17 ms·

When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! A Star Trek computer that I can interact with conversationally! I just say what

by cheald 10y ago

When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! A Star Trek computer that I can interact with conversationally! I just say what I want and it happens! Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box which I can only interpret as a giant frickin' security liability. I want this, but unless it's open source top-to-bottom, I won't ever actually put one in my home. We know too much about how these things can be abused for me to ever seriously consider it without being able to verify for myself what it's doing and why.

surge 10y ago
MyCroft? https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/
- niutech 10y ago
  or Jasper.
jff 10y ago
You probably have on in your pocket already, is the thing. (I agree though, I don't want this in my house, and I turned off the "Ok Google" functionality on my phone)
- cheald 10y ago
  I do. And I recognize the hypocrisy of that. I think the difference for me is that my phone isn't a permanent fixture in my house - it's not explicitly a surveillance device. Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design. I can stick my phone in a Faraday bag easily enough if I want to. I guess what it comes down to is that while I recognize that I sacrifice a measure of potential for privacy with my phone, I judge the benefits to be worth it. I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis. To be honest, I trust that Google and Amazon are probably acting in my best interests with these products, for the most part. I don't think it's all an evil conspiracy to get microphones and cameras into my inner sanctum or anything. I believe it's very possible for a product like this to be mutually beneficial for provider and consumer. And hey, if a state actor wants to surveil me, it's going to happen regardless of these devices being in my house. But as we've learned just how fragile security is, it seems foolish to me to rush off to install black-box monitoring devices all over and just hope that they do what we think they are doing. I love the idea of these things, but they are such potentially powerful windows into our lives that I think that we have to be really sure the value they provide is worth the security risk they entail.
  - noonespecial 10y ago
    Its not that I don't think that Google and Amazon are probably acting in my best interests now. They probably are. Also not that I think that the government couldn't spy on me if they wanted to. They could. The scenario that worries me is that years from now, Google and Amazon may be coerced into turning over what I said yesterday to a corrupt government fishing through the past for word-crime. And boy-howdy, it turns out they recorded everything and retained it forever. Surprise!
    - d0mine 10y ago
      If we believe Snowden then Google and Amazon as well as any technology company that collects user data are enabling spying on you for many years now.
    - notatoad 10y ago
      >The scenario that worries me is that years from now, Google and Amazon may be coerced into turning over what I said yesterday Amazon has said that they're only recording what happens after the hotword is triggered. That's why they can't do custom hotwords - listening for "hey alexa" is built right into the hardware and it doesn't do anything until it hears that. Unless they're flat-out lying, they can't provide any information about what you said yesterday to anybody because they don't have that data.
      - dandrews 10y ago
        My 2012 Moto X has a trained keyword (and in fact a dedicated low-power specialized processor to listen for it - one of the things I like about that phone). No "OK Google" for me; it's "Listen please", in Russian. Never tripped by mistake.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    > I think the difference for me is that my phone isn't a permanent fixture in my house - it's not explicitly a surveillance device. For most people, its a permanent fixture on their person: people these days leave their home more than they leave their phone. > Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design. Echo/Home are no more explicitly audio surveillance devices than cell phones are. > I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis. Modern phones (considering the hardware and software stack together) are, in fact, designed to do just that, both Siri and Google Now voice recognition works (though it is, IIRC, disabled-by-default in the latter case) from the lock screen. Its just as always-on as Echo/Home.
- r00fus 10y ago
  Nope, I dont. And I agree with @cheald. It's a big shift to have a "press to query" as opposed to a vague keyword-based "always available". I know some technophiles coworkers who have an Echo, and I couldn't for the life of me trust Amazon, Google (or even Apple) with potentially the always-on stream of audio from my house.
  - aninhumer 10y ago
    I really wish these various voice offerings would offer push-to-talk as an option. It would solve a whole bunch of problems: It would activate reliably when you want and almost never accidentally, you don't need to use awkward code phrases, and it can trigger results as soon as you release the button instead of having to wait for silence. It would also allow for better privacy by making a phone in which the microphone is hardware controlled by the button. It just seems so obvious to me that I don't know why no one has done it. I guess needing a new button makes it harder to sell, but this seems like a great use case for smartwatches.
    - r00fus 10y ago
      I think that's what some folks hope the Apple Watch and/or Android Wear can do - be conduits (like ST:TNG Communicators) to cloud supercomputers.
- milge 10y ago
  Which is why I keep mine in a lead box at home.
  - knodi123 10y ago
    an interesting side effect is that, until you open the box, the phone is in a superposition of both ringing and not ringing at the same time.
- eridius 10y ago
  I don't know about Android (though I assume it works the same way), but iPhone's "Hey Siri" is done entirely on-device, so until you activate Siri, nothing you say is sent to a server.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Though is that auditable? Siri's not Free Software AFAIK.
    - detaro 10y ago
      You can at least audit the network traffic. And since people have been able to hook their own software into Siri, you probably somehow can break open its encryption and look at the content. (Unless I misremember how that worked)
  - tree_of_item 10y ago
    People keep bringing this up and it's silly. It can just record what you say and send it later.
    - eridius 10y ago
