The Echo Dot was the best-selling product on Amazon this holiday season
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
There is a lot of friction in using voice activated services. If I have a choice of typing "Weather in XXXXX zip" in the address bar vs. asking an assistant, I choose the former. Therefore, every time I use anything else but Google, I am afraid it won't recognize my command and I immediately feel like throwing that thing out of the window.
I need to be 100% sure that I will get a return on my time invested when it comes to searching or asking for information. When a Google search fails in a browser, at least I have something to bite on.
For other things such as timers, calendars, game scores, home lights, music - assistants are nice.
This isn't too difficult. I know Google is well off in this space but Alexa is pretty damn good too.
"Alexa, set my location to XXXXX." It can't do that.
Actually getting correct location details requires downloading a separate smart phone application and digging through its menus to figure out how to set the location for each individual Alexa device.
I own a smart phone, but it basically just is used to make phone calls. Hacker News is the closest I come to a social network.
Alexa gives me my specific neighborhood as my location (as opposed to my city). The thing is, I don't really live in a big city, and I would bet that most people in my city don't know the neighborhood names. For me, it's too specific.
As it relates to my city, the maps don't give common street names, but rural route numbers instead.
One day complaining to my wife, and she asked Alexa how to change her location which Alexa provided a precise answer... goto Alexa app and update this setting. As others have pointed out the app is a requirement for Alexa anyway so I don't see why you are frustrated.
Also, don't think for a second that they're lazing about and not trying to figure out how to surpass Google in the areas where they're behind.
The right way to choose between them is by looking at the hardware, and the reviews I've seen say that the Echo Dot is too quiet. That can't be fixed in software.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/All-new-Generation-improved-powered-d...
I'm an iPhone / Mac person and the Chromecast / Home combo has made me consider what a life in the Google ecosystem would look like. Not yet ready to switch but it's priming me. Then I remember how terrible an Android is for my current setups. If they solve that issue for me, they have me.
Like living in a fish tank being filmed from all angles.
Where the fish tank is placed and where that video is going is important. Details matter and trying to dismiss technology with these taglines do those details a disservice. I'm an engineer myself, I am very aware of the dangers and watch closely. Right now, for my personal calculus, the benefit outweighs the risk.
For example, one great example is, sometimes I'm watching something on my Chromecast and I want to skip a very specific amount. I can go "OKG, skip forward 48 seconds". Try doing that with the tiny track bar on your phone precisely...
You’d have to coach each person (individually) in all of those threads to delete the thread and create a new one in order to be included again, which is a crazy barrier. Even more so if the threads are work related.
I suspect Apple is in violation of federal law in this: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511
My alexa can hear what I'm saying down the corridor with the shower on and much louder.
It was embarassing
Google's products don't feel like they are designed by humans.
(Also, "OK" is a very unnatural prefix! Notice how you accidentally replaced it with "hey". I watched a 7 year repeatedly do this a couple of days ago with Google Home, concluding it was broken. Compare w/ Alexa, which kids pick up on instantly.)
Edit: OK, not accidental, apparently "hey" is supposed to work too. Not sure why it wasn't working at my in-laws house! I think "hey" is a better prefix word than "OK" (though still not nearly as nice as no prefix [try always addressing your friends by putting "hey" in front of their name and see how it goes]), so I reduce my criticism by half. :-)
We'll look back at fixed naming and wonder who ever thought that made sense.
If I want my assistant to be named Jarvis, it puzzles me why I can't do that. It would also simplify the case where multiple devices are in the room (e.g. not having to yell towards the specific target device and hope the others ones don't hear.)
Something so simple will deeply personalize the experience for many users.
I am not saying that it is not doable, it's just there are real engineering tradeoffs present here.
1. Hotword detection runs on a minimal low powered local subsystem
2. The two provided hotwords run networks that have been trained on millions of samples in thousands of different environments.
That thing is very heavily optimized. Alexa and Bixbi get far more false positives and false negatives.
If it's primarily a technical challenge that raises the chances of this eventually becoming reality.
Google has taken an absolute brilliant approach towards voice and their popularity shows. It’s a pleasure to use compared to anything else.
And it sounds incredibly stupid to anyone else within earshot. I can’t get over how dumb my roommate sounds whenever he uses the thing. My immediate thought when I hear him say “OK Google” is that Google must have told him something and he is responding with “OK” to acknowledge. You know, the way people actually communicate.
I get that it becomes natural after a while but so what? Why start with such an unnatural way to activate it in the first place? Why not “Hey Google”? (I know it is supported in google home)
Remember, people can do whatever they want with their language, and it becomes a thing even if you personally aren’t familiar with it.
Or, if it is used to pretend a command, it is used as a continuation of an existing conversation, like when you are at the doctor and he or she says “Go ahead and get on the scale” and then “OK, now sit here and open your mouth.”
The way google uses it is definitely not natural.
There is also the pause, after you say “Ok google” and it activates search for you.
Anyway, fanboys will continue to downvote I know but the whole interaction is undoubtedly awkward as fuck.
My friends are better at contextually disregarding comments and don't send any utterance that seems to invoke them to a remote server, so don't need a form of address designed to avoid false positives.
I think it's likely that three syllables just happens to be a nice cut-off point that minimizes the number of spurious activations, and that explains why everybody doing voice control uses that particular threshold to activate their digital assistant.
Heck, even Star Trek got it right way back in 1966 with its "Computer" wake word.
About the only company I can find that seems to be ignoring the three-syllable rule is Microsoft, who use "Hey, Cortana", which is four syllables. But Microsoft's always been a fan of using really long phrases to identify their products, so maybe that shouldn't be a surprise.
"Hey, VMware vSphere Home Voice Assistant Essentials Plus..."
Probably in a few years this whole debate topic will seem quant, as devices will be much at figuring out when we're addressing them than the primitive idea of a wake-word. :-)
i bought an echo dot on a whim, since it's so cheap, assuming it'd be fun to play with, but not very useful.
to my surprise, it's really handy. setting timers, adding food to the shopping list, and playing music are all super-convenient with alexa. turning lights on and off with her is fun too, although i admit, it was already a fairly easy task to do using a conventional, physical switch. :-)
But of course its much easier to require "Hey"
Amazon tried to get around it by naming the product "Echo" while making the activation phrase "Alexa" but that means people don't call it "Echo" in practice.
However I think they missed on how personal a thing it is to talk to someone. I think they should have viewed 'OK Google' as a personality that's like Google's little brother, that will ask Google for you if that's what you need or else will for example check in your diary for you.
Notice how, even in your post, you say "people talk about Google Home", but the equivalent to Google Home isn't Alexa, it's the Echo Dot.
It's possible that Google copied Baidu, which used "Ni hao baidu" [0] is the only thing I can think of.
[0]: https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning-projects/lec... (see the video transcript)
> Having to say "OK, Google" instead of just "Google" (or "Alexa") is a deal-breaker.
