Edit: There are also several skills available that can point at full, local, downloads of wikipedia and the like. So if you prefer faster results and keeping some of your queries internal as a sort of hybrid thing that's an option as well.
Rhasspy is a really cool project that is compatible with a bunch of fully offline speech frameworks. PicoVoice is a super neat company too.
They essentially abandoned development of the v1 line (but appear to still be selling it!) for the v2 line, and I have a hard time trusting them.
Admittedly, I haven't done that much with the mic array I have, mainly because I got burned out dumping tens of hours into trying to get ReSpeaker Core v1 working (which I ended up trashing; it was that bad). I'd like to use it with a Raspberry Pi; hopefully that works out.
Wake word detection, speech to text, intent recognition, etc. is all split out and able to be plugged into separately.
Unfortunately, they mismanaged Mark II so badly that I lost all faith in Mycroft in general.
I, too, saw the Indiegogo campaign and gladly handed over nearly $200 for the Mycroft Mark II.
Two and half years later, there has been little progress, with no telling when they'll actually deliver the device to backers.
It's one thing for a company to delay production to have lost money on this with no help from Indiegogo and a refusal from the company to refund backers, I have no hope for this product seeing the light of day any time soon.
Shame on Mycroft for this scam.
How practical would it be to recognize my most common commands, eg "resume podcast", offline?
Many of those who are concerned with apps phoning home would be the ones to keep their data and media locally too!
The problem with mass surveillance is not that the NSA/etc can breach anyone they want; that's effectively always been true. It's that it's cheap to breach everyone, by default, all the time. Taking reasonable precautions such that you can't have your data swept up cheaply, instead requiring targeted human effort and/or a court order, does create a deterrent, and helps counteract the current imbalance of power between TLAs and We The People.
Let's say person A was doing research on a product they're interested in buying. That product category is now associated with person A. Person A goes and visits person B. Because our phones track where we go by default for most people, now there's an association between Person A and Person B, and a potential likelihood that person B is also interested in that product. Thus the occasional ad shows up for the product Person A was researching. Since Person A and Person B are friends, it's possible Person A will talk about the product they're interested in. Person B now notices that they're getting ads for the product that Person A talked about.
at the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. likely what is happening is that you searched something somewhere on your phone, then brought it up in conversation, then saw an increase in ads related to that subject.
While I do respect you and your spouse for trying this experiment, it's entirely too small a sample size to really prove that this doesn't happen. There are a ton of variables involved, the biggest being which advertisers may or may not be listening in at any given time. It's hardly a controlled experiment, and I can't say I can put any stock in it.
It also does not prove that it is observer bias. I have had things pop up that I am %100 absolutely positive I never in any way shape or form looked into, yet there the ads were after a short conversations with others who did have an interest.
It makes sense for them to target by IP, so if one person in an office is researching the product they can start targeting the entire office and maybe get their ad in front of an exec who can make a purchasing decision.
Also a fair number of people live where a snowmobile isn't practical but have a cabin where they are and so they will be making weekend trips to where they are practical.
Your point stands though, anyone who lives in the wrong area is unlikely to be targeted if the only indication they might want a snowmobile is home conversion. If you are serious you will do other searches (tracked for sure), and have location history in a target area (might not be track able, these area often have poor cell coverage)
Your message is basically "You're already screwed, why bother trying?"
Why act that way? Who are you helping?
If you support privacy, then people taking steps to try to share less data ought to be encouraged, right?
Maybe it's not perfect - But it's worth trying to do better.
I take active steps to minimize when and how the microphones around me listen in. In no way do I subscribe to the idea that "we are already screwed".
Please do not take the worst possible interpretation of what people say on HN. It's in the guidelines and generally looked down upon. This is not reddit.
edit: spelling