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Amazon Echo Dot

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Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#301
post #282

I'm wondering why it took the product being from Amazon for geeks to finally be ok with a device that silently listens to everything you say in your home and sends that data to Amazon's servers.

This is FUD, it doesn't do this. Only data recorded after you say "Alexa" or the like is sent up. There is also a mute button.

It's not FUD. We've had countless stories scare mongering about smart TVs that "may be spying on you"

If this device was from Samsung I think the giddiness over it would be alot more tempered.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, every one of these devices does nothing until a "wake word" is heard, and only then do they record+send. Having all of the devices listening all the time would be a bandwidth and power nightmare, if not for the sender, for the receiver.

What about accidental triggers of the wake word? What about planted "wake words" to record people discussion "inappropriate" things?

For the Echo, at least, it has to use your home network, so you could pretty easily run a packet capture to see if it's ever sending audio out when you don't want it to.

Harder for things with cellular data, though.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#303
post #285
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that voice interfaces break down pretty quickly once you try to do anything complicated. The Echo has pretty solid voice recognition--far better than anything else I've ever used--but it's still hard to get it to do anything useful once you get beyond a pretty narrow script. (e.g. what's the weather forecast, play this artist, etc.)

That holds true with pretty much all first generation products of it's type. The first "smart phones" couldn't do a whole lot of things. Over time, the Echo will improve and you'll be able to hold conversations with it.

Speech recognition has improved dramatically over the past few years through using cloud back-ends. It's actually usable for many tasks.

However, we seem to still be pretty far from natural language interfaces that make sensible inferences about actions you're requesting and perhaps join multiple data sources to answer your query. There have been a lot of advances--don't get me wrong. But it's a very hard problem that's been being worked on for a very long time.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#304
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live by myself and barely even speak out loud at home. It occurs to me that the background noise in your home actually reveals a whole lot about the self: - What you're listening to and when - What you're watching and when - What type of gentleman's material you enjoy and when - When you leave home and get home - When you wake up, when you go to bed Some of these can be limited by the size of your house, but the…

And at the end someone pays money for some company to install a device to collect all this. The tech insanity has really gone far ..

Finally the Telescreen is here.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#305
post #291
post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That holds true with pretty much all first generation products of it's type. The first "smart phones" couldn't do a whole lot of things. Over time, the Echo will improve and you'll be able to hold conversations with it.

Just like you hold conversations with Siri, Cortana and Google Now?

Are they not first-gen?

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#306

The transition from primarily visual UX towards an auditorial UX is really powerful. Looking at screens to get key information distracts me from my surroundings and seems archaic. My wife is a sound designer who has opened my eyes to the importance of sounds both in film and in the world. It's not that I was unaware of sounds, but I didn't realize how important they are to centering me in this world and the made up w…

"computer lights on" "dimmer"

no thank you.. i will use my hand

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would you find useful? You seem upset that a product was designed for a user that is not you, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a use. Subscribing to music streaming services, ordering delivery, using Uber; these aren't incredibly uncommon things just because you don't use them. It is rare for new and exciting technology to just pop out of nowhere. Almost all new products are reiterations of previous product…

Totally fair point! But would you buy an Echo Dot if you only used Uber and didn't use any of the other services? Or if you used 1 or 2 of the services? How many of these services do you need to use before the functionality of Echo becomes apparent? I want to be a fly-on-the-wall when someone sets one of these up in their home. I can't picture it fitting in with my lifestyle, so I'm curious to see how others would ac…

I find it fantastically useful for social gatherings in my small apartment. While cooking we listen to music from the Echo, and have equal control over the music selection (vs "Who has the iPhone? Can you turn it up? Oh, it needs unlocked") and timers for cooking. It could be far more powerful with playlist creation.

After that, it's Uber, schedule, and weather on my way out the door. As I leave I ask it to turn off the lights.

So I use at least 5 of its features (and stream Pandora/NPR on it, so 7?), and find it useful. I don't think I would miss it, but I do find myself wishing for it a bit when I'm at a friend's house that doesn't have one.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If by "locked down" you mean able to develop and deploy your own software onto[1], then sure. That doesn't allow publishing anywhere, which is still behind a paywall and still tightly controlled. It also still requires you to use a Mac, from what I can tell. > Given what's going on with the FBI, I'm starting to see the absurd security of the platform as more a positive than a negative. Oh yes, the wonderful mixup b…

That doesn't allow publishing anywhere Which isn't the point the point is you can run what you want on your own device now regardless of whether Apple likes it or not. The tight control is a feature, not a bug. I'd rather put up with this slight nuisance than have the adware, malware infested dump that is the Play Store. Random hackers and advertisers are a much more clear and present threat than anything Apple can d…

>> That doesn't allow publishing anywhere

> Which isn't the point the point is you can run what you want on your own device now regardless of whether Apple likes it or not.

So they've lightened a tiny bit for PR purposes, while still not giving the average user any practical freedom.

> The tight control is a feature, not a bug. I'd rather put up with this slight nuisance than have the adware, malware infested dump that is the Play Store. Random hackers and advertisers are a much more clear and present threat than anything Apple can do to me.

The Play Store is by no means perfect, but it's never been that awful. And besides, I'm fine with Apple exercising reasonable control over their own App Store, as long as sideloading is reasonably simple.

> I've had less and less reasons to jailbreak over the past few releases, and with good reason, a jailbreak both lessens your security and functions as an exploit all on its own.

The exploit is there whether you use it or not, the only difference is whether it's you or malware authors who gain anything from it.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#309

The dot sounds great but I cringed when I read about the tap. Its increasingly common for people to play cell phone audio in enclosed places without consideration of others. The tap seems to be designed to make it even easier to do so.

You mean like ALL portable bluetooth speakers?

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#310
post #50

Still too expensive, imo. I've read a lot about "Alexa" and Echo... and beside the privacy issues, in many cases the Echo quickly becomes an expensive speaker (after the kids and everyone else gets tired of asking "Alexa" questions). $89 is not in my compulsion buy price range. I may be in the minority on that though...

I sorta agree. I got the original Echo for $100 when they had a special deal for Prime members. The timer is handy. The shopping list is handy. It's occasionally vaguely useful to ask it questions about the weather or other things--though it's not like my phone is that far away. I do use it for Amazon Music when I can't be bothered finding something to play on my stereo. Potentially, the ability to interface with hom…

Some of the Skills that have been added lately are also useful, Alexa can read you Kindle books, for example, which is soothingly robotic.
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