Amazon Echo Club

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Sounds like "fake news" from a British tabloid to me. The Alexa service is far from perfect, but this story sounds extremely suspect. Perhaps someone hacked into her device, but I suspect this is just pure "fake news" BS.

It's a lot simpler than that. Alexa just reads out the first paragraph or two of the wikipedia page. No doubt someone had vandalised that page at the time the question was asked.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ApK

Indeed. And "hacking" in this case, for the non-tech-savvy, could simply be someone in that other room with the other Alexa device saying "Alexa, announce '...stab yourself.'"

A news report should have at least mentioned the log of what the device heard and said from the app.

Well to begin with, it was an article on AOL.com. Who uses that anymore? And I noticed absolutely no names for sources listed. They could have at least made up some names. Saying Amazon admitted the issue but never stating who at Amazon supposedly admitted something and with no direct quotes makes it suspect. These kinds of articles are everywhere these days on sites like Facebook and even major news sites. On major news sites scroll down a bit and you will see all the articles labelled as "Sponsored". Those tend to be ads or fake news or anything else other than real news. Many sites don’t even attempt to label them as sponsored so they might look real. Funny how some people will buy into almost any BS. I remember as a young kid standing in the checkout lines with my Mom at the grocery store and seeing the rack of tabloids placed there as impulse buys. Even as a six year old I knew they were BS. But some people choose to believe almost anything.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

It's a lot simpler than that. Alexa just reads out the first paragraph or two of the wikipedia page. No doubt someone had vandalised that page at the time the question was asked.

Even if that explanation is true, the report is still "yellow journalism, in other words pure BS.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Well to begin with, it was an article on AOL.com. Who uses that anymore?

1. A surprising number of senior citizens, it seems. And I even ran into one slightly younger person who was still using it.
2. And, apparently, drjd.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Even if that explanation is true, the report is still "yellow journalism, in other words pure BS.

Yup. If it was due to a wikipedia issue, a decent article could have explained it, presented a cautionary tale about trusting stuff on the Internet and understanding where your information is coming from, and STILL could have been the sensational click bait they wanted it to be.

[drjd]

Originally Posted by ApK

1. A surprising number of senior citizens, it seems. And I even ran into one slightly younger person who was still using it.
2. And, apparently, drjd.

But I'm a firm believer of Abraham Lincoln, which is evident from my signature.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by ApK

1. A surprising number of senior citizens, it seems. And I even ran into one slightly younger person who was still using it.
2. And, apparently, drjd.

I was just pokng fun at AOL. TBH I didn't know it still was in operation.

Originally Posted by ApK

Yup. If it was due to a wikipedia issue, a decent article could have explained it, presented a cautionary tale about trusting stuff on the Internet and understanding where your information is coming from, and STILL could have been the sensational click bait they wanted it to be.

There was a great scene in an American Dad episode where Stan wonders aloud, [See quote below], which was a swipe at Wikipedia. I wish Amazon wouldn't use that site at all.

ETA: Here is Stan's actual quote: "If only there was a place where you could make any outrageous claim you want with absolutely no proof and millions of people will accept it as fact." He was referring to Wikipedia of course.

[mlewis78]

I just asked "Alexa, tell me about the Greensboro Woolworth Sit-Ins 1960" and she didn't know that. I kept asking and eventually it started reading from a Wikipedia page about World War I.

[OtinG]

I'm not surprised, although Wikipedia does have articles on it. People don’t seem to care much for history anymore though, so it probably isn’t a priority within Echoland to add such info.

I was only 2 years old in 1960, so I don’t remember the sit ins you mentioned. But I definitely remember the long gone five and dime stores that used to dot the landscape in nearly every strip mall and small town in my area. Woolworth was one of them, along with TG&Y, and a host of others. And in small towns where I grew up, catalog stores were popular, especially if the small town was a long ways from a big town. I haven’t seen a catalog store in years now, but I don’t live in a rural area anymore. Sears and Western Auto catalog stores used to be very popular in smal town USA.

[mlewis78]

I was 9 in 1960 and I started school at UNC at Greensboro in 1969. I had lunch at that Woolworth a few times. Now it is an international civil rights center.

[binaryhermit]

to be fair, i though aol.com these days is a crappy clone of crappy web portal yahoo.com

[binaryhermit]

Originally Posted by binaryhermit

to be fair, i though aol.com these days is a crappy clone of crappy web portal yahoo.com

Though given what I'm about to quote from https://plans.aol.com/join?ncid=mbr_advacqlnk00000013

If you're interested in purchasing a plan that includes dialup service, please call 1-800-827-6364 (Mon-Fri: 8am-12am ET; Sat: 8am-10pm ET)

Although at this point I wonder what percentage of their dialup subscribers actually still want their dialup internets. I seem to remember hearing it's virtually impossible to cancel AOL.

[OtinG]

AOL is a dinosaur for sure, but some old dinosaur customers who are older still prefer that kind of service. Some dinosaur customers don't take well to change I guess.

When AOL came along the internet was still fairly new. Most people in those days still didn't even have email addresses, and they didn't understand the internet or how to navigate it. They also didn't understand modems and how the technology worked. Along came AOL who basically held their hands and brought them into the internet, albeit through a highly scaled back and highly restricted access to same. People could signup, by a modem, get their geeky child/friend/neighbor to hook it up to their computer, and get on the internet and discover email, instant messaging, and the world of surfing the web, even though they didn't have much clue about any of that.

In those days AOL was huge, so big that it eventually took over Time Warner. Fast forward a few years and people had mostly learned what they needed to know to access the full and unfiltered internet via much better services. Many cable companies began offering internet services and the prices went down. AOL became the dinosaur it now is and started bleeding out customers. Time Warner pushed the AOL directors to the curb and regained control of their company.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by OtinG

In those days AOL was huge, so big that it eventually took over Time Warner. Fast forward a few years and people had mostly learned what they needed to know to access the full and unfiltered internet via much better services. Many cable companies began offering internet services and the prices went down. AOL became the dinosaur it now is and started bleeding out customers. Time Warner pushed the AOL directors to the curb and regained control of their company.

From a time travel skit I just saw on Youtube:

"Now I have to travel to 1995 and invest in something called 'Google.' Or was it 'America Online?' Eh, no matter, I'm sure they'll both be equally successful."

[wodin]

I still fondly recall the cheery "You have mail!" announcement when my modem finally stopped squealing at me.