      It makes literally no sense for the Hey Siri functionality to do that. This is just a very slightly altered version of "it's an internet-enabled device with a microphone, it could be hacked and told to turn on its microphone remotely", which is a legitimate, if fairly paranoid, complaint that applies to all such devices, even fully open-source and open-hardware ones.
- azinman2 10y ago
  I probably don't -- my phone is often in another room when home.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  I've ditched the smartphone. And, for the most part, the phone. I'm not at all happy with the trade-off any more. I've got a tablet, both cameras taped over. Killing the mics would be a Good Thing. Sigh.
  - bch 10y ago
    Tablet connected to a network?
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      Frequently, yes. Though not 3GL/4GL mobile networks. I'm aware of the risk and hypocrisy. I'm also far from happy with it (I increasingly dislike Android, Samsung, and with varying levels, Google). But given the balance of something I can power down, that isn't always on me, and the portability and cost benefits over an alternative laptop, its a far-less-than-perfect satisficing solution for now.
      - noir_lord 10y ago
        I'm thinking my nexus will be my last Android device, not decided yet what I want to replace it with but dumb phone is looking likely, I'm either at home, the office or somewhere I can use my laptop so don't really have the need for a tablet, I might been able to google the odd thing now and again when out and about but that's a once or twice a week thing for me. I've come to resent carrying a phone all the time, I rarely answer it and resent that "I tried ringing but you didn't answer!" whine you get as though it's beyond incredulous that you would ever not answer the phone.
        dredmorbius 10y ago
        What I like about the tablet is the size, the battery life, the switching between landscape (generally: composing w/ keyboard) and portrait (generally: reading long-form content) modes. A 10" form factor plus bluetooth keyboard is sufficient for some Real Work (though that's hugely crippled by system and software limitations). As a comms device, on a sufficiently fast WiFi/broadband connection, it's also useful. I've not done that often, but it's been done, and I was impressed. The OS is a mess in many particulars. It handles external storage poorly. It doesn't multi-taske well. Multi-window mode is specific to application. The default shell userland is unforgiveably anemic (Termux, one of a few available add-ons is much better). Lack of comprehensive privacy controls, or insight, is a huge issue. The app "ecosystem" is pathologically broken. I've written on this at G+, my feeling is it needs to be scrapped. Samsung's own tweaks are also pretty bad. The fact that the device is entirely locked down from a bootloader perspective (it was a bit of a panic on-the-road buy) has become beyond annoying. Inability to remove certain stock apps is a major concern. Google's "Play" store is beyond annoying. I'm watching for news of Firefox OS and Ubuntu's mobile offerings. I'm not particularly hopeful. A small laptop _might_ be a suitable replacement, if I can park Linux on it (without systemd). Mostly it's a very effective advertisement against itself. And more generally: the tech world very, very, very badly needs to find a non-advertising business model.
timpark 10y ago
An open alternative seems to be https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ (I heard about it a while back, but I didn't back it so I haven't read the latest updates)
- DrPhish 10y ago
  That's a step in the right direction, but I won't be adopting any similar tech until it can be self hosted (and preferably live on a non-routable vlan, maybe with proxy access to white-listed websites)
Analemma_ 10y ago
This entire keynote just keeps highlighting that one sentence from the end of Maciej's wonderful http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm "Yesterday ... I realized how long it had been since I looked at a new technology with wonder, instead of an automatic feeling of dread." EDIT: Speaking of Maciej, if you're not already following him on Twitter, today is the day to do that. He's having a field day with this keynote.
- skybrian 10y ago
  Well, sure, @Pinboard is great if you like snark and don't care about accuracy. For example: "What’s been missing from my video calls is the ability for people to see me before I’m ready" [1] This is when you are calling them. Why wouldn't you be ready? It's more like seeing who is outside your door before opening it. [1] https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/732992053668253696 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/732992053668253696
  - yoo1I 10y ago
    I have no idea, but I saw this tweet > @Pinboard they did talk about privacy though: the video app shows your camera feed to whoever calls you before your call starts https://twitter.com/computerality/status/732995563034169345 https://twitter.com/computerality/status/732995563034169345
    - danellis 10y ago
      To anyone reading, just to be clear, that's not the case at all. It shows the caller's video, and they're completely aware of the fact.
- politician 10y ago
  Link?
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    @pinboard
mevile 10y ago
> When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! You're making it sound like it doesn't already exist. This is a me-too product from Google as a response to Amazon's Echo which already does home automation, voice commands etc.
- cheald 10y ago
  I'm aware. This thread is about Home. I've said similar in threads about Echo. :)
hendersoon 10y ago
I'm not comfortable with this either, but I recognize it's hypocritical-- after all, smartphones have microphones AND camera and are internet-connected running proprietary software.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  The way I see it, the difference is the burden in not having the device. For a lot of people a smart-phone isn't necessary, but it's extremely inconvenient to go without. Whereas these devices are new, so they aren't ingrained into our culture yet. I agree with you and OP. If there was a good open-source version of either of these, I'd buy them in a heartbeat, but there's not.
- coldtea 10y ago
  There's nothing hypocritical about not wanting FURTHER intrusion... Not to mention, smartphones don't record all you say 24/7 and send it to a foreign data center, except if tampered with. These devices do as their normal operation mode.
  - jeeva 10y ago
    Not to be blindingly trustworthy or anything, but I'm pretty sure none of these devices currently state that they send everything you say 24/7 (or more specifically, the Echo). That would, again, only be if it had been tampered with.
slg 10y ago
