Amazon Echo Is Laughing Creepily At Us

Is the random laughter coming from Amazon Echo's
Alexa a sign that she's turned evil and murderous?

I'm glad I read the NPR article I'm about to cite before Alexa, the voice on my and everybody else's  Amazon Echo could scare the daylights out of me.

Apparently, Alexa has been breaking out in creepy laughter for no apparent reason.

Here's how NPR describes the typical scenario, kind of like a teaser for a horror movie:

"Late at night, in the gathered shadows of your bedroom, you may have heard it. Or, perhaps you heard it over breakfast with your family in the kitchen, the sound rising unbidden from over your shoulder in a corner of the room you had thought - and now, desperately wish - to be empty. 

Laughter. Quick, inhuman laughter."

Normally, to get Alexa to talk and give you information, you have to say the name Alexa and ask your question. Example: "Alexa: How old is Alex Trebek?" (For the record, Alexa tells me Trebek is 77 years old.)

If you don't ask Alexa any questions, she's supposed to keep her mouth shut.

But she's into the laughter lately, freaking out lots of people.   Some people have said when they hear that Alexa laugh it is "time to move" and "the scariest shit I've ever heard."

You can rig up an Amazon Echo to turn your lights on and off. One person wrote on Reddit: "I was trying to turn off some lights and they kept turning back on. After the third request, Alexa stopped responding and instead did an evil laugh."

On Twitter, a guy named Gavin Hightower wrote: "Lying in bed about to fall asleep with Alexa on my Amazon Echo Dot lets out a very loud and creepy laugh....there's a good chance I get murdered tonight."

Amazon explains that sometimes the Amazon Echo mistakenly hears the command, "Alexa, laugh" and does.

I can't imagine a random bump in the night sounds like "Alexa, laugh" but what do I know?

Or are there creepy people wandering around outside and tellling Alexa to laugh from outside the house. Or have they broken in? Yikes!

Amazon said it's working on a fix in which the Echo won't respond to the command "Alexa, laugh." If you really want Alexa to laugh, you'll have to say, "Alexa, can you laugh?"

And in that case, Alexa will respond, "Sure, I can laugh," followed by laughter.

Still, I think this whole thing means we should be paging Steven King.  He's done horror books about inanimate objects before. Think "Christine."

Imagine the fun King could have with Alexa going murderous on people?

Sorry, But I Think This TSA Agent Was Getting His Jollies

Image of the creepy TSA patdown of a 13 year old kid at
te Dallas-Fort Worth airport recently. Ugh. 

A lot of people have been yelling and screaming in social media about Aaron Henderson, 13, who got quite the NSFW patdown from a weird TSA agent at an airport recently.

This all started at the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport when agents detected what might have been a trace of an explosive substance in the kid's laptop.

There are a lot of false positives with these tests, but I can't blame the TSA from taking a closer, second look at the laptop, and Aaron. Better safe than sorry, right?

However, the "patdown" Aaron got looked like foreplay in a porn movie, though Aaron was clearly not happy about this. I wouldn't be, either.

This apparently is a new policy at the TSA, giving them permission to really feel out people for contraband.

Sorry to blame everything on Donald Trump, but things are getting more police state-ish under his administration, so the TSA "rubdowns" might be part of this.

In addition, CBS News reports that this is part of new TSA procedures that came after an undercover audit in 2015 revealed major lapses in security.

 Aaron's mother, Jennifer told CBS News, "I believe he was patted down excessively. They went over his sensitive areas, a little more than necessary, especially given that he wasn't wearing bulky clothing or anything like that."

The TSA says new procedures took effext March 2.

I get it that they're trying to prevent terrorist attacks.

But working for the TSA is a thankless job which pays poorly. Most people don't want to work there. But the desperate, sometimes the stupid, sometimes the perverts also want to work there, since nobody else will.

This won't end well.

Here's the creepy video from CBS, showing the patdown. To me, it's almost child porn, so I was reluctant to show it. But we need to know what the TSA is doing, so I tried to overcome my qualms to post it.

