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Funny coincidence I was just wondering this a few weeks ago when reading a Tinder bio of a girl named Alexa who had something to the effect of 'heard all the Alexa jokes for a lifetime thanks' Made me wonder if there is a class action lawsuit where all of the Alexa's could sue Amazon for psychological distress or something.
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> Imagine your own name being used as a term for ridicule or poking fun. You mean like "a John"? Or "Dick"? Or "a big Charlie"? These things are old as sin, stuff like this will probably exist forever. Forbid it as much as you want, it will always come back one way or another. Or is the problem that now they "trend female", whereas they historically trended male? I have a pretty simple name, but because it was used i…
The odd thing, is that every single Dick I've known, real name was actually Richard. People are weird. My bother in law has one of those names which is is a "joke" and it doesn't seem to bother him in the least. My Sister OTOH, I don't think I actually knew his full name until I was attending their wedding.
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It's not snark, surely. It's a legitimate option. Ditch the surveillance boxes, they can't possibly augment your life in a meaningful way.
> they can't possibly augment your life in a meaningful way Claims like this one seriously undermine the (worthwhile) privacy movement. Convenience and entertainment _are_ worthwhile uses of technology. Those of us with an understanding of privacy and surveillance technology might well make the judgement that certain forms of convenience and entertainment are not justified by the intrusion that they present - but to…
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Do you think unrequested snarky comments like this will actually convince anyone?
It's not snark, surely. It's a legitimate option. Ditch the surveillance boxes, they can't possibly augment your life in a meaningful way.
Alexa, Siri and co. do have legitimate use cases for people, even if they may not be useful for -you-.
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> Imagine your own name being used as a term for ridicule or poking fun. You mean like "a John"? Or "Dick"? Or "a big Charlie"? These things are old as sin, stuff like this will probably exist forever. Forbid it as much as you want, it will always come back one way or another. Or is the problem that now they "trend female", whereas they historically trended male? I have a pretty simple name, but because it was used i…
I'm not calling for censorship. Growing a thicker skin is a virtue. But it'd be nice if the people promulgating the trend also stopped to think about it. > You mean like "a John"? Or "Dick"? Or "a big Charlie"? This has been the case for so long that parents have had ample time to stop naming their children this. They recently renamed a nearby bridge in Georgia from "Dick Hunter Memorial Bridge" [1,2]. [1] http://eth…
Dick/Richard is the only one here I agree with. That is extremely commonly used slang, so it makes sense.
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Because different words have very different best potential performance characteristics when used as wake words. We would have liked to enable fully custom wake words, but it would have led to bad user experiences with the device either failing to wake up too often (false negatives) or having too many false positives or both. So we compromised by enabling more than one, but not full choice.
Thanks for the insight. Is it difficult to fingerprint a sound bite? Have people repeat it several times and again for each user that wants to use the custom wake word?
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I know an Alexa and she says the same. I'll admit I hadn't thought about it before but it does sound like an incredibly annoying thing to have dropped on you from on high: constant jokes, if anyone addresses you in an Amazon-enabled home all kind of crap gets triggered... I can see why people are infuriated by it.
People are like that. Ask a tall person if he's tired of people asking, "What's the weather like up there?" My first name is associated with a catch phrase of a particular era, and I can judge how old someone is by their reaction to it. You live with it. You move on with your life.
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I am acquaintances with a Siri. She's seems like a nice person, but since she works in a service industry I bet she's tired of hearing "Hey, Siri" all the time. If I was her, I'd ask for permission to not wear a name tag.
Has she considered changing the name on the tag, just at work? Just put "Jane" or something generic, or "Sarah" so it sounds similar. But yeah, it unfair that she has to be the one to change.
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I am acquaintances with a Siri. She's seems like a nice person, but since she works in a service industry I bet she's tired of hearing "Hey, Siri" all the time. If I was her, I'd ask for permission to not wear a name tag.
Has she considered changing the name on the tag, just at work? Just put "Jane" or something generic, or "Sarah" so it sounds similar. But yeah, it unfair that she has to be the one to change.
Yes, and the internet has ruined the name Karen, too.