13 ms·

Property managers bring in Alexa to manage tenants

156 points by dsr12 7y ago

lettergram 7y ago
I’m fairly confident there will be lawsuits about this... adding listening devices to your tenants apartments has always been a bad call
- Frost1x 7y ago
  I was gifted a few of these devices and had to return them. For the bulk of society, they're not seen as invasive listening devices and many willingly pay hefty fees for them and install them. Unless you're doing your own NLP locally and designed it, I don't really trust it. To be fair, most already have cell phones that can be tapped in similar ways (with additional sensors--it's amazing what you can derive from MEMs alone) but active assistant listening is usually one of the first "features" I disable.
  - maxerickson 7y ago
    The basic devices are like $40. Hopefully most people that pay more than that are doing so for reasons like a better speaker.
    - Frost1x 7y ago
      I have a friend who has around 20 of these scattered around his house, on the side porch, etc. He uses them as speakers to play music in different sections of the house and likes the added feature of having the Google assistant. If you only get one or a couple I suppose it isn't too expensive. My parents aren't tech savvy and are quite old and they have 3 themselves in a very small house.
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  I used to use Airbnb a lot. Now I don't so much because I have to write the host beforehand and verify there are no cameras or listening devices in the space. This is where we are now.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    Did you ever get a negative answer? (=Yes, there are.)
- nabilhat 7y ago
  This is the immediate problem. Ignore the FAANG issues for a second, and imagine considering a rental with locks, lights, and thermostats that write to a database your landlord controls. With a baby monitor in the living room that the landlord controls. Getting back to the "smart home" features, allowing your landlord the ability to apply parental controls to restrict your use of features, purchases, requests; and to record them. The privacy issues go well beyond simply installing listening devices which can eavesdrop on tenants.
- cardiffspaceman 7y ago
  The features of an offline smart home could still support monitoring by the owner/landlord. The smart home's features could be independent islands of automation. Renter says, "Set temperature to at least 78." Landlord says, "Why is my utility bill so high?" Assume the voice recognition is good enough without access to an off-site server. [Edit for grammar]
- mistrial9 7y ago
  you are badly incorrect -- adversarial listening devices are increasing, especially where there is a power imbalance
DennisP 7y ago
I'd love to read this but their paywall is effective. Could someone sum it up?
- AlphaWeaver 7y ago
  Try Googling the article title and then clicking on the article from there. The Google Referer header should disable the paywall.
  - ipince 7y ago
    Click on the "web" link, which is a link to the Google search already filled in for you.
  - colinbartlett 7y ago
    That never works for me for WSJ, I think they disabled that.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wcoenen 7y ago
  I think this snippet sums it up: > Amazon’s Alexa Smart Properties team, a little known part of its Alexa division, is working on partnerships with homebuilders, property managers and hoteliers to push millions of Alexa smart speakers into domiciles all across the U.S. Amazon is hoping to find a new way to build market share by offering discounted hardware, customized software and new ways for property managers to harvest and use data.
- dsr12 7y ago
  Link without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your-next-apartment-before-you-do-11559361605?mod=rsswn https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your...
  - DennisP 7y ago
    Thanks! So the same link with "?mod=rsswn" appended? Does that work for any article, or is there a method to find the link for a given article?
bilbo0s 7y ago
Have I just become a curmudgeonly old man yelling at kids to stay off my lawn? I mean I don't feel old and out of touch, but something is off? Is everyone else really out there demanding these types of services and technologies be installed in their homes as a prerequisite to even living there? If you're one of the people who use these kinds of devices, and you don't mind me asking, why is it you guys like these types of devices and services? And do the privacy issues here concern any of you at all? As a matter of full disclosure, the privacy issues seem obvious and deal breaking to me, but clearly that's not the consensus view.
- nerdponx 7y ago
  No. It's supply-driven demand, propped up by advertising.
  - yesplorer 7y ago
