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I may have posted this same sentiment on the other threads on this topic so please feel free to ignore. I see some confusion as to why anybody would want these

I may have posted this same sentiment on the other threads on this topic so please feel free to ignore. I see some confusion as to why anybody would want these devices in the houses whatsoever and would like to offer an answer: Quadriplegia. Imagine walking into your house one day and all of the keys had been taken off your keyboard, every light switch is smooth, all of the doorknobs have disappeared, the controls on your stereo have disappeared and every other switch, lever and/or physical method of interacting with your devices had disappeared. That was what it was like to be me as a quadriplegic Geek. Then came the Amazon Echo and its ilk. The Echo coupled with Home Assistant[1] has absolutely revolutionised my life and enabled me to do all of the things above that I wasn't able to do before. It's a pretty compelling reason for me. Am I worried about my privacy? Absolutely. Am I any more worried about the Amazon Echo than I am about the microphone in my iPhone, television, MacBook Pro, iMac and weirdly my fridge? Nope. As others have pointed out it's a trade-off, I could be completely private and not be able to do anything or I could accept this somewhat Faustian bargain and be able to control almost every aspect of my house. Crappy situation to be in, but there is. There are a few open source alternatives coming through which keep everything within the wire, but until they get traction enough to be out interact with all my other devices I can't use them. Which sucks. Anyway, hopefully this comment was helpful and am available to answer questions on any topic other than physics. I'm rubbish at physics. :-) [1]: https://home-assistant.io/ https://home-assistant.io/

