[NSFW audio] Amazon Alexa gets saucy, much to the consternation of a toddler's parents.
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9:25 am Tue
Jan 3, 2017
Amazon Alexa gone wild
Critical essays (including mine) discuss Toronto's plan to let Google build a surveillance-based "smart city" along its waterfront
Sidewalk Labs is Google's sister company that sells "smart city" technology; its showcase partner is Toronto, my hometown, where it has made a creepy shitshow out of its freshman outing, from the mass resignations of its privacy advisors to the underhanded way it snuck in the right to take over most of the lakeshore without […]
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Cop says Amazon told him they had "partnered" with 200 US police forces to sell and tap into Ring surveillance doorbells
Last week, Motherboard reported on a public record request that revealed that Amazon had struck confidential deals with local police forces to get them to promote the company's Internet of Things "Ring" doorbells, and the accompanying "Neighbors" app that produces a kind of private surveillance mesh overlooking nearby public spaces -- under the terms of […]
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Like Amazon, Google sends voice assistant recordings to contractors for transcription, including recordings made inadvertently
After Bloomberg revealed that Amazon secretly sent recordings from Alexa to subcontractors all over the world in order to improve its speech-recognition systems, a whistleblower leaked recordings from Google Home to investigative reporters from VRT, revealing that Google, too, was sending audio clips from its voice assistant technology to pieceworkers through the Crowdsource app.
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Learn a new language by chatting with native speakers from around the world
There are a lot of different language apps out there because nobody learns anything the same exact way – especially not something as complex as a new language. For some people, the best way is to dive in and start talking, but that’s easier said than done if you’re not around those natives you aspire […]
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Save up to 40% on these signed Marvel and Star Wars collectibles
There’s movie merch and then there are artifacts – one-of-a-kind items for the true fans only. These 11 items definitely fall into the latter category. We’ve unearthed movie art, props and other fan touchstones from the major nerd franchises of the last 50 years. Gaze upon these Star Wars and Marvel collectibles and don’t worry. […]
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Become a spreadsheet ninja with these Microsoft Excel training bundles
No matter what kind of office you work at, there’s probably an Excel expert in it. And no wonder: Businesses are still discovering uses for one of Microsoft’s flagship software suites beyond just bare-bones spreadsheets. Make October the month you become invaluable at work by taking one of these boot camps in Excel and its […]
