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

electronupdate.blogspot.com

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

#231

Post by sib »

sushisource wrote: post #208
sib wrote: post #190

Earlier 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.

My question for you is why not advertise this loudly? Or, maybe you did and no one cared? Because presumably it's a bit more costly per unit to do it this way, and very few people are ever going to understand and care. Not that I think you made the wrong choice, I think it's a good one, but I'm just curious how many consumers you thought would actually understand it, or how that information would be distributed

It's a balancing act. We built it, to build trust. But talking about it too much would - we thought - highlight concerns and increase worries that we hoped (most) users wouldn't have.

As an example, we were very clear and upfront in the original product detail page that users' voices went to the cloud, as we were not trying to hide that. Even so, some people tried to play a bit of "gotcha" and fear-mongering about the fact, as though we were not being transparent.

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

#232

Post by sib »

pnathan wrote: post #217
sib wrote: post #190

Earlier 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.

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

True. And in the early (internal) alpha days, false positives for wake word detection were quite high. So we felt the pain from eating our own dogwood; even though we spent huge amount of science / engineering resources on reducing those false positives, we knew it would never get to zero while maintaining acceptable true positive rates.

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

#233

Post by sib »

mgdev wrote: post #205
sib wrote: post #190

Earlier 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.

I know you. :) #doppler4lyfe

Took me a couple of minutes to figure out who you are :)

Still proud of this product!

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

#234

Post by pengaru »

mlyle wrote: post #49
bigiain wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that really qualifies as "even better"... "Even better, there is no microphone", is about the only "even better" scenario than the signal lines being broken. A powered down active component is only "almost as good" at best.

OK, so you'd rather have a big, high gain, low output impedance amplifier enabled and driven with the audio waveform but the signal line gated... than the device unpowered and the signal line connected to ground via the ESD protection path in the package. K. I'd have a decent chance at recovering the audio in the former case, but nil in the latter.. For instance, if it's gated with a FET, and then hooked up to a SOC…

I wasn't aware the two were mutually exclusive. Why wouldn't you cut the power AND the signal?

That MEMS microphone is producing analog output, is it not? I did a cursory search for the printed part numbers but came up empty handed.

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

#235

Post by mlyle »

pengaru wrote: post #234
mlyle wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so you'd rather have a big, high gain, low output impedance amplifier enabled and driven with the audio waveform but the signal line gated... than the device unpowered and the signal line connected to ground via the ESD protection path in the package. K. I'd have a decent chance at recovering the audio in the former case, but nil in the latter.. For instance, if it's gated with a FET, and then hooked up to a SOC…

I wasn't aware the two were mutually exclusive. Why wouldn't you cut the power AND the signal? That MEMS microphone is producing analog output, is it not? I did a cursory search for the printed part numbers but came up empty handed.

It looks like an analog part, yes, going to an ADC.

Sure, cutting both would be even better.

But-- as I posted earlier-- recovering a signal from a depowered MEMS device would be somewhat miraculous. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25743822

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

#236

Post by StavrosK »

ballenf wrote: post #218
StavrosK wrote: post #168

Earlier 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.

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.

It's analyzed on the device, which is not outside your control. Besides, how do you know the same isn't true of the physical button?

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

#237

Post by parsecs »

WClayFerguson wrote: post #225
parsecs wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 so…

Why not? You can't hide microcode or MEMS IMU elements or analog circuitry in a way that decapping and examination by experts cannot uncover. This very article shows acid etching the epoxy packages to inspect the die. There are experts like Ken Shirriff (kens on HN) who reverse engineer silicon devices at the transistor level.

How do you arrive at the conclusion that microcode or software cannot be detected even by experts?

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

#238

Post by alias_neo »

lovemenot wrote: post #102
sokoloff wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it a lot at work and chalk it up to some people having learned/internalized a legalistic way of building up a pattern of facts and basing each on the previous. It’s not so much that they want you to read 2 pages but that they want you to believe every newly introduced bit of the story.

Here in Japan too, bottom-up is the standard pattern. Japanese people can learn to use BLUF, but it's very much not the culturally expected approach.

It makes sense if you're telling a story, and that I understand. But when you're trying to make a point, I feel like it's more respectful of people's time to get to the point; if they want details they can read on.

How does that fit with the culturally expected approach in Japan? If you're sharing a revelation, is it still normal to build up rather than start with the answer?

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

#239

Post by alias_neo »

sokoloff wrote: post #99
alias_neo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have noted this with several high ranking posts on HN. I wonder whether it's a case of the author being unaware of BLUF, or simply that they want you to read their work before finding the conclusion?

I see it a lot at work and chalk it up to some people having learned/internalized a legalistic way of building up a pattern of facts and basing each on the previous. It’s not so much that they want you to read 2 pages but that they want you to believe every newly introduced bit of the story.

It makes sense, but I'm a big fan of the TL;DR approach; if you're sharing a point, get to it, then embellish all you like after that. If someone clicked through, bought your book, whatever to find out, what does 1+1 equal; start with "1+1 = 2. The following is a long and detailed account of why...".

On a tangent, I find it quite refreshing in film when they start with the punchline. You know what happens in the end before you even start; if it's a good film, it's still worth watching, even knowing the end.

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

#240

Post by antattack »

I had amazon flex muted (top and button lights red) then red light up-top started to pulsate blue. I unmuted the flex by pressing the mute button to see if I had notifications. Flex did not respond but mute button become red again in a few seconds.

TLDR, it appears that mute function can turn itself on by itself.

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