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The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

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Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#351

Post by thg »

pdkl95 wrote: post #199
thg wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not really practical with a pinned internal CA and batched uploading. It's not so much about looking at the payload than it is about whether it's sending anything at all and if it is, what amount. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from everything I've read and heard these devices don't really have much in the way of internal storage capacity (yet). It either has to be uploaded or discarded.

Are you checking the cellular bands, or just your local 802.{3,11}? SoC exist with builtin LTE/CDMA/etc. edit: Also, voice compresses really well if you don't care about the quality. With a codec that uses most 2.4 MB/hour. A simple gate filter that cuts out quiet periods should cut the storage requirements down to only a few MB/week. A typical flash chip used to store the firmware could easily store years worth of t…

> SoC exist with builtin LTE/CDMA/etc.

But inside the Echo? It's not my area of expertise, but I'm almost certain that there are people with the expertise that are looking for exactly that and if Google or Amazon had those built in, we'd know about it. I think we can at least rule that one out.

As for the compression, that is very interesting indeed. I had no idea you could compress voice that much. If / When they're going for 24/7 recording, this would be most likely the way to go and it would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to detect.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#352

Post by JohnCohorn »

ekianjo wrote: post #230
baby wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait, VR is freaking awesome, please don't put it in the same box.

> VR is freaking awesome For what uses? I've been trying VR on multiple occasions, I still don't see much use for it. Even most VR games suck completely.

Try Robo Recall. Most fun gaming experience I’ve had all year.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#353

Post by ehsankia »

amorphid wrote: post #201
djhworld wrote: post #196

I have an original Echo, it's fine. I use it to listen to the radio via TuneIn, to turn lamps on and off and to set timers. That's about it really. Sometimes I use it to convert American imperial units to metric, which is handy when converting recipes in the kitchen (e.g. "what's 2 cups in millilitres") I'm at my parents house at the moment, my Mum primarily uses it to set timers, and reminders (e.g. remind me tomorr…

I have a Google Assistant. I use it for timers, playing music (on my Chromecast), and playing the news. That's about it. I can't find another use case where it seems like the best tool for the job.

Same here. For $30, it's great value. Some people try to make it more than it is, or try to use it for absolutely everything. Not all workflows work well with voice, but the few that do bring great value. Same thing with Chromecast, for 35$, it's just decent value.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#354

Post by spion »

dilap wrote: post #69
saalweachter wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever been in a room with an Alexa unit when people are trying to talk about it? It's like a comedy routine with the device activating spuriously over and over.

I have, and it's pretty funny. We quickly adapted to just saying "A." or "her". Probably in a few years this whole debate topic will seem quant, as devices will be much at figuring out when we're addressing them than the primitive idea of a wake-word. :-)

This should actually be fairly easy even now, simple grammar analysis could discover whether the sentence is directed at Alexa or is simply about Alexa.

But of course its much easier to require "Hey"

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#355

Post by thg »

mikeash wrote: post #221
ferongr wrote: post #30

Who could imagine that people would install telescreens voluntarily, and pay for the privilege?

It was pretty obvious a decade or two ago when everyone started buying cell phones. I don’t understand why techies are just freaking out about this now . I’ve had a potential listening device in my home since 2001, when I got my first cell phone. Most of you are in a similar situation.

Having the microphone always-on drains a lot of power. You would notice it very quickly were your cell phone to transform into an always-on surveillance bug.

You're technically correct that cell phones leak all sorts of meta data that can be used for surveillance, but they aren't always listening. Voice assistants, however, are designed to be always-on and that is the key difference.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#356

Post by mikeash »

thg wrote: post #355
mikeash wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was pretty obvious a decade or two ago when everyone started buying cell phones. I don’t understand why techies are just freaking out about this now . I’ve had a potential listening device in my home since 2001, when I got my first cell phone. Most of you are in a similar situation.

Having the microphone always-on drains a lot of power. You would notice it very quickly were your cell phone to transform into an always-on surveillance bug. You're technically correct that cell phones leak all sorts of meta data that can be used for surveillance, but they aren't always listening. Voice assistants, however, are designed to be always-on and that is the key difference.

My phone is always listening already. Battery life is just fine.

Some phones aren’t designed to always listen, but voice assistants aren’t designed to record everything and upload it, so what’s the difference? In both cases, you’d need something that goes beyond the advertised functionality.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#357

Post by ehsankia »

twblalock wrote: post #335
wepple wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: it’s all proprietary, so the answer is: yes; you could reverse engineer firmware

That won't help you find out if Amazon is storing the recordings in a datacenter somewhere.

The question here is if the data is being sent back at all or not. If you can show that either Google or Amazon is saying voice data outside of the command after the hotword, you already have yourself a huge scandal.

No voice data without hotword should ever even leave the device.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#358

Post by ZenoArrow »

illumin8 wrote: post #238
amrrs wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely nailed it. I think it has to do with human psychology. Anything similar to spectacle is easily connected to being watched (literally) while even the amount of (useful) data collected by an always on microphone could relativity high. Maybe for a privacy advocate, the only possible way to bring awareness as equivalent as is to make people understand and believe that it sits and is always listening during…

No, he didn't. How do you justify carrying a smartphone with an always listening microphone into shared public spaces (many listen for wake words now), but get hung up on having a microphone in your private residence? Google has a horrific track record on privacy, but Amazon knows who their customers are, and would never do anything to violate their trust. With Amazon, you're the customer, with Google, you're the pro…

> "How do you justify carrying a smartphone with an always listening microphone into shared public spaces (many listen for wake words now), but get hung up on having a microphone in your private residence?"

I've preordered this phone, which mitigates against this type of surveillance by the use of switches for turning off hardware devices like the camera and the microphone (and by making the software stack as open source as it can be):

https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

I also currently use one of the few smartphones without a front facing camera, which only cuts out one form of surveillance but does help.

So whilst I'm putting up with a temporary invasion of privacy for now whilst I wait for the Purism 5 to be released, I'm not passively accepting surveillance from one device whilst criticising another.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#359

Post by icelancer »

659087 wrote: post #306
icelancer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets OK use I've found from people who are between 28-40 adopting new technology like voice commands. I have two kids. You should see how they use Alexa. A ton. Like we adopted technology in ways the generation before us could never imagine, so will the next. Never forget that we have decades of bias cooked into our souls; the mouse and keyboard being the primary instruments of UI and email being the main method o…

> I have two kids. You should see how they use Alexa. A ton. Amazon thanks you for the data points they've been collecting on your children, and for teaching your children to tell Amazon all about themselves before they're even old enough to realize the possible implications of doing so.

I remember when I used to think such aggregations of data were avoidable, too. Better times.

Re: The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season

#360

Post by jimmaswell »

kenjackson wrote: post #317
jimmaswell wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly don't understand how so many people could buy something that literally does nothing their phone couldn't already do. Maybe it was marketing.

The same reason people bought smartphones that literally did nothing their laptop couldn't do. Ease of use. I can turn on my entertainment system or turn off my lights with my phone, but its a lot easier to just say it, versus getting my phone out of my pocket, turning it on, finding the app, launching the app, going to the screen to turn on the thingie, and then pressing the right button.

If this is such a selling point then why is there no widespread adoption of this level of voice control on smart phones? It's certainly technically doable.
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