I recently talked about LSD to a spiritual person (the western esotericism kind).
He accidentally took a very high dose in his 20s and also read a bunch of books on the subject for a while, by Leary and so on. He equated it to a trip to the mirror maze, but nothing more. He doesn’t find it worth it and warns against it since for some people it lingers for too long. He is puzzled about people calling the experience „spiritual“ too.
Set and setting can make or break the experience. Alone and -> introspection or in the crowd who will drag you along them? Looking around at patterns emerging or resting with eyes firmly closed letting your mind wander far and high? What kind of soothing music is in the background? And so on.
For me and my several mushroom trips in the past (cca 1 standard dose, nothing over that but mixed with lemon which should shorten the trip while making it way more intense) all above made it extremely pleasant, very powerful with lasting effects, and also at the end of each very spiritual (while not changing me being agnostic, rather just confirming it).
Once took a milder dose without lemon, and just sat in one of Amsterdam's parcs looking around - felt almost nothing compared to other trips, and dealing with reality, traffic, cyclists etc made it less than pleasant.
I've enjoyed my experiences and find them very interesting, but I just don't feel any like they've revealed anything deep about life or the universe to me.
Like from my point of view each moment of consciousness is bizarre, interesting, impossible to describe already. The experience of taking mushrooms or LSD doesn't really enhance or even change that fact.
A lot of people out there do not listen to learn or share viewpoints or out of genuine interest for the other being, but to get information that they can later use against you. People with real interests (nerds) should be particularly careful when talking to most people because nerds don’t understand such intent, which is why I try to not share my interests or similar personal information when I don’t sense certain personality traits. Being shut up about yourself makes most people out there mad because they view a conversation as a “trade” and can’t expect a later dopamin fix if you don’t give them your share, but who cares.
Maybe ancient nomadic humans ate low-carb / keto in winter (which is why it seems good for using up fat resources efficiently) and high-carb in summer (which is why it seems good for filling up fat storages)?
Consider a dust mite hoover (Hoover Ultra Vortex is popular). Also good to have some turnover routine for your mattress as dust usually accumulates underneath in the bed frame.
Black Seed Oil at night also helped me as a mild natural antihistamine. I’m not sure whether it can / should be taken for extended time (my otolaryngologist saw no problem but I’m not sure).
My two Echo Dots 3 had an aura of technical immaturity from day one, but I always viewed them as inexpensive minimalist audio players with some extra functions. They were on sale for like 20€ when I was looking for a simple Bluetooth speaker and I am happy I gave them a try.
* Spotify across the apartment due to the seamlessness of Spotify Connect. No complaints about sync or sound quality, works beautifully.
* Audiobooks or radio while unable to control smartphone (bathtub, exercise).
* Quick access to radio stations, news shows (the ones it understands at least :) ).
* Simple automatic routines like a brown noise playlist during sleep or wake up music, or turning the lights off at night.
* Elderly people in my family who don’t understand tech love theirs to request favorite music via Spotify, set kitchen timers, play digital radio, get a morning greeting. It’s an extended kitchen radio for them and in heavy use.
Would not call this a failed product, perhaps they should focus on core functionality, and improve the app (that I fortunately rarely use).
The "colossal failure" in all the recent headlines means "colossal [financial Return-On-Investment] failure" because customers are not shopping with Alexa voice commands.
A lot of consumers do like Alexa and millions have bought them because conveniences like turning on the lights and playing music are desirable -- but those "smart home" type of uses are not increasing revenue for Amazon.
Amazon was betting on more "Alexa, buy AA batteries" (i.e. spend money) instead of just "Alexa, turn on the light". With more sales enabled by Alexa, it would have justified the billions spent on developing the voice recognition infrastructure. In that monetization sense, it's a "colossal failure".
Amazon isn’t good enough for buying things on Alexa to seem reasonable. Many users barely trust the web interface to show legitimate products — how is voice control supposed to make any sense?
I would believe that Whole Foods could pull this off. Or maybe Target, or more generally any store that competently curates their inventory. That’s not Amazon.
This lets them shill for whatever gives them the best margin directly, without having to present the user multiple products.
I guess it turns out that people tend to want a bit more control than that. Especially considering that when I tell an SO or friend to buy something I can be confident they'll act in my interest, while I can be fairly confident that Amazon will act in Amazon's interests when told to buy me something.
Yeah this is it. I'm not sure how they actually attribute value and if "Alexa, buy batteries" counts to their P&L or the e-commerce side. Either way, I'd assume the same as you that they never intended to turn a profit on device sales but rather as a loss leader for ecomm and it's probably fallen short.
The listening capabilities are probably the most valuable and my grapevine says they're pivoting to buy up audio content (ie Wondery).
The failure is not in the product, it’s an excellent product.
