Why would any sane person place a literal always on spyware device in his room?

Why would any sane person place a literal always on spyware device in his room?
Is this a normie thing?
Do you have to be mentally challenged?

Other urls found in this thread:

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/amazon-wont-disclose-if-alexa-witnessed-a-murder/
reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5ja020/privacysecurity_flaw_in_amazon_echo_2nd_gen_dot/?st=j02lhw0a&sh=7fd62999
reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5ivvsn/how_do_i_keep_random_people_from_connecting_to_my/?st=j02lhu7d&sh=5ee3f855
liveleak.com/view?i=c91_1489063132
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

I have one - but I develop skill sets for it so I just leave it unplugged most of the time.

Why does that look like my Fleshjack Flight

(right most in image)

What is this thing useful for?

It's a doohickey. People like doohickeys.

I was blown away when a friend of mine bought this thing. It doesn't even really do anything.

Advertising can normalize anything I guess.

sane people aren't fucking freaks so they have nothing to hide

>normies are easily memed and will do anything to surrender privacy for comfort
>normies elected hitler
>normies killed jesus
>normies though earth is flat and when proven otherwise they got butthurt and burnt the guy at the stake
>we are forced to suffer for normie sins
"kill all normies, nerd war now" when?

>implying Hitler was wrong

Hitler had autism tough

He's just like us

>Is this a normie thing?
>Do you have to be mentally challenged?
stop repeating yourself

no he had a girlfriend

>tfw you invade poland just to get people to notice your artworks

All kinds of shit. I use mine to voice-control my entertainment center (on/off via Harmony Hub) and my smart lights (Philips Hue/Belkin WeMo), for unit conversions and shopping lists in the kitchen, and for alarms and weather reports in the bedroom. Also, it both amuses guests and allows for more intuitive control of the lights and EC for them.

At the very least, it makes for a super-convenient Bluetooth speaker, because it sounds good/gets loud (VERY loud), is plugged into the wall so you never have to dick around with turning it on/off (or, for that matter, toggling pair visibility for power-conservation reasons), and initiates pairing via voice so you don't have to go over to it, pick it up, hold down buttons, etc. Even if you're using it standalone and not for Bluetooth, it's good for music/podcasts/audiobooks.

And these are just the ways I personally use it. You can do a lot more: IFTTT integration, smart door locks and garage door openers, car diagnostic integration via Automatic, etc.

It only does nothing if the owner is an unimaginative, boring idiot. The more shit you have going on in your life, the better it is.

>Buying Wi-Fi enabled light bulbs makes me interesting

Fuck off with your faggot meme lights.

And use a phone or your stereo for everything else sweetie.

You've described nothing that can't be done with a smart phone. You also equated being a consumer whore with "having shit going on in your life".

You're the problem.

Does it matter ?
The botnet is anywhere. There is no escape.

Not what I meant.

What I meant is that the Echo really shines when you have guests over (it does party tricks, plays music, and simplifies device control), have kids (it can read books and Wiki entries to them, do math and recite basic facts, make animal noises, tell dumb jokes, etc), have an SO (don't have to explain the home theater system, don't have to break away from spooning to turn off the bedside lamp, etc), have otherwise extremely complicated home theater systems (Harmony Hub), or are generally very busy (audiobooks are for busy people).

The more you have going on, the more it has to offer you.

I have indeed described things that cannot be as intuitively done with a smartphone, I have not merely described "being a consumer whore". You just read me wrong. See above.

Guests can't easily use *their* phones to control your house. And, even if they could, they wouldn't want to. My MIL spent the weekend here recently, and she told me she really liked being able to walk into the home theater and say, "Alexa, theater lights on", followed by "Alexa, turn the TV on" without having to actually understand how everything worked. It's a thing.

They don't realize or don't know the difference between a literal botnet "AI" and a locally running "AI".

Also, Hue bulbs are a godsend in houses with wonky wiring. Our house has its light switches wired up in weird, counter-intuitive ways that annoy us and baffle visitors. With WiFi bulbs, though, you can group lights together in whatever configuration you like.

It's also cool to be able to say "Alexa, whole house off" to turn off an entire 3100sqft house off in one command as you're walking out the door or laying down for the night.

It all sound very flashy and futuristic, but the thing is, EVERYTHING YOU SAY TO IT IS TRANSMITTED TO AND PROCESSED ON AMAZON BOTNET SERVERS

I admit, it would be cool if it wasn't botnet.

