if you are ever at a friends house and they have an Alexa, be sure to talk about cross dressing midgets, gay porn, pressure cookers, and lizard people.

I talk about that stuff, Alexa or no Alexa.

It doesn't actually keep track of or upload anything that doesn't come after you say Alexa, so you have to do that first

I would not be so sure about that.

You can verify this yourself by monitoring your network traffic

Never owned alexa and never will so I can not personally test it and to be honest I don't have any interest in doing so. But just because it does not send your spoken words into the cloud immediately does not mean it will not send them later when you call alexa next time. Smartphones are not sending it immediately either, I've tested it myself. I was talking about a certain subject near my phone with wifi/mobile data disabled, enabled it after a while then I already had the targeted ads about that subject by the evening.
These devices are not made to make your life easier, these stuff were made to collect data for targeted advertisement and other unknown purposes.
The scariest part is not that tgese devices are literally spying on you, but the fact itself that people are installing them voluntarily

I have a Google home, I'll try it. Pick a subject for me, make it something specific and monetizable that someone wouldn't typically mention.

teacup pigs

I'll see about it, but i don't think it is brandable enough

Absinthe - a Las Vegas show. They have extremely aggressive marketing, it seems. Someone from it was on America's Got Talent, and I googled it ONCE and am still seeing banner ads for it on 80% of the websites I visit.

Good one. Gonna mention the city name all day

Just a mention a few times how cold your feet are. Slipper ads are in full swing for the winter.

Salt and Pepper shaker collectibles. The rare ones are the Native Sambo Nodder collectibles where the black slave is eating watermelon. It doesn’t get any more left field than this and it’s random. You’re welcome...

electric leaf blower

Lol and neither does Siri. Have you never gotten ads from things you've just talked about with some one but not googled?

Phones listening whether you like it or not. Who knows when it does and when it doesn't record.

That's never happened to me. I've read other people's stories but I've never experienced it or seen someone else experience it.

Yea it's trippy at first but you get accustomed and forget your being heard 24/7

nigga I met up with a girl the other day that exclusively drinks a coffee called cafe bustelo. I never mentioned this drink before in my life. suddenly saw a couple ads for CAFE BUSTELO right after that on my phone. I never ever think or cared about that shit before hanging with this girl.

That works. I'll try that tomorrow.

What happens when they keep saying Alexa on the tv you're watching

Have Google, but they almost made it turn on Master of None omce

Old folks are so vulnerable to this shit bc they don't understand technology. The same people who'd get this kind of thing parrot the whole "if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to worry about" when confronted with the Snowden level revelations. People are just ok with mass surveillance..

Younger people are vulnerable too because they embrace technology readily.

Good point. They're too trusting in general.

I will never put one of those creepy things into my residence.

Unless you don't have any electronics in your home, you already have one.

Yes, good point.

They're handy, tho

Handy comes at a price, potentially. I made it this far without one. Given the misbehavior of corporate and govt bodies since 9/11, I see no reason for my family discussions to be eavesdropped and am certain they would be on occasion.

Found the pointless equivocator.

Every Fucking Post - there's at least one.

As if 50 people sharing the same opinion is better discussion

Pointless equivocation is not discussion..."tho"

A rational comparison of the real value of cloud based voice command vs the virtual surrender of your home privacy is a discussion.

Fair enough, I think my biggest argument to the above is that it's the market delivering what people have wanted for decades. Since the point that they even imagined such a thing could exist.

I agree that your perspective is valid.

It's not for me. I saw a Samsung refridgerator the other day with a "family bulliten board" feature built in - also camera to see inside and automatic inventory of content/automatic online re-ordering (we're out of _______)

To me, it is nonsense that people think this is necessary when others don't even have clean water.

Then again, I think football is a waste of time, so what could I know?

Thanks.

Well, people just aren't inclined in general to give away excess money. So once you have it, you have to keep finding new ways to use it. Remodeling your kitchen is a pretty common use of excess money.

This is why I don't believe in the idea that poverty can be solved without a socialized democratic government run by people who actually want to help.

But that being said, something like a Google home is actually a pretty efficient use of money, all things considered. The mini was available from Walmart for $30 with a $25 gift voucher to Walmart that you got after activating it. I wouldn't really call it a true luxury item.

I'd also add that privacy is a first-world problem. For people who don't have clean water, they don't really give a flying fuck about privacy or the government watching them. Except to the extent that people are watching without helping them.

I have no concept of "excess money"

Money represents goods or labor. Resources are limited and time cannot be recovered, so, when most people know jack about finance, there is plenty of need for planning, not waste. Most appliances and gadgets are frivolous time wasters. Consider the electric knife...ridiculous, as is the refrigerator with an interior camera. The huckster at the store said not opening the door saves energy, which is insane, when those efforts could be directed to solar energy, not figuring out ways to burn less coal.

