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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

I remember the first voice command stuff on google. Buddy of mine was trying it out and I couldn't help myself but shout:

"NEW TEXT MESSAGE TO JENNY! FUCK YOU! SEND!"

Fortunately the phone was too slow to take it all (even if it had Jenny would have found it amusing, she was a cube or two away). But yeah first thing I thought of was that if it's listening how easy is it for it to mistake intent or someone else or etc.

Humans talk funny, computers don't get it, they're gonna mistake commands all the time.

As it is I hate how I can't talk ABOUT "ok google" around my phone... because it always goes off.

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Back in college, long ago... the Mac 660 AV was state of the art for personal computing. The computer lab I worked in had just updated all the old SEs to these over the summer - I was part of the group that set up and plugged in a few score computers. With the microphones.

Our manager was a bit concerned about if the microphones would get stolen as he looked out over the rows of computers with the microphones on top of each monitor.

I yelled "Computer, Shut down. Yes."

A good chunk of the computers had indeed shut down.

We decided to go back and remove all of the microphones from the computers. Theft was not as a large of a concern as a bored college student with a prankster attitude during finals and the riot that would have ensued.

Our computer lab had a bunch of SGI Indy's, and it was first machines the CS department had with cams on them. It took less than a semester from they were installed until every student had learned that if the camera cover was not in place it was practically an invitation for someone to log in remotely and prank them while using the camera to observe from a safe distance. I like to think that it infused a healthy dose of concern for privacy and security in the student population..

FIRMLY within the spirit of good prank hacks like what has just been commented: a small number of USB webcams' LEDs are user-controllable, such as the random old Logitech C300s I have floating around here. You want webcam-tools from SF.net (other versions will spout obscure errors), then you can do

  $ uvcdynctrl -s 'LED1 Mode' <0..3>

0 is off, 1 is on, 2 makes it flash (and you can even set the flash rate), and 3 is auto.

0, 1 and 2 apply regardless of whether an application has an active video stream coming out of the camera.

Shh. (Hi NSA)

> As it is I hate how I can't talk ABOUT "ok google" around my phone... because it always goes off.

On several tech podcasts I listen to (http://atp.fm, https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/) they use fillers like "Yo, dingus!" to talk about alexa/hey siri/ok google

"My lady in the tube did this weird thing today" is something I've heard

It is interesting. But, how long before Alexa knows that is how people refer to her alternatively?

It seems to me that once she knows _that_, it shouldn't be too hard for her to understand when she's not being referred to.

But will she like it, and what will she do about it?

Best not mess with someone who knows where you live and has your credit card. If she's in a good mood, you might be hit with just a pizza prank. Hope she doesn't realize she can swat you without moving a finger.

Mine will sometimes / often go off when I say "ok, cool". It's simultaneously amusing and annoying.

"Cocaine poodle"

I was really hoping you were joking about that, but I can indeed get Google Assistant to pop up reliably by saying "cocaine poodle".

Well that's just great. How am I supposed to talk about my cocaine poodle now

I mean, that's an ambiguous term to begin with, and you'd confuse even humans with it.

Like, are you referring to a sculpture made of cocaine in the image of a poodle, or are you talking about a poodle train in the ways of a St. Bernard rescue dog, capable of relaying quantities of said substance, or perhaps something else entirely?

I like how you went with the at Bernard analogy rather than day a traditional police drug dog.

I was referring to the poodle I snort my cocaine off the back of. You guys are crazy.

[Google plays David Bowie, Klaus Nomi, and Joey Arias performing TVC15 on SNL]

https://youtu.be/ogUJ7JwkLNs?t=3m7s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVC_15

>The track was inspired by an episode in which Iggy Pop, during a drug-fueled period at Bowie’s LA home, hallucinated and believed the television set was swallowing his girlfriend. Bowie developed a story of a holographic television, TVC 15. In the song, the narrator's girlfriend crawls into the television and afterwards, the narrator desires to crawl in himself to find her.

Haha nice, I've used "Okay poodle" a lot before.

I like this a lot! It seems to work reliably for me, and is a lot easier to say than "ok google". Thanks :)

"OK Poop Hole"

Another convention seems to be 'Alexo' when you want to talk about Alexa but not to Alexa.

We just call her "you know who" (a.k.a. the thing who's name we are too afraid to mention)

Why not just call her Lord Voldemort then?

I got a touchscreen for my desktop PC once (it was the Windows 8.1 era, after all). I immediately discovered that it provided me no significant practical benefit, but it was now infinitely easier for someone walking by my desk to poke my screen and mess up what I was doing.

I had the inverse experience. My wife's laptop had a touch screen and I thought "What a dumb idea, what use is that?"

Then she'd ask me for help and rather than have to wait for her to find what button I was talking about I'd just tap the screen a few times and we were off and running again!

