Mycroft – An open-source voice assistant
mycroft.ai
mycroft.ai
edit: spelling
at the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. likely what is happening is that you searched something somewhere on your phone, then brought it up in conversation, then saw an increase in ads related to that subject.
Also a fair number of people live where a snowmobile isn't practical but have a cabin where they are and so they will be making weekend trips to where they are practical.
Your point stands though, anyone who lives in the wrong area is unlikely to be targeted if the only indication they might want a snowmobile is home conversion. If you are serious you will do other searches (tracked for sure), and have location history in a target area (might not be track able, these area often have poor cell coverage)
While I do respect you and your spouse for trying this experiment, it's entirely too small a sample size to really prove that this doesn't happen. There are a ton of variables involved, the biggest being which advertisers may or may not be listening in at any given time. It's hardly a controlled experiment, and I can't say I can put any stock in it.
It also does not prove that it is observer bias. I have had things pop up that I am %100 absolutely positive I never in any way shape or form looked into, yet there the ads were after a short conversations with others who did have an interest.
It makes sense for them to target by IP, so if one person in an office is researching the product they can start targeting the entire office and maybe get their ad in front of an exec who can make a purchasing decision.
Your message is basically "You're already screwed, why bother trying?"
Why act that way? Who are you helping?
If you support privacy, then people taking steps to try to share less data ought to be encouraged, right?
Maybe it's not perfect - But it's worth trying to do better.
I take active steps to minimize when and how the microphones around me listen in. In no way do I subscribe to the idea that "we are already screwed".
Please do not take the worst possible interpretation of what people say on HN. It's in the guidelines and generally looked down upon. This is not reddit.
Let's say person A was doing research on a product they're interested in buying. That product category is now associated with person A. Person A goes and visits person B. Because our phones track where we go by default for most people, now there's an association between Person A and Person B, and a potential likelihood that person B is also interested in that product. Thus the occasional ad shows up for the product Person A was researching. Since Person A and Person B are friends, it's possible Person A will talk about the product they're interested in. Person B now notices that they're getting ads for the product that Person A talked about.
The problem with mass surveillance is not that the NSA/etc can breach anyone they want; that's effectively always been true. It's that it's cheap to breach everyone, by default, all the time. Taking reasonable precautions such that you can't have your data swept up cheaply, instead requiring targeted human effort and/or a court order, does create a deterrent, and helps counteract the current imbalance of power between TLAs and We The People.
Edit: There are also several skills available that can point at full, local, downloads of wikipedia and the like. So if you prefer faster results and keeping some of your queries internal as a sort of hybrid thing that's an option as well.
Rhasspy is a really cool project that is compatible with a bunch of fully offline speech frameworks. PicoVoice is a super neat company too.
Wake word detection, speech to text, intent recognition, etc. is all split out and able to be plugged into separately.
They essentially abandoned development of the v1 line (but appear to still be selling it!) for the v2 line, and I have a hard time trusting them.
Admittedly, I haven't done that much with the mic array I have, mainly because I got burned out dumping tens of hours into trying to get ReSpeaker Core v1 working (which I ended up trashing; it was that bad). I'd like to use it with a Raspberry Pi; hopefully that works out.
How practical would it be to recognize my most common commands, eg "resume podcast", offline?
Many of those who are concerned with apps phoning home would be the ones to keep their data and media locally too!
Unfortunately, they mismanaged Mark II so badly that I lost all faith in Mycroft in general.
I, too, saw the Indiegogo campaign and gladly handed over nearly $200 for the Mycroft Mark II.
Two and half years later, there has been little progress, with no telling when they'll actually deliver the device to backers.
It's one thing for a company to delay production to have lost money on this with no help from Indiegogo and a refusal from the company to refund backers, I have no hope for this product seeing the light of day any time soon.
Shame on Mycroft for this scam.
Everyone laughed but I meant it seriously. I still don't get how "1 click buy" is a thing you can patent but you can't patent "2 click buy". The patent process is incredibly stupid and arbitrary as far as I can tell - at least when it comes to software.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crush...
The biggest problem is their hardware: they have a Mycroft v1, (to me personally) a prototype alike piece of hardware. There have been successful campaigns for a v2 release, with new hardware and an improved design.
However, they fail to work with reliable partners and there's still no working device which resembles the final production level. I have been a backer of the indigogo campaign but it's frustrating they postpone their Mycroft v2 every time again. I really hope the can deliver the device at some point, but they keep rewriting software and if they ship, the hardware is pretty outdated probably.
I think the priority needs to be getting the STT to a good, neural net backed, open source engine. Once the software is stabilized I think there’s room for a whole ecosystem of hardware interfaces.
As with most open source efforts(especially early on) there's a lot of tinkering and DIY at the get go and they've designed their product to be supportive of this. Their "retail" devices are, much like Googles intent with Nexus, intended to be a best possible target for other vendors to target including the DIY crowd. Whether that's the right way to come at it is open to debate but the premise that they don't have a set hardware target is at best misleading.
Edit: Link to hardware spec https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/get-mycr...
[1]: https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft-technologies/over...
Check out this example with the MATRIX Creator and MATRIX Voice: https://www.hackster.io/matrix-labs/matrix-devices-running-m...
https://github.com/rcbyron/hey-athena-client/commit/50b37628... (2015)
Vs
https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-core/commit/8e470ce7c15... (2016)
Jokes aside, it's a great work, I'll probably try it in my spare time.
Alternate analysis: Personally it is not surprising to me at all that a marketing website would be run on Wordpress, Drupal, etc. And therefore it is quite clear that a database connection would be needed.
It requires extra half an hour of work, but... it's probably worth it.
Plasma Bigscreen from people involved with KDE:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/03/26/plasm...
Last time I asked, the dev asked me back how much I'd be willing to pay for it...
I'll have a loot at it again.
I am amazed that this doesn't seems to bother anyone ... And adding a cache layer is not a real solution ...
And in other parts of the internet there is few stacks delivering 5k to 150k rps per core without cache ...
But still everyone use WordPress ...
https://battlepenguin.com/tech/a-history-of-personal-and-pro...
Quote often I'd get issues with the database failing due to load. I'm very glad I moved everything to a static content generator.
Error establishing a database connection
https://mycroft.ai/blog/why-name-it-mycroft/
Edit: Google cache has a copy[1]:
> Mycroft is named in honor of Mike, the supercomputer in Robert A. Heinlein’s classic novel “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress”. Heinlein’s Mycroft was a High-Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L” – a HOLMES FOUR. Mycroft’s friend Manuel named him “Mycroft” after Sherlock’s elder brother Mycroft Holmes. This was later shortened to Mike.
[1] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ei=mwx-XrKxLauV...
"My dear Watson," said he, "I cannot agree with those who rank modesty among the virtues. To the logician all things should be seen exactly as they are, and to underestimate one's self is as much a departure from truth as to exaggerate one's own powers. When I say, therefore, that Mycroft has better powers of observation than I, you may take it that I am speaking the exact and literal truth."
... "I said that he was my superior in observation and deduction. If the art of the detective began and ended in reasoning from an arm-chair, my brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He will not even go out of his way to verify his own solution, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right. Again and again I have taken a problem to him, and have received an explanation which has afterwards proved to be the correct one. And yet he was absolutely incapable of working out the practical points which must be gone into before a case could be laid before a judge or jury."