Good lord you deserve kidney stones

>At the very least, it makes for a super-convenient Bluetooth speaker
One that completely random devices can pair to at ANY time it feels like.

Got one as a gift last week. Not sure what to do with it beyond "Alexa, play Joe Rogan podcast" for my dog while I go to work.

Are you talking about that hat or the amazon thing?

didn't know amazon salesmen posted here

The "botnet" concerns are overblown. Amazon is literally hearing "theater lights on". Whoop de fucking doo.

They've even refused to provide data in a murder investigation:

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/02/amazon-wont-disclose-if-alexa-witnessed-a-murder/

On the upside, its cloud-based nature means its functionality updates are user-transparent and seamless.

Not true. Only true for devices that have gone through the initial pairing process. It'll also announce the name of the device it's just paired to upon pairing.

>Why would someone want an Echo?

>Lots of reasons. For example, [...]

>OMG SHILL! SALESMAN!!!

How retarded do you have to be to take a legitimate, sensible answer to the question posed in OP as "shilling"? Or maybe you didn't want a legitimate answer. Maybe you just wanted to have a circlejerk about MUH BOTNET, like every other fucking thread on Sup Forums.

>Implying it's not an Orwellian nightmare made flesh

This is embarrassing

Why are you schilling so hard for fucking Alexa

I have a goddamn Google home these things are all just goofy little gadgets with some security concerns who are you trying to impress

>They've even refused to provide data in a murder investigation

>This is a representative list of requests
>This is their standard response
>If they had given out the data, Amazon would also have gone to the press and said so with equal conviction
>This is not a PR stunt
Ayyyy

>Not true. Only true for devices that have gone through the initial pairing process. It'll also announce the name of the device it's just paired to upon pairing.

Yes it announces the device. That is how i know it does that. I have no devices named Chico (autism dictates that i name all devices after their model numbers) and im not pairing anything while I'm in the next room fapping.
>lel it was someone else you live with/ are friends with
i live alone and have no friends. Its not family fucking with me either because i live in an entirely different state.

googling "echo random bluetooth pair" comes up with these 2 leddit posts about it too so its not a one off issue.
reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5ja020/privacysecurity_flaw_in_amazon_echo_2nd_gen_dot/?st=j02lhw0a&sh=7fd62999
reddit.com/r/amazonecho/comments/5ivvsn/how_do_i_keep_random_people_from_connecting_to_my/?st=j02lhu7d&sh=5ee3f855

>he linked to reddit

>Orwellian nightmare

Oh, please. Let's dispense with these histrionics. Your analogy is flawed at face value, because telescreens watched and listened all the time, and couldn't be deactivated by most who had them. Not only can you mute and/or unplug Echos, but there's also absolutely no evidence that the Echo transmits anything other than the command you issue after speaking the wake word. Oh god, the botnet knows that you turned on your bathroom light at 3:22 AM, and can infer from this information that someone (possibly not even you!) had to pee.

I'm not shilling, I'm counterbalancing against you MUH NORMIE BOTNET retards by relating my real, legitimate experience with the Echo. And there's nothing wrong with that. Unless, again, all you want out of this board is a turbonerd circlejerk.

By the way, Google Home isn't as good and costs a lot more.

When your beliefs are non-falsifiable, it's time to re-evaluate them.

Oh, this. I have heard of this before, but I can't say that it's ever happened to me. I haven't even been able to intentionally reproduce it. The Echo isn't visible to me if I delete its pair information from my devices.

as an ex-amazon employee, only the ones who drank the kool-aid at that company would shill for it. and there aren't that many of them.

>Oh god, the botnet knows that you turned on your bathroom light at 3:22 AM, and can infer from this information that someone (possibly not even you!) had to pee.
This is how it starts.

For the reason of two great things that drive most humans.

Convenience and novelty.

I think that horse is kind of out of the barn.

If you're going to shit your pants over what the botnet knows, you should probably be more worried about what the Repugnicans are doing in the legislature. They're looking to repeal regulations that previously prevented ISPs from aggregating 100% of your web browsing data, using it to build an advertising profile, and selling it to the highest bidder. Verizon, especially, is chomping at the bit to do this. They're secretly an ad firm, that's why they want Yahoo.

the next step is some agency starting to hear everything you say even without calling "alexa".
then you live with an asshole as president/whatever and saying you don't like him gets you arrested.
Alexa is the DDR wet dream.
But buy it and doom your kids to live in such a state. Thank you.

find another place where people can bitch about tech shit and have it be well integrated into the google botnet search.

amazon representatives pls go

I might get the Dot to control my Xiaomeme lights

Problem is it isn't sold in my country, might have to get creative with shipping

man, this is clearly a paid shillman.

just look at his posts:
>Clear writting
>Educated manners
>List of benefits just scrapped from some marketing documen he has open in another tab
>replies every posts

All of that screams SHILL.

