Comment by escapologybb | Hacker News Reader

Comment by escapologybb | Hacker News Reader

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I may have posted this same sentiment on the other threads on this topic so please feel free to ignore.

I see some confusion as to why anybody would want these devices in the houses whatsoever and would like to offer an answer:

Quadriplegia.

Imagine walking into your house one day and all of the keys had been taken off your keyboard, every light switch is smooth, all of the doorknobs have disappeared, the controls on your stereo have disappeared and every other switch, lever and/or physical method of interacting with your devices had disappeared. That was what it was like to be me as a quadriplegic Geek.

Then came the Amazon Echo and its ilk. The Echo coupled with Home Assistant[1] has absolutely revolutionised my life and enabled me to do all of the things above that I wasn't able to do before. It's a pretty compelling reason for me.

Am I worried about my privacy? Absolutely. Am I any more worried about the Amazon Echo than I am about the microphone in my iPhone, television, MacBook Pro, iMac and weirdly my fridge? Nope.

As others have pointed out it's a trade-off, I could be completely private and not be able to do anything or I could accept this somewhat Faustian bargain and be able to control almost every aspect of my house. Crappy situation to be in, but there is.

There are a few open source alternatives coming through which keep everything within the wire, but until they get traction enough to be out interact with all my other devices I can't use them. Which sucks.

Anyway, hopefully this comment was helpful and am available to answer questions on any topic other than physics. I'm rubbish at physics. :-)

[1]: https://home-assistant.io/

I really hate the "why would anyone want this?!?" argument as well. I am not quadriplegic, but I absolutely want the functionality it provides.

That being said: No fucking way am I putting a closed-source, black-box, always-listening device in my house. A lot of the current home-automation concepts are amazing, but we keep implementing them in the shittiest way possible.

We really need better open, secure, upgradeable, hackable, adjustable systems for it to really take off.

I want these devices for their simple convenience...

My teenage children often leave lights on in the basement of my home. "Alexa, turn off the basement lights".

I'm also slightly afraid of heights, so I've considered installing smart LED's in the can lights in the eves of my roof. "Alexa, turn the house red."

Sometimes I get hot or cold after I've already gone to bed and I don't want to walk to the thermostat to see if someone has adjusted it. "Alexa, set the temperature to 70 degrees."

I worry about the loss of privacy but the day to day convenience is also pretty compelling.

with all the info available about rampant blanket NSA spying/access, and the content of most privacy policies, the basic operating procedure anymore should be to assume that all devices are pwned.

if you're cool sprinkling always-on microphones around your house for convenience, more power to you.

I can't do it.

You probably carry a microphone almost everywhere you go. Your smart phone might or might not record by default but it can certainly be made to do so.

> You probably carry a microphone almost everywhere you go.

That's projection; some of us value an expectation of privacy more than minor conveniences.

> it can certainly be made to do so

Except that isn't the intended purpose of the device. You still have an expectation of privacy. When you normalize an expectation that you might be recorded by 3rd party devices, the 4th Amendment longer applies[1].

This isn't about technology, "targeted advertising", or the NSA. Blinded by shiny baubles and a handful of not-strictly-necessary conveniences, you're normalizing social expectations to accept regular automated recording the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2].

Defending internet microphones because they are convenient isn't useful or convincing. Lots of things sound good when you only consider the benefits.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853560

[2] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html

It is of course a trade-off. However having accepted one, doesn't mean I should accept the other. I still prefer to have one potentially listening microphone around, than have two.

Sprinkling always-on microphones around the house that don't do much more than push a button you could push yourself.

I completely don't get it.

The annoying things is that all the use cases you just described could be handled locally (over wifi/home-nework) without Alexa being connected to the wider web.

This is all I want; give me the option to not have the assistant connect to the web but still work in a more limited capacity for home automation and to interact with the local files/programs on the computers in my home.

I was under the impression that aside from a limited realm like the wake word, it's Hard to do voice recognition without centralized processing. Some combination of faster CPU (even with network latency detracting), whatever storage requirements there are for samples or fingerprints of every possible phoneme, 0-day neologisms (okay, strictly home automation wouldn't need that part), etc. etc. etc.

>My teenage children often leave lights on in the basement of my home. "Alexa, turn off the basement lights".

I feel that this solution is in every respect markedly inferior to "Kids, turn off the basement lights." You spend more money, your house is bugged, and your kids don't learn.

Most manufacturers also have a phone app. I use Phillips Hue light-bulbs, and they're OK. Sure, there are still privacy implications (NSA can tell if I'm home or not), but not as bad as having a bunch of microphones. My daughter can also control the lights with her tablet.

Main downside: it's annoying to unlock phone, open the Hue app (which is oddly sluggish), wait for it to connect to the hub, then control a device. You can also write your own tools, for example, if you want to turn off lights when there are no mobile devices connected to the wifi (i.e. no one home).

