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Comment by brachi | Hacker News Reader

This is pretty cool. After a year experimenting I found that turning things off/on in an if/then fashion doesn't add much value to me. The kind of automation I want is for chores that take time and are not much fun, like laundry. Turns out that doing that is much harder than turning things on/off remotely :).

I'm thinking of an assistant where I show (or tell it) what I want, and it just does it (it 'learns'), improving based on feedback from the users.

Hard-coding times in the day, for example, could be improved if the assistant knew what would be the ideal time to sleep to me, based on all the data collected for each profile of the people living in that home. It might ask me or suggest me things to do, having more flexibility than static rules.

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Even a digital assistant is really hard. For me, I'd love something that could handle a lot of my administrivia like booking travel. But the thing is that, if it's straightforward, it's really not a big deal. And if it's not straightforward, that's because there are a bunch of tradeoffs and decisions that would be hard for all but a good personal human assistant who knows your preferences well.

And, of course, that's not even talking about tasks that require moving around and manipulating things in the physical world.

TBH, things like auto bill pay and direct deposit save me more time and distraction than any of my (few) home automation devices.

I wonder what a “good personal human assistant” As A Service would look like. A real human that knows all about you (and 100 other clients) and can book appointments, plan vacations, or who knows what.

100 is probably a big number. Consider that would only get you their services for about 30 minutes/week on average. They're also not going to know you and your preferences very well at that point or be immediately on call.

That's certainly far more than an admin at a company covers for anything beyond very cursory attention.

Travel agents can still help you a fair bit within their area of expertise. My experience is that for a very long time, most largely just booked flights, hotels, and cruises before the days of self-service. However, there are specialty companies that can help handle a lot of details for certain types of trips.

There are also companies that offer virtual assistants but, going by past experiences with not so good admins, I'm a bit skeptical how much value you'd get in general.

Roomba et al is probably the biggest recent advancement in chores, although it doesn't work in every home.

I periodically think of getting one, but it would only work for a section of the house, albeit the section that could use the most regular vacuuming. But that same section is also where there tends to be the most clutter/cords laying about, etc.

In the end, my compromise was to get a good cordless vac which I can run for a few minutes if the crumbs and other debris get too objectionable.

Regular vacuuming makes carpet last longer because when grit gets between the carpet fibres, it acts as an abrasive and literally wears your carpet away with every footstep.

The trafficked areas the Roomba would work for mostly don't have carpeting. And where there are carpets, they're all decades old so I'm not too worried about taking new steps to prolong their life.

That's entirely reasonable. I mostly posted that as a PSA for anyone who assumed that vacuuming was only about cleanliness, not carpet life.

Compatibility with a Roomba-type vacuum is on my list of considerations when deciding to rent/buy a flat now.

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