I just finished up what I’d call a fluid conversational interview with Gemini Live and, while it doesn’t do a lot of the things I want it to do, it was quite decent at conversation and able to provide me with an audio only response (you can get the text responses afterward.)

Gemini Live, not to be confused with Gemini the assistant, is a black screen with a floating sound wave at the bottom and it responds fluidly to conversational queries. It stores the text of the conversation in the Gemini Assistant app (you can scroll up and see your conversation) for viewing at a later time and perhaps training in general.

Gemini Live can’t open apps, send text messages, make calls, play music, routines, set anything on the calendar. Can set reminders. It knows where you’re at approximately but won’t reveal how it knows. It seems great for searching for information but somewhat useless at operating the phone.

It’s good for a two way conversation but is a subset of what Gemini Assistant is, which still can’t do everything that Google Assistant can/could. It’s a great start, but maddening that we’ve taken this huge step forward in conversational AI and a giant leap back in Assistant features.

After a minute or so of not talking to Gemini Live it goes to sleep and you have to press a resume button. There’s no way to spawn Gemini Live with your voice, but you get to it by opening the Gemini app and then pressing the 3 stripe star icon in the bottom right of Gemini.

Gemini Live knows certain incorrect things about you… for me it was pretty sure my name was Serena, which it hasn’t been as long as I can recall. It doesn’t seem to be able to get any information out of my email or account but it’s cagey in how it knows certain things.

While asking Gemini Live for bad ideas it suggested I trade in my car for a llama because the gas milage is insane and it would make me the coolest person on my block. I like this thing.

Gemini Live is exceedingly OK to talk to, and that is high praise from me. The only problem is it takes up the entire screen, can’t act as an assistant, it’s not something I can use in the car which is where I’d love to use it – when I’m trapped in a chair alone and can’t look at a screen to research things I’m thinking about.

That said, I suspect over the next few months we’ll see it be unleashed to start doing things such as making calls or texting, being able to make appointments, etc.

If you want to try it out, it’s the Gemini App on Google Play, and if you want to switch back to Assistant afterward just tap your picture in Gemini and switch back to assistant should be an option there.

I question how much of this is done using on-phone processing as opposed to simply offloading the work to a server farm, but I won’t really be able to test that out until I devise a test. I’d assume most of this is off-device processing which means if you’re in a bad connectivity situation you’re not getting useful answers. But I might be wrong on that.

I asked it about the future and have gotten that they’re expecting to make it a floating window in the bottom of the screen, but what it knows about itself may just be notes from a forum.

It’s a cool app, a shame I have to disable it to use Google Assistant.

Download: Play Store

Gemini Live is here, and wow by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Entrepreneurs are given 90 seconds to make their pitch to the 100 potential customers. If enough customers and investors like the product it goes into an Amazon Buy It Now store.

One contestant can win $20,000 during an episode.

The show will be available on Prime Video starting October 30.

Amazon’s Temu-ing Shark Tank for new show called Buy It Now. Walmart’s Great Value 2 x knockoff incoming by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

I had disabled content matching, advertising tracking, and anything that gave my TV manufacturer any additional information about me nearly a year ago. Last night I was doing some dishes and the TV started playing soft calming music, which is something I also turned off a long time ago.

I figured I’d check since I had turned that option off when it was released, and once again I was opted back into the things I’d disabled previously.

So yeah, my TV’s been watching what I watch and reporting it back. This after I specifically chose to opt out.

Opted out of targeted advertising, content matching, and other tracking on your TV? You sure about that? by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Updated: music is coming back as licensing deal reached

I suspect YT Music will crank rates, YouTube will inject more terrible advertising, and the artists will get two to three cents extra a year when all is settled.

Reminder that if you don’t own the music, you don’t have access to it when Google or SESAC feels the need to add a few million dollars to their bottom line.

Trying to play Nirvana on YouTube? Nevermind. Update: it’s coming back by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

SOS mode is evidently working to call emergency services, so there’s that.

