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Tech News and Commentary
Dave and the team discuss Hyperloop testing, devices that can power other devices from across a room, new Instagram algorithms, Amazon wanting you to pick up your purchases, Firefox 83’s HTTPS-only mode, Amazon adding two way video calls to their smart TV Cube, Apple waving some fees until June, and more.
Larry in Metamora, Michigan listens on AM800 CKLW and asked: “Curious about how you get – on an Android phone – the Google Assistant from suddenly appearing when you haven’t asked for the Google Assistant, and it starts asking you “Can I help you?” And my second question is on Facebook, how do I stop the videos that automatically start playing. I want to look at what people post. I don’t want to look at, or listen to, or watch a video.”
Larry, other than asking Google not to respond to any voice triggers, theres not a lot you can do right now.
Google wont let you change the trigger word to something that doesnt include the word Google and your phone will just react if it thinks its heard you call it.
In theory as people use it more and the voice recognition gets better there should be fewer false positives, but who knows, they may prefer to err on the side of answering too often than not enough.
We do have better news about Facebook though, they are still an awful company, but somehow they managed to do one helpful thing and they do allow you to disable autoplay for videos.
To do that, youll need to go to Setting and Privacy (Privacy who says they dont have a sense of humor?), then click on settings, select Video and there should be a dropdown allowing you to set Autoplay to off.
While youre in the Settings, if you go into Deactivation and Deletion, you can delete your account from there Just a not-so-subtle suggestion for a better life…
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