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It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my ho

It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. > People are voluntarily paying for their houses to be tapped for the convenience of being able to shout: play me some song. > I’m so out of touch with this world it’s scary. I could just as easily say "People are voluntarily paying for their locations to be tracked for the convenience of being able to get live maps on the go" (ie. cell phones, which also are listening to everything you say unless you disable it)

kinsomo 8y ago
> It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. There's no reason why your house needs to be "tapped" for either of those use cases. All those things could be accomplished without leaving your home network.
cortesoft 8y ago
I never thought that voice control would be that useful until I had my daughter... being able to turn on the white noise, turn off the tv, play her music, etc while having my hands full of toddler is very useful.
- jethro_tell 8y ago
  How did we do it before? I can't even imagine. /s
  - watwut 8y ago
    He said that it is useful and makes his life easier. He did not said that whole family would die without it.
    - jethro_tell 8y ago
      What I am saying, is that I think the increase in convenience is largely perceived.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    Clap on clap clap Clap off clap clap Clap on, clap off. The Clapper! clap clap
    - jethro_tell 8y ago
      You can't clap with a baby in your arms?
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    Are you arguing that we should just stop creating anything new, since we clearly survived before without it? This comment could literally apply to ANY new thing.
    - jethro_tell 8y ago
      No I'm not, I work on home automation for a living. I am saying the value and added convenience is largely perception and it doesn't. I raised my first kid pre-echo and my second post echo. I think for the most part, raising a kid is easier than we thing, and we are surprised at how well we are doing and attribute that to things around us, much like our old superstitious ancestors.
    - musage 8y ago
      The TV not running in the first place and singing to one's child isn't "surviving", it's like a lush forest compared to the irradiated wasteland that is "turning off the tv and playing some white noise and/or music". > This comment could literally apply to ANY new thing. Yes, and? It applies to using x-ray machine to fit shoes in shoe shops, which was super fancy schmancy at first, and I'm sure anyone who rejected it solely on the bases of being unnecessary was laughed at by first adopters, too. On the other hand, there's the discovery of washing hands being derided and ignored, when quicker adoption could have saved lives. Exactly because it can go both ways, you have to look at the actual thing. You can't determine the quality of a thing or the usefulness of a habit by just looking at a calendar and a clock.
- ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
  That’s about all we use ours for “Alexa... play white noise” “ALEXA... stop”
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    Do you notice that it randomly fades out and then fades back in every few hours? I don't understand why it does that.
    - Operyl 8y ago
      Is it pulling a track from their music archives? Maybe it’s just a several hour long loop and the date is when it repeats.
      - cortesoft 8y ago
        Yeah, that is kinda my guess, but it doesn't seem to be predictable... sometimes it happens within a few minutes, other times it takes an hour or more.
        Operyl 8y ago
        Then I'd assume it's a playlist, and some tracks are just longer than others.
- jstanley 8y ago
  Why do you want to turn on white noise?
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    Blocks out other distracting sounds. Helps kids, animals and some people relax. Helps some people sleep.
  - wenc 8y ago
    Heck it helps me sleep -- I'm a light sleeper. I started using the Noisli app every night this past year and my sleep quality improved in noticeable ways. I also live in a city, so white noise (actually brown noise) masks out tiny noises that interrupt sleep.
  - ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
    It can help babies sleep. Supposedly it simulates the noise in the womb
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    It helps kids sleep.
hnaccy 8y ago
Not having to use light switches or a remote does not seem comparable to mobile internet connectivity.
- mstolpm 8y ago
  Of course: convenience! Mankind has made countless decisions to trade convenience for some degree of personal freedom. I can live without mobile internet - its just so convenient to have it. Voice control for home appliances is exactly the same.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  If I'm home and don't have my phone (or have my hands full, or it's dark, or whatever) I can easily turn lights on or off and without fumbling around for switches or trying to juggle a cat or a child. I can also control my tv, thermostat, get a news briefing, check my calendar and set reminders. Yes, it's ultimately a convenience, but so is indoor plumbing and store bought bread.
  - tambourine_man 8y ago
    >Yes, it's ultimately a convenience, but so is indoor plumbing and store bought bread. I’m sorry, clean water and food are not conviniences. They are among the most basics of human needs. That’s the kind of thing that scares me. That someone would make such a comparison with a straight face.
    - grkvlt 8y ago
      This is the kind of argument that seems really common and I find very annoying. So 'indoor plumbing' is obviously used to provide us with clean water, but the convenience aspect is the indoor part - you can have clean water from an outdoor communal well, instead. Similarly 'store bought bread' is food, but so is home made bread. I just cannot work out if the commenter was being deliberately obtuse or really misunderstood?
      - 8y ago
ohyes 8y ago
I don’t get why it had to go to the cloud and back.
- rdl 8y ago
  Because the computational requirements of good speech rec exceed what you would build into a $100 device, and because doing it in the cloud makes training and improving it easier. The “wake word” is local, which is why it is constrained to a few choices. I suspect we are only a few years away from being able to do a slightly inferior version using local processing, or a private cloud (already possible today when there is a market). I would probably opt for that, but use Alexa in rooms already already untrusted.
  - Amezarak 8y ago
    > Because the computational requirements of good speech rec exceed what you would build into a $100 device, I have difficulty believing this. We had good speech recognition on <$1000 devices 10 years ago.
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      For unrestricted language, without training?
      - Amezarak 8y ago
        Yes to the former, pretty much for the latter - the "training" I recall was less than a minute long and consisted of repeating one or two example sentences, hardly anything that would be an adoption impediment to devices like an Echo. The resulting voice recognition worked, in my experience, better than that on modern Android phones.
        ryanwaggoner 8y ago
        I'm pretty skeptical of this. Apple has a pretty good commitment to privacy, one that is costing them on the AI front, and as far as I can tell they still upload Siri audio to the cloud for processing. If this was easy to do 10 years ago, I think Apple would at least offer as an option.
qyv 8y ago
There is a massive difference between walking a few steps to turn on a light switch (which is only useful when you are in close proximity) vs having a accurate real-time mapping functionality when on the go. Similarly, there is a massive difference in the privacy implications of listening to every conversation everyone in your home (including guests) is having vs. having your current location known. Wiretapping laws exist for a reason.
- ben336 8y ago
  Turning off all the light switches that have been left on in a big house though is a meaningful convenience. I think the privacy point is strong enough without having to trash people's use cases.
  - qyv 8y ago
    No trashing it at all, just contrasting it. I do see the convenience (luxury) of home automation, but when you compare that against accurate mobile mapping, location finding and navigation, the difference in usefulness is orders of magnitude. One can literally save your life.
- saghm 8y ago
  > having a accurate real-time mapping functionality when on the go. To be fair, you can have all the maps without the location tracking; the location tracking just tells you where you are on the map.
- LinuxBender 8y ago
  There is a drinking water appliance in our breakroom that will not dispense water if it can not reach the internet. This is not the world we should be engineering. Actually, I would say, this is not engineering.
IncRnd 8y ago
You can get voice control without Alexa.
jrootabega 8y ago
Nobody is going to disagree that it's useful and hard to live without. That's why the big 3 or so tech companies know you'll sell your soul to have it. And yes,I and you should disable location services on your phone when not needed.
hiccuphippo 8y ago
Does controlling your home need sending data to an external server thought? Has no one come up with a competing product where all the processing is done in the machine itself?

