Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Is there a way to repurpose an Alexa device? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by 3yiyo3@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

My girlfriend gave me an Alexa assistant as a gift with all good will, since she knows I like technology. I know in terms of privacy it is garbage, however I wonder if there is a safe way to use some functions of this device, perhaps without internet. Some way to hack it or something, do you guys know something about this?

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[–] anon5621@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Fast search gave me this ,replacing with open source firmware Mycroft https://hackaday.com/2021/03/22/amazon-echo-gets-open-source-brain-transplant/

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Mycroft the company went bust. Not sure if you'd still want to do this with unmaintained software.

[–] WoodenBleachers@lemmy.basedcount.com 14 points 1 year ago

You don’t. I did a project involving Mycroft and, while functional, it was awful. Not worth any of the hassle.

[–] Ferk@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sad. I did not know that.

Although, to be honest, I was sort of expecting it would happen sooner or later. It did not look like the product was ready for mainstream users yet, and the devices at that price must have been tough to sell.

For anyone curious, this message from the CEO has more details: https://web.archive.org/web/20230822232437/https://mycroft.ai/blog/update-from-the-ceo-part-1/

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the yrice was a lot higher than anyone was expecting, and they changed the design to make them a lot uglier.

Plus they wasted their cash with legal costs fighting patent trolls.