I love my echo! I probably use it 15-25 times a day.
1) Acts as my alarm
2) Turn on my favorite radio station while I make breakfast.
3) Timers for cooking breakfast.
4) Listen to flash news
5) Alarm again if I need a nap.
6) Timers for lunch meal
7) Add item to shopping list.
8) Add todo items.
9) Plays spotify while I work on my computer from across the room.
10) More flash news (its really quite extensive)
11) more naps
12) dinner timer
13) news
14) word definitions
15) Tell it to stop when it starts talking in the middle of a conversation (a bit annoying).
16) more todos
17) Order more dogs treats
18) Play bedtime music
Worth every penny.
Where did the strange sense of "everyone is spying on you" come from? A bloated sense of self importance?
Wow, you need a reality check here with your "A bloated sense of self importance?". Here is some history for you....
My Dad has written a book about Native Americans in the pacific northwest. Part of his research turned up personnel letters from an officer in the US Cavalry long ago (many officers). These letters were very personnel, and only ever meant to be read by his wife. Unfortunately, these letters were passed down in the family many times up until recently a family member got fed up with this box of letters and donated it to the University of Washington where my Dad found the letters relevant to his research, and others of personal nature as I explained.
You can't even begin to imagine what devices (production, backup, test, hacked versions, amazon, nsa etc) that your voice is sitting on now and what those devices and interfaces will look like 100 years from now and who or what will be using them, heck, even 10 years from now is a mystery.
So don't become famous, run for office or try to be big corp CEO or even use any social network because one day something you said while your echo was recording will bite you or your grandkids in the ass!
I would love to use a service like echo, it looks slick, but if I cant verify the source code or trust some community who has then it will never be in my house.
> So don't become famous, run for office or try to be big corp CEO
I don't necessarily disagree, but the vast majority of people will do none of these things mentioned.
The real issue is that of a person's private life seeping into all of their interactions with society. A person could be easily controlled even in private settings if a misstep could land them without a job, ruin a marriage, or cost a person their freedom.
With that being said, the majority of people don't care about privacy. Almost all of us are oversharing (although the demographic on HN are likely more privacy-conscious than most). Either we're all going to get bitten in the ass, or somehow we'll adapt as a society to accept others more deeply (as the alternative is mutual destruction).
I'm quite privacy conscious myself, but when does our habits of privacy-first make us bigger targets than others who are not?
>>Where did the strange sense of "everyone is spying on you" come from? A bloated sense of self importance?
You under estimate how far this can go!
Essentially, this could work against you in a million ways not even imaginable now.
Come to think of it, what if you are denied health insurance on grounds that this gadget was eavesdropping on your health conditions. Or some marketing company spamming you with ads on topics you talk about frequently at home. Or listening to the intimate moments between you and your partner. One could list a gazillion conditions in which a evil mind could use this to their advantage.
Exactly. And this is why surveillance is so difficult to fight. The actions are far removed from the consequences, and the public just isn't very good at long-term planning. But we can't wait for the negative effects to show, because by then it'll be too late.
Where did the strange sense of "everyone is spying on you" come from? A bloated sense of self importance?
Beyond what others have written, there's also a matter of principle. I don't think I'll be personally and directly affected by it, and so I'm kind of sloppy with my use of online services, but I don't want to live in a world where these devices are everywhere, because they are dangerous when ubiquitous and hence unavoidable.
The phrase "vote with your dollars/euros/etc" may be often misapplied, but there's some truth to it, and the corollary is that every time you buy something, you're also making a wider impact on society regarding what is acceptable.
