My household has far too many Google products in it, among them several Home Hub, Nest, and original Home speakers. There are very few commands we actually use on a regular basis but turning off a light near the bed, setting the temperature, and turning on an array of lights to make my basement look less like a death trap are things we use all the time.

For the past few months a rather regular event has been my wife attempting to turn off a device, being greeted by a male voice saying that the TP-Link Kasa service is unreachable and to try again later. No matter how many times she asks once it’s told her it’s down Google Assistant will have the male voice, and all her requests will somehow not work.

Now, I know the voice options for Assistant, it’s one of the male voices… but none of us have chosen one of the male voices. Both her and my Google Assistant voices are stock and neither of the kids have chosen that voice. Once the man’s voice is heard, nothing works for her. I ask Assistant to turn out the light and bam.

It’s become a running joke that it just hates her. The later it is in the night the less chance she has of it turning off the light she’s reading by.

Light is wired in such a way that to turn it off manually you need to crawl under a desk six feet away, using voice commands is preferable.

We’ve never been able to narrow down anything other than that it’s on one of the original Google Homes, and it’s usually after 11pm. Works fine any other times. If I’m not mistaken the volume is also slightly louder, although that might just be the voice.

Google Assistant/Home: A strange man’s voice answers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

My household has far too many Google products in it, among them several Home Hub, Nest, and original Home speakers. There are very few commands we actually use on a regular basis but turning off a light near the bed, setting the temperature, and turning on an array of lights to make my basement look less like a death trap are things we use all the time.

For the past few months a rather regular event has been my wife attempting to turn off a device, being greeted by a male voice saying that the TP-Link Kasa service is unreachable and to try again later. No matter how many times she asks once it’s told her it’s down Google Assistant will have the male voice, and all her requests will somehow not work.

Now, I know the voice options for Assistant, it’s one of the male voices… but none of us have chosen one of the male voices. Both her and my Google Assistant voices are stock and neither of the kids have chosen that voice. Once the man’s voice is heard, nothing works for her. I ask Assistant to turn out the light and bam.

It’s become a running joke that it just hates her. The later it is in the night the less chance she has of it turning off the light she’s reading by.

Light is wired in such a way that to turn it off manually you need to crawl under a desk six feet away, using voice commands is preferable.

We’ve never been able to narrow down anything other than that it’s on one of the original Google Homes, and it’s usually after 11pm. Works fine any other times. If I’m not mistaken the volume is also slightly louder, although that might just be the voice.

Google Assistant/Home: A strange man’s voice answers by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

The Dumbening started last week with Home/Nest voice devices not being able to turn off either my Nest or my Cielo controlled thermostats. Today on the drive into my kid’s school we had a very fun trip where we learned Kate Bush only has one song that would play, Regina Spektor makes music that contains a total of 6-10 seconds and then ends, and attempts to play any individual song require me to unlock my device which is connected to my car, and then it plays a random TV show.

Let’s use a little smarts Google Assistant. If I am driving, connected to my car’s Bluetooth connection, don’t play movies?

This was not a good trip in. We did finally get it to play the only Kate Bush song in the entire universe in its entirety, but the goal at the outset was to play anything but that song.

The phone kept locking, requiring me to unlock it to get the wrong results. Something that was not supposed to happen for 4 hours or so because that’s how it’s set.

Attempts to play Good Times by Edie Brickell, or honestly Good Times by anyone who has recorded a song named Good Times (there are many) were greeted with that I needed to unlock my phone and what appeared to be a half-hearted effort to locate a TV show similar to, but not Good Times.

At this point my ten year old told me to stop because it was obvious that Google Assistant had the dumbs today and any and all attempts were futile. It was in response to this that Kate Bush started playing again, the only song that exists evidently, and attempts to skip it went to a song that never started playing or had an insane quiet intro, and then that one Kate Bush song… again.

While I’ve often had issues with Google Assistant while driving, this was picking up what I was saying. But man it was not returning anything useful today.

Apple PR – seriously, put a camera in my car you’ve got your next Siri advertisement.

Google Assistant reached levels of dumb today that are being mocked by my 10 year old by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

The Dumbening started last week with Home/Nest voice devices not being able to turn off either my Nest or my Cielo controlled thermostats. Today on the drive into my kid’s school we had a very fun trip where we learned Kate Bush only has one song that would play, Regina Spektor makes music that contains a total of 6-10 seconds and then ends, and attempts to play any individual song require me to unlock my device which is connected to my car, and then it plays a random TV show.

Let’s use a little smarts Google Assistant. If I am driving, connected to my car’s Bluetooth connection, don’t play movies?

This was not a good trip in. We did finally get it to play the only Kate Bush song in the entire universe in its entirety, but the goal at the outset was to play anything but that song.

The phone kept locking, requiring me to unlock it to get the wrong results. Something that was not supposed to happen for 4 hours or so because that’s how it’s set.

Attempts to play Good Times by Edie Brickell, or honestly Good Times by anyone who has recorded a song named Good Times (there are many) were greeted with that I needed to unlock my phone and what appeared to be a half-hearted effort to locate a TV show similar to, but not Good Times.

At this point my ten year old told me to stop because it was obvious that Google Assistant had the dumbs today and any and all attempts were futile. It was in response to this that Kate Bush started playing again, the only song that exists evidently, and attempts to skip it went to a song that never started playing or had an insane quiet intro, and then that one Kate Bush song… again.

While I’ve often had issues with Google Assistant while driving, this was picking up what I was saying. But man it was not returning anything useful today.

Apple PR – seriously, put a camera in my car you’ve got your next Siri advertisement.

Google Assistant reached levels of dumb today that are being mocked by my 10 year old by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

At my house I have two smart-managed heating and cooling devices. One is my Nest thermostat controlled central unit which is named “hallway” and the other is a split unit for the upstairs (named “Upstairs Theremostat”) because there’s just no way with the walls to get any sort of airflow up there.

Being as it’s spring / dead of winter / spring lately there’s been a lot of turning the heat on, off, and occasionally the AC on. Yesterday I walked in and the heat was on and it would have been better to just open a window so I said “hey google, turn off the hallway” and was told that device had not been set up yet. This was odd because I’ve been using it for literally years.

I asked what it heard and was told it heard “turn off the hallway”. Curious I asked what the hallway was set to and it returned what it was set to. I once again asked it to turn the hallway off and was told that device had not been set up yet. I went in and manually turned it off from the Nest thermostat and thought little about it that day.

It got *hot* upstairs last night with temperatures being about 80f. The downstairs was comfy, but there’s no way to recirculate the air and I turned the upstairs thermostat on to get the temp down and hold it. Once it’s down it turned itself to maintain mode but this morning I had no need to have it running today as when I get home I plan to fling open a window and slap a box fan in. I asked my little Google Home devices to turn off the upstairs thermostat and was once again told that that device had not been set up.

I once again asked what it heard just to make sure and it heard me correctly. I asked to change the temperature and that worked. It told me I could select heat, cold, eco and that worked. Turning off, not so much.

So I found the remote and turned it off.

Either way, both the Google-owned Nest, and the Cielo managed Blueridge controller, failed to be able to turn off.

This along with Assistant deciding to play a YouTube playlist called “white noise” when I ask the same damned thing I have asked for the past 4 years make it appear something is afoot at the local Circle K.

Google Home / Assistant seems to have forgotten how to turn my heating/cooling off by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.