I switched to Home Assistant a couple months ago (because I didn't like the idea of my voice being sent to amazon constantly) and haven't looked back! Soo much more you can do (including immediately using an LLM, if you like, whether in the cloud or local), and so much more control.
Related, here's a comment from 2019 from at the time of writing from someone claiming to be a principal engineer at Amazon, talking about how<p>"I'm proud of the approach that Amazon takes to privacy. Privacy of customer data is considered the most important thing to Amazon, and this customer obsession (the #1 leadership principle) permeates the organization."<p>The comment further talks about the mute button on the original Amazon Echo (i.e. Alexa voice assistant) being hardware-based : <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19208670</a>
People don't really care about privacy, it's as simple as that. Yes, they worry about privacy, and complain about violations of privacy. But if they cared, they never would have purchased this product in the first place. There are bits of technology which violate privacy, but are extremely difficult to fully avoid: Social Media, (I know a lot of HN isn't on it, but how about most of your family and friends?) smart phones, the surveillance of modern stores, etc. All of those are terrifically difficult to fully avoid or mitigate. But not buying an echo is effortless and free. There's no cost associated with not buying one, and not spending the time to set it up.<p>But, despite the fact that it literally costs nothing, these have sold quite well, and if folks haven't got an echo they've got a Google Home, or a Siri, or something else. They just don't care about privacy, and companies know this.
"You know that boundary that we agreed upon a while back? We're gonna violate that boundary now. This is not an opportunity to negotiate a new agreement, we're gonna do whatever we want to you because we're big and you're little."<p>Stuff like this is why I've cut amazon out of my life entirely. No more new devices, no more new purchases, cancelled prime, all of it gone.
Thinking about that picture from a (UK?) hospital breakroom with the sign that said "Please turn off the Echo before discussing sensitive patient information."
Now would be a good time to have a functional FTC commissioner. Doing a bait and switch like on a product that was sold with a set of features should be illegal. If I buy a car and the sales guy stops by my house the next day to take back the wheels, it would rightfully be seen as ridiculous.
I will never understand why anyone would ever want to use voice assistants (other than for accessibility reasons). It is so gimmicky and awkward to use.<p>Android Auto does not even understand the word "no".
How much AI computational power do I need to "set a timer for 8 minutes"? It's all just a sham to take away the little privacy you have left.
I still remember the time when devices worked for you rather than against you.<p>But people will put up with anything. You could literally send a note that any Alexa will be equipped with 2kg of Semtex, to be triggered in case of wrongthink in your own home. People would still use Alexa and rationalize the feature.
What if you bought the device just because it had this option?<p>I have an Echo Dot 2nd Gen which I used for around two months, until it once failed at a command of playing back a radio station but instead started to continuously stream my audio to Amazon, for hours until I noticed it (bandwidth monitoring with InfluxDB and Grafana).<p>Now none of my devices (phones and tablets) listen for hotwords, but at this point there's no guarantee that my Pixel phone isn't listening in all the time. That feature where your phone listens to water or an alarm is what I found too sketchy, as if they have been playing around with on-device constant sound recognition for too long and then come up with some silly reason to make you enable it.
Do people really enjoy talking to their home devices? I've always felt really awkward telling my phone to do something, especially in public, like I don't feel like everyone else needs to hear about what I want things to do, so I just prefer to type something. I know there are some people for whom its an accessibility thing, where they have difficulty typing or reading, but I've never really seen the point for average joe/josephine
Always assumed Amazon was doing whatever it wanted with Alexa powered devices. I used to have one in the kitchen that I used mainly for timers. The mute button stayed on 99.999% of the time. Needing to unmute to start or stop timers did make it a bit less useful but it was fine.<p>I watched a breakdown of that model of Echo where it looked like the mute was indeed at the hardware level. My EE knowledge is limited but good enough I could follow along. Amazon probably could hide some hidden way to get around the hardware switch if they wanted but the risk for them seems higher than the risk to me, which never really was more than they'd hear me belch while cooking.
