the negative consequences that might arise from it would entirely be the consequence of what the creators of South Park chose to put in that episode.
No, it would be the result of someone who didn't care what was on the shopping list telling Alexa to order everything on the list. And not paying attention as Alexa kept saying it was adding things that the person who is actively paying attention to Alexa hadn't requested.
And for what it's worth, it did apparently bother quite a few people.
Ok, so you want me to go look for the "Annoying Other People With Computers Act".
There reportedly were people who had unplugged their devices after a few minutes because they were getting annoyed with how they were responding to the television during the episode.
You mean people making the choice not to allow their personal assistant to be in a position to hear commands from other people? That sounds like taking responsibility for a device that they know will respond to any command from any person within hearing.
The first home computer virus was just a practical joke too, after all.
Uhhh, no. Claiming that any program that does anything you don't want is a "virus" is silly. And if you don't want your voice controlled device to respond to TV sounds, don't put it where it can hear the TV. If you don't want your three year old child to play with a gun, don't leave a gun where he can pick it up. If you don't want your Alexa to respond to voice commands from whatever it can hear, don't let it hear things from sources that aren't authorized. Common sense.
Now, I take it that all this rambling means you don't actually have a link to an actual law that was violated.
You can't disable it without a bright persistent red LED across the top staying on.
A small bit of tape will cover that up. Electrical tape is quite good and usually doesn't leave too much residue. That is what I use to cover the LED on my noise cancelling headphones so the waitresses on airplanes don't hassle me about turning off electronic devices. (Now that PEDs are ok, it's redundant, but psychologically pleasing.)
The echo will answer the exact questions that are being asked on the ad; except when they detect a sound clip identical to the ad.
The audio will never be identical. The command will be identical. And you admit that the Echo will not answer the question or command from the ad. False advertising -- showing a device doing something that it has been deliberately programmed not to do.
No, the devices don't have speech recognition - with the sole exception of recognising their wake word.
They don't have speaker recognition AT ALL. They have WORD recognition -- what are the words -- but the actual speaker is never identified. That's the relevant part, whether you call that "speech recognition" or something else.
But of course you know when I said that the "devices" have speech recognition that I meant it as the system as a whole -- the devices are quite dumb. And you accuse me of being pedantic.
If they identify a recording as matching an Amazon ad,
And what they pull out of the recording is the COMMAND, which matches an Amazon ad. They do not identify the speaker, so they do not know whether it was spoken by an Amazon ad or a person.
The fact that people weren't harmed in this particular is irrelevant...
Except that the law requires some kind of harm. That makes it relevant. Can you cite the actual law that is being broken? A link is good... to a law that is relevant.
In South Park's case, to the best of my understanding, the Amazon assistants that were affected by this prank evidently added humorous items to the user's own shopping list, which it did not evidently actually follow through and purchase,
So no harm. And the owners did allow the assistants to listen.
but what if there had been someone else in the same room who was not watching the episode,
What if there had been someone else in the same room with a knife who was stabbing the Echo's owner? We can play all kinds of "what if" games, can't we?
What? No, none of the above.
I'm saying it specifically ignores the specific sound clips from Echo ads.
Then yes, all of the above, because they are showing uses that explicitly will not work in real life. That's false advertising.
Only if, for some reason, you insist on doing so by playing back a sample of the advert.
The devices have speech recognition but not specific voice recognition. It doesn't matter who says "and a ten minute time-out timer for Mr. Bear", the "ten minute time-out timer" is activated by those words, not by who says them.
The cell data network is handled by Linux the same way that other data interfaces are (it just looks like another network interface), and iptables handles them just fine.
But unless you've rooted your phone, you are not running iptables on it. Since the cell network is connecting your phone to the cell network, where are you running iptables? Your cell repeater doesn't give you that control, so....
I have an active cell booster that I can extract the usage data from -- I can't decode the actual packets, but I can see when the data link is being used, by what device, and the pattern of data sizes and times)
Interesting. Did not know such devices would give such data.
I'm not sure what that has to do with the firewall...
How do you run a firewall on cell data networks? Trusting the firewall you run implies all the data goes through it.
