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Amazon is reportedly working on a home robot that would follow users around and provide access to Alexa:
Amazon is reportedly developing its first robot for the home, according to Bloomberg. The project has been given the internal codename "Vesta," named after the Roman goddess of the hearth. It's being developed by Lab126, the Amazon hardware R&D center that previously built the Kindle, Fire Phone, and Echo.
There are no firm details on what Amazon's robot looks like or what purpose it will serve, but Bloomberg suggests it could be a sort of "mobile Alexa" — following users around their house to places where they can't speak directly to an Echo speaker. Prototype robots built by Amazon reportedly have computer vision software and cameras for navigation, and the company is said to be planning to seed devices in employees' homes by the end of the year. Bloomberg notes that the general public might be able to test such robot prototypes "as early as 2019."
From such scant details, it's difficult to know exactly what Amazon is planning, but it's safe to say that a home robot in this case does not mean some sort of "robot butler able to perform a variety of household chores." The technology needed for this sort of device just doesn't exist yet in the commercial sphere (although companies like Boston Dynamics are working on it).
The company's Amazon Robotics subsidiary, formerly Kiva Systems, makes robots for Amazon warehouses.
Amazon's Prometheans are going to kill your family from inside the comfort of your own home.
Also at TechCrunch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @10:59PM (6 children)
https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporations/facebook/all [github.com]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday April 23 2018, @11:09PM (3 children)
Note that they don't call it a tracking pixel. Neither do they call it a web bug or a web beacon.
Does anyone ever actually use the term "web beacon"? My ex' website's privacy policy said it doesn't use web beacons.
However to block Facebook's Pixel you have to block URLs that start with "http://www.facebook.com/tr". To block facebook.com would mean that I could chat with Cousin Chuck anymore.
The URLs that actively supply FB's tracking pixel look like this:
http://www.facebook.com/tr?id=123456789 [facebook.com]
Where one uses one's actual FB developer ID.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 23 2018, @11:18PM (2 children)
My condolences. Buy your cousin a phone card or get yourself a copy of Tor Browser? I"m able to open https://www.facebookcorewwwi.onion/ [www.facebookcorewwwi.onion] (N.B., only works with Tor) so I assume Facebook still allows use of Tor [pcworld.com].
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday April 24 2018, @12:39AM (1 child)
For a while I was doing my gmail with Tor just so I could contribute some encrypted traffic to defeat the NSA.
DuckDuckGo has a .onion hidden service. Perhaps Facebook could be convince to as well.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 24 2018, @04:40PM
I was testing out Tor one time and accessed my PayPal account while using Tor. The site came up in Arabic, but I was able to login etc. Almost immediately PayPal sent me a password change request. I changed my password and haven't used Tor since. I have acquired a VPN service, but mostly just use it for my wife. Netflix doesn't much like the VPN, so she's learned to turn it off for that. 90% of my home browsing is spent on game forums and Netflix. The rest of my traffic tends to be Steam and games. I'm already dealing with a barely manageable service, so routing that through a VPN just degrades my connection even more. I've basically sworn off of google and have been using DuckDuckGo for quite some time. I don't usually bother on my Android phone or Tablet, though. Since, it's 99.99% likely they have tracking baked in anyway.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 24 2018, @01:10AM (1 child)
Wildcards would shrink that list to about 5 or 6 lines, and not require constant updates.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 24 2018, @09:05AM
That requires a name server (e.g. dnsmasq) though.