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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 vux984 on Sunday April 22 2018, @08:08PM
Ok, on the technical front, I disagree:
mono voice quality for voip/phone calls is as low as 10kbps. 8 hours of conversation ...
10kbps * 3600 seconds/hour * 8hour = 288000 kb (kilobit) = 36000 kB (kilobyte) =~ 35MB. iFixit says an echo has 256MB ram and 4GB storage.
Even a higher bandwidth voice codec, requiring 60-100kbps would fit pretty easily.
I don't disagree with you. However, I think the device is amply -capable- of being misused, and if the device were subverted by warrant or malware or software bug it seems to have the capability to do a lot more than you give it credit for.
It's interesting how innocuous meta data can reveal things you aren't aware of though. Your taste in music can suggest your political affiliation, your age, your race, perhaps even your sexual orientation. Your patterns of activity can reveal your employment status, your work schedule, when you go on vacation. That you are a night owl or early riser or insomniac. Perhaps long term we can make assessments of mental health, how often you get sick, and for how long, how often you skip work, and so forth based on patterns, and changes in those patterns. Perhaps we'll feed that into your 'social score' (a la China) and credit score, and consider it when selling you health insurance. Even if its only 'weakly correlating'.
Yeah, you aren't wrong, and i am bothered about that. The computer provides incredible and necessary utility. As does the phone. I admire Stallman's dedication to control over his computing experience, and while I am not nearly so extreme; I do actively choose to limit what devices i use and what they can do with an eye to that control. A computer and smart phone enable me to work & earn income, and provide entertainment and information, navigation, and communication. These are a huge net benefit to me. An echo... lets me set timers, turn on the lights, and reorder cat food. (And i can already do all of those things without much effort.)
It's about attack surface. I can't put up with the inconvenience of not having a phone or computer. But just because i've given up some ground there, doesn't mean im willing to install an amazon mic and camera in every room in my house.