• I use GA to spell shit for me because I have senior moments. It’s just easier to click a button and say spell naseaous for me.

    See? Fuck that word. Also fuck Google. For more reasons than just this.

  • 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

    • 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

  • 4 hours

    My grandmother used it for calling. She’d long press the home button and say ‘Call Aliya’ etc. It has stopped working last week, in both google assistant and gemini. If anyone knows an alternative, please let me know.

  • 12 hours

    It’s already dead on my phone

    pm uninstall --user 0 com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox

    • Need a follow up on this, since I’ve always assumed that package is essential.

      1. Is this on a Pixel?
      2. What happens to the space where the search bar is on the launcher?
      3. Does it break anything else?
  • 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 😅

        • 12 hours

          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.

  • 18 hours

    OMFG.

    Gemini is neat, but it SSUUUUUUUUCCCKKS at being a voice assistant.

    It will frequently produce a fucking essay in response to being asked to turn the lights on or off.

    I just gave it a go again, 30% of the time it pretends to do what you ask without actually doing it. 20% of the time it flat-out refuses while never failing to mention that I really should enable gemini activity tracking. 40% of the time is claims this functionality does not exist, even though it was given the ability to “ask assistant” to do things only it can do (like identify music by listening to it). 10% of the time it will successfully hand off to assistant, which will then instantly do as asked.

    • 3 hours

      The problem is Google is treating all those functions (“tool calling”) as just any other response, they didn’t even bother training the model to recognize and process the requests properly using the tools. They did the Google thing of just putting the function in and calling a day and forgetting about it.

      So without proper reinforcement learning it responds with the same casual randomized answer-shaped sequence of words as ever, you’re just lucky if the part of it that knows to look up the tool call instructions responds, and luckier if it does it right AND submit the tool call formatted right. If it forgets to look up it’s tool call instructions, it might randomly tell you it can’t do it because you got an answer from a part of the network trained on data from when there weren’t models that could.

  • Well this fucking sucks. Gemini is complete garbage in Android Auto, I thought I was stuck with it until I discovered a couple weeks ago that I could choose to continue using the assistant.

    Now it’s being ripped from my hands again.

    This is total ass. Fuck Gemini. Fuck AI. Fuck Google.

    • Gemini is complete garbage in Android Auto

      It also can’t read labels on gmaps. Can’t read people’s “nickname” field in contacts (there are so many Roberts). And can’t access or write notes without also requiring access to my emails (hell no).

      Those are the three things I use AA for, and it’s objectively worse at every single one of them.

      • 20 hours

        I couldn’t get it to create a reminder for me when I tried the other day.

        • I have a Google Nest speaker in my kitchen and while cooking “Hey Google set a timer for 5 minutes” … “I cannot do that at this time”

        • 19 hours

          Worse.

          It will fucking lie and say it set a timer or reminder, and if you ask it “wtf” in response when it clearly didn’t (if you notice), it’ll fucking explain it’s just roleplaying at being a voice assistant.

    • 19 hours

      If it makes you feel better, I’m sure someone in Google got the promotion they so desperately needed.

      • Oh for sure. They can proudly tell their shareholders that every one is using Gemini now, which I’m sure they’ll eat that up even though we’re all being forced into it with no recourse.

  • 1 day

    FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

    Assistant was awesome. The voice isn’t as punchable as Gemini’s options.

    • 24 hours

      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.

  • 24 hours

    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.

    • 15 hours

      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.

      • 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

        • 54 minutes

          I’m sorry, Village, I’m afraid you can’t do that.

      • 12 hours

        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.

      • 15 hours

        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.

        • 14 hours

          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.

    • 20 hours

      Wake words are a pain on android but everything else is very doable. I use my local assistant everyday.