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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I'm not talking to computers still. It's a border I just can't cross. Like I'd literally rather stop and type on my car display than try to voice in a destination. And I'd if I'm cooking and my hands are greasy wash my hands and pick up my phone and tap in a timer for 5 minutes rather than try some "set timer for 5 minutes" voice command. Not sure I ever will start talking to computers, but not this year at least. Anyone else feel the same way? It's part because in public it feels extremely dumb. But mostly I think it's the frustration. At least fumbling on touchscreen characters is a known frustration. Trying to voice-in a Scandinavian street name is worse.

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I mostly agree and was happy to hear that you could shake the device to bring up an on-screen keyboard to use on the touch screen.

I set timers while cooking with speech all the time and I don’t see why that seems weird to you. I just think of it like some natural language parser helping me do something instead of talking to myself. Is it talking to yourself you find strange?

Funny you say this, using Siri to set timers when cooking was my "gateway drug" to using voice features on my phone more broadly.

For the longest time it was literally the only thing I used Siri for (cooking timers), but now I use Siri for setting reminders and other similar transactional stuff on my phone, and I use voice dictation for texts all the time in the car, and even sometimes when I'm walking in the cold and just don't want to take my gloves off..

And it works great. And it doesn't feel weird at all.

I'd buy a device just to do the timer setting, weather checking, and light control consistently and without selling my data. I have found it enormously useful and get frustrated/miss it when I don't have it. I also love the music playing feature but don't see how I can get that without being tracked/updates being pushed that require maintenance.

I have found that relying on these devices to have consistent usability when the processing is all done on the cloud and out of my control was a foolish mistake. I do wish I could revert my google home to ~two years ago.

I would never do it in public, but I have gotten used to voice commands for a few things.

For example, adding things to our grocery list. It is quite handy to just say “add butter to the grocery list” when I am looking in the fridge. I am able to not stop cooking, but add things we need to the list as I find we are low.

I agree that it's really dumb, especially in public.

I respect your feeling/position on this, but I don't understand it...

What feels "dumb" about it?

Is the perception of others towards you when you do this? Because that ship has sailed, people Vlog on the sidewalk and do TikTok videos in the subway, and Facetime their mom or brother at the grocery store or in the mall and have long video conversations with each other out loud..

I'm not saying this to be dismissive. As a GenX'er it took me a while to normalize this behaviour even to myself, but I've accepted now that these kinds of interactions with devices are just everyday occurrences and literally no one cares.

They can be obnoxious for sure, but just using TTS/Siri on your phone is like the nicest version of this interaction I can imagine. ;-)

> people Vlog on the sidewalk and do TikTok videos in the subway

Not without me giving them the "Have you escaped from an institution" look they don't. And you judge yourself as you judge others. If I were to say "Add eggs to shopping list" on the bus, I'd instantly feel the stares of a dozen people as I look on my phone in shame (That's whether or not I'm alone on the bus). And my shame is justified too.

I wouldn't do it on the bus, because it's just rude.

But I'd do it in the car, or the kitchen, if it was reliable and didn't require sharing anything with anyone.

Yes if it's 100% reliable and I'm alone then I'd have a low treshold. But it feels weird having a UX that works when I'm alone and isn't accessible when I'm not. On your phone you can just enter "eggs" to your shopping list. But if devices move away from the general purpose input UX, then you'd have to talk to it on the bus. And when it's only 90% reliable you'd have people shouting shopping lists on buses...

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