"Alexa, Tell Jeff Bezos He's A Weiner."

I should be outraged, but:

1. I'm tired of being outraged.

2. Figured Amazon was listening inalready.

3. About the only thing I ask Alexa for are:

a. "Find Corner Gas on YouTube"

b. "Play 'The Best of Car Talk.'"

So they can listen in all they want.

What am I on about? This.

In a nutshell, Amazon is rolling out AI-enabled whatsises in the next few weeks and to make it all work, they'll no longer allow users who don't want their voice recordings entering the cloud block that feature. If they do block it, the devices they've paid for and have been working for however long they've had them will brick.

Brick, as in "not function anymore."

Tell me again why I'm not excited to move to streaming services, 'cause nobody can take my CDs and DVDs away from me because I no longer want to play.

From the article:

Amazon said in its email today that by default, it will delete recordings of users’ Alexa requests after processing. However, anyone with their Echo device set to “Don’t save recordings” will see their already-purchased devices’ Voice ID feature bricked. Voice ID enables Alexa to do things like share user-specified calendar events, reminders, music, and more. Previously, Amazon has said that "if you choose not to save any voice recordings, Voice ID may not work." As of March 28, broken Voice ID is a guarantee for people who don't let Amazon store their voice recordings.

Big Brother is listening. Not that we didn't suspect that already.

PLEASE Buy Last Week's News!

TIME, what is this malarkey?

Specifically, this malarkey. And in case you miss it, it's this:

When the Queen imports three unsuitable suitors as prospective husbands, Merida causes havoc in the realm by declaring she’ll marry no one but herself. “I hope you die!” she screams at the woman who gave her life. In a rage, Merida visits a witch (Julie Walters), hoping for a magic spell that will change her mother. It does. Reviewers’ etiquette requires that we speak no more of it. If you want to know what happens in the movie’s Act Two, buy a subscription to TIME and read the review in last week’s issue.

The part in italics I can buy. Richard Corliss, from whose review of Pixar's Brave this paragraph comes from, doesn't want to spoil  the show by, well, spoiling the show. but given that it blends in so well with the bit of anti-Internet malarkey in bold, I have to wonder if Corliss' wording is more a plea from a dead-tree magazine to keep it alive than movie reviewer ettiquette.

I'm willing to give Corliss the benefit of the latter, but TIME is guilty of the former.

Yes, yes, I know the media is struggling trying to find a balance of free offerings for the internet versus offerings we have to pay for. Corliss, as the other writers at TIME and at, say, your local newspaper deserve to be paid. But the inserted plea for a subscription or single-issue sale comes at a poor time, rhetorically, in this instance.

And really, TIME, you think telling me I have to buy last week's issue -- old news even by dead tree standards -- to get the rest of the review is going to make me rush out and do so? I trust Richard Corliss for film reviews, but given that there are plenty of other reviewers on the internet who won't make me go out and buy a copy of last week's stuff to read what they have to say, the trust in Corliss is outweighed by the sheer inconvenience of finding that old news dead tree edition in the first place. Good thing my local library subscribes to TIME, so I can go read it for free.

But here's the deal -- I'd almost rather have a paywall to deal with here, because at least that way I'd have a reasonable chance of finding what I wanted to read, even if I only paid to read that article and not the whole of the magazine. I don't happen to have a local branch of Last Week's News around where I can buy a copy of last week's TIME magazine. The library is my only option.

Rumpole of the Internetz

I’ve read a few stories about Anonymous, the non-group of whatevers who occasionally band together when they really, really want to in order to stick it to the man by assaulting their web sites and such.

It’s good to see the boys – now, I assume there are girls involved as well, but given the nature of things, I’m sure most of them are boys – doing something with their talents, whatever they may be. I, too, have felt the urge to protest. Mostly furniture store sales and the occasional yard sale and car wash. One election year I put up a sign reading “Don’t Vote. It Just Encourages Them” on the front of the house. Just for the lulz. So I understand that they want to have their say.

But toilet paper? Really? I understand the Koch brothers connection, yadda yadda blah blah blah. But you know what? How many people really want to go online and research toilet paper? How many of us really noticed Anonymous’ failed distributed denial of service attacks against Angel Soft, brief as it was? Unless you’re in my house usin’ my toilet paperz, I promise you I didn’t notice. At all.


Protest is a great American tradition. It brought us the civil rights movement. It brought us the American Revolution. Suffrage. The repeal of Prohibition. But if political hacktivism the Anonymous Way is the way protest is headed these days, no wonder it’s going out with a whimper, as Ars Technica writes. (And Anonymous, this is Ars Technica, Rumpole of the Bailey of the Internet here, poking fun at you. I wouldn’t take that lying down, friends.)

And when you post things like this:

We laugh in the face of tragedy, we mock those in pain, we ruin the lives of other people simply because we can, these things we do for the lolz [sic] and we do them with no remorse, no caring, no love, and no sense of morality, we attack all things in this way, we can, we will, and we have destroyed countless that stand to harm Anonymous.

And then get people to agree with it, well, no wonder you’re fragmentary and losing your effectiveness, at least in the Toilet Paper Wars.