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> Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rat

> Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. You're underplaying it in order to artificially inflate your mileage. Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Not to mention the latency of instantiating them, or possibly even installing them, migrating data between them, etc. Voice assistants have contexts but they map fairly closely to natural language. And non-technical users can teach other non-technical users what those contexts are. "Here's how you set an alarm." I've never used Alexa but I'd bet it's something like, "Set an alarm for blah," or even, "Wake me up at blah." And I bet if I asked an Alexa user how to do that I'll remember because it's all natural language. That's a huge win for usability. Now try teaching a non-technical user about cron, its flags, and its relationship to other shell commands, using natural language. In a decade that bullshit will sound more antiquated than the amplitude modulation on the voice of a Dalek.

andrepd 8y ago
>You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Please elaborate. What do you mean by "thousands of hours of learning". Aren't you overplaying it to fit your narrative?
- saulrh 8y ago
  Hundreds to thousands of hours seems completely reasonable to me. Have you ever done IT for your family or friends, or seen a coworker completely helpless in the face of an unrecognized file extension? Say they're, I don't know, an engineer or a call center operative or something. 6 hours of computer in a working day, 250 days of work a year, maybe they got out of college in 2005... more than fifteen thousand hours in front of a computer, and, well, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9DLxDtPtc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9DLxDtPtc. Computers are mindbogglingly complicated. And then there's us, the people that hang out on HN. I can't even think of how many times I've spent fifteen minutes digging around in config files or menus or googling for a better tool. I've probably spent over a hundred hours just on my emacs setup. Easily hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of focused effort dedicated solely to high-end computer-use skills, and that's not even counting the things I use the computer for. And I'm still learning things every day.
  - calculi 8y ago
    I agree with you. I know more than one who bought a new notebook because the operating system didn't work and they don't even realize that reinstalling is an option.
    - lostlogin 8y ago
      Continuous reinstall used to be the way to keep stuff working. It was awful.
craftyguy 8y ago
It doesn't take "thousands of hours" to learn how to launch a web browser and type some words into a search engine box.
- lostlogin 8y ago
  Then why do so many people not do it?
rapind 8y ago
I'm with you, until you lost me on: > Now try teaching a non-technical user about cron, its flags, and its relationship to other shell commands, using natural language. I'm just not sure what you mean with this statement. Are you talking about setting up cron jobs via voice? Or are you just making an analogy about the (perceived?) complexity of cron and teaching it to a non-technical user?
- ddeck 8y ago
  I would assume they are saying that it's a whole lot easier for the average person to say: "Please remind me every day at 5pm to water the plants", or "Please play this song at medium volume every morning at 7am" than to learn how to do the equivalent in whatever operating system their device uses, and I'd tend to agree. Cron is certainly a much higher bar than learning to use the alarm app in your phone, but the point remains, particularly in a home context.
  - rapind 8y ago
    But who's using cron to set a reminder or an alarm on their phone?! That can't be it, but if it is, then they are ironically overstating. I mean you can use the GUI (launching apps etc.), or literally just type "remind me every day at 5pm to water the plants" into the home screen search bar (on Android at least). The voice recognition and the assistant parts are decoupled.
    - calculi 8y ago
      You two are talking about different groups of people. crontab/Linux/Win: definitely needs learning smartphone: a little bit easier to use, open an app and everything is set visual assistant: out of box for being ready to use. I taught one of my family members about using PC and Android, and found that almost everything needs to be explained. For example: - What's Google/Microsoft for? (Yes, even the giants in tech may never be heard for some people and it's common) - Browser? And there are many of them? (Not everyone has a computer and Internet access) - URL? What is that? I cannot even spell it! (This is more complicated and requires people to remember the addresses of tens of commonly used websites, btw, what's a bookmark!?) - register? with what? bank account or passport? (if someone doesn't have a email account, it's likely that they have no idea about the process of register, activation.) - App market? wait a second, what's an app? (not to mention built-in ones and those from 3rd parties) The thing is Alexa, google home and many others provide a unified, easy to use substitute(well, I have to admit these devices are pretty dumb these days. So they are not 100 percent alternatives). The only requirement is being able to speak in a clear way, which is true for almost everyone. PS: I don't have any of these devices. As a hard-core programmer, my choice is, without any doubt, *nix, shell, etc. GUI sucks ;-)
