[HN Gopher] Mycroft - open source voice assistant
___________________________________________________________________
Mycroft - open source voice assistant
Author : kitebive
Score : 249 points
Date : 2022-11-22 09:54 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (mycroft.ai)
(TXT) w3m dump (mycroft.ai)
| xrd wrote:
| I have one of these devices. I'm still a bit mystified about what
| I want to use it for. But, after reading these threads, I've now
| got a few ideas that make me very excited.
|
| I have come to despise the Google/Alexa/Siri devices. I'll
| explain why.
|
| I hate that Google Home devices always give you a direct answer
| when you ask a question. The reason I hate this is because my
| kids use it to get an answer, without any work, without any
| thinking, without any consideration that there might be context
| to the answer. If they were to research and read about the
| question, they would learn so much more. But, they, like all
| people, want a simple and compact answer. And, I'm sure Google
| engineers have their RSUs tied to some KPI that says "make
| answers as simple and compact" so it will never come out any way
| other than this from Google.
|
| I hate that Google permits my kids to play the same damn song
| over and over again. (Cue sentimental music...). In my day, we
| listened to the radio and it might have been bad for my dad for
| five minutes and he scowled the whole way as enjoyed some utterly
| awful pop song, but then that song ended and he didn't have to
| listen to it for a few hours. Modern radio is worse, but at least
| you can take a break for an hour before they play (and are paid
| to play) the same song over and over.
|
| I hate the surveillance aspect of Google. I don't want to have
| profiles generated of my kids such that when Google revenues dip
| in a few years they are enticed by an offer from that shady
| insurance conglomerate that really wants to know whether any of
| them discussed depression or racism.
|
| So, if I can use a Mycroft device to: * Permit
| them to ask questions, but give them answers in a way they have
| to dig and think and explore, that would be really cool. I'm sure
| this isn't easy, but it will never happen with Google/Alexa/Siri
| because they only care about MONETIZING those interactions.
| * Give me more control over how media is consumed. The people
| working at YouTube will never have a KPI for "make sure you can
| only play one song per hour" and Google Home will never have that
| KPI, so it will never happen. That will never be something they
| can MONETIZE. It seems like it will be a lot more challenging to
| get music onto my Mycroft, but I prefer to play Jazz radio and
| because there still are live streams, I think you could get off
| the YouTube/Spotify/Amazon music train anyway. I got rid of so
| much of my music, but you can play shared files: https://mycroft-
| ai.gitbook.io/mark-ii/basic-commands#jukebox * Forget the
| worries about surveillance. Mycroft right now uses Google for
| text to speech, but it can anonymize it enough for me not to
| worry as much.
| nottorp wrote:
| > I hate that Google Home devices always give you a direct
| answer when you ask a question.
|
| So does StackOverflow. Teaching people how to do things instead
| of giving them code ready to copy paste is frowned upon there
| as well.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| I like it. Now they simply have to make it fully functional and
| add some intelligent AI.
| karencarits wrote:
| I really liked the idea from an earlier post with continuous
| recording + Whisper for transcription + keyword based actions.
| The drawback is asynchronous execution of your actions, but that
| setup seems very flexible!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33608437
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I backed on IndieGoGo (in late 2018 I think), then helped
| crowdfund on StartEngine. I want _so badly_ to speak well of
| these guys, and since I invested I want them to succeed, but it
| 's been getting harder to do so.
|
| They deserve credit for being reasonably transparent about their
| processes though. Their blog has been very interesting to follow.
| They had a ton of issues trying to work out their original
| design, then the pandemic hit. So in a way, timing has been bad.
| In the meantime they spent a lot of time on the software side,
| then on the fundraising side, then deck shuffling at the top, and
| now they're finally shipping something that looks nothing like
| what the Kickstarter showed. Instead of being close to the $200
| price point they wanted to be at, it's currently $349, then will
| go to $500. They're at a point where if they don't get sales at
| those prices, they're not going to be able to deliver to backers;
| at least that's how they framed it when they discussed rollout.
|
| They are actually shipping, though! Which didn't look like a
| guarantee for awhile. However, the reviews have been a bit
| lukewarm; [this][1] being an example. They had a way to make
| skills and they apparently changed it in order to better
| accommodate their final product, so it seems like there's been a
| bit of fracturing of the ecosystem as a result.
|
| In conclusion: I'd love for you to support them! I still believe
| this segment needs a player like Mycroft, Mycroft can be that
| player, and I really want to not have my investments go to waste.
| But I 100% would not blame you if you looked at the company's arc
| and said "no thanks".
|
| [1]:
| https://old.reddit.com/r/Mycroftai/comments/yitzzk/mycroft_m...
| aartav wrote:
| Kudos to them for shipping a product.
|
| I looked into them a few weeks ago because I am tired of the
| "Did you know.." and "Can I add that to your cart?" from Alexa.
| When I saw the device I was really disappointed. I can just
| never see getting one - it doesn't need a screen (cause it
| should be hidden) and why did they make it look like a 1960s
| sci-fi movie thing? IMHO it looks terrible.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| The original design was great, but it just didn't work. They
| had too many issues trying to source hardware and decided to
| pivot to more off-the-shelf components.
|
| That's the short version; here are some highlighted blog
| posts that document the trials and tribulations:
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mark-ii-update-delivery-timeline-
| and...
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mark-ii-update-
| january-2019-current-...
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mark-ii-architecture-change/
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mark-ii-update-revised-architecture/
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/real-companies-ship-product/ (here's
| the pivot to Raspberry Pi)
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mark-ii-update-january/
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mycroft-mark-ii-july-2020/ (here's
| where they decide that the thing has to be a box instead of a
| cylinder)
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/mark-ii-update-october-2020/
|
| https://mycroft.ai/blog/redesigning-the-mark-ii-part-1/
| (here's the final design)
|
| For what it's worth I'm intrigued by a screen. Theoretically
| it shouldn't be needed but if they want to have a reference
| device that can be used in multiple industries, it's better
| to have it than to not have it.
|
| But that series of posts is why I'm still cheering for
| Mycroft despite everything: Clearly this stuff is hard,
| they've been out there trying hard, taking lumps, fighting
| off patent trolls, putting in the work. If they don't
| succeed, I'm not sure who else will pick up the reins and do
| any better.
| nshm wrote:
| There is also a strange story of speech developer leaving them
| a week ago https://community.rhasspy.org/t/rhasspy-is-joining-
| nabu-casa...
| SEJeff wrote:
| That's great news for Home Assistant however!