Verizon customers across the US experiencing a case of AT&T by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

30 day battery life, heart rate, SpO2 tracking or on demand, AFIB detection, respiratory rate sensing, ECG on demand, sleep quality tracking, body temperature tracking, and various menstrual tracking capabilities all in something that looks almost completely unlike any other fitness tracker on the market.

The ScanWatch Nova brings back classic style and a minimalist interface that unless activated recedes from view. There’s nothing wrong with wearing a square brick on your wrist, but this shows you don’t have to.

Before we get on with this review I will give a heads up on three things – I was provided the watch by Withing’s PR team, but as is now evident by one of my scale reviews of theirs I am under no obligation to give it a glowing review. The second is that I credit one of the Withings products I purchased (the blood pressure monitor,) with getting a doctor to stop throwing medication after medication at me and refer me elsewhere and eventually finding out I had a fairly substantial tumor that got removed before it killed me. So I’m pretty grateful for a couple of their products. The third thing is any Amazon link we’ve probably monetized but that’s it.

The ScanWatch Nova comes with two wristbands – one is a metal masterpiece and the other is an adjustable band similar to what my original ScanWatch had. The metal band was a tad too tight so I added three of the links, it was now comically large, removed one, too big, removed another, still too big, removed the final one, now it was just a wee bit too snug.

Discovered that there were half links and removed one of those and added a full one and have been wearing it since with no issues. The only comment I have on this is some of the higher end watches I’ve played with have a minute adjustment ability (for when you’re exercising / swell up in the heat) – I may be missing something but I do not see that in the metal band.

The black rubber strap is probably better suited to exercise, however I adore the metal band and it reminds me of a watch I saved up for when I was a kid that I believe is sitting in a drawer somewhere with a dead battery and potential water intrusion.

I’d been wearing the ScanWatch original up until this point as the Pixel Watch 2 was overall a disappointment, and I got compliments on the ScanWatch somewhat regularly as well as genuinely loved watching the analog dial that tracks your goal progress slowly move throughout the day toward completion.

Pairing the watch and activating my account on it was simple, and at the moment both of my watches share my workout progress when my phone is near, which amuses me.

The ECG had to be prescribed again, I’m still not quite sure what that is about but prescription is watch based and not account based and included for the life of the watch… what it means to you is it’ll be a couple of days before the ECG function works so make sure to set that up day one so you won’t be waiting.

The Nova is a 10 ATM watch with a rotating bezel that can be use as a solar compass, or to mark what time you started something at. The bezel rotates counter clockwise only so if you accidentally whack it you’d be getting done early and not 4 minutes after your air ran out. However I think that style of diving may have gone out in the 1980s.

Much like my original ScanWatch once the ScanWatch Nova is on it is just something I forget. The only time it intrudes on my life is to tell me to get up and walk around a bit (which I have it set to.)

While I did not ever have a ScanWatch 2, this appears to be the same basic watch with higher tolerances for diving. I have done some swimming with the watch, however I have not gone particularly deep as I am still recovering in the breathing department and run out of breath far too easily.

Coming later in the year they expect to have Overnight Heart Rate Variability, respiratory rate, and recovery temperature after workout.

So as of today (August 12 2024) I have used this watch nonstop for 10 days. There have been no notes other than I wished the metal band had minute adjustments for exercise related fluffing, and that there was a slightly less reflective face as, man this thing is shiny.

So as it has not been particularly long that I have been in possession of the ScanWatch Nova at the moment, I’ll check back in in a week and add anything new I find.

I’m looking forward to the HRV tracking.

August 19, 2024

I fully charged my ScanWatch Nova four days ago. I’ve got it set to alert me to move, got it monitoring my sleep, and have logged two hour long workouts during this time. The watch has dropped to 48% battery during this time. Assuming I keep logging my workouts I’m looking at about an eight day battery life.

That said, I suspect the reason for the drain may have to do with selecting an exercise that kicks in an hour long Bluetooth connection to my phone, which is cool and all but I’m not sure how it’s going to measure me working at knee rehab and on the machines other than by heart rate and temp.

So far so good, I’m trying to remember if I ran into this on my ScanWatch, but I don’t think I was ever remembering near the end of the trials to turn it on except when I was swimming.

