Amazon will no longer support the Echo Look, encourages owners to recycle theirs | Hacker News Reader

Amazon will no longer support the Echo Look, encourages owners to recycle theirs

theverge.com

Jesus harold christ.

If Apple, Tandy, or Commodore sold a computer that stopped working altogether after some flag day when the company decided to stop supporting it, there would be... I'd like to say "rioting in the streets" but that's a little too on the nose right now so let's just say there would be significant consumer backlash.

im curious about why this happened

Around a decade ago, Apple and Google started ramming myriad customer-hostile paradigms down everyone's throat. Things like unrepairable devices, "share buttons", dongle life, touch-screens, flat design, the subscripion purchase-model, storing everything "in the cloud", promoting "internet of shit" gadgets, etc.

Most middle-aged, and old reviewers didn't complain much about these changes (with the exception of "dongles", at least). I assume because they blamed themselves for being out of the loop. Eg: "Touch UI is extremely error-prone, inaccurate, physically fatiguing to use, and unsuitable for large displays... but I surely just feel that way because I'm a dinosaur with an irrational love of computer mice."

Meanwhile, younger customers didn't know any better, and now accept all this nonsense as the unchangeable facts of life. And perhaps they are? Maybe the world really has entered "late stage capitalism." I look at the state of tech, and it's hard to explain why the user experience stopped improving, unless customers just have less power over manufacturers today.

On rereading this, my first paragraph gives the unintended impression that Apple and Google somehow fiendishly conspired to worsen tech. And my next two paragraphs are a bit smug. Too late for me to edit it, alas.

thx for the retrospection, its a good look actually.

my thought was that amazon had too many nudie pixs for thier desired optics and just said oops and stop it all

And yet, today, consumers seems to be malleable enough to accept everything, starting from giving access to their mailboxes to strangers.

Chromebooks have an expiration date[1]. Considering I have 10-plus-year-old ThinkPads that still work fine, Chromebooks are a hard pass for me.

[1] https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/chromebook-6-years-expira...

I've got a 5 year old Chromebook that still works great. I paid $200 for it in 2015.

Updates may cease but the machines still work and can easily be put into developer mode to receive another OS.

This Echo thing depends on some cloud service to even function. And I doubt Amazon built hackability into 'em. Once they pull the plug on the cloud service, the device becomes junk.

Hardware security is changing very rapidly.

There's more than it seems on the surface.

Do you mean software security issue one could exploit given physical access (which sounds a much minor issue than hardware obsolescence in this world of overproduction and waste) or risk of physical harm due to, say, fire hazard or similar?

This is Hacker News. I'm speaking of exploits/firmware vulnerabilities.

New hardware brings new mitigations, like the Pixels + GrapheneOS for example.

Used to think Android/mobiles were awful from a security perspective. Boy was I wrong.

Still awful for privacy, if Airplane mode is off, but, still.

Also, NOT just exploitable with physical access....remote code execution is not just a theoretical fantasy.

> If Apple, Tandy, or Commodore sold a computer

I often wonder what the world would be like if Apple still made computers.

Tandy and Commodore??

This is more of a hardware interface to an unpaid network service than a personal computer.

Here's Amazon's original flashy marketing video for it (2017):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_fP4pPWPw

Serious question, how many people here work at a startup with a questionable machine learning component?

There’s going to be graveyards of products that were ‘going to use machine learning to figure out real estate prices’ or whatever.

Fun times, that list is going to be hilarious to read through one day.

Engaging elevator pitch bullshit mode:

There's probably a "business space" for "human-enhanced AI" "solutions" leveraging the new work-from-home reality due to Covid-19.

AI toy that distracts your dog/feeds it! AI home security system! AI plant-watering system!

I wonder the same thing about blockchain.

I see a lot of companies in the space that want to solve an (often physical) problem with blockchain which is absolutely infeasible.

I don’t understand how these companies get funding and get away with making their bold claims when anyone with a tiny bit of common sense and technical knowledge will tell you that their task is inherently impossible.

TIL Echo Look existed. If--like me--you were wondering if they introduced and discontinued the product in the last two weeks, it's actually been around since 2017. How Googley.

Off to the landfill with ye!

This is why I would never use Amazon Web Services for my startup. You can't count on them to not pull the plug if a product doesn't gain traction.

killedbyamazon.com

When has AWS killed a service? Usually that does not happen. SimpleDB had been deprecated for years and is not even shown in the console or marketing pages and yet its existing customers continue to use it. This is just one of the examples.

AWS is a bad example. They keep things running ridiculously long as long as customers are paying them.

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