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

441–450 of 746 posts

Re: Amazon Echo

#441

Post by LeoPanthera »

memnips wrote: post #426

I'm surprised by the privacy backlash in this thread! I understand why this product is so scary for someone who is concerned about privacy, but how is this that much worse than all the other devices you use? You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) w…

> why don't you trust Amazon

I think you're asking the wrong question. It's about the company's motivation.

Google makes money from your data, and by showing you ads. Amazon makes money by creating services and devices that sell you products. Apple makes money just by selling you services and devices.

Looked at this way, I certainly trust Apple more than Google or Amazon, and this is borne out by Apple's recent "A message from Tim Cook". http://www.apple.com/privacy/

Re: Amazon Echo

#442

Post by 72deluxe »

LesZedCB wrote: post #168
muraiki wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they put motorized wheels and a cute LED face on the device, I bet it would sell a bit more. Although there's the whole problem of stairs...

That's basically Serge from Caprica! [1] It would be cool to actually have one of those. We just need them to be hosted on our own servers... [1] http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Serge

I'd prefer Twiki from Buck Rogers.

Re: Amazon Echo

#443

Post by atmosx »

memnips wrote: post #426

I'm surprised by the privacy backlash in this thread! I understand why this product is so scary for someone who is concerned about privacy, but how is this that much worse than all the other devices you use? You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) w…

I do have control over my laptop, the NSA or Amazon would have to actively hack me in order go get to that mic and luckily I'm not worth it anyways.

In order for someone (the NSA?) to track a phone and do whatever they need to do, they need to have a warrant and what-not.

That's like deliberately sending all your living-room conversations (yours and your family's) online for analysis for God-knows-what purpose.

You trust Amazon that's good for you then. I don't trust anybody with admittedly uncontrolled access to all table conversations my family will have in the future.

Re: Amazon Echo

#444

Post by hardwaresofton »

bfwi wrote: post #397
hardwaresofton wrote: post #380

Well it looks like Amazon just did the market research for anyone that's wanted to make an open source version of this. Like these guys have: http://jasperproject.github.io/ I've had this idea sitting in the back of my brain for years, worked up some simple prototypes (just using computer's mic), the technology is already there and surprisingly simple (made simple for the layman by brilliant people)...

Just looked at the Jasper project. The voice synthesizer sounds like crap compared to a product like Siri, and I suspect the voice recognition is worse too. I've coded on some the stuff using voice synthesis and recognition for fun, and it seems that the open source options haven't gotten any better for the past 15 years.

Well I think CMUSphinx and Julius have actually made leaps and bounds. Jasper is a thin layer built on top of those systems (sphinx in this case).

I guess I'm just easy to impress - I think the fact that we have off-the-shelf open source software that does voice recognition with any kind of quality is amazing.

And again, a lot of the time, it's about how well your model is trained. One of the ideas I had was to work training into the product, and have the user say sentences over time (maybe ~5 a week, at random times) to help the machine understand better (something like "hey, if you have a minute, let's work on our communication").

Also, even if the voice is a little bit computer-y, I don't mind, yeah you won't match on feature set right out of the gate, but I don't mind.

Also, there's an opportunity for advancement in that area -- if I were to build a site that collected voice/utterance samples from voice artists and had users pay a little bit for packs, I think we could fund the open-source teams doing the work to make more realistic voice/utterance.

I think of Jasper as a first step, but then again, I am biased, I like the idea and have been wanting to do it myself for a long time

Re: Amazon Echo

#445

Post by hackuser »

melling wrote: post #306
hackuser wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn't call anyone an idiot. I know; sorry I didn't write more clearly. I meant that them calling you "idiot" and you calling them "paranoid" is roughly equivalent.

I said "our paranoia". I wasn't trying to dismiss it but these types of conversations tend to devolve into mainly discussing our paranoia. I don't need to be warned every week. And it's my choice to decide to allow Google or Apple, for example, to get my data.

> I said "our paranoia".

Hmmm ... that's not what I see above.

Generally I can understand frustration with any issue getting too much attention and drowning out others.

> it's my choice to decide to allow Google or Apple, for example, to get my data.

It's not your choice really. It's hard to function in this society otherwise, and I don't just mean having phone service or traveling. For example, my electricity vendor insisted on installing a 'smart meter', which allows them to record what and when electrical devices are used, giving them a good view of my activities in the privacy of my home. My choice was to let them install it, get my own generator, or go without electricity.

Re: Amazon Echo

#446

Post by anigbrowl »

lsseckman wrote: post #411
anigbrowl wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is cool - I didn't see any detail of the mic array on the site, where did you find it? Also, do you think it's feasible for Amazon to keep a voice profile on the speakers? I'm thinking if they are going to tout perfect voice recognition they'll have to make it person-specific at some point.

Well, it says: Tucked under Echo's light ring is an array of seven microphones. These sensors use beam-forming technology to hear you from any direction. With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it's playing music.

I've been working professionally with digital audio for nearly 20 years now so I know a fair amount about DSP, acoustics and so on. Very basically, you can measure the acoustical properties of a space by playing a sound known as an impulse and recording the response, and then extracting the acoustical information by a mathematical technique known as deconvolution. This is used in various commercial products for allowing you to simulate, say, the reverberant space of Sydney Opera Hall on a recording made in a vocal booth, or reproduce the signature tone of a hideously expensive guitar amplifier in a cheap DSP-powered device.

When you have hardware where the speaker and microphones exist in a fixed physical configuration relative to each other, as here, then the math gets that much simpler because a lot of your coefficients become fixed quantities. With multiple microphones at fixed distances from each other you can use small discrepancies in the phase of the input audio to infer information about spatial characteristics of the environment. I don't know the exact dimensions of this thing but just eyeballing I'd guess that you could hack this thing to produce a reflectance map with a resolution of maybe under an inch.

Wow, thinking about it I hope it is hackable. Even if you were only able to get the raw input stream from the microphones and had to import the audio to another machine for all the DSP, a perfectly-calibrated speaker + phased microphone array for $200 is a steal.

Re: Amazon Echo

#448

Post by 72deluxe »

spydum wrote: post #373

This all reminds me of "AutoPC" from Clarion in the late 90's[1]. A friend of mine had it in his truck, it truly was amazing at the time -- he could make phone calls, play music, render maps on his display, you name it, all hands free on a tiny little SH-3 processor running windows CE (yes, remember that?!) under his seat. It's sad it really hasn't progressed very far -- Essentially, we've moved on to cloud-hosted au…

That sounds a really interesting device, thanks. I too have noticed that voice recognition has been shifted "to the cloud" despite the improvement in local processing power; even 15 year old Nokias had voice recognition of some sort (BLUETOOOOTH you would shout), and old single-core PCs had Dragon Naturally Speaking working on them; I am sure modern devices have more processing power (and storage).

Re: Amazon Echo

#449

Post by 72deluxe »

cr3ative wrote: post #8

I hope it has a reasonable API. I want to program it to automatically laugh at my terrible jokes.

Haha what a great idea.

I laughed at you, but I'm unsure as to whether it was a terrible joke......

Re: Amazon Echo

#450

Post by mode80 »

jwallaceparker wrote: post #343

Watch the promo video again and pretend it's the first few minutes of a horror movie. A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it. It's Alexa. It's "for everyone," says Father. The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her? Father rushes in from the backyard, "Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?" Alexa an…

This is the first time I've laughed reading HN. :)
Post reply on HN