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Re:Amazon cuts 'several hundred' jobs in Alexa division by parl_match on Friday November 17, 2023 @02:04PM (#38308363)
I used to use alexa for home control. Over the past 5 years or so, it got progressively smarter and more capable - and worse! It was incredibly annoying. Now I just use a locally hosted smarthome solution.
Re:Amazon cuts 'several hundred' jobs in Alexa division by danielbln on Friday November 17, 2023 @03:14PM (#38309391)
My Alexa recently lost knowledge of most rooms, it can't work most lights anymore. A few months prior it suddenly refused to work with "livingroom", apparently some new device of that name appeared after a automatic device scan, but would not react or be removable. In the end I renamed it "main room" which worked until the recent snafu. The only, only good thing about Alexa is the low latency. But if most things just don't work right, what good is it.
Re:Amazon cuts 'several hundred' jobs in Alexa division by nunez on Friday November 17, 2023 @09:59PM (#38314450)
I felt this one personally.

We have a ton of devices connected to Alexa and HomeKit via Home Assistant. We mostly interact with Alexa through our Sonos system.

I want to throw Alexa out the goddamn window every other week, especially when I ask it to turn off a very specific room, and it responds "which device?" Despite parsing my query perfectly.

Re:Amazon cuts 'several hundred' jobs in Alexa division by parl_match on Monday November 20, 2023 @02:54PM (#38353594)
I always enjoyed when it would do something like get the wrong task altogether, but what really annoyed me was when it started giving me tips on how to do other things.

"You can also..."