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7 am. Dog wants out. I roll out of bed after trying to pretend I am dead.
Walk down the stairs to the side door. Half asleep and notice that the door has daylight shining through on the lock side. Didn't shut it all the way the night before. Walk outside. Dog does his thing. Turn around. Doors locked.
Fuck.
Go for my phone. In the house. Go for my keys. In the house. Fuck. Fuck a duck.
Start checking my windows. One opens a fraction of an inch. Doesn't do me any good. Dog is outside with me. Freezing his ass off. It's like 5 degrees here.
Both of my neighbors don't answer their door. Life flashes before my eyes. Put my dog in my jacket to warm him up. Little 15lb rat terrier. Not made for snow.
He's fine for now. I grab a piece of rebar from my backyard and lever my window a bit more open, busting one of the locks.
And then I yell "ALEXA. OPEN THE FRONT DOOR." The voice of an angel responds. "OK." Whirrr. Click. Door opens. Sweet warmth.
I need a fake rock with a key under it.
Great Sunday.20 -
Google Assistant Python SDK has been published ten days ago. Just in time, I've integrated it in AlexaPi, so now everybody can have Alexa AND Google Home running on one Raspberry Pi 😎
https://github.com/xtools-at/...
8 -
Dude: Come on man, Google and/or Facebook are not actively listening to us, I mean, we're not terrorists.
Me: Ok, Google
Google Asistant: How can I help you?
Dude: ._.5 -
I just saw this shout-out by alexa developers. Thx to the skill developer for creating new ways of using DevRant
15 -
State of technology today:
Twitter is really pushing the boundaries of technology by allowing you to tweet 280 characters instead of 140! Who would have thought they’d be making tweets longer than two sentences in their lifetime?
Snapchat has revolutionized communications and took NYSE by storm by doing the exact same thing SMS and hundreds of other texting apps do except with the innovative twist of making them delete themselves. Sexting has never been easier
Raspberry pi has taken IOT to a whole new level, by making things that were easily possible but nobody cared about into things that are still easily possible and people have at least heard of and still never do by putting a chip who’s power consumption and efficiency is rivaled by most competitors even for its time. WOW!!
Alexa can now be in your home and it allows you to ask it basic questions and watch it’s AI struggle to understand what your saying, or order stuff just by talking whenever you happen to be in a particular room in your house. It can even betray you just like a real person but minus the ethical subroutines. What a time to be alive!
Anyone can have a startup now just by writing some software that piggybacks on others services and funnels some ad revenue to you like skyscanner. Awesome, I always wanted to have a tech startup and never have to actually do anything, just like in South Park!
New trendy languages like c# let you be trendy and make cross platform portable code just like you can in c++ except when they don’t, now that’s innovative!!
Reverse cameras and lane monitoring have changed te way we drive because now incomprehensibly arduous tasks like looking behind you and staying in your lane are in reach for people for the first time in history. And it only took us a century and billions of dollars of r&d to accomplish it!
None of this is to say this technology is pointless, but to ridicule how innovative everyone claims this shit to be when it’s actually just generally very mundane and it’s usefulness is marginal. Except the raspberry pi, that has some uses but it’s far from the first of its kind like everyone acts like it is.28 -
Hey guys,
I have decided to stop worrying about privacy. I have nothing to hide so why should I even care.
I just created an Instagram and a Facebook account and I also installed WhatsApp again and I ordered an Amazon Alexa and a Google home device as well. These voice assistants are just so useful 😊.
I am also gonna use windows again, everything just works and it is the most used operating system so it has to be the best one! It is way securer than Linux because it is not open source and thus hackers can't find vulnerabilities because they can't see the code.13 -
I made a small Mac App some weeks ago and I just made it to 8th place on the Mac App Store in Germany.
This has always been a dream for me 😁12 -
!(short rant)
Look I understand online privacy is a concern and we should really be very much aware about what data we are giving to whom. But when does it turn from being aware to just being paranoid and a maniac about it.? I mean okay, I know facebook has access to your data including your whatsapp chat (presumably), google listens to your conversations and snoops on your mail and shit, amazon advertises that you must have their spy system (read alexa) install in your homes and numerous other cases. But in the end it really boils down to "everyone wants your data but who do you trust your data with?"
