Fuck everything about this: Gemini sucks!
ITT: “how could Google ruin shit and foist worse shit on me!?!”
Bruh, it’s Google.
Breaking news, google spyware removed in favour of another google slop spyware
Never used it. Always first thing I disable
Gross.
I degoogled (mostly) a while ago, but home assistant has a pretty configurable local voice assistant. If you have remote access to your server, I imagine you could cobble together a good keyword based personal assistant that sets alarms, turns lights on and off, and reads you an RSS newsfeed while you drink your morning coffee.
We’re truly on the technological downslope now. First it was all about the user and making software accomplish a purpose, then it was all about the user as long as it was profitable, now it’s fuck the user - be profitable.
Personally I went out of my way to put physical buttons around my house so I can use Home Assistant automations without talking. It has the added bonus that guests can just turn the lights on and off without a tutorial.
Bilresa buttons from IKEA are a blessing. Cheap, (currently) work with ZigBee and ridiculously simple to set up. I can talk to Home Assistant, but never do.
I get a lot done with physical buttons and time / condition automations but sometimes it’s nice to just do a one off action from the couch.
I’ve built some md5stack little speaker things and they work okay. Weird audio artifacts sometimes though.
It can definitely come in handy. Although I went as far as leaving a wireless Zigbee button by my couch so I can dim the lights or toggle power on my AV stuff without getting up. I haven’t replaced the battery yet, and it’s been 2 years.
I had everything either automated or timed but the ladies wanted a physical button in the bathroom. Ok I put one in, then they kept leaving the light on so I had to put in a 15 min timer. Buttons have their places. I also prefer not talking to it.
I’m working on a project using esp32s to build my own Hal9000 system. Every room will have a small touch screen where you can control stuff in the room, but the screen saver will be HAL
I’m sorry, Village, I’m afraid you can’t do that.
Wake words are a pain on android but everything else is very doable. I use my local assistant everyday.
Can the Gemini assistant set reminders yet? Such a basic function of the old Google assistant and yet Gemini has failed every time I tried it in the past
Because it doesn’t know what time is or how to measure it or even how to count for that matter.
F: play Spotify (activated by multi button on headset)
A: Please unlock your phone yada yada yadaBRO! GUESS WHY I USED THE MULTI-BUTTON >:(
I CAN’T USE MY HANDS TO UNLOCK IT AND PLAY MUSIC MANUALLY.It’s been abled to set alarms for me haven’t tried reminders. I also use it to create events from me on my calendar.
It connects to my Google home now too, which it wasn’t able to do before
Assistant tasks like this are probably the only semi reasonable LLM use case. If it was less resource intensive anyway
You don’t really need a powerful LLM for personal assistant tasks.
Even the small ones are resource hogs.
It’s a shame, now I’ll never get to try it…
The timing is crazy, that’s around the same time that Google and Android is expected to start disappearing from thousands of phones.
It was a convenient way to set a kitchen timer. I never used it for anything else but this is still gonna hurt.
This was pretty much the only thing I used Google Assistant for. I bought six Google devices. I thought I would use it for more things, but I ended up just using it for timers when making food or when I was resting and wanted to rest for 30 minutes before I do some chore.
Same here, it’s 95% timers when cooking and 5% pause or shutting off the tv when the remote isn’t in reach.
Considering when I first upgraded to a phone that included it, Gemini was incapable of setting a timer, I do not have high hopes for this.
This is to say, when I told it “set a timer for X minutes” it produced a UI on the phone that suggested it understood I wanted a timer, but failed the critical step of actually setting the damn timer. I immediately switched back to assistant, as there’s really no coming back from a fuck-up that comprehensive.
You would have also realized that Gemini no longer can stop timers that are going off by saying, “Stop”.
It probably did either only half the syntax of the tool call or fucked up the number input lol
I use home automation to help manage a disability and have been meaning to move to home assistant but right now I’m still using google home devices…
Guess that means I have to move up my schedule. Really wish I did this before the ai hardware price spike like I was considering doing.
Can’t wait to go see if thin client or needed components will cost me a billion dollars. ALSO BECAUSE OF AI. Fucking stupid horseshit, I have no money
Read the article….
There are no changes on Google TV, Google Home or smart displays at this stage.
Thanks! Meant to come back and give it a read so I could learn specifics but really didn’t wanna try to wade through stressful stuff right now
Though my trust it will stay that way is not super high 😅
Home assistant integrates with Google Home devices as well, so you can start small with your HASS OS device and make a slow transition of your GH devices as you change them out (or retain them). My best friend loves his HASS and GH, and uses them both heavily with HASS as the main driver.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK
Assistant was awesome. The voice isn’t as punchable as Gemini’s options.
I took an online course sponsored by Google years ago, when AI was but a twinkle in tech bros’ eyes, and one of the Gemini voices is 1000% the presenter of that course.
That’s fine. Google devices have been disappearing from my life as well, so this will not be a long-term problem.
