> This is what I mean when I say most people don't feel culpable enough; there isn't anything sufficiently illegal going on in their lives that they perceive a significant government interest in intruding upon them in the first place. I hear this refutation quite often. I find it typically comes from people in a place of privilege that the system largely ignores. I've read far too many accounts from people who are no…
You're making my point for me. The system largely ignores a large majority of the people, who therefore don't care much about this issue to feel deterred from buying the relevant technology. Hence the enormous popularity of smartphones with GPS functionality and so forth: never getting lost >> government tracking everywhere you go, for most people.
> The system largely ignores a large majority of the people
Unless you happen to have a child named Alexa.....
In which case you can pick a different wake word, which they mention in the video. I don't know what those specific alternatives are, but I'm betting just about everybody will be able to find one that doesn't match a housemate.
I wonder if all the alternative words have a "hard" sound in them. Like the X in alexa.
The way I think they work is they constantly record 2 seconds of audio, and look only for peak "hard" sounds. Like K in Ok, and X in Alexa. If they find a peak they search back to see if the word was the one they are looking for, but otherwise the CPU is mostly sleeping.
My favorite connected device is still an old iPad2 that I have connected to my TV. The advantages are: 1) The iPad has much better app support than most other TV connected devices. I can watch shows from Amazon, Hulu, HGTV, HBO, ... even the olympics have been well supported. The only issue I have is that there is no remote, and I don't see a good path to adding one. 2) I am a little less worried about privacy issues…
> "Hey Siri", works well for me, and is enough to play the occasional song, or check wikipedia facts if I need one.
Siri works on the iPad 2? I thought it was only on later models.
I get your point, but on the topic of paranoia breeding paranoia, (1) I'm not sure if there is really a causal relationship there, and (2) the government's paranoia a fear of alleged domestic and foreign threats to our safety, well-being, way of life, etc. while the people's paranoia is that the NSA knows what I ate for breakfast. Despite whether either threat is real or not, I'm less concerned about my facebook priv…
I wrote a really long ass post about how naive your line of thinking is, but I decided against posting it. Do yourself a huge favor and pick a god damn book. I suggest 1984 by George Orwell.
I get your point, but on the topic of paranoia breeding paranoia, (1) I'm not sure if there is really a causal relationship there, and (2) the government's paranoia a fear of alleged domestic and foreign threats to our safety, well-being, way of life, etc. while the people's paranoia is that the NSA knows what I ate for breakfast. Despite whether either threat is real or not, I'm less concerned about my facebook priv…
the government's paranoia a fear of alleged domestic and foreign threats to our safety, well-being, way of life, etc. Ostensibly. In real life these powers have been used for all sorts of activities outside this sort of apparently existential threat - for example spying on lawyers in civil rights cases. It's not clear they are useful against well-organised terror, that terror is actually the existential threat you se…
Well you might as well go off the grid completely then, don't use anything that could be used to track you like phones, tablets, laptops, stay away from people in general because you never know who the spies are that are trying to catch you. Don't use credit cards, debit cards, etc. Don't keep your money in banks. In fact probably don't even keep currency, buy gold instead. But you won't need that either because the only way for you to be truly safe is to live the jungle and live off the land....until the spies come for you there too.
......or, you could realize that probably NOT everyone is trying to achieve world domination and enslave all of humanity, starting by spying on you with amazon echo.
Why 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…
The idea of this sitting on my dining room table while eating with my family is horrifying.
I hope you don't put your phone on the table while eating with your family, or have it in your pocket at that time.
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. Maybe you didn't mean it literally but it's a popular expression in this context. I don't think a desire for privacy is paranoid; it is normal, healthy behavior. But to address the gist of what you say, I think you assume an understanding of data security that is far beyond most end users. How many even know what "metadata" means, or how '…
>I don't think a desire for privacy is paranoid; it is normal, healthy behavior.
We on Hacker News spend our free time criticizing anyone we perceive as complicit in surveillance, bemoaning centralization, and championing Bitcoin and Uber for disrupting authority. To HN, a desire for privacy is literally normal: it is a social norm of this community.
That doesn't mean that people outside this community do (or should) care nearly as much as we do.
> Nothing will be transmitted to the cloud unless it is the word "Alexa" You can't be certain that there's no way to activate it remotely without you knowing. Seven mikes in your lounge is an attractive nuisance.
> You can't be certain that there's no way to activate it remotely without you knowing. Ditto with every electronic device with a microphone: Smartphones, tablets, laptops, home phones, bluetooth in your car, Microsoft's Kinect, baby monitors, etc. And while we're on an NSA paranoia trip, let's also remember that if you bounce a laser off of one of your windows it will allow them to pick up sound from within, plus si…
Of course, you could be monitored by the laser bounced off your window, or by your EM leakage. But it is an order of magnitude cheaper and easier for the commercial/governmental entity to use your own voice-enabled communications device for their own purposes. The commercial/governmental data gathering dragnet has come to its current state because it works on devices and networking services that the consumers themselves have purchased.
I'd love one! Rooted, acting as a high quality wifi microphone . If TTS is handled locally (doubtful) I'd love to tap into that as well, it sounds very nice.
This might be the new Kinect, a device least used for what it was originally intended. Fingers crossed, we might be getting a great microphone!