Fogbow

Amazon’s Alexa device tells 10-year-old to touch a penny to a live plug socket
The child had asked the Echo smart speaker for a challenge, prompting her mother to post the response on Twitter

Maya Yang
Thu 30 Dec 2021 00.09 GMT

Virtual assistants can set timers for people, play music, control smart home devices, respond to voice commands and set up reminders. As of Sunday, they have also proven their ability to challenge children to lethal dares.

Alexa, Amazon’s virtual assistant, recently advised a 10-year-old girl to touch a penny to a live plug socket after she asked the Echo smart speaker for a challenge.

“My 10-year-old just asked Alexa on our Echo for a challenge and this is what she said,” said user Kristin Livdahl in a tweet on Sunday. She accompanied the caption with a screenshot of Alexa’s response.

“Here’s something I found on the web. According to ourcommunitynow.com, the challenge is simple: plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs,” read Alexa’s response.



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -live-plug

... plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs ...

Rotterdam to partly dismantle historic bridge for Jeff Bezos’s superyacht
Central section of Koningshaven Bridge to be removed to make way for Amazon founder’s $485m superyacht

AFP in the Hague
Wed 2 Feb 2022 21.11 GMT

A historic steel bridge in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam is to be partly dismantled to allow a superyacht built for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to pass, local authorities have announced.

Bezos’s gigantic, 430-million-euro ($485m) yacht is too big for the iconic Koningshaven Bridge, which dates from 1878 and was rebuilt after being bombed by the Nazis in 1940 during the second world war.

The shipyard building the three-masted mammoth in Alblasserdam, near Rotterdam, has asked the local council to remove the bridge’s central section so it can pass through.

“It’s the only route to the sea,” a spokesperson for the mayor of Rotterdam told AFP, adding that the Amazon owner would foot the bill for the operation.

The decision has angered some in the Netherlands as the local council promised after a major renovation in 2017 that it would never again dismantle the bridge, known to Rotterdammers as De Hef.



https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... superyacht

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 03, 2022 9:22 am
The decision has angered some in the Netherlands as the local council promised after a major renovation in 2017 that it would never again dismantle the bridge, known to Rotterdammers as De Hef.

The shipyard building the three-masted mammoth in Alblasserdam, near Rotterdam, has asked the local council to remove the bridge’s central section so it can pass through.

“It’s the only route to the sea,” a spokesperson for the mayor of Rotterdam told AFP, adding that the Amazon owner would foot the bill for the operation.

Amazon is raising the price of its annual Prime membership to $139 from $119, the company announced on Thursday.

Amazon hasn’t raised the price of its Prime membership program since 2018, when it increased from $99 to $119, the current fee.

LEAKED: NEW AMAZON WORKER CHAT APP WOULD BAN WORDS LIKE “UNION,” “RESTROOMS,” “PAY RAISE,” AND “PLANTATION”
Also: “Grievance,” “slave labor,” “This is dumb,” “living wage,” “diversity,” “vaccine,” and others.

Ken Klippenstein
April 4 2022, 9:27 p.m.

AMAZON WILL BLOCK and flag employee posts on a planned internal messaging app that contain keywords pertaining to labor unions, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. An automatic word monitor would also block a variety of terms that could represent potential critiques of Amazon’s working conditions, like “slave labor,” “prison,” and “plantation,” as well as “restrooms” — presumably related to reports of Amazon employees relieving themselves in bottles to meet punishing quotas.

“Our teams are always thinking about new ways to help employees engage with each other,” said Amazon spokesperson Barbara M. Agrait. “This particular program has not been approved yet and may change significantly or even never launch at all.”

In November 2021, Amazon convened a high-level meeting in which top executives discussed plans to create an internal social media program that would let employees recognize co-workers’ performance with posts called “Shout-Outs,” according to a source with direct knowledge.

The major goal of the program, Amazon’s head of worldwide consumer business, Dave Clark, said, was to reduce employee attrition by fostering happiness among workers — and also productivity. Shout-Outs would be part of a gamified rewards system in which employees are awarded virtual stars and badges for activities that “add direct business value,” documents state. At the meeting, Clark remarked that “some people are insane star collectors.”

But company officials also warned of what they called “the dark side of social media” and decided to actively monitor posts in order to ensure a “positive community.” At the meeting, Clark suggested that the program should resemble an online dating app like Bumble, which allows individuals to engage one on one, rather than a more forum-like platform like Facebook.



https://theintercept.com/2022/04/04/ama ... -chat-app/

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 29, 2022 3:05 pm

LEAKED: NEW AMAZON WORKER CHAT APP WOULD BAN WORDS LIKE “UNION,” “RESTROOMS,” “PAY RAISE,” AND “PLANTATION”
Also: “Grievance,” “slave labor,” “This is dumb,” “living wage,” “diversity,” “vaccine,” and others.

Lisa Kessler/L.A. Kessler - PERFECT - Out Now! @LdyDisney wrote: Just a reminder that Amazon is NOT a library. When you read and return a book it COSTS the author... It's June 1st and I owe Amazon at the moment because people are reading through the Muse series and returning the books when they finish.... :-/ Authors need to eat too...

I don't know if Amazon will care, but this petition to change the return policy on ebooks has almost 50,000 signatures! I just signed...

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Wed Jun 22, 2022 1:20 pm I’ve learned a little more about this Amazon ebook nonsense, and it is even worse than I thought. Let’s say an author gets a $4 royalty on a book. That’s probably wildly high, but I’m just making up the numbers so whatever. Amazon then charges a “digital delivery fee” to the author when someone buys it, let’s call that $1 for the sake of argument. So the author nets $3 on that sale. When the ebook is returned, Amazon recoups the $4 royalty from the author, but they don’t refund the $1 digital delivery fee. So not only does the author have to repay the royalty, they are out the digital delivery fee and actually lose money on the sale. I’ve seen posts showing negative balances for authors at Amazon as a result, they literally owe Amazon money for selling their books that were then returned above and beyond repaying the royalties. Strangely enough, Amazon doesn’t do this for movie rentals, you hit play on it the movie is yours and no refund is possible, not like ebooks where they will allow you to read the whole thing and then get a refund. It’s a nasty scam.

tek wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 6:51 am "your order may arrive in multiple shipments"

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:01 pm From a source that follows the yachting industry:

This has become a non-issue several weeks ago. Bezo's new yacht will be sent downstream without the masts inserted, they will be sent separatly by barge. Masts will be hoisted and set in position at a different boatyard rather than having the yacht leaving the builders fully complete.

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 7:18 am

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:01 pm From a source that follows the yachting industry:

This has become a non-issue several weeks ago. Bezo's new yacht will be sent downstream without the masts inserted, they will be sent separatly by barge. Masts will be hoisted and set in position at a different boatyard rather than having the yacht leaving the builders fully complete.

Why not do that in the first place?

pipistrelle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 30, 2022 7:18 am

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 29, 2022 9:01 pm From a source that follows the yachting industry:

This has become a non-issue several weeks ago. Bezo's new yacht will be sent downstream without the masts inserted, they will be sent separatly by barge. Masts will be hoisted and set in position at a different boatyard rather than having the yacht leaving the builders fully complete.

Why not do that in the first place?