3 ms·

I’m not sure if you’re telling me that I’m right or that I’m wrong.

genewitch 2y ago
You're right. A "batteries included" device can't be sold for the actual R&D and engineering costs of the device, so you're either going to lose money on each sale, or not sell many at all; and either way that leads to anti-consumer behaviors. Ramble follows, feel free to ignore the AIY kits were "on clearance" when i got them, and i haven't seen similar since. But the issue isn't that people don't want to "own their data" and "DIY" - but think of all of the things you need to know how to do, to set up that device i spoke of. Linux shell. Wifi / networking. Electronics. Figuring out the moving target of google infra services. Let's pause here; if this part is removed, we get a bunch more - running things in docker, or compiling from source, or python venvs. You have to have enough compute just laying around to do the processing of voice and tts, you still have to "hook up" all of the piping to something that can actually "do work" based on "plain english commands" how many people on HN could set up a voice assistant without any assistance? With the archlinux wiki and stack and copilot that number might grow a magnitude or two. I do mean the full stack, but COTS hardware. it's marginally easier these days than it was when i bought that AIY Voice Kit - transcription and TTS are downright magical, and built upon at least a decade and a half of prior art; I don't think tortoise-tts has much in common with the TI-49/A or Apple powerPC era text to speech. I don't think whisper has much in common with Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the powerPC era "short commands" that you could use with applescript. If some startup wants to try and light investor money on fire a little slower, it should be possible to design and build a "home assistant" device that's like a 100 TOPS tegra or functionally equivalent running linux as a "base station" and remote or satellite transceivers that have the wakewords and whatnot on them. Think like a cordless phone. Obviously to build a moat we'd use some arbitrary wireless protocol, if not proprietary. nah, it should be wifi, maybe even as part of a "home mesh wifi" system or something? you're still gunna lose your ass trying to make something people want at a decent price.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

You're right. A "batteries included" device can't be sold for the actual R&D and engineering costs of the device, so you're either going to lose money on each sale, or not sell many at all; and either way that leads to anti-consumer behaviors. Ramble follows, feel free to ignore the AIY kits were "on clearance" when i got them, and i haven't seen similar since. But the issue isn't that people don't want to "own their data" and "DIY" - but think of all of the things you need to know how to do, to set up that device i spoke of. Linux shell. Wifi / networking. Electronics. Figuring out the moving target of google infra services. Let's pause here; if this part is removed, we get a bunch more - running things in docker, or compiling from source, or python venvs. You have to have enough compute just laying around to do the processing of voice and tts, you still have to "hook up" all of the piping to something that can actually "do work" based on "plain english commands" how many people on HN could set up a voice assistant without any assistance? With the archlinux wiki and stack and copilot that number might grow a magnitude or two. I do mean the full stack, but COTS hardware. it's marginally easier these days than it was when i bought that AIY Voice Kit - transcription and TTS are downright magical, and built upon at least a decade and a half of prior art; I don't think tortoise-tts has much in common with the TI-49/A or Apple powerPC era text to speech. I don't think whisper has much in common with Dragon Naturally Speaking, or the powerPC era "short commands" that you could use with applescript. If some startup wants to try and light investor money on fire a little slower, it should be possible to design and build a "home assistant" device that's like a 100 TOPS tegra or functionally equivalent running linux as a "base station" and remote or satellite transceivers that have the wakewords and whatnot on them. Think like a cordless phone. Obviously to build a moat we'd use some arbitrary wireless protocol, if not proprietary. nah, it should be wifi, maybe even as part of a "home mesh wifi" system or something? you're still gunna lose your ass trying to make something people want at a decent price.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]