For me, facebook and the so-called social media sites are a strict no-no but I use whatsapp as my primary chating application. I like to use google for my searches because yaa it gives me more accurate search results as compared to ddg because it has my search history. I use gmail as my primary as well as work email because it is convinient and an adv here and there doesnt bother me. Their spam filters, the easy accessibility options, the storage they offer everything is much more convinient for me. I use linux for my work related stuff (obviously) but I play my games on windows. Alexa and such type of products are again a big no-no for me but I regularly shop from amazon and unless I am searching for some weird ass shit (which if you want to, do it in some incognito mode) I am fine with coming across some advs about things I searched for. Sometimes it reminds me of things I need to buy which I might have put off and later on forgot. I have an amazon prime account because prime video has some good shows in there. My primary web browser is chrome because I simply love its developer tools and I now have gotten used to it. So unless chrome is very much hogging on my ram, in which case I switch over to firefox for some of my tabs, I am okay with using chrome. I have a motorola phone with stock android which means all google apps pre-installed. I use hangouts, google keep, google map(cannot live without it now), heck even google photos, but I also deny certain accesses to apps which I find fishy like if you are a game, you should not have access to my gps. I live in India where we have aadhar cards(like the social securtiy number in the USA) where the government has our fingerprints and all our data because every damn thing now needs to be linked with your aadhar otherwise your service will be terminated. Like your mobile number, your investment policies, your income tax, heck even your marraige certificates need to be linked with your aadhar card. Here, I dont have any option but to give in because somehow "its in the interest of the nation". Not surprisingly, this thing recently came to light where you can get your hands on anyone's aadhar details including their fingerprints for just ₹50($1). Fuck that shit.
tl;dr
There are and should be always exceptions when it comes to privacy because when you give the other person your data, it sometimes makes your life much easier. On the other hand, people/services asking for your data with the sole purpose of infilterating into your private life and not providing any usefulness should just be boycotted. It all boils down to till what extent you wish to share your data(ranging from literally installing a spying device in your house to them knowing that I want to understand how spring security works) and how much do you trust the service with your data. Example being, I just shared most of my private data in this rant with a group of unknown people and I am okay with it, because I know I can trust dev rant with my posts(unlike facebook).41 -
I was doing a physical security engagement on a clients home. The door had a new smart lock, I called his landline to inform him it was us at the front door. I got the answering machine, and figured it'd be funny to say "Alexa, unlock the front door." To our surprise, the front door unlocked.3
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People: I will never put one of those smart speakers in my home! You're basically just putting in a microphone that will spy on you!
Also People: Hang on I have to grab my phone/high-fidelity microphone/high resolution camera/GPS tracker/Data Aggregator and make sure I have it with me literally everywhere I go, because who knows when I will want to comment on a cute picture of a cat!?16 -
Amazon's Deals Algo: Since you bought a pressure cooker, we've found these recommendations you'll be interested in...more pressure cookers.3
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"Alexa still down :( Please send help, I no longer know how to switch any devices on or off manually. Smart home now officially dumb..."
The home isn't the only one it seems 🤭4 -
I need your support guys... It's been long time since I last posted, but this is a really awesome community and I was little busy. But now I'm back with a bang.... @dfox
29 -
Building a business can hamper one's development urges!
I have been building stuff since 2008. Took my first job in 2012, won a hackathon at Yahoo right after that. Got an amazing team to work with! Our team converted the hacked product into a proper product using Django and AngularJS. Those were the fun days. At that time AngularJS had just come out and I was under the dilemma to use Angular, Ember or backbone. But with all this came the responsibility to build a business out of our product. It didn't happen eventually though.
So I moved on to cure my entrepreneural itch and went on to start up an e-commerce startup along with my day job. It started getting good traction and I finally left my day job to focus completely on it. It's a sticker marketplace and I had to focus a lot on the actual physical product, improve the quality, tackle business development and stuff etc. In all this, my habit of creating stuff with code kind of got the back seat. Everyday, I see such exciting technologies come up and I want to try them out. I have been itching to create a native app using react native. Try to build a skill for Amazon Alexa.
