Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

That still implies 50 of them are trying to make it seem like anything but a toy.

I was given a Google Home Mini as a Christmas gift (the resident tech god for most people's lives doesn't have one? what, how can this be!? someone rectified that for me), and I've been toying with it... and its the Google assistant in my phone, but in a stand alone device.

I mean, don't get me wrong, that's a lot more useful than people realize because.... IT ACTUALLY WORKS. Ridiculously loud kitchen fan hood roaring along at levels that are probably considered unsafe by OSHA standards? "Hey Google, do the thing." "Okay, I'm doing the thing." Upstairs, far away from it? Not even yelling at it, it understands me reasonably and does things alarmingly often.

The best impossible magic? "Okay Google, turn my television off." My Chromecast is not named "television" nor "my television", is only referenced in my Home config as the default TV for that room (of which the TV and Mini share), and somehow turns the TV off even though the Chromecast does not expose this functionality anywhere in the Home app (and was assumed to only know how to issue exactly one HDMI CEC command (turn TV on and switch input to here) due to some undocumented and strange hardware issue... hundreds of threads across the Internet all about how can they turn the TV off even though they can turn the TV on, none of them ever figuring out how to issue CEC off or even if the Chromecast can... it can, and the assistant in my tiny speakers knows how to issue this probably undocumented command to the Chromecast).

My experience with Alexa? Ideal listening conditions, no background noise, only me talking. "Alexa, do the skill that you know how to do and is advertised in the commercials on TV, any off them." "I'm not quite sure how to help you with that".

Agreed, technically it's amazing.

My wife and I ave different native languages yet we can speak to it, combining both languages in a single inquiry/conversation and it replies to me in my language and to her in hers.

Ingenious stuff, whatever people think of the privacy issues.

I have been using Alexa for years. I've been controlling my TV and I have WiFi smart plugs. It is super useful and it has never had issues understanding what I was saying.

I have noticed people who have issues they place the device next to a sound source such as a TV or fan or something and obviously this will mess it up.

I also don't understand why so much hate for Alexa. Everyone in this thread just seems like a Debbie downer, shi*ing on everything all the time.

> I also don't understand why so much hate for Alexa. Everyone in this thread just seems like a Debbie downer, shi*ing on everything all the time.

My issue is that it hears me correctly, it just doesn't understand what I'm saying. You can't use "AND" to combine stuff ("Turn off the living room AND kitchen light"), trying to play a podcast by reciting the name doesn't work 90% of the time. I can barely get it to play my Spotify and do shuffle play, it usually takes like 3 failed commands, and I think "wow, I could of just pulled my phone out of my pocket and done it faster - without getting annoyed".

I've had it for a year now, and it hasn't improved at all as far as I can tell. Kind of pathetic when you are the #1 selling device and I assume have multiple times the data of their competitors for training.

I'll give you a concrete example. The primary light fixture in my small apartment is a standing lamp in the corner of the living room. I bought a smart plug for the lamp and during set-up I chose the name "lamp", since that is what we call it (in our household you don't have to say /which/ lamp, since it's obvious). Now, Alexa doesn't know what to do if I ask it to "turn off the light", which is disappointing enough, but it also fails to understand "turn off the lamp" -- instead I have to remember to drop the 'the' and say "turn off lamp", which is so unnatural. It feels like I have to bend and deform natural language into something Alexa can parse, which is the exact opposite of what assistants promise to do.

Well, naming devices for voice control is more tedious than you'd think. You have one device that you named poorly. Try having a house with over 150 devices! Naming matters. Putting a little thought into it makes a big difference in usability.

I've got one that gets used everyday. It's named "Breakfast Table". 'Alexa, turn on Breakfast Table' works quite reliably. Now, am I actually turning on the table? No, of course not, but that rolls off the tongue a lot better than "Alexa, turn off pendant lamp over the breakfast table". Or recessed ceiling cans as opposed to just "living room ceiling". We really don't have many devices with 'lamp' or 'light' as part of their name. Because we're not really asking for control over a light, we're asking for light for an activity at a location.

But there still ends up being a few that are clunky. "Family room endtable" for a reading lamp near that end of the sectional, or 'Family room sofa" for the two on a console table behind the other part. Haven't hit upon better names for those. Activity naming is an option but we really don't call for lighting in a scene oriented kind of way. Some folks seem to like that, go figure.

Bearing in mind with an open floorplan just about everything on a level is within line of sight and earshot. The placing of multiple Alexa devices took a little fine tuning to overcome reflection from lots of wood and drywall surfaces. That allows for unexpected pickup. Oh, the units handle avoiding overlap with each other, but sometimes facing one way in a room leads to the sound being picked up by the one in that direction. As you'd expect sound waves would travel. But without a LOT more intrusive sensors (cameras, motion, position) it's handling things remarkably well just with voice.

The great tragedy is the leap to conclusions people make. "Promise to do".... where? By whom?

Oh, you want a TV cartoon equivalent of Rosie the Robot... we're not there yet. But given the hilariously low price point for these devices, we're getting quite a lot of bang for the buck in the meanwhile.

Can you rename it to "the lamp"?

I’ve set up a few single device “groups” in the Alexa app to serve as aliases. This has helped quite a bit.

I find Alexa "voice recognition" quite, if not amazingly, good. Native English speaker but definitely not news anchor voice. The problem is in conversational understanding that drops off quickly beyond "What's the weather?"

> I've been controlling my TV and I have WiFi smart plugs. It is super useful and it has never had issues understanding what I was saying.

> I also don't understand why so much hate for Alexa.

Those are nice features. You absolutely shouldn't have to send you voice over the internet and give up all of your privacy just to make these work. Does it work when your internet goes out?

I don't know anything about how good Alexa works since requiring an internet connection is a non starter. This isn't why I hate Alexa.

Because it's a spying device people are installing in their homes. These are the same people that are going to complain that it was a huge invasion of privacy in 5 years. It's going to be Facebook all over again. People willingly hand all their data over to daddy Bezos and then wonder why Amazon National Healthcare is charging them insane premiums.

Edit: The same people developing facial recognition for the DoD is developing eavesdropping devices for Americans to install in their homes. Why, after the Snowden revelations, would any rational person think the big-brother doesn't have a direct line into your home? Listening to your every word, to your childrens words, to their opinions in formation.. Seems willingly selfish to not only hand over your privacy, but everyone you invite into your life.

Edit 2: Considering the investment being put into a smart-microphone, I can only imagine the market for the device is a skunkworks operation. Selling a perfect surveillance device to the CPC perhaps? Beat Google and their project dragonfly to the punch? Hmm

Alexa is like a little kid, you just have to repeat yourself often, and sometimes she pipes up in the middle of a conversation because she wants to do something else.

That said, she’s quite capable of turning my TV and lights on and off.

Seems Siri is much better than Alexa as well - I often hear my roommate struggling with getting Alexa to do what she wants, and various other friends struggling with Alexa as well, usually because of accents.

Smart assistants in general have a ways to go still, but perhaps in the next 5-10 years they will be very good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com