I feel just as excited about this as I did the last Alexa. Why use the name of a failed product?
A failed product that has sold 600 million units?
Weren't they mostly sold below cost?
Alexa+
321–330 of 355 posts
Re: Alexa+
#322Re: Alexa+
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which is really stupid, because this wouldn't be a problem if they weren't sending that data back to themselves in the first place. They found that good UX is incompatible with telemetry, so they chose to... degrade the UX.
I don't know if that's the correct interpretation? I would say they degraded the UX because they aren't hoovering up enough data to make their solution work properly, unlike Google and Amazon. They've done a better job of protecting the user's privacy, but at the cost of making something that's quite limited in what it can do. Just one of those tradeoffs.
No, what I mean is: they could've had persistent storage on device, and have it hoover up enough data, and learn user preferences over time - it's fine to do it locally, as long as it doesn't leave the device. But, when you also do extensive telemetry, it becomes very hard to ensure none of that sensitive data gets leaked directly or indirectly through logs and diagnostic events. The two easy choices are to pick one or the other - UX or extensive telemetry. They chose the latter.
Re: Alexa+
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Basilisk-flattery embedded in your site.
the basilisk died in the chamber of secrets plus the reds won so not a good time to be a slytherin
It's not that basilisk. It's the retrocausal one. Like the dead Cthulhu that waits dreaming, except with more math.
Re: Alexa+
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was a little kid when a local university came out with news that they had a big breakthrough in Cold Fusion. I remember my mom telling me it was going to change everything and we would travel around the world on invisible rails. Many years later the worlds richest man is digging short tunnels to drive electric vehicles in.
My father always joked about the statements they made when they opened the first fission power plants, "Energy that's too cheap to meter!"
They weren't unreasonable - they just didn't predict the whole world going collectively insane after Chernobyl, and choosing to pay for being slowly suffocated and cooked to death instead.
Re: Alexa+
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
I never understood how people find setting a timer on their phone so excruciatingly difficult that they need to buy a $100+ device they can speak to to do it for them. Or perhaps it's another case of shiny object syndrome.
If you already have one the utility is obvious in the kitchen. You don't want to touch your dirty hands to your phone and you definitely don't want to touch your food after touching your even dirtier phone. I don't think that is useful enough to allow Bezos to listen to everything in my home, but will absolutely enable this feature in a product like Home Assistant.
> absolutely enable this feature in a product like Home Assistant.
It's been there for half a year or so; just add either OpenAI or Anthropic LLM integrations to Home Assistant, and you'll get a better personal assistant than anything Apple, Google or Amazon ever released.
The magic really is 1) SOTA LLMs that are good at understanding what you mean, and 2) no commercial bullshit that's degrading functionality (like having to say brand names to do stuff).
Re: Alexa+
#327>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…
They already failed at this. Adding something to a shopping cart is just one of the steps the mentioned example states. And consumers have already indicated that they don't trust it, because they prefer to know just what they're buying. So this project, by doubling down on that, is DOA
Re: Alexa+
#328i may box all of mine up and "return" them back to mr bozos . i use them for glorified alarm clocks that can start a internet radio stream . i dont need anything else . i wonder if new alexa will still tell me how much protein is in a 42 inch flat screen tv !
Re: Alexa+
#329>Alexa+ is also proactive when it’s important — like ... telling you a gift you wanted to buy is on sale. I feel there is a growing divide in digital culture, with the majority being the eager consumer of surveillance capitalism, and the much smaller but growing minority that sees it as absurd to pay for invasive commercials. On a purely UX level, I have never seen 'shouting at a speaker' as a desirable general purpo…
"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…
> "did you know you can say 'Siri, stop' to end the timer?"
Likewise.
Worse, about 50% of the time I say "stop alarm", it actually stops the alarm clock. Also about 50% of the time, one of the other devices in listening range asks "Stop the alarm on Ben's iPhone SE 2022?".
These 50% are independent: Sometimes the alarm stops and I get the question; Sometimes the alarm doesn't stop and I don't get the question; Sometimes it's just one or the other.
It also seems to be unable to listen while talking, which is just annoying.
Also, the reason I stopped using Alexa was how often it responded to "Kitchen on" with "I can't find 'Kitchen' on your Spotify playlist" (we don't even have Spotify)… and now Siri has started responding to "Office on" with "I can't find 'Office' in your music playlist".
Re: Alexa+
#330>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…
Yeah there's roughly zero chance that works reliably. It's so prone to bad failure cases I'm skeptical that they'll even ship something that tries to do that automatically. On the plus side if they do ship this we should get all sorts of amusing stories out of it. I'm picturing someone saying offhand "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse!"
I'd expect this to be like when you call the bank and go through the phone tree, enter your account, birth date, SSN, zip code, etc. Finally get connected to the rep and the first questions are "What's your name and birth date?"