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Siri, What Time Is It in London?

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Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#671

Post by aidenscott2016 »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #523

Siri doesn't know that my front door is called "FRONT DOOR". I only have one smart lock, which works perfectly, and it is called "FRONT DOOR" in HomeKit. When I ask Siri about my FRONT DOOR she responds that she cannot find it. When I ask Siri about the status of my DOOR, she responds with "The FRONT DOOR is locked/unlocked". I'll then say 'Alright Siri you literally just used the phrase "FRONT DOOR" five seconds ago…

is it named in capital letters? I've noticed some systems will see capital letters and read it as F-R-O-N-T etc. Maybe try renaming the door to lower case

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#672

Post by paulcole »

mulmen wrote: post #635
Slartie wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the person asking the question lives in Ohio, they may actually be talking about London OH (or Dublin OH). I would seriously doubt this assumption. Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? On the contrary, this context information would make it much more likely that the person actually meant "London, England". Except if ther…

> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? Because they want to know what time it is in a different location. 14 states have more than one time zone. Do you know which ones?

> Do you know which ones?

No and that’s irrelevant trivia. What I know is if the state I live in is on that list. Oregon and it is. Don’t care what the other 13 are if I’m asking for a time in the state I live in.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#673

Post by dehrmann »

Reminds me of a bug I kept having to resurrect at Spotify: the first result for "Billie Jean" was an admittedly good cover by The Civil Wars, but the result was clearly wrong. And it wasn't a case of "Man Who Sold the World," "Hurt," or "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" where the cover is arguably the definitive version. Turns out search is hard.

Oh, and if you search for "Billy Jean?" Still broken.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#674

Post by teacpde »

jvolkman wrote: post #357

At some point about a year ago I noticed that I could no longer ask my Google Home devices "what's the weather?". I'd just get a generic "I don't understand" response. But more specific queries such as "What's the weather in Seattle?" would work. After a couple of weeks of this, I somehow got the idea that it was related to the devices' configured locations. And sure enough, telling the Home that I lived in the next…

That’s a fun experience to debug a problem, I bet if that problem goes thru customer service, it probably will not unfold and let alone a fix.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#675

Post by wrsh07 »

dehrmann wrote: post #673

Reminds me of a bug I kept having to resurrect at Spotify: the first result for "Billie Jean" was an admittedly good cover by The Civil Wars, but the result was clearly wrong. And it wasn't a case of "Man Who Sold the World," "Hurt," or "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" where the cover is arguably the definitive version. Turns out search is hard. Oh, and if you search for "Billy Jean?" Still broken.

At some point I wonder if business incentives are a problem

Eg does Spotify pay more to play the original than the one by The Civil Wars?

If so, how much money are they saving by such "bugs"?

And if not, how is popularity (use an objective ish metric, eg wiki page length) not a major feature?

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#676

Post by wrsh07 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #298

TBH I always feel amazed about how worked up people get about stuff like this, especially people familiar with software who should know that there are millions, maybe billions of edge cases like this in a generic knowledge system, and thus at least it's easy to make a mistake like this. I mean, the time it took him to write his blog post is probably more than all the times it would take him to follow up with "What ti…

No way

This is the difference between a usable product and something that is not

If my voice assistant is going to make a significant % of errors, it either needs to be very cheap for me to correct it (it's not -- usually you retry and if it keeps failing what do you do?) or I'm going to stop using it

Steve Jobs made great, not passable, products. It's a shame that Siri is so far behind

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#677

Post by recursive »

mulmen wrote: post #669
recursive wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a harder question. The important question here is "does your state have more than one time zone?"

No, it isn't important. What's important is how to answer the question that was asked. The number of time zones in a state has nothing to do with the time in a location. You just need to disambiguate what location is the subject of the question.

Well, it's no less important than this.

"14 states have more than one time zone. Do you know which ones? "

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#678

Post by 1_player »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #464
1_player wrote: post #375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mnemonic is literally "it's the wrong one". 12PM is morning, 12AM is afternoon.

No, it's not. 12PM is midday (12:00), and 12AM is midnight (00:00).

Right. Mnemonic or not, I still get it wrong.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#679

Post by mulmen »

recursive wrote: post #677
mulmen wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't important. What's important is how to answer the question that was asked. The number of time zones in a state has nothing to do with the time in a location. You just need to disambiguate what location is the subject of the question.

Well, it's no less important than this. "14 states have more than one time zone. Do you know which ones? "

The point I was making there is not all states have one time zone so it is reasonable to think someone could ask for the time somewhere else because they don’t know what time it is there. Even if that somewhere else is in the same state.

I had hoped that would also demonstrate that the solution here is to just answer what was asked instead of saying “that’s not something people would ask.”

They would ask that and if you are designing a system based on what you think users won’t do then you’re gonna have a bad time.

Re: Siri, What Time Is It in London?

#680

Post by mulmen »

paulcole wrote: post #672
mulmen wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why on earth should someone living in a state specifically ask for the local time in a different location within that same state? Because they want to know what time it is in a different location. 14 states have more than one time zone. Do you know which ones?

> Do you know which ones? No and that’s irrelevant trivia. What I know is if the state I live in is on that list. Oregon and it is. Don’t care what the other 13 are if I’m asking for a time in the state I live in.

The point is that just because you know the state doesn’t mean you know the time. They’re unrelated. It is reasonable for a person in Portland to ask what time it is in Ontario. They may know there are two time zones around eastern Oregon but where is the line?

Idaho is the same way. What time is it in Riggins? I’m from Idaho and I don’t even know the answer to that question. It’s a reasonable thing to ask siri.

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