Do you have voice-activated (Siri, Alexa, etc.) stuff in your home?

fuck, no

to be clear i was at someone else's house because aimless otm

I use Siri on my phone to set timers for cooking and alarms. The Alexa/Google Home/etc. stuff doesn't work well enough for me to want to buy in even if it wasn't creepy. They're so picky about how you phrase things it's like playing Zork to get a bad wireless speaker to start some music.

I have a Google Home that I got for free, and I pretty much only use it for a wake-up alarm and to ask it what the weather is like while I'm getting dressed.

I have nothing for the sort for good reasons, like not wanting to be eavesdropped by corporations all the time, and for personal reasons, like not wanting to have to pipe up like a lil' chatterbot whenever I want to find the closest hardware store.

Voice activated things are a godsend for disabled and/or barely literate people like my clients. I don't know why other people would use them.

It's kinda nice to play a song instantly if I don't have my phone on me, but it's still usually easier to pick a song on Spotify on my phone than ask Alexa. Also Alexa was temporarily a source of frustration for my young son because she couldn't understand his requests (he's given up now)

Don't forget Cortana. The first thing I did to my cheapo work laptop was disable Cortana.

My brother tried to give me an Alexa a few years ago. DO NOT WANT.

Now I have no one to tell me a joke :(

No way. Never even enabled Siri on my phone.

Every time I'm in a home with the appropriate device, I holler 'Alexa...fart!' The only employment that justifies the technology afaict.

Voice activated things are a godsend for disabled and/or barely literate people like my clients. I don't know why other people would use them.

This seems about right. I cannot see the attraction myself.

(xp) Also, I now know what that Cortana thing is on my laptop, thanks!

Alexa enabled speakers

Its grand tbh, the odd hiccup on selection but otherwise fine

fuck, no

― it is to laugh, like so, ha! (Aimless), Sunday, August 8, 2021 12:18 AM

No. (Hell no.)

No. (Hell no.)

Sorry about that.

I’ve tried nominally to get used to speaking to Siri for things like setting alarms and timers but still feel more comfortable doing it by hand

I can do things much quicker with touch than speaking to the machine. Also, fuck no.

As Christine notes above, for the disabled these functions make total sense.

Using devices like this or Siri just … to me it feels like giving up, and giving up completely. Modern technology in very insidious ways is changing and colonizing us just through its use. It’s creepy to think about. But Echo/Siri whatever is like outright handing your humanity over when you don’t really need to (to my mind).

My kids got me the Amazon one for father's day years ago. I wouldn't have gotten it for myself, but tbh it's come in handy for a few specific things. If I'm cooking or baking I can ask it to set a timer (it's in the kitchen), and it syncs with our wall clock so that I get a visual representation of how much time is left as well. My kids can ask it the weather first thing in the morning so they know how to dress for school, and they have little ones they use for alarms and streaming music. When I wake up I tell it to "start coffee," and it turns on the electric kettle (that we set up the night before). And of course we listen to music on/via it, though it isn't always good at playing what you want, in which case we just control it with a phone; it is, in essence, a sentient bluetooth speaker. There are a few other things I've tried to set it up to do, from controlling some lights to controlling the TV, but that was all pretty pointless.

I have a Pixel phone, and I do use the google voice interface a good deal. It seems to be a lot more accurate than Amazon or Apple on that front. I suppose if there's any distinction it's that we all use google, so to ask google to google something for you seems pretty mundane. But Apple and Amazon are slightly different sorts of companies/services that seem to be shoehorning/trapping you into their ecosystems, whether you want to or not. Regardless, they're all clearly listening to everything, our phones included, unless you lock them down tight and turn everything off. But then what's the point of even having a "smart" phone?

lol came to post exactly what aimless did. so for posterity, fuck no

Absolutely not. I turn off Siri on all the Apple devices in our home (a laptop, a desktop iMac, two iPhones) and would never have an Alexa or other stand-alone servant/spy device here. I'm tracked enough already.

i used to have alexa in the house, for about a year. during that time, 99% of its (intended) functionality was playing spotify/npr in the kitchen. but during that time, it also accidentally thought i was giving it a command about 1000 times, and probably recorded me taking a shit (in the kitchen?) so i destroyed it

siri answer thread "fuck no"

Siri: ...playing Fuck No by 99 Neighbors on Spotify

No and never will and when I'm in somebody's house who uses one their use of it always seems faintly performative, like "oh I guess I should use this since I bought it." Siri off on iPhone, too.