If I was a shady business, a nefarious government, or a malicious hacker and I wanted to eavesdrop on you, I would probably attack the vector that spends much more time by your side and can easily hide its data connections from you, e.g. your mobile phone. As long as these home automation devices ride on your own personal network, it is easy to monitor to what extent they are sending data back home.
- atmosx 10y ago
  whats the argument here? We shouldn't care about privacy because we have iPhones? we shouldn't tight the seatbelt wheb driving because we're going to die by cancer in the long run anyway?
  - slg 10y ago
    My argument is that you should prioritize your worries and these devices are a lesser threats than phones. To use your analogies, I wouldn't worry about tightening my seatbelt or getting cancer if I am in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital for some other life threatening issue. Or perhaps a better analogy, I wouldn't stress about keeping the windows of my home locked if I never locked my front door.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Those of us with Google smartwatches have had this functionality for some time. Its very convenient to just whispers, "OK Google remind me at 3pm tomorrow about the dog's vet appointment." Or "What's the weather in Reykjavik?" Having this functionality on your phone, tablet, or computer is very different than having it right in front of you at all times. Its hard to quantify, but there's an inconvenience of pulling out a phone or a tablet and even then muscle memory dictates that you'll probably just start typing and swiping instead of speaking. Having this all tie in with various smarthome appliances will be interesting as well. Sure, I can open my garage door by using an app on my phone but I'd rather just say, "Open the garage door." I think ultimately we prefer to do things like we're dealing with other people, not machines. Amazon's Alexa was a good first step towards this. I'm glad Google is chasing Amazon as Google has become a Microsoftian organization that only does well when they're chasing a competitor or having one right on their heels.
- FmrAMZN_TA 10y ago
  It's funny you say the second paragraph - it feels like it directly contrasts the first (OK Google was first by a good margin).
mbrock 10y ago
The Free Software Foundation, in its texts, often uses the phrase "the free world" to mean the realm of computing without proprietary restrictions, surveillance, etc. Approximately since Snowden, I've become more and more convinced about both the fragility and the value of this free world. And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies. Career-wise, henceforth I will avoid proprietary systems and dedicate myself to working on privacy-enabling free software, even if I make less money. Many people in the free software movement have had more foresight and ethical intelligence than me, and I salute them! It's only recently that I'm able to start formulating my techno-political views in a coherent and strong way. Now, looking at a device like this, I automatically compare it to something like a tractor or plow. It demands constant connectivity to Google HQ... it's full of secret code... it requires, for its basic paradigm, a private company's acquisition of staggering amounts of surveillance... and so on. When I think about what to work on, a guiding question for me now is "What would Google not do?" I look forward to contributing to the free world! (Sorry for this quasi-manifestoish tone...)
- manachar 10y ago
  Freedom has always been fragile and eagerly bartered away for perceptions of safety and prosperity.
  - fuck_google 10y ago
    "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few." - Wendell Phillips (Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on January 28, 1852.)
- amelius 10y ago
  But do you think that free software can keep up against these giants? In the near future, it will all be about having large amounts of data, and processing power; it will be less and less about the actual algorithms. I'm afraid the only way out will be to rethink the economy.
  - mbrock 10y ago
__jal 10y ago
Ditto. Until I can set the endpoint this thing talks to[1], It ain't living on my LAN.[2] [1] This, of course, implies an open source server I can host as well. [2] Maybe it is just me, but I choose to leave my phone at home fairly often. It is a bit of a luxury for me, and I find I enjoy the feeling when I'm not contactable. Things like this are closer to furniture, and don't take an affirmative "opt-in" (like taking your phone with you) to be functional in their role. So when my brother's kids come over, I'm opting them in. When a visitor is wondering around half-awake looking for the coffee, I'm opting them in. I realize some others seem to feel that this is identical to cell phone surveillance (but if so, and if you always have your phone, why bother with this?). I don't, and I'm not alone. The law recognizes major distinctions between 'home' and 'not-home'; I mention this only as a demonstration that the distinction is a clearly rooted one for a lot of people.
agumonkey 10y ago
I laughed hysterically at the same fact last week. Everything we dreamed of 20 years ago feels like a burden now.
- erickhill 10y ago
  Hysterically sounds borderline crazy. Step away from Alexa, nice and slow.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Ok a bit strong, but the self fulfilling dystopia really threw me off.
pessimizer 10y ago
Kirk wouldn't have gotten away with half the shit he did if every word he said to the computer roundtripped to the Federation and back before being processed.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Fortunately for him, the society of the Federation isn't driven by greed and personal profit seeking anymore, so they can focus on doing things the right way - like making the starship computer process voice recognition instead of sending it God knows where via subspace.
sdegutis 10y ago
