Amazon Echo Club

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Thanks for the heads up. I only use two skills -- weather and iHeart Santa (Christmas music).

I just looked at mine and there were 18 installed. I forgot about the sleep/ambient sound skills I had installed. Most of my skills are those. I also have a Hulu skill and a Netflix skill, and I cannot figure out how to delete them. I tried using them once way back when, and of course they were both a total fail. It aggravates me that the Alexa app is such a pile of rubbish. Seriously Bezos, hire some decent programmers. My guess is that popular skills like Netflix and Hulu will be the type homophone hackers will try to mimic due to their popularity. I think if you don't give Alexa access to financial information you will be better protected, but they can still phish for your personal information. I have never allowed ordering through Alexa, and never will. However, with Bezos Bozos (his stupid programmers) no telling what all Amazon account information might be available through Alexa.

[CRussel]

I'm using and enjoying my Fire TV Cube. It's replaced the second generation Fire TV and does well. It was stupider than absolutely necessary at first, but that's improved noticeably over time. Being able to change inputs to the TV with voice is a plus as is being able to go directly to Hulu or a specific program. Navigation with voice is still basically useless, but I have the remote for that.

One thing I wish they'd fix is the ability to resume when the screen saver has activated. That's annoying. "Alexa, resume" should just work.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by CRussel

....One thing I wish they'd fix is the ability to resume when the screen saver has activated. That's annoying. "Alexa, resume" should just work.

I press the Play button on my remote to resume after the screen saver displays. That works on both the Fire TV 2nd Gen. and the Roku. So I wonder if "Alexa, play" would work? You would certainly expect "Alexa, resume" to work, but we are dealing with Bezos Bozos so I'm not surprised it doesn't.

[Conan46]

I always have some amount of tension weighing privacy with the pragmatic usefulness of Alexa. I use the Bible skill to have Alexa read chapters to me. I also listen to Pandora music. Timers are useful and alarms. TTS readings of ebooks are useful and a few other things. There will be breaches and hacks. The important thing is that Amazon tech and devs find and fix them quickly. My only real concern is that Amazon gets as greedy as Google for our info that they step over the line and collect too much and listen too often and abuse our love for their devices. In that situation I would drop my Alexas as fast as a hot rock no matter how convenient they are. I don't think Amazon is that stupid. But over time Google has actually become evil and I wouldn't have thought it of them either. So I stay very cautiously optimistic as Amazon actually wants to sell us items and hopefully can't afford to scare off their users.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by Conan46

I always have some amount of tension weighing privacy with the pragmatic usefulness of Alexa. I use the Bible skill to have Alexa read chapters to me. I also listen to Pandora music. Timers are useful and alarms. TTS readings of ebooks are useful and a few other things. There will be breaches and hacks. The important thing is that Amazon tech and devs find and fix them quickly. My only real concern is that Amazon gets as greedy as Google for our info that they step over the line and collect too much and listen too often and abuse our love for their devices. In that situation I would drop my Alexas as fast as a hot rock no matter how convenient they are. I don't think Amazon is that stupid. But over time Google has actually become evil and I wouldn't have thought it of them either. So I stay very cautiously optimistic as Amazon actually wants to sell us items and hopefully can't afford to scare off their users.

I really don't think you have to worry much about Amazon directly abusing your information. I think the huge threat is that they are never going to police the 3rd party apps and Alexa skills the way they should. Google will let developers put almost any app on Android; they are sleazy and could care less if those apps are a threat to users. Amazon is better than Google, but Alexa runs on Android and it is crazy easy to hack Android. Google has definitely shown no restraint in harvesting user informations and selling it to other customers. That is sick. And if you think Amazon isn't peeking at your information and activity, request a song to be played on an Alexa device then go to Amazon.com and you will see advertisements pushing that song and artist front and center! Or google a song or any item, and it appears on Amazon.com the next time you go there. Amazon definitely spies on us to find what things we like and or interested in and then they relentlessly push those items in our face trying to get us to purchase them.

[Conan46]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I really don't think you have to worry much about Amazon directly abusing your information. I think the huge threat is that they are never going to police the 3rd party apps and Alexa skills the way they should. Google will let developers put almost any app on Android; they are sleazy and could care less if those apps are a threat to users. Amazon is better than Google, but Alexa runs on Android and it is crazy easy to hack Android. Google has definitely shown no restraint in harvesting user informations and selling it to other customers. That is sick. And if you think Amazon isn't peeking at your information and activity, request a song to be played on an Alexa device then go to Amazon.com and you will see advertisements pushing that song and artist front and center! Or google a song or any item, and it appears on Amazon.com the next time you go there. Amazon definitely spies on us to find what things we like and or interested in and then they relentlessly push those items in our face trying to get us to purchase them.