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Those prices are really insane tbh. No way it will take off
| like that, it's just a non-starter. 200 was already the upper
| limit of what's doable.
|
| I think they're stretching too much to satisfy the original
| backers and it's commendable not giving up on them but if it's
| going to be similar to Alexa, Siri or Google it's just not good
| enough.
|
| If it were an actual assistant I could talk to, then yes. It
| would be worth it.
|
| Imagine this.. I'm doing my laundry and mycroft pipes up.
|
| "hey Alice is looking for you on telegram"
|
| "Tell her I'll get back to her after I finish the laundry"
|
| "Ok!" ... "She says it's urgent, are you sure"?
|
| "Ok call her please on speaker"
|
| Or another scenario.
|
| "hey mycroft I'm going out to the zoo"
|
| "Ok make sure you bring an umbrella because it's going to rain
| in 2 hours "
|
| Stuff like this. Right now assistants have zero short term
| memory, don't remember any of my preferences and can only
| understand one thing at a time. They're also not proactive at
| all. They don't know my life and habits and don't warn me when
| things are happening that I should know about. Yet most of
| those things are easily identified from notifications on my
| phone! It's not a stretch to expect this IMO. It's all thing
| I'd expect from a real assistant. All this low-hanging fruit
| turn on the bedroom light stuff is not worth money.
|
| It's just that there's not much sales to link to it other than
| the service price (which I'd definitely pay for!!).
|
| I don't think these scenarios are too far-fetched with the
| current state of AI tbh.
|
| Ps blaming the pandemic is a bit rich. Their project was
| already down the drain for years before that. First they canned
| the original plan and then they had this DIY raspberry addon
| board and that was in huge trouble well before the pandemic.
| I'm sure it made matters worse but if they'd managed it
| properly it would all have been fulfilled years before corona
| meant anything other than beer.
| voakbasda wrote:
| The recent comments on the Mycroft kickstarter [0], which was
| funded four years ago, indicate that the company is shipping
| preorders. However, only 10% of the units are going to their
| backers. Instead they are selling the units to new customers. If
| you are backer 2000, they might not fulfill your order for
| _years_ to come, based on the production rate quoted there by
| their new CEO.
|
| This is not a viable way to treat your original, most ebthusiatic
| customers. They will go on forums like HN and bitterly complain,
| warning other potential customers not to invest in a company that
| clearly does not respect its users.
|
| [0]
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-m...
| NikkiA wrote:
| Huh, didn't expect to see a Mycroft Holmes reference today.
| Picroft looks interesting.
| walterbell wrote:
| Is there a good, affordable, open-ish dev platform with an array
| of far-field microphones? If not, would it be possible to
| teardown an Amazon Echo Dot and attach their microphone array to
| an ODROID Arm SBC? Might depend on whether the Alexa microphone
| array is using a dedicated audio processor chip for echo
| cancellation.
|
| A web search finds this 4-mike array for $63,
| https://www.robotshop.com/en/seeedstudio-respeaker-mic-array...
|
| Google had an audio dev kits for schools based on their TPU and
| RPi, https://aiyprojects.withgoogle.com/voice/
| ccn0p wrote:
| Mark II sounds like he'd rather be sleeping than helping the
| person in the demo video.
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| I installed their self-hosted minic3 tts the other day to add a
| voice to my home assistant on prem smart home. It sounds
| unbelievably good compared to the picotts crap I was using
| before. Pretty stoked. Now I want to try getting the voice
| assistant hooked up too.
|
| https://mycroft.ai/mimic-3/
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| Sadly their German voices sound broken, as if they stress and
| lengthen/shorten random syllables. And that's with their demo
| text.
| cjtrowbridge wrote:
| Mycroft was the first thing I thought of when I read the first
| press releases from OpenAI about Whisper! Mycroft has
| historically used Google for voice recognition. Exciting to see
| self-hosted alternatives like Whisper coming out.
| borissk wrote:
| I hope this project makes into people's homes, but I really doubt
| it. Google invests so much resources into their Assistant (a
| recruiter recently told me they have over 1000 vacancies). Given
| that Google has it's own very advanced and very efficient cloud
| infrastructure, their own ML processors and an army of devs and
| AI scientists, their assistant will always be cheaper and
| "smarter" than a device build by a small company on top of an
| open source project.
| wolczek wrote:
| They use Google cloud speech-to-text API, one of the key
| technology. https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft-
| technologies/over...
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
| arbol wrote:
| The pi isn't really fast enough to process the speech in real
| time. deepspeech by mozilla was cited as an offline alternative
| to the Google speech API but it's difficult to set up with
| Mycroft and doesn't work very well (lack of data and lag -
| https://mycroft.ai/voice-mycroft-ai/). Because of this, Mozilla
| set up Common Voice (https://commonvoice.mozilla.org/en) to
| help build open datasets of voice recordings.
| shagie wrote:
| > The pi isn't really fast enough to process the speech in
| real time.
|
| If you've got an iPhone... put it in to airplane mode so that
| it is local only. You'll note that Siri no longer works when
| you do this. However... open up the notes app and tap the
| microphone. Do some interesting text...
|
| > Mister Smith said that he wanted a two by four and half of
| a pie.
|
| (if you don't have an iDevice, it transcribes this as:
|
| > Mr. Smith said he wanted a 2 x 4 and 1/2 of a pie
|
| That is without a network and done in real time. We can
| compare the relative processing capabilities of an iPhone and
| the RPi, but offline speech to text is feasible on a device
| of limited capabilities.
|
| Additionally, you can do a limited vocabulary speech to text
| on chip ( https://www.imagesco.com/articles/hm2007/SpeechReco
| gnitionTu... - https://www.amazon.com/HM2007-Speech-
| Recognition-Integrated-... ). This can handle the specific
| incantation common tasks (think closer to how a car voice
| control works - say exactly these words in this order), but
| that can help with performance for things that are often
| done.
