
South Park Season Premier Sets Off Everyone's Amazon Echo - gridscomputing
https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/south-park-season-premiere-sets-off-amazon-echo-units-2017-9
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5_minutes
These creators are just great guys. Not only is this again a sign of them
being on the edge of healthy creativity, but they're also the only show that
just has all episodes for free to watch.

There's a documentary on how they make each show "a la carte" each week, and
never missed its deadline except once, but it's often been a close call of
just a few minutes.

Edit: "6 Days to Air: The Making of South Park"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-
Un8JjUwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ-Un8JjUwo)

~~~
ethbro
I thought the only reasons they offered their content for free (ad supported)
was that they were competing with a major piracy site dedicated exlusively to
streaming their episodes.

~~~
leephillips
I read years ago that they explained that they placed the episodes free online
because they were tired of going to pirate sites to get convenient access to
their own stuff.

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cjlars
Audio is a terribly insecure channel to accept commands through. You presume
no one else has access to the device because it is physically locked in your
house, but sound travels through walls and through speakers. Heck, you can
even make a window pane into a speaker with some simple gear.

It's no big deal when the worst case scenario is being served up a search
result you don't need or listening to a song you didn't request, but you
definitely wouldn't want to link voice recognition tech up to anything non-
reversible like a stock trade or the lock on your front door.

~~~
nomel
In case anyone missed it, the commands don't have to be audible:

From
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf)

> DolphinAttack ... modulates voice commands on ultrasonic carriers ... to
> achieve inaudibility. By leveraging the nonlinearity of the microphone
> circuits the modulated ... commands can be successfully demodulated

~~~
sogen
Yes, scary indeed, deactivated Hey Siri.

~~~
stephenr
Hey Siri is keyed to your specific voice. A random person can't activate it.

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jp57
They should add a character named alexa, and have everyone address her by name
and order her around.

~~~
mkempe
Don't forget Siri.

I still don't understand why these companies cannot let us choose a name for
our listening devices. Computers can be named, phones too.

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Taek
My understanding is that these devices have ASICs which listen for their
names, the actual pattern for the name coded into hardware, meaning that you
can't easily select a new name.

Voice recognition takes more CPU power than the devices have, especially if
you are trying to prolong battery life, and I think the more complex commands
are relayed to a server instead of parsed locally.

~~~
makomk
Low-power DSP chip, I believe. For more complex tasks like voice recognition
it generally makes sense to use something that at least resembles a general-
purpose CPU.

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derekp7
The fact that these voice response devices don't lock into a particular set of
users' voices is a major problem. In fact, multiple times I've had a Google ad
cause the phone it was playing on go do a web search triggered by that ad.
Totally insane.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
For Google Now that demand is reasonable but Amazon Echo is designed to be
triggered by anyone in the room, not just a specific owner.

~~~
mejari
The demand can still be reasonable for the Echo, if you believe that it is
terrible design to be triggered by anyone.

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mgiannopoulos
Tim Cook's voice (or someone else from the presentation) enabled Siri on my
phone during the iPhone X event (watching over YouTube). I thought it was
supposed to be locked to my own voice though?

~~~
brianwawok
Apparently you have the same voice as tim cook to a robot?

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zaroth
I wonder if there is a low-pass filter on Alexa's microphone? Triggering your
Alexa with ultrasonic commands outside of normal human hearing would be even
more entertaining. Ads already embed ultrasonic chirps to some extent for
tracking purposes.

~~~
satysin
Check out DolphinAttack

Demo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HjF4A3WE4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21HjF4A3WE4)

Paper:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09537.pdf)

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DonHopkins
I sure wish I was one of the lucky bastards who was selling Gomphocarpus
Physocarpus on Amazon. They really hit the jackpot!

[https://www.amazon.com/GOMPHOCARPUS-PHYSPCARPUS-PLANT-
HAIRY-...](https://www.amazon.com/GOMPHOCARPUS-PHYSPCARPUS-PLANT-HAIRY-
ANNUAL/dp/B01HDSSNGO)

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koolba
I feel like I should get a writer credit for this episode:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11724174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11724174)

~~~
psyc
I don't have a link, but an implementation of your project did make the rounds
on YouTube and/or Twitch a while back.

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s73ver_
Didn't Google have this issue with a Burger King commercial? Shouldn't Amazon
have learned from that, and tried to cut this kind of thing off?

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Steko
The underlying problem is not being able to rename assistants.

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eric_h
Indeed - but it's a much more difficult problem than it seems at first glance
(unless you're okay with an always on, always streaming to the cloud
microphone).

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Steko
Should be done locally anyway, assistant should have some functionality
(alarm, timer, calendar, etc.) when you're completely offline.

Other comments indicate the assistant names are hard coded in ASICs but they
certainly don't have to be.

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microcolonel
Countdown to Stone and Park enduring a lawsuit under the CFAA.

