Amazon Echo Show – gonna be hard to beat

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No doubt you’ve been reading about the Amazon Echo Show – Alexa with a screen — that’ll ship on June 28. https://www.recode.net/2017/5/9/15594724/ama
[See the full post at: Amazon Echo Show – gonna be hard to beat]

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I’ve ordered two. Even if I only use them as intercoms, they’re worth $230 each.

And they’re only $180 each when you order two.

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At this price, you have to be pretty serious about using Amazon Echo (or any of these personal assistant devices). But the screen does add something which a lot of folks might have been missing. I think this will sell very well. It won’t ship until July, 2017, BTW.

-- rc primak

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I hope those of you who planning to buy this device or are using a similara device are not concerned about your privacy.
By the way that goes for those of you using similar devices for your phone
All you are doing is giving the companies like Amazon and Google not to mention the government another way to invade your privacy.

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Elly, samak, MrJimPhelps

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True – and that’s the case with anything that listens, including Cortana, Siri, OK Google, my old GPS, TVs and … refrigerators?

It’s a very real problem, and I don’t have a solution. But I really, really like the convenience of “OK Google, navigate to Costco.”

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Elly, ch100

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I prefer Siri and Apple Maps.
Just feels more professional like everything Apple 🙂

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PKCano

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Amazon’s ‘Echo Show’ Gives Alexa the Touchscreen It Needed — Now that there’s a screen in the Echo universe, there’s almost nothing you and Alexa can’t do.

“There’s almost nothing you and Alexa can’t do” — I guess we could call Alexa “Big Sister” rather than “Big Brother”.

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I read your blog headline thinking Amazon went nuts and had created a TV show with their Alexa product.

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I may be missing something, but I don’t see why new hardware is needed for a function that could be handled with new software, only.  We’ve got a world full of touch screens with speakers.  I’m just thinking of all of the fancy gadgets of yesteryear that I’ve already hauled to the hazardous disposal site, as well as the current objects du jour currently taking up real estate in my home.  I like to calculate the value of space inside my home as a function of the cost of the home divided by the total usable space (volume that can be occupied by gadgets) and then add the cost of the space occupied by the gadget to the purchase price to get the total cost to me.  Yeah, that’s too geeky; sorry.

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Elly

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Well, aside from the privacy and equally importantly the security side of these devices, I simply don’t see the point of them. Why do I need to speak to a machine to turn off a light when I can just flick a switch.

Maybe I’m just getting too old and passed it, but this seems to me to be an expensive solution looking for a problem and to me the so called “smart home” will just be a draw for every kiddie hacker that wants to try their hand at running up your utility bills by turning everything full on while you’re out. I bet burglars will love it too bearing in mind the general state of security for IoT.

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@ David F

Yes, agree. It will likely be a full time “hobby” patching/securing the OS running IoT smart-home devices against hackers/malware.
. . Patching/securing the Windows computers against hackers/malware is already sometimes a time-consuming affair.

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There was an anonymous comment that I’d like to address. It went like this:

“But I really, really like the convenience” Those are words for slavery.  You or anyone else are trading freedom along with privacy for the “luxury” of convenience by using this invasive technology.

I hear you, and I agree to some extent. I went through a painful adjustment when I finally broke down and started using a mobile phone – I most certainly, and consciously, traded freedom and privacy for convenience. Same thing when I got my first credit card. First bank account.

Same with Google search. GPS. Android. Windows 10. Chrome.

The loss of privacy is troubling to me. But I find that the increase in convenience offsets the downside. Your mileage may vary – and I certainly respect the choice. It’s a question of where you draw your personal line in the sand. I’ve found that my line keeps moving.

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Elly, AlexEiffel, John in Mtl

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Woody, the one line I have drawn is with my mobile phone – mine is talk and text only; I don’t have a smart phone. (My wife does.)

Otherwise, I just do my best to minimize my exposure and vulnerability. I think I do better at that than the average person, because of my knowledge of IT issues. It scares me to think of how exposed and vulnerable the average non-IT person is on a continual basis.

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woody wrote:

I went through a painful adjustment when I finally broke down and started using a mobile phone – I most certainly, and consciously, traded freedom and privacy for convenience.

I got a feature phone for the first time in 2005, long after everyone else did.  The one I have now, I think, I got two years later.  It’s still using the original battery, which I think is a sort of testament to how little I actually use it.  It’s basically one of the vaunted “in case of emergency” phones, though I also rarely use it to coordinate with people when out and about (even though I can do this, I typically do it the same way we used to back in the day– talk on the landline ahead of time and plan where to meet and that kind of thing all in advance).  Otherwise, it can just stay OFF and not lend itself to casual tracking by the cell provider.  I know the NSA or police can supposedly turn it on surreptitiously to record my position and what I say, but if I ever appear on their radar like that, I think privacy is pretty much gone anyway.  I’m way too boring to warrant any concern on their part anyway.

