Google Home
home.google.com
home.google.com
Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box which I can only interpret as a giant frickin' security liability. I want this, but unless it's open source top-to-bottom, I won't ever actually put one in my home. We know too much about how these things can be abused for me to ever seriously consider it without being able to verify for myself what it's doing and why.
(I agree though, I don't want this in my house, and I turned off the "Ok Google" functionality on my phone)
I guess what it comes down to is that while I recognize that I sacrifice a measure of potential for privacy with my phone, I judge the benefits to be worth it. I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis.
To be honest, I trust that Google and Amazon are probably acting in my best interests with these products, for the most part. I don't think it's all an evil conspiracy to get microphones and cameras into my inner sanctum or anything. I believe it's very possible for a product like this to be mutually beneficial for provider and consumer. And hey, if a state actor wants to surveil me, it's going to happen regardless of these devices being in my house. But as we've learned just how fragile security is, it seems foolish to me to rush off to install black-box monitoring devices all over and just hope that they do what we think they are doing. I love the idea of these things, but they are such potentially powerful windows into our lives that I think that we have to be really sure the value they provide is worth the security risk they entail.
The scenario that worries me is that years from now, Google and Amazon may be coerced into turning over what I said yesterday to a corrupt government fishing through the past for word-crime. And boy-howdy, it turns out they recorded everything and retained it forever. Surprise!
Amazon has said that they're only recording what happens after the hotword is triggered. That's why they can't do custom hotwords - listening for "hey alexa" is built right into the hardware and it doesn't do anything until it hears that. Unless they're flat-out lying, they can't provide any information about what you said yesterday to anybody because they don't have that data.
For most people, its a permanent fixture on their person: people these days leave their home more than they leave their phone.
> Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design.
Echo/Home are no more explicitly audio surveillance devices than cell phones are.
> I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis.
Modern phones (considering the hardware and software stack together) are, in fact, designed to do just that, both Siri and Google Now voice recognition works (though it is, IIRC, disabled-by-default in the latter case) from the lock screen. Its just as always-on as Echo/Home.
With something like Echo / Home, the always-on power source makes it technologically feasible for it to always be listening to you as well, without needing to wake up to a keyword. Now, they may as a feature only start processing based on a keyword, but you don't have the "comfort" of knowing that it is technological limitation rather than a software decision that may or may not be in your control.
Let's be real. You don't keep your phone in a Faraday bag and you probably never will.
I know some technophiles coworkers who have an Echo, and I couldn't for the life of me trust Amazon, Google (or even Apple) with potentially the always-on stream of audio from my house.
It just seems so obvious to me that I don't know why no one has done it. I guess needing a new button makes it harder to sell, but this seems like a great use case for smartwatches.
I'm not at all happy with the trade-off any more.
I've got a tablet, both cameras taped over. Killing the mics would be a Good Thing.
Sigh.
I'm aware of the risk and hypocrisy. I'm also far from happy with it (I increasingly dislike Android, Samsung, and with varying levels, Google).
But given the balance of something I can power down, that isn't always on me, and the portability and cost benefits over an alternative laptop, its a far-less-than-perfect satisficing solution for now.
I've come to resent carrying a phone all the time, I rarely answer it and resent that "I tried ringing but you didn't answer!" whine you get as though it's beyond incredulous that you would ever not answer the phone.
As a comms device, on a sufficiently fast WiFi/broadband connection, it's also useful. I've not done that often, but it's been done, and I was impressed.
The OS is a mess in many particulars.
It handles external storage poorly. It doesn't multi-taske well. Multi-window mode is specific to application. The default shell userland is unforgiveably anemic (Termux, one of a few available add-ons is much better). Lack of comprehensive privacy controls, or insight, is a huge issue.
The app "ecosystem" is pathologically broken. I've written on this at G+, my feeling is it needs to be scrapped.
Samsung's own tweaks are also pretty bad. The fact that the device is entirely locked down from a bootloader perspective (it was a bit of a panic on-the-road buy) has become beyond annoying. Inability to remove certain stock apps is a major concern.
Google's "Play" store is beyond annoying.
I'm watching for news of Firefox OS and Ubuntu's mobile offerings. I'm not particularly hopeful. A small laptop _might_ be a suitable replacement, if I can park Linux on it (without systemd).
Mostly it's a very effective advertisement against itself.
And more generally: the tech world very, very, very badly needs to find a non-advertising business model.
I've got one and although it is not ready for the general public yet, it's a little gem for us free software fans.
16 GB storage is far, far, far too little. That should be upgradeable. The problem with microSD expansion is vfat. That's crippled on both capacity and permissions. I'd also prefer encryptable removeable media.
Speakers. I want my devices to NOT have them. I'll attach via Bluetooth or a wired headset/mic combo. I'd also prefer cameras be shuttered. That's both for protection (lenses get scratched) and privacy.
Other than that, yes, it's headed the way I'd like things to go.
Input devices should be clearly and unambiguously disableable, or external.
When the first Android device shipped, all internal storage was dedicated to OS and apps. But OEMs wanted to advertise that they had X gigs onboard. And thus they started partitioning internal storage, and mounting one part as if it was removable memory.
Problem is that apps could not go on removable memory, so people bought a device only to find that a few apps was enough to max out that side of the partition.
And thus Google came up with "move to SD".
But then that got into trouble with USB data transfers, as the "SD" had to be unmounted on the Android side before it could be mounted by the PC over the cable.
So somewhere around 3.x Google adopted MTP, and union mounts to emulate a FAT partitioned SD (for legacy reasons).
But at the same time they introduced new access permissions, but reserved write permission to actual removable storage for system level apps. Thus you could use your PC to transfer music and such onto a SD, but you could not officially do so from within Android. Various OEMs, Samsung for example, modified the permissions file so that their devices retained the old behavior.
Since then Google has in fits and starts modified the MTP support so that it can also be used by internal apps to write to removable storage without having to deal with permissions. At the same time they have tried to lock down access to the "SD" even further as various dumb app devs have used it to store sensitive user data for any other app to see.
Thing is that going via the MTP subsystem invites DRM, as the apps talk to a database that then talk to the FS. And that database can be incomplete, or the subsystem can outright lie to the apps. And it so happens that Google adopted MTP along the same time as they introduced Play Music and Play Movies.
Then again, the consumer UI/UX designers have long been tilting the windmills over the whole files and folders thing. For some reason they see it as a failure of UX, and thus something that needs to be at least hidden from the user, if not outright abolished. See numerous attempts at replacing files and folders with a grand database of metadata, that will "magically" pull out everything you have stored related to that company project or aunt Tillie as needed.
(I heard about it a while back, but I didn't back it so I haven't read the latest updates)
"Yesterday ... I realized how long it had been since I looked at a new technology with wonder, instead of an automatic feeling of dread."