| one-another-dev wrote:
| > If you've got an iPhone... put it in to airplane mode so
| that it is local only. You'll note that Siri no longer
| works when you do this
|
| This is not true anymore. Latest iPhone models have offline
| Siri working to some extent
| xrd wrote:
| I'm comfortable with their approach to anonymizing the
| interaction, and assume they will find a way to remove that
| dependency.
| incomingpain wrote:
| $350 for a 4.5" CRT looking thing?
|
| OR
|
| $90 for echo show 8" which does many more things. *Including
| government surveillance.
|
| I wonder how many people have preordered.
| glenstein wrote:
| Under the specs, all I saw for display was:
|
| >4.3'' IPS wide-viewing angle, full color, touchsceen
|
| Were you able to find more information somewhere else about it
| being crt?
| moffkalast wrote:
| He didn't say it's a CRT, he said it's a 'CRT looking thing',
| which it definitely is with the thick extension behind the
| monitor.
|
| Personally I do like the design but I'm quite fond of
| Fallout/Alien style retro displays so YMMV. As a personal
| assistant type thing the original vertical prototype with
| eyes seemed better though.
| dspillett wrote:
| He said _CRT looking_ , I assume to mean "old-fashioned and
| bulky/boxy", not that it actually was a CRT based display.
| UltraViolence wrote:
| Which is essentially a Raspberry Pi 4 with an LCD display.
|
| However, not wanting to spend time and money integrating the
| hardware and the software and building an enclosure around it
| I'd say it's still a fair deal.
|
| Amazon is merely selling devices at cost, which is why they're
| losing $10 billion a year on Alexa. All this is probably going
| to stop soon so people end up with useless devices. Hopefully
| hackers will be able to run MyCroft on them.
| srmarm wrote:
| There was another post[0] on here today about Amazon losing
| $10B on Alexa this year. The only other big player is Google
| who I assume must also run the division at a big loss - at
| least on the hardware side of things as I've got loads of their
| devices dotted around the house most were given to me free or
| at a stupidly low cost (PS20 each). Even the ones like this
| with a full colour screen I've only paid PS49 for.
|
| It's an interesting market that I don't think either has
| figured out too well. Anecdotally, I've not really seen them
| used for shopping or even really shopping lists and the search
| model doesn't seem quite as lucrative as if someone used their
| phone or computer to search.
|
| The one thing they do seem to do well in is as an introduction
| to - and hub for - the smarthome but I struggle to see how that
| will make these big subsides viable.
|
| Which brings us back to this. A bit ahead of it's time perhaps
| but if Amazon/Google pull back their subsidies then this kind
| of thing might be where we have to go. I'd be happier not using
| Google Home and have mostly moved to zigbee switches with home
| assistant to control now anyway. Maybe voice control was a bit
| of a flash in the pan?
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33700792
| Brendinooo wrote:
| They actually have some data for you here to give you a sense
| of scale:
|
| https://mycroft.ai/mark-ii-status/
| JosephRedfern wrote:
| This isn't a CRT.
| incomingpain wrote:
| I realize it's not an actual CRT, it looks like a CRT.
| kitebive wrote:
| Sorry if I ask, but what does CRT mean?
| Brendinooo wrote:
| Cathode Ray Tube, the kind of monitor/television that
| existed before LCD screens became popular.
| laputan_machine wrote:
| I love the idea, but I think this isn't going to be "the one".
|
| It's VC funded, the VCs are going to want to get a RoI.
|
| And we all know where that leads...
| cjtrowbridge wrote:
| So fork it; it's FOSS.
| rexreed wrote:
| The voice assistant space is dying:
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co...
|
| Some of the comments below are part of the explanation why. It
| doesn't work as well as people were hoping, and it's a solution
| in search of a problem with limited application and it seems
| little monetization. The above article sums it up better from the
| big tech company's perspective.
| cloudking wrote:
| We use Google home assistant devices throughout the house, and
| find them quite useful. Use cases:
|
| - controlling smart devices (thermostats, TVs, speakers)
|
| - broadcasting messages
|
| - reminders / tasks
|
| - asking questions
|
| However, none of these use cases generate any revenue for
| Google afaik.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| It's not dying at all - it's an incredibly useful interaction
| style.
|
| Those companies are failing to profit because they don't
| understand that a digital assistant needs to be working with
| me, locally, and not subverting my intent.
|
| It just needs to be _my_ device, and not a sales rep for google
| /amazon. I use voice controls all the time at home - it's
| astoundingly useful in all sorts of situations, and I'm not
| even disabled (where it's literally life changing in some
| cases).
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Ours is a voice-driven music player for our kids. They love it.
| We have a YouTube Premium subscription just because of the Nest
| Minis we have in every room. Sometimes we ask it "What's the
| animal of the day?" or "Tell a story" or "What year was Abraham
| Lincoln born?" but mostly the Nest Hub Maxes we have are just
| photo slideshows, which we love, and sometimes we ask "What's
| the weather?"
|
| That set of functionality alone makes them well worth the money
| for us.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| The "voice assistant space" also includes Siri, Google
| Assistant, and Cortana, so it's not going anywhere.
|
| I'd contend that it's absolutely not a solution in search of a
| problem; it's much more of an unsolved problem, and a big part
| of the "why" is
|
| - voice recognition/assistance tech still maturing
|
| - major players are insisting that the tech supports their
| walled gardens
|
| - price points are still a problem
|
| The last two creates a conundrum: a lot of times tech prices
| come down by selling expensive stuff to rich people until the
| hardware becomes commoditized. But for a good voice assistant,
| you need a lot of up-front investment at scale. Unfortunately,
| the companies that are able to do this are also controlling the
| hardware that can use it, which limits its ability to spread
| and be useful.
|
| This is why I think Mycroft is important to support:
|
| 1. If you can make voice assistant software open-source and
| plug-and-play, then it frees people up to tinker with form
| factors
|
| 2. Part of Mycroft's pitch to businesses is that they can make
| custom solutions. There are probably a thousand big businesses
| that might want to get into this space but don't want to rely
| on Amazon because they want to control the experience and not
| give up their data. Maybe Target wants to stick virtual
| assistants around their stores, or maybe a hospital wants to
| give tools for surgeons.