You know, I feel the opposite. When I was younger, I wanted the same thing. To be kind of like Tony Stark in Iron Man, with all the convenience and power that future technology seems to promise. But now that I'm old and boring, I'm perfectly happy with my non-futuristic life. We still have an iPhone 3G which we use as an iPod around the house (which we plug into our speakers the old fashioned way, by plugging one end of a headset cord into the iPhone and the other into the speaker's AUX jack), and we have our laptop computer which we use for facebook and reddit. And that's the most "futuristic" technology I care to have. I don't plan to buy a VR headset. I take notes with a pen and paper when I'm not at my computer. We still write our grocery lists down that way and mark them off in the store with a pen. It may be boring and un-futuristic, but it gets the job done just fine, and I really don't have any complaints. I'm probably in a tiny minority on HN though.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  I have a similar view but for different reasons (though I do own an S7 - but for different reasons[0]). I still want to be like Tony Stark, or captain Picard. I want the cool future stuff. But I came to two realizations - a) it's always cooler in the movies than in real life, but b) even taking that into account, our future sucks compared to theirs. In the movies I like, technology was about empowering people. They were tools. Today, more and more the products are nice looking but barely functional, and sport the minimum subset of features that can be sold to the lowest common denominator. So take Google Now. Does it recognize voice? Yes, quite well I'd say. Would it be a problem for Google to let you hook up your own actions and data sources to the system, so that you could make yourself a Star Trek environment with a spare tablet attached to a wall? No, it wouldn't. It's an obvious feature. A feature which they - and pretty much everyone else - refuses to provide. Why? Because fuck useful. Lowest common denominator doesn't need that. [0] - I'm tired of buying shitty hardware. When I change the phone, I prefer to shell out for a top-of-the-line model to be 100% sure it will work fast and stay ahead of the bloat. I learned it the hard way with my first smartphone, which was barely powerful enough to lift its own OS - and trying to connect it to Internet always ended up with having to pull out the battery. I was stuck with it for a couple of years. A smartphone is something I use quite a lot every day, and even little frustrations accumulate.
danellis 10y ago
Does everything else in your house run open source firmware? How does source being available tell you whether your device is secure? Are you auditing it, then building and installing the firmware yourself so you know that the binary matches the released source? Are you doing the same with the bootloader? How far are you willing to take your paranoia?
walrus01 10y ago
Whenever I see one of these things, and the people who happily purchase it without giving even two seconds of thought to the privacy implications, it makes me realize how important organizations like the FSF and EFF are.
niutech 10y ago
There is an open source alternative to Google Home: Jasper (https://jasperproject.github.io https://jasperproject.github.io)
drdeadringer 10y ago
> Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box A little while back, there was a kickstarter for "The Ubi"... basically as you describe. A non-mobile v0.1 Ziggy [Quantum Leap] where you'd plug it in and ask it generic questions. "Ubi, what's the weather?" and the like. IIRC, the Ubi is slowly but decently chugging along. However, your questions on security are valid.
darpa_escapee 10y ago
Let us be reminded that the FBI can neither confirm nor deny that they've accessed the microphones on the Amazon Echo of suspects, according to FOIA requests. Adoption of this tech will hurt general privacy. Find me a home where there isn't an internet enabled microphone or camera. Even if you are security conscious, are your family, friends, coworkers and the people you are near?
api 10y ago
Never EVER under any circumstances would I put a closed-source cloud-connected always-on microphone in my house. Google's entire business model and value as a company revolves around their ability to maximize the accuracy of their consumer profiles. They have no incentive to do anything other than maximally invade privacy. A device like this from them is even creepier than the Amazon Echo. While it's not released yet, I don't see a disable microphone switch on it either. At least the Echo has that-- though I imagine most users would forget to use it. The defenders will say "but it only listens when it hears the keyword!" What assurance do I have of this? How secure is this device? Is the keyword recognition performed locally or remotely? What is the definition of "listen?" I'm guessing that like glass the privacy policy will allow them to collect everything.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  To the advantage of society, Google's value also lies in not alienating people to the point that they shun its products and services. Google cannot sell advertising based on my eyeballs if I won't use Google Search, block ads, avoid Google Maps, and download video via yt-download vs. watching it on the far-less-convenient YouTube website or application. Google have lost me to search, and several other products, for precisely this reason. I don't know the segment of the population I represent, but it is a segment. A US Department of Commerce survey release this past week reveals that 20% of the population consciously avoids online activities already due to privacy and surveillance concerns. This isn't fully attributable to concerns over Google (and that almost certainly poses a subset of those dissuaded), but it is a surprisingly large effect of privacy concerns. The trust factor you mention is a huge one. Cognizability is a wonderful word I've run across recently (from William Stanley Jevons' discussion of money). It refers to the ability to instantly and unambiguously recognise a characteristic or trait. Electronic devices lack cognizability of privacy. Glass didn't do so well as I recall.
  - api 10y ago
    20% -- I hope it's that high. That's a high enough number to get peoples' attention and challenge the prevailing meme of "nobody cares about privacy or security." (Privacy IS security. There's not really a distinction.)
Fletch137 10y ago
You might be interested in mycroft, then: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/
nathan_f77 10y ago
I was getting prepared to argue with you, but then I thought about it and realized you were right. I'm not prepared to give Google that much control over my house, especially when it's completely cloud-based. However, I am totally willing to use cloud-based voice recognition software, because the machine learning clusters required don't fit in my house. Sure, you can run basic voice recognition software on a server or a laptop. But that only gets you maybe 80% accuracy if you're lucky. There is a huge difference between 80% and 98% accuracy, it's the difference between using something every day, and turning it off after a week of frustration. (I've been there myself, I tried building my own voice recognition system for home automation.) But I think that's really the only packet that needs to leave my home network. I hate that my Philips Hue bulbs need an internet connection to work.
ElijahLynn 10y ago
This looks promising. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-an-open-source-artificial-intelligence-for https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-a... https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/

