Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by turar » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:10 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #179

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…

Another kindred spirit here, another programmer who can't tell if they're just getting old or if electronic devices are getting worse. I describe each of our AppleTVs as "something that works perfectly, except when you really need it"-- when we finally have time to watch a movie we want to see, when our daughter is losing her mind about wanting to see some video, that's the only time it craps itself. >2016 macbook th…

That's my Google Maps traffic experience pretty much daily. The section of the map that I actually need NOW is all of a sudden not rendering exactly when I need it, but hey here's traffic for the rest of the city.

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

#232

Post by yeukhon » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:23 PM UTC

new299 wrote: post #15

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…

A lot of technology is pretty flaky. I think you have a couple of issues however: 1. You have sucky Internet. Bad Internet is going to cause numerous issues. From what I've heard it's hard to get a really good Internet connection in the US. But in many places in the world, great Internet connections are available at low cost. Bad Internet means devices are going to have issues with firmware updates. Things will be mo…

I recommend if you have a choice get yourself your own modem. Switching to my own Motorola SB6141 was the best investment besides getting a decent router. Just a thought.

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

#233

Post by Eridrus » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:24 PM UTC

CaptSpify wrote: post #200

Eridrus wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These comments about the NSA listening to you through these get annoying enough to me, I hate to think how annoying they must be to you when you built the damn thing.

Is there any reason an Echo couldn't be updated to add 24/7 listening? Just because someone built a part of it doesn't mean they know how it works now

They could do the same thing to your computer or phone or even any speaker you have; why are we freaking out about this except for the fact that it's being sold as a microphone?

Why don't we freak out that Chrome could be listening to all our audio? I guess you could make an argument that far-field mics make it different, but I have a lot of conversations near my laptop and phone.

As tekromancr mentioned; it would be pretty obvious if these changes were made, especially on a wide-ranging basis, so that only really leaves this potential capability being used in a targeted manner, at which point Mossad is after you specifically and you're gonna get Mosadded. (https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf)

Having said that, I would be interested in a 3rd party maintained registry of updates for all software so that it would at the very least be noticeable if updates were being abused for this purpose, similar to the way certificate transparency works for SSL/TLS certs.

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

#234

Post by dawnerd » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:25 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #179

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…

Another kindred spirit here, another programmer who can't tell if they're just getting old or if electronic devices are getting worse. I describe each of our AppleTVs as "something that works perfectly, except when you really need it"-- when we finally have time to watch a movie we want to see, when our daughter is losing her mind about wanting to see some video, that's the only time it craps itself. >2016 macbook th…

Had this same issue. Appears to be more with whatever chip Apple uses not playing well with certain access points. I switched to ubiquiti APs and the problem went away.

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

#235

Post by yeukhon » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:28 PM UTC

I was excited about Echo when my co-worker introduced it to me a month ago, but then realize I'd have to write a Lambda function, set up this and that, and the fact I'd have to write out the exact command, I shrugged a bit and lost my interest. Now that AWS has Rekognition, Polly, and Greengrass, I am more excited to find out how to integrate them (although sure Google's Vision API and Voice API already exist for a while now).

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

#236

Post by mrbill » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:29 PM UTC

newspaper-shill wrote: post #99

mrbill wrote: post #17

Not quite.. I ordered a second Echo Dot for my mom last Thursday (the 15th). It was originally scheduled to ship on the 30th, but shipped early on the 19th and she got it today. She's not very technically oriented (iPad is about as complicated as she wants to get), but absolutely LOVES the Dot. I bought her first one for her birthday back in October, and she called me on my birthday three weeks after that and had it…

What does your mom use it for? I'm strongly considering getting one for my own parents.

Playing music, weather, shopping lists...

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

#237

Post by FrancoDiaz » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

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…

When I'm walking into my bedroom, I want the nightstand lamp on, so I say "Alexa, turn on the bedroom lamp". The nightstand with the lamp is on the other side of the bed that I don't sleep on, so it's much easier to say "Alexa, turn off the bedroom lamp", than to roll over and stretch out to turn it off. And much easier just to tell Alexa to turn it on in the middle of the night instead of fumbling around. Alexa always responds with "Ok", and saying the commands I could see as a problem with a significant other, but at this house I'm living alone, so it's all good.

I like to ask Alexa what time it is without turning on the tv or looking for my phone. Whem I'm going to the bathroom, I'll tell Alexa to play the news. I add things to the shopping list, check the weather, set alarms for certain times...

For $40 (the dot) it's worth it. I'm hoping to save some money with a smart thermostat. And I'm hoping Google will put out something like the dot because I hear it's much more conversation (I just don't want to plunk down $140 or whatever it is for the Google Home right now).

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

#238

Post by TheOneTrueKyle » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:33 PM UTC

The greatest part about the echo is that I can create my own skills for my own echo without having to publish my skills to skill store.

This allows me to build the Alexa that I want to build which is really awesome IMO.

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

#239

Post by FrancoDiaz » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

matwood wrote: post #135

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…

> what are people actually using these for? Off the top of my head from last night while cooking dinner: * "hey google, add olive oil to the grocery list" * "hey google, set a timer for 15 minutes for rice" * "hey google, play some Christmas music" * "hey google, how much time is left on the rice" I could have fumbled with pulling out my iphone for all of these, but I would have had to stop prepping dinner, wash my h…

Yeah, the hands free, walk around barking out commands to (Alexa in my case) is the big win IMO.

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

#240

Post by twothamendment » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

MatthaeusHarris wrote: post #31

jcoder wrote: post #2

Considering the ambiguity of "Sold Out", maybe the original headline, "Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush", would be better?

I got what you meant, and that was my first thought too. The main reason I haven't bought an Echo (and am looking into self-hosted solutions instead) is the privacy concern.

I'm using the Echo now, but I keep playing around with raspberry pi solutions. I'm waiting for Respeaker to deliver. I'd prefer to have it all in-house, but until I come up with something that works as well I'll keep the Echo plugged in.