Ben Zhao and his wife, Heather Zheng, computer science professors at the University of Chicago, designed what they are calling a “bracelet of silence” that will jam the Echo or any other microphones in the vicinity from listening in on the wearer’s conversations. The New York Times reports: The bracelet is like an anti-smartwatch, both in its cyberpunk aesthetic and in…
Tag: Echo
Black holes shouldn’t echo, but this one might. Score 1 for Stephen Hawking?
When two neutron stars slammed together far off in space, they created a powerful shaking in the universe — and their echoes could violate Einstein’s theory of relativity. Source: https://www.livescience.com/black-hole-echoes-unsettle-einstein-relativity.html
Amazon Sees Alexa Devices More Than Double in Just One Year
It took Amazon four years to populate the world with 100 million Alexa-powered devices. It took the company just one more year to more than double that number. From a report: The e-commerce titan announced Monday that there are now “hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices” in customers’ hands worldwide, a massive increase from the 100 million it announced last January….
Dad Takes Son To Mongolia Just To Get Him Off His Phone
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the BBC: Riding through a remote valley in Mongolia on the back of his motorbike, adventurer Jamie Clarke let the hum of the engine and the wind echo in his mind while his thoughts wandered. After several hours, he pulled over to shake off his helmet and take a look at the map. This…
40% of Anti-Vaccine Group’s Funding Came From Wealthy ‘Alternative Health’ Vendor
An anonymous reader quotes the Washington Post: The nation’s oldest anti-vaccine advocacy group often emphasizes that it is supported primarily by small donations and concerned parents, describing its founder as the leader of a “national, grass roots movement.” But over the past decade a single donor has contributed more than $2.9 million to the National Vaccine Information Center, accounting for about…
Amazon Learns a New Skill: Making Money From Alexa
For most of Alexa’s five years in existence, Amazon has focused on making its voice assistant as ubiquitous as possible, putting it in everything from microwaves to wearable rings to its growing family of Echo devices. Now Amazon has a new focus for Alexa: making money from it, reports The Information. [Editor’s note: the link is paywalled; an alternative source was…
In a First, Amazon Launches a Battery-powered Portable Echo Speaker in India
After launching nearly a dozen Echo speaker models in India in two years, Amazon said on Wednesday it is adding a new variant to the mix that addresses one of the most requested features from customers in the nation: Portability. From a report: The e-commerce giant today unveiled the Echo Input Portable Smart Speaker Edition, a new variant in the lineup…
Mozilla’s Annual Buyer’s Guide Rates Amazon and Google Security Cameras ‘Very Creepy’
“Be Smart. Shop Safe,” warns Mozilla’s annual buyer’s guide for secure connected products. Based on their conversations with developers and dozens of privacy experts, they’ve awarded smiley faces with different expressions to rate products from “Not Creepy” up to “Super Creepy”. “While the variety of smart devices on offer is rapidly increasing, so are the number of products that pay no…
Security Researchers Exploit Amazon Echo’s Chromium Bug, Win $60,000 Bounty
An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch: Two security researchers have been crowned the top hackers in this year’s Pwn2Own hacking contest after developing and testing several high profile exploits, including an attack against an Amazon Echo. Amat Cama and Richard Zhu, who make up Team Fluoroacetate, scored $60,000 in bug bounties for their integer overflow exploit against the latest Amazon Echo Show…
Florida Police Are Using Amazon Echo Recordings For a Murder Investigation
“Police in Hallandale Beach believe there may have been a witness to the July murder of Silvia Galva, and ‘her’ name was Alexa,” reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Slashdot reader PolygamousRanchKid tipped us off to the story: According to a search warrant, investigators want to know what the popular voice-controlled smart speakers overheard during a fatal altercation between Galva, 32, and…