notyourday 9y ago
> Quadriplegia Damn, and no VC went into that huge market?!
- gamblor956 9y ago
  Your sarcasm aside, his comment extends to pretty much all persons with limited mobility, which includes the sick, injured, and elderly.
  - escapologybb 9y ago
    I don't think they were being sarcastic, were they? Or am I hopelessly naive and operating under the Principle of Charity? ;-) /sarcasm [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity Edited to add: corrected stupid voice dictation mistakes.
  - escapologybb 9y ago
    Sorry, I didn't actually address your point in my rush to be sarcastic. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. You are absolutely correct and I think that quadriplegics can be used as a kind of Patient Zero for accessibility purposes, in that if you can make a widget/service/application/building that a quadriplegic can successfully use then all those other people you mentioned will probably be able to as well. It means you have to solve one problem involving extreme disability, rather than taking each disability, infirmity, and just plain old being old as discrete and individual problems. Maybe. Seems like it might work though to me.
  - jbob2000 9y ago
    I used to work for a healthcare software company, we dealt with this a lot. In fact, it was probably our primary focus. The problem with the sick, injured, and elderly is that they are all disabled in very different ways. Someone with a spinal injury will be operate completely differently than someone with a stroke. You'll put a control on the left side of the screen which will impact anyone who can't use their left hand. Then you'll move it to the bottom of the screen, but that will impact people with peripheral vision issues or dementia. Many solutions that work for one set of disabilities are mutually exclusive to other disabilities. Color blindness and issues with sight are very difficult to get right (avoid blue... and red... and green...). Everything has to be big and bold and high contrast; your important call-to-action will be the same size as the link to your terms and conditions. We built an app that required people with diabetes to take pictures of their feet. Ironically, when we went to trial, none of the patients were able to take pictures of their feet. People who suffer from diabetes tend to be a bit larger, and yeah... they can't really bend over or pickup their feet. You can't build one app for everyone, you have to build 3 or 4 different versions that offer tailored features depending on the disabilities of that group. You need a design team that is accessibility focused, otherwise your developers are going to get a flat PNG of designs and have no idea how to implement the workflows for accessible users. It's incredibly expensive and you need talented people. I say all this not to stop anyone from doing accessibility focused work, but just to give reasons why many companies a) do a shit job of it and b) don't spend much time on it. The sad reality is that many disabled people don't have expendable income, so they aren't really the focus of business efforts. The only reason I got to experience all of this work was because the government was directly funding our efforts.
- escapologybb 9y ago
  > Damn, and no VC went into that huge market?! Tell me about it, I have money too! You make the products and I will buy them, as will other disabled people. It's a huge untapped market, it really is and only Apple seems to be paying even the slightest attention. I'm available for very expensive opinions by the way! :-)
codazoda 9y ago
I want these devices for their simple convenience... My teenage children often leave lights on in the basement of my home. "Alexa, turn off the basement lights". I'm also slightly afraid of heights, so I've considered installing smart LED's in the can lights in the eves of my roof. "Alexa, turn the house red." Sometimes I get hot or cold after I've already gone to bed and I don't want to walk to the thermostat to see if someone has adjusted it. "Alexa, set the temperature to 70 degrees." I worry about the loss of privacy but the day to day convenience is also pretty compelling.
- gr3yh47 9y ago
  with all the info available about rampant blanket NSA spying/access, and the content of most privacy policies, the basic operating procedure anymore should be to assume that all devices are pwned. if you're cool sprinkling always-on microphones around your house for convenience, more power to you. I can't do it.
  - codazoda 9y ago
    You probably carry a microphone almost everywhere you go. Your smart phone might or might not record by default but it can certainly be made to do so.
    - kruczek 9y ago
      It is of course a trade-off. However having accepted one, doesn't mean I should accept the other. I still prefer to have one potentially listening microphone around, than have two.
    - pdkl95 9y ago
      > You probably carry a microphone almost everywhere you go. That's projection; some of us value an expectation of privacy more than minor conveniences. > it can certainly be made to do so Except that isn't the intended purpose of the device. You still have an expectation of privacy. When you normalize an expectation that you might be recorded by 3rd party devices, the 4th Amendment longer applies[1]. This isn't about technology, "targeted advertising", or the NSA. Blinded by shiny baubles and a handful of not-strictly-necessary conveniences, you're normalizing social expectations to accept regular automated recording the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2]. Defending internet microphones because they are convenient isn't useful or convincing. Lots of things sound good when you only consider the benefits. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853560 [2] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html
windexh8er 9y ago
Out of curiosity have you tried using the Snips.AI integration in HA?
QAPereo 9y ago
This makes a lot of sense, but there are only so many people with these kinds of injuries, and Amazon is marketing far beyond it. It’s just s pity thst help to someone in your circumstances always seems to be a side-effect or afterthought, rather than the initial goal. It makes me think a bit of how restaurants have moved to accommodate the many people who claim various, spurious forms of gluten/wheat issues other than actual Celiac disease. If you have Celiac, your horizon has expanded, but only because of a separate group of loud and gullible people.
gleb 9y ago
How are you "typing" this comment?
- delta1 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition
CaptSpify 9y ago
I really hate the "why would anyone want this?!?" argument as well. I am not quadriplegic, but I absolutely want the functionality it provides. That being said: No fucking way am I putting a closed-source, black-box, always-listening device in my house. A lot of the current home-automation concepts are amazing, but we keep implementing them in the shittiest way possible. We really need better open, secure, upgradeable, hackable, adjustable systems for it to really take off.
mirimir 9y ago
I have cervical damage that could lead to paralysis. So I get that perspective. But damn, I don't see why the voice-control stuff can't all be local.

notyourday 9y ago

> Quadriplegia Damn, and no VC went into that huge market?!

