11 ms·

I'm firmly in the "hell nah" camp: 1. Google and Amazon are pushing these with stupendous discounts, certainly below cost. That tells me that the revenue model

I'm firmly in the "hell nah" camp: 1. Google and Amazon are pushing these with stupendous discounts, certainly below cost. That tells me that the revenue model is not the hardware. They hope to make money by manipulating me after I buy it. Nope. 2. Google injecting ads into the "My Day" information. Nope. 3. Google Home was found to be listening all the time due to a "hardware flaw." Nope. 4. Amazon devices doing the creepy laugh for no reason? Nope. I mean, come ON. They couldn't pay me to incorporate one of these things into my living space. It's below-cost hardware running bigcorp-controlled, remotely updatable software intended to extract my info and dollars. Get lost!

calewis 8y ago
If it can be done, it will be done. You're correct on every point.
product50 8y ago
Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because they think like you. Good luck!
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  And we are just now starting to figure out that those people were way smarter than those of us who bought into smartphones. Hence even Google pushing the whole "well being" thing this year at I/O. (I've had a smartphone since 2009, but am strongly considering something dumber next time around.)
  - blackflame7000 8y ago
    There are 7 Billion people in this world. I've have come to accept I am simply not that important. I'm sure BigBrother has too.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      This statement both ignores the tremendous effect smartphones have on you personally (as opposed to others being interested in you), and the tremendous effect tech platforms have on large scale groups of unimportant people.
      - blackflame7000 8y ago
        Oh no doubt, and it does so intentionally. A voice assistant in my house effects me and only me. Therefore, I am ok with the privacy/convenience tradeoff because frankly IDK what Google thinks they know about me, but I google way too much random crap to ever put together a half-way decent profile about me and my interests.
        ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        The whole point of big data is finding patterns in large amounts of seemingly random information.
        blackflame7000 8y ago
        Maybe, but HFT have been working a long time to find a pattern in the markets. Human's are random and Sampling can only tell you so much especially when sampling bias is so easy to do accidentally
        sah2ed 8y ago
        Humans can be spontaneous yes, but not exactly random. In aggregate, human behavior from online activities is predictable [0] according to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in Everybody Lies. 0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKLK/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_1?ie=UTF8&cursor=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKL...
        blackflame7000 8y ago
  - larkeith 8y ago
    I'm going to keep blatantly promoting the Librem 5 [1], which is designed specifically to address these concerns (not affiliated with them, just a fan). [1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
    - grizzles 8y ago
      I'd be careful about promoting vapor as people tend to get annoyed when they don't get their product. If Purism ships, I doubt it will be anything decent. They are absurdly under capitalized for what they are trying to do. I'd love to be wrong but I'd happily bet 5 figs that I'm not.
      - losteric 8y ago
        Why do you say they're "absurdly" under-capitalized? They already make laptops. The phone's hardware seems fairly standard, no risky R&D gambles, and the software is Linux/OSS...
        grizzles 8y ago
        They re-badge laptops that someone else makes. It's not like they have their own factory in China. In this case they are not re-badging, they are building their own phone and phones are considerably harder to make. There are QA processes that require machines that cost >$1M. It puts them into a situation where they have to trust their manufacturer 100% and pray. Essential spent ~$100M making their phone and they had help from Foxconn and awesome industry connections. $2M isn't gonna cut it.
        auslander 8y ago
        It is impossible to run Intel or AMD laptop without using their firmware blobs. Check Libreboot FAQ. Only free thing at the moment is ARM, like Marvell CPUs.
    - mwcampbell 8y ago
      Why not Android without the Google services, e.g. LineageOS or CopperheadOS? IMO, for the category it targets -- devices for users that have neither the skill nor desire to be their own sysadmin -- Android is technically superior to the usual GNU/Linux stack. GNU/Linux is moving in the right direction with sandboxed Flatpak apps, but Android is already there. Also, Android is a thoroughly mainstream platform. So if you don't want to be a free-software purist, you can run individual proprietary apps, as long as they're available outside the Play Store and don't require Google services. With a GNU/Linux system, unless it can run Android inside a container, you're basically limited to web applications for anything mainstream.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    I don't feel dumber. I traded information to Google in exchange for convenience. Now maybe that wasn't worth it to you, but I'd avoid speaking for all of us. My smart phone makes me a functional member of society, that's worth a bit of privacy.
