251–260 of 696 posts
Is all audio up to “Alexa” still processed on device?
It should, but as far as I know you have zero guarantees about that. I just hope there's privacy organizations and / or hackers that continuously verify these claims. Of course, Amazon can push an update at any time to change this, at which point it'll be too late to think "hmm, 1984 warned us about this".
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Laughs in European Consumer Protection How's that "break regulation to innovate" working out for US?
Well, the per-capita GDP of the poorest U.S. state — Mississippi — is greater than that of the U.K., France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Poland and many others, and within 10% of Finland, Germany, Belgium and Austria. 34 of the 47 European states have lower per-capita GDPs than Mississippi. The median per-capita U.S. state GDP is $78,649; the median per-capita European state GDP is $28,713. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.or…
https://mississippitoday.org/2023/01/26/maternal-mortality-r...
In Greece , 8 per 100k https://genderdata.worldbank.org/en/economies/greece
That's just a random health stat, but it's clear the Greek have a far healthier population.
But Mississippi has more millionaires so I guess it's fine.
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Well, the per-capita GDP of the poorest U.S. state — Mississippi — is greater than that of the U.K., France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Poland and many others, and within 10% of Finland, Germany, Belgium and Austria. 34 of the 47 European states have lower per-capita GDPs than Mississippi. The median per-capita U.S. state GDP is $78,649; the median per-capita European state GDP is $28,713. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.or…
We have to ask ourselves what we want. Because it's not GDP, you can't eat GDP or sleep under it, you can't even withdraw it from the bank. So more directly, how does it influence our life? (Of course GDP influences our life to some extent.)
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raises hand There are exactly two companies which make a device capable of actually integrating with every home automation and voice control, so given the options, I assumed Amazon would have fewer evil ideas than Google, seeing as the mechanism for Amazon profiting off the data directly is clear and the mechanism for Google has 100 teams building different products to consume that data in 1000 ways I can't begin to…
But why do we need these in the first place? I have a free Apple home that I can’t find much of a use for aside from being a speaker. Is it that hard to get the weather or turn lights off from your phone? I definitely don’t want to order products from an audio interface. What else am I missing?
Voice assistants are not a revolution in home living, but lets not go too far in the other direction and ignore that they do still have useful features.
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Amazon also sold the Echo in Europe, so it’s going to be interesting to see how European Consumer Protection helps out in this case.
GDPR says "hi". If users don't consent, Amazon can't collect. If users exercise their rights to be forgotten, Amazon has to delete. If Amazon breaks the thing because users have not consented, then Amazon will be on the hook for breaching the contract. "It was working until yesterday, how come?" EU will ask.
The fines, if they ever arrive, are merely the cost of doing business - a small tax.
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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.
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Well, the per-capita GDP of the poorest U.S. state — Mississippi — is greater than that of the U.K., France, Italy, Greece, Spain, Poland and many others, and within 10% of Finland, Germany, Belgium and Austria. 34 of the 47 European states have lower per-capita GDPs than Mississippi. The median per-capita U.S. state GDP is $78,649; the median per-capita European state GDP is $28,713. Sources: https://en.wikipedia.or…
It means that GDP doesn't buy prosperity. We've been told for decades that letting our economy turn out like Europe's was something to fear, while they outpaced us in virtually all quality of life measures. We can no longer claim being the richest country in the world as a source of uniqueness or justification -- handed to us by the gods. I think this is part of the reason for the present descent into authoritarianis…
unfortunately the wealthy are going to concede more wealth and power or it will continue.
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I should have a bit more faith but at this point I feel like the median voter might see their world getting worse but still be convinced somehow that Democrats are behind it because Republicans have their messaging on point and Democrats are doing the equivalent of a silent protest.
Turns out, propoganda really does work. Just takes a few billionaires, a few hostile nations states, and some exploitable algorithms
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.
IANAL but I thought bait and switch is illegal? It definitely is in the EU. Is it not in the US?
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.
Don't these usually come with ToS or something that has you agreeing that they can change the service any time?