Thomas Hein
evacideI rarely tell people to throw their devices into the sea, but you should throw your Amazon Echo into the sea.
DoNotPunchDownNever had one but I'm telling everyone I know to get rid of theirs
RRB@evacide Wouldn't an active volcano be more effective and cause less pollution?
Mark Hurst@rrb @evacide I usually tell https://techtonic.fm listeners to "throw it into the river, metaphorically" but yes - if there was a lava lake within throwing distance, then "throw it into a volcano" could literally be OK
@rrb @evacide my favorite place for disposing of Big Tech waste (that is, their surveillance products) is, here in the NYC area, the Lower East Side Ecology Center:
https://www.lesecologycenter.org
https://www.lesecologycenter.org
@markhurst @evacide Sounds better than the more traditional e-waste recycling approach:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ivory_Coast_toxic_waste_dump
Oblomov
Adam
Ehay2kIt's probably better if we put them into a plasma gasification incinerator. There are a LOT of these things and we don't want to pollute!
(We got one [edit - an Echo, not a plasma thingy] as a Christmas gift a few years ago and gee, just never got around to setting it up. Sent it back to Amazon for credit.)
Taco Dave@evacide I wish there was a guide to hacking them and replacing the software. I honestly just need a hands-free way to turn on and off lights at this point.
(Also lol my phoneโs swipe keyboard tried autocorrecting โsoftwareโ to โdiseaseโ.)
woe2you@dave @evacide Not aware of anything for the Echo but there's a nifty hardware project that turns the Google Nest Mini into an ESP32 based voice satellite for Home Assistant.
https://www.pcbway.com/project/shareproject/Onju_Voice_d33625a1.html
beaumains
Dr Ro Smith@evacide I wish I could convince my friends who own one of this.
Mad Alex@evacide I just felt right once again for never getting one of those and moved on to the next topic.
Martin Boller 
@evacide Noooo, we have polluted the sea enough. Let's disassemble and reuse the shit :)
Metaphorically speaking yes, do throw them into the sea.
Daniel Nazer@evacide In San Francisco you can safely dispose of up to 30 Amazon Echos a month at the SF Transfer Station https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/universal-electronic-waste/
Universal & Electronic Waste - Recology
Electronic Wastes can have circuitry that contains toxic heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium, zinc, and nickel that can pollute groundwater and harm public health if not properly managed. Electronic Wastes includes computers, monitors, peripherals, phones, TVs, VCRs, DVD players, stereos, microwave ovens, iPods, and other electronic devices. Universal Wastes, such as batteries and [โฆ]
@danielnazer Into the sea, Daniel!
@evacide I'm going to assume you are telling me to go surfing or swimming and heartily agree.
DianeDumping all the old echos into the sea would probably cause environmental issues.
What about using the echos as packing material for things being returned to Amazon?
rootfake
Orb 2069The fun part is going to be when Android reveals the REAL reason they're stuffing TesorFlow chips into the Pixels.
maya_b ๐จ๐ฆi bought one of hte original echos way back when, and about a month later ripped it's brains out and just kept hte audio part and put a new brain into it.
proper PITA but better than eWaste.
when sonos tried their "recycle your old devices and we'll brick perfectly usable devices" idiocy about 5 years ago, similar reworking ensued.
PG&E Delenda Est@evacide normally I dump electronics I don't use any more at the thrift store but this time it feels like setting up someone for a scam
llogiq@evacide please don't tell people to throw their trash in the sea. It's bad for the environment.
Retailers are required by law to take back electronic devices that are trash. So best bring them to your next amazon fulfillment center for proper disposal.
The Penguin of Evil@evacide I'm wondering if it would be better put the wake word and a voice2text reading random crap in short bursts on loop and leave it next to the echo 8)
harry_wwc@evacide so, you want to compromise the privacy of the whales and dolphins instead? ;)
Steve Gisselbrecht@evacide
Some people weren't gay weed-smokers when those things were illegal and it shows.
