I think your argument is made illegitimate by the fact that your cell phone, landline, smart tv, and laptop all can be used for other activities that don't spy on you. This sin't the case with Alexa or Siri. Their sole purpose is to listen to you.
Their sole purpose is to listen to your commands and do what you asked -- much like "OK Google" or "Hey Siri" with cell phones. How is a smart speaker any different than a cell phone? (other than the fact that most people are around a cell phone much more than their smart speaker)
Last year it was at 52%, now it's at 75%. Google increased from 81% to 88%.
But still... even when understanding my query isn't an issue, I've found that typing/clicking is faster than talking for setting up most things - the exceptions being "set a timer" and "when I get home, remind me to...".
A surprisingly useful feature is integration with smart switches/lights. I set up integration with my lights on a whim, it seemed like a useless gimic until the night I walked up the stairs with arms full of groceries and found it to be super convenient to ask Alexa to turn on the kitchen lights. It's also convenient at bedtime to walk past the kitchen and say "Alexa, turn off all lights" just before I flip on the hallway light to go upstairs". Whoever built my house loved light switches, there are 8 switches scattered between the dining room/living room, plus we have two standalone reading lamps. Automation means I don't need to make a lap around the livingroom to turn everything off.
But yeah, aside from that, all I used it for is playing music, checking the weather before work to see if I need to wear a rain jacket, and as a kitchen timer. And the voice recognition makes all of those more convenient.
Therefore you have zero actual reason to be making claims about their functionality as you did with the recording wake-word. You have no idea what is true. Stop regurgitating THEIR MARKETING as if you did, cheesus.
Since no skill can override the wake-word activation, it's still safe to say that the Alexa is only activated by the wake-word.
I wish you'd just log in, it's fruitless to try to have a conversation with an Anonymous Coward since there's no way to know that it's the same person.
Amazon explained what happened, it was still a wake-word activation, even if unintended.
"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."
"only anything you say after the wake-word is recorded" - YOU supplied this claim, YOU supply empirical proof of that. It's a very questionable claim as multiple cases have shown ongoing eavesdropping for various reasons/excuses.
It's the documented behavior of the device and confirmed by Amazon. You're the one making the extraordinary claim, so the burden of proof is on you.
I'm not aware of any claim that wasn't explained by the device being activated by the user, either by the wake word or a an inadvertent phone call.
A laptop can be locked down. A "smart" speaker cannot. A phone can't really be locked down entirely either, but more so than the speaker. Comparing them as if apples to apples is reductive.
It's cute that you think that -- unless you're willing to clip the microphone (and the speaker too since in some laptops, the speaker can act as a microphone too), you can't reliably lock down a laptop.
Sure, but which one is more fun to shoot? Tune in next week when we line them up on a fence along with some beer cans, and launch them into the air for a skeet shoot shotgun test.
The Amazon Echo is probably shaped most like a beer can, so if you like shooting beer cans, that's probably your best bet. Though for the price, it's hard to beat clay targets, you can probably buy over 1,000 of them for the price of one Echo.
Why the fuck would anyone allow that shit in your home? Basically everything you say can and will be recorded for future law enforcement fishing expeditions.
That's not correct -- only anything you say after the wake-word is recorded. (unless, of course, you use the device to call your boss and talk crap about him and get fired).
If you have evidence that the devices have been used for general spying without having said the wake-word, I'd like to see it.
before anyone should ever put one of these in their house: "Alexa/Siri/Google, stop spying on me."
And ditch your cell phone too. And your landline while you're at it. And probably should get rid of your smart tv, since you have no idea what's inside or what it's sending back. Oh, and stop using your laptop.
Just because the smart speaker is the only device that advertises that it's listening to you, that doesn't mean it's the only device that is -- and it's those that you need to worry about, because they don't get nearly as much scrutiny.
Corporate policy is probably to push items that are about to expire first. They would directly lose money on expired items otherwise. It also tells me that they overstock too many items if the expiration date is too short, that whole logistics thing. Workers are just doing what they are being told to do, I would be surprised if they are that malicious or incompetent.
You are right though, who is going to want to buy week old bread online?