But watching the data amounts, if not the destinations, through the booster would give you some indication of how the phone behaves, privacy-wise, when the app or OS author thinks you are on an un-monitorable cell network, so if you don't see it misbehaving on that network then that is a reasonable indication it isn't misbehaving. Thanks.
Nothing is certain, but I'm over 90% sure. I test my security arrangements regularly.
I'm curious how you do that. I have actually run tcpdump on my phone's data while it has been running on my WiFi, but I cannot do that for other people's WiFi or while using cell data. Since the device can tell when it is connected to a non-snoopable network, I would assume any clandestine data transfers would be done using that network.
My firewall. Neither the OS nor any app can send data out without me specifically allowing it.
So you never use the "phone in your pocket" anywhere but where there is WiFi you control. It's never out in the real world where there is a cell data connection available to it. You also never open a hole to Google to update any apps, or for any other apps to connect for data. That's not what most people think of when they read "phone in my pocket", so you can understand my question.
Completely wrong. As soon as you connect to my device you are knowingly accessing it.
As I pointed out, I knew none of the things you listed as a requirement. I don't know who you are, so I cannot know I was connecting to YOUR computer (I wasn't), and I don't know that you have that device. I was pointing out the failure of your description, not necessarily of what the law actually says.
I don't know why you think the fact that you don't know it is my device matters in the slightest.
I don't know why YOU think I know it is your device matters, but that's what you said.
Also, I didn't quote the whole law because I thought people would be smart enough to look it up themselves it they cared.
I didn't see you quote any of "the law", and there are so many of them that being specific in a citation is required for that citation to have any value at all.
3. That's a fair point... but the action is still criminal,
Citation required.
4. What makes BK's stunt "in poor faith" and this one not?
What makes either one "bad faith"? (There is no such thing as "poor faith".)
Let's see. I have a device that responds when anyone within hearing says "Ok Google". I made the choice to turn that device on, and I know it does this because it does it in my presence.
Can I know that nothing anyone ever says while in the presence of my device will cause harm? Of course not. But I know that it can. My choice to have it or not.
That's ultimate why BK's stunt was not well received, after all.
I think you are projecting. You didn't receive it well, and everyone else must feel the same way. Sorry, I don't. If I had such a device and the only thing it did was read one sentence from a Wikipedia page in response to a TV ad, I would think "what an interesting advertising concept".
What I would NOT have found to be acceptable was Google's decision to tack an ad for a Disney movie onto the end of weather information. Google has no high moral ground to object to Burger King when Google plays such games with their devices.
But it also can't send any of that data out without me specifically allowing it to,
Are you sure?
I have had "background data" and "auto update apps" turned off for as long as I've known about that setting, and yet magically some of my apps updated themselves. And just a couple of days ago I found out that Google scans my device on a regular basis and checks with momma to verify that the apps are "safe".
I can write a program with a "please may I send your data off to everyone?" check-box that is completely ignored. Who is to say Google or any other app developer cannot do the same thing?
Free advertising. As long as Google spelled Burger King's name right, it was all just free advertising. And what an odd definition of "trouble" you have. If Google doesn't like what you do, you're in trouble young man! A ten minute time-out for you and your teddy bear.
What's really funny is the reaction of some idiot quoted in the NYT article about it. He's unhappy that advertisers are listening to every word in your living room. He ignores the fact that it is Google that was listening, not Burger King, and they don't listen to every word.
The other result of that ad was that the Wikipedia page for The Whopper Burger was locked down and could no longer be edited.
This is, perhaps, what was meant by "getting in a whole lot of trouble." I would have thought that Amazon accepting orders for a dollhouse based on audio in news reports of a girl accidentally buying a dollhouse through Alexa might have resulted in more trouble, but no, getting someone's Google Home device to say "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese on a sesame seed bun" is too egregious to ignore.
Read the law again. It contains phrases like 'Intentionally access..' and 'knowingly access...' So, prove that they intentionally accessed YOUR computer (which would of course require you to demonstrate that they a) knew you had such a device, b) would have the device in position to respond, and c) knew that you would be watching the show. Ain't gonna fly.
Under that legal theory, if I were to scan a range of IP addresses using a script that will brick certain common home routers, I would not have committed a crime. You would have to prove that I intentionally accessed YOUR computer (don't know who you are), that you had such a device (didn't know it until the hack worked), and that you had that device connected to the net (again, didn't know in advance).
