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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

That is very, very interesting. I've been hoping to have an assistant in the workshop (hands-free!) that I could talk to and have it help me with simple tasks: timers, calculating, digging up notes, etc. — basically, what the phone assistants were supposed to be, but aren't.

"You will have to unlock your iphone first" is kind of a deal-breaker when you are in the middle of mixing polyurethane resin and have gloves and a mask on.

More and more I find that we have the technology, but the supposedly "tech" companies are the gatekeepers, preventing us from using the technological advances and holding us back years behind the state of the art.

I'll be trying this out on my Macbook, looks very promising!

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The computing power we all have in our pockets is staggering. It could be tool that truly makes our lives easier, but instead it's mostly a device that is frustrating to use. Companies have decided to make it simply another conduit for advertising. It's a tool for them to sell us more stuff. Basic usability be damned.

Siri does have a setting that'll activate it if you say "hey siri" while the phone is locked. Obvious privacy and battery usage concerns though, and it's still Siri, so it's a little clunky.

Mhm. I think I use that. But then I say "call my wife" and it says "you'll need to unlock your iphone first".

It's clear Tim Cook doesn't ever try to use Siri wearing gloves. Or ever, for that matter :-)

Siri (on iOS 18, at least) will call people for me without unlocking, in response to a voice command only - I just double-checked...

You might be interested in the open-source https://www.home-assistant.io/voice-pe/ .

I've been replacing my Google Homes and Chromecasts with Snapcast streamers, and this is the next thing I've been planning to look into.

It's truly absurd how the Google voice assistant USED to work properly for setting timers, playing music, etc, and then they had to break it 15 times and finally replace it with much slower AI that only kinda does what you want. I'm done.

Selfhosted is the way to go if you want to keep your sanity. My wife has basically given up on any Google/Apple voice assistants being able to do anything useful above "set a 10 minute timer".

> More and more I find that we have the technology, but the supposedly "tech" companies are the gatekeepers

Yes same with RSS readers being dropped by large companies. Worked too good I guess!

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