"After quizzing these companies about data practices, I learned that most are sharing what’s happening in my home with Amazon, too. Our data is the price of entry for devices that want to integrate with Alexa. Amazon’s not only eavesdropping — it’s tracking everything happening in your home."
#GeoffreyAFowler, 'Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time'
#Amazon 👉 apoya tus tiendas locales #Alexa 👉 Dicio o Mycroft #Appstore 👉 Aurora Store o Neo Store #Luna 👉 Parsec o Steam Remote Play #Music 👉 Nuclear, ViMusic o Spotube #AmazonPay 👉 PayPal, Wise... #PrimeVideo y #FireOS 👉 Jellyfin con WebOS #Twitch 👉 Kick o DLive #Ring 👉 lo integrado con Home Assistant #Kindle 👉 Kobo y Calibre #AWS 👉 Oracle o IMB Cloud #Drive 👉 Nextcloud o Cryptpad
I’ve had an Echo device in my bathroom and ask for “flash briefing” every morning and for more than a month it fails most of the time. It is a pretty basic feature which has worked for years but now it falling apart. 🫤 #Alexa#Echo
Interesting piece on developing Irish Alexa via 'voice disentanglement', though some details seem off: I've seldom if ever heard anyone say 'bath' like 'bat' or 'bad', and the 'r' sound in Irish English is not 'overpronounced' – it's just pronounced, unlike in non-rhotic accents
Amazon shut off a man’s smart home devices for a week after a delivery driver falsely accused the customer of hurling a racist slur via a doorbell intercom, the tech giant confirmed Thursday....
#Alexa got connected to #ChatGPT, and started responding to people with disinformation. #VoiceAssistants are #interfaces, and they have the power to amplify what data sources they are interfaced with.
Who controls what information is presented by a voice assistant? Who is liable for misinformation?
Once Alexa is updated with the new LLM support I am going to try it out with my Echo Buds. I pre-ordered this product when it was announced so I got them with a discount which was a no-brainer for me. Back when I worked on Echo Frames for the 1st gen it was helpful to simply make requests of Alexa on the go, but the functionality was so limited. That is going to change very soon, finally.
The update is an LLM that is optimized for Alexa so it will differ from ChatGPT. A very important difference is ChatGPT was trained with data and is now 2 years out of date. If I want to ask about a restaurant in my area Alexa will ideally know of restaurants which have opened or closed recently. If it is able to adapt to menu changes that would be incredibly useful.
🆕 blog! “Why doesn't Alexa know that homonyms aren't homophones?”
As we head unto an AI dominated future, the Turing test will probably become less like a Voight-Kampff test and more like a warzone Shibboleth. Yesterday, I asked the Alexa to set a timer. "What do you want to name your timer?" She It asked. "Bow," I replied. "Bow timer set," it said. Except… that […]
«Markets have been “replaced by digital trading platforms which look like, but are not, markets”. The moment you enter amazon.com “you exit #capitalism” and enter something that resembles a “feudal fief”: a digital world belonging to one man and his algorithm, which determines what products you will see and what products you won’t see.
If you are a seller, the #platform will determine how you can sell and which #customers you can approach. The terms in which you interact, share information and trade are dictated by an “algo” that “works for [Jeff Bezos’] bottom line”.
The capitalists who rely on this mode of selling are granted access to the digital estate by its virtual landowners, the Big Tech companies. And if “vassal capitalists” don’t abide by the laws of the estate, they are kicked out – removed from #Apple’s App Store or #Google’s search index – with disastrous consequences for their business.
Access to the “digital fief” comes at the cost of exorbitant rents. Varoufakis notes that many third-party developers on the Apple store, for example, pay 30% “on all their revenues”, while #Amazon charges its sellers “35% of revenues”. This, he argues, is like a medieval #feudal lord sending round the sheriff to collect a large chunk of his serfs’ produce because he owns the estate and everything within it.
This is not extracting profit through the production or provision of goods and services, as these platforms are not a “service” in the sense in which the term is used in economics. They are extracting rents in the form of the huge cuts they take from the capitalists on their platforms.
There is “no disinterested invisible hand of the #market” here. The Big Tech platforms are exempted from free-market competition. Their owners – “cloudalists” – increase their wealth and power at a dizzying pace with each click, exploiting a new form of rent-seeking made possible by the new algorithmically structured digital platforms. Parasitic on capitalist production, they are now dominating it.
But something even more transformative has happened, Varoufakis argues.
Even though most of us are regularly interacting with capitalists and earning wages via our labour, now, for the first time in history, all of us contribute to “the wealth and power of the new ruling class” through our “unpaid labour”.
Every time we use our cloud-linked devices – smartphones, laptops, #Alexa, Google Assistant, #Siri – we replenish the capital of the Big Tech cloudalists. This in turn increases their capacity to generate more wealth. How? We train their algorithms, which train us, to train them, and so on, in a feedback loop whose goal is to shape our desires and behaviour. They are “selling things to us while selling our attention to others”.»
As the "AI" race heats up, those of us who operate servers are going to be getting hit from more and more bots speed crawling our sites like the bad old days... that never really left.
I see many people automating stuff I consider normal, such as closing windows shutters or turning on and off lights at a certain time or by using their phone.
I think these activities are normal and fine in a house. Yes, I like to open and close the shutters manually and turn on the light by using the switch on the wall.
So, which useful automations do you have in your home?
Been trying to get home automation working on my #raspberrypi. Was originally going to try and make some of the stuff myself with python, but decided to try out #HomeAssistant.
It worked well...until I tried to get #Alexa working. Now, full disclosure, I do not want to have to keep using Alexa - I mostly just use it as an alarm, for it's builtin segmented display that acts as a clock, and for playing podcasts. That's really it. And I've been wanting to go to an alternative (maybe even DIY) but you know...💵
Nor do I have anything against Home Assistant. I think it works amazing. However, to get Alexa working you need to PAY for a subscription to their cloud service to access the instance from away...and I just find that that kind of breaks the magic of being an #opensource and modular automation suite. And if I want to use it away from home I can just make a #cloudflare tunnel.
I guess I am going to have to find some other solution...
This school year we’ve been trialling #alexa announcements to count the kids down to the school run: one announcement 10mins before and one when we need them to put their shoes on. Reduces parental nagging & they have responded really well!
I love watching little kids interact with other peoples' #Alexa. They haven't learned the "natural" timing, diction, and commands to use it effectively, so it always ends in "Alexa... Alexa! No Alexa! ALEXAAAAAAAAA!"
This whole thing started because my family would always leave lights on and lose their keys…
Now the lights turn themselves on and off, all doors are now keyless, I have control over ALL of it, I know exactly what we are consuming at any given moment, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of what this amazing software can do!
I will buy NO smart home device that isn’t #HomeAssistant compatible.
Forget #HomeKit. Forget #Google. Forget #Alexa. If you’ve got a little tech know-how, get this.
Hi All, I wanted to get some opinions on the setup I have with Alexa and understand how other people are doing it because Im not sure if I wanted to setup more HA automations and stuff, if my other option is a better one....
Amazon shuts down customer’s smart home devices after delivery driver’s false racism claim (nypost.com)
Amazon shut off a man’s smart home devices for a week after a delivery driver falsely accused the customer of hurling a racist slur via a doorbell intercom, the tech giant confirmed Thursday....
HomeAssistant and Alexa
Hi All, I wanted to get some opinions on the setup I have with Alexa and understand how other people are doing it because Im not sure if I wanted to setup more HA automations and stuff, if my other option is a better one....
Alexa Rydell (famososefamosasdetodososramos.blogspot.com) Portuguese
Alexa Rydell