Amazon Echo - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/oc/echo <comment><USER2> 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.

<comment><USER3> 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.

<comment><USER4> 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."

<comment><USER3> 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.

<comment><USER5> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 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?

<comment><USER7> 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.

<comment><USER8> > 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?

<comment><USER7> 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.

<comment><USER9> > _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.

<comment><USER7> 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.

<comment><USER10> The system isn't designed to watch everyone.

It's designed to watch _anyone_.

<comment><USER11> The technical apparatus is designed to watch everyone.

The legal apparatus is designed to watch anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 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.

<comment><USER13> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

<comment><USER15> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 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.

<comment><USER7> 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.

<comment><USER17> 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.)

<comment><USER18> > (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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> 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 . . .

<comment><USER20> 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.

<comment><USER21> 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

<comment><USER22> Only at 90% ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 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.

<comment><USER24> Wouldn't consider it at $199, impulse buy at $99.

<comment><USER25> 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!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> 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.

<comment><USER22> 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.

<comment><USER26> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > 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.

<comment><USER28> 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.

<comment><USER29> > 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".

<comment><USER30> 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.

<comment><USER31> > _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

<comment><USER32> By that argument, those people won't buy the Amazon Echo either, so what's the problem?

<comment><USER33> > _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! :)

<comment><USER34> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> 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.

<comment><USER36> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _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.

<comment><USER38> I think that's exactly why they all have trigger words, "Ok Google", "Xbox", "Alexa". Makes it at least a little less likely.

<comment><USER39> Unless you happen to have a child named Alexa.....

<comment><USER38> 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.

<comment><USER39> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> 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.

<comment><USER41> 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.

<comment><USER40> What alternatives have you chosen that makes you feel more secure? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER41> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 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.

<comment><USER42> "Alexa, start my car"

"Alexa, close the garage door."

"Alexa, good bye."

<comment><USER20> But... But the first law of robotics?!..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 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. "

<comment><USER44> 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.

<comment><USER45> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Always on. Connected to the cloud. In a recent talk Bruce Schneier called our times the golden age of surveillance.

<comment><USER47> 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

<comment><USER48> You say that, but I think young people are concerned with privacy: see snapchat, etc

<comment><USER49> Snapchat is in no way private.

<comment><USER50> 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.

<comment><USER32> 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.

<comment><USER50> Why do you think they want it to be inconvenient to save messages?

 _Privacy._ They want those messages to be _private_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> 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.)

<comment><USER52> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> 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".

<comment><USER54> 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?

<comment><USER45> 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?

<comment><USER55> Tim Cook + Bono finger touch can be thrown in for good measure

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> 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?

<comment><USER56> 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...

<comment><USER57> 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)

<comment><USER45> I'd prefer Twiki from Buck Rogers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> 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.

<comment><USER24> The Xbox kinect already does this AND records video, millions of gamers own one as well.

<comment><USER59> At least the backlash and market demand made the Kinect optional.

<comment><USER24> Yea but I think that was more because of the added cost and not the privacy implications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> 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.)

<comment><USER61> Amazon (in)famously has lots of revenue, but weak profits.

<comment><USER62> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I hope it has a reasonable API. I want to program it to automatically laugh at my terrible jokes.

<comment><USER45> Haha what a great idea.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> 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.

<comment><USER65> > 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> 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.

<comment><USER54> In the video, the dad says something along the lines of "We just have to say the wake word we choose."

<comment><USER66> Unfortunately, the EULA specifies that by agreeing to its terms you are choosing to use Alexa as your wake word... ;-)

<comment> dj-wonk Cacao will be my wake word.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> 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.

<comment><USER45> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> 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?

</comment><comment><USER69> 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.

<comment><USER69> I stand corrected [http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> 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.

<comment><USER45> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> 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!!

</comment><comment><USER72> 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?

</comment><comment><USER73> 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.

<comment><USER74> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> An always-on microphone with an ip address?

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

</comment><comment><USER76> 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.

</comment><comment><USER77> 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?

<comment><USER78> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> 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)...

<comment><USER80> 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.

<comment><USER79> 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...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> 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.

</comment><comment><USER82> 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.

<comment><USER83> > 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Please have an open API, I can think of a ton of things I would love to use this for.

<comment><USER84> Yes, it MUST have an open API!

"Alexa, dim the lights."

<comment><USER85> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> 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.

</comment><comment><USER87> 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?

<comment><USER88> 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.