It's not good.
I'm not saying they should use "Google." I don't care what they use, as long as it's better than, "OK, Google."
“Now” as in “since the introduction of Google Home”. (On phones prior to Google Home, it only supported “OK Google”.)
alexa and google home are still super-primitive, but as they get more sophisticated, thinking of them as people will seem like the most natural thing in the world.
(i do get where you're coming from, but i think it's a perspective that only makes sense for (1) the very technical and (2) is not long for this world.)
(it's sort of analogous to how originally in internet search engines, you had to put in very precise search terms, and unsophisticated people would just put in some sort of sloppy natural language query. but as the search engines got smarter, the precise stuff got ignored and sloppy was the way to go.)
LOL. That is one of the reasons I hated Alexa. She turned on when a podcast said something about her, the TV ad came on, we talked about our friend Alexa and when anything sounded kinda like Alexa. Ended up changing it to Echo, which worked a bit better. Amazon was out of the question when order to much from there and so common conversation have Amazon in them.
I enjoy Googles way more and no one I know still uses "OK, Google" its much simpler and rolls off the tongue to say "Hey, Google!". First world problems after all.
>Google's products don't feel like they are designed by humans.
And Amazons does? Over half of the stuff I said to Alexa comes back as "I don't know how to help with that" even simple facts. Alexa seems to be very limited in researching and answering. While google has there powerful search engine. Also with google I can build shortcuts for even the most advanced, long winded commands and wrap it into "Hey google, protocol seven" or whatever I want.
At one point the conversation triggered alexa and i had to apologise and quickly pull the plug
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2R0NSKtVA0&feature=youtu.be
not designed for humans! i rest my case.
For something like a voice interface to become second nature, you need to deeply trust that it'll do what you expect. Work with screwdrivers enough and they become an extension of your hand.
Voice activated devices, even Google assistant, are far away from the reliability/robustness we expect from a reliable tool. Therefore, they are not tools yet.
Music is the universal killer app of these devices. My relative after talking to me basically chose the dot because of the above reason.
For myself, thats what I ended up using the dot for in my house. Music, weather, traffic & turning off some lights.
It can also stream to a bluetooth speaker.
First off, while this may be true, we don't know yet. What this article says is that "Dot was the best selling product on Amazon". Google products aren't on amazon so it's not really a comparison. We'd have to get the numbers from Walmart and Target.
As for AUX out, while I agree it's a shame, I don't think it impacts as many people as you imply. Chromecast by itself is also amazing value and it brings even more value to the Home mini as you can easily send netflix, youtube and music to your TV (which is connected to your sound system).
While you can get away with the music, for the other actions, you would need a fire stick too.
My mother in law does not use a computer or smartphone at all, but she loves to use the Echo because it provides a familiar interface (speech) to services she would use (music, weather, casual information search).
And interacting with voice assistants is a two way street in my opinion. They will get better at understanding what we want and we will adapt to phrase our questions in a way the software understands.
And while I doubt us folks would use a voice assistant to query a solution for an error message on stackoverflow it still provides a convenient way to control music, lights, shutters while our hands are occupied in other ways (cooking, drawing, crafting, ...)
We have an Echo and to this day we haven't found any use for it.
Talking is broadcast and most of the time we search stuff for ourself on mobile. Also, it often simply says it has no answer.
I briefly played with the webhook in ifttt and I think the "serverless" aws or Google Cloud could use this as a custom dash button. Instead of going to a dash button and pressing it if you run out of tide, you simply say "echo, trigger detergent" or I'm thinking with custom programming, "echo, trigger [predefined post request here that starts a series of actions]"
News.
Kitchen timers.
Music control.
These are my most popular uses.
Light seems to slow instead of just hitting a button
If the switch is within reach anyway then I totally agree that a voice command is more cumbersome than just hitting the switch
Here is our fun little project for Halloween https://youtu.be/BdbjoniAP0s
The problem I'm finding is I can train myself to remember about 5 skill names that can each do one or two things, but thats about it. I'm wondering when I write my own, if i should just have a central skill for my house. Also how did you link into the Chromecast? I have a chromecast buried in my Vizio Smartcast TV and i'm wondering how i can link it in.
I'm one of the people who bought my partner a Dot. It works very well for the things we've used for so far.
I used to believe this, and I still do too some extent. Amazon won us over with a great online experience and best in class customer service. However, Amazon is on an explosive expansion phase of expanding their business and pushing vertical integration in all corners. They are rivaling any other company out there in terms of ability to mass manipulate as well.
I have an undisclosed relationship to the man running Amazon India's fashion vertical, and it's easy to see Amazon's position rivaling Google in terms of that feeling of "Google having too much information".
In the end, as I said I still agree with you with Google having to much information (I rely on Google apps and Android to this day), and that diversifying where that information is being gathered and classified is one of the few ways of both using these handy products and impeding companies knowing more about me than I know (a la Netflix video recommendations).
Amazon is now yet another giant to be weary of.
The Google home supports natural language for most things.
I think of the Echo like a command line interface and the Google home like a GUI.
Set a timer
Set a reminder for something in X minutes
Take a voice note
Create lists (maybe could be pushed to phone via bluetooth)
Maybe some home auto stuff
You control what goes where.
https://voice.mozilla.org/data
If everyone who reads HN commits a little time to Mozilla Common Voice in 2018, we might have a non-cloud solution in 2019.
But I don't think either the Echo or the Google Home will connect to that. If you are running home assistant on a raspberry Pi, you could probably build that right into your own speaker.
I played around a bit to see if I could put together a standalone timer but didn't get very far.
Probably has something to do with being on the market first, but developing a skill is a much better experience than it is with Google (imo). I think that's a big reason why.
I've developed a number of skills for some big companies, and I'm fighting Amazon right now about getting my open source one published (https://github.com/m0ngr31/kodi-alexa)
I am concerned about the IAM policy you're choosing - Administrator access should basically never be given out or used. I would highly recommend figuring out what your actual dependencies are and restricting the policy to just what's necessary.
If Amazon won't approve my skill (they have an issue with Kodi after the fire tv stick debacle), I have a hosted version that won't require setup like there is currently, so it's just a temporary solution.
I've switched over to Plex for most everything, but if I end up going back to Kodi I'll definitely be setting this up. Thanks for writing it.
(full disclosure: I work on Alexa, but not on the team that handles skills)
I've responded and asked to have the issue escalated and posted on the dev forums, but the support is pretty sad, despite the otherwise good documentation and developer experience on the platform.
That's hilarious because Amazon is probably the biggest seller of Kodi boxes in Canada.
Having to open a skill like an app before asking what I want Alexa to do feels completely wrong. It leads to me basically never using any third party skills.
If I wanted to open apps I’d use my phone. I want something more natural.
One question: Which sections in the kodi.cfg are necessary? I already have Kodi configured and don't want to just replace the file, or spend time changing options your skill doesn't need.
