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Submitted via IRC for fyngyrz
Amazon this morning is introducing "Alexa Blueprints," a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code. The idea is to allow Alexa owners to create their own voice apps, like a trivia game or bedtime stories, or teach Alexa to respond to questions with answers they design – like "Who's the best mom in the world?," for example.
[...] "Alexa Skill Blueprints is an entirely new way for you to teach Alexa personalized skills just for you and your family," explained Steve Rabuchin, Vice President, Amazon Alexa, in a statement about the launch. "You don't need experience building skills or coding to get started—my family created our own jokes skill in a matter of minutes, and it's been a blast to interact with Alexa in a totally new and personal way."
[...] The feature could give Amazon an edge in selling its Echo speakers to consumers, as it's now the only platform offering this level of customization – Apple's HomePod is really designed for music lovers, and doesn't support third-party apps. Google Home also doesn't offer this type of customization.
All three are competing to be the voice assistant people use in their home, but Alexa so far is leading by a wide margin – it still has roughly 70 percent of the smart speaker market.
Source: Amazon's new 'Alexa Blueprints' lets anyone create custom Alexa skills and responses
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Sunday April 22 2018, @05:15PM (2 children)
These devices are not "gigantic surveillance apparatuses", they are cheap-as-dirt, can-throw-in-trash-on-any-whim devices. And as for "lost", no. These devices are enabling at this point in time. No loss. Should that change, throw away. At that point, Amazon and the government have nothing from this vector. So there's little (more likely no) risk here.
This is not an idea I subscribe to. At all. Proprietary software, in and of itself, is fine. Software that presents a problem for a user – and let's be clear, there are many reasons why both open/free and proprietary software can do that – can typically be abandoned, particularly when we're talking about software that connects a consumer to Amazon. In any case, Amazon's not offering any software I have to have. Not a single thing. So they can cook up whatever they want, I don't worry at all about it until or unless it affects me negatively, at which point I'll avoid it. They're a business, they can't make me use their stuff.
Well, then, the analogy failed. These devices are not a "surveillance infrastructure" of any note, first, because they are trivially and completely able to be defeated both individually and in general, and also trivially avoided if present outside one's home (say nothing interesting, they can send nothing interesting), and second, because they actually can't do what you're implying they can do: No onboard STT, and no 100%-on network communications to send the data. If either of those things changes, we'll know right away, and then (trivial, easy) action can and should be taken to dispose of the device. There's no valid analogy to be had here.
That's right. And as I have said repeatedly, right now is what matters for deciding how to treat the device right now.
Again, we do know: these devices are easily monitored, and they are being monitored. They have one, and only one, means to talk to Amazon (or anyone else) and that is via their network connection. That's very easy to keep an eye on, and further, the devices themselves are pretty weak hardware; they can't do onboard STT so they can't triage, and they have very little memory to store without triage. So far, they listen (meaning, for more than the wake word, and send what they hear along to Amazon) only when the blue ring is lit; communicate only if they hear the wake word, or think they do (they're fairly lousy at that, one of the things that tells you they'd be even worse at general STT), and they send very little information when they are actually operating as the user intends.
Amazon's a store. I'm happy to aid and abet them, as they are busily aiding and abetting us. They sell us stuff we want to buy, for less cost than we can get it here, they get it to us faster than we can get it here, and they offer a broad range of things we are interested in. They're a pretty decent media provider as well. From a customer perspective, I think fairly highly of them. And to the point, our lives are significantly enhanced by them, and all you have to offer in this discussion is that they might someday misuse the relationship via the device in a way I can trivially defeat; that's not of sufficient weight to tip the scales even slightly in your argument's favor.
Do you spend a lot of time in other people's homes, etc.? We don't. If we did, we certainly wouldn't be misbehaving, inasmuch as that is an "out in public" circumstance, just as walking around town is. People, cops, whoever can watch you when you're out of your home. There's nothing new about it being rational to behave well in public and in another person's home. It's not about being a hermit; it's about not being a jerk.
If they want to give the government info about how often we turn our lights on and off, ask for the weather, etc., hair on 'em. These devices have no critical information at all.
Hyperbole.
You're sitting in front of a computer that is connected to the network. I suspect Stallman does this from time to time as well. You have no place to stand as your platform is "this hardware could be used against us." None at all. The legitimate concern is when the hardware is being used against us. If we succumb to what-if fears of technological misuse, we're going to do some serious damage to progress for no actual concrete reason. I think that would be one of the worst outcomes imaginable.