No, I really don't like this stuff

Wait, why were you taking a shit in the kitchen?

"Alexa, why am I taking a shit in the kitchen?"

First it's wrong to do in the shower and now we can't even use the kitchen sink?! What a bunch of prudes.

I'm surprised they didn't offer you a job as a driver after that

I can do things much quicker with touch than speaking to the machine. Also, fuck no.

― American Fear of Scampos (Ed)

Yeah, I don't know why yelling at a box in your kitchen is somehow supposed to be a life-changing improvement from typing something into your phone

Like I said, we use it the most when we are cooking or baking, when our hands are wet or messy or stirring stuff and the like.

Otherwise, sure, phone is fine. That's why I find Apple watches much more inexplicable. You more or less need your phone nearby to use it anyway, so how does it help to have an even smaller screen on your wrist?

honestly its heartening to hear so many people feel the same way i do about this bs. high five everyone.

My mom has an Apple Watch so she doesn't have to carry her phone walking her dogs - emergency calls and streaming audio make it worth the extra $10/mo for one that doesn't need a phone nearby I guess.

I guess I don't understand what it is about these desktop gadgets/gimmicks that bugs people more than phones. I mean, they're *all* spying on you.

I don't really need any of these devices since I already record all of my comings and goings and mail them off in week-long batches to all of the big tech companies. I figure they have plenty on their plate as is so it's only fair that I chip in and help them keep tabs on me.

Yeah, I don't know why yelling at a box in your kitchen is somehow supposed to be a life-changing improvement from typing something into your phone

It was almost always when I had my hands messy in the sink

;)

Yeah, if I've got hands covered in chicken juice it's nice to be able to yell "hey Siri start timer for 9 minutes"

I mean, they're *all* spying on you.

Yup. I do my best to strangle the data flow down to the least amount I can get away with while still living in approximately the year 2000, technologically speaking, as opposed to say 1970.

xpost or really any kinds of fluids or solids

no way, i turn it off on my phone/kindle and keep the latter in airplane mode unless i need to download something

Yeah, if I've got hands covered in chicken juice it's nice to be able to yell "hey Siri start timer for 9 minutes"

I get this -- it's just that the percentage of my day when my hands are wet from the sink or covered in chicken juice is SO SMALL, and I'm the main cook and dishwasher in the house.

?

i guess your normal toilet is just fine, then. i guess you don't even think about using the kitchen sink. i guess you don't even realize you have a choice

to "let go of the chicken juice", i mean

siri this is my profile
alexis this if my profile

hearing "let go of the chicken juice" in the voice of early 70s James Brown

Sounds more like a Rufus Thomas thing IMO.

I finally broke down & activated Siri on my phone as a part of trying to get more serious about mitigating the worst aspects of my ADHD. On a regular day I’ll think of something that needs doing about 4x more often than when I’m not driving, and will GUARANTEED forget if I don’t note it down at the point where I think about it, so the ability to set a reminder or add to a list without typing is good.

Otherwise, fuck no

Imagine if we actually invested in accessible user interfaces for blind folks all over the place, and these voice assistants could access all kinds of things instead of the walled gardens that these products currently offer. That would be compelling to me.

Today's voice assistants are like AOL before it was connected to the web and usenet. Too much focus on directing people to the companys' own services, no attempt to make it useful beyond prescribed use cases.

I just can’t really use this stuff. Feels so awkward. But I did use voice commands in my car once or twice when the phone nav unexpectedly shut down mid highway trip, and I had to get the same destination into the onboard system instead without pulling over to type. I suppose that was handy.

i have an alexa in the kitchen. downside: amazon. upside relative to siri: it works.