September 30, 2024

I realize once again how little I actually have to think about the ScanWatch Nova. I think I’ve charged it twice in a month and both times it straight up did not need it, it was just that I was taking it off anyway, and both times it charged to full before I needed it.

I contrast this with the Pixel Watch 2 I’m wearing today which at 80% died in an overnight wear.

The Withings ScanWatch Nova is available on the Withings website and also on Amazon (although they are not showing the Nova at this point)

ScanWatch Nova

The Withings ScanWatch Nova is simply the most elegant health tracker I've encountered. I've been impressed with pretty much everything in their line and I'm not easy to impress. Go read other reviews, thing is great.

Product Brand: Withthings

Product Currency: USD

Product Price: 599.95

Product In-Stock: InStock

Editor's Rating:
4.9

Pros

• Classic look
• Doesn't miss a beat
• Customizable goals
• SpO2 meter
• AFIB detection
• HRV coming soon
• 30 day battery life

Cons

• Minute metal band on the fly adjustment isn't there
• Too shiny when driving
• ECG takes two days or so before you can do the first one

Withings ScanWatch Nova – where elegance and health tracking meet. Running review. by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

The Altas PT Ultra is a wireless 4K camera with a 20,000mah battery pack for continuous recording of up to 4 days on a single charge (press release says 8 days at 12 hours, I’m going to buy this,) prerecording, passive IR sensor, and full color night vision.

It’s also got a very good pan/tilt that reaches 355° pan and 90° tilt. This works perfectly for where I mounted it.

You can record to a MicroSD card, the cloud, FTP, set push notifications, email alerts.

Testing and placement

So I’ve put this in the worst possible space to test it. The extreme edge of Wi-Fi – the point several steps past which my Pixel 8 Pro disconnects, and triggered by every vehicle than comes by. I have it recording to an FTP I manage, and also to a MicroSD card I installed.

It’s set to record and FTP in the highest quality, connected to a solar panel that Reolink supplied for power, and it’s been raining pretty much since I installed it in this location. In two days I’ve used 16% of battery, the sun hasn’t been out for more than a few minutes to charge.

The Wi-Fi router I use is in the basement of the house that Google Maps measuring distance claims is 50 feet away, and below ground level. A direct line of sight to the router goes through several feet of dirt before hitting brick/concrete/foundation. It’s so thick I suspect the Wi-Fi signal is bouncing off of something up higher as there’s no way you could punch through.

The particular placement of the router was to handle the thick plaster walls, brick, basically it shoots from the basement straight up and it works perfectly inside. Where the Reolink Altas PT Ultra is positioned is the worst possible place in my property due to the paved walkway, concrete stairs, stone foundation, and AC ductwork in the path.

Being at the extreme range of my Wi-Fi I am limited a tad on frames per second but in a normal setup where you’re on the house and not 50 feet from the Wi-Fi it’s quite smooth (I did testing in office before I deployed the unit.)

I mounted the unit where I could look at my house, my street, and my lawn (don’t worry, that got mowed immediately after install.) I’m not particularly interested in what goes on on the street, nor actually paranoid enough to need more cameras at my house, but this is where I could test it and evidently it’s causing the traffic to slow to the speed limit on my street as people try and figure out what is going on.

Further testing

It is my plan to test this and have it in operation until it dies, although I might end up moving it closer to the house. Any suggestions for a real world test here are appreciated.

Notes

Unfortunately WordPress is not cooperating with me here, but if you click the second picture you’ll see the security seal can be bypassed by simply opening the bottom of the box. While any security seal can, this one was exceptionally easy because it just opens. They probably need to consider either dropping the security seal or putting one on the bottom.

The unit I received included a solar panel. The sun has been out for something like 36 seconds since I installed the unit. I will have no good stats on the solar panel for at least a couple of weeks from time of initial post.

I have not tried auto tracking as I felt it fairly creepy to be following people on the street, nor have I attempted a conversation with anyone as the Wi-Fi delay and bandwidth limitations make it not feasible at the distance I have it at. I may move this from my mailbox to my second floor window and track anyone on my yard at a later date.

