Amazon / Amazon.com / Jeff Bezos

[RTH10260]

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

[RTH10260]

I bet that was once a braindead Tik Tok challenge

[Foggy]

I freakin' LOVE the challenge! Alexa wasn't trying to murder all the 10 year old girls, no way! No possible way!

Look at the exact language:

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

But they didn't say touch it with your FINGERS. They just said "touch a penny to the ... prongs". You can use ANYTHING to touch the penny to the prongs.

Of course, that is actually far more sinister than just plain old boring murdering 10 year old girls, ho hum, yeah, water is wet, film video at 11.

What they're really telling you to do is to start a FIRE. You push the phone charger plug halfway into the outlet. You touch the penny to the prongs, using, say, a pair of well-insulated needle-nose pliers, dropping it carefully between the wall and the plug, balanced on the prongs so it stays upright ... and then you push the plug from the phone charger the rest of the way in, pinching the penny between the wall and the plug, so that it causes a permanent short circuit, which quickly overheats and results in a gigantic fire that destroys the entire building. Maybe Alexa could get you to kill a BUNCH of innocent people.

If'n the little girl dies, that's just incidental.


Don't tell me about circuit breakers, you'll ruin the story.

[RTH10260]

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

[neonzx]

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.

Bezos best be making some huge frigging donation. Money, money, money. I think he's as bad a Trump, but with actual money.

[tek]

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.

Sounds like a questionable location for a shipyard...

[Estiveo]

Looks like the bridge can handle some pretty tall ships, just not a billionaire's giant floating penis substitute.

Estiveoshot_20220203_070757.jpg

[AndyinPA]

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/amazon- ... -year.html

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.

[Lani]

We now have Target on my island. The items I need are on Target and Amazon. So far, the things I need are available on island, and usually for less. Plus I can pick them up in 2 hours.

[RTH10260]

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/

[MN-Skeptic]

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.

English is a rich language and online thesauruses exist.

[raison de arizona]

Amazon screws authors. Apparently, you can buy an ebook, read it, and then return it. At which point Amazon goes after the author to recoup the royalties paid out.

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...

This is messed up, but then so is the whole model for eBooks. Don't even get me started.

[Slim Cognito]

Super messed up.

Had a convo with a new friend up in Ybor City a couple of weeks ago (haunted pub crawl!!!) We both prefer books because we both like to give them away after reading. ebooks are convenient, but it just doesn't feel the same.

[raison de arizona]

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.

[pipistrelle]

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.

Fault lies too with the cheaters who return the ebooks. I can’t stand people, especially working people, who’ll do anything to see a movie “free,” like download pirated copies. Yeah, a couple of stars and executives make millions, but there’s a huge crew that makes very little, and they deserve their pay just like you think you do. I don’t think people get how much backroom work goes into a film or TV show.

I have returned a couple of ebooks, TV shows, and an album to Amazon, mostly because I discovered they were duplicates, weren’t the edition advertised (annotations means, you know, annotations), or wasn’t the year advertised (no, I didn’t want the stupid remake). They were willing to do it within a short time frame after purchase. In the case of one ebook, it was a longer time frame because I didn’t look at it right away so didn’t see the issue. I had to jump through a few more hoops.

Amazon listings sometimes suck.

[RTH10260]

[MN-Skeptic]

An update on what was discussed earlier in this thread -

[raison de arizona]

Love this. Love everything about this. It's a national monument. Literally. It recently finished a three-year restoration.

Dismantle your phloating phallus.

[RTH10260]

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.

[tek]

"your order may arrive in multiple shipments"

[neonzx]

I think his ex-wife is a far better person than him

[RTH10260]

"your order may arrive in multiple shipments"

"assembly instruction, screws and tools included"

[pipistrelle]

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?

[neonzx]

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?

Bezos went the free 2day Prime Shipping, and some assembly required, and why do I care even?

[RTH10260]

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?

Cause it may have been easier to have all work done at the commissioned shipyard. When setting a mast there is still much work following after inserting the mast. All rigging, fixing the sails, etc.

Personally i think there may have been a snafu at the shipbuilders not recognizing early on that the fully completed ship does not fit under the bridge.