EDIT: Speaking of Maciej, if you're not already following him on Twitter, today is the day to do that. He's having a field day with this keynote.
Is he? Last tweet I can find of his is from yesterday. Could you provide the link you're using?
https://mobile.twitter.com/Pinboard
https://mobile.twitter.com/Pinboard/status/73298537020423372...
And if you prefer your tweets detwitterpated:
https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/MtHn4A9W...
For example: "What’s been missing from my video calls is the ability for people to see me before I’m ready" [1]
This is when you are calling them. Why wouldn't you be ready? It's more like seeing who is outside your door before opening it.
> @Pinboard they did talk about privacy though: the video app shows your camera feed to whoever calls you before your call starts
I then went down a thought path of what level of personal data the AI would have had in the movie, and started thinking about what that would look like from a monetization/privacy standpoint given todays realities of advertising, NSA surveillance, etc. Pretty scary.
In fact, I'd love for someone to do a cut of clips from that movie with overlays detailing all the bits of personal data that would have been fed to a company's servers based on what is happening in the scene--there are some particularly juicy scenes for that if I recall correctly.
The very fact that someone is watching the keynote and going "oh my Gawd, the level of intrusion" at every turn, kind of tells me they are interested in having the features but don't want to provide the data. Otherwise you wouldn't even be watching the keynote. Am I missing something?
(Full disclaimer: I do work for an Alphabet company, so take my words with as many grains of salt as you want.)
E.g. cheald's comment above is pretty clear "I always wanted that, but I fear its implementation"
The truth about a lot of these services is they only work at the scale Google (or Amazon, or Facebook, etc.) run them. You'd spend thousands, if not millions, of dollars to get equivalent functionality, even if you got the software for free. I've basically had this argument every time someone helpfully suggests "Dropcam/Nestcam cameras should have an option to save data locally." You can have cheap, 100% private and efficient. Choose two.
In other words: "It's Google, why are they outraged that we're encroaching further on their privacy? What did they expect?"
At least you guys are honest about being evil, now.
How is that "being evil"? Isn't that the product's whole raison d'être? Everything else ("it's going to be recording everything you say and reporting it to the NSA!") is just tinfoil-hat-level speculation and not based on any factual information. If I started saying "In-n-Out could change their burger recipe to include cyanide at any minute and kill all their customers" would you accuse In-n-Out of plotting to kill everyone?
For the record, this is my very own (pretty frustrated) point of view, and obviously doesn't represent Alphabet's view in any capacity.
And, please don't think this is hyperbole. Independently, over the past year, I've caught parts of this same vision from two separate (large) companies. This is the low hanging fruit. The rewards are too high, the costs are low, and there are very few downside (to the companies).
So, you can't just put your arms down and say it is hopeless.
The Free Software Foundation fight was also hopeless when they started, look at what happened since that time and behold how software with available code dominates the market for third-party components.
It is in our hands the responsibility to act and make the new technology to respect privacy and people as much as possible.
People say that about stuff like Googlemail and Facebook. "Don't use it", except that doesn't always help when friends use it, and feed it with info about you as well. But hey, your fault for liking people who use Facebook or something. Now you can simply choose to not be friends with people who put this "home product" in their home, right? Or you can wear a disguise and talk with a false voice when visiting them, or ask them to turn it off whenever you're over. It's all voluntary, so no biggie.
At what point will all these small things combine into one big "You don't have to read or write anything, or communicate with any other person, or buy anything, or ever leave your house"? That's not even a slippery slope in my mind, more like taking 15 points which are in a straight line and extrapolating the line further. So when you talk of "this level of paranoia", I'd say the flipside of that is considering your stance a certain "level of apathy and/or short-sightedness".
Maybe because people are not islands, and don't think like isolated solipsists but also worry about the wider social implications of a technology?
Them not using a troublesome product won't solve that -- and it might not even solve the implications for them (e.g. like your friends can still tag you on photos on Facebook, even if you don't have an account there). Or you know, visiting a friend's house who has the device.
>The very fact that someone is watching the keynote and going "oh my Gawd, the level of intrusion" at every turn, kind of tells me they are interested in having the features but don't want to provide the data. Otherwise you wouldn't even be watching the keynote. Am I missing something?
Yes. 30+ years of data abuses and privacy encroachment by advertisers.
It's not a paid service with siloed data used only for the service's purpose -- rather the service is the lure to gather even more data for targeted marketing/ads.
So even if Googlers may find it "amazing" that privacy advocates don't just shut up and go live behind a rock, that's what you're going to have to live with in a free society.
I don't use Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. etc. etc., you name it. Yet, somehow I am employed, have friends and hobbies, and am happily married. How could that have possibly happened?
I guess the proof is all in the etc etc etc.
How about things like using Google search, exchanging unencrypted email with people who use ad funded mail services like gmail, using software or hardware that isn't completely open source (or working with people who do), using ad funded web sites, operating systems or apps that track you, using credit cards and other authenticated payment services, using location based services, using the internet without Tor, making unencrypted phone calls?
But yes, strictly speaking you are right. It is not impossible to avoid all of that and still have a social life. It's just very very difficult, and that's why it makes sense to speak up when useful services are designed in ways that create unnecessary privacy issues.
I'm just an old codger that can't understand why people have expectations of A, B and C, when they are buying a product that says it does A, promises to do B as well as possible and tells you that it definitely can't do C because it's technically impossible. Like, back in my day people read EULAs and stuff :)
This is the same as "if you don't want to be tracked by Google online, don't use Google Search", which conveniently omits that Google is working hard to add a tracking beacon on every page on the internet, via AdSense and +1 button.
StreetView, being tagged in photos by friends even if I don't use Google Photos. I also have a number of reasons to believe Google is homing in most people location information from Android phones without their informed and explicit consent.
Google's privacy practices are very questionable. Google could do better than hide under "don't use Google". What ever happened to "Don't be evil?".
You're making it sound like it doesn't already exist. This is a me-too product from Google as a response to Amazon's Echo which already does home automation, voice commands etc.
I agree with you and OP. If there was a good open-source version of either of these, I'd buy them in a heartbeat, but there's not.
Not to mention, smartphones don't record all you say 24/7 and send it to a foreign data center, except if tampered with. These devices do as their normal operation mode.
we shouldn't tight the seatbelt wheb driving because we're going to die by cancer in the long run anyway?
Or perhaps a better analogy, I wouldn't stress about keeping the windows of my home locked if I never locked my front door.
Having this all tie in with various smarthome appliances will be interesting as well. Sure, I can open my garage door by using an app on my phone but I'd rather just say, "Open the garage door." I think ultimately we prefer to do things like we're dealing with other people, not machines. Amazon's Alexa was a good first step towards this. I'm glad Google is chasing Amazon as Google has become a Microsoftian organization that only does well when they're chasing a competitor or having one right on their heels.
