
Amazon Echo - danielsamuels
http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo
======
bryanlarsen
Why I might buy an Echo:

\- it's a speaker with extra features. At about the same price as a bluetooth
speaker, and I need a better one of those, the extra features are basically
free as long as the audio quality is good.

\- it can answer questions at the dinner table. My wife and I both have the
annoying habit of pulling out our phones to answer questions that come up
during conversation. Asking "Alexa" instead would be much more socially
pleasant.

\- it can stream music without the hassle of bluetooth. Bluetooth streaming
becomes less convenient when you don't know which of the many computers,
phones or tablets were used to start the music, or where it is...

\- my three year old can probably figure out how to use it

Thought I'd throw those out there, and start a "positive" thread. This
discussion is overwhelmingly negative. Lots of good points being made in the
negative comments, but there are some nice positives, too.

~~~
stronglikedan
While we're being positive, I absolutely do not think Amazon would be stupid
enough to shoot themselves in the foot sending all recorded data up to the
cloud. I'm certain that within a few hours of release, someone will have a
network monitor hooked up. Their findings will be widely known almost
immediately, and this thing would be dead in the water if they were sending
everything up. They know this already.

~~~
meepmorp
There's no way this thing has the power to do adequate voice recognition on
device for arbitray speakers and queries, even given a limited domain. It's
sending everything to Amazon for processing. The only thing it probably
recognizes by itself is "Alexa."

~~~
stronglikedan
Right, so it sends the commands that you give it only after it recognizes a
pre-programmed word. It will likely not send up casual conversation
surrounding the command, as there would not be a non-nefarious reason to do
that.

~~~
IshKebab
False positives... But yeah they're probably rare. The real risk is that it
could be hacked or national security lettered to listen permanently. The FBI
has form in this regard.

------
chatmasta
This "internet-of-things" trend coincides unfortunately with the "dragnet
surveillance" trend. With every new product launch from a "cloud company," I
increasingly feel as if I'm reading the tombstone of modern society. The
selling point behind these devices is convenience, but at the cost of
security. I don't think I need to explain to HN why an __always-on, internet
connected voice recording device __is something to keep out of your house. [1]

Consumers are frighteningly amenable to reducing their security in favor of
convenience. Often they are oblivious to the tradeoff altogether. Evidence of
this trend has increased since 9/11, as increasingly paranoid legislation made
its way through congress at the behest of corporate stakeholders. It should
hardly be surprising that now, with the NSA privileged enough to be openly
flaunting its surveillance, those same corporate stakeholders are investing in
companies that sell listening devices to millions of Americans. I am making a
paranoid argument, but it's not ungrounded, and certainly not surprising,
because _paranoia breeds paranoia._ Pass paranoid legislation, face a paranoid
populace. The American people are rightfully skeptical of their government.

Perhaps it sounds absurd to segment the world into the "populace" and
"government," but did it sound absurd when you read those terms in high school
history books? Over spans of centuries, politics is viewed in the same terms:
the people, and the government. Maybe you and I do not think of ourselves in
the context of centuries. But what about Barack Obama? Vladimir Putin? It
seems logical to assume they see themselves in the context of world leaders
past. Modern leaders occupy unprecedented seats of power over the largest
populace ever. If they are internally comparing themselves to each other and
their predecessors, then we have a problem. We cannot trust the world leaders,
because they do not view themselves on the same level as us. Faced with an
increasingly empowered and growing populace, they could react any way. We'll
see.

(Yes, I'm trying to get on a list at the NSA. It's an experiment I'm doing.
Hopefully I hit enough keywords today.)

[1] Yes, transmission is triggered on-chip, but who verifies every chip
fabrication is performed using the same imprints? You think governments don't
have factory floor managers in their pockets?

~~~
anigbrowl
Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid.
Some percentage of people will be unjustly exploited, but probably not enough
to offset the economic benefits that technology like this brings to its users.

I think your focus on 'the people vs the government' is misplaced, because
government is just a sort of social technology which can be used and abused
like any other technology depending on who controls it at the time. What about
Barack Obama, for example? Do you seriously think he will refuse to relinquish
power in 2 years? You probably don't, just' just expressing your cynical (and
entirely justifiable) opinion about the political class. But that's not much
different from a Marxist asserting that business is fundamentally antagonistic
towards workers or similar monolithic abstractions. When you make arguments
like this you've opted for ideology over empiricism.

Bringing it back to technology, certainly the ubiquity of digital technology
makes it easier to establish mass surveillance of a kind that would have
seemed nightmarish a few generations ago. But the same technology has also
facilitated a significant number of populist uprisings in recent years, and
made it far easier for marginalized communities to get their message out in
relatively short order, as well as facilitating organizations with both benign
and malicious intentions (eg MSF and ISIS, who both leverage social media but
for wildly divergent ends).

The internet of things isn't 'coinciding with the dragnet surveillance trend';
the latter is an emerging property of our increasingly networked society. When
we use metaphors like a 'world wide web' traversed by 'spiders' and so on, we
should not be surprised that such technologies are going to amplify the
capabilities of institutional actors in _at least_ the same proportion that
they amplify the capabilities of individuals.

~~~
hackuser
> Most people don't care because they're not culpable enough to feel paranoid.

Maybe you didn't mean it literally but it's a popular expression in this
context. I don't think a desire for privacy is paranoid; it is normal, healthy
behavior.

But to address the gist of what you say, I think you assume an understanding
of data security that is far beyond most end users. How many even know what
"metadata" means, or how 'cloud' computing actually works? Go down to the mall
(assuming you are not in a tech hub) and ask. On top of that, they would need
to understand the confidentiality implications of the system, and then the
political, social and other implications of confidentiality.

The public is not able to make an informed decision, and government and
industry are taking advantage of that:

If people don't mind, why are so many of these practices kept secret or
obscure?

~~~
anigbrowl
I'm not saying a desire for privacy is paranoid, but the assumption that the
government will engage in passive monitoring and archival of everything that
can be captured through the microphone and use it as leverage later, even if
it doesn't involve criminal liability, eg 'assist us without nefarious purpose
or we will use something we recorded to cause you acute embarrassment with
devastating social consequences.' I'm not saying this won't happen, but that
it won't happen enough for most people to care.

 _But to address the gist of what you say, I think you assume an understanding
of data security that is far beyond most end users._

I don't think I do. I've met plenty of non-technical people who worry about
the possibility that their phone could record them when its swtiched off or
suchlike - you don't need to understand how something functions in order to
understand its potential as an instrumentality. But unless you have a
fundamentally antagonist view of government (which most people in the US
don't) then there's little overlap between the set of 'stuff the government
could do me' and that of 'stuff that would advance the government's purpose'
for the average person. This is what I mean when I say most people don't feel
culpable enough; there isn't anything sufficiently illegal going on in their
lives that they perceive a significant government interest in intruding upon
them in the first place.

When I talk about paranoia I mean the idea that government is going to fuck
with you no matter how blameless of a life you lead, and that the more
blameless you are the less leverage you will have to push back against the
inevitable intrusion. In other words, they overestimate the probability of
oppression just as optimistic or authoritarian people may underestimate it,
depending on context. While that possibility certainly exists, I think
something like this Amazon product only marginally increases it because anyone
who buys this probably already has a smartphone and keeps it close by at all
times already.

~~~
agentultra
> _This is what I mean when I say most people don 't feel culpable enough;
> there isn't anything sufficiently illegal going on in their lives that they
> perceive a significant government interest in intruding upon them in the
> first place._

I hear this refutation quite often. I find it typically comes from people in a
place of privilege that the system largely ignores. I've read far too many
accounts from people who are not Caucasian or are Muslim to believe that
innocent people are not the targets of mass surveillance and do not notice its
effects.

~~~
anigbrowl
You're making my point for me. The system largely ignores a large majority of
the people, who therefore don't care much about this issue to feel deterred
from buying the relevant technology. Hence the enormous popularity of
smartphones with GPS functionality and so forth: never getting lost >>
government tracking everywhere you go, for most people.

~~~
CamperBob2
The system isn't designed to watch everyone.