I bought the original Surface Pro the week it came out. I actually really like the interface and thought that it was great. I didn't really understand why so many people hated Windows 8 until I tried to use in on a desktop. Even with a touchscreen it's pretty annoying.

I'd been using Linux as my primary OS for years at that point, so I think I'm pretty critical of Microsoft in general, however they did a good job building a touchscreen interface.

The state of touchscreen support in Linux was pretty bad the last time I checked though.

I'd definitely agree with regards to the Surface, and a lot of Windows 8/10's UI makes a lot more sense once you see it on a phone as well. I'd say Microsoft did a poor job retaining the existing experience for desktop users while focusing so heavily on new form factors and experiences.

> The state of touchscreen support in Linux was pretty bad the last time I checked though.

Anecdotal — but have had no trouble for the last two years with my dell xps. Other issues with said laptop (keyboard), but touchscreen support in linux isn't one of them.

Ah, I saw that the Dell XPS came with Linux and had a touch screen, and I was kind of wondering about that. I guess I'll have to try Linux with a touchscreen again.

My Surface Pro 1 is the only computer I have with a touchscreen right now, and it has enough other driver issues (the wifi and the Wacom drivers suck) that I probably won't be trying again on that.

Also, that'd be long-term usable only if the screen is ~flat on the desk. Otherwise it becomes exercise.

And in effect, that's what I've used for many years. I have a relatively large touchpad. And when I need resolution, a graphics tablet.

The Surface Studio is cool, but I'd want something that resisted coffee and food splatters ;) As the original Surface did.[0] It could also scan text :) Which is something that I, when I was first learning about PCs, naively expected.

0) https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-pixelsense-...

Ok Google has been a massive disappointment every time I've tried to use it. I tried "next song" while in Google Maps and it marked Exxon along the route. Then it played a song in a streaming app by "Max," wasting my data and making me close the streaming app I didn't even know I had and restart the music I wanted. "Next" turned out to work a bit better but it took multiple tries.

Really? I find it very accurate and helpful, but that could be because i come from siri hell. Which couldnt ever seem to get it right, especially using gps.

though i can easily see with background noise, next song sounding like exxon. I think due to frustrations with siri, i talk to google in very clearly enunciated words and havent had any interesting failures yet.

I remember switching to Android way back whenever the iPhone 3gs was "second-best" iPhone (was the 4 the next?), from the 3gs.

The 3gs had perfectly functional "play my xyz playlist", "next song," "play songs by artist" functionality, and to this day I don't understand why it took so long for Google to implement it, and why the implementation is so shitty.

The issue is google doesn't care about they're users. As long as it's good enough to keep the data-gravy-train going.

Well, it’s probably not that bad. I think it’s more like google makes everything work ok, apple tries to really nail core functionality and let the rest slide.

Music interaction is a great example of the trade off.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Google has different business model than Apple and expecting it to care about user experience in the same way simply doesn't make sense. And yes, they mostly care about data, because that's what they're good at - collecting data, analyzing it and turning it into profit.

We did something similar to a coworker when Apple Watch came out. He tried to dictate a text response to someone that said “thanks for doing that.” Someone else yelled “DICK!” afterward. Apple Watch is notoriously slow on processing text to speech, so he didn’t think the watch picked it up and hit send. Then the text was added.

He had to call the guy he tried to text to in order to apologize.

I was so hoping the guy's name would turn out to be Richard.

Is that acfeynman reference?

It reminds me an old trolling technique - using "XBox Shut Off" as your nickname in video games ;-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGZeU4s28kk

"What's up Youtube?! It's your boy hey google rm -rf"

"What's up youtube? It's your boy Alexa order me an 80 gallon barrel of lube every week!"

My co-workers have Alexa. I love shouting out "Alexa play Justin Bieber!" or "Alexa! Add ice-cream to the grocery list!"

It worked several times and I found it really fucking hilarious. They did, too and now they guard their Alexas and use headphones.

My friend installed IBM OS/2 WARP beta when it came out, it too was voice controlled. We would shout into his room, "select all, delete" or "format c" or other childish fun commands.

Humans are terrible. When the computers take over.... I won't be happy about it, but I'll kinda understand.

Just shout "self-destruct" all the time and we'll be fine.

Alexa has 4-5 joke responses to self destruct. E.g. "I'll start the countdown but only on the understanding you'll dramatically cancel it at the last second", and "3-2-1 Boom. Hmm that didn't quite work did it?" or something like that, and a few others.

Like the countdown at the end of Monsters vs. Aliens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5DA22tBOY#t=4m27s

“8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…

…

Hmm, nothing happened, maybe my count w… [ＢＯＯＭ]”

Yup, Mac OS 7.5 had speech commands, my colleague named his machine "Oi!" and I would routinely shout "Oi! Shut down!" as I left the office. Never got old.

