Nearly Half of American Households Will Own a Smart Speaker by 2019, Study Says (fortune.com) 220
Almost half of American households will have a smart speaker by next year, according to a new study from Adobe. From a report: The study, released Monday, finds that 32% of the country already owns a smart speaker and another 16% plan on getting one this holiday season. And just as importantly, people are using those speakers. "Technology trends come and go, but we think voice is here to stay," said Colin Morris, director of product management for Adobe Analytics, in a statement. "Consumers continue to embrace voice as a means to engage their devices and the Internet. It's a trend that has fundamentally changed the face of computing." A notable indicator of the growing popularity of the speakers is how comfortable people are talking to the device in front of others. And that number is on the rise: 72% of smart speaker owners say they use voice assistants in front of others. (Only 29% of people without a smart speaker are comfortable with doing so.) Further reading: Google Home Outships Amazon Echo for Second Quarter in Row.
Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
Seriously? That many people want an ever-listening microphone in their home?That was fast.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a smart phone, and you think Alexa is a bigger threat to your privacy, then you are delusional.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly! I don't get how this supposedly "always listening and spying on me" device is going to get more out of me than the phone that knows almost everything I do and write, all day every day. I don't tell Alexa before I go to a store where I'm going and what I'm going to get, but the phone knows exactly where I went, how long I spent there, and what products I researched before I did it.
All the phones these days are listening all the time, as well. And they follow you around.
I really don't see what the problem with a smart speaker is. And it looks like most people agree.
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Not everyone feels the need
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That's good for you, but you're in the minority.
Even then, nobody carries an Echo around with them. So even you will likely be talking around it much less often than you will use your phone.
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
you do have full control over what you are using your phone for and by extension what data is being sent out to nefarious companies.
No you don't. If you monitor your phone's packets, you may be surprised what data is being sent where.
Then try monitoring the packets from Alexa. Unless you say the keyword, you will see ... nothing.
Bottom line:
1. There is no evidence that Alexa is "spying", or doing anything except listing for a particular keyword.
2. There is plenty of evidence that your cellphone is doing stuff behind your back and running 3rd party software.
If you trust your cellphone more than you trust Alexa, you are a deluded fool.
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Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
I only ever talk at home to Alexa anyway, why should I bother?
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Alexa should be able to respond to other words, like "honey", "sweetie", and "darling".
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That phone is not really logging everything you do.
How do you know?
These chat speakers are.
There is no evidence of that. It would involve a conspiracy involving hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, knowingly breaking the law, and exposing one of the largest corporations in the world to massive class action lawsuits.
Why are stupid conspiracy theories believed for Alexa, but not for cellphones? The cellphone has a much larger attack surface. Just one bad app is all it takes, and the OS is far more complex than what a speaker has, with many more potential holes.
Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
All the phones these days are listening all the time, as well. And they follow you around.
I have a lot more control over my phone. Use LineageOS with privacy guard, or the XPosed Framework installed on pretty much any Android based OS. Or just avoid installing apps which abuse your privacy in the first place.
If I was able to purchase one of these smart speakers and install an open source OS on it which doesn't automatically connect to google or Amazon all the time, I would be very interested in playing around with one of them. Until that's possible, there's no way I'll willingly use one.
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Exactly! I don't get how this supposedly "always listening and spying on me" device is going to get more out of me than the phone that knows almost everything I do and write, all day every day.
What does the most egregious stalking device get? A special prize? What difference (Senator) does it make who does it best?
I don't tell Alexa before I go to a store where I'm going and what I'm going to get
That's right. You tell other people and Alexa records it.
All the phones these days are listening all the time, as well. And they follow you around.
I really don't see what the problem with a smart speaker is. And it looks like most people agree.
Oh so no big deal then. Most people agree if they get one black eye they have no problem getting a second one.
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I think you missed my point. *I* don't think either device is stalking me. The point is that most people also don't think their phone is stalking them, even though it's an order of magnitude more likely for it to be doing some illegal monitoring of your activities than the wifi-only static microphone in one of your rooms. Yet, this microphone is a feared privacy intrusion device (at lea
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How much data do you think it needs to transfer? Most of what you do is not voice recordings, but raw gps data, emails, etc., which not only compress really well, but have already travelled to you on that bad data plan of yours.
Plus, high-quality VOIP takes less than 40MB per *
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40MB/hour translates to 28GB/month.
Only if you talk continuously.
