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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

#411

Post by LinuxBender »

j88439h84 wrote: post #408
LinuxBender wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't leave a webcam attached, or a microphone. I can also debug any code running on my machines and have some idea of what they are doing. I can also limit when they are allowed to talk to the internet and to what address.

> Not even if I had root on the device with the source code to the OS, firmware and applications. Can't you debug code and control network access in that scenario?

Maybe if I have the debugging symbols and kernel headers. Even then there are circumstances where it won't help.

For example: Nearly all cell phones check in to their manufactures website from time to time. Nearly all of them look for a header that triggers a debug mode that turns on CarrierIQ. (It isn't called this any more, AT&T renamed it to an empty name to stop people from searching for it).

Trying to find obscure functions and understand how they interact with the servers they check into can be very difficult at best. It often leads to more questions than answers, at least based on my experience.

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

#412

Post by toomuchtodo »

m0zg wrote: post #347
flukus wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the cost of the iPhone is in the screen, battery, form factor and fashion accessory premium. Take that away and your much closer to raspberry pi territory.

It's closer to Apple TV territory maybe, that custom CPU inside costs a pretty penny to design and manufacture.

Can one not do machine learning on a RaspberryPi with an FPGA shield?

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

#413

Post by r00fus »

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

Are you saying that voice UI is not its own "application context"?

It's an undiscoverable mess.

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

#414

Post by m0zg »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #412
m0zg wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's closer to Apple TV territory maybe, that custom CPU inside costs a pretty penny to design and manufacture.

Can one not do machine learning on a RaspberryPi with an FPGA shield?

FPGA on which it is worthwhile to do deep learning costs more than the iPhone, and consumes a lot more power. Your best option starting next year will be sub-$100 Chinese chips with a TPU-like unit built in. The only one I know of is RK3399Pro, which was supposed to come out this year, but didn't make it, apparently because the die had to be larger than they planned.

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

#415

Post by lkrubner »

phlipski wrote: post #394
lkrubner wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About this: " I mean, essentially it's a command line interface with a wonky input method, no? " This is precisely the feedback we got from salespeople, when we were working on a Natural Language Programming interface for Salesforce. Initially, I got angry and denied the comparison. But after several people made the same comparison, I came to appreciate how true it was. Unless NLP is perfect, it is really just a Comm…

NLP will only continue to improve in the years ahead. I've got a few echo's around the house, and yes the current implementation of NLP is not perfect. It requires some modification of how the user speaks, but the first time you say "Alexa what's the weather today?" and Alexa comes back with the day's forecast is a jaw dropping moment (at least for me it was). I believe voice activated devices will ultimately be plac…

Have you ever written an Alexa skill? Because as soon as you try that, you realize the limits of the slot/intent system that Amazon is pursuing. You will notice this especially when it came to names and letters. We built an Alexa skill that allowed sales executives to use an Amazon Echo to ask Salesforce questions such as "Who was my best sales person last month?" That worked great, but the executives we talked to mostly wanted specifics about particular cases. And Alexa could not figure out the company names. These tripped it up badly:

Avon

IBM

Sinopec

Volkswagon

Alexa could not get these, which made the skill nearly useless.

It is much easier to simply use a keyboard.

And please consider the failed promises we've heard over the last 3 years. Remember "Invoxia will enable Alexa to tell which person is talking":

http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/invoxia-will-allow-al...

One as limited options in terms of forcing Alexa to pause in certain parts of a word:

http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/using-a-glottal-stop-...

I wrote this when I was still optimistic:

http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/how-to-build-conversa...

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

#416

Post by rebuilder »

saulrh wrote: post #405
rebuilder wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it worked, yes, absolutely. On my Android phone, however, the note-taking process is as follows: "OK Google!" wait 5-10 seconds for the assistant to chime. It might work if I don't wait, but mostly doesn't. Sometimes it doesn't wake up at all. "take a note" wait for the assistant to ask what the note is "Remember to put your shoes on!" Check whether the note was taken correctly Also, if I was actually using the ph…

That's a bit odd. What version of Android are you on, does it have any of those junk manufacturer skins, and how old is the phone? If my phone is already unlocked I can spout off the hotword, invocation, and content in a single stream, the assistant pops up in an overlay and prints the note for me to check visually, and then it finishes and hides with no further intervention. Pixel 2 XL, fully patched, it's worked li…

Sorry, I definitely didn't mean to mock you! It's just that lately, I feel like I might just forget to get dressed and that's why I'd like to use voice assist to build a to-do list. Too many things going on at once.

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

#417

Post by iforgotpassword »

poooogles wrote: post #363
iforgotpassword wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I can type everything I'd issue as a…

>I can type everything I'd issue as a voice command into my home screen. I have to install and learn just as few/many things and commands as I'd have to using voice recognition. Op might have underplayed something, you just made things up. You are not the market that these are targeted at then. The normal person cannot do those things.

A normal person cannot type an English sentence? Wow, I really seem to he disconnected from normal people.

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

#418

Post by dang »

notyourwork wrote: post #201
accnumnplus1 wrote: post #12

This is just facebook all over again. Why can't people see trouble-tech? I never used facebook and won't ever use an alexa, nor whatever google's thing is.

Do you use a cell phone? You seem to be wearing a tin-foil hat living under a rock.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and post civilly and substantively, or not at all.

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

#419

Post by vonseel »

Supernaut wrote: post #366
vonseel wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you're not the only one. Outside of HN, in the real world, the average person doesn't set up a FreeNAS server or homelab for data storage, doesn't know how to do backups, and doesn't have nearly as much concern over privacy as the fear mongers here at HN, Reddit, and tech publications. Fear mongering is nothing new, folks. The media is incentivized to cater to people in that way; this is why they use scare tactic…

> the article implies this mixup would NEVER have happened if the user's [sic] had not requested their data be released per GPDR. OK, cool. So as long as I don't assert my rights under data protection regulations, Amazon probably won't orchestrate a grotesque breach of my privacy?

It's a mistake, man (or woman). Shit happens. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We have to expect as users of cloud software there is a chance our data could be compromised by BUGS or human error. I think that should be a given in any scenario. There's a difference between releasing data to third parties (or internal employees having access) as a matter of standard practice, and an unexpected breach or error in process leading to accidental disclosure of personal data.

As a reader, I am uninterested in articles about the latter. It's clickbait / doomsday journalism. The most interesting stories are those about grave errors in judgment/behavior and cases that indicate a company has routinely breached user trust. I do not agree that "employee mistakes" fall in that category.

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

#420

Post by Faark »

aero142 wrote: post #117
danso wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence or steps would be sufficient for you?

Not parent, but I'll answer. 1) The implementation of the wake word recognition is implemented in hardware that cannot be updated remotely. 2) The device is unable to transmit information without lighting up a TX light. Implemented in unmodifiable hardware. 3) Voice recordings are processed and then deleted within one month. 4) The device is run by a company that doesn't make money through marketing or data analysis.

Love your list & know I'm late, but I'd add one item to your list: Make your update mechanism resistant against sending "personalized" update versions to specific clients. A client querying a central server can be overcome with a single NSL, while a peer to peer solution would need to hijack your connection as well.
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