Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Echo Dot

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 410 posts

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#351

Post by sib »

gherkin0 wrote: post #275
jdminhbg wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think when we were kids we didn't think that the personal assistant would have to communicate with the outside world via the internet in order to perform its function. Human personal assistants were connected to the outside world -- how else would they make appointments and reservations, book flights, find out what the weather would be, etc.? The whole point is to be connected to the outside world, automatic or n…

> Human personal assistants were connected to the outside world... There's a difference between the "always on" communication these devices have and communication the user specifically requests. When I want to make an airline reservation, I'm requesting the device to send the booking information to the airline. I'm not asking it to send a recording to the mothership of everything that happened in my home for the last…

That's also not what's happening with Echo. You'd literally have a few seconds of audio being sent to Amazon and then some text (the result of the ASR) being sent to the third party ticket search / reservation system.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#352

Post by steele »

Amazon is offering a free t-hirt to people adding new Alexa skills... that's the bar for adding to their ecosystem now -- a t-shirt.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#353

Post by dionidium »

jordache wrote: post #306
startupfounder wrote: post #14

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

A device to change the channel on my TV? No thanks; I'll just use the dial on the TV.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#354

Post by sib »

tlrobinson wrote: post #179
sschueller wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't legally the FBI get a court oder to be able to listen in on conversions in a room that has one of these? They already do that with car assistance services. [1] [1] http://www.cnet.com/news/court-to-fbi-no-spying-on-in-car-co...

Echo (supposedly) doesn't start sending audio to Amazon until you trigger it with a "wake word", i.e. "Alexa". Of course: a) it's not open source so we can't be sure (aside from monitoring network traffic, which is probably encrypted) b) if the FBI is successful in compelling Apple to develop a backdoor for the iPhone there's nothing stopping them from compelling Amazon to do the same with Echo. c) better hope you do…

The traffic is encrypted. But you could certainly watch the network traffic and see that there's no traffic if the Echo doesn't wake and the lights don't turn on. (Of course, you'd have to trust that it isn't time delayed for hours in some sort of intentionally-sneaky way.)

It would also be possible to take a look at the hardware design and determine the linkage between the "mic mute" button light being on and power going to the mics.

The customer can set the device to provide both audio and visual indication when it "wakes up" and begins streaming to the cloud. And, of course, the customer can also press the mic mute button to avoid accidental wake up.

Yes, the FBI could try the same approach with Amazon as they are trying with Apple. For all of our sake, let's hope that Apple wins.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#355

Post by chris_st »

webXL wrote: post #347
cubano wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've often postulated that copy and paste is perhaps the biggest productivity enhancement in the history of computing.

I know some software maintainers who might disagree. But I like PopClip ( https://pilotmoon.com/popclip/ ) as an enhancement on top of that one.

I second PopClip as a fantastic product, incredibly useful. Their DropShelf[0] tool is also useful, but not nearly as much as PopClip. But definitely worth the money.

0: https://pilotmoon.com/dropshelf/

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#356

Post by sib »

kayoone wrote: post #338
ryandrake wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love "smart" devices, but hate "devices that needlessly insist on connecting to the Internet". One of the worst offenders is Dropcam. They have a super camera, easy to set up and use. Great picture quality. Would be an awesome baby monitor or "closed circuit TV replacement". But why the goddamn hell does it need to connect to the Internet? Why is the only option available to needlessly stream video out of my home n…

Alexa probably uses forms of machine learning and also queries lots of services to find the answers you need. Also it learns from every user and gets better for every user this way. That would be really hard to do with an offline device.

Yes, that is exactly how it works.

If you, as a customer, want to, you can go to Amazon.com and delete all your voice history (or any single interaction).

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#357

Post by sib »

GBond wrote: post #113
mikeash wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't imagine it will be like that forever. It's just a clever way to limit demand until they can ramp up manufacturing, or work out the bugs, or whatever their motivation is for keeping it in a limited release for now.

... and also a way to introduce the concept of shopping via Alexa (I would imagine one of AMZN's primary long term goals for the project)

Actually you can already shop via Echo/Alexa today. It's effectively limited to reorders and music for now.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#358

Post by rayiner »

nostrademons wrote: post #277
ghaff wrote: 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.)

I've found that the voice recognition on Android phones works well enough to be useful in a wide variety of circumstances. Navigating, getting directions, setting alarms, taking notes, sending text messages, sending emails, searching for things, and many more. When I was still using my Moto X I did the majority of every-day tasks with voice recognition. The iPhone is catching up fast too...my wife's taken to sending…

Define work well? It doesn't work well if you're not connected to the Internet, if you speak quickly, if you interrupt it, it can only do limited follow up.

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#359

Post by yomly »

nostrademons wrote: post #277
ghaff wrote: 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.)

I've found that the voice recognition on Android phones works well enough to be useful in a wide variety of circumstances. Navigating, getting directions, setting alarms, taking notes, sending text messages, sending emails, searching for things, and many more. When I was still using my Moto X I did the majority of every-day tasks with voice recognition. The iPhone is catching up fast too...my wife's taken to sending…

Just on the note of hand strain, without knowing anything about your wife's condition, a way that could help alleviate it is to critically analyse hand position/technique. As a pianist, I have been trained to have a very supple hand position when operating any device but I notice this isn't at all the case for many people I observe in their day to day activities.

Historically probably wasn't much of an issue but given that most people will spend hours at a desk on a keyboard, it's likely to become more of a problem. Think of it akin to paying attention to your posture

Re: Amazon Echo Dot

#360

Post by sib »

fredley wrote: post #174
binarymax wrote: post #115

Be forewarned - if I am invited into your home for any reason, and I see an Alexa device, I will vocally add a large shopping list of nonsense to your Amazon cart :)

Serious question: is it feasible to implement a kind of loose voice 'fingerprint' to prevent this kind of thing? Will/could Alexa know who's talking to it?

Yes, definitely. It adds complexity in that now you have another source of both Type I and Type II errors (failing to wake up, waking when it shouldn't). Voice ID itself is far from settled science to do well, so it would be a tradeoff.
Post reply on HN