amazon echo / google voice / siri / alexa / VR / smart speakers ~~THINK ABT IT~~

i'm astonished these still exist. do they or are you kidding?

as long as there are cold blankets there will be a device to warm them

It’s working again on my series 4. I had given up on my previous series 2.

it was absolutely fine on my series 3 until watchos 5

google assistant is now available as a siri shortcut, so you can yell e.g. “hey google, i parked my car here” into your watch and google maps will remember where you parked it

Serious question: why are you guys all not bothered by having every sound you make in your homes spied on?

because

1. network activity monitoring has shown iirc that they (at least google’s iirc) only scan locally for the wake word and don’t send any voice data to the mothership unless they’re invoked

2. i honestly can’t think of a trade-off that matters, given i have what 40 years left to live and will just waste it anyway

3. phones everywhere are doing exactly the same thing all of the time

that said i would never buy one for anyone as a gift, that would be a really shitty thing to do

Sounds as though google is a bit better than alexa, then. Cheers.

yeah alexa got sprung recently for over-listening (can’t find the link i saw recently, but here’s another one from may)

i have what 40 years left to live and will just waste it anyway

my man

lol wait for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVhFxxyXd0o

I got an Echo as a "welcome to the new office" gift 2.5 years ago (to cushion the blow of being relocated from Soho to a Z4 industrial estate, as far as I could tell). My gf also worked at the same place then, and now we live together, so we have two of these bastards. They continually fall off the wifi, and have to be powered off/on, which entirely defeats their only use, which is playing music while you're cooking/doing dishes/otherwise unable to fiddle with a touch-screen. The novelty of Alexa singing songs or telling lame jokes or ghost stories wore off for the kids after about six months.

Still, Amazon have a nice little archive of me saying "go fuck yourself" and "why is everything so shit" or "where are my fucking keys, eh? Tell me that" after the wake-word which I'm sure can be weaponised at some point.

gotta wifi those keys bruh

Surprised the Echo didn't just drop £500 of home-security facial-recog tech into my Amazon basket so I never have to fumble for physical keys again. "I'll let you back in when you stop swearing at me".

all I do with these things now (alexa and google) is control lights, add stuff to shopping lists and play music (which on google is a major clusterfuck at least half the time). worth having around but I wouldn’t update unless these ones die.

u people are mad letting these things in your homes

we have a five month old called hazel in the house, and sonos speakers with google voice support. saying 'goo goo goo' often sets them off - more worryingly, so does 'hey hazel', though it makes a slightly different beep and doesn't actually respond to any commands afterwards.

I feel confident that Alexa won't send a random email out, it's not linked to my email account (other than through my amazon account). I'm pretty sure it doesn't have the function to just look up my contacts in google mail and send out an email.

No one will ever want to come to my house again once I get this new little robot.

Five and two year old at the table, two year old asks "hey google how does a sponge work"

"According to the website mayoclinic.org the contraceptive sponge is a type of birth control (contraceptive) that prevents sperm from entering the uterus. It is soft and disk-shaped and made of polyurethane foam. The contraceptive sponge contains spermicide, which kills sperm. Before having sex, you insert the sponge deep inside the vagina so that it covers the cervix. Your vaginal muscles hold it in place. The contraceptive sponge has a strap on one side for easier removal. The sponge can prevent pregnancy but doesn't protect against sexually transmitted infections (STIs)."

lmao amazing

haha!

hey google what is an upper decker

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/29/amazons-alexa-child-penny-live-plug

Also belongs in a Darwin awards thread:

The challenge began circulating on TikTok around a year ago and often results in the person getting electrocuted