We have Sonos speakers which came with google voice activation, and we watch tv through a chromecast. If e.g. one of the kids wakes up in the night it's quicker to say 'hey google pause the tv' than get the phone, unlock it, find the app, wait for it to connect, and hit pause. And it's better to say 'hey google play wheels on the bus' than whipping the phone out at dinner and then getting pestered to look at pictures. Downsides: google is not very clever and you have to say 'play x on sonos' or it says "i'm sorry i can't do that here", and it's sometimes hard of hearing so you get the kids shouting "HEY GOOGLE PLAY THE PARTY FREEZE SONG ON SONOS" over and over. We use it for weather forecasts as well, that's about it.

Saying 'hey' that many times is out of the question tbh.

hey hey my my, voice activation will never die

The Scottish version replaces 'hey' with 'och', the Glasgow one with 'fuckin''.

mods please edit my post to replace 'activation' with 'control' which actually scans and rhymes with 'rock & roll'.

“Hey, kids, rock’n’roll/Nobody tells you where to go”

I wanted to turn this into an Alexa joke but I just woke up end I’ve got nothing folks

only time I've ever used it was when taking pictures of some things too big to fit in a scanner so I put my phone in a tripod over them, and used Google Assistant to take the pictures because me pressing the button on my phone would make it wobble. it was fucking annoying. after shouting OK GOOGLE TAKE A FUCKING PHOTO at it several times I was ready to throw my phone out the window.

Imagine if we actually invested in accessible user interfaces for blind folks all over the place, and these voice assistants could access all kinds of things instead of the walled gardens that these products currently offer. That would be compelling to me.

Today's voice assistants are like AOL before it was connected to the web and usenet. Too much focus on directing people to the companys' own services, no attempt to make it useful beyond prescribed use cases.

― fajita seas, Sunday, August 8, 2021 10:39 PM (yesterday)

yup, i'm not blind but i am disorganized and i would pay for something voice activated that kept lists for me, or set timers. i don't want a spy/data collecting thing in my house just so i can have those functions

Yes I have Alexa all over the apartment. Mainly use it for starting and stopping radio and Spotify playlists. It's still pretty janky, but I don't care enough about the privacy thing to turn off the convenience. I still fiddle with my phone to get the speakers to do more complicated things like listening to podcasts.

Yesterday, my three-year-old son managed to activate an Audible Premium Plus subscription by asking for Goldilocks and the Three Bears, but one phone call later I was refunded and I've turned the purchase-by-Alexa option off now in my settings.

Whoa, thanks for the heads-up about the purchasing through Alexa setting. Went ahead and disabled that

I assume you heard about the Amazon Sidewalk (iirc?) thing and turned that off, too?

No way. I can think of a few times when it might be vaguely useful, but otherwise I know it'd be, at best, more hassle than it's worth, and at worst, "ATN News. We're listening".

Always swore I would never have any of this stuff, then moved into a shared house that has a Google Home in every room, so I just gave in. Even my room has one now because my housemate gave me one as a gift. (He works for Google and thought my speakers were too small.) I do end up using voice activation for Spotify quite a bit, because I didn't have a smartphone until recently and saying "Hey google, play _______" was easier than carrying my computer around and waiting for it to find the right speaker to cast to. It's also handy for setting timers for cooking. One other little thing that I find annoyingly useful - you can tell it to stop and then resume if you're playing something from Spotify. So if I'm sewing and I want it to pause for a few seconds while I sew a seam, I can just tell it to without having to take my hands off my work to hit buttons.

We also use ours as intercoms to call up to the kids' rooms. And they can call down and ask "what's for dinner?" or whatever.

Oh, and we use it to add to a shared shopping list, too. "Alexa, add milk," and it adds it to a list my wife and I can access on our phones.

Well now wait a minute.

