This is what I don't get. I used to play with Microsoft's SpeechAPI back in 2007 and it was pretty decent at real-time speech recognition - almost perfect, if you limited your program to a pre-defined command grammar. It was all done completely off-line, real-time on a machine that had much less processing power than your average smartphone of today. I don't see anything inherent in speech recognition that would require so much processing power that the phone can't handle it real-time. The only reason I see is that continuous moving of everything to cloud because it's easier to capture revenue stream that way.

Unfortunately, even YCombinator, just like a vast majority of tech companies, are guilty of supporting this notion. There is no respect or regard for privacy and ownership of your person. if it escapes your flesh and bones, it is deemed fair game to harvest by anyone. You and your actions and your speech and your image and your location are a commodity to be optimized for profit. Say moo, mothertrucker.

EDIT: I'm also one of those guys who's like "no I'm not signing up to X service because they don't need more data about me" but I get the double-edged sword and how more of the right data makes certain decisions easier.

I don't think it's trivial, but I hope to see some regulations coming in the way the data are collected and stored.

Of course command grammars are recognized on the device, otherwise you wouldn't be able to turn your TV on using a command or use basic functions in a speedy manner.

And, of course they send audio data to a server -- because your TV does not have a complete language model for up to date web search or even tv guide installed a priori. i.e. good reasons that have nothing to do with "capturing revenue stream".

Sigh...

'TV Install Samsung Super Social Awesome App, Yes, Yes Yes'

The issue is not about the intent of the manufacturer. Noble intent or not, the story is about what is enabled by this device. Any time you rely on noble intent of a 3rd party you are putting a lot of trust in them. Especially when those third parties can monetize your data without you ever knowing about it.

Technology provides the tools for mass surveilance and globally undermining trust, but it also provides tools for removing the need for trust, and apparently this smart TV adopts a "just trust us" approach.

Among other things, running the radios all the time to send audio to the cloud would be a battery-killer.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17616994/offline-speech-r...

Sadly, it appears that Google voice recognition follows yuor network connection, so you can't keep it in offline-recognition mode unless you turn off networking when talking.

More likely: There is a button on the remote to make users believe they have the ability to disable voice data relay to someone's remote servers.

What are the chances such TVs will have network controlled power-up capability? You only think you turned it off.

It's funny that people seem to be accepting always-on GSM network connectivity of the electronics in control of their cars, but oh my god, not the TV!

The TV can't drive you at 100MPH into a palm tree on remote command.

Just to be clear, I think 'smart TVs with network connected microphones' is a completely insane idea. Another on a long list of hanging offenses.

Dude. I stare at my TV. If it stares back, that's scary! And if it's listening to me!?!? All the time?

The messed up part is that ALL of our devices will soon be watching and listening to us. Our thermostats, our smoke detectors, our TVs, our phones ... I just installed a fancy internet connected lock on my door. In fact, I installed a fancy electronic toilet seat too... oh well.

Shit, I'm not. OnStar freaks me the fuck out; one of many reasons I'll never buy a GM car.

Voice recognition for it isn't always-on - I have to press a button on the remote. It's like siri, surely, in that whatever you say to it gets shunted off to a third party API that recognises words?