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How disheartening. I knew going in that there would be privacy issues but I figured for the service it was fine. I also figure my phone is always listening anyway.
As someone with limited mobility, my echo has been really nice to control my smart devices like lights and TV with just my voice.
Are there good alternatives or should I just accept things as they are?
There aren't any immediate drop in replacements that won't require some work, but there is Home Assistant Voice - It just requires that you also have a Home Assistant server setup, which is the more labor intensive part. It's not hard, just a lot to learn.
And for now it's voice assist is garbage in comparison. I have home assistant, and a few Alexa units, so I set up nabu and tried it, but it's slow and can maybe do 1 in 5 commands, while Alexa is much more reliable.
It's always been this way for the cheap speakers. They've no processing power on-board and need the cloud just to tell you the time.
Now they can hear me scream “shut the fuck up Alexa!!!!” every time she says “…by the way…” when I just want to know what time it is.
Me while cooking mac and cheese for the kids:
"Echo, set timer for 8 minutes"
Echo: "GOOD EVENING [me], SETTING TIMER FOR 8 MINUTES"
No, shut the fuck up and just set the goddamn timer without the extra fluff. I've seen Ex Machina, I know you have no empathy, so knock off the "nice" shit and do what I fucking ask without anything else.
There are a few settings that make it better. Like enabling "brief mode" or something like that
Say this: "Alexa, disable by the way"
"Alexa, from now on, call me 'Big Dick Daddy from Cincinnati'."
Wait hold on
I wonder if I can get the Google assistant British lady to call me that
Edit: Lmfao it works
In the age of techno-fascism, the people willingly pay to install the listening devices into their own homes.
Which Echo devices ever supported local only processing? They cost about £30. There's no kit that can do decent voice commands for that money. You'd be lucky to have a device that processes claps to turn the lights on for that.
My family has one in most rooms of our house...ugh
I honestly have no idea why anyone who cares even 1% about their privacy would have ever bought one of these abominations in the first place. If I ever receive one as a gift I will burn it with fire.
I have the things so that I can understand how to protect myself from them. I have a similar thing going on with AI video right now. Hate it but watch the growth to understand it.
Better yet, crack it open and find a way to load alternative firmware onto it
Amazon employee with no piss breaks listening in on my echo:
"How many fucking cats does this guy have? Just chose one name and call it that!"
Edit: "I don't know Jeff, sell him a fucking dr seuss book or something the guys mental."
Always listening AI. I always thought the future would be awesome but capitalism has figured out a way for it to not be that.
The part that really gets me is that you have to opt out to not have everything you say saved. Bonkers that that isn't the default! There's no good user-based reason for this. Alexa doesn't remember shit for users, like any AI there's no recall feature. You can't say remember what I told you last night - give the address for that place, I was drunk and don't remember the name.