While I would likely just type "milk" to my grocery list, I do use the mic feature on my Android for things like saying out loud what I want to say in a text rather than typing it all out. But that feature isn't like Siri, where it's always listening and on "standby". I have to tap the little mic icon to do that.

But is it really not like Siri? I just looked up how it works. While the "google" app does control the mic transcriptions, it's "Google Assistant" that acts like Siri and records everything.

I guess at one point I did have that turned on? It's no longer on my phone, so I must've uninstalled it.

Here's the last record I have of it:

https://i.imgur.com/Ly19ldj.png

Saying "thank you" at my mom's house on Christmas Day 2019. I'm such a good boy.

My point is that my hate level of these things does drop once we remove the "always listening, always monitoring" aspect of it. Does this "google" app record my words and have someone transcribe it? Or is localized, where it recognizes the soundwaves of my words and uses that to create text?

I dunno, but it makes a difference.

there is a tiny person inside it writing down the words and faxing them to google

I’ve got no interest in using it to buy anything directly. Even if I’m using Amazon Fresh no way am I trusting it to add the right milk to the shopping list. I guess I could use it as a first stage to be checked later; that hadn’t really occurred to me. But I’m not sure it would work for me in practice.

I do wonder how much of Amazon’s investment in voice is predicated on us using it to buy things and whether they are happy with their progress on that front.

I think one thing this thread is making me remember is that people play music through speakers

I mean, I know music by definition has to come out of a speaker, but it has been years since I listened to music not on a) my laptop speaker or b) headphones, so I just don't have the use case of "I want to listen to a song right now but I'm not at my computer, I'm just, like, standing in a room"

My wife got an Alexa Dot for xmas a few years back. She only uses it to stream spotify. Sometimes it doesn't work very well though. When we first got it, my kid liked to use it to ask for jokes or play some trivia game that was on it. Now it just sits there collecting dust on top of the microwave.

and listening

when i was a kid we just had microsoft encarta to click the little speaker thing and make it say "poop" over and over

I would never shop with the voice commands. I literally just add stuff to a list that the family can also add stuff to, so that when I open it at the store I see everything everyone needs. But whether or not people are using the "OK google" or "Whatup, Siri?" or "Alexa" prompts, I am *positive* our phones are always at least listening a little bit. The number of times we've been talking about something specific one day only to see ads pop up for said topic the next has been uncanny. Like, had it happened once I would think it weird, but it's happened a few times.

Sometimes it doesn't work very well though.

Now it just sits there collecting dust on top of the microwave.

These two thoughts might be related! Don't put your WiFi-connected stuff on top of your microwave. :)

lol, awesome.

you have to put it *in* your microwave iirc

I wish.

I use both Alexa and Siri, all scattered throughout the house, both bedrooms, living room/kitchen, bathroom. Alexa for all home automation commands and Siri mostly for music from the HomePod. I can’t even muster up the strength it would take to manually flip on a light switch anymore. Use Siri on the phone all the time for music/podcast control.

I assume you heard about the Amazon Sidewalk (iirc?) thing and turned that off, too?

I had not, so thanks. Sounds awful, I turned it off. Sigh, every time I find out about one of these worse-than-useless features, I get pushed further to the "no" camp

I can’t even muster up the strength it would take to manually flip on a light switch anymore.

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Who said that

lol whenever jeff posts it's like, wow you are the embodiment of my personal hell on earth. no offense

