Does anyone have pic related?
I just received one as a gift, how do you use yours?
I was just reading up on how to develop "skills" (apps) for the thing and it looks like any route you take will end up costing shekels because app code isn't run on the device itself, but instead has to run in amazon's shitty cloud.
>>51834381
>costing shekels
What? Just because the Echo relies on the cloud, that doesn't mean it costs money.
>>51834562
The apps have to run as a webservice on AWS or as a Lambda service, both have free tiers but require you to attach a credit card in case you go over the limits. The app I wanted to implement definitely doesn't need to be implemented as a web service, so it's a non-starter for me.
>>51834602
Oh, I see what you're saying now. So, what are these limits, and how likely is it in practice that you'll end up exceeding them?
>>51834671
The free tier for Lambda allows you 1 million requests a month, which is probably enough for my needs but it still annoys me that I could potentially get charged if my app became popular. I have no plans to monetize it, it was just going to be an app for finding new movies in theaters nearby w/ showtimes.
As all of the data I need for my app is already available through simple rest APIs there is no need for an additional service in the middle, the Echo device itself should be more than capable of performing the work.
>>51834754
Well, if you're trying to do an end-run around the Echo development tools, I think the Echo supports IFTTT scripts. You could try some clever fuckery with those.
That aside, how possible is it to just keep the app to yourself? Could you prevent other people from using it?
>paying to have the NSA listen to your living room 24/7
Go away, Jeff Bezos, you couldn't trick us into giving a shit about the Fire Phone or Dash Buttons, you can't trick us into giving a shit about this.
>>51834805
It would be completely impossible for the Echo to hide a persistent listening/recording function that transmitted data all the time, you absolute retard. Get the fuck out of here with that FUD.
>>51834754
>1,000,000 requests a month
>~23.14 requests a minute
>~once every 3 seconds
>just to find out which mind manipulating fictional story w/ possible subliminal messages is available to pay to be indoctrinated by
noice
>>51834784
I've never used IFTTT, all I really need is the ability to make web requests (to the json API), parse the json, then perform some simple logic on it (loop through results). Is that all supported?
>>51834805
I've had NSA spying for almost a decade now because I use the internet and I own a cellphone, so I'm not too worried.
>>51834860
Uh, how do you think wakewords work?
>>51834939
Doesn't it just listen for "Alexa" locally, then when that's triggered it uses the cloud to route the specific intent?
>>51835027
And what happens when someone says something that isn't "Alexa"? Does the microphone not hear it?
>>51834939
It listens with a rolling buffer, it doesn't record everything. When it hears the wakeword, it begins recording until you're done issuing a command, at which point it stops recording. I know how wakewords work, but I'm not sure you do.
>>51834906
I have no idea, re: IFTTT. You'll have to explore it yourself.
>>51835043
>And what happens when someone says something that isn't "Alexa"? Does the microphone not hear it?
It discards it.
Again: if the Echo was transmitting everything you say directly to Amazon (or anyone else, for that matter), it would be impossible to hide the network activity. Security analysts would be all over it like niggers on watermelon.
>>51835043
I think the microphone does hear it, it just doesn't transmit the audio over the net. If it were constantly uploading audio 24/7 you'd probably notice it on your internet bill
>>51835061
>it discards it
We can hope.
>>51835074
We can know. Teardowns indicate that the Echo doesn't have the local storage to save all that voice data, and we can tell by its data transmission patterns that it isn't sending it.
You're completely full of shit.
>>51835063
If the device is programmed to detect the word "Alexa", who's to say it isn't programmed to detect the word "bomb" or "shooting"?
There sure are a lot of shills on /g/ trying to convince everyone putting a microphone and proprietary software that calls to Amazon is a good idea, I'm kind of curious why.
>>51835061
They convert it to plain text, compress and encrypt it.
Everything you say in a day ads up to just a tiny amount of data.