Unlikely -- stores accept a certain amount of spoilage, and adjust ordering to keep it in that level -- but what they won't tolerate is customer loss - customer acquisition cost is high enough that they'll gladly throw away some produce if it means they'll keep a repeat customer happy.
I just need to pick out my own groceries. Furthermore, grocery shopping is not at all unpleasant, and smart stores have interesting samples etc.
That depends on personal preference, I don't like to go to the grocery store at all, I'm happy to let someone else pick out my produce if it means that I don't need to set foot in the store.
I don't use Amazon for shopping though, I use my local supermarket's pickup service, I place my order online, then stop on my way home from work and they bring it out to the car for me.
Maybe because we still lack cheap bulk off-the-shelf Arduino-based devices that can be mounted as light switches, shutter motors, radiator thermostats, switching/dimming power sockets, and various sensors
Good luck getting a UL stamp on anything remotely like that. (Specifically the switches and sockets) And with no UL stamp you're not going to find anybody (in the States anyway) willing to install it in their home.
It shouldn't be too hard to have a 120VAC module with standardized inputs and a 5V output that you can plug your microcontroller of choice into. Then you only need to get the UL listing for the 120VAC switch part. Much like how having a UL listed wall wart avoids the need to get the UL listing for your entire device.
Though I suspect that the actual market for this is so small that no company would do it.
A VPN only masks your IP from the destination web site and the routers your packets pass through. Your phone always knows where you are and shares that info with your carrier, OEM and application store, just for starters.
Yes, I know, that's why I'm ok with IP based tracking, but not GPS or Wifi SSID tracking, and I'm very selective over what apps have location access -- I know Google and my carrier know my location, but that's unavoidable, I'm not so principled that I'd give up a smartphone entirely.
I'm ok with IP based tracking, my IP stays static anywhere in my local metro are, so all they know is what city I'm in (and often that's not even accurate for small towns).
If I really want to hide it, I can use a VPN.
What I don't like is the GPS or Wifi SSID tracking which is much more granular and harder to mask. I almost never give apps that permission. I once tried a free flashlight app that wanted location permission and ability to read my contacts, I've been very selective about what apps I install after that.
a) Anybody else remember the "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run" days of Microsoft.
b) Microsoft could have pushed out an update to Edge in a matter of hours if they really wanted to. This is just a pot calling a kettle 'black'.
Could they? Is this something that they could have just worked around with a simple code patch, or would it have broken other sites if they did it as a generic fix ("allow hardware acceleration if there's an empty HTML element over the video"), or if they put in a specific fix for Youtube, would Google have just changed it until it escaped the detection by Edge, yet still broke the hardware acceleration? Website changes can be pushed out in minutes, software patches across hundreds of millions of consume and business owned devices can take months if not years, so MS would lose any game of catch up.
I always figured that most people use Incognito mode when they visit porn sites to keep spouses and partners from seeing their history. Though maybe people with spouses and partners are not the biggest porn users.
I don't understand why Comcast would expect the town to pay them? Is that common?
I thought that the cost of infrastructure was a cost of doing business that Comcast would recoup through subscription fees, why do they need a subsidy?
The page doesn't note that the images are simulated, and after showing Djudjic's photo, it proceeds to show the A8's dual rear cameras, implying a connection.
Actually, it does (at least now):
* All specifications and descriptions provided herein may be different from the actual specifications and descriptions for the product. Samsung reserves the right to make changes to this web page and the product described herein, at anytime, without obligation on Samsung to provide notification of such change. All functionality, features, specifications, GUI and other product information provided in this web page including, but not limited to, the benefits, design, pricing, components, performance, availability, and capabilities of the product are subject to change without notice or obligation. The contents within the screen are simulated images and are for demonstration purposes only. * All images simulated for illustrative purposes.
But does it really matter? Even if they were real images, they'll have been made under ideal lighting conditions and hand picked from hundreds if not thousands of images so don't reflect real-world conditions. And this ad campaign was likely put together before the phone was available to take any photos let alone to go out and do enough photo shoots to find suitable images.
If you want to see how it does in real-world conditions, wait for the independent review sites to review it because most users will never duplicate the image quality seen in an ad.
Lol.. Tiny vehicle that barely holds 4 passengers and a grocery bag starts at $30K.. and it isn't a luxury.