nooooooo not ever, my paranoia’s at 11 already. whenever i’m at someone’s house who has these things i feel surveilled and like i have to add yet a further dimension to my laborious social performance. i know a couple who have infested their house with alexa/sonos/nest devices to the point that it’s almost nonfunctional without them, you have to talk to the lights to turn them on, you have to order the blinds to open like you’re some kind of wealthy sci-fi villain, most of the rooms have these obnoxious video alarms that announce "SOMEONE HAS BEEN DETECTED IN THE UPSTAIRS OFFICE” or whatever and show you your own startled face on the horrid little touchpad screen, sure hope you weren’t planning on surreptitiously plucking out a wedgie or whatever because you’re on camera! their whole house (which they designed!) is like a series of elaborate booby traps, the most frustrating and ridiculous nonsense all the way through, you can’t use the doors! they have 6 doors to the outside and you can only use one because this over here won’t close right unless you do it *just so* and these ones will fall off their hinges and shatter if you don’t open them exactly right and this one has a fancy lock that, if improperly unlocked, can never be locked again without flying in the locksmith from germany or something. and the blinds that aren’t voice activated you must never touch, because they’re terribly delicate and you could break them, and anyway if they’re lowered below a certain level the pets will wreak destruction upon them, and the counters. ugh, my god, the counters. in the bathrooms, they have counters topped with some kind of stone that isn’t supposed to get wet. the BATHROOM SINKS are installed in fancy slabs of rock that CAN’T GET WET. you have to do this tyrannosaurus hunch to wash your hands without splashing the counters and wipe them up immediately after just in case, because you can’t actually see stray water droplets on the mottled surface unless you lean over at the precise angle where the light reflects off the water but not the stone or vice versa, and it only does that partially so you wonder how many little puddles you missed and try wiping down that freaking counter again, it is literally hell. and you can’t walk on the floors. the wood they got for the floors is so delicate that it cannot bear the ravages of shoes, or bare feet (the sweat will ruin the finish, o no!) so everyone has to creep around in soft-soled house shoes. there are rugs but each one is a unique handmade work of art, so please don’t ever walk on the rugs thanks. and none of this even looks good! if it were all exquisitely beautiful i might understand but you could literally replace each of these elements with identical crap from home depot at one tenth the price and 100x the utility, damn that vexing freaking house. but right, yeah, installing bugs in your own home seems weird and i would not choose to do that (posted from my smartphone, etc).

AND ANOTHER VAGUELY RELATED THING, i once downloaded this great period tracker from the amazon app store, no ads and intuitive layout, it was fantastic. i kept track of periods, meds, moods, exercise, when i masturbated/had sex/was horny, it was so convenient to have everything all laid out so i could see the influences interweave. then for some reason i uninstalled the app store and the next time i went to open the period tracker it was all “sorry bitch, can’t contact the app store so no period tracking for you” and i realized that jeff bezos knew when i was getting laid and was comparing it to when i ordered replacement toothbrush heads, that pervy scumbag, and i have never trusted again.

Using Siri on my phone with a stutter only reminded me of getting made fun of as a kid so I turned it off.

and the counters. ugh, my god, the counters.

:D

lol whenever jeff posts it's like, wow you are the embodiment of my personal hell on earth. no offense

My counters can get wet though. That would just be weird.

As someone who keeps far away from this stuff, I am kind of surprised that to take part it seems you have to actually say "Hey Alexa" or "Siri" or whatever. I would've thought the names would be easily changeable to random words of people's choice. Am I right thinking that isn't the case? I thought people liked options to personalise shit. Using those default names would just involve too much implied buy-in to the horror for me, and I'm suprised how many people I know just do it. I'm not pure - I would probably do it too if I could just make it "Hey fuckface" or whatever - but at the same time I'd rather turn over the record or the radio or turn off the light switch myself anyway.

might just be, but i'm not sure one iota of this stuff can be plausibly construed as "forward progress." but the highest tech thing i am thinking about acquiring - thanks thread for the reminder - is some kinda real nice push-button kitchen timer. something that lets you have a couple timers going at once. you know, one for the rice and one for the stuff in the oven. and like maybe they make ones that are waterproof and easy to clean so you don't have to worry about having ingredients on your hands? i haven't looked into this at all but that seems really luxurious and fancy and is roughly the level of smartness i would enjoy in my home.

Alexa lets you use "Amazon" or "Computer" (like Star Trek) instead. xp

Letting you choose any word you want is not possible yet.