Very good point about 3rd party apps. So many developers are jumping on the Alexa bandwagon that it would be difficult for Amazon to search all that code for abuses. But I hope they are at least trying.
I don't mind a sort of 'passive' interest in my activities on Alexa, such as music I'm listening to or book genres I like. I would think twice about using some search terms--if Alexa was any good at looking things up--regarding health or other info. That's why I use Startpage or DuckDuckGo search engines instead of Google.
Google is very aggressive at sucking up every ounce of info possible on everyone. Turn off location services, Google is still following you. Think the microphone on your phone isn't listening, it likely still is:
https://www.slashgear.com/ok-google-...ning-06526391/

And the most recent bit of obnoxiousness from Google:
https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/30/1...istory-privacy

If Amazon ever gets that bad I will disengage from them just as I've been doing with Google. The big difference is Amazon wants to sell products. Google wants to sell you as the product to advertisers.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I also have a Hulu skill and a Netflix skill, and I cannot figure out how to delete them. I tried using them once way back when, and of course they were both a total fail.

Go here or here, click your skill, then click "Disable Skill"
.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Go here or here, click your skill, then click "Disable Skill"
.

Thanks but that doesn't work. I went there (several times) and was able to select 3rd party skills to disable and a Disable Skill dialog box indeed displayed and I was allowed to disable the 3rd party skills. However, if I click on Hulu or Netflix the list merely refreshes and no dialog box displays. Clearly Amazon must have an agreement ($$$$) with Hulu and Netflix to prevent their skills from being deleted. I tried using this method in my iPhone and iPad Alexa apps as well as the Alexa app website on my MacBook Pro. It never worked.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by CRussel

I'm using and enjoying my Fire TV Cube. It's replaced the second generation Fire TV and does well. It was stupider than absolutely necessary at first, but that's improved noticeably over time. Being able to change inputs to the TV with voice is a plus as is being able to go directly to Hulu or a specific program. Navigation with voice is still basically useless, but I have the remote for that.

One thing I wish they'd fix is the ability to resume when the screen saver has activated. That's annoying. "Alexa, resume" should just work.

Originally Posted by OtinG

I press the Play button on my remote to resume after the screen saver displays. That works on both the Fire TV 2nd Gen. and the Roku. So I wonder if "Alexa, play" would work? You would certainly expect "Alexa, resume" to work, but we are dealing with Bezos Bozos so I'm not surprised it doesn't.

Well apparently Amazon changed how the Fire TV works in this case. I was watching the Amazon Prime add-on service called BritBox last night via my Fire TV 2nd Gen. I was binge watching the first two series (seasons, years) of "Last of the Summer Wine" and on multiple occasions I paused the play and went to do something else. When I came back the Fire TV had gone into screen saver mode even though it was only a few minutes since I paused play--as in perhaps 3 minutes. It goes into screen saver way to quick IMO. Pressing the Play button did absolutely nothing. That used to resume play. I don't have a Resume button, at least on the universal remote I use. So each time I had to press the Home button then navigate back to the show I was watching. Really clunky if you ask me! Another Bezos Bozos moment for sure!!!! He really needs to find programmers who actually know how to program and who actually use the devices they are programming... The main reason I use my Roku box most of the time is because it is way easier and way more intuitive to navigate within. Roku has a much better user interface that actually works, although it could use a lot of improvements as well.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Thanks but that doesn't work. I went there (several times) and was able to select 3rd party skills to disable and a Disable Skill dialog box indeed displayed and I was allowed to disable the 3rd party skills. However, if I click on Hulu or Netflix the list merely refreshes and no dialog box displays. Clearly Amazon must have an agreement ($$$$) with Hulu and Netflix to prevent their skills from being deleted. I tried using this method in my iPhone and iPad Alexa apps as well as the Alexa app website on my MacBook Pro. It never worked.

That sucks! You should always be allowed to disable skills you no longer want.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

That sucks! You should always be allowed to disable skills you no longer want.

I totally agree. To be honest, I don't remember even enabling the Hulu and Netflix skills, so they are likely automatically added as a part of the Alexa app/system.

I also hate that we cannot modify the Fire TV, Roku, Apple TV, etc. interfaces to get rid of the 95% of garbage we don't care about. It would be nice if these streaming services would allow us re-organize the screens in a meaningful way so we could find what we want in a hurry. It is like going to the grocery store. You just get used to where everything is located then they rearrange everything to make you browse in hopes of selling you impulse items. Plus you have to avoid all the shelf restockers who are there and in the way regardless of what day or time you go. That pretty much describes the interfaces for streaming services too. Way too much clutter designed to get us to watch things rather than organization designed to help us navigate quickly. It seems like all of the streaming services I've used are too cluttered to be navigable in any meaningful way, and appear to be written and designed my morons.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

It seems like all of the streaming services I've used are too cluttered to be navigable in any meaningful way, and appear to be written and designed my morons.

We just got Sling TV and I was thinking the same thing. But I don't think they were built by morons, I suspect they were built by people who had to take orders from people who's primary goal was advertising and driving traffic to certain sponsers content. As far as the end user experience goes, they probably were concerned with putting in the minimum cost and effort.

