Why are you baffled? They’re great little devices. I have two Amazon echoes.
Now that I can use my Apple Music, they are used constantly.
Voice-first devices are long overdue.
Now that I can use my Apple Music, they are used constantly.
Voice-first devices are long overdue.
Voice first running entirely on prem with no internet connectivity, sure I would go for that.
Talking to the internet? No way. Not even if I had root on the device with the source code to the OS, firmware and applications.
In the meantime, I’m “feeding” my devices every day.
Hopefully voice-first becomes a solved problem, and you’ll get your device sooner.
I believe it was made by a company called Covox or something? There were several other companies that made similar software back then.
Certainly not as well as the software we implemented to listen to phone calls in the background on wireless networks in the mid 90's. That was the wildfire project and was fun. We abandoned it, since our lobbyists were able to kick the hands-free laws down the road.
Can you explain how this is different from running your linux computer with a webcam attached?
I can also debug any code running on my machines and have some idea of what they are doing. I can also limit when they are allowed to talk to the internet and to what address.
Can't you debug code and control network access in that scenario?
For example: Nearly all cell phones check in to their manufactures website from time to time. Nearly all of them look for a header that triggers a debug mode that turns on CarrierIQ. (It isn't called this any more, AT&T renamed it to an empty name to stop people from searching for it).
Trying to find obscure functions and understand how they interact with the servers they check into can be very difficult at best. It often leads to more questions than answers, at least based on my experience.
Sure, that's not really anything that anyone disagrees with. It's the acceptance of data collection and exfiltration that is odd.
Everyone needs to draw a line somewhere, I just don't see a reason to use voice assistants, definitely not with internet connectivity and where the company keeps all recordings for some reason.
Google gives you a UI to view and delete your recordings and suddenly they're monsters.
To see exactly what outbound connections were made by which device and which app when either device was being actively used, or laying dormant?
This is how it was discovered in the UK that SmartTVs were sending viewing data....