    - millstone 8y ago
      What if you could have that convenience without trading information? Weather, stock prices, recipes, music, traffic, timers, shopping lists, etc. don't require sharing any of your personal information.
      - ReverseCold 8y ago
        Right, what if? Someone needs to make it happen.
      - Zombieball 8y ago
        For free?
      - ctz 8y ago
        I'm interested in how you think weather or traffic (for example) would work. Would you download all weather and traffic for every location/road on earth? That's quite a lot of data.
    - Majestic121 8y ago
      I don't think it is required to have a smartphone to be 'a functional member of society'.
      - jhall1468 8y ago
        For me it is. I have ADD and my phone is a God send for not forgetting things.
      - thoughtpalette 8y ago
        I can never go back to not having the worlds map/navigation in the palm of my hand. I would love to go back to a dumb phone if not for the very crucial feature for me.
  - product50 8y ago
    The corollary of being privacy conscious is NOT being stupid. Folks may be privacy conscious and all power to them to navigate the web/mobile world by making respective choices. However, A LOT of folks are perfectly fine trading off their privacy with convenience and value-add that comes with sharing data with companies (that use the said data to provide better and customized experiences to them). Categorizing people who make these trade offs as less smart is missing the point - and probably cynical since you can't accept them.
    - taurath 8y ago
      One would argue that it’s only because they’ve nothing to lose at the time. I imagine sometimes all the smart motivated people who would never ever run for office or be a public figure of any sort because they’re afraid of their search or post history of their teens or 20s cropping up. I’ll bet it’s actually quite a massive amount. I’m certainly in that boat.
  - ehsankia 8y ago
    Not at all, those things are mutually exclusive. You can have a device that is useful and makes many facets of your life much better, but is also hurting other parts. You can still keep the former, and try to reduce the impacts of the latter. If smartphones were completely useless, then we wouldn't actually need well-being features, we would just throw away our phones...
  - CaptainZapp 8y ago
    If I could get a dumb phone with reasonable fast WiFi hotspot functionality I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. It just doesn't seem to exist.
    - jacobush 8y ago
      IIRC Nokia had one.
    - seabrookmx 8y ago
      I know it's less convenient, but there's dedicated WiFi hotspot devices that exist. I considered getting a "dumb phone" and one of these devices because in some cases a tablet-style internet-only plan + pay-as-you-go minutes for the odd time I use a phone would be cheaper than a bundled smartphone plan. At this point saving the $10/month isn't worth the hassle to me though and now I use Slack on my phone so damn much it'd never work :\
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      Symbian phones, sadly now dead (yes I don't miss Symbian C++, but the phone was great).
    - vazamb 8y ago
      Look at the new Nokia 'matrix phone' 8110. It is a dumb phone with some smart features and most notably 4G and WiFi hotspot functionality. At only 80 dollars or so. I am seriously considering getting one just as an experiment
      - CaptainZapp 8y ago
        Thank you very much. Sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.
  - Kiro 8y ago
    No, people are not "starting to figure out" anything here. That's just your and a small minority's opinion.
- larkeith 8y ago
  This is a false equivalence; There is a slight difference between owning a smartphone with privacy and data collection management options and actively bringing into your home a device designed and acknowledged to constantly record and transmit data.
  - function_seven 8y ago
    They aren't designed to constantly record or transmit. If they were sending that kind of info out the WAN connection, it would be noticed the day it's enabled. If you trust Google to honor the privacy and data collection management options, then I see no reason not to apply that same level of trust to their home speaker product. Now, whether these devices are capable of doing this on a targeted basis, that's possible. That same possibility exists with the closed source baseband chip in all our smartphones as well, though.
- lwansbrough 8y ago
  Are they wrong? It's not like phone (hardware or service provider) companies have exactly proven their ability to not spy on or advertise to you.
- StreamBright 8y ago
