Amazon Echo - Siri thing from Amazon because their phone bombed

Yeah I think I’m gonna kill Alexa. Some “isolated human-error” meant some dude downloaded another’s 1700 voice snips.

You know what would also make it less likely to happen again? If Amazon wasn’t recording these in the first place.

My Alexa is in a room with my parrot. I can’t wait until those clips go viral.

https://i.imgur.com/CjoPt0c.jpg

How has your parrot not learned how to use Alexa on his/her own yet?? That’s hilarious.

FYI, I just asked and yes they can but only in small pieces and infrequently because they are lactose intolerant.

I think anyone who wants to listen to my conversations with Alexa will be bored stiff, only after they stop laughing when they realize I am getting irritated with her after the third time I ask her to do the same thing, and she still can’t get it.

Awesome. I just sent this link to everyone I know.

KMBC’s source was the Daily Mail, just so you’re aware, but my gut says it’s accurate.

So I might have bought a Google Home Hub. It hasn’t arrived yet, and it’s from Target, but i can easily return it if I change my mind later. The deal just seemed so good!

Google Home Hub + 2x Google Home Mini $99 + Free Shipping

https://www.target.com/p/google-home-hub/-/A-54163096?lnk=TodayonlyGet2Go

Plus I got the 20% off Target Gift Card deal so it was actually 89 not 99 plus 2 minis which I don’t know what i would do with. I’ll agonize over it for a week or so until it arrives. I am not sure I am going to appreciate it not having a camera.

Dammit Nesrie. Now I own a Home Hub. My parents could use another Mini so this works out pretty well at least.

My humble apologies. heh.

We killed ours last month. Its just too freaky. The “talk about it and then you see ads about it” coincidences just added up once too often. Paranoia aside its just one less gizmo I have to worry about with wifi and whatever.

Besides we primarily used it as a timer & playing music. There are better solutions for that problem.

Wow, that is a hell of a deal.

Yeah. And then there’s this.

My Spot’s volume can no longer be controlled by voice. Anyone else having this problem? Stopped working a few weeks ago.

Everything else seems to work. I rebooted it as well. Did they remove it?

Did your Home Hub arrive? Any thoughts yet?

Is no one else having problems with their Echo’s volume? As I said above my volume control stopped working by voice. And then it started working again on Friday. But then today it’s stopped working again. Plus the volume keeps reseting to level 1 and I have to keep hitting the volume buttons to change it, as if the buttons aren’t working right. It’s really weird.

Am I going nuts? I can’t imagine something is broken. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and that did t fix it.

Edit: and minutes later I figured it out. I have a Sonos Play 3 in the same room as the Spot. My voice commands are changing the volume on that, not the Spot. That doesn’t make sense because the Play 3 doesn’t use the Alexa voice, but it sort of supports Alexa.

Not sure how I fix this. Is there a way to give the Spot priority?

My hub did arrive. It does several things well, a number of things not well, and it’s missing some really key features.

Does Well

Timers: no seriously this is the best timers I’ve had so far. You can name the timers, you have multiple timers. There is a visual tracker and it keeps them in order for you, and you can do all of this without touching anything.

Recipe instructions: works pretty flawlessly, walks you through the steps, remembers where you left off, takes you through it all hands free.

Wikipedia useless trivia: What’s better than asking who Guy Pearce is so your family member who just watched a movie with you can know who he is, well visuals of course.

Speakers: Compared to the Smart Speakers, not great, compared to a number of tablets and phones, actually a lot louder so you can stand at the sink or kitchen and still hear it. You probably don’t want to be playing music on it.

Mic: On Off Switch, physical switch, no seriously it has one. This is perfect for someone who is concerned about ease dropping or is like me. I work with seriously sensitive data in my home. Nothing in my home office is allowed to list 24 hours due to the way I treat PHI. This is the first smart device that i might actually consider having in here and… I would want to hook it up to something like security and doorbell cameras.

So-So

Screen: It’s pretty darn small. I mean, because it’s Google and not Amazon, you can watch YouTube on it but… why. ti’s too small for that. It’s pretty hard so far though. I feel like I could break most tablets easily, this one kind of feel, I don’t know, less fragile. It’s also feels like the smaller screen that I’ve purchased that wasn’t designed to walk around with me.

Smartphone required? It’s got a screen, and it was kind of a bitch to get up and running. I am not sure if there was a connection issue going on or not but gets the phone to connect to it and then it to the internet is something I’d expect to have to walk family through. It made sense that speakers need app because they have no screens… this should have at least basic functions without the app.

Bad

No Recipe Box: Okay, seriously, a kitchen device that has multiple named timers, walks you through recipes, but has no way to actually store or add recipes to a box you want to pull from. Hey Google, I don’t need you to search for everything… sometimes I have what I need right here. I hear there is a way around this by using some third party skill or something, but this should be a built in feature.

Ingredients List: Supposedly it can take a recipe and add all the ingredients from it to your list which is hand on your phone… except all I seem to get is “Ingredients” and nothing else listed. I don’t know if it’s the ingredients, or if I am not asking right. I’ll take more time figuring this out.

No Camera: I knew this coming in but it seems so… strange not to have it. It can make something called a Google Duo call where you can watch someone else but they can’t see you… ummm. I’m noticing it’s missing because it seems like it’s easy way to do a quick call in a kitchen or share cooking stuffs.

Now I got it with the Kitchen in mind and potentially using apps to security cameras I don’t have yet. I also got it in a pretty large discount, because of the added minis. I don’t use Google Assistant, at all, and the only real Google device I have is phone. It might be some of this learning curve is due not to the hub but my lack of using Google’s new goodies.

It’s probably worth checking out if you are putting your foot in the water, but my gut tells me I’d be happier with the more expensive offerings, the bigger screens and the camera. I think going Google this time is fine but if these are going to kind of veer into the kitchen more… Kindle has a lot of cookbooks. I don’t find reading a recipe on my Kindle while cooking at all worthwhile, but… having it read to me, adding them to grocery list… Google could do it too since they have readers, but as someone who likes to cook using recipes and still buys physical books for that or prints them from online… they could easily change my behavior here.

Is there an easy way to use the same shopping list between Echo and Google assistant on an android phone? I prefer the phone’s interface compared to the Alexa app. I want to be able to share the list with my wife and add things with an android phone and Alexa.

I could use a 3rd party app like Any.do I guess. Not looking to pay $30 per year. I’m OK paying a one time purchase if I need to.