    Virtually every product is supply-driven demand, propped up by advertising. Beyond food, clothing and shelter, everything else is possibly supply-driven demand.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  I’m in the same boat as you, but a bunch of my friends have smart speakers. For them it’s a convenience thing + not caring overly much about privacy. The ability to query google, set timers, and play music hands free outweighs the creepy factor.
  - jhrmnn 7y ago
    This reminds me a bit of the environmental issues. Most of my friends are aware of the impacts of flying (CO2) and buying stuff (waste), but the negative end results of these things are just too distant and abstract for them to voluntarily strip themselves of the convenience they provide. The difference of course being that the privacy issues impact mostly just the individual, while the environmental issues impact all. But the psychology of it seems similar.
jplayer01 7y ago
For a second I thought they were moving into real estate/housing as the next market to disrupt. That would've been fun.
- nickstefan12 7y ago
  Same! Another industry they could play monopoly with
netwanderer3 7y ago
"For Amazon, the appeal is obvious: Adding millions of new users to its services and gaining access to data like their voice-based wish lists and Alexa-powered shopping habits..." It's okay folks. There are no privacy concerns here as they only want your voice-based wish lists and shopping habits data. Once again people just love exaggerating on these topics. /s
- wolco 7y ago
  I remember when we didn't need a /s we assumed everyone got the joke. I took it seriously until I hit the /s but never would have years ago. When did sarcasm stop registering? I was watching a webseries from the early 2000s and everything had that tone.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    > When did sarcasm stop registering? [In 1983][0]: > 8. Avoid sarcasm and facetious remarks. > Without the voice inflection and body language of personal communication these are easily misinterpreted. A sideways smile, :-), has become widely accepted on the net as an indication that "I'm only kidding". If you submit a satiric item without this symbol, no matter how obvious the satire is to you, do not be surprised if people take it seriously. [0]:https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/net.announce/8CsYPJuZ4Hg/8em44sgCCVYJ https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/net.announ...
- crucifiction 7y ago
  There isn't though. This is just voice control of existing things people are already doing through Amazon. This is data they already have. Is data inherently evil? I don't understand how there is some significantly different privacy concern of using Amazon services (wish lists and purchasing things) via voice control than via their website or app. There are many legitimate privacy concerns with ever-listening devices in your house, but having "data" from people directly using existing features of a company via voice instead of mouse clicks isn't really one of them.
dsr12 7y ago
Link without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your-next-apartment-before-you-do-11559361605?mod=rsswn https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your...
- e40 7y ago
  Can you share how you got that non-paywall link?
  - SahAssar 7y ago
    The link is the same but with ?mod=rsswn added. Adding that also appears to work for other WSJ articles for me. No idea how OP found out about it though.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - Fiveplus 7y ago
    Append ?mod=rsswn at the end
  - dsr12 7y ago
    You can append ?mod=rsswn at the end of WSJ urls to get non-paywall links. I submitted the story with this param but for some reason it's missing. Maybe I made some mistake in copy/pasting. I learnt about this trick from a HN comment in the past.
    - Fiveplus 7y ago
      Any similar tricks you wanna share for other soft paywall-heavy websites?
eternauta3k 7y ago
You could leave a computer playing synthesized speech at Alexa all day just to fuck with it.
- netwanderer3 7y ago
  This is probably the best strategy. One obviously cannot stop them monitoring you since there are just so many different surveillance techniques nowadays. Therefore the best way to deal with it is by constantly throwing garbage and useless data into the pipeline so that it may confuse their algorithms and stop them from profiling the individual.
  - malka 7y ago
    poisoning the well is my usual strategy with data hungry companies as well.
  - robotresearcher 7y ago
    So they profile you as a person that messes with Alexa.
- joezydeco 7y ago
  This was an interesting project from earlier this year: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/15/18182214/amazon-echo-google-home-privacy-protection-project-white-noise https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/15/18182214/a... "When the Alias hears its own wake word, it’ll stop broadcasting white noise and wake up Alexa or Google Assistant so you can use them as normal."
cabaalis 7y ago
