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The market for smart speakers boggles my mind. Are people really willing to sacrifice their privacy for a minor upgrade in usability? Is it really that hard to

The market for smart speakers boggles my mind. Are people really willing to sacrifice their privacy for a minor upgrade in usability? Is it really that hard to just tap play on your smartphone instead of yelling out "Alexa play Despacito"?

Semaphor 6y ago
Considering the speakers are dumb like pretty much all "smart" devices, I’d always avoid using the voice interface. When possible. It’s extremely convenient while, for example, cooking with no clean hands free.
- smichel17 6y ago
  I have a friend who owns an Alexa, and this is the one use case I agree is very nice. I would buy a non-networked device with only this functionality, or an app (with no network permission) that does the same.
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    Because I really started loving having a voice interface in a pinch (and because I want a less natural and more usable device), I started planning on building my own replacement with Rhasspy, but so far I haven’t gotten past the planning stages.
tolbish 6y ago
Those Alexa commercials make setting a timer look so fun.
djsumdog 6y ago
I had a roommate who I told, if he ever got an Amazon assistant, I'd smash it with a hammer. I don't get it either. There are open source alternatives if you want to setup your own assistant that doesn't transmit all your data back to Google/Amazon/Apple. The one caveat, I do know someone who is blind who uses the speech-to-text on her Google device a lot. She has all the fonts set to their maximum size, high contrast colors, and various other accessibility features enabled. Speach to text helps her greatly.
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago
  > There are open source alternatives if you want to setup your own assistant that doesn't transmit all your data back to Google/Amazon/Apple. Really? The Mycroft project claims to be just that, and it shows promise, but it still seems really clunky. And right now, as far as I can tell, you need to set up an account on their service so it can do things like voice recognition, which is a pretty critical component to this type of thing.
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    I haven't tried them yet, but there's also Rhasspy (https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io) and voice2json (https://voice2json.org https://voice2json.org)
- jeanofthedead 6y ago
  It really depends on what devices you use. For example, I have Homebridge set up on a Raspberry Pi to link my array of unsupported 'smart' devices to Apple's Homekit. I tried using Home Assistant (Hassio), but found the lack of support for several brands a dealbreaker. I wish the dev communities communicated more, between the two.
wvenable 6y ago
It boggles the mind the people would carry around always-on personal trackers that not only perfectly pin-point your location, know who your family and friends are, and can also listen to your conversations. Smart speakers are not all that scary if you know how they work and that information, in detail, is all out there. They go to a low-power mode waiting for the keyword and only then do actually turn on the main CPU and do any processing. They may the safest least privacy leaking Internet device you actually own. Your TV is probably taking screen shots of what you're watching. Your phone is leaking data to dozens of different entities all the time. Your computer is constantly sending stuff out. A smart speaker is tame by comparison.
- yborg 6y ago
  I assume the strawman you are propping up is a mobile phone. There is a significant difference there of course, which is that the phone performs a function impossible to obtain in any other way, namely mobile telephony. The "smart speaker" performs functions trivially replicated in other ways.
  - wvenable 6y ago
    Yes, but the point is that they're so much safer than your mobile phone that the trivial usage is perfectly fine. I have an Alexa and while I only use it for basically trivial things I use it for those trivial things all the time. It's really quite nice to have. I also have my phone on me, all the time, even while at home so really my privacy issues aren't increased by having that Alexa.
- mLuby 6y ago
  It's not mind-boggling; we've just forgotten what it's like to buy and carry physical maps (or give/remember directions, or a stand-alone GPS device), have a physical address/contact book, use a tape recorder, etc. Now those things are all in one device. It is extremely convenient, but in general none of those features need to exfiltrate data from your device. If you ask me, device owners should have unimpeachable control over what data, if any, is sent from their devices.
acolumb 6y ago
I bought my HomePod mainly for its value as a speaker first -- at $199 I don't think any Sonos or Harman competitor can produce such high-fidelity sound. I also put more trust into Apple/Siri than I do with Alexa or Google. Their differential privacy and anonymized Siri requests have limited the speaker to few features which in my experience work well with the latest 13.x OS.