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The difference is that the microphone on my cell phone sucks and no one can hear me anyway. So no threat there.
Now - if they were to take a "smart speaker" microphone and somehow graft it on to a phone, thereby making it possible to use your phone to talk to people and have them understanding you - well, shit, then they'd have something!!
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It's not quite the same, you have other options with a phone, like not installing Facebook on it.
But you have a point: my wife has noted that all too frequently she'll mention something in conversation in our living room, while perusing FaceBook on her phone, and within hours an ad or post of some sort will show on FB for that thing she just discussed, whether it's needing a new mattress (which we do), or luggage for vacation (which we did), or a celebrity we mentioned. It's gotten creepy. I'd say a coup
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If you have a smart phone, and you think Alexa is a bigger threat to your privacy, then you are delusional.
The effect is additive. The most egregious offender doesn't win and everyone else walk away empty handed. Everyone wins at your expense.
Imagine an angry flash mob of all remaining Facebook users lobbing bricks at crystal palace. Each brick thrown causes additional damage. It's never the case that the most damaging brick wins and all other damage is magically erased from history.
If you throw a brick at crystal palace because everyone else is doing it your legal liability, karma, chance of going to hell i
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Does Alexa have a comprehensive set of options to limit how much information it can use and share? With my phone I can turn off GPS, turn off ads, and so forth. The phone is not always listening, presumably, and I have to turn it on before I can interact with it. Alexa, by design and user interface, is always on.
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No shit.
I for one don't want it either. I don't like talking to those voice assisted telephone prompts either.
I don't want to fucking talk to anything in order to use it. Hell, even on my phone, I'd rather send an email or look at a website for the info I need, rather than place a phone call.
And I DEFINITELY don't want electronics talking to ME. Just fuck that every which way!
Down with voice!! Make your voice heard!! Wait - what? Oh yeah. Down with voice!!
Thank you!
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But it's a lot more convenient to get soap without touching anything and there's less to clean. Paper towels are easy to tear and if you can't get them out by pulling, it means you need to put your wet hands on a some lever or wheel to get them out - that's more to clean or more germs.
Technology isn't that scary, you don't have to always
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You're missing out though. If you just go with it and accept that we're living in the future now, you can wave your hands in front of the magic wall dryer and it actually will do a pretty good job drying your hands. The air-blade ones are especially cool and work great. Try it!
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Right.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
So you personally are The People, then?
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Seriously? That many people want an ever-listening microphone in their home?That was fast.
That many people understand that it's not an ever-listening microphone, at least not one that listens for anything other than the activation keyword.
You may consider them naive for believing the tech companies are telling the truth about what it does and does not listen for. If so, I consider you naive for believing that the tech companies could get away with such a lie. It's pretty easy to monitor network traffic, and not too much harder to crack one open and check out what it's doing from the inside. O
depends on what smart means in this case. (Score:2)
There's microphones that are merely conduits for Siri/ok google/cortana/alexa. A few of these actually have some multi microphone directional listening capability which makes them slightly smarter.
this is not different than any android phone. I wonder also why they call is a smart speaker rather than a smart microphone.
In any case there is as far as I know only one consumer grade mass produced "smart" speaker in existence and that is the apple home pod. It actually senses it's accoustic environment, meas
People are fucking idiots. (Score:2)
Yep. Individual specimens can be fine, even intelligent.
But on the whole, "people" have the collective intelligence of someone in persistent vegetative state undergoing a full frontal lobotomy.
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Yep.
Count me out unless they come up with some ironclad Do Not Track agreements, a two step process for activating, and a completely separate and offline mode for controlling IOC devices in the home.
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I would use voice recognition software that ran locally. It could retrieve shit off of the internet, but only through my direct connection and it must never send or receive any data from anywhere unless explicitly commanded to do so by a user.
All of this crap about "needing" to be connected to Google or Amazon or Microsoft servers for processing purposes is bullshit. A low end smartphone SoC is more than powerful enough to handle all of the processing locally. I was doing accurate voice recognition and voic
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So, why didn't you launch a smart speaker in the meantime? Was it crap compared to current day?
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I was doing accurate voice recognition and voice control of my computer back in the 90s on Pentium 1 CPUs with 16MB of RAM.
So, why didn't you launch a smart speaker in the meantime? Was it crap compared to current day?
I was changing my own oil and doing light maintenance on my vehicle back in high school. Should I have opened my own garage?