|
| I also think there's an opportunity for voice control in home
| stereo, where someone decouples the speakers from everything
| else. It's still annoying to work with Bluetooth in 2022, and
| Sonos is still pricey, and another walled garden. I'd love to
| have a simple controller that connects a dumb speaker to Wi-Fi
| and lets me voice-control it to play music from a library of my
| choosing. That's not a thing yet, right?
| ghaff wrote:
| >- price points are still a problem
|
| Really? An Echo Dot is $25 on Amazon right now. Which, if you
| use it at all, is pretty reasonable. (To be sure, if I were
| using it for music to any degree, I'd probably get a model
| with better speakers.)
|
| For music, I have an old phone connected to a stereo
| receiver. So it has voice control although I mostly pick a
| playlist or album manually.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| >An Echo Dot is $25
|
| Yup, price point is solved for the "just timers and some
| music" people, but now you're stuck in Amazon's orbit.
| ghaff wrote:
| That's a pretty weak orbit though if that's all I'm using
| it for. (I do use mine for music sometimes but it's
| actually connected to Apple Music.) I could switch to a
| different assistant tomorrow if I wanted to. I've
| literally never ordered anything by voice--and can't
| really see doing so.
| Brendinooo wrote:
| I mean, these things are credibly accused of violating
| the Federal Wiretap Act, it's not just about the walled
| garden:
|
| https://epic.org/wp-
| content/uploads/privacy/internet/ftc/EPI...
|
| EDIT: other point I forgot - original article says
| they're bleeding money, so clearly $25 isn't sustainable
| right now anyways.
| tjohns wrote:
| > 1. If you can make voice assistant software open-source and
| plug-and-play, then it frees people up to tinker with form
| factors
|
| For what it's worth, Google Assistant does have an open API
| to create new devices. It's not open source, but you can
| certainly experiment with your own custom form factors.
| There's even a tutorial:
|
| https://medium.com/google-cloud/how-to-build-your-own-
| smart-...
| liotier wrote:
| > custom solutions
|
| Especially interesting as voice recognition is much easier,
| cheaper and more efficient within the limited space of a
| specific usage.
| jm4 wrote:
| I don't think the entire space is dying. Amazon is having
| problems because Alexa has little benefit to them outside of
| direct monetization. They wanted people to use Alexa to buy
| things and no one wants to shop like that. So they have these
| devices and all this infrastructure to run people's kitchen
| timers, lights and play music. People will buy Alexa devices on
| Prime Day, use them dozens of times a day for years, and never
| make a dime for Amazon.
|
| Apple isn't necessarily in the same boat. Siri isn't
| particularly good, but it does all those things well. Most
| importantly, it keeps people on iPhones and in the Apple
| ecosystem, which does make money.
|
| You already have the phone and probably have a device that
| works with HomeKit so why not try it out. Next, you buy some
| new lights. Before you know it, you're controlling most of the
| lights in your house, streaming Apple Music and setting kitchen
| timers from your Apple Watch. Next time you need a new phone,
| you're not even going to think about anything else because if
| you change you won't be able to turn on your lights anymore.
|
| Apple has a plan that works and Amazon doesn't.
| smoldesu wrote:
| This makes no sense to me. Apple's plan works because...
| their lock-in is better? I can "control most of the lights in
| my house, stream Apple music and set kitchen timers" with
| Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana and even Bixby. What is
| Apple's _actual_ advantage here? How is Apple making money
| from this when Amazon does not?
| Tagbert wrote:
| Apple makes money from the devices it sells. Siri makes
| those devices more convenient to use.
|
| Amazon is selling the devices at or below cost and hoping
| that Alexa will make the money (which it doesn't)
| smoldesu wrote:
| That only tells me which one will exist longer, not that
| "Apple's plan works". I've genuinely seen zero people
| deliberately use Siri (on iPhone or Mac) over the past 5
| years. Apple is certainly losing money on Siri too.
| nottorp wrote:
| I was one of those zero people until i realized i can
| tell Siri "add an appointment with Blahblah next tuesday
| at 11", it will actually understand that and it takes
| less time than using the calendar interface.
|
| I'm sure enough people find some small use for the voice
| commands that it's a good feature to have on the phones.
| jm4 wrote:
| If you look at Siri in a vacuum, you're almost certainly
| correct that it isn't a moneymaker. But Siri isn't in a
| vacuum. It comes with a device with an average cost of
| like $1000. It may not necessarily be widely used, but
| the ones who do use it are highly likely to remain in the
| Apple ecosystem and use other products and services that
| are highly profitable.
|
| Look at all those Korean novelas and shovelware on
| Netflix. There are cohorts of subscribers who remain
| highly loyal because they're into it. Netflix isn't
| necessarily swinging for the fences with high brow,
| popular content that competes with the best studios in
| the world. Instead, they pump out a wide variety of
| content that keeps the maximum number of people
| subscribed.
|
| Apple is similar. They promote features - whether it's
| Siri, health, privacy, family sharing/controls, etc. -
| that will strongly appeal to some cohort and keep them on
| the platform. Then, they incrementally hook you into
| services until you're buying $1000 devices for the whole
| family and paying $30/mo for the services bundle. And
| once you're there, they have you because the switching
| cost involves turning your digital life upside down.
| shagie wrote:
| Apples devices are smarter. This makes them cost more for
| the "same" hardware, but costs less for the computation.
|
| Apple isn't trying to make money with Siri. It's using Siri
| to make its ecosystem of Apple Music and similar more
| valuable to its customers.
|
| The limits that Apple puts on what it can do makes that
| cloud side computation less expensive.
|
| ---
|
| Consider that bit - less expensive. Apple doesn't run its
| own cloud in the way that Google, Amazon, or Microsoft do.
| So what does Alexa _cost_? It costs for AWS cloud time.
| That 's the expense that it's running. Those skills that
| people use run on AWS compute time rather than a phone's
| local cpu and battery.
|
| A google search "costs" about 1 KJ of energy. Alexa has
| similar costs somewhere just for energy and other costs for
| the maintenance of the additional software and content. It
| costs something to maintain that joke database.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| I don't think Apple is smarter. Siri is really basic.