Pricing & availability

The Reolink Altas PT Ultra is available from Amazon as of publication for $229.99, and on the Reolink website. The Reolink website is claiming the price for the camera + panel is $199 for the next 15 hours.

Pocketables receives a commission on the Amazon sales if you click the Amazon link.

Altas PT Ultra 4K Wi-Fi security cam

The Reolink Altas PT Ultra 4K Wi-Fi security cam is a 2.4/5G 355/90 degree PTZ camera that can be solar powered or wired and has an astonishing working range from router. It also sports color night vision as well as up to 4 days of continuous 4K recording.

Product Brand: Reolink

Product Currency: USD

Product Price: 199.99

Price Valid Until: 2024-09-28

Product In-Stock: InStock

Editor's Rating:
4.7

Pros

• Wi-Fi range
• color night vision
• camera battery

Cons

• no integration with other systems
• Software needs some minor work

Reolink Altas PT Ultra 4K Wi-Fi security cam (in use / it’s great) by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Chances are good they will have no way to tell that your five star review of a new business resulted in you getting a meal for free, or that that five star review for a car body shop was in exchange to get your vehicle put ahead of the others.

It’s a shame they’ve let Google Maps reviews be the cesspit that they are. I’m in the top 1% of reviewers on it and lemme tell you the competition is nonexistent. It’s like a wasteland of bots, boughts, and nots. (Bought reviews, and people hating a place.)

Sad too because there’s a whole community that would police this for digital badges.

But for now, take a Google Review the same as you’d take any bought and paid for advertisement and use your best judgement.

Google Maps cracking down on review fraud by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Roskomnadzor, the Russian agency in charge of ensuring stability in society by ensuring compliance with the legislation of the Russian Federation in the information sphere has officially reported that 25 of the apps have been removed.

This and Apple’s refusal to implement end to end encryption on RCS at time of deployment couldn’t be related could they?

Apple quietly removes 60 VPNs from Russian markets by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

It looks like you’re able to ask questions about the current video, grab information from other sources, or follow up with related videos.

Finally we’ll be able to ask it to skip after the intro and get machine generated stats on how much of the video is wasted with YouTubers begging you to like, subscribe, and ring that bell to be notified.

I’m genuinely interested in being able to take some of these epic 40 minute deep dives and get an answer out of them, or at least know that an answer is produced. There seems to be a lot of time wasting on YouTube just for algorhythmic purposes (video more than 8 minutes, no quick reveal of answer, “but first” delays)

It’ll be interesting to see if the AI is going simply off of YouTube’s auto transcripts (which are terrible,) or if it can actually process what’s up there. I suspect it’ll use the transcripts which them begs the question of if a user uploads their own does it use those and can we then abuse that to make AI threaten people?

It’s not rolled out to me yet, so I can’t tell.

YouTube adding AI to allow you to skip to the good parts by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

I received this quite a while back and it’s sat on the re-review shelf for too long as I had to try it with multiple devices and locations. The sound is decent, but loudness is not for more than two or three people in a room.

This will not bring the party and it will barely beat the wind despite claiming 90db/24 Watts. The fake bass doesn’t quite pull it off on the T7 Lite although it is an enjoyable addition, and it has possibly the weakest Bluetooth connection of any modern speaker I’ve run across with noise every time I move the source device.

Moving my phone, tablet, or whatever I’ve paired it with results in short audio degradation, something I’ve been blissfully absent for a version of Bluetooth or two. Back in the day we had to put the phone down near the speaker, but that hasn’t been the case for a very long time.

I’ve really wanted to love this thing – the size is great, the price point now is good, and the lighting is cute, but the audio dropouts if you move with your source device are impossible to ignore on my Pixel 8 Pro and Samsung Tablet, and took a really somewhat decent audio experience and turned it into a game of “Immobilize the audio source.”

Even with the source not moving there are occasionally issues and I don’t know if it’s the environment I’ve been testing in or the devices I’m testing with but the experience is similar to what we had in 2015 with Bluetooth devices when it was all new and a bus driving down your street could interfere with the signal. It doesn’t feel like a 5.3 connection should be.