This is even more obvious than those (((app))) posts
>weather reports in the bedroom

Alexa Guy, did like, you save up your whole allowance and buy the thing and now you have to justify the purchase to someone

Like you've seriously written a novel of marketing material at this point about "little robot voice that plays music and turns the lights on" the emotional investment in a spyware Pringles can is insane

Are you suggesting that it's possible for the Echo to hear everything you say without it creating a massively obvious data footprint? Because that's absurd. Security researches will notice that kind of behavior within about a month after it starts happening.

It'd be suicide for the entire product category, too. Remember how people felt about Google Glass? How they didn't like it because they felt like they never knew whether or not they were being recorded, even though those concerns were generally unfounded per the actual specifications of the device? How people wearing them got banned from otherwise public places, got assaulted, got arrested? Yeah, that's what would happen to the Echo if anyone ever discovered that it was transmitting data on a regular basis unbidden by the user.

Autistic circlejerk advocate pls go.

This is rich. You're literally presupposing that, because I'm educated and write well, the only reason I would ever be present here is because I was paid. No, I don't have a marketing document open in another tab, you paranoid nutcase. I just know what the thing's useful for because I own several and have been using them every day for about a year.

>weather reports in the bedroom

Uh, yeah. You know, where you get dressed? Where you might want help deciding what to wear based on the weather outside?

Our first Echo was an anniversary gift from my wife. We added three Echo Dots on Black Friday of last year. I haven't spent more than about $300 on the lot of it. It's just useful as hell, I think you guys are being really retarded about it, and I happen to be a masochist, so I come here and post a reasonable, experience-driven account of exactly what it's good for, fully knowing that people will assume someone paid me a large sum of money for daring to like something that Sup Forums doesn't.

My dad got one for making President's club at his work (>inb4 that's a shitty reward, he also got a trip to Hawaii and a waterproof camera). He had me set it up because he's a computer illiterate and couldn't read the instructions. He used it for a few days and now it just sits on a shelf being unused. I don't understand what the purpose is when everybody already has a smartphone.

>Normalizing the dystopia

Fuck you, even if you're trolling.

holy shit this is just absurd.
you are either shitposting, doing what said or are really a [spoiler]shill[/spoiler] .

>accusing me of shitposting

My posts are more legitimate and content-driven than all the posts reflexively accusing me of being a shill.

>my wife hates how much I'm spending on government subsidized physical spyware
>God dammit I'm going to convince SOMEONE this was a good idea

>I happen to be a masochist

Clearly. Ever sat on an Alexa? I've always wanted to hear her muffled voice from inside my rectal cavity but right now I struggle to even get a Dot up there

You spent $300 to be spied on?

The day we got the Echo, I said, "Great, now we just need about four more to cover the rest of the house," and she told me that was ridiculous.

A week later, she was downstairs (Echo is upstairs), and I caught her saying, "Alexa..." before frowning and walking over to the light switch.

She had no objections to the extra Dots.

I spent $300 to voice-control my entire house, to have good audio in the kitchen, to not have to fumble with my bedside lamp anymore, etc. I don't regret it at all. It's awesome.

As low as $49.99 goyim.

Your wife is a brave and honorable person for marrying someone so insufferably autistic

not him, but why the fuck would anyone care? i rarley speak out loud at home and i just find it useful for things like hearing the news, setting alarms/timer and so on. i also own only the dot.

Please don't be public opinion
Please don't be public opinion
Please don't be public opinion

You're collectively eschewing all connected devices because MUH BOTNET and raging on anonymous forums about things "normies" do, and *I'm* autistic. Ooooooookay. Whatever helps you sleep at night, man.

I got mine for $40. Black Friday is a wonderful thing. You know the thing is reasonably priced when setting up a Raspberry Pi to achieve the same task costs *more*.