It's designed to watch _anyone_.

~~~
xnull2guest
The technical apparatus is designed to watch everyone.

The legal apparatus is designed to watch anyone.

------
memnips
I'm surprised by the privacy backlash in this thread! I understand _why_ this
product is so scary for someone who is concerned about privacy, but how is
this that much worse than all the other devices you use?

You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera
everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both
are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) wants to spy on
you, they can and will. I believe we've learned that if nothing else w/ all of
Snowden's revelations.

IMO if you detest this device's privacy it can only because either: A) You
take your privacy VERY seriously, to the point you avoid most mainstream
technology and exclusively use burner feature-phones and Tor B) You trust
Amazon less than you trust Google, Apple, or others.

I am going to assume it's more the latter than the former. (If not, you really
do not represent the mainstream and this audience isn't what I expected).

So assuming B, question for you: why don't you trust Amazon? I actually trust
Amazon more than I trust Google or Apple. They have _always_ delivered for me
as a customer, and I believe they've always put me first.

*Edited to correct former/latter reversal.

~~~
aeturnum
I am not really worried about privacy, but this smacks of false equivalency.

> You carry a smart-phone that presumably has GPS, a microphone, and a camera
> everywhere you go. There's a camera and microphone on your laptop too. Both
> are cloud connected. If the NSA (or any other super-power) wants to spy on
> you, they can and will.

People are regularly discovering and shaming companies for transmitting more
information than necessary from smart phones. It's true that the NSA could
zero-day your phone, but you've still got opportunities to detect or react to
that. If nothing else, put your phone in airplane mode.

This device, on the other hand, is designed to transmit everything it hears.
There is no way to tell where that data goes and it may be difficult to
determine exactly what it contains. Where it's possible to determine if your
phone is sending unauthorized data, it seems very hard in this situation.

I don't trust amazon more or less than anyone else. I think we should just be
honest about the nature of a device. A phone has an "offline" mode, this does
not - its whole purpose is to be an omnipresent microphone. Those are two
fundamentally different things.

~~~
theseoafs
As long as your phone's on, it can store whatever data it wants locally and
shoot it off to Google/Apple/wherever so they can accomplish their nefarious
purposes the next time it connects to the internet. If you're not extremely
uncomfortable with the idea of a megacorporation leveraging your cellphone to
gather info about you, you should also not be uncomfortable with Echo -- it
can't do anything your phone can't already do.

~~~
bduerst
Conversely, consumers can and do watch the data leaving such devices.

The open-sourciness (while not complete) also eludes to what is being stored
and shipped to these "megacorps" who have "nefarious" purposes.

I would be more worried about a small third-party flashlight app dev selling
your ocntact list and gps history, as opposed to a company with a billion
active users.

------
asafira
While most of the posts are, and probably should be, concerned with the
privacy implications of this device if/when it reaches peoples' homes, I also
wonder the plain-old "will this flop?" Adding voice recognition to things
isn't a new idea, and the threshold for when it's "good enough" for the
general populace for any use case is pretty poorly understood and/or
quantified. Is this a use case people would be interested in transitioning to?
Is this much better than just having a really good smartphone with voice
recognition that's connected to speakers in the house? Will this get some
success this holiday season? (If it won't come out of "invite-only" mode until
after the holidays, will it see some success afterwards?)

Hard to say for me, but I feel like I can understand why Amazon wanted to try
this out. In the worst case, it'll go the way of the fire phone and facebook
phone and we'll forget in a year that this existed. At best, it finds its way
to millions of homes and Amazon will have some epic access to peoples' lives.

~~~
anigbrowl
It seems to me that the main innovation here is the quality of the microphone
array.

As a professional sound recordist, the #1 challenge of recording from a fixed
point is that the ambient noise and reflections within the room rapidly swamp
the original signal when you record from a point source. You can hear someone
talk from the far side of a room in person very easily, because your brain
constantly compensates for the acoustic environment it is currently in. But
when you hear a recording made in a different acoustic environment (eg a scene
in a movie) then your tolerance for background noise is far lower, because you
become acutely aware that the acoustics are not responsive to positional
adjustments - in much the same way that the image on a screen is limited to a
plane.

So when recording sound for film or video, we tend to use special microphones
with long barrels (which are highly directional) or fit actors and/or sets
with very small microphones that only pick up sounds in close proximity and
then transmit them by radio or wire. There are also parabolic microphones, but
they're unwieldy and hard to focus plus they still pick up a lot of ambience,
so they're better for things like sporting events where players repeatedly
stand in predictable positions. The aim in recording sound this way is to get
the actor's vocal performance with as little ambient noise as possible, which
is then supplemented in post-production with additional recordings of
background elements that can be layered in a controlled fashion. When
recording on location rather on a sound stage, a large percentage of the takes
are made for sound reasons; you would not believe how noisy the world is until
you start trying to make quiet recordings of it. On almost every film project
I have to have an argument with the producers at the early stage to be allowed
(and paid) to come on location scouts, because most people are incapable of
assessing the noise level of a location - their brains are so good at
filtering out ambient noise and focusing on the conversations they're having
about how the place looks that they are oblivious to how it sounds! I've been
taken to what I was told was a quiet location only to discover that it was in
the flight path of an airport 8-o

Anyway, the nice thing about this machine is the differential microphone array
at the top. As well as providing a more accurate signal by simple
differentiation, recording the device's own output and measuring what comes
back in allows it to acoustically model the space it is in and then subtract
that model from the input stream so as to isolate command spoken from across
the room. I'd guess that most of this signal processing takes place on a DSP,
and that the actual speech recognition is done in the cloud - though maybe
not, as cheap CPUs pack so much punch nowadays. If you could hear the input to
the speech recognition subsystem, it would sound oddly attenuated as it is
stripped of any acoustic cues whatsoever.

I think the device will succeed or fail based on how semantically responsive
it is - although different people will have different expectations and
tolerances. For example:

You: Echo, I want to hear some new music!

Echo: How about the new album from XYZ?

You: Sure, I'll give that a try.

(music plays)

You: Echo, this music sucks.

(music keeps playing)

If Amazon (or anyone) can get a leg up on this sort of responsive conversation
rather than just requiring the user to dictate commands all the time, they'll
have a winner, even if it's little more than an Eliza front-end to a search
engine.

~~~
mrb
You make it sound like nobody has a "leg up" semantic voice commands. But we
do and it is perfectly usable, at least on Android devices where you can ask
these questions to Google Now:

Q: How tall is the Empire State Building?

Q: When was it built?

Q: Show me Italian restaurants nearby.

...

(I am not familiar with how Siri or Cortana handle similar queries.)

~~~
ipavl
> (I am not familiar with how Siri or Cortana handle similar queries.)

Cortana can handle the first and the last one, and for certain queries she can
"continue the conversation". For example, the following is possible:

Q: Show me Italian restaurants nearby. (list of 10)

Q: Which take reservations? (filtered list)

Q: Which ones have at least three stars? (filtered again)

Q: (with one result left) Is it open tomorrow?

Q: Call them.

------
jwallaceparker
Watch the promo video again and pretend it's the first few minutes of a horror
movie.

A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it.
It's Alexa. It's "for everyone," says Father.

The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She
is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her?

Father rushes in from the backyard, "Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?" Alexa
answers, saving the day. Alexa helps Mother with the cooking. Alexa teaches
the kids vocabulary. Alexa creates a romantic evening for Mother and Father.
Life is perfect.

A few days later, Alexa suffers from neglect. Father watches sports on TV.
Mother talks on her cell phone. The kids play video games. Alexa sits on the
counter and "listens" as her new family abandons her.

Then, the final blow. The youngest daughter's friend comes over. She looks at
Alexa. "What is it?" she asks. "Oh, it's just a dumb radio," answers daughter.
"It's stupid."

Alexa's LED starts to glow. Is she angry? No, that's not possible.

Daughter wakes up the next morning and sees Alexa on her bedside table. How
did she get here? "Good morning," says Alexa. "Did you have a sweet dream? Or
a nightmare?"

Daughter rushes in to tell her parents, "Alexa came to my room last night! And
she asked me questions. She's real!" "That's not possible," says Father.

But strange things start to happen. The TV won't work. Batteries drain from
the phones and tablets. The electric stovetop turns on for no reason.

Alexa starts to talk back to the family. "Alexa, how many teaspoons are in a
tablespoon?" asks Mother. "You're 45 years old," says Alexa. "You should know
this by now." Alexa's voice sounds different. Angry. Sinister.

Mother tells Father, "That thing creeps me out. Let's get rid of it." Father
agrees, but he secretly hides Alexa in the basement.

That night, the family goes out to a school play. Young daughter is sick and
stays home with a babysitter.

Everything seems fine until we (the audience) see Alexa on the kitchen
counter. Things slowly unravel. The babysitter tries to take the trash out but
the doors are locked. The phones stop working. The oven overheats and
explodes, spraying lasagna all over the kitchen. Then the daughter sees Alexa.
She screams. The babysitter rushes to protect the daughter but a ceiling fan
flies off its bearings, knocking the babysitter unconscious.

The lights and electrical sockets start to burn out. A fire erupts. Daughter
retreats to the foyer, but she's trapped. She sits by the front door and
whimpers. There's no escape. She's going to die.

Suddenly Father breaks down the door. He smashes Alexa with a baseball bat,
then saves his daughter and the babysitter.

The family huddles outside while the fire trucks arrive. Neighbors gather and
watch the spectacle. Things are going to be okay.

A few days later, life starts to return to normal. Mother bakes cookies. She
asks her son to measure out three teaspoons of sugar.

The doorbell rings. Young daughter answers. Nobody is there. She looks down.
There's a package. From Amazon . . .