On one side I am happy that I have been able to build a brand and become the largest sticker marketplace in India providing super awesome reusable stickers, but on the other hand, managing the business on a daily basis is killing the developer in me :(
Does anyone else building a business which involves a physical product also face a similar problem? I think I should just take up weekend hackathon type problems and try to solve them using the technologies I want to learn. Example, I have been meaning to build an app for our company. I think I will start with that!
I have been following devRant for quite sometime now and it has been awesome. Finally, signed up and ranted today! 😊😊5 -
We’re supposed to have self-driving cars in this world soon if Google and Apple are to be believed...
3 -
Alexa is refusing to answer any of my questions....guess I pushed her too far when I asked her what the temperature was outside....lol
??🌞 ❄ ☁ ☔ ??4 -
When you are listening to music while coding and the music is on fire so you hit the same button on the keyboard several times to go with the beat 😂1
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Today at work:
- Oh a new critical update for windows
*installing the update and restart*
System crashed and i have to reinstall windows -.-
Now i know why they call it „critical“ update for windows ;)1 -
Amazon for fucks sake!!!
Would you PLEASE keep this fucking Alexa crap disabled after updating my tablet.
I deliberately disabled it for a reason.
What are you? Microsoft?4 -
Th moment you tell alexa the third time to turn out the lights and then realizes its 5am and the light is the rising sun :P3
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As much as I hate Amazon Alexa and everything connected to it, the randomly laughing thing is a very smart PR-move.5
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I was just checking a website that a friend had designed for them a couple of years back and I was astonished at how many things were wrong with it:
- No mobile optimization, zero, null, void. There were 20px margins on either side of all the content (including navigation).
- Font size was 12px. Who does that anymore? Isn't 16px a given?
- Tons and tons of javascript and css files (support for IE7 in Font Awesome which is not even used anywhere in the website, too) - none of them minified. Are you kidding me?
- The h1 element of the website was an image wrapped in an h1. I'm sorry but Google has no clue what the website is about.
- No meta tags, none at all. No keywords or description. The website is 2 years old and it's not even found by Alexa and my website in comparison is two weeks old and I can pretty easily see its ranking and search traffic.
- The speed of the website is abysmal. The tool that Google provides scored a 2 and a 4 for mobile and desktop respectively. This is terrible.
...And I am sitting here doing nothing important with my life, pointing all of these things out, fresh out of college, while some incompetent jerk made a fairly terrible website and was paid a reasonable sum of money for it. This is just sad...3 -
Sometimes I feel like a Jedi:
My boss says: Look the app is not sending any notifications.
I just have a feeling that he deactivated notifications in the app settings.
I check that and it was deactivated
Does that count as Jedi skills ? Or just programmer intuition5 -
Taxi Driver: Do you like this song Sir?
Me: Not sure, I don't know it!
Taxi Driver: Alexa, change the song...
Me:...6 -
I'm pretty upset that Alexa didn't maniacally laugh at me after I asked her about the weather. I'm even more upset that they updated her laugh, and now she just giggles instead of cackling like Dr. Evil2
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We are not friends, Alexa and Clark. I don't even want to be your friend, I just used your services a long time ago. I don't fucking care who's the name of the one sending me spam, because, as I don't remember asking you to send me e-mails, your are just sending me spam.
Seriously, who's the genius who thought, one day, "Hey, let's have some avatar to make our customers think they are friends with it ! That'll surely send some good ol' dopamine far up their tiny brains."
If you send me an e-mail and you are a company, wether it's solicited or not, send it in your name, don't try to blame your poor fake employee.
5 -
#wk126 yeah I'm late, I was too lazy to post in time.
Made an IFTTT trigger that WakesOnLAN my desktop using my Echo.
"Alexa, trigger my pc."7 -
I'm wondering: what would all these virtual assistant (Allo, Siri, Alexa, ...) write if they had a devRant account?6
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Just set up an Google Assistant on Android 5.1.1 yaaayyyy it's cool but Amazon Alexa is better still can do hell lot more.