by cheald 10y ago

surge 10y ago

MyCroft? https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/

niutech 10y ago
or Jasper.

jff 10y ago

You probably have on in your pocket already, is the thing. (I agree though, I don't want this in my house, and I turned off the "Ok Google" functionality on my phone)

cheald 10y ago
I do. And I recognize the hypocrisy of that. I think the difference for me is that my phone isn't a permanent fixture in my house - it's not explicitly a surveillance device. Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design. I can stick my phone in a Faraday bag easily enough if I want to. I guess what it comes down to is that while I recognize that I sacrifice a measure of potential for privacy with my phone, I judge the benefits to be worth it. I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis. To be honest, I trust that Google and Amazon are probably acting in my best interests with these products, for the most part. I don't think it's all an evil conspiracy to get microphones and cameras into my inner sanctum or anything. I believe it's very possible for a product like this to be mutually beneficial for provider and consumer. And hey, if a state actor wants to surveil me, it's going to happen regardless of these devices being in my house. But as we've learned just how fragile security is, it seems foolish to me to rush off to install black-box monitoring devices all over and just hope that they do what we think they are doing. I love the idea of these things, but they are such potentially powerful windows into our lives that I think that we have to be really sure the value they provide is worth the security risk they entail.
- noonespecial 10y ago
  Its not that I don't think that Google and Amazon are probably acting in my best interests now. They probably are. Also not that I think that the government couldn't spy on me if they wanted to. They could. The scenario that worries me is that years from now, Google and Amazon may be coerced into turning over what I said yesterday to a corrupt government fishing through the past for word-crime. And boy-howdy, it turns out they recorded everything and retained it forever. Surprise!
  - d0mine 10y ago
    If we believe Snowden then Google and Amazon as well as any technology company that collects user data are enabling spying on you for many years now.
  - notatoad 10y ago
    >The scenario that worries me is that years from now, Google and Amazon may be coerced into turning over what I said yesterday Amazon has said that they're only recording what happens after the hotword is triggered. That's why they can't do custom hotwords - listening for "hey alexa" is built right into the hardware and it doesn't do anything until it hears that. Unless they're flat-out lying, they can't provide any information about what you said yesterday to anybody because they don't have that data.
    - dandrews 10y ago
      My 2012 Moto X has a trained keyword (and in fact a dedicated low-power specialized processor to listen for it - one of the things I like about that phone). No "OK Google" for me; it's "Listen please", in Russian. Never tripped by mistake.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I think the difference for me is that my phone isn't a permanent fixture in my house - it's not explicitly a surveillance device. For most people, its a permanent fixture on their person: people these days leave their home more than they leave their phone. > Echo/Home are explicitly audio surveillance devices, though ostensibly benevolent in their design. Echo/Home are no more explicitly audio surveillance devices than cell phones are. > I can't say the same for Echo/Home, and it somehow feels qualitatively different in that phones aren't designed to be always-on microphones constantly processing audio to send it off to a server somewhere else for analysis. Modern phones (considering the hardware and software stack together) are, in fact, designed to do just that, both Siri and Google Now voice recognition works (though it is, IIRC, disabled-by-default in the latter case) from the lock screen. Its just as always-on as Echo/Home.
r00fus 10y ago
Nope, I dont. And I agree with @cheald. It's a big shift to have a "press to query" as opposed to a vague keyword-based "always available". I know some technophiles coworkers who have an Echo, and I couldn't for the life of me trust Amazon, Google (or even Apple) with potentially the always-on stream of audio from my house.
- aninhumer 10y ago
  I really wish these various voice offerings would offer push-to-talk as an option. It would solve a whole bunch of problems: It would activate reliably when you want and almost never accidentally, you don't need to use awkward code phrases, and it can trigger results as soon as you release the button instead of having to wait for silence. It would also allow for better privacy by making a phone in which the microphone is hardware controlled by the button. It just seems so obvious to me that I don't know why no one has done it. I guess needing a new button makes it harder to sell, but this seems like a great use case for smartwatches.
  - r00fus 10y ago
    I think that's what some folks hope the Apple Watch and/or Android Wear can do - be conduits (like ST:TNG Communicators) to cloud supercomputers.
milge 10y ago
Which is why I keep mine in a lead box at home.
- knodi123 10y ago
  an interesting side effect is that, until you open the box, the phone is in a superposition of both ringing and not ringing at the same time.
eridius 10y ago
I don't know about Android (though I assume it works the same way), but iPhone's "Hey Siri" is done entirely on-device, so until you activate Siri, nothing you say is sent to a server.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Though is that auditable? Siri's not Free Software AFAIK.
  - detaro 10y ago
    You can at least audit the network traffic. And since people have been able to hook their own software into Siri, you probably somehow can break open its encryption and look at the content. (Unless I misremember how that worked)
- tree_of_item 10y ago
  People keep bringing this up and it's silly. It can just record what you say and send it later.
  - eridius 10y ago
    It makes literally no sense for the Hey Siri functionality to do that. This is just a very slightly altered version of "it's an internet-enabled device with a microphone, it could be hacked and told to turn on its microphone remotely", which is a legitimate, if fairly paranoid, complaint that applies to all such devices, even fully open-source and open-hardware ones.
azinman2 10y ago
I probably don't -- my phone is often in another room when home.
dredmorbius 10y ago
I've ditched the smartphone. And, for the most part, the phone. I'm not at all happy with the trade-off any more. I've got a tablet, both cameras taped over. Killing the mics would be a Good Thing. Sigh.
- bch 10y ago
  Tablet connected to a network?
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Frequently, yes. Though not 3GL/4GL mobile networks. I'm aware of the risk and hypocrisy. I'm also far from happy with it (I increasingly dislike Android, Samsung, and with varying levels, Google). But given the balance of something I can power down, that isn't always on me, and the portability and cost benefits over an alternative laptop, its a far-less-than-perfect satisficing solution for now.
    - noir_lord 10y ago
      I'm thinking my nexus will be my last Android device, not decided yet what I want to replace it with but dumb phone is looking likely, I'm either at home, the office or somewhere I can use my laptop so don't really have the need for a tablet, I might been able to google the odd thing now and again when out and about but that's a once or twice a week thing for me. I've come to resent carrying a phone all the time, I rarely answer it and resent that "I tried ringing but you didn't answer!" whine you get as though it's beyond incredulous that you would ever not answer the phone.
      - dredmorbius 10y ago
        What I like about the tablet is the size, the battery life, the switching between landscape (generally: composing w/ keyboard) and portrait (generally: reading long-form content) modes. A 10" form factor plus bluetooth keyboard is sufficient for some Real Work (though that's hugely crippled by system and software limitations). As a comms device, on a sufficiently fast WiFi/broadband connection, it's also useful. I've not done that often, but it's been done, and I was impressed. The OS is a mess in many particulars. It handles external storage poorly. It doesn't multi-taske well. Multi-window mode is specific to application. The default shell userland is unforgiveably anemic (Termux, one of a few available add-ons is much better). Lack of comprehensive privacy controls, or insight, is a huge issue. The app "ecosystem" is pathologically broken. I've written on this at G+, my feeling is it needs to be scrapped. Samsung's own tweaks are also pretty bad. The fact that the device is entirely locked down from a bootloader perspective (it was a bit of a panic on-the-road buy) has become beyond annoying. Inability to remove certain stock apps is a major concern. Google's "Play" store is beyond annoying. I'm watching for news of Firefox OS and Ubuntu's mobile offerings. I'm not particularly hopeful. A small laptop _might_ be a suitable replacement, if I can park Linux on it (without systemd). Mostly it's a very effective advertisement against itself. And more generally: the tech world very, very, very badly needs to find a non-advertising business model.

