You can disagree with how one uses the right of free speech, and defend said right, in the same breath.
fonix232
joined 2 years ago
That's been the conservative approach, no matter the country, for a while now. Whine about things being bad, then target progressive ideologies as the culprit behind them, then finally go on a "crusade" of contrarianism, of doing nothing but offending those you consider your enemies.
So yes, the goal is to offend everyone, even at the cost of associating with known child rapists, sex traffickers and other unsavoury characters.
It would be great, but sadly the increase of literacy did not come with an increase in critical thinking, or reasoning skills.
As Qui-Gon Jinn said: the ability to speak (or, in this case, read) does not make you intelligent.
Well yeah, the availability of these more advanced hardware bits is pretty new - for example, all the older GH Minis and Echo devices were running a quite pared down Linux distro with software processing for e.g. wake words.
Transplanting all that to MCUs takes time, but now we have a solid base, a handful of devices/boards that utilise the various XMOS chips, and soon we will be seeing more and more consumer level devices - but again that takes time when there's no big megacorp behind the project pushing it to completion with bottomless finances and hundreds of engineers.
But you're not exactly correct on there being no other options. There's the Satellite1 smart speaker which might be a DIY kit but it does exist. Then there's the Seeed Studio Respeaker Lite w/ ESP32-S3 to which you can slap a speaker (either directly or a powered speaker through the audio jack). In fact the Respeaker lineup has a handful more options for smart speakers all utilising the various XMOS chips.
Just keep in mind that these speakers are DIY mainly for two reasons:
- the technology is pretty new
- there's no big corpo push behind it to deliver profitable (in some way) consumer products
There WILL be consumer products (hopefully soon) on the market, but again, this is being done by volunteers and small startups with just a handful of people, it takes more time to get them on the market than it does for companies the size of Amazon or Google.
To be fair, in the early days HA wasn't too usable. Even around 2018-19, the integrations were limited and the core logic was quite wonky. I'd say around 2020 it became mature enough for daily use for non-tinkerers.
Have you tried Meetups?
As in, the literal platform/website. Facebook etc. might only have a few niche groups, but in my experience Meetup does tend to have at least a handful of more generic hobby oriented ones that aren't so DnD/MTG focused.
I do wish there was a smaller LongCat model available. My current AI node has a hard 16GB VRAM limit (yay AMD UMA limitations), so 27B can't really fit. An 8B dynamically loaded model would fit, and run much better.
The HA Voice Preview is a pretty solid device, but you're right, there isn't really any ready made Echo/Google Home Mini replacement device - primarily because all those devices are generally sold at a loss, or at cost at best, and subsidised by your data being sold.
You won't be able to make a Google Home Mini contender for below $50, and at that price most people will opt for the former. Good quality speakers, microphones, local processing (like the XMOS chip in the Voice Preview) all cost money, and there's no subsidy to be made. Some older Echo devices are rootable, but the hardware tends to be somewhat exotic (meaning no open source support for specialised components), and there's little ongoing third party support (focus has been on the display-equipped models, and to run Android on them).
All in all, "cheap" and "fully local open source voice assistant" don't really coexist.
There were like, about two years between OpenHAB and HA being released. Former debuted in 2011, HA saw first release in 2013.
I'm sorry, what?
Googling "home assistant Spotify" results in the very link you've provided.
And you can hardly expect a project like Home Assistant, with THOUSANDS of first party integrations, to cater to your specific needs, or to provide preferential treatment to companies like Spotify, who provide absolutely no support to the project.
It also doesn't require a "techie setup", but following a quite straightforward guide, that culminates in clicking about maybe a dozen buttons (most of them being "I accept" to various terms and policies), then copying a handful of readily provided strings into the right fields. It's simple enough that even my tech illiterate father can do it.
Home Assistant at the end of the day is NOT an Alexa (or other voice assistant) replacement, but a smarthome control hub OS. That it provides a voice assistant interface is quite secondary to its main mission.
He's behind it because he's desperate to control the narrative. Watch it shift down the line in a few weeks to "Trump always wanted the files released but it was the dirty Biden-era DoJ/FBI/[insert random alphabet org here] people who blocked it".
Also do make note of the Epstein file tracker site that's been floating around, before the release. Trump, last I checked (and they're still going through the 20k dump from last week) was at 59 mentions. I'll bet good money that tons of Trump mentions will be struck out, redacted, or plain simple held back from release, while others - especially Democrats - will be represented at an overwhelmingly increased rate compared to previous releases.
Remember, Trump had months to doctor these files, and while most of the Grand Ole Paedos in the House and Senate might be trying to save their own arses now, the orange shitsack did pick a bunch of hardcore loyalists to lead key departments/organisations where they would have direct access to doctor the files... at this point, they will twist the release into something beneficial to them.
The only time the US is united is when they're under threat from an external source. Let it be the Soviet Union, or 9/11, y'all need an external enemy to unite against, otherwise all the differences come up... and y'all are simply incapable of discussing political differences because half the population still thinks black people were better off as slaves, while the other half simply demands basic respect for all people...