[blackeyeblitzar]

> it was to sell more stuff on Amazon

Is that actually true? I cannot imagine that they are even marginally successful at that. In fact, I can’t identify what exactly Alexa succeeded at, beyond being a voice activated kitchen timer.

> that cannot be the metric that leadership actually cared about

I think the metric was promotions for Alexa employees, sort of like a lot of projects at Google.

[ssl-3]

It's a networked, voice-activated kitchen kitchen timer, but it's a shitty one.

Suppose I put a roast in the oven and retire to my office to do something completely unrelated to cooking, where I cannot hear what happens in the kitchen.

One would think that I could set a timer in the kitchen and have it notify me wherever I am -- in the office, in the living room, on my pocket computer, on my desktop PC, or maybe even all of these things.

"Alexa, set a timer for two hours and notify me everywhere" seems like a perfectly cromulent thing to do.

But it isn't that way. Timers follow Vegas rules: Timers that that start in the kitchen stay in the kitchen -- they cannot be heard anywhere else.

It's not superior in any functional way to the old dumb digital timer on my oven, which has a VFD and a rotary encoder to set a timer.

(Which, by the way, has really marvelous ramps and responsiveness for that encoder -- it's silly-fast and efficient to give that knob a twist and dial in exactly what I want for a timer. Adjusting the clock for DST or whatever is equally fast and straightforward.

Except, fucking perplexingly: Alexa can notify me in the office when my oven timer beeps in the kitchen. This works fine.

All that is clear is that there is nobody steering this fucking ship.)

[bombela]

> Which, by the way, has really marvelous ramps and responsiveness for that encoder -- it's silly-fast and efficient to give that knob a twist and dial in exactly what I want for a timer.

Omg I am so jealous. All the appliances I use at home or family have horrendous UIs.

And I am really trying hard to find appliances with passable UIs. It's impossible those days.

And for the few that have a rotary encoder, they are barely usable, and used for anything but selecting the time.

I have contacted companies and offered to write the code for free to fix theirs shitty knobs. But they all refused or didn't bother replying.

Anyways I am off topic.

[ssl-3]

It's old -- I'd guess from the mid 80s. Branded Kenmore and made by Frigidaire/Electrolux. It was free. The controls themselves were basic electromechanical things -- the clock/timer doesn't do anything but display time/timer and beep.

When I first got it, I assumed it was driven by AC as many clock ICs once were back in those simpler times.

But then I discovered a small low voltage DC power supply when I was in there installing a PID controller for the oven, so it may actually have something resembling software. Maybe.

And yeah, unresponsive physical controls are a pox. I'm not sure what method you used, but perhaps contacting the companies that design and build the boards might be better than contacting the companies that buy the boards and install them.