Would've been newsworthy if it wasn't the case
this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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Yeah, that's kinda the point. They literally tell you that your voice interactions are used to improve the service.
I gItz NufIN Ti HIIIDE
I will be the last person to not have a smart home. There will be a banner over the doorway: "Welcome to Stupid House".
There will be a small cover charge.
You can have a privacy-first smart home. I have. I run Home Assistant in a docker container. No external services/plugins. My smart doorbell streams to my local nvr. If my internet is down, everything keeps working. And it's not even that hard anymore. It's become a lot easier over the last 2-3 years. Still not for non-techie users, but a lot better.
That sounds pretty reasonable.
Edit: Still kind of want to call my place "Stupid House" for myriad other reasons
I'm not tech illiterate by any means, and everything after "home assistant" in that post is Greek to me
Docker is a way to run containers. Basically lightweight virtual servers. That makes it easy to run multiple servers on one machine. An NVR is a network video recorder. It's like a video security system like they use in stores where all cameras are viewed and recorded in a single place. I assume you know what a doorbell is 😄
Have any resources to get started with that? Been looking into security systems but don't fully trust nest/ring/simplisafe etc
Just start with a local Home Assistant on. Raspberry Pi and go from there: https://www.home-assistant.io/installation/
Teach me your ways please! Setting up a Home Assistant seems like such a daunting task. I'm stalling converting my devices into it. Any tips for a (home assistant) beginner?
I just followed the steps on their site. Containers give me cancer, so I did a real install on my home server.
Caveat: I am a professional software engineer (but I didn't really have to hack anything)
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I'm with you. I hate how they expect me to control everything from my phone or with voice commands. I'm fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.
There's a middle ground as well. I refuse to put Alexa or OK Google or whatever on any of my stuff, but I run home-assistant with zigbee smart devices. My entire setup runs completely cut off from the internet. I could in theory even air gap it, although that's a little overkill. It's a "smart" house, but one I'm 100% in control of.
Is that self hosted? I'd just about fuck with a FOSS self hosted smart home setup, but even then I could barely be arsed
Yes. You can host it on a pi if you want
That's badass. I've got one lying around actually.
Be careful running it in a Pi because it's a little heavy for that depending on how you configure it. A Pi model 4 is probably OK, but you wouldn't want to run it on a model 3 or something even older, and you're going to want to use one with at least 4GB of RAM.
Ah shit, the raspberry I've got is old as hell. Thanks for the heads up.
It will probably run even in a Pi Model 1, it's just going to be a bit slow to interact with, and you're not going to be able to do anything more complicated like enable the voice support (which you probably don't want anyway, because I think it's dependent on internet access for that, and then we're back to the same problem as Alexa, although I don't use it myself so I can't say for sure).
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I'm using z-wave stuff but similar setup. Home Assistant does reach out to the cloud for some things like weather forecast and Google calendar but otherwise it will operate 100% without internet if needed. I also have cameras that while they aren't air-gappend they are blocked from Internet access and can only talk to the NVR.
The last thing I want is to talk to a computer. Buttons are fine. The roboto phone customer service is bad enough.
I’m fine walking to a light switch or walking to the thermostat.
When the hallway light was left on again it's really damn nice to simply say "Turn Off Hallway Light" while staying under my nice warm covers. It's also pretty swank to have the garage lights turn on when the garage door opens then turn themselves back off 5 minutes after the garage door closes. Someone left their closet light on? No problemo, my automation catches that and shuts it off.
Window coverings like blinds and drapes? Yeah, those are opening and closing automatically based on the position of the sun, even when I'm not home to do it. Did it rain while I was at work? Automation keeps my sprinklers from running tonight.
All of that is being done by Home Assistant and absolutely no Internet is required to make it work.
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When skynet comes online, I'll die quickly, being mopped to death. You'll have to struggle in the post apocalyptic hellscape where humans fight robots with A-10s for some reason.
haven't we all known this since product launch ?
I think most people, me included, underestimate the scale of the operation. When you hear "company will use private data to do X", you imagine what a reasonable person would do, like random sample a few conversations here and there. In reality they record everything permanently over months and years, far beyond what would be necessary to run the service.
It's kind of crazy how we get this level of surveillance while still having software that will lose your data if you don't hit Save often enough.
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not sure how much they’ll learn from me screaming “you dumb bitch” at it
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Noooo reaaally?
The new Amazon AI is going to be remarkably foul-mouthed. Every time it screws up (and it screws up a lot) I have to curse at it to make it shut up so it can hear the command again.
I brings me joy when I tell her "Alexa, shut up you dumb bitch" and then she responds with that sad minor tone dejected sound.
So who thinks this conversation here on lemmy isn’t being used to train an AI? Maybe not right now but later?
Sure the relatively small size of lemmy means it might not be scooped up and trained on. But the point still stands. All that is publicly online is food for the big-corp AI builders. And while Alexa invading your home privacy is obviously a shitty thing, I’m not sure we’ve all thought through the new relationship between us, the internet and the big AIs.
Well I know I have no expectation of privacy here, but I'd rather open source LLMs train on my words along with proprietary ones, than some company hoarding information and selling it to each other.
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We always knew that. What they don't tell you is your phone is also secretly listening. "Ok Google" <- turn that thing off too
They are listening to you even when you're not talking to alexa, did you know that
Obviously. How else would it hear you say, "Alexa?"
I'd love a citation on this, outside of wakeword usage (a local device waiting for "Alexa* to begin recording).
Source: their ass.
Alexa devices use an onboard DSP to detect the wakeword and maintain a rolling audio buffer. On a positive match, the DSP wakes the main CPU which combines the saved buffer and any following speech and uploads it to the cloud where Alexa lives so she can try to figure out what you meant.
No audio is uploaded without being triggered by a wakeword. Also, the "mute" button physically cuts power to the mic, and the indicator LED is hardwired to the power rail as a failsafe indicator.
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And none of it has paid off because Alexa is still super trash
I love being able to dictate a grocery list but god damn is she stupid.
Good luck asking for cream cheese and chive crackers without ending up with cream cheese as one item and chive crackers as another. Or worse peanut butter and honey crackers as peanut butter and then honey crackers
"chive crackers with cream cheese"
"honey crackers with peanut butter"
?
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An always on microphone connected to a company that is mostly known to exploit their customers and employees! Say it ain't so!
Yeah, I realized these things are terrible about a year ago. So, I hacked them into computer speakers using some cheap amps and a 12 volt power supply.
It’ll be really good at telling people to shut the fuck up if it’s using my data for training.
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