Approximately since Snowden, I've become more and more convinced about both the fragility and the value of this free world.
And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies.
Career-wise, henceforth I will avoid proprietary systems and dedicate myself to working on privacy-enabling free software, even if I make less money.
Many people in the free software movement have had more foresight and ethical intelligence than me, and I salute them! It's only recently that I'm able to start formulating my techno-political views in a coherent and strong way.
Now, looking at a device like this, I automatically compare it to something like a tractor or plow. It demands constant connectivity to Google HQ... it's full of secret code... it requires, for its basic paradigm, a private company's acquisition of staggering amounts of surveillance... and so on.
When I think about what to work on, a guiding question for me now is "What would Google not do?"
I look forward to contributing to the free world!
(Sorry for this quasi-manifestoish tone...)
I'm afraid the only way out will be to rethink the economy.
I don't think we are even close to the limits if what we can reach with standard desktop and server software.
Our devices have incredible amount of computing power now - a great untapped potential that we could use for something else than for supporting unnecessary indirection layers.
The challenge is how do we make it economically viable for both the producer of the technology and the end user to keep it useful and local, while also making it a good user experience?
The thing about cloud-based services is that they leverage scale well, making many things cheaper than they ever could be locally unless you buy a device and use it for long time AND fixes can be rolled out quickly with no lagging install base to cause problems or bad user experiences.
I really do want to have my privacy and keep my data safe but I also recognize that's hard to do without higher cost or more hassle (or both).
The future of all of our devices having extremely fast connections existing in a world of amazing, free, peer-to-peer applications still seems so far away.
BTW just today I was thinking about IPv6 VPNs. Seems like a good way to extend one's Intranet of Things to one's mobile devices.
- Reasonable cost
- Availability
- Ease of use, especially setup
- Eye candy
- Social connections
If you can check all of those for an FOSS solution, then I think you are home. Unfortunately most of the points are still not available for average Joe users with FOSS.
Add to that, most people will give you a blank look when you start discussing how companies own your data, and even those who understand just shrug and go the route of least resistance.
We have a long way to go with all of the above points before we need megaclouds with asic and huge data *to move the state of art forward.
All of the above be solved without creating a new unicorn startup.
We could do live online or batch training of models in a distributed manner if it is feasible. It would take more time to build new models because we would have to produce more data, but it's an idea.
For my personal use, free software has always been high enough quality; its at least 90% of the way there if not better. And I can trust it.
When you're out and about, your devices tunnel home automatically, knowing the endpoint is trustworthy (which is more than can be said about traditional VPNs). All your photos, tweets, posts, and all other brain farts straying into the open world are never sent out directly by the device they were produced on, but by the server at home instead.
Tor could finally work as intended, with millions of boxes in the network, all handling each other's traffic. Add new projects like IPFS, and the whole centralised cloud bullshit starts to crumble. Not just from a privacy pov, but features. Your home box talking to the neighbours' home boxes by itself is a whole lot more powerful than all parties meeting on some obscure server somewhere, although I find myself quickly coming back to privacy when thinking about advantages. I do hope there is room for other big features, otherwise getting this box into peoples' hands will prove difficult.
I see it as a kind of decentralised centralisation: your whole digital life is based on this one machine, but it's in your home, you own it, and you can do with it whatever the heck you want. No ads (!), no monetization of your private data, which stays in your hands at all times, except of course once you share. Still, then it will be in the hands of those you shared it with, and hopefully not huge corporations with little incentive to do no evil (who the hell thought this was an appropriate company motto?).
Most everything for which we turn to Google and Facebook can be done much more privately at home (office things, communication, sharing shit...), except maybe search. I have little problem in keeping Google as a search machine (they do a great job) once they stop waiting for me at every. single. corner, and following me around the bits inbetween. Decentralised search is hard, but I'm fairly optimistic once a basis is laid out, someone smart takes on the challenge (and is able to solve it, too!).
Regarding your last sentence, rethinking our economy isn't a bad idea in any case. Capitalism is fundamentally unfit to be a fair system, and if a socially fair system is what we want, we have to get rid of some ideas (like this infinite growth nonsense, or that education is obsolete. Education, in whatever shape or form, is the only way I know of how humanity is not going to spiral to its (intellectual) death).
Google still relies on institutions to provide data in indexable form, and those institutions build their reputations in ways that only partially rely on Google traffic.
I mean, a competent librarian has a kind of expertise that Google's algorithms don't, so that's one situation to explore for a post-Google idea of finding information (of course it's also pre-Google).
The social aspect of information discovery is something that Google and Facebook are kind of fighting over, but fundamentally it doesn't belong to them—it belongs to "us" intrinsically.
They shut down Google Reader but they can't shut down the human tendency to share information!
And the panopticon information provided by Google is often just a mesmerizing massive overload with no curation, weight, intelligence...
Wikipedia is the top hit for so many searches that one could see Google as an interface for it. Add Wikivoyage/Wikitravel, some other community wikis, API interfaces a la DuckDuckGo, social curation, etc, and you might find that the value of Google Search is actually not that incredible.
This is one of the main reasons I think home serving is a great idea. It enables people with some interest in one another to connect directly, one-to-one, instead of running around in some third party's server. This opens possibilities for exchange and networking on a very personal basis that we don't have today mostly because of privacy concerns (virtual neighbourhoods and the like).
Ultimately you'll never escape the fundamental flaw of Tor, which is that I, as a moderate bandwidth user, don't want to subsidize some leech's desire to download weird fetish porn in 4K with my connection.
I live in Canada where the scumbag broadband companies all collude to keep prices exorbitantly high, and I pay a lot of money for what would be considered bottom-tier garbage service in e.g. South Korea.
I don't run Tor because ultimately I want to use the bandwidth I pay for.
Check out http://yacy.net, you may be surprised!
On an algorithmic front, definitely. The key areas where free software is kneecapped against large corporate interests are in marketing, which free software has never been good at, and in training set gathering.
In the case of the latter, google, facebook and microsoft have a major advantage in gathering data to do things like improve accent recognition, because they don't give a shit about collecting everything you say via services like cortana to improve their voice recognition, as long as it's legal. That technique applies to a whole suite of other problems as well, unfortunately.
Supposedly there are doctors in Norway still holding on to their DOS based patient journal software. Arguably because they can operate it without taking the focus way from the conversation with the patient.
Deep Learning doesn't actually require "Big Data". They went from thousands of examples to millions or billions, but we can scrape that kind of data with open source tools, record with cheap cameras, sensors, etc.
Also, there is a lot of research into scaling big models to small hardware. We can run pretty decent AI on cell phones and small systems.
Third, the AI academic research community is pretty open and posts everything, often including code and datasets. This enables rapid progress, but essentially, it brings knowledge in the public domain. We need that to continue in order to have access to the best algorithms.
