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Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

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Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#151

Post by sib »

mc32 wrote: post #98
sib wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because different words have very different best potential performance characteristics when used as wake words. We would have liked to enable fully custom wake words, but it would have led to bad user experiences with the device either failing to wake up too often (false negatives) or having too many false positives or both. So we compromised by enabling more than one, but not full choice.

Thanks for the insight. Is it difficult to fingerprint a sound bite? Have people repeat it several times and again for each user that wants to use the custom wake word?

It's not so much the "fingerprinting" - it's more that there are some words ("type 1") that have many relatively frequent words that sound like them, and there are other words ("type 2") that only have a very few other words (and infrequent ones at that) that sound like them.

Type 2 words make better potential wake words.

(That's not the whole story, but I think it's good model.)

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#152

Post by sib »

mrcartmenez wrote: post #137
sib wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because different words have very different best potential performance characteristics when used as wake words. We would have liked to enable fully custom wake words, but it would have led to bad user experiences with the device either failing to wake up too often (false negatives) or having too many false positives or both. So we compromised by enabling more than one, but not full choice.

I just wanted to let you know that you have caused great distress to my aunt, my daughter and my wider family through you and your colleagues thoughtless actions. I hope someday you, and Amazon as a whole, gets its comeuppance.

I'm sorry if that's the case, but our actions (at least with respect to "naming" Alexa) were extremely far from "thoughtless." There were literally thousands of hours of research, analysis, engineering, and "thought" involved.

Re: Has Amazon Ruined the Name Alexa?

#153

Post by scubbo »

gumby wrote: post #115
scubbo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems staggeringly unlikely. If you want to change what people in everyday life call you, then yes, that's not paperwork, that's just a polite request/conversation with various people (and, hopefully, they respect it). If you want to change the name by which organizations, including the government, refer to you, then that is _by definition_ paperwork. I simply don't believe that you could have done that without…

> What am I misunderstanding? Some hyperbole on my part, sorry. I really meant "official name changes, getting permission from courts etc"). About 30 years ago I married and my wife and I changed our names significantly. California marriage licenses don't mention married names at all. At the time the name law was "you may use any name you want, but may not use your name to commit fraud". Here's what I remember we did…

Interesting context and history, thank you!
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