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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

#701

Post by ysacfanboi »

bryananderson wrote: post #387
ysacfanboi wrote: post #275

Please realize, for this to be true, there must be another incentive. I.e., Alexa devices are government-subsidized spyware. What are the advantages for Amazon? - Mic-popping, Camera-popping, mobile phone backdoor access, network sniffing, device activity monitoring across all wifi/bluetooth connected networks. - Sidewalk (remember this? Amazon "borrows" your wifi, for free...) Unplug Alexa devices. Remove the Alexa…

This is hysterical. I never owned one until I worked on the product because I worried it was always recording/transmitting. Turns out it’s not. Promise. You don’t need a shadowy government cabal to explain Alexa persisting too long in the strategy described in the article. Just a powerful chief executive with an attachment to the product, the sunk cost fallacy, a company with too much revenue to know what to do with,…

To be sure, it's not shadowy. You can track awarded contracts. You can track employment of persons from 3-5 letter agencies into private sector. You can look on Amazon Science page from 2019, where plans for "ambient intelligence" begin.

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

#702

Post by bombcar »

ta1243 wrote: post #676
derefr wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, you can't even pick out a brand-name product from a brick and mortar store and be sure of getting the real thing. People will buy something from a store, buy a fake version of that thing on AliExpress, swap the fake into the box, re-shrinkwrap the box, return the shrinkwrapped fake to the store, and sell the real one on eBay. The store will often put the thing back on the shelf, because it's still shrinkw…

> People will buy something from a store, buy a fake version of that thing on AliExpress, swap the fake into the box, re-shrinkwrap the box, return the shrinkwrapped fake to the store, and sell the real one on eBay. Why not just sell the AliExpress one on ebay?

Because eBay will respond very angrily when people report getting the fake piece of junk. Walmart doesn’t care if you are intelligent work hard at it. You don’t even have to give them your drivers license and they never know.

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

#703

Post by bombcar »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #463
throwadobe wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF to Amazon they take all my shit back on the reg

Amazon will accept returns, but not like Costco will or sears did. Sears would exchange any broken craftsman tool for a new one even decades after purchase. Costco is much the same. Used, year old stuff with missing parts will gladly be refunded in full.

To be fair to Costco you have to understand that the way they do that is they just send the item back to the vendor and deduct it from the next purchase. The vendors only option is to not sell stuff to Costco anymore.

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

#704

Post by paledot »

pmontra wrote: post #619
regularfry wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's malicious compliance. They probably wouldn't show anything other than the pack price if they had a choice, so there's something forcing them to show unit prices. So given that they have to show them anyway, they have an opportunity to inject profitable confusion. Non-metric units are just icing on the cake.

I remember that around year 2000 a coworker from England told me that petrol pumps changed the prices from pounds per gallon to pounds per liter when the cost crossed the one pound mark. There is some malice in that too. Something like that could be the origin of using different units in those USA shops, not to cross some psychological threshold. It's been a long time since I went to the UK so I can't say if petrol i…

Gallons are larger than litres, so in Canada you'll never find anything sold by the gallon. However, pounds are smaller than kilograms, so produce at the grocery store is commonly advertised with per-pound price, with the per-kilogram in small print.

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

#705

Post by paledot »

pjc50 wrote: post #650
pmontra wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that around year 2000 a coworker from England told me that petrol pumps changed the prices from pounds per gallon to pounds per liter when the cost crossed the one pound mark. There is some malice in that too. Something like that could be the origin of using different units in those USA shops, not to cross some psychological threshold. It's been a long time since I went to the UK so I can't say if petrol i…

It is, and everything is required to be sold in metric units. Except for things like pipe fittings and screw sizes, but even those have to show the metric somewhere. There's an effort to switch car efficiency from mpg (higher is better) to "l/100km" (smaller is better), because the latter has more intuitive scaling as well as being properly metric. There were definitely people complaining about the price hike when th…

I can see bearing a grudge for 50 years over that one, though.

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

#706

Post by joenot443 »

lionkor wrote: post #605
ChadNauseam wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 impli…

Its because you clicked on an unrelated google result about string views. After you have taken any kind of C++ course, like learncpp.com, you dont have to look this stuff up anymore either. So if LLMs are worth 200$/month to you, I would be very interested to see what actually learning the tools you use would be worth.

Do you take a course for every programming language you encounter?

I needed to edit a Ruby script the other day for a client, though I'm not at all a Ruby developer. ChatGPT was super helpful.

If I'm understanding correctly, your model here would instead be to enroll in a Ruby course, right? I think we must value our time very differently :)

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

#707

Post by oblio »

bombcar wrote: post #690
oblio wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only happens in shady mom and pop corner stores where laws are not enforced. Most countries force price listing and it's trivial to get caught.

You will see 10 X but it’s in places where it’s considered emergency go to the 24 hour gas station and look at the price of diapers or butt wipes compared to Walmart.

Yeah, but it's different if they list the price and it's huge, compared to no price listed at all.

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

#708

Post by honkycat »

A former company I worked at made a TON of money by providing radio over the internet, and Alexa was one of our big money makers.

We had a partnership with Amazon to be THE radio provider.

...Then Amazon released their own internal version of our product and kicked us off of keywords.

Our revenue tanked due to this, and I ended up getting laid off. Because Amazon saw an opportunity and betrayed their partner.

Get bent amazon!

Why would anyone ever integrate with Alexa if they are just going to steal the idea?

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

#709

Post by NBJack »

swatcoder wrote: post #100
paxys wrote: 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…

> I always want to see a page with the product details and price before I click "buy". Reducing the number of clicks is not going to make me change my decision. This is compounded by the multi-headed monster that large orgs like theirs have no choice but to become. If customers could trust that every day essentials had a relatively stable price and availability pattern like they trust from their local grocery store (…

Yes, the absolute deluge of options for price and shipping speed is one of my chief concerns as well, even outside of voice based orders. This plagues the web interface as well, requiring you to either try and refine via search options (not always available!) or basically doom scrolling. Even a simple sort option, like Ebay has had for years on price v distance, would be a welcome change.

But it seems that, much like Google search and the glut of questionable sites gaming the system via SEO, I think Amazon too will always be fighting against sellers clamoring to be 'above the fold' of results.

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

#710

Post by hahamaster »

netsharc wrote: post #659
asfodelsu wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In many places in Europe: Normal price per item big letters, price per Kg small letters. Problem solved

I've seen the "unit price" be per 100g (Especially so you don't notice it's a ton of money per kg) so there's still some screwing around...

I prefer prices per 100g because I mostly buy food that's under one kilo. I'm sure they show prices per 100g just to make them look cheaper but in my case I actually prefer it this way.
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