It will be much easier than you think to have open source implementations of the best AI tools.
But YOU can choose to use what you want. And IT can choose to require certain things of those it communicates with. And now you're right back to less freedom in the name of more freedom, hehe.
So for instance, I want my calendar or e-mail to be stored somewhere, I don't care where - hence in the cloud. But I want the data to be under my control. I can pay for a reasonable guarantee that the data will not suddenly disappear. I can pay for someone else's piece of code to be run against my data, but otherwise I want that someone else to stay away. Companies can earn money by providing useful pieces of code, and even managing stuff for people who absolutely don't care about how this stuff works - but we do need to reverse the idea. It should be arbitrary code run on demand against our data, not our data feeding someone's machine.
Don't be. I think it was very well said, and while I've been a bit of a Free Software hippie for a while it keeps hitting me over and over just how far ahead they saw.
But the GPL basically forbids that.
I think it's important to note that in-house voice recognition is simply the Nth iteration of a general trend away from privacy that has been going on for many many years.
Eg: Our emails are scraped, and use to target ads. I see ads for specific things that I've only mentioned as a 'reminder email' from myself, to myself. SMS can be read as well, at least on Android if the user allows it. And even if you are very careful to avoid this (using iMessage, hosting your own email, etc), the people you interact with may be sharing this info. People upload their contacts to random services, and if you avoid doing that yourself, your friends may not. These are just trivial examples in the wild now which don't include state-level surveillance (legally mandated ISP web history tracking, license plate tracking, etc).
I'm happy that having a microphone always listening in your home is bringing so many people around to this idea that maybe having companies know so much about you isn't an OK thing. But another part of me feels that short of strong privacy laws, the privacy ship sailed a long time ago.
I think things could change quite dramatically if there was a moral panic around it. A few more scandals - something personal that the voting public can really relate to, rather than something vague and distant and somewhat comforting to some people, like mass surveillance.
As someone who used to write code for snowplows, they're also becoming quite centralized. Location, plow settings, salt per mile/km usage and other values are tracked in real time from the municipal office. Municipalities are increasingly strapped for cash, so performing real-time data analysis on their services can save them quite a bit of money in the long run.
Until I can set the endpoint this thing talks to[1], It ain't living on my LAN.[2]
[1] This, of course, implies an open source server I can host as well.
[2] Maybe it is just me, but I choose to leave my phone at home fairly often. It is a bit of a luxury for me, and I find I enjoy the feeling when I'm not contactable. Things like this are closer to furniture, and don't take an affirmative "opt-in" (like taking your phone with you) to be functional in their role. So when my brother's kids come over, I'm opting them in. When a visitor is wondering around half-awake looking for the coffee, I'm opting them in.
I realize some others seem to feel that this is identical to cell phone surveillance (but if so, and if you always have your phone, why bother with this?). I don't, and I'm not alone. The law recognizes major distinctions between 'home' and 'not-home'; I mention this only as a demonstration that the distinction is a clearly rooted one for a lot of people.
When I was younger, I wanted the same thing. To be kind of like Tony Stark in Iron Man, with all the convenience and power that future technology seems to promise.
But now that I'm old and boring, I'm perfectly happy with my non-futuristic life. We still have an iPhone 3G which we use as an iPod around the house (which we plug into our speakers the old fashioned way, by plugging one end of a headset cord into the iPhone and the other into the speaker's AUX jack), and we have our laptop computer which we use for facebook and reddit.
And that's the most "futuristic" technology I care to have. I don't plan to buy a VR headset. I take notes with a pen and paper when I'm not at my computer. We still write our grocery lists down that way and mark them off in the store with a pen.
It may be boring and un-futuristic, but it gets the job done just fine, and I really don't have any complaints. I'm probably in a tiny minority on HN though.
I still want to be like Tony Stark, or captain Picard. I want the cool future stuff. But I came to two realizations - a) it's always cooler in the movies than in real life, but b) even taking that into account, our future sucks compared to theirs. In the movies I like, technology was about empowering people. They were tools. Today, more and more the products are nice looking but barely functional, and sport the minimum subset of features that can be sold to the lowest common denominator.
So take Google Now. Does it recognize voice? Yes, quite well I'd say. Would it be a problem for Google to let you hook up your own actions and data sources to the system, so that you could make yourself a Star Trek environment with a spare tablet attached to a wall? No, it wouldn't. It's an obvious feature. A feature which they - and pretty much everyone else - refuses to provide. Why? Because fuck useful. Lowest common denominator doesn't need that.
[0] - I'm tired of buying shitty hardware. When I change the phone, I prefer to shell out for a top-of-the-line model to be 100% sure it will work fast and stay ahead of the bloat. I learned it the hard way with my first smartphone, which was barely powerful enough to lift its own OS - and trying to connect it to Internet always ended up with having to pull out the battery. I was stuck with it for a couple of years. A smartphone is something I use quite a lot every day, and even little frustrations accumulate.
How does source being available tell you whether your device is secure? Are you auditing it, then building and installing the firmware yourself so you know that the binary matches the released source? Are you doing the same with the bootloader?
How far are you willing to take your paranoia?
A little while back, there was a kickstarter for "The Ubi"... basically as you describe.
A non-mobile v0.1 Ziggy [Quantum Leap] where you'd plug it in and ask it generic questions. "Ubi, what's the weather?" and the like. IIRC, the Ubi is slowly but decently chugging along.
However, your questions on security are valid.
Adoption of this tech will hurt general privacy. Find me a home where there isn't an internet enabled microphone or camera. Even if you are security conscious, are your family, friends, coworkers and the people you are near?
Google's entire business model and value as a company revolves around their ability to maximize the accuracy of their consumer profiles. They have no incentive to do anything other than maximally invade privacy. A device like this from them is even creepier than the Amazon Echo. While it's not released yet, I don't see a disable microphone switch on it either. At least the Echo has that-- though I imagine most users would forget to use it.
The defenders will say "but it only listens when it hears the keyword!" What assurance do I have of this? How secure is this device? Is the keyword recognition performed locally or remotely? What is the definition of "listen?" I'm guessing that like glass the privacy policy will allow them to collect everything.
Google cannot sell advertising based on my eyeballs if I won't use Google Search, block ads, avoid Google Maps, and download video via yt-download vs. watching it on the far-less-convenient YouTube website or application.
Google have lost me to search, and several other products, for precisely this reason. I don't know the segment of the population I represent, but it is a segment.
A US Department of Commerce survey release this past week reveals that 20% of the population consciously avoids online activities already due to privacy and surveillance concerns. This isn't fully attributable to concerns over Google (and that almost certainly poses a subset of those dissuaded), but it is a surprisingly large effect of privacy concerns.