My wife clicks a photo on her iphone and without touching an additional button walks into our family room later and will ask for fine details in photos and the TV turns itself in, input sets and the photo in 4k appears.
We also have a 4k Chromecast and this is just not possible with the Echo.
But the cool part setting it up was just buy, plug in and log in and that is it. Wife already used Google photos on her iPhone.
We started with the Echo but now have switched to Google Homes and unless going to do a lot of shopping on Amazon can not see any reason to get an Echo over the Google home any longer.
That alone has tarnished my opinion of the company.
Publishing YouTube app on Windows Phone requires Google to put extra effort into developing an app for a completely new platform which I assume requires lot of engineering effort.
Selling Chromecast on Amazon probably does not cost Amazon any extra engineering effort. So, I do not believe that the two situations are equivalent.
It's fairly straightforward as these things go, but to suggest it doesn't require anything is flat out wrong.
Unless I use Chrome. Which I don't. Or Android. Which is annoying if I look at something on my laptop.
As for Android, I was fairly certain iOS at least can cast as my Apple fanboy roommate was having fun messing with the volume and pausing playback.
But it's a crutch AND doesn't allow the same stuff: If I watch a YT video, it's in my browser. No way to throw it at the TV. If I watch Twitch, it's in my browser. No way to throw it at the TV.
Maybe it can handle URLs. But if I have to copy the URL, paste it somewhere, fiddle to get to the same spot in the video ... then I can just launch Chrome and curse just as much.
(Highly ironic that the player offers the option to install a Chrome extension to open movies in SodaPlayer. For me the whole selling point of the thing would be to .. not need Chrome ofc)
Personally Recommended (due to no having zero issues using):
https://github.com/muammar/mkchromecast
https://github.com/xat/castnow
https://github.com/Pat-Carter/stream2chromecasthttps://developers.google.com/cast/
Amazon is the one banning it.
Amazon is the one stopping casting from their devices. Not Google. Google Cast is free to setup for. https://developers.google.com/cast/docs/design_checklist/
Nothing needs to be sold through Google Cast, no royalties, etc. All Amazon has to do is SUPPORT it. Or atleast allow homegrown solutions to thrive.
I agree this is a stupid 'feud' that only hurts consumers and I have my likes and dislikes for both companies but if you cannot see the difference here then I'm not sure how to help.
That alone has tarnished my opinion of the company.
They had a nice YouTube app, too. Then, just took it away. Even has casting from the YouTube iOS app.
__________________________________________
It's like deciding who gets to sit at the Cool Kids table at lunch.
It's amazing how once Google retaliated Amazon finally allows chromecast on their store (but no streaming!)
Too bad our services vanish from thin air when it happens, instead of any actual resolution.
What do you think about Google not allowing iOS or Firefox to become cast sources, or FireTV to act as a cast targetI just opened firefox up and had no issue casting from it. According to the below support thread[1] you may need to enable a flag in the about:config page. Although I didn't need too.
Does that piss you off, or are your feelings of outrage only limited to our own personal convenience?
[0] - https://developer.amazon.com/docs/fire-tv/faq-general.html
But now that Amazon purchased Twitch they removed the Twitch app from the Roku. Use to be a fan of Amazon but this is ridiculous behavior in their part.
Google already owns my browser, my mail, Google Drive / Sheets, the best single sign-in, etc.
I understand the arguments for distributing your data - this is coming from someone who's given up on that privacy front sadly. If that doesn't apply to you, I can see why Amazon could make more sense for some products. For me, I more ascribe to giving my entire life to 1-2 that I trust and attempting to hold them accountable / influence their policies.
Google is faaaaaaar from perfect, but in sum it seems like the much better option for giving my life to.
I'm looking more at how much I trust the company to not leverage the data they have to give to NSA, turn the world into 1984, etc. Apple did the same type of legal protection of personal device data as Amazon, and I expect Google to do the same if asked, which will likely happen soon enough. What worries me about Amazon/Bezos in this regard more than Google is Amazon + WaPo + Whole Foods, all the industries they have swallowed and replaced, etc.
Again, both have that concern, and in the end I'm cautious but not really expecting either to turn like that. But it's one small data point. The Chromecast hookup is much more heavily weighted in this decision, but I think the psychology behind the argument above def nudges more towards Google as well.
I'll give you a hint: First Ctrl+F "Google", then Ctrl+F "Amazon"
Still, I'd argue they are absent because they store little of the things the NSA cared for at the time, reference slide 3:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program)#/...
Amazon at the time didn't have widely used social media, personal photo or video storage, person to person chat, email, etc. The basic info input by people was already collected via all the other companies. What does the NSA really gain from the Amazon dataset at the time?
I bet if Alexa was out and the NSA wanted data from these devices, however they got the rest to agree would have applied to Amazon. I'm inclined to believe it was pretty unavoidable extortion. That said, I hope that Apple / Google / Amazon can temper assistant always on recording by not doing it, let alone sending to a server. If they don't have the data it's hard to turn over when extorted.
Still, I concede my NSA standard looks to be failed by Google. That said, Google or Alexa, they have it all anyways, and I don't believe for a second that if the government decides to use these types of devices to collect voice data that they all won't take the same stance, whatever it may be. At that point, I'll be unplugging whatever one I have any serious conversations. Heck, I already do that to be safe now.
I'd still point to the industry breadth of Amazon as a concern. Though, these posts illustrate pretty well that privacy is a lost cause for most cases, or at least one technologically agnostic within our current major choices. Noted in case the Alexa / Amazon ecosystem improves.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/26/amazon-digital-advertising-p...
"Two media buyers said Amazon showed some willingness to share more user data than Google and Facebook have traditionally — if the advertising budget was big enough."
Pretty much the only way Amazon will have significant success here (IE not just stay #3 or worse) is if it is more willing to share data than Google or Facebook.
To me, the biggest difference is Google's biggest successes (Search, Gmail, and Android) come from giving something for free in order to increase ad revenue. Amazon's biggest successes (Amazon.com, AWS) come from selling things to me and profiting from the margin.
2. It has great integration with other Google services if you're already a heavy Google user (maps, mail, calendar, Fi/GV, hopefully Keep soon...)
3. It has fantastic uses with chromecast (netflix, youtube, pause, rewind, volume, etc).
Obviously, #2 and #3 will vary heavily for people; you can probably get most of #3 if you get a Fire stick. It really depends if you're already a Google/Android/Chromecast user or not.
Amazon removing the twitch app from the Roku after purrchasing Twitch is just wrong. Also Amazon banning any company from able to sell the Google home or Chromecast in their marketplace is also a problem.
Amazon does not need to do this anti competitive BS.
However, Orwell's envisioned surveillance apparatus is ubiquitous all over the planet, no matter what nation you live in.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/70/bc/c9/70bcc9ab4c2ab6e22e29...
