Alexa’s Dumb

I have Amazon Alexa devices.

Why?

Because I like the audio quality and I like to listen to my local AM news station in the morning. They’ll light up with announcements, like Amazon deliveries or weather. But the main thing I use them for is media. Keep in mind, I worked with voice processing software for over a decade. So for me, speaking commands is no big deal. I’m used to talking to machines. Besides, Alexa fits the need. I can play the radio station without draining my mobile.

In the house I owned, pre-divorce, I had one. My daughter gave it to me. It sat for months until I plugged it in. I tried doing the smart home thing with it, but found that all it did was act as a proxy for all the services I wanted to use it on, such as a Phillips hub. I found it way faster to simply use Wyze bulbs and the app. They have automations that turn my lights on and off without me screwing with the app. I also didn’t want Amazon to have access to my other accounts. This is a basic security thing – silo these things.

I had it on a table in the breakfast area so I could hear it in the kitchen and my office. I had other areas wired with my receiver in my office. More than once I thought of simply wiring a pair of speakers in the kitchen to replace it.

When I moved, I added an Echo in my bedroom. I found that you could play that radio station on all devices, and it synced up seamlessly. So I could listen as I showered/dressed, then as I dealt with breakfast. At my new place, I added one in my office.

All this time, the command to listen to the station has been the same:

“Alexa, play NewsTalk 820 everywhere.” Worked great for years.

Then somewhere along the line, Amazon upgraded my devices. First thing I noticed was that the smooth, professional female voice was gone, replaced by a smartypants GenZ chick with half a vocal fry and an annoying lexicon. The type you see in almost every dopey commercial. Also, the command to listen to my station changed. She didn’t know how to do what I wanted.

Jeezis this sort of thing pisses me off. Microsoft does this all the time with their user interface. Everytime they do, I have to relearn the interface. It’s irritating, but it’s right in front of your eyes, so you can stab around and figure it out. You can’t do that here. It’s a voice interface. So you have a human reaction along the lines of “Why the fuck can’t you do what I told you to do? It seems like that petulant idiot that won’t do something you asked because you didn’t say “Please” in the right way. So you have to go to the interwebs to figure it out. You’ll spend a morning trying to figure it out on the mobile app, which seems to be designed my GenZ retards.

Turns out, I needed to add a group. So I created one called “everywhere” and put all the Echo Dots in it. Then, I said the same thing and it worked until it didn’t. I farted around with the app, did some web research. Turns out, I needed to put them into rooms. Even though I had them all in the same room, telling it to play there didn’t work. SO, I put each device into it’s own room – Bedroom, Office, Kitchen. Like that. I removed the “Everywhere” group and put them in a group pithily named “group-1”

“Alexa, play NewsTalk 820 in every room”

That worked until it didn’t this week. Instead of it’s response “Playing NewsTalk 820 on all available devices”. It said:

“One Moment”

“I built a routine to play NewsTalk 820 on Echo Dot. Do you want to try it now?”

Yes.

It played only on that device. Fuck. I’m going to have to figure this out again. As I went from room to room, I asked it to play the station on that device. Each time, it built a routine before playing it. Now I had three devices playing, not in sync. They were all separated by the amount of time between commands. Utterly retarded.

I looked at the app. I can build a routine. What I can’t do is have it apply to a group or more than one device. Insanely retarded. I see this with software all the time at work. They add stuff, like a new interface. They keep both on the platform, you can choose either for now. But each one doesn’t do all things. It’s insisting on a new feature, but that feature isn’t as comprehensive as the old way of doing things. What retard conjured this nonsense?

The next morning, I tried again. Again it tried to build a routine. I told it to stop.

“Alexa, play NewsTalk 820 on every device without building a routine”

“I can’t do that without building a routine, but I can build an automation. Do you want me to do that?”

Yes

It didn’t work.

“Alexa, play NewsTalk 820 on Group-1”

It worked.

I hate this with the power of a thousand suns. I deal with that at work on the software I support. They build a new modern interface for the older package. Pick it, it doesn’t work like the old one and doesn’t have the same functionality the same way if at all. And you can’t go back cleanly. No one thinks of any sort of backward compatibility.

One more time. One.More.Time and I’ll wipe the devices clean and stick them on ebay. I’ll use my mobile with earbuds or my Bose sound tower. I saw an ad for networked bluetooth speakers. Problem is an Amazon Echo is $50 or so. The cheapest one of these is the Apple HomePod mini @ $129. They all go up from there.

Maybe, I add speakers from my receiver to the bedroom and call it good. You can get a bitchin’ set of powered speakers at a fraction of the price.

We’ll see. I hope Amazon doesn’t make this a priority for me and stops adding bullshit functionality it thinks I need.