I am kind of surprised that to take part it seems you have to actually say "Hey Alexa" or "Siri" or whatever. I would've thought the names would be easily changeable to random words of people's choice.

voluntarily changing it to "amazon" sounds like it would add an extra layer of badness, and like something a person who has bathroom counters that can't get wet would do

I now hate Alexa again after it refuses to play Bug a Boo on Spotify when I ask it. Maybe it thinks I’m swearing at it.

if i can't train alexa to address me as 'your grace' or 'my noble shit-lord' then what use is it really

i had one for about a year and stopped, for similar reasons as upthread. it never worked very well. the music i wanted was hard to ask for. playing specific podcast episodes is very difficult. there's no discovery mechanisms, for anything.

Today's voice assistants are like AOL before it was connected to the web and usenet. Too much focus on directing people to the companys' own services, no attempt to make it useful beyond prescribed use cases.

they are working on this. 'voice assistant interoperability' is coming eventually, where one assistant hands off to another with more knowledge in a certain domain. the big use case is cars, where your hands and eyes are busy with other stuff. choosing songs and frankly doing anything apart from driving takes your attention off the road so there's a huge role for voice. it's just so poor now. yelling 'play pop 2 by charli xcx!' over and over while google assistant fails to recognise the track, or says it's not available in google play music or whatever would be enough to make me flip my car.

i can't remember who was telling me this but their family has an echo dot (that is the name of the amazon smart speaker, fact fans - alexa is the name of the virtual assistant that you speak to) and they changed it to "computer" because they think giving commands to a female-named assistant for household tasks is sexist and i can't really find fault with their judgment tbh, at least on that score

May have been me. Should be able to call it Jeeves. We went back to Alexa because Sonos speakers don’t let you change it from the default.

Wow! Just discovered you can finally give it a masculine voice and call it Ziggy:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/21/22587130/alexa-masculine-voice-gender-ziggy-amazon-smart-assistant

Wakeword detection has to happen on-device, so models for each of the wakewords are loaded locally into the devices (whereas all the other speech-to-text happens in the cloud). I don't think "choose-your-own-wakeword" is scalable yet (it would cost money to train a model for each wakeword).

As I understand it you can also subtly change some of its (Echo's) properties by changing its speaking voice from American English to, say, Australian English or Canadian English and so on. Haven't tried it yet, though.

probably couldn't keep myself from constantly intoning 'computer, end program'

My life has been improved by the ability to turn power on and off to devices with a command that were previously a royal pain to reach.

As I understand it you can also subtly change some of its (Echo's) properties by changing its speaking voice from American English to, say, Australian English or Canadian English and so on. Haven't tried it yet, though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

remember before alexa there were those branded buttons you could tack onto things and push them to order more laundry detergent or whatever?

xpost I was reading about people getting certain unprompted stuff from Alexa - "Have I told you I can also ..." type stuff - and one of the workarounds was to change the nationality, which apparently stopped it from doing that extra annoying stuff. Which implies different regions/nationality settings perhaps get different results.

I tried Ziggy a few days ago and couldn’t handle it. Years of saying Alexa makes it a non-starter.

"Ziggy!" *bangs and slaps appliance* "Play 'Candy Colored Clown'!"

We're on holiday and some of my wife's relatives are staying in our house. Allegedly the sonos/google speakers started playing baby shark and they didn't know how to stop it.

May have been me. Should be able to call it Jeeves.

then your spy device will throw out your socks and buy ones it prefers, and gaslight you into firing your cook?

I have a friend/neighbor named Alexa who understandably hates that Google named it Alexa. Everywhere she goes, people talking to her set off random smart speakers.

Shes alexb now baby

i have a google home mini which i got for free from spotify in my bedroom, i use it as an alarm clock. been waking up to aphex twin ‘#1’

I had a student named Ciry and she was not fond of the feature either 😂

amazon named it alexa. google's is google.

Me: Hey google, play "Get Off Of My Cloud"
Google: "'Get Off of My Cloud' by The Rolling Clones, playing on Spotify"
Me: STOP STOP STOP hey google, play Get off of My Cloud by the Rolling Stones
Google: "'If You Can't Rock Me/Get Off of My Cloud,' playing on Spotify"
Me: OH NEVER MIND

it’s really not too good