Amazon Echo Club

[OtinG]

I wonder how many people actually use Cortana as opposed to Siri, Alexa, and Google Home (or whatever they call their data mining version)? Not that any of these services is very good yet.

Talk about a company that totally lost their way. I wish I had a dollar for every Blue Screen of Death I saw, I would be living a luxurious retirement rather than penny pinching! Somehow those bozos hung on though despite Bill Gates claiming that no one would ever need a computer with more than 640 KB of RAM (KB not MB or GB!) and that the internet would never be of much value on computers. "Hey Cortana, what was Bill popping when he came up with Windows ME and Windows Vista?"

[wodin]

Amazon is slashing prices on Echo devices and it's not even Prime Day

Amazon's smart devices are among the most popular on the market, especially if you're looking for easy home control. Today, Amazon is making them even more attractive with some deep discounts: The Echo Plus is down to $100 and comes with a free Hue bulb, a savings of more than $80, while the Echo Show is $100 off its $230 list price—the lowest prices we've seen since the Prime Day blowout.

[wodin]

Cover your home in smart devices with three Echo Dots for just $25 apiece

If you add three Echo Dot smart devices to your cart and use the code DOT3PACK during checkout, the price will drop from $119.97 down to $74.97. That's $45 off the price and brings the Echo Dots down to about $25 apiece.

[OtinG]

Amazon has been having a lot of sales on Echo devices in the past few months, and on a fairly regular basis. When the Kindles came out they tended to price them lower to eat away at the competition, and finally succeeded in eliminating most of their competition, then the Kindle prices started going up. Maybe they have a similar strategy with home automation devices. However, I think in the home automation category Amazon has too much competition from manufacturers who are not going to go away like the eBook reader manufacturers did. Companies like Google and Microsoft and Apple are not going to be easy competition to smash like Sony and Nook and other eReader companies were. So hopefully these strong competitors will keep prices down.

[ApK]

They also reduce prices when they are about to offer something new that makes the old stuff obsolete or in some way less valuable.

[OtinG]

There is a new Dot supposedly coming, but they already updated the Echo 1 with a couple of newer models, Echo Plus and Echo 2, so I doubt we will see anything new in the original Echo area for a while. The Show and Spot might get updates at some point, but it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that they were introduced. The Look, well who cares about that creepy device... The Tap is certainly due for an upgrade, overdue IMO, but they don't seem to push the Tap much. Pity though, it is my favorite Alexa device. Unfortunately none of these devices has very good sound quality, nor will they ever have it since they are too small. The laws of physics are going to win out every time. But none of them were intended to provide room filling sound that can compete with expensive home sound systems. They are merely voice activated little devices with small speakers. The best we can hope for is incremental improvements in sound. The big improvements need to be in the FW and on the server side.

[cc_in_oh]

So lately "smart plugs" are popping up in lightning deals every 10 minutes, or at least it seems that way. I'd be interested to hear if anyone is using them with their Echo devices, and what for? I'm sure there must be more creative uses for them than turning lights on and off, but not much is coming to mind.

I still only have a Tap, and since the novelty wore off it pretty much only gets used as a glorified portable radio...

[ApK]

Originally Posted by cc_in_oh

So lately "smart plugs" are popping up in lightning deals every 10 minutes, or at least it seems that way. I'd be interested to hear if anyone is using them with their Echo devices, and what for? I'm sure there must be more creative uses for them than turning lights on and off, but not much is coming to mind.

I still only have a Tap, and since the novelty wore off it pretty much only gets used as a glorified portable radio...

We use them for turning lights on and off. Perhaps not very creative, but very convenient.

We have one on a lamp, and the other two are here on a shelf waiting to be needed.

At the holidays we use them for the tree lights and for the inflatable snoopy that adorns our front yard.

We've occasionally considered using them on fans or small ac units in some rooms, but so many devices these days are electronically controlled, and don't retain the on/off state when power is removed, that our creativity has been somewhat hampered. That is, unlike a simple lamp or other device with a mechanical power switch that actually connects or disconnects power when you switch it, too many device now are always off when you plug them in, even if it was on when you unplugged it, until you press a power button, so controllable power outlets aren't good for much more than an emergency cut-off.

I may use one on my NAS device, because every now and then it requires a physical unplugging reboot, and it's hidden away in a crawl space.
But it needs it so infrequently that it seems silly to dedicate one of the plugs to it, when I can just sent in a child. :-)

ApK

[cc_in_oh]

Originally Posted by ApK

We use them for turning lights on and off. Perhaps not very creative, but very convenient.

...

I may use one on my NAS device, because every now and then it requires a physical unplugging reboot, and it's hidden away in a crawl space.
But it needs it so infrequently that it seems silly to dedicate one of the plugs to it, when I can just sent in a child. :-)

ApK

Makes sense - I'd forgotten how useful children can be for getting to those hard-to-reach places between walls and in air ducts and crawl spaces. Of course you have to be sure to remember they're in there or you'll be in for a world of aggravation.

Today one of the deals was a power bar with individually controlled outlets - that could be handy for devices like external drives and monitors that need surge suppression...