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Interesting)
I cannot STAND places that have switched to phone support that tries to get you to speak to answer questions rather than hitting a number to make choices on how they want to direct your call.
This is especially a PITA when you're sitting in cubeville making a call....whether a direct work support call, or maybe you're on break, and calling local utilities for instance.
I don't want co-workers around me to hear my personal business, etc.
I have read, that some of these robo-support systems listen for hostility and curse words....I use this possibility to the fullest when calling from home and continually yell "Get me a FUCKING live operator"....after about 2-3 of those, I get to a person.
I'm very calm and gracious when talking to people on the phone, but I cannot stand having to talk to a fucking computer...I'd almost rather talk to a foreigner with too thick of an accent to understand than a flawless English speaking computer, I hate it that much....
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I really don't see why people hate the old "press 1 for x, 2 for y..." type decision tree. It's not that hard to navigate and you can easily map the decision tree to find what you want.
Because it replaced a human switchboard operator who was trained to route you instantly to the person you wanted to reach.
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Exactly!
So more like this:
"Alexa"
"Alexa Voice Activated, Confirm please."
"Confirmed. Order pizza.
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Count me out unless they come up with some ironclad Do Not Track agreements
No "agreement" that can be administratively undone ("oops, we made a mistake!") will ever be good enough. I doubt I'll ever own one of these spy toys, but if I do it will only be because it's running completely on open source.
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You have confused average with median.
I guess we know where you fall in the distribution.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Informative)
You have confused average with median.
While pedants love to counter with this, you're wrong. In colloquial English, the word "average" means "typical", not necessarily the arithmetic mean. A few sources (from the first three dictionaries that popped up on google):
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average [merriam-webster.com]
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/average?s=t [dictionary.com]
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/average [cambridge.org]
Furthermore, the statement assumes that it makes sense to measure intelligence on a single scale; and by far the most common scale to do that is using IQ. IQ tests are designed to result in a normal distribution, which means that both the median and the mean are the same, and so we expect right about 50% of people to have an IQ less than the mean.
Although the other half of me thinks that if you go out and talk to some people on the street, you'll probably conclude that the majority of people are far dumber than average.
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In other words, previous poster confused average with median.
Re:Seriously? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Previous poster was using colloquial English, which is the language that we speak and understand on Slashdot. The only confusion is yours, since you apparently don't understand that the term "average" is correct in this context.
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Previous poster was using colloquial English, which is the language that we speak and understand on Slashdot.
What? Speak for yourself, I'm speaking nerd. I think it's reasonable to expect Slashdotters to understand the difference between "average" and "median".
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Nice try.
"Colloquial" would be "I'm an average Joe" or today is "about average". In these instances, no one is expecting the speaker to be making any kind of mathematical statement.
In our case here, the speaker was referring to a population being a precise amount below the average. That's clearly mathematics, not colloquial speech.
50%. (Score:2)
Maybe I'm getting old.... (Score:4, Insightful)
...but why exactly would I want one of these? I can already sit at my pc which I am almost always in front of at home, or whip out my phone, to order stuff on Amazon. I don't understand what value these speakers add to my life.
Re:Maybe I'm getting old.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Maybe I'm getting old.... (Score:5, Interesting)
What, you don't enjoy listening to music with lossy compression in glorious MONAURAL?
I really think the mid-90s were the high water mark for music reproduction... CDs had become the norm, everyone had AT LEAST a respectable pair of bookshelf-sized speakers paired with a subwoofer big enough to do 80-100hz properly, and an amp with 50W (RMS) per channel was the baseline norm. Then came mp3, iPods, and the Loudness War, and everything totally went to shit. We're literally back at the point where music doesn't sound much better than a 1960s large FM table radio did. And that really sucks.
Surround sound with 96khz 24-bit audio was supposed to be the NORM by now. And it probably would have been, if the music industry and consumer electronics industries hadn't fucked up SACD so completely and thoroughly with DRM.... then given in to the Loudness Wars to make CDs sound even worse than low-bitrate MP3s thanks to clipping (CLIPPING, for fuck's sake!)
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...but why exactly would I want one of these? I can already sit at my pc which I am almost always in front of at home, or whip out my phone, to order stuff on Amazon. I don't understand what value these speakers add to my life.
Think of the quadraphonic stereo early adopters of the 60s/70s. Everyone will have these soon they said.
