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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

Why I might buy an Echo:

- it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically free as long as the audio quality is good.

- it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would be much more socially pleasant.

- it can stream music without the hassle of bluetooth. Bluetooth streaming becomes less convenient when you don't know which of the many computers, phones or tablets were used to start the music, or where it is...

- my three year old can probably figure out how to use it

Thought I'd throw those out there, and start a "positive" thread. This discussion is overwhelmingly negative. Lots of good points being made in the negative comments, but there are some nice positives, too.

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> - it can answer questions at the dinner table...

that would be my biggest use for it, well that and as a speaker I guess. I really hope that I can swap out "Alexa" for the word "Computer" so I could feel like I'm one step closer to Star Trek

from the video: "..it only hears you when you use the wake word we chose..", so you can definitely chose "Computer" as your wake word

Now they just need a Paul Bettany voice pack.

That's pretty good, but it's second place to my desire for a Majel Barrett voice pack.

Funnily enough, Google Now's voice search was originally called "Project Majel" for that reason - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Now#History

That doesn't necessarily mean that any word is an option, just that your set of options is larger than 1.

Isn't this patently false?

If it's not listening how can it hear the wake word?

Xbox and google now do the same thing. As I understand it all the sound is filtered locally for the keyword. If it's detected, then it starts recording and sends the audio to a server to be processed.

I sincerely wonder about the effect of offloading so much of our "brainwork" to computers. No one remembers phone numbers or tries to navigate without GPS, and increasingly we depend on accesss to information so there's less practice with storage and recall.

What brain/neuron plasticity tells us is that our brains literally reallocate unused neurons for other tasks. So, on the one hand, a positive theory might have it that offloading more mundane tasks would free our brains for higher order thinking and creativity, etc.

But, it seems that we are instead finding more ways to distract ourselves with less meaningful "leisure" activity.

I don't know that we will literally start getting dumber, but it's hard to know whether we are headed in a good direction as the future gets closer to the now.

This is an old argument, it was made about writing, printing etc. The missing step is that these changes are actually optimisations because information really has become easier to access. If we were about to get transported to a pre-internet civilisation, then we would have cause to worry, but since we strongly expect to have access to computers and the internet for the rest of our lives, it is actually more efficient to spend our time learning other things.

We are getting worse at things that used to be considered 'smart' -- like information retention -- but we're better at using information because we have much more access to it now even than very smart people did in the 20th century.

>This is an old argument, it was made about writing, printing etc

One difference is that technology is replacing more and more of what we one might consider "mundane", but really involves higher order thinking that is important for creativity, critical-thinking, problem-solving, etc. For instance, the ability to draw from a broad swath of stored, assimilated, and well-understood information is a critical element of problem-solving and finding creative solutions.

Because functional intelligence to a large degree involves drawing on information and experiences to assemble solutions. This requires a "working set" from which to draw. It is not enough to simply look things up, because you don't know what to look up.

And, in general, what computers do for us that, say, simply printing or other older "technology" didn't supplant includes executive functioning (e.g. algorithmic tasks like mapping directions, etc.) Beyond simple information retrieval, computers actually solve problems for us. In fact, it's so different from something like printing that I am not sure I understand your analogy.

>we're better at using information because we have much more access to it now

Sounds intuitive, but I am not sure we have evidence for this. Ironically, though, computers are better at using information.

>it is actually more efficient to spend our time learning other things

I mentioned that this could be one theoretical upshot but, in general, I think our culture is going in the opposite direction with a tendency towards mindless distraction. Exclude tech people and reconsider your statement.

While we're being positive, I absolutely do not think Amazon would be stupid enough to shoot themselves in the foot sending all recorded data up to the cloud. I'm certain that within a few hours of release, someone will have a network monitor hooked up. Their findings will be widely known almost immediately, and this thing would be dead in the water if they were sending everything up. They know this already.

SmartTV and other home-automation-with-voice-recognition device manufacturers would like a word with you.

Actually it's the other way around. We (as consumers) should have a word with them.

This very likely uses network speech recognition, so most things (except for the wake-up word) are being streamed up and recognized in Amazon's data center (Siri, SVoice, etc all do this also)

Exactly. Casual conversation won't be sent up; only commands.

