Just what the cash-strapped people of the world want - more monthly fees.
this post was submitted on 22 May 2024
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And for something that is already data-mining you. Adding a fee just adds insult to injury.
Yeah, I think that's the bigger issue here. These devices pay their way by collecting data to sell off. What this "overhual" is indicating is that they haven't quite figured out how to make these devices not only pay for themselves, but also, generate a net background profit for the company.
The only thing I'm reading from this story is that Amazon is just aiming for more dollar signs from Alexia. I'm going tell you in the day and age of Siri and Whatever Google's thing is, this is going to backfire massively on Amazon. This will likely collapse whatever paltry Alexia that's out there. And I have a good feeling they'll look at this collapse as "well the technology just isn't a good money maker." No you idiots, it's not a mass profit driver. I get how something not drawing double digit percentage gains is a mystery to you all, but just because you cannot buy your fifteenth yacht from it, doesn't mean that the technology is a failure.
But it's whatever, Amazon's ship to wreck.
Looks like companies are shifting to charging users whose data they are stealing.
The saying 'if you aren't the customer, you are the product' is outdated. Now you are the customer and the product!
Windows has done this for ages now. Buying a laptop, you pay well over $100 for the windows license alone, yet it is the most egregious operating system when it comes to datamining the user.
And then they started putting ads for subscriptions in the os.
With Sonos shitting the bed with its app update and now the prospect of Alexa being destroyed by fees and AI, my smart home infrastructure is falling apart. So disappointing.
Never use anything that depends on the Internet for your smart home. There are entirely offline text to speech and voice recognition plugins/libraries for home assistant.
Yeah I learned this lesson by starting with Smartthings and grew to hate the lack of reliability pretty quickly. Home Assistant and a raspberry pi has been significantly better.
What are you using for microphones?
I can't ask a question? I am in the Alexa infrastructure and would like to change and I don't know what's good to use instead. People are really shitty.
Don't take it personally. It's just a few trolls who think they're superior. Your question is valid and I'm also interested in alternatives too. I have home assistant, but it's another thing entirely to more easily swap out Alexa for some equally well supported mic/speaker hardware. I'm sure this will change with people being motivated not to give Amazon subscription fees and 'to finally' cut the online requirements. I would love local voice control so that I'm not reliant on phone apps if the internet goes out.
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Home Assistant is a great alternative. It gets better and better as all Google and Alexa get worse and worse.
What are you using for microphones?
Why the downvotes? this is a legitimate good question as there are many available and people may have important experiences to share. Looking to set up my own someday (hopefully soon) and am interested in what has worked well for people as well.
Probably because they've asked it four times in this post
If only any of those questions had a legit answer D: I’m curious too.
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Oh no! Where else will I find a Bluetooth speaker that also tells me the temperature outside?
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And this is exact the reason I'm building a Home Assistant instance with local voice processing. Right now it takes a few seconds to process a request and take action on my crappy 1.8ghz laptop with only 4gb of RAM, but it basically does everything I use Alexa for. This announcement is just encouraging me to build a better server with an esp32 satellite.
I'm in the process of this now too. The only need that I can't figure out within home-assistant assist, is unit conversions. Converting measurements when cooking is one of the main things we use the Alexa for these days.
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Watch the existing one become even more insufferable to push you into paying for the upgrade.
Will the existing ones still operate without the subscription?
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
What do you think ^^
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Not having Amazon is great and cheaper than having it.
I wonder how many fools are out there that will pay for this.
Too many, way, way too many,
The same amount of fools who created the largest civilian surveillance network with Ring doorbells.
Well, once again a tech company gives a service I don't care for an overhaul I don't want and tries to charge a fee I won't pay.
I suspect when this doesn't do the numbers they want they'll try adding a user fee to oxygen as a retaliation.
Since it won't come with my Prime sub, it'll just get unplugged and thrown away.
Also, because the AI part.
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I'm sorry Bill. I can't open the pod bay door until you subscribe to Omni-zon
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Lmao, charge us for everything which was at first an incentive to buy your shit products
If I have to pay to have my dots and ring, i will throw the shit out in the street
Edit: Yeah, I'm done with them anyways, they're trash.
Looks like I'll be selling the few Amazon Alexa-centric devices I've got.
Please don't do that to other people..
I will pay exactly zero dollars, thanks!
Yeah nah, not gonna pay for that
I didn't think people really expected to believe that their smart stuff was really theirs. Did they? Imagine renting your bulbs to Amazon.
Won't last long. Free apps will ruin that Amazon subscription plan fast. One can already get a local and free chatAI and it's already just a few clicks setup and I wouldn't be surprised if these get made more easier for the mainstream any day. The tech is just too new, but were getting there soon.
I hope for one good thing to come out from all this AI madness : people might get used to pay for a service on the internet again. If this miraculously happens it could lead to people more cautiously choose services over quality instead of the one with darkest patterns.
One can still dream...
I wouldn't get your hopes up too high.
You're thinking like you are the customer and the customer is always right, so if you pay for a service it should provide you what you want, right?
This is not that scenario.
You are not the customer. You are a product that is being sold to advertisers. It does not matter if you also pay them money, you are still the product. If you pay them money on top of being sold then you are just an especially profitable product.
Paying them money will not cause you to cease being a product, no matter how much money you are willing to pay.
If you use a different company's product that starts off with you being the customer, eventually, they will learn that they can make more money by selling you to other people, and they will.
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