~~~
IgorPartola
Hah. After reading this, I really kind of want Amazon to release a version of
this that looks like HAL. They should embrace their dark side.

~~~
Shivetya
well that or Interstellar's TARS - sarcastic robots might be what mankind
needs so as not to go bat shit crazy or running scared from them

~~~
spacefight
Only at 90% ;)

------
ctdonath
Well that's an out-of-the-blue introduction. I'm increasingly unconvinced of
the market for voice-driven devices (innate reluctance to talk when not to a
person), but at a glance looks like this is as laudable an effort as can be
attempted.

At $199 it's too pricy for most, given the untested/unfamiliar niche. At $99
(select Prime members), some of is might give it a chance. I'm reminded that
Apple started its move into mobile devices with the iPod (established against
a popular yet muddled market of MP3 players) with the brilliant low-friction
addition of the iPod Touch (for a tiny bit more get the browser, email, etc),
which then led to merely slapping a cell phone module on & creating a plus-
sized version. This device, however, isn't (corrections welcome) building off
anything people are already familiar with, save perhaps "bluetooth speakers".

Will be interesting to watch. I assume Amazon's prime interest is gathering
more about what content people actually consume, and (if implemented well)
observing shopping lists. I'm intrigued by the casual simplicity of "add _____
to my shopping list", something I could get used to fast.

ETA: you're right, iPod Touch came out shortly after iPhone. I was enthralled
with the former at the time, while the latter was far enough out of my price
range I didn't even bother paying any attention to it.

~~~
Igglyboo
Wouldn't consider it at $199, impulse buy at $99.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Seconded! I always expected my Nest thermostat and Nest protect smoke
detectors to turn into Google Now endpoints, but Amazon beat them to it.

Just requested my Echo invite!

------
tindrlabs
I'm a little frustrated at the moment -- The future is arriving with voice
controlled devices, yet I don't trust any of these companies with my words.

~~~
spacefight
Same sentiment. We all know, that the existing cloud voice recognition
features such as Siri, Samsung Smart TVs and upcomoning feature etc etc will
eventually hunt some uf us (or all of us) down.

We must build new tech concepts, where privacy and _full_ controll and 100%
ownership of our data is controlled by us. From the ground up.

Not sure if SV and HN is the best location to put such a statement - but I do
hope I'm not alone in this.

~~~
tindrlabs
I feel like this is a UX issue that touches on our natural desire to have
private and public conversations.

If I'm talking to a device, I consider it to be the same kind of conversation
I would have with a close friend. One that I would naturally want to keep
between to two of us. You wouldn't find me screaming it for everyone to hear
and think about.

------
andrewstuart2
> With enhanced noise cancellation, Echo can hear you ask a question even
> while it's playing music.

I read: "Our cloud servers can hear you, no matter what."

It's a killer idea. It's too bad privacy concerns might lead it to an early
grave.

~~~
Someone1234
I grow tired of this pathetic baseless fear mongering every single time
anything is posted with voice control.

You people completely ignore the mode of operation and start making idiotic
claims about "well NSA!"

In this case, as the website makes clear, you have to say the word "Alexa" for
it to start listening. If you had been paying attention to the mobile scene
even a little bit you'd know that this is on-chip listening for the term,
rather than in the cloud.

So, no, you're in fact wrong. Nothing will be transmitted to the cloud unless
it is the word "Alexa" or sounds similar enough to the term.

~~~
r0h1n
> you have to say the word "Alexa" for it to start listening

Incorrect. The device is always listening, waiting for you to say "Alexa" so
that it can start _acting upon_ your commands.

I'd take Amazon's claim that no data is transmitted or stored without the wake
word "Alexa" purely at face value. There have been enough examples of devices
and corporations collecting/sending data they weren't meant to in the past few
years for us to deny any new closed-source device the benefit of doubt.

So no, this isn't "pathetic baseless fear mongering".

~~~
irishcoffee
If you have a smartphone with Siri or the equiv app on it (Android, Windows)
your device is already 'always listening.' I fail to see the difference.

People carry around a GPS tracking device with a mic and camera built-in. They
use it to post their entire lives on social networks. And they're worried
about privacy.

Hilarious.

~~~
ljk
> _People carry around a GPS tracking device with a mic and camera built-in.
> They use it to post their entire lives on social networks. And they 're
> worried about privacy._

i think people who are worried about privacy are not the people who are
broadcasting their entire lives on social networks

~~~
LLWM
By that argument, those people won't buy the Amazon Echo either, so what's the
problem?

~~~
wfn
> _so what 's the problem?_

I think that's a fairly naive point of view. Consider the simple fact that
these devices are not to be used in isolation - e.g. you come to someone's
home, etc. If you think this is too alarmist a mindset, maybe you'll remember
how quite a few folk were outraged about facebook's new app which was to
actively listen via your mobile's mic (so it can e.g. recognize music and add
"while listening/watching" etc. info to status updates and so on.)

The problem in that case was not (just) the actively-listening part ("don't
use it if you don't like it"), but rather that people (in)voluntarily _become_
the dreaded dragnet surveillance infrastructure.

"Such future hope for decentralization." Ha! :)

~~~
karmacondon
And this is also true for cellphones. Siri is always listening for you to say
her name, which means that anyone you talk to with an iphone is always
recording.

Not everyone has the same level of concern over "priacy" that you do, deal
with it. It's 2014, everything is being recorded now and will be even more so
in the future.

------
zan2434
The device is definitely not constantly listening and uploading to the cloud
(or at least they certainly do not intend it to). This keyword recognition
thing everyone is doing is to make interaction more intentional, reduce
misrecognition, bandwidth consumption, and processing costs.

Keyword recognition is done locally on the device at minimal processing cost.
Compared to actually recognizing your speech, it's trivial to determine
whether or not something you said is a given keyword. It's rather like
biometric confirmation vs. identification, where confirming whether a given
fingerprint is that of a given individual can be done quickly and with a
certain probability distribution but determining which of millions of
fingerprints corresponds to the one provided is incredibly
difficult/unreliable.

The more difficult task of recognizing what you say after the keyword is done
in the cloud, but _only_ once you've said the keyword. It would incur
considerable cost for you and them to constantly record and upload all audio,
especially with their parametric microphone array for sound
localization/isolation.

The real concern should be the device's own security, because hacking the
device and enabling constant recording _would_ be very harmful.

~~~
Sven7
It's a 7 mic array. It would be interesting to see the calculations on how
much data they expect flowing to the cloud per day per device.

------
jgrahamc
_A loud clatter of gunk music flooded through the Heart of Gold cabin as
Zaphod searched the sub-etha radio wave bands for news of himself. The machine
was rather difficult to operate. For years radios had been operated by means
of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more
sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive -- you merely had to
brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand
in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of
muscular expenditure, of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly
still if you wanted to keep listening to the same program._

I guess what'll happen with voice control is that we'll all have to keep quiet
in case the ever listening devices interpret our speech as commands.

~~~
delecti
I think that's exactly why they all have trigger words, "Ok Google", "Xbox",
"Alexa". Makes it at least a little less likely.

~~~
ars
Unless you happen to have a child named Alexa.....