[OtinG]

I tried to think of a good use for the smart plugs back when they had some deals on them when you bought a Dot, but alas I couldn't think of one use that would justify their cost. As APK said, many contemporary devices are designed to save power consumption. Those wall warts we all use for a multitude of devices are well know historically to consume a lot of energy even when the device they power is turned off, so there has been a turn toward trying to conserve power and not waste it through better designs for the power sources. So the plugs would do absolutely nothing for the newer power sources that stay off until the ON switch is activated on a device.

The holiday lighting sounds like a good use, but other than that seasonal use I cannot really think of another one. Fans are another good use except my fans already came with remotes to let me turn them on and off, control speed, and control oscillation, so I don't need a limited smart plug for them.

Another issue with the plugs is that some appliances and devices have internal clocks that will get reset to midnight if they lose power, so you would have to set the time again. Also devices like cable boxes, FireTV, Roku, etc. will reboot if they lose power and thus take a while to turn back on.

The only smart home devices I currently use are a few smart LED lightbulbs. If you want to control lighting then they are much more useful than smart plugs. At best, the plugs will turn a lamp on or off. The bulbs on the other hand turn on and off, most allow for variable brightness control, and some allow for variable colors to be used. I prefer the smart bulbs to allow for dimming and brightening of lights.

[wodin]

I bought one last winter to control my outside Christmas lights. Now I have a lamp named "Christmas" that comes on 15 minutes before sunset and turns off four hours later.

Spoiler:

Ironically, the lamp was a Christmas gift from my son's girlfriend.

[OtinG]

It seems like we haven't heard anything from the Fire TV Cube users in a long while. Anyone here still using one? I'm just curious how it is working out, especially as compared to the other Fire TV devices available. I notice that the rating for the Fire TV Cube on Amazon's website is only 3.4 stars. I kind of thought it would be higher than that. I still use my Fire TV 2nd Generation (my favorite) and my Fire TV 3rd Generation and they are pretty good and reliable. I have the 2nd Gen hooked up to my main TV in the LR and it is wired directly to ethernet, as is my Roku. I still use the Roku more than the Fire TV 2nd Gen though. My Fire TV 3rd Gen is hooked up via WiFi to my little TV in my Study. I also have the original Fire TV Stick, but it was a terrible little device that never worked well, so it is collecting dust somewhere, not sure exactly where actually. Anyway, I was just curious how the Fire TV Cube is working out for those of you who use it.

[OtinG]

According to this article, there are two identified types of attacks that can be effective against Amazon Alexa devices, at least in theory. One is called "skill squatting" and the other takes advantage of commonly misinterpreted words/commands by Alexa to activate malicious activity.

https://arstechnica.com/information-...oice-commands/

...Thanks to the way Alexa handles requests for new "skills"—the cloud applications that register with Amazon—it's possible to create malicious skills that are named with homophones for existing legitimate applications. Amazon made all skills in its library available by voice command by default in 2017, and skills can be "installed" into a customer's library by voice. "Either way, there's a voice-only attack for people who are selectively registering skill names," said Bates, who leads UIUC's Secure and Transparent Systems Laboratory.

This sort of thing offers all kinds of potential for malicious developers. They could build skills that intercept requests for legitimate skills in order to drive user interactions that steal personal and financial information. These would essentially use Alexa to deliver phishing attacks...

I think we should assume that wherever a cloud exists, hackers are likely already lurking therein. I personally don't use many 3rd party skills, but I will definitely be careful in the future and periodically check to see if skills I didn't install somehow got installed. Currently I only use a very few skills that come from the manufacturer of my LED lightbulbs or came from Amazon's website. It pays to be cautious though...

Apple takes a lot of flack from MS and Android fans, but their proactive hunt for malicious apps should be commended. Amazon and others should do that too, but I doubt they ever will. I'll take the walled garden any day over the "you're on your own" attitude of most other companies.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

I think we should assume that wherever a cloud exists, hackers are likely already lurking therein. I personally don't use many 3rd party skills, but I will definitely be careful in the future and periodically check to see if skills I didn't install somehow got installed. Currently I only use a very few skills that come from the manufacturer of my LED lightbulbs or came from Amazon's website. It pays to be cautious though...

Thanks for the heads up. I only use two skills -- weather and iHeart Santa (Christmas music).

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Apple takes a lot of flack from MS and Android fans, but their proactive hunt for malicious apps should be commended. Amazon and others should do that too, but I doubt they ever will. I'll take the walled garden any day over the "you're on your own" attitude of most other companies.

And Mussolini kept the trains running on time.
I'll take freedom and the accompanying risks and responsibilities.

Anythewho....

I'm not clear on one element of the skill attack thing.

Forget the homophone thing, I get that that might drive traffic to the malicious skill, but the only real issue is that the malicious skills are there in the first place.

So assuming we accept that even maximum security walled gardens occasionally have breaks, and some malicious skills are going to get through even if Amazon was as diligent as Apple, what's to do?
How can we responsibly manage this risk?
Do we need to just not use any skills from unfamiliar sources? That seems like the equivalent of never going outside for fear of being mugged, or only reading books from BPHs for fear of encountering some really offensive indie dreck.

Do we need to start an independent skills review forum/database?

ApK