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Google lays off hundreds in Assistant, hardware, engineering teams
(www.reuters.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I just don't get how all of these "Smart" devices continue to get stupider. Why are they removing existing features or making them worse to use?
It's gotten to the point where I'm currently working on a project to roll my own dumb smart display and speakers with a RPi, Magic Mirror, and a DAC/amp hat.
Google has no maintenance culture. Maintenance is simply not rewarded. Instead in order to get rewarded one needs to launch new things to show "impact". At some point the only way to move forward is to deprecate some unmaintained features or the entire product.
Google pay and Google wallet
Take a look at home assistant to power the speech part of the display. They have done a lot the last year and even have wake words working.
I'm not going to bother with speech on it as I don't really like talking to my devices. How assistant is definitely in consideration for the screen though if I don't get magic mirror working to my liking.