511–520 of 746 posts
Watch 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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My name is Talky Tina and you'll be sorry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSy8Ko1vSKQ
Man, is it Talky Tina or Talking Tina? I always thought it was the latter, but now I'm not sure.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is established by now that various government agencies all over the world routinely monitor web traffic, tap phones and install trojans on computers. There is no doubt in my mind that an internet connected listening device would be exploited.
So smartphone, tablets, laptops are also exploited? They all have a microphone and they're never off. I fail to see how this is any more a possible privacy breach than my iPhone that's laying right next to me right now.
I'm a little frustrated at the moment -- The future is arriving with voice controlled devices, yet I don't trust any of these companies with my words.
Watch 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…
Reminds me of Blinky: http://vimeo.com/21216091 "Will you be my frieeend?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i think you're underestimating how deeply entrenched 'surveillance as a business model' has become amongst leading american tech companies in recent years. this has much less to do with latent consumer demand than companies wanting to leverage that information for advertising and related purposes and desperately trying to craft a value proposition that justifies and normalizes more intrusive forms of data collection.
Can/will this lead to a stifling of true innovation? If this existed and there was one in that the famed Apple garage, or in the house rented by Zuck and his friends, would IBM have let Apple happen, or Google let the FB grow? How many prescient individuals (the future is already here, just not evenly distributed, as Gibson said) do you need to spy on to "manage" innovation in a way to prevent disruption? Could this…
Really, the post-snowden paranoia is getting out of hand.
Why I might buy an Echo: - it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically free as long as the audio quality is good. - it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would…
> - it can answer questions at the dinner table... that would be my biggest use for it, well that and as a speaker I guess. I really hope that I can swap out "Alexa" for the word "Computer" so I could feel like I'm one step closer to Star Trek
Earlier quoted context omitted.
By that argument, those people won't buy the Amazon Echo either, so what's the problem?
> so what's the problem? I think that's a fairly naive point of view. Consider the simple fact that these devices are not to be used in isolation - e.g. you come to someone's home, etc. If you think this is too alarmist a mindset, maybe you'll remember how quite a few folk were outraged about facebook's new app which was to actively listen via your mobile's mic (so it can e.g. recognize music and add "while listening…
Not everyone has the same level of concern over "priacy" that you do, deal with it. It's 2014, everything is being recorded now and will be even more so in the future.