I use Alexa nearly every day to tell me the weather while I'm getting dressed and to play music on spotify. I ask it the occasional math problem, trivia question, etc. Paranoia aside, what's my exposure level?
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  Counterpoint: I use my iPhone to do the same, it takes an extra few seconds to tap to look at the weather and queue up a couple podcasts. Why raise my exposure to save 5 seconds?
crazygringo 7y ago
Honestly, this makes a lot of sense. Key sentence: > It also means being able to add other Alexa-controlled devices, like speakers, smart plugs and lights, more easily. A lot of my friends who live in newly constructed buildings have speakers built-in to their apartments. In small NYC apartments, honestly it makes sense to speakers built into walls/ceilings to save space and control from your phone with Bluetooth. It's a genuinely nice amenity. I know so many people with Alexa anyways that it makes sense for them to have it integrated. And if it's an extra option to control the lighting, even better. Obviously if you have privacy concerns you can just keep it turned off or ask maintenance to unplug its ethernet. (You still have physical lightswitches, nothing essential will break.) And nothing's preventing you from using your own speaker/Google Home/etc. instead on your counter. But from an apartment amenities standpoint... this is pretty convenient. And like I said, you can always unplug its internet. It's an option, not something being forced on you.
- xhgdvjky 7y ago
  you can have built in speakers without alexa
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    The point is using Alexa to control your lights is an amenity like built-in speakers... and also makes obviously sense to integrate with built-in speakers. Nobody's saying speakers require Alexa... I think that's pretty obvious.
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  >Obviously if you have privacy concerns you can just keep it turned off or ask maintenance to unplug its ethernet. *For now: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choose_to_not_connect_your_samsung_smart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...
- koala_man 7y ago
  >built into walls/ceilings to save space Ow, my pet peeve. Does this ever actually save space? Recessed lights and built in closets just waste a ton of it.
arcbyte 7y ago
What is up with all these links to paywalled websites? Can't read any of this garbage.
- Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
  If you are using Firefox On desktop (dunno about Firefox on Android) there is an extension that will bypass a fair few paywalls - https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
- dogweather 7y ago
  Subscribe?
  - DennisP 7y ago
    I do subscribe to one major newspaper. I'm not going to subscribe to twenty. Subscriptions are a very inefficient payment mechanism, when we're reading just a few articles each from lots of different publishers. If I could click a button and pay a little bit per article, I would. It'd be less work than getting around the paywall.
- dang 7y ago
  If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20paywall https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
vibrolax 7y ago
Aside from the privacy issue, all these cloud-connected devices become bricks when the manufacturer goes bust, discontinues the "service", or decides you need to buy a new one because they've deemed yours obsolete.
- maratd 7y ago
  Yes and no. Yes for the smaller manufacturers, which is why I never buy cloud-anything from them. For the larger ones, they never go bust, but they do cancel. They have enough of a user base that things get rooted and custom solutions are available after death.
steve-benjamins 7y ago
My wife works in a woman's shelter and Alexa / smart home devices is a common way women in abusive relationships are harassed and monitored... Edit for clarity: Even if a woman has a restraining order against the abuser, the abuser will turn on music in the middle of the night, mess with the lights, turn the thermostat down etc. If the woman still lives with the abuser, smart devices (not necessarily Alexa) are used to monitoring comings and goings. One person often sets up the devices and the other person has no understanding of how to turn these things off. Even more often: the harassed woman doesn't even realize what's happening is due to the man controlling smart devices— the harassed is "gaslighted" and thinks they're going crazy ("why does the temperature keep PLUMMETING?").
- daenz 7y ago
  EDIT>> Totally misunderstood the parent post.
  - detaro 7y ago
    Why would they "surely" mean the opposite of what they said?
  - jstarfish 7y ago
    No, you can do a lot of griefing with the ability to remotely control locks, fixtures, appliances and thermostats.
  - steve-benjamins 7y ago