lsc 8y ago
>Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Not to mention the latency of instantiating them, or possibly even installing them, migrating data between them, etc. So, it's interesting. I resisted the iphone-style smartphone for a long time (I loved my nokia communicators) - I mean, I was super into wearable computers; I owned an Xybernaut at one time; I had the palm v with the cdpd modem... but I resisted the winning form factor for so long. And... yeah, it was a mistake. Not really a huge one, 'cause the things are designed to be easy to learn over being easy to use (there's usually an either/or there. the easiest to learn process is rarely the most efficient process) but still, a cost; to this day, I'm not all that great at typing long messages on a phone keyboard, like young people seem to be. For that matter, I didn't buy a car GPS until far after they were common, and I am unusually bad at reading maps for a man who started driving before consumer GPS was common, so I would have saved many hours and more than one job interview if I had that technology sooner. I kind of feel the same way about voice control. I mean, essentially it's a command line interface with a wonky input method, no? and it's a command line interface designed for regular people, not people who are familiar with the command line tradition. I don't think it's super useful now, and I kinda think it will be a fad, like the '80s talking cars. But, I could be totally wrong. What am I missing out on by resisting the voice controlled garbage? I mean, if someone does come up with a google maps level 'killer app' that makes you way more effective if you use the voice control, I'll be behind the curve.
- lkrubner 8y ago
  About this: "I mean, essentially it's a command line interface with a wonky input method, no?" This is precisely the feedback we got from salespeople, when we were working on a Natural Language Programming interface for Salesforce. Initially, I got angry and denied the comparison. But after several people made the same comparison, I came to appreciate how true it was. Unless NLP is perfect, it is really just a Command Line Interface with an awkward input device. I talk about this a little towards the end of this story: https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...
iforgotpassword 8y ago
> Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Not to mention the latency of instantiating them, or possibly even installing them, migrating data between them, etc. I can type everything I'd issue as a voice command into my home screen. I have to install and learn just as few/many things and commands as I'd have to using voice recognition. Op might have underplayed something, you just made things up.
- poooogles 8y ago
  >I can type everything I'd issue as a voice command into my home screen. I have to install and learn just as few/many things and commands as I'd have to using voice recognition. Op might have underplayed something, you just made things up. You are not the market that these are targeted at then. The normal person cannot do those things.
  - iforgotpassword 8y ago
    A normal person cannot type an English sentence? Wow, I really seem to he disconnected from normal people.
- grkvlt 8y ago
  How do you manage to do the typing when you're in the bath?or stepping out of the shower? or when you've left your laptop in another room? or if someone else is using your laptop for something important? The point is not that the voice commands are easy to learn or remember, it's that you have with you at all times (even if entirely naked, hey it's your house) the equipment needed to issue these commands...
adrianN 8y ago
Everything a voice assistant does could be done with an device that has nothing but a keyboard and a text input field. People are not complaining about the great natural language comprehension these things have, they're complaining about always-on microphones in their homes.
- tonylemesmer 8y ago
  But even with typed instead of spoken commands, wouldn't the natural language processing still done in the cloud? Admittedly, typed instructions instead of recorded sounds is less intrusive but still intrusive because it requires the internet, not processed locally.
  - kurtisc 8y ago
    If it was implemented using something like hitting super/the Chromebook search button and then typing your intentions, it would be a more deliberate choice to send the data than it is using a voice assistant which is constantly recording to look out for the keyword.
    - tonylemesmer 8y ago
      yes - a physical interlock would be infinitely preferable.
cm2187 8y ago
Except that voice assistant are not self-discoverable (in addition to being very unreliable and sluggish, which granted could be improved over the long run). And it forces me to memorize commands. Not just "switch on x". But like I want to play that song from that band I don't remember the name of but I remember it is a blue album a few songs after that radiohead song in my playlist. I don't want to have to memorise all these names.
r00fus 8y ago
> Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing Are you saying that voice UI is not its own "application context"? It's an undiscoverable mess.