And YOU are the one who "put it in a place where it would respond", so I'm even less guilty.
They shouldn't. The system recognises its own commercials and ignores them.
So we should notify FTC of Amazon false advertising? You're saying that the things they explicitly show the device doing in their ads the devices have been programmed explicitly not to do in real life. If I buy an Echo for the specific purpose of setting a ten minute time-out timer for Mr. Bear it will ignore that command?
Then I start feeling high as shit. I need this stuff, but maybe in a lower dose--
So take less. Unless you're being physically restrained and force-injected with this medication, you can simply take less of it. It is your choice.
Pharmacies sell pill cutters. The active ingredients are rarely, if ever, concentrated in one place in a pill, they are distributed throughout, so truly, half a pill has half the dose of a full pill.
It is a bit harder to manage to double your dosage on a prescription med without a doctor's ultimate approval. You can do it until your current allocation of pills is gone, but it if is truly making a difference then your doctor should consider that in setting your dosage later.
Let's remember that there are communities on this planet where depression is an unknown,
Yes, every community that doesn't have a saturation level of psychologists and psychiatrists and a drug store on every corner, with insurance that pays for all kinds of things, has no depression. That's because there is nobody to diagnose it, and nobody to profit from it.
Until ADHD and ADD and such became the reason why Johnnie and Suzie couldn't read, nobody had ADD or ADHD, either. And now, people who are jittery and nervous have "restless leg syndrome", because there is a drug that treats it.
despite their popluation's daily struggle to survive.
In other words, when people don't have a lot of free time to think about why it isn't their fault that their life sucks, they aren't depressed. That's why there is the phrase "first world problems".
My Bad. The summary called them a dryer sheet, and then said they went in the laundry machine. Ok, the local water treatment facility having a big washing machine for the water isn't as stupid as having a big dryer. But it would be a lot smarter to have a fixed filtering system, which would then be clogged up by all the other particulate matter that is still in the water. Face it, the water in your washing machine is distilled compared to what a water treatment plant gets to handle.
Because it is a waste of electricity to machine dry polyester or fleece, so the most environmentally conscientious people will not be using a dryer anyway. The only people who would use such a thing are those weak minded people who are scared because someone told them they are "eating their dirty laundry".
Assuming this is important and the product works, then they can have a post-filtering stage at the sewage treatment plant where the clean water discharge first goes through a giant, turbulant vat stirring up many sheets of this stuff.
These aren't washer sheets, they're dryer sheets. Imagine the local water processing plant with a huge dryer where they have hundreds of these sheets in a big hot rotating tub and they spray water into it and it "dries". Hey, you don't need the sheets at all if you are going to distill all your outgoing waste water!
When a centralized design doesn't work, distribute.
Uhhh, the problem with this solution is that polyester clothing is almost dry when it comes out of the spin cycle of the washer, and it is a waste of time to run it through a dryer in the first place. (A, you risk melting your clothing if the dryer gets too hot.) You hang it up and it dries in about ten minutes. Ok, overnight.
The reason you should never machine dry your polyester stuff is that drying fuses any remnant stains or odors onto the cloth. I've got some tees that I had professionally washed and I had to wash them three times after that to get the odor out of them.
Because the word "lie" says that you are making a deliberate false statement.
So does "fake news".
In this case they are making up stories based on know truthful facts then adding commentary that is made up.
In other words, "fake news" is just an opinion that differs from your own.
This was based on the original reporter looking at two pictures that were from a different angle, distance and light. Would it be reasonable to a journalist to understand those items, probably not so it is not a lie.
Journalists not understanding common photographic effects? I think they certainly should have understood that. Photos are a stock-in-trade for journalists, and they've certainly all seen tens, if not hundreds of them, during their careers.
Because then you have to admit it's always been around and you don't have to fall for it.
+5. The Internet has always been a source of some pretty ridiculous disinformation, but it's a new phenomenon created by the alt-right when it might have affected your preferred candidate.
Yea, but for the incumbent's rally they covered only the protestors that shoed up,
Hey, in North Carolina, putting on shoes means you're going to Sunday meeting on Easter. It's pretty significant, and the news was quite right to cover that part of the event.