Their problem is their high expectations to make it a big business. Same way Google kills good products willy-nilly because of unrealistic expectations or inability to spin it off into a self-sustainable project that builds good will with the parent brand.
Whenever Alexa tries to get me to add things to my cart or search products I roll my eyes (it’s never intrusive or annoying, they know better) so I can see why it might not tie in well with their primary business or any added revenue streams.
But they can make money selling the devices or on the App Store - they totally suck at promoting apps and educating users on new usecases. Especially if their AI isn’t going to improve like it hasn’t in the 5 years I’ve used it (if they are investing in the AI side heavily I haven’t seen the ROI).
I'd describe it rather as a failed platform, and I point the finger directly at the awful integration experience for developers and users alike. Alexa's skills ecosystem is painful to engage, being bureaucratic, riddled with misbehaviours, janky UX, and breaking API/data changes - all deficiencies whose consequences are pushed back on the consumer and integrator to handle.
The fact my US-made Rainbow Echo Dot stopped working entirely when moved overseas is a testament to the Alexa service team's pernicious gatekeeper mentality. Don't even get me started on the baffling inconsistencies in behaviour exhibited by Alexa when embedded e.g. trying to control my Sonos kit.
I am especially dissatisfied having been the recipient of a pre-production first-generation Echo courtesy of a visiting BDM whilst managing an AWS team in Melbourne. Super excited at the time, super disappointed now.
Perhaps I should've paid more heed to a key early warning of a restricted and rather parochial outlook: in the first year or so of operation it was impossible to register an Echo with a service address outside of the USA, and I could only set an overseas timezone by writing my own configuration front-end. Even for a MVP, in hindsight, that was a red flag.
That quote in the article, "Alexa is a colossal failure of imagination", sums up my feeling (I am not the former employee quoted).
In this time of too much complexity in apps and user-interfaces it is great that Alexa allows you to accomplish some simple things simply: Alexa play some jazz. Alexa set alarm in 10 minutes.
Those are the two simple things Alexa is good at. Then I also pay for Amazon Music. I don't know if the Amazon profits counts in profit from Amazon Music but without Alexa I would not be be paying for Amazon Music .
Agreed, I bashed the AI R&D but really I should be bashing the UX/dev environment. Adding new workflows and finding new apps should be 10x easier. Instead of asking me to add things to a cart they should recommend new ways to use the product.
Amazon has totally undersold the capabilities of their devices to users.
Idk if google is any better. I use Amazon because I love the firestick and I’m a big Audible user.
Indeed it is. What Alexa can do today was science fiction 20 years ago. I can say "Alexa, order Earl Grey tea" and a package of Earl Grey tea will show up on my front door step tommorow. Yeah, its slower than a Star Trek replicator but essentially the same thing.
I personally love it but I’m a nerd who is supposed to like it.
What sold me was hearing about my 9yr old niece asking Alexa random questions at 1am because she couldn’t sleep and then asking for rain sounds. And how everyone in the family knows she’s the weather expert because she asks Alexa the weather every morning.
That makes them failed products from a business viewpoint.
Of course, they would become successful from a business viewpoint if they could sell enough of them at (cost + reasonable margin), but the article doesn’t discuss whether that would be possible.
I’ve introduced sabbath, one day per week (mine was Saturday) where you are not allowed to work or even think about work, not even reading mails. Do what your inner voice leads you to do on these days, including staying in bed all day while listening to audiobooks.
I’ve been using my sabbath day to explore the country I was living in (immersion in different places), and / or meeting people while at it. While traveling I was listening to audiobooks or playing games on my Switch (but overall reduced screen time). It was one of the factors getting me through an AI PhD.
I've been a beta user but the 10$/month price tag is too steep for me.
That being said, I'm beginning to think that having a price tag as entry barrier is a good thing for a search engine.
One of the reasons for Google's downfall is that they had to cater to dumb and easily controllable masses.
Also, the aggressive SEO that made the search results so bad made economical sense as soon as those masses flocked at the platform.
Kagi may only stay this good if it does not become too popular. I hope the developers think about the fact that their best strategy might be focusing on their current sizeable niche market of nerds and intellectually curious people.
These are some of the worst photos you can show of Dresden.
Try some image search instead. It’s called „the Florence of the Elbe river“ for good reason. There are almost no big cities in Germany today that are comparatively beautiful (Münster maybe, but it’s smaller). Some impressive art has been collected there.
This is geek‡ tourism, which doesn’t follow the typical expectations for tourist photos. My idea of fun is visiting a sewage treatment plant: preferably shown around by an engineer that is excited by it all and shows you the wet wear.
At the end of the article the writer says “let’s not forget that Dresden is also one of Germany’s biggest attractions with a beautifully renovated city center and surroundings which are a sight to behold. Vineyards line the River Elbe, the porcelain town of Meissen and the Saxon Switzerland National Park.”
‡ using the meaning of geek from last century, not the modern pop culture version.