    No, I mean smart devices are used to harass women in entirely new ways. Men often are the ones who setup the devices. Even if they have a restraining order they will turn music on in the middle of the night, mess with the lights, turn the thermostat down etc. Before a restraining order smart devices are often used for monitoring.
- aiisjustanif 7y ago
  Never even thought about this, geez. Do we have any rough stats on how often this happens? Also, just another reason I don't use smart devices.
blhack 7y ago
I guess I’ll be the dissenter. This all seems really cool to me. There’s actually an amazon owned apartment complex being built almost across the street from my house (in Tempe, Az), and I had been wondering if they’d do stuff like this. We have an Alexa in our house, and use it all the time. For the kids moving into these apartments they’re building, I’m sure the high-endiness of having voice controlled lights and music everywhere is a big selling point. Nobody outside of our little tech bubble ever thinks about how this stuff works, and they likely don’t care. If they do (like my wife and I) we just treat it appropriately. I guess it’s kindof like the way we all used to look at “work networks” — it was WAY faster than your home connection, but the IT guy could probably spy on you. So use it for fun stuff and think it’s cool, but if you ever didn’t want the IT guy to have the option of seeing what you were doing, use something else (or in our case at our house: turn it off)
- jslabovitz 7y ago
  > There’s actually an amazon owned apartment complex being built almost across the street from my house (in Tempe, Az), and I had been wondering if they’d do stuff like this. What? Are you serious? It's one thing for Amazon to partner with builders & landlords, but another for them to actually start building themselves. I tried to research this, but came up with nothing except that Tempe does have an Amazon research center. Do you have any other links that would be helpful?
  - blhack 7y ago
    It’s this complex: https://www.thelocaltempe.com/ https://www.thelocaltempe.com/ There were some local news articles about how this was owner by Whole Foods, and the apartments above it were supposed to have some tight tie-in to the store. I can’t find those articles anymore though, so it’s possible I am wrong, or misunderstood this when it was being written about.
    - jslabovitz 7y ago
      I did a little research, and it doesn't appear that the complex is owned by either Whole Foods or Amazon, but rather a Colorado-based developer (non-local, haha). https://www.statepress.com/article/2019/02/newwholefoodscomingtotepeprovidesmoreoptionsforstudents https://www.statepress.com/article/2019/02/newwholefoodscomi... Your neighbors are apparently upset enough to spend the time creating an entire faux-site critical of the project! I'm impressed. http://thelocaltempe.co http://thelocaltempe.co
zamalek 7y ago
I'm one of the fools who uses one of these spying devices. I know and accept the risks. I'm in the Google camp. They are a less trustworthy company, but difference in reliability and interoperability is anything but subtle. I'd be pretty pissed if I found out that my place was hard-wired to the inferior product on move-in day. My Google Play Movies account is pretty extensive, I use other things that don't work with Amazon (because they emulate Apple's walled garden). This needs to be disclosed up-front, not only for people who wisely avoid these devices, but also those who prefer the competition.
neonate 7y ago
http://archive.is/lar6t http://archive.is/lar6t
tzs 7y ago
Semi-OT: I suspect that Amazon is going to end up with the lion's share of the smart home assistant market. I see a lot of Amazon advertising on television for Alexa and their devices. I don't see much for Google, and I don't think I've ever seen a TV for Apple's device. Furthermore, I'm now seeing Alexa being mentioned outside of Amazon ads. For example, Frito Lay has a TV ad that is a variant on one of their earlier ads for their variety pack of snack sizes bags of potato chip. In the variant as the mom in the ad leaves for her daughter's soccer game, taking the variety pack with her to provide snacks for the kids, she calls out to Alexa to order another pack, and a text overlay shows the exact phrasing for this order. I don't know if Frito Lay added the Alexa bit on their own, or Amazon paid them to do so [1], but either way if this starts happening with other products I think it will really give Amazon a boost. [1] I can see it going either way. I can see Amazon paying to be included as a way to promote Alexa. But maybe Frito Lay makes more on the sale if you buy via Amazon than if you buy from your local store, and so they did it on their own.
dredmorbius 7y ago
What's that noir short story where the guy is trying to bargain with his smart pay-per-use door to open up?
Pulletwee12549 7y ago
What surprised me was that the article didn't mention anything about the ability to deactivate the use of the system. Why wouldn't the reporter have asked about that detail?