The Leaf has 24 ft^3 of cargo space (with the seats up), compared to a 29 ft^3 for a $45K BMW X3. You can buy a lot of grocery bags for that extra $15K in your pocket and you don't need to go to gas stations any more.
How many people are buying that leaf? I personally don't want to die in a car that is not much bigger then a beer can. I think They should be elminated for cars that are higher end, like most Tesla model's that cost near 6 figures. Those tax breaks were made specificcly for rich people early on since they were only ones that could afford EV's. So I think Should be an income threshold on who can get those Subsidies.
Around 100K people have bought the Leaf over the past 5 years.
The Leaf has a 5 star safety rating and you're safer driving it than you are driving a full-size pickup. Granted, if you're in a collision with that pickup, you're more likely to die in a small car, but you're still statistically safer in a small car with a good safety rating, because most collisions are not head on collissions between cars.
The point of giving subsidies even for $80K Teslas is that it makes people more likely to buy them (it turns out that even wealthy people like saving money), and the expensive cars are the proving ground for expensive new techology (expensive to produce and maintain), as that technology is refined, then it makes its way into cheaper cars. The $40K Tesla Model 3 would never have existed if the $100K model S wasn't developed first.
If, as is often stated here, renewables are the most cost-effective energy sources, then they shouldn't need subsidies.
The subsidies for fossil fuels are already built-in to our economy so they are invisible, renewables are the newcomer so their subsidies are more explicit.
Slashdot Mirror
I think your argument is made illegitimate by the fact that your cell phone, landline, smart tv, and laptop all can be used for other activities that don't spy on you. This sin't the case with Alexa or Siri. Their sole purpose is to listen to you.
Their sole purpose is to listen to your commands and do what you asked -- much like "OK Google" or "Hey Siri" with cell phones. How is a smart speaker any different than a cell phone? (other than the fact that most people are around a cell phone much more than their smart speaker)
Last year it was at 52%, now it's at 75%. Google increased from 81% to 88%.
But still... even when understanding my query isn't an issue, I've found that typing/clicking is faster than talking for setting up most things - the exceptions being "set a timer" and "when I get home, remind me to ...".
A surprisingly useful feature is integration with smart switches/lights. I set up integration with my lights on a whim, it seemed like a useless gimic until the night I walked up the stairs with arms full of groceries and found it to be super convenient to ask Alexa to turn on the kitchen lights. It's also convenient at bedtime to walk past the kitchen and say "Alexa, turn off all lights" just before I flip on the hallway light to go upstairs". Whoever built my house loved light switches, there are 8 switches scattered between the dining room/living room, plus we have two standalone reading lamps. Automation means I don't need to make a lap around the livingroom to turn everything off.
But yeah, aside from that, all I used it for is playing music, checking the weather before work to see if I need to wear a rain jacket, and as a kitchen timer. And the voice recognition makes all of those more convenient.
Therefore you have zero actual reason to be making claims about their functionality as you did with the recording wake-word. You have no idea what is true. Stop regurgitating THEIR MARKETING as if you did, cheesus.
Since no skill can override the wake-word activation, it's still safe to say that the Alexa is only activated by the wake-word.
I wish you'd just log in, it's fruitless to try to have a conversation with an Anonymous Coward since there's no way to know that it's the same person.
Do you think the wake word algorithm is perfect?
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/25/614470096/amazon-echo-recorded-and-sent-couples-conversation-all-without-their-knowledge
Amazon explained what happened, it was still a wake-word activation, even if unintended.
"Echo woke up due to a word in background conversation sounding like 'Alexa.' Then, the subsequent conversation was heard as a 'send message' request. At which point, Alexa said out loud 'To whom?' At which point, the background conversation was interpreted as a name in the customers contact list. Alexa then asked out loud, '[contact name], right?' Alexa then interpreted background conversation as 'right'. As unlikely as this string of events is, we are evaluating options to make this case even less likely."
"only anything you say after the wake-word is recorded" - YOU supplied this claim, YOU supply empirical proof of that. It's a very questionable claim as multiple cases have shown ongoing eavesdropping for various reasons/excuses.
It's the documented behavior of the device and confirmed by Amazon. You're the one making the extraordinary claim, so the burden of proof is on you.