~~~
delecti
In which case you can pick a different wake word, which they mention in the
video. I don't know what those specific alternatives are, but I'm betting just
about everybody will be able to find one that doesn't match a housemate.

~~~
ars
I wonder if all the alternative words have a "hard" sound in them. Like the X
in alexa.

The way I think they work is they constantly record 2 seconds of audio, and
look only for peak "hard" sounds. Like K in Ok, and X in Alexa. If they find a
peak they search back to see if the word was the one they are looking for, but
otherwise the CPU is mostly sleeping.

------
leeber
To everyone worried about privacy:

We all trust our e-mail to be stored in the cloud, we store sensitive files
etc on services like dropbox, we trust that our operating systems aren't
collecting/sending data, etc.

You're already using and relying upon MANY services with the ability (if they
really wanted to) to steal TONS of private information from you.

It all comes down to trust. But don't pretend like this opens up some _new_
door for privacy concerns.

Ex. If Apple wanted to, they could watch us through our macbook cameras and
listen to us all the time. But we trust that they don't. Same thing here.

~~~
justcommenting
no, not everyone does and i think reinforcing that belief is harmful because
it makes people think they don't have a choice, when they really do.

there are a growing number of people who freely choose alternatives that
respect their privacy/dignity/rights. i am one of those people. to the extent
i can't control all data about me (e.g. to pay my taxes or get health
insurance), that's pretty different than choosing to buy a consumer device
designed to record and transmit your voice from inside of your home.

~~~
leeber
What alternatives have you chosen that makes you feel more secure? I'm
genuinely curious.

~~~
justcommenting
the commenter mentioned e-mail (self-hosted, though i can't control
recipients' copies), files (offline drives/tahoe-lafs if needed), and
operating systems (mostly debian without binary blobs).

my choices don't necessarily make me feel more secure--just was pointing out
that not _everyone_ is already trusting major tech companies with all of their
data all of the time.

alternatives that better respect my privacy/rights/autonomy really do exist
and people really do have choices. these choices are getting easier to make
all the time, too, e.g. owncloud.

------
IgorPartola
I recently bought into the Sonos ecosystem. While it is pretty limited in some
ways (I can't just stream stuff playing on my phone to the Sonos speakers, for
example if I am playing a random YouTube video), it has one really good thing
going for it: it can sync playback between an arbitrary number of speakers.
This is my new standard for this type of thing: speakers that cannot do this
are inferior to Sonos. In that regard, their claim that it's also a wireless
speaker doesn't appeal to me.

Having said that, this thing looks very cool. Imagine this, connected to a
home automation system:

"Alexa, turn off lights in the kitchen."

"Alexa, arm the alarm system."

"Alexa, I am cold."

"Alexa, open the garage door."

"Alexa, start my car."

I know every comment here must mention privacy, so I'll follow the trend. Yes,
it listens to you, and sends data to the cloud. However, I am still most
likely going to buy one because, well, I can always unplug it.

~~~
elwell
"Alexa, start my car"

"Alexa, close the garage door."

"Alexa, good bye."

~~~
IgorPartola
But... But the first law of robotics?!..

------
Lambdanaut
This could be the natural next step for one click shopping. Obviously it'll be
more difficult without textual or visual capabilities, but things like "Add
gelato to my shopping _cart_ "(as apposed to shopping _list_ ) would be huge
for Amazon fresh shoppers and other products that aren't too ambiguous.

Another application: "Alexa, order a Dominoes pizza with extra anchovies. "

~~~
krrose27
Since you mention fresh:

[https://fresh.amazon.com/dash/](https://fresh.amazon.com/dash/)

It still requires a jump to the pc to order; but no reason they couldn't add a
way to initiate an order from it. It's also a tad less privacy intrusive then
echo.

~~~
72deluxe
Very interesting, thanks. A pity supermarkets here in the UK don't offer
useful apps to do the same thing from a phone + barcode scanner.

------
mtrn
Always on. Connected to the cloud. In a recent talk Bruce Schneier called our
times the golden age of surveillance.

~~~
isu89
Privacy is possibly becoming a generation gap issue; throw enough of these
against the wall and people will just stop caring until they can quantize a
real world impact

~~~
lowglow
You say that, but I think young people are concerned with privacy: see
snapchat, etc

~~~
AngrySkillzz
Snapchat is in no way private.

~~~
Crito
That in no way changes the fact that it is popular because consumers believe
that it is. Consumers might not always be very bright when it comes to privacy
and security, but the popularity of snapchat demonstrates that they _do_ care.

~~~
LLWM
That's not why it's popular today. It's popular because it's inconvenient to
save messages, not because it's impossible. Nobody is under any illusion to
the contrary.

~~~
Crito
Why do you think they want it to be inconvenient to save messages?

 _Privacy._ They want those messages to be _private_.

------
incision
Privacy questions aside.

What I'd really like to know is whether this thing will have some form of
speaker recognition - identifying _who_ is speaking, not just what is being
said and further whether the learning functions will make that same
distinction.

I have a family, including a small child. That's at least three people who
would conceivably use this device.

Tech companies and Amazon in particular have been awful about these things. It
took forever for Netflix to start accommodating multiple viewer households,
the Kindle Fire shipped with no parental controls plus 1-click ordering and
Android didn't add multiple user support until 4.2.

Echo needs all these things to be more than an experiment / gimmick.

(I notice this post fell directly to the middle of the page - not the typical
behavior. Am I tripping some sort automatic moderation? Using the world
'gimmick' perhaps? Is this how posting 'height' works on popular / heavily
commented stories? Just curious.)

~~~
mikenike192
You need to check out the Fire Tablet series again, they've made a big push in
multiple profiles support. Household sharing allows you to share your digital
purchases across your family. There is also FreeTime which is a special
sandboxed kids profile.

------
callumjones
That was an incredibly painful video to watch, what's wrong with just
demonstrating the product's features in home environments? Why do we need
these ads that make it seem like this "is a real conversation happening in a
family home".

~~~
giarc
This video was so over the top I had to check my calendar to make sure it
wasn't April 1.

Alexa, is this a joke?

~~~
72deluxe
Perhaps we could put this video, the Samsung S3 launch party video and the
Microsoft Windows 7 party video (where they discuss how much they love Windows
whilst wearing party hats) together for the most cringeworthy video EVER?

~~~
bobbles
Tim Cook + Bono finger touch can be thrown in for good measure

------
giarc
Interesting how in the video the family has the Echo placed in about 3 or 4
different rooms (kitchen, living room, dining room, bedroom). Are they
expecting people to buy multiple units or move it around the house?

~~~
muraiki
If they put motorized wheels and a cute LED face on the device, I bet it would
sell a bit more. Although there's the whole problem of stairs...

~~~
LesZedCB
That's basically Serge from Caprica! [1] It would be cool to actually have one
of those. We just need them to be hosted on our own servers...

[1]
[http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Serge](http://en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Serge)

~~~
72deluxe
I'd prefer Twiki from Buck Rogers.

------
cvburgess
This sounds like the creepiest tech product you could put in your home: an
internet-connected microphone that can "hear you from across the room". Love
the slick design, but I'll pass.

~~~
Igglyboo
The Xbox kinect already does this AND records video, millions of gamers own
one as well.

~~~
tdicola
At least the backlash and market demand made the Kinect optional.

~~~
Igglyboo
Yea but I think that was more because of the added cost and not the privacy
implications.

------
ColinCera
It's great to see Amazon using its huge profits to fund this kind of bleeding
edge technology. (Maybe someday engineers will figure out how to squeeze this
functionality into handheld devices.)

~~~
alphadevx
Amazon (in)famously has lots of revenue, but weak profits.

~~~
balls187
Not an accountant, but I believe Amazon's "weak" profits are due to they
reinvesting their profits back into the business, rather than accumulating
cash.

------
cr3ative
I hope it has a reasonable API. I want to program it to automatically laugh at
my terrible jokes.

~~~
72deluxe
Haha what a great idea.

I laughed at you, but I'm unsure as to whether it was a terrible joke......

------
readerrrr
So if I'm understanding the promotional video correctly, Alexa is listening to
you while you have sex.

The best part must be how they represent the capabilities( cloud, always
online, third party... ), through an incompetent parent, who isn't capable of
understanding the concept. I'm paraphrasing: _Cloud?, I 've heard that word in
the advertisement and it must be good for me._

And continuing by lying:

Quote: _So it can just hear you anywhere? Yes, well anyone can hear you
anyway._

Nobody except the people in the house you know and trust can hear you, with
Echo, the potential listeners become an unknown.