  And your point? I am thinking about not having a smartphone since non of the companies offer a product that does what I want to do with a smartphone.
- Sir_Substance 8y ago
  Textbook strawman argument. "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man." - Wikipedia. We don't know anything about how the parent poster uses his smartphone, if he has one. Learn to recognise 'em people :)
regnerba 8y ago
2: can you source that please? Only time I ever heard of that was when people thought the bit about a movie coming out was an ad. They said it wasn't a paid thing and was given to people that they thought would enjoy the movie. Personally that's what I want to hear when I ask my home about my day. A reminder that a movie I am interested in is coming out today? Thanks for the reminder! https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/16/14948696/google-home-assistant-advertising-beauty-and-the-beast https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/16/14948696/g... 3: if your referring to the mini that a journalist got and found to be constantly recording small snippets of audio, I thought Google handled that really well. They had someone at his house to collect it the same day I think, and within days disabled the feature across the board even though only a small number of devices had the flaw. https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/10/google-nerfing-home-minis-mine-spied-everything-said-247/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/10/google-nerfing-home...
- millstone 8y ago
  1. Yes, I meant the Beauty and the Beast ad. They describe how "it invites our partners to be our guest and shares their tales." That's their actual explanation: this product is how Google invites THEIR guests into YOUR home. If that's honestly what you want, by all means. But not in my house. 2. Right, Home was found to be recording thousands of times a day. Google quickly shipped a software update to disable it: that's the right damage control, and they deserve credit for that response. But the point is that Google will happily "spy on everything I said" and not notice. Why should a random reporter have to dig through Google codenames to discover this spying? Shouldn't Google have safeguards in place? And see their pathetic response [1] that doesn't acknowledge the true problem at all. Google could own these mistakes. But instead they deny their ads are ads, and characterize constant eavesdropping as "touch controls behaving incorrectly." They haven't learned a thing, and until they do, this stuff is going to happen again and again with their products. [1] https://support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7550221 https://support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7550221
  - ehsankia 8y ago
    I'm sorry but you're either being intentionally obtuse or trying to twist and mislead people by spreading stories out of context and lacking crucial information. 1. In over two years the Home existing, that happened a SINGLE time, no money changed hands and once they realize it people didn't enjoy the experience, it never happened again. Reading your original comment > Google injecting ads into the "My Day" information you make it sounds like this is something they do regularly all the time. It literally happened once a year ago and they apologized for it. 2. This was a hardware defect on a very very small number of units on a single type of smart speaker. The defect triggered the button at the top, which makes the speaker lights up, listen and tries to respond, so the user would clearly see it misbehaving. All recordings also show up on your activity page. Again here, your original comment: > Google Home was found to be listening all the time You make it sound like his happened on all devices, was doing it intentionally and was doing it in an undisclosed secret way, when in fact it was a bug which realistically affected less than 0.00001% of the people and was fixed within a few hours once reported. You can bend the truth and assume whatever crazy tinfoil theory you want, but that doesn't make it reality.
alexpetralia 8y ago
Your first point reminds me of a recent podcast[1] where Tren Griffin said that sometimes the hardware is simply a distribution channel for the software, which is where all the margins are. He called this "software in a box." [1] http://investorfieldguide.com/tren/ http://investorfieldguide.com/tren/
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  This has been common for years now in the IoT sphere, and begins to infect everything in computing too. To be honest, I just fucking hate it. When companies turn a product into a service, they can afford selling entry package at a loss, thus driving out competitors who sell products as products. Suddenly, you have yet another thing for which you need recurring payments (instead of one-time), and which will only work as long as the provider likes it. You lose freedom and control.
  - kenning 8y ago
    For me the classic example of this is photoshop. You cannot buy old photoshop licenses anymore because they realized that people are happy with them.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