|
| I can't even say "Turn on the lights and the fan". I have
| to present it all in bite-sized chunks. Come on how hard
| is that.
|
| I have a feeling there is no AI in these supposedly
| intelligent assistants. Only scripted stuff.
| shagie wrote:
| There is more processing done in the Siri local device
| than there is in the Alexa local device.
|
| It's not "Siri is smarter" but rather "Apple is working
| on minimizing cloud costs because it is _entirely_ a cost
| for them. "
|
| Siri _is_ scripted and limited to make it locally
| "smarter".
|
| With Amazon and Alexa, everything goes to AWS because
| that's where the entirety of Alexa's processing happens.
| The hardware devices in the homes are "dumb" terminals
| for AWS with a voice interface. This allows Amazon to
| make use of AWS as much as it can and do something with
| "surplus" computing power that it has available on AWS.
| dljsjr wrote:
| I don't know if it's device specific but I use "Hey Siri,
| turn on the overhead lights and the floor lamp" for
| example all the time. I have a HomePod though.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Weird, I have a homepod (mini) also. In fact I hardly
| have any Apple stuff anymore, I only got homepods because
| it was the most privacy-friendly option out of the big
| three. I just have an iPad from work which I used to set
| them up. And most of my automation goes through Home
| Assistant anyway.
|
| When I give a double command Siri literally tells me she
| can't do two things at the same time and I have to
| present them as two separate commands.
|
| Perhaps it's because I have it set to UK English? Perhaps
| it's smarter in US English. I'll have to try that.
| theptip wrote:
| Seems odd right? Just charge more than break-even for Alexa
| and you have a business?
| jm4 wrote:
| Not necessarily because the cost increases through
| increased use by the customer. The idea was to sell
| hardware at close to cost and then monetize the customer.
| The likely assumption was that Alexa users would buy more
| similar to how Prime customers buy more. Ideally, Alexa
| customers were supposed to use services like "subscribe and
| save" and then randomly tell Alexa to order more toilet
| paper or laundry detergent. Amazon wanted all the household
| stuff on recurring subscriptions. It would have been great.
| Increased revenue, better ability to bundle shipments
| together to cut costs, customers who don't even look at
| prices anymore. Instead, they sell a device for which they
| incur an operating cost while producing little to zero
| increased revenue and subscriptions.
| theptip wrote:
| Right, I read the Ars Technica article, I get the
| original idea. It turns out that monetization strategy
| doesn't work and the Alexa business unit is losing
| billions of dollars.
|
| I'm saying, new business idea: give up on the old
| strategy of Alexa driving induced profit in other
| business units, instead charge more than the breakeven
| cost of building devices and running the service. This
| will likely be substantially more, and fewer Alexas will
| be sold. But the users that do actually get a lot of
| value from the device and service they are using will pay
| more for it.
|
| The product/market fit to test is: How many customers
| would pay more for a device that's not trying to sell you
| things? Can you get a solid (but smaller) business just
| by charging more for the device? What features would you
| add to persuade the marginal user to pay more? Offline
| mode for privacy-conscious users? Lean in to home
| automation features? What about a true AI-powered
| personal assistant? What about per-user language training
| with a local model that gets refined by your voice
| samples, with that data not shared back to the cloud?
| Etc.
|
| Simple startup-style product iteration stuff here. You
| had a customer hypothesis and a growth model, and it was
| proven unviable. So can you pivot to find a viable
| business?
| ncallaway wrote:
| Charge more than break even for Alexa and they won't sell
| enough.
| cupofpython wrote:
| Apple and the garden of eden. Dont take a bite unless you're
| going all in
| aartav wrote:
| Its certainly not a solution looking for a problem. Its a great
| way to deal with a number of minor daily tasks. Checking the
| time, setting timers, checking the weather/AQI, playing music,
| checking news headlines, etc.
|
| Theres a lot of things its really not good for and people have
| tried them all I'm sure. But where it fails the hardest is
| being able to increase sales volume for Amazon or increase ad
| revenue for Google - the only path to monetization seems to be
| to force it in - and THAT is what is dying.
|
| And who the heck wants it in a ring or glasses??
| C2H4O2 wrote:
| Maybe one of the reasons behind this is that people use voice
| assistants, and search engines too in general, to look for
| information. Today, all that these products do is suggest
| instead of catering results. I believe this is one of the
| reasons people, or at least I, do not wish to use assistants.
| It feels that a computer is controlling my likes, dislikes and
| wishes while it should actually be me who controls computers.
| melling wrote:
| It works a lot better than nothing. I use Siri and Alexa every
| day. If Alexa goes away, I'll use Siri more, or find another.
| Siri was a little slow to catch up.
|
| I think the story that you read simply says that it's hard to
| monetize. You are inferring more than what the story says.
|
| Voice assistants are here to stay.
|
| I eagerly await the day when I can simply say respond to this
| post then begin writing with my voice.
| genewitch wrote:
| "Okay, navigating to the nearest post office"
| veidr wrote:
| With all due respect, I find that thesis absurd.
|
| Maybe you meant it like, "the voice assistant space isn't going
| to generate huge profits, and thus giant corporations will lose
| interest".
|
| But even that is absurd. They will still have to do it as a
| loss leader. Maybe not Amazon -- because they just ship us our
| toilet paper and protein bars and shit. They don't have an
| "ecosystem" (although they gave it a halfhearted try a few
| times).
|
| But the chance that in 2032 people just like... don't have
| voice assistants? It's literally zero, barring an actual WWIII
| cataclysm reversion-to-barbarism event.
|
| > doesn't work as well as people were hoping
|
| Nothing does, until it does...
|
| > little monetization
|
| Yep, that might be right. But it doesn't necessarily mean the
| space is "dying". Just that it might not be amenable to
| oligopolization.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I will never have a voice assistant unless a completely open
| and self-hosted solution appears on the market. And with
| current patent landscape, that seems incredibly unlikely to
| happen before 2032.
| veidr wrote:
| OK, I can't keep reading this website any more tonight, but
| for fuck's sake you do realize that the submission you are
| commenting on is a completely open and self-hosted solution
| that is on the market, right?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I want a voice assistant that passes my AI turing test if you
| will. I want it open sourced like Mycroft too though. I don't
| care for having 17 speakers that start talking when they think
| I was talking to them. I wasn't.