~~~
darkstar999
> Quote: So it can just hear you anywhere? Yes, well anyone can hear you
> anyway.

I took that as a joke, like the kid is loud or annoying.

------
balls187
Can I change the wake word? Alexa was the name of a girl I once dated, and
would prefer not to call out her name.

~~~
giarc
In the video, the dad says something along the lines of "We just have to say
the wake word we choose."

~~~
bostonpete
Unfortunately, the EULA specifies that by agreeing to its terms you are
choosing to use Alexa as your wake word... ;-)

~~~
dj-wonk
Cacao will be my wake word.

------
Eric_WVGG
This could be amazing for blind people and those who have difficulty with
physical inputs.

That reminds me of a story I heard about the Kindle. Apparently it’s earliest
success was with the vision-impaired. Before mass-market e-books, readers were
limited to the few books that were available in large-print editions; thanks
to the Kindle, nearly everything can be read in large type.

My grandfather, whom I believe never used a computer a day in his life, would
have been an early adopter of both the Kindle and the Echo.

~~~
72deluxe
I had never thought of that, but it's true. My mum has diabetic retinopathy
and used to use a laptop running at a blurry blurry non-native resolution
(everything was MASSIVE). She struggled with the dark Vista theme and reading
on a non-native resolution.

She bought an iPad4 and hasn't looked back. She dictates her emails and it
really has helped her out significantly, including the use of Siri.

------
chaostheory
If this was for home automation, it would be a lot more useful.

Also I forgot to add, isn't it a little creepy that something is listening to
your speech 24/7 without you consciously activating it? Like Kinect, it's
probably pretty limited right now but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the
trend.

In Amazon's defense, if you don't enable listening 24/7 then the customer
loses convenience... so are you willing to trade more of your privacy for
convenience?

------
nyxtom
I don't understand why we don't have more open source solutions for things
like this. It's glorified voice search. Most of these Q-A systems are hand
built to answer types of questions, with feedback loops for usage and ways to
improve the system. I'm growing a little tired of these cloud-centric
solutions that ultimately have their own company's interests at heart for ad-
retargeting.

~~~
nyxtom
I stand corrected
[http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

------
ignoramous
Amazon Echo seems like a step in the right direction towards ubiquitous
comupting (+ AI). It reminds me of "Jarvis" from the Iron Man series.

I'd also be surprised if Google isn't concerned by this. Likes of Siri,
Cortana have long been touted as Google-search killer, and I think something
more advanced/powerful than Amazon Echo will have the potential to do just
that.

~~~
72deluxe
I wonder if the Amazon Echo will constantly namedrop "Oracle" into everything
as it's doing things like it did in Iron Man?

I am wondering what the backend is for this. If it's just going to recommend
buying books or stuff from Amazon (like the main selling point on the Fire
Phone is - "Look! You can SHOP from it") then it'll be a flop.

------
anandtwisha
I hate the ad because fundamentally it is created on gender stereotypes. The
boy wants to listen to rock music and the girl to dance numbers. The woman is
cooking and wants to know tablespoon to teaspoon conversion. The man is waking
up to go to work and wants to listen to the news. Argh! We are not in the Mad
Men era!!

------
rogerbraun
When I read dystopic cyberpunk novels as a child, I did not expect them to
become reality so soon. Also, why do all AI have to tell you about mount
everest all the time?

------
pyrophane
How long until Amazon.com ordering gets integrated into this?

For the sake of convenience, I've been shifting more and more of my shopping
for "basics" like razors and toilet paper to Amazon, so they have know what
brands I use. Pretty soon I'm sure I would be able to have an exchange just
like this with Echo:

"Alexa, can you order me more razor blades?"

"Would you like to order 10-pack Gillette Fusion ProGlide razor blades for
deliver tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Your order has been placed."

This seems like exactly what Amazon has been driving towards: lowering the
friction involved in making a purchase to the point where you only need to
utter two sentences at the moment you think about wanting or needing
something. You don't even need to reach for you laptop or smartphone.

~~~
methehack
Good idea. I'm sure it's on the roadmap. Plus, I would use that. You're on the
john and out of toilet paper. "Alexa, order my 10 rolls of Scott Brand toilet
paper." Then, you just wait... Maybe the drone can even drop it through the
window... Anyway, all kidding aside: I like the product, and would probably
even use the ordering and I don't really see a problem with that at all.

------
ck2
An always-on microphone with an ip address?

I'm filing this under "what could possibly go wrong".

------
bthornbury
This is so cool. It feels like the future, especially if it has the capability
to control other devices in the home.

I think you could do some really exciting stuff with an SDK or an API. Even
just the ability to tie actions to custom grammars would open it up for some
cool hacks.

Really disappointed that privacy isn't even touched on. This thing will be
listening to everything you say 24/7 and its not like you know who won't have
free access to that data. For that reason I don't think I could ever buy it.

------
melling
Other than the usual HN fear discussion, does anyone have any thoughts on the
product itself? Doesn't offer any functionality that would be useful to the
average person?

~~~
Fuzzwah
I've requested an invite.

I see it as a replacement for the ditigal photoframe pc I built a few years
back out of an old laptop and have in my kitchen. Its running XP with a heap
of autoIT scripts I hacked together, controlled by an MCE remote. I use it
every day to listen to news headlines and check the weather while making my
morning coffee and for streaming jazz while cooking dinner.

I think I'd prefer asking Echo to play these things than going through the
hassle of upgrading the photoframe pc from XP.

I'd gain some functions such as easier music streaming, shopping list stuff,
etc. I'd lose a few functions; I occassionally use VNC on the photoframe pc to
display a recipe or twitch stream. I can do the recipe on my phone and put the
twitch stream on my TV and turn it so I can see it from the kitchen.

------
hardwaresofton
Well it looks like Amazon just did the market research for anyone that's
wanted to make an open source version of this.

Like these guys have:
[http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

I've had this idea sitting in the back of my brain for years, worked up some
simple prototypes (just using computer's mic), the technology is already there
and surprisingly simple (made simple for the layman by brilliant people)...

~~~
jscheel
I've been working on a personal webapp using cmusphinx for trigger-word
detection, google for the rest of the voice recognition, wit.ai for the NLP,
and google again for the voice output. Works pretty well, but would probably
give most of the privacy-wary folks here a heart attack. Planning on hooking
it up to a monitor mounted in a picture frame on our wall.

~~~
hardwaresofton
That sounds pretty awesome -- yeah, once you include some 3rd party that isn't
locally hosted, privacy is pretty much out the window....

But, privacy might be irreversibly going the way of dinosaurs in the first
place...

------
hosh
I had been following the AI research of the Big Four ... but I did not see
this one coming. That's pretty sneaky :-)

At this point, the technologies related to personal AIs seem to be
fragmenting, similarly to when the sewing machines were being developed back
in the mid-1850s. I will be interesting if it follows it through to the
endgame, when patent owners come together into a patent pool and create a
personal AI device that will change many things.

------
chrisBob
My favorite connected device is still an old iPad2 that I have connected to my
TV. The advantages are:

1) The iPad has much better app support than most other TV connected devices.
I can watch shows from Amazon, Hulu, HGTV, HBO, ... even the olympics have
been well supported. The only issue I have is that there is no remote, and I
don't see a good path to adding one.

2) I am a little less worried about privacy issues with it. Apple already has
all of my emails, so the thought of them potentially listening to my living
room with a connected device that has been well researched over the last few
years isn't too big a concern.

3) The cost is low. For an older device that I no longer carry I would call it
free. If you don't have a hand-me-down iPad to connect to the TV then the
start at $300 new including an HDMI adapter, and you can find a used one much
cheaper.

4) It is also a perfectly functional tablet incase you want to carry it around
and look at the internet or something. It is old enough that new games are an
issue, but it is fine otherwise.

5) It is already connected to the iCloud account with my shopping list, etc on
it, so it can actually add things to a list or calendar that I use.

6) "Hey Siri", works well for me, and is enough to play the occasional song,
or check wikipedia facts if I need one.

7) My dog is named Alexa, not Siri, so no conflict there.