Proprietary software != abusive.
Abusive software == abusive.
Fact: I developed, and sold, very powerful proprietary software for many years. It did what it was supposed to do, it did it well, and it did it at a very low price/performance ratio. It didn't do anything underhanded or abusive. There was no "abuse" involved. I wrote it, it was mine to sell if I chose to. It was the consumer's option to buy it or not. Any relationship of money for product that occurred was based on an exchange of value.
I still develop proprietary signal processing software; it's free, but otherwise it's the same: it does what it is supposed to do, it does it well, it doesn't do anything it's not supposed to do or do anything not immediately obvious I don't reveal in excruciating detail in the extensive, also free, documentation, and the consumer gets great value from it. I'm happy to do it. I am under no obligation whatsoever to release my source code. That's not abuse. That's a service.
The entire meme of proprietary software being bad only arises as an abject failure of critical thinking. Software is only bad if it is bad. There's no other valid case to be made. Proprietary has nothing to do with abuse, or lack thereof. You can have open software that is abusive, and you can have proprietary software that is abusive; you can have open and proprietary software that isn't abusive. The problem, when there is one, is the abuse. Not the open/closed nature of the software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @06:19PM
the thing is while I agree with you on most points, I also recognize that they are as cheap as dirt and can be set up many places and always be listening and always subject to government legal interference, despite the fact that all of these other innocuous services were not rolled out with legal enforcement in mind.
so i don't want them around me. and i can't stop other people from using them--like the solar powered trackers in urban recycling bins and street lights and in malls and throughout stores and...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 22 2018, @11:44PM
It is difficult for the vast majority of people to throw away all these little devices they let into their personal lives and become dependent upon. Maybe it is easy for you, but I'm thinking in general and in the long-term. You might quickly rid yourself of the devices when any further abuses become known, but most people will not do that, and so the harm remains.
I guess there's nothing to be done if you just disregard societal impacts out of hand and only think in the short-term.
This does not make sense. A mass surveillance society is dangerous to everyone, and you are short-sighted to just dismiss the topic so quickly. I don't see what this has to do with "being a jerk". It seems you don't take the dangers of mass surveillance (corporate or governmental, since they are both related) seriously at all.
They are ultimately listening devices, so there is no reason they would be limited to just that if they were to turn more abusive. Not only that, but companies and governments spend massive amounts of money trying to figure out how to use seemingly innocuous data to identify, profit from, and abuse people, and it's entirely possible they could think of things that you would never fathom.
I do have a place to stand, because I only use devices that fully respect my freedoms (of which there are several), thereby minimizing the dangers to some small extent. There is only so much a single individual can do when the entire system is unjust and compromised, so this is better than handing everything over on a golden platter, and it does not require one to become a hermit. However, even were that not the case, that would not make any of my arguments wrong. It is possible for people living within a system to recognize the injustice perpetuated by the system, and their arguments stand on their own merits. I believe we need to fix the system so that all devices respect users' freedoms and do not abuse them.
Your argument strongly reminds me of the 'love it or leave it' argument, where you tell dissidents to leave if they are unsatisfied with the state of things. No positive change could occur if people followed that advice.
If you truly want progress, then advocate for the fix: Free Software, and devices fully controlled by users instead of corporations.
it's clear we have a difference of values here. To me, denying users their freedoms [gnu.org] is, in and of itself, inherently abusive, and trivially opens the door up for further abuses in the future.
Nope. It arises from the idea that users have certain freedoms that should not be denied to them.
I'm a proponent of Free Software, not open source. Proponents of "open source" usually make no mention of ethics, and therefore do not question the fundamental underpinnings of our current unjust system. This may be why the corporate media loves that term so much, because it doesn't rock the boat.
In any case, that is true. However, it is far less likely that Free Software will abuse users, and any abusive anti-features could be removed by anyone if it did. Not only that, but the software would still grant users their freedoms, so it would have to be a different kind of abuse (such as privacy violations) than denying those to users. With proprietary software, you have to stop using the software entirely if it is abusive (besides denying users their freedoms), which is often difficult because it attempts (either intentionally or not) to make users dependent upon it, which means that the injustices continue for a long while.
I do not think that proprietary software is justified even if you can make more money developing it.