> “This is getting ridiculous and I'm about to just toss the whole thing and move back to Google”
"This pan is very hot, I gotta get outta here!"
* jumps into fire *
People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
171–180 of 195 posts
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#172These days, the general rule is to avoid buying anything 'smart'. They are all filled with advertisements and data-sharing practices and are designed to target you through their user interface and applications. They bombard you with offers for their other products and deals.
Apple gets a lot of criticism but one thing I do like is that their devices at least respect me. The AppleTV streaming box has no ads in the OS and OS-level data sharing is opt-out. It’s nothing inherently bad with “smart” devices. Just the business models behind them.
For now...
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now I'm wondering, the first news papers were sold out on the street. How long was it before there were ads in them? And was there the same intellectual hand-wringing about it at the time?
The first newspaper ad was for a book and in the 1620s. I am not certain about intellectual handwringing but there were people who considered making money through commerce at all as morally wrong due to it involving neither toil as they recognized it nor might-makes-right. Based upon some truly stupid ideas of "fair price" and assumptions of fixed universal prices meaning that any merchant had to be a scammer.
>people who considered making money through commerce at all as morally wrong due to it involving neither toil as they recognized it
How very puritanical! That was the style at the time though.
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#174I’m afraid to upgrade from my ~6 year old LG OLED with a damaged corner because I pair it with an Apple TV and only see Apple ads occasionally on the Home Screen. I don’t know if a newer tv would give me the same experience.
Sceptre TVs. They sell large, dumb TVs that do not contain any networking equipment at all.
https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#175I’m afraid to upgrade from my ~6 year old LG OLED with a damaged corner because I pair it with an Apple TV and only see Apple ads occasionally on the Home Screen. I don’t know if a newer tv would give me the same experience.
Sceptre TVs. They sell large, dumb TVs that do not contain any networking equipment at all. https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
Yes, this is the answer in an ideal world. In practice, it's nearly impossible to buy Sceptre dumb TVs these days.
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sceptre TVs. They sell large, dumb TVs that do not contain any networking equipment at all. https://www.sceptre.com/TV/4K-UHD-TV-category1category73.htm...
Yes, this is the answer in an ideal world. In practice, it's nearly impossible to buy Sceptre dumb TVs these days.
They are listed right there on the website. Add one to your cart and check out. What's impossible about that?
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#177These days, the general rule is to avoid buying anything 'smart'. They are all filled with advertisements and data-sharing practices and are designed to target you through their user interface and applications. They bombard you with offers for their other products and deals.
Apple gets a lot of criticism but one thing I do like is that their devices at least respect me. The AppleTV streaming box has no ads in the OS and OS-level data sharing is opt-out. It’s nothing inherently bad with “smart” devices. Just the business models behind them.
[deleted]
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#178I wonder what they expected when buying such a device from Amazon.
I think a lot of normies still think that when they buy a smart appliance they are buying an appliance like from yesteryear, except with more features. In reality they are buying a computer shaped like an appliance of yesteryear. Your smartphone? That's not a phone, it's a computer shaped like a phone. Smart TV? Computer shaped like a TV. Smart watch? Computer shaped like a watch. This brings with it all the advantag…
The term "smart appliance" has changed radically since the 1960s [0]; it didn't necessarily mean "ubiquitous connectivity, data collection, building a profile on the occupants and monetizing it with advertisers/data brokers". We only end up at that through decades of legislative inaction.
Your second point is about the extent to which manufacturers are allowed lock their product behind proprietary interfaces (protected by the excesses of the DMCA, and lack of compliance with Right to Repair). Remember the 2023 bankruptcy of e-bike manufacturer VanMoof, locking out its customers, even ones who had purchased it? Probably legislatures will only pass meaningful consumer laws after a wave of smart bankruptcies and data asset transfers. If even then. Perhaps one flashpoint will be the rise in subprime auto lenders using "kill switches" as a high-tech repossession alternative. How are consumers protected when the company itself fails (as is currently happening with Tricolor [1], likely followed by others)?
[0]: https://www.impulselabs.com/blog/the-past-and-future-of-smar...
[1]: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/a-big-auto-lender-went-bankrupt...
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#179We're way overdue to abolish the DMCA, in particular the "anti-circumvention" felonies. It shouldn't be a crime for me to customize the product I purchased. Or to sell people a kit to do the customization themselves.
Better yet: ban hardware vendors from denying the user an ability to customize software. They don't have to make it easy, but they should be forced to give a way to opt out of walled gardens and bypass "secure boot".
Better yet: declare hardware and software to be two independent products/markets, and that tying them together is illegal anti-competitive bundling. Software products must be developed based on publicly-available hardware documentation, and using unpublished documentation from the hardware manufacturer should be illegal. The points where this might seem a little wonky (how do you deal with a hardware manufacturer constantly bumping chip revs) is exactly a constraint the market should be optimizing around in order to produce more end-user legibility/autonomy.
Re: People regret buying Amazon smart displays after being bombarded with ads
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of the trend. But one could argue that a computer is just a cheaper implementation of the yesteryears discrete electronics. Which was itself a cheaper implementation of old school mechanical gears, switches and timing wheels, etc. A locked down computer, could have been mechanical for all the user cares. Fixing a dishwasher a while my dad told me that back in the day, they operates w…
which should in theory make them more dependable but I've seen friends go through a few yet my 25 year old whirlpool has only ever had the door seal replaced and it works fine if loud as hell compared to modern ones.
Could be survivorship bias ;)
But yes, the don't make them like they used to -- in fact they never did!
People said the same thing 25 years ago, and 25 years before that.
A modern fridge is probably cheaper (corrected for inflation) and more energy efficient.
Moreover, few appliances lives to be 30 years old just because they don't break.
Case in point: my better half is looking for a new oven. Because the 10y old one we have is noisy, compared to the new smart ovens. (I personally hate the fact that the top models are so smart, I must spend a second or two watching animated Siemens logo, before it's ready for input).