Amazon Alexa IFTTT Automations Are About To Stop Working (theverge.com) 20
IFTTT in a blog post said that Amazon is removing the service from Alexa beginning October 31st. "Once the integration is severed, users won't be able to ask Alexa to trigger IFTTT applets," reports The Verge. "Certain automations will stick around in the IFTTT app, but some will be archived on November 1st unless you take action." From the report: If your IFTTT applets use a specific phrase or question as the trigger ("Alexa, trigger..." or "Alexa, what's on my to-do list?"), that will convert to using an IFTTT button widget that you can either use in the app or add to your smartphone's homescreen. But all other triggers set up through Alexa -- say, an automation that runs when you add something to your to-do list -- will be archived. You will also have to remove any Alexa ingredients from your applets or they'll stop working.
IFTTT suggests a few alternatives to pursue to keep using it. In addition to button widgets, users can try Apple Shortcuts or the IFTTT note widget. It's also still integrated with Google Assistant, though voice commands have to start with "activate" before an applet will trigger.
IFTTT suggests a few alternatives to pursue to keep using it. In addition to button widgets, users can try Apple Shortcuts or the IFTTT note widget. It's also still integrated with Google Assistant, though voice commands have to start with "activate" before an applet will trigger.
No shit? No warning. (Score:2)
Really? 1 week warning? I’m thinking IFT3 thought they could negotiate a way out of this. Sorry to those affected, this is going to suck.
RIP Amazon Skills (Score:2)
If they weren't irrelevant before, 'Amazon Skills' are nothing but a developer's wasteland [amazon.com] now.
Ah, living in 2023... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Utility vs cost is a thing. There's no item you buy that has endless utility. Hardware you own wears out and breaks. If you're approaching someone with the idea of perpetual utility you won't convert anyone to make a change since it's not a concept that people are familiar with.
It's why I continue to use Google products. Yeah they shut down product X which I use, but it has provided utility for many years at very little cost, and migrating to product Y is not too difficult / expensive. Hence I think product
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The minimum should be a requirement to issue a full refund to owners if they reneg on their guaranteed service lifetime.
If it's not specified there should be a default - 20 years is considered standard for appliances.
They can definitely tell which customers sre affected so it's not completely open-emded.
Looking forward to LLM taking over home assistants (Score:5, Interesting)
Seems like we're only a couple of years away from an open source LLM that does voice transcription in real time and can run on a home server. I would like to say something besides "ok google", and I like the idea of all my devices being fully disconnected from the cloud, so I don't need to worry about software updates and patches. Totally closed system.
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You can do that today.... whisper.cpp runs on pretty much everything.
IMHO, the main limitation right now is getting some cheap + robust smart assistant hardware (e.g. an open source echo dot-like device)
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You can do that today.... whisper.cpp runs on pretty much everything.
IMHO, the main limitation right now is getting some cheap + robust smart assistant hardware (e.g. an open source echo dot-like device)
There are some local-only alternatives, but you have to build them yourself or buy something like Mycroft II for $400.
Matter. Because, Matter. (Score:2)
Matter will save everyone!*
*If you believe that the Matter standard will fix everything I also have a bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.
I'm not an Alexa person but (Score:3)
I'm not an Alexa person, but damn this pisses me off.
IFTTT has been a really useful tool to let home users really push their smart home setups. I'm pretty sure I've heard rumblings that Amazon is not making jillions of dollars from it and thus sees it as more of a liability.. and in their quest to maximize profit, I have to wonder if they're going to eventually just strip more and more functionality as they lay off as much of their dev teams as they can ...
I've always been a passive open source supporter, but the more enshittification that happens in tools and systems I rely upon, the more I see the writing on the wall that I should be prioritizing OSS in my choices..
I bought into the Apple ecosystem because my spouse was an Apple person, and it was the path of least resistance rather than trying to get competing assistants/systems to play nice with each other (stuff like I was using Google Keep for grocery lists - which would work on iPhone but my spouse really liked using Siri and the Apple Watch to add stuff to the list.. just going with Apple so we were both using the same things greatly simplified the integration fight
I have poked around with Home Assistant and I think that I should probably move toward that as much as possible .. but it's that voice assistant thing - the apple watch and iPhone and Siri do work incredibly well for us to control the lights and such and it's my understanding that there isn't quite a "ready for prime time" solution for completely abandoning Alexa/Google Assistant/Siri yet...
Re: I'm not an Alexa person but (Score:2)
While I do feel Apple needs to do more work to improve Siri and the range of compatible devices, at least the open source HomeBridge solution helps cross the divide for IoT based solutions.
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I just hope that Amazon gives the world a gift if they decide to kill it - open up the Echo products so that open source hackers can do something useful with them.
I'd love to turn an Echo 8 into a touchscreen controller for my office, to control light switches and outlets from my desk with a tap. It can already do that, but it's takes a few swipes and waiting for some applet to slowly load because there's no way to just leave it on that applet forever - they've got ads to show me, which they are constantly
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Yeah, I'm frustrated as well. I bought all in. I have used Alexa to automate a LOT of things in my home. So much so that I'd even considered starting a business doing this for others, for me the simplicity brought with it functionalities that I dreamed about 10 years ago. However, this new lack of IFTTT support infuriates me. The "Skills" thing is obnoxious. It reduces Alexa's integration abilities with "Non-Alexa" approved hardware and creates a barrier to product adoption. The "commercials" drive me
But... cloud, cloud, cloud! (Score:3)
Ah yes... I remember IFTTT... (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh! Is IFTTT even still a thing?
Sorry... let me catch you up, in case you lack the proper context for my sardonic quip. When the folks over at IFTTT decided to go all-in on the paid subscription model a few years back and effectively crippled their non-commercial "free" tier, (restricting it to something like only three "free" applets before holding out their hand meaningfully and tapping their foot impatiently) I promptly dropkicked everything related to IFTTT. At that point I think I had (ahem) only created a little over a dozen or so actions -- all associated with the simple tasks of toggling four sets of lights in different ways. Whittling that down to just three actions? Yeah, that wasn't going to work for me. I was able to very quickly determine that IFTTT was by no means the only way to accomplish those tasks, nor even the only free way. So after a fairly brief refactoring session, my lights continued to work exactly the way I wanted them to, without IFTTT and with not a single dime spent.
So yeah... I hear the pleading voice of the IFTTT PR person, trying to make out like this issue needs to be blamed on Amazon and the limitations they are "unfairly" placing on Alexa integration -- and that pleading voice falls entirely on deaf ears. IFTTT lost me three years ago due to their greed; regardless of who is actually "to blame" for their current plight, I will shed not a single tear.
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What did you end up using?
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What did you end up using?
Actually, I discovered that the app for the plug-in devices I use had finally been updated to be directly compatible with iPhone shortcuts. So really, in this particular case I was just removing a middleman which was thankfully no longer necessary. It seems to me that a number of product vendors have realized the value of being able to directly interact with Apple's APIs and have updated their apps accordingly, so a lot of what IFTTT does (did) is no longer even necessary.
That said... if the device and/or t
Free alternative (Score:2)