Technology

Just sold my 3 devices and shut down Amazon account. It's very liberating and I don't miss it one bit. Have Home Assistant and a couple of really good 2nd hand Sonos speakers.

I have always told people to avoid Amazon.

They have doorbells to watch who comes to your house and when.

Indoor and outdoor security cameras to monitor when you go outside, for how long, and why.

They acquired roomba, which not only maps out your house, but they have little cameras in them as well, another angle to monitor you through your house in more personal areas that indoor cameras might not see.

They have the Alexa products meant to record you at all times for their own use and intent.

Why do you think along with Amazon Prime subscriptions you get free cloud storage, free video streaming, free music? They are categorizing you in the most efficient and accurate way possible.

Boycott anything Amazon touches

Publicly, that is. They have no doubt been doing it in secret since they launched it.

If anyone remembers the Mycroft Mark II Voice Assistant Kickstarter and was disappointed when development challenges and patent trolls caused the company's untimely demise, know that hope is not lost for a FOSS/OSHW voice assistant insulated from Big Tech..

FAQ: OVOS, Neon, and the Future of the Mycroft Voice Assistant

Disclaimer: I do not represent any of these organizations in any way; I just believe in their mission and wish them all the success in getting there by spreading the word.

People are saying don't get an echo but this is the tip of an iceberg. My coworkers' cell phones are eavesdropping. My neighbors doorbells record every time I leave the house. Almost every new vehicle mines us for data. We can avoid some of the problem but we cannot avoid it all. We need a bigger, more aggressive solution if we are going to have a solution at all.

I can’t believe people are still voluntarily wire tapping themselves in 2025

I didn't even know this was a feature. My understanding has always been that Echo devices work as follows.

1. Store a constant small buffer of the past few seconds of audio
2. Locally listen for the wake word (typically "Alexa") using onboard hardware. (This is why you cannot use arbitrary wake words.)
3. Upon hearing the wake word, send the buffer from step one along with any fresh audio to the cloud to process what was said.
4. Act on what was said. (Turn lights on or off, play Spotify, etc.)

Unless they made some that were able to do step 3 locally entirely I don't see this as a big deal. They still have to do step 4 remotely.

Also, while they may be "always recording" they don't transmit everything. It's only so if you say "Alexaturnthelightsoff" really fast it has a better chance of getting the full sentence.

I'm not trying to defend Amazon, and I don't necessarily think this is great news or anything, but it doesn't seem like too too big of a deal unless they made a lot of devices that could parse all speech locally and I didn't know.

If you traveled back in time and told J. Edgar Hoover that in the future, the American public voluntarily wire-tapped themselves, he would cream his frilly pink panties.

be aware, everything you say around amazon, apple, alphabet, meta, and any other corporate trash products are being sold, trained on, and sent to your local alphabet agency. it's been this way for a while, but this is a nice reminder to know when to speak and when to listen

No way! The microphones you put all over your house are listening to you? What a shocker!
If you bought these this is on you. Trash them now.

Today: "...they will be deleted after Alexa processes your requests."

Some point in the not-so-distant future: "We are reaching out to let you know that your voice recordings will no longer be deleted. As we continue to expand Alexa's capabilities, we have decided to no longer support this feature."

Easy fix: don't buy this garbage to begin with. It's terrible for the environment, terrible for your privacy, of dubious value to begin with.

If every man is an onion, one of my deeper layers is crumudgeon. So take that into account when I say fuck all portable speakers. I'm so tired of hearing everyone's shitty noise. Just fucking everywhere. It takes one person feeling entitled to blast the shittiest music available to ruin everyone in a 500yd radius's day. If this is you, I hope you stub your toe on every coffee table, hit your head on every door jam, miss every bus.

Which Echo devices ever supported local only processing? They cost about £30. There's no kit that can do decent voice commands for that money. You'd be lucky to have a device that processes claps to turn the lights on for that.