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Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

theguardian.com

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Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#61

Post by ghaff »

CrazyStat wrote: post #58
jsjohnst wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh, and a conversion chat is also somewhat horrible, because this one country uses volumetric measurements where the form a product is in changes how much X of that unit means. If it’s so hard for you, then buy measuring cups in US sizes or stop using US recipes. These are trivially solved problems in a low tech way. You’re like an addict trying desperately to defend why they need a fix. Yeesh!

> buy measuring cups in US sizes Measuring cups are an objectively terrible unit, since (1) the volume of a cup, while officially standardized, is not consistent across the measuring cups you'll find in stores, and (2) the amount (mass) of common ingredients in a cup can vary wildly--50% or more--depending on how densely packed the ingredient is. A "standard" cup of flour is generally considered to be 120-130g, but i…

>Measuring cups are an objectively terrible unit

For baking, I'll generally weigh and, for flour, pretty much always. However, I use measuring cups all the time for other cooking where recipes may not even give a weight equivalent to a volume of something.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#62

Post by danpalmer »

feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

> order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow

That's 2 continuous axes and one discrete option. What if the cheapest one is the worst reviewed? What if the most expensive one is the best reviewed? What if the middle price is only slightly above the worst review? What if there's a clearly cheapest, best option that is only available in 2 days?

How do you "trust" an answer to this? What does a single choice answer even mean?

I'm not sure I'd trust a shopkeeper to make this decision for me, as they could easily rationalise not telling me about the cheap and great option if it's not in stock, or falling more on the quality than the price because they make more margin. And Amazon is in this position on this one.

I can see a market for "Alexa, order me cheap dogfood for tomorrow", but pretty much anything more complex than that I just don't think people would give the decision to a biased third party to make for them, let alone a non-human one.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#63

Post by CrazyStat »

jsjohnst wrote: post #60
CrazyStat wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> buy measuring cups in US sizes Measuring cups are an objectively terrible unit, since (1) the volume of a cup, while officially standardized, is not consistent across the measuring cups you'll find in stores, and (2) the amount (mass) of common ingredients in a cup can vary wildly--50% or more--depending on how densely packed the ingredient is. A "standard" cup of flour is generally considered to be 120-130g, but i…

> A "standard" cup of flour is generally considered to be 120-130g, but if you buy a brand new bag of flour at the store and scoop a cup off the top you may be getting as much as 200g, since it's densely packed. I’m not debating if the US method of measurement in recipes is terrible or not (it is!). But taking an imprecise unit of measurement and lossy converting it to another is better (edit for clarity what I meant…

Yes, converting a cup of flour to 120g of flour is absolutely better. That way your measurements will be consistent from day to day, so you can learn and make adjustments--"This recipe calls for 300g flour, but the dough was a bit loose last time--I'll try 315g instead." (In practice I'd probably first adjust the liquid content rather than the flour amount, but you get the idea).

If you're measuring 2.5 cups of flour one day you might get 317g and another day you might get 362g, so you can't even make the same consistency dough twice.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#64

Post by jsjohnst »

CrazyStat wrote: post #63
jsjohnst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A "standard" cup of flour is generally considered to be 120-130g, but if you buy a brand new bag of flour at the store and scoop a cup off the top you may be getting as much as 200g, since it's densely packed. I’m not debating if the US method of measurement in recipes is terrible or not (it is!). But taking an imprecise unit of measurement and lossy converting it to another is better (edit for clarity what I meant…

Yes, converting a cup of flour to 120g of flour is absolutely better. That way your measurements will be consistent from day to day, so you can learn and make adjustments--"This recipe calls for 300g flour, but the dough was a bit loose last time--I'll try 315g instead." (In practice I'd probably first adjust the liquid content rather than the flour amount, but you get the idea). If you're measuring 2.5 cups of flour…

> Yes, converting a cup of flour to 120g of flour is absolutely better.

Yes, but you do that once and done and then continue using the recipe in the future with the new quality measurement (adjusting as needed on future cooks). OP was advocating for using their Alexa to convert every time they cooked, specifically when their hands were full of raw sausage for example.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#65

Post by jacquesm »

ghaff wrote: post #11
feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing. Setting an alarm, playing an album, getting a quick weather forecast? OK. But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like when driving--not so much. For example, with podcasts, I find I really need to pre-populate a playlist and by and large I find trying to totally control my phone by voice is very hit and miss. Voice assistants have g…

> Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing.

