It's just a hobby game, I doubt I'll do anything other than open-source it, but it's been fun. I don't have any experience with other engines, but this one has been great to learn on. The GDScript isn't too hard to figure out, but their documentation can be a bit lacking at times. It feels really polished for an OS project.
I haven't used any other engines so I don't have any experience, but I would still recommend this for a beginner.
Sure, they can use it to make it better, but I've yet to see proof that they need it to process your voice. I'm definitely not knowledgeable in this area, but I'd imagine that they could make an internetless standalone product that translates, but choose not to.
Howso? I don't see it as any different, but instead of Microsoft, there are multiple organizations.
> FOSS is from another era.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. FOSS is still current, and quite active today. In fact, I'd say even moreso.
> But that's a lot of nuisance and in the end what you get is an inferior version.
I agree. That's what I do now, but it's not nearly as good. But what I was implying was that we have the potential to create a much better version, that's trustworthy.
Interesting. The pricepoint is a little high, but I didn't know that they were full linux-clusters. I run my own home-automation server in-house, so I could use this. I see that the android-client is in the works. Is that still the case?
> It doesn't have to be FOSS, all you need is software designed to run offline, which can be network isolated, e.g. in a virtual machine.
It depends on who you ask, some people may only be willing to run FOSS stuff |;)
But yeah, I've looked for a "offline: FOSS or not" solution, and haven't found much.
EDIT: I can't reply to you because thread is too deep I'm assuming, but: yeah, it looks like it does. Unfortunately I probably won't try this because it requires windows, and I'm not really wanting to set up a VM/Wine to accomplish this. But you are correct.
> Your refrigerator does not need networking capability. Nor does you wash machine or your toaster or your tig welder.
Although you are correct, there's a lot of advantages that can be had with these devices being on a network.
I know this answer isn't for everyone, but I personally have a home-network dedicated to devices, and it's air-gapped from the internet. I don't really see any other solution to this (other than FOSS-everything), but I would love one.
> The device does not communicate with amazon.com until you say "alexa" and the code/hardware for that is all done on the device itself. So its not listening and streaming everything, all the time. It is listening all the time, yes- But only for the word 'alexa' - If it hears that word, then it starts talking to amazon.com and starts doing voice recognition. This is very easy to verify yourself with a network monitor.
My personal issue with this is: That could be changed at anytime without any warning. Yes, I tend towards the tinfoil side of things, but the fact is: You can't really always know that, unless you are consistently monitoring the connection.
> We've also talked about open sourcing a subset of the cloud infrastructure so that users could prop-up their own servers if they really wanted "remote control" of lights (which does matter to people).
As someone who runs his own home-automation server: Have you thought about something like a stand-alone server, that I'm able to turn off net-access for (open-source or not)? I'm currently looking for something like that, and I'm not aware of anything that exists.
> The place where those restrictions have to happen is in the laws we need to develop to keep them all in check.
IMO we need that, but we also can't rely on that. Things like the NSA have shown that the laws don't really matter. Yes, we should be striving for those laws, but we should also not depend on them, when they can so easily be ignored.
> The problem is there is no coherent programme on how to counter the privacy-encroachment trend.
IMO, there sort of is: FOSS
I have my own "Alexa". It uses FOSS, and recognizes simple commands, like: lights off. Play/pause music. Add something to the grocery list.
Unfortunately, it's a lot less feature-full. I really want an Alexa (or the like), but I personally refuse to get one until I can run it on my own servers, and block it from getting on the internet. And unfortunately, that doesn't look like it's gong to happen anytime soon.
I think the big problem is the inability to run these systems without "big data" behind them, and I'm not sure what's the answer to that gap.
Seems pretty obvious to me which part of schools needs slimming down.