| bluGill wrote:
| My needs for a smart speaker are not really passing a turing
| test. I want them to be automations. They need to get some
| things that an AI would do right, but there is a large step
| between an assistant that can do specific things and an AI
| that can talk about anything.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| Voice assistants which are trying to force engagement to
| squeeze money out of you are dying.
|
| Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple
| tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like
| mycroft. It is, however, very, _very_ bad for Amazon and
| Google, because those tasks don 't make them money. That's why
| they're all going so aggressive on "you asked for the time, but
| by the way here's a 5 minute speech on all the easily
| monetizable tasks I can do instead"
|
| People like the idea of voice assistants, but by and large they
| don't like all the problems associated with a voice assistant
| run by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Yup - I think this is the truth. I'm willing to spend several
| hundred dollars right this second for a simple voice
| assistant for things like weather, time, timers, unit
| conversion, alarms, and home assistant control (mainly
| lights).
|
| I've actually pre-ordered the Mycroft Mark 2, although no
| chance to evaluate it yet.
|
| I'm _very_ interested in devices that can do this locally.
|
| I'm not interested in Alexa/Google home anymore _AT ALL_ - I
| 've gone that route, they both work, but they want my dollars
| all the time, and it's become increasingly clear that if they
| can't get me making purchases through those devices - they
| will kill them off, or become ever more scummy in the attempt
| (Alexa is now including ads in the "did you know" section -
| "did you know" was already a fucking terrible decision to
| include, since it's going to marginally increase interaction
| at the expense of huge user dissatisfaction. But putting ads
| there has made me leave.)
|
| So basically - I think if anything, we're seeing a speed run
| of 90s/2000s tech company boom/bust. A huge amount of money
| poured into the space with no real idea of how to sustainably
| profit, but the space itself doesn't feel like it's going
| anywhere.
|
| It's really, really compelling to allow voice control in all
| sorts of interactions - but it needs to be very clearly
| working with me, and not trying to subvert my intent for
| profit. That might even mean it needs to fall back to
| something like "if this command, then that action" style
| usage. No more changing commands, no more bullshit ads, no
| more subversion of what I'm asking it to do.
|
| It needs to obey me, not google or amazon. Otherwise it's a
| sales rep and not a digital assistant.
| cupofpython wrote:
| >they both work,
|
| I got an echo (alexa) for free and use it for home
| assistant. It only works when I have an internet
| connection. So when my internet is out, I cannot turn my
| lights on/off with it. I understand why, but i too would
| REALLY like to just have all functionality dependencies for
| home automation to be local.
| LVDOVICVS wrote:
| I use Mycroft with the home assistant vm running on
| Proxmox. I'm surprised how easily they integrate. And
| when the internet goes out I can locally control things
| from a laptop.
| cupofpython wrote:
| I'll have to check out the specifics - but your full
| setup does not seem like an improvement for me. If alexa
| is down, I can open up the app on my phone for each smart
| device manufacturer and manually control things that way.
| They only need my local wifi network to be functional,
| internet access not needed.
|
| Can a raspberry pi handle the server functionality I
| wonder?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > And when the internet goes out I can locally control
| things from a laptop.
|
| While an improvement I don't want a cloud-dependent
| system except where it's unavoidable: like having it read
| me news.
| shagie wrote:
| > Most people only use the voice assistants for a few simple
| tasks, which is perfect for an open source project like
| mycroft.
|
| I'll certainly grant that... but the price point where
| Mycroft is, is _certainly_ not near what I 'd pay for doing
| those few simple tasks.
|
| Apple is at the upper end of what I'd spend for such a device
| (the HomePod mini is $99) - and that's because I'm fairly
| invested into the Apple ecosystem and thus it can make use of
| the iTunes library, home automation, calendar items, etc...
|
| If I wasn't invested in Apple, then none of the home
| assistants other than Amazon (because of the price point for
| the echo) would be particularly interesting.
|
| I've got a echo show - because its a very nice simple
| clock/weather interface (that's got Alexa behind it) too (I
| really liked the Ambient 7 day weather clock when it was
| available). I've got an echo wall clock that is paired with
| the echo in the kitchen - it makes timers nicely visible (a
| sibling of mine has an echo wall clock because its an analog
| dial that doesn't have any sound with it).
|
| The problems with Alexa of suggesting by the way ("Alexa,
| stop by the way" - give it a try and yes, it is routineable)
| are tolerable for how much I'm paying for them and the
| functionality that I use it for.
| smoldesu wrote:
| > That's why they're all going so aggressive on "you asked
| for the time, but by the way here's a 5 minute speech on all
| the easily monetizable tasks I can do instead"
|
| This is a word-for-word description of how Siri originally
| functioned. "You asked for the top 5 romantic resturaunts
| nearby; here are the top results from Google Search:"
| zamadatix wrote:
| GP isn't talking about bad fallback answers where it punts
| you to a search page more like when you ask "Hey Alexa,
| what is the time" and it says "The time is 5:45 PM. By the
| way did you know you can buy ribbons for the holidays on
| Amazon by saying..." i.e. things that are blatantly
| unrelated to answering your question and often trying to
| sell you something.
| voakbasda wrote:
| A truly open platform stands a chance in the voice assistant
| space, as it could be adapted into forms that are useful beyond
| their current limited designs. Such useful forms probably are
| not as monetizeable as the current incarnations that invasively
| collect information about you and your family, so I very much
| doubt the big tech players will ever attempt to build these
| useful systems directly.
|
| Unfortunately, Mycroft is not very open itself. Sure, most of
| the code is open and available, but I tried to contribute and
| found my PRs ignored for weeks. When they were finally ready to
| merge them, their poor response cause me to lose interest in
| the project. At that time, they did not seem interested in
| cultivating a strong developer community around their core
| technology components; they were doing their thing, and they
| wanted the community to implement "skills". I got the
| impression that community could either get on board or stand
| aside and watch them work. For that reason alone, I feel fairly
| certain that this project will fail eventually as well, and
| their hardware will become yet another high-tech relic of a
| paperweight.
