It's Win10 Release DayFollow

It's surprising to me how many people don't think through the ramifications of having a voice activated device around them designed to interpret what they say and which is in turn connected to a wi-fi network. At the very least, you should disable these systems except for when you actually want to use them. Even setting aside the privacy issues (you've basically just planted a wi-fi connected bug in your home), they can result in a bit of hilarity. One of my coworkers reported the following event:

Person, speaking to someone in the room: "Are you serious!? That's fucking stupid"

His iPhone: "Here's what I found about That's fucking stupid"

Edited, Aug 5th 2015 2:35pm by gbaji

I say Alexa quite a bit for work

Not sure why I shared that information

Edited, Aug 5th 2015 8:39pm by stupidmonkey

I say "computer" quite a bit. Alexa I don't have much problem with except when I say Alexis, my bosses name, at which point it always gets confused about what I just said/asked.

This illustrates one of the problems. In order for the computer to know when it's being addressed it has to be permanently listening and understanding the context of your conversations. Your PC isn't capable of that level of processing so all of your speech has to be sent to a remote server to be translated into commands (or not as the case may be) and sent back. That means everything you say is being sent to a remote server. Is that data being kept? Can it be intercepted? Is my home still private? Can someone hack Microsoft's servers and listen to the conversation my wife and I had last night? Does the NSA/CSIS have direct access to that?

Yup. You can at least turn off your laptop when it's not in use. But you kinda have to leave your cell phone on (if you expect to be able to receive phone calls without like scheduling them ahead of time or something). Cell phones also have video capability (front and back even!), not to mention some that are "always on" so they can be activated with hand gestures (probably a good thing to disable as well). And they are notoriously easy to remotely hack.

Of course the flip side argument is that it seems as though younger people don't need to be hacked anyway. Given the sheer number of examples of idiots actually intentionally filming themselves engaged in illegal activities and then posting online, it's not like the government has to hack many people. Just watch their social media and you'll get 99% of what you need. Quaint idea indeed!