I'm not aware of any claim that wasn't explained by the device being activated by the user, either by the wake word or a an inadvertent phone call.
a real test would include every feature, not just pick and choose the best feature and claim the device is the best because of it.
Since there are a nearly unlimited number of third party skills that can be added to the Echo, there's no way to test every feature.
A laptop can be locked down. A "smart" speaker cannot. A phone can't really be locked down entirely either, but more so than the speaker. Comparing them as if apples to apples is reductive.
It's cute that you think that -- unless you're willing to clip the microphone (and the speaker too since in some laptops, the speaker can act as a microphone too), you can't reliably lock down a laptop.
Reminds me of this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_D...
For those that don't want to click:
People from the 60's: "I better not say that or the government will wiretap my house"
People today: "Hey wiretap, do you have a recipe for pancakes?"
Sure, but which one is more fun to shoot? Tune in next week when we line them up on a fence along with some beer cans, and launch them into the air for a skeet shoot shotgun test.
The Amazon Echo is probably shaped most like a beer can, so if you like shooting beer cans, that's probably your best bet. Though for the price, it's hard to beat clay targets, you can probably buy over 1,000 of them for the price of one Echo.
Why the fuck would anyone allow that shit in your home? Basically everything you say can and will be recorded for future law enforcement fishing expeditions.
That's not correct -- only anything you say after the wake-word is recorded. (unless, of course, you use the device to call your boss and talk crap about him and get fired).
If you have evidence that the devices have been used for general spying without having said the wake-word, I'd like to see it.
before anyone should ever put one of these in their house: "Alexa/Siri/Google, stop spying on me."
And ditch your cell phone too. And your landline while you're at it. And probably should get rid of your smart tv, since you have no idea what's inside or what it's sending back. Oh, and stop using your laptop.
Just because the smart speaker is the only device that advertises that it's listening to you, that doesn't mean it's the only device that is -- and it's those that you need to worry about, because they don't get nearly as much scrutiny.
Corporate policy is probably to push items that are about to expire first. They would directly lose money on expired items otherwise. It also tells me that they overstock too many items if the expiration date is too short, that whole logistics thing. Workers are just doing what they are being told to do, I would be surprised if they are that malicious or incompetent.
You are right though, who is going to want to buy week old bread online?
Unlikely -- stores accept a certain amount of spoilage, and adjust ordering to keep it in that level -- but what they won't tolerate is customer loss - customer acquisition cost is high enough that they'll gladly throw away some produce if it means they'll keep a repeat customer happy.
I just need to pick out my own groceries. Furthermore, grocery shopping is not at all unpleasant, and smart stores have interesting samples etc.
That depends on personal preference, I don't like to go to the grocery store at all, I'm happy to let someone else pick out my produce if it means that I don't need to set foot in the store.
I don't use Amazon for shopping though, I use my local supermarket's pickup service, I place my order online, then stop on my way home from work and they bring it out to the car for me.
Maybe because we still lack cheap bulk off-the-shelf Arduino-based devices that can be mounted as light switches, shutter motors, radiator thermostats, switching/dimming power sockets, and various sensors
Good luck getting a UL stamp on anything remotely like that. (Specifically the switches and sockets) And with no UL stamp you're not going to find anybody (in the States anyway) willing to install it in their home.
It shouldn't be too hard to have a 120VAC module with standardized inputs and a 5V output that you can plug your microcontroller of choice into. Then you only need to get the UL listing for the 120VAC switch part. Much like how having a UL listed wall wart avoids the need to get the UL listing for your entire device.
Though I suspect that the actual market for this is so small that no company would do it.
A VPN only masks your IP from the destination web site and the routers your packets pass through. Your phone always knows where you are and shares that info with your carrier, OEM and application store, just for starters.
Yes, I know, that's why I'm ok with IP based tracking, but not GPS or Wifi SSID tracking, and I'm very selective over what apps have location access -- I know Google and my carrier know my location, but that's unavoidable, I'm not so principled that I'd give up a smartphone entirely.
I'm ok with IP based tracking, my IP stays static anywhere in my local metro are, so all they know is what city I'm in (and often that's not even accurate for small towns).
