Actually, I suspect many folk would consider it the antithesis of “cool”! 
I’m with you.
In 1984, the government mandated listening devices in everyhome, and that was evil. Now people willingly pay money to have them. I don’t get it.
-End of hijack
Horse is out of that barn.
I kind of understand that reluctance but you get to choose where the devices are. For instance we don’t have one in our bedroom or any room in our house but the living room. I’ve been home all day and haven’t said three words in a room with an Alexa device. (Not counting my glasses but I can hard turn off the mic on those when I’m not on a call)
I was paranoid enough when we first got an Alexa forever ago to check on my router when it was sending data and how much. I satisfied myself that it wasn’t constantly sending data when people were talking or sending big data dumps in the middle of the night or anything.
Of course I haven’t checked lately…
The door is still closed in my barn. 
I think he’s referring to the dozens of ways in which our information is being collected and disseminated every minute. I’d be impressed if you’ve managed to eliminate smartphones, Google, Amazon, credit cards or any other insidious actor who had collected about all there is to collect from us.
yeah Munch. That’s pretty much what I was saying. My info is out there everywhere. And I’m careful.
I signed my 91 mother up for H & R Block today because I’m going to have to do her taxes (she can’t see well enough to do it). A lot of the info was already there. For ‘security’ questions, it asked what year Toyota Highlander she used to own. I couldn’t remember the year, and made an educated guess.
I use mine for music, asking specific questions (what day is March 21st, 2021?), checking the time, checking the weather, adding things to my calendar, shopping, turning lights on and off - particularly the bedside light - and speaking to my daughter in another room without having to go to the stairs and shout. Plus a few other things I do less often - those are every day.
My next kettle will probably be an Alexa one. It only saves a couple of minutes, but when you drink as much tea as I do, that adds up.
It is a fine choice for many folk - just not for me. I’m not aware of anything it does better than I can do w/ my computer, phone, and personally flicking a wall switch. At least not that I care about.
And the lack of positives is outweighed by the squick factor of having something listening to me, and my mental image of the fat lazy people from Wall-E.
Who knows - maybe I’ll be a late adopter of this when the NEXT new tech comes along.
What is Wall-E?
I’m a VERY new user. To be able to say Play Jackson Brown, or play Pink Floyd is nice. By Artist, album, or song.
I lost all of my vinyl years ago in a move. Make that decades ago. I’m rediscovering the stuff I loved.
A movie from a while back.
Sure, exaggerated. But often comes back to me when folk tout some new labor saving technology such as, “I don’t have to flick a light switch, nudge the thermostat or, heavens, walk to the next room to speak to a family member!”
Heh. I’m disabled, so for me those things are more than mere convenience. So nyer to you!
But a lot of it isn’t about being labour-saving, anyway. The convenience factors are different - being able to snuggle down in bed and then turn the lights off means it’s easier to get to sleep, being able to operate switches and plugs from another room (or even another country) so that you can organise your time better, being able to play music by asking vocally while using your hands for something else. Etc, etc.
I’ve been curious about Alexa’s music capabilities. I know I can ask her to “play Bob Dylan”, but can I ask her to “play early Bob Dylan”?
Last night I was thinking about the barefoot diva, who I was lucky enough to meet on the last tour of her life. I said, “Alexa, play Cesária Évora“ and she did!
It’s hit and miss. It depends on if a someone has created a playlist that those keywords will hit on. There have been a lot of playlists created though.
I think most of it has been covered, but similar to many
- music: I subscribed to Amazon Music, so we get pretty much anything that streams…that’s how I check out new albums
- radio: we listen to NPR, plus local college radio & college radio from other cities.
- lights: two out-of-the-way lamps are controlled by Alexa
- sleep aid: I put on “rain sounds” every night as white noise
- TV: with the fire stick we can watch Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, ESPN+…she understands instructions maybe 85% of the time. [oh, the ultimate laziness: I have her turn on/turn off the TV when the remote isn’t immediately handy]
- weather, random facts, timers when I’m baking, sometimes my wake-up alarm
So, more useful than I first expected. My wife was resistant at first, now she wants to add one . #Borg
We have both Amazon Echos and Google Homes (I like gadgets). So we have a Amazon Echo Studio in the Kitchen/Living Room. That is used for music/NPR, as well as asking the weather, and most importantly as a timer for cooking - it’s super useful for that as you can set unlimited differently named timers without worrying that your hands are dirty. We also have an Echo Dot in the bedroom and Sonos One in the Office/Nursery. We have smart lights in our three main rooms (the living room one is a multi-colored one).
We have a Google Home Hub in the living room, a Google Home Mini in the bedroom, and a Google Nest Audio in the Office/Nursery. We have Chromecasts on all three of our TVs, so it’s easy to pause/play with voice… and turn off the TV with our voice.
One of my other uses for Alexa is to find my phone. Almost every other day I’ll put it down somewhere and forget it. I hunt in person first, but I swear it hides. Previously I’d use my landline to call it, but now I use Alexa instead.
My daughter also has issues with using the phone for actual phone calls - she’s autistic. I’m sometimes away overnight these days (though very near home) and she can call me by asking Alexa to call me. She’s done it a few times, one of which was important. She had a phone call from an assessment person that had been rescheduled without either of us being told about it; she couldn’t cope with it; she had Alexa call me - Alexa, call Mum - and I dealt with the phone call from a different house, me on Alexa on my phone, the other person on speaker on my daughter’s phone.
It’s free, too.
And if I wanted to contact her, I could drop in on my living room or the downstairs hallway, and speak to her from there, without relying on her having her phone to hand, charged, and actually answering it.
Where it can really fail is for classical music. You sometimes have to mis-pronounce things in order for the algorithm to find it, and occasionally it will play a modern rock version for some reason.
It’s getting better over time, though.
Unless someone has a playlist called early Bob Dylan then it will probably just play any Bob Dylan. I guess it could sort by year of original publication, theoretically, but even then most pre-2000s tracks have been remastered (for good reason - the originals sometimes just sound terrible) and that messes up the dates they show up as.
Then I hope you don’t have a smart phone. Because it too, is listening.
I have two Alexas, I didn’t buy either of them. They come free with my yearly Sirius subscription. The one I got this year, I gave to my bestie. He didn’t think he’d have a use for it, but he uses it more than he thought he would.
I use mine for music, and for ambient sounds. I sometimes use the shopping list feature. I use it for those random questions that pop into your mind. I use it a lot.
You can find out what it has recorded and delete the recordings using the app.
Is it invasive? Maybe. You have to decide if the benefits outweigh the risk.