South Park's Season Premier Sets Off Everyone's Amazon Echo (maxim.com)

SonicSpike writes: It's hard to believe that Trey Parker and Matt Stone didn't know exactly what they were doing with Wednesday night's season premiere of South Park. This episode marked the beginning of the show's 21st season and as usual, South Park took on current issues like tiki torch-wielding white supremacists and... home digital assistants. The latter meant lots of gags in which Cartman and other characters addressed Amazon Echo's Alexa and Google Home as well. And that ended up being a problem for viewers who own those devices. (Editor's note: example 1, 2) South Park writers absolutely knew their lines would do this and probably had a hilarious time coming up with funny commands for the home assistants.

Comments

Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

Who actually uses these invasive pieces of technological garbage?

Re:Genius

[OffTheLip]

Southpark fans

Re:Genius

[JohnFen]

The people South Park is ridiculing, of course.

Re:Genius

[xantonin]

I have one which is very useful in the garage for playing music and other commands. I can pause the music or skip tracks without having to touch anything. When your hands are covered in oil and grease it is very helpful.

The same in the kitchen if I'm cooking and my hands are covered in flour or grease again (I swear it's not the same grease) - it's useful to ask things like "how many teaspoons make a tablespoon" without having to take out my phone. I can even set a timer for different things I am cooking.

The speaker is also nice because it plays downwards to a cone which radiates the sound equally everywhere. This is nice in the garage since I don't have to "direct" speakers to where I am.

But the thing I use it for the most is when I crawl in bed and have to turn out the light, or I decide I want the fan on, I just ask Alexa to turn it on or off. In fact, I have it interface to an API with my sleep tracking app which does that for me when I activate it for sleep time.

Sure, you don't need any of this, but for the price ($50), it's already paid for itself compared to the cost of buying some of these devices separately. I don't see how any of this makes me an idiot.

Re: Genius

[Anonymous Coward]

See this is the real application for these devices. Mechanics, cooks, people with mobility issues, seniors, etc.

However, they are never sold as such. They've been made as an alternative to thinking, and that is not good in the long run since it reduces our collective memory and deduction skills.

Re:Genius

[DogDude]

but for the price ($50)

Oh, that's cute. You really think that's the price? You didn't take into account that you've also given up every scrap of privacy you have, too. Is that worth $0 to you? You don't mind that it's entirely likely (and legal) that somebody somewhere is listening to you and your SO banging? That's worth the horrible inconvenience of pushing a light switch with your finger?

Re: Genius

[xevioso]

Well, I'm sure that's an example; the poster probably knows that. But if you are multiplying a recipe by 3.5 and something calls for 1/3 table spoon of cinnamon, it helps to have something handy to do that math other than your brain.

Re:Genius

[nospam007]

"Right- because washing your hands is SOOOO hard. "

Indeed, it's hard I'm a surgeon and it's nice during an operation to ask: 'Alexa which of these bloody blobs is the heart again'.

Re:Genius

[hey!]

You know, if you could say, "it feels cool to use," I'd be OK with that. It's the downsides.

I'm not even talking about the hacking concerns. The reason companies are so hot to sell these things is that they view them as consumer behavior tracking and modification devices.

Re: Genius

[hey!]

I take your point, but if your recipe called for 1/3 of a tablespoon of cinnamon, I'd call that a dodgy recipe.

Re:Genius

[lexman098]

If you're in the garage covered in grease, fucking focus on what you're doing and stop dicking with the radio. For the better part of a century there was a radio turned to a radio station and it made noises while people were covered in grease. That hasn't changed. If what's on the radio is more important than the reason you're covered in grease, go wash your hands, and sit down and listen to the radio.

So people aren't allowed to stream music and work on their car now? FM radio sucks, and sometimes you want to move to the next track. Who the fuck sits down to just listen to the radio? This isn't 1950.

Three. The answer is three. It's not really hard to remember. And why the hell would you need to know that anyway? If you don't have the correct measuring tools, buy them. If you're modifying the recipe, do that ahead of time, not while you're fucking cooking already. That's a recipe for disaster.

Yeah it wouldn't be hard to remember that one conversion. There's lots of conversions though, and that was probably just an example. Also, maybe not everyone is a super efficient expert cook. Some people have fun trying to wing it.

Holy shit. A cone of sound? You need directional speakers when you're working on the car? WTF?

He specifically said he did *not* want directional speakers so the sound doesn't change when he walks around the garage. I didn't take that as an end-of-the-world kind of thing either, just a nice perk.