timpark 10y ago

An open alternative seems to be https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/ (I heard about it a while back, but I didn't back it so I haven't read the latest updates)

DrPhish 10y ago
That's a step in the right direction, but I won't be adopting any similar tech until it can be self hosted (and preferably live on a non-routable vlan, maybe with proxy access to white-listed websites)

Analemma_ 10y ago

This entire keynote just keeps highlighting that one sentence from the end of Maciej's wonderful http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm http://idlewords.com/talks/internet_with_a_human_face.htm "Yesterday ... I realized how long it had been since I looked at a new technology with wonder, instead of an automatic feeling of dread." EDIT: Speaking of Maciej, if you're not already following him on Twitter, today is the day to do that. He's having a field day with this keynote.

skybrian 10y ago
Well, sure, @Pinboard is great if you like snark and don't care about accuracy. For example: "What’s been missing from my video calls is the ability for people to see me before I’m ready" [1] This is when you are calling them. Why wouldn't you be ready? It's more like seeing who is outside your door before opening it. [1] https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/732992053668253696 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/732992053668253696
- yoo1I 10y ago
  I have no idea, but I saw this tweet > @Pinboard they did talk about privacy though: the video app shows your camera feed to whoever calls you before your call starts https://twitter.com/computerality/status/732995563034169345 https://twitter.com/computerality/status/732995563034169345
  - danellis 10y ago
    To anyone reading, just to be clear, that's not the case at all. It shows the caller's video, and they're completely aware of the fact.
politician 10y ago
Link?
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  @pinboard

mevile 10y ago

> When I was younger, I dreamed of something like this. Voice control for my home! You're making it sound like it doesn't already exist. This is a me-too product from Google as a response to Amazon's Echo which already does home automation, voice commands etc.

cheald 10y ago
I'm aware. This thread is about Home. I've said similar in threads about Echo. :)

hendersoon 10y ago

I'm not comfortable with this either, but I recognize it's hypocritical-- after all, smartphones have microphones AND camera and are internet-connected running proprietary software.

CaptSpify 10y ago
The way I see it, the difference is the burden in not having the device. For a lot of people a smart-phone isn't necessary, but it's extremely inconvenient to go without. Whereas these devices are new, so they aren't ingrained into our culture yet. I agree with you and OP. If there was a good open-source version of either of these, I'd buy them in a heartbeat, but there's not.
coldtea 10y ago
There's nothing hypocritical about not wanting FURTHER intrusion... Not to mention, smartphones don't record all you say 24/7 and send it to a foreign data center, except if tampered with. These devices do as their normal operation mode.
- jeeva 10y ago
  Not to be blindingly trustworthy or anything, but I'm pretty sure none of these devices currently state that they send everything you say 24/7 (or more specifically, the Echo). That would, again, only be if it had been tampered with.

slg 10y ago

If I was a shady business, a nefarious government, or a malicious hacker and I wanted to eavesdrop on you, I would probably attack the vector that spends much more time by your side and can easily hide its data connections from you, e.g. your mobile phone. As long as these home automation devices ride on your own personal network, it is easy to monitor to what extent they are sending data back home.

