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Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

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Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#351

Post by lsc »

jancsika wrote: post #321
lisper wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a big difference: having a GPS in my phone means I never have to worry about buying or carrying a map with me ever again, at the cost of potentially revealing my location to someone who I'd rather not know it. Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. By my quality metric, th…

> Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. You're underplaying it in order to artificially inflate your mileage. Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundred…

>Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Not to mention the latency of instantiating them, or possibly even installing them, migrating data between them, etc.

So, it's interesting. I resisted the iphone-style smartphone for a long time (I loved my nokia communicators) - I mean, I was super into wearable computers; I owned an Xybernaut at one time; I had the palm v with the cdpd modem... but I resisted the winning form factor for so long.

And... yeah, it was a mistake. Not really a huge one, 'cause the things are designed to be easy to learn over being easy to use (there's usually an either/or there. the easiest to learn process is rarely the most efficient process) but still, a cost; to this day, I'm not all that great at typing long messages on a phone keyboard, like young people seem to be. For that matter, I didn't buy a car GPS until far after they were common, and I am unusually bad at reading maps for a man who started driving before consumer GPS was common, so I would have saved many hours and more than one job interview if I had that technology sooner.

I kind of feel the same way about voice control. I mean, essentially it's a command line interface with a wonky input method, no? and it's a command line interface designed for regular people, not people who are familiar with the command line tradition. I don't think it's super useful now, and I kinda think it will be a fad, like the '80s talking cars.

But, I could be totally wrong. What am I missing out on by resisting the voice controlled garbage?

I mean, if someone does come up with a google maps level 'killer app' that makes you way more effective if you use the voice control, I'll be behind the curve.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#352

Post by gigatexal »

I paid full retail for my HomePod (BestBuy in the states has them for 150 usd off) and love it. But I love it more because of the company behind it: Apple is not in the business to sell my data to the highest bidder. And their stance on security and customer privacy allowed me to put a talking tube in my home. There was no way in hell I was going to add a listening device from Google or Amazon.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#353

Post by calculi »

rapind wrote: post #337
ddeck wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would assume they are saying that it's a whole lot easier for the average person to say: "Please remind me every day at 5pm to water the plants" , or "Please play this song at medium volume every morning at 7am" than to learn how to do the equivalent in whatever operating system their device uses, and I'd tend to agree. Cron is certainly a much higher bar than learning to use the alarm app in your phone, but the po…

But who's using cron to set a reminder or an alarm on their phone?! That can't be it, but if it is, then they are ironically overstating . I mean you can use the GUI (launching apps etc.), or literally just type "remind me every day at 5pm to water the plants" into the home screen search bar (on Android at least). The voice recognition and the assistant parts are decoupled.

You two are talking about different groups of people. crontab/Linux/Win: definitely needs learning smartphone: a little bit easier to use, open an app and everything is set visual assistant: out of box for being ready to use.

I taught one of my family members about using PC and Android, and found that almost everything needs to be explained. For example: - What's Google/Microsoft for? (Yes, even the giants in tech may never be heard for some people and it's common) - Browser? And there are many of them? (Not everyone has a computer and Internet access) - URL? What is that? I cannot even spell it! (This is more complicated and requires people to remember the addresses of tens of commonly used websites, btw, what's a bookmark!?) - register? with what? bank account or passport? (if someone doesn't have a email account, it's likely that they have no idea about the process of register, activation.) - App market? wait a second, what's an app? (not to mention built-in ones and those from 3rd parties)

The thing is Alexa, google home and many others provide a unified, easy to use substitute(well, I have to admit these devices are pretty dumb these days. So they are not 100 percent alternatives). The only requirement is being able to speak in a clear way, which is true for almost everyone.

PS: I don't have any of these devices. As a hard-core programmer, my choice is, without any doubt, *nix, shell, etc. GUI sucks ;-)

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#354

Post by saulrh »

andrepd wrote: post #325
jancsika wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. You're underplaying it in order to artificially inflate your mileage. Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundred…

>You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Please elaborate. What do you mean by "thousands of hours of learning". Aren't you over playing it to fit your narrative?

Hundreds to thousands of hours seems completely reasonable to me.