tills13 8y ago
2. I have _never_ had an ad and I use both my Minis daily 3. the hardware issue causing this was disabled 4. ? k
- schraeds 8y ago
  4 happened https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/amazon-alexa-devices-strange-laughter https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/am...
- ehsankia 8y ago
  It was an experience that happened a single time a year ago. No money exchanged hands, it was just a fun thing they made for fan of the movie, and after the criticism, they apologized and never did it again. Yes the parent comment makes it sound like this is something that happened all the time... I'm not sure why a comment literally spreading lies is the top comment, I guess HN loves crazy tinfoil hat alternative truth now. Similarly with #3, it was a hardware bug that impacted a very very small number of devices, and which was fixed within hours of being reported. It was also very obvious the device was misbehaving so implying that Google was "spying" is stupid. Why would Google make the device light up and make noises if they were spying on you?
rapfaria 8y ago
What is 4. about? Never heard about it. And out of curiosity I asked: Alexa, can you laugh? "Sure, I can laugh. Ti-hi".
- millstone 8y ago
  Web search "Alexa laughing randomly", it was widely reported.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
blauditore 8y ago
1. -> Not necessarily, they might just be trying to dominate the market, or just make such devices popular, then increase prices. However, it's probably about data gathering (and having an ad platform in-house) too.
Sir_Substance 8y ago
People are giving you a lot of shit for this, but I agree. #1 was enough to swing it for me. Unfortunately, my room mate bought two of them anyway, and so I've spent the last 6 months unplugging one of them every time I go to the bathroom. By the way, they also aggressively throw multicast traffic around your network and upload at least 10 megabytes an hour to google even when idle. My current speculation is that they are tracking android and possibly non-android devices as they move from network to network so they can better map who knows who.
PunchTornado 8y ago
There are certainly some people like you, but they are in the minority. As soon as these devices become very useful, people will jump on them. I would buy one too, but atm I think the technology is not yet there. The thing that I find ridiculous is that you kind think are superior or in a position to judge other people for buying this tech. haha
hknd 8y ago
Ignoring the misleading/obtuse information here and focusing on the "hell nah" declaration: Nobody is forcing you to use any of those smart speaker devices, and nobody is forcing you to buy them. Many people really enjoy using their Google Home or an Amazon Echo, as it greatly improves aspects of their day-to-day life. Some people with disabilities are actually greatly alleviate by this progress - they can now use their voice to control many different things within their house which was not possible before.
- slivym 8y ago
  There are plenty of good use cases for these, and I'm sure there are legitimate ways people can decide they're happy with the trade-off. However, for me this screams of a Facebook style scandal coming sooner or later. People buying these things often don't really know what the business model is behind this, and don't know really know how Amazon/Google is going to make money. We can all sit here and speculate about it as informed people, but that's not the general market. I could easily see in 2 years time people turning around and saying "What do you MEAN Amazon has been ordering more expensive versions of products when I use the Echo" or "What do you mean Google showed me adverts for Ron Paul because I keep asking it about chem trails". The power of the information collected by these devices is incredibly far reaching, and incredibly profitable, and at the moment most people aren't really capable of giving informed consent.
ourmandave 8y ago
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal *Listening" succinct summary. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/listening https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/listening
Datenstrom 8y ago
I agree, does anyone know of any efforts to make something like this that is not evil?
jacksmith21006 8y ago
What is great is you get to chose. We have several Google homes in our house and they are used daily by my family. Saved my butt two days ago. Son graduation was at an arena in the city and walking by the GH and asked drive time to find over 2x than normal. Apparently a MLB baseball game that started 15 minutes after his graduation start time. Usually traffic is out of the city not in. Thanks to Google made it in time. What is also cool is the arena name is a hard name to pronounce as named after someone who gave money to the University yet Google still got it on first try. Alexa and Siri can't handle such things. But have zero problem with you not wanting one as it is a personal choice.

