Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#221

Post by dx034 » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 4:50 PM UTC

habosa wrote: post #215

I have noticed that Amazon (and Amazon merchants) seem to be unprepared for this holiday season. Amazon was always my go-to place for "oh shit I need a Christmas present at it's December 20th". I went online to buy a few things this weekend and almost every item I looked up was marked "Back in stock on Dec XX" where XX was somewhere in the range of 24th to 30th. So I'm not surprised that this extends to Amazon's own…

Could be a sign for the current economic environment. Ecommerce took really off in the last decade or so. The recovery after the crisis in '08 took long and while consumption was ok, it was never extremely good.

Current numbers, especially in the US, look very promising. Growth isn't where it has been in the past, but employment is very strong and so is spending. Wage growth will have a large effect on spending for gifts, especially for earners with low wages.

Maybe that's why Amazon was so surprised this year. They anticipated their growth number to what they sold last year and didn't account for the extra boost.

Of course that's just speculation, but it would fit well. And would explain why I don't see this effect on Amazon UK at all.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#222

Post by matwood » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 4:51 PM UTC

sikim wrote: post #168

matwood wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are people actually using these for? Off the top of my head from last night while cooking dinner: * "hey google, add olive oil to the grocery list" * "hey google, set a timer for 15 minutes for rice" * "hey google, play some Christmas music" * "hey google, how much time is left on the rice" I could have fumbled with pulling out my iphone for all of these, but I would have had to stop prepping dinner, wash my h…

I believe from iPhone 6S and above, there's an option to just say "Hey, Siri" to activate Siri without having to touch the phone, so you can basically do the same thing with iPhones.

There is, but my phone is either in my pocket or not right next to me. Google Home works fine across the room, and ties directly into Google Music. I can also tell it to cast to my better speakers if that's what I want it to do. Siri also has a weird way of doing multiple timers: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2014/01/timers-and-reminder...

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#223

Post by matwood » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 4:52 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #204

matwood wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what are people actually using these for? Off the top of my head from last night while cooking dinner: * "hey google, add olive oil to the grocery list" * "hey google, set a timer for 15 minutes for rice" * "hey google, play some Christmas music" * "hey google, how much time is left on the rice" I could have fumbled with pulling out my iphone for all of these, but I would have had to stop prepping dinner, wash my h…

> "hey google, play some Christmas music" In Canada this just doers a google search, whereas "play Bruno Mars" fires up Spotify as expected.

I have Google Music so it finds music by matching on playlists/genre.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#224

Post by tekromancr » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 4:53 PM UTC

m_t wrote: post #106

petra wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon says that only after you say the hotword it transmits voice to servers.

Well then we can definitely trust them.

I'm starting to get tired of this. I really don't understand this sentiment on a forum called "hacker news" of all places. You don't have to trust anyones word about it not listening 24/7. It is t r i v i a l to look at the data from the echo transiting across the network. You can see that the traffic spikes after you say alexia as it sends the audio data out.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#225

Post by Raphmedia » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 4:54 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #7

Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

You are not alone. I also have some gremlins messing with my technology.

I like to believe that there is an AI out there that managed to avoid CAPTCHA and is messing with us at the worst moments.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#226

Post by ajford » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 4:56 PM UTC

tclancy wrote: post #179

GuiA wrote: post #7

Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

Another kindred spirit here, another programmer who can't tell if they're just getting old or if electronic devices are getting worse. I describe each of our AppleTVs as "something that works perfectly, except when you really need it"-- when we finally have time to watch a movie we want to see, when our daughter is losing her mind about wanting to see some video, that's the only time it craps itself. >2016 macbook th…

Have you considered upgrading your Wifi setup to something like Ubiquiti Unifi hardware? I'm trying to convince the spouse that I need ~1k$ upgrade our home network to Ubiquiti...

There's a blog post that was on HN a few days back about it: https://www.troyhunt.com/ubiquiti-all-the-things-how-i-final...