If I really want to hide it, I can use a VPN.
What I don't like is the GPS or Wifi SSID tracking which is much more granular and harder to mask. I almost never give apps that permission. I once tried a free flashlight app that wanted location permission and ability to read my contacts, I've been very selective about what apps I install after that.
a) Anybody else remember the "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run" days of Microsoft.
b) Microsoft could have pushed out an update to Edge in a matter of hours if they really wanted to. This is just a pot calling a kettle 'black'.
Could they? Is this something that they could have just worked around with a simple code patch, or would it have broken other sites if they did it as a generic fix ("allow hardware acceleration if there's an empty HTML element over the video"), or if they put in a specific fix for Youtube, would Google have just changed it until it escaped the detection by Edge, yet still broke the hardware acceleration? Website changes can be pushed out in minutes, software patches across hundreds of millions of consume and business owned devices can take months if not years, so MS would lose any game of catch up.
I always figured that most people use Incognito mode when they visit porn sites to keep spouses and partners from seeing their history. Though maybe people with spouses and partners are not the biggest porn users.
I don't understand why Comcast would expect the town to pay them? Is that common?
I thought that the cost of infrastructure was a cost of doing business that Comcast would recoup through subscription fees, why do they need a subsidy?
The page doesn't note that the images are simulated, and after showing Djudjic's photo, it proceeds to show the A8's dual rear cameras, implying a connection.
Actually, it does (at least now):
* All specifications and descriptions provided herein may be different from the actual specifications and descriptions for the product. Samsung reserves the right to make changes to this web page and the product described herein, at anytime, without obligation on Samsung to provide notification of such change. All functionality, features, specifications, GUI and other product information provided in this web page including, but not limited to, the benefits, design, pricing, components, performance, availability, and capabilities of the product are subject to change without notice or obligation. The contents within the screen are simulated images and are for demonstration purposes only.
* All images simulated for illustrative purposes.
But does it really matter? Even if they were real images, they'll have been made under ideal lighting conditions and hand picked from hundreds if not thousands of images so don't reflect real-world conditions. And this ad campaign was likely put together before the phone was available to take any photos let alone to go out and do enough photo shoots to find suitable images.
If you want to see how it does in real-world conditions, wait for the independent review sites to review it because most users will never duplicate the image quality seen in an ad.
it should sound a lot like Windows 10 S and RT; Windows 10 Lite only runs PWAs and UWP app
What?
Lol.. Tiny vehicle that barely holds 4 passengers and a grocery bag starts at $30K.. and it isn't a luxury.
The Leaf has 24 ft^3 of cargo space (with the seats up), compared to a 29 ft^3 for a $45K BMW X3. You can buy a lot of grocery bags for that extra $15K in your pocket and you don't need to go to gas stations any more.
Are there really buyers of $50K+ Teslas that needed a subsidy? I don't think so.
"Need"? That's hard to say. But "want"? That's more clear -- it's safe to say that fewer people would have bought a $50K+ Tesla without a subsidy.
How many people are buying that leaf? I personally don't want to die in a car that is not much bigger then a beer can. I think They should be elminated for cars that are higher end, like most Tesla model's that cost near 6 figures. Those tax breaks were made specificcly for rich people early on since they were only ones that could afford EV's. So I think Should be an income threshold on who can get those Subsidies.
Around 100K people have bought the Leaf over the past 5 years.
The Leaf has a 5 star safety rating and you're safer driving it than you are driving a full-size pickup. Granted, if you're in a collision with that pickup, you're more likely to die in a small car, but you're still statistically safer in a small car with a good safety rating, because most collisions are not head on collissions between cars.
The point of giving subsidies even for $80K Teslas is that it makes people more likely to buy them (it turns out that even wealthy people like saving money), and the expensive cars are the proving ground for expensive new techology (expensive to produce and maintain), as that technology is refined, then it makes its way into cheaper cars. The $40K Tesla Model 3 would never have existed if the $100K model S wasn't developed first.
If, as is often stated here, renewables are the most cost-effective energy sources, then they shouldn't need subsidies.
The subsidies for fossil fuels are already built-in to our economy so they are invisible, renewables are the newcomer so their subsidies are more explicit.