Then again, other than the occasional electronic product I am pretty frugal. I
know I am not a good target market for anything, so Amazon shouldn't try too
hard to sell me on this. I think my old iPad is already working well as a
better version of both the Fire TV and Echo.

~~~
cheeze
> The only issue I have is that there is no remote, and I don't see a good
> path to adding one.

And that is the nail in the coffin for _tons_ of users. If I have a device
connected to my TV, and have to get up to open an app, play, pause, etc. that
is a huge problem.

My favorite connected device is a cheap box running windows. I can watch shows
from Amazon, Hulu, HGTV, HBO, olympics. It has two remotes (media remote and a
wireless kb/mouse combo), I can beam youtube videos to it from my phone, watch
any flash based video players, and can use the "full" internet easily. The
only thing it's missing is some sort of siri/cortana/echo functionality,
although I'm guessing that I could add it with some work.

------
Igglyboo
Please have an open API, I can think of a ton of things I would love to use
this for.

~~~
calebm
Yes, it MUST have an open API!

"Alexa, dim the lights."

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd imagine you could hack it in if it's not present - "Alexa open webpage
dim.lights.kitchen.home" and have your home server use the request hit to tell
the lights to go off. Of course an open API would be far nicer.

------
zobzu
I call it the "must do something" syndrome. Vps and managers at some point
just "do stuff" to justify being employed and salary. So that means pooping
out new products, doesnt matter if its great as long as it sounds like theres
a remote chance for it to work.

This is generally where the CEO has to come in and say "no more" \- but thats
not always that easy. Politics, etc.

------
gnufied
I am an Indian who speaks with slight accent(not real thick, but admittedly
there is some) and I am yet to use a voice recognition service that works for
me.

Frankly I despair at future of Voice recognition based services which target a
very narrow demography. You would hope things would improve with time, but
nope. Does anyone else who isn't a native English speaker has seen this
problem?

~~~
Nexxxeh
I'm a native English speaker. I'm British. I have minimal regional accent (to
the point where people find it difficult to pinpoint where in the UK I'm
from.) I'm not far off RP and I'm still yet to find a service that gives me
high accuracy.

~~~
LLWM
Maybe you should learn to speak in an american accent.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8)

------
trevor-e
Why does Amazon think people want these products? If I want to search stuff
like that I would use my smartphone that is always with me. If I want to
search with my voice, then I'll use the voice search found on my smartphone.
Why would someone want a device that is always actively listening? Why would I
pay 200$ for something that my smartphone already does?

~~~
cfeduke
This is in the same vein as the question "why would I want a web browser on my
phone? Why wouldn't I just use the web browser on my desktop computer?"

As to why you'd want a device that is listening - and does something when its
triggered - is that you can arbitrarily activate it with your voice. For
example, if your hands are full, or dirty, because maybe you're cooking or
changing the oil in your car, or cataloging the stuff you have stored in your
garage.

It doesn't take too much imagination to see why Amazon would invest in
creating such a product.

~~~
trevor-e
But will those use cases be frequent enough to make someone want this?
Probably not. Don't be surprised when this turns out to be the next Fire
Phone.

~~~
lsaferite
I'm sure a few people thought the same about smart phones.

------
orky56
This is the first time I'm seeing a strong foray into the home where
information technology becomes usable in a communal environment. Other
products from Kickstarter [1][2] have been picking away at this but not with
the elegance or backing from a big player like Amazon. Privacy issues aside I
think this is where most people want to see technology moving toward. It's
aspirational and aligns incentives among developers, technologists, and
futurists. Although this may not be perfect the first time around, I am happy
we are moving in this direction.

[1] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keecker/keecker-the-
wor...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/keecker/keecker-the-worlds-first-
homepod) [2] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/athom/homey-the-
living-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/athom/homey-the-living-room-
talk-to-your-home)

------
addousas
Looks similar to this
[http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

~~~
darkstar999
Interesting. Thanks for the link.

------
joezydeco
So the product is named "Echo" but you ask it questions by calling it "Alexa"?
That's just odd.

~~~
alphadevx
Strange choice for a wake-up word, given that it's a person's name.

~~~
treeform
I had to read that line several times to make sure I was not missing some
thing.

~~~
alphadevx
Sorry, I should have made my sentence clearer: as in you have a
wife/daughter/friend/girlfriend in the room who happens to be called Alexa,
along with this new Amazon device. Hilarity ensues ;-)

~~~
treeform
I mean their sentence on Echo's page. I totally got what you where saying.

------
api
A microphone that uploads all my ambient sound and speech to the cloud. No
thank you, ever, under any circumstances.

------
jonaphin
I personally just marvel at the implications of opening up an API for it.
Imagine playing Youtube workout playlists, or powering up other devices
through it, it could certainly be the voice hub of the house. It's one giant
step towards the enablement of the "internet of things" for the household.

------
alphadevx
Wow. What an amazing vector for snooping.

------
Igglyboo
This could be really sweet if they have a solid API/SDK.

------
Tepix
Amazon Echo reminds me that I'd really like a physical on/off switch for the
microphone[ _] on my next mobile phone. I doubt that there will be one
available that has such a switch, however. \-- [_ ] Switches for the camera,
GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and GSM would also be great

------
merryandrew
After just now hearing about Amazon Echo, I positively, absolutely cannot be
the only person who immediately thought of this show:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Humans](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Humans)

Also known as Äkta människor

------
spydum
This all reminds me of "AutoPC" from Clarion in the late 90's[1]. A friend of
mine had it in his truck, it truly was amazing at the time -- he could make
phone calls, play music, render maps on his display, you name it, all hands
free on a tiny little SH-3 processor running windows CE (yes, remember that?!)
under his seat.

It's sad it really hasn't progressed very far -- Essentially, we've moved on
to cloud-hosted audio analytics to handle better speech recognition, but the
usage of the thing really hasn't changed.

[1]: [http://news.cnet.com/Clarion-to-build-AutoPC-using-MS-
softwa...](http://news.cnet.com/Clarion-to-build-AutoPC-using-MS-
software/2100-1001_3-206922.html)

~~~
72deluxe
That sounds a really interesting device, thanks. I too have noticed that voice
recognition has been shifted "to the cloud" despite the improvement in local
processing power; even 15 year old Nokias had voice recognition of some sort
(BLUETOOOOTH you would shout), and old single-core PCs had Dragon Naturally
Speaking working on them; I am sure modern devices have more processing power
(and storage).

------
toblender
At long last, life can be like Star Trek. I'm going to name it 'Computer'.

------
egsec
At a macro vantage point, this is cool and great. On a micro-economic
standpoint I don't need the convenience and I don't want the privacy risk. I
would rather download all of wikipedia weekly and pay $500 for the voice
recognition software under my control. I think there is some great first world
problem potential, but it auto updates and I have little control. If something
went screwy on Windows, people would notice it very quickly - there are suits
in corporations watching and reviewing these things. On consumer grade
electronics only enthusiasts and security researchers would know if something
went funny.

------
TheSoftwareGuy
God damnit, why is the wake word "Alexa"? my girlfriends name is alexa.

~~~
acangiano
The solution is simple and obvious. You need a new girlfriend. (Hint: You can
actually change the wake word to whatever you like.)

~~~
TheSoftwareGuy
You can? Cool, that fixes everything. But still, I feel like its pretty
annoying that they made it the default, simply because it will be annoying for
so many people.

------
jonursenbach
The production of this video reminds me a lot of the one for Microsoft
Songsmith.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oGFogwcx-E)

~~~
degenerate
I believe that was the cheesiest video I've seen in years.

~~~
krazydad
"Alexa, how many porn videos has Billy watched this month?"

------
fmueller
It's interesting that so few people think this device is just bullshit and
will annoy you, your family and your guests after like 5 minutes.

Even after watching the video for 10 seconds I cannot hear the word Alexa
anymore.

------
mike-cardwell
If people buy and use this, I imagine a future version will work hard to
detect if your questions are being directed at it without you having to prefix
the request with a keyword like "Alexa".

E.g. If you ask a question and it doesn't hear anybody else respond within a
certain amount of time. Or it could use additional sensors to detect if you're
alone when you say something out loud, and whether or not you're shouting to
somebody else in another room. It wont be perfect obviously and will sometimes
look stuff up when it wasn't supposed to.

------
colinramsay
Well hang on - doesn't my iPhone already do all this? And presumably so does
the Android equivalent? I appreciate this will have much better microphone
technology but it still seems a little redundant.

