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Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#331
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how does the whole LLM market come to fruition? I'm paying for chatGPT and use it quite often. I find it very useful. I don't pay for chat because there have been free options since the 80s. I don't pay for voice(chat) because there have free options for ~10yrs?

Interesting. How much would one have to pay you to stop using it? Wondering what the use cases are (replace Google? Stack Overflow? etc).

I'd have to be paid probably at least $200/mo to stop using LLMs, they are a massive productivity boost for new projects and can replace google for simple things. As an example of replacing google (since I was writing C++ today and I haven't used it in ages):

me: is there an issue with passing "hello" to std::string

claude: Passing "hello" to a function expecting std::string is actually not an issue. C++ allows implicit conversion from string literals (like "hello") to std::string objects. This conversion is possible because std::string has a constructor that accepts a const char*, which is the type of string literals in C++.

If I type this question into google, I get this:

> some_function(std::string{"hello, world"}); is completely safe, as long as the function doesn't preserve the string_view for later use. The temporary std::string is destroyed at the end of this full-expression (roughly speaking, at this ; ), so it's destroyed after the function returns.

which doesn't really answer my question

As an example of simple project: I wanted to make an app with swiftUI, and I was able to just describe it to claude and have it give me the basic outlines of the app, and then improve it by iteratively asking claude for changes. Since I try to understand the output, this lead to me learning Swift and SwiftUI very quickly while also having a functional app within a few minutes.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for politicians that campaign on consumer protection legislation. Here in Europe, it's been mandatory to show a price related to a reasonable common base point (e.g. liter, kilogram, piece, usage-unit for laundry detergent) adjacent to the actual product's price for many years now. You can go and use 1/10/100 grams/milliliters though for small scale packages where that is reasonably common (e.g. spices), and tha…

Here in the US with Amazon it will usually give you a price per quantity, though that can vary between "each", "oz", etc... The real issue being complained about is that there may be 10 listings in Amazon for "Tide Pods", so if you say to Alexa "Order Tide Pods" you aren't sure what you'll get, what quantity, or what price. Amazon REALLY needs to do some product normalization. It is true that if you go into a grocery…

The big difference with a store is that if tide pods should be ~$8 for a pack, the dtore is incredibly unlikely to have one pack of tide pods on the shelf for $70

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#333
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of my Alexa usage is: Kitchen timer What's the weather Shipping and weather alerts So yeah, not sure where the money will come from. I get angry any time Alexa recommends anything.

The other really big use case - actually the majority for me! - is telling Alexa to add things to shopping lists. I have one list I always check when I'm at a physical store or preparing for curbside shopping.

And I use a steno pad for that.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#334
post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for politicians that campaign on consumer protection legislation. Here in Europe, it's been mandatory to show a price related to a reasonable common base point (e.g. liter, kilogram, piece, usage-unit for laundry detergent) adjacent to the actual product's price for many years now. You can go and use 1/10/100 grams/milliliters though for small scale packages where that is reasonably common (e.g. spices), and tha…

Nah. Just choose to buy the way you wish to. Vote with your money and don’t artificially restrict where there’s zero issues. Everything works out in the end. I’d much rather transact in the US than Europe. The entire retail customer experience and return policy is unmatched. The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.

> The last thing I want is for some government regulation to make it suck like Europe.

Are you aware that Europe has a mandatory 2 year minimum warranty period on consumer purchases? A mandatory 14-days no-questions-asked return window on all purchases?

In the US, AFAIK you're fully at the mercy of whatever the vendor so graciously offers you.

[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#335
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's ridiculous that I have to have a spreadsheet with pricing information and links for household goods just to spot check and make sure I'm getting the actual price per quantity that I want due to the multiple dynamic listings that change every day nightmare. Don't ask how many times I receive more or less than I thought I would or something came in 10 packages of 3 instead of 1 30x package.