Same thing when I got my first credit card. First bank account.

Yeah, I will admit to those.

Same with Google search.

Can be mitigated.  Clear cookies before and after each use of Google, use an ISP that has a large pool of rotating IP addresses, and use something like NoScript to block the tracking scripts wherever they appear.  Google Analytics, Google Tag Services, etc., appear on lots and lots of sites.  The browser fingerprinting is still possible (even spoofing my useragent string didn’t help when I tried it on that site that was in the news not long ago), but with most of the scripts blocked, it can’t do very much mining as I go about the web.

GPS.

It depends what you mean by GPS– a lot of things can provide GPS function.  In my case, I seldom use it, but when I do, it’s my old, nearly abandoned Android tablet (wifi-only) that performs the task.  It has offline map capability, so I need no connectivity at all to use its nagivation function.

I’ve never used one of the dedicated GPS devices (that look like small tablets).  Do they have any cellular connectivity for things like live traffic?  No idea what they do.  I know what the possibilities are technically, just not what they actually use.

Android.

For the most part, that’s a “pass.”  For most people, “Android” would suggest a smart phone that’s always on and always carried with the person, and I don’t do that.  I do have the aforementioned tablet, but it probably sees about as much use as my feature phone, and it seldom gets to leave the house.  I don’t browse with it or do anything that Google would really find any actionable data in, and that’s intentional.  The only reason I keep it charged is to prevent the battery from deteriorating (the tablet is five years old, btw)… otherwise, I could just leave it plugged into the car charger if I need it for GPS duty, or the home charger while doing anything with it here.

Windows 10.

PASS.

Chrome.

Pass.

The loss of privacy is troubling to me. But I find that the increase in convenience offsets the downside. Your mileage may vary – and I certainly respect the choice.

Ultimately, it’s each person’s choice.  Who am I to tell others they can’t give away their privacy for any reason at all?  If it belongs to them, and I think that it does, they may do with it as they please.  Unfortunately, the fact that so many do give it away is the kind of thing that leads corporations like Microsoft to believe that while their product has never had THIS level of data slurping in it before, it is okay to put it in now, because now it’s normal.  It’s part of what probably led to nVidia’s decision to get on the bandwagon, including requiring a sign-in to use features like Shadowplay that used to be available without it.  The more people accept it, the more companies will cheerfully give them more opportunities to do so.

It’s a question of where you draw your personal line in the sand. I’ve found that my line keeps moving.

Mine too.  I become much less tolerant of privacy violations over time (which I suspect is not what you meant when you said your line is moving).  I have not always carried the feature phone OFF, and I did buy the Android tablet (four or five years ago), which I would not do now.  There’s no smart anything in my house; my satellite box has an ethernet port and a phone line jack (no wifi), but it’s never seen either of them connected.  The TV itself uses a CRT (meaning it’s so old that there were no smart TVs when it was made).  Just outside of the house is a smart electric meter, which I unfortunately have no choice but to accept if I don’t want to generate my own electricity.  Otherwise, everything in here is “dumb.”  All of my appliances and such were purchased before the option to be “smart” ever appeared.

I will always prefer to buy non-smart versions of things, but if it ever gets to the point that I cannot, I will take steps to lobotomize them.  I’ve read an anecdote of a Vizio smart TV that, if you don’t specifically assign to a wifi access point, will proceed to connect to any open wifi AP it finds– which could mean quietly stealing my neighbor’s bandwidth on my behalf without me even knowing it’s happening.  If true, I’d have to ask… on what planet is it okay to release a product that will steal from the neighbors (for which I am responsible) by design?

With the world as it is, I’d have to do research into any product I buy that has the “smart” warning on the box, and make sure it’s not going to try to pull something like that.  If it does, it’s going to have to go back to the store if I can’t find a way to disable it without voiding the warranty.  I suppose I could plug in one of my spare wireless routers and have the TV associate with that, but the router would have no connectivity at all. I would guess that as long as it has an AP, the TV won’t drop it and try to grab the neighbor’s AP.  It’s pretty stupid to have to set up a dummy router to get the TV or any other thing under control (if indeed there are devices that do this).

