Amazon Echo Club

[wodin]

Amazon's Alexa Reviewers Can Access Customers' Home Addresses

An Amazon.com Inc. team auditing Alexa users’ commands has access to location data and can, in some cases, easily find a customer’s home address, according to five employees familiar with the program.

[OtinG]

Another good reason to turn off the permission for Amazon to review your voice recordings. (See this post for how to turn it off.) It doesn't seem to be helping out Bezos Bozos anyway--several years in and Alexa has not made much, if any, progress in recognizing and responding to commands. If Amazon wanted to, they could still review your history, but I don't think Bezos would allow that. Bezos is not like ZuckerTURD or the Google trash that data mine for a living. He does seem to have at least some ethics. However it is probably never a good idea to give permission to any company to review your data, history, or anything else. I started denying that permission whenever given the choice. There are a lot of apps that ask for that permission and many turn it on without asking and/or by default. I personally think it is much safer and wiser to keep that permission turned off. If the app sucks, then write emails telling them what sucks and ask them to fix it and even suggest how it might be improved, but I don't see the benefit of giving them carte blanche to search through your private information and data.

Don't forget that most tech firms employ a lot of contractors, some of whom might be outsourced in other countries. As such, that can make your data and info even more vulnerable to misuse and/or unauthorized use.

[OtinG]

Is anyone able to listen to radio stations via the Radio.com skill when using a stereo paired set of Echo devices? I can get the Radio.com skill to play radio stations on a single Dot 3, but I cannot get it to play on the 2nd Dot 3 to which it is paired. Amazon Prime Music will play on both Dot 3’s simultaneously, but Radio.com won’t. This might be another planned restriction by Amazon, but not sure. Frustrating to say the least!

And here something to think about: The man whose Alexa devices are so limited and flawed wants to land people on the Moon. Any wagers on how that works out?

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Is anyone able to listen to radio stations via the Radio.com skill when using a stereo paired set of Echo devices? I can get the Radio.com skill to play radio stations on a single Dot 3, but I cannot get it to play on the 2nd Dot 3 to which it is paired. Amazon Prime Music will play on both Dot 3’s simultaneously, but Radio.com won’t. This might be another planned restriction by Amazon, but not sure. Frustrating to say the least!

I'll try it out and let you know.

And here something to think about: The man whose Alexa devices are so limited and flawed wants to land people on the Moon. Any wagers on how that works out?

Did he promise to bring them back alive

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Is anyone able to listen to radio stations via the Radio.com skill when using a stereo paired set of Echo devices? I can get the Radio.com skill to play radio stations on a single Dot 3, but I cannot get it to play on the 2nd Dot 3 to which it is paired. Amazon Prime Music will play on both Dot 3’s simultaneously, but Radio.com won’t. This might be another planned restriction by Amazon, but not sure. Frustrating to say the least!

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I'll try it out and let you know.

Did NOT work for me.

iHeartRadio gets stereo and Radio.com only gets mono. What's with that Amazon?

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

I'll try it out and let you know.



Did he promise to bring them back alive

LOL! Good point. I think he wants to colonize the Moon. I’m so burned out on all the Mars BS that I tune out all this space exploration nonsense. We are generations away from any meaningful space exploration. Our parents generation went to the Moon (a quarter of a million miles away) and safely back 50 years ago and the best subsequent generations can do is float around a few hundred miles above the Earth in low Earth orbit boring us to tears and burning up lots of money. What did they tell us in the late 1960s Monkey, that in 25 years we would have astronauts on Mars? Yea right, that happened—not!

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

LOL! Good point. I think he wants to colonize the Moon. I’m so burned out on all the Mars BS that I tune out all this space exploration nonsense. We are generations away from any meaningful space exploration. Our parents generation went to the Moon (a quarter of a million miles away) and safely back 50 years ago and the best subsequent generations can do is float around a few hundred miles above the Earth in low Earth orbit boring us to tears and burning up lots of money. What did they tell us in the late 1960s Monkey, that in 25 years we would have astronauts on Mars? Yea right, that happened—not!

Yep. Even the 60's sci-fi shows had us exploring other planets by the turn of the century. So much for that. Like you said, we've pretty much done nothing since the moon landings.