Setting aside the microphone privacy problem, these speakers are also self configuring for stereo and/or quad. Just plop them down in somewhat arbitrary convenient locations and they will self configure themselves to properly "flood" the room with sound. Its not a bad idea and it is something quite separate from "gizmo, order milk from amazon".
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Hmm...in my home, I listen to my fairly high end audio system I've been building and putting together since I was a kid....
I can't imagine wanting to listen to some
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I'm guessing there has to be a place you input into the ceiling speakers, right?
Just a thought, that the new Dolby ATMOS (sp?) systems now use speakers over you as part of the surround signal, you might could use the c
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I don't remember the exact reason, but my dad (a major audiophile) told me that all of the various 1970s-era Quad encoding schemes had some major, fatal flaw that didn't really become obvious (to anyone outside the industry itself) until lots of people had quad setups & they realized it was endemic rather than just their own fault. From what I recall, the "sweet spot" was REALLY small (like, in a 10x12 foot room, something like a 1x2 foot zone), and the speaker placement wasn't compatible with normal st
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I've got a pair of quadraphonic headphones... dual 1/4" stereo plugs!
Maybe I should use an ESP-32 and smarten them up a bit! lol
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I was on the fence for a long time about whether or not I wanted one of these, but the clincher was the hands-free cooking aid (eg timers and measurement conversion/math). It fits well into the kitchen.
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Is it really such a burden to just wash your fucking hands, and work the keypad on the microwave or calculator you keep in your kitchen drawer to convert from quarts to milligrams or whatever? I mean...damn.
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Yes Luddite.
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I use android apps on a wifi tablet, no need to wash hands just wipe the screen afterwards.
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My cold dead hands (Score:5, Funny)
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We can arrange that. --companies
You can quote me on this: (Score:2)
"No fucking way."
-Styopa
September 2018
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"No fucking way."
Cure for cancer was just discovered, but it is only available as IoT.
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Back to Creative Writing with you, we demand better stories.
Latest models have red/yellow/green lights (Score:5, Insightful)
Green: consuming Fortune 500 products, watching sports, discussing celebrities, Yellow: discussing taxes, social justice or foreign policy, Red: statements in support of fringe candidates (e.g., from Vermont), negative statements about taxes or fees, unflattering comments about incumbent politicians (or politicians from powerful families), discussion of election security or any foreign or domestic agency's influence on them, and citing of facts not previously vetted by a major TV news organization.
Get your smart speaker today, Citizen, for only 150 Visa credits!
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Wording (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how many people mis-understood the question and answered yes?
The real question would be to ask how do you use your smart speaker? Unless they say: to answer questions and connect to voice activated services, then their smart speaker are probably just a set of normal speakers they connected to an ipod dock.
I just don't see it (Score:2)
I know what they really mean by "smart speakers" is Alexa devices, but I just don't see how Amazon could have that kind of reach by 2019, even with very cheap models and bundling Alexia in with other devices (like cars).
Disturbing trend, if so.
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More than half the people I know already have an Alexa. So I don't think half of households by 2019 is unrealistic at all.
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It's not Alexa being bundled in everything,. It's Google Home being bundled in most Android smartphones.
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Aha, that makes a lot more sense to me as a possible answer to sheer numbers (though is not then very indicative of how many will make use of it).
I love technology (Score:5, Insightful)
As a semi-retired engineer, I use technology whenever I find it useful
"Smart Speakers" and "Smart Appliances" seem like silly fads to me. I can't imagine where they would be useful
Even worse, they raise troublesome privacy issues
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This technology isn't for you use.
This technology is to use you.
Re:I love technology (Score:5, Funny)
I would hesitate to call them "smart" at all. Setting aside privacy issues these things barely work as intended. I've tried to get my google assistant on my phone to work for several years. Damn things still mis-understands half of what I say and ignores the other half. I figure if I was to bring home one of these "smart" doohickeys I would spend half my time yelling at the damn thing and the other half manually doing with I was yelling at it to do in the first place.
me: "We are out of coke?"
smart thing: "I've ordered you a pound of coke. Would you like a hooker to go with it?"