You're technically correct that cell phones leak all sorts of meta data that can be used for surveillance, but they aren't always listening. Voice assistants, however, are designed to be always-on and that is the key difference.
Some phones aren’t designed to always listen, but voice assistants aren’t designed to record everything and upload it, so what’s the difference? In both cases, you’d need something that goes beyond the advertised functionality.
And with Google Home Mini priced at $29, it's easy to speculate that it sold quite a few as well.
So yes, it makes a significant difference in my life, as someone with ADD that struggles with these every day tasks. Maybe the delusional one is the person that thinks their particular perspective is the only one.
That is basically what you are saying here. We both agree, it will tell you the weather, your commute, and play some music. Those are the things you grew tired of, but many people have their entire homes wired to these devices (me included). I don't use them daily, I use them hourly at home. It runs my sprinklers, lawn mowers, vacuums, lights, alarms, timers, starts my car, on and on. You have to invest in things to get the most out of them.
Because when anyone talks about "investing" in a wifi lawnmower, or any other consumer gadget, I think they're seriously misusing the word...
Getting used to the idea of home automation as investment, as opposed to just business automation is something that older folks are going to have to come to grips with. But, like, I have Hue lights at home, I have to be on my wifi network to control them (Hue Pro, not the Philips app, because I like my presets)--say I bought one of these and saved a couple minutes a day just doing that, what's that worth to me? Can I put a dollar amount on it? What's the ROI?
(I got one for Christmas, so I guess we'll see.)
But this is also why we as software developers are valued: our time creates capital in a way that many (most) other professions do not.
That said, I always dreamed of one, as a kid, who had to mow an acre. But as an adult, its clearly not the best option. Stop calling it an 'investment'.
By the way, why do you /have/ to mow 25 times per year? Is that an actual requirement of some sort or really a personal preference? I live in central Europe (Berlin), haven't mowed a single time this year. Doesn't look particularly classy but it's not a jungle either...
Perhaps I just need to grow a different kind of grass?
Imagine not having to chop wood for your fireplace. Wouldn't that be amazing, to save such time? The natural gas and or electricity company is going to learn something about your lifestyle.
Imagine if you could tap your smartphone and easily get a taxi. That seems like it could be extremely useful. But then the company is going to learn something about you.
Imagine ordering a pizza or other takeout and giving them a form of payment other than cash. That'd be super convenient, not having to only carry cash all the time and being able to order online. But then the company knows something about you, such as what food you like to order and when.
Imagine buying a car from Tesla or a dealer and getting it routinely serviced. Of course now they're going to know how many miles you put on it and they'll learn something about you from how you treat your vehicle, the condition of its interior, etc. The gas station and charging station too, is going to know how often you fill up. But geez it'd be amazing if we had automobiles.
Imagine if we had trains, airplanes and buses that could haul large numbers of people very efficiently. That'd be pretty cool, what a hassle it would save not having to walk or ride a horse for 1,000 km. Of course, then lots of companies and government agencies are probably going to learn something about you every time you purchase a bus ticket, every time you get on a plane.
Imagine going to the blacksmith, the store, or Amazon.com, and ordering cookware and not having to craft your own. What a staggering savings of time that would be. But then the blacksmith might learn something about your lifestyle.
I don't see much creepy about what the parent said. It's a concentrated form of the types of technological productivity gains you're using on a constant basis in modern life and throughout your day, and humans have been using since the beginning.
Nearly every single thing you touch on a daily basis that is made by people is conceptually similar to what the parent is doing in terms of boosting automation / productivity. From using a pencil you bought at Target to the drink you buy at the convenience store, you're doing the same thing, and they all involve some trade-off (most of which are entirely meaningless).
> But then the blacksmith might learn something about your lifestyle.
But once the blacksmith has sold me the pot, that's the end of the data-exchange. He doesn't receive a continual feed of data about my usage of the pot. Maybe I'll go back five years later to get the pot repaired; that'll be a surprise to him. Perhaps he'll ask how I broke it, and I can fib to him.
Home automation is a great convenience and time-saver. That's not the concern. The concern is that megacorps are in the loop and are monetizing our lives.
An Amazon Echo should in an ideal world be able to operate just fine on a LAN without an Internet connection, or with just a web-server front-end for the owner to use. Just like my wifi AP or my weather station.
Alexa hears: Mow the cat.
Sprinklers - What on earth are you voice controlling for? Just get a box on a set schedule a couple days a week, set and forget. I haven't had to think about my sprinklers for months, what advantage would I get by manually controlling them with voice or non? My water bill is so low right now that even just telling it not to run when it has rained won't save enough to make the effort worth while, and there are better non-voice controlled mechanisms for doing that anyway.
Lawn Mower and Vaccum cleaner - There are two categories of these, either autonomous (e.g. roomba) or manual. Manual ones offer no advantage for voice control because you literally just have to press a button to turn on and off, and you can visually see when it's full. Autonomous ones have no use for voice control because the whole point is they are meant to be autonomous. The only advantage I can think of is getting an alert when they need to be emptied/cleaned but that's better served by push notifications not voice queries.
Starting your car - Yes I admit this can be useful if it's cold outside so you have heat ready to go (or AC if it's hot).
Alarms & Timers - I'll give this one even though our Echo has completely failed at both of these properly, or required multiple attempts to give it the right time (at which point it was easier to just enter the timer on the microwave or stove, which we end up doing anyway).
TV (one not mentioned) - Echo has completely failed in this regard. We bought Fire TVs largely for the integration but imho it's just a complete failure. Each app has specific ways to interact with it that isn't always intuitive, if you leave off the app you want to do things on it assumes you want to look things up on Amazon's app store (e.g. "Play Chopped" vs "Play Chopped On Hulu" do very different things), the lag time prevents rewinding to be useful (I can't just say rewind 20 seconds because it usually takes 10 seconds for it to fully go back, usually missing the part I was trying to rewind to. It just became such a hassle to use voice properly that it's so much faster and reliable to use the remote. Even just pausing and playing is quicker and easier with a remote (or your phone with a chromecast) than yelling at the echo.
Music and Podcasts (another not mentioned) - This is another not mentioned that we have had some success with, but you still have to be crazy specific when making queries that it requires more mental effort than just hitting things with your phones. For example "play christmas music" makes Alexa say we have no christmas music, but "Play Christmas Music On Pandora" works and does what we want (we don't care what app is playing christmas music, we just wanted SOME type of christmas music).
Podcasts also kind of suck because its all app dependent. I can't just say "Play Johnny's house" (a local radio show) because Echo has no idea about it. I have to say "Play Johnny's house on I Heart Radio" before it works, and even then I can't give it a specific episode to play, it always plays the latest. So if I'm a day or two behind I can't just catch up.
