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Amazon Echo

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Re: Amazon Echo

#221

Post by readerrrr »

So if I'm understanding the promotional video correctly, Alexa is listening to you while you have sex.

The best part must be how they represent the capabilities( cloud, always online, third party... ), through an incompetent parent, who isn't capable of understanding the concept. I'm paraphrasing: Cloud?, I've heard that word in the advertisement and it must be good for me.

And continuing by lying:

Quote: So it can just hear you anywhere? Yes, well anyone can hear you anyway.

Nobody except the people in the house you know and trust can hear you, with Echo, the potential listeners become an unknown.

Re: Amazon Echo

#223

Post by hyperbovine »

Someone1234 wrote: post #59
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #4

> With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it's playing music. I read: "Our cloud servers can hear you, no matter what." It's a killer idea. It's too bad privacy concerns might lead it to an early grave.

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…

The phenomenon of the average person being surrounded by a half dozen internet-enabled cameras and microphones is a pretty recent one; I don't think we've even begun to experience the Bad Things that can result from that. Even if it's highly unlikely that Amazon would use it for evil, there's no stopping a technically savvy malfeasant from doing so. I mean, probably 1/3rd the people reading the post, including myself, are on an Apple laptop. You're staring right into the face of an internets-enabled HD camera. Is it recording? The light says no but the light can lie (https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2...). Is your microphone recording audio and sending it somewhere? Even you, the 1%ers of the tech savvy world, have got to admit that you would have little way of knowing this if somebody did it correctly.

Re: Amazon Echo

#224

Post by rubencodes »

opendais wrote: post #178
irishcoffee wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a smartphone with Siri or the equiv app on it (Android, Windows) your device is already 'always listening.' I fail to see the difference. People carry around a GPS tracking device with a mic and camera built-in. They use it to post their entire lives on social networks. And they're worried about privacy. Hilarious.

I don't care about my location information, I don't use social networks. I care about the content of my private communications w/ other people. Including in-person conversations.

So your worried Amazon will be specifically listening in to your conversations and use the content to...what? Blackmail you? Share clips of your conversation on the Internet? Inform your wife/husband you're having an affair?

Re: Amazon Echo

#225

Post by bhhaskin »

krschultz wrote: post #9
andrewstuart2 wrote: post #4

> With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even while it's playing music. I read: "Our cloud servers can hear you, no matter what." It's a killer idea. It's too bad privacy concerns might lead it to an early grave.

Opt-in to 1984 for only $199! ($99 if you belong to Amazon Prime)

That is exactly what this reminds me of, telescreens. I love the idea of being able to have a star trek like computer interface, but with all the processing being done off site it can and will be used in ways that violate our privacy.

Re: Amazon Echo

#227

Post by captn3m0 »

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.

>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.

Re: Amazon Echo

#228

Post by ColinCera »

fra wrote: post #206
ColinCera wrote: post #11

It's great to see Amazon using its huge profits to fund this kind of bleeding edge technology. (Maybe someday engineers will figure out how to squeeze this functionality into handheld devices.)

You mean huge losses, right?

I was attempting sarcasm; I may have failed.

Re: Amazon Echo

#229

Post by goatforce5 »

Lambdanaut wrote: post #17

This could be the natural next step for one click shopping. Obviously it'll be more difficult without textual or visual capabilities, but things like "Add gelato to my shopping cart "(as apposed to shopping list ) would be huge for Amazon fresh shoppers and other products that aren't too ambiguous. Another application: "Alexa, order a Dominoes pizza with extra anchovies. "

The two main things I use Siri for are setting alarms ("Wake me at 7 tomorrow") and adding things to shopping (i.e., reminder) lists ("Add pasta to my Costco list").

It'd be kinda magic if I could say "Alexa, get me some toothpaste" (and have it know that I like Mr Sparkle Minty Fresh) and have that turn up on my doorstep the next day.

And I guess if it's always listening, it could build up a 'map' of when you're home. So it could schedule delivery of fresh stuff for when you're likely to be there.

Re: Amazon Echo

#230

Post by abracar »

gnufied wrote: post #106

I am an Indian who speaks with slight accent(not real thick, but admittedly there is some) and I am yet to use a voice recognition service that works for me. Frankly I despair at future of Voice recognition based services which target a very narrow demography. You would hope things would improve with time, but nope. Does anyone else who isn't a native English speaker has seen this problem?

Don't despair, it's going to improve eventually but it takes time. Those companies need to put effort into training their services specifically for accented speech - in the same way they do it for child voices etc. I'm pretty sure it's already on their roadmap!
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