Slashdot Mirror
the negative consequences that might arise from it would entirely be the consequence of what the creators of South Park chose to put in that episode.
No, it would be the result of someone who didn't care what was on the shopping list telling Alexa to order everything on the list. And not paying attention as Alexa kept saying it was adding things that the person who is actively paying attention to Alexa hadn't requested.
And for what it's worth, it did apparently bother quite a few people.
Ok, so you want me to go look for the "Annoying Other People With Computers Act".
There reportedly were people who had unplugged their devices after a few minutes because they were getting annoyed with how they were responding to the television during the episode.
You mean people making the choice not to allow their personal assistant to be in a position to hear commands from other people? That sounds like taking responsibility for a device that they know will respond to any command from any person within hearing.
The first home computer virus was just a practical joke too, after all.
Uhhh, no. Claiming that any program that does anything you don't want is a "virus" is silly. And if you don't want your voice controlled device to respond to TV sounds, don't put it where it can hear the TV. If you don't want your three year old child to play with a gun, don't leave a gun where he can pick it up. If you don't want your Alexa to respond to voice commands from whatever it can hear, don't let it hear things from sources that aren't authorized. Common sense.
Now, I take it that all this rambling means you don't actually have a link to an actual law that was violated.
You can't disable it without a bright persistent red LED across the top staying on.
A small bit of tape will cover that up. Electrical tape is quite good and usually doesn't leave too much residue. That is what I use to cover the LED on my noise cancelling headphones so the waitresses on airplanes don't hassle me about turning off electronic devices. (Now that PEDs are ok, it's redundant, but psychologically pleasing.)
The echo will answer the exact questions that are being asked on the ad; except when they detect a sound clip identical to the ad.
The audio will never be identical. The command will be identical. And you admit that the Echo will not answer the question or command from the ad. False advertising -- showing a device doing something that it has been deliberately programmed not to do.
No, the devices don't have speech recognition - with the sole exception of recognising their wake word.
They don't have speaker recognition AT ALL. They have WORD recognition -- what are the words -- but the actual speaker is never identified. That's the relevant part, whether you call that "speech recognition" or something else.
But of course you know when I said that the "devices" have speech recognition that I meant it as the system as a whole -- the devices are quite dumb. And you accuse me of being pedantic.
If they identify a recording as matching an Amazon ad,
And what they pull out of the recording is the COMMAND, which matches an Amazon ad. They do not identify the speaker, so they do not know whether it was spoken by an Amazon ad or a person.
The fact that people weren't harmed in this particular is irrelevant...
Except that the law requires some kind of harm. That makes it relevant. Can you cite the actual law that is being broken? A link is good ... to a law that is relevant.
In South Park's case, to the best of my understanding, the Amazon assistants that were affected by this prank evidently added humorous items to the user's own shopping list, which it did not evidently actually follow through and purchase,
So no harm. And the owners did allow the assistants to listen.
but what if there had been someone else in the same room who was not watching the episode,
What if there had been someone else in the same room with a knife who was stabbing the Echo's owner? We can play all kinds of "what if" games, can't we?
What? No, none of the above. I'm saying it specifically ignores the specific sound clips from Echo ads.
Then yes, all of the above, because they are showing uses that explicitly will not work in real life. That's false advertising.
Only if, for some reason, you insist on doing so by playing back a sample of the advert.
The devices have speech recognition but not specific voice recognition. It doesn't matter who says "and a ten minute time-out timer for Mr. Bear", the "ten minute time-out timer" is activated by those words, not by who says them.
The cell data network is handled by Linux the same way that other data interfaces are (it just looks like another network interface), and iptables handles them just fine.
But unless you've rooted your phone, you are not running iptables on it. Since the cell network is connecting your phone to the cell network, where are you running iptables? Your cell repeater doesn't give you that control, so ....
It would be criminal under the category of unauthorized computer trespass.
Citation required.
I have an active cell booster that I can extract the usage data from -- I can't decode the actual packets, but I can see when the data link is being used, by what device, and the pattern of data sizes and times)
Interesting. Did not know such devices would give such data.
I'm not sure what that has to do with the firewall...
How do you run a firewall on cell data networks? Trusting the firewall you run implies all the data goes through it.
