Amazon CEO says ‘beautiful’ new Alexa hardware is coming this fall

Fuck amazon.

Yeah, I won't ever put one of their listening devices in my house.

Setting aside any issues with Amazon themselves running these...

I suspect that there is, at some point, going to be one almighty privacy clusterfuck when someone manages to mass-compromise Internet-connected speech-recognizing microphones.

I'm not saying that Alexa devices are even the worst here. I'd be more-worried about stuff like inexpensive security cameras out of China from some random company that promptly goes under and doesn't provide any security updates.

But I really think that people don't stop and consider "am I really prepared to put a sensor in my house that may have some random party on the Internet in control of it at some point in the future?"

I bought the marketing BS about the stupid Alexa when the screen when it came out.

It was such a pile of shit I left a long 2-star review on Amazon ranting about how pointless it was. Amazon phoned me numerous times trying to talk to me about my review and experience (why do product people have my phone number?). I declined to engage.

Fast forward a few years and I can guarantee the “beautiful” new offerings are going to be just as shitty as the last time.

The Alexa product line has never been profitable. They lose billions on them. They continue to shove it into unwitting peoples' homes in the hopes that it will drive sales at Amazon. It will end up being a cost-per-use thing, just a hunch.