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

The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

discuss.systems

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 696 posts

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#141

Post by dns_snek »

caseyy wrote: post #44
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #35

Am I supposed to have sympathy for people who bought a home snooping device now realizing they're going to be snooped on?

Yes. If, as a culture, we don’t stand up for consumer rights when a seller mistreats others, no one will stand up for us either.

I agree with the principle but frankly it doesn't apply here. Privacy conscious people have been sounding the alarm about these devices since their invention and the overwhelming majority of consumers typically respond to those warnings with dismissal or ridicule.

There's only so much sympathy and support and standing up for others that I can fit into any given day and I'd rather give it to people who weren't warned about the dangers beforehand.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#142

Post by pjc50 »

labster wrote: post #57
evrimoztamur wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's lack of customer protection will hurt continue hurting its people. Ladies and gentlemen, please do something about it.

I’m afraid the only thing we can do at this point is gun for an economic depression, ride out three years of that just like with Hoover (1929–33), and upgrade to New Deal 2.0 beta. There’s no amount of protests that can convince the median Trump voter that anything is wrong in America unless it affects him personally. And no amount of protest will convince Trump that he has made a single mistake in his entire life.

It's very likely that they're going to Liz Truss the budget, but without any comparable way of dealing with the consequences by swiftly removing the bad actors.

(when exactly is that anyway? I'm dimly aware of some drama with continuing resolutions)

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#143

Post by kerkeslager »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #49
DevX101 wrote: post #3

Now would be a good time to have a functional FTC commissioner. Doing a bait and switch like on a product that was sold with a set of features should be illegal. If I buy a car and the sales guy stops by my house the next day to take back the wheels, it would rightfully be seen as ridiculous.

America's lack of customer protection will hurt continue hurting its people. Ladies and gentlemen, please do something about it.

I 100% agree but unfortunately this is pretty far down the list of our biggest problems at the moment.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#144

Post by kerkeslager »

usrnm wrote: post #121
tanepiper wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laughs in European Consumer Protection How's that "break regulation to innovate" working out for US?

It's actually working very well for the US, just not the US consumers

Can we not do this?

I think it would be more correct to say that a nation is made up of its people (consumers) than its corporations. Correcting to the latter is at best pedantic and at worst just incorrect.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#145

Post by rafinha »

phito wrote: post #103

I will never understand why anyone would ever want to use voice assistants (other than for accessibility reasons). It is so gimmicky and awkward to use. Android Auto does not even understand the word "no".

It's handy for non-tech-savy people, namely the elderly. It can be used for playing music: "Alexa play X", "Alexa shutdown" is all the user needs to know.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#146

Post by dns_snek »

thinkingemote wrote: post #76
AndyMcConachie wrote: post #35

Am I supposed to have sympathy for people who bought a home snooping device now realizing they're going to be snooped on?

Yes because it damages one's own morals and can increase the likelihood in the future to be the one to exploit "suckers" for profit. We can still say "I told you so" and have sympathy. But we shouldn't throw the sympathy away in contempt. Another reason is that over our life at least once we will be the suckers, and will look on those who said "i told you so" and see contempt in their eyes. Is that what we want?

I have sympathy for the 1% of people whose response to "Hey I think having these devices is a really bad idea because you can never be sure where the audio is being sent and who's listening" was "You raise a good point, I won't be buying it" or "Thanks for pointing that out, that sounds scary but I trust them".

As opposed to a dismissive "I don't care", "I have nothing to hide", or "You're being paranoid" of the other 99%. Those people either don't need sympathy because they don't feel wronged, or don't deserve it because they shot the messenger.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#147

Post by orphea »

dns_snek wrote: post #141
caseyy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If, as a culture, we don’t stand up for consumer rights when a seller mistreats others, no one will stand up for us either.

I agree with the principle but frankly it doesn't apply here. Privacy conscious people have been sounding the alarm about these devices since their invention and the overwhelming majority of consumers typically respond to those warnings with dismissal or ridicule. There's only so much sympathy and support and standing up for others that I can fit into any given day and I'd rather give it to people who weren't warned…

You probably overestimate how loud are these "Privacy conscious people". I bet if you ask ordinary Joe about privacy concerns with voice assistant devices, he'd tell he had no clue.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#148

Post by mFixman »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #115
serial_dev wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like your confidence in the competitors. Which ones do you recommend? I need a timer, integration with smart home (turn things on and off), play songs and radio, I need to announce to my other devices. And the set up should not be a month long side project. How much will it cost me to replace Alexa in at least 5 rooms...

Home Assistant. Sure, non-tech people might have an issue setting it up today (it's easy and getting easier, but it's not turn-key easy yet), but for you personally, this shouldn't be an issue. Assuming you have a spare Raspberry Pi or some other compute you can dedicate to it, replacing Alexa in every aspect except the microphones is at most a couple hours of installing, configuring and testing stuff. I don't person…

The microphones and speakers are what I care about. Alexa is the perfect hands-off universal remote + podcast speaker.

Is there a way to flash the Echo hardware to make it work with Home Assistant without pinging Amazon HQ?

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#149

Post by 0xTJ »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #126
charcircuit wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People don't always have their hands free or are able to look at a screen. Not everyone is good at typing.

The commenter did mention "except for accessibility reasons".

Voice input while driving isn't an accessibility reason, but it's an important safety feature. Unfortunately Google's Assistant has only gotten worse, nearing uselessness in anything but setting driving directions.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#150

Post by Planktonne »

oblio wrote: post #135
gryfft wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's actually really good for me, it's just bad for almost every cell in my body"

Well, I think the proper analogy would be that it's good for me but bad for my kidneys and colon. Edit: LOL at the downvotes. It's true. The US is basically mistreating its "undesirables". In the US if you're poor, f** you. Payday loans, food deserts, car dependency, etc, everything is meant to hit you while you're down.

Something bad for your kidneys is bad for you as well, even if you don't notice at the time/don't mind that level of damage.

If the US harms its population, it is harming itself, because -- like every state -- it's at least partially made of its people.

Post reply on HN