Please don't post generational flamebait to HN. It starts generational flamewars on HN. Those are seriously lame and boring.
Sorry, I was being more descriptive about which generation wouldn't look deep into what the technology does and would instead jump to conclusions, ie "amazon knows everything you're saying", but I still realize that wasn't appropriate.
So you think only boomers will find this sort of thing off putting or creepy?
Re:Amazon’s plan for Alexa
by Enginerrrd on Monday November 11, 2019 @12:42AM
(#21502449)
Yeah, my experience seems to indicate boomers have no concept of digital privacy and it's largely only the younger and more technically literate that care.
Re:Amazon’s plan for Alexa
by acollins1331 on Monday November 11, 2019 @12:28AM
(#21502396)
No but they'd be the only people in a Facebook group complaining about it
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and/or flamebait to HN? You've been doing it a lot, and we've already had to warn you a lot. I just posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21502690, but there were several cases before that and plenty of other guidelines violations that I only just saw.
Re:Amazon’s plan for Alexa
by CaptainZapp on Monday November 11, 2019 @01:15AM
(#21502599)
This boomer doesn't do Facebook (or WhatsApp, or Instagram for that matter).
Then again I'm not likely to by a "smart"-speaker anytime soon.
Using a microphone, even with an offline ML model, to do things like play music at the right times and (almost certainly) show you ads or ask if you want to buy Amazon product is pretty off-putting. Google Maps and Siri Suggestions uses your phone's behavioral data and location history to figure out when you usually leave for work, but if you said "i need to get to work an hour earlier tomorrow" to someone, it would be weird if your phone or Alexa instantly said "do you want me to remind you to leave earlier?" I don't think it's as off-putting as the article makes it out to be, but it's still pretty creepy; we're almost certainly going to have boomer facebook groups boycotting Alexa for "always listening".