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

theguardian.com

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

#111

Post by hyperman1 »

CrazyStat wrote: post #95
robonerd wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not cooking hundreds of recipes at once; I'd just convert them when I need them.

Which is what I do, with the help of automation.

whatever floats your boat, but it sounds a bit overkill to me.

As a european, I notice how imperial units are sometimes creeping back in. Even hating the crappy illogical mess, you learn to get some feeling just by exposure. Feet divided by 3 is about a meter, and 4 inch is 10cm. A mile is 1.5km.

For some reason I can remember pounds as 1/2 kg, but can never figure out lb without looking it up and finding it is also pounds.

A while ago, a local computer store mixed up feet and inch, and announced things like 14 feet laptop screens. I was the first to tell them, the mistake had been there for a month. It turns out non-USians know what a screen of size 14 is supposed to look like, and the word 'inch' behind it is treated like meaningless gibberish.

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

#112

Post by danpalmer »

harvey9 wrote: post #67
danpalmer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow That's 2 continuous axes and one discrete option. What if the cheapest one is the worst reviewed? What if the most expensive one is the best reviewed? What if the middle price is only slightly above the worst review? What if there's a clearly cheapest, best option that is only available in 2 days? How do you "trust" an answer to this? What d…

I think it's almost achievable if you say 'cheapest with 4 or more stars and delivery tomorrow'. Problem remains that cheapest could be the smallest pack size or cheapest per pound, and Amazon is not good at the latter anyway.

It is, but it means engineering your formulations carefully before giving them to the computer. Computers taking things literally isn't new, but there's normally less on the line when we do it.

Also I would imagine that as often as not there would be an opportunity for human judgement. Maybe there's a _much_ cheaper one at 3.98 stars, or the 4+ star and next day delivery options are 3x more expensive than the next available option. In both of these cases a human with the right intentions would likely stop and do something different.

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

#113

Post by CrazyStat »

hyperman1 wrote: post #111
CrazyStat wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is what I do, with the help of automation.

whatever floats your boat, but it sounds a bit overkill to me. As a european, I notice how imperial units are sometimes creeping back in. Even hating the crappy illogical mess, you learn to get some feeling just by exposure. Feet divided by 3 is about a meter, and 4 inch is 10cm. A mile is 1.5km. For some reason I can remember pounds as 1/2 kg, but can never figure out lb without looking it up and finding it is also…

Anything that you use often enough can be memorized. A cup of flour is 120g, for example. But I use something like molasses maybe 5 times a year, so I'm not going to remember how much a cup of molasses weighs.

(I use molasses as an example because, due to how sticky it is, I much prefer to measure it directly into my mixing bowl by weight rather than using a liquid measuring cup).

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

#114

Post by jsjohnst »

harvey9 wrote: post #71
jsjohnst wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like driving--not so much. I’ve tried Alexa, Google, and Siri multiple times over the years while driving and it’s just embarrassing how over hyped all of them are and yet simple questions which a human could potentially easily answer in seconds doing a search (if not driving of course), but none of them even get close. - How far away is…

You can easily search how far away is that storm? The others really ought to be voice searchable, but the diesel one would need to be timely in my area, where a couple of places have not had diesel available for several days.

> You can easily search how far away is that storm?

Yes, I have two apps I use for that depending on what form of “how far away” I’m looking for, Dark Sky (time) and RadarScope (distance).

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

#115

Post by bsenftner »

eranation wrote: post #23
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.

What about smartphones, not just yours, but also those around you with Hey Siri or Hey Google turned on? I don’t see a huge difference.

I turn them off, and disable their ability to function completely. Unless I am in control and the processing is local, no ambient computing.

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

#116

Post by wutbrodo »

ghaff wrote: post #27
wutbrodo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

I'm definitely in the middle ground somewhere. I do think they're mostly disappointing. That said, they understand properly phrased commands well enough and are somewhat useful, if hardly essential, for a variety of simple tasks. >Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. I'm going to want some sort of speaker in my bedroom--used to have a CD player--and a smart speake…

Yea, it really is a no-brainer for a modest QoL improvement, unless you have objections to the privacy implications. I'm really just losing tolerance for this tendency to only express dumb, low-dimensional opinions that are so heavily detached from reality, like the GP comment's claim that they can't comprehend it having nonzero value to someone's workflows.

I wonder if it's the same dynamic that's contributing tk the polarization of political discourse: the structure of information flow in the social media era rewards being punchy, simplistic, and hysterical. The incentives feel inescapable for the masses of people out there that are too hollow to hold beliefs or engage with reality in any meaningful way.

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

#117

Post by carapace »

annoyingnoob wrote: post #39

Does God answer prayers from robots?

Machines can pray on our behalf according to Tibetan Buddhism.

http://karmawheel.org/

https://github.com/PixelsCommander/PrayerWheel

http://pixelscommander.com/interactive-revolution/can-comput...

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

#118

Post by tsol »

xnorswap wrote: post #22
wirthjason wrote: post #13

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.

Always bet on religion. Some of the most profitable early apps on the apps stores were Bible apps. People love their religions and will happily spend money on following them.

People like what they like. Religion, games, tv shows-- people will spend huge amounts on all these things if they find value in it. That value isn't always apparent to others. Also I really wonder how many of those users don't know they're paying for a subscription

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

#119

Post by vidarh »

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

Doing it on my phone involves taking my phone out of my pocket or figuring out where I left it. Doing it on my alexa devices means mindlessly speaking out loud anywhere in my house, also when my hands are full or messy.

It affects QOL when you get used to it along with a wide range of other features which are similarly tiny by themselves (turning the TV on/off; changing volume; searching for something on my FireTV instead of using the virtual keyboard; turning lights on/off; using it as an alarm clock; telling my son in his room upstairs that dinner is ready without yelling; having a single command to turn of the lights and turn on a playlist to fall asleep to) but that combined adds up to a whole lot reduced friction.

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

#120

Post by vidarh »

mdp2021 wrote: post #59
onion2k wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At HN?! HN is a diverse bunch. There are lots of non-technical people here. But even ignoring that, there's a hell of a difference between 'knowing to how to code' and 'knowing how to write an Android app'. I've been writing code for 25 years, and I know for certain it'd take me several evenings to be able to make a working Android app, and a lot more to make one I was actually happy with to the point I'd use it.

> HN is a diverse bunch. There are lots of non-technical people here. But even ignoring that, there's a hell of a difference between 'knowing to how to code' and 'knowing how to write an Android app' Absolutely, and absolutely. But if one is keen on QoL boosts, coding remains a foremost helpful skill, and currently coding for mobile devices is a further booster. > several evenings ... and a lot more I would suggest t…

> is probably lower than you seem to suggest (if you are already proficient in Java)

So in other words it's probably not lower than suggested.

And certainly higher than the skills required to order and plug in a home assistant that offers a superior interface (doesn't require clean and free hands)

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