But watching the data amounts, if not the destinations, through the booster would give you some indication of how the phone behaves, privacy-wise, when the app or OS author thinks you are on an un-monitorable cell network, so if you don't see it misbehaving on that network then that is a reasonable indication it isn't misbehaving. Thanks.
Nothing is certain, but I'm over 90% sure. I test my security arrangements regularly.
I'm curious how you do that. I have actually run tcpdump on my phone's data while it has been running on my WiFi, but I cannot do that for other people's WiFi or while using cell data. Since the device can tell when it is connected to a non-snoopable network, I would assume any clandestine data transfers would be done using that network.
My firewall. Neither the OS nor any app can send data out without me specifically allowing it.
So you never use the "phone in your pocket" anywhere but where there is WiFi you control. It's never out in the real world where there is a cell data connection available to it. You also never open a hole to Google to update any apps, or for any other apps to connect for data. That's not what most people think of when they read "phone in my pocket", so you can understand my question.
Completely wrong. As soon as you connect to my device you are knowingly accessing it.
As I pointed out, I knew none of the things you listed as a requirement. I don't know who you are, so I cannot know I was connecting to YOUR computer (I wasn't), and I don't know that you have that device. I was pointing out the failure of your description, not necessarily of what the law actually says.
I don't know why you think the fact that you don't know it is my device matters in the slightest.
I don't know why YOU think I know it is your device matters, but that's what you said.
Also, I didn't quote the whole law because I thought people would be smart enough to look it up themselves it they cared.
I didn't see you quote any of "the law", and there are so many of them that being specific in a citation is required for that citation to have any value at all.
3. That's a fair point... but the action is still criminal,
Citation required.
4. What makes BK's stunt "in poor faith" and this one not?
What makes either one "bad faith"? (There is no such thing as "poor faith".)
Let's see. I have a device that responds when anyone within hearing says "Ok Google". I made the choice to turn that device on, and I know it does this because it does it in my presence. Can I know that nothing anyone ever says while in the presence of my device will cause harm? Of course not. But I know that it can. My choice to have it or not.
That's ultimate why BK's stunt was not well received, after all.
I think you are projecting. You didn't receive it well, and everyone else must feel the same way. Sorry, I don't. If I had such a device and the only thing it did was read one sentence from a Wikipedia page in response to a TV ad, I would think "what an interesting advertising concept".
What I would NOT have found to be acceptable was Google's decision to tack an ad for a Disney movie onto the end of weather information. Google has no high moral ground to object to Burger King when Google plays such games with their devices.
But it also can't send any of that data out without me specifically allowing it to,
Are you sure?
I have had "background data" and "auto update apps" turned off for as long as I've known about that setting, and yet magically some of my apps updated themselves. And just a couple of days ago I found out that Google scans my device on a regular basis and checks with momma to verify that the apps are "safe".
I can write a program with a "please may I send your data off to everyone?" check-box that is completely ignored. Who is to say Google or any other app developer cannot do the same thing?
including a reprimand from Google.
Free advertising. As long as Google spelled Burger King's name right, it was all just free advertising. And what an odd definition of "trouble" you have. If Google doesn't like what you do, you're in trouble young man! A ten minute time-out for you and your teddy bear.
What's really funny is the reaction of some idiot quoted in the NYT article about it. He's unhappy that advertisers are listening to every word in your living room. He ignores the fact that it is Google that was listening, not Burger King, and they don't listen to every word.
This is, perhaps, what was meant by "getting in a whole lot of trouble." I would have thought that Amazon accepting orders for a dollhouse based on audio in news reports of a girl accidentally buying a dollhouse through Alexa might have resulted in more trouble, but no, getting someone's Google Home device to say "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce cheese on a sesame seed bun" is too egregious to ignore.
Read the law again. It contains phrases like 'Intentionally access..' and 'knowingly access...' So, prove that they intentionally accessed YOUR computer (which would of course require you to demonstrate that they a) knew you had such a device, b) would have the device in position to respond, and c) knew that you would be watching the show. Ain't gonna fly.
Under that legal theory, if I were to scan a range of IP addresses using a script that will brick certain common home routers, I would not have committed a crime. You would have to prove that I intentionally accessed YOUR computer (don't know who you are), that you had such a device (didn't know it until the hack worked), and that you had that device connected to the net (again, didn't know in advance).
