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Facebook Unveils Portal and Portal+ Smart Speakers With Video Calling Feature (cnbc.com)
Facebook on Monday unveiled a pair of smart speakers, complete with cameras and microphones, for your home. From a report: The devices, Portal and Portal+, directly challenge Amazon, Google and Apple in the fast-growing smart-speaker market with a unique approach that will emphasize video calling. It's Facebook's first hardware product outside the Oculus line of virtual-reality devices. To start a video call, users can say "Hey Portal, call ..." followed by the name of a connection on Facebook's Messenger service. These calls include entertaining augmented-reality features that can outfit users with cat hats or turn their living rooms into animated night clubs. Another feature is Smart Camera, which uses artificial intelligence and the devices' cameras to perfectly frame users on video as they move around while on a call.
[...] Besides video calls, the Portal devices can stream music from Spotify, Pandora and Amazon Music and video from Facebook Watch. Not included at launch are services like Apple Music, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or HBO Now. The devices come equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and the many skills available on that service, allowing them to ask questions like "What's the weather?" or "How are my teams doing?" [...] The company is taking preorders for the devices now and will begin shipping them early next month. The Portal, which features a 10-inch screen, is available for $199 while the Portal+, which has a long, 15.6-inch screen, is priced at $349. WashingtonPost reports that the device follows the person in their house: What's unique about Facebook's device is the tech it uses to make the video calls look good. Think of it as a personal cinematographer: A 12-megapixel camera -- equivalent to most phones -- identifies the shape of people within its 140-degree field of view and pans and zooms to make sure they're all always in the frame. You can wander around the room, do chores, Jazzercise, play with the kids or whatever. (Or, if you want, you can tap on the face of one person and the Portal camera will track just them.)
[...] Besides video calls, the Portal devices can stream music from Spotify, Pandora and Amazon Music and video from Facebook Watch. Not included at launch are services like Apple Music, YouTube, Netflix, Hulu or HBO Now. The devices come equipped with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant and the many skills available on that service, allowing them to ask questions like "What's the weather?" or "How are my teams doing?" [...] The company is taking preorders for the devices now and will begin shipping them early next month. The Portal, which features a 10-inch screen, is available for $199 while the Portal+, which has a long, 15.6-inch screen, is priced at $349. WashingtonPost reports that the device follows the person in their house: What's unique about Facebook's device is the tech it uses to make the video calls look good. Think of it as a personal cinematographer: A 12-megapixel camera -- equivalent to most phones -- identifies the shape of people within its 140-degree field of view and pans and zooms to make sure they're all always in the frame. You can wander around the room, do chores, Jazzercise, play with the kids or whatever. (Or, if you want, you can tap on the face of one person and the Portal camera will track just them.)
Just what I want: A closed platform with microphones, cameras, and Facebook spying on me 24/7.
This is very important to my purchasing decision.
At first I thought, no.
Then I thought, Hell no.
Then I thought - what about buying one of these speakers and putting on an act whenever I was around them, to feed it completely false data? Like a looped recording that asked for the latest whereabouts of Salman Rushdie and/or Hitler every few minutes or something.
That would be amusing but sadly I don't have that kind of free time.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Then there were those VR glasses, whatever happened to them? Did they ever come out?
Nope, VR turned out to be a scam. Also, Hillary turned out to not actually be evil (go figure), Trump's apparently a nice guy, after all (it was just a show)... but Musk... well, the Model 3 is actually only 1/10th scale... and those SpaceX "launches" were rendered using the same analog computers at Wright-Patterson that were used to fake the moon landings.
Any further questions?
It's funny, because he's also one of those paranoid guys with a large collection of guns who thinks the government is tracking him and is going to try to take his guns away.
They should just offer him an exchange for free Amazon speakers
Stalker loves you just wants to help you.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
these are listening devices with a voice interface from a search engine. the speakers themselves are speakers, not smart speakers.
If you want to see an actual speaker that is smart look at the apple homepod. that one actually does use sophisticated intelligence to improve the sound.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I hate Facebook and I'll never buy this or any other "smart speaker" thingamajig.
That said, I have to say that the "Smart Camera" is impressive.
