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

Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

electronupdate.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 249 posts

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#211

Post by Talanes »

shaklee3 wrote: post #160
ballenf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is one of the consumer's intent: are you buying a phone with a bunch of extra capabilities or a microphone hooked to a data center around the world? And that explicit decision is what is jarring to people who value privacy. Of course they both have microphones hooked to data centers, but the Alexas/Echos are almost worthless without the microphone enabled. Many people I know have turned off listenin…

> are you buying a phone with a bunch of extra capabilities or a microphone hooked to a data center around the world Yes.

I get that you're trying to be clever and say that it is actually both, but the question was clearly phrased so that the second option was in exclusive opposition to the first.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#212

Post by Johnny555 »

KraftKacke wrote: post #175
epanchin wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a google phone be any less likely to be listening than a google home?

I addressed that point already in the post you're replying to.

You said it's not a phones intended purpose to snitch on you, but it's also not an Amazon Echo's intended purpose to snitch on you, so I'm not sure what point you're making if you're going to assume that the device is used for its intended purpose.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#213

Post by anotherforsure »

rubyfan wrote: post #138
HourglassFR wrote: post #79

Yes that is the technical conclusion. But maybe the most important thing is that we have to do an actual teardown of the product in order to have some confidence that Amazon is not lying on it's Echo capabilities. To be clear, I am not saying we should trust Amazon & Co, I'm saying that if that's the level of trust we have with home assistance devices, why even bother with the stuff ?

The stakes are so high for Amazon to tell the truth here. If they were lying then there would be outrage among users, media, competition, etc. I’ve dealt with many people from Amazon in my professional life and based on their handling of customer data I believe Amazon take seriously the trust customers place with them. Amazon believe the Alexa and Echo platform will grow their retail and service relationships with cu…

"outrage among users, media, competition, etc."

You really believe this? Still?

Amazon is so big that the loss of outraged users is a rounding error to them. Ford used to let cars off the line missing bolts. They're still here because their pockets are deep enough to wait until people forget.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#214

Post by Johnny555 »

ansible wrote: post #201
SilasX wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. It's why it's so important for laptops to permit a physical slider to block the integrated camera. It is a low-cost, low tech way to verify that the camera is not picking up usable images. The real problem is that we don't have something analogous for microphones. The best we could do is some kind of humming device that you could turn on near the sensor that would drown out any noises it might otherwise pick up…

> It is a low-cost, low tech way to verify that the camera is not picking up usable images. It is definitely not low cost . In the hardware business, we count pennies. We count fractions of pennies with the costs of various components. A shutter means at least one extra mechanical part, and a more complicated housing and increased assembly time at the factory. You might look at a piece of plastic and think it is only…

Or you can spend a dollar on a stick-on sliding camera cover, which is what I use on my Macbook. Or spend a fraction of a penny and tear a corner off a sticky-note and past it over the camera.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#215

Post by Johnny555 »

Daho0n wrote: post #106
chaboud wrote: post #15

Disclosure: I'm an Amazon Devices PE, but not on Alexa devices. Jeff (and others) have spoken publicly about this in the past, and this teardown is correct. The hardware is designed such that, if the privacy LED is on, the microphone is unpowered. In order to compromise that, one would need to physically alter/damage the hardware.

AFAIK a reboot would trigger a reset from mic off to mic on. If true that is a very poor choice for a privacy switch.

My Echo Studio preserves the mute state on reboot (I just tried it -- I usually keep it muted since I mostly just use it as a smart speaker for Spotify). So I don't know if that makes it more safe or less safe if the mute state can be set either way by the software

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#216

Post by WClayFerguson »

parsecs wrote: post #204
WClayFerguson wrote: post #200

It's likely there are microphones in Echo that even an electronics expert can't "recognize" as a microphone. Any object that is flimsy and can 'vibrate' due to sound, can have it's position used to alter an electrical signal, and anything monitoring that signal can convert the signal easily back into sound. Even a non-data carrying wire with current can do this.

I don't know about that. Yeah, ceramic capacitors in particular exhibit strong piezoelectric effects, but you'd need some sort of silicon to amplify the signal. I think electronic experts should be able to discover any sketchiness like that through thorough inspection and reverse engineering.