calewis 8y ago

If it can be done, it will be done. You're correct on every point.

product50 8y ago

Well there are certainly folks who still don't have smartphones today because they think like you. Good luck!

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
And we are just now starting to figure out that those people were way smarter than those of us who bought into smartphones. Hence even Google pushing the whole "well being" thing this year at I/O. (I've had a smartphone since 2009, but am strongly considering something dumber next time around.)
- blackflame7000 8y ago
  There are 7 Billion people in this world. I've have come to accept I am simply not that important. I'm sure BigBrother has too.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    This statement both ignores the tremendous effect smartphones have on you personally (as opposed to others being interested in you), and the tremendous effect tech platforms have on large scale groups of unimportant people.
    - blackflame7000 8y ago
      Oh no doubt, and it does so intentionally. A voice assistant in my house effects me and only me. Therefore, I am ok with the privacy/convenience tradeoff because frankly IDK what Google thinks they know about me, but I google way too much random crap to ever put together a half-way decent profile about me and my interests.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        The whole point of big data is finding patterns in large amounts of seemingly random information.
        blackflame7000 8y ago
        Maybe, but HFT have been working a long time to find a pattern in the markets. Human's are random and Sampling can only tell you so much especially when sampling bias is so easy to do accidentally
        sah2ed 8y ago
        Humans can be spontaneous yes, but not exactly random. In aggregate, human behavior from online activities is predictable [0] according to Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in Everybody Lies. 0: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKLK/ref=cm_cr_dp_mb_rvw_1?ie=UTF8&cursor=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/review/B01AFXZ2F4/R2TPT5454UEKL...
        blackflame7000 8y ago
- larkeith 8y ago
  I'm going to keep blatantly promoting the Librem 5 [1], which is designed specifically to address these concerns (not affiliated with them, just a fan). [1] https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
  - grizzles 8y ago
    I'd be careful about promoting vapor as people tend to get annoyed when they don't get their product. If Purism ships, I doubt it will be anything decent. They are absurdly under capitalized for what they are trying to do. I'd love to be wrong but I'd happily bet 5 figs that I'm not.
    - losteric 8y ago
      Why do you say they're "absurdly" under-capitalized? They already make laptops. The phone's hardware seems fairly standard, no risky R&D gambles, and the software is Linux/OSS...
      - grizzles 8y ago
        They re-badge laptops that someone else makes. It's not like they have their own factory in China. In this case they are not re-badging, they are building their own phone and phones are considerably harder to make. There are QA processes that require machines that cost >$1M. It puts them into a situation where they have to trust their manufacturer 100% and pray. Essential spent ~$100M making their phone and they had help from Foxconn and awesome industry connections. $2M isn't gonna cut it.
      - auslander 8y ago
        It is impossible to run Intel or AMD laptop without using their firmware blobs. Check Libreboot FAQ. Only free thing at the moment is ARM, like Marvell CPUs.
  - mwcampbell 8y ago
    Why not Android without the Google services, e.g. LineageOS or CopperheadOS? IMO, for the category it targets -- devices for users that have neither the skill nor desire to be their own sysadmin -- Android is technically superior to the usual GNU/Linux stack. GNU/Linux is moving in the right direction with sandboxed Flatpak apps, but Android is already there. Also, Android is a thoroughly mainstream platform. So if you don't want to be a free-software purist, you can run individual proprietary apps, as long as they're available outside the Play Store and don't require Google services. With a GNU/Linux system, unless it can run Android inside a container, you're basically limited to web applications for anything mainstream.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  I don't feel dumber. I traded information to Google in exchange for convenience. Now maybe that wasn't worth it to you, but I'd avoid speaking for all of us. My smart phone makes me a functional member of society, that's worth a bit of privacy.
  - millstone 8y ago
    What if you could have that convenience without trading information? Weather, stock prices, recipes, music, traffic, timers, shopping lists, etc. don't require sharing any of your personal information.