Some people weren't gay weed-smokers when those things were illegal and it shows.
Elon Muksis ๐บ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ธ ๐ช๐บ
Jesse Atkinson@evacide I assume this includes anything with Alexa? Like my Sonos One that came with it built in?
John Ulrik@evacide Not the sea! Be responsible, destroy the internal storage, and bring it to some kind of electronic waste collection. ๐ฑ
Pablo Rrrrrrr@evacide it feels like an open call for people to say โfuck you, Bezosโ for eighteen hours non-stop.
SamuelJohnson@evacide Right. Pollute the marine environment instead of hacking the device or recycling it. Egregiously bad advice.
Pete Prodoehl ๐@evacide I am offering a free service where I crush Amazon Echo devices with a hydraulic press.
Gary "grim" Kramlich@rasterweb @evacide put the videos on youtube/facebook and donate the proceeds to a needy charity or your neighbors or whatever.
@rasterweb Forgot to mention, i have a NiB echo show (i think) that I'd be willing to donate. Got it as part of a "smart home package" when I signed up for att fiber.
xs4me2A sledgehammer will suffice I guessโฆ
caranea@evacide
It seems for now only the places where they already have Alexa+ got any sort of notification. E.g. none of the folx I know in Germany got an email.
It seems for now only the places where they already have Alexa+ got any sort of notification. E.g. none of the folx I know in Germany got an email.
evilstevie@evacide I'm waaaay too paranoid (and partially brummy-accented) to have a voice-controlled device around the house.
still feels odd being proven right though :(
Paul McKoneCould they be repurposed by putting them into a soundproof box with a receiver tuned to a 24-hour talk radio station?
AntJBro@evacide โAlexa, how far can you swim?โ
AlgoCompSynth by znmeb ๐บ๐ฆ@evacide There's enough pollution in the ocean already - throw it into a volcano.
Ligando Os Pontos (@Dru)@evacide , the sea can't handle so much garbage.
Mac Cellar@evacide Amen!! If it can hear you when you want it to, it can hear you when Amazon wants it to.
Jerk@evacide You definitely do NOT want to through them into the sea (or vulcano). You want to have them professionally recycled, so they can make for something useful, if you made the mistake to buy one at first. ๐ Throughing them into the sea would mean to hurt our environment, which the owner of this company already does by a lot in many ways. ๐ก
Bill Zaumen@evacide Is it feasible to add a 'push to talk button to the device? That may be feasible if its internal microphone is accessible and has wires that you can cut and splice.
Flaming Cheeto@evacide if I had a good home solar system to provide dirt cheap power, I'd play Rage Against the Machine into it 24/7
MฤMฤNTล MลRi๐๐ช๐บ๐ฉ๐ช
John Maxwell@evacide Nah. Strip it for parts without anesthesia. Little snitch.
Cowboy Who?
๐๐ท๐ญ๐๐ฃ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ญ๐๐ฎ ๐คPlease don't throw your Amazon Echo into the sea. There is too much garbage in the oceans already.
Root it.
https://hackaday.com/2023/07/22/root-on-an-amazon-echo-dot/
BlackCatRanch@evacide I never had one of these.
Chris ๐ณ๐ธ@evacide TLDR this thread, but I'm sure someone wants to collect and hack the firmware. Your post reminded me of a video by Chris Doel where he makes a battery bank from discarded vapes he collected https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ehp23hrrEHY
Turning Disposable Vapes into a Fast Charge Power Bank
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
@evacide I want to see someone make a choir of Amazon Echo's perform Ave Maria
Greg Bell@evacide fill up their cloud drives with fish bloops
ArticwolfI guess that if you say that Trump is a moron and goes to Amazon it will be passed to the White House and in a couple of minutes the FBI will be at your door
Alkaris 
@evacide if people can't opt-out then what if we blocked its access to call home, packet sniff the device to get the server it calls home to.
But also reverse engineer the software and hardware to replace with custom software.
Michael WestergaardIt contains batteries, so it is perfectly legal and charges the electric eels.