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Comment by colejohnson66 | Hacker News Reader

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colejohnson66

Siri is hit and miss, but setting timers (for cooking) always works.

> Hey Siri, set a timer for 8 minutes.

> Ok. 8 minutes and counting.

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Siri is the world's most powerful AI-timer-setter.

Setting timers is apparently surprisingly hard! Google Assistant frequently just tells me to set the timer in the app.

Use it all the time for cooking with multiple timers. No issue here.

when i was a working chef, i used this NON-STOP. it is actually the first real “tech” i’ve ever brought into a (real working) kitchen that provided real value instead of gimmick

You worked as a chef and used a single timer in Siri and were happy with that? How?! (Siri doesn't support more than one concurrent timer)

Siri doesn't support more than one concurrent timer

I can't speak for the chef, but it does on HomePod. Each gets its own name and that name is announced when the alarm goes off.

"bleep bloop bleepity boop! Eggs timer. bleep bloop bleepity boop!

So multiple timers only work if I get a HomePod and talk to Siri on that?

I miss the days of instruction manuals. Alexa has always (?) supported concurrent timers but it wasn't until recently that it started asking me if I want to name my timers. But it tries to be "smart" and only ask me when it thinks I need to name them.

I only figured out through trial and error that I can name my Alexa timers without waiting for it to prompt me:

  > Alexa, set a pasta timer for 10 minutes
  > - Pasta timer, 10 minutes, starting now.
  > Alexa, cancel pasta timer
  > - Pasta timer canceled

Alexa, let pastaTimer equal 600. While pastaTimer greater than zero, pastaTimer minus minus. Sleep 1. End while. Play alarm dot mp3.

> (Siri doesn't support more than one concurrent timer)

It has for at least the past couple years now.

I just tried it. It doesn't:

Hey Siri, set a timer for 5 minutes. "OK."

Hey Siri, set another timer for 10 minutes. "A timer is already running, do you want to replace it?"

Alexa is mostly good with timers/alarms, but occasionally will swap 15/50 or 8/80.

If you miss hearing the distinction in the confirmation, you'll miss the scheduled event

Edit: They also have distinct classification of alarm/timers. You can use either word to create one but checking what you've set or trying to cancel will result in 'no timers/alarms' set if your request doesn't match their system design.

Siri does that too. For some reason its always 14/40 for me. The number of times I've gotten shockingly early timers for the drier...

Better than shockingly late timers for the cookies?

It's 2020 and that's still everything virtual assistants are good for. It's kind of sad, really.

I've had great success with the Google smart speaker with "Hey Google, turn off the Living Room TV".

I do have to specify "Living Room TV", even though the speaker and chromecast are configured to be in the same room, it still just turns off a bedroom tv if I'm not specific about which tv.

Also "Hey Google, turn off the Xbox" works, because I linked that at some point.

So not just timers! ;)

There's a setting in Google Home where you can alias which TV a given speaker is paired to as its default so you don't have to name the TV. If you have a device _named_ TV, that goes out the window, though.

It's 2020 and that's still everything virtual assistants are good for. It's kind of sad, really.

The thing I use Siri most for is "Hey, Siri. Tell me a joke."

My dream job is to work at Apple compiling jokes for Siri to belch out on demand.

For you maybe.

> Hey Siri, set a timer for 13 minutes

> 30 minutes and counting.

> Hey Siri, set a timer for thirteen minutes.

> oh you already have a timer running, do you want me to change it?

> yes

Also I have set timers and lock the phone ‘too early’ and the timer was lost

I have the opposite problem where Siri always starts a timer for 13 minutes when I want 30. I've adjusted to setting the timer for 31 minutes.

I just tried "a half hour" and "half an hour" and it does understand that. So that might be an option if you don't want to wait an extra minute.

I also use 20/40/50/70/80/90 so the half hour trick gets more complicated.

Google Assistant on my phone just got better at handling timers.

It used to do a cheesy "Starting your timer.... Now", which would have been okay if a bit tedious repeatedly, apart from the fact that actually you could see that the timer started immediately, so the whole delayed "now" thing was completely misleading. It was like that for well over a year until I noticed it was fixed just recently.

This is literally the only useful thing voice assistance does in my life.

It used to be like this for me too. Recently I can‘t use siri anymore when the ventilation is already running. After I said my sentence it keeps listening to the noise forever until it gives up, even though it understood my first sentence perfectly.

No joke, this is the one thing I use my Echo for: as stuff is cooking I set timers for each of them and it works perfectly. It does virtually nothing else well but it's a fantastic keeper of timers.

4 minute timers are hard. I normally drop the ‘for’ and it gets super confused. “Set a four minute timer”

You can also say "Set a timer for four minutes".

Fine, you can also say "Set a timer", pause for a hot take, and then say "four minutes" and it's fine. I just tried it and it worked without any issue.

Thank you. I’ll try to add a beat.

The short version works well too. “Timer 8 minutes”

Also: Wake me up at 7.

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