Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amazon Echo

amazon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

581–590 of 746 posts

Re: Amazon Echo

#581

Post by aeturnum »

memnips wrote: post #426

I'm surprised by the privacy backlash in this thread! I understand why this product is so scary for someone who is concerned about privacy, but how is this that much worse than all the other devices you use? You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) w…

I am not really worried about privacy, but this smacks of false equivalency.

> You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) wants to spy on you, they can and will.

People are regularly discovering and shaming companies for transmitting more information than necessary from smart phones. It's true that the NSA could zero-day your phone, but you've still got opportunities to detect or react to that. If nothing else, put your phone in airplane mode.

This device, on the other hand, is designed to transmit everything it hears. There is no way to tell where that data goes and it may be difficult to determine exactly what it contains. Where it's possible to determine if your phone is sending unauthorized data, it seems very hard in this situation.

I don't trust amazon more or less than anyone else. I think we should just be honest about the nature of a device. A phone has an "offline" mode, this does not - its whole purpose is to be an omnipresent microphone. Those are two fundamentally different things.

Re: Amazon Echo

#582

Post by zan2434 »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #302

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…

actually, it doesn't have a battery, so it won't replace an ordinary bluetooth speaker. I was optimistic too :(

Re: Amazon Echo

#583

Post by zan2434 »

It's unfortunate it doesn't have a battery. For this price point it would have made a great bluetooth speaker with some extra intelligent assistant functionality.

Re: Amazon Echo

#584

Post by TeMPOraL »

harvestmoon wrote: post #569
calebm wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really thought it was satire too. It wasn't until there was like 10 seconds left in the video that I realized, "there's not enough time left to make it funny, it must be serious!"

Agree. This really seems like it could be the start of a futuristic, dystopian horror movie. I think what makes it even more unsettling is that the people's voices are recorded naturally (the microphone several feet away) while the device sounds like it is coming from your computer directly. Not to mention these people are in bed together while this HAL-like robotic cylinder is listening to everything they are doing…

To quote my friend, "at NSA they probably call it Amazon Echelon".

Re: Amazon Echo

#586

Post by [deleted] »

jwallaceparker wrote: post #343

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…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Echo

#587

Post by theseoafs »

aeturnum wrote: post #581
memnips wrote: post #426

I'm surprised by the privacy backlash in this thread! I understand why this product is so scary for someone who is concerned about privacy, but how is this that much worse than all the other devices you use? You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) w…

I am not really worried about privacy, but this smacks of false equivalency. > You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) wants to spy on you, they can and will. People are regularly discovering and shaming companies for transmitting more information t…

As long as your phone's on, it can store whatever data it wants locally and shoot it off to Google/Apple/wherever so they can accomplish their nefarious purposes the next time it connects to the internet. If you're not extremely uncomfortable with the idea of a megacorporation leveraging your cellphone to gather info about you, you should also not be uncomfortable with Echo -- it can't do anything your phone can't already do.

Re: Amazon Echo

#588

Post by joshu »

jwallaceparker wrote: post #343

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…

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re: Amazon Echo

#590

Post by lettercarrier »

melling wrote: post #196

Other than the usual HN fear discussion, does anyone have any thoughts on the product itself? Doesn't offer any functionality that would be useful to the average person?

I would like it to read to me. My wakeup browsing headlines, my kindle ebook or names of recent Facebook postings.

I would like to replace my Clapper with it and add a connection to my coffee maker. [BION, the Clapper is one of our top gadgets so we do not have to roll over and turn off the bedroom lights].

I also would like it to respond to >1 name so different people can have different commands and/or meanings.

Post reply on HN