12 ms·

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

122 points by rwbhn 4y ago

bsenftner 4y ago
Be smarter than a smart speaker by never purchasing one. Why put an always on snitch in your home? Such convivence is a trap.
- rgrieselhuber 4y ago
  Boggles my mind that anyone buys these things.
  - haunter 4y ago
    It's incredibly useful for people with disabilities
    - retrac 4y ago
      I can see that. But I hope it never becomes standard. I find them aggravating because of my disability. An acquaintance has made every light in their home integrated into Google's services. I have a mild speech impediment and Google seems incapable of recognising my speech as speech. "Hey Google. HEY GOOGLE. Hey Gooooogle! Turn off the lights." I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. "Hey Goooooooogle! Turn. Off. The. Lights.". I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. And of course, when I gave in and used the switch, my host immediately came upstairs and chastised me for causing device errors to pop up in the network. Use voice! Not terribly impressed, to say the least. And don't get me started on the bank's voice recognition system on the phone.
      - pessimizer 4y ago
        You're an edge case, like the old, the young, the computer-illiterate, the very computer-literate, people who speak English but deal with a lot of things that aren't in English, and so on...
      - andrewaylett 4y ago
        I'm struggling to understand their stance :(. The point of "smart" is that it makes things easier. If it doesn't make things easier, what's the point? And as a guest, it had better make it easier for you. For what it's worth, which obviously isn't much, all my public rooms have smart switches as well as being able to be controlled by voice. And if someone needs to use the physical switch (they're all still uncovered and accessible) then that's a failure of my system not of whoever needed to bypass it. The main benefit to me of smart is that I can automate transitions, so it's that much less likely that anyone will need to manually adjust the lighting.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        This is a problem because your acquaintance have used smart bulbs instead of replacing their switches with smart switches. Lightwave rf switches and similar can be controlled with Google/Alexa or their own app, but still have buttons to push as well. I absolutely understand your frustration with that. In terms of understanding, it'll improve. I have a broad Scandinavian accent. My Alexa handles that just fine for the most part. It's not more than a few years ago most speech recognition struggled with that (I remember a phone booking line that insisted on recognising me saying "London" as "Birmingham")
  - probably_wrong 4y ago
    At the risk of sounding like a drug dealer, have you tried one? The main reason why I'll probably never buy an Alexa is because it sucks at the specific things I need it to do, but I concede that there's something liberating about just yelling at the computer and getting a reply. If I'm about to leave and I don't know which jacket to pick, being able to yell "Alexa, what's the weather like?" keeps me from switching contexts and losing my train of thought. It may not sound like much, but once you combine a bunch of small tasks it adds up.
    - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
      I just don't see those tradeoffs adding up for me. My days in the Bay Area taught me to dress in layers and always have extra layers when going out anyway, although I know it was just one example you were giving. I don't even like to speak around them because I assume they are archiving every voice sample forever.
      - vidarh 4y ago
        That's the thing, you won't really know how much they add up until you start using one. Even then it took a long time before I used it as much as I do now. My son uses it even more, e.g. preferring to ask it to do maths rather than opening up a calculator app. But frankly "hands free" timers/reminders/alarms alone is enough of a killer feature for me alone.
- Semaphor 4y ago
  Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.
  - ulfw 4y ago
    The fact you call this mini feature of setting a timer (which is equally available on your phone via voice) "QOL" is fascinating to me
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Yeah. Those are the sort of occasionally handy things that Alexa is somewhat useful for. But QoL? (I don't even generally use it as a timer in the kitchen as opposed to spending 5 seconds to set a timer by hand that shows me a countdown.)
    - heretogetout 4y ago
      The phone is even more of a snitch than is an Echo or what have you.
    - wutbrodo 4y ago
      Setting a time, setting alarms, playing music, turning lights on and off, controlling media, (eg Netflix), checking the weather, etc. I'm just focusing on the universal use cases, and excluding varying degrees of niche usesnlike interactively displaying recipes and saying the rosary. Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room). This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.
- eranation 4y ago
  What about smartphones, not just yours, but also those around you with Hey Siri or Hey Google turned on? I don’t see a huge difference.
  - bsenftner 4y ago
    I turn them off, and disable their ability to function completely. Unless I am in control and the processing is local, no ambient computing.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Oh this dystopian future.
mister_tee 4y ago
Short version: Alexa supports third parties extending it with "Skills" apps which may be commercial. Paid functionality may be enabled via verbal confirmation via an in-app purchase[1]. Paid functionality may be one-time or recurring. Her sister caught the corresponding email just before the paid subscription would have started. The documentation says developers must mark skills targeted at kids and those aren't eligible to have this flow enabled. [1] https://developer.amazon.com/es-MX/docs/alexa/paid-skills/overview.html https://developer.amazon.com/es-MX/docs/alexa/paid-skills/ov... edit to add -- that was all presented without comment. But having a device that can start up a recurring subscription if anyone says "yes" to one prompt exist at all, and having the toggle for the feature on by default and in options is in the "no thanks" column for me.
