This is surprising. How does it compare to siri and the android equivalent? For me Siri doesn't get me more than half the time, while google gets me most of the time.
Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
61–70 of 273 posts
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#62Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…
"The industry" will have to pry my "dumb house" out of my cold, dead hands. :)
The same for me, even when all this stuff works it rarely provides the value it promises.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#63How many were sold? 20K? 200K? 2M?
The story mentioned 5M since 2014
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#64I found the idea that it could be always listening to you creepy at first...but if you think about it your mobile phone, landline phone, computer microphone and more could be hijacked to always listen to you as well so there isn't much difference.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
The voice recognition technology is so much more reliable and flexible than I've found Siri to be. It has an API that allows developers to build apps for it, and is updated every week with new voice commands and features that make it even more interesting and useful. I resisted for a long time, then bought an Echo, and I loved that so much that I bought a dot, then another, then a 3 pack for my kids for Christmas. It…
what do you mean by "browsing amazon"?
Shopping for items that pop into my head.
"Alexa, order a _____."
"I found 7 items matching ___..." and proceeds to go through the list.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#66Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…
I am not in the US, but I've also had many of the issues you describe. For me everything originated in the network equipment. I kept upgrading to more and more expensive routers until I came to the conclusion they are all just shit. I literally bought the best router you could buy from Asus for like $300 and I kept getting disconnects and issues many times a day. I tried the custom firmwares and what not as well, but…
It depends on where you are but if you are in a hot country you may have been able to fix your network issues with a $5 laptop cooler. A lot of the wireless routers do not have enough cooling for hot environments. My cheap hack that usually fixes problem is a cheap USB cooling mat that I put under the router and plug it into the USB port of the router. Almost always improves the reliability.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#67I found the idea that it could be always listening to you creepy at first...but if you think about it your mobile phone, landline phone, computer microphone and more could be hijacked to always listen to you as well so there isn't much difference.
There is a huge difference: You voluntarily give away this information with this device while on the others there is work involved from a 3rd party. Most of the time you won't be worth it.
While on Echo, you are just a part of the Quality System and Eris knows what they'll do with all that information in the future. Algorithms and AI is there to sort it out.
I find it creepy but what creeps me even more out is people who don't find it creepy.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Living in a house with no great internet options for a couple of years kind of cured me of my impatience with technology. I have co-workers who get ticked off immediately if the internet is out for more than a minute and get Comcast on the phone. I think it's good to lower your expectations with technology a bit. You really can live without internet or Bluetooth connectivity for a few minutes. But I'm also in the sam…
> I think it's good to lower your expectations with technology a bit. You really can live without internet or Bluetooth connectivity for a few minutes. I just get annoyed if something that would work instantly otherwise doesn't work at all. Say I want to put on music while cooking - putting on a record or CD would take 5 seconds, and work 100% of the time. But if Spotify is down, or asks me to update my password, or…
putting on a record or CD would take 5 seconds, and work 100% of the time
That's not my experience at all; the damn scratches in CDs made me switch to an MP3 player as soon as I could afford one, back in the early 2000s.
Streaming audio is still shitty, that's true, but MPD reading off of a local disk actually works reliably.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#69Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…
> does modern technology suck just for me
To try to counter potential selection bias I'll give my boring answer: I would be really pissed if those things kept happening to me, so you're not particularly intolerant, but they don't. I get hard to fix wifi problems maybe once a year.
Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am the same way with net connection. I used to get so annoyed when I was living in the US and randomly my connection would start moving pre-56k speeds (AT&T). I've moved to Japan now and have yet to have a problem with my ISP. Also, I hate using voice assistants. By the time I say "weather" I could have typed it into the browser (and 1/10 times it doesn't hear me properly and gives me some jibberish I'm not interes…
Voice assistants aren't (in my opinion) for when you are at your computer. They are for when you are doing random daily tasks like getting dressed, cooking, watching tv, walking around the house... That's where the Echo shines.
Ah, I was referring to my phone when I said type it in the browser. I don't use OK Google, so I have to hold down the home key or push the mic button to start talking (hence I'm better off just typing it). Always listening would probably be more convenient but I didn't want to take a hit to my battery life.