    - ReverseCold 8y ago
      Right, what if? Someone needs to make it happen.
    - Zombieball 8y ago
      For free?
    - ctz 8y ago
      I'm interested in how you think weather or traffic (for example) would work. Would you download all weather and traffic for every location/road on earth? That's quite a lot of data.
  - Majestic121 8y ago
    I don't think it is required to have a smartphone to be 'a functional member of society'.
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      For me it is. I have ADD and my phone is a God send for not forgetting things.
    - thoughtpalette 8y ago
      I can never go back to not having the worlds map/navigation in the palm of my hand. I would love to go back to a dumb phone if not for the very crucial feature for me.
- product50 8y ago
  The corollary of being privacy conscious is NOT being stupid. Folks may be privacy conscious and all power to them to navigate the web/mobile world by making respective choices. However, A LOT of folks are perfectly fine trading off their privacy with convenience and value-add that comes with sharing data with companies (that use the said data to provide better and customized experiences to them). Categorizing people who make these trade offs as less smart is missing the point - and probably cynical since you can't accept them.
  - taurath 8y ago
    One would argue that it’s only because they’ve nothing to lose at the time. I imagine sometimes all the smart motivated people who would never ever run for office or be a public figure of any sort because they’re afraid of their search or post history of their teens or 20s cropping up. I’ll bet it’s actually quite a massive amount. I’m certainly in that boat.
- ehsankia 8y ago
  Not at all, those things are mutually exclusive. You can have a device that is useful and makes many facets of your life much better, but is also hurting other parts. You can still keep the former, and try to reduce the impacts of the latter. If smartphones were completely useless, then we wouldn't actually need well-being features, we would just throw away our phones...
- CaptainZapp 8y ago
  If I could get a dumb phone with reasonable fast WiFi hotspot functionality I'd jump on it in a heartbeat. It just doesn't seem to exist.
  - jacobush 8y ago
    IIRC Nokia had one.
  - seabrookmx 8y ago
    I know it's less convenient, but there's dedicated WiFi hotspot devices that exist. I considered getting a "dumb phone" and one of these devices because in some cases a tablet-style internet-only plan + pay-as-you-go minutes for the odd time I use a phone would be cheaper than a bundled smartphone plan. At this point saving the $10/month isn't worth the hassle to me though and now I use Slack on my phone so damn much it'd never work :\
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    Symbian phones, sadly now dead (yes I don't miss Symbian C++, but the phone was great).
  - vazamb 8y ago
    Look at the new Nokia 'matrix phone' 8110. It is a dumb phone with some smart features and most notably 4G and WiFi hotspot functionality. At only 80 dollars or so. I am seriously considering getting one just as an experiment
    - CaptainZapp 8y ago
      Thank you very much. Sounds exactly like what I'm looking for.
- Kiro 8y ago
  No, people are not "starting to figure out" anything here. That's just your and a small minority's opinion.
larkeith 8y ago
This is a false equivalence; There is a slight difference between owning a smartphone with privacy and data collection management options and actively bringing into your home a device designed and acknowledged to constantly record and transmit data.
- function_seven 8y ago
  They aren't designed to constantly record or transmit. If they were sending that kind of info out the WAN connection, it would be noticed the day it's enabled. If you trust Google to honor the privacy and data collection management options, then I see no reason not to apply that same level of trust to their home speaker product. Now, whether these devices are capable of doing this on a targeted basis, that's possible. That same possibility exists with the closed source baseband chip in all our smartphones as well, though.
lwansbrough 8y ago
Are they wrong? It's not like phone (hardware or service provider) companies have exactly proven their ability to not spy on or advertise to you.
StreamBright 8y ago
And your point? I am thinking about not having a smartphone since non of the companies offer a product that does what I want to do with a smartphone.
Sir_Substance 8y ago
Textbook strawman argument. "A straw man is a common form of argument and is an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent.[1] One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man." - Wikipedia. We don't know anything about how the parent poster uses his smartphone, if he has one. Learn to recognise 'em people :)

