Be smarter than a smart speaker by never purchasing one. Why put an always on snitch in your home? Such convivence is a trap.
That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.
Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room).
This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.
>Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer.
I'm going to want some sort of speaker in my bedroom--used to have a CD player--and a smart speaker is as useful a candidate as anything, and it can function as an alarm clock as well.
I wonder if it's the same dynamic that's contributing tk the polarization of political discourse: the structure of information flow in the social media era rewards being punchy, simplistic, and hysterical. The incentives feel inescapable for the masses of people out there that are too hollow to hold beliefs or engage with reality in any meaningful way.
It affects QOL when you get used to it along with a wide range of other features which are similarly tiny by themselves (turning the TV on/off; changing volume; searching for something on my FireTV instead of using the virtual keyboard; turning lights on/off; using it as an alarm clock; telling my son in his room upstairs that dinner is ready without yelling; having a single command to turn of the lights and turn on a playlist to fall asleep to) but that combined adds up to a whole lot reduced friction.
What you seem to be needing takes an old tablet and a slice of an evening of coding...
At HN?!
> when your hands are full
One would never be empty handed while cooking?!
Not to mention that voice enables me to do this while also doing something else with my hands, like cutting veggies.
This given, for the specific needs as you presented them I would have taken an old tablet, coded the feats you needed (timer, converter etc) in a single interface, fixed it in some most appropriate part of the kitchen for that use, and covered it with some plastic wrap film (I think standard PVC should be capacitive display friendly) in order to keep electronics and mess separate.
Of course, if you are more comfortable with the assistant, that is anyone's prerogative. Just reasoning.
HN is a diverse bunch. There are lots of non-technical people here. But even ignoring that, there's a hell of a difference between 'knowing to how to code' and 'knowing how to write an Android app'. I've been writing code for 25 years, and I know for certain it'd take me several evenings to be able to make a working Android app, and a lot more to make one I was actually happy with to the point I'd use it.
Absolutely, and absolutely. But if one is keen on QoL boosts, coding remains a foremost helpful skill, and currently coding for mobile devices is a further booster.
> several evenings ... and a lot more
I would suggest that the amount of competence to get you started to the point of applications usable to your satisfaction is probably lower than you seem to suggest (if you are already proficient in Java); and that the amount of blasphemy you could spend against the workings of the available libraries and time lost in code that "should just work" is probably not only in general underestimated, but really in this realm you would meet it a lot in practice.
So in other words it's probably not lower than suggested.
And certainly higher than the skills required to order and plug in a home assistant that offers a superior interface (doesn't require clean and free hands)
Now, the context is more on drawbacks, and it was the very poster to note an intention to «replace [it] with something fully local».
You have an “insane” QOL then if having a manual kitchen timer or a simple conversion chart on the wall would be a major difference.
At least with the manual kitchen timer, you can always know how much time is left just by looking. Set a ten minute timer on an Alexa, you have to threaten it with violence to keep the timer visible for more than 30 seconds of it, and that doesn’t always work either. I went so far as to literally turn off every single thing I could from the display and yet it’ll prefer showing a content less main screen over just keeping the timer displayed.
And my Alexa has no display, so it’s just "Alexa, timer [Name] status"
Oh, and a conversion chat is also somewhat horrible, because this one country uses volumetric measurements where the form a product is in changes how much X of that unit means.
If it’s so hard for you, then buy measuring cups in US sizes or stop using US recipes. These are trivially solved problems in a low tech way. You’re like an addict trying desperately to defend why they need a fix. Yeesh!
You honestly think having measuring devices for two entirely different systems or not using US based recipes is trivial compared to asking for the conversion out loud and getting it immediately? Yeesh!
EDIT: even going back to your timer comment (to which you completely ignored the response), your 'trivial' solutions effectively boil down to 'get more kitchen space'. Totally trivial.
If you want to make recipes based on imperial measurements, YES, and I’d also say the vast majority of people here would agree with me.
Having a full set of imperial kitchen measuring cups costs less than any meal you are bothering to prepare and takes up less kitchen space than a single salad bowl.
For your follow up edit:
> to which you completely ignored the response
I’m under no obligation to rebut every thing someone says, whether I find it correct or not. I said why I hate using Alexa for timers, I didn’t feel the need to go any further there.
The karma on the posts says otherwise, but thank you for your opinion!
You just can't comprehend the fact some people think it's more convenient to use a voice triggered device when cooking than have numerous conversion charts or multiple measuring devices (especially in kitchens where space is at a premium. Let alone messy hands).
Having an Alexa and asking it how many grams are in 1 1/4 cups of white wine vinegar is easier than having 2 sets of measuring cups. It's easier than having 1 set of measuring cups.
0 measuring cups takes up 0 space and I have no use for them. I use a bowl and a scale. That's easier for me than messing with measuring cups and having more crap to clean.
