The three biggest players in voice assistants –– Google, Apple and Amazon –– have radically different approaches to profiling users, Northeastern University researchers say.
I loved my Google Home when I got it in 2017, but when I got into home automation, I realized it is dumb to have to tell a device to do things. Motion sensors basically replace the main thing Google Home does and a Bluetooth speaker is cheap to buy.
I never trusted that they weren’t listening to me all the time with the speakers and I never looked back after I donated them away.
Yeah, just having a microphone in the house with some predefined voice controls which you can go and change gives you all of the benefits of a Google home with none of the Google bullshit.
Especially now with LLMs getting so big, just go set up voice-to-text ollama session with predefined prompts and responses
That handles automation, but can’t freestyle questions.
“Hey Google, convert (metric) to (Imperial).”
“Hey Google, weather today?”
“Hey Google, what’s the capital of Kakistan?”
I have a ceiling-mounted mini in almost every room and just toss questions around while I work or play. Or, just ask it to play music. (Which went to shit when I cancelled Spotify.)
Or, just ask it to play music. (Which went to shit when I cancelled Spotify.)
I learned how to get Home assistant working JUST to restore this feature. Fuck you Google for not supporting other services despite supporting controlling them once it starts going ugh
These devices are almost always listening, and the companies behind them are already collecting our data.
Uh oh! Clicks scary link
The good news is, they aren’t recording all the time … and when they are activated accidentally, the recordings are typically short.
:/ alrightythen