Alexa

[getthegat]

Used ours a couple times, keep forgetting the damn things name? It is usually unplugged and the electric toothbrush charger plugged in in place of it, much more useful. These gizmos do have their place and the future  does mean inovation and change, just let's not loose the basics like memory or the ability to think for ourselves.

Edited February 18, 2018 by getthegat
Remove a word.

[vampire]

Bought the wife one for xmas,now its just used to remind me of my various tasks ?

[buze]

I have 3. both of us use them all the time.

+ It is not 'recording all the time' -- it can't, it's a small embedded platform, and all it's DSP is capable of is to store a handfull of rolling seconds, just enough to detect 'alexa' as a keyword. That's why the number of words you can use is limited to 3, can't do much else.

+ ONCE it has detected the keyword (and only then) it opens a connection to amazon and streams everything you say (up to a pause, marking you're done) and the amazon backend does the clever voice detection and handling.

Anyway, I've hooked all my lights, replaced all the wall switched with remote controlled ones, added wall switch outlets etc. You can 'group' them, so I can 'turn off downstairs' and it will turn off every lights, and the stereo.

I've got one in the lab/man cave, and I can use to to 'drop in' in the lounge and talk to Mrs, hands free.

I use it for cooking *all the time*, you can have several timers going on as easily as 'alexa, timer 20 minutes for chicken' and she'll ping in with 'your chicken timer is done'.

But mostly we use it for radio, and music. "alexa, play radio 4". Or "alexa, play some evening jazz" ro whatever and I can turn it streaming to the stereo for better quality audio with "alexa, turn on speakers". You can "alexa, next" for next track, "alexa, louder" etc etc.

Anyway, pretty cool gadget. I know it's not for everyone, but since I'm an electronics/computer guy, I can make use of it -- but what's interesting is that my wife who's a bit of a technophobe is pretty much as much of a user as I am.

[grrclark]

8 minutes ago, buze said:

+ It is not 'recording all the time' -- it can't, it's a small embedded platform, and all it's DSP is capable of is to store a handfull of rolling seconds, just enough to detect 'alexa' as a keyword. That's why the number of words you can use is limited to 3, can't do much else.

+ ONCE it has detected the keyword (and only then) it opens a connection to amazon and streams everything you say (up to a pause, marking you're done) and the amazon backend does the clever voice detection and handling.

That is indeed what Amazon says it does, however how do you know?

Without being excessively paranoid what if the device is hacked? there are a considerable number of exploits around the IoT, even exploits such as Meltdown and Spectre that have impacted on chipsets and are a major issue for hosted platform providers such as Amazon.

Part of the fear around the exploits on the IoT is that as houses become increasingly connected that malicious hacking could become excessively disruptive.

Amazon do retain a cache of the previous voice commands, as does Google with their assistant, and this is used to improve accuracy and to be able to make better predictions about what you might like.  What do they do with that data?

The potential breach of privacy is huge with these devices as is the potential risk of significant disruption as we become increasingly reliant on them.

[buze]

1 hour ago, grrclark said:

That is indeed what Amazon says it does, however how do you know?

Without being excessively paranoid what if the device is hacked? there are a considerable number of exploits around the IoT, even exploits such as Meltdown and Spectre that have impacted on chipsets and are a major issue for hosted platform providers such as Amazon.

Part of the fear around the exploits on the IoT is that as houses become increasingly connected that malicious hacking could become excessively disruptive.

Amazon do retain a cache of the previous voice commands, as does Google with their assistant, and this is used to improve accuracy and to be able to make better predictions about what you might like.  What do they do with that data?

The potential breach of privacy is huge with these devices as is the potential risk of significant disruption as we become increasingly reliant on them.

The hardware is not capable of recording all the time; it uses a chip from xmos to do the DSP recognition, and that chip is incapable of doing that... Yes the commands you say (and some false positive) are recorded at amazon but even I have noticed they no longer keep /everything/ as they used to -- they record the 'action' but only a fraction of the commands we issue.

There is always a possibility of being 'hacked' but in this particular case you would have to rewrite a firmware for the whole device to do it... I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's far more complicated and would require a lot more resources than exploiting spectre...

Also, if you are worried about you being recorded, make sure to bin your mobile phone, and everyone elses mobile phone too.

The only thing that saves us is that it requires a HUGE amount of processing to store audio -- even amazon (who are the leader in 'cloud' computing) are struggling to keep up with just the audio being recorded/processed. For someone to to want to hijack that sort of volume, it would require an incredible amount of resources.

And the more people using it, the harder it will get -- in fact I wonder if /amazon/ themselves will be able to keep up with the monster they created...

[12gauge82]

4 hours ago, grrclark said:

That is indeed what Amazon says it does, however how do you know?

Without being excessively paranoid what if the device is hacked? there are a considerable number of exploits around the IoT, even exploits such as Meltdown and Spectre that have impacted on chipsets and are a major issue for hosted platform providers such as Amazon.

Part of the fear around the exploits on the IoT is that as houses become increasingly connected that malicious hacking could become excessively disruptive.

Amazon do retain a cache of the previous voice commands, as does Google with their assistant, and this is used to improve accuracy and to be able to make better predictions about what you might like.  What do they do with that data?

The potential breach of privacy is huge with these devices as is the potential risk of significant disruption as we become increasingly reliant on them.

This would be my concern, I don't care how "secure" any system is, anything that is capable of capturing sound, data or as in other devices, images, there will always be a way around them, no system is 100% safe.

[JohnfromUK]

5 hours ago, grrclark said:

potential risk of significant disruption as we become increasingly reliant on them

That is my concern.  We become 'dependant' on these things.

When I was a kid, we had little or no dependency on 'outside' services.  Water was stored in a roof tank (admittedly not drinking water, but plenty for washing and cooking), heat and cooking was by coal/coke for heating and hot water and neither electricity dependant (gravity circulation), and we had back up candles/oil lights for the (very frequent) power cuts.  TV sets were unreliable and you had to be adjusting the 'stability, horizontal hold and vertical hold' regularly.  Battery radios were available (though ate batteries).  Phone was also poor reliability with crossed lines, dialing problems, 'party lines' - and the need to place longer distance calls through the 'operator'.

Now I'm near 100% dependant on electricity for heat, light, cooking, rely on an internet for many banking/administrative matters, have no 'stored' water ...... and whilst electricity reliability is remarkably good, it needs to be.

I see the Alexa type stuff as insufficiently developed/proven as yet to become reliant on it in any way - more of a novelty.  I have voice control in the car ........ and NEVER use it - its easier and more intuitive (to me anyway) to use traditional switches..