Recipes (another not mentioned) - One great idea we had for it was to dictate recipes to us. We have never gotten this to work out while cooking and the best we have gotten was it to text a recipe to our phone, defeating the whole point.
tldr: Half of the things you mentioned make almost no sense with voice control vs the alternatives, the others are flaky enough or inconsistent enough that we (and many of our friends that have bought multiple echos) have failed to find a good use for them in the normal flow of daily life. For voice to be practical I don't want to do mental gymnastics to figure out the right way to word things and which apps I have to mention in order to have what I want to be done to be done. At that point I might as well pull out my phone or a remote and in 2-3 taps be done.
We got a regular Echo for the in-laws, and they absolutely love it, but mostly use it as a speaker. We got them a Spotify account as well, so my mother in law can just say 'Alexa, play Josh Groban' and it just works. They loved it so much we ordered them a tap as well so they can use it in the garden come spring.
So it all depends, personally I think $30 isn't bad even if you just use it as a wireless Spotify player, although you'll have to hook it up to good speakers.
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2017/12/13/voice-as-a-user-inte...
Is it worth getting a Google Mini too? I’m told that it’s actually smarter. I’m going to set up my Echo so I can reorder all the stuff I hate to shop for.
We’ve been waiting half a century for “Voice as a User Interface”. Now we’re only a decade away?
The Google Home is generally better at ANSWERING QUESTIONS and providing information. Random queries that pop into your head a thousand times a day (e.g. Who starred in such-and-such movie? Who won the last time the Atlanta Falcons played the Carolina Panthers? etc).
Occasionally though, Alexa will surprise you by answering a question where Google flopped. Either way, like others in this thread, I now have both since they discounted them so low for the holidays. But for the Google, I get by with the "Mini" version... whereas I sprung for the full-size Amazon Echo because I use it for music, audiobooks, podcasts, etc and want the better sound.
I started with Echo but ended up replacing it with Google Home because I like it so much more.
Google Home still requires you to use 3rd party apps but you are forced to set up the device in a location in your home/apartment. I can walk into my apartment and say "Ok Google, turn on all lights" and not have to worry about which brand of lights turn on.
When I used my Echo Dot my brother got me last Christmas, I had so many issues with the same command.
I think of our Echo as a command line and our Google homes as using a GUI.
BTW, GH is also a lot easier for old people has been my experience.
So it is a lot easier to use and especially for kids and older people.
You can talk to the GH more like you would talk to your wife.
I think of the Echo as using a command line and the GH a GUI.
There are a fair number of people in this thread saying they prefer the dot, which is really interesting to me because I thought the home was the clear winner. Perhaps I need to give Alexa a second chance.
The big upside of the home is it has contextual understanding. “Alexa, what’s the temperature in Celsius” gives me the weather, including full day forecast (cloudy etc) in Fahrenheit. Google will tell me exactly what I wanted to know. I’ve given up on Alexa, but maybe “she” deserves a second chance.
...Then again I have a cellphone...
Sometimes I wish it had a GUI though so I could interact with it even faster..
One thing I don't find it useful for is what Amazon most want me to use it for -- to buy things. I rarely buy the same thing twice from Amazon, so I can't just say "Alexa, buy more toilet paper" -- when I shop, I generally want to look at other options, compare different retailers, read reviews, etc... which is hard to do with a pure voice interface.
Why is it ever not in your pocket?
I have two kids. You should see how they use Alexa. A ton.
Like we adopted technology in ways the generation before us could never imagine, so will the next. Never forget that we have decades of bias cooked into our souls; the mouse and keyboard being the primary instruments of UI and email being the main method of communication.
The next generation has no guarantee of using the same tools we did... and in fact is very likely to be using something entirely different that seems unproductive to us.
I started with computers as a teenager before the Mac was released. Growing up watching the original Star Trek in reruns, I thought we’d all be talking to computers by now.
I thought the same, but I also thought the computer would be a massive box somewhere on site like the Enterprise's computer
Amazon thanks you for the data points they've been collecting on your children, and for teaching your children to tell Amazon all about themselves before they're even old enough to realize the possible implications of doing so.
I have two young kids, and they love peppering the Google Home with a million zany questions that otherwise I'd have to stumble through (e.g. "Is a T-Rex bigger than a Spinosaurus?"). Occasionally random queries will pop into my head too, and it saves me the trouble of pulling up my laptop or tapping a search string out on my phone.
They're both mostly toys, I suppose. But I've spent much larger sums of money on much sillier and less worthwhile toys (it's astounding that Apple hasn't made one of these yet).
2. In my experience, understands me and responds way better and quicker than Siri on my iPhone
3. My wife and I love the Spotify integration and other little useful things like timers, alarms, etc.
Overall, it's the simply ease-of-use that keeps us using the Dot everyday.
being able to turn the lights on and off is fun, too.
I think current Echo's interface is still limited, that is why Amazon is adding screen to the Echo Spot. Shopping with voice is just plainly awfully awful.
The ultimate Alexa is going to be the one with a screen + a projector enhanced by AR. That will really cool, though years maybe decades before we reach there.
* to turn on/off the TV (for my nintendo switch)
* timers
* netflix
* music
* weather
The lighting control is great. I see a lot of people saying a physical button or switch is better, but voice control is a button that is always exactly where you are.
I live in an older house which with the exception of the kitchen and bathroom is lit entirely with tabletop lamps. Adding modern recessed lighting with convenient switches would be a major undertaking. Installing a bunch of Insteon lamp controllers took 15 minutes and pairing with Alexa was pretty simple.
Bottom line, Alexa is an I/O device just like a keyboard is. It's only useful when connected to other devices. If you find home automation worthwhile, you'll probably like the voice control Alexa provides. If you think home automation is more trouble than it's worth, Alexa probably won't change your mind.
This is one use case for lighting IoT that seems genuinely useful to me. Most of my house lighting has been upgraded over the years as part of bigger renovation projects but I had a bunch of X-10 gear at one point to handle the various lights that weren't controlled by wall switches. If current smarthome gear had been available then it would have been very useful.
I use it to listen to the radio via TuneIn, to turn lamps on and off and to set timers. That's about it really.
Sometimes I use it to convert American imperial units to metric, which is handy when converting recipes in the kitchen (e.g. "what's 2 cups in millilitres")
I'm at my parents house at the moment, my Mum primarily uses it to set timers, and reminders (e.g. remind me tomorrow to do X). Although our pet dog absolutely hates it though, which is amusing.
The problem is I would love one I could trust!
It's all proprietary, so the answer is: no.
No voice data without hotword should ever even leave the device.
Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=...
I personally haven't gone through it, but someone more interested can take a stab at it.
If you want a voice assistant you can trust, you have to build your own out of open hardware and software and run your own hosted service for it, but the thing being hacked would still be a possibility. In the end, the only way to be sure is not to have one in the first place.
Not really practical with a pinned internal CA and batched uploading.
