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.
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Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
221–230 of 249 posts
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#222Earlier 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.
Are you still involved? If so, is there some way I can request a feature to turn off all of the "by the way" and other follow-ups? I find them incredibly annoying. I usually answer "no and don't ask again" but it doesn't seem to understand.
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'd consider myself an electrical engineer. How do you suppose you would transform and capture those vibrations to electrical signals with enough fidelity? I'm aware of techniques like perhaps laser diode self mixing. How will you do it in a way that cannot be detected even by experts?
What I'm getting at is: how do you capture those signals without the use of obvious silicon devices (so no MEMS or opamps or whatever)? I'd imagine you have to hide it in software somehow. Then how do you acquire that signal? A simple analog input pin to the ADC of a cheap microcontroller is not good enough.
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
It's kinda meaningful. Wake words can be sometimes triggered by accident. Or by things like that commercial from a few years ago. A physical button press avoids all that.
So the worry is that it will be triggered accidentally and hear something you didn't intend it to, then that tiny, rarely occurring piece of data will be used against you?
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I'd consider myself an electrical engineer. How do you suppose you would transform and capture those vibrations to electrical signals with enough fidelity? I'm aware of techniques like perhaps laser diode self mixing. How will you do it in a way that cannot be detected even by experts? What I'm getting at is: how do you capture those signals without the use of obvious silicon devices (so no MEMS or opamps or whatever…
Right, the fidelity is not that good, when just sampling arbitrary vibrating objects. For example a simple accelerometer attached to the center of a lamp shade might create an intelligible signal, but one attached to a heavy table might not. Remember, AI can build speech from a very noisy signal, however.
To pick up a better signal you need either a large flat or concave object (like even a computer case), or else something small and flimsy. You may know that even shining a laser pointer at the window of a building can pick up sound from a mile away simply by using a telescope to capture video of it and then let video processing detect the miniscule jostle in position due to the vibrating window. That trick has been used for decades, and works well.
But yes recording stuff secretly from an electrical device means you need either computer microcode or software secretly onboard that is recording signal variations that emerge from these physical vibrations, but there is almost no way, even after full disassembly, that even an electronics expert can necessarily detect this setup.
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#226Conclusion: > But, basically if one presses the switch it causes the flip-flops to change state and to then either add or remove power from the microphones. > The 'mute' button appears to be very real and functional. When the button glows 'red' the power is removed from the microphones.
I sometimes write articles describing investigations similar to this one. Do you think this article’s structure is appropriate? Or would it be better to reduce the need for comments like this one by putting the conclusion much earlier in the piece? I understand not putting the conclusion in the title, but perhaps in the first paragraph, in the spirit of BLUF [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)
The conclusion needs to be in the headline. If I'd seen this last night I would have emailed the HN mods using the footer Contact link to have the clickbait stripped out of it. I'm doing so now anyways.
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I sometimes write articles describing investigations similar to this one. Do you think this article’s structure is appropriate? Or would it be better to reduce the need for comments like this one by putting the conclusion much earlier in the piece? I understand not putting the conclusion in the title, but perhaps in the first paragraph, in the spirit of BLUF [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)
The conclusion needs to be in the headline. If I'd seen this last night I would have emailed the HN mods using the footer Contact link to have the clickbait stripped out of it. I'm doing so now anyways.
I'm not sure the original headline was that baity, since (1) the original title implies that the article will investigate the question, which is exactly what it does; and (2) if the conclusion had been that the button was fake, the title would certainly have said so.
But point taken and I've changed it now. Thanks!
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#228Conclusion: > But, basically if one presses the switch it causes the flip-flops to change state and to then either add or remove power from the microphones. > The 'mute' button appears to be very real and functional. When the button glows 'red' the power is removed from the microphones.
I sometimes write articles describing investigations similar to this one. Do you think this article’s structure is appropriate? Or would it be better to reduce the need for comments like this one by putting the conclusion much earlier in the piece? I understand not putting the conclusion in the title, but perhaps in the first paragraph, in the spirit of BLUF [0]? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)
This blog is all about decapping various ICs and providing die photos. The motivating question is mostly irrelevant, the intended audience is there to let someone else deal with boiling acid and still get cool pictures of chips to look at (and sometimes reverse-engineer). It's all about teardowns that don't give up whenever there's an IC package or epoxy blob.
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Are you still involved? If so, is there some way I can request a feature to turn off all of the "by the way" and other follow-ups? I find them incredibly annoying. I usually answer "no and don't ask again" but it doesn't seem to understand.
I left some years ago. Yeah, not a huge fan of these "by the ways" but agree that having them would be less bad if there were a "don't ask again."
Re: Amazon Echo Flex: Microphone mute button appears to be real and functional
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
IMHO, This was the correct choice. No one I know would trust a software mute.
Yeah... I thought it was pretty clear. While still hoping that we could build something (product & reputation) that users wouldn't want to turn off.