That's because you interact with it as though it is a person, so your expectation levels are corresponding to the mode of communication used.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#66

Post by ghaff »

jacquesm wrote: post #65
ghaff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing. Setting an alarm, playing an album, getting a quick weather forecast? OK. But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like when driving--not so much. For example, with podcasts, I find I really need to pre-populate a playlist and by and large I find trying to totally control my phone by voice is very hit and miss. Voice assistants have g…

> Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing. That's because you interact with it as though it is a person, so your expectation levels are corresponding to the mode of communication used.

>That's because you interact with it as though it is a person

Well, that was sort of the pitch and it's certainly implied by "virtual/voice assistant." Certainly Amazon wasn't pitching Alexa as a voice-operated kitchen timer. To be honest, I'm probably better with them now because I know they mostly don't work but can be used for some simple tasks for which I know an incantation that mostly gives me the result I want.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#67

Post by harvey9 »

danpalmer wrote: post #62
feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

> order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow That's 2 continuous axes and one discrete option. What if the cheapest one is the worst reviewed? What if the most expensive one is the best reviewed? What if the middle price is only slightly above the worst review? What if there's a clearly cheapest, best option that is only available in 2 days? How do you "trust" an answer to this? What d…

I think it's almost achievable if you say 'cheapest with 4 or more stars and delivery tomorrow'. Problem remains that cheapest could be the smallest pack size or cheapest per pound, and Amazon is not good at the latter anyway.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#68

Post by CrazyStat »

jsjohnst wrote: post #64
CrazyStat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, converting a cup of flour to 120g of flour is absolutely better. That way your measurements will be consistent from day to day, so you can learn and make adjustments--"This recipe calls for 300g flour, but the dough was a bit loose last time--I'll try 315g instead." (In practice I'd probably first adjust the liquid content rather than the flour amount, but you get the idea). If you're measuring 2.5 cups of flour…

> Yes, converting a cup of flour to 120g of flour is absolutely better. Yes, but you do that once and done and then continue using the recipe in the future with the new quality measurement (adjusting as needed on future cooks). OP was advocating for using their Alexa to convert every time they cooked, specifically when their hands were full of raw sausage for example.

Maybe they make new recipes on a regular basis, so they're doing it once per recipe but still fairly often. I have hundreds of recipes in my file that I haven't gotten around to trying yet, I could easily make a new recipe every day for a year.

I use a recipe app that has built-in conversions I can configure, but if I'm making a recipe out of a paper book I sometimes use Alexa to do conversions for me. Ideally I'd do all the conversions before I got my hands dirty, but that doesn't always happen.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#69

Post by kabdib »

feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

> I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal

Entering into a subscription with no knowledge of that, let alone any up-front information about price or other terms, is very scummy behavior. The after-the-fact email attempts to claw back a moral high ground, but it's not difficult to see it for what it is. This combines the convenience of a smart speaker with the rapacity of a cold caller who already has your credit card number. It's thinly disguised fraud, and pernicious.

I doubt anyone would be happy with "Alexa, what's the weather?" entering them into an unannounced dollar-a-day contract with The Weather Company, or if asking about soccer scores got them automatically hooked up with a $7.99 Sportsball Channel add-on to their cable bill.

Re: Alexa, why have you charged me £2 to say the Hail Mary?

#70

Post by Agentlien »

ghaff wrote: post #11
feintruled wrote: post #6

I don't think this particular incident is any kind of big deal, though it's funny. It was only a £1.99 a month and there was a 7-day free trial anyway. Amazon say they emailed about it as confirmation. I think the issue it shows is how you can't trust voice control for anything important. It's just a bad interface for buying stuff particularly. If I am buying some dog food, I search dog food, glance over the options,…

Voice control is mostly pretty disappointing. Setting an alarm, playing an album, getting a quick weather forecast? OK. But something more complicated where you really would like good voice control--like when driving--not so much. For example, with podcasts, I find I really need to pre-populate a playlist and by and large I find trying to totally control my phone by voice is very hit and miss. Voice assistants have g…

I tried using Google Assistant a few years ago and it was so frustrating in some dumb ways.

A notable example was when I tried using it to make a call. I told it to call my wife, by name, and it couldn't understand her name at all. So I said "call my wife" and it asked who my wife is. I couldn't answer with voice, because it still didn't understand her name. But it did give me a popup to select her from my address book. So I did and the popup went away... No call. So I tell it "call my wife" and it replies "who is your wife?".

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