And YOU are the one who "put it in a place where it would respond", so I'm even less guilty.
They shouldn't. The system recognises its own commercials and ignores them.
So we should notify FTC of Amazon false advertising? You're saying that the things they explicitly show the device doing in their ads the devices have been programmed explicitly not to do in real life. If I buy an Echo for the specific purpose of setting a ten minute time-out timer for Mr. Bear it will ignore that command?
Then I start feeling high as shit. I need this stuff, but maybe in a lower dose--
So take less. Unless you're being physically restrained and force-injected with this medication, you can simply take less of it. It is your choice.
Pharmacies sell pill cutters. The active ingredients are rarely, if ever, concentrated in one place in a pill, they are distributed throughout, so truly, half a pill has half the dose of a full pill.
It is a bit harder to manage to double your dosage on a prescription med without a doctor's ultimate approval. You can do it until your current allocation of pills is gone, but it if is truly making a difference then your doctor should consider that in setting your dosage later.
Let's remember that there are communities on this planet where depression is an unknown,
Yes, every community that doesn't have a saturation level of psychologists and psychiatrists and a drug store on every corner, with insurance that pays for all kinds of things, has no depression. That's because there is nobody to diagnose it, and nobody to profit from it.
Until ADHD and ADD and such became the reason why Johnnie and Suzie couldn't read, nobody had ADD or ADHD, either. And now, people who are jittery and nervous have "restless leg syndrome", because there is a drug that treats it.
despite their popluation's daily struggle to survive.
In other words, when people don't have a lot of free time to think about why it isn't their fault that their life sucks, they aren't depressed. That's why there is the phrase "first world problems".
So, overall, it is still a stupid idea.
We aren't.
Because it is a waste of electricity to machine dry polyester or fleece, so the most environmentally conscientious people will not be using a dryer anyway. The only people who would use such a thing are those weak minded people who are scared because someone told them they are "eating their dirty laundry".
Assuming this is important and the product works, then they can have a post-filtering stage at the sewage treatment plant where the clean water discharge first goes through a giant, turbulant vat stirring up many sheets of this stuff.
These aren't washer sheets, they're dryer sheets. Imagine the local water processing plant with a huge dryer where they have hundreds of these sheets in a big hot rotating tub and they spray water into it and it "dries". Hey, you don't need the sheets at all if you are going to distill all your outgoing waste water!
When a centralized design doesn't work, distribute.
Uhhh, the problem with this solution is that polyester clothing is almost dry when it comes out of the spin cycle of the washer, and it is a waste of time to run it through a dryer in the first place. (A, you risk melting your clothing if the dryer gets too hot.) You hang it up and it dries in about ten minutes. Ok, overnight.
The reason you should never machine dry your polyester stuff is that drying fuses any remnant stains or odors onto the cloth. I've got some tees that I had professionally washed and I had to wash them three times after that to get the odor out of them.
Just let me get my shotgun, a barrel of whiskey, and we can try it again where you surprise me by having a car drive itself down my rural road.
There are places where cars with flashing lights are regarded as revenuers and shotguns are the standard welcome.
How nice for Ford to put a car with flashing lights on the road to try distracting other drivers, all in the name of proving how safe AVs are.
Because the word "lie" says that you are making a deliberate false statement.
So does "fake news".
In this case they are making up stories based on know truthful facts then adding commentary that is made up.
In other words, "fake news" is just an opinion that differs from your own.
This was based on the original reporter looking at two pictures that were from a different angle, distance and light. Would it be reasonable to a journalist to understand those items, probably not so it is not a lie.
Journalists not understanding common photographic effects? I think they certainly should have understood that. Photos are a stock-in-trade for journalists, and they've certainly all seen tens, if not hundreds of them, during their careers.
Because then you have to admit it's always been around and you don't have to fall for it.
+5. The Internet has always been a source of some pretty ridiculous disinformation, but it's a new phenomenon created by the alt-right when it might have affected your preferred candidate.
Yea, but for the incumbent's rally they covered only the protestors that shoed up,
Hey, in North Carolina, putting on shoes means you're going to Sunday meeting on Easter. It's pretty significant, and the news was quite right to cover that part of the event.