<comment><USER32> Maybe you should learn to speak in an american accent. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMS2VnDveP8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 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?

<comment><USER89> 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.

<comment> 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.

<comment><USER90> I'm sure a few people thought the same about smart phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> 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)

</comment><comment><USER92> Looks similar to this [http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

<comment><USER65> Interesting. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> So the product is named "Echo" but you ask it questions by calling it "Alexa"? That's just odd.

<comment><USER61> Strange choice for a wake-up word, given that it's a person's name.

<comment><USER94> I had to read that line several times to make sure I was not missing some thing.

<comment><USER61> 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 ;-)

<comment><USER94> I mean their sentence on Echo's page. I totally got what you where saying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> A microphone that uploads all my ambient sound and speech to the cloud. No thank you, ever, under any circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER96> 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.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wow. What an amazing vector for snooping.

</comment><comment><USER24> This could be really sweet if they have a solid API/SDK.

</comment><comment><USER97> 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

</comment><comment><USER98> 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

</comment><comment><USER99> 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)

<comment><USER45> 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).

</comment></comment><comment><USER100> At long last, life can be like Star Trek. I'm going to name it 'Computer'.

</comment><comment><USER101> 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.

</comment><comment><USER102> God damnit, why is the wake word "Alexa"? my girlfriends name is alexa.

<comment><USER103> The solution is simple and obvious. You need a new girlfriend. (Hint: You can actually change the wake word to whatever you like.)

<comment><USER102> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> 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)

<comment><USER105> I believe that was the cheesiest video I've seen in years.

<comment><USER106> "Alexa, how many porn videos has Billy watched this month?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> 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.

</comment><comment> 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.

</comment><comment><USER108> 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.

<comment><USER109> 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

<comment><USER110> Well, unless you own a Moto X. The 2014 version lets you also choose a custom hotword.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> 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.

</comment><comment><USER92> This is weird but this looks strikingly similar to this [http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

</comment><comment><USER112> 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.

</comment><comment><USER113> 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.

</comment><comment><USER114> 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.

<comment><USER115> or "Jarvis"

</comment></comment><comment><USER116> '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...

<comment><USER90> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER117> I wonder if it includes the option to change the 'Alexa' keyword to 'Computer' so you can pretend you're on Star Trek.

<comment><USER45> 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

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> 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.

</comment><comment><USER119> Every single example used in their advertising, verbatim, works on Siri (and presumably google phones) which is already in my pocket.

<comment><USER120> 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.

<comment><USER121> Both those questions work on ok google btw

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> 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.

</comment><comment><USER123> 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

</comment><comment><USER124> 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)

</comment><comment><USER125> 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)

</comment><comment><USER126> Looks similar to the Ubi: [http://www.theubi.com/](http://www.theubi.com/)

</comment><comment><USER127> 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)

</comment><comment><USER128> 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.

</comment><comment><USER129> 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.

</comment><comment><USER130> 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!

</comment><comment><USER131> 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?

</comment><comment><USER45> "Alexa, open pod bay doors"

</comment><comment><USER132> _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?

<comment><USER133> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER134> Didn't Amazon preview a product like this a few months ago, except that it was portable?

</comment><comment><USER135>
       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.

</comment><comment><USER136> 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.

</comment><comment><USER137> 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?

<comment><USER90> I would guess it's A9 [http://a9.com/whatwedo/](http://a9.com/whatwedo/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER138> 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.

</comment><comment><USER139> 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 ...

</comment><comment><USER140> ... 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.

<comment><USER141> 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)

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> 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 :]

</comment><comment><USER143> Seems like the movie Her is not as far in the future as we may think...

</comment><comment><USER144> 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)

<comment><USER145> I would enjoy the hands-free unit conversions and timers when cooking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER146> Another spy in the house listening to you like the telescreen in 1984.

</comment><comment><USER85> 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."

[...]

</comment><comment><USER35> 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.

</comment><comment><USER147> 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.

</comment><comment><USER148> 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.

</comment><comment><USER149> "hears you from across the room - connected to the cloud"

No, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER150> 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.

</comment><comment> WD-42 Brings to mind HAL9000

</comment><comment><USER151> Amazon Echo surveillance program. Always on. For only $199.

</comment><comment><USER152> 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.

</comment><comment><USER153> 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?

</comment><comment><USER154> 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.

</comment><comment><USER155> I just had to... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsE- fWYhLQQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsE-fWYhLQQ)

</comment><comment><USER156> [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1yIZycIQAASfNS.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1yIZycIQAASfNS.png)

</comment><comment><USER157> 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.

