Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary? • Hacker News Board

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#11

Post by ghaff » Mon, May 30, 2022, 1:49 PM UTC

feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing. Setting an alarm, playing an album, getting a quick weather forecast? OK.

But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like when driving--not so much. For example, with podcasts, I find I really need to pre-populate a playlist and by and large I find trying to totally control my phone by voice is very hit and miss.

Voice assistants have gotten marginally better over the years. But I really wouldn't miss them much if they all went away tomorrow. The vision was/is that they could match at least a marginally competent personal assistant over the phone. And they're nowhere even near the ballpark.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#12

Post by ghaff » Mon, May 30, 2022, 1:55 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #9

Semaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.

The fact you call this mini feature of setting a timer (which is equally available on your phone via voice) "QOL" is fascinating to me

Yeah. Those are the sort of occasionally handy things that Alexa is somewhat useful for. But QoL? (I don't even generally use it as a timer in the kitchen as opposed to spending 5 seconds to set a timer by hand that shows me a countdown.)

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#13

Post by wirthjason » Mon, May 30, 2022, 1:59 PM UTC

I’m more shocked that the developer of a “skill” that says the holy Mary makes $2 a month and has 10,000 users. That’s a sweet return for work that on the scale of copy-pasting the Alexa getting started tutorial.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#14

Post by RileyJames » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:01 PM UTC

feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

> “Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation.“

The elderly woman stated she didn’t own a computer, or know how to use one.

Yes, it’s an edge case.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#15

Post by bombcar » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:05 PM UTC

Anything I don’t expect to use to make purchases I try to enable whatever “child lock” features it might have.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#16

Post by haunter » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:06 PM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #5

bsenftner wrote: post #2

Be smarter than a smart speaker by never purchasing one. Why put an always on snitch in your home? Such convivence is a trap.

Boggles my mind that anyone buys these things.

It's incredibly useful for people with disabilities

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#17

Post by mdp2021 » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

Semaphor wrote: post #7

bsenftner wrote: post #2

Be smarter than a smart speaker by never purchasing one. Why put an always on snitch in your home? Such convivence is a trap.

Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.

> I can set timers and look up conversions

What you seem to be needing takes an old tablet and a slice of an evening of coding...

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#18

Post by heretogetout » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #9

Semaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.

The fact you call this mini feature of setting a timer (which is equally available on your phone via voice) "QOL" is fascinating to me

The phone is even more of a snitch than is an Echo or what have you.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#19

Post by scrollaway » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

mdp2021 wrote: post #17

Semaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.

> I can set timers and look up conversions What you seem to be needing takes an old tablet and a slice of an evening of coding...

Because nothing screams like "great UX" and "QOL" like a tablet in a greasy kitchen you can't operate when your hands are full, and having to learn to code in order to use a timer.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#20

Post by wutbrodo » Mon, May 30, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

ulfw wrote: post #9

Semaphor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.

The fact you call this mini feature of setting a timer (which is equally available on your phone via voice) "QOL" is fascinating to me

Setting a time, setting alarms, playing music, turning lights on and off, controlling media, (eg Netflix), checking the weather, etc. I'm just focusing on the universal use cases, and excluding varying degrees of niche usesnlike interactively displaying recipes and saying the rosary.

Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room).

This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.