Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2023 August 2

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August 2

Best practices for using Google Assistant devices

I am a keen Google Assistant user at home. I have several Google Nest Mini speakers and Google Nest Hub devices, at least one in every room, and I use these devices to control lighting, set alarms, timers, stopwatches, check the weather forecast, perform arithmetical computations, etc.

As a software developer myself, I am truly impressed by the system's ability to convert waveform audio into text, but I am also flabbergasted by the very frequent failures when it comes to acting on these commands.

For instance, when I go to bed, I say, "Hey Google, good night" and the nearby device asks me what time the alarm should be set and then turns off all light. But a few months ago, it started asking for the alarm time twice:

• Me: Hey Google, good night.
• GA: What time should I set the alarm?
• Me: Eleven o'clock.
• GA: What time should I set the alarm?
• Me: (slightly annoyed voice) Eleven o'clock.
• GA: Good night, Andreas.

After a month, it reverted to its original, correct, behaviour again.

My guess is that this is due to automatic software updates? Would that be a reasonable guess?

Similarly, since last week, the Assistant is no longer able to control my lighting. If I ask it, "Hey Google, turn off all lights.", the Assistant replies, "Here's what I found: According to [some environmental org.], turning off your lights is a good way to save energy. [...]"

Also, there's always a confusion about what language to use. For instance, to control lighting, Swedish seems to work best. However, it is impossible for me to set reminders using Swedish. Here only English works, at least right now. And when I ask the Assistant to toss a coin, it replies in Swedish using an English voice (which indeed sounds horrible).

Again, as a software developer, this makes me flabbergasted: If a company can solve a hugely complicated software problem like speech recognition, then how is it possible for the same company to fail so miserably when implementing fairly trivial NLP for basic commands? And do Google send out updates without any prior beta testing or QA at all?

My guess is that this happens to me not because the Assistant is particularly stupid, but because I am bilingual, using both Swedish and English, which may be a scenario that is not tested by Google.

Is this a reasonable assumption? If so, what's my best course of action? Switch to Swedish only? English only?

--Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 15:13, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think anyone here will be able to find you a referenced answer. I have no experience with voice activated technology but my suggestions would be (1) always use that slightly annoyed voice (2) turn it off then on again (3) ask it why it always asks you twice (4) find a discussion forum where you can ask other users (5) set the alarm on your phone or clock. Shantavira|^{feed me} 08:51, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for your input. I am well aware of the difficulty, but if these problems also happen to English-only users (in the US or UK, say), at least I know there's no use experimenting with my language settings.

Regarding your suggestions, (1) the voice I use has no effect on the text "heard" by the device, (2) these issues happen on all devices, (3) that's waaay to complicated for GA (if I try anything but a very basic command, it always responds "Sorry, I don't understand." -- this is very much not ChatGPT!), (4) I did ask Google Support, and they simply said that they hope my issues will be solved by a future update. --Andreas Rejbrand (talk) 18:41, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Did the Windows XP installation CD really include an encrypted copy of Microsoft Bob?

According to the Microsoft Bob article: Microsoft employee Raymond Chen disclosed that an encrypted copy of Bob was included on Windows XP installation CDs in order to consume space to prevent piracy. It was thought that by consuming an additional 30 megabytes on the disc (in the era of dial-up internet access), users with 56 kbit/s modems would be dissuaded from attempting to download the software illegally. Retired Microsoft engineer David Plummer has identified himself as the employee responsible for the encrypted copy. The installer routine would check for the "blob of Bob" and if an "OEM blob" was detected, only an OEM product key would be accepted. Tech journalist Harry McCracken called the story "a delightfully urban legend-y tale" and noted its similarities to an April Fools' Day joke claiming that Bob was hidden in Windows Vista.

I looked at the sources and the accounts by Chen and Plummer raised a lot of questions. For one, consuming a mere 30MB would still not fill up the CD, as an example, an RTM copy of Windows XP Home Edition was only around 470MB, and whether that figure included the supposed encrypted copy of Bob or not, it would still not fill up a 650-700MB CD. Secondly, Windows XP has been around for over 20 years now, and even parts of its source code has been leaked, and you'd think if the "blob of Bob" really was somewhere on the CD, someone would likely have found it and pointed it out by now (even if they were unable to decrypt it), as even if the files were encrypted, the disc itself was not. Also, it raises the question, if the supposed "blob of Bob" was not found or corrupt, what would happen? Would Windows refused install or activate, would an error message appear? - CHAMPION ^{(talk) (contributions) (logs)} 23:04, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

It is just an urban legend. Ruslik_Zero 20:03, 3 August 2023 (UTC)