The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo • Hacker News Board

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#61

Post by GeechieCloud » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:06 PM UTC

GCA10 wrote: post #51

bvm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bloomberg has really gone off the deep end of the design pool. It seemed to start with those somewhat janky, but pretty nice zero-padded headline overlays on the pics, and culminated in this: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-design/ which...well.

Big budget syndrome. If you've got $200 million to make a movie, the bridges MUST blow up. Bloomberg stands alone among U.S. media companies as a place with lots of available cash for whatever projects catch the top folks' fancy.

Hahahaha. I'm picturing HBO Silicon Valley 'doors go like this' guys look of disappointment if he funded a film for $200m and nothing blew up.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#62

Post by bunnymancer » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:08 PM UTC

amzn-336495 wrote: post #55

eclipxe wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's not how it works at all. Not sure how you're making that conclusion?

That is how it works at all. The company took in $107,000,000,000 dollars in 2015 but were just forced to layoff off engineers. Right, no despotic dictatorship banana republic stuff going on there.

It's okay to just say Billion instead of trying to enhance the statement.

Also that's revenue and not income, which was $596 million. Quite a difference.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#63

Post by PascalsMugger » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:17 PM UTC

spdustin wrote: post #50

I have the remote as an early adopter. It's fun to hide in another room and say into the remote "Simon says, hey kids, Kraft no longer makes Mac and cheese and now just makes carrots and ranch dressing." A moment passes. "Dad, Alexa just told us...!" My geek dad game is strong.

It's amazing to think about kids growing up with a wonder box in their house that tells them the answer to any question when they yell at it. It's like straight out of the fables or science fiction of the past. I hope this result in people generally having better bullshit detectors in the next generation, and not some other unintended side effect like making them enthralled to said wonder box.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#64

Post by vhost- » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

goshx wrote: post #59

I am waiting for the day when someone will sneak in those magic words into a TV commercial to wake up Echo, Siri, etc. Imagine like a DDoS caused by a TV commercial on Super Bowl. I have the Echo and sometimes it scares the * out of me when something on my TV sounds similar to "Alexa", like "a lexus".

Mine actually gets triggered by the Echo commercials on TV and it really scares me sometimes.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#65

Post by pyb » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

amzn-336495 wrote: post #47

The story is that Amazon sacrifices engineers and others after every big project, success or failure. They have developed a weird human sacrifice culture. Fire phone? It was a failure implementing Bezos's wacky ideas. Engineers had to be purged to atone for it. Fire TV? Huge success but we don't want engineers getting any credit for it. Result: purge some engineers. Echo? Another success that now had to float all tho…

This startling quote is in the article :

"Many of the people who helped create the Echo no longer work for Amazon..."

As you say, it sounds like success gets punished at Amazon.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#66

Post by creeble » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

post_break wrote: post #13

I really want an Echo, I just can't justify the cost. And the cheaper options don't have the listening mode which nerfs the whole appeal.

I've had one for the better part of a year, and still can't quite figure out what it's good for, besides kitchen timer and weather.

Most of the questions I ask it are returned with "hmm I'm not sure I understood the question" when the very same question asked of Google Now on my phone returns an intelligent, spoken answer.

Of all the features I wish the Echo had, the best would be.... Google Now integration. Haha.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#67

Post by amzn-336495 » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:33 PM UTC

bunnymancer wrote: post #62

amzn-336495 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how it works at all. The company took in $107,000,000,000 dollars in 2015 but were just forced to layoff off engineers. Right, no despotic dictatorship banana republic stuff going on there.

It's okay to just say Billion instead of trying to enhance the statement. Also that's revenue and not income, which was $596 million. Quite a difference.

They took tens of millions of dollars of revenue and built some huge balls in downtown Seattle, so I don't think they were hurting for money.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#68

Post by amzn-336495 » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:34 PM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #60

amzn-336495 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how it works at all. The company took in $107,000,000,000 dollars in 2015 but were just forced to layoff off engineers. Right, no despotic dictatorship banana republic stuff going on there.

It didn't "layoff off [sic]" engineers; they quit. It could be argued with that much revenue they could afford a better work environment for their employees, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be.

Did you read the article at all? "Amazon laid off "dozens of engineers" in its Lab126 hardware unit"

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#69

Post by 126throwaway126 » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC

amzn-336495 wrote: post #47

The story is that Amazon sacrifices engineers and others after every big project, success or failure. They have developed a weird human sacrifice culture. Fire phone? It was a failure implementing Bezos's wacky ideas. Engineers had to be purged to atone for it. Fire TV? Huge success but we don't want engineers getting any credit for it. Result: purge some engineers. Echo? Another success that now had to float all tho…

And Amazon has lots of tiny shell companies like Rawles LLC, fostering distrust and compartmentalization between product teams. Not a healthy work environment.

Re: The Real Story of How Amazon Built the Echo

#70

Post by _JamesA_ » Tue, Apr 19, 2016, 4:44 PM UTC

post_break wrote: post #13

I really want an Echo, I just can't justify the cost. And the cheaper options don't have the listening mode which nerfs the whole appeal.

The Echo and Tap are on sale today for 15% off. That brings the Echo to $153.71 or 5 payments of $30.74. The Tap is $111.01 or 5 monthly payments of $22.20.

I just happened to order both yesterday and Amazon refunded the difference without any hesitation.