>>51835114
Couldn't any device with a micrphone have that risk though? If you believe that's possible with this thing, then why wouldn't you believe it's also happening unbeknownst to you on your cellphone, laptop, tablet, (anything else with a microphone) ?
>>51835074
Like it's been said many times in this thread. You don't have to hope. If a device was transmitting recorded sound over the internet 24/7, it wouldn't take a security expert to figure it out. Just look at your bandwidth usage from your ISP.
I like mine. It's kinda awkward that the cell app recalls my drunk wiki asking it.
Aka, you look at your phone and be like wtf, why was I asking it to define female genital mutilation.
I like the streaming, I love using it as a cooking timer (so useful for that) and when I'm drinking coffee in the morning I'll ask Alexa for the morning news and it gives me a highlights reel.
There's fun easter eggs for friends.
I'm looking into home automation with alexa.
I'm no more concerned about having it in my house then having a fucking android phone in my house.
I mean shit, atleast I know it can spy on me. The smart TV I wouldn't even know. My smart phone, same. My computer, same.
Fuck it. I fully expect a alphabet agency to come after me first for other things then what I say to fucking alexa or me telling alexa about my dick piercings.
>>51835114
Well, genius, we can say "bomb" in front of the Echo while running network traffic analysis tools, to see if the Echo exhibits the same behavior upon hearing the word "bomb" as it does when it hears the word "Alexa".
It's not magic, retard, it's a machine, and this machine provably does not work that way.
>>51835127
No, they don't. The Echo simply doesn't have the faculties to do that.
>>51835127
You could be right, I don't know much about how the device works internally, but from my experience developing software it seems unlikely that this $150 device could do speech to text without the help of a server. I think all it can recognize w/o internet is "Alexa"
>>51835141
See:
>>51835114
Nobody said it had to be recording 24/7, you've already acknowledged the device has hotwords it can detect, what makes you so confident you've been informed of them all?
>>51834381
If you think Amazon's cloud is shitty, imagine how it'll be if it tried to parse your speech entirely within the device.
>>51835160
Network. Traffic. Monitoring.
You can tell when a device is or is not sending or receiving data -- and how much -- and that's more than enough to betray the Echo's spying capabilities if it had them.
And, frankly, why bother? The NSA already listens to all your Internet traffic, all your Google searches, all your phone conversations, your GPS logs, they have license plate readers that tell where your car's been, they have everything. Why go through such a complicated and nefarious process in order to listen to the idle banter of a bunch of turbonerds?
>>51835165
Just because the speech processing must be processed in the cloud doesn't mean that my app should have to be in the cloud. The Echo eventually gets a response from the cloud after an utterance is detected and routed, why can't that processing be done by Amazon, and the results returned to the Echo device for a local app to process offline?
>>51835220
Probably because it's less complicated for Amazon to manage. Keeping everything under that one roof -- Amazon Cloud Services -- minimizes the unknowns Amazon has to be able to account for. Just makes things easier.
>>51835158
>from my experience developing software it seems unlikely that this $150 device could do speech to text without the help of a server.
Mobile phones can do it.
It's not extremely accurate, but if you play back the text with a voice synthesizer (or just read it phonetically) it becomes perfectly clear what was said.
>>51835145
What easter eggs have you found?
>>51835239
Well if they want me to develop for their platform I'd prefer that they prioritized what was easier for me, not for them. They're not exactly in a great position with respect to apps as is.
>>51835212
>Network. Traffic. Monitoring.
You say this like it's that simple. The simple fact is, Amazon ties your Echo purchase to your account, so not every Echo has to function the same way, as much faith as you have that they will. Because it's proprietary hardware and software, you have absolutely no guarantee just because some pentester had an okay device that you also do.
I swear to God Amazon must pay you guys well.
>>51835256
Agreed. Amazon is really in no position to play hardball.
It's really starting to piss me off that none of these smart assistants are particularly open to customizability. I would've expected Google Now, at least, to have custom wakewords and commands by now, but no, nothing there either.
