I’m sorry, people still have or use these things?
Who is this stupid or lazy?
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. 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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
Maybe I didnt read it properly when Calibre was sending it to my reader.
Regarding formats: As expected (Insert XKCD comic about standards)
Easy fix:
Follow-up fix: get home assistant and recreate this yourself with a $15 device
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.
It doesn’t plug directly into the wall
That’s a huge deal: it stays out of the way and it’s a complete unit.
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
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. :(
Yeah I understand the health issues for sure. First prostate cancer with a radical prostatectomy and then a year later Guillain-Barré Syndrome. I had lots of projects on hold for several years. This was like 5 years ago and I’m good now.
Damn. I hope you’re feeling better, my friend.
Working on it!
Oh that is fucking awesome. Hope you can finish it and share it one day!
Now introducing Alexa Luxe
Now introducing Alexa Luxe + Pro Max Premium
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.
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.
To disable suggestions:
“Alexa, stop By The Way”
Pretty much why we unplugged all of ours. I just need to set a timer, don’t tell me extra shit!
*Amazon testing public backlash before shoving ads into your conversations with Alexa+
FTFY
Make the bad even worse. Is there a word for this?
Enshitification
You’re still using Alexa? Unplugged our listening er pod device about a week after we got it.
Same, I got Alexa (the first one with a good speaker) when attended a sales event of another company. I set it up, but after seeing its network activity even when no one was home I shut it down and didn’t use it again.
I don’t understand why people don’t feel weirded out by having an always on listening device.
Yup, scares the heck out of me. Guess other don’t agree. I am getting downvoted.
Likely b/c your comment reads like you are stating OP is using it when you probably meant a more general public “you”? That’d be my guess. I think most, if not all, here would agree to not ever use alexa, that bitch.
That’s a them problem. I did not say it was OP. Ass/u/me.
Based on the your still “insert whatever here”.
Just the messenger, dude.
“brought to you by Carls Jr.”
Fuck you! I’m eating!!
Duh. This is the AI wet dream. Ads won’t have discrete patterns that can be filtered. The LLM will deliver content specific garbage as if it were a genuine answer to a query. It will just bias towards ads and deliver the ad Ina different personalized manner each time. For as much as everyone likes to bitch about AI. This may be the golden age. It probably just gets worse from here.
Musk on the other hand already experiments on adding ideology and use such bots (makes as regular users) on social media.
They’re already making suggestions. Got one this morning telling me I can ask it for updates on Amazon packages.
Speaking of which, anyone have any suggestions for better smart speakers?
I’m not really a smart speaker kind of guy but HomePods are nice, sound quality is pretty good
Mine isn’t. Do you use the full size, or the mini?
I bought a full size a few years ago but returned it cause I didn’t think it was worth the price. I got a mini as a gift last year and it works great. Even has built in temperature and humidity sensors
All natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of mount Nicaragua !
They already do…
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.
Fuck, the Echo Show series is basically just a glorified ad machine with a clock feature.