</comment><comment><USER158> Oh man. Just what I needed. A microphone in my house.

</comment><comment><USER41> 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.

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-04-24](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-04-24)

</comment><comment><USER159> Nice, but the added "convenience" isn't worth the notion that everything in my house is being recorded and stored somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER160> 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?

</comment><comment><USER161> 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.

</comment><comment><USER162> Amazon can now hear everything you say and target ads to your conversations. I'm surprised Google didn't release this.

</comment><comment><USER163> My favorite feature is getting to pick my one wake word. Cortana, Dinklebot, Jarvis, GLaDOS. Now if I could pick the voice...

</comment><comment><USER164> Is there any distinct benefit which this offers over Google Now other than the fact that it gives instant access to Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER165> Maybe they should have added a pixelated surface you could populate with tickers and such to try and justify this price?

</comment><comment><USER166> It will be interesting to see if it has any easter eggs like Siri and Google Now. "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot"

</comment><comment><USER167> I wonder how much attention has been given to the needs of tech-savvy people with aging tech-challenged parents?

</comment><comment><USER168> I hear the early beta testers kept getting sex tips... It was even worse when their partner was named Alexa.

</comment><comment><USER169> Can someone disassemble and reverse engineer/monitor one to try to verify that its not spying on us?

</comment><comment><USER170> So it's like a dedicated Google Now device? For $99 as prime member, I guess I can give it try.

</comment><comment><USER171> Now, replace "Alexa" with "Hey Siri" and you don't need another device.

</comment><comment><USER172> It would be asome if you were able to connect this to sensors and actuators around your home :D

</comment><comment><USER173> Would this be able to play Billy Joel's "Downeaster Alexa" without interruption?

</comment><comment><USER174> I don't need a device just to play music and ask it questions. I already own a computer!

</comment><comment><USER175> 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.

</comment><comment><USER176> Amazon Echo + Firefly + Kiva + AWS = Personal Robot, I'm hoping to see it next year.

</comment><comment><USER177> Yeah, nope won't buy it. Don't need Amazon analyzing my happens for profit.

</comment><comment><USER178> I just don't see the point when we already have devices like this in our pockets.

</comment><comment><USER179> I bet the backend service is developed by the Evi Technologies group in Cambirdge.

</comment><comment><USER180> Hoping this can be hacked, would love to use it for voice control of my choice.

</comment><comment><USER181> Ugly design imo, want to reproduce a cheaper version of the macpro?

</comment><comment><USER182> what happens if someone in family is named 'Alexa'?

<comment><USER65> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER183> Google is in real trouble if it really works as advertised.

</comment><comment><USER184> Is it echo or is it Alexa? Just decide and be done with it.

</comment><comment><USER185> My wake word is going to be 'bezos'

<comment><USER186> "Bezos, buy me toilet paper."

</comment></comment><comment><USER187> What a horrible video and family.

</comment><comment><USER188> Let he who is without a mobile phone in their pocket and a Facebook account cast the first stone.

</comment><comment><USER189> Warrantless echo tapping?

</comment><comment><USER190> 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.

<comment><USER191> 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.

<comment><USER192> 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?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER193> Since my 2-year-old's name is Alex, I don't think "Alexa" is going to work out in our household :/

</comment><comment><USER194> It would be nice if Amazon offered a version in beige.

</comment><comment><USER195> Absolutely...meh. No interest.

</comment><comment><USER196> my grandmother...what big technology you have...all the better to monitor you and make you dumber my dear.

</comment><comment><USER197> I like it, it just that tower, it comes with, is useless.

</comment><comment><USER198> 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.

<comment><USER199> [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/)</comment></comment>


Seneca - On the Shortness of Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I personally find this one of the most inspiring pieces i've recently read, and I think it's of interest to a lot of HN'ers.

"Can anything be sillier than the point of view of certain people—I mean those who boast of their foresight? They keep themselves very busily engaged in order that they may be able to live better; they spend life in making ready to live! They form their purposes with a view to the distant future; yet postponement is the greatest waste of life; it deprives them of each day as it comes, it snatches from them the present by promising something hereafter."

That is something that's stuck in my head ever since.

Related to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1601281></comment>


NYU dean sends REM dance video as part of response to call for tuition refund - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nyu-dean-sends-dance-video-in-response-to-students-petitioning-for-tuition-refund/ <comment><USER2> If you sign a contract and the government creates a law that invalidates that contract, you don't get to say you can still enforce it. Kids didn't "optionally" leave the campus.

