Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Alexa+

aboutamazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 355 posts

Re: Alexa+

#161

Post by happyopossum »

mikestew wrote: post #127
ceejayoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"On sale" usually means "the price is the same it's been for the last six months, but we're showing a big discount on a price that was never charged", in my experience. Siri has suddenly started telling me things like "did you know you can say 'Siri, stop' to end the timer?" when I use it, which is frustrating extra friction on something that worked just fine. Worse, it does it regularly and doesn't seem to be tuneab…

Every time I hear that, I think “you mean like I’ve been doing for, what, the last five years?” How does Siri not know that I know this already? Does its little pea brain have no persistent storage ?

> Does its little pea brain have no persistent storage ?

Essentially, yes - for various privacy/marketing/whatever reasons what information Siri collects is heavily anonymized and can't be tied back to you.

Re: Alexa+

#162

Post by MattJ100 »

scarface_74 wrote: post #160
Arthanos wrote: post #152

>Let’s say you need to get your oven fixed—Alexa+ will be able to navigate the web, use Thumbtack to discover the relevant service provider, authenticate, arrange the repair, and come back to tell you it’s done—there’s no need to supervise or intervene. This is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't trust an LLM to choose between two brands of dish soap for me let alone pick a contractor, schedule a repair, and make a…

Apple didn’t try to summarize the news. It tried to summarize the headline and that was the issue.

I don't think you can say that is the problem. It may have exacerbated the issue, but problems exist when summarising full news content too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0m17d8827ko

Re: Alexa+

#163

Post by scarface_74 »

nashashmi wrote: post #76

I remember when law officers wanted the Alexa recording at the home of a murder. Amazon did not give it up. I always thought that data was meaningless if it takes a person hours to go through it. Now we have AI. Which means the data is not meaningless. And the always on feature actually means something. And that means all your data at home can be at someone's fingertips ... because say they are looking for ways to ma…

Until last year, Amazon gave police video from Ring without a warrant.

https://www.wired.com/story/ring-police-rfa-tool-shut-down/

Re: Alexa+

#164

Post by _DeadFred_ »

daveguy wrote: post #53
reginald78 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure their search results intentionally suck to make their ads more valuable.

I stopped shopping at Amazon about a year ago. Too much overhead figuring out the good products, vs the scam products, vs the mediocre but pushed products. Been using Newegg/BestBuy for electronics, Costco/Target/Walmart for home goods, local grocery stores for food, and Barnes and Noble for books. I used to be good at picking out the gems from the cruft on Amazon, but either it's gotten more difficult or I've lost m…

I can't believe that in 2025 BestBuy is my go to for electronics. Wild times.

Re: Alexa+

#165

Post by scarface_74 »

bhhaskin wrote: post #109
wiremine wrote: post #105

I'm not optimistic, but my recent experiences with Gemini's mobile app gives me pause on my pessimism. My wife and I are planning a family vacation, and we had some questions about various destinations. I opened Gemini, and we had a helpful 10-minute conversation. If Alexa+ can provide a similar experience, I can see us having more of those voice-based sessions.

The big issue with LLM is how can you trust the information it gives you? It could be flat out making all or some of it up.

The built in web search

https://chatgpt.com/share/67bf76e2-5124-8010-8f54-50d967625a...

Re: Alexa+

#166

Post by _DeadFred_ »

cy_hauser wrote: post #75
daveguy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped shopping at Amazon about a year ago. Too much overhead figuring out the good products, vs the scam products, vs the mediocre but pushed products. Been using Newegg/BestBuy for electronics, Costco/Target/Walmart for home goods, local grocery stores for food, and Barnes and Noble for books. I used to be good at picking out the gems from the cruft on Amazon, but either it's gotten more difficult or I've lost m…

> Too much overhead figuring out the good products ... How does changing stores help. If the products are still the same but on Walmart, how are you getting better information?

Amazon doesn't care if you die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU&t=192s

Re: Alexa+

#167

Post by cmrdporcupine »

taeric wrote: post #123

I find it interesting that the big companies are so sure that LLMs are somehow going to make a larger market for smart speakers than they currently have. To the contrary, I expect they are going to damage the market they have for people that just want easy kitchen timers and radio like functionality. This feels like the VR plays some of the big companies have made. I'm willing to bet that the market for people that w…

Google has already done this. Destroyed its existing assistant product -- removed key functionality, de-staffed the team, moved it all under Gemini.

I'm in a few Polestar car user groups, and people are pissed that their Android based head units can no longer do basic integration via assistant stuff that the car was initially sold to them able to do. In some cases they are blaming Polestar, in some cases connecting the dots back to Google.

It's beyond foolish. And destroys goodwill with customers. Who they seem to consider there being an infinite supply of. There is not.

Beyond that, there's the fact that stochastic "fuzzy" AIs are maybe not such a great fit when you just need to have the pod bay doors opened. Basic deterministic, symbolic, "AI" makes a lot of sense, especially once people get used to the quirks for the right way to talk to the thing.

Re: Alexa+

#168

Post by Marsymars »

Arthanos wrote: post #152

>Let’s say you need to get your oven fixed—Alexa+ will be able to navigate the web, use Thumbtack to discover the relevant service provider, authenticate, arrange the repair, and come back to tell you it’s done—there’s no need to supervise or intervene. This is a disaster waiting to happen. I don't trust an LLM to choose between two brands of dish soap for me let alone pick a contractor, schedule a repair, and make a…

SEO, except your goal is to be the contractor that Alexa picks for the subset of customers that meet whatever criteria you're targeting.

Re: Alexa+

#169

Post by lm28469 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #111
delichon wrote: post #5

I've been spoiled by LLMs in my daily work and now want to put the same kind of prompts into search boxes. Not "air fryers" but "air fryers without bluetooth or wifi and less than 3 cooking modes, and no negative reviews about the device failing prematurely." I'm not going to let Alexa plus or minus listen into my whole life, but I would like some that of intelligence when I actually go shopping.

I've found Perplexity.ai with Deepseek R1 to be very good at choosing a product or a hotel for me. I just punched in your query and it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen ! "Cosori Pro LE Air Fryer" It's a good air fryer. https://www.perplexity.ai/search/air-fryers-without-bluetoot... Another example, after spending an hour on trip advisor going back and forth to maps to check for walkin…

> it actually chose the air fryer that's already sitting in my kitchen !

How do you know it's not selected because it's the one with the most paid ads? Or reddit fake reviews? Or llm generated seo articles about it?

Re: Alexa+

#170

Post by taeric »

cruffle_duffle wrote: post #125
taeric wrote: post #123

I find it interesting that the big companies are so sure that LLMs are somehow going to make a larger market for smart speakers than they currently have. To the contrary, I expect they are going to damage the market they have for people that just want easy kitchen timers and radio like functionality. This feels like the VR plays some of the big companies have made. I'm willing to bet that the market for people that w…

If the only thing this does is make it easier to control devices whose names I forget, than it is worth it. Because I never, ever remember what I name devices and to address them with the current implementation of Alexa I need to be pretty spot on.

This could be solved with a reliable way to ask the device its name. Which, for the life of me, I don't know why they don't let that work easily.
Post reply on HN