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Silly. The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based. Nothing is recorded and sent until the wake word is

Silly. The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based. Nothing is recorded and sent until the wake word is uttered and after that only the part until you finish your question. If you are truly worried about spy devices, you should really consider dropping your cell phone in the toilet. (Yes, I love my echo)

jon-wood 11y ago
What do you use it for? I love the idea of Echo, but I can't think of enough I'd do with it to warrant buying one.
- Pxtl 11y ago
  Ever tried to call somebody while cooking? As a dad who spends most of his home time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and parenting, hands-free tech is glorious.
  - jon-wood 11y ago
    I'd certainly have it in the kitchen, which happily is also in earshot of the living room, but despite doing a lot of cooking myself I've rarely needed to be entirely hands free. I do admittedly have a tablet screen that is absolutely filthy half the time, but its yet to come to any harm from it.
  - notlisted 11y ago
    The echo doesn't allow you to place or pick up calls (yet).
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Same here. I keep checking the price hoping it drops to a level where I'd feel comfortable buying it just to play with one, but at $180, I think it's too steep when there's no real justification. Anything you'd really want the Echo for, you could do on your phone with an "OK Google" (or a few quick taps at worst).
- notlisted 11y ago
  Delayed response - My main uses are simple things like asking about the weather (current and future), listening to the flash briefing and asking random things while watching TV, asking what's on the family calendar. Had it hooked up to a smartthings hub for a bit, which worked, but the smartthings platform has issues so I've abandoned the idea of smart home control. Will buy a Philips Hue system in the next few weeks. My wife, who hates gadgets in general, likes it in the kitchen to add stuff to her shopping list while cooking (with messy hands). In the store she opens the echo app and checks off everything on the list. It seems like a silly thing, but she thinks it's terrific and it has saved us many useless return trips to the store. She also loves the option to play music (again, for the same reason, messy hands or just busy). My 7yo uses it for music, to get the answers to trivia and interact with a few 'skills' I've enabled (guess the animal, etc). She also "plays with Alexa" when friends come over (they take turns requesting songs and dancing) The echo is not ideal, especially in terms of underlying knowledge base, integration with other Amazon devices (we have two firetv boxes, amazon owns IMDB, mysteriously neither are well-supported or integrated) and the "skills" approach is cumbersome (should have used an "intent" approach instead of "ask {skill}"), but voice recognition is better than anything I've used and it works for everyone in the family without training, as well as random guests, including kids. PS I signed up early and bought it for $99, a second one was requested, but I feel the regular price of $179 is too high with the current feature set. Note: It does NOT (yet) allow handsfree calling. I wish it did.
a3_nm 11y ago
> The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based For now, maybe. If some update changed this, how and when would you figure out? I'd say it's not entirely silly to be worried about something in your home which is controlled by a third party and could turn into a spying device at any moment, even though it seems not to have become evil yet.
- cthalupa 11y ago
  >If some update changed this, how and when would you figure out The echo traffic always flows through your internet - it has no 3G/4G hardware, for example. If you want to do a pcap with tcpdump or similar, you can. When I first received mine, I set up a packet capture on my linux firewall/ips/nat device and looked at traffic outbound to the internet from the echo. If I was particularly paranoid, I could leave this running 24/7 outputting to a pcap, and then watch that file for changes and get notifications whenever it did. Honestly, if you're worried about this sort of thing, you shouldn't own a cell phone.
  - goldenkey 11y ago
    "Honestly if you are worried about this sort of X, you shouldn't live in a [subset of first-world country utilities.]" Ad hominem. C'mon, I expect better specious arguments on Hacker News.
    - cthalupa 11y ago
      That's not even remotely an ad hominem, though I imagine you just mean it's a fallacious argument in general. That being said, hardly. We already know that law enforcement can use cell phones to spy on people. There is an abstract fear that the Echo might do this in the future (enough analysis has been done to know that it does not currently), yet we know for sure that cell phones can do it currently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellphone_surveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellphone_surveillance http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/ http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdro... http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/02/fbi-can-remotely-activate-microphones-in-android-smartphones-source-says.html http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/02/fbi-can-remotely-acti...
chockablock 11y ago
>Nothing is recorded and sent... How does an outside observer know what is being recorded and stored (e.g. for later analysis or retrieval)? What guarantees does Amazon offer in their terms of service about their use of any recordings? Can the police get a warrant to have Amazon bug my home using my Echo?
tripzilch 11y ago
> The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. cool, got a link to those? mainly out of interest reading about such systems and DSP, btw. actual trust could only come from open source--"this closed source, auto-updating software hasn't been observed to send sensitive data over the network so far" is something I might as well take your word for :-)

jon-wood 11y ago

What do you use it for? I love the idea of Echo, but I can't think of enough I'd do with it to warrant buying one.

