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The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

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Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#371

Post by _dark_matter_ »

bmicraft wrote: post #355
smitelli wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never liked any answer I've gotten to questions like "what's the weather like." I look at the forecast in my weather app -- the whole fullscreen thing -- and follow some sort of mental algorithm that I can't fully specify to arrive at the conclusion about what to wear/bring. The spoken data feels like it's missing something, or maybe it's just transmitted in a sequence that my brain can't work with. It's not tha…

It's certainly gives a very different kind of answer than my roommate would. Often times the most useful answer to receive can be "exactly like yesterday" or "slightly warmer/colder" - a voice assistant wouldn't do that.

My android phone does that by default, I'm assuming it would be very easy to have a voice assistant read the same text

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#372

Post by flanbiscuit »

bentt wrote: post #351

I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted. So yeah we're just going to ge…

My partner and I have both an Alexa and a Google Home Assistant and we leave the mic off on both devices. The Alexa we got because we have a Blink doorbell and it connects to the Alexa in order to make a sound when someone rings the doorbell. The Google Home Assistant came with the Google Nest Wifi Mesh extender. We both care about privacy so that's why we turned them off (but not enough to not have the physical devices in our house). I sometimes wonder if those mic switches are hardware switches and can amazon or google override them.

edit: fixed typo, missing a "to" in "to not have"

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#373

Post by _heimdall »

fwip wrote: post #364
_heimdall wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not blaming anyone. People make their choices, every choice has a consequence. Its as simple as that. It sounds like you may take more issue with the busy work we're all given. Is the problem really that the government isn't regulating problems away, or that people are kept so busy and distracted that they can't make their own decisions?

Asking everybody nicely to stop contributing to climate change does not work to stop climate change. It is an individualized solution to a societal problem. We didn't clean up our water by asking people to stop buying lightbulbs from the factory that dumped mercury directly into the river - we made it illegal for the company to do so, and we were successful.

I'm also not proposing we ask people nicely to do anything. People will make their choices, we have to expect people will generally make a decision that's best for them and that in the long run if people continue to do what they think is best it will work out.

What are we even doing here with capitalism, democracy, etc if we don't generally trust people to make their own decisions?

With regards specifically to lightbulb factories dumping mercury - the problem is often that the people in the area have no power to legally handle it themselves. Companies get to hide behind expensive lawyers, lobbyists, and often regulations themselves to avoid repercussions.

We often can get just as far by removing legal protections for companies rather than further centralizing power and authority to a few people we trust to do the right thing.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#374

Post by LMYahooTFY »

Aurornis wrote: post #369
venusenvy47 wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally assume that they wouldn't be processing all sound at all time from a device because it would be massively expensive for them. Obviously, it's technically possible that they could be, but I don't see how it would be financially possible. If we talk about targeted surveillance, then that is certainly financially possible. But I find it unlikely I would be targeting among the millions of people using these.

I don’t know why anyone in tech believes the myth that their devices are streaming everything. It’s trivial to inspect traffic from a device. You can see that your devices aren’t constantly streaming data somewhere. You can see a burst of activity after a command. Beyond that, it would require a massive conspiracy for everyone who ever worked on these programs to never leak details about always-on surveillance record…

Doesn't it have to listen to everything locally for a command though? I wonder if only commands are keywords.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#375

Post by stego-tech »

timwis wrote: post #23

I switched to Home Assistant a couple months ago (because I didn't like the idea of my voice being sent to amazon constantly) and haven't looked back! Soo much more you can do (including immediately using an LLM, if you like, whether in the cloud or local), and so much more control.

Data sovereignty in general is always a good decision. I love my HA device, my local inference for LLMs on my 3090, my homelab of services, and the FTP access to my PikaPods workloads.

If you don't have full control over your data, someone else does - and will do as they please with it, eventually.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#376

Post by footy »

AmVess wrote: post #303
ropejumper wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This requires a justification for why home size is a good indicator of quality of life, or for why it's more important than other indicators.

Small homes just plain suck. No room to do anything, stuffy, cramped. GF and I moved, rented a house for a month. 1400 square feet. 700 up, 700 down. Tiny and cramped, and it only had one very small bathroom. We had to sleep on different floors. Master bedroom was barely larger than the queen bed, and no way 2 people could sleep in there because it would get blazing hot in minutes. Garage was similarly minuscule. GF…

sounds like a bad space distribution. I live in a 700 sqft apartment and my bedroom is large enough for a bed (where my girlfriend and I absolutely can both sleep) a small desk, a weight bench, a rowing machine, and some normal bedroom stuff (dressers etc)

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#377

Post by smeej »

bentt wrote: post #351

I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted. So yeah we're just going to ge…

My brother got rid of his when he saw the listening light on his Alexa devices turn on every time he asked Siri a question. His house is all Siri devices now.

I don't know when else they're listening, but that was enough to make him uncomfortable.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#378

Post by codedokode »

everdrive wrote: post #186

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart ph…

People might not care, but it also might be that they are not aware. Telemetry and data collection are cleverly hidden by app developers. Imagine if for example a phone would show messages like "Sending your data to Company X" every time it sends a telemetry. That would make people more aware.

Re: The Alexa feature "do not send voice recordings" you enabled no longer available

#380

Post by kibwen »

ryukoposting wrote: post #245
everdrive wrote: post #186

People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart ph…

HN is social media. So there.

Yes, but "social media" is a broad spectrum. On one end you have "profile-less" social media, like forums, and the other end is "profile-rich" social media, like Facebook. The privacy implications of the latter are far worse than the former.
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