andrepd 8y ago

>You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Please elaborate. What do you mean by "thousands of hours of learning". Aren't you overplaying it to fit your narrative?

saulrh 8y ago
Hundreds to thousands of hours seems completely reasonable to me. Have you ever done IT for your family or friends, or seen a coworker completely helpless in the face of an unrecognized file extension? Say they're, I don't know, an engineer or a call center operative or something. 6 hours of computer in a working day, 250 days of work a year, maybe they got out of college in 2005... more than fifteen thousand hours in front of a computer, and, well, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9DLxDtPtc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9DLxDtPtc. Computers are mindbogglingly complicated. And then there's us, the people that hang out on HN. I can't even think of how many times I've spent fifteen minutes digging around in config files or menus or googling for a better tool. I've probably spent over a hundred hours just on my emacs setup. Easily hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of focused effort dedicated solely to high-end computer-use skills, and that's not even counting the things I use the computer for. And I'm still learning things every day.
- calculi 8y ago
  I agree with you. I know more than one who bought a new notebook because the operating system didn't work and they don't even realize that reinstalling is an option.
  - lostlogin 8y ago
    Continuous reinstall used to be the way to keep stuff working. It was awful.

craftyguy 8y ago

It doesn't take "thousands of hours" to learn how to launch a web browser and type some words into a search engine box.

lostlogin 8y ago
Then why do so many people not do it?

rapind 8y ago

I'm with you, until you lost me on: > Now try teaching a non-technical user about cron, its flags, and its relationship to other shell commands, using natural language. I'm just not sure what you mean with this statement. Are you talking about setting up cron jobs via voice? Or are you just making an analogy about the (perceived?) complexity of cron and teaching it to a non-technical user?

ddeck 8y ago
I would assume they are saying that it's a whole lot easier for the average person to say: "Please remind me every day at 5pm to water the plants", or "Please play this song at medium volume every morning at 7am" than to learn how to do the equivalent in whatever operating system their device uses, and I'd tend to agree. Cron is certainly a much higher bar than learning to use the alarm app in your phone, but the point remains, particularly in a home context.
- rapind 8y ago
  But who's using cron to set a reminder or an alarm on their phone?! That can't be it, but if it is, then they are ironically overstating. I mean you can use the GUI (launching apps etc.), or literally just type "remind me every day at 5pm to water the plants" into the home screen search bar (on Android at least). The voice recognition and the assistant parts are decoupled.
  - calculi 8y ago
    You two are talking about different groups of people. crontab/Linux/Win: definitely needs learning smartphone: a little bit easier to use, open an app and everything is set visual assistant: out of box for being ready to use. I taught one of my family members about using PC and Android, and found that almost everything needs to be explained. For example: - What's Google/Microsoft for? (Yes, even the giants in tech may never be heard for some people and it's common) - Browser? And there are many of them? (Not everyone has a computer and Internet access) - URL? What is that? I cannot even spell it! (This is more complicated and requires people to remember the addresses of tens of commonly used websites, btw, what's a bookmark!?) - register? with what? bank account or passport? (if someone doesn't have a email account, it's likely that they have no idea about the process of register, activation.) - App market? wait a second, what's an app? (not to mention built-in ones and those from 3rd parties) The thing is Alexa, google home and many others provide a unified, easy to use substitute(well, I have to admit these devices are pretty dumb these days. So they are not 100 percent alternatives). The only requirement is being able to speak in a clear way, which is true for almost everyone. PS: I don't have any of these devices. As a hard-core programmer, my choice is, without any doubt, *nix, shell, etc. GUI sucks ;-)

