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Because they make my life better? I enjoy being able to use a simple voice command to change the temperature of the room, dim a light, play a song, check the o

Because they make my life better? I enjoy being able to use a simple voice command to change the temperature of the room, dim a light, play a song, check the outdoor temperature before taking my dog on a walk, or close the garage door from my bedroom because I forgot to do it before going up for the night. It feels like living in the Star Trek universe to me. I have a smart speaker in every room. I knew I wanted this long ago. I had coded my own version of Alexa before smart speakers were a thing. It ran on a tablet PC I hung on the living room wall, using a mishmash of free and commercial APIs for voice recognition, text to speech, and smart home device control. A software engineer at Liftmaster emailed me back then about my strange website usage when I hacked up an API for voice control of my smart garage door opener. But all that was replaced by Echo speakers when the Echo Plus came out and was able to become my new Zigbee hub.

donkarma 5y ago
rglullis 5y ago
Does it have to come with the surveillance apparatus, the absolute lack of legal responsibility for potentially fatal actions and the perverse incentives for mindless consumerism, though? You know how the sausage is made. Wouldn't you like to at least fund a viable ethical alternative?
- astura 5y ago
- dangrossman 5y ago
  I'm perfectly content with Amazon's product. I am happy to fund it in exchange for the utility it provides me.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    It's interesting to point out that your answer does not defend the ethical aspect of Amazon and consequently your own choice. And you don't think that you can do anything to counter the bad side of it? Don't you think there is no externality that you should be paying for?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dangrossman 5y ago
      You're a funny guy. I'm going to go ponder the ethical aspect of the bagel I'm about to make for lunch now, and whether there are any externalities I didn't pay for when choosing a toaster oven to warm it up. This should interest you, so maybe I'll report back later.
    - cheeze 5y ago
      It's a smart speaker that people ask "how many teaspoons in a cup". I don't care about the ethical aspect. I care about the basic utility that it adds to my life. I don't see much unethical here, HN people are just weirdos.
      - Levitz 5y ago
        And Facebook is just a site to read stuff and talk to your friends, I guess? I'm baffled that the third biggest corporation in the world by revenue having a microphone listening 24/7 in millions of homes doesn't raise any questions about ethics, there are a truckload around advertising alone.
        dangrossman 5y ago
        Were you also baffled by the ethics of telephones? I don't mean the cell phone in 6.4 billion pockets that's always listening, I mean the POTS. AT&T was once the largest corporation in the world, and they had a live wire going directly to almost every house in the nation. The telephones were always on, and the other end always capable of remotely listening in to anything you said, if you picked it up. Little different from an Echo device that's always waiting for its wake word to start transmitting. Almost everyone that's alive right now has always had a remote listening device in their home, controlled by a major corporation, from the moment they were born.
0xdeadb00f 5y ago
> It feels like living in the Star Trek universe to me. I have a smart speaker in every room. This is literally what these companies are preying on, don't you see?
- emodendroket 5y ago
  It is literally what they're advertising. "Preying on" seems a bit loaded as a description.
  - 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
    Except that's what it is. You don't really think they sell these things for the cool tech aspect do you? They don't sell it to better peoples lives, that's just a side effect. Same can be said for just about anything.
    - emodendroket 5y ago
      Indeed, you could "say it about anything." But "don't you realize they're just selling you that to make a profit?!" would sound like an inanity if someone said they liked, say, the bread a bakery down the street sold, or a keyboard, or the Xbox.
      - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
        It would be more apt if the bread contained nano bots that phoned home after analysing your stool to report on what other foods you eat, or if the keyboard logged every keystroke to some remote API for analysis
        emodendroket 5y ago
        Many if not most retailers do sell information about your purchases.
    - maccard 5y ago

donkarma 5y ago

rglullis 5y ago

Does it have to come with the surveillance apparatus, the absolute lack of legal responsibility for potentially fatal actions and the perverse incentives for mindless consumerism, though? You know how the sausage is made. Wouldn't you like to at least fund a viable ethical alternative?

astura 5y ago
dangrossman 5y ago
I'm perfectly content with Amazon's product. I am happy to fund it in exchange for the utility it provides me.
- rglullis 5y ago
  It's interesting to point out that your answer does not defend the ethical aspect of Amazon and consequently your own choice. And you don't think that you can do anything to counter the bad side of it? Don't you think there is no externality that you should be paying for?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dangrossman 5y ago
    You're a funny guy. I'm going to go ponder the ethical aspect of the bagel I'm about to make for lunch now, and whether there are any externalities I didn't pay for when choosing a toaster oven to warm it up. This should interest you, so maybe I'll report back later.
  - cheeze 5y ago
    It's a smart speaker that people ask "how many teaspoons in a cup". I don't care about the ethical aspect. I care about the basic utility that it adds to my life. I don't see much unethical here, HN people are just weirdos.
    - Levitz 5y ago
      And Facebook is just a site to read stuff and talk to your friends, I guess? I'm baffled that the third biggest corporation in the world by revenue having a microphone listening 24/7 in millions of homes doesn't raise any questions about ethics, there are a truckload around advertising alone.
      - dangrossman 5y ago
        Were you also baffled by the ethics of telephones? I don't mean the cell phone in 6.4 billion pockets that's always listening, I mean the POTS. AT&T was once the largest corporation in the world, and they had a live wire going directly to almost every house in the nation. The telephones were always on, and the other end always capable of remotely listening in to anything you said, if you picked it up. Little different from an Echo device that's always waiting for its wake word to start transmitting. Almost everyone that's alive right now has always had a remote listening device in their home, controlled by a major corporation, from the moment they were born.

0xdeadb00f 5y ago

> It feels like living in the Star Trek universe to me. I have a smart speaker in every room. This is literally what these companies are preying on, don't you see?

emodendroket 5y ago
It is literally what they're advertising. "Preying on" seems a bit loaded as a description.
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  Except that's what it is. You don't really think they sell these things for the cool tech aspect do you? They don't sell it to better peoples lives, that's just a side effect. Same can be said for just about anything.
  - emodendroket 5y ago
    Indeed, you could "say it about anything." But "don't you realize they're just selling you that to make a profit?!" would sound like an inanity if someone said they liked, say, the bread a bakery down the street sold, or a keyboard, or the Xbox.
    - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
      It would be more apt if the bread contained nano bots that phoned home after analysing your stool to report on what other foods you eat, or if the keyboard logged every keystroke to some remote API for analysis
      - emodendroket 5y ago
        Many if not most retailers do sell information about your purchases.
  - maccard 5y ago