I hope you enjoyed last week’s part 1 of the Last Waltz alternate concert footage and today we go on to part 2.
Archive of entries posted on 24th February 2021
Big Dog From China Threatens To Break Biden’s Other Ankle
What If It Misinterprets Your Command as “A Lexus Kills”?
Privacy Issues and Security Risks in Alexa Skills
Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum / 2/24/21 / Phys.orgWith the voice commands “Alexa Skills,” users can load numerous extra functions onto their Amazon voice assistant. However, these Skills can often have security gaps and data protection problems, as a team of researchers from the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and North Carolina State University discovered, together with a former Ph.D. student who started to work for Google during the project. They will present their work at the Network and Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS) conference on 24 February 2021.
Why, that’s today. Thanks for the advance notice.
More than 90,000 Skills analyzed
In their study, the research group of Christopher Lentzsch and Dr. Martin Degeling studied first-time the ecosystem of Alexa Skills. These voice commands are developed not only by the U.S. tech company Amazon itself but also by external providers. Users can download them at a store operated by Amazon directly, and in some cases, they are also activated automatically by Amazon.
The researchers obtained and analyzed 90,194 Skills from the stores in seven country platforms. They found significant deficiencies for safe use. “A first problem is that Amazon has partially activated Skills automatically since 2017. Previously, users had to agree to the use of each Skill. Now they hardly have an overview of where the answer Alexa gives them comes from and who programmed it in the first place,” explains Dr. Martin Degeling from the RUB Chair of System Security.
Aye, there’s the rub!
(How does Dr. Degeling pronounce his name, without getting people to chuckle?)
Unfortunately, it is often unclear which Skill is activated at what time. For example, if you ask Alexa for a compliment, you can get a response from 31 different providers, but it’s not immediately clear which one is automatically selected. Data that is needed for the technical implementation of the commands can be unintentionally forwarded to external providers.
… and we’ll just gloss over the question of why you’d be asking Alexa for a compliment.
Woke Remake of “Abbey Road” Corrects Male-Dominated Bias of Original
Gretchen Gretchmore, creator of “Girl Ghostbustiers,” announced the release of a socially conscious remake of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album Wednesday.
“For too long has this album — and, frankly, many other albums — been dominated by a patriarchal exclusion of women, undeserved — I mean, underserved — communities, and the music-impaired.”
The cover of the album displays an apparently cis-woman (in polythene boots) and something else of indeterminate age, sex, race, religion, or country of origin crossing the street, a reference to the insulting and aggressive image on the original Beatles album. There are only two of them, symbolizing something very important and woke.
A disclaimer in large, angry print on the back reads: “These songs include negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.”
Sales are expected.
It’s OK, College Kids, You Can Come Out of Your Safe Spaces Now
Now even The Muppets are branded racist: Disney slaps popular show with an alert about ‘offensive content’ and it can only be seen on an adult account
UK Daily Mail | February 21, 2021The Muppet Show appears to be the latest victim of political correctness with new warnings over its historic content.
The adventures of Kermit the Frog, Animal, Miss Piggy and friends now come with an alert about ‘offensive content’ and can only be seen on an adult account.
The move came to light when Disney made five series available last Friday on its streaming service, which costs £5.99 a month.
Viewers are greeted with the disclaimer: ‘This programme includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures. These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.”