4 ms·

It's not snark, surely. It's a legitimate option. Ditch the surveillance boxes, they can't possibly augment your life in a meaningful way.

scubbo 6y ago
> they can't possibly augment your life in a meaningful way Claims like this one seriously undermine the (worthwhile) privacy movement. Convenience and entertainment _are_ worthwhile uses of technology. Those of us with an understanding of privacy and surveillance technology might well make the judgement that certain forms of convenience and entertainment are not justified by the intrusion that they present - but to claim that there is _zero_ benefit to those technologies just makes you look out-of-touch or cranky to the very people who would benefit from more awareness. Would I give up all my credit card details in order to have a marginally better music playback experience? No. Would I tell a company my birthday if they paid me $1,000,000 for it? Yes. There is a continuum of "privacy/payback evaluation", and different people lie at different points along it.
- sep_field 6y ago
  There's no reason the language model couldn't be stored locally. It doesn't need to be transmitting everything you say all the time to corporate HQ.
  - scubbo 6y ago
    I have serious doubts that the storage and computation components necessary to do full TextToIntent locally would result in an economic product - but, regardless, that isn't a refutation of my point that "smart speakers do provide some value to the average user, and to pretend that they don't undermines the legitimate discussion about privacy".
intertextuality 6y ago
This is so out of touch. If you want people to simply roll their eyes and ignore your words completely, keep on espousing arguments like that. Alexa, Siri and co. do have legitimate use cases for people, even if they may not be useful for -you-.
- mrcartmenez 6y ago
  What are these legitimate use cases? Controls for people with disabilities?
  - scollet 6y ago
    I 100% support disability augments. I don't see why the processing can't be localized to a device.
mrcartmenez 6y ago
Agreed. Those things are useless novelty items that seem to have no genuinely useful function

scubbo 6y ago

> they can't possibly augment your life in a meaningful way Claims like this one seriously undermine the (worthwhile) privacy movement. Convenience and entertainment _are_ worthwhile uses of technology. Those of us with an understanding of privacy and surveillance technology might well make the judgement that certain forms of convenience and entertainment are not justified by the intrusion that they present - but to claim that there is _zero_ benefit to those technologies just makes you look out-of-touch or cranky to the very people who would benefit from more awareness. Would I give up all my credit card details in order to have a marginally better music playback experience? No. Would I tell a company my birthday if they paid me $1,000,000 for it? Yes. There is a continuum of "privacy/payback evaluation", and different people lie at different points along it.

sep_field 6y ago
There's no reason the language model couldn't be stored locally. It doesn't need to be transmitting everything you say all the time to corporate HQ.
- scubbo 6y ago
  I have serious doubts that the storage and computation components necessary to do full TextToIntent locally would result in an economic product - but, regardless, that isn't a refutation of my point that "smart speakers do provide some value to the average user, and to pretend that they don't undermines the legitimate discussion about privacy".

intertextuality 6y ago

This is so out of touch. If you want people to simply roll their eyes and ignore your words completely, keep on espousing arguments like that. Alexa, Siri and co. do have legitimate use cases for people, even if they may not be useful for -you-.

mrcartmenez 6y ago
What are these legitimate use cases? Controls for people with disabilities?
- scollet 6y ago
  I 100% support disability augments. I don't see why the processing can't be localized to a device.

mrcartmenez 6y ago

Agreed. Those things are useless novelty items that seem to have no genuinely useful function