kinsomo 8y ago

> It's a little more than just that. Every light in my house is controlled with Alexa which is a very nice and hard to explain until you have tried it. Also my home theater system is all controllable via Alexa as well. This kind of thinking makes no sense to me. There's no reason why your house needs to be "tapped" for either of those use cases. All those things could be accomplished without leaving your home network.

cortesoft 8y ago

I never thought that voice control would be that useful until I had my daughter... being able to turn on the white noise, turn off the tv, play her music, etc while having my hands full of toddler is very useful.

jethro_tell 8y ago
How did we do it before? I can't even imagine. /s
- watwut 8y ago
  He said that it is useful and makes his life easier. He did not said that whole family would die without it.
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    What I am saying, is that I think the increase in convenience is largely perceived.
- hinkley 8y ago
  Clap on clap clap Clap off clap clap Clap on, clap off. The Clapper! clap clap
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    You can't clap with a baby in your arms?
- cortesoft 8y ago
  Are you arguing that we should just stop creating anything new, since we clearly survived before without it? This comment could literally apply to ANY new thing.
  - jethro_tell 8y ago
    No I'm not, I work on home automation for a living. I am saying the value and added convenience is largely perception and it doesn't. I raised my first kid pre-echo and my second post echo. I think for the most part, raising a kid is easier than we thing, and we are surprised at how well we are doing and attribute that to things around us, much like our old superstitious ancestors.
  - musage 8y ago
    The TV not running in the first place and singing to one's child isn't "surviving", it's like a lush forest compared to the irradiated wasteland that is "turning off the tv and playing some white noise and/or music". > This comment could literally apply to ANY new thing. Yes, and? It applies to using x-ray machine to fit shoes in shoe shops, which was super fancy schmancy at first, and I'm sure anyone who rejected it solely on the bases of being unnecessary was laughed at by first adopters, too. On the other hand, there's the discovery of washing hands being derided and ignored, when quicker adoption could have saved lives. Exactly because it can go both ways, you have to look at the actual thing. You can't determine the quality of a thing or the usefulness of a habit by just looking at a calendar and a clock.
ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
That’s about all we use ours for “Alexa... play white noise” “ALEXA... stop”
- cortesoft 8y ago
  Do you notice that it randomly fades out and then fades back in every few hours? I don't understand why it does that.
  - Operyl 8y ago
    Is it pulling a track from their music archives? Maybe it’s just a several hour long loop and the date is when it repeats.
    - cortesoft 8y ago
      Yeah, that is kinda my guess, but it doesn't seem to be predictable... sometimes it happens within a few minutes, other times it takes an hour or more.
      - Operyl 8y ago
        Then I'd assume it's a playlist, and some tracks are just longer than others.
jstanley 8y ago
Why do you want to turn on white noise?
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  Blocks out other distracting sounds. Helps kids, animals and some people relax. Helps some people sleep.
- wenc 8y ago
  Heck it helps me sleep -- I'm a light sleeper. I started using the Noisli app every night this past year and my sleep quality improved in noticeable ways. I also live in a city, so white noise (actually brown noise) masks out tiny noises that interrupt sleep.
- ElCapitanMarkla 8y ago
  It can help babies sleep. Supposedly it simulates the noise in the womb
- cortesoft 8y ago
  It helps kids sleep.