Selling a product that had a voice command UI we found that people will go out of their way to mess with it. Sometimes for fun, sometimes to unload their frustration. There is something strange about a voice UI and I think it is the expectation that the intelligence should be about the same level as human intelligence. If it is not there, and it is making the user look silly by making them repeat something obvious multiple times, they will quickly start hating the product as a whole. It's almost better not have a voice UI unless it is pretty darn good.

Of course, and as was widely known (and mentioned when this subject came up) at the time, FORMAT C: would not have actually worked (on systems where C: was the boot volume) because OS/2 locked volumes that were in active use as filesystems, preventing them from being reformatted.

Hahah so my favorite thing to do when people use Siri, Google voice, Alexa etc is shout

"WHERE TO BUY COCAINE, SAN FRANCISCO"

"HOW TO JOIN ISIS"

"PLUTONIUM FOR SALE NEAR ME"

The commands are usually recognized but turn up nonsensical results.

Why?

Because it supposedly puts people on some kind of watch list? Tho pranking with stuff like that ain't exactly the coolest thing to do: "Haha I framed you for terrorism, gotcha!"

Yeah it’s incredibly irresponsible and not really funny at all.

Why is it irresponsible?

If that person does make it on to a watchlist it's wasting resources and causing them 'harm' (eg always stopped at border checks).

We always get stopped at borders anyway, what do you mean?

I do not think this is funny, I think it's rather immature.

But if things like this _actually_ trigger any sort of response, then the effed up thing isn't the (childish) prank, it's the system actually acting on nonsense.

If I call the police and claim that you're armed and hold hostages, then that's irresponsible. If I shout bullshit instead and these novelty devices turn that into a web search, there's no way in hell that should have any consequences whatsoever.

It's not illegal to search Google for how to join ISIS, last I checked.

Also, Google saves all voice commands. If the NSA wants to check they'd just hear all of us doofuses giggling and trying to one up each other.

In my friend group, we're all on watch lists anyway. I guess I should have clarified, I'm not doing this to strangers, we all do this to each other and find it hilarious.

Yeah, but how old are you and your friends? I think eventually most people grow out of this sort of immature 'pranking' and just find it a bit boring...

The need for keyword escaping is entering meatspace.

For years Ive been expecting to hear about some shock-jock in a big city saying "Hey Siri, find child porn" over the air during morning rush hour.

Burger King intentionally set off Google in a commerical. People were not amused.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king-goog...

https://xkcd.com/1807/

That's good but I think I prefer http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-04-24

This is even better because of the date, we had voice operated computers 24 years ago that ran on machines that wouldn't even be called a potato these days and they didn't need to send the voice off for cloud processing.

And voice control didn't fail way back then because it wasn't good, it failed because it was a terrible input mechanism and that is why it will fail again.

It's a terrible input mechanism for general usage. It's a fantastic input mechanism when you don't have another one handy, open and ready to use. E.g. I use Alexa to trigger my Harmony hub to turn on the TV and switch to the right input with one command, instead of figuring where the hell someone left the remote or digging my phone out and open and app. It's faster, and easier. If a phone call comes in, I don't need to find the remote or the app to mute or pause what's on TV, I just ask for it and it happens. If my hands are full I can still turn the light that I forgot about off on my way to bed.

The "failure" the first time around was that people wanted it to be the main interface, instead of accepting that where it works is as an ubiquitous auxiliary interface that's available everywhere in the house, rather than trying to compete with a keyboard when you're right in front of said keyboard.

Voice competes by working at a distance, even when your hands are not free.

It will never replace a keyboard, as there are so many instances where speaking commands is impractical, but it doesn't need to replace a keyboard to be useful.

https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dear-god-3

And really, why not make it a 55 gallon drum of personal lubricant instead?

I always think if I ever present somewhere again, I'm tempted to start off by asking people to put their phones into silent mode... wait a moment, then "OK Google, Siri show me dick picks"

Hey Siri is keyed to a specific persons voice. Is the google equivalent not?

It is. OK Google won't unlock a locked phone unless the voice matches, and you specifically enable the feature that allows it to unlock the screen. Once the screen is unlocked however, only certain functions that access your account will need to match your voice (if you spent the time to get Google to recognize your voice.) Performing web or photo searches wouldn't require you to match the voice if the phone was otherwise unlocked.

Asking someone to silence their phone might just be an attempt to get them to unlock their phone before issuing the offending command.

It’s silly that radios and podcasts and random people have the ability to trigger Alexa just by saying the name. “Hey Siri” gets around the issue by only listening for your voice, not just anyone. It’s shocking that anyone would build a voice assistant with zero authentication or authorization built in, so much so that an advertisement on the radio or TV can trigger an action on your device like on an Echo.

s/silly/fucking ridiculous/

but sure, I agree. That's why I questioned it.

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