The trust factor you mention is a huge one. Cognizability is a wonderful word I've run across recently (from William Stanley Jevons' discussion of money). It refers to the ability to instantly and unambiguously recognise a characteristic or trait. Electronic devices lack cognizability of privacy.
Glass didn't do so well as I recall.
(Privacy IS security. There's not really a distinction.)
citation needed.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/05/13...
"Nearly one in two Internet users say privacy and security concerns have now stopped them from doing basic things online — such as posting to social networks, expressing opinions in forums or even buying things from websites, according to a new government survey released Friday.
This chilling effect, pulled out of a survey of 41,000 U.S. households who use the Internet, show the insecurity of the Web is beginning to have consequences that stretch beyond the direct fall-out of an individual losing personal data in breach. The research suggests some consumers are reaching a tipping point where they feel they can no longer trust using the Internet for everyday activities."
More: https://www.ntia.doc.gov/blog/2016/lack-trust-internet-priva...
However, I am totally willing to use cloud-based voice recognition software, because the machine learning clusters required don't fit in my house. Sure, you can run basic voice recognition software on a server or a laptop. But that only gets you maybe 80% accuracy if you're lucky. There is a huge difference between 80% and 98% accuracy, it's the difference between using something every day, and turning it off after a week of frustration. (I've been there myself, I tried building my own voice recognition system for home automation.)
But I think that's really the only packet that needs to leave my home network. I hate that my Philips Hue bulbs need an internet connection to work.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-a...
I want to be able to control my Apple TV with my Google Home device.
I want to be able to control my Phillips Hue and LiFX bulbs.
I want to be able to build my own custom home automation server endpoints and point my Google Home commands at them.
I want to be able to remote start my car with a voice command.
I want to be able to control my Harmony remote, and all of the devices connected to my Harmony hub.
I want to be able to access my Google calendar.
I want to be able to make hands-free phone calls to anyone on my Google contacts.
If my grandmother falls, I want her to be able to call 911 by talking to the Google Home device.
I want to be able to ask wolfram alpha questions by voice.
I want to be able to have a back-and-forth conversation to arrive at a conclusion. I don't want to have to say a perfectly formulated command like, "Add an event to my calendar on Jan 1, 2016 at 2:00 pm titled go to the pool party". I want to be able to say, "Can you add an event to my calendar?", and then answer a series of questions. I hate having to formulate complex commands as a single sentence.
I want to be able to have a Google Home device in each room, without having to give each one its own wake-up word. Just have the closest one to me respond to my voice (based on how well it can hear me).
I want to be able to play music on all of my Google Home devices at the same time, and have the music perfectly synchronized.
This is my wish list. I am currently able to do more than half of these items with Amazon Echo, but I had to do a bunch of hacking and it was a pain in the ass.
If Google Home can deliver on these points, I would switch from Amazon Echo in a heartbeat.
> Please, please, please be a completely open, extensible platform...
That's one. The second one is, please make it self-hosted. No cloud bullshit.
I know I'll probably never live to see the second one coming true.
You could build this on a pi with a mic, speakers, some foss stt and tts engines and some basic training data. But it'll suck.
Just the other day I was looking at CMU's Sphinx project for speech recognition. It seems quite capable, even of building something like this Google thing, but I haven't tried to actually use it.
Large-vocabulary recognition probably needs something better than a Raspberry Pi... so, just use a more powerful CPU.
Yes, Google has an incomprehensibly enormous database of proprietary knowledge and information. Good for them! If we want to build a home assistant that doesn't depend on Google, we'll have to make tradeoffs. That doesn't mean it has to suck.
Is it PocketSphinx?
I was mostly interested in automated transcription, didn't look much at the live recognition stuff.
I'm not buying you couldn't make a decent, self-contained, off-line speech recognition system. Sure, it may not be as good as Echo or Google Now (though the latter does suck hardly at times, it's nowhere near reliable to use, and it doesn't understand shit over a quite good and expensive Bluetooth headset). But it would be hackable, customizable. You could make it do some actual work for you.
Oh, and it wouldn't lag so terribly as Google Now does. Realtime applications and data over mobile networks don't mix.
I agree. It's not a problem of technology, it's a problem of incentive. There's no money in developing self-contained, off-line speech recognition system, unfortunately.
Nonsense. Self-hosting is highly valued in the enterprise sector. But we're not talking about the sort of products that could be sold to consumers for a few hundred dollars here.
That's a key limitation, though.
But we're getting close to the point where you can do some of this. For example - http://arxiv.org/pdf/1603.03185.pdf - LSTM speech recognition running on a Nexus 5.
The more serious problem with this is that it's going to be expensive -- and somewhat wasteful. There's a lot of pressure to keep consumer devices as cheap as possible, and the cloud is an awesome way to do that. Having shared cloud-based infrastructure for the speech recognition as opposed to putting it into every device (even though it's only used for ~5 minutes every day) is probably a lot cheaper. Consider the hardware in an Amazon Echo:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Amazon+Echo+Teardown/33953
256MB DRAM and a TI DSP: http://www.ti.com/product/dm3725 with a single Cortex-A8 core (about $23 + a smidgeon for the dram)
vs. a Nexus 5 (2GB DRAM, 4 core 2.2Ghz Krait 400) -- the N5 has roughly 8x the DRAM and compute of the CPU in the Echo.
Would you pay an extra $150 for a LocalEcho that still had to send most of your queries to a search engine for resolution, or to a cloud music service for music? (You & I might, but most consumers wouldn't.)
> That's a key limitation, though.
Why would it be? Sophisticated exchange of theorems and not essential for this scenario, is it?
A Pi, though, couldn't do well at all, just like you said. If I wanted to build a system like this for myself, I would target an HTPC form factor.
edit: Another possibility, which was explored elsewhere in this thread, would be to keep the listening device "thin", but have the ability to offload the processing to a machine in my LAN instead of one the "cloud".
Is there something I'm missing?
But, on the other side, if it's not open and you can't use any device with it... I'm going to be really upset on a personal level.
The reasons consumer IoT isn't huge yet are: 1) Disparate connection types (e.g., I could buy Z-wave, Wifi, BLE, etc and they all onboard differently) 2) I can't choose which device I want to use with which platform because of politics.
Some of these devices (thermostats or security systems for instance) aren't impulse buys. If I have a Honeywell thermostat, and Home doesn't support it, I either buy a new thermostat or don't buy Home.
That's a crummy choice for a consumer.
I rather suspect that the knowledge graph it uses is a rather hefty dataset. Probably not suitable for a home installation. And how would you keep it up-to-date without the cloud? Would you have it scrape websites and consume feeds itself?
The more important aspect of it is fixing the problems with said knowledge graph. For instance, Google doesn't have the data on the public transportation in my city. I could easily write a scrapper that would fetch me the bus/tram timetables - but there's no way to integrate that source of data with Google Now. It's one example, but in practice Google's knowledge graph is pretty much useless for me. At best, it can answer me some trivia questions sometimes.
