Our manager was a bit concerned about if the microphones would get stolen as he looked out over the rows of computers with the microphones on top of each monitor.
I yelled "Computer, Shut down. Yes."
A good chunk of the computers had indeed shut down.
We decided to go back and remove all of the microphones from the computers. Theft was not as a large of a concern as a bored college student with a prankster attitude during finals and the riot that would have ensued.
$ uvcdynctrl -s 'LED1 Mode' <0..3>
0, 1 and 2 apply regardless of whether an application has an active video stream coming out of the camera.
Shh. (Hi NSA)
On several tech podcasts I listen to (http://atp.fm, https://daringfireball.net/thetalkshow/) they use fillers like "Yo, dingus!" to talk about alexa/hey siri/ok google
Like, are you referring to a sculpture made of cocaine in the image of a poodle, or are you talking about a poodle train in the ways of a St. Bernard rescue dog, capable of relaying quantities of said substance, or perhaps something else entirely?
https://youtu.be/ogUJ7JwkLNs?t=3m7s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVC_15
>The track was inspired by an episode in which Iggy Pop, during a drug-fueled period at Bowie’s LA home, hallucinated and believed the television set was swallowing his girlfriend. Bowie developed a story of a holographic television, TVC 15. In the song, the narrator's girlfriend crawls into the television and afterwards, the narrator desires to crawl in himself to find her.
Then she'd ask me for help and rather than have to wait for her to find what button I was talking about I'd just tap the screen a few times and we were off and running again!
I'd been using Linux as my primary OS for years at that point, so I think I'm pretty critical of Microsoft in general, however they did a good job building a touchscreen interface.
The state of touchscreen support in Linux was pretty bad the last time I checked though.
Anecdotal — but have had no trouble for the last two years with my dell xps. Other issues with said laptop (keyboard), but touchscreen support in linux isn't one of them.
My Surface Pro 1 is the only computer I have with a touchscreen right now, and it has enough other driver issues (the wifi and the Wacom drivers suck) that I probably won't be trying again on that.
And in effect, that's what I've used for many years. I have a relatively large touchpad. And when I need resolution, a graphics tablet.
The Surface Studio is cool, but I'd want something that resisted coffee and food splatters ;) As the original Surface did.[0] It could also scan text :) Which is something that I, when I was first learning about PCs, naively expected.
0) https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-pixelsense-...
The 3gs had perfectly functional "play my xyz playlist", "next song," "play songs by artist" functionality, and to this day I don't understand why it took so long for Google to implement it, and why the implementation is so shitty.
Music interaction is a great example of the trade off.
though i can easily see with background noise, next song sounding like exxon. I think due to frustrations with siri, i talk to google in very clearly enunciated words and havent had any interesting failures yet.
He had to call the guy he tried to text to in order to apologize.
It worked several times and I found it really fucking hilarious. They did, too and now they guard their Alexas and use headphones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5DA22tBOY#t=4m27s
“8… 7… 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…
…
Hmm, nothing happened, maybe my count w… [ＢＯＯＭ]”
"WHERE TO BUY COCAINE, SAN FRANCISCO"
or
"HOW TO JOIN ISIS"
or
"PLUTONIUM FOR SALE NEAR ME"
The commands are usually recognized but turn up nonsensical results.
Also, Google saves all voice commands. If the NSA wants to check they'd just hear all of us doofuses giggling and trying to one up each other.
But if things like this _actually_ trigger any sort of response, then the effed up thing isn't the (childish) prank, it's the system actually acting on nonsense.
If I call the police and claim that you're armed and hold hostages, then that's irresponsible. If I shout bullshit instead and these novelty devices turn that into a web search, there's no way in hell that should have any consequences whatsoever.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/12/15259400/burger-king-goog...
And voice control didn't fail way back then because it wasn't good, it failed because it was a terrible input mechanism and that is why it will fail again.
The "failure" the first time around was that people wanted it to be the main interface, instead of accepting that where it works is as an ubiquitous auxiliary interface that's available everywhere in the house, rather than trying to compete with a keyboard when you're right in front of said keyboard.
Voice competes by working at a distance, even when your hands are not free.
It will never replace a keyboard, as there are so many instances where speaking commands is impractical, but it doesn't need to replace a keyboard to be useful.
There's nothing wrong in enjoying the writings of people whose political ideas you disagree with. I'd rather say that if you cannot do that, there's something wickedly wrong in you.
"A Modest Proposal" [1] would be seen in a very different light if we learned Jonathan Swift was serious.
And then of course that means everybody who is struggling, well those people just didn't want it enough, they aren't putting in the hard work like Adams. Frankly it's their fault thinks Adams.
Dilbert Future is twenty years old.
Not everything in the world need to be connected and associated with US politics and trump vs anti-trump politics. If we brought in the political views of every creator, inventor and artist than we would not be able to discuss anything on HN other than politics since every creator, inventor, and artist has a political view and people who agree and disagree with that political view.
Adams frequently pitches his book "Win Bigly"...marketing himself as one of the few people to predict Trump's rise, due to his rhetoric. Showing examples would just be marketing for Adams.
And really, why not make it a 55 gallon drum of personal lubricant instead?
Asking someone to silence their phone might just be an attempt to get them to unlock their phone before issuing the offending command.
"NEW TEXT MESSAGE TO JENNY! FUCK YOU! SEND!"
Fortunately the phone was too slow to take it all (even if it had Jenny would have found it amusing, she was a cube or two away). But yeah first thing I thought of was that if it's listening how easy is it for it to mistake intent or someone else or etc.
Humans talk funny, computers don't get it, they're gonna mistake commands all the time.
As it is I hate how I can't talk ABOUT "ok google" around my phone... because it always goes off.