regnerba 8y ago

2: can you source that please? Only time I ever heard of that was when people thought the bit about a movie coming out was an ad. They said it wasn't a paid thing and was given to people that they thought would enjoy the movie. Personally that's what I want to hear when I ask my home about my day. A reminder that a movie I am interested in is coming out today? Thanks for the reminder! https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/16/14948696/google-home-assistant-advertising-beauty-and-the-beast https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/3/16/14948696/g... 3: if your referring to the mini that a journalist got and found to be constantly recording small snippets of audio, I thought Google handled that really well. They had someone at his house to collect it the same day I think, and within days disabled the feature across the board even though only a small number of devices had the flaw. https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/10/google-nerfing-home-minis-mine-spied-everything-said-247/ https://www.androidpolice.com/2017/10/10/google-nerfing-home...

millstone 8y ago
1. Yes, I meant the Beauty and the Beast ad. They describe how "it invites our partners to be our guest and shares their tales." That's their actual explanation: this product is how Google invites THEIR guests into YOUR home. If that's honestly what you want, by all means. But not in my house. 2. Right, Home was found to be recording thousands of times a day. Google quickly shipped a software update to disable it: that's the right damage control, and they deserve credit for that response. But the point is that Google will happily "spy on everything I said" and not notice. Why should a random reporter have to dig through Google codenames to discover this spying? Shouldn't Google have safeguards in place? And see their pathetic response [1] that doesn't acknowledge the true problem at all. Google could own these mistakes. But instead they deny their ads are ads, and characterize constant eavesdropping as "touch controls behaving incorrectly." They haven't learned a thing, and until they do, this stuff is going to happen again and again with their products. [1] https://support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7550221 https://support.google.com/googlehome/answer/7550221
- ehsankia 8y ago
  I'm sorry but you're either being intentionally obtuse or trying to twist and mislead people by spreading stories out of context and lacking crucial information. 1. In over two years the Home existing, that happened a SINGLE time, no money changed hands and once they realize it people didn't enjoy the experience, it never happened again. Reading your original comment > Google injecting ads into the "My Day" information you make it sounds like this is something they do regularly all the time. It literally happened once a year ago and they apologized for it. 2. This was a hardware defect on a very very small number of units on a single type of smart speaker. The defect triggered the button at the top, which makes the speaker lights up, listen and tries to respond, so the user would clearly see it misbehaving. All recordings also show up on your activity page. Again here, your original comment: > Google Home was found to be listening all the time You make it sound like his happened on all devices, was doing it intentionally and was doing it in an undisclosed secret way, when in fact it was a bug which realistically affected less than 0.00001% of the people and was fixed within a few hours once reported. You can bend the truth and assume whatever crazy tinfoil theory you want, but that doesn't make it reality.

alexpetralia 8y ago

Your first point reminds me of a recent podcast[1] where Tren Griffin said that sometimes the hardware is simply a distribution channel for the software, which is where all the margins are. He called this "software in a box." [1] http://investorfieldguide.com/tren/ http://investorfieldguide.com/tren/

TeMPOraL 8y ago
This has been common for years now in the IoT sphere, and begins to infect everything in computing too. To be honest, I just fucking hate it. When companies turn a product into a service, they can afford selling entry package at a loss, thus driving out competitors who sell products as products. Suddenly, you have yet another thing for which you need recurring payments (instead of one-time), and which will only work as long as the provider likes it. You lose freedom and control.
- kenning 8y ago
  For me the classic example of this is photoshop. You cannot buy old photoshop licenses anymore because they realized that people are happy with them.