Let me introduce you to PuSH: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PubSubHubbub
> Initially, Google says that it will not be creating APIs for Assistant and Home and that as such, any integrations with services and other devices will have to come from Google first. This approach is a contrast with the Echo, which is designed to be extensible.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/05/google-assistant-and...
Dreams = crushed :(
1. What's the name of that film that came out around the time of Jane's birthday party, the one with that guy in that I always confuse with Adam Sandler?
2. Where can I go for lunch and sit outside in the sunshine?
3. Play me some music that I'd like but nothing too recent.
I think it will mostly deliver ads.
1. Train Google Home to recognize Amazon Echo's voice as its owner.
2. Train Amazon Echo to recognize Siri's voice as its owner
3. Train Siri to recognize Google Home's voice as its owner
4. Kick start some kind of endless loop between the three of them.
By owner I mean the voice that it's trained to respond to (not in an authentication sense). See [1] and [2].
[1]: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
[2]: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/83995/20150913/ios-9-inclu...
--
1. http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercl...
2. It's rather amusing, but IBM has a ton of really smart people making cool stuff, then a ton of marketing people seemingly pitching at someone other than the target audience and making it sound dumb. If you can wade through the marketing BS, Watson is very cool.
And though I can't see any personal uses for such a device, he swears it has changed his life, and the only thing I believe he does with it is tells Cortana to play Van Halan first thing when he wakes up.
But I guess it's not an impossible technical problem to train some machine learning algorithm to classify the voices and the conversation in the room and detect typical behavior patterns of a crime and be it smoking weed with friends.
This is pretty much my usage at the moment with the Google Assistant. I tried it this morning for the first time. I sleep with my tablet on the bed next to me (I have a very big bed and a very small room, so I use half of my bed as a makeshift shelf). I woke up and went "Ok Google, play me some music, please" and then I gently woke up with the sound of whatever I had in my library.
Then I went to take a shower and realized that voice commands are really super useful for that situation. I used them to change songs or tell Google to play me different songs.
The only annoying thing at the moment is that the microphone input seems to be calibrated to a much higher volume than conversational voice so I end up shouting "OK GOOGLE" multiple times to get it to register and I'm pretty sure my flatmates aren't thrilled at that idea.
Freebase was a large collaborative knowledge base consisting of data composed mainly by its community members. It was an online collection of structured data harvested from many sources, including individual, user-submitted wiki contributions. Freebase aimed to create a global resource that allowed people (and machines) to access common information more effectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freebase
Google is using a lot of data collaborative collected data from closed Freebase and Wikipedia without giving it back.
What are you doing with that ?
- https://developers.google.com/freebase/#freebase-rdf-dumps - http://wiki.dbpedia.org/ - http://webdatacommons.org/ - https://dumps.wikimedia.org/
"[...] and manage everyday tasks"
What exactly do we want to automate at home? I think this whole home automation and smart home stuff is complete bullshit. Obviously there are some nice things, like "play me song xyz", but IMHO it is completely oversold. There are just not that much things to automate at home.
And this does not mean that I think 640K are enough memory for everyone.
My friend's house turns on the front porch light when he gets home, auto-locks the front door if unlocked for more than X minutes, alerts of outside doors that have been open for more than X seconds, dims the lights when he turns on the TV, alerts him when his wife is almost home (she hates that), yells at the dog if he goes into his office, and a hell of a lot more. That said, he's logged dozens of hours getting everything working.
So the motive of your friend is security for himself and surveillance of his wife.
The motive of cloud home automation stuff (e.g. Homeseer) is surveillance of its customers, e.g. your friend.
It is like turtles all the way down.
This is my favorite one
* order more $thing
* schedule an appointment with (doctor|vet|dentist)
* start the dishwasher at 4 P.M.
* turn on the oven when I get home
etc. Just because you can't think of how it will benefit you doesn't mean it's bullshit.
- grocery list:
So some kind of Todo list. But you can do that with your mobile computation device, or just take notes physically?
- order $thing:
I do not think that humans need more convenient buying-experiences than what is already there (think Amazon, food-delivery services, etc.). I guess most people want to _see_ what they pay for and look up specific apps?
- doctor schedules:
The scheduling problem. Maybe I am out of touch, but I would write an e-mail and/or call?
- dish washer cron:
Ok, I do not get that? Why would you want to schedule a dish washer job for a specific time?
- turn on the oven:
Yeah, but there is surely a UI for the oven, that has the functionality to turn on the oven (seems like a core feature). If it's really oldschool, it has a button that one may press (or a slider). That may seem inconvenient, so it may have a web-ui. However there is NO reason whatsoever why it should be connected to the "cloud".
You could use your phone or take notes on paper, but being able to make a note that i need more flour the second i reach for the bag in the back of the cabinet is significantly easier.
- order $thing
Again, you might not think so, but instead of just making a note that i need more flour, i'd love to be able to just ask for more flour and know it will be my "normal" brand and will be here in a day or 2.
- dish washer
Because it's loud, uses up hot water, and at least I often forget to start it until it's too late. I'd love to remember "oh shit i forgot to start the dishes" and just call out to have it go (or say to start at 1am when i'm asleep).
- turn on the oven
Again, in a perfect world i'd love this ability. I start on dinner and can just ask the oven to be at 425 in 15 minutes. Nobody is asking for it to be connected to the cloud specifically, but if it is and is secure i'd have no problems with it.
Plus... An API to remotely turn on your oven is really dangerous if it isn't completely secure. I don't think I'd trust any IoT company to make one I'd have in my house.
Solutions that solve the wrong problem are not solutions.
In the dishwasher case, sometimes i'm forgetting, others i just want it to go on at a specific time. Sure, I could fiddle with the current method of a button that adds +1 hour wait time when pressed (and doing math in my head to figure out when 1am is...), or it could have yet another clock i need to reset when the power goes out and i could schedule it via time, but those are clunky and have a poor interface.
I don't want my washer going on it's own, we often load it as much as possible before turning it on to avoid wasting electricity and water, that means it may sit there a few days 70% full waiting for a few more dishes before we start it. And if electricity is cheapest while i have guests over, I don't want it running then (as it's pretty loud and front-and-center in our house). Also dishwashers have a bunch of settings (most of them i believe useless, but they are there anyway). Being able to tell the dishwasher to turn on tonight when i realized that i forgot to start it right as i'm going to bed would be convenient.
It's not revolutionary or anything, just a small nice-to-have. Just like how having a connected thermostat has made it nicer to be able to adjust the temperature from the couch or bed, and how having "smart" light switches makes it nice to turn on the fan or turn off the porch light without having to get up. Nothing that will change the world, but each one is a small improvement in my life.