Decent little speaker, not going to hate on it, but I had no love. I have enjoyed their other products and would recommend them as I did not have any of the issues I encountered with the audio with them and the same source devices.

If in spite of my review you want to grab a Tronsmart T7 Lite, they’re on Amazon.

Tronsmart T7 Lite

The Tronsmart T7 Lite is the fifth product that Tronsmart has sent to me and probably the first one I'm going to probably say pass on. Really, any of their other products I've been happy with but my experiences with the T7 Lite are a little underwhelming.

Product Currency: USD

Product Price: 49.99

Product In-Stock: InStock

Editor's Rating:
3

Pros

• Average sound
• Looks nice
• Fun lights

Cons

• Connectivity was weak
• Not particularly loud

Tronsmart T7 Lite – small footprint / performance by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

While the Play Store currently has functionality to remove applications you’ve installed via the Play Store, the question here will be will Google roll out some backdoor they currently have, and uninstall a sideloaded apps for users? Or will they claim that without the app being installed via the Play Store there’s no way the current system can remove it.

It’s an interesting case of ordering an operating system developer to manage your piracy problem. An order usually reserved for ISPs (which also were involved).

The initial investigation appears to have been exposing IPTV boxes, which without a doubt have some custom AOSP homebrew on them, so I don’t expect that Google is going to manage to get that done considering there’s probably not even Play Services on the units.

Will Google be forced to push a backdoor to tons of devices without the Play Store? Will there be state wide software for banning of other applications installed? Interesting times.

That said, when they block service M can’t they just register new domains and become service N? Is the order going to be geographically enforced and can someone just simply hop out of Argentina and install it and pop back in or are there going to require monitoring software?

Argentina orders Google to remove software from your devices by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Here’s the quick and dirty of how to get your updates even when it’s showing nothing.

Open the Play Store
Tap your icon top right
Choose Manage apps and devices

At this point if you see no updates available go to the Manage tab, then to the updates available, and then check for updates.

After you install the updates, go back to the Manage apps / Manage tab and check again – I just did and there were 14 more things waiting for me to install.

Everything should be updating automatically, but no. Every time I check there are apps from weeks ago that are waiting for an update.

How to force Play Store updates by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

Spotted today – the undisputed dominator of your advertising dollar pushing advertising at me for an app that I already have installed in my phone. Advertisement pushed from the app that installed it, and updated it just yesterday.

I remember blowing through $500 in Google advertising credit/dollars and getting about 32 hits once and thinking something was afoot. This reminded me of that again.

I am betting that Google isn’t promoting X for free either.

Misc – Play Store advertising apps already installed by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

The malware hitched a ride to legitimate distribution with the Coral SDK, which is a third party advertising app developers can include to actually get paid for their work.

The SDK activates and then does whatever it wants, from executing arbitrary code, to installing backdoors for future exploitation and downloading different payloads.

And in the end the problem was a supply chain security issue where a simple advertising plugin that probably paid decent rates got modified and distributed with real software.

You would think at this point with centralized distribution of software and Google’s absurd overabundance of AI resources that there would be some sort of examination process for obfuscated code to determine if it contains the ability to do certain things.

Or perhaps AI just isn’t up to the task yet of finding code that can execute external code in a code. Seems like that would be something right up its alley.

Other neat takeaway is that Kaspersky, the antivirus banned in the US, appear to be the ones that made the notification to Google.

Android Malware getting into SDKs of legit apps by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

For the past two weeks I’ve now been getting voicemail scam emails, which look quite similar to my normal work voicemail except that instead of the attachment being an mp3 of a mouth-breathing bot, it’s a web page containing a payload that won’t execute and/or an advertisement.

Unfortunately I don’t have a real voicemail email for comparison, but it’s at a glance somewhat close. Obvious differences being the phone system reply-to is different, it’s not a HTML attachment but an MP3, and most importantly paul@pocketables.com doesn’t have a voicemail.

Just something to look out for.

Voicemail to email scam is pretty clever by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

In the ensuing five months we’ve managed to be without internet two full business days that I know of and in each case it was a non-Google contractor somewhere slicing through some buried fiber optic cables because really, you can probably take out the fiber connection with a hand drill.

