251–260 of 734 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it pulling a track from their music archives? Maybe it’s just a several hour long loop and the date is when it repeats.
Yeah, that is kinda my guess, but it doesn't seem to be predictable... sometimes it happens within a few minutes, other times it takes an hour or more.
What actually happened: Alexa misinterpreted some voice commands and activated a "call" skill. The people involved and local news got very excited and escalated this into a conspiracy story. Amazon takes customer privacy EXTREMELY seriously. There's no way a team would get the "ok" to build a skill that randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact. It also doesn't make any logical sense…
If a "call" skill is accidentally triggered, before it is sent to any email addresses, it should tell user "N seconds of voice was recorded and about to send to ....", please said "Send" to send, "Play" to play back the message, etc. The default must always be voice recording will be auto deleted after 1 minute if no response is heard. It should let user know about that too.
To send this message to John Smith, say 'artichoke'.
I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…
You don't need cameras for that, just motion sensors.
> That server makes decisions on if lights should be on...in that room.
You don't need a server for that, just a motion-sensing switch. They can be totally offline. My office has them to shut off lights automatically when a conference room becomes unoccupied.
https://www.homedepot.com/b/Electrical-Wiring-Devices-Light-...
It can get annoying if you're not moving much, but the key point is: no camera or server required.
> That server makes decisions on...if A/C should be running in that room.
Ecobee thermostats can already do that using motion/temperature sensors. They run fine without an internet connection.
What actually happened: Alexa misinterpreted some voice commands and activated a "call" skill. The people involved and local news got very excited and escalated this into a conspiracy story. Amazon takes customer privacy EXTREMELY seriously. There's no way a team would get the "ok" to build a skill that randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact. It also doesn't make any logical sense…
> There's no way a team would get the "ok" to build a skill that randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact. And then builds exactly that...
It's a mistake, but it's a pretty bad one.
I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…
On making, not buying... A lot of home automation stuff seems like something that would be fun to make, but not something I really want to have. I mean, the AC might be a good energy saver (a smarter thermostat) but that's not something I want , more like something that I would buy if it was cheap and practical enough. To some extent, this is a phenomenon of early technology. It feels full of potential, so you want t…
Alas, remote controlling those blinds would be a major hassle since AFAIK I would have to install 6 wifi-enabled devices and tear holes everywhere (not even sure there is a powerline near) - and likely do all the programming myself. Thanks but no thanks.
I've told my roommate I'm moving out if he ever buys an Alex/Google/Apple assistant device. I have a microphone and I've been intending to get one of the open source solutions working and just tie it in to mpd, weather and a few other things. But all the processing should really be done on your own device, by hardware you own, software that's open and that you configure, and not send up to someone else's computer (ak…
I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produce…
> I have this idea of a system I would like to have in my house. It contains cameras in every room that are constantly watching where people are and relaying the coordinates to a central server. That server makes decisions on if lights should be on or if A/C should be running in that room. But I would never buy this system. I would have to make it myself. I am hopeful that open source software and hardware can produc…
What actually happened: Alexa misinterpreted some voice commands and activated a "call" skill. The people involved and local news got very excited and escalated this into a conspiracy story. Amazon takes customer privacy EXTREMELY seriously. There's no way a team would get the "ok" to build a skill that randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact. It also doesn't make any logical sense…
If you took privacy seriously you would have added an audible prompt to ask for confirmation before sending or similar safeguard.
I mean if you are an engineer then you know that there is a nonzero false positive rate for the device to detect the "call" command.
Knowing this, and not implementing a trivial safeguard sure seems to me like the team was "ok" with building exactly that, a device that: "randomly records private conversations then sends them to a random contact."