This is something I actually wish the open sores faggots would get to work on. They might be able to do the concept justice.
>>51835276
>you have absolutely no guarantee just because some pentester had an okay device that you also do.
You're basically asking me to prove a negative at this point, which is fallacious at best, and an argument made in bad faith at worst. If you have no evidence that Amazon is spying on you, the sane thing to do is not to assume that Amazon is spying on you until you're definitively sure otherwise, because to prove otherwise is, as you stated, impossible.
>>51835276
I actually work for one of Amazon's biggest threats.
At any rate, I'm not trying to be incredulous, I just don't have the same fears you do. If the device is spying on me, than so be it. Right now it seems there's just as much proof that it is as there is that it isn't.
I'm not going to humor this conversation anymore, so I'll ditch the formalities: Fuck off, I don't give a shit.
>>51835311
You are correct, I have no way of proving that this closed-source always-on microphone is not spying on me, therefore I have no intention of putting it in my living room.
Clearly the last decade and a half hasn't put the same paranoia in you as it has in me.
>>51835358
Oh, I get it, you're one of those paranoid freetards.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people.
>>51835374
Yeah, I remember ten years ago when I thought Richard Stallman was a crazy lunatic for thinking the government was spying on everyone.
I bet he feels so silly now.
>>51835387
Right now, I mostly just trust my smartphone because the battery is too shitty to run the mic 24/7. Maybe if the Echo ran on a cheap Li-On battery I'd like it more.
>>51835212
This is easily undetectable if they introduce a delay. If the machine detects a keyword, a flag could be sent at some time where normal data is sent or it could trigger more recording that could be sent again, later.
I'm sure this could be remotely turned on to record 24/7 if something was triggered from their end.
>>51835044
>IFTTT
I just checked it out, unfortunately the Alexa channel doesn't support use of Alexa as an action, just as a trigger. So at most I can command other devices using Alexa, but I can't have Alexa then respond with something, e.g. movie showtimes.
>>51835401
>>51835404
If I combine both of your theories, then you both should be terrified of any device with a microphone and an internet connection, as with you cellphone/tablet/etc it could just be listening for wake-words (bomb, gun, trump), and send a light report of the incident at a later time if your battery was low on charge.
>>51835472
Actually, if you bothered to read the post you linked, you'd see the correct list is a microphone, an internet connection, and wall power. My phone only has two of those, Echo has all three.
>>51835472
>as with you cellphone/tablet/etc it could just be listening for wake-words (bomb, gun, trump), and send a light report of the incident at a later time if your battery was low on charge.
>he thinks running the microphone all the time to listen for hotwords doesn't require a significant amount of battery.
Think you missed the point, bud.
>>51835496
Power isn't an issue, your phone could be either listening in a low power mode for keywords (which then wakeup full recording), or your phone could enable full listening periodically instead of all of the time (when you unlock the phone, when the accelerometer detects a lot of movement, etc)
ITT: shills try to convince everyone that answering asinine questions aloud at the dinner table is worth $200 and bugging your own home
>>51835526
>Power isn't an issue, your phone could be either listening in a low power mode for keywords
No it couldn't, because if it's running the microphone listening for keywords, it isn't in low power mode.
>>51835552
>Ok, Google
>Hey, Siri
>Hey, Cortana
Wow how the heck aren't all these phones completely drained of battery power.
>>51835246
There's a whole fucking list of them that are hilarious.
My favorites with friends and drinking is to ask it to marry me, ask it how much the puppy in the window is (freaks sister out), open the pod bay doors. Etc.
There's like 200+ known easter eggs.
Like I said, it's a music stream, that reads the news to me, and a fucking amazing kitchen timer. I love cooking, and hands free timers and news in the morning was worth the price I paid ($150 for it with the remote) but if I wasn't planning to home automate I wouldn't buy it.
>>51835246
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCf9kxVkPjQ
>>51835670
Now try doing it with your screen off, idiot.
