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

Amazon Echo

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 746 posts

Re: Amazon Echo

#251

Post by bicknergseng »

javert wrote: post #235
chatmasta wrote: post #87

This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an always-on, internet connected voice recording device is something to ke…

> Yes, I'm trying to get on a list at the NSA I have a running joke about this with my mom. The particular list that people like you and me get put on is called the "patriot file." Fortunately, it's way too big of a list for them to follow up on thoroughly, so if your phone conversation (or comment) ends up there, you're really OK.

Even the NSA has to deal with Huxley.

Re: Amazon Echo

#252

Post by justcommenting »

headgasket wrote: post #233
justcommenting wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think you're underestimating how deeply entrenched 'surveillance as a business model' has become amongst leading american tech companies in recent years. this has much less to do with latent consumer demand than companies wanting to leverage that information for advertising and related purposes and desperately trying to craft a value proposition that justifies and normalizes more intrusive forms of data collection.

Can/will this lead to a stifling of true innovation? If this existed and there was one in that the famed Apple garage, or in the house rented by Zuck and his friends, would IBM have let Apple happen, or Google let the FB grow? How many prescient individuals (the future is already here, just not evenly distributed, as Gibson said) do you need to spy on to "manage" innovation in a way to prevent disruption? Could this…

why would any company large enough to fund R&D take risks to develop something truly innovative when it could just combine incremental innovation rolled up into an advertising/commerce-linked platform?

especially for anyone trying to develop new hardware, patent barriers have made it much more risky and difficult--especially for small companies--to build things that are truly innovative or disruptive. and to the extent anyone does, they're likely to get bought out by a major company.

Re: Amazon Echo

#253

Post by loganu »

captn3m0 wrote: post #227
dandroid1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst case, it's a music streaming speaker that doesn't require you to stream via bluetooth. I wonder how the audio stacks up against something like the Bose SoundLink.

>Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream your favorite music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet. Seems like it needs Bluetooth to stream music.

Remember that Amazon has its new music service for Prime customers. If they didn't integrate that into this somehow, it would be quite confusing.

Re: Amazon Echo

#254

Post by tjbiddle »

r0h1n wrote: post #105
Someone1234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grow tired of this pathetic baseless fear mongering every single time anything is posted with voice control. You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic claims about "well NSA!" In this case, as the website makes clear, you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening. If you had been paying attention to the mobile scene even a little bit you'd know that this is on-chip lis…

> you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening Incorrect. The device is always listening, waiting for you to say "Alexa" so that it can start acting upon your commands. I'd take Amazon's claim that no data is transmitted or stored without the wake word "Alexa" purely at face value. There have been enough examples of devices and corporations collecting/sending data they weren't meant to in the past few y…

Wouldn't it be fairly simple to just monitor network connections to see how often it's sending data to Amazon's servers?

Granted - then of course you can have the argument that it's always recording, and then only sending data at the opportune time so that it's a little bit more hidden. And to that - I'd just say you can keep track of how much data should be being sent for the average command.

Re: Amazon Echo

#255

Post by wtetzner »

leeber wrote: post #192

To everyone worried about privacy: We all trust our e-mail to be stored in the cloud, we store sensitive files etc on services like dropbox, we trust that our operating systems aren't collecting/sending data, etc. You're already using and relying upon MANY services with the ability (if they really wanted to) to steal TONS of private information from you. It all comes down to trust. But don't pretend like this opens u…

There's a difference between people being able to steal data from your email or computer, and having something record everything you say in the "privacy" of your own home.

Re: Amazon Echo

#256

Post by tree_of_item »

melling wrote: post #158
Someone1234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grow tired of this pathetic baseless fear mongering every single time anything is posted with voice control. You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic claims about "well NSA!" In this case, as the website makes clear, you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening. If you had been paying attention to the mobile scene even a little bit you'd know that this is on-chip lis…

Yeah, I was just having this conversation 4 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545144 There's always a guy on HN who wants to warn everyone like we're all a bunch of idiots. It's ok to be paranoid but we should file it under an FAQ. Our time is probably better spent discussing the value of the product itself. Hopefully, we get to that today.

Thanks for dragging me in to this. This is an even better example of the point I was trying to make, yet you're still doing this bland dismissal. You should really stop and think about the privacy implications of this technology for a few minutes.

Re: Amazon Echo

#257

Post by hackuser »

melling wrote: post #158
Someone1234 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grow tired of this pathetic baseless fear mongering every single time anything is posted with voice control. You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic claims about "well NSA!" In this case, as the website makes clear, you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening. If you had been paying attention to the mobile scene even a little bit you'd know that this is on-chip lis…

Yeah, I was just having this conversation 4 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8545144 There's always a guy on HN who wants to warn everyone like we're all a bunch of idiots. It's ok to be paranoid but we should file it under an FAQ. Our time is probably better spent discussing the value of the product itself. Hopefully, we get to that today.

> idiots > paranoid

I don't see much difference between calling someone an "idiot", and calling them "paranoid" and dismissing their concerns to an FAQ.

> Our time is probably better spent discussing the value of the product itself.

Confidentiality has a large impact on the product's value, at least for many people. I don't see them as independent issues. If you feel, like many, that confidentiality is necessary to its value then the focus of the discussion makes sense (if it wasn't so redundant).

Re: Amazon Echo

#258

Post by Fuzzwah »

captn3m0 wrote: post #227
dandroid1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worst case, it's a music streaming speaker that doesn't require you to stream via bluetooth. I wonder how the audio stacks up against something like the Bose SoundLink.

>Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream your favorite music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet. Seems like it needs Bluetooth to stream music.

Echo is always on and connected to Wi-Fi so it's ready to respond instantly.

Music: Listen to your Amazon Music Library, Prime Music, TuneIn, and iHeartRadio.

Re: Amazon Echo

#259

Post by jewel »

dandroid1 wrote: post #184
asafira wrote: post #159

While most of the posts are, and probably should be, concerned with the privacy implications of this device if/when it reaches peoples' homes, I also wonder the plain-old "will this flop?" Adding voice recognition to things isn't a new idea, and the threshold for when it's "good enough" for the general populace for any use case is pretty poorly understood and/or quantified. Is this a use case people would be interest…

Worst case, it's a music streaming speaker that doesn't require you to stream via bluetooth. I wonder how the audio stacks up against something like the Bose SoundLink.

I've been using a chromecast + an HDMI audio splitter as a cheap way to stream. It works really well for apps that support chromecast, such as pandora.

Re: Amazon Echo

#260

Post by hsod »

colinbartlett wrote: post #42
joezydeco wrote: post #10

So the product is named "Echo" but you ask it questions by calling it "Alexa"? That's just odd.

Almost certainly relevant is that Alexa is an Internet analytics company that Amazon owns.

Why "almost certainly"? They don't seem particularly connected
Post reply on HN