|
| As a formerly enthusiastic kickstarter backer, I cannot
| recommend the Mycroft project as the basis for a product; you
| don't own and can't control the platform on any meaningful way
| (short of forking it). It might be a better choice than a
| closed platform, but not enough to make me want to put any
| money in it.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| ...but you _can_ fork it. Is the build process really too
| painful for that to be enough?
| gigatree wrote:
| Why do you need to control it yourself in order for it to be
| valuable as an open-source project? Maybe the team has a
| specific vision for the product, and reading through PRs from
| random people online takes away from their limited resources.
| theCrowing wrote:
| I use Mycroft for around 2-3 years on a raspberry pi with an
| microphone array and the quality is still not nowhere near the
| level were I would give it to my mom or granny.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| Depends on what it's used for imo. I've got the same setup and
| --apart from some sexism in the voice recognition--the basics
| work flawlessly. Once it's up and running it's trivial to set
| timers, check the weather, do basic unit conversions, etc...
|
| Maybe once a month it freezes and it just needs to be
| restarted, anyone can do that who can get used to talking to a
| robot in the first place.
|
| The more complicated stuff, I agree is not fit for people who
| aren't comfortable with a terminal. I also use it to control my
| lights and play spotify, but I'm only able to do that because
| I'm comfortable messing around with it and have the skills (and
| desire) to debug it when it breaks every other week.
|
| It's nowhere near as polished as Alexa or similar, but it's
| good for the basics or for hobbyists who don't want to be spied
| on.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| Been looking for an open source tool like this for a while
| now - but to automate some home security stuff. All I need is
| good basic functionality anyways. So its good to know it at
| least works.
|
| The sexism part is horse manure though. A strong accusation
| on a likely small team on tight deadlines and budgets who
| cannot cater to everyone all at once, like Big Tech and their
| massive resources and teams.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| I don't mean to say the devs have any ill intent. Just
| pointing out the reality it has trouble with feminine
| voices. Like veidr points out in response to my comments,
| implicit bias is a big issue. Probably they originally
| trained the wakeword model entirely on American cis men, so
| naturally it has trouble recognizing any voice outside of
| that norm. It's not an accusation, this is a very well
| documented pitfall of machine learning.
|
| I'm very grateful to the Mycroft team because I love smart
| speakers but am not willing to sacrifice my privacy to such
| a degree as I would have to to use a google home or Alexa
| or anything like that. That does not mean I won't point out
| its flaws.
| veidr wrote:
| > sexism in the voice recognition
|
| What does this mean? Mycroft prefers taking orders from
| dudes?
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| Yes. It reliably responds to the wakeword ("hey Mycroft")
| from men, and only responds about 50% of the time to women.
|
| When my sister visits, it almost never responded to her for
| example.
|
| And in my personal experience, I used to have a very deep
| voice and it always responded to me. I decided I would
| rather have a more androgynous voice and did some voice
| training to accomplish that and use a pretty neutral pitch.
| Now it only responds to my normal voice about 50% of the
| time, so I intentionally drop my voice an octave whenever I
| speak to it.
|
| But somehow it's not just about pitch either. I have
| friends who are trans men, and speak in a deep voice but
| they still have trouble getting Mycroft to respond.
| veidr wrote:
| OK, I see. Really interesting, but I guess not
| surprising. We talk a lot about inherent/implicit bias
| these days, and that's probably an example of it.
|
| I wonder if the Mycroft project people are aware of the
| issue?
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| They are: https://mycroft.ai/blog/hey-mycroft-listen-to-
| me/
|
| Although it hasn't gotten better from my perspective. But
| until I searched for this, I was totally unaware they've
| provided an easy way to train your own model for the
| wakeword! https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-
| mycroft-ai/customiz...
|
| I will have to try that and if I remember I'll update
| here if it improves my situation in a few days
| sampo wrote:
| > It reliably responds to the wakeword ("hey Mycroft")
| from men, and only responds about 50% of the time to
| women.
|
| They have instructions on how to train your own version
| of the wakeword listener.
|
| https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft-precise#train-your-
| own-...
| veidr wrote:
| Would love to read about experiences actually using this (I mean
| Mycroft in general) -- good, bad, or otherwise.
|
| Also, though: why don't we have "text assistants"? Seems to me
| the process of deciphering spoken text is (or should be) entirely
| orthogonal to performing the actual task -- changing the
| lighting, cranking up the AC/heat, arming the security perimeter,
| or whatever.
|
| I think the reason is that voice recognition is hard and so far
| only the "BIGASS TECH!!!" corporations have been able to make it
| "mom or granny ready" -- and they have no incentive to do that
| for free and let us make our own mash ups. They want to wall us
| into their ecosystems.
|
| So from that standpoint, this looks pretty cool to me -- even if
| the voice recognition isn't as good as the big three.
|
| OTOH, to rebut my own point: I got the new Apple Watch Ultra and
| I noticed that I can map the side button to a "shortcut" (the
| Apple term for a script you create yourself to automate
| something) that just transcribes whatever I say, and sends it as
| text over SSH to any host I want. On my local LAN, the delivery
| time is well under 1000ms.
|
| So that's getting pretty close to being able to use Siri as a
| generic voice recognizer, and then piping the input into whatever
| arbitrary/homebrew system I want.
|
| To do it purely with voice though you have to be like "Hey Siri,
| do the funky chicken" (after naming the shortcut "do the funky
| chicken"). And _then_ say the actual command phrase you want your
| home automation to do.
| rickoooooo wrote:
| I played with Mycroft about two years ago. I had been using a
| couple Google home minis for a while for the usual things (play
| spotify, set timers, ask the weather, control lights around the
| hose). They worked perfectly for that. At the time I decided to
| de-Google my life and take back my privacy so I went looking
| for something open source that would provide me more control of
| my data. I found Mycroft and played with it for a few months.
|
| I was pretty excited about it. I bought a ReSpeaker 2.0, which
| is an embedded device that can run Linux and has a six
| microphone array. I designed a custom 3d-printed case to hold
| the ReSpeaker and a small speaker to make my own little
| "Jarvis" box (Iron-man reference).
