I had a look at the amazon APIs today. I reckon I could interface alexa with my custom built home automation setup. Thinking of getting one for Christmas in fact.
2 Likes
A fair point, but certainly it’s not technically impossible to create something an in-home wireless setup, which would permit voice command of local switchgear without any web connection whatever?
1 Like
It’s an example of how silly the all-or-nothing belief is. I don’t personally believe it. I think that people who will happily FaceTime or use Google Hangouts or Telegram or Discord but somehow quail at the idea of even entering someone’s home who has a voice assistant hooked up are silly hypocrites. I think people need to be better informed about the tech that’s out there before getting all paranoid. Or at least make their paranoia consistent.
1 Like
It’s a use case. By no means am I saying I want to automate everything. But if my hands are covered in cake batter and I want to hear some Led Zeppelin and I can do so by saying PLAY WHOLE LOTTA LOVE! or if I forgot to turn off the hall lights and I’m in bed and can do so by saying TURN OFF THE HALL LIGHTS, it’s a pretty nice perk of living in 2017.
2 Likes
Nice! I had not heard of this. Here’s a link for the hell of it: https://jasperproject.github.io/
1 Like
@nitroburn and @jgs
I concede that these devices are not phoning home with literally everything they hear. BUT without being able to inspect the source code, we only have the vendor’s word that this behavior won’t change.
Can we agree that these devices are always-on smart microphones with an explicit goal of selling you things? Sounds sketchy, right?
For what it’s worth, I’ve never been offered anything for sale through an Alexa device, purchased anything, or spent a cent beyond its purchase price.
Traffic analysis should be sufficient keep the vendors relatively honest. I mean, if they start steganographically exfiltrating the audio stream you can’t expect a simple sniffer to catch that, but that threat on one hand seems somewhat far-fetched and on the other hand is by no means limited to these types of devices (you need to suspect everything with a mic, starting with your computer and your phones).
I’ve heard “goal of selling you things” said about the Amazon devices (I have a friend who swears he fell prey to the old “Alexa, order a pallet of toilet paper” gag, ok it wasn’t actually a pallet of toilet paper). It’s not true of the Apple device I mentioned, as far as I know, unless you mean it in the broadest possible sense of “they want to add value to their gadget so you’ll buy it”.
Apart presumably from the connected media server/player and the hall lights?
It’s its own media server/player; the dimmable Hue lights were here before Alexa moved in.
2 Likes
That’ll teach me to google these things first 
But the general point is, you need a whole infrastructure of stuff to command with these voice assistants, otherwise it’s pretty pointless. So unless you already have the “smart” lightbulbs, thermostats, etc. you can’t do much with the device so there is a bigger cost to it than just the cost of the device.
Interestingly, it looks as though the US version allows you to telephone most US, Mexico or Canada telephone numbers (although emergency services are excluded for some reason) and anyone anywhere with an Echo device or the app, whereas the UK version promises only to let you call anyone with an Echo or the app.
Once again, the UK gets swindled!
This is the tip of the iceberg for what Doctorow actually wants you to do. There’s only one way to be completely private:
- Smash your phone, dip the microphones in acid
- Unplug your network cables and run them through a shredder
- Give up any hope that any date you’ve ever accrued was ever private
- Move to Siberia with compass, map, and Spam
- Unplug your desktop from the wall
Streams from Alexa are more difficult to cull and transcribe than the texts, browser traffic and nudes you’re already capturing. Don’t ever feel like you’ve accomplished something by not buying an Echo. Your microwave is already taking pictures of you.
2 Likes
Well, I will have saved just under £50.
3 Likes
BTW: I have 2 Echos 
And you will have missed out on all the Christmas music Alexa wants to sing to you!
1 Like
Use them!
Your road ahead will be trying.
I’m not even being facetious.
Time for you to worry less about that stuff.
They’ll be plenty of us to do that.
I’d prefer that anyone thinking of committing homicide get a free Amazon Echo.
You don’t believe it, and then you double down on it?
Ooookaaay …
Yes. But it doesn’t need to be that way, it just so happens that this the current business model paradigm.
2 Likes
Christ what an …
