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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

#791

Post by bryananderson »

ysacfanboi wrote: post #701
bryananderson wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you’re right, they did a stellar job of hiding it from the engineers working on the devices!

Or maybe I’m one of the deep state cutouts. One never knows for sure.

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

#792

Post by davidf18 »

Damogran6 wrote: post #740
xp84 wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unit price labels here in the US are hilariously messed up. The items you want to compare will be say, a pack of 6 granola bars or a 10 pack. The unit prices will be like: #1: $0.37 / ounce #2: $6.50 / pound or even: #3: $1.82 / each (a price per item) This will even be common within the same exact brand too. The stores seem so bad at picking a consistent unit for a product category that it seems malicious, but i…

Oh, they have plenty of time to do it. We have created lots of MBAs...people who want to take advantage of their education, and to do so they want to squeeze a little more profit. And they're bored. And they need to stand out from their coworkers. Therefore 'price per net weight' becomes a thing. And Surge pricing. (Peanutbutter M&Ms are an egregious example...the share bag price varies 20% depending on the calendar,…

[dead]

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

#794

Post by smolder »

wiether wrote: post #649
DaoVeles wrote: post #423

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call businesses like that Llama's. When a Llama (the creature) generally starts getting friendly towards someone it means they are about to get nasty and attack/spit in your face. Amazon and Microsoft are two great examples of this. When they get close to you be weary. Go for the buy out or watch out for them trying to get ideas to steal.

> When a Llama (the creature) generally starts getting friendly towards someone it means they are about to get nasty and attack/spit in your face. Is that why Meta decided to call their _open source_ LLM this way? It would make a lot of sense!

It's called Llama because it has L L M in it and is cute.

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

#795

Post by dboreham »

noveltyaccount wrote: post #110
bluSCALE4 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any of that is true. If Costco produced such features in their imaginary product, people may use it. Why? Because Costco has proven itself trustworthy of a blind repeat purchase. You could trust the price you're paying is typical and fair. Amazon on the other hand...

To build on the Costco analogy: for any given product category they typically only have three specific options: good, better, best. I could tell Costco bot that I need AA batteries and it would ask me if I prefer Duracell, Kirkland brand, or cheapest. I trust that either of them will be plenty good, so I would say cheapest. Amazon has a vastly different experience with thousands of indistinguishable Chinese knockoffs…

Executive function tax.

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

#796

Post by mgh2 »

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…

Is this a failure of the UXR (observational studies) or product team (metrics)?

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

#797

Post by bogota »

pedrogpimenta wrote: post #599
bogota wrote: post #587

I hope the product burns. For the simple fact that it was such a huge oversight to use a popular human name for a home assistant product. Really just such an extremely stupid thing to do.

Your name is Alexa, isn't it?

It is not but i know two people who are named that. The jokes get old and it’s even worse when you have the stupid devices go off all the time when people use their names. One of them just switched to using their middle name because they got so sick of it.

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

#798

Post by stronglikedan »

mgraupner wrote: post #224
stronglikedan wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you say, "volume 15 percent" it will set it to 15%.

Not working for me, as I said in another comment, asking it to set it to 15% will set it to 20%.

that sucks that you're the only one in the world that it doesn't work for. sorry to hear that

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

#799

Post by 39896880 »

mycall wrote: post #693
39896880 wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s worse than that. These systems can be adapted by looking at failed user commands, but people don’t really sit around trying out fun things and watch it fall on its face for longer than the first day or so. After that, the novelty wears off, so you’ve trained your users to accept the device’s limitations. Then, even when you do improve the functionality, your users won’t know! They won’t try it, and those command…

> people don’t really sit around trying out fun things and watch it fall on its face for longer than the first day or so. Isn't this what thumbs-up/down RL is for? To improve the quality of the results.

That’s the intention but very few users enjoy being unpaid QA for trillion dollar corps.

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

#800

Post by WalterBright »

razakel wrote: post #638
WalterBright wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government routinely hides what you're paying in taxes. Case in point - the so-called "Employer's Contribution" to your social security taxes. There's no such thing. That comes out of your pocket, too. This is because employers have no interest in what your paycheck amount is. They care about "total compensation", which is what it costs the employer to employ you. Seattle added some "payroll taxes" and successful…

Do you really think people don't know that the tax deductions on their payslip are actually their money?

The "Employer's Contribution" is not listed as a deduction on the payslip.
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