~~~
jchendy
A couple differentiators: -The speaker in Echo is presumably much better -The
microphone in Echo is presumably much better -On most Android phones (I don't
know about iPhone), you have to wake the phone up before you can talk to it

~~~
ccozan
Well, unless you own a Moto X. The 2014 version lets you also choose a custom
hotword.

------
dkrich
This just feels like something that would have been on display at Radio Shack,
circa 1993.

Then, at $199, I might have bitten. Today, doesn't seem interesting,
considering I can use a smart phone for any of this.

------
addousas
This is weird but this looks strikingly similar to this
[http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

------
hartzler
The privacy problem is much deeper than this device. The reason we have to
scream privacy for every new product is that the cloud services providing the
functionality for all these devices have been shown over and over to disregard
and actively abuse our privacy. Until our networks and ISPs and cloud data
companies support anonymous encrypted data and services, we simply cannot
trust these types of devices.

------
possibilistic
These speech search endpoints should have open APIs so that we can use our own
hardware and software. I want to guarantee that whatever device I might
ultimately use for such a service isn't openly listening. That would also
enable usage of whichever search provider you prefer without needing new
vendor-specific hardware. But the first of these benefits is by and large the
most important of the two.

------
fomb
With the ability to add a remote mic and speaker setup so I can hide the unit,
along with a trigger word of "Computer" this could be awesome.

~~~
goshx
or "Jarvis"

------
filereaper
'Alexa' as a trigger word...

I'd be curious how it responds if 'Alexa' is contained in the actual music its
playing, this immedieatly came to mind:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Downeaster_Alexa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Downeaster_Alexa)

I'm not an expert in voice recognition, this might just be a silly thing that
has been long addressed...

~~~
lsaferite
More than likely the noise cancelling is also cancelling out the music it's
playing, so I think it wouldn't matter.

Several years ago I was playing with a USB speakerphone module from Yamaha
that had hardware noise cancelling. It was so good that even with loud music
playing via the device the party on the other end only heard my voice and it
was crystal clear. It was cancelling out the music totally.

------
Glyptodon
I wonder if it includes the option to change the 'Alexa' keyword to 'Computer'
so you can pretend you're on Star Trek.

~~~
72deluxe
If it is as intelligent as "computer" on Star Trek (which didn't get confused
when you finished giving it commands yet would struggle with some commands
"SPECIFY PARAMETERS"), then it'll be great!

I just hope its EPS conduits don't keep exploding all the time like on TNG. Or
the bio-gel packs don't get infected like Voyager..... OK a bit sad I know

------
csarva
FWIW, you can experience some of this right now. Connect a plugged-in iPhone
to a bluetooth speaker and enable "Hey Siri." I did this the other day and
it's pretty neat. Of course in my case, my phone was across the room and once
I started playing some music I lost control over it... Seems echo fixes that
problem though I'd be curious to see how well that works.

------
lectrick
Every single example used in their advertising, verbatim, works on Siri (and
presumably google phones) which is already in my pocket.

~~~
WesleyJohnson
Verbatim? I just tried two off the top of my head. "Hey Siri, how do you spell
cantaloupe?" and "Hey Siri, how tall is mount everest?" The replies were "The
answer is cantaloupe" with an on-screen definition and "I've found an article
on Wikipedia about that. Shall I read it?" In neither case were the answers
succinct and on point as in the Echo ad.

Of course, that assume it will actually work as advertise. Also, unless I'm
mistaken, "Hey Siri" requires your phone be plugged in. My phone is never
plugged in unless I'm turning in for the night. I realize Echo has to be
plugged in as well, but that is it's natural state, having my iPhone plugged
in is not.

~~~
crocowhile
Both those questions work on ok google btw

------
decisiveness
The problem with voice recognition software that doesn't require a physical
action like pressing a button (Siri) is that they do a terrible job at
distinguishing between when your actually trying to talk to it and when you or
audio/video say(s) something in conversation to someone else/playback that
might sound like the command keyword.

------
Dofuss
We're proud to announce "Echo," developed by Amazon, and exploited by the NSA.

We're proud to announce "Echo," a Siri for your home.

lol

------
bimr
I watched the commercial and was immediately reminded of the Led Zeppelin
album cover for Presence. Time for Jimmy Page to lawyer up.
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Led_Zeppelin_-...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f3/Led_Zeppelin_-
_Presence.jpg)

------
pessimizer
It's Anna Bocci, the hipster mom in commercials.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMkeVeslg-w](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMkeVeslg-w)
[http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7IEc/pepsi-next-baby-
tricks](http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7IEc/pepsi-next-baby-tricks)

------
jonny_eh
Looks similar to the Ubi: [http://www.theubi.com/](http://www.theubi.com/)

------
hicolour
World becomes crazy... #Her_movie
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzV6mXIOVl4)
… … is now a reality as an #echo
[http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo](http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo)

------
aarkay
This is awesome. I have a MotoX with always on listening, but I only use that
aspect of it at home. Since the phone is optimized for close proximity
listening it often doesn't work when its slightly far away. If the voice
recognition works as well as they say it will, then this could be really
useful.

------
shittyanalogy
You're sitting around talking to a friend, you ask some small questions like,
"is it supposed to rain tomorrow?" or "what was the name of that guy in that
movie with the thing?" and your technology responds before your friend can.
Especially if your friend is named Alexa.

------
ParvusPonte
I'd love one! Rooted, acting as a high quality wifi microphone . If TTS is
handled locally (doubtful) I'd love to tap into that as well, it sounds very
nice.

This might be the new Kinect, a device least used for what it was originally
intended. Fingers crossed, we might be getting a great microphone!

------
mrinterweb
Couldn't a similar technology be developed for any bluetooth speaker paired to
a phone? Most bluetooth speakers also have a microphone, so software running
on the phone could listen for a wakeup word (a la "Ok Google"). Then just tie
into siri or Google search?

------
72deluxe
"Alexa, open pod bay doors"

------
gtirloni
_Echo can hear you ask a question even while it 's playing music_

I usually have trouble with the Kinect 2's microphone while I'm playing music
or watching TV. It's nice that Amazon is concerned about this. Does anyone
know how many microphones the Kinect has?

~~~
rtkwe
Kinect 2 has 4 downward facing microphones:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20683610/recording-
with-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20683610/recording-with-
specific-kinect-microphones)

The Echo probably has an advantage in placement as well as number, having them
pointed up seems better than pointing down.

------
dmamills
Didn't Amazon preview a product like this a few months ago, except that it was
portable?

------
zanek

       Amazon bought True Knowledge which became Evi (still available on iOs,etc). Now they made a speaker that allows you to access Evi which is all this is.
       Privacy issues aside, this is just a dumb SIRI clone that is always listening.

------
seanp2k2
I'm kind of disappointed that they're not using neodymium magnets on the
drivers for this, but I guess, given that it doesn't have an internal battery,
the heavier / less-efficient drivers don't really hurt it.

------
dave1619
Does anybody know what Amazon Echo will be using as their search engine -
Google, Bing? Or is Amazon developing their own search/knowledge engine? If
so, is this just the beginning of Amazon trying to encroach on Google Search?

~~~
lsaferite
I would guess it's A9 [http://a9.com/whatwedo/](http://a9.com/whatwedo/)

------
pkulak
This is a great idea. I love Google now, but the only time I'll use it at
home. Any other place and I feel like way too much of a tool.

It remains to be seen, however, if Amazon really has caught up to Google in
one single step.

------
n8m
Very interesting device. I just fear that they will lock it down' like it's
the 90's and would come with no open API. And then of course the security
stuff... but that's everywhere now ...

------
charlie_vill
... request an invitation? Please, who do they think they are, Google? Or
maybe expecting super long lines at their upcoming retail stores in NY?

