Google Gemini is coming to more cars, but some consumers aren’t cheering

Yeah it's total dogshit. Th e only decent-ish, half-assed solution for me is using android auto (with a dedicated, isolated phone with a dummy account). Using my own voice-command-app and sygic for navigation. Of course I couldn't control much of the car, only what odb offers.

But I'm not locked in to the proprietary car-shit. Had that once with a fucking "premium" brand's top-model and was so pissed at it. Even cars got enshittified.

Funny: android auto forces me to make pauses while using it "for my safety", but it's shit crap that forces me to use damn touchscreens in a car. While driving. Also according to AA, passengers don't exist 😁

Well the car is brand new and will probably last a while. I already downgraded from some "premium" brand to an "entry-level" car, just to have nothing but android-auto and a screen. AC and shit like that is good old knobs and buttons.

Previous car had nothing analog at all. Then the cockpit broke and it was blank. Couldn't even see how fast I was going. Replacement was 6000 moneyz. And because the HUD also broke, it was another 5000 moneyz because the whole windshield had to be replaced. Also took a week. That made my left nut explode and sell that piece of shit (that I loved to drive, beside THAT)

I actually did not know nor ever noticed in TNG. Now I will eagle-eye that the next run 😁

Though, if I were bound to a screen to do the things and the whole ship is steady in flight, touch would be fine. But in a car, where I need to focus on everything around me EXCEPT the touchscreen, well...

We should have taken this sentiment for the (industry) warning it was.

Yes, the non-determinism is crazy.

I have like one thing I use voice for usually. "Call ". With Google Assistant, it reliably called that specific person.

Now that my phone decided to gemini, it will sometimes make a call, and sometimes it says something like "I have found one contact with that name in your contacts, their phone number is 1-555-555-5555" Sometimes with some extra language clearly intended to be stuffed back into context to guide some next step that isn't coming, don't remember but something along the lines of "Contact match added to context to enable dialing the phone now" or something.

I'm perfectly fine with a different wake word or chaining it to google assistant, "Hey google, ask gemini ...." would be fine.

And yes, it might be vaguely useful for doing a maps search in the car, as that is a pain. A vaguely decent answer I can confirm is nice for things like a road trip stop for food or some small thing.

Even my wife uses the car better than that, and she never waits for me to pull up the directions before starting driving

If this takes 70 years to collapse humanity won't be here to witness it.

The fake opinion is to steer you towards some marketing crap.

A certain portion of "dumb" is neccessary to fall for this automated crap.

So you're saying the world just needs a little more love ❤️

"In 0.2 miles, turn right after Waffle House. Also, you smell nice and have a huge dick."

Oh, I know, ai was trying to point out the insanity in a few words as possible. All the solutions and conveniences we are being sold are bullshit. They are sold as helpful but just make you hate the world.

I had an Apple Watch, the simplicity of not having to take out my phone was the draw, I could see my notifications quickly and easily. All it did though was create more distraction, more digital cruft to wade through and dismiss. I get more value out of the rubber band that I have on my wrist right now than I did the Apple Watch.

I’m m an Infrastructure architect and engineer, this is the same problem in enterprise. Cloud, SaaS, proprietary vendors, they all want to lock you. Time and place for all of it, but you’ve gotta know what you are getting yourself into.

What chance does the average, non-30 year veteran of industry have? It’s bad out there.

Nah, wasn’t “we” , it was “them” who sold us on a promise, but was really a leash, or muzzle. The “them” is the oligarchs, the billionaires, the epstein class…

2015 is when surveillance came standard with all cars.

‘Privacy Nightmare on Wheels’: Every Car Brand Reviewed By Mozilla — Including Ford, Volkswagen and Toyota — Flunks Privacy Test

just like headlights that are so bright that they blind everybody in front of them

I never feel safer than when I'm approaching the crest of a hill on a corner with a 15-ft deep rocky ditch to either side at 80 km/h on a narrow road with almost no shoulder and I can see the night sky lit up in front of me like it's a football stadium because the car on the other side of the hill has LED high beams on. Then we reach the point where we can see each other's headlights, and I am flash banged from the intensity going directly into my squinting eyes. I see a barely discernible flash as their auto-highbeams recognize that I am a vehicle and it switches to low beams, which are the exact same intensity and still going directly into my eyeballs, except now it's not lighting up the night sky as well as the treetops.

I turn my own LED highbeams* on in response in an attempt to see some of the road in front of me so that I can avoid the ditch, and I steer towards the middle of the road where there is only a chance of danger instead of guaranteed danger from driving off the road. Hopefully the other driver sees me well enough to avoid me if I get too close to center or even go over the line.

We complete the pass, my night vision returns over the next 30 seconds, and I start saying a small prayer thanking God for how safe I was kept during that interaction, but I am interrupted by the exact same scenario happening on the next hill.

• I installed LED highbeams bulbs just for this reason, trying to see when somebody is blinding me. I only use them in this situation because my halogen low beams are enough for all other driving conditions that I find myself in. I disabled the DRL module so that the LED bulbs don't come on unless high beams are on.

Photo generator is ok. But the text one is very bad and gives so much false info. I don't trust it with anything at all. I find Leo from Brave much, much better.

The nano banana image models that gemini uses in the backend are the most accurate that i used so far.

The free gemini Chat on the other hand is very bad! Its hard tuned to keep a conversation going and not to anwer the question's and it has a verry small kontext window forgetting the prevoise conversation and indtructions verry fast.

My car has Android automotive. If you're driving 8 hours a day, it's better than what you have in your Android or Apple phone. Everything's right there and it integrates very nicely with the car. However, like most people, you're only driving for a little bit to work and then your car just sits there. It's not worth it. Your phone already has everything you want on it and you just want your phone to connect and do things. I hate that in my car if I say hey Google my car jumps in sorry you need a subscription- my phone already has my subscription I don't want a second one. If I remember I can turn on the Wi-Fi on my hotspot on my phone, but why bother? I don't even want my car to respond here. I just want my phone which is right there and already can respond and do everything. Part of this is another well deserved rant against GM for not putting Android Auto on their cars. That's something that other manufacturers do and I suppose in that case it actually would work well. I don't know.

For sure (our Volvo is 1 year too old to have the android automotive system and ... It would be better). The Amazon effort that powers the Alexa + Ford sync business isn't quite at that depth: it's an API with always online "AI learning" stuff OEMs can integrate.

https://developer.amazon.com/automotive/

The average person doesnt give a single solitary shit I've learned sadly.