God damnit, why is the wake word "Alexa"? my girlfriends name is alexa.
The solution is simple and obvious. You need a new girlfriend. (Hint: You can actually change the wake word to whatever you like.)
Amazon Echo
391–400 of 746 posts
Re: Amazon Echo
#392I recently bought into the Sonos ecosystem. While it is pretty limited in some ways (I can't just stream stuff playing on my phone to the Sonos speakers, for example if I am playing a random YouTube video), it has one really good thing going for it: it can sync playback between an arbitrary number of speakers. This is my new standard for this type of thing: speakers that cannot do this are inferior to Sonos. In that…
"Alexa, start my car"
"Alexa, close the garage door."
"Alexa, good bye."
Re: Amazon Echo
#393This is the first time I'm seeing a strong foray into the home where information technology becomes usable in a communal environment. Other products from Kickstarter [1][2] have been picking away at this but not with the elegance or backing from a big player like Amazon. Privacy issues aside I think this is where most people want to see technology moving toward. It's aspirational and aligns incentives among developers, technologists, and futurists. Although this may not be perfect the first time around, I am happy we are moving in this direction.
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keecker/keecker-the-wor... [2] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/athom/homey-the-living-...
Re: Amazon Echo
#394Privacy questions aside. What I'd really like to know is whether this thing will have some form of speaker recognition - identifying who is speaking, not just what is being said and further whether the learning functions will make that same distinction. I have a family, including a small child. That's at least three people who would conceivably use this device. Tech companies and Amazon in particular have been awful…
Just buy three and give them all different names!
Re: Amazon Echo
#395Watch the promo video again and pretend it's the first few minutes of a horror movie. A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it. It's Alexa. It's "for everyone," says Father. The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her? Father rushes in from the backyard, "Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?" Alexa an…
Hah. After reading this, I really kind of want Amazon to release a version of this that looks like HAL. They should embrace their dark side.
[deleted]
Re: Amazon Echo
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Is this much better than just having a really good smartphone with voice recognition that's connected to speakers in the house? It doesn't look like it. Maybe it has a better microphone? In any case, this seems like a function that could be just as easily accomplished by a smartphone. (Maybe this is a wasted Fire-phone opportunity?)
I think what makes it better is that it's completely hands free and accessible to everyone in the vicinity. I already have a smart phone with Google Now, and I have a Sonos, but I'd still consider getting this to solve this common use case in our household: Every morning my wife or daughter asks what the weather is going to be like. My wife could ask Siri, but she doesn't always have her iPhone at hand. I always have…
You will miss those silly little moments with your daughter, don't give them up.
Re: Amazon Echo
#397Well it looks like Amazon just did the market research for anyone that's wanted to make an open source version of this. Like these guys have: http://jasperproject.github.io/ I've had this idea sitting in the back of my brain for years, worked up some simple prototypes (just using computer's mic), the technology is already there and surprisingly simple (made simple for the layman by brilliant people)...
Just looked at the Jasper project. The voice synthesizer sounds like crap compared to a product like Siri, and I suspect the voice recognition is worse too. I've coded on some the stuff using voice synthesis and recognition for fun, and it seems that the open source options haven't gotten any better for the past 15 years.
Re: Amazon Echo
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
> well, I can always unplug it. And how long until this is the norm and we stop even talking about the privacy implications? How long after that point the notion of privacy stops existing?
Yes, this is the slippery slope to 1984. Do you carry a cell phone? Do you use a computer? Do you have windows? Do you ever leave your bunker with 4 foot concrete and steel walls? Yeah, your privacy is compromised already. No, we won't stop talking about privacy because I said I can unplug this thing. Yes, I am excited about a new type of device coming out that is actually as cool as an iPad, or the Nest.
Sometimes the stupidity of people makes me believe they deserve what is coming to get them.
Re: Amazon Echo
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. Some percentage of people will be unjustly exploited, but probably not enough to offset the economic benefits that technology like this brings to its users. I think your focus on 'the people vs the government' is misplaced, because government is just a sort of social technology which can be used and abused like any other technology depending…
> Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid. Maybe you didn't mean it literally but it's a popular expression in this context. I don't think a desire for privacy is paranoid; it is normal, healthy behavior. But to address the gist of what you say, I think you assume an understanding of data security that is far beyond most end users. How many even know what "metadata" means, or how '…
> I don't think a desire for privacy is paranoid; it is normal, healthy behavior.
I think it's healthy to choose how private you keep each aspect of your personal life. I make tradeoffs all the time. When I think that sharing some aspect of my personal life (whether with an individual or an organization) will give me more benefit than the cost of losing that privacy, I'll do it.
Re: Amazon Echo
#400The privacy problem is much deeper than this device. The reason we have to scream privacy for every new product is that the cloud services providing the functionality for all these devices have been shown over and over to disregard and actively abuse our privacy. Until our networks and ISPs and cloud data companies support anonymous encrypted data and services, we simply cannot trust these types of devices.