- Uber is experimenting with letting riders wait longer in exchange for cheaper fares by Quarts. Surely another way Uber will be short changing drivers and charging riders more.
- Amazon’s Alexa will now butler at Marriott hotels by Reuters. I still don’t find these “butlers” that useful, am I the only one? I’m also a bit worried about these sorts of devices listening in.
- PayPal is buying group payouts platform HyperWallet for $400 million by Fast Company.
Deals expiring at the end of today (view the full deal calendar here):
- [Targeted] Chase Ink Preferred 120,000 Point Offer
- [Targeted] eBay: Up to 8% Back in eBay Bucks on Purchases
Deals expiring at end of tomorrow:
I find Alexa to be pretty handy, at least in my home once it’s synced up with everything. The full sized Echos have really great sound, and being able to play a song whenever you think of it off Spotify or similar is great- in my mind that high quality music player is about 80% of the value. Otherwise, being able to control appliances with your voice is quite handy, as is being able to quickly check the weather, convert units, set a timer/alarms etc. Reordering items with your voice is also quite a timesaver.
From what I read yesterday Alexa will not only listen but record! Marriott says they will delete the recordings each day, they will not know which recordings come from which room & Amazon won’t have access to the recordings. They also say you will have to physically switch on the Alexa devices.
I’m personally still creeped out by it & it seems entirely unnecessary. The recent bad press about Alexa does not help.
What bad press?
google it. 🙂 (and nope, this is not important just to “conspiracy theorists” or Greenwald or Krebbs readers….) I will be inclined to avoid Marriott going forward, now that they have a new “bug” problem. I don’t “trust” Alexa/Marriott any more than I do…. facebook — to not abuse the technology’s very obvious privacy invasion capabilities. Creepy indeed. Ah, but the apologists and/or shills for Amazon (and now Marriott) will tell us such fears are “overblown,” “unlikely” …. And so it goes.
ps: back to the original post compilation…. that Sears deal at gyft has been OOS since early June…. (e.g. “Sorry, this code is no longer valid because either the promotion period is over or we have run out of supply”)
What bad press? If i Google “Alexa” all I see are mostly postive reviews. If I search for “alexa bad press” I get results related to stupid items, like the laughter. I am really curious what bad things Alexa does. I have 4 devices and love them and find them extremely usefull. Especially for communicating with my elderly dad. The poster just refrences bad press withot any detail or link. I am curious. Thanks
It’s really no different than you smartphone listening in all the time. How else do you think “Hey Siri” or “OK Google” works? And they use all that content for advertising. Not sure why Alexa alarms people but the rest of it doesn’t. Your best bet might be walking to the library and looking things up in an encyclopedia.
I disable those features, too.
If I check into a hotel that has an Alexa device, I’m unplugging it. If I cannot unplug it, I’m leaving.
“OK Google” detection is offline. If that component is not detecting the exact words, Google does not even know about it. The detection does have some false positives though (pretty low rate IMO), you can check all that was sent to the server: https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/6030020?p=account_voice_audio&visit_id=1-636651031849544263-624469765&rd=1
The Alexa problem was that their detection was continuously firing (due to a bug?), and it was practically recording and sending audio to Amazon 24/7.
Actually I do know how Siri works and basically the others work the same. (And if you think you’ll find the info at your local library? LOL. In an encyclopedia?! ROFL.) As far as living your every day life Siri listens and overwrites like every minute, it does send data of what you say while Siri is activated to Apple to “improve” Siri. Alexa is similar in that it listens to everything but is only supposed to understand and transmit to Amazon when you trigger it. Alexa issues seem to arise from technical issues like unintentionally triggering the device- (see those people who sent a recording of their private conversation to a phone contact and had no idea they did it, Amazon claims they said words similar to trigger words and similar to the name and the end result was Alexa sending a private conversation without the users’ knowledge) and Amazon’s not-hidden intention to use it to market to you soon (which theoretically doesn’t apply here due to Amazon not being given access to the hospitality data). (https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/02/amazon-alexa-is-opening-up-to-more-sponsored-product-ads.html)
Is it all enough for me to not stay at a Marriott? No- and despite my knowledge it still creeps me out. I travel with my own smart devices, no interest in using other’s devices. Tbh even if this Alexa for hospitality device did record everything, the most interesting thing it’ll hear is me watching that umpteenth episode of ncis, poor Alexa!
So if you use those features already on your devices that you travel with, how would having a Marriott Alexa be helpful? As a codger who usually types faster than I talk, I don’t use any of those so I’m really curious how an additional device would make life easier.
We stayed at a Curio (Hilton) that had Alexa and weren’t thrilled about it. Our only (intentional) interaction with it was my wife saying “Alexa stop!” before I even knew it was there. 🙂
I’ve been waiting for Uber to add this feature back. It is essentially telling you when surge will be over which used to be a feature of the app but disappeared when they switched to upfront pricing and stopped telling you that it’s currently surging
I encountered Lyft surge pricing this last winter. I arrived at the airport around 11pm on a rainy evening. Lfyt was pricing at $130 for a ride that is normally $30 and Uber did not have any available rides. I waited about 20 mins until Lfyt dropped to $40. It was raining, but no ice on the roads. Apparently the day before had poor road conditions and that is why many drivers did not want to take a risk on the roads the following day.
I would really like to see that feature rolled out everywhere!