The “sim” part of the sims is the least favorite part of the game for me, the allure is the decorating 
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I’ve never played The Sims, but going from being the city’s mayor to barging into citizens’ homes and telling them when to pee always seemed like a weird concept. No weirder than suddenly turning into an ant queen, I guess.
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Sim city was fine but i always had a soft spot for Sim Theme Park and Sim Copter
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This is as good a place as any to mention Home Assistant. In addition to just being good software, it respects your privacy, and can’t effectively be taken away from you.
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“ To me, this is the clearest indication that voice assistants are in a very bad place, and something needs to be done. That something, if Google, Apple, and Amazon have anything to do with it, will probably be a much-needed dose of AI”
Gizmoso is just slop cheerleading wall to wall these days isn’t it?
Think I’m just going to not follow any links there any more.
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And that makes absolutely no sense in this context. The reason assistant got worse is because they’re pushing the gemini crap.
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How do we solve the problem of services being transmuted into shit by AI? Moar AI!
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I think in this context Assistant refers to the software running on speakers and displays, rather than Assistant that runs on phones and tablets. That there is a distinction at all is itself a problem, but not a new one. I would agree that the current state of Assistant on speaker and displays is due to Google’s focus on Gemini to the exclusion of basically everything else and the general problem within Google that the only way to get promoted is by making something new rather than improving something existing, which is, in my opinion, the primary reason that many of the projects end up in graveyard. (Not to mention the vicious cycle that creates: Make new thing, get promoted, leave half-finished thing for your underlings who abandon it for something new so that they can get promoted. Later, rinse, repeat.)
The specific problems mentioned in the article seem like a direct result of either changes happening in preparation of replacing Assistant with Gemini, or just a lack of attention to maintaining the platform. I do have several Assistant devices around the house, but I’ve only really ever used them for setting timers, listening to music, or asking random questions. As far as I know, these features are still working, albeit for various values of working. Setting timers mostly works as it has in the past, although there are times that it lags significantly enough that the timer starts late. Good thing those aren’t time sensitive… Music playback is mostly fine, but in fairness I’m only using it to play Youtube Music and I pay for that, so I’m not sure what the experience is like for people in other situations. Asking questions is notably less useful. In the past you could get a direct answer, but more and more the answer is “I don’t know, but here are some results from the web…” which isn’t a great way to interact with a voice response system, as that requires a screen to work.
I’ve never used the home automation features of Google Assistant, so I can’t judge their current state, or even their former state. I have no reason to doubt that things are as people are claiming, for precisely the reasons that are mentioned above. Controlling smart home devices is an incredibly broad subject, which requires a great deal of boring discipline and maintenance to keep working. It is for these reasons that I have not trusted Google (or Apple, or Samsung, etc.) for these tasks. Additionally, I personally bristle at the fundamental design flaw of communicating with something in my house that must communicate with the Internet in order to communicate with something else that’s in my house.
Finally, it’s worth mentioning (again) that Home Assistant is attempting to address this. Their Home Assistant Voice (preview edition) is an actual (Open Source) product that provides functionality similar to existing voice assistants, but can be run entirely locally, with as much or as little AI and other advanced functionality as you desire. The learning curve is steep and the setup burden is significantly larger, but that should improve over time, in contrast to the mainstream offerings.
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Users left scrambling for a plan B as Dropbox drops Dropbox Passwords
Dropbox has given users of its password manager until the end of October to extract their data before pulling the plug on the service.
[…]
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Okay, I do think this is a crappy thing to do to customers who’ve bought into your service, but do these lights not have manual switches? I mean, I work in IT so I refuse to have this tech in my home, at least at this level. I’ll concede that our washer and dryer do talk to each other and let us know when they’ve finished a cycle, but we also still press the buttons with our own paws like a bunch of filthy animals. Is this not an option for lights?
(Again, not blaming people for getting pissed over this. I can understand that, but are they really left with no way at all to toggle the state of their lights?)
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No idea, really.
I mean, you can always pop the breakers.
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Yeah, the only IOT stuff I don’t mind having are:
- doorbell camera - people can still knock on the door.
- water alarms (to detect flooding under appliances like water heaters, washers, dishwashers, sinks, toilets) - they blare out loudly with or without the app, whether or not you even have your phone.
Our water heater has flooded twice - the first time it was a few inches deep through the whole floor by the time any of us went down there and noticed, that was when I got the alarms. Second time the alarm caught it right away and we shut it all down while it was still basically just a bucketful of water.
But other stuff? Eh. Somebody gifted me one of those app-adjustable lightbulbs a few years ago and I haven’t even tried it yet.
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