feintruled 4y ago
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, check prices and delivery dates and reviews then plump for one. Thinking of doing the same by voice drains me. "Alexa, order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow". Could that work? Would I trust that it had worked, if Alexa just said "ok" without me running off to a computer to check the order details and defeating the whole object? More likely it would turn into an exhausting game of twenty questions with the device narrowing my selection iteratively. (I actually tried that sentence just now. Alexa remained in a stunned silence.)
- feintruled 4y ago
  Update.. I tried just "order dog food" and it picked a decent choice based off my order history and then I could have said "buy this". So to be fair (with a device with a screen) it performed quite well.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    Good that you tried it. There are plenty of ways to make the interface very usable and reliable. Fixating on the voice UI is absolutely the wrong way to see it. The real problem is that your "assistant" doesn't actually work for you.
- ghaff 4y ago
  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 gotten marginally better over the years. But I really wouldn't miss them much if they all went away tomorrow. The vision was/is that they could match at least a marginally competent personal assistant over the phone. And they're nowhere even near the ballpark.
willcipriano 4y ago
> Thank goodness she didn’t ask Alexa to say the Rosary The highlight of the article there.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
bombcar 4y ago
Anything I don’t expect to use to make purchases I try to enable whatever “child lock” features it might have.
wirthjason 4y ago
I’m more shocked that the developer of a “skill” that says the holy Mary makes $2 a month and has 10,000 users. That’s a sweet return for work that on the scale of copy-pasting the Alexa getting started tutorial.
- xnorswap 4y ago
  Always bet on religion. Some of the most profitable early apps on the apps stores were Bible apps. People love their religions and will happily spend money on following them.
  - tsol 4y ago
    People like what they like. Religion, games, tv shows-- people will spend huge amounts on all these things if they find value in it. That value isn't always apparent to others. Also I really wonder how many of those users don't know they're paying for a subscription
- bodge5000 4y ago
  I remember downloading a digital clock widget for my ipad (for some reason the only native clock widget is analog), and then finding to use it they wanted £5 a month. iirc, it all started with DarkSky, which was very reasonable, something like £1 a year, which made subscriptions for more "basic" apps acceptable, and from there its just got worse.
  - mongol 4y ago
    Was that before or after the "I am rich" app? It cost something like 10000 USD I recall.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    And things like DarkSky actually involve continuing to provide an appreciable service, a subscription model is quite reasonable. I have no problem with subscriptions for things with substantial back ends.
mdp2021 4y ago
> set up by my sister... and is attached to her... account > can inadvertently enter into premium subscriptions simply by saying yes So this individual (sister to a journalist at the Guardian, which facilitates information spreading and highlights the possibility of under the radar cases) gives somebody else a voice controlled machine linked to a credit card. What could possibly.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  Reminds me of having accounts for kids with the payment details...
robg 4y ago
Seems like the email should be the confirmation, and without the confirmation the trial stops. Opting in with a yes alone, when my four year olds can now ask Alexa for stuff, seems like a terrible design choice by itself.
annoyingnoob 4y ago
Does God answer prayers from robots?
- kibwen 4y ago
  We made robots in our image, which makes us gods to the robots. And what is a crash log or a compiler error or a core dump, if not a prayer from the machine begging for salvation? Every Jira ticket you've ever closed has been a prayer answered successfully, and every WONTFIX is surely interpreted by the machine as "the sysadmin works in mysterious ways".
- carapace 4y ago
  Machines can pray on our behalf according to Tibetan Buddhism. http://karmawheel.org/ http://karmawheel.org/ https://github.com/PixelsCommander/PrayerWheel https://github.com/PixelsCommander/PrayerWheel http://pixelscommander.com/interactive-revolution/can-computer-pray-for-the-benefit-of-all-living-beings-praying-with-javascript-and-webgl/ http://pixelscommander.com/interactive-revolution/can-comput...
mc4ndr3 4y ago
god runs on a freemium service
bambax 4y ago
Never mind prayers. The new frontier for AI is confessions. And Alexa should sell indulgences. Seriously though, how long before we see AI-powered therapists? Or do they exist already?
- wiml 4y ago
  How good do they have to be? Even ELIZA apparently has (minor) demonstrable therapeutic value. https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/the-original-eliza
thewebcount 4y ago
Yeah, Amazon is terrible about this. It claims that it must have had the user confirm the purchase, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. I order from Amazon about once a year, and the last time I did, they ran the, “Would you also like to sign up for Prime while making this order?” scam on me. I hit the button and immediately realized what I had done. I hit the back button before the next page loaded, but it was too late. I already had an email saying I had signed up without confirming anything or agreeing to any terms of service. Luckily I only had to go through about 3-5 pages of “Are you really sure you want to cancel?” And “how about we just suspend the service but don’t cancel it,” before I was allowed to cancel it. This company is disgusting.