hnaccy 8y ago

Not having to use light switches or a remote does not seem comparable to mobile internet connectivity.

mstolpm 8y ago
Of course: convenience! Mankind has made countless decisions to trade convenience for some degree of personal freedom. I can live without mobile internet - its just so convenient to have it. Voice control for home appliances is exactly the same.
vorpalhex 8y ago
If I'm home and don't have my phone (or have my hands full, or it's dark, or whatever) I can easily turn lights on or off and without fumbling around for switches or trying to juggle a cat or a child. I can also control my tv, thermostat, get a news briefing, check my calendar and set reminders. Yes, it's ultimately a convenience, but so is indoor plumbing and store bought bread.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  >Yes, it's ultimately a convenience, but so is indoor plumbing and store bought bread. I’m sorry, clean water and food are not conviniences. They are among the most basics of human needs. That’s the kind of thing that scares me. That someone would make such a comparison with a straight face.
  - grkvlt 8y ago
    This is the kind of argument that seems really common and I find very annoying. So 'indoor plumbing' is obviously used to provide us with clean water, but the convenience aspect is the indoor part - you can have clean water from an outdoor communal well, instead. Similarly 'store bought bread' is food, but so is home made bread. I just cannot work out if the commenter was being deliberately obtuse or really misunderstood?
    - 8y ago

ohyes 8y ago

I don’t get why it had to go to the cloud and back.

rdl 8y ago
Because the computational requirements of good speech rec exceed what you would build into a $100 device, and because doing it in the cloud makes training and improving it easier. The “wake word” is local, which is why it is constrained to a few choices. I suspect we are only a few years away from being able to do a slightly inferior version using local processing, or a private cloud (already possible today when there is a market). I would probably opt for that, but use Alexa in rooms already already untrusted.
- Amezarak 8y ago
  > Because the computational requirements of good speech rec exceed what you would build into a $100 device, I have difficulty believing this. We had good speech recognition on <$1000 devices 10 years ago.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    For unrestricted language, without training?
    - Amezarak 8y ago
      Yes to the former, pretty much for the latter - the "training" I recall was less than a minute long and consisted of repeating one or two example sentences, hardly anything that would be an adoption impediment to devices like an Echo. The resulting voice recognition worked, in my experience, better than that on modern Android phones.
      - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
        I'm pretty skeptical of this. Apple has a pretty good commitment to privacy, one that is costing them on the AI front, and as far as I can tell they still upload Siri audio to the cloud for processing. If this was easy to do 10 years ago, I think Apple would at least offer as an option.

qyv 8y ago

There is a massive difference between walking a few steps to turn on a light switch (which is only useful when you are in close proximity) vs having a accurate real-time mapping functionality when on the go. Similarly, there is a massive difference in the privacy implications of listening to every conversation everyone in your home (including guests) is having vs. having your current location known. Wiretapping laws exist for a reason.

ben336 8y ago
Turning off all the light switches that have been left on in a big house though is a meaningful convenience. I think the privacy point is strong enough without having to trash people's use cases.
- qyv 8y ago
  No trashing it at all, just contrasting it. I do see the convenience (luxury) of home automation, but when you compare that against accurate mobile mapping, location finding and navigation, the difference in usefulness is orders of magnitude. One can literally save your life.
saghm 8y ago
> having a accurate real-time mapping functionality when on the go. To be fair, you can have all the maps without the location tracking; the location tracking just tells you where you are on the map.
LinuxBender 8y ago
There is a drinking water appliance in our breakroom that will not dispense water if it can not reach the internet. This is not the world we should be engineering. Actually, I would say, this is not engineering.

IncRnd 8y ago

You can get voice control without Alexa.

jrootabega 8y ago

Nobody is going to disagree that it's useful and hard to live without. That's why the big 3 or so tech companies know you'll sell your soul to have it. And yes,I and you should disable location services on your phone when not needed.

hiccuphippo 8y ago

Does controlling your home need sending data to an external server thought? Has no one come up with a competing product where all the processing is done in the machine itself?