61–70 of 355 posts
The fusion of the different devices is cool but man it feels odd to be owned by some company, integrated into all aspects of your life idk. My phone runs my life so maybe Google owns me technically
I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.
I ordered the first echo the day it was announced, and was excited about the possibility for years. But that "possibility" never turned into reality for me and I ended up only using it to start timers and play music. I've since abandoned the product line and do not have faith that Amazon will develop this into something actually useful, rather than something that is used to sell me products and surveil on me.
It’s really awesome for starting timers and playing music though. I also ask it questions and it does pretty well at answering them. For once we get to be on the opposite side of the exploitation curve here. They can provide this service to me for free in perpetuity I hope. I think my Dots were maybe $19 or bought on eBay.
>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…
I don't think it's a growing minority. I think HN has proved to be hospitable to anti-surveillance-capitalism viewpoints because of the way upvote-based sites work and so creates a flywheel of attracting more anti-surveillance-capitalism viewpoints. Don't mistake chatter on these sites for general sentiment. My observation is that the public has pretty multifaceted views on this, some very negative, others neutral or positive.
> On a purely UX level, I have never seen 'shouting at a speaker' as a desirable general purpose interface.
I mean I mostly ride a bike to get around and even then I have a lot of time where I'm doing some low-intellect work that needs to get done with my hands. Just yesterday I was washing the dishes and cleaning our kitchen. It was messier than usual because my partner is sick and she needs to rest. That was an hour of "work" that I basically queued up a podcast for. If I had a good verbal assistant, I'd tell it to read random things online, or queue up some Anki cards. I've tried screen readers for these kinds of things but they're awful for reasons that both make me feel really bad for visually impaired folks and reasons that will inflate and derail this comment.
I will say: “Alexa, send an announcement”. But 50% of the time, instead of prompting me for the announcement, it will play me saying “Send an announcement” around the house.
I wonder if anyone else has had this issue, or if it’s just me?
How much intelligence does it take to handle "Alexa, turn off the light" or "Alexa, play something by Taylor Swift"? Are people actually trusting Alexa to answer questions that require actual thought?
This isn’t what they are selling. They are selling “Alexa play all the songs Taylor made after her breakup with xxx”
I see this kind of junk in their prime video adds when we are trying to watch a movie. "While we show this add, click here to add the item to your cart".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Customers will also be able to access Alexa+ in a new mobile app (available in the Apple App Store and Google Play store) and a new browser-based experience at Alexa.com.
And how exactly do I copy & paste or even use my keyboard to input text to Alexa+? I believe that I have my phone in my hands no longer than 10 minutes a day, and it is not linked to my PC, nor will it ever be. There are only a few things I consider as worthless as a keyboard on a 65mmx40mm touchscreen surface. Only in case of emergency.
The fusion of the different devices is cool but man it feels odd to be owned by some company, integrated into all aspects of your life idk. My phone runs my life so maybe Google owns me technically
What does it mean to be "owned" here? Are you not the one choosing to pay Amazon, or to use your Google phone? You surely get something out of this trade.
edit: another tagent, almost every non-tech person I know (including family) don't know how to use ad-blockers so their lives are influenced by these ads, they just accept them "that's how it is"
movies are similar (theater) granted that one at least you may find something interesting but you sit down to watch a movie, there are 30 minutes of trailers before your movie starts plus the company's own ads eg. AMC
I get I sound jaded/miserable but I do spend most of my time in tech