381–390 of 468 posts
You too can bring a slice of 1984 into your home with this lovely crafted listening device!
It's scary how close this is to being one of 1984's telescreen devices. I might even argue that it basically _is_ a telescreen considering Google's previous dealings with state actors, though with some of the 451-style "you asked for this" as opposed to the 1984-style "this is forced on you".
When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! A Star Trek computer that I can interact with conversationally! I just say what I want and it happens! Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box which I can only interpret as a giant frickin' security liability. I want this, but unless it's open source top-to-bottom, I won't ever actually put one in my home…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But do you think that free software can keep up against these giants? In the near future, it will all be about having large amounts of data, and processing power; it will be less and less about the actual algorithms. I'm afraid the only way out will be to rethink the economy.
>But do you think that free software can keep up against these giants? On an algorithmic front, definitely. The key areas where free software is kneecapped against large corporate interests are in marketing, which free software has never been good at, and in training set gathering. In the case of the latter, google, facebook and microsoft have a major advantage in gathering data to do things like improve accent recog…
I really don't want to come off as super negative here ... but am I the only one who finds this one UGLY ? Compare to some of the other devices from previous years, and competitors: https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+nexus+sphere&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo&tbm=isch https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo+short&tbm=isch It sort-of looks like a cheap air freshener. Maybe it'd grow on me,…
Ok, controversial opinion: "[...] and manage everyday tasks" What exactly do we want to automate at home? I think this whole home automation and smart home stuff is complete bullshit. Obviously there are some nice things, like "play me song xyz", but IMHO it is completely oversold. There are just not that much things to automate at home. And this does not mean that I think 640K are enough memory for everyone.
- laundry: separate my dirty laundry, load and run the washing machine when a laundry bucket is full enough, dry it and fold it
- same with dishes: load the dishwasher, run the correct program, put the dishes back in the cupboard
- vacuuming, dusting, cleaning windows, etc.
- fetch and OCR my (paper) mail, sort by bills/appointments/ads, automatically schedule appointments in my calendar and stage payments for authorization by me. Throw out the flyers.
That should suffice for the next 15 years.
ITT smart hackers asking for more features and noting the privacy implications. Unfortunately, this, Echo, and others are coming for the masses, the masses who have everything public on Facebook and won't really understand the issues until it's too late. Give it a few years and 'everyone' will have a Star-Trek-like home computer experience. What can we do to turn the tide in favor of privacy and security? Or do we ju…
My mom just got an Echo for Mother's Day. She's always been very apprehensive about government encroaching, so when I explained to her that the microphone was always on, at first she was surprised. Then I explained how could it know she needed something without always being on? Then I explained to her that we already know for a fact that the government records all data over the wire. And since Echo is plugged into th…
When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! A Star Trek computer that I can interact with conversationally! I just say what I want and it happens! Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box which I can only interpret as a giant frickin' security liability. I want this, but unless it's open source top-to-bottom, I won't ever actually put one in my home…
However, I am totally willing to use cloud-based voice recognition software, because the machine learning clusters required don't fit in my house. Sure, you can run basic voice recognition software on a server or a laptop. But that only gets you maybe 80% accuracy if you're lucky. There is a huge difference between 80% and 98% accuracy, it's the difference between using something every day, and turning it off after a week of frustration. (I've been there myself, I tried building my own voice recognition system for home automation.)
But I think that's really the only packet that needs to leave my home network. I hate that my Philips Hue bulbs need an internet connection to work.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Free Software Foundation, in its texts, often uses the phrase "the free world" to mean the realm of computing without proprietary restrictions, surveillance, etc. Approximately since Snowden, I've become more and more convinced about both the fragility and the value of this free world. And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies. Career-wise, henceforth I will avoid proprietary systems and dedi…
https://jasperproject.github.io/
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ten years ago I played with Microsoft Speech API - which was completely off-line and trained off your voice. In restricted grammar mode, it worked flawlessly - I built a music control application on it, and utilized it like you would use Amazon Echo - I just said "computer, volume, three quarters" from any place in the room, and the loud music turned down a notch. Etc. That was ten years ago , with a crappy electret…
"In restricted grammar mode" That's a key limitation, though. But we're getting close to the point where you can do some of this. For example - http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03185.pdf - LSTM speech recognition running on a Nexus 5. The more serious problem with this is that it's going to be expensive -- and somewhat wasteful. There's a lot of pressure to keep consumer devices as cheap as possible, and the cloud is an awe…
> That's a key limitation, though.
Why would it be? Sophisticated exchange of theorems and not essential for this scenario, is it?