Doesn't mean the NSA or Chinese equivalent won't figure out how to hack Echo to plant a little piece of stealthware on it that records all conversations of suspects in "terrorism related" investigations. Such stealthware might get detected once or twice (though not often-- it won't be ubiquitous), but such detections will easily covered up by forcing Amazon to announce a rare and obscure firmware bug backstory. Actually, come to think of it, with proper contextual targeting, such stealthware wouldn't even need to send full conversations. Just wait for detection of "the meeting" or "the rally" and boom spend off all the info you need to effectively disrupt pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong.

The NSA could also do the same thing to a phone.

Or a laptop, or an iPad, or anything with a microphone on, really.

Phones, laptops & ipads don't have microphones designed specifically to pick up conversations from the other side of the room...

There's no way this thing has the power to do adequate voice recognition on device for arbitray speakers and queries, even given a limited domain. It's sending everything to Amazon for processing. The only thing it probably recognizes by itself is "Alexa."

Right, so it sends the commands that you give it only after it recognizes a pre-programmed word. It will likely not send up casual conversation surrounding the command, as there would not be a non-nefarious reason to do that.

False positives... But yeah they're probably rare. The real risk is that it could be hacked or national security lettered to listen permanently. The FBI has form in this regard.

I'm guessing it's Android under the covers, and I believe that Google voice recognition is now processed on the device - so it might well be powerful enough to do the voice recognition without the cloud.

I believe it's only limited command processing, and less accurate than what can be done with more powerful computers.

Edit: I missed this: "Plus, Echo is Bluetooth-enabled so you can stream your favorite music services like Spotify, iTunes, and Pandora from your phone or tablet," which obsoletes some of the below. The point on monophonic audio still stands.

Out of curiosity, are you already embedded in the amazon cloud music ecosystem? I'm one of those luddites who still has a library of mp3s—I don't want to have to figure out what I can or can't get on some compatible streaming service here. That would be a lovely feature—if it had an aux-in port or bluetooth compatibility so I could still use it as a dumb speaker. Smart TV's still have inputs, e.g.

Additionally, if I'm not mistaken, it's monophone? Dual-driver, but only one "360-degree" channel of some sort?

I am also a "library of mp3 luddites", and to me it sounds as though the Echo can do any Bluetooth audio, like a modern head unit. So you might say, "Computer, play Bluetooth audio", or "Computer, skip this track," and it would work just like pressing play and skip in your car.

This may just be wishful thinking on my part, however.

Your three year old probably can't use it. Current voice recognition - Siri, kinect, et al - all seem to struggle with child voices. Maybe something they've expressly worked on for this 'home assistant' scenario, but I don't hold out much hope. It's a general pattern that early releases of human-interaction tech tend to optimize for 50th percentile western males.

Why wouldn't they? If they're being released in the west, they're optimizing for their largest target demographic.

Children generally don't enunciate as clearly as adults. Their speech is more difficult for a computer (or a human who doesn't know the language well!) to understand.

Siri literally said "You're a baby!" to my 1.5 year old daughter the other day when she tried to talk to it.

As a person, I struggle with 3 year old voices... I think its just that they are still learning how to properly form words.

When one of my daughters was 3 someone handed an iphone with one of those apps with an animal that repeats things back. She said something with the word "color" in it, but it came out "cala."

It repeated it back (incorrectly) and then she got stuck in a loop of saying "not cala, cala!" and it repeating it back, getting more frustrated each time.

I'm guessing that was Talking Tom (the cat). My 2 year old daughter has gotten into similar loops with it several times. Usually though, it's just along the lines of, "No, YOU!"

I definitely agree. I'd use it mostly for a bluetooth music streaming speaker. And for $99 (since I'm a prime member) it's a good price. All the other features are extra and I don't know which ones I'd end up actually using on a regular basis. But it would be cool to try out.

This was my train of thought as well, but it ended in me researching mini bluetooth speakers and buying one of those instead. The features enabled by Echo are kind of cool and all, but I don't think I'd use them at all and the security stuff is obviously enough of a concern to make me think twice. It wonder why they didn't try to add a wifi kill-switch kind of thing for the paranoid who would just use it for a blue-tooth speaker

there's a button on top to turn the listening feature off

Which actually activates the stream-to-NSA feature /paranoia.