Tarantulas On A Plane. Really!

How'd you like this guy to be your seat mate
on your next airline flight?  

Both real life and fictional airline flights are fraught, let me tell you.

I've recently written about the impossibly long lines created by TSA staff shortages and incompetence combined with a do-nothing Congress.  

We have idiotic movies, like Snakes On A Plane, which certainly sounds unpleasant.

Now we've just had a real life drama that's even worse than the aforementioned movie.

Tarantulas on a plane!

Makes me look forward to some upcoming flights I'm taking in June.

According to The Guardian newspaper, two huge tranantulas got loose in the passenger cabin on an April flight from the Dominican Republic to Montreal, Quebec Canada.

Understandably, the incident had passengers screaming and standing on their seats, and flight attendants urging everyone to keep their ankles covered.

Yeah, a lot of good that would do for the women on the flight wearing skirts or dresses.

Let's allow Catherine Moreau of Quebec tell her in-flight story, as related by Radio Canada:

"I was wearing a skirt and a spider crawled up my leg...,...It was during a meal. My husband managed to catch the spider in a plastic container, but it wriggled its legs out. My daughter was crying, she was in shock."

Yeah, I bet!

Especially since they're so huge.

The Guardian and Radio Canada said that a Montreal entomologist, Etienne Normandin said the type of spider on the plane is roughly four to eight inches long and has fangs that can be nearly an inch long.

The bad news, Normandin said, is this type of spider is quite aggressive. The good news, I suppose, is the venom in these spiders isn't especially potent.

Great. I'm sure everybody who was on the plane was just overjoyed with that news.

The tarantulas were on the plane in the first place because probably some idiot hid them in their carry on luggage and they escaped.

Apparently, there is a market for these things and the mystery passenger who brought them on board probably intended to sell them in the Montreal area.

Tarantulas as pets? No thanks. I'll just keep my two furry non-aggressive, happy and not scary dogs, thanks.

Stalkers: Capital One Credit Card Has Totally Creepy Terms of Service

I guess I won't be getting a Capital One credit card anytime soon.

Does Capital One's Terms of Service make them
creepy stalkers? Some people think so.  

David Lazarus at the Los Angeles Times found some really creepy details in the fine print terms of service verbiage that comes with the credit card.

Hat tip to Ellen Cronin via Facebook for alerting me to this.

Lazarus writes: "The update specifies that 'we may contact you in any manner we choose' and that such contacts can include calls, emails, texts, faxes or a 'personal visit.'

"As if that weren't creepy enough, Cap One says these visits can be 'at you home and at your place of employement.'"

Of course, as Lazarus points out, the 4th Amendment to the Constitution bars searches and seizures like the one described in the Cap One terms of service. However, the 4th Amendment only applies to government agents. Private companies like Cap One are not covered by the 4th Amendment, so apparently this is legal.

Also in the Cap One terms of service, says Lazarus: "We may modify or suppress caller ID and similar services and identify ourselves on these services in any manner we choose."

Again, as Lazarus notes, that's called spoofing.  They can just use a local number to pretend the person calling might be somebody you know, or pretend to be some benign charity request call.

Lazarus contacted a company spokesperson, who said that Cap One wouldn't visit somebody's home or office except in very rare instances when a big ticket item needs to be repossessed. The spokesperson also said that Cap One wants their calls on people's cell phone so identify the company correctly, but sometimes local phone service doesn't allow that.

The spokesperson said some of the language has been there for years, but people are noticing now.

I totally agree with Lazarus when he says that, if the spokesperson is right, why not just say it like the PR person did in the terms of service language?  Cap One says it's reviewing the language. But is the review happeneing only because a pesky reporter or two is calling with questions about the terms of service verbiage?

Look, I understand banks and other businesses have to be fairly aggressive to make sure some recalcitrant debtors pay up. But the language in the Cap One is tantamount to stalking.

Anyway, I don't trust this. I'm staying away from Capital One. So they can just stop sending me letters in the mail Every. Single. Day. telling me to sign up for their cards.