
Title text: "Sure, you could just ask, but this also takes care of the host gift thing."
I wonder why anyone would invite BHG and his girlfriend over. Associating with them always ends badly.
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Soupspoon wrote:Shouldn't stop at Alexa. Go all the way up to "Watson: This element was used in the Trinity and Fat Man bombs," to see what happens. ("...and I would like ten deliveries of 1kg each, for overnight delivery...")
xtifr wrote:... and orthogon merely sounds undecided.
Nor here. I'm riffing off of observed transatlantic memes myself, and have the same concern.orthogon wrote:Maybe it just seems stupid to me because we never had it on TV here.
ETA don't you mean 11 deliveries?
orthogon wrote:That Jeopardy! format really bugs me. The so-called "answer" would make a very unusual response to the "question" ("what is plutonium?"). In fact it's just a totally conventional quiz with a strangely affected way of asking and answering the questions.
cellocgw wrote:Why creamed corn when the Official Internet Nerd /. Meme is hot grits?
Personally, if I were going to make use of someone else's Alexa & Amazon account, I'd at least go for the OtherOfficialInternetNerd/.Meme : hookers and blow.
oldgus wrote:A reasonable person might deduce from the comic that Echo devices are constantly transmitting audio to Amazon's servers. It is straightforward to examine Echo traffic with Wireshark, or similar, and show that audio is only transmitted after a wake-word is detected. This should help reduce one's tin foil budget a bit.
da Doctah wrote:What bugs me is that nobody ever takes advantage of the "form of a question" dodge when the "answer" already is a question; you shouldn't have to say "What is 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'?" or (a recent Final Jeopardy) "What is 'what did you give up for Lent?'?", and Alex should smile knowingly when a contestant realizes this and omits the outer question.
Rombobjörn wrote:Transmitting only after a wake-word is detected seems like a purely technical decision to me. Having all the Echo devices transmitting constantly would consume way too much expensive bandwidth. From a privacy point of view I don't see how it matters much. If Amazon – or a rogue Amazon employee – wanted to eavesdrop on someone, they could push a software update to the victim's Echo to make it transmit constantly, or as soon as any voice is detected, or define additional wake-words, or whatever they wanted.
speising wrote:Aka "telemetry to improve your customer experience"
Rombobjörn wrote:oldgus wrote:A reasonable person might deduce from the comic that Echo devices are constantly transmitting audio to Amazon's servers. It is straightforward to examine Echo traffic with Wireshark, or similar, and show that audio is only transmitted after a wake-word is detected. This should help reduce one's tin foil budget a bit.
Transmitting only after a wake-word is detected seems like a purely technical decision to me. Having all the Echo devices transmitting constantly would consume way too much expensive bandwidth. From a privacy point of view I don't see how it matters much. If Amazon – or a rogue Amazon employee – wanted to eavesdrop on someone, they could push a software update to the victim's Echo to make it transmit constantly, or as soon as any voice is detected, or define additional wake-words, or whatever they wanted.
What matters is that a device that someone else controls has the potential of listening constantly. At that point everything depends on how much you trust the person who controls the device.
cephalopod9 wrote:Only on Xkcd can you start a topic involving Hitler and people spend the better part of half a dozen pages arguing about the quality of Operating Systems.
Rombobjörn wrote:What matters is that a device that someone else controls has the potential of listening constantly. At that point everything depends on how much you trust the person who controls the device.
Mikeski wrote:It's a testable hypothesis.
Turn on your WireShark (or similar), and start using the expected code phrases. Names of politicians, terrorism-related stuff, names of intelligence agencies, words related to drug trafficking, "Jeff Bezos is sexually attracted to soybeans", etc.
ps.02 wrote:Also, there's little need to transmit in real time. Just wait for the next "Alexa" event and send a bolus of audio (or a transcription) then.)
Steve the Pocket wrote:Rombobjörn wrote:Transmitting only after a wake-word is detected seems like a purely technical decision to me. Having all the Echo devices transmitting constantly would consume way too much expensive bandwidth. From a privacy point of view I don't see how it matters much. If Amazon – or a rogue Amazon employee – wanted to eavesdrop on someone, they could push a software update to the victim's Echo to make it transmit constantly, or as soon as any voice is detected, or define additional wake-words, or whatever they wanted.
What matters is that a device that someone else controls has the potential of listening constantly. At that point everything depends on how much you trust the person who controls the device.
One could say the same of literally any device that has a microphone and an Internet connection, regardless of whether it can reach an AI service at the other end.
Rombobjörn wrote:I think you overlooked this part:ps.02 wrote:Also, there's little need to transmit in real time. Just wait for the next "Alexa" event and send a bolus of audio (or a transcription) then.)
da Doctah wrote:What bugs me is that nobody ever takes advantage of the "form of a question" dodge when the "answer" already is a question
Soupspoon wrote:Just A Minute
Soupspoon wrote:Though the quip sounds familiar (if inaccurate!), I don't believe he has guest-hosted any JAM. But has indeed appeared on it...
(QI, or something similar? Did he swap places with Fry at some point? I'm getting timeouts on wikipedia and other sites, now, so I can't even check... Will this post?)
(I know he's guest-hosted HIGNFY, and that, just before I finally try to Submit, is my best guess as to where I saw him do that joke.)
Pfhorrest wrote:Soupspoon wrote:Just A Minute
Was that the show that had David Tennant guest-host an episode, and a Q&A exchange along the lines of:
Tennant: Knock knock.
Contestant: ...who's there?
Tennant: Doctor.
Contestant: ...Doctor Who?
Tennant: Correct! Next question...
xtifr wrote:... and orthogon merely sounds undecided.
Mikeski wrote:Heck, if they're transmitting raw unencrypted mp3/ogg/whatever, just capture and decode the stream yourself.)
da Doctah wrote:it helps to know that the original concept for the show came out in the wake of the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s where certain contestants were (secretly, behind the scenes) given the answers to questions. Merv Griffin said "what if we give them the answers, then, and ask them to come up with the question?"
orthogon wrote:We used to tell that joke in the playground circa 1979 (with the punchline "You just said it!"). But it probably got forgotten as Doctor Who was off air for a decade or more, and then re-invented by someone.
But the "joke" itself steps onto dangerous territory for Doctor Who fans by implying that "Doctor Who" is the character's name.
xtifr wrote:... and orthogon merely sounds undecided.
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