The alternative is to crank the TV up to hear it over the dishwasher or start the dishwasher in an hour after your show is done - but that's easy enough to forget. It's a very real scenario.
As for the pre-heating the oven. Maybe I'm at my desk (I work from home) and wrapping up my day. I look at today's meal plan and see I need to bake some chicken. I can ask Google Home to get the oven started while I wrap up my day.
It's very easy (don't have to get phone out or find paper) to say "Alexa, add Cornflakes to my shopping list" and then when I'm at the shop, have a live list to check off.
The timer function is simple but effective as well. "Alexa, set a timer for 10 minutes" when cooking pasta. I get so sick of getting my phone out and doing it that way.
These sound like tiny things, but they're so much more natural.
My three year old asks "Alexa, how tall is an elephant?" etc.
I'm definitely not entering a room with this thing.
1. read the news (1x per day)
2. play music (~3x per day)
3. turn on/off lights (~8x per day)
4. set a timer (~2x per day)
5. feed the cat (~2x per day... blog post forthcoming)
For me the time saving is just too low compared with the alternative of wrestling with some kind of UI, but I may change my mind if I try it out for some time? Let's see.
//edit:
And I think turning lights on/off and playing songs is a really bad example. It is like the Fibonacci sequence of programming language PR. I really do not think one goes with a PL because it has a short solution to generate the Fibonacci sequence. It is nice. But not useful.
well... its more convenient!
- laundry: separate my dirty laundry, load and run the washing machine when a laundry bucket is full enough, dry it and fold it
- same with dishes: load the dishwasher, run the correct program, put the dishes back in the cupboard
- vacuuming, dusting, cleaning windows, etc.
- fetch and OCR my (paper) mail, sort by bills/appointments/ads, automatically schedule appointments in my calendar and stage payments for authorization by me. Throw out the flyers.
That should suffice for the next 15 years.
The forth one is solved by hiring a personal assistant.
Fuck you. I did not get into technology just so we can replace one type of menial labour with the exact same thing, just a different human. How does your proposed solution scale to include the maid's household?
Sure, offline-capable would be great too, but for now just give me the damn api hooks. :s
edit: Note that i believe Echo has a pretty good API. I just don't want to talk to echo haha. I want to talk to my system.
If you wanted to use your own voice recognition and natural language processing, you could easily tie that into open source vocabulary that has been written for Echo.
But yea, what i would want is to literally take all input from the Echo, have amazon/echo transcribe it to text, and then send it to my code. Echo would then read the english response back.
I was just looking around for a custom solution to have something listening, send it off somewhere to get the text out of the voice command and then respond to keywords/contexts with appropriate custom-made actions. All you need then is to process that and read out the response.
I'm not talking about using Echo to do any complex work, i want echo to just be my middle man taking in speech and sending my program the text. With of course, a customizable wake word.
I wasn't aware of IBM Watson having an Echo or Home like device. If it matches my needs, i'm very interested :)
If you need a product like this, for the sake of your privacy, buy an Echo.
Advertisers buy the attention, Publishers sell it. Google is the intermediary that connects the right advertiser to the right publishers, and charges x%.
A simple, plausible way this might invade your privacy in a meaningful way is that your home conversations will start being factored into the ads that your shown. Knowing this about Google, I can infer based on the ads shown to you, to some extent, what you are talking about in private.
Granted, the information is incomplete, and it is a noisy signal, but it is a signal nonetheless.
And now they want to put a speaker and a microphone under their control in my home, you say?
Yeah, let's stop this nonsense.
You are also assuming that Google's policy will never change, Google's assets will never end up for sale, etc.[1]
Obviously, we weight these things differently. But calling it nonsense demonstrates either contempt for those you disagree with or a lack of thought on the matter.
[1] Sure, looks unlikely at the moment. But unless you think it is going to rival the Catholic Church for longevity, it is worth thinking about. The average corporate lifespan in the US is 27 years.
I wonder what the average lifespan is for companies that are already more than X years old, where X could be 1, 2, 5...
I'm thinking as a comparison to how the biggest increase in average lifespan for humans wasn't everyone dying a tiny bit later, it was infant mortality dropping massively.
Another interesting question would be Cohort life expectancy of corporations - that is, have corporations started in the 1990's lasted longer than those started in the 2000's? (obviously, the graph of corporations in the 2000's would have less data)
I don't know what the corresponding trend is for business ventures, but I suspect they may exhibit similar traits.
I am aware that various measures of corporate dominance are declining -- residency within the Dow Jones 30 Industrials, for example.
I don't know what you mean by "direct persons personal data". If it is supposed to mean that correlations don't reveal information that people would prefer to be kept private, either in general or specifically about my friend's results with Google ads, well, that's also wrong. I'm getting the feeling, though, that this is becoming unproductive.
My guess was that they took it back with the recent strife, or felt it better connected to the Google brand because of search and music.
Home or any other AI/machine learning driven product needs to take a much more iterative approach. With those products you start by defining your platform goals and release that. Your product gets better through invisible improvements in your backend, not in the physical thing you sell to people. It makes sense that this product belong to the same team that built Chromecast.
Amazon has what, 6 months to get more competitive on the search/trivia front? or this is going to kill it.
Speech is not a "solve it once and it works everywhere" kind of problem.
I would ballpark that Google needed to collect 10k hours of _far-field_ speech to train this to a level that was acceptable for the enormous variety of noise conditions and accents that a far-field system needs to work on. That scale of data collection takes time and a lot of trench-warfare effort.
To still be aiming for end of year seems like some serious missteps and catch-up going on.
Edit: Downvoters, please educate me on where I am wrong. Thanks.
It would be very easy to detect something fishy was going on. Even if the device was locked down and the connection was encrypted, they couldn't hide it if the device was uploading large volumes of data with no explanation.
The hotword detection (OK Google/Hey Siri/Alexa) currently happens on the device - it would be terribly inefficient to do that in the cloud. If a security researcher notices their Google Home is transmitting significant amounts of data without them using the "OK Google" prompt, that would raise eyebrows.
I don't know much on all the subjects that would converge over _the NSA storing all the audio from everyones house_ but it seems unlikely. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about though.
>Perhaps, but bear in mind that Google is a PRISM partner, whereas Amazon is not.
We simply have no way of knowing, and our best guess is that the NSA/CIA/HS/FBI gets their own backdoor private APIs to any data source they want, Amazon included.
Beyond that, there's really no difference between Google Home and a Nexus phone. If Google wanted to record all of the audio around you, they're already equipped to do so for like 50% of the population that runs Android (and there has been speculation that intel agencies are able to remotely activate cell phone microphones and listen in).
http://www.businessinsider.com/lavabit-founder-letter-2014-5
http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-its-treason-to-...