Couldn’t agree more. Knew I should have backed away after my first post in this tree, the only one I stand 100% behind out of context of the rest of the replies around it.
Measuring cups are an objectively terrible unit, since (1) the volume of a cup, while officially standardized, is not consistent across the measuring cups you'll find in stores, and (2) the amount (mass) of common ingredients in a cup can vary wildly--50% or more--depending on how densely packed the ingredient is.
A "standard" cup of flour is generally considered to be 120-130g, but if you buy a brand new bag of flour at the store and scoop a cup off the top you may be getting as much as 200g, since it's densely packed. This obviously has serious implications for whatever you're baking.
TL;DR: Don't buy measuring cups.
I’m not debating if the US method of measurement in recipes is terrible or not (it is!). But taking an imprecise unit of measurement and lossy converting it to another is better (edit for clarity what I meant) each time you cook, while in the middle of cooking!?
If you're measuring 2.5 cups of flour one day you might get 317g and another day you might get 362g, so you can't even make the same consistency dough twice.
Yes, but you do that once and done and then continue using the recipe in the future with the new quality measurement (adjusting as needed on future cooks). OP was advocating for using their Alexa to convert every time they cooked, specifically when their hands were full of raw sausage for example.
I use a recipe app that has built-in conversions I can configure, but if I'm making a recipe out of a paper book I sometimes use Alexa to do conversions for me. Ideally I'd do all the conversions before I got my hands dirty, but that doesn't always happen.
Then memorize the conversions. It’s not that hard. Or you know, plan ahead and convert before cooking. Or simply just own up to the fact that the only reason an Alexa is a “insane QOL improvement” for this use case is SOLELY because you’ve rationalized it as such. This horse is now more than sufficiently beaten, so I’m backing away.
However, you mention that you iterate and refine these recipes, effectively writing your own recipes using volumetric recipes only as a starting point. In this case, the conversions have real utility. But if you're doing it right, these are conversions you only need to apply once per recipe, after which you'll never use that original volumetric recipe again. Such once-and-done tasks don't really seem worth automating to me, but for each their own I guess.
As a european, I notice how imperial units are sometimes creeping back in. Even hating the crappy illogical mess, you learn to get some feeling just by exposure. Feet divided by 3 is about a meter, and 4 inch is 10cm. A mile is 1.5km.
For some reason I can remember pounds as 1/2 kg, but can never figure out lb without looking it up and finding it is also pounds.
A while ago, a local computer store mixed up feet and inch, and announced things like 14 feet laptop screens. I was the first to tell them, the mistake had been there for a month. It turns out non-USians know what a screen of size 14 is supposed to look like, and the word 'inch' behind it is treated like meaningless gibberish.
(I use molasses as an example because, due to how sticky it is, I much prefer to measure it directly into my mixing bowl by weight rather than using a liquid measuring cup).
If you prefer to work in mass, you reverse the conversion.
For baking, I'll generally weigh and, for flour, pretty much always. However, I use measuring cups all the time for other cooking where recipes may not even give a weight equivalent to a volume of something.
I find them aggravating because of my disability.
An acquaintance has made every light in their home integrated into Google's services. I have a mild speech impediment and Google seems incapable of recognising my speech as speech. "Hey Google. HEY GOOGLE. Hey Gooooogle! Turn off the lights." I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. "Hey Goooooooogle! Turn. Off. The. Lights.". I'm sorry, I didn't catch that.
And of course, when I gave in and used the switch, my host immediately came upstairs and chastised me for causing device errors to pop up in the network. Use voice!
Not terribly impressed, to say the least. And don't get me started on the bank's voice recognition system on the phone.
For what it's worth, which obviously isn't much, all my public rooms have smart switches as well as being able to be controlled by voice. And if someone needs to use the physical switch (they're all still uncovered and accessible) then that's a failure of my system not of whoever needed to bypass it.
The main benefit to me of smart is that I can automate transitions, so it's that much less likely that anyone will need to manually adjust the lighting.
In terms of understanding, it'll improve. I have a broad Scandinavian accent. My Alexa handles that just fine for the most part. It's not more than a few years ago most speech recognition struggled with that (I remember a phone booking line that insisted on recognising me saying "London" as "Birmingham")
The main reason why I'll probably never buy an Alexa is because it sucks at the specific things I need it to do, but I concede that there's something liberating about just yelling at the computer and getting a reply. If I'm about to leave and I don't know which jacket to pick, being able to yell "Alexa, what's the weather like?" keeps me from switching contexts and losing my train of thought. It may not sound like much, but once you combine a bunch of small tasks it adds up.
I don't even like to speak around them because I assume they are archiving every voice sample forever.
But frankly "hands free" timers/reminders/alarms alone is enough of a killer feature for me alone.