This is blatant theft. Don't matter if times are tough. You can't enforce a contract that is now void just because you're strapped for cash.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Spring 2020 tuition and fees at Tisch typically cost $29,276

How much?? Can most students even hope to make this amount back once their degree is over? That's 120k of tuition after 4 years. To sa nothing of the interests on that debt or the opportunity cost. What are the employment prospects for art graduates?

<comment><USER4> no that is _per semester_ not per year.. so, double that.

<comment><USER3> Holly macaroni!! Well, good luck with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regarding her response dance video; whatever else she may be, out-of-touch is certainly one of them.

</comment><comment><USER6> Profoundly embarrassing.</comment>


Show HN: CryptoTrader.Tax – A Cryptocurrency Tax Calculator - <AUTHOR> https://www.cryptotrader.tax <comment><USER2> This is their _eighth_ Show HN.</comment>


How much can you earn from Google Adsense? - <AUTHOR>

I'm just wondering does anybody here got their startup sustained by just the income from Google Adsense? Does anybody become big just from Google Adsense? Just wondering........ <comment><USER2> [http://www.shoemoney.com/gallery/v/misc/adsensecheck.jpg.htm...](http://www.shoemoney.com/gallery/v/misc/adsensecheck.jpg.html)

I think this is what you want to see. It is Jermey Shoemakers check for $133k generated from Adsense.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used to make $2,000 before i sold my website like 2 years ago. I seriously don't recomment using it unless your website is content driven.

I know some big guys from that time that used to make sick amounts of cash like $145,000 a month

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow thats a pretty good chunk of money.What kind of site you got? A social networking site, Q&A site...</comment></comment>


Method and system for transferring large data files over parallel connections - <AUTHOR> http://patft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6243676

<comment><USER2> In other words - a download manager. Somebody patented a download manager. And in case anyone accuses me of knee-jerk hysteria, yes, I did read all the claims.

They are describing every download manager on the planet that makes multiple connections to any given server, to download chunks of a file and re-assemble them in the correct order.

It confuses the issue by making a claim about choosing "discrete unused TCP ports on the client system". Which is true of every single client-to-server TCP program in existence - like when your browser opens multiple HTTP connections to a web server.

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay, there's yet another painfully ridiculous patent. So...?</comment>


Ask HN: Rate my startup MyRunningMate - <AUTHOR>

http://myrunningmate.com An app that provides political campaigns the means to run and manage a virtual phone bank. Once setup, volunteers call a provided phone number which automatically connects them to voters one after another. An accompanying web page allows the volunteer to monitor their calls and report on the outcome of those calls.
Please poke around and try it out. You can test it out without actually contacting voters. No need to fill in real contact info, just make it all up.
Building this app took 16 days. The last three weekends and nights after my day job. Now comes the hard part for me, marketing it. I am going to aim for downballot campaigns. For a few reasons, no one below federal level campaigns use my main competition. I am also hoping the name MyRunningMate will be a container company for several services directed at political campaigns. <comment><USER3> Best of luck with this - political software is a great niche industry, although a very competitive one.

If you're looking for a new feature, I would suggest some type of offline mode. Many people have this image of a political phone bank being a room full of people on headsets with computer screens in front of them, reciting carefully-prepared statements. For centrally-run national campaigns, this is correct. But for more local ones - which make up the vast majority of campaigns, and the ones with the lowest barrier to entry - a campaign office is a vacant storefront in a mall, and a phone bank is eight people in some spare cubicles with old Nortel handsets. Find a way to make this software useful for them.

How? Maybe something like call sheets. I press the "Call Sheet" button, select that I want a sheet of 50 callers, and your software will generate a printed piece of paper with 50 names on it, with each name having the appropriate check-boxes next to them. I can then give that to a volunteer who will call the dial-in number, enter the PIN for that sheet, and your PBX will call though the names on the sheet they're given in the order listed, and they can check off the details. When they're done, they give it to a volunteer who does data entry about the results.

Want to get fancier? Make your call sheets optical-scan. Instead of handing the completed call sheet to a volunteer who does data entry, hand it to some guy with a scanner. The scanning volunteer places the call sheet in a standard $60 OfficeMax scanner, and presses the "Send PDF via Email" button on the scanner, and sends it to a custom email address you've supplied them with. Your service then scans the PDF, figures out how the volunteers have marked the sheets, and presents the results (and any ambiguities) to the volunteer who is doing data validation, as opposed to entry.