If Google add function to add your own apps to GA then it will be good.2 -
Just completed developing my first Amazon Alexa skill. Please try it out on your Alexa device and give reviews on how I can improve this skill.
This skill uses Apertium, a free and open-source rule-based machine translation platform to provide translations for exotic and divergent languages.
The link to the skill: https://amazon.com/Techievena-Smart...
Here is an article to demonstrate the use of the skill.
https://linkedin.com/pulse/...
7 -
Finally, it's working..
A new device added to my Collection.
Welcome Echo Dot !!!!!
Long list of skills planning to implement..
8 -
Why do people keep saying that Alexa is spying? Don't they have a smartphone, Smart Tv, Laptop, SmartWatch or something like that? Of course, Amazon, Google, ... collect your data, but why is that a new thing for them?4
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Mom and Dad were proud, when I said I will develop Apps.They helped me to found my own company and arranged some new clients.
My brother is happy with it and is taking CS courses at school.
I've never met people who treated me as a nerd or did not accept my choice1 -
I start shaking and getting nervous when there is something I really, really want to say.
Today in school we started talking about Amazon Alexa and privacy.
This topic concerns me a lot and I started talking in front of the whole class about Google and things they do to spy on you. After about 30 seconds of me talking I started shaking because there was so much I wanted to say and with so much enthusiasm and also a bit of anger.14 -
My boss did not care about making things secure in our early development stage, even though I told him several times.
After 1 day our elastic search cluster was filled with random crappy data.
Fix: Apply security schemes provided by AWS1 -
*The things you find watching logs*
From an innocent script I wrote to crawl Alexa categories for datascience team.
1 -
So, there is alexa skill for devrant, and it just read out lout a rant by @AlexDeLarge
(The one about him saving a business and nit getting even a single thank you)
It seems thatd alexa automatically sensors the word *Fuck*,4 -
If I were to want to write an AI along the lines of Alexa/Cortana/Siri, what would be the best programming language to do that in?22
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Why is Google so bad in creating good documentations for their API ?
I send exactly what they specify and on some values I just get a 400. thanks for nothing5 -
My roomate just got to know about Google Home and now he thinks google was the pioneer.
He never heard of Alexa 😐6 -
So I made a bit research about voice control /alexa /Google Home..
I came to the conclusion that when in like 20 years voice control is in every household, it WILL play ads randomly every hour. Yes. They'll do it!1 -
the api endpoint for retrieving user-data in an alexa skill might as well be api.eu.amazonalexa.com WITH .EU
this is not as good documented as it should be and did cost me several hours until i saw it by accident analyzing the request-data another time...
you´re welcome. -
Is it wrong to change my amazon dot name from Alexa to Darling 🤔
Need a new name for it, because them annoying radio dj's keep say her name 🤓4 -
So I'm pretty sure that when I went all in to Apple's Siri shitfest and turned on "Hey, Siri" that I had to accept some kind of privacy notice or some shit. Essentially, being an iPhone user and turning on that service, I've agreed to allow them to listen to me.
But what about the guy who sits next to me? Are his rights to privacy being infringed because my phone can also hear him? If so, who is the one infringing? Me or Apple?
Apple is just an example, but imagine if someone has an Echo in an office or a Google Home. Or what if you're unknowingly standing next to someone with a Google or Apple device that's always listening?
I know my old Android phone had picked up people at the grocery store before. I never turned on "Ok Google" but I used the speech to text of the keyboard a few times. When people showed how you could go see what Google had "heard", I was surprised to find how many OTHER people it picked up.
Anyway, just some thinking. -
Is the Android Build process getting slower with every update or is it just me who is experiencing that...
In the newest Android Studio Beta it went from 3m to 7m 🤦♂️
And my whole computer is blocked and not usable while compiling7 -
Waiting for the day when amazon Alexa would talk to google duplex and Siri trying to get into the convo. 😋😉😉2
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What's the best natural language processing software that won't f you up?
I'm a big fan of Alexa's capabilities but we all know that Alexa is to security what North Korea is to democracy.