This event has been written on the walls of the USA since those smart speakers and cel phones first appeared. The average US citizen has been conditioned to believe the 'regulation' is 'evil government' and not protection from established abusive practices - that's how regulations get created: someone (usually a corporation) abuses a public resource or good so extremely that laws are written to prevent that. Of course, those laws prevent business from exploiting the situations, so of course business educates people that regulation is evil, and the fake to destroyed education system volunteers to educate that lie too.<p>The USA is a destroyed, hollowed out shell that manufacturers morons, on purpose, because they make desperate employees. The fact that almost no Americans can explain themselves without thinking that act is a lead up to a punishment is very telling, and then their explanation cannot be understood by anyone but a career peer because they only speak in non-communicating jargon, a parrot echoes of talking points from media. No self generated thinking, only echoes of media. It's seriously a giant problem. This nation is kaput intellectually.
I would like to meet the person who bought an Alexa device at any point in time thinking "now here is finally the privacy protecting AI assistant I have been waiting for."
User hostility level +1<p>But that is of no problem, users seem to enjoy being abused, repeatedly, so they continue giving their money to the organization to come up with further marketing startegy (smaless bullshit lies) to introduce the next one never asked for abuse in the next company output that solves very marginal or no problem of their life.
It would be interesting to put an Alexa (or another voice assistant device) in a space with only an audio playback device around to keep it company, with that audio playback device playing sounds associated with various crimes (but never saying the trigger word obviously). I wonder if there are any crimes it thinks it would hear that would result in a police visit. If police were called as a result of this setup, would this constitute a false police report on Amazon's behalf?<p>In the US, because I'm at least reasonably confident that such a setup comes nowhere near any exceptions to free speech protections here.
Hm!<p>I like the sound quality of my Echo Dots, so I'd be fine to keep them in "dumb mode" (or even disconnecting their microphones physically), but setting a timer etc. is a useful feature too, when you are running around the house.<p>How good is the sound of the Home Assistant Speakers and can they be used like bluetooth speakers, too? How about multi room sound?<p>Any recommendations on a good solution that focusses on that music part and is not likely to be a victim of getting bricked by a software update?
Got a free echo dot (not sure they're even supported anymore?) a long time ago through some promotion. Hooked it up with a separate account to let the kids play music that we uploaded on-demand. Then, they took away the "play user-uploaded music" part of it. Probably haven't plugged it in in 5+ years - definitely going to the landfill as soon as I remember..
The first thing i can think of is this: <a href="https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/" rel="nofollow">https://www.5snb.club/posts/2023/do-not-stab/</a><p>I never had Alexa and imagine I go now and buy one device, the first thing I can expect from it is to record me? Because I never opted out?
My first tought was in this direction: Amazon’s Echo hardware can be hacked to run your own local voice assistant that never touches the cloud. This involves replacing or modifying the Echo’s firmware to break free of Amazon’s servers, then installing offline voice recognition and AI tools on your local network.
"North Korea reducing number of approved hair styles by one."<p>Is that really the hill to fight over, or even care about? If you have that thing in your house, you <i>already</i> lost the war.
How does this comply with COPPA? Amazon was fined $25mm for failing to comply. Is the setting available, but obfuscated under "a child profile"?
when technological advancements that actually would allow for BETTER privacy and security, and MORE local-only features are misappropriated for constructing bogus and dishonest justifications to rather erode the least-effort user-minded safeguards that already had been present, it's become plain obvious that the claim to create a product that serves the user has always been a lie. It's about capturing data and influence, and always has been
They should just update their ToS to allow any kind of software updates without customer notification. The customer has a license to use the product, they don't own the product! Customers need to understand they don't have a choice in these matters and its useless to notify them and stir up controversy when a ToS update will suffice.
I know this single bit of news isn't the biggest deal. However we were talking at the dinner table, my wife and two kids and I. We just decided we're done with Amazon and Alexa. My wife has always been skeeved out by the devices, and I've reassured her that the wake word is the only time it's recording. Whether this is true or not, it's obvious that the company can no longer be trusted.<p>So yeah we're just going to get a cardboard box, put it in the kitchen, and pile all the Alexa stuff into it and Ebay it. We'll use the $21 we get for all the devices to buy ice cream or something.