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I Fired Google

theartofdoingstuff.com

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Re: I Fired Google

#51

Post by dminik »

delichon wrote: post #29
aliasxneo wrote: post #5

I don't really use our Google Home devices, but my wife does. Ever since the "update" I've noticed now that Gemini likes to ask her 2-3 follow up questions after each query. The first might be something like, "Would you like to know more about ?" My wife would answer "No" and Gemini would respond like, "Is there anything else you would like to discuss on the subject of ?" It's gotten to the point where she will start…

I talk to chatbots while doing yardwork, often with both hands full. Yesterday I tried to get it to shut up mid conversation and just could not do it with voice only. I had to wait through several minutes of blathering, restarted by every random noise, before I could put the chainsaw down and turn it off. I was amazed at my own level of anger at that. It was just a voice in my ears but I reacted to it viscerally like…

This is kind of funny, but very much expected.

The interface into the LLM is tokens in and out (text, images, audio). And the harness generally doesn't understand what you're passing in. The LLM has nothing to do other than to respond with tokens and empty responses (eg. just a stop token) have been aggressively trained out of it.

Re: I Fired Google

#52

Post by mrhottakes »

cwnyth wrote: post #28
freediddy wrote: post #9

Sorry but this page and site have the most obnoxious number of ads on almost any page I've ever seen. After reading a couple of paragraphs I closed the window, no content is worth subjecting myself to that many ads and trying to navigate which is real content and which isn't.

Firefox + ublock origin and voilà, no more ads.

I can't fathom how anyone uses the web without an ad blocker these days. Especially shocking to hear on HN.

Re: I Fired Google

#54

Post by jimbokun »

Fun article, but the sea of pop ups and advertisements battling to distract you from the text ironically exemplifies the point being made about Google Home.

Re: I Fired Google

#55

Post by data-ottawa »

> For years I could ask Google what song was playing and it would identify it. It was one of the most useful features it had. You'd hear a song in a store, on television or drifting over from a neighbour's backyard and Google would identify it in seconds.

A huge pet peeve of mine is when I’m in the car and want to know what song is playing on the radio. I run Shazam and my phone mutes the stereo to activate a microphone. I have to disconnect from CarPlay then run Shazam, then reconnect — it’s a passenger only operation.

Song recognition is built into both iOS and Android, the device should always use the internal mic instead of a CarPlay/Android Auto microphone over Bluetooth.

Side note: is there a good “dumb smart speaker” I can have run with a wake word connected to my own API? Speech to Text and Speech to Speech are fairly well supported for local AI workflows now, it would be great to have my own Home device without worrying about where the audio goes.

I’m sure it’s a very niche audience today, but I imagine giving this thing MCP for Wikipedia, a music app, and my recipes would be perfect.

Re: I Fired Google

#56

Post by jimbokun »

elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

Soon it will be like Jack Black in High Fidelity, preventing you from listening to music that’s currently too hip for you.

Re: I Fired Google

#57

Post by shaky-carrousel »

tomasphan wrote: post #45
sqquima wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And a clearly AI-generated or at least AI-assisted post.

It’s not clear to me. What makes you sure it’s AI assisted?

> Google Home used to be one of my favourite gadgets.

> Not because it was smart.

> Because it was useful.

I was half expecting "and that's bold" after that.

Re: I Fired Google

#58

Post by fastforwardius »

bighead1 wrote: post #23

> Nobody asked for cars that require IT support and 3 sub-menus to lower the air conditioning. (Screens are cheaper to install than buttons and knobs.) perhaps, but people did ask for cheaper cars.

I saw cost savings trickle down to customers only in an economy textbook.

Re: I Fired Google

#59

Post by markbnj »

I feel like the author has another disappointment coming. Alexa has been annoying in this way for a long time now. Still very useful as well, but yeah, annoying. It has always been too proactive about suggesting things I don't want or need in response to simple questions like "What is the outside temperature?" ("It's currently 46 degrees, with a low of 32 degrees expected overnight. Did you know you can turn your lights on and off according to a schedule? Would you like to schedule turning some lights on or off?") But recent AI-oriented updates have just made it worse. Now its chatty and full of attitude, and having raised a few teenagers let me tell you, that's what we want more of in our lives. Chat. And attitude.

Re: I Fired Google

#60

Post by jimbokun »

themythfable wrote: post #33
elbasti wrote: post #11

I have an android phone which means I use android auto fairly often. The sheer quality destruction it's experienced since transitioning to Gemini is incredible. I experience this mostly when asking for music. Before gemini, mistakes were common but deterministic. It was easy to understand where the query had gone wrong and so how to fix it. Example: "Hey google, play Blackstar " (Plays the album blackstar by David Bo…

Same thing with Google homes. Pre-gemini, you knew what you would get, basically the structured snippets that would appear at the top of the search results. Now it's much more verbose. My biggest gripe is that it basically stopped listening to me, since "upgrading" to Gemini, which is frustrating because I've used it to control the Hue lights for the past decade. It listens to my partner though, so after it fails to…

Like being the one who brought the dog home from the shelter and feeds it, and the dog still prefers your partner.
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