156 points by dsr12 7y ago

I’m fairly confident there will be lawsuits about this... adding listening devices to your tenants apartments has always been a bad call

Frost1x 7y ago
I was gifted a few of these devices and had to return them. For the bulk of society, they're not seen as invasive listening devices and many willingly pay hefty fees for them and install them. Unless you're doing your own NLP locally and designed it, I don't really trust it. To be fair, most already have cell phones that can be tapped in similar ways (with additional sensors--it's amazing what you can derive from MEMs alone) but active assistant listening is usually one of the first "features" I disable.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  The basic devices are like $40. Hopefully most people that pay more than that are doing so for reasons like a better speaker.
  - Frost1x 7y ago
    I have a friend who has around 20 of these scattered around his house, on the side porch, etc. He uses them as speakers to play music in different sections of the house and likes the added feature of having the Google assistant. If you only get one or a couple I suppose it isn't too expensive. My parents aren't tech savvy and are quite old and they have 3 themselves in a very small house.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
I used to use Airbnb a lot. Now I don't so much because I have to write the host beforehand and verify there are no cameras or listening devices in the space. This is where we are now.
- kaybe 7y ago
  Did you ever get a negative answer? (=Yes, there are.)
nabilhat 7y ago
This is the immediate problem. Ignore the FAANG issues for a second, and imagine considering a rental with locks, lights, and thermostats that write to a database your landlord controls. With a baby monitor in the living room that the landlord controls. Getting back to the "smart home" features, allowing your landlord the ability to apply parental controls to restrict your use of features, purchases, requests; and to record them. The privacy issues go well beyond simply installing listening devices which can eavesdrop on tenants.
cardiffspaceman 7y ago
The features of an offline smart home could still support monitoring by the owner/landlord. The smart home's features could be independent islands of automation. Renter says, "Set temperature to at least 78." Landlord says, "Why is my utility bill so high?" Assume the voice recognition is good enough without access to an off-site server. [Edit for grammar]
mistrial9 7y ago
you are badly incorrect -- adversarial listening devices are increasing, especially where there is a power imbalance

DennisP 7y ago

I'd love to read this but their paywall is effective. Could someone sum it up?

AlphaWeaver 7y ago
Try Googling the article title and then clicking on the article from there. The Google Referer header should disable the paywall.
- ipince 7y ago
  Click on the "web" link, which is a link to the Google search already filled in for you.
- colinbartlett 7y ago
  That never works for me for WSJ, I think they disabled that.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wcoenen 7y ago
I think this snippet sums it up: > Amazon’s Alexa Smart Properties team, a little known part of its Alexa division, is working on partnerships with homebuilders, property managers and hoteliers to push millions of Alexa smart speakers into domiciles all across the U.S. Amazon is hoping to find a new way to build market share by offering discounted hardware, customized software and new ways for property managers to harvest and use data.
dsr12 7y ago
Link without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your-next-apartment-before-you-do-11559361605?mod=rsswn https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your...
- DennisP 7y ago
  Thanks! So the same link with "?mod=rsswn" appended? Does that work for any article, or is there a method to find the link for a given article?

bilbo0s 7y ago

Have I just become a curmudgeonly old man yelling at kids to stay off my lawn? I mean I don't feel old and out of touch, but something is off? Is everyone else really out there demanding these types of services and technologies be installed in their homes as a prerequisite to even living there? If you're one of the people who use these kinds of devices, and you don't mind me asking, why is it you guys like these types of devices and services? And do the privacy issues here concern any of you at all? As a matter of full disclosure, the privacy issues seem obvious and deal breaking to me, but clearly that's not the consensus view.

