Alexa, play some Norwegian death metal

[beats me]

My parents got an Echo Dot for Christmas and I have to admit there’s something satisfying about speaking a music request into the air and it just does it. I’ve rarely “Hey Siri”d anything and even rarer that it actually works. Not to mention with all the Apple products I have I don’t know which Siri is expected to pull the task off.

This holiday season the Echo Dot was like the Live Lite of electronic gadget purchases. Order an electronic gadget from Amazon and they’ll just throw a Dot in for a few bucks extra. Mine should be arriving today bundled with a universal remote I ordered. The speaker is fairly weak but its good enough to make it my kitchen buddy.

The only bummer is it doesn’t work with any of Apple’s services directly which I would say is 60% Apple’s fault and 40% Amazon’s. They don’t like sharing platforms (read: eating into profits). The work around for your iTunes library is to sync it with Amazon music for $25 a year. I wonder if it will recognize your original music. For podcasts you have to access them through the TuneIn App. I’m sure Apple is probably working on their own late to the game product in this space but at this point I’d say Amazon pretty much nailed it for simplicity.

[TomKern]

You must have an awfully big kitchen to make not having to get up to change the music worth all the hassle.

[beats me]

I actually have a pretty small kitchen and the living room stereo isn’t that far, but usually I need to turn up the living room stereo pretty high to go over the kitchen noise and around the corner the kitchen is in. Plus I don't have to worry about gumming up any hardware with food fingers.

Last night I was in the kitchen making a salad and said “Alexa, play Bee Gees”, discoed out to making my salad for 2 minutes, and said “Alexa, stop” and returned to my room. A brief moment of entertainment. I also have it linked to my Hue lighting system so I can tell her to turn certain lights and rooms on and off.

Supposedly I can also get it to work with my Logitech Harmony remote but logistically it doesn’t make sense to yell commands to the dining room to control the TV in my bedroom.

[H20nly]

it doesn't creep you out thinking this thing is listening to every word, breathe, passed gas moment of your home life?

[beats me]

Not really. I’ve always had an unhealthy paranoia that what I say or do even in private could come back to kick me in the nuts. I try to be on my best behavior even when alone.

[TomKern]

Ah justified paranoia is so 2013. Nowadays we all just love and embrace Big Brother
Besides according to this: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016 ... -a-murder/
the only speech to be transferred to Amazons servers is the one after the key word.
So the hardware always listens, but doesn't send it for speech recognition to Amazon until it recognized someone saying "Alexa".

I still think most of that home automation and IoT fad is a waste of time and money and a security nightmare waiting to happen.

[beats me]

My parents are still trying to remember they need to start their request with “Alexa”, not end the request with it.

I don’t really have security concerns but am realizing we are getting a little too dependent on wifi. Other than the common uses I also have lightbulbs and even my entertainment center remote runs off wifi. My bulbs are still on hard switches but my entertainment center remote is a brick if the wifi is down. Also wifi isn’t 100% reliable. Lightbulbs and TV remotes buffering is not a good time.

[downfader]

Alexa, play digger digger..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5p0gqC ... e=youtu.be

Poor little guy

[beats me]

To barrow from a classic joke, how many different methods does beats me need to turn off his bedroom lightbulbs?

Old school wall switch
WIFI dimmer switch next to that
WIFI dimmer switch behind bed
Button on universal TV remote
Siri/iPhone/iPad/Mac/Apple Watch
Alexa/Amazon Echo

I’m fully prepared for a light on/off emergency. Unless there is a power outage.

[TomKern]

Alexa, light a candle!
Alexaaaaa!?

Huh ok. Siri! Light a candle!

Siri? Siriiiii? Please?!

Anyone?! HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And that's how the great human civilization ended kids....

[H20nly]

Siri would reply "Enlightened angle, i'm not sure what that means. Would you like me to search the web?"

IoT fad is a waste of time and money and a security nightmare waiting to happen.

fact

[lowshelf]

You know those stories where Alexa was buying stuff based on mishearing TV commercials?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -show.html

If you're on Tunecore or other distro selling tracks on Amazon, you could experiment with planting sort-of-subliminal "Alexa buy [artist] [trackname] mp3" messages in the track...

You might to want to hide it in a melee of cut-up vocal edits, keeping low/mid-freqs clear but camoflaged by high freq sounds. Or really mask it by substituting some phonemes with equivalent non-verbal noises. Effects from vocoding to time stretching could obfuscate the instruction to the listener, but still enable detection by the speech recognition algorithm. There you have it: Solving the internet age musician dilemma, by taking the customer out of the music purchasing equation. "I sold 64 copies of my new track today. All to the same buyer!"

[TomKern]

There you have it: Solving the internet age musician dilemma, by taking the customer out of the music purchasing equation. "I sold 64 copies of my new track today. All to the same buyer!"

I'm not so sure that is the musicians dilemma nowadays though (maybe 10 years ago). Todays dilemma is how to even get anyone to listen to your tracks for free.
It's not the payed track competing against the free tracks for money, it's the free track competing against all the other billions of free tracks out there for attention.
If you actually have a single person that keeps listening to one of your tracks 64 times nowadays, you are extremely lucky as is.

[downfader]

Gah..! Dont post Daily Mail links. They're a racist newspaper.

[lowshelf]

Nevermind.