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"Smart Speakers" and "Smart Appliances" seem like silly fads to me. I can't imagine where they would be useful
Apparently half of Americans have more imagination than you do :-)
In all seriousness, we find ours pretty useful. Enough that I've put them in most rooms in the house. They serve as an intercom system as well as alarm clocks, timers, shared grocery list managers, music players and general information lookup devices... all voice-controlled. I put one in the TV room, and that's turned out to be quite nice; I especially like when someone asks "What did he say?" I can just say "Hey Google, back up 20 seconds
In related news: (Score:3)
Fools and their valuables are soon parted! Few realize the value of their privacy or real ownership.
Feudalism is making a comeback.
Dumb speaker (Score:2)
I got one of these so I wouldn't have to put together another sound system in my bedroom, for that purpose it's been inexpensive and sound is good enough. But it is far from smart sometimes I have to say the name of the artist or playlist I want multiple times before it gets it. Some of the playlists I make are because it can't understand the artists name so I make a list with a simpler name. So if it want to listen to my farts in my sleep enjoy. I does have a microphone off, and just unpluging the
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technoids are different (Score:2)
NEVER going to own one (Score:4, Insightful)
Say Goodbye to Privacy! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Not only is Big Brother watching you, he has convinced you to pay for the privilege. For this I give a big Orwellian facepalm.
How is this different from the hardwired telephone we had in the kitchen when I was a kid? And how is it different from all of the smartphones lying around the house now? I suppose the microphone on the smart speaker is higher-quality...
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Just in case you're not trolling:
A hardwired telephone was not active when it was hung up. Mobile telephones are limited by size and battery therefore not so well optimised for listening to all conversations in the room. A "smart speaker" in every room has much higher coverage than a couple of smart phones lying around that may or may not be turned on, have an active data connection, and be well-placed to listen.
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How is this different from the hardwired telephone we had in the kitchen when I was a kid?
My guess would be wiretapping a telephone is a felony. It's illegal to wiretap without legal cause.
And how is it different from all of the smartphones lying around the house now?
Smartphones are loaded with malware (Google play services and apps downloaded from Google play store) that stalk you with reckless abandon without any fear of political or criminal liability.
I suppose the microphone on the smart speaker is higher-quality...
Yea that... jokes... and ridiculous logic.. that thing over there is just as bad so it doesn't matter if we commit the same transgression.
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Now, if you do something "bad", its possible to look back at your records and the records of everyone you interacted with to see who else is culpable.
Or if someone you have ever interacted with is under suspicion *they* may be investigated and a network chart of their connections to others [chandoo.org] generated, potentially dragging you into the crosshairs.
Don't you mean corporation spy speaker? (Score:3, Insightful)
Conversations with smart speaker owners usually go something like this:
Friend: "I just bought an Amazon Echo/Google/Apple/whoever smart speaker. It is amazing what it can do."
Me: "What can it do now that you could not do before?"
Friend:"Well it can control my Hue lights, make phone calls, and play music."
Me:"Can't you do that with your phone already?"
Friend:"Yes, but now I can use my smart speaker!"
Me:"So tap-tap-tap-tap on your phone was too much work?"
Friend:"No, but this is newer so it's cooler and more modern!"
Me:"You do know your voice is recorded and sent back to their servers, stored, and is accessible to them and to god-only-knows-whoever their business partners are, right?"
Friend:"They are a hi-tech company and they say they wouldn't do anything to violate my privacy with that, so there!"
Me:"So then, would it be ok if I install a microphone in your home that records whatever you say and have the recordings sent back to me? I will only store them, promise never to listen to them, and never use them for any other purpose without your consent. You can trust me!"
Friend:"NO NO NO! I will not let you do that-it would violate my privacy."
Me:"Sigh!"
Well (Score:2)
as the naysayers again crawl from the woodwork (Score:3)
Now they are saying that they will never talk to a 'smart speaker'. Each of you should tattoo that statement on your arm, along with the date. Look at it every day until you talk to smart speakers. Then shut up and don't say anything so stupid till you die.
Unfortunately... (Score:2)
...we need much more a Speaker of the House who is smart.
More complete and utter bullshit (Score:2)
We say it's going to happen therefore it has to be true, BELIEVE IT!
Yeah sure and tablet computers were going to make desktops and laptops extinct [slashdot.org].
You are a FOOL if you believe this, and a BIGGER fool if you run out and start buying these gods-be-damned surveillance devices.
TFS says own (Score:2)
TFS says own, not necessarily use.
You might get given one for Xmas, but never take it out of the box.
And by march 2019... (Score:2)
.... they'll all be screaming at their speaker like it's a half deaf microcephalic. Which it pretty much is.