122 points by rwbhn 4y ago

Be smarter than a smart speaker by never purchasing one. Why put an always on snitch in your home? Such convivence is a trap.

rgrieselhuber 4y ago
Boggles my mind that anyone buys these things.
- haunter 4y ago
  It's incredibly useful for people with disabilities
  - retrac 4y ago
    I can see that. But I hope it never becomes standard. I find them aggravating because of my disability. An acquaintance has made every light in their home integrated into Google's services. I have a mild speech impediment and Google seems incapable of recognising my speech as speech. "Hey Google. HEY GOOGLE. Hey Gooooogle! Turn off the lights." I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. "Hey Goooooooogle! Turn. Off. The. Lights.". I'm sorry, I didn't catch that. And of course, when I gave in and used the switch, my host immediately came upstairs and chastised me for causing device errors to pop up in the network. Use voice! Not terribly impressed, to say the least. And don't get me started on the bank's voice recognition system on the phone.
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      You're an edge case, like the old, the young, the computer-illiterate, the very computer-literate, people who speak English but deal with a lot of things that aren't in English, and so on...
    - andrewaylett 4y ago
      I'm struggling to understand their stance :(. The point of "smart" is that it makes things easier. If it doesn't make things easier, what's the point? And as a guest, it had better make it easier for you. For what it's worth, which obviously isn't much, all my public rooms have smart switches as well as being able to be controlled by voice. And if someone needs to use the physical switch (they're all still uncovered and accessible) then that's a failure of my system not of whoever needed to bypass it. The main benefit to me of smart is that I can automate transitions, so it's that much less likely that anyone will need to manually adjust the lighting.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      This is a problem because your acquaintance have used smart bulbs instead of replacing their switches with smart switches. Lightwave rf switches and similar can be controlled with Google/Alexa or their own app, but still have buttons to push as well. I absolutely understand your frustration with that. In terms of understanding, it'll improve. I have a broad Scandinavian accent. My Alexa handles that just fine for the most part. It's not more than a few years ago most speech recognition struggled with that (I remember a phone booking line that insisted on recognising me saying "London" as "Birmingham")
- probably_wrong 4y ago
  At the risk of sounding like a drug dealer, have you tried one? The main reason why I'll probably never buy an Alexa is because it sucks at the specific things I need it to do, but I concede that there's something liberating about just yelling at the computer and getting a reply. If I'm about to leave and I don't know which jacket to pick, being able to yell "Alexa, what's the weather like?" keeps me from switching contexts and losing my train of thought. It may not sound like much, but once you combine a bunch of small tasks it adds up.
  - rgrieselhuber 4y ago
    I just don't see those tradeoffs adding up for me. My days in the Bay Area taught me to dress in layers and always have extra layers when going out anyway, although I know it was just one example you were giving. I don't even like to speak around them because I assume they are archiving every voice sample forever.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      That's the thing, you won't really know how much they add up until you start using one. Even then it took a long time before I used it as much as I do now. My son uses it even more, e.g. preferring to ask it to do maths rather than opening up a calculator app. But frankly "hands free" timers/reminders/alarms alone is enough of a killer feature for me alone.
Semaphor 4y ago
Because the QOL from one is insane for me. While I’m cooking, I can set timers and look up conversions (one big country that produces a lot of internet content, including recipes, uses the most insane units). Everything else is a nice bonus, but those parts are major. That said, I want to replace Alexa with something fully local, but the supply chain issues are currently a hindrance.
