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>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,

>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 purpose interface.

toomuchtodo 2y ago
I want a conversational assistant, with the ability to downshift to a workstation with state maintained when the scope of the task or work changes, but I want total control over my data and the experience. Local LLMs (with the option for remote LLMs that are interchangable) and on device apps get me most of the way there, and that is what I'm willing to pay for. Home Assistant Voice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43186573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43186573 Amazon's offering is the equivalent of their Dash reorder buttons. To be locked into their ecosystem is to guarantee future enshittification, degradation of experience, etc. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245315/amazon-dash-buttons-discontinued https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245315/amazon-dash-butt...
ceejayoz 2y ago
"On sale" usually means "the price is the same it's been for the last six months, but we're showing a big discount on a price that was never charged", in my experience. Siri has suddenly started telling me things like "did you know you can say 'Siri, stop' to end the timer?" when I use it, which is frustrating extra friction on something that worked just fine. Worse, it does it regularly and doesn't seem to be tuneable.
- 1shooner 2y ago
  Conceptually, I appreciate the design challenge: what is the conversational equivalent of a tool tip? But it's just an inherent limitation of the interface: there simply isn't the same information capacity to convey or manipulate state, or to provide demoted or secondary cues to the user.
- mikestew 2y ago
  Every time I hear that, I think “you mean like I’ve been doing for, what, the last five years?” How does Siri not know that I know this already? Does its little pea brain have no persistent storage ?
  - happyopossum 2y ago
    > Does its little pea brain have no persistent storage ? Essentially, yes - for various privacy/marketing/whatever reasons what information Siri collects is heavily anonymized and can't be tied back to you.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      Which is really stupid, because this wouldn't be a problem if they weren't sending that data back to themselves in the first place. They found that good UX is incompatible with telemetry, so they chose to... degrade the UX.
      - Philpax 2y ago
        I don't know if that's the correct interpretation? I would say they degraded the UX because they aren't hoovering up enough data to make their solution work properly, unlike Google and Amazon. They've done a better job of protecting the user's privacy, but at the cost of making something that's quite limited in what it can do. Just one of those tradeoffs.
        TeMPOraL 2y ago
        No, what I mean is: they could've had persistent storage on device, and have it hoover up enough data, and learn user preferences over time - it's fine to do it locally, as long as it doesn't leave the device. But, when you also do extensive telemetry, it becomes very hard to ensure none of that sensitive data gets leaked directly or indirectly through logs and diagnostic events. The two easy choices are to pick one or the other - UX or extensive telemetry. They chose the latter.
- Marsymars 2y ago
  > "On sale" usually means "the price is the same it's been for the last six months, but we're showing a big discount on a price that was never charged", in my experience. In many/most jurisdicitions, this isn't permitted by regulators (e.g. it would typically qualify as false advertisement), but enforcement is mixed. You can help regulators by reporting it and including supporting documentation when you see it.
  - ceejayoz 2y ago
    Add a few dozen items to an Amazon wishlist a few weeks before Prime day. Take a screenshot. Come back on Prime day and see how many are "Prime Day Deals!" with roughly the same price they used to be. Higher, quite frequently.
    - Marsymars 2y ago
      For amazon you can just use camelcamelcamel or keepa to track price history.
- ben_w 2y ago
  > "did you know you can say 'Siri, stop' to end the timer?" Likewise. Worse, about 50% of the time I say "stop alarm", it actually stops the alarm clock. Also about 50% of the time, one of the other devices in listening range asks "Stop the alarm on Ben's iPhone SE 2022?". These 50% are independent: Sometimes the alarm stops and I get the question; Sometimes the alarm doesn't stop and I don't get the question; Sometimes it's just one or the other. It also seems to be unable to listen while talking, which is just annoying. Also, the reason I stopped using Alexa was how often it responded to "Kitchen on" with "I can't find 'Kitchen' on your Spotify playlist" (we don't even have Spotify)… and now Siri has started responding to "Office on" with "I can't find 'Office' in your music playlist".
Karrot_Kream 2y ago
> the much smaller but growing minority that sees it as absurd to pay for invasive commercials 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.
advisedwang 2y ago
Honestly I think it's a tiny number people that are actually eager consumers of surveillance capitalism. It's just pushed so hard by the companies around us that unless you actively oppose it it will creep in.
hbosch 2y ago
>On a purely UX level, I have never seen 'shouting at a speaker' as a desirable general purpose interface. On a bus or plane, no, absolutely not. In the kitchen of a busy household, yes, definitely.
- crazygringo 2y ago
  Yup. Or rewinding your podcast or skipping to the next music track in the shower. Asking what the name of the artist is while running with earbuds. And so forth. We have different interfaces to adapt to the outputs we have available at the moment...
californical 2y ago
The Alexa in my in-law’s house already does this and it is such an anti-feature. It’s always some garbage that they had clicked on at one point. Suggested: the “AOWFIZ Toilet Brush with digital thermomteer” is 10% off Like they paid $200 to have that in their kitchen

toomuchtodo 2y ago

I want a conversational assistant, with the ability to downshift to a workstation with state maintained when the scope of the task or work changes, but I want total control over my data and the experience. Local LLMs (with the option for remote LLMs that are interchangable) and on device apps get me most of the way there, and that is what I'm willing to pay for. Home Assistant Voice - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43186573 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43186573 Amazon's offering is the equivalent of their Dash reorder buttons. To be locked into their ecosystem is to guarantee future enshittification, degradation of experience, etc. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245315/amazon-dash-buttons-discontinued https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/28/18245315/amazon-dash-butt...