I'm a mechanical engineer myself. I've built microphones before in a college laboratory where all we used (proved) was "any object that vibrates from sound, which can be used to alter an electrical current, can be turned back into sound"

Even the most basic form of digital audio stored as PCM (redbook, etc) is actually nothing but a file where every data-point in the file is an integer representing the 'magnitude' of a disturbance during that short milli/microsecond of time. Any vibrating 'disturbance' is the very definition of "sound" itself too.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#217

Post by pnathan »

sib wrote: post #190
verbify wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't they have implemented mute in software? There would be little outrage if they had (users don't care about the difference) but spy agencies (e.g. NSO Group) would have a backdoor. The fact that they used a hardware switch means they did it the right way. By contrast my Logitech camera has a light to show when the camera is running - but the light can be disabled via their software which makes me uncomfortable…

When we discussed this - at long length - during the original Echo development program, we consistently came to the conclusion that it should be hardware, not software, to maintain customer trust.

Appreciate that, a lot.

Particularly with software auto-updates, a software mute is simply untrustworthy.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#218

Post by ballenf »

StavrosK wrote: post #168
ballenf wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is one of the consumer's intent: are you buying a phone with a bunch of extra capabilities or a microphone hooked to a data center around the world? And that explicit decision is what is jarring to people who value privacy. Of course they both have microphones hooked to data centers, but the Alexas/Echos are almost worthless without the microphone enabled. Many people I know have turned off listenin…

> I have a HomePod that I have to manually press the touch button on top for it to listen What's the difference? You trust it not to listen without the button press, I trust it to not listen without the wake word. To think that the distinction is meaningful is wishful thinking.

I just see listening for a trigger word as surveillance. Your (and your guests) every word is analyzed and at least temporarily saved somewhere outside your control.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#219

Post by mhh__ »

systemvoltage wrote: post #29
e9 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not physical debounce switch? I get it is more expensive but no one would question it twice.

In order to use a physical debounce switch, there are several steep challenges. You can imagine OP presenting to an audience of 14 people at Amazon Devices group with a slide titled "New BOM proposal" entailing 6 million devices x [$0.0273 (switch price at 100k qty) + $0.05 assembly cost] + $50k engineering NRE (650 engineering hours) + $35k tooling NRE + $22k FCC re-cert + 7k ESD cert + another $100k in various cert…

Isn't that all back of the sofa change for Amazon, though? Less than a cent per device is still a fraction of what it costs overall.

You could use this logic to shun literally any improvement to the device not done in software.

Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional

#220

Post by TheOperator »

KraftKacke wrote: post #125
HourglassFR wrote: post #79

Yes that is the technical conclusion. But maybe the most important thing is that we have to do an actual teardown of the product in order to have some confidence that Amazon is not lying on it's Echo capabilities. To be clear, I am not saying we should trust Amazon & Co, I'm saying that if that's the level of trust we have with home assistance devices, why even bother with the stuff ?

To me it's unfathomable to have such a device around. I even feel uncomfortable with my neighbor having one (which I _hear him talking to). I assume it's like reading the side effects of medication and think they are other people's problems somehow. How do people trade core privacy for setting the alarm or getting the weather report by voice command. I don't respect them. Same with off the shelf IP cameras in one's b…

For me what made me give in was realising how useful the features would be in regards to ADHD, allowing for a new input modality that just straight up reduces the friction it takes for me to set a reminder.

It's routine that I will just leave an item and forget where it is several times a day that I take it almost for granted up until it causes me to be late going out the door. Now I can yell "Find my phone" (or wallet, keys, etc) and my phone is there. Yes I could go to my computer, go to the find my phone page, but there's just more friction and these issues happen to me all the time. The more things I link up to voice control, the more options I have in regards to accomplish a task, and sometimes voice is the most efficient means of going about it.

I can get entertainment like a podcast or music without a single screen being involved, which given that I inherently have low impulse control, is a nice separation of things. Or I can again, find my stuff without looking at any screens. Voice input can act as a lesser evil to screens.

Saying to just use FOSS and air gaps, because of how immature such solutions are, is effectively saying you shouldn't use these systems at all. The benefits of using the systems that exist today makes it so that the average person, like yourself, judge me less because I appear more punctual and less forgetful and more productive and better rested and so on. Being human, you are likely to disrespect me for being late and disorganized no matter what my excuse is, whereas you'll only disrespect me for using voice assistants if you know I'm using them, so it's a winning tradeoff. Just like how some will judge me for taking medication but only if they know I'm using it.

Post reply on HN