It's not so much about looking at the payload than it is about whether it's sending anything at all and if it is, what amount. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from everything I've read and heard these devices don't really have much in the way of internal storage capacity (yet). It either has to be uploaded or discarded.
edit:
Also, voice compresses really well if you don't care about the quality. With a codec that uses <10 kbit/s (e.g. GSM-HR, AMR), the storage requirements are at most 2.4 MB/hour. A simple gate filter that cuts out quiet periods should cut the storage requirements down to only a few MB/week. A typical flash chip used to store the firmware could easily store years worth of typical household speech in the non-firmware space.
But inside the Echo? It's not my area of expertise, but I'm almost certain that there are people with the expertise that are looking for exactly that and if Google or Amazon had those built in, we'd know about it. I think we can at least rule that one out.
As for the compression, that is very interesting indeed. I had no idea you could compress voice that much. If / When they're going for 24/7 recording, this would be most likely the way to go and it would be extremely hard, if not impossible, to detect.
You can be absolutely certain everything is being recorded, if anything as a statistical datapoint to improve voice recognition.
Whether this stuff will get its way to the security services depends almost entirely on whether such services find it useful (the other relevant parameter is the country market-size, i.e. how costly it would be for manufacturers not to comply with requests).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NM4yEOdIHnc
Of course, we aren’t there yet but it’s a step in the right direction. There’s nothing like a few multi-billion dollar companies in an arm’s race to get us to the next level.
Maybe an open source version is more your cup of tea? First, we need good speech recognition:
They have the Amazon Show but you have to be up close and it’s only in one room. I want my digital info/queries to be seen and accessible by just looking up wherever i am in my home.
Otherwise, we can imagine the next headline: "The Echo Dot was the most-returned product on Amazon this post-holiday season."
I bought one because it's a useful companion to my Echo. /shrug
"An always listening device that record all your private conversations, that may or may not have been compromised (or will be compromised) by the private and government entities for surveillance and profit purposes has been the best selling product in the USA (where people refuse to give-up rights to own guns because they don't trust the government)"
Why do you think millions of people bought an Echo Dot or a Google Home? Not from YOUR perspective, but from the perspective of millions of people that seem to see value in this product?
* Novelty value, it's a fun idea. It looks cool to buy an "edgy" product for your nephew / niece etc.
* The marketing team worked hard to direct prime customers to buy one for their family / friends as gifts.
* People are out of ideas and it's something new, novel and affordable.
I really don't think people put much thought into presents in general, if there is something new, kind of affordable and in your face, it's a given you're going to buy it.
(We bought one for a pretty tech savvy 89 year old who we thought might actually get practical benefits from IoT plugs as well as enjoy the novelty value of something that interacts vaguely like a human since he doesn't go out so much these days. But that's something of an edge case)
The Baby Boomers are retiring in droves right now. It's becoming less and less so (in the USA).
Throw in that it was mentioned in all the black friday deal discussions and it was marketed to anyone visiting amazon.com for holiday shopping... well, they were going to push units regardless.
My wife didn't like the idea of having a microphone in our rooms, now she asked me if i don't want to buy another one.
And yeah it is only used for timer, reminder, light on/off and music.
I love it too.
(Edit P.S.) Don't get me started on Unix REPLs suitable for young kids. A simple for loop still reads best in BASIC.
When she actually saw it in action and found out I had only paid $50CAD for one, she told me to get another one.
I've only had Echo since Dec 5, but we're both becoming dependent on its convenience.
I enjoy the discussions here but the reaction of this niche audience is not a good predictor of how the average person will act. Most people don't understand how internet ads work or care that much about the privacy of mundane activities. Try asking some non-technical friends how Google or Facebook make money and then once you explain how ask if they care.
People buy these products because they're useful. They don't know about or care what the vocal minority that know about tech say.
My dad takes weeks or months to learn how to use any new GUI. He's used automated phone systems for his whole life, though, and a voice-driven interface would be much easier for him.
It seems like HNers find it hard to believe that people like my dad exist, for some reason.
If that small subset is sufficiently useful to that particular individual, I don't think it really matters. The average person only uses a small subset of Microsoft Word for example.
For what uses? I've been trying VR on multiple occasions, I still don't see much use for it. Even most VR games suck completely.
These things have come a long way in 20-50 years.
Yes, many vr games are still little more than tech prototypes and the hardware still needs improvement. But if you haven't used a decent brand system and can't appreciate how much potential it has. I don't know what to say to that.
You shouldn't take vr just at face value for being awesome but also some of the potential it has in next few years. That is what's freaking awesome to me(and I'm not op)
To be honest we've been told about the potential for VR for the past 3 or 4 years at least and I still can't see any killer app to justify the investment. Yeah, it's fun for cockpit games and simulations in general, but... there's not many games "made for VR" that are really interesting. Maybe business applications will be more appealing in the end?
It's not freaking awesome for everyone. I feel like throwing up any time I spend more than a couple minutes on it.
I thought the new iterations of the Vive had fixed most problems but seems like some people are just not going to experience this thing any time soon :/
There is an outrageous amount to it, feature wise. Voice is the holy grail for a pretty large amount of the public, and it is finally there.
The setup is surprisingly unintuitive (even the simple step to connect to a specific wifi network is beyond many users, and it is notable that Google Home on the same device just does it by itself), but I'm sure the techie niece will do it for most.
For most it would probably instead be a techie nephew. Very cool that you (I’m assuming) have a techie niece though! Always great to see that sort of thing.
Most of whom, and are you sure?
> but it literally makes no difference.
If it doesn't really make sense, it does make a difference, and certain wording can actually have the opposite effect and turn people away from the cause - even if they support it, like I do. I'm a huge proponent of "girls can do anything guys can do" and not pushing gender stereotypes on girls, but the GP's very presumptive wording came across as trying really hard to change the status quo, as well as exclusionary, when it could have been done much more naturally and subtly:
> "the techie niece/nephew will do it for most"
(being inclusive of both genders when obviously only the one gender, male, really reasonably applies; doesn't tend to offend anyone and brings them over to your cause because you're not making it look like you're trying to unreasonably exclude - this is probably the most ideal choice of wording)
or even just removing the "for most" (since it's completely inaccurate and very presumptive)
> "the techie niece will do it"
But I mean, techie girls do exist, but they're pretty rare. It's like saying "if most people simply asked their plumber, she'd agree to use more environmentally friendly chemical to unclog your drain". It's like really? Literally only 1.4% of plumbers are female [1], c'mon, stop trying so hard to push your agenda, it just turns people off and hurts your otherwise very worthy cause.
But so does mine.
We have a Harmony remote, so we turn on/off our entertainment center and lights with the Echo. While I make breakfast I get my news update from it. My son plays music with it while doing little projects.
I'm actually surprised at the number of people who have them who really like them.
My guess is that most buyers are much younger than me. Perhaps they seek to be early adopters like I once did. But, values must have also changed. For example, it wasn’t very long ago that the Xbox Kinect was released and many people freaked out by having a corporation freely listen to what they say.
How do you know that?
