News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo. Parent comment

Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by m0zg on Sunday January 06, 2019 @11:05PM (#18842698)
You can mostly speak to it like you'd speak to a human, and in the vast majority of cases it will understand. No need for rigid commands. You can also ask clarifying questions and it will keep context. Its speech synthesis and response language is more "human" and "cheerful". I just wish it also had an echo-like microphone array. When it's playing music it sometimes can be difficult to get it to hear commands.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by walterbell on Sunday January 06, 2019 @11:20PM (#18842748)
Previous Echo models had the same issue with music. The latest Echo model will lower the music volume when it hears the wake word.

Alexa can make phone calls that dial a landline number, which is not an option with Google.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by Semaphor on Sunday January 06, 2019 @11:38PM (#18842787)
> The latest Echo model will lower the music volume when it hears the wake word.

I got my Echo a while ago before the current generation was even announced. It would always lower the volume as soon as it hears the wake word.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by walterbell on Monday January 07, 2019 @12:36AM (#18843029)
Then it was only Echo v1 which didn't have this feature.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by StudentStuff on Monday January 07, 2019 @05:25AM (#18844127)
Hrm? Google Home can make calls (uses the google voice # of the account paired to it).
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by walterbell on Monday January 07, 2019 @06:30AM (#18844389)
Echo can use a landline for the outbound call.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by StudentStuff on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @12:15AM (#18853369)
How is this better than the Google Home/Google Voice integration? Seems significantly more complex, and reliant on the end user having a working home phone line
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Amazon Says It Has Over 10k Employees Working on Alexa, Echo by walterbell on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @01:07PM (#18857784)
Echo can dial (VOIP) without a landline, same as Google Voice/Home.

If you have a landline and want your outbound Echo calls to have the same caller ID as the landline (so that people can return/screen calls), then Echo is the only option for voice dialing.

[ Parent | on HN ]