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

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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon is rarely the cheapest way to have a package delivered to your home in less than two days. You can often find people much cheaper if you don’t mind waiting a week or two. I reduced Amazon by 90% when I realized how much money I was wasting over 70-120 packages a year.

What’s the alternative? Everyone else has you pay for shipping, and it’s slower.

To my mind that's just what my privacy costs and I'm willing to pay it. Others might not feel the same way, and they're welcome to pawn their data for free fast shipping.

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

#552
post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every starlink station (and probably) tesla, scoop up every mac address they ever see. This is one is unique in that it puts all that data into a single actor's hands.

As opposed to every Android phone doing the same?

Continue

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

#553

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart ph…

People don't care about privacy

Some people have enjoyed the benefits of government agencies that promote consumer protections. At some level, maybe we hear about or even directly benefitted from some consumer protection agency, and assume the government has our back. Maybe it is naive, but I still think that assumption is there: we don't have to care because it is someone else's job to care about privacy. How could it be put on sale if it is not safe? They test cars, for safety, they test food for safety, etc. They must test these things, too, right?

This is clearly not the case, though. The government works for big tech. The US government is even shutting down consumer protection agencies at the behest of big tech and leaving us to their whims!

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

#554
post #520

Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how "I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization." The comment further talks about the mute button on the orig…

We should make AI generated conversations to overload their surveilance.

It's all fun and games until the import brokerage calls to ask where to deliver the 850,000 rubber dog turds you ordered.

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

#555

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart ph…

This kind of apathic statement is not very useful. By your logic, we should not care about climate change either. "People don't care about privacy" doesn't mean that regulators and the tech community should not lead a charge.

I didn't read their comment as apathetic. The mass majority just doesn't choose to make privacy an emphasis in their lives.

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

#556

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart ph…

HN is social media. So there.

Only if you think forums, 4chan or whatnot from ye olden days are also "social media". HN has no friends feature, no curated algorithm, no way to discover creators...

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

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has some of those features. I think I’d attach speakers to the HA Voice you can use them that way but the built-in speaker will not cut it (think gen1 Echo). They are cool little devices, but they have a while to go before they can replace the Alexa’s.

Ah ok, thanks for the info. Had hoped I could jump on HA Voice right away because I have already a small HA server in my home.

Same here, I was ready to replace 8-10 echo with them in a heartbeat if it was even close to the Echo but it's not quite there yet. I hope v2 is good enough as I'd love to remove the echo's but they are too convenient currently.

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

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should just drive and call later. You are putting yourself, your kids and the people around you at risk by calling someone else while driving, even when keeping your hands no the steering wheel.

I'm not a parent, but I suspect that if you're driving your kid(s) to the ER, there's a risk of having hours or minutes left with your kid(s) before they perish. So while it is riskier to call on the way, the risk of your spouse missing out on the last few moments of your child's time on Earth is actually greater. That being said, one would hope that is a seriously unusual edge case for requiring voice commands. (I p…

I think I'd always call an ambulance if it is what I perceive as a life threatening situation. Actually I did it once. You can't give CPR to your kids while driving. I also think calling the other parent would be way below in term of priority than making sure my kid stays alive so I think I would call only when ER specialists or at least paramedics have taken charge of them and that may be some hospital clerk doing it for me if I have to be available to give information about medical history.

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

#559

Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how "I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization." The comment further talks about the mute button on the orig…

Heh. We have a Nest Mini at home that someone gave us, that we use as a smart speaker. Before setting it up, I popped it open and physically scraped out the MEMS microphones. Now that' s a hardware mute.

I like this approach.

But can you safely do this with multi room devices?

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

#560

Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how "I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization." The comment further talks about the mute button on the orig…

This is interesting because I remember interviewing a UX manager candidate at Google around 2019 who was coming from the Alexa team at Amazon, and his feedback even then was that Alexa was never going to be profitable and that he -- and many others -- were trying to get out while the getting was good. It, just like Google Assistant, is just suffering a very slow death.
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