I bought an Alexa echo long before I actually cared about privacy and I regret it a lot. It’s been a pricey paper weight since then. I wish I could flash some kind of OS and use it as a sound bar or something. I can’t even use the Bluetooth without signing in with amazon account, which requires a lot of data including phone number.
Do you have a shotgun? Makes a respectable flying target.
Once….which is probably the point.
Now I’m going to refuse to purchase one even harder!
Not only that, I wouldn’t even use one if they paid me. How did they convince people to pay to be spied on and advertised to?
I honestly forgot people even buy these
I was saving up for one. Nvm lol
Easy fix:
Follow-up fix: get home assistant and recreate this yourself with a $15 device
I started making my own several years ago but got sidelined by health issues and haven’t gone back to it. :(
My end goal is I have a lot of comic books. I want a voice assistant that can query a database and then turn on smart lights to show box locations.
I got the database done, I got the queries working, then had a heart attack and never got the voice input or smart light output working. :(
Damn. I hope you’re feeling better, my friend.
Working on it!
Can I replace AppleHome with this stuff?
It’s fun and I recommend it, but I’m hesitant to say you can ‘replace’ your existing systems with it. You’ll probably mostly be able do what you want to do, but we’re still in the enthusiast stage and there’s going to be annoyances and frustrations. Home assistant is also one of the easier things to setup as far as self hosting goes, but you’re going to pick up some skills on the path to getting it working.
Trust me, there’s annoyances and frustrations aplenty with Apple
If you can find a hass replacement for the Echo Flex, I will name my firstborn after you.
How far away is the Home Assistant Voice Preview from what you’re looking for?
It doesn’t plug directly into the wall but instead uses a USB C cable (that you provide). Other than this, mine can answer questions, search the internet, turn things on and off, play music via Spotify, Jellyfin, etc. Tell me about the state of stuff in Home Assistant (temps in rooms, how the solar is doing, what’s on my shopping list and can add things, etc).
It requires you already have Home Assistant set up but it is a pretty good experience so long as you’re willing to do some amount of tinkering to make it your own.
Like other comments say it’s not general public ready but it’s pretty close and costs $69.
Like always, Black Mirror has an episode on this.
Isn’t Black Mirror a manual at this point?
Or a documentary.
What the fuck is Alexa+ 🤣🤣🤣
After AI became a thing, Amazon decided you needed to pay a subscribtion to use Alexa with an LLM instead of the basic keyword recognition model
Sounds like another case of Amazon trying to out-Amazon itself
Alexa already periodically makes “suggestions” that are annoying to disable if you misspeak.
Counting down until it starts demanding credit cards in order to function. Maybe as a form of “identity check”, as that’s been a popular excuse to collect payment information.
Pretty much why we unplugged all of ours. I just need to set a timer, don’t tell me extra shit!
To disable suggestions:
“Alexa, stop By The Way”
As if I was ever stupid enough to use Alexa.
I’m amazed it didn’t already as someone who has never used or heard one being used. What’s the business model? Just the data harvesting for purpose of their other businesses?
Got 8 Google Minis around the house, mostly ceiling mount. First ad that comes out that bitches mouth, I’m taking a 12-gauge to every motherfucking one of them, patch the roof later.
You sir, and I say this with no hyperbole; are a hero.
🎵I got a shotgun, and here’s the plot,
Takin’ Minis out with a flurry of buck shot,
Boom, boom, boom! Yeah, I was gunnin’,
And then you look, all you see is Googles runnin’,
And fallin’ and yellin’ and pushin’ and screamin’,
And cussin’, I stepped back and I kept bustin’🎶
Im sure they’ll try to get you to order ammo as they explode.
<pump-action sound>
“How’s your supply of shells? Winchester is having a blowout sale on 00-buck. To learn more…”
I’m pretty sure Amazon got this idea from Black Mirror’s latest season
Their users will accept this.
Not this one. I’ve been a Prime member for many years out of convenience (and because I live in the rurals and need to ship a lot of things to the house). Amazon completely fucked it up for themselves with regard to my subscription this past year or two, I’m done.
- Removed the ability to download and sideload Kindle books
- Ads in Prime Video
- Followed by even more ads in Prime Video
- Now this, and I don’t even own an Alexa device
I’m done. Subscription is cancelled (has been for some time now, but unfortunately it was reupped annual). I’ve found alternative sources for several things I need to buy monthly/regularly that I previously would purchase on Amazon. Video was already trashed, but I barely used it. I’ve jailbroken my Kindles, converted all my books to EPUB, and installed KOReader on them. Wasn’t a hard transition since I’ve had a Boox device as my main reader for some years now anyway. I’ve started buying my books from Kobo and other sources.
Looking into other services for online purchases and shipping. It’ll be less convenient, and I’ll still buy from Amazon in the event I absolutely have to, but I’d like to minimize that now.
Never had issues sideloading epubs with Calibre on my PW.
No, Amazon took away the “Download and transfer via USB” option when downloading your books. Making it more difficult to strip DRM, but also to conveniently add it to multiple devices. I prefer to keep my eReaders offline and manage them with Calibre.
Regarding sideloading EPUBs with Calibre, it’s not really doing that. Under normal circumstances Kindle can’t read EPUB format at all, so Calibre will convert it to a native format, either MOBI or AZW3 generally. But with a jailbroken Kindle and KOReader, you can actually read EPUBs natively. I’ve actually converted my entire collection to EPUB and deleted the AZW3 and KFX files.
Oh my bad.
Any reason why those formats are worse than epub?
It’s really just that only Amazon uses AZW3 and KFX. MOBI is deprecated, and nobody really uses it anymore, not even Amazon. KFX is DRMed to hell, and I’m not sure about it, but most AZW3 files are just DRM wrappers for EPUB anyway. This is why the KindleUnpack plugin for Calibre can strip out EPUBs from most AZW3 files and retain formatting without needing conversion.
Basically, AZW3 and KFX are for Kindle, and only for Kindle. EPUB is an open standard that literally every device that’s not a Kindle uses.
I already own a non-Amazon reader that’s my main reader, and I want to move away from Amazon’s ecosystem.
How do you jailbreak your Kindle?
Depends on the model and firmware, but for most, Winterbreak is the current method.
Do note if your Kindle is updated to version 5.18.x currently it’s not possible to jailbreak. There is ongoing work on a new exploit though, and a new jailbreak method (or update to Winterbreak) is expected later this year.
Edit - actually, if you’re on firmware 5.18.0 the jailbreak may work. 5.18.1 and above it definitely doesn’t.
*Amazon testing public backlash before shoving ads into your conversations with Alexa+
FTFY
Calling out Companies is not beneficial to the “Journalists”
Alexa has ads since the beginning and I can’t imagine that would change just because they are replacing the backend with AI. The first time Echo wasted my time trying to selling me something in my own home was also the last time. I don’t understand how anyone can be okay with that.
“brought to you by Carls Jr.”
Fuck you! I’m eating!!
It won’t be long until the LLMs are trained with for ad-RAG
While each conversation happens a second model will scan it, send the contents to a vector search, return as embedding and a score, then give those outputs silently to the conversing model.
You do need to train/fine tune the model to not mention that it received the ad and subtly push it.
Actually, now that I think about it, you don’t even need to tell the model about the ad, you just weight some of the input tokens with the ad embedding and it naturally biases towards talking about that brand.