nerdponx 7y ago
No. It's supply-driven demand, propped up by advertising.
- yesplorer 7y ago
  Virtually every product is supply-driven demand, propped up by advertising. Beyond food, clothing and shelter, everything else is possibly supply-driven demand.
mdorazio 7y ago
I’m in the same boat as you, but a bunch of my friends have smart speakers. For them it’s a convenience thing + not caring overly much about privacy. The ability to query google, set timers, and play music hands free outweighs the creepy factor.
- jhrmnn 7y ago
  This reminds me a bit of the environmental issues. Most of my friends are aware of the impacts of flying (CO2) and buying stuff (waste), but the negative end results of these things are just too distant and abstract for them to voluntarily strip themselves of the convenience they provide. The difference of course being that the privacy issues impact mostly just the individual, while the environmental issues impact all. But the psychology of it seems similar.

jplayer01 7y ago

For a second I thought they were moving into real estate/housing as the next market to disrupt. That would've been fun.

nickstefan12 7y ago
Same! Another industry they could play monopoly with

netwanderer3 7y ago

"For Amazon, the appeal is obvious: Adding millions of new users to its services and gaining access to data like their voice-based wish lists and Alexa-powered shopping habits..." It's okay folks. There are no privacy concerns here as they only want your voice-based wish lists and shopping habits data. Once again people just love exaggerating on these topics. /s

wolco 7y ago
I remember when we didn't need a /s we assumed everyone got the joke. I took it seriously until I hit the /s but never would have years ago. When did sarcasm stop registering? I was watching a webseries from the early 2000s and everything had that tone.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  > When did sarcasm stop registering? [In 1983][0]: > 8. Avoid sarcasm and facetious remarks. > Without the voice inflection and body language of personal communication these are easily misinterpreted. A sideways smile, :-), has become widely accepted on the net as an indication that "I'm only kidding". If you submit a satiric item without this symbol, no matter how obvious the satire is to you, do not be surprised if people take it seriously. [0]:https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/net.announce/8CsYPJuZ4Hg/8em44sgCCVYJ https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/net.announ...
crucifiction 7y ago
There isn't though. This is just voice control of existing things people are already doing through Amazon. This is data they already have. Is data inherently evil? I don't understand how there is some significantly different privacy concern of using Amazon services (wish lists and purchasing things) via voice control than via their website or app. There are many legitimate privacy concerns with ever-listening devices in your house, but having "data" from people directly using existing features of a company via voice instead of mouse clicks isn't really one of them.

dsr12 7y ago

Link without paywall: https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your-next-apartment-before-you-do-11559361605?mod=rsswn https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-plan-to-move-in-to-your...

e40 7y ago
Can you share how you got that non-paywall link?
- SahAssar 7y ago
  The link is the same but with ?mod=rsswn added. Adding that also appears to work for other WSJ articles for me. No idea how OP found out about it though.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Fiveplus 7y ago
  Append ?mod=rsswn at the end
- dsr12 7y ago
  You can append ?mod=rsswn at the end of WSJ urls to get non-paywall links. I submitted the story with this param but for some reason it's missing. Maybe I made some mistake in copy/pasting. I learnt about this trick from a HN comment in the past.
  - Fiveplus 7y ago
    Any similar tricks you wanna share for other soft paywall-heavy websites?

eternauta3k 7y ago

You could leave a computer playing synthesized speech at Alexa all day just to fuck with it.

netwanderer3 7y ago
This is probably the best strategy. One obviously cannot stop them monitoring you since there are just so many different surveillance techniques nowadays. Therefore the best way to deal with it is by constantly throwing garbage and useless data into the pipeline so that it may confuse their algorithms and stop them from profiling the individual.
- malka 7y ago
  poisoning the well is my usual strategy with data hungry companies as well.
- robotresearcher 7y ago
  So they profile you as a person that messes with Alexa.
joezydeco 7y ago
This was an interesting project from earlier this year: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/15/18182214/amazon-echo-google-home-privacy-protection-project-white-noise https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/1/15/18182214/a... "When the Alias hears its own wake word, it’ll stop broadcasting white noise and wake up Alexa or Google Assistant so you can use them as normal."

cabaalis 7y ago

I use Alexa nearly every day to tell me the weather while I'm getting dressed and to play music on spotify. I ask it the occasional math problem, trivia question, etc. Paranoia aside, what's my exposure level?

