This is a fantastic idea! Although it is pretty sad that it is needed in the first place.
It's not needed
Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
61–70 of 301 posts
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#62You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
Never seen a single use case? How about a kitchen assistant, especially with dirty hands, or a task doer for the elderly or otherwise mobility disabled. It’s a generic time saver, and time=money for most people.
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#63You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
Honestly. I know that a lot of new technology is not quickly adopted by older people.
But do we really need technology to save us any more time? Are we really filling the empty time with worthwhile activities?
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#64You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
I like to be able to play music, ask simple questions, etc. without pulling out my phone. I don't understand why those aren't "legitimate" use cases. Maybe you don't like the tradeoff you're making in using such a device, but if I'm fine with it, how are my uses cases not legitimate?
Yeah, I got one for Christmas a couple of years ago; thought it would be really gimmicky, but I find it's actually quite a lot nicer to use than my phone or other devices for the following:
* Turning on/off lights
* Changing the thermostat set temp
* Asking about the weather forecast
* Add items to a shopping list
* Playing music
If you can't imagine a voice interface being appreciably better than a phone interface for these things, I recommend withholding judgment until you've tried it.
Also, to be very clear (since some people have a knack for arguing points I never made), I'm explicitly not saying that the current hot-mic implementation is technically necessary or ideal, nor that these conveniences justify the privacy tradeoff.
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#65While I appreciate the sentiment...unless you actually think Google and Amazon devices are recording irrelevant ambient sound deliberately (they aren’t), this doesn’t help anything. Unless the software here is better than theirs at recognizing the trigger word (very unlikely), there will be even more false positive activations on this device than there are on the originals. Edit: It’s very unlikely because Amazon and…
> (they aren’t)
How do you know? And, how do you know they will not do this silently in the future?
Also worse detection does not mean more false positives. Usually, you can get the false positive rate very low by allowing more false negatives. In this way you have a choice, how you want to trade-off. Without this device, you are stuck with the choice that Amazon/Google make for you.
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#66You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
Your smartphone is also always listening. What's the difference?
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#67While I appreciate the sentiment...unless you actually think Google and Amazon devices are recording irrelevant ambient sound deliberately (they aren’t), this doesn’t help anything. Unless the software here is better than theirs at recognizing the trigger word (very unlikely), there will be even more false positive activations on this device than there are on the originals. Edit: It’s very unlikely because Amazon and…
Actually, it doubles your area of risk. Now you have 2 companies to worry about per device.
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#68You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
Do you have kids? I have three small ones, and they are just starting to desire technology. From my perspective, letting them control music (which they want, and I want them to have) is much better using a Google Home device than giving them access to my phone or tablet. If you don't have kids, you have no idea how loud and aggressively they will scream when they want something, and especially when these devices are…
If your kids are screaming loudly and aggressively about things they want, you have a problem that technology will not solve.
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#69You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
I like to be able to play music, ask simple questions, etc. without pulling out my phone. I don't understand why those aren't "legitimate" use cases. Maybe you don't like the tradeoff you're making in using such a device, but if I'm fine with it, how are my uses cases not legitimate?
Rarely do I need to answer a simplistic question in line with "what's the time now".
Its rather some deeper info that first few lines of wikipedia article covers, sometimes more. Is your use case valid? For sure for you. But it wouldn't be enough for me, not for the price, upfront and hidden, not for the creepiness it potentially brings. The real time and energy saved for me would be tiny - but that's me. I can still do a bit of 'work' myself.
This reminds me of my recent trip to Aconcagua, highest peak in South (both) America. One US lady had this electric air mattress inflater, and she ran off the charge. She was bragging how smart is she for having such appliances. Rest of the group just smiled and inflated our mattress ourselves, even in 6000m high camp. If you can't do 10 full lungs blows yourself and spend that 1 minute preparing mattress, you shouldn't be up there, by huge margin.
Re: Project Alias hacks Amazon Echo and Google Home to protect privacy
#70You could also just not buy one of those awful things. I have never seen a legitimate use for it that wasn't misplaced adolescent tech fantasies (omg I can tell big brother to make coffee and my keurig starts up!). But maybe my line of business has made me excessively paranoid / niche I would like to make an edit: functionality for those with disabilities is a huge use-case I did not consider. Thank you for your insi…
I like to be able to play music, ask simple questions, etc. without pulling out my phone. I don't understand why those aren't "legitimate" use cases. Maybe you don't like the tradeoff you're making in using such a device, but if I'm fine with it, how are my uses cases not legitimate?
Apologies if this comes across as too "get off my lawn", but I come from a time when to look something up, you had to haul yourself to the library; open one of dozens of drawers filled with index cards; find the card your looking for, which directed you to a stack in the library; find the book on the stack; and finally find the page in the book by consulting an index. It's a lost art. Then, you would have to go to an actual person and engage with them in order to take the book home with you, giving you time-limited access to the information. That's if you're lucky enough that the book existed at your library. If it was checked out or had to be ordered, it might take weeks for you to get access to that information.
Many people today grew up with cellphones in their cribs. They have no idea what information starvation is like. The experience of receiving information you've been waiting for for weeks or months is exhilarating.
Anyway, when you take the library experience versus the experience of pulling up information from a cellphone the improvement is astronomical. From cellphone to voice assistant, the improvement seems very marginal.
Cell phones even represented a distinct advantage over desktops and laptops in that they were always there on your person. Cell phones opened up the possibility to look up information anywhere. With voice assistants it seems the only advantage you gain over cell phones in that you don't have to use your fingers. That doesn't seem very life changing by comparison, unless you don't have fingers, in which case I will admit your life would be vastly improved.
But the downside is that you're connecting a always-on microphone access to mega-corporations who are looking to monetize your existence. For those of us who grew up without the internet or cell phones the trade-off just makes zero sense. We're willing to use cell phones because they open up new worlds of information access. But voice assistants just seems to create more problems than they solve.