I wonder if it includes the option to change the 'Alexa' keyword to 'Computer' so you can pretend you're on Star Trek.
Amazon Echo
331–340 of 746 posts
Re: Amazon Echo
#332To 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…
>Ex. If Apple wanted to, they could watch us through our macbook cameras and listen to us all the time.
Which reminds me that my Macbook camera is broken :'(
Re: Amazon Echo
#333Why I might buy an Echo: - it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically free as long as the audio quality is good. - it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would…
You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy for solving minor first world annoyances.
>You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy
Prove it. Seriously, don't speculate like this until it's proven one way or the other. Prove that it violates my privacy and then we will talk.
Re: Amazon Echo
#334Well hang on - doesn't my iPhone already do all this? And presumably so does the Android equivalent? I appreciate this will have much better microphone technology but it still seems a little redundant.
A couple differentiators: -The speaker in Echo is presumably much better -The microphone in Echo is presumably much better -On most Android phones (I don't know about iPhone), you have to wake the phone up before you can talk to it
If your iPhone is plugged in to power, you can trigger Siri by saying "Hey Siri". I believe this is off by default and there's a settings switch for it.
Re: Amazon Echo
#335Why I might buy an Echo: - it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically free as long as the audio quality is good. - it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would…
Your three year old probably can't use it. Current voice recognition - Siri, kinect, et al - all seem to struggle with child voices. Maybe something they've expressly worked on for this 'home assistant' scenario, but I don't hold out much hope. It's a general pattern that early releases of human-interaction tech tend to optimize for 50th percentile western males.
Re: Amazon Echo
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy for solving minor first world annoyances.
>You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy Prove it. Seriously, don't speculate like this until it's proven one way or the other. Prove that it violates my privacy and then we will talk.
You must be joking.
Why don't you "prove" that all the metadata is not used for commercial purposes, and that metadata isn't available to government agencies.
Re: Amazon Echo
#337While 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…
It seems to me that the main innovation here is the quality of the microphone array. As a professional sound recordist, the #1 challenge of recording from a fixed point is that the ambient noise and reflections within the room rapidly swamp the original signal when you record from a point source. You can hear someone talk from the far side of a room in person very easily, because your brain constantly compensates for…
I wonder if they plan to capture the unknown commands and run them past human ears to help it learn.
Re: Amazon Echo
#338This "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…
Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. Some percentage of people will be unjustly exploited, but probably not enough to offset the economic benefits that technology like this brings to its users. I think your focus on 'the people vs the government' is misplaced, because government is just a sort of social technology which can be used and abused like any other technology depending…
> Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid.
It's going to take a high-profile case to show people how wrong this is. Wait for it.
Here's some potential scenarios:
* An author who is researching dangerous-sounding stuff and discussing it with his friends for a book is SWAT teamed and shot dead. Later investigation reveals overzealous "parallel construction."
* Someone at one of these companies is busted insider trading on information from these sources. Surveillance targets include lawyers, CXO-level personnel, etc.
* Creepy misogynistic black-hat hackers break into the network behind one of these devices and start using it to engage in cyber-stalking against women and record their sexual encounters, posting the results to 4chan and Reddit.
* HIPAA or other similar regulations are spectacularly violated, resulting in large cash damages.
* Someone is busted pwning the "cloud-enhanced Internet of things" (surveillance) devices of police officers and selling feeds to drug traffickers and the mob.
... I could keep going.
Re: Amazon Echo
#339Why I might buy an Echo: - it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically free as long as the audio quality is good. - it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would…
Your three year old probably can't use it. Current voice recognition - Siri, kinect, et al - all seem to struggle with child voices. Maybe something they've expressly worked on for this 'home assistant' scenario, but I don't hold out much hope. It's a general pattern that early releases of human-interaction tech tend to optimize for 50th percentile western males.
Why wouldn't they? If they're being released in the west, they're optimizing for their largest target demographic.
Re: Amazon Echo
#340It's interesting that so few people think this device is just bullshit and will annoy you, your family and your guests after like 5 minutes.
Even after watching the video for 10 seconds I cannot hear the word Alexa anymore.