- ulfw 4y ago
  The fact you call this mini feature of setting a timer (which is equally available on your phone via voice) "QOL" is fascinating to me
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah. Those are the sort of occasionally handy things that Alexa is somewhat useful for. But QoL? (I don't even generally use it as a timer in the kitchen as opposed to spending 5 seconds to set a timer by hand that shows me a countdown.)
  - heretogetout 4y ago
    The phone is even more of a snitch than is an Echo or what have you.
  - wutbrodo 4y ago
    Setting a time, setting alarms, playing music, turning lights on and off, controlling media, (eg Netflix), checking the weather, etc. I'm just focusing on the universal use cases, and excluding varying degrees of niche usesnlike interactively displaying recipes and saying the rosary. Especially in rooms where you don't already have a sound system, it's really a no-brainer. And I question that you've ever interacted with a smartphone if you think either the responsiveness or the convenience (not everybody is glued to their phone, and sometimes it's in the other room). This need people have to think everything is either super-tubular-amazing or completely-useless-dross is _exhausting_. For anybody interested in understanding instead of posturing online to fill some emotional void, it's plainly obvious how smart speakers could be a modest improvement to QoL for many people.
eranation 4y ago
What about smartphones, not just yours, but also those around you with Hey Siri or Hey Google turned on? I don’t see a huge difference.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  I turn them off, and disable their ability to function completely. Unless I am in control and the processing is local, no ambient computing.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Oh this dystopian future.

mister_tee 4y ago

Short version: Alexa supports third parties extending it with "Skills" apps which may be commercial. Paid functionality may be enabled via verbal confirmation via an in-app purchase[1]. Paid functionality may be one-time or recurring. Her sister caught the corresponding email just before the paid subscription would have started. The documentation says developers must mark skills targeted at kids and those aren't eligible to have this flow enabled. [1] https://developer.amazon.com/es-MX/docs/alexa/paid-skills/overview.html https://developer.amazon.com/es-MX/docs/alexa/paid-skills/ov... edit to add -- that was all presented without comment. But having a device that can start up a recurring subscription if anyone says "yes" to one prompt exist at all, and having the toggle for the feature on by default and in options is in the "no thanks" column for me.

feintruled 4y ago

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, check prices and delivery dates and reviews then plump for one. Thinking of doing the same by voice drains me. "Alexa, order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow". Could that work? Would I trust that it had worked, if Alexa just said "ok" without me running off to a computer to check the order details and defeating the whole object? More likely it would turn into an exhausting game of twenty questions with the device narrowing my selection iteratively. (I actually tried that sentence just now. Alexa remained in a stunned silence.)

feintruled 4y ago
Update.. I tried just "order dog food" and it picked a decent choice based off my order history and then I could have said "buy this". So to be fair (with a device with a screen) it performed quite well.
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  Good that you tried it. There are plenty of ways to make the interface very usable and reliable. Fixating on the voice UI is absolutely the wrong way to see it. The real problem is that your "assistant" doesn't actually work for you.
ghaff 4y ago
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 gotten marginally better over the years. But I really wouldn't miss them much if they all went away tomorrow. The vision was/is that they could match at least a marginally competent personal assistant over the phone. And they're nowhere even near the ballpark.