Pxtl 11y ago
Ever tried to call somebody while cooking? As a dad who spends most of his home time in the kitchen cooking and cleaning and parenting, hands-free tech is glorious.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  I'd certainly have it in the kitchen, which happily is also in earshot of the living room, but despite doing a lot of cooking myself I've rarely needed to be entirely hands free. I do admittedly have a tablet screen that is absolutely filthy half the time, but its yet to come to any harm from it.
- notlisted 11y ago
  The echo doesn't allow you to place or pick up calls (yet).
cookiecaper 11y ago
Same here. I keep checking the price hoping it drops to a level where I'd feel comfortable buying it just to play with one, but at $180, I think it's too steep when there's no real justification. Anything you'd really want the Echo for, you could do on your phone with an "OK Google" (or a few quick taps at worst).
notlisted 11y ago
Delayed response - My main uses are simple things like asking about the weather (current and future), listening to the flash briefing and asking random things while watching TV, asking what's on the family calendar. Had it hooked up to a smartthings hub for a bit, which worked, but the smartthings platform has issues so I've abandoned the idea of smart home control. Will buy a Philips Hue system in the next few weeks. My wife, who hates gadgets in general, likes it in the kitchen to add stuff to her shopping list while cooking (with messy hands). In the store she opens the echo app and checks off everything on the list. It seems like a silly thing, but she thinks it's terrific and it has saved us many useless return trips to the store. She also loves the option to play music (again, for the same reason, messy hands or just busy). My 7yo uses it for music, to get the answers to trivia and interact with a few 'skills' I've enabled (guess the animal, etc). She also "plays with Alexa" when friends come over (they take turns requesting songs and dancing) The echo is not ideal, especially in terms of underlying knowledge base, integration with other Amazon devices (we have two firetv boxes, amazon owns IMDB, mysteriously neither are well-supported or integrated) and the "skills" approach is cumbersome (should have used an "intent" approach instead of "ask {skill}"), but voice recognition is better than anything I've used and it works for everyone in the family without training, as well as random guests, including kids. PS I signed up early and bought it for $99, a second one was requested, but I feel the regular price of $179 is too high with the current feature set. Note: It does NOT (yet) allow handsfree calling. I wish it did.

a3_nm 11y ago

> The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. Detection of the wake word is hardware-based For now, maybe. If some update changed this, how and when would you figure out? I'd say it's not entirely silly to be worried about something in your home which is controlled by a third party and could turn into a spying device at any moment, even though it seems not to have become evil yet.

cthalupa 11y ago
>If some update changed this, how and when would you figure out The echo traffic always flows through your internet - it has no 3G/4G hardware, for example. If you want to do a pcap with tcpdump or similar, you can. When I first received mine, I set up a packet capture on my linux firewall/ips/nat device and looked at traffic outbound to the internet from the echo. If I was particularly paranoid, I could leave this running 24/7 outputting to a pcap, and then watch that file for changes and get notifications whenever it did. Honestly, if you're worried about this sort of thing, you shouldn't own a cell phone.
- goldenkey 11y ago
  "Honestly if you are worried about this sort of X, you shouldn't live in a [subset of first-world country utilities.]" Ad hominem. C'mon, I expect better specious arguments on Hacker News.
  - cthalupa 11y ago
    That's not even remotely an ad hominem, though I imagine you just mean it's a fallacious argument in general. That being said, hardly. We already know that law enforcement can use cell phones to spy on people. There is an abstract fear that the Echo might do this in the future (enough analysis has been done to know that it does not currently), yet we know for sure that cell phones can do it currently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stingray_phone_tracker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellphone_surveillance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellphone_surveillance http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/ http://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdro... http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/02/fbi-can-remotely-activate-microphones-in-android-smartphones-source-says.html http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/08/02/fbi-can-remotely-acti...

chockablock 11y ago

>Nothing is recorded and sent... How does an outside observer know what is being recorded and stored (e.g. for later analysis or retrieval)? What guarantees does Amazon offer in their terms of service about their use of any recordings? Can the police get a warrant to have Amazon bug my home using my Echo?

tripzilch 11y ago

> The traffic from the Echo has been studied extensively. cool, got a link to those? mainly out of interest reading about such systems and DSP, btw. actual trust could only come from open source--"this closed source, auto-updating software hasn't been observed to send sensitive data over the network so far" is something I might as well take your word for :-)