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Essential Home is an Amazon Echo Competitor That 'Puts Privacy First' (theverge.com)
In its bid to take on Apple, Google and Amazon, Essential has unveiled "Home," a new intelligent assistant that it hopes owners will be proud to show off. From a report: Essential Home is the new intelligent assistant with round "auto-display" just announced by Andy Rubin's new venture. It can be activated with a question, a tap, or even a "glance," according to Essential, and it's designed to never intrude upon the home. In that way Essential calls it "an entirely new type of product" but it mostly borrows ideas from existing products in an attempt to outdo them. Essential Home lets your control your music, ask general interest questions, set timers, and control your lights -- capabilities we've seen from Google and Amazon -- only Essential promises to do it better, somehow. It's like Google Home or Amazon's Echo series of assistants only without the "boxes, tubes, or strange lights." It's like Nest but it doesn't try to make your home smart by anticipating your needs -- it suggests certain behaviors instead. "In the end people decide," says Essential. Earlier today, the company also announced the Essential Phone. Unlike the Essential Phone, however, much about the Essential Home is not know. It is expected to ship in a few months.
From the article: "What Essential Home is exactly, isn’t clear."
So, why does this article exit, and why is it on Slashdot?
I don't respond to AC's.
"...it suggests certain behaviors instead. "In the end people decide," says Essential."
People decide? That's a laugh. People are more manipulated by what someone or something else tells them more than ever, to the point where they absolutely rely on it. Can't date without running it through a profiling engine. Can't eat at a restaurant without reviewing the opinions of several million taste buds first. Can't buy products without validating that purchase with a strangers opinion. Create a friendship or relationship from scratch? No way. It must be suggested or recommended by a network of friends of friends first.
TL; DR - A human engaging in cognitive thinking? What the fuck for? - The Future
When the only two "people" listed for "security" on their entire fucking team - ARE DOGS.
Until these devices can do speech-to-text and home control and local resource interaction (your PC, basically) without going out on the net, there can be no reasonable expectation of privacy.
Closest so far is MyCroft. It's modular, it's open source, and so it has the potential to be as good as we want to make it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Also, they should build in a full suite of sound effects, make any related GUI based on LCARS. Actually, I wouldn't mind having a small wireless communicator badge that, if you tap it, it connects over the Internet to talk to the computer.
... and FTL travel. That's all one of these virtual assistants needs for me to buy one. Respond to "computer" with Majel Roddenberry's voice, use a GUI based on LCARS, provide a communicator badge, and warp drives. Oh! and a holodeck.