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Comment by sailfast | Hacker News Reader

I can't recommend highly enough that everyone at least turn on the audible sound when their assistants are listening. At a minimum you should know the kinds of things that end up triggering the device. There's a really wide area of detection and it's interesting to see where that is.

I would also recommending changing your default word at a minimum. Then again, I might also recommend ditching the device entirely but I happen to have one in my kitchen that I like OK sometimes.

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I want to get rid of my alexa, but my wife uses it as a kitchen timer.

We literally dont use it for anything else.

Might get one of those philips light sets since our living room is weird... Tbh, id rather not use alexa..

The clock / timer functions of Alexa/Google Home are super useful, but nothing else seems compelling to me.

Someone could clearly make an offline device that did voice recognition clock and timer, but does anyone?

With the echo/Alexa, I use timers, clock, alarms (morning), control Spotify, and call my mother and grandparents.

The last is the most important for me; I live hundreds of mile from both, and the key is that the echo is a super easy device for them to use.

I can send a chatty audio message telling them I'm looking to call, or asking a question, which is asynchronous in nature, and when they are ready they can call or message me.

It is conference calling by default. Which is great for family stuff, they wouldn't meet my girlfriend otherwise.

I got them the echo show (I have the normal echo) and it is fabulous. Video calling with no effort. I use my phone to do video on my side.

For this, the echo is worth every damn penny and then some.

Or you could spend $3 and get a kitchen timer that you can slap to start, and beeps when it’s done!

Alexa has named timers, which means you can time multiple things (a common occurrence in cookery).

It is also voice activated, which means it can be done when your hands are full (another common occurrence in cookery).

It looks like nice product request that someone here can make with knowledge in the area. Perhaps a kickstarter.

Perhaps you could connect it to foot peddles, commonly used by guitarists that have their hands full.

Setting the timer takes a lot of steps and usually wants clean hands.

Not my project, but here's an offline voice assistant: https://hackaday.io/project/32425-modular-smart-speaker-assi...

I've started using the device when I lose my FireTV remote. It's a good fallback so the kids don't accidentally start another episode of whatever they're watching and melt down haha.

That's literally the only thing I use "OK, Google" on my phone for, too.

Siri timer-only user chiming in

I use my iPhone for that

Gotta be hands free in the kitchen! Hard to use your iPhone when you're covered in raw turkey.

Turn "Hey Siri" off though!

Say something like "My firetruck is red" -then- manually activate siri, she was listening the whole time.

WHAAAAT, I'm kinda creeped out

Though it makes sense that it would have a rolling buffer

but "Hey Spybot-Listening-To-Every-Conversation-In-This-Household-And-Building-A-Transcript-For-The-NSA" doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.

Come now, on a tech and hacking website of all places we should all be better informed than this. There is a voice activation only chip tied directly into the lights that only listens for commands. Once the activation is heard it sends it off to the servers to get processed etc.

With everyone scrutinizing the web traffic around them trying to prove NSA/Google spying with them we'd definitely have found something by now.

So it's probably just yours that is sending off to the NSA. I'd send it back to them for repairs, see if they don't give you a free home mini in compensation!

I can't find the article, but there was a post where someone turned on the Audible Alert of when it was listening and it began listening for a lot of times.

They also said they found a lot of recordings in their Google History that really shouldn't have been there.

Here's another article about the history: https://qz.com/526545/googles-been-quietly-recording-your-vo...

Are you talking about the Google Home Minis? Because that was a hardware defect with its capacitive sensors that caused them to completely remove the feature:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/11/16462572/...

I think this was what I was thinking about.

https://gizmodo.com/the-house-that-spied-on-me-1822429852

"Hey, NSA snitch"? "Hello Big Brother?"

that should be the activation command on all devices

"I love Big Brother" for more accurate flavour.

> I can't recommend highly enough that everyone at least turn on the audible sound when their assistants are listening.

How do I do that for Google home?

The Google Home app. I remember it being under accessibility.

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