Meyer would do well to cite the specific statute that makes noncompliance into a charge of treason. Otherwise she's clearly lying to spin the actions of Yahoo for PR points.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)
Google: "Google cares deeply about the security of our users' data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a backdoor for the government to access private user data."[112] "[A]ny suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users' internet activity on such a scale is completely false."[113]
Apple: "We have never heard of PRISM. We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers, and any government agency requesting customer data must get a court order."[115]
PRISM partners' denials are, of course, standard and expected PR moves.
I can't see the hundreds of people it would take at google staying quiet for this long about being involved in giving the NSA direct access to servers. There would be at least one whistle blower on that side of things...
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-...
https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/
I find it very difficult to believe that US Federal Contracts have not swayed their levels of cooperation at the highest level.
Last time I checked, the only connection Google had with PRISM was their fiber optics being hacked by NSA. I don't recall any proof Google was actively cooperating with them.
Amazon just has my shopping history.
Google already knows me. I've basically slept with Google, so seeing me naked is just not a big deal. If Google uses that against me or gets compromised by a third party I'm screwed anyway and the transcripts from my living room will be the least of my worries.
It has nothing to do with "I should also profit from my data" but rather, I want to contribute less to Google's dominance.
Google has become very powerful--it's in the top 10 of lobby spending in the US.
Their power is tied to their profits, and limiting my contribution of one, should limit my contribution to the other.
I mean bezos vs sundar. Enough said.
What about Bezos vs Schmidt?
This can be said for any website or app you visit regularly. How deep they go and whether they act on this data or not is in question, but Data Analyst positions are becoming increasingly popular for a reason.
On another note, is there a way to just get some sort of remote microphone array (I think that's what it's called on the Echo) and set up Alexa/Google/Cortana/... directly on a PC?
The hardware is still a problem, I've tried to find microphones like the one on the Echo, but the few that seem to meet the requirements basically cost half of the Echo. I'm not particularly knowledgeable when it comes to microphones, so I may very well be looking in the wrong places.
I do wonder though how Google/Microsoft/Apple will handle there being multiple instances of their devices able to take commands. So if I say "Hey Cortana" or "Ok Google" will each device have to sort of communicate with the other to only activate the one that is closest?
That having been said, if Google chooses to release the data to the government, it has an obligation to tell us about that or it will be behaving unethically. As matters stand, however, this is just a new technology with pros and cons.
Similar to bodycams for people like teachers or police. People argue they can wear them if they like to protect themselves against accusations, until they are so widely used that opting-out is not longer an option because it's seen a sign you are hiding something.
No, as far as I know that would be incorrect with NSLs in place. Gag order and such.
This has been successfully used by companies to indicate that "the canary has died" in a surveillance order.
Do you choose them in the office you work in?
Do you choose them in the store you're shopping in?
Do you choose them in the cafe you're talking in?
Do you choose them at the bus stop you're waiting in?
Do you choose them in the transit you're riding in?
Do you choose them in the car-share you're riding in?
That element of choice can close very quickly.
Sensors will and are turning up in light switches, lights, appliances, stereos, video and audio systems, advertising displays, and more.
Unless such devices are required, say, by law, to comply with some form of universal off switch.
Both have to be specifically placed, however. Common devices with location tracking and audio monitoring capabilities already exist. They can be targeted for monitoring, and to the best of my knowledge, are.
Some are actively monitoring activity on an ongoing basis -- e.g., someone's voice-enabled TV sets. I really can't even keep up with all this crap any more.
All of which is moot to the original point: that people can choose whether or not this equipment is in their environment or not. Effectively they cannot.
Absolutely. Just pointing out that we're on the path to adding always on cloud connected far field microphones in every other house in the country. Good luck "choosing" to not be listened to. The largest danger is self-censorship. "What is the risk somebody is listening to non-correct speech? I'd better watch what I say and not formulate non-correct speech."
Thank you.
Reminded me of a humidifier for some reason - http://www.amazon.com/Aromatherapy-Essential-Oil-Diffuser-co...
Personally, I feel we need to use less technology in everyday life.
If they can't get the third party vendors to get their Google Cast integration up to the reliability level of a Chromecast Audio, they should stop supporting this.
I would love for there to be something out there akin to what echo has, with programmable skills, and hopefully able to put things onto a chromecast. I would have a lot of fun tinkering with that.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160518172856/http://home.googl...
Remember, it's made by a company that thinks it's appropriate to put text ads on the first spots of your search results, in increasingly confusing ways.
Do they give them away for free?
Anyone else have privacy concerns?
It reminds me of webcams in laptops. Overnight it appeared that manufacturers were including them as a non-optional component. Yet it never seems to be something the public really cares for at all.
Google Home isn't the first entry into this market (Amazon Echo is a thing), and neither of those is the first network-connected microphone-bearing device in people's homes that might be targeted, so its kind of weird to focus on this particular product for that question.
Home automation doesn't need nor should it require signing over your privacy.
The interest in this on Google's side is on having a permanently connected 'listener' on your network to identify which devices you're running and when. If it's running through your WiFi network, Google is going to know about it.
I'm hopeful the Android platform will make this a better device.
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That’s all we know.Compare to some of the other devices from previous years, and competitors:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=google+nexus+sphere&tbm=isch
https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo&tbm=isch
https://www.google.ca/search?q=amazon+echo+short&tbm=isch
It sort-of looks like a cheap air freshener. Maybe it'd grow on me, but I kinda think it is ugly.
Someone should manufacture a range of "tchotchke skins"
https://www.google.ca/search?q=tchotchke&tbm=isch so it could sit on your counter and look like something that you'd be happy to mix in with the rest of your decor. (angels, golden lucky-cats, porcelain hands, googly-eyed-wooden-owls https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/78/b5/80/78b580270...)
Anything to stop that thing from lookling like a plug in air freshener really.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00X4WHP5E
Is there going to be a patent war?
Doing that would be a great gesture.
As it stands, I would be wary of purchasing one of these. How long would it last before Google tires of it?
When viewing source I initially thought 'great, a nice clean HTML page'... after all, it's just 3 images fading between each other and a simple form.
But then at the bottom we see Angular, Angular Animate, Angular Scroll, and a fourth Main JS file. Way to set an example Google.
This project relies on that fact.
I wish there was a text box:
Please never send me the latest updates about Google Home.
What could Apple's Project Titan be if not a smart home device?
I was naïve. Nobody cares. Now they viciously support such practices. As long as that exists, I can't buy into datamining devices. And it will always exist.
The best and easiest features of Amazon Echo don't need the most difficult local support. Things like the shopping list sans buying, timers, weather, timezones, traffic, etc.
Next thing you know it's going to tell me is "Smith! Put more effort in those crunches!".
You should probably work with a trainer until your form is correct.
With Google Home, add your "everyday tasks" and voice history to this! ^^