willcipriano 4y ago

> Thank goodness she didn’t ask Alexa to say the Rosary The highlight of the article there.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

bombcar 4y ago

Anything I don’t expect to use to make purchases I try to enable whatever “child lock” features it might have.

wirthjason 4y ago

I’m more shocked that the developer of a “skill” that says the holy Mary makes $2 a month and has 10,000 users. That’s a sweet return for work that on the scale of copy-pasting the Alexa getting started tutorial.

xnorswap 4y ago
Always bet on religion. Some of the most profitable early apps on the apps stores were Bible apps. People love their religions and will happily spend money on following them.
- tsol 4y ago
  People like what they like. Religion, games, tv shows-- people will spend huge amounts on all these things if they find value in it. That value isn't always apparent to others. Also I really wonder how many of those users don't know they're paying for a subscription
bodge5000 4y ago
I remember downloading a digital clock widget for my ipad (for some reason the only native clock widget is analog), and then finding to use it they wanted £5 a month. iirc, it all started with DarkSky, which was very reasonable, something like £1 a year, which made subscriptions for more "basic" apps acceptable, and from there its just got worse.
- mongol 4y ago
  Was that before or after the "I am rich" app? It cost something like 10000 USD I recall.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  And things like DarkSky actually involve continuing to provide an appreciable service, a subscription model is quite reasonable. I have no problem with subscriptions for things with substantial back ends.

mdp2021 4y ago

> set up by my sister... and is attached to her... account > can inadvertently enter into premium subscriptions simply by saying yes So this individual (sister to a journalist at the Guardian, which facilitates information spreading and highlights the possibility of under the radar cases) gives somebody else a voice controlled machine linked to a credit card. What could possibly.

Ekaros 4y ago
Reminds me of having accounts for kids with the payment details...

robg 4y ago

Seems like the email should be the confirmation, and without the confirmation the trial stops. Opting in with a yes alone, when my four year olds can now ask Alexa for stuff, seems like a terrible design choice by itself.

annoyingnoob 4y ago

Does God answer prayers from robots?

kibwen 4y ago
We made robots in our image, which makes us gods to the robots. And what is a crash log or a compiler error or a core dump, if not a prayer from the machine begging for salvation? Every Jira ticket you've ever closed has been a prayer answered successfully, and every WONTFIX is surely interpreted by the machine as "the sysadmin works in mysterious ways".
carapace 4y ago
Machines can pray on our behalf according to Tibetan Buddhism. http://karmawheel.org/ http://karmawheel.org/ https://github.com/PixelsCommander/PrayerWheel https://github.com/PixelsCommander/PrayerWheel http://pixelscommander.com/interactive-revolution/can-computer-pray-for-the-benefit-of-all-living-beings-praying-with-javascript-and-webgl/ http://pixelscommander.com/interactive-revolution/can-comput...

mc4ndr3 4y ago

god runs on a freemium service

bambax 4y ago

Never mind prayers. The new frontier for AI is confessions. And Alexa should sell indulgences. Seriously though, how long before we see AI-powered therapists? Or do they exist already?

wiml 4y ago
How good do they have to be? Even ELIZA apparently has (minor) demonstrable therapeutic value. https://sites.google.com/view/elizagen-org/the-original-eliza

thewebcount 4y ago

Yeah, Amazon is terrible about this. It claims that it must have had the user confirm the purchase, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t. I order from Amazon about once a year, and the last time I did, they ran the, “Would you also like to sign up for Prime while making this order?” scam on me. I hit the button and immediately realized what I had done. I hit the back button before the next page loaded, but it was too late. I already had an email saying I had signed up without confirming anything or agreeing to any terms of service. Luckily I only had to go through about 3-5 pages of “Are you really sure you want to cancel?” And “how about we just suspend the service but don’t cancel it,” before I was allowed to cancel it. This company is disgusting.