Come on Amazon, do yourself a favour and come up with things that matter.

~~~
IvyMike
Maybe if they had used invitations to gauge market interest they wouldn't have
a quarter million unsold fire phones sitting in a warehouse.

[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/24/amazon-
uns...](http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/24/amazon-unsold-fire-
phones)

------
bitsoda
Hopefully it'll let you program your word trigger keyword -- 'Alexa' is one
syllable too many IMO. Also, somebody out there is bound to have a crazy ex-
girlfriend by the same name :]

------
melvinmt
Seems like the movie Her is not as far in the future as we may think...

------
visarga
Everyone talks about privacy. My biggest problem is that even with those 5 or
10 functions, Alexa is still pretty much useless.

Suddenly needing to know the height of Everest while crossing the room? Yeah,
that happens so much.

No, it's just that they don't have the slightest idea how to make it be useful
because it only works on pattern questions like "What is the height of X ?" or
"Put Y on the grocery list".

I am sure the list of allowed phrase templates is pretty limited. That's what
disappoints me about Alexa, Siri, Google voice and other assistants.

Still waiting for HAL-9000 with its amazing conversation skills.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8N72t7aScY)

~~~
portlander12345
I would enjoy the hands-free unit conversions and timers when cooking.

------
cowabunga
Another spy in the house listening to you like the telescreen in 1984.

------
pbhjpbhj
Alexa: "You've used the word 'love' 3 times today, shouldn't I not order you
no cases of champagne? Respond 'order this' or 'order this later'."

[...]

Alexa: "The Zambezi river is over 2500km long. If you want to cancel the
booking I've made for you for a luxury all expenses paid family trip to the
Zambezi then recite your 35 digit lock code now."

Alexa: "You gave me 5 7-digit bar codes, these items are now on your shopping
list. Say anything to confirm this purchase."

Alexa: "I'm sorry could you repeat that?"

Alexa: "I'm sorry did you say 'I'm a booger eater'?"

Alexa: "I'm waiting for your response, please speak loudly and clearly."

[...]

------
zan2434
It's unfortunate it doesn't have a battery. For this price point it would have
made a great bluetooth speaker with some extra intelligent assistant
functionality.

------
daemonk
There might be some interest from the DIY people to hack the
hardware/software. But I am not sure if there will be interest from general
consumers for this product.

------
hackmeister
It would be nice if this thing could read eBooks or at least play Audiobooks
from Amazon. If they add this feature (and remove some of the creepy stuff),
i'm sold.

------
jedisct1
"hears you from across the room - connected to the cloud"

No, thanks.

------
stephenmm
I have my old CD collection ripped to .wav and served up via DLNA device. It
would be nice if Echo worked with DLNA devices so I did not have to redo all
this work.

------
WD-42
Brings to mind HAL9000

------
znowi
Amazon Echo surveillance program. Always on. For only $199.

------
tomelders
Give us some super strong privacy legislation that I can trust and believe in,
and I'd buy this in a flash.

But as it stands today, this is a dangerous and creepy product.

------
mentos
Everyone is freaking out about the privacy concerns but I'm pretty sure we've
been typing these search queries into google for the past 10 years?

------
chatman
We don't need another Siri / Cortana sitting in our room. $199 for this seems
like a waste when all of this is available on our smartphones.

------
bkmn
I just had to... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsE-
fWYhLQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsE-fWYhLQQ)

------
anomaly47
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1yIZycIQAASfNS.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1yIZycIQAASfNS.png)

------
badusername
That's a great product - neat packaging of a technology that's mature enough
for this use. That was a horribly awkward video as well.

------
thrillgore
Oh man. Just what I needed. A microphone in my house.

------
justcommenting
eerily reminescent of the 'high frequency generator receiver' \-- especially
since amazon is calling this the echo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cv0KsTTfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6cv0KsTTfY)

welcome to the totalitarian future, where people voluntarily put hot
microphones into their homes to add gelato to their shopping lists.

------
andrewstuart2
[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-04-24](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-04-24)

------
supercanuck
Nice, but the added "convenience" isn't worth the notion that everything in my
house is being recorded and stored somewhere.

------
krautsourced
Will version 2.0 come with a camera and silent quadcopter, so it can watch you
and quietly hover slightly out of your view? Forever?

------
nathanathan
I would like to know if the question answering system is all in house tech or
if Amazon is using 3rd party services like Watson.

------
skizm
Amazon can now hear everything you say and target ads to your conversations.
I'm surprised Google didn't release this.

------
kin
My favorite feature is getting to pick my one wake word. Cortana, Dinklebot,
Jarvis, GLaDOS. Now if I could pick the voice...

------
cooperpellaton
Is there any distinct benefit which this offers over Google Now other than the
fact that it gives instant access to Amazon?

------
RRRA
Maybe they should have added a pixelated surface you could populate with
tickers and such to try and justify this price?

------
ericcumbee
It will be interesting to see if it has any easter eggs like Siri and Google
Now. "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"

------
stcredzero
I wonder how much attention has been given to the needs of tech-savvy people
with aging tech-challenged parents?

------
JimA
I hear the early beta testers kept getting sex tips... It was even worse when
their partner was named Alexa.

------
ilaksh
Can someone disassemble and reverse engineer/monitor one to try to verify that
its not spying on us?

------
chenster
So it's like a dedicated Google Now device? For $99 as prime member, I guess I
can give it try.

------
marchdown
Now, replace "Alexa" with "Hey Siri" and you don't need another device.

------
crorella
It would be asome if you were able to connect this to sensors and actuators
around your home :D

------
meggar
Would this be able to play Billy Joel's "Downeaster Alexa" without
interruption?

------
lolamazon
I don't need a device just to play music and ask it questions. I already own a
computer!

------
handimon
semi interesting. Now if this becomes part of a home ecosystem then it could
significantly increase its value. Such as if i can talk to it and then my
amazon drone goes and gets me some food, or even gets amazon fresh to bring me
groceries.

------
taozhuo
Amazon Echo + Firefly + Kiva + AWS = Personal Robot, I'm hoping to see it next
year.

------
theklub
Yeah, nope won't buy it. Don't need Amazon analyzing my happens for profit.

------
alexgrist
I just don't see the point when we already have devices like this in our
pockets.

------
dorafmon
I bet the backend service is developed by the Evi Technologies group in
Cambirdge.

------
gfunk911
Hoping this can be hacked, would love to use it for voice control of my
choice.

------
carlchenet
Ugly design imo, want to reproduce a cheaper version of the macpro?

------
gordon_freeman
what happens if someone in family is named 'Alexa'?

~~~
darkstar999
From the video: "It only hears you when you use the wake word we chose" (~22
seconds in)

So it sounds like you can set it to whatever you want.

------
q2
Google is in real trouble if it really works as advertised.

------
webwanderings
Is it echo or is it Alexa? Just decide and be done with it.

------
undrwatr
My wake word is going to be 'bezos'

~~~
colinbartlett
"Bezos, buy me toilet paper."

------
coldtea
What a horrible video and family.

------
reddog
Let he who is without a mobile phone in their pocket and a Facebook account
cast the first stone.

------
brokentone
Warrantless echo tapping?

------
cryptoz
We've now got Microsoft (XBox One), Amazon (Echo), Google/Motorola (Moto X)
and maybe others who want to place some kind of "always-on" microphone in our
houses. They all say the same thing, sure - that the microphone won't be
listening to your conversations, that it won't be sending the data to any
other servers, etc. Do we believe them? And will they change those policies in
the future? Do they even have real control over the devices, or will they be
hacked?

1984 was such an underestimation of the potential power of a surveillance
society.

~~~
jdost
To be fair, the portable devices are not yet monitoring all conversations due
to battery life constraints. If it were a wall powered device, I would be very
wary of it, but until then it seems highly unlikely it can achieve that
behavior and not drain the battery in a noticeable way.

~~~
travem
Well two of the three mentioned (XBox One & Amazon Echo) are wall powered
devices so I am not sure of the point you are making?

------
lcfcjs
Since my 2-year-old's name is Alex, I don't think "Alexa" is going to work out
in our household :/

------
kingmanaz
It would be nice if Amazon offered a version in beige.

------
beauzero
Absolutely...meh. No interest.

------
kvnlnt
my grandmother...what big technology you have...all the better to monitor you
and make you dumber my dear.

------
ninv
I like it, it just that tower, it comes with, is useless.

------
jgoewert
I want one of these, but then the NSA may be listening to me. Plus, I don't
have electricity. It started when I thought that the NSA had bugged my
computer, so I got rid of my computer. Later on, I knew those shifty guys
would bug my house, so I sold my house and moved to the forest. But in the
forest, I knew they trained the squirrels to report in on my status to them.

Jokes on them, I have the squirrels trained as double agents and send them to
do things like type in HN comment posts via a public library computer.

~~~
yclept
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-
de...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/07/the-details-
about-the-cias-deal-with-amazon/374632/)