Prescription drugs have something called "NDC number" ( National Drug Codes ). What we need is NDC numbers but for consumer goods.

European Article number

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#336
post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of my Alexa usage is: Kitchen timer What's the weather Shipping and weather alerts So yeah, not sure where the money will come from. I get angry any time Alexa recommends anything.

The other really big use case - actually the majority for me! - is telling Alexa to add things to shopping lists. I have one list I always check when I'm at a physical store or preparing for curbside shopping.

That sounds handy, how do you get the list back out?

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#337
post #86

The core issue is that Amazon envisioned Alexa as a product that would help it increase sales. Smart home features were always an afterthought. How convenient would it be if people could shout "Alexa order me Tide Pods" from wherever they were in their home and the order got magically processed? That demo definitely got applause from a boardroom full of execs. The problem is that consumers don't behave like that. Thi…

What do you need Alexa to do with your smart home that it can't do today? https://www.amazon.com/alexa-smart-home/b?ie=UTF8&node=21442... Seems like the voice-smart-home problem is the same as the voice-shopping problem: There is a limit to how many features you can/want to support in a voice interface.

It just sucks. I get non-deterministic reactions from "turn off the lights" vs "turn off every light" vs "all lights off".. one of those phrases eventually works. I had to set up a custom action ("goodnight") to reliably do the thing.

If they focused on getting voice control for home automation perfect, it could be a real winner.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind ordering only made sense when Amazon customer service was top notch. That ended when Amazon started having profitable quarters and started Day Two. Now I have to be paranoid about checking product details like if there are 3rd party sellers using FBA which potentially signals fakes. There’s no longer blind trust in Amazon for a lot of customers. I can’t just mindlessly buy stuff with the hope that Amazon custom…

I can't come up with a single item that I would blind order. At most, I could ask Alexa to add an item to a shopping list and then verify the list and place the order myself.

I would love to order a bunch of things - toilet paper, kitchen paper, toothpaste, mayonnaise, sriracha, foil, dishwasher and laundry tabs. Anything that isn’t a weekly purchase that I find myself out of when I want to use it.

The problem isn’t that I don’t want to blind order it, it’s that I don’t trust blind ordering it from Amazon.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#339
The Alexa leadership at Amazon has been a waste since day 1 (pun intended).

Shopping with Alexa is easy to fix!

Reorder what I want, not the most popular item. When I say, order diapers, use the last brand and size that I ordered. That would actually be useful! Who wants to say "get my diapers" and get a random box of random sized diapers? Do the Alexa leadership even use their own product?

Distinguish regular orders from one-offs. I never want a one-off order from a category I don't regularly order from. But I very much want to be able to reup regular orders.

Let me order incrementally from Fresh as I cook. I would order from Fresh more often if I could just say "Alexa, we're out of red wine vinegar". Again, I have to know 100% that it would get the item that I want, not some random item. Then, let me say, "Ok, pull the trigger on all of the pending fresh orders Sat at noon".

Voice identification is a must. I don't want random people ordering. And I don't want my kids ordering. The first thing everyone with kids does is turn off ordering. The fact that they can't sort this out is crazy!

Their half-hearted attempt to create an ecosystem was completely wasted. No one wants to use a wake word, then another command word, and another word, just to access a skill. They need to figure out how to route to skills automatically based on what someone is asking. This isn't rocket science they're just incompetent.

Also, has anyone seen the website to install new skills? It could win an award for worst UI.

Skills can also charge you while using them! The skills store is full of 1 star reviews from people saying they got charged against their will for months in some cases.

It feels like the Alexa team just doesn't talk to consumers.

Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions

#340
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to your point, one can't even pick out a brand-name product directly from Amazon's website and be sure of getting the real thing.

That's been an issue with ordering consumer electronics. I don't know if the item is refurbished, returned,or endorsed by the manufacturer warranty. I basically only order through the manufacturer or best buy these days.

Does Best Buy not resell returns?
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