atmosx 10y ago
whats the argument here? We shouldn't care about privacy because we have iPhones? we shouldn't tight the seatbelt wheb driving because we're going to die by cancer in the long run anyway?
- slg 10y ago
  My argument is that you should prioritize your worries and these devices are a lesser threats than phones. To use your analogies, I wouldn't worry about tightening my seatbelt or getting cancer if I am in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital for some other life threatening issue. Or perhaps a better analogy, I wouldn't stress about keeping the windows of my home locked if I never locked my front door.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

Those of us with Google smartwatches have had this functionality for some time. Its very convenient to just whispers, "OK Google remind me at 3pm tomorrow about the dog's vet appointment." Or "What's the weather in Reykjavik?" Having this functionality on your phone, tablet, or computer is very different than having it right in front of you at all times. Its hard to quantify, but there's an inconvenience of pulling out a phone or a tablet and even then muscle memory dictates that you'll probably just start typing and swiping instead of speaking. Having this all tie in with various smarthome appliances will be interesting as well. Sure, I can open my garage door by using an app on my phone but I'd rather just say, "Open the garage door." I think ultimately we prefer to do things like we're dealing with other people, not machines. Amazon's Alexa was a good first step towards this. I'm glad Google is chasing Amazon as Google has become a Microsoftian organization that only does well when they're chasing a competitor or having one right on their heels.

FmrAMZN_TA 10y ago
It's funny you say the second paragraph - it feels like it directly contrasts the first (OK Google was first by a good margin).

mbrock 10y ago

The Free Software Foundation, in its texts, often uses the phrase "the free world" to mean the realm of computing without proprietary restrictions, surveillance, etc. Approximately since Snowden, I've become more and more convinced about both the fragility and the value of this free world. And today, I basically see the tech giants as colossal enemies. Career-wise, henceforth I will avoid proprietary systems and dedicate myself to working on privacy-enabling free software, even if I make less money. Many people in the free software movement have had more foresight and ethical intelligence than me, and I salute them! It's only recently that I'm able to start formulating my techno-political views in a coherent and strong way. Now, looking at a device like this, I automatically compare it to something like a tractor or plow. It demands constant connectivity to Google HQ... it's full of secret code... it requires, for its basic paradigm, a private company's acquisition of staggering amounts of surveillance... and so on. When I think about what to work on, a guiding question for me now is "What would Google not do?" I look forward to contributing to the free world! (Sorry for this quasi-manifestoish tone...)

manachar 10y ago
Freedom has always been fragile and eagerly bartered away for perceptions of safety and prosperity.
- fuck_google 10y ago
  "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few." - Wendell Phillips (Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society on January 28, 1852.)
amelius 10y ago
But do you think that free software can keep up against these giants? In the near future, it will all be about having large amounts of data, and processing power; it will be less and less about the actual algorithms. I'm afraid the only way out will be to rethink the economy.
- mbrock 10y ago

__jal 10y ago

Ditto. Until I can set the endpoint this thing talks to[1], It ain't living on my LAN.[2] [1] This, of course, implies an open source server I can host as well. [2] Maybe it is just me, but I choose to leave my phone at home fairly often. It is a bit of a luxury for me, and I find I enjoy the feeling when I'm not contactable. Things like this are closer to furniture, and don't take an affirmative "opt-in" (like taking your phone with you) to be functional in their role. So when my brother's kids come over, I'm opting them in. When a visitor is wondering around half-awake looking for the coffee, I'm opting them in. I realize some others seem to feel that this is identical to cell phone surveillance (but if so, and if you always have your phone, why bother with this?). I don't, and I'm not alone. The law recognizes major distinctions between 'home' and 'not-home'; I mention this only as a demonstration that the distinction is a clearly rooted one for a lot of people.

agumonkey 10y ago

I laughed hysterically at the same fact last week. Everything we dreamed of 20 years ago feels like a burden now.

erickhill 10y ago
Hysterically sounds borderline crazy. Step away from Alexa, nice and slow.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  Ok a bit strong, but the self fulfilling dystopia really threw me off.

pessimizer 10y ago

Kirk wouldn't have gotten away with half the shit he did if every word he said to the computer roundtripped to the Federation and back before being processed.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
Fortunately for him, the society of the Federation isn't driven by greed and personal profit seeking anymore, so they can focus on doing things the right way - like making the starship computer process voice recognition instead of sending it God knows where via subspace.