Have you ever done IT for your family or friends, or seen a coworker completely helpless in the face of an unrecognized file extension? Say they're, I don't know, an engineer or a call center operative or something. 6 hours of computer in a working day, 250 days of work a year, maybe they got out of college in 2005... more than fifteen thousand hours in front of a computer, and, well, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa9DLxDtPtc. Computers are mindbogglingly complicated.

And then there's us, the people that hang out on HN. I can't even think of how many times I've spent fifteen minutes digging around in config files or menus or googling for a better tool. I've probably spent over a hundred hours just on my emacs setup. Easily hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of focused effort dedicated solely to high-end computer-use skills, and that's not even counting the things I use the computer for. And I'm still learning things every day.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#355

Post by calculi »

sbov wrote: post #189
madrox wrote: post #104

I've never seen a demographic breakdown of HN, but I'm 37 years old. I'm definitely not the oldest guy here, but I see history repeat itself regularly. I remember when people used location tracking as a reason to not own a cell phone. I'm talking about flip phones, mind you, not even iPhones with GPS receivers. I recall the bulk of complaints in that vein died down around the time Google Maps for phones came out. If…

New technology is scary, old is not. With the third party doctrine the only way to really protect yourself is to not participate in modern society in any way.

This reminds me a saying like:

anything existed before my birth is old and outdated. Ideas and inventions I grew up with really changed and is changing the world. Others are useless and invade my privacy.

I cannot remember either the exact sentences or where I get this from.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#356

Post by calculi »

saulrh wrote: post #354
andrepd wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are ignoring the hundreds/thousands of hours you've spent learning which software is appropriate for which contexts. Please elaborate. What do you mean by "thousands of hours of learning". Aren't you over playing it to fit your narrative?

Hundreds to thousands of hours seems completely reasonable to me. Have you ever done IT for your family or friends, or seen a coworker completely helpless in the face of an unrecognized file extension? Say they're, I don't know, an engineer or a call center operative or something. 6 hours of computer in a working day, 250 days of work a year, maybe they got out of college in 2005... more than fifteen thousand hours i…

I agree with you. I know more than one who bought a new notebook because the operating system didn't work and they don't even realize that reinstalling is an option.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#357

Post by pseudalopex »

calculi wrote: post #355
sbov wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technology is scary, old is not. With the third party doctrine the only way to really protect yourself is to not participate in modern society in any way.

This reminds me a saying like: anything existed before my birth is old and outdated. Ideas and inventions I grew up with really changed and is changing the world. Others are useless and invade my privacy. I cannot remember either the exact sentences or where I get this from.

It sounds like a quotation from Douglas Adams: "Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things."

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#358

Post by pseudalopex »

nevertoolate wrote: post #240
sbov wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technology is scary, old is not. With the third party doctrine the only way to really protect yourself is to not participate in modern society in any way.

What makes a “modern society”? Is it modern because of a certain code it uses, or because it has certain qualities which make it more vital than “non modern society”? I understand that one should follow and understand technological change, but being wary toward obvious intrusion of personal space is far from being socially unacceptable.

"Modern" can just mean "current".

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#359

Post by lostlogin »

calculi wrote: post #356
saulrh wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds to thousands of hours seems completely reasonable to me. Have you ever done IT for your family or friends, or seen a coworker completely helpless in the face of an unrecognized file extension? Say they're, I don't know, an engineer or a call center operative or something. 6 hours of computer in a working day, 250 days of work a year, maybe they got out of college in 2005... more than fifteen thousand hours i…

I agree with you. I know more than one who bought a new notebook because the operating system didn't work and they don't even realize that reinstalling is an option.

Continuous reinstall used to be the way to keep stuff working. It was awful.

Re: Amazon Sends 1,700 Alexa Voice Recordings to a Random Person

#360

Post by lostlogin »

craftyguy wrote: post #329
jancsika wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having a voice assistant means I don't have to spend a few seconds typing, at the cost of having everything I say potentially overheard by someone who I'd rather didn't hear it. You're underplaying it in order to artificially inflate your mileage. Having a voice assistant means not having to learn to change application contexts inside an operating system follwed by a few seconds typing. You are ignoring the hundred…

It doesn't take "thousands of hours" to learn how to launch a web browser and type some words into a search engine box.

Then why do so many people not do it?
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