dontbenebby 7y ago
Counterpoint: I use my iPhone to do the same, it takes an extra few seconds to tap to look at the weather and queue up a couple podcasts. Why raise my exposure to save 5 seconds?

crazygringo 7y ago

Honestly, this makes a lot of sense. Key sentence: > It also means being able to add other Alexa-controlled devices, like speakers, smart plugs and lights, more easily. A lot of my friends who live in newly constructed buildings have speakers built-in to their apartments. In small NYC apartments, honestly it makes sense to speakers built into walls/ceilings to save space and control from your phone with Bluetooth. It's a genuinely nice amenity. I know so many people with Alexa anyways that it makes sense for them to have it integrated. And if it's an extra option to control the lighting, even better. Obviously if you have privacy concerns you can just keep it turned off or ask maintenance to unplug its ethernet. (You still have physical lightswitches, nothing essential will break.) And nothing's preventing you from using your own speaker/Google Home/etc. instead on your counter. But from an apartment amenities standpoint... this is pretty convenient. And like I said, you can always unplug its internet. It's an option, not something being forced on you.

xhgdvjky 7y ago
you can have built in speakers without alexa
- crazygringo 7y ago
  The point is using Alexa to control your lights is an amenity like built-in speakers... and also makes obviously sense to integrate with built-in speakers. Nobody's saying speakers require Alexa... I think that's pretty obvious.
dontbenebby 7y ago
>Obviously if you have privacy concerns you can just keep it turned off or ask maintenance to unplug its ethernet. *For now: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choose_to_not_connect_your_samsung_smart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/bpr6xs/if_you_choo...
koala_man 7y ago
>built into walls/ceilings to save space Ow, my pet peeve. Does this ever actually save space? Recessed lights and built in closets just waste a ton of it.

arcbyte 7y ago

What is up with all these links to paywalled websites? Can't read any of this garbage.

Crosseye_Jack 7y ago
If you are using Firefox On desktop (dunno about Firefox on Android) there is an extension that will bypass a fair few paywalls - https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox
dogweather 7y ago
Subscribe?
- DennisP 7y ago
  I do subscribe to one major newspaper. I'm not going to subscribe to twenty. Subscriptions are a very inefficient payment mechanism, when we're reading just a few articles each from lots of different publishers. If I could click a button and pay a little bit per article, I would. It'd be less work than getting around the paywall.
dang 7y ago
If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20paywall https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

vibrolax 7y ago

Aside from the privacy issue, all these cloud-connected devices become bricks when the manufacturer goes bust, discontinues the "service", or decides you need to buy a new one because they've deemed yours obsolete.

maratd 7y ago
Yes and no. Yes for the smaller manufacturers, which is why I never buy cloud-anything from them. For the larger ones, they never go bust, but they do cancel. They have enough of a user base that things get rooted and custom solutions are available after death.

steve-benjamins 7y ago

My wife works in a woman's shelter and Alexa / smart home devices is a common way women in abusive relationships are harassed and monitored... Edit for clarity: Even if a woman has a restraining order against the abuser, the abuser will turn on music in the middle of the night, mess with the lights, turn the thermostat down etc. If the woman still lives with the abuser, smart devices (not necessarily Alexa) are used to monitoring comings and goings. One person often sets up the devices and the other person has no understanding of how to turn these things off. Even more often: the harassed woman doesn't even realize what's happening is due to the man controlling smart devices— the harassed is "gaslighted" and thinks they're going crazy ("why does the temperature keep PLUMMETING?").

daenz 7y ago
EDIT>> Totally misunderstood the parent post.
- detaro 7y ago
  Why would they "surely" mean the opposite of what they said?
- jstarfish 7y ago
  No, you can do a lot of griefing with the ability to remotely control locks, fixtures, appliances and thermostats.
- steve-benjamins 7y ago
  No, I mean smart devices are used to harass women in entirely new ways. Men often are the ones who setup the devices. Even if they have a restraining order they will turn music on in the middle of the night, mess with the lights, turn the thermostat down etc. Before a restraining order smart devices are often used for monitoring.
aiisjustanif 7y ago
Never even thought about this, geez. Do we have any rough stats on how often this happens? Also, just another reason I don't use smart devices.