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#227

Post by ajford » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:00 PM UTC

croon wrote: post #90

new299 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of technology is pretty flaky. I think you have a couple of issues however: 1. You have sucky Internet. Bad Internet is going to cause numerous issues. From what I've heard it's hard to get a really good Internet connection in the US. But in many places in the world, great Internet connections are available at low cost. Bad Internet means devices are going to have issues with firmware updates. Things will be mo…

> 2. There's no reason why your macbook should keep disconnecting from Wifi. Perhaps you live somewhere with a lot of RF noise? Or you have a cheap/crappy router? Again, this is an issue which many people don't face. Mostly Wifi just works. I've went through tons of routers, and on those routers all available firmwares (dd-wrt. open-wrt, tomato, etc). I've been using an Asus RT-AC87U for the last couple of years now,…

Check out Ubiquiti gear. I've been wanting to upgrade to their Unifi line, but haven't convinced the spouse that I need the money when it "works" to her. The random drop-outs don't bug you when you aren't constantly SSHed into something, and the bursty speeds aren't bad when you aren't moving files to and fro on the internal network. :(

There was a cool blog recently on HN about switching to Ubiquiti HW: https://www.troyhunt.com/ubiquiti-all-the-things-how-i-final...

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#228

Post by johnwheeler » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

swozey wrote: post #198

johnwheeler wrote: post #196

People here are really missing the point with these things asking, "why should I care?" It should be clear to the HN crowd. One day, ambient voice technology is going to be everywhere. In your car. In the supermarket. Everywhere. The Amazon Echo is an early example of it. That it's connected to the largest goods distribution network has the potential to enhance modern living in an obvious way. It's so typical with ne…

I've had this stuff in my cars, phones and now laptop (siri and cortana) for years and I've never found it to be a smooth execution to the point that I just don't use it. My BMW has a horrible manual system for entering addresses into its navi (spin wheel to letters), you'd think the voice system would be an easy resolution but it's even clunkier. I bought 2 dots last night, one to plug into my Sonos and one to use a…

It's early. Think beyond the current capabilities and project 10 or 20 years from now.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#229

Post by balls187 » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:03 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #7

Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

My biggest problem with the Echo is that if the volume is too loud, I have to shout at it.

Outside of that, big fan of it. Despite only using a few features.

I'm less bothered by flaws in implementation, and instead bothered by failing to live up to potential due to artificial limits.

For example, the original Xbox had Ethernet and a harddrive, but it's capabilities were completely hamstrung by the OS. It wasn't until the device was hacked did it really come into it's own (spawning XMBP=>XBMC=>(Kodi|Boxee|Plex|...).

I got the Echo when Amazon was offering it to select Prime members for $99, so I didn't have much expectations for it. I was happy that I could change the wake work (Because Alexa is the name of an ex-gf), and the kitchen timer, and news feature were more than enough for me.

Once they added Spotify integration, it was well worth the cost to me.

Re: Amazon Sells Out of Echo Speakers in Midst of Holiday Rush

#230

Post by 20years » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 5:04 PM UTC

GuiA wrote: post #7

Clearly, people love these things. I have a few friends who own it and say it's an amazing product; and commenters on HN have expressed their enthusiasm for it as well. There is a question that's been bothering me for years now, to which I still don't have an answer, which is: does modern technology suck just for me, or am I just less tolerant of defects than most people are? I am currently typing this from a 2016 ma…

I feel the same way. We bought an echo for the kids a month ago. It wore off within a week. They now really only use it occasionally for music.

I could be partly to blame for that though because I don't like that fact that every thing they say into the echo is recorded and saved into the cloud so I limited what they could do with it. Don't want all my kids silly activities saved and tracked like that.

The Echo gets things wrong a lot more than 5%. I agree, that takes the fun out of it and becomes increasingly annoying. Sometimes, its quicker and easier to simply type in the search in Google.

I love my paper books!!

I still truly do not understand the full appeal of the IoT. I play with this stuff as a hobby, but I am always asking myself "would, I really use this in real life?" and 95% of the time the answer is no.