But we have managed to send our radio signals and space probes out there announcing to the universe "hey, here we are; come and get us"

[wodin]

Originally Posted by OtinG

...
Our parents generation went to the Moon (a quarter of a million miles away) and safely back 50 years ...

That was MY generation, and I am NOT your parent!

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by wodin

That way MY generation, and I am NOT your parent!

Are you really that old? No offense intended of course. To be clear, my parents were of “The Greatest Generation” so named by Tom Brokaw, born in the Great Depression, fought in and/or lived through WWII. It still amazes me how we went from horse and buggie in my grandparents’s day to walking on the Moon in my parents day to sitting on our metaphorical butts in my day! Woodstock must have screwed us up too much! Obviously the Tommy Chong method of engineering and innovation doesn’t work, unless you are designing a bong.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

Yep. Even the 60's sci-fi shows had us exploring other planets by the turn of the century. So much for that. Like you said, we've pretty much done nothing since the moon landings.

But we have managed to send our radio signals and space probes out there announcing to the universe "hey, here we are; come and get us"

Yep if they show up a new term will come into use shortly before we go extinct—laser fodder! If they can travel that far and we cannot get past the Moon, then it will not go well for us... The last book published on Amazon will be How to Serve Humans, 2nd Edition.

[wodin]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Are you really that old? No offense intended of course. To be clear, my parents were of “The Greatest Generation” so named by Tom Brokaw, born in the Great Depression, fought in and/or lived through WWII. It still amazes me how we went from horse and buggie in my grandparents’s day to walking on the Moon in my parents day to sitting on our metaphorical butts in my day! Woodstock must have screwed us up too much! Obviously the Tommy Chong method of engineering and innovation doesn’t work, unless you are designing a bong.

I missed the Apollo 11 landing because I was in the US Navy, underway on a submarine. We didn't have television on submarines in those days.

I was in the crews bunkroom of my first submarine, USS Chivo, SS-341 (yes it was a WWII era diesel powered submarine) when President Kennedy was assassinated, nearly six years earlier.

My son and his wife visited here in Hawaii last summer, and we toured the USS Bowfin memorial. I stared talking about the different aspects of the ship and literally drew a crowd. I don't think anyone there actually knew anyone who had served on one of those boats.

So I'm a tween, too young for the Greatest Generation and too old to be a boomer. I was born during the war, but remember nothing of it.

Spoiler:

I'll be 76 in December.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Yep if they show up a new term will come into use shortly before we go extinct—laser fodder! If they can travel that far and we cannot get past the Moon, then it will not go well for us... The last book published on Amazon will be How to Serve Humans, 2nd Edition.

So true. Remember this Twilight Zone episode?

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tubemonkey

So true. Remember this Twilight Zone episode?

Oh well I remembered the gist of it but got the actual title a bit off! I thought it was from a movie, so I remembered that part incorrectly too. I do remember seeing that scene though as the aliens push the guy into the space ship just as the other guys are trying to warn him it was a cookbook!

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by wodin

I missed the Apollo 11 landing because I was in the US Navy, underway on a submarine. We didn't have television on submarines in those days.

I was in the crews bunkroom of my first submarine, USS Chivo, SS-341 (yes it was a WWII era diesel powered submarine) when President Kennedy was assassinated, nearly six years earlier.

My son and his wife visited here in Hawaii last summer, and we toured the USS Bowfin memorial. I stared talking about the different aspects of the ship and literally drew a crowd. I don't think anyone there actually knew anyone who had served on one of those boats.

So I'm a tween, too young for the Greatest Generation and too old to be a boomer. I was born during the war, but remember nothing of it.

Spoiler:

I'll be 76 in December.

Okay, I thought you were younger than my parents generation as they would all be approaching 100 now if they were still alive. All my aunts and uncles and both parents are long gone now, except one aunt who turned 100 this past January. I was born in 1958 so I’m almost a tween between the Boomers and Gen X, but technically still a Boomer since my dad and all my uncles were in the military during WWII and started their families during or after the war. My oldest cousins are about your age. My dad was in the Army but served under Adm Halsey during the Island Hopping campaigns. He liked Halsey but hated MacArthur!

[OtinG]

Hey Monkey, this is way off topic, but this is my favorite SciFi movie of all time—very thought provoking...