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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

#651

Post by amaranth »

kazinator wrote: post #590
kzrdude wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's weird that they (Alexa, Google etc) haven't tried to do something new with generative AI assistants.

They have. You can switch your Android phone from the old Google Assistant to Gemini. I don't like it, so I use Gemini separately by going to the Gemini URL, leaving the assistant as is. It may be dumb, but it's useful. Just like you wouldn't replace your Bash with a GUI, at least not for some values of 'you'.

Google Assistant is going away soon so this won't work anymore.

https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/end-of-life-gemini-wi...

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

#652

Post by lightedman »

ziml77 wrote: post #631
mintplant wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hardware mute until they switch the speaker output pins to input mode and use the speaker itself as a microphone.

Speakers much larger than headphone speakers tend to be very poor at such a thing since it gets a lot harder to move the voice coil as weight and pressure from the surround dampen everything. Anything capable of reproducing appreciable bass will almost certainly not work.

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

#653

Post by dade_ »

everdrive wrote: post #186

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…

Many people refuse to have any of these devices in their home over privacy concerns, one person I know wants them unplugged when visiting. I like the convenience, but there is a line and Amazon is crossing it. The lack of innovation, layoffs, and reports of financial losses were the warning the enshittifcation of Alexa is coming and I expect this is only the start.

Alexa and Google Assistant created the market, now it will be interesting to see how it evolves. Home Assistant is working well in testing and has a great feature set for home automation, the LLM support is fun, and most of the smart devices I've bought over the years are compatible including Apple Homekit. At least for people that do care, there are options.

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

#654

Post by ryukoposting »

mvieira38 wrote: post #556
ryukoposting wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I do. Primeval social media, sure. Social media that predates the term "social media," even. Nearly all things exist before we agree on a name for them, so that's nothing new.

All of those services you list are examples of an online medium that exists for the purpose of socializing. So yes, they're all forms of social media, even if they're considerably less structurally harmful than something like Facebook.

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

#655

Post by AdieuToLogic »

elif wrote: post #632
arcrwlock wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then you'd be running a full speech to text model all the time, and an LLM any time any speech is detected.

Uh yea, I want that to happen. Correct. Why would I want things happening without the model knowing and having context? Have you seen Star Trek? We should have computer by now. An agent which knows when to tell us things we need to know, not just respond to requests.

>> Because then you'd be running a full speech to text model all the time, and an LLM any time any speech is detected.

> Uh yea, I want that to happen.

Be careful what you wish for.

> Have you seen Star Trek? We should have computer by now. An agent which knows when to tell us things we need to know, not just respond to requests.

Have you read 1984[0]?

Star Trek is fiction. A good fiction IMHO, but a fiction none the less. As such, the writers took "creative liberties" in order to present a storyline for viewers of same.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four

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

#656

Post by elif »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #655
elif wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh yea, I want that to happen. Correct. Why would I want things happening without the model knowing and having context? Have you seen Star Trek? We should have computer by now. An agent which knows when to tell us things we need to know, not just respond to requests.

>> Because then you'd be running a full speech to text model all the time, and an LLM any time any speech is detected. > Uh yea, I want that to happen. Be careful what you wish for. > Have you seen Star Trek? We should have computer by now. An agent which knows when to tell us things we need to know, not just respond to requests. Have you read 1984[0]? Star Trek is fiction. A good fiction IMHO, but a fiction none the…

If you'd read 1984 recently enough you'd know it is based upon the notion of state and social imposed ideology becoming enmeshed, a locally running hub of pure logic is the antithesis of that concept.

A better metaphor would be mephi from yamyatin's We (the original inspiration for 1984) which represents the kernel of u modulated truth which exists outside the calculus of the imposed social matrix

Hilarious that you thought I'd wouldn't be familiar with the work, when you yourself appear to be that person

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

#657

Post by _heimdall »

fwip wrote: post #562
_heimdall wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also not proposing we ask people nicely to do anything. People will make their choices, we have to expect people will generally make a decision that's best for them and that in the long run if people continue to do what they think is best it will work out. What are we even doing here with capitalism, democracy, etc if we don't generally trust people to make their own decisions? With regards specifically to lightb…

> What are we even doing here with capitalism, democracy, etc if we don't generally trust people to make their own decisions? Laws are the primary mechanism by which democracy safeguards threatened community resources. You may be longing for an anarcho-capitalist society, but don't expect negative externalities to ever be priced in.

I'm not an anarcho-capitalist, or an anarchist in general. I generally agree with laws that protect individual freedoms and generally disagree with laws that limit freedoms. Protecting everyone's right to free speech is important for example, legislating whether my milk must be pasteurized is not for example.

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

#658

Post by kazinator »

amaranth wrote: post #651
kazinator wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have. You can switch your Android phone from the old Google Assistant to Gemini. I don't like it, so I use Gemini separately by going to the Gemini URL, leaving the assistant as is. It may be dumb, but it's useful. Just like you wouldn't replace your Bash with a GUI, at least not for some values of 'you'.

Google Assistant is going away soon so this won't work anymore. https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/03/end-of-life-gemini-wi...

I wonder how that will affect older devices, like Android TV streaming boxes, where you use the assistant through the remote.

I see that the article mentions this, but I'm skeptical. I think that the assistant will just be switched off, and that will be it; no more using the older Android TV box to ask for today's weather or search for videos.

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

#659

Post by TZubiri »

ohmygoodniche wrote: post #183
TZubiri wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have become absolutely spoiled, now talking with a machine feels like something an arm chip should be able to handle

You can preprogram super cheap chips to do voice commands. They come with limitations but they don't wire tap your home to sell private conversation data to advertising companies to later water board your kids into purchasing thing's on social media

You might write those limitations off as an asterisk , but they are probably orders of magnitude of differing quality.

You don't make a state of the art product by shipping some code and never getting any direct feedback on it.

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

#660

Post by nullpoint420 »

gopher_space wrote: post #425
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never have anything voice controlled in my house if I can help it. I mean I have them but they're all turned off. Except for the teenager's iphone, but we troll him by saying stuff like "Hey Siri, how do I stop being annoying?" or something like that.

Hey Siri, delete all music. That was an interesting feature to discover.

Man. I wonder what the PM/dev was thinking when they designed, planned, tested, and deployed that feature.
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