My car, also, doesn’t have OBD II capability, let alone any ability to transmit that data anywhere.  If I were in the market for a new one, it would be the same deal as appliances: the c*** to transmit that data gets disabled or I don’t buy it.  There are plenty of older cars that don’t blab.  More and more, “obsolete” goods are really looking good to me.

People can choose to trade privacy for convenience, but that also means that trying to protect the privacy is more inconvenient than it ever has been before.  I don’t think for a moment that this is anything but intentional; I think we’re supposed to recognize the futility of it all and learn to love the bomb.  I’m just way too cantakerous and stubborn for that.

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Elly

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The loss of privacy is troubling to me. But I find that the increase in convenience offsets the downside. Your mileage may vary – and I certainly respect the choice. It’s a question of where you draw your personal line in the sand. I’ve found that my line keeps moving.

Understood. I thank you for providing a response to your personal situation.  The issue at hand is that there will be a day, if not that we are already there, that many will realize where did our freedoms and privacy go?  By that time it will be too little and too late to do anything against the behemoth of the situation.  I guess that we deserve what we asked for.

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Elly, samak

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MrJimPhelps wrote:

It scares me to think of how exposed and vulnerable the average non-IT person is on a continual basis.

Yes, I too, worry about this and do my best to educate those around me, despite the weird looks I get from some people at times.  But the average person is either clueless (very likely) or doesn’t care (I have nothing of interest or anything to hide). They have absolutely no idea of how “profiling” could eventually affect their lives and freedoms. And they certainly don’t know they are being “monetized” by corps of all kinds while never getting any of the proceeds.

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samak

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I sometimes work on the computers of my friends. One friend had a lot of adware on his computer; I thoroughly cleaned it up and installed Trend Micro. I checked his computer a few months later, and a search engine had co-opted his browser.

Ditto for his wife’s computer.

Although my wife doesn’t know that much about IT issues, when I first met her I noticed that her computer was as clean as a whistle. Some people are just naturally more careful than others.

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with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Elly

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They have absolutely no idea of how “profiling” could eventually affect their lives and freedoms. And they certainly don’t know they are being “monetized” by corps of all kinds while never getting any of the proceeds.

If only that was the issue at play.  Profiling anyone has direct consequences with what type of health coverage you may get, car insurance rates, job options and criminal action potential to name a few.  The closest Sci-fi movie to what it may/will the future come out to be is “Minority Report”.

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Elly

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anonymous wrote:

The loss of privacy is troubling to me. But I find that the increase in convenience offsets the downside. Your mileage may vary – and I certainly respect the choice. It’s a question of where you draw your personal line in the sand. I’ve found that my line keeps moving.

Understood. I thank you for providing a response to your personal situation. The issue at hand is that there will be a day, if not that we are already there, that many will realize where did our freedoms and privacy go? By that time it will be too little and too late to do anything against the behemoth of the situation. I guess that we deserve what we asked for.

That Ben Franklin quote comes to mind though needs a slight modification:

“Those who would give up essential liberties and freedoms for unnecessary conveniences deserves neither liberty or freedom.”

Generally speaking, I find it extremely hypocritical that the military many Americans worship are “fighting for your freedoms” only for those same military worshipping Americans to willingly give them away because it’s too hard to get to Costco or whatever else it is. As you say, one day people will wake up and wonder what the heck happened and where all our freedoms went. Well, you gave them all away! That’s where they went! We’re already about 15 years down that road already. That won’t be a comfortable bed to sleep in when that day comes.

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Elly, samak

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Sessh wrote:

I find it extremely hypocritical that the military many Americans worship are “fighting for your freedoms” only for those same military worshipping Americans to willingly give them away because it’s too hard to get to Costco or whatever else it is.

Huh? A complete non-sequitur. I assure you I’m not a military worshipper. But I do like getting directions to Costco.

Please, if you want to make political statements, put them in the Rants forum….

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Even if you were a military worshipper, it would still not be a conflict.  Freedom is about having choices; you make the choice to trade privacy for convenience.  The company makes the choice to let you.  No conflict between that and freedom in the military sense.

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Here’s another good reason to keep away from this c**p, free ADVERTS which apparently you’re going to love, quote “VoiceLabs claims the messages will be the first “voice-first” advertising that people will love”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/11/ads_amazons_alexa_and_vr_games/

Edit for content

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The same way that Satya Nadella wants us to love Windows?

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Heh, heh. All those who buy into all this cr**pola deserve what they get.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/amazon-alexa-ads-voicelabs/

And since Amazon wants to get into your bedroom, they seem to have succeeded dumping ads there too. The only place left for ads is in your hearing aids and glasses. Just watch.

 

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