Is there any software that can compete with powerhouses that are Alexa, Google home, Siri or cortana?4 -
I just startet my masters in CS and I‘m still unsure if I should switch to IT-Security.
Our university plan in CS include some completely off topic stuff, like economics.4 -
Why does personal assistants like Siri and Alexa get names? Why don't just call them "Computer" that they in fact are, just like in star trek?8
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Thank you. Amazon and Apple. Because of you no parents would now name thier kids as Alexa and Siri.2
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Does anyone else think it's odd that the term "Alexa" can be used to describe either a large analytics service or a digital assistant, both of which are owned by Amazon.1
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// When the deadline was yesterday
//... Or last week
while daysToDeadline() < 0 && !projectIsFinished {
self.sleepTime.reduce()
self.code()
self.addCaffeine()
}1 -
I used to thank Alexa when it does something for me... Why am I doing this? And more important: does AI care? :D1
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dear amazon,
would you please be so kind and explain me, a native german speaker, how to give more german responds within my german skill to match the german language?
also are you fucking kidding me presenting new unheard silly issues every new submission and needing four days to answer? you don't want to be alexa sounding and acting natural, do you?
your fucking silly certification process takes the whole fun out of free-of-charge-enhancing the use of your own product.
yours cincerely
for real, coding skills is fun, but never ever promise a client any deadline. amazon will definitively screw you. dumbasses.
FUUUUUCKSHITDAMNARSEHOLESSILLYBITCHES3 -
Amazon alexa is here for plex.
(You can yell at plex to play something)
But it seems it might need some permissions or something.
Anyone tried sudo <command> yet? -
TL;DR : How would you 'smart home' with privacy?
How would you go about a privacy focused home automation/smart home setup?
What I feel is not necessarily important
> some assistant that you can have conversations with.
> Not being in home network to automate.
What I feel is essential. (in decreasing order of importance)
> Being a able to control appliances/electronics with voice/app (optional gesture)
> Have features to automate stuff, like turn on something if something happens (IFTTTish)
> Easily play music from Spotify or something similar, e.g. " * Play some Tchaikovsky."
> Simple alarm and reminder features.
So far I have seen relays and other devices that you add in the wiring and they connect to wifi. They work surprisingly well, but whatever I came across also collects personal user data.
Also not aware of any google home and alexa alternative that can so seamlessly pick up commands through ambient noise.
What are your thoughts and views?
P. S. I would have picked up something like this as my side project, but I don't see my self having that much free time atleast for the next 4-5 months.6 -
Just started working on Alexa skills ,
And I must say , feel like a dog lost in a pool of balls plastic balls, while am chained to a pole. So much I can do.. but there’s no documentation as to how things work
All the docs available are old, and I didn’t really understand how things are working5 -
Just had a convo with my flatmate:
"You know Amazon Alexa?"
"...Yeah"
"Is it a play on I'll ask her?"
..I'm not sure if ?2 -
Not a bad experience per say, but it was the only one I have been to so far...
Went to a hackaton with my friend for the Amazon Alexa and we were asked to create a skill in 30 minutes.
My friend and I had never used JavaScript or the Alexa API but we came up with the idea of having Alexa respond with a voice clip of Larry David saying "pretttay prettay good" from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Unfortunately we couldn't get the error regex or something thing on Alexa to recognise video URLs but we still likely our idea 🙃 -
Just leave it and be angry about the project. When I start thinking about it the next day in most cases you know the answer of the stupid mistake you made 😅1
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I am working on a new version of Alarmify an Alarm that uses Spotify Music on iOS. But I‘m still not finished, because I completely rewrote it and it took more time than I had.
I hope I can finish it this fall 😊 -
IMHO, the Amazon Fire Stick represents a "race to the bottom" for media devices in terms of interface design, functionality and app support.
They join the Apple TV waiting there since the second generation device.