You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy for solving minor first world annoyances.

>You are trading your so far rarely touched privacy

Prove it. Seriously, don't speculate like this until it's proven one way or the other. Prove that it violates my privacy and then we will talk.

You must be joking.

Why don't you "prove" that all the metadata is not used for commercial purposes, and that metadata isn't available to government agencies.

No, you must be joking. The burden of proof in an argument has to be borne by the one making the claim. If you claim you saw a UFO, the burden of proof is on you. The burden of proof does not fall on everyone else to prove that what you saw could NOT, in any way, shape, or form, possibly be a UFO.

It is established by now that various government agencies all over the world routinely monitor web traffic, tap phones and install trojans on computers. There is no doubt in my mind that an internet connected listening device would be exploited.

So smartphone, tablets, laptops are also exploited? They all have a microphone and they're never off.

I fail to see how this is any more a possible privacy breach than my iPhone that's laying right next to me right now.

The only difference I see is that the battery of a smartphone would drain rapidly if it was constantly recording and uploading the recordings to the cloud. But you are right, a smartphone is a device used to monitor you and people whose freedom depends on that knowledge, like radical political activists are aware of that. And yes laptops are exploited. To give an example: The German government has developed a number of trojans for Windows over the years and the BKA routinely uses them for targeted surveillance.

So what you're saying is that you don't have proof of your claims. Ok, got it.

That's not proof of my privacy being violated though.

The probability that my privacy was compromised by a mandatory court subpoena is very low, hence the person used "rarely touched privacy".

Premising your argument about government agencies all over the world is argumentum ad absurdum.

You are shifting the burden of proof.

You made the positive claim, you are the one who needs to provide evidence. Until you do, a rational mind is well justified in disbelieving your claim.

This is no more invasive than Ok Google and Hey Siri.

Yes! And hopefully you aren't using them.

I certainly am not using OK Google, as shouting at my dashboard whilst driving makes for a frustrating driving experience. It just never hears what I say correctly.

I think both of them don't need to send any data to the mothership and can process this phrase on device.

For instance, in airplane mode with no network access iPhone response to 'Hey Siri' is 'Siri is not available. Connect to internet'

It would be shocking if Echo doesn't work the same way, that would be an incredible waste of bandwidth and AWS CPU power otherwise.

Rarely touched privacy? If somebody wanted to spy on me, they could use the microphone in my phone or my laptop, right? I almost never turn either of those off. Bringing Echo into my home doesn't give the NSA new opportunities, my phone is always in my pocket anyway. If I'm worried enough about Echo to avoid buying it, I should also get a laptop without a webcam and get rid of my cell phone.

> it's a speaker with extra features. This is so true! Nice speaker with add-on capabilities, definitely a plus and will probably buy!

I attempted to start a positive comments thread earlier, yours seems to have done far better so I'm going to repost my thoughts here too:

I've requested an invite.

I see it as a replacement for the ditigal photoframe pc I built a few years back out of an old laptop and have in my kitchen. Its running XP with a heap of autoIT scripts I hacked together, controlled by an MCE remote. I use it every day to listen to news headlines and check the weather while making my morning coffee and for streaming jazz while cooking dinner.

I think I'd prefer asking Echo to play these things than going through the hassle of upgrading the photoframe pc from XP.

I'd gain some functions such as easier music streaming, shopping list stuff, etc. I'd lose a few functions; I occassionally use VNC on the photoframe pc to display a recipe or twitch stream. I can do the recipe on my phone and put the twitch stream on my TV and turn it so I can see it from the kitchen.

The idea of this sitting on my dining room table while eating with my family is horrifying.

I hope you don't put your phone on the table while eating with your family, or have it in your pocket at that time.

Nope. We have a family rule that dinner time is an electronics free zone.

Or in your pocket for that matter - yes, the acoustics are pretty much good enough to pick up everything you say.

actually, it doesn't have a battery, so it won't replace an ordinary bluetooth speaker. I was optimistic too :(

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