Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 273 posts

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#141

Post by drvdevd »

GuiA wrote: post #7

Clearly, 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…

Some personal anecdata for you:

1) Q4 2015 MBP, top of the line - kernel thread crash on suspend, causing it to wake back up. Semi-random, kinda interesting except when it woke up in my bag and seemed to almost catch on fire ... repeatedly. People told me to take it to the Genius Bar .. I seriously doubted they could figure the issue out. It would've been a back to the factory situation (I sold it -- after verifying the hardware was still good of course).

2) Sometime in 2014-ish? I change the wireless bandwidth on a ubiquiti router at the office -- all the Macs go offline, Linux machines do not. Suggesting a bug in WiFi. This is not unusual for WiFi on any device (not just macs) in my experience. I disagree with the idea that it Just Works generally.

3) Macbook Pro 2013 - enabling IPv6 stack causes kernel crash when trying to disable.

4) and to make it clear I'm not just picking on Apple: Sony PS4 with a dual band 802.11a/b/g/n wireless router -- constantly drops connection. Figured out it was because of the 5GHz band. Had to set up a separate wireless network just for PS4 with an older router. Sony should put up some time and money to help fix these driver issues instead of leaving it entirely on BSD volunteers (assuming they're not using a custom driver, in which case they should, you know, fix it).

5) Making PSN a requirement was a terrible decision for the PS4: lizard squad DDoS the day after I got it. Updates kicking me out of PSN. Unable to log back in, etc. I will never buy another console gaming system with this requirement, if I can avoid it. If I can't I will do serious research first.

This is why I'm back to homebrewing/hacking hardware and putting Linux/BSD on all my stuff ... at least I then have a clue of how to debug this kind of weird shit, even if it is a PITA, and at least if things don't work, I can blame myself, rather than having to say I paid for it. Certainly no sense paying for premium consumer stuff either, even if you have the money. Spend it on something else.

No it's not just you.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#142

Post by kevincox »

dmritard96 wrote: post #129
hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

what are people actually using these for? i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this. if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music. is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just ph…

"if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want" Powered on 100% of the time is the difference. The listening takes too much power for most devices still whereas echo's are always wired and listening. There are probably differences in the software as well but thats a big one. I guess the speaker is larger as well. Kinda like a beats pill audio quality (limite…

Most high end phones now days have the option to have an always listening microphone for almost no power usage (1 or 2 percent over the day on my Galaxy S5). So if you leave your phone in the middle of the room it works quite well, and often you can even shout at your pocket.

But I think you are right, it's the small improvement over the phone, you always know where it is, and the microphones are designed for large area reception over phone microphones which are generally optimizes for closer sound sources. These small differences are valuable, even though you can get 90% of the functionality by just keeping your phone in the open.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#143

Post by ianlevesque »

manarth wrote: post #91
ianlevesque wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a panacea but for me using exclusively 5 GHz fixed wifi once and for all.

To offer a contradictory piece of anecdata, I had to disable 5GHz to maintain a consistent wifi connection.

Isn't technology fun?

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#144

Post by kevincox »

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #136

I was hoping to see a review of them here. I almost bought an Echo, or a Tap, but then I read the audio wasn't great. I wanted something to play music well and it sounded as if it didn't. I would love to know whether or not their audio quality or Google Home's, were worth it. Otherwise I guess I'll buy a decent quality amp for my Airport Express or something, which seems to cost about as much.

I know Google put significant effort and takes serious pride in the audio quality of the Home, so while I haven't heard it myself it is probably worth a try.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#145

Post by Eridrus »

hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

what are people actually using these for? i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this. if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music. is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just ph…

We bought one for a relative who's vision was deteriorating so that he could listen to audiobooks just by talking to it.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#146

Post by czstrong »

hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

what are people actually using these for? i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this. if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music. is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just ph…

It's a $40 bedroom speaker to play music and news in a super convenient way. My friends and I love it. Timer, alarm, and weather are pleasant bonuses.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#147

Post by croon »

matwood wrote: post #134
croon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works. I've went through tons of routers, and on those routers all available firmwares (dd-wrt. open-wrt, tomato, etc). I've been using an Asus RT-AC87U for the last couple of years now,…

> I have never been on or even heard of a wifi network that always works. Years ago I had this problem and bought an Apple router. My wifi has always 'just worked' ever since. There was an entire thread of people on here on HN saying the same thing when Apple decided to stop making them. Wifi, like cell, is very anecdotal because of things out of your control.

I've had Apple routers as well. While above average, and not requiring restarts, it wasn't better than other premium (consumer grade) routers I've had. Of course, anecdata, but just for clarification:

Are you saying you never have any wifi issues? Even every other month?

I think the OP question touched on problems existing, but small enough for many to "accept them" as status quo, and him/her questioning if he/she was the only one bothered by them. I am one of those people too. Thus my question of whether or not you actually have no problems, or simply "no problems requiring intervention, other than waiting/reconnecting".

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#148

Post by Eridrus »

Greed wrote: post #104
hijohnnylin wrote: post #26

what are people actually using these for? i'm legitimately curious about the use cases for this. if you have an android phone or iphone or smartwatch, you already can "Hey Siri/Google" whatever you want, including playing music. is it for light switches? Hey Siri/Google already does this, no? also, how many people have 50$ wifi connected bulbs? and isn't the most convenient way to turn on a light switch still just ph…

As an (incidental) user I can tell you that Alexa is of middling usefulness at best, even for someone with a high degree of home-automation type stuff. The voice recognition is quite good compared to similar services, but that's about the only thing it has going for it really. Most of the 'skills' (an appstore with absolutely zero quality control) are useless or extremely limited shovelware hidden behind archaic verb…

I expect Google Home is much better with things like asking for Tesla stock since it already does this kind of thing for search. I tried your exact queries on my phone and they worked. People have also noticed that the Home device also remembers context, so you don't always have to repeat yourself.

So I don't think we can really generalize Alexa's failings to the entire space.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#149

Post by croon »

bcook wrote: post #122
croon wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works. I've went through tons of routers, and on those routers all available firmwares (dd-wrt. open-wrt, tomato, etc). I've been using an Asus RT-AC87U for the last couple of years now,…

Yeah, the RT-AC87U is known to have a buggy Quantenna WiFi chip, especially the 5ghz. There are many reports of problems over on snbforums. The RT-AC68U or RT-AC88U are better choices (because they use Broadcom?). My RT-N66U has been a flawless AP for years.

Interesting, I'll have to investigate this, I've had other Asus in the past, but not those two versions. I'll have to check the chips on the ones I've had.

Thank you for the tip!

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#150

Post by icebraining »

michaelt wrote: post #132
Greed wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an (incidental) user I can tell you that Alexa is of middling usefulness at best, even for someone with a high degree of home-automation type stuff. The voice recognition is quite good compared to similar services, but that's about the only thing it has going for it really. Most of the 'skills' (an appstore with absolutely zero quality control) are useless or extremely limited shovelware hidden behind archaic verb…

It very much appears that instead of being able to infer what you mean, Alexa mostly just matches extremely specific strings to extremely specific corresponding processes. Understandable as a developer, extremely frustrating as a user. I think getting this right, and especially getting it right while allowing third-party skills and preserving user privacy, is probably very difficult. If someone says "Alexa, we need m…

The full behaviour may be a bit too much for now, but deciding which to use seems simple: it's how Android Intents already work. Apps register themselves for which kinds of actions they can handle, then the user gets asked which one to use, and can set a default.

> Alexa, we need more bread

> Always use Asda for bread ("unless I tell you otherwise" is implied)

Post reply on HN