Everything you could ever want to stream is either a few hundred clicks away or on a different device. -
So anyone think this Viv app (demoed in TechCrunch) is going to be a hit, when Siri and Alexa failed?4
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Stopping to work with clients directly and starting at a nice startups where I can concentrate on my aktual skills2
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Does anyone uses an Echo Dot for any usefull task? I currently use it only for Phillips HUE because I can't think of any other usecase 🤔1
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I can't wait for the release of Snips Air sometime in 2019 so that I can stop using my Google home. It's not even the privacy concern that bugs me, it's the stupid shit like alarm management. To preface, I've had a Google home since late last year and since I got it the alarms have been nothing but trouble. More than half the time when I ask it when my next alarm is, it will respond with "You have an alarm for Friday at 7pm that is going off right now" (At the time of this response it was Tuesday). Then snoozing sometimes just doesn't work, I told it to snooze for 10 minutes, it worked just fine. Then today I made the mistake of asking it to snooze a second time which responded with "Sure, snoozing for 5 minutes", I wake up 45 minutes later, and ask "Hey Google, when's my next alarm?", it responds "You have an alarm today for 7:00 snoozed until 7:15". I have an exam today so luckily I didn't sleep in too late but againg this isn't the first occurence. To prevent this I normally just have a backup alarm on my phone and the one on my phone will wake me up in case something happens. On top of that though I've had rarer cases where it will delete all my alarms and I'll have to go command by command reminding of each alarm. That's just alarms though, I also have it control several IoT devices, and me having to use IFTTT requires the utmost precision in my phrasing otherwise it won't understand ( although this issue is mainly due to how the assistant service trigger on IFTTT is configured ). It still does much better than Siri ( at least my home can set alarms unlike my mac ), I have yet to try Alexa though. Of course my last problem is the hotword, saying "Hey Google" is much better than "Ok Google" but it's still excessive when I have to repeat it for each individual command. This is why I'm so excited for snips air, a set of devices that look pretty great, hackable, and as a bonus much more private that the current options. I realize that I could get a dev kit or set up snips on a pi but the dev kit isn't exactly visually appealing and I doubt I could get something that looks or functions half decent on the pi.1
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!dev related (sorry, but have to vent):
Just watched Resident Evil Last Chapter and can't get over the fact that Wesker got killed by a f*cking DOOR like a f*cking b*tch 😠😠3 -
!rant
My dad wants to add security cameras in our home. I kind of want to go ahead and add cool stuff(like automation or something) to our house using this opportunity.
What I am thinking of right now is salvaging an old desktop with an Nvidia GPU to add face recognition and motion detection to the mix. I am also thinking I could get an Alexa echo dot or something similar and hook everything up. Another idea is using owncloud to create my own cloud.
What do you guys think? Any ideas or suggestions? Maybe a cheaper way to do stuff?7 -
does anybody of the alexa skill tester actual read the additional test instructions given by the developer?
please be aware that this and that can be used likewise. pleade provide information why the utterance abort invokes default even if i keyed it to stopintent
'given this, expected that. cancel doesn't an abort'
you don't fucking say!
(sorry for being repetitive but this is my current project. four weeks full of shitty 'feedback') -
I swear by all that is binary when I see Siri I’m going to curb stomp that skank. She single handedly makes me want to toss my iPhone X (which is heavy) into an Apple store window then pick it up to ask for assistance with a representative. I hate having to say “hey Siri!” just so she can take her sweet ass time to answer me. When I speak she fucking deaf and misinterprets what I say 80% of the time. English is my native language. I have to talk like a robot for her to get me. Alexa I’ve noticed works faster and more accurate. Siri take note!2
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#Amazon #Alexa #Super #Skills t-shirt.
My skill, Inspire in GitHub.
https://github.com/aleplusplus/...
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I slide into my kiddie pool of Nutella, pull my ergonomic mouse and keyboard in nessled tightly around me, dim the lights, turn off Alexa, and... what was I going to do again?
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Idea for the "why did I think of this" pile:
SQL console skill for Alexa/Google home. Data storage has never been so frustrating! -
I'm building my own google home/amazon echo any tips on good books about A.I etc?
Right now i have it in browser but later on im planning to do it in python and let it run on a raspberry pi -
!rant
So I may be really late to the party, but it seems one can rename amazon's alexa to any wake word one would like...
...i'm so going with EDI. ^^
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