#DeleteFacebook
The day they come up with VR that shows you cute anime girls as assistants following you everywhere is the day this will take off.
Example:
Miku: Anata wa 10: 00 No kaigi o motte imasu.
Me: What? Come on, Miku! I don't speak Japanese!
#DeleteFacebook
When will Cave Johnsons exploding lemons be released
And I suppose this is where I mention that Facebook probably only disabled your account but it's still in there somewhere. Me? I never had a Facebook account. Well, except for my shadow profile of course, but I can't control what Facebook does, only limit what they get from me.
#DeleteFacebook
You should buy the yellow no-name brand at Maxi, it's much better than the Dollarama stuff.
#DeleteFacebook
If it is, it would give them about 10% marketshare in the U.S.A..
#DeleteFacebook
Virtual +1 Funny.
#DeleteFacebook
Here's an idea, Slashdot. Since the "Funny" mod is not supposed to count toward karma or whatever, how about making this moderation a separate score?
Example: (Scores: +3 Informative, +27 Funny)
#DeleteFacebook
I assume they're called "smart speakers" because smart people don't use them? That's pretty weird.
I don't respond to AC's.
"Hey Portal! Call Alexa and have her tell Google to send an email to Siri to play songs based on my Instagram."
In long term care facilities to keep the orderlies monitored
Instead of just an ankle bracelet, also install them in the homes of people on probation (convicted felons have limited civil rights anyway)
For senior citizens living on their own. "I've fallen, and I can't get up!"
In stores to monitor pilferage.
And the camera follows you around, keeping everyone in focus.... not creepy at all.
You could make a skin that looks like an old timey portrait painting with the tracking cameras for the eyes so they can follow you as you move.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
I don't know what planet these "people" live on, but it's definitely not Earth and these are definitely not humans. ... and the swarm lifeform.
Not to denigrate alternative life styles, but I think we are at the verge of two types of lifeforms separating.
The individual
Classical homo sapiens always was a bit of a swarm-type due to being social, but it seems to really diverge here. I see so many "people" who openly glorify passive-thinking and passive-living and actually seem to like submitting to being merely a limb / tool / drone of their opinion leaders so much, that it can be rightfully said, that they do not want to be people, let alone individuals. (If one can speak of "will" in those cases.) ;). (Maybe our ideal only look ideal to us because they are ours.)
It reminds me a bit of single-celled organisms versus multi-celled ones, with the former vastly out-numbering the latter (apparently even in our own bodies), but the latter being seen as a "higher" life-form (but who is telling us that though?
Ok, one could define a swarm as a person too, so the swarm can be a person, but the drones aren't. Just like our fingers or cells aren’t people either.
Meanwhile, I (and many others) like to be an individual and think for myself. Although I like being social too. But only where it is useful.
I haven't thought about if I'd like being the leader of such a swarm of drones though. It would make the whole thing less of a problem, provided there wouldn’t be too many actual individuals left.
I guess what I worry about, is how much I am already forced into this conformism, even though my individuality does not conflict with their life style and I don’t intend to harm them either. (Aka I don't claim to want the freedom to do with them whatever I want.) They are harming my freedom from their freedom (do do whatever they want) though!
Or it's just that the swarm is so damn stupid. (Any sufficiently advanced stupidity becomes evilness. Which is why, even though evilness itself is stupid too, on top of playing stupid too, that "Never attribute to evilness, what you can attribute to stupidity." meme is the wrong way around.)
What could be, and what actually is, due to them, is what pains me.
That certainly would make moderation a lot more fair, but you can just get used to it. Save your jokes until you've got a really funny one. I have lost over a dozen karma on a single post due to a mod war involving lots of funny mods, but it's all just part of the game.
You do know Slashdot is just a MMORPG, don't you?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And we completely trust FB not to gather all information it can about our private lives and personal conversations in our homes and not sell that to marketeers.
Never mind Zuck lied before congress about shadow profiles.
Maybe Equifax will make a smart speaker/camera next!
That, and he's right of course.
Facebook robots with cameras to track humans inside their own homes
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First Amazon, now Facebook... I'm anxiously awaiting the announcement of a Slashdot smart cam that I can buy.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.