>be Sup Forums
>shill windows 7, android
>shits it's pants when it comes to alexy
>"if! it could! normies! botbotbotbotnet!"
>paranoid about sky...i mean, botnet, even if their lives are empty
>knew that eventualle every device possible is compromised
pathetic.

no, but not insane. if it was for this board, even the internet would not exist, because it's the mother of all botnets. get a grip of reality.

liveleak.com/view?i=c91_1489063132

There's some reason to be concerned because it's definitely an invasion of privacy, but frankly I don't give a good god damn if the CIA has audio recordings of me jerking off or setting timers.

>invasion of privacy

I don't know that what the Echo does is even worthy of being called that. The only voice data it sends to Amazon is that which you specifically intend it to hear, as recognized by your utterance of the wake word.

It's a voluntary tradeoff between keeping your data to yourself and having actual, real functionality. In other words, it's the exact same kind of thing as literally every privacy policy on every website/service *ever*.

Again: if you want to worry about something, don't worry about the Echo. Worry about the fact that it's about to be legal for your ISP to datamine you and sell your information to third parties for profit.

...

>I read the brochure and believe it verbatim

I have nothing to hide from my friends CIA.

Data mining leaves a trail. You'd be able to see it sending packets, and/or storing things locally. Security researchers would tear the thing apart. They're already looking, precisely because people are suspicious of what it gathers, and nothing particularly concerning has been found.

I don't "believe the brochure" when I say this. I believe that the complete lack of evidence that it can and/or does listen to you 24/7 is suggestive of the fact that it does not, in fact, do that. You know, evidence-based conclusions. Not baseless conspiracy theories based on -- at most -- one instance of Amazon declining to confirm or deny being *theoretically able* to remotely activate a *specific target's* Echo for an intelligence service.

Delet this

...

I love how people defend thiw, saying no one is going to spy on you, when the cia hacks millions of peoples phones to hear what you say at home. Not only in the USA.
You just make it easy.

Consumer whores and trolls man

Allows me to turn on/off my lights by just saying 'Alexa, lights off'
4/5 bretty gud

You could do that with a Raspberry Pi, lol.

I bet you see nothing wrong with owning a smartphone though.

I have one and leave it on all the time

the trick is to not to be a criminal scum in the first place, which makes it easy not to accidentally distribute CP within mic range, or absent mindedly sell drugs in its vicinity, or haphazardly plot against the state while its listening

I don't have time to be compiling kernals on my pipi all day sweetie.

>Shilling this hard for Amazon
You literally have an Internet connected microphone in your home that is constantly listening

the way I see it I already drank the kool aid by having a smart tv and using a smart phone, might as well go all in by having wifi connected light switches and an always on mic for the odd moment I want to verbally set a timer ask the news

Or say that you have a certain wound/illness.
Because your insurance wouldn't care, right? :^)

You mean a smartphone? Yeah most everyone's has one of those nowadays sweetie

>sweetie
Cuck off

that fact that the thing can set timers hands free pays for itself in my line of work

I just wish It had a more sensitive mic so I could use it out in the shop more often.
and a more sensible way of managing multiple timers by voice.

>2 wrongs make a right
Yes let's ignore the new spyware because of old spyware.

>my line of work
What kind of retarded job is that?

>I'm going to autisticly rage against one """spyware"""" while being complacent and indulging in another spyware
Oh, sweetie.

you can call up your insurance provider and tell them straight up you have a certain illness and it won't affect anything about your insurance premiums until a doctor diagnosis it

>implying
enjoy being spied on, sweetie :-*

We'll all have them in our homes once the IoT takes off.

Ayy, left representing.

the kind of job that occupies both hands for extended durations, an extremely retarded characteristic in work. I wonder sometimes when my second hand starts getting involved whether or not I actually have a learning disability and have just been in denial

To be fair, you already carry around a spying device that can even track your location.

>implying I have a (((smartphone)))

Why are you even on the internet?

You do understand that your ISP can see everything you're doing, right?

I use CopperheadOS and turn my phone off at night because I'm not a retarded sheep.

>being such a autistic manchild you don't even have one of the most basic pieces of equipment required to function in the world
Sweetie, it's time for you to stop playing with your ganews and go outside into the real world.

>implying that your phone/TV/car/computer doesn't already record everything

How many layers of tin foil you got on your head OP? Obviously too many to even see past your own mental condition.

How the amazondrones try to move the discussions to smartphones.
>criticizing a spyware is stupid because of another one
yes smartphones are retarded, but putting a microphone inside your room is not better.