blhack 7y ago

I guess I’ll be the dissenter. This all seems really cool to me. There’s actually an amazon owned apartment complex being built almost across the street from my house (in Tempe, Az), and I had been wondering if they’d do stuff like this. We have an Alexa in our house, and use it all the time. For the kids moving into these apartments they’re building, I’m sure the high-endiness of having voice controlled lights and music everywhere is a big selling point. Nobody outside of our little tech bubble ever thinks about how this stuff works, and they likely don’t care. If they do (like my wife and I) we just treat it appropriately. I guess it’s kindof like the way we all used to look at “work networks” — it was WAY faster than your home connection, but the IT guy could probably spy on you. So use it for fun stuff and think it’s cool, but if you ever didn’t want the IT guy to have the option of seeing what you were doing, use something else (or in our case at our house: turn it off)

jslabovitz 7y ago
> There’s actually an amazon owned apartment complex being built almost across the street from my house (in Tempe, Az), and I had been wondering if they’d do stuff like this. What? Are you serious? It's one thing for Amazon to partner with builders & landlords, but another for them to actually start building themselves. I tried to research this, but came up with nothing except that Tempe does have an Amazon research center. Do you have any other links that would be helpful?
- blhack 7y ago
  It’s this complex: https://www.thelocaltempe.com/ https://www.thelocaltempe.com/ There were some local news articles about how this was owner by Whole Foods, and the apartments above it were supposed to have some tight tie-in to the store. I can’t find those articles anymore though, so it’s possible I am wrong, or misunderstood this when it was being written about.
  - jslabovitz 7y ago
    I did a little research, and it doesn't appear that the complex is owned by either Whole Foods or Amazon, but rather a Colorado-based developer (non-local, haha). https://www.statepress.com/article/2019/02/newwholefoodscomingtotepeprovidesmoreoptionsforstudents https://www.statepress.com/article/2019/02/newwholefoodscomi... Your neighbors are apparently upset enough to spend the time creating an entire faux-site critical of the project! I'm impressed. http://thelocaltempe.co http://thelocaltempe.co

zamalek 7y ago

I'm one of the fools who uses one of these spying devices. I know and accept the risks. I'm in the Google camp. They are a less trustworthy company, but difference in reliability and interoperability is anything but subtle. I'd be pretty pissed if I found out that my place was hard-wired to the inferior product on move-in day. My Google Play Movies account is pretty extensive, I use other things that don't work with Amazon (because they emulate Apple's walled garden). This needs to be disclosed up-front, not only for people who wisely avoid these devices, but also those who prefer the competition.

neonate 7y ago

http://archive.is/lar6t http://archive.is/lar6t

tzs 7y ago

Semi-OT: I suspect that Amazon is going to end up with the lion's share of the smart home assistant market. I see a lot of Amazon advertising on television for Alexa and their devices. I don't see much for Google, and I don't think I've ever seen a TV for Apple's device. Furthermore, I'm now seeing Alexa being mentioned outside of Amazon ads. For example, Frito Lay has a TV ad that is a variant on one of their earlier ads for their variety pack of snack sizes bags of potato chip. In the variant as the mom in the ad leaves for her daughter's soccer game, taking the variety pack with her to provide snacks for the kids, she calls out to Alexa to order another pack, and a text overlay shows the exact phrasing for this order. I don't know if Frito Lay added the Alexa bit on their own, or Amazon paid them to do so [1], but either way if this starts happening with other products I think it will really give Amazon a boost. [1] I can see it going either way. I can see Amazon paying to be included as a way to promote Alexa. But maybe Frito Lay makes more on the sale if you buy via Amazon than if you buy from your local store, and so they did it on their own.

dredmorbius 7y ago

What's that noir short story where the guy is trying to bargain with his smart pay-per-use door to open up?

Pulletwee12549 7y ago

What surprised me was that the article didn't mention anything about the ability to deactivate the use of the system. Why wouldn't the reporter have asked about that detail?