sdegutis 10y ago

You know, I feel the opposite. When I was younger, I wanted the same thing. To be kind of like Tony Stark in Iron Man, with all the convenience and power that future technology seems to promise. But now that I'm old and boring, I'm perfectly happy with my non-futuristic life. We still have an iPhone 3G which we use as an iPod around the house (which we plug into our speakers the old fashioned way, by plugging one end of a headset cord into the iPhone and the other into the speaker's AUX jack), and we have our laptop computer which we use for facebook and reddit. And that's the most "futuristic" technology I care to have. I don't plan to buy a VR headset. I take notes with a pen and paper when I'm not at my computer. We still write our grocery lists down that way and mark them off in the store with a pen. It may be boring and un-futuristic, but it gets the job done just fine, and I really don't have any complaints. I'm probably in a tiny minority on HN though.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
I have a similar view but for different reasons (though I do own an S7 - but for different reasons[0]). I still want to be like Tony Stark, or captain Picard. I want the cool future stuff. But I came to two realizations - a) it's always cooler in the movies than in real life, but b) even taking that into account, our future sucks compared to theirs. In the movies I like, technology was about empowering people. They were tools. Today, more and more the products are nice looking but barely functional, and sport the minimum subset of features that can be sold to the lowest common denominator. So take Google Now. Does it recognize voice? Yes, quite well I'd say. Would it be a problem for Google to let you hook up your own actions and data sources to the system, so that you could make yourself a Star Trek environment with a spare tablet attached to a wall? No, it wouldn't. It's an obvious feature. A feature which they - and pretty much everyone else - refuses to provide. Why? Because fuck useful. Lowest common denominator doesn't need that. [0] - I'm tired of buying shitty hardware. When I change the phone, I prefer to shell out for a top-of-the-line model to be 100% sure it will work fast and stay ahead of the bloat. I learned it the hard way with my first smartphone, which was barely powerful enough to lift its own OS - and trying to connect it to Internet always ended up with having to pull out the battery. I was stuck with it for a couple of years. A smartphone is something I use quite a lot every day, and even little frustrations accumulate.

danellis 10y ago

Does everything else in your house run open source firmware? How does source being available tell you whether your device is secure? Are you auditing it, then building and installing the firmware yourself so you know that the binary matches the released source? Are you doing the same with the bootloader? How far are you willing to take your paranoia?

walrus01 10y ago

Whenever I see one of these things, and the people who happily purchase it without giving even two seconds of thought to the privacy implications, it makes me realize how important organizations like the FSF and EFF are.

niutech 10y ago

There is an open source alternative to Google Home: Jasper (https://jasperproject.github.io https://jasperproject.github.io)

drdeadringer 10y ago

> Now, I just see an internet-connected microphone in a software black box A little while back, there was a kickstarter for "The Ubi"... basically as you describe. A non-mobile v0.1 Ziggy [Quantum Leap] where you'd plug it in and ask it generic questions. "Ubi, what's the weather?" and the like. IIRC, the Ubi is slowly but decently chugging along. However, your questions on security are valid.

darpa_escapee 10y ago

Let us be reminded that the FBI can neither confirm nor deny that they've accessed the microphones on the Amazon Echo of suspects, according to FOIA requests. Adoption of this tech will hurt general privacy. Find me a home where there isn't an internet enabled microphone or camera. Even if you are security conscious, are your family, friends, coworkers and the people you are near?

api 10y ago

Never EVER under any circumstances would I put a closed-source cloud-connected always-on microphone in my house. Google's entire business model and value as a company revolves around their ability to maximize the accuracy of their consumer profiles. They have no incentive to do anything other than maximally invade privacy. A device like this from them is even creepier than the Amazon Echo. While it's not released yet, I don't see a disable microphone switch on it either. At least the Echo has that-- though I imagine most users would forget to use it. The defenders will say "but it only listens when it hears the keyword!" What assurance do I have of this? How secure is this device? Is the keyword recognition performed locally or remotely? What is the definition of "listen?" I'm guessing that like glass the privacy policy will allow them to collect everything.

dredmorbius 10y ago
To the advantage of society, Google's value also lies in not alienating people to the point that they shun its products and services. Google cannot sell advertising based on my eyeballs if I won't use Google Search, block ads, avoid Google Maps, and download video via yt-download vs. watching it on the far-less-convenient YouTube website or application. Google have lost me to search, and several other products, for precisely this reason. I don't know the segment of the population I represent, but it is a segment. A US Department of Commerce survey release this past week reveals that 20% of the population consciously avoids online activities already due to privacy and surveillance concerns. This isn't fully attributable to concerns over Google (and that almost certainly poses a subset of those dissuaded), but it is a surprisingly large effect of privacy concerns. The trust factor you mention is a huge one. Cognizability is a wonderful word I've run across recently (from William Stanley Jevons' discussion of money). It refers to the ability to instantly and unambiguously recognise a characteristic or trait. Electronic devices lack cognizability of privacy. Glass didn't do so well as I recall.
- api 10y ago
  20% -- I hope it's that high. That's a high enough number to get peoples' attention and challenge the prevailing meme of "nobody cares about privacy or security." (Privacy IS security. There's not really a distinction.)

Fletch137 10y ago

You might be interested in mycroft, then: https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/

nathan_f77 10y ago

I was getting prepared to argue with you, but then I thought about it and realized you were right. I'm not prepared to give Google that much control over my house, especially when it's completely cloud-based. However, I am totally willing to use cloud-based voice recognition software, because the machine learning clusters required don't fit in my house. Sure, you can run basic voice recognition software on a server or a laptop. But that only gets you maybe 80% accuracy if you're lucky. There is a huge difference between 80% and 98% accuracy, it's the difference between using something every day, and turning it off after a week of frustration. (I've been there myself, I tried building my own voice recognition system for home automation.) But I think that's really the only packet that needs to leave my home network. I hate that my Philips Hue bulbs need an internet connection to work.

ElijahLynn 10y ago

This looks promising. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-an-open-source-artificial-intelligence-for https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aiforeveryone/mycroft-a... https://mycroft.ai/ https://mycroft.ai/