ceejayoz 2y ago

"On sale" usually means "the price is the same it's been for the last six months, but we're showing a big discount on a price that was never charged", in my experience. Siri has suddenly started telling me things like "did you know you can say 'Siri, stop' to end the timer?" when I use it, which is frustrating extra friction on something that worked just fine. Worse, it does it regularly and doesn't seem to be tuneable.

1shooner 2y ago
Conceptually, I appreciate the design challenge: what is the conversational equivalent of a tool tip? But it's just an inherent limitation of the interface: there simply isn't the same information capacity to convey or manipulate state, or to provide demoted or secondary cues to the user.
mikestew 2y ago
Every time I hear that, I think “you mean like I’ve been doing for, what, the last five years?” How does Siri not know that I know this already? Does its little pea brain have no persistent storage ?
- happyopossum 2y ago
  > Does its little pea brain have no persistent storage ? Essentially, yes - for various privacy/marketing/whatever reasons what information Siri collects is heavily anonymized and can't be tied back to you.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    Which is really stupid, because this wouldn't be a problem if they weren't sending that data back to themselves in the first place. They found that good UX is incompatible with telemetry, so they chose to... degrade the UX.
    - Philpax 2y ago
      I don't know if that's the correct interpretation? I would say they degraded the UX because they aren't hoovering up enough data to make their solution work properly, unlike Google and Amazon. They've done a better job of protecting the user's privacy, but at the cost of making something that's quite limited in what it can do. Just one of those tradeoffs.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        No, what I mean is: they could've had persistent storage on device, and have it hoover up enough data, and learn user preferences over time - it's fine to do it locally, as long as it doesn't leave the device. But, when you also do extensive telemetry, it becomes very hard to ensure none of that sensitive data gets leaked directly or indirectly through logs and diagnostic events. The two easy choices are to pick one or the other - UX or extensive telemetry. They chose the latter.
Marsymars 2y ago
> "On sale" usually means "the price is the same it's been for the last six months, but we're showing a big discount on a price that was never charged", in my experience. In many/most jurisdicitions, this isn't permitted by regulators (e.g. it would typically qualify as false advertisement), but enforcement is mixed. You can help regulators by reporting it and including supporting documentation when you see it.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  Add a few dozen items to an Amazon wishlist a few weeks before Prime day. Take a screenshot. Come back on Prime day and see how many are "Prime Day Deals!" with roughly the same price they used to be. Higher, quite frequently.
  - Marsymars 2y ago
    For amazon you can just use camelcamelcamel or keepa to track price history.
ben_w 2y ago
> "did you know you can say 'Siri, stop' to end the timer?" Likewise. Worse, about 50% of the time I say "stop alarm", it actually stops the alarm clock. Also about 50% of the time, one of the other devices in listening range asks "Stop the alarm on Ben's iPhone SE 2022?". These 50% are independent: Sometimes the alarm stops and I get the question; Sometimes the alarm doesn't stop and I don't get the question; Sometimes it's just one or the other. It also seems to be unable to listen while talking, which is just annoying. Also, the reason I stopped using Alexa was how often it responded to "Kitchen on" with "I can't find 'Kitchen' on your Spotify playlist" (we don't even have Spotify)… and now Siri has started responding to "Office on" with "I can't find 'Office' in your music playlist".

Karrot_Kream 2y ago

> the much smaller but growing minority that sees it as absurd to pay for invasive commercials 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.

advisedwang 2y ago

Honestly I think it's a tiny number people that are actually eager consumers of surveillance capitalism. It's just pushed so hard by the companies around us that unless you actively oppose it it will creep in.

hbosch 2y ago

>On a purely UX level, I have never seen 'shouting at a speaker' as a desirable general purpose interface. On a bus or plane, no, absolutely not. In the kitchen of a busy household, yes, definitely.

crazygringo 2y ago
Yup. Or rewinding your podcast or skipping to the next music track in the shower. Asking what the name of the artist is while running with earbuds. And so forth. We have different interfaces to adapt to the outputs we have available at the moment...

californical 2y ago

The Alexa in my in-law’s house already does this and it is such an anti-feature. It’s always some garbage that they had clicked on at one point. Suggested: the “AOWFIZ Toilet Brush with digital thermomteer” is 10% off Like they paid $200 to have that in their kitchen