>>51835695
>1) Open Google Now
>2) Go to Google Now Settings
>3) Click on "Voice"
>4) Enable "Audio History"
>5) Click "Ok Google Detection"
>6)Click "Always on" and follow the remaining directions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWD1x8grGxQ
Oh my god so crazy! And it doesn't even require root, is your mind completely blown yet?
>>51835720
Holy shit, a non-standard, opt-in feature that only works without draining the battery on supported by certain Qualcomm chips that aren't in all phones, including the one I own that we were talking about!
You sure showed me! I'm ordering an Echo right now!
>>51835720
Here's a list of the 12 phones this actually works on as of 6 months ago.
http://www.theandroidsoul.com/your-phone-might-support-ok-google-with-the-screen-off-check-the-list-of-supported-devices-here-75392/
>>51835754
I don't care if you buy an Echo or not, I'm just pointing out how dumb your paranoia is, when every phone eventually uses a chip set that supports this will you stop using cellphones?
Further, are you saying that you're comfortable with spying as long as it only occurs when your phone screen is powered on?
What about your friends? Do you make them turn off their phones if they support Ok, Google/Siri/Cortana?
>>51835804
>I don't care if you buy an Echo or not, I'm just pointing out how dumb your paranoia is, when every phone eventually uses a chip set that supports this will you stop using cellphones?
So you've run out of present-day examples of how I'm wrong for me to refute, so you have to project into the future now?
We'll cross that bridge when we get there, maybe I'll just pull the battery.
>Further, are you saying that you're comfortable with spying as long as it only occurs when your phone screen is powered on?
Is that what you read? Because I'm pretty sure my whole point was that any extended recording on a battery operated device would be clearly detectable by how quickly it drained the battery, the nonsense with the screen being on came up when you misunderstood how most phones handle listening for hotwords. The fact is, no government agency is going to bother putting a backdoor in a phone that only works when the screen is on, so I feel pretty confident that it's not happening in a way that I simply do not with the Echo. That's it.
>What about your friends? Do you make them turn off their phones if they support Ok, Google/Siri/Cortana?
No, but I also don't buy their devices.
I'm sorry Jeff, I'm not interested. Go peddle your wares elsewhere.
>>51835898
The amount of evidence that I have for the case that the Echo is not spying on me is the same as the amount of evidence you have for the case that your phone is not spying on you.
Either way this discussion is pretty off topic, if you don't want to buy an Echo then don't buy one. It is telling that you thought it necessary to even reply to this thread if you felt that way.
>>51836020
>The amount of evidence that I have for the case that the Echo is not spying on me is the same as the amount of evidence you have for the case that your phone is not spying on you.
My phone is certainly spying on me, I'm just confident it's not recording my voice because the hardware would never allow it to and keep a charge for longer than an hour.
My phone also offers a lot of functionality that makes my life easier. The Echo...saves me from typing something into Google? It honestly doesn't seem like a very good comparison.
>It is telling that you thought it necessary to even reply to this thread if you felt that way.
It's telling that I'm bored on the internet just like you were when you responded to me. No need to be a pompous ass about it.
>>51836069
>The Echo...saves me from typing something into Google?
Not him but I feel like everyone misses the overall usage of the device by highlighting the question stuff which is honestly what I use the least out of it. Half the time it tells me to go to the app and Bing it so fuck it I'd rather just use my phone.
It's more like a glorified bluetooth speaker with added functionality, I use it a lot for what the other guy highlighted above. Great for radio/podcasts/music and handy for timers while being hands free in the kitchen.
>>51836069
>The Echo...saves me from typing something into Google? It honestly doesn't seem like a very good comparison.
I agree with you there, it's not a device I would personally buy, but I received it as a gift. The reason I wouldn't buy it isn't because it could possibly be used to spy on me though, as most devices can be used to that end. The reason I wouldn't buy it is, as you said, it's not that useful.
But that's why I created this thread, I want to see how anyone else who already owns it has been using it. I was also curious about making it more useful by developing software for it.