gamblor956 9y ago
Your sarcasm aside, his comment extends to pretty much all persons with limited mobility, which includes the sick, injured, and elderly.
- escapologybb 9y ago
  I don't think they were being sarcastic, were they? Or am I hopelessly naive and operating under the Principle of Charity? ;-) /sarcasm [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity Edited to add: corrected stupid voice dictation mistakes.
- escapologybb 9y ago
  Sorry, I didn't actually address your point in my rush to be sarcastic. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. You are absolutely correct and I think that quadriplegics can be used as a kind of Patient Zero for accessibility purposes, in that if you can make a widget/service/application/building that a quadriplegic can successfully use then all those other people you mentioned will probably be able to as well. It means you have to solve one problem involving extreme disability, rather than taking each disability, infirmity, and just plain old being old as discrete and individual problems. Maybe. Seems like it might work though to me.
- jbob2000 9y ago
  I used to work for a healthcare software company, we dealt with this a lot. In fact, it was probably our primary focus. The problem with the sick, injured, and elderly is that they are all disabled in very different ways. Someone with a spinal injury will be operate completely differently than someone with a stroke. You'll put a control on the left side of the screen which will impact anyone who can't use their left hand. Then you'll move it to the bottom of the screen, but that will impact people with peripheral vision issues or dementia. Many solutions that work for one set of disabilities are mutually exclusive to other disabilities. Color blindness and issues with sight are very difficult to get right (avoid blue... and red... and green...). Everything has to be big and bold and high contrast; your important call-to-action will be the same size as the link to your terms and conditions. We built an app that required people with diabetes to take pictures of their feet. Ironically, when we went to trial, none of the patients were able to take pictures of their feet. People who suffer from diabetes tend to be a bit larger, and yeah... they can't really bend over or pickup their feet. You can't build one app for everyone, you have to build 3 or 4 different versions that offer tailored features depending on the disabilities of that group. You need a design team that is accessibility focused, otherwise your developers are going to get a flat PNG of designs and have no idea how to implement the workflows for accessible users. It's incredibly expensive and you need talented people. I say all this not to stop anyone from doing accessibility focused work, but just to give reasons why many companies a) do a shit job of it and b) don't spend much time on it. The sad reality is that many disabled people don't have expendable income, so they aren't really the focus of business efforts. The only reason I got to experience all of this work was because the government was directly funding our efforts.
escapologybb 9y ago
> Damn, and no VC went into that huge market?! Tell me about it, I have money too! You make the products and I will buy them, as will other disabled people. It's a huge untapped market, it really is and only Apple seems to be paying even the slightest attention. I'm available for very expensive opinions by the way! :-)

codazoda 9y ago

I want these devices for their simple convenience... My teenage children often leave lights on in the basement of my home. "Alexa, turn off the basement lights". I'm also slightly afraid of heights, so I've considered installing smart LED's in the can lights in the eves of my roof. "Alexa, turn the house red." Sometimes I get hot or cold after I've already gone to bed and I don't want to walk to the thermostat to see if someone has adjusted it. "Alexa, set the temperature to 70 degrees." I worry about the loss of privacy but the day to day convenience is also pretty compelling.

gr3yh47 9y ago
with all the info available about rampant blanket NSA spying/access, and the content of most privacy policies, the basic operating procedure anymore should be to assume that all devices are pwned. if you're cool sprinkling always-on microphones around your house for convenience, more power to you. I can't do it.
- codazoda 9y ago
  You probably carry a microphone almost everywhere you go. Your smart phone might or might not record by default but it can certainly be made to do so.
  - kruczek 9y ago
    It is of course a trade-off. However having accepted one, doesn't mean I should accept the other. I still prefer to have one potentially listening microphone around, than have two.
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    > You probably carry a microphone almost everywhere you go. That's projection; some of us value an expectation of privacy more than minor conveniences. > it can certainly be made to do so Except that isn't the intended purpose of the device. You still have an expectation of privacy. When you normalize an expectation that you might be recorded by 3rd party devices, the 4th Amendment longer applies[1]. This isn't about technology, "targeted advertising", or the NSA. Blinded by shiny baubles and a handful of not-strictly-necessary conveniences, you're normalizing social expectations to accept regular automated recording the "details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion"[2]. Defending internet microphones because they are convenient isn't useful or convincing. Lots of things sound good when you only consider the benefits. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15853560 [2] http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html

windexh8er 9y ago

Out of curiosity have you tried using the Snips.AI integration in HA?

QAPereo 9y ago

This makes a lot of sense, but there are only so many people with these kinds of injuries, and Amazon is marketing far beyond it. It’s just s pity thst help to someone in your circumstances always seems to be a side-effect or afterthought, rather than the initial goal. It makes me think a bit of how restaurants have moved to accommodate the many people who claim various, spurious forms of gluten/wheat issues other than actual Celiac disease. If you have Celiac, your horizon has expanded, but only because of a separate group of loud and gullible people.

gleb 9y ago

How are you "typing" this comment?

delta1 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_recognition

CaptSpify 9y ago

I really hate the "why would anyone want this?!?" argument as well. I am not quadriplegic, but I absolutely want the functionality it provides. That being said: No fucking way am I putting a closed-source, black-box, always-listening device in my house. A lot of the current home-automation concepts are amazing, but we keep implementing them in the shittiest way possible. We really need better open, secure, upgradeable, hackable, adjustable systems for it to really take off.

mirimir 9y ago

I have cervical damage that could lead to paralysis. So I get that perspective. But damn, I don't see why the voice-control stuff can't all be local.