|
| My favorite part about the whole thing was the customization. I
| wrote a couple of skills to do some other things for me. For
| example, I could say "Where can I watch X?" and it would use an
| API to search for a TV show or movie to see where it was
| available on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, etc and let me
| know. It's always been annoying to go Google and try to figure
| out where I can watch something streaming online, but limited
| to only the services I currently subscribe to. I wrote another
| skill that tied into my couchpotato instance so I could say
| "Download the movie X" and it would go find it and download it.
| If it found multiple matches, it would read off the top few
| matches and let me choose the correct one. I even tied those
| skills together so if the first skill couldn't find a movie at
| one of my streaming services it would ask if I wanted to
| download it and I could simply say "yes". I also modified the
| code to use a custom text to speech API so I could configure
| Mycroft to use a custom voice.
|
| It was all really cool and I had a lot of fun playing with it.
| The biggest problem I ran into was the wake word recognition.
| It worked mostly OK for me on the ReSpeaker from close range
| but I found as I moved away it went downhill. It was especially
| bad if I had my device playing music, which is possibly the
| most common thing I was using my Google Home mini for. I had
| hoped that the ReSpeaker would help with this, because it had
| the six microphone array and some built-in loopback hardware to
| try and cancel out any noise that that was being generated by
| the ReSpeaker. So any sound output to the speakers would be
| looped back into the ReSpeaker and could be subtracted from the
| microphone's input. I found that I just couldn't get it to work
| well, though. I think the music was causing vibrations that
| were overloading the microphone array and causing it to be
| unable to hear me through the music. It's possible it could be
| improved with a better hardware design to help reduce vibration
| caused by the device's own speaker. Maybe it works better now,
| two years later. I think I had configured Mycroft to use
| Snowboy for wake-word recognition so I could name my Mycroft
| something else (Jarvis).
|
| One day the Mycroft installation just stopped working on my
| device after I hadn't touched it in a week or more and I never
| went back to figure out what was wrong. It's still sitting on
| the corner of my desk unplugged. If I could have got the wake-
| word recognition working reliably with music playing I think I
| would have used it a lot, but I wasn't able to at the time.
|
| I just recently bought a smart watch with a built in "Alexa"
| app that allows you to send voice commands to your phone which
| get processed through the watch's official app. I'm instead
| using Gadgetbridge on Android to interface to the watch. Some
| kind hacker updated Gadgetbridge to add very basic support for
| my watch's microphone, allowing you to send the raw voice data
| to an external application. I'm hoping I'll be able to use this
| to revive my Mycroft instance and I'll just send voice commands
| to Mycroft from my watch/phone via a custom Android
| app/service. In theory, I'll be wearing the watch all the time
| anyway and having the microphone on my person and right next to
| my face should hopefully help with the speech-to-text and I
| won't have to worry about a wake word at all. I've only just
| barely started working on this, though.
| adam1028 wrote:
| I gave up on mycroft after a long wait and built my own with
| respeaker and picovoice. i have 2 of them with different wake
| words. imo it's way better and easier than snowboy. i dont
| understand why people give their data to amazon to set a
| timer :)
|
| check their free stuff: https://picovoice.ai/pricing/
| moffkalast wrote:
| > why don't we have "text assistants"
|
| We do, it's called typing things into Google.
| HankB99 wrote:
| Will that initiate actions like the voice thing does? I
| thought it just returned search results.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| Google assistant on your phone can accept text input. If
| you're on a relatively recent version of Android you should
| be able to long-press the home button, then tap the
| keyboard icon in the popup. Works the same as a voice
| prompt
| moffkalast wrote:
| A lot of assistant functionality is just getting data from
| the internet, which search engines already know how to
| present and format in a useful way.
|
| If you need to go to a specific spot in the house to write
| some text that turns on a light it seems easier to just
| walk to an actual light switch? For general automation then
| I think there are some visual block-based configurators to
| set up triggers for smart appliances otherwise.
| mod wrote:
| Why do I need to go to a specific spot? I have devices
| that take text input on my body at all times, and I sit
| in front of one for most of the day.
| EntropyIsAHoax wrote:
| This is actually how Mycroft handles it, more or less.
|
| The wakeword ("hey Mycroft") is done on-device, but everything
| you say after that is sent to a speech-to-text API. That text
| is then routed to the appropriate skill to handle. So when
| you're writing the skill you only worry about the content of
| that text
|
| https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft-technologies/over...
| criddell wrote:
| > why don't we have "text assistants"
|
| I used to use a text-based assistant service called _I want
| Sandy_ and it was great. Then Twitter bought the company and
| they went away.
|
| http://boingboing.net/2007/11/14/i-want-sandy-perfect.html
| toqy wrote:
| > why don't we have "text assistants"
|
| Siri has this as an accessibility feature since iOS 11, but
| might not be exactly what you're looking for
| veidr wrote:
| That is right, and I did try it, but they made it so that if
| you enable that then voice input no longer works. (T_T)
| mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote:
| Why is this so damn expensive? I have plenty of good hardware
| available to run the compute for this thing. Just make a
| daemon/app architecture where I can use my phone as a microphone
| and run daemons on whatever hardware I need to control.
|
| I just don't see this being worth the money. Hundreds of $ to
| make switching music slightly more convenient just seems like a
| colossal waste of money to me.
| systemicdanna wrote:
| Agreed. I don't need a screen or a loud speaker on a voice
| assistant box. Just make it small and cheap, as promised.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| I think we're spoiled by Google and Amazon losing so much money
| for so long
|
| For example, I noticed a couple years ago at the store that a
| regular featureless analog wall clock was more expensive than
| an Echo Dot
|
| These guys need to pay for their software dev out of hardware
| sales and can't hope for a runaway success yet, so of course
| it'll cost a painfully lot more
| splitrocket wrote:
| The key feature I haven't seen any of these opensource projects
| implement is microphone response coordination: If you have
| multiple microphones and speakers, which one responds?
|
| My google home's are terrible at this: often one in another room
| responds, but at least it's only one. When I tried to run Genie
| (https://genie.stanford.edu/) I had multiple devices responding
| simultaneously. It was a disaster.
|
| For me, this is the core feature that will enable me to swap out
| my corporate listening devices for an opensource, cloud-free
| alternative.
| [deleted]
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