Plus no ads, and MUCH more efficiently written code to boot - win-win!

Just don’t hook it up to the Internet…

Can confirm. I opened this post outside, and was immediately swarmed. The last thing I saw before my eyes were pecked out was someone bearing a strong resemblance to Alfred Hitchcock…

Dunno what TVA you’re thinking of, but the person you responded to was much more likely referring to the fictional TVA from Marvel.

Yeah, the Google Minis are hit or miss for us a lot, too. I don’t generally have the keyword activation switched on with my phone, but was going to activate it if need be for this. I’ve got a Bluetooth headset with very good background noise cancellation (according to those I’ve spoken to on the phone), so I’m hoping/assuming that will help it understand me more reliably, and that Assistant activation via its button will obviate the need for turning on keyword activation.

Replying to my own post in case anyone’s following this (still too new to Lemmy to know if that’s a thing - guess I’ll look into it after this).

Apparently, Moto may be working on something that fills this need. The promo video in this article only demonstrates things I think Google Assistant might already be capable of (or maybe slightly more), but the article states what they’re working on involves using apps on your phone to do things rather than just being a microphone and speaker for stuff that actually happens mostly on Google’s servers. Crossing my fingers that includes doing what I want rather than just being focused on buying things as demonstrated in the teaser video.

In the meantime, I’ve stumbled across the fact that Google’s built-in TalkBack feature has support for keyboard shortcuts. This likely means I can use a small handheld Bluetooth game controller along with an app to map the buttons to the appropriate key presses in order to move around the screen, and thus control the Android device without looking at or touching it. That means using Google Assistant to launch the apps, and the controller to actually use it via TalkBack. I’ll likely test this next weekend & report back if anyone’s interested.

ETA: Forgot to mention: remembered that my kid has an iPad required by his school some years ago, but so far as we can see the capabilities are roughly on par with Android so switching platforms doesn’t seem to be the answer.

Same playbook as Republicans: every accusation is a confession.

Not a category in interested in, but I did take a spin through your collection on GitLab. You lost all credibility with me when I saw your top web browser pick was Brave.

He knows about the only thing he can do to lose them is side with a lib. He’s not worried about losing them - especially now. He’s more concerned with slash & burn revenge upon every last thing liberals have ever cared about. He doesn’t GAF about anything else.

Don’t forget mutual agreements by major established ISPs not to encroach on each other’s territory and actually have to *gasp* compete!

What? You don’t enjoy the prospect of having to pay significantly more for crappier satellite connections? Just another reason Elon is so involved - he wants to speed up the ROI for Starlink.

Or on Android you can use YTDLnis which provides a nice frontend with lots of flexibility as to what is downloaded.

I have a few Google Home Minis, and so far as I know they are the same thing - just rebranded. It’s basically the same thing as Google Assistant built into every Google-approved/equipped (meaning it has their full suite of apps pre-installed) device. They’re just so limited. I know of no way to get them to read Lemmy posts as in my added second example.

I also thought of another use case for what I’m after that might be more universally applicable and easily understood. Imagine someone doing some relatively mindless menial job such as working an assembly line, janitorial work, chauffer - something where your mind is relatively unoccupied, but you’re not free to look at and/or touch your device (whether it be due to practicality, or job rules). While doing that job, I want to be able to have the device read and interact with something of interest to me at that moment (ADHD is a fickle mistress), rather than just relying on podcasts with predefined content. Kind of like having someone next to me doing all the interfacing between me and the device.

(EDIT: minor swipe keyboard corrections.)