Otherwise I agree that those voice devices have big advantages for people with a disability, elderly, etc. I can't help thinking of old "clap on, clap off" ads from the 80s.

This makes a lot of sense, but there are only so many people with these kinds of injuries, and Amazon is marketing far beyond it. It’s just s pity thst help to someone in your circumstances always seems to be a side-effect or afterthought, rather than the initial goal. It makes me think a bit of how restaurants have moved to accommodate the many people who claim various, spurious forms of gluten/wheat issues other than actual Celiac disease. If you have Celiac, your horizon has expanded, but only because of a separate group of loud and gullible people.

How are you "typing" this comment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition

I have cervical damage that could lead to paralysis. So I get that perspective. But damn, I don't see why the voice-control stuff can't all be local.

Out of curiosity have you tried using the Snips.AI integration in HA?

> Quadriplegia

Damn, and no VC went into that huge market?!

> Damn, and no VC went into that huge market?!

Tell me about it, I have money too! You make the products and I will buy them, as will other disabled people. It's a huge untapped market, it really is and only Apple seems to be paying even the slightest attention.

I'm available for very expensive opinions by the way! :-)

Your sarcasm aside, his comment extends to pretty much all persons with limited mobility, which includes the sick, injured, and elderly.

Sorry, I didn't actually address your point in my rush to be sarcastic. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

You are absolutely correct and I think that quadriplegics can be used as a kind of Patient Zero for accessibility purposes, in that if you can make a widget/service/application/building that a quadriplegic can successfully use then all those other people you mentioned will probably be able to as well.

It means you have to solve one problem involving extreme disability, rather than taking each disability, infirmity, and just plain old being old as discrete and individual problems.

Maybe. Seems like it might work though to me.

I used to work for a healthcare software company, we dealt with this a lot. In fact, it was probably our primary focus.

The problem with the sick, injured, and elderly is that they are all disabled in very different ways. Someone with a spinal injury will be operate completely differently than someone with a stroke. You'll put a control on the left side of the screen which will impact anyone who can't use their left hand. Then you'll move it to the bottom of the screen, but that will impact people with peripheral vision issues or dementia. Many solutions that work for one set of disabilities are mutually exclusive to other disabilities.

Color blindness and issues with sight are very difficult to get right (avoid blue... and red... and green...). Everything has to be big and bold and high contrast; your important call-to-action will be the same size as the link to your terms and conditions.

We built an app that required people with diabetes to take pictures of their feet. Ironically, when we went to trial, none of the patients were able to take pictures of their feet. People who suffer from diabetes tend to be a bit larger, and yeah... they can't really bend over or pickup their feet.

You can't build one app for everyone, you have to build 3 or 4 different versions that offer tailored features depending on the disabilities of that group. You need a design team that is accessibility focused, otherwise your developers are going to get a flat PNG of designs and have no idea how to implement the workflows for accessible users. It's incredibly expensive and you need talented people.

I say all this not to stop anyone from doing accessibility focused work, but just to give reasons why many companies a) do a shit job of it and b) don't spend much time on it. The sad reality is that many disabled people don't have expendable income, so they aren't really the focus of business efforts. The only reason I got to experience all of this work was because the government was directly funding our efforts.

Hi, I guess I really didn't articulate my point very well at all, sorry about that.

I think I was trying to articulate that solving one disability problem for one type of disability almost always has applications for people with other types of disabilities, a very simple example is ramps and widening doors for people in big wheelchairs. That wider door and ramp can also be used by people with other disabilities.

As you quite rightly point out there are no panaceas, there is no one application to suit everybody; that would be impractical. What companies could do more of is open up their API's so that people can solve their own problems, that way if the widget you've just bought doesn't quite fit your disability but has an open API the option exists for you to tailor it to your needs. This is how I fly my Parrot drone, it wasn't designed to enable disabled people to use but they left a little space I could solve my problems. Obviously not everyone has that ability, but with an open API other companies could create products and solutions for existing products and services.

I'm not sure I agree with you about the disposable income part of your argument, if we can work a big enough scale we can make things affordable. But to get there we need companies to spend a lot of money on as you quite rightly pointed out talent, time and treasure. And unfortunately only Apple seems to be even slightly moving in the right direction.

Also in the UK we have the NHS who has enormous purchasing power and would be totally willing to pay for low-cost devices that solve particular disability problems, that way those people don't take up expensive hospital beds. At the moment, it needs a giant amount of investment and as you also pointed out that's probably going to be governments if it's done at all.

Thanks for your perspective! I totally agree about opening up APIs, it is a relatively small task that any company should be working towards.

I don't think they were being sarcastic, were they? Or am I hopelessly naive and operating under the Principle of Charity? ;-)

/sarcasm

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Edited to add: corrected stupid voice dictation mistakes.

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