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Comment by footy | Hacker News Reader

you can really tell the people building these tools spend a lot of time alone. I work from a home office 90% of the time and I wouldn't want this to be my workflow. I don't want to talk to my computer, I want to listen to music while I work, and I want to not sound deranged and disturb everyone around me when I am working from a coffeeshop or the open-plan office or the airport or the train or whatever.

and that's aside from the obvious privacy problems.

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Agreed. A lot of Google products feel anti-social (like Google glass). They are definitely missing a human touch. Perhaps a byproduct of elitism and leet code grind filtering of employees mixed with founder personality.

Nothing else expected - one of the examples in this very article marks some text in a doc and prompts "make this more human"

thats incredible

somebody the other day described google products as being a 22 year old imagining what their dad would want, and that feels very true to me.

I can actually see more use-cases for Google Glass tbh - having a HUD would be useful when using Google Maps for example, like a fighter pilot.

And being able to take photos/videos with the glasses (like the Meta ones nowadays) is really useful with my kid because he often does funny or cute stuff and I don't have time to pull my phone out to take a video/photo of it. I guess it could be useful for video calls too so my parents can see him.

But I just don't see anyone sitting in an office, or even at home, talking to their computer. It's really only useful for hands-free settings like when you are driving, or in the kitchen etc.

> he often does funny or cute stuff and I don't have time to pull my phone out to take a video/photo of it.

IMO, that’s the anti social part. Why is a phone butting in your relation with your kid? I only have a few pictures taken when I was a kid (and most were for some grand occasion). And I’m happy that was the case because of so many cringeworthy things I did.

It's anti-social because other people don't want to be filmed by you.

yeah, i understand the frustration of needing to do all the communication through typing and clicking and that it can feel limiting - but i want the computer to be less demanding of my physical reality not more. i want to be able to talk to someone on the phone, work on something ith my hands, and still successfully manage my compute tasks. improvement can only be made by requiring less attention to hte screen and less hand movements, not adding in anything new like voice

> i want to be able to talk to someone on the phone, work on something with my hands, and still successfully manage my compute tasks.

Maybe you can share a scenario for that one? I can’t figure a scenario where all of this needs to be true. It seems like a recipe for accidents.

It's not exactly "compute tasks" in this sense, but online gaming is similar. People are constantly talking to each other while managing multiple other kb/mouse inputs at the same time.

well to start, im not sure what the magical new input would be that doesnt involve hands or voice, but for conversation lets assume its magic. the ideal is that i can use magic input to manage cloud compute through my phone, and that leaves me hands free to exercise and listen to music, or play video games, or hold a baby in a quiet room, and still manage tasks.

realistically what would be best is flexible inputs. voice input is often neutered by being only voice, or requiring a click activation and click to stop recording, is part of the trouble.

Getting a "magic" input is not as hard as it seems, if you reduce its input space as not needing to compete with keyboards and voice. a workflow could involve an assistant making suggestions and then the magic input needs only be a yes/no which could be head nod / shake, eye tracking & blinking, foot pedals, hand gestures

honestly though i think the real quality of life improvement is going to come from OS's enabling multiple focus windows to be active simultaneously with multiple input devices. like what i really want is a keyboard that can act as 10+ virtual keyboards with a way to change which one is in use, and then based on which one is in use the inputs go directly to an app that is in focus for that input. let my game controller stay inputting into the game while i type something, or toggle my voice input to talk to an AI and not transmit to discord while im doing that. or i just get two keywords and two mice and splitscreen games with m&k input with another person next to me to two instances of the game running (one on each of two monitors), or the mic recognizes my partners voice as a separate input from my voice and managed independently

there is so much that could be done with interface beyond layout and menus even regardless of AI, but AI related tools could help with mapping different voices into different virtual inputs, or recognizing keywords to do the same

Yeah, I talk to someone on google meet who will seamlessly transition between talking to me and talking to Claude while on the call, and it is extremely annoying.

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