I get gizmos like this as gifts every now and then. I never bothered opening any of them up. What are some fun things that we can do with these things besides their intended use?
Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
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Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#112How surprised would you be if in 5 years there was a Snowden-type revelation, that yes, the speakers and Facebook/Insta apps, Amazon echo, etc, etc, were listening all the time? Sorry. And that there was a secret court ruling that meant all that data was live-streamed to NSA Utah. Not surprised at all, is the answer.
As someone who has worked on speech recognition at several of these companies I'm quite certain that they are not listening all the time
How certain are you that the long term game plan is not 24/7 listening? They seek to monitor you every other way and push the envelope relentlessly
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any of those things would be such massive trust violations that the fallout would almost certainly sink the product and badly tarnish the company. That's not saying a company wouldn't be stupid enough to try it, but it's very clearly a bad business decision - so logically they wouldn't do it.
sure, it's company policy not to. but if you do it anyway and don't get caught, your risk-taking will be rewarded, so it becomes a numbers game/informal policy.
That just means we need more than company policy. Regulations w/ teeth and verifiable audits, for example.
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#114I had one of these when I worked for Google, I didn’t quite trust it though, so I had it in the bathroom to limit what my employer could listen to. Imagine discussing a product idea at home with friends, then having that stolen by an engineer at one of these companies (who figured out how to find the interesting conversations) for a promotion or new position. On a larger scale these might get hooked up with some adve…
...so I had it in the bathroom to limit what my employer could listen to.
Uh, this feels like Opposite Day.
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#115I might sound like a grumpy old granddad to some of you (and I am not even that old), but did you really think that a huge company would offer to put microphones into your living room for your advantage? They are going to benefit from this and you are going to pay for it. How? For instance with dynamic pricing. Your loved ones tell you how much they want that vacation on that Greek island? Good luck finding a cheap f…
You're spreading conspiracy theories. There is no way Google is listening to your phone calls and using the information for ads.
The NSA on the other hand... well, I'll just say that every once in a while, when I lose something, I'll whisper into my phone: "I know you're listening, I know you're watching. And I really need to find my car keys".
Then I'll wait 5 minutes or so, and step outside, and there will be a small note taped to my door. Last time it said, "You left them in the car --a friend"
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're spreading conspiracy theories. There is no way Google is listening to your phone calls and using the information for ads.
Just like they would never scan the content of your emails and serve up targeted ads based on that... Oh, wait, they were doing that up until 2017...
And they were upfront with it. When GMail was released, they straight up told users that’s how they were paying for the enormous 1GB storage.
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#117I might sound like a grumpy old granddad to some of you (and I am not even that old), but did you really think that a huge company would offer to put microphones into your living room for your advantage? They are going to benefit from this and you are going to pay for it. How? For instance with dynamic pricing. Your loved ones tell you how much they want that vacation on that Greek island? Good luck finding a cheap f…
You're spreading conspiracy theories. There is no way Google is listening to your phone calls and using the information for ads.
Why is there no way they're doing it? They're certainly capable of it. I think it's pretty unlikely they are, but it would be trivial for them to do so.
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might not be as high as you think, if they are processing the data and sending a summary over, rather than the raw sound file.
Dragon Naturally Speaking ran on clients without network access in the 90s. A given household might have 20,000 words spoken in a day. With speech to text, then compression, this would be a 20kb network request. If you only sent data once a month the data/day could likely be reduced even further. This could easily be Trojan-horsed alongside valid requests without anyone noticing.
As a CE I’m glad some people get this. I see all the posts here about “we could it’s not listening by looking at encrypted traffic amounts” or “it can’t do local speech recognition” or “they wouldn’t do that!” and want to bang my head against the wall.
These devices can absolutely be abusing trust - it’s not even unlikely to some degree.
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#119I might sound like a grumpy old granddad to some of you (and I am not even that old), but did you really think that a huge company would offer to put microphones into your living room for your advantage? They are going to benefit from this and you are going to pay for it. How? For instance with dynamic pricing. Your loved ones tell you how much they want that vacation on that Greek island? Good luck finding a cheap f…
Any of those things would be such massive trust violations that the fallout would almost certainly sink the product and badly tarnish the company. That's not saying a company wouldn't be stupid enough to try it, but it's very clearly a bad business decision - so logically they wouldn't do it.
Just wait a little. It’s too soon now but then again, I suspect very few people if they were teleported from 20–30 years ago would accept all the privacy violations we take as a fact of life today.
Re: Google speakers are listening to more than just voice commands
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nope, its high compression comes at the cost of similarly high CPU and memory usage.
Compressed audio at speech quality uses miniscule amounts of storage, especially with modern codecs like Opus.
You addressed storage but skipped the CPU portion: Yes, Opus can create good quality audio with low storage requirements, but it cannot do so without a high CPU cost.