And in your bedroom. You can't turn off the lights before bed? You can't decide if you want the fan on or off? It's too hard to haul your ass out of bed for 4 seconds to adjust either?

The lights thing is a bit of stretch, but maybe he wasn't too hot when he went to bed and it got hotter later? Of course he *could* get out of bed half asleep, but no one *wants* to do that.

Go take your meds.

Re:Genius

[TheDayOfMe]

Interestingly, the number of teaspoons to tablespoons is different in in different countries and era of the cookbook.
The standard Australian tablespoon is 20ml, 4 teaspoons, but that we get mostly chinese made stuff now tablespoons are now mostly 15ml. The standard tablespoon in India used by 25ml.
Just a sample: Beware of the Tablespoon

Re: Genius

[PopeRatzo]

Frankly, as someone who fucked in public several times

You shouldn't have any problem, as long as you don't name the sheep, "Alexa".

Re:Genius

[Killall -9 Bash]

You've totally convinced me. Having a SSN and credit score is the same level of tracking as a constantly on web connected microphone in my home.

Proposed New South Park Character

[Anonymous Coward]

They should introduce a new character named Alexa, a young girl who fights for small businesses. Then Cartman can ask her for fishsticks and NAMBLA paraphernalia.

Re:I'm pretty sure that would be considered....

[14erCleaner]

Alexa, say "mark has no sense of humor".

No sympathy

[DarkOx]

Sorry if you are stupid enough to allow some company to basically put a hot-mic in your home, well I don't feel sorry about any problems you encounter as a result of that.

Re: No sympathy

[unrtst]

I'm not trying to change your mind, nor that of the GP, but there is *some* security built in.

For starters, it's not a simple hot mic. The audio is only sent anywhere if the keyword is first heard. It does audio recognition only of the keyword(s) locally, and the rest of it is done remotely if that keyword gets picked up. That said, I'd be surprised if a software update or bug couldn't cause it to stream all data, but it's not doing so all day long.

For certain actions (ex. purchases done through it), it can be setup to require an additional pin code, or those actions can be disabled altogether. This limits the potential impact of someone saying stuff to it. They can mess up your shopping list, play music, have it answer dumb questions, etc, but they can't (easily) have it make purchases.

They also have different models of them. For example, if you wanted one that isn't always listening, but you wanted the rest of the features, you could get the "Amazon Tap", which requires you to tap a button before it'll listen. I'm not well versed in the other providers (google home, etc), but amazon has:

* echo : has 7 mics that use beam-forming stuff, and a nice speaker.
* echo dot : just that nice mic array, no speaker. You provide your own speaker, otherwise it's basically the same as the echo.
* tap : it's basically just the speaker part of the echo, and you can tap it to speak to one mic. It's also portable (has battery) and works as a bluetooth speaker (as does the echo).
* echo show : 8 mics, speaker, camera, and a screen so it can show you stuff too, and do video calls.
* echo look : (this one seems weird IMO) mics, camera, led lighting (for camera), speaker, and a mic&camera off button (kinda like the show without a screen).
* alexa voice remote : This can connect to the echo or echo dot. There's a mic in the remote, and some buttons. IMO, it'd be nice if this worked with the tap, so you wouldn't have to stand next to it. It provides a way to have a hardware button control a mic though, so this could provide added security if your echo dot was shielded from external audio.

Some day, voice recognition stuff might provide some more security to the echo/echo dot/echo show/etc, but I don't think that would really change anybodies mind... recording someone elses voice is pretty easy. It would prevent a TV show from triggering every device out there though. So, if you don't want the risk, there are other options... but you probably just don't like any of them.

I just thought people might want to know that they've really covered just about every combo of hardware features that one of these could have.

Re:No sympathy

[chispito]

Sorry if you are stupid enough to allow some company to basically put a hot-mic in your home, well I don't feel sorry about any problems you encounter as a result of that.

Why do you not extend that same level of distrust to the phone in your pocket? It also has a camera, GPS, and contains your browsing history.

Re:No sympathy

[nospam007]

"Some people like the convenience of a voice assistant.

Some people like meth, too. That doesn't mean that it's a smart decision."

But it's big business.
s) Heisenberg

Re:No, it didn't

[Krishnoid]

A few very simple things to ask it:

• play music you purchased via your Amazon account
• the current time
• set timers/alarms
• general-information questions that wikipedia would have the answer to
• current weather/traffic in your area (?)

Not that impressive, but you can think of it as a $50 voice-controlled alarm clock/timer/stereo which may add new features in the future. I consider it an inexpensive one-time purchase that buys me continuous (for now) access to something of a potluck of Amazon's continuously updated cloud services.