Edit: I was totally wrong. I did an informal survey, and several people said they did have them. I just never saw them use them. Just seeing what I want to see ...
Duh, because this has been the holy grail of personal computers since forever: you ask and computers do, no questions asked, no training, nothing. It's having servants without the pesky societal thing. In any scifi story ever there is something like that.
It's the first time it really feels like AI dreams are getting real. Interpreting speech is something so human that a computer doing it feels magical; and it removes all barriers to interacting with computers, which is a real problem that most people still have. Of course regular humans (i.e. not geeks) love this technological leap.
The technology is here to stay, one way or another, that's obvious. But problem-solving types of people (i.e. geeks) are bound to see the issues, the kinks, that can ruin the dream.
For me, the privacy implications are still a big obstacle; the world is still full of totalitarian states, even supposedly "democratic" states can barely survive periodic bouts of everyday fascism. This sort of tech is a totalitarian wet dream. We need better protections, in law as well as in tech, or we'll end up under constant STASI-like surveillance in our kitchens.
Alexa, wash the dishes! Alexa, change my kid’s diaper! Alexa, pickup my kid from school! Alexa, vacuum the living room! Alexa, take out the trash!
She can’t help me with any of that.
I guess everyday people need to have lower barriers to interacting with computers, but I’m good. I like to read HN the way I would have read the newspaper. I listen to some podcasts the way I would have listened to the radio. Beyond that I don’t have much non-professional use for computers.
By that I mean, they will run a rather random route, and may or may not get to that spot on the rug you'd rather them clean, which would harken the "Alexa, clean the rug".
These things, although still very cool, seem kinda useless for anything other than once-a-day scheduled routines for keeping dirt, hair, and other messes down to a minimum.
Ironically each commercial will show the robot cleaning up a spilled mess with easy, none can actually "see" these messes. But you know, marketing.
This could probably be solved by the robot mapping floors as it sweeps them, which most already do. Results could be accessed via pc/tablet, where a user could mark specific areas as "rug", "kitchen" etc. I bet we will see this sort of feature appear in a not-so-distant future.
Oh she will, eventually.
Already she can basically do all your shopping. That's a servant job alright. And there are plenty of other things that you would typically ask of "the help", which I bet you can already do:
"send an Amazon gift voucher to my cousin on 25 december."
"call a Uber for 5pm and send it to address X to pick up the kids."
"find plumbers near me with good ratings."
"call my lawyer on Skype."
And there will be things that will likely appear very quickly:
"create a new document with template X and the following text: ..."
"make a mix of songs A, B and C and send it to my girlfriend."
"share photos of holiday X with Dad"
... and so on and so forth. As more and more things are plugged in, it will really feel like you had an invisible servant at your disposal, doing all the dirty work for you, starting with "dealing with computer interfaces" which is what it does right now. Some things are obviously difficult or pointless to automate (like sorting dirty clothes or loading a dishwasher - note how the actual washing is already automated). Some are easier, like sweeping floors with a Roomba.
It's like we were looking at the Apple II, and you were complaining that the desktop cannot write a letter and send it for you. Vocal recognition is an enabler, an interface. If the interface is successful (and it looks like this is the case), programs and "peripherals" will come.
You would probably need to edit your question to "Why do you think millions of people bought an [Amazon] Echo Dot or a Google Home [Mini]" The evidence is clear both are the lowest costing home assistant device for their respective lines. At $30 on sales this season it could make it even into many gift swaps with that budget. Just as a few years ago the Firestick and Chromecast did.
I would add...
'and the vast majority of americans dont understand why they should care about government surveillance and how that relates to installing an internet-connected microphone in their home'
unfortunately most of us in the hn crowd probably feel like there is tons of awareness about surveillance right now, but my guess is that feeling is the result of filter bubbles.
When we start to talk about government surveillance I think people go over board and start looking at IOT devices over aggressively. It not hard to bug a house, people are usually gone for at least 8 hours a day on weekdays. If I was doing an ops, it be easier to break into their Wi-Fi and infect a device that way or break into their house and just plant a bug or two rather than wait and get a warrant for their data from Google or Amazon which is time consuming and filled with paper pushing, plus the added fact that Google and Amazon have both pushed back in recent years in court battles.
When it comes to "Big Brother" you are fighting a rather big monster with zero days, money and time on its side. Even as someone with enterprise grade networking equipment in his house and a security background, I just know its a time game if you fighting the "MAN". I had a friend that was super paranoid. Enterprise gear, no IOT, custom linux router with live patching, some pretty cool stuff. Asked me to pentest him. A door left unlocked (planned to use a bump key) by his wife before leaving the house and a PoisonTap attack on a windows computer and he was pawned. GAME OVER.
I have no problem with the product category Echo Dot and Google Home sit in, and can see why they make interesting gifts, my only issue is with the surveillance aspects of these devices.
Why do I think people bought them regardless of this issue? I'd suggest either surveillance wasn't forefront in their minds, or it doesn't bother them that much.
What's interesting to me is to compare these devices to Google Glass. There was a huge backlash about Google Glass as it was obvious people were being recorded without their consent. You had people wearing the devices getting called glassholes, and the devices being banned from certain venues. Compare that to the Echo Dot. The level of unwarranted surveillance with Google Glass and Echo Dot is pretty much the same, but because one is less visible than the other it doesn't get the same level of backlash. Is there something about audio surveillance which makes it more socially acceptable than video surveillance? If a future version of Amazon Echo came with a camera that watched your actions, would that get people to see the downsides of these devices? I'm not sure.
Google has a horrific track record on privacy, but Amazon knows who their customers are, and would never do anything to violate their trust. With Amazon, you're the customer, with Google, you're the product.
I've preordered this phone, which mitigates against this type of surveillance by the use of switches for turning off hardware devices like the camera and the microphone (and by making the software stack as open source as it can be):
https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
I also currently use one of the few smartphones without a front facing camera, which only cuts out one form of surveillance but does help.
So whilst I'm putting up with a temporary invasion of privacy for now whilst I wait for the Purism 5 to be released, I'm not passively accepting surveillance from one device whilst criticising another.
This is a bug in human programming. I think it stems from far too many people not caring about potential, regardless of likelihood, and instead only caring about what happens. Similar to a gamblers fallacy in bad statistical reasoning (if it hasn't happened yet, then it won't happen), combined with a few other cognitive biases that allow a person to ignore events they don't see the direct cause and effect of.
The end result is that as long as the privacy invasion doesn't appear to be a privacy invasion, people will be okay with it. And given their past choices, they'll be more willing to be okay with the privacy invasion when it does go bad, instead blaming it on some other factor (such as one particular company caught abusing it, instead of the overall trend).
Companies are learning how to exploit this, and with technology increasing faster than social ability to handle the technology (such as why video recording and audio recording treated different legally), this is going to put a damper on the future.
With smart home devices, you put a microphone on private property that you already own, and it needs to be connected to an AC outlet. It's not a public space.