For calculating purposes there were 106 business days in this run, I’m not including the weekend portion they were down because I didn’t track it.

This puts them at 1.8% down and 98.2% up for what I actually track. I have no idea what their weekend and nightly performance are at the moment and there’s nothing that proactively tells you when something is amiss.

Honestly reminds me of the Comcast business class cablemodem days from a decade ago, but at least without the people trying to assure you that you’re to blame since 100 other people haven’t called in yet with the same issue.

Really needs to be some redundancy factored in. And an email notice that you’re down and getting a credit would be nice.

We’ve so far received one month’s credit / which is $100. Our AT&T connection which has not been down any during the 105 business days comes in about $50 more a month.

Here’s to hoping GFiber builds in some better redundancy and can survive some guy named Jake slicing into the road to pour a driveway.

We got business class GFiber 5 months ago, here’s what’s happened by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

My kiddo kept asking what her classmates were talking about with “android’s garbage cameras” and I had to explain that the people of iPhone land were receiving garbage MMS versions of the pictures anyone from the Android world sent them.

Well, iOS 18 is out now and probably it’ll put to rest the garbage camera and video claims (seriously, have you ever seen what iPhone video sent looks like to Android users?) and maybe we won’t be stuck sending Minecraft-quality videos and pictures to one another.

I’ve been noticing I’ve been getting a whole lot more suggestions to go into threads that devolve into iOS vs Android lately, so I suspect someone is paying to keep stoking the digital divide, so there’s that. Someone’ll profit off of conflict heere.

RCS was implemented in November/December of 2019 and allowed, among other things, not sending garbage photos and end to end encryption (although that came after rollout).

I would guess the new arguments will eventually land on which AI isn’t just stupid at launch. Seriously, don’t trust your life to AI and current voice recognition.

I have been watching this iOS vs Android fight since June of 2010 so seeing one thing agreed upon by both parties in 14 years is rather nice. Maybe in another 14 they’ll allow cross-device apps… who knows?

Now to wait for the iPhone people to upgrade to iOS 18, and enable RCS.

They’ll still green the Android users, but should stop with the garbage photos and videos.

RCS is everywhere, time to get something else to argue about by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

A Plex Pass allows you to DVR your favorite programs, download movies from your Plex Server to your phone for use in limited bandwidth / no bandwidth scenarios, determine intro and credits and offers the ability to skip them, as well as many other features.

• Offer Code: FOREVERPRO
• Offer valid through 6:59 AM UTC on Saturday, September 21, 2024. Lifetime subscriptions only. Example price in USD. Exact pricing in other currencies may vary.
• Link https://www.plex.tv/plex-pass/purchase/?plan=lifetime&code=FOREVERPRO

I really should have gotten this posted on Monday, but if you keep up with my non-existent daily health blog I have been down for the past couple of days due to (assuming,) mold, a cold, or absurdly light COVID.

I often think if Plex got ticked off at giving me a comped Plex pass back years ago would I get it again and the answer keeps coming up yes. There are other apps that do similar and can be configured for free, but I don’t want to do IT support for relatives and friends.

Thus far the only Plex support I’ve had to offer to anyone was telling them to log back into their account on their TV because an update of their TV’s firmware had logged them out.

Anyway, check them out. It’s really one of the very few things I don’t complain about these days.

Lifetime Plex Pass $24 off for just two more days by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.

And to be honest I still haven’t quite got it hammered down, but I did learn how to “iron” a print and smooth out the print on the final layer.

There are some areas on the cat print above you can see the print lines, but most of it is smooth. I highly suspect if I’d spent more time ironing it would be indistinguishable from commercial grade. Roughly 10 minutes was spent ironing and I suspect if I’d fiddled with it some more that print would be smooth as a baby’s butt.

Not sure where it is on your particular slicer or printer program, but for me it’s on Quality / Ironing.

Yeah, you already knew that… I’m learning at my own pace, which is slow.

Today in 3D printing I learned irony… I mean ironing by Paul E King first appeared on Pocketables.