lsc 8y ago

>Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Not to mention the latency of instantiating them, or possibly even installing them, migrating data between them, etc. So, it's interesting. I resisted the iphone-style smartphone for a long time (I loved my nokia communicators) - I mean, I was super into wearable computers; I owned an Xybernaut at one time; I had the palm v with the cdpd modem... but I resisted the winning form factor for so long. And... yeah, it was a mistake. Not really a huge one, 'cause the things are designed to be easy to learn over being easy to use (there's usually an either/or there. the easiest to learn process is rarely the most efficient process) but still, a cost; to this day, I'm not all that great at typing long messages on a phone keyboard, like young people seem to be. For that matter, I didn't buy a car GPS until far after they were common, and I am unusually bad at reading maps for a man who started driving before consumer GPS was common, so I would have saved many hours and more than one job interview if I had that technology sooner. I kind of feel the same way about voice control. I mean, essentially it's a command line interface with a wonky input method, no? and it's a command line interface designed for regular people, not people who are familiar with the command line tradition. I don't think it's super useful now, and I kinda think it will be a fad, like the '80s talking cars. But, I could be totally wrong. What am I missing out on by resisting the voice controlled garbage? I mean, if someone does come up with a google maps level 'killer app' that makes you way more effective if you use the voice control, I'll be behind the curve.

lkrubner 8y ago
About this: "I mean, essentially it's a command line interface with a wonky input method, no?" This is precisely the feedback we got from salespeople, when we were working on a Natural Language Programming interface for Salesforce. Initially, I got angry and denied the comparison. But after several people made the same comparison, I came to appreciate how true it was. Unless NLP is perfect, it is really just a Command Line Interface with an awkward input device. I talk about this a little towards the end of this story: https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/0998997617/ https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-Steps/dp/09...

iforgotpassword 8y ago

poooogles 8y ago
>I can type everything I'd issue as a voice command into my home screen. I have to install and learn just as few/many things and commands as I'd have to using voice recognition. Op might have underplayed something, you just made things up. You are not the market that these are targeted at then. The normal person cannot do those things.
- iforgotpassword 8y ago
  A normal person cannot type an English sentence? Wow, I really seem to he disconnected from normal people.
grkvlt 8y ago
How do you manage to do the typing when you're in the bath?or stepping out of the shower? or when you've left your laptop in another room? or if someone else is using your laptop for something important? The point is not that the voice commands are easy to learn or remember, it's that you have with you at all times (even if entirely naked, hey it's your house) the equipment needed to issue these commands...

adrianN 8y ago

Everything a voice assistant does could be done with an device that has nothing but a keyboard and a text input field. People are not complaining about the great natural language comprehension these things have, they're complaining about always-on microphones in their homes.

tonylemesmer 8y ago
But even with typed instead of spoken commands, wouldn't the natural language processing still done in the cloud? Admittedly, typed instructions instead of recorded sounds is less intrusive but still intrusive because it requires the internet, not processed locally.
- kurtisc 8y ago
  If it was implemented using something like hitting super/the Chromebook search button and then typing your intentions, it would be a more deliberate choice to send the data than it is using a voice assistant which is constantly recording to look out for the keyword.
  - tonylemesmer 8y ago
    yes - a physical interlock would be infinitely preferable.

cm2187 8y ago

Except that voice assistant are not self-discoverable (in addition to being very unreliable and sluggish, which granted could be improved over the long run). And it forces me to memorize commands. Not just "switch on x". But like I want to play that song from that band I don't remember the name of but I remember it is a blue album a few songs after that radiohead song in my playlist. I don't want to have to memorise all these names.

r00fus 8y ago

> Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing Are you saying that voice UI is not its own "application context"? It's an undiscoverable mess.