So I think they were written and designed by people who worked for morons.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I totally agree. To be honest, I don't remember even enabling the Hulu and Netflix skills, so they are likely automatically added as a part of the Alexa app/system.

Could be. They're not listed in Alexa's list of baked-in skills.

TuneIn was my favorite streamer for radio stations on Alexa and it was baked-in. Stations were super easy to request. Then iHeart (also baked-in) removed their stations from Tunein and it's now a real pain to get Alexa to understand the station I want. To make matters worse, Entercom just pulled all of their stations from TuneIn. Now none of my favorite local radio stations are available on TuneIn. On the bright side, Alexa understands my requests for the Entercom stations, unlike iHeart.

Now here's the kicker. Entercom's streaming app for stations is Radio.com and when I request a station, Alexa repeats it back and adds "on Radio.com". The thing is, I never enabled that skill, nor is it listed in Alexa's baked-in skill set.

So it appears that Radio.com is one of those hidden skills like Hulu and Netflix. It would be nice if we could get a list of all skills baked into Alexa.

Final rant. My Echo Dot used to be my go-to radio for local stations. That's no longer the case. Now I use one of my older no contract phones with a built-in FM tuner. For an antenna, I use an old pair of earbuds with the buds cut off. Works great and it's much quicker to play and change stations than Alexa currently is.

Funny how older technology is a better solution in this scenario than newer technology

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Could be. They're not listed in Alexa's list of baked-in skills.

TuneIn was my favorite streamer for radio stations on Alexa and it was baked-in. Stations were super easy to request. Then iHeart (also baked-in) removed their stations from Tunein and it's now a real pain to get Alexa to understand the station I want. To make matters worse, Entercom just pulled all of their stations from TuneIn. Now none of my favorite local radio stations are available on TuneIn. On the bright side, Alexa understands my requests for the Entercom stations, unlike iHeart.

Now here's the kicker. Entercom's streaming app for stations is Radio.com and when I request a station, Alexa repeats it back and adds "on Radio.com". The thing is, I never enabled that skill, nor is it listed in Alexa's baked-in skill set.

So it appears that Radio.com is one of those hidden skills like Hulu and Netflix. It would be nice if we could get a list of all skills baked into Alexa.

Final rant. My Echo Dot used to be my go-to radio for local stations. That's no longer the case. Now I use one of my older no contract phones with a built-in FM tuner. For an antenna, I use an old pair of earbuds with the buds cut off. Works great and it's much quicker to play and change stations than Alexa currently is.

Funny how older technology is a better solution in this scenario than newer technology

Yep, here is something similar to what I used as a kid growing up in the 1960's:



Worked pretty well and those old AM stations could be heard from hundreds of miles away! And during the winter those vacuum tubes could keep you warm. FM was not an option in my area then, and you didn't even have FM radios in most cars back then either.

[tubemonkey]

Cross-posted from the Deals Forum:


Amazon -- Select Customers Only -- exp 07 Sep @ 9 AM PT

• $69.99 -- Fire TV Cube -- with Alexa & 4K Ultra HD

Exclusive offer: Fire TV Cube $119.99 $69.99 for a limited time with code FIRETVCUBE50 at checkout. Learn more.

Exclusively for you: $50 off a Fire TV Cube

Limited-time offer

From September 3, 2018, at 9:00 AM (PT) through September 7, 2018, at 9:00 AM (PT), get $50 off a Fire TV Cube. To redeem this offer, add a Fire TV Cube to your cart and enter promo code FIRETVCUBE50 at checkout.

Terms and Conditions

Spoiler:

This is a limited time offer.
Offer expires at 9:00 AM (PT) September, 7, 2018.
Offer only applies to products sold by Amazon.com or Amazon Digital Services LLC (look for "sold by Amazon.com" or "sold by Amazon Digital Services LLC" on the product detail page). Products sold by third-party sellers or other Amazon entities will not qualify for this offer, even if "fulfilled by Amazon.com" or "Prime Eligible".
Offer does not apply to digital content.
Offer good while supplies last.
Shipping charges and taxes may apply to the full value of discounted and free promotional items.
Items must be purchased in a single order and shipped at the same speed to a single address.
Offer limited to one per customer and account.
Taxes, shipping and handling, and gift wrap charges do not apply when determining minimum purchase amount.
Promotional code expires at 9:00 AM (PT) September, 7, 2018.
Promotional code only applies to Amazon Fire TV Cube.
The maximum benefit you may receive from this offer is $50 off the purchase price of an Amazon Fire TV Cube.
Amazon reserves the right to modify or cancel the offer at any time.
Offer is non-transferable and may not be resold.
Offer discount will be allocated proportionally among all promotional items in your order.
If any of the products or content related to this offer are returned, your refund will equal the amount you paid for the product or content, subject to applicable refund policies.
If you violate any of these terms, the offer will be invalid.
Unless an Amazon Gift Card is the stated benefit of the promotion, promotional codes (including those placed directly in accounts) may not be redeemed for Amazon Gift Cards.