deleted 8y ago

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tills13 8y ago

2. I have _never_ had an ad and I use both my Minis daily 3. the hardware issue causing this was disabled 4. ? k

schraeds 8y ago
4 happened https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/amazon-alexa-devices-strange-laughter https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/am...
ehsankia 8y ago
It was an experience that happened a single time a year ago. No money exchanged hands, it was just a fun thing they made for fan of the movie, and after the criticism, they apologized and never did it again. Yes the parent comment makes it sound like this is something that happened all the time... I'm not sure why a comment literally spreading lies is the top comment, I guess HN loves crazy tinfoil hat alternative truth now. Similarly with #3, it was a hardware bug that impacted a very very small number of devices, and which was fixed within hours of being reported. It was also very obvious the device was misbehaving so implying that Google was "spying" is stupid. Why would Google make the device light up and make noises if they were spying on you?

rapfaria 8y ago

What is 4. about? Never heard about it. And out of curiosity I asked: Alexa, can you laugh? "Sure, I can laugh. Ti-hi".

millstone 8y ago
Web search "Alexa laughing randomly", it was widely reported.

deleted 8y ago

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blauditore 8y ago

1. -> Not necessarily, they might just be trying to dominate the market, or just make such devices popular, then increase prices. However, it's probably about data gathering (and having an ad platform in-house) too.

Sir_Substance 8y ago

People are giving you a lot of shit for this, but I agree. #1 was enough to swing it for me. Unfortunately, my room mate bought two of them anyway, and so I've spent the last 6 months unplugging one of them every time I go to the bathroom. By the way, they also aggressively throw multicast traffic around your network and upload at least 10 megabytes an hour to google even when idle. My current speculation is that they are tracking android and possibly non-android devices as they move from network to network so they can better map who knows who.

PunchTornado 8y ago

There are certainly some people like you, but they are in the minority. As soon as these devices become very useful, people will jump on them. I would buy one too, but atm I think the technology is not yet there. The thing that I find ridiculous is that you kind think are superior or in a position to judge other people for buying this tech. haha

hknd 8y ago

Ignoring the misleading/obtuse information here and focusing on the "hell nah" declaration: Nobody is forcing you to use any of those smart speaker devices, and nobody is forcing you to buy them. Many people really enjoy using their Google Home or an Amazon Echo, as it greatly improves aspects of their day-to-day life. Some people with disabilities are actually greatly alleviate by this progress - they can now use their voice to control many different things within their house which was not possible before.

slivym 8y ago
There are plenty of good use cases for these, and I'm sure there are legitimate ways people can decide they're happy with the trade-off. However, for me this screams of a Facebook style scandal coming sooner or later. People buying these things often don't really know what the business model is behind this, and don't know really know how Amazon/Google is going to make money. We can all sit here and speculate about it as informed people, but that's not the general market. I could easily see in 2 years time people turning around and saying "What do you MEAN Amazon has been ordering more expensive versions of products when I use the Echo" or "What do you mean Google showed me adverts for Ron Paul because I keep asking it about chem trails". The power of the information collected by these devices is incredibly far reaching, and incredibly profitable, and at the moment most people aren't really capable of giving informed consent.

ourmandave 8y ago

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal *Listening" succinct summary. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/listening https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/listening

Datenstrom 8y ago

I agree, does anyone know of any efforts to make something like this that is not evil?

jacksmith21006 8y ago

What is great is you get to chose. We have several Google homes in our house and they are used daily by my family. Saved my butt two days ago. Son graduation was at an arena in the city and walking by the GH and asked drive time to find over 2x than normal. Apparently a MLB baseball game that started 15 minutes after his graduation start time. Usually traffic is out of the city not in. Thanks to Google made it in time. What is also cool is the arena name is a hard name to pronounce as named after someone who gave money to the University yet Google still got it on first try. Alexa and Siri can't handle such things. But have zero problem with you not wanting one as it is a personal choice.