Semaphor 6y ago

Considering the speakers are dumb like pretty much all "smart" devices, I’d always avoid using the voice interface. When possible. It’s extremely convenient while, for example, cooking with no clean hands free.

smichel17 6y ago
I have a friend who owns an Alexa, and this is the one use case I agree is very nice. I would buy a non-networked device with only this functionality, or an app (with no network permission) that does the same.
- Semaphor 6y ago
  Because I really started loving having a voice interface in a pinch (and because I want a less natural and more usable device), I started planning on building my own replacement with Rhasspy, but so far I haven’t gotten past the planning stages.

tolbish 6y ago

Those Alexa commercials make setting a timer look so fun.

djsumdog 6y ago

I had a roommate who I told, if he ever got an Amazon assistant, I'd smash it with a hammer. I don't get it either. There are open source alternatives if you want to setup your own assistant that doesn't transmit all your data back to Google/Amazon/Apple. The one caveat, I do know someone who is blind who uses the speech-to-text on her Google device a lot. She has all the fonts set to their maximum size, high contrast colors, and various other accessibility features enabled. Speach to text helps her greatly.

cbm-vic-20 6y ago
> There are open source alternatives if you want to setup your own assistant that doesn't transmit all your data back to Google/Amazon/Apple. Really? The Mycroft project claims to be just that, and it shows promise, but it still seems really clunky. And right now, as far as I can tell, you need to set up an account on their service so it can do things like voice recognition, which is a pretty critical component to this type of thing.
- djsumdog 6y ago
  I haven't tried them yet, but there's also Rhasspy (https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io https://rhasspy.readthedocs.io) and voice2json (https://voice2json.org https://voice2json.org)
jeanofthedead 6y ago
It really depends on what devices you use. For example, I have Homebridge set up on a Raspberry Pi to link my array of unsupported 'smart' devices to Apple's Homekit. I tried using Home Assistant (Hassio), but found the lack of support for several brands a dealbreaker. I wish the dev communities communicated more, between the two.

wvenable 6y ago

It boggles the mind the people would carry around always-on personal trackers that not only perfectly pin-point your location, know who your family and friends are, and can also listen to your conversations. Smart speakers are not all that scary if you know how they work and that information, in detail, is all out there. They go to a low-power mode waiting for the keyword and only then do actually turn on the main CPU and do any processing. They may the safest least privacy leaking Internet device you actually own. Your TV is probably taking screen shots of what you're watching. Your phone is leaking data to dozens of different entities all the time. Your computer is constantly sending stuff out. A smart speaker is tame by comparison.

yborg 6y ago
I assume the strawman you are propping up is a mobile phone. There is a significant difference there of course, which is that the phone performs a function impossible to obtain in any other way, namely mobile telephony. The "smart speaker" performs functions trivially replicated in other ways.
- wvenable 6y ago
  Yes, but the point is that they're so much safer than your mobile phone that the trivial usage is perfectly fine. I have an Alexa and while I only use it for basically trivial things I use it for those trivial things all the time. It's really quite nice to have. I also have my phone on me, all the time, even while at home so really my privacy issues aren't increased by having that Alexa.
mLuby 6y ago
It's not mind-boggling; we've just forgotten what it's like to buy and carry physical maps (or give/remember directions, or a stand-alone GPS device), have a physical address/contact book, use a tape recorder, etc. Now those things are all in one device. It is extremely convenient, but in general none of those features need to exfiltrate data from your device. If you ask me, device owners should have unimpeachable control over what data, if any, is sent from their devices.

acolumb 6y ago

I bought my HomePod mainly for its value as a speaker first -- at $199 I don't think any Sonos or Harman competitor can produce such high-fidelity sound. I also put more trust into Apple/Siri than I do with Alexa or Google. Their differential privacy and anonymized Siri requests have limited the speaker to few features which in my experience work well with the latest 13.x OS.