Socialized democracies do not function well...no better than representative constitutional republics infiltrated by corrupt robber barons and politicians.

A free market is a wonderful thing. When the state "gives" things away, the cost is born by another taxpayer.I am glad you got a satisfactory deal on your gadget.

Privacy is a two way street. I bet the first world people in Flint Michigan had a little more transparency from the state that was knowingly poisoning their water. I doubt that there are no concerns about privacy in Venezuela, where the wrong vote can get you killed.

Google doesn't care about soap brands--- but selling the data (or trading it for favoritism from the homeland overlords) that's their bread and butter.

I have one. I honestly don't care what it knows, or overhears. Let them suspect anything they want. Doesn't really matter to me. I only got the thing because I was struggling with insomnia and leaning up and checking my alarm clock, and I wanted a faceless, voice-controlled alarm clock that I couldn't peep at. It's fantastic for that purpose. If I want to have a private conversation without it ending up transcribed into plaintext on an Amazon cloud server where the CIA or NSA can read it, I can just, like, walk to another room, out of range of the microphones. It is entirely possible to blend in and appear to accept all sorts of monitoring devices in your life, while still having a high level of privacy. The important thing is to acknowledge the various ways you're being watched and tracked. People freak out about microphones and cameras in their TVs and smart home devices, but the fact of the matter is that most of those very same people carry a smartphone in their pocket and leave location services on, and Alphabet literally knows their commute and their favorite restaurants and grocery stores, with no intervention from the user at all. It's gotten to the point where someone actually looks more suspicious the further off the grid they are. I mean, most of us talk about casual rebellion against the police state and maintaining our freedoms, but we still have Prime subscriptions and shop at Amazon with that sweet, sweet "free" two-day shipping. It's like, hello? If you care so much about privacy, why are you giving Jeff Bezos, very nearly the richest man on the planet, even more of your money? Of course these assholes want to know everything about us and our habits. We're a commodity. That's how big data works. People's personal information and their personal preferences are something you can sell to advertisers in bundles and make tons of bread. When you use Facebook and Google Plus, YOU are the product!

yes, my location service is never on by my hand.

I canceled amazon prime - I can wait a few days for things to arrive and the other benefits aren't worth $100.

Oh, fuck the Walmart "family" also. They suck like the cheap whores they are.

You know those WiFi signals coming off that thing constantly are killing you right ?

I have a D-Link AC1900 router literally three feet behind me on a desk, with three antennas blazing. I work on a diesel-electric ship where I'm around three-phase AC transformers with millions of watts of electricity and diesel generators spewing dirty power. If I were worried about EMF in my life, I'd have a different job.

Between these smart home devices, your cellphone and your ISP, you are basically monitored 24/7 by corporations that share your information with the govt. 1984 has finally arrived.

Don't forget Windows 1984!

Yes because the Feds want to know what kind of milk you prefer.

Or why i can never remember how to convert ounces to grams

But someday soon they might want to know if you're complaining or talking seditiously against the gov.

And it also might be a bomb, just waiting to blow.

Derp.

it's all data. No one knows who what when is using it. Maybe it's sold to ad agencies. Maybe it's fed into some weird AI to predict purchasing behavior. It's invasive at it's core. No one should be okay with that.

I understand the idea, I just think it's silly that people will happily have smartphones and post their entire lives on social media or whatever, and then turn around and complain that something is spying on them. You potentially sacrifice convenience for privacy, it sucks but it's a fact, and people seem to want both.

Over the past month I've noticed at least 4 local radio stations whose commercials are based on Alexa. The commercials are all the same silly quip "Alexa kill the spider in my shower" followed by something along the lines of "oh Alexa can't do everything yet, but use Alexa to listen to our station 101.1". They are pushing for every home to have some Alexa type of device hard right now.

The last time I watched an entire football game was the 1989 superbowl. The 49ers beat the bengals. It was a good game. It was the last one I watched with any interest whatsoever. You see I was 9 years old, and sports were still pretty interesting. However, I got older and smarter and realized it is just a bunch of jerkoff's fiddling around with a ball. I still to this day will go play football, basketball or any sport I like. I will go play it. I don't have the time to watch a bunch of roid freaks play with balls for money. Maybe if someone could knock 50 IQ points out of my skull I could sit through a game.

/r/iamverysmart/ mvp right here, folks

Amazon has a deal with the NFL. They paid millions of dollars for streaming rights for some games. It also gives them lots of commercial time. Their hot product right not is Alexa stuff and the fire tv. They advertise their products.

Some of you people who make threads dont even use Google before posting some of the nonsense you think.

I’m pretty sure they already know everything about us. The Alexa and google home devices are being using to build AI.

Don't forget Windows 1984!