Meanwhile, most seem to have no problem carrying smartphones on them 24/7, which have the same capability of recording microphone input, but in public spaces disconnected from an AC outlet.
The faux outrage at surveillance is fairly hypocritical, if you ask me.
I never understood using this as an argument in favor of always listening devices. Just because someone is invading your privacy in one way, doesn't mean you should just open the floodgates and let everyone invade your privacy. It is possible to be outraged at both, while being required to use one or the other.
But in the meantime, since I have to have a smartphone, you are arguing that I should just get any device that listens without regard for privacy. That doesn't make any sense.
Probably because they emulate human conversation well enough to make people feel less lonely.
Considering the myriad of viewpoints shown on HN, I don't think that is a reasonable take. I first learned about Bitcoin on HN in 2010, long before it became well-known. Also, when Apple announced the Homepod, the financial press was constantly comparing it to Amazon Echo, but HN knew it made more sense to compare it to Sonos. Not every comment on HN is spot-on, to be sure, but the signal-to-noise here is better than 99.9% of the web.
I realised that I can influence this trend by participating more actively in the discussions. Hence, my resolution for 2018 is to more often post questions, rather than arguments to hopefully drive forward our collective creativity and intelligence. HN is a truly special place on the web!
I'm probably significantly older than the mean at HN, and I'm starting to forget stuff. My wife and I find the shopping list and reminders very handy compared to using the phone.
I also have underutilized smart home devices (wemo, harmony hub, etc) and Echo just got introduced in Canada at a lower price. I read that Echo has slightly better smart home compatibility than Home, so I decided to go with Echo. My friends with the Home seem equally happy with their devices as I am. I use Echo to turn on groups of lights by voice. It's great.
My main gripe with the Echo is that the skills are region locked. There are tons of skills that are only English (US) and not available for English (Canada) yet. I'm lucky that the two skills I'm waiting for aren't that important to me.
I get that there are privacy concerns, but I ended up opting convenience and functional benefit over them. I kinda see my Echo as "big brother[1] with benefits".
[1] big sister might be more accurate, given that we only have the option of a female voice with Echo
Because it was the "hot new thing". Of the many "non-technical" people I know who foolishly put these things in their homes over the past couple years, all but a few have unplugged them and thrown them in a closet already.
It was a novelty at first, but one they quickly realized didn't offer much or any advantage over what they could already do with their phones - and wasn't worth the added surveillance. My sister in particular was creeped out by how often it seemed to activate without any "wake words" being said.
Now that Amazon made them cheap enough to be stocking stuffers even for lower income families in order to expand their mass surveillance network, a whole new portion of society will get to go through the same process.
I think anyone who puts these in their home should be required to have some kind of sign on their door to let anyone who enters know that "by entering this home, you agree to Amazon/Google's privacy policy".
It can't be something they already have. It can't be something from a special interest hobby field, where enthusiasts identify deeply with every single related purchase decision. It can't be a commodity they would routinely buy anyways, that'd be like giving money.
This leaves us with purely sacrificial gifts ("to show you that I care, I have, through an elaborate mechanism too complicated not only to explain but also to understand, paid some poor kid to spend their life burrowing through dirt to find this nice stone which I now present to you"), things you know they would have bought, but didn't like the price and, most importantly, things they might like but they don't know it yet.
Echo dot and the like must be huge holiday sellers because many people who would never but one might still enjoy then, and the whole concept is sufficiently new that even a blind guess yields an acceptable risk in "do they already have one?".
And then there is of course the onegenerational aspect, a great many senior citizens who never got fully accustomed to digital screen media have children or grandchildren who can't think of much besides gadgets, perfect match.
There are 2 kinds of gifts I like to give that aren't "purely sacrificial gifts": either a book I think the recipient will enjoy (this could be a graphic novel or art book if they aren't much of a reader), or a framed print of a portrait of their kid/partner/themselves with friends/etc. (I do large format film photography and make my own prints, so obviously the latter option is not a possibility for everyone. Still, books are great)
In terms of the response to these devices... they are tough devices in that they do not stand alone, and their usefulness is really defined by who the user is.
I think what you’re reading here is a coming to grips with it. Nobody really knows what these things are good for yet... but someone’s teenager likes to listen to music with it and someone’s grandma likes to control the lights.
The same discussions were had about the “information superhighway” in 1997 :)
I absolutely agree. They also fixed the most glaring problem of the Fire Phone -- the cost.
As I write this, the echo dot is $30 [screenshot]. Over 60% of US households apparently has Amazon prime. This is a good purchase for them I think.
[screenshot] https://screenshots.firefoxusercontent.com/images/a164594d-5...
I think that's always been true, if anything it might have gotten a little better. I remember back in the early smartphone-wars days any article about the iPhone would illicit numerous "iPhone is too locked down" comments and any Android article would illicit numerous "The UI is bad" comments.
Somewhat related, the most influencial Paul Graham article for me is http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html. I try (and often fail) to apply this when responding to articles.
I can turn on my entertainment system or turn off my lights with my phone, but its a lot easier to just say it, versus getting my phone out of my pocket, turning it on, finding the app, launching the app, going to the screen to turn on the thingie, and then pressing the right button.
To play music from my phone right now, I have to swipe to Bluetooth, connect to the speaker, wait for the bloop, switch to my music app, and play. It connects automatically in my car, but not my kitchen, and even in the car, I have to hunt down overcast to play podcasts.
In almost every case, it's faster and easier to shout out to Alexa in my kitchen.
In general, I think people have a lot of tendencies to follow the crowd, or follow what they perceive as cool. I also don't think people think about the ramifications of what it might mean for the future (and surveillance).
This leads into a much bigger conversation about people's view of the future. I feel very few (percentage wise) are thinking about the next generation. There was a great interview with Jane Goodall on Startalk. She latched onto this, as well.
The whole climate change debate is so strange to me. People seem to get angry that scientists say it is caused by humans. To me, that doesn't matter at all. We are clearly warming and we should take measures to reverse it, no matter what the cause.
As Goodall said, we don't look at decisions in our time and ask: is this good for future generations? That is rarely part of the conversation (it might be introduced, but it's quickly swamped by other things).
I have a 76 year old auntie. After setting it up and explaining to her how to use it, she was able to request that Alexa play her favorite pop song from when she was a teenager and it worked.
It worked despite:
- This was her first time using it and she's wildly not a computer person
- Her having a thick tagalog accent
- It was some fairly obscure song that hasn't been played on the radio for forever
She's blown away and assumes that it costs $1000s of dollars, because nothing else works like this so it must be horrendously expensive, but no it costs about what a decent alarm clock/radio costs.
Similarly, my young kids love it as well b/c they can request music, etc.
While the primary use in our house is music, a close second would be timers+alarms (for cooking, leaving the house, taking turns, waking up, etc.) they're so quick and easy to set up.
Anecdotic question but can the Echo run a rotation, like a chore wheel?