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Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

zdnet.com

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Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#23

Post by pushpop »

ravenstine wrote: post #16
kowdermeister wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with gimmicks? Voice control itself is not a bad idea, the interface to control your technology is something you are born with :)

Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they are useful to people in very limi…

I completely agree with every single word you’ve posted there. From the history recap to the modern era problems.

These days the only thing my Echo does which is remotely useful is setting named timers while cooking. So I can have my hands dirty with raw meat and ask Alexa to set various timers for each step of the meal. I found that particularly good when cooking meals that have large gaps in time between stages (like Sunday roasts when there can be 5 minutes or more between the cooking times of different vegetables). However even there it sometimes becomes more trouble than its worth when it starts mishearing names of vegetables or duration numbers when spoken.

The most disappointing thing is that I spent a few days working with Alexa’s - frankly terrible - SDK to integrate it into my existing home automation (all stuff I’ve built myself and powered by a FreeBSD server). Not only was the development progress of Alexa skills amongst the most frustrating I’ve had in my ~30 years of experience writing software; but it turned out to be a complete waste of my time because Alexa is so piss poor at any interactions more complex than the very basic (as you described). It’s also very laggy at such interactions so even when it does work it feels slow. So slow, in fact, that it ends up taking longer and being more painful using the voice control than it would have been to wake my laptop from sleep and trigger the same HTTP API endpoints Alexa would used but instead doing so manually from the command line using curl. So needless to say I very quickly gave up using Alexa for home automation.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#24

Post by TeMPOraL »

School-Cotton wrote: post #18
ravenstine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they are useful to people in very limi…

"Besides [a bunch of useful stuff], Alexa is useless! Therefore it's a gimmick." I have an Echo Dot which I use almost exclusively for a few static purposes: the weather, setting alarms, turning my lights on and off, and asking what time it is. I also ask it basic questions like whether various sports teams won or what time they're playing, which it also answers well. Not sure why you think it is useless just because…

The point is that these few useful things can be all achieved much cheaper with much greater ergonomics.

> the weather, setting alarms, (...) and asking what time it is.

You can do that on your phone. Even assuming you wanted it hands-free, it doesn't justify an always-on microphone sending data to the cloud. We had the tech to do this level of voice recognition reliably in the 2000s.

> It allows me to turn off the light when reading in bed without having to get up and walk to the light switch.

Kids from my generation used to solder clap detectors for like $5-$10, and they're already more reliable and faster to use.

Voice is cool, it's like being in Star Trek. I get it, I built my own system to control music in the 2000s, complete with audio responses snipped from Star Trek shows. But the feeling of "living in the future" wears off pretty quick, and you're left with a ridiculously expensive and user-hostile gimmick.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#27

Post by Karunamon »

ravenstine wrote: post #16
kowdermeister wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with gimmicks? Voice control itself is not a bad idea, the interface to control your technology is something you are born with :)

Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they are useful to people in very limi…

>the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches.

The primary use of my Alexa devices is being a voice-controlled IP radio. I paid about $300 many years ago for Logitech/Slim Devices' crack at this, the Squeezebox, and I loved it.

Now, I get that same functionality for $40 shipped with more on top. Everything else is a bonus. including the smart home stuff - being able to turn the lights on with grocery bags in hand is damn futuristic.

Does it screw up sometimes? Sure. But it beats the hell out of a keyboard or dials for the use case.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#28

Post by dalore »

jtdev wrote: post #6

I can’t believe that people actually pay for these things... Alexa has always seemed like a gimmick to me. I have an Ecobee smart thermostat that has integrated Alexa, which I promptly disabled after installation.

I can't believe people actually pay for mobile phones. They seem like a gimmick to me. My rotary phone works just as well.

Re: Amazon can't yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions

#29

Post by pushpop »

School-Cotton wrote: post #18
ravenstine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimmicks are short-lived for fundamental reasons. I'm going to sound like a broken record but, as someone who has owned multiple Alexa devices and quit their job to start a voice-UI business(didn't pan out), the current generation of "smart speakers" are a joke when it comes to doing anything serious besides asking for the weather or toggling light switches. I have no doubt that they are useful to people in very limi…

"Besides [a bunch of useful stuff], Alexa is useless! Therefore it's a gimmick." I have an Echo Dot which I use almost exclusively for a few static purposes: the weather, setting alarms, turning my lights on and off, and asking what time it is. I also ask it basic questions like whether various sports teams won or what time they're playing, which it also answers well. Not sure why you think it is useless just because…

I fairness to your bed time reading example, it’s very common for people to have bed side lights - even if they’re just little lamps that rest on a table. At least this is the norm in the UK. So for a great many of us, turning our reading light out would just be an extension of our arm.

My wife tends to prefer using the TV as her reading light. I find that rather bizarre but she likes the background noise. In any case, TVs have remote controls and sleep timers so that mitigates the need for voice control.

To be honest, I couldn’t think of a place I’d less want an Echo than the bedroom. Even the bathroom seems less inappropriate (eg you might want music when in the shower / bath).

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