Two more (simpler) suggestions:

\- The ways to respond to a call should be customizable, if they're not already. As opposed to just yes/no, I'd like my volunteers to be able to select a few checkboxes about each respondent (guesses at party ID, how committed they sound, possible follow-ups, etc.).

\- Add some keyboard shortcuts. I know I said earlier that most phone banks aren't guys with headsets and laptops, but some are. For those keeners, may as well make it easy for them to do all their call categorization without having to keep mousing around.

Another interesting approach - and Obama's team did something like this - <USER2> to set up for distributed phone banking, taking advantage of people who have free evenings on their cell phones. A volunteer would dial into your system, get connected to someone to speak to, and then when the call finishes get kicked into an IVR system for categorization ("Press 1 for Democrat, press 2 for Republican, press 3 for Undecided" etc.). Once they've entered their IVR response, connect them to their next caller, and repeat until they hang up. You'd have to come up with some decent access control (to prevent opposition candidates from calling in and screwing with your voter lists), but it seems like you could probably do this whole module with some judicious use of Twillo (or whatever PBX you're now using as a back-end).

While I'm thinking about this, I would also reconsider your pricing model. There is nothing a campaign manager likes more than cost certainty, and right now your service doesn't have it. If I let a room full of volunteers at your service for four hours, I don't really know what it would cost my campaign, which would scare me. On the other hand, if you charged by the call I could say to myself "we want to do a call blitz tonight, so I'm going to budget out enough for 5,000 calls", pay that, and be safe knowing that no matter how productive my volunteers are, I'll be able to have a hard cap on how much I'm going to spend in a metric I'm used to using and can compare across mediums (engagement cost). Put another way, it's a hell of a lot easier to go to the finance committee/candidate and say "we're going to use this fancy new service to make 1,000 calls" as opposed to "we're going to use this fancy new service for 800 minutes, and I'm really not sure how many calls."

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I had thought of a few different "offline" mode options. I'm not sure there is a market for printing call sheets and handing them to volunteers. Most campaigns are fine printing off excel pages and using that. Though it is worth more thought.

That call "tagging" is customizable by the campaign in the back end. As it is now though, I probably need to redo the buttons as many options would take up too much space.

Re: Distributed phone banking. That is the main target of my app. Having the volunteers call from home instead of having them come to the campaign office and work off of call sheets.

Pricing gets tricky. I am charged on a per minute basis and at this time I don't really have a good idea how long the average call would last. If they hit an answering machine it would be 1 minute, but if they have a good conversation with the voter it could be 5+ minutes. To charge on the per call level I'd be mostly taking a guess at this point. The per minute billing allows me to take most of the risk out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow, this is really, really cool, and it looks like it will make operating a phone bank really easy.

Congrats on putting it together so quickly!

It took me a while to figure out what it does and what I can do with it, and I'm still not totally clear, but that could be because I'm not familiar with phone banks.

I think it's time to show it to some potential customers and figure out what's keeping them from signing up and using it!

Great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I do think I need to make a video that shows how it all works. I just haven't had the time yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm very intrigued! Have you contacted any local MP's to pilot the app? I'm curious how open they are to innovation in the space.

You have picked a great market to build products for. Congrats! $$$

<comment><AUTHOR> I have contacted a few campaigns, but no real bites yet. I know the market is there, I just need to figure out how to get the word out. Working on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> i think demo accounts or something would be good for rate my startup... or a video. i am stuck at Add to Account Balance page unless i enter credit card. maybe a demo or promo code to get past entering the credit card. it will probably be useful for prospective customers as well.</comment>


German supermarket clears its shelves to make point about racism - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/24/german-supermarket-clears-shelves-make-point-racism/ <comment><USER2> Somehow I find it hard to believe that the coordinated government-media- business-academia-internet push towards diversity at any cost has a purely humanitarian basis, unless power magically decided to grow a conscience in the last 5 minutes. Also, surely it's better for the environment if we minimise food miles.

</comment><comment><USER3> What a silly point they think they're making.

Nobody thinks that their country shouldn't have foreign _goods_. But many do think that foreign people and/or foreign cultures should stay in foreign countries.

<comment><USER2> Indeed, generally I go to the shops to buy things rather than have a political point shoved down my throat. Also who are they trying to convince with this - aren't the Germans mostly pro-immigration already?</comment></comment>