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  • helenslunch@feddit.nlEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    Paywalled. But I must say I’m very unsurprised that people are not using Alexa to buy things…

  • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I coded an Alexa Skill once. It was tedious and a garbage platform. After a while it was delisted for spurious reasons, even worse DX than Google and Apple app stores. Complete dumpster fire from start to finish.

    All obsolete now that LLMs are here. I don’t think any devs will miss it.

    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Alexa skill store is a “prime” example of Amazon’s we don’t give a shit attitude. For years they’ve turned their back on third party developers by limiting skill integration. A well designed skill on that store gets a two star rating. When everything in your app store is total shit - maybe the problem is you Amazon?! It’s been like that for years ; I completely avoid using skills as they only lead to frustration.

      LLM integration into an Alexa device could be a big improvement, but current speed performance at that scale seems concerning that we’d get a laggy or very dumbed down system. Frankly Id be happy if Alexa could just grasp the concept of synonyms and also have the ability to attempt second guess interpretations of speech comprehension rather than assume user has just asked the exact same question in rapid succession but with a more frustrated tone.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        Every damn smart light skill has different syntax and there is no way to get the Alexa app to just fucking tell me what the syntax is. The "nui’ (no user interface) approach is cute but really falls flat when trying to do complex tasks or mix brands of smart devices.

        Also, it might be Google that does this more often so I won’t blame Alexa necessarily, but a lot of times when I ask things to play my liked songs I end up getting a song called “my liked songs” to play. It hasn’t happened in a while so however I am phrasing it must be correct now but it’s not something I’m super consciously aware of.

        • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          4 months ago

          Yeah the syntax stuff was the biggest disappointment for me as a dev, too. There’s very little natural language processing going on, just simple template-based pattern matching. So basic and inflexible.

  • LifeOfChance@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    4 months ago

    I call absolute bullshit on this. They’re losing out on the sale of the device but make up for it 20 fold by selling and manipulating data it collects in your house. This isn’t even conspiracy loads of people report Alexa going off randomly without any sort of prompt. Don’t tell me the device isn’t listening closely to every little conversation you have.

    • yesman@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Don’t be paranoid. An Eco Dot literally can’t tell you the time w/o phoning home. You can watch the network traffic it produces. No way it’s transmitting 24h of audio. And if you think about it, millions of Alexa devices recording 24/7 audio would generate more traffic than porn. And that’s before Amazon has paid a nickel to process any of that audio.

      When it comes to eavesdropping on “every little conversation” They don’t, they can’t, it would be stupid to try.

    • Xander_Meters@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      01·
      4 months ago

      Conspiracy means there are people conspiring meaning it is a conspiracy fact. I mention this coz the next comment says it IS but goes on to back up it is not a conspiracy because wording

    • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
      01·
      4 months ago

      This isn’t even conspiracy loads of people report Alexa going off randomly without any sort of prompt. Don’t tell me the device isn’t listening closely to every little conversation you have.

      This definitely is conspiracy. You’re claiming that Amazon is secretly conspiring to make Alexa devices behave differently than they advertise them to. That’s like the definition of conspiracy lol. But that aside, I really don’t believe this. What’s the exact claim, that they’re always listening? No, they don’t. People can analyze the traffic and tell that’s false. That they’re intentionally overly sensitive? I have an easier time beginning to buy that but I still think we’d see more quantitative articles about that if it were true. Like we haven’t had whistle blowers or security researchers saying anything like that.