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GooseFinger

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Amazon Mulls $5 to $10 monthly price tag for unprofitable Alexa service, AI revamp (www.reuters.com)

Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers of service and has considered a monthly fee of around $5 to access the superior version, according to people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.

GooseFinger ,

If you have an Amazon Echo (or whatever they call it) in your home, then you already pay them by letting it spy on you, your family, and any guests that come over. Even if they improved the service (they won’t), why would you pay $20 or $30 a year for it?

GooseFinger ,

More than just “ripcord likes to have lights on at 6:00 pm,” surprisingly.

It knows what brand lights you have, who’s interacting with it, who you might be with if anyone speaks in the background, what times and days you’re typically home… it’ll even infer your mood based on how your voice sounds.

Unfortunately, Amazon isn’t required to disclose every bit of personal data they take from you, so only so much is known about it. If you consider though that data collection is a new, multi-billion dollar industry, and how effective hundreds of PhDs in data science and social-engineering can be with near infinite resources to develop tools to extract as much information from these devices as possible, it starts becoming more believable.

Here’s a good paper I found: arxiv.org/pdf/2204.10920

GooseFinger ,

No one’s mentioned the privacy nightmare that new vehicles are. Why anyone would pay $45k for a vehicle that spies on you for the sole benefit of car manufacturers and insurance companies is beyond me. Do away with all the unnecessary privacy violations, or pay ME a monthly subscription for MY data.

GooseFinger ,

Nothing to see here, move along citizen.

GooseFinger ,

I know you mean well, but when wins are this small and infrequent, I’d refrain from giving praise and instead demand more. Really though, has the current administration done anything else to improve the prison system besides this?

Our prison system is such a far cry from functioning well and ethically that capping phone call charges is truly, barely scraping the surface. I understand celebrating small wins, but if we celebrate this one and continue making improvements at this rate, it would take literally thousands of years for our prison system to reach reform. That’s not a win, that’s stagnation disguised as a win.

And this isn’t mentioning how nearly every facet of this dysfunctional, worthless excuse of a society is designed to serve the rich at the expense of the poor, and our government has made it crystal clear that they don’t intend on fixing any of it. I have incredibly good health insurance and I can’t even see a damn allergist, my wife and I are two working professionals who will never afford a home (let alone kids), etc. You can make more money in this country reselling sneakers than you can by getting a degree in education and teaching children. Seriously though, what the fuck?

We won’t see any meaningful social reform in our lives unless things boil over and heads start to roll. Until then, the government will continue making our lives tangibly worse in two dozen different ways for each micro-win, like this prison phone call change.

GooseFinger ,

Rational conversation is impossible in threads like this so don’t even bother. It’s a nonstop circlejerk of over generalizations and name calling.

I think my favorite comment in this one so far is “When you have a gun, especially a “manly” gun like an AR-15, you start having intrusive thoughts and desire to use it.”

Really? They really think that owning a gun magically gives the owner intrusive throughts and desires to use it against people? Forget who they are or how good their character might be, apparently anyone who owns a firearm will struggle with newfound urges to murder people. That’s news to me, I guess that commentor knows myself better than I do.

And before someone takes this non anti-gun comment and frames it as support the dude’s actions in the original article, I’ll clearly state that I don’t agree with what he did and he should probably face criminal charges. Pulling a gun on someone’s only acceptable if they’re moments away from murdering or seriously harming someone.

GooseFinger ,

Do you actually need their point of view explained to you or are you purposely trolling?

I’m honestly asking because I can’t tell at all.

GooseFinger ,

I wish more people understood that violent crime happens and responsibly protecting your family, and knowing what that means and how to really do it, is a very sensible thing to do.

I also wish that our people in general were smarter, wealthier, and less stressed out so that violent crime and firearm accidents would diminish. That would take actual social reform though, which is way harder and less catchy than “ban things ban things!”

GooseFinger ,

SPT with MPT mod.

GooseFinger , (edited )

I have a handful of tankie capitalism and “democracy” loving, American “traditional” leaning and religious Republican coworkers who absolutely still believe that he’s a genius. They feel that way about other billionaires too.

Edit: TIL that “tankie” doesn’t mean “capitalism and ‘democracy’ loving, American ‘traditional’ leaning and religious Republicans.” I guess the shorthand for that is just “stereotypical conservative.”

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