The latter would be impossible. One of the features of Alexa is to learn your voice so that it can track your preferences, recent playlist, etc...

I agree that recordings shouldn't be easily accessible by any Amazon employee - or any random person for that matter. There should be solid procedures when it comes to the recordings, say anything over a week or two old gets archived somewhere, beyond 6 months is deleted. In order to retrieve recordings requires verification of identity and two-person integrity on Amazon's part to confirm whatever goes outside their doors.

I have a couple local chains that do both curbside pickup and delivery. The former has dedicated parking spots, you text a number, and they come out with your order. The latter they pull up and drop off your stuff. In either case you sign up for a particular timeslot (e.g. 5:30 ) and they'll have your stuff ready, in-fridge or dropped off shortly after that time. At least in my case, both charge 3% per item for the "shopping" done by an employee at the store, then curbside is a $6 fee, delivery is $15. Not free, but it certainly makes you think about what you need and limits impulse shopping.

Compare that with Prime Now, where you get a handful of things that you don't have an option of looking at before and have no real recourse to return if it's the wrong item. Oh, and it'll be there in two hours.

Yea, that's handy when you have that "oh shit, I forgot dog food and need to get dinner started for the family" moments. But how often do those moments really happen?

Folks are also forgetting one of the other recent buzzwords - "Unit Testing".

Java has Junit and a slew of libraries to support package-time testing of all of your classes - as long as you've taken some time to write 2-3 tests for each function. Packages like this exist in C and C++ too, though I haven't used them directly. I can say that carving out some dev time certainly helps identify those simple logic errors like "I didn't handle a negative index" or "I went past my array size" sorts of error handling.

As one of my professors said "Java won't give you the gun. C++ will hand it to you, C will help you aim it at your foot".

Fixed that for you

You're missing the point of being a CEO. He is also the face and spokesman for his company - it is up to him to come to its defense and uphold its reputation. If there is a risk of legal action or damage to the business, you get your ass on that plane, answer questions and spread the word about the great things you're doing.

Apples stock would take nose-dives when news of Jobs' health was declining - whether it was true or not.

Ballmer's hot-headedness and throwing of chairs is the stuff of legend now and painted MS as the wanna-be crybaby phone maker it was. It only needed to happen once.

"Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups" - George Carlin

And now those groups are bigger and better connected. Just look at the persistence of this whole anti-vaccination nonsense that stirs up every year or two.

Steve Jobs never bent metal, designed PCB's, or wrote Operating System code. Did that make him a terrible leader of the most profitable technology company?

Bill Gates never designed PCB's, never built his own gaming system, though he did write the original MS DOS. Does that make him a terrible leader?

William Clay Ford Jr. never drew up design documents for a work truck, never casted an engine block, and (honestly) probably never looked at an assembly line in detail. Does that make him unfit to lead Ford Motor Co?

Lots of C-level folks have never done the jobs of those they hire. Just because they haven't gotten their hands dirty in the design lab or production line doesn't mean they have no grasp of what it takes to run the business and how to find the big brains to answer those questions. True businessmen know when they're being lied to, and know when to cut losses - often those go hand-in-hand.

Or even better, who is at fault for the piss-poor working conditions? The corporation that tries to keep costs low and profits high - through salary caps, anti-union campaigning, and tax deals? Or the workers that continue to apply for jobs at said companies?

There are other tech industry jobs that allow unions, have solid benefits, and a great work-life balance. If Google and Amazon start bleeding employees en-masse to other, better companies (MS? Apple? startups?) then their profits go down the tubes and they'll have to fix the complaints. Hard to make profits if no one wants to work for you. With how regularly these articles come up it feels more and more like sob stories about that on-again off-again ex that treats you like crap, but you just cant quit them.

I'm struggling with what you're trying to say here. "may it so"? "AMD is not going to happen?" Huh?
I don't think Apples "tech refresh" is in any way dependent on Intel's process size. There hasn't been any correlation that I've seen between process size and "mac[book] pro" releases. Despite not yet hitting 10nm, Intel has still released new iterations of their i-series chips pretty consistently.

Intel has done some underhanded things in the past to push AMD out - and got slapped with anticompetitive lawsuits. AMD has proven they've got solid designs with the PS4 and XB1. Only time will tell if Apple cares about name and reputation (such as it is) versus solid technology at a reasonable price. Any new shiny computer from Apple will be priced the same high price, regardless if it's Intel or AMD inside. Besides, Apple has been making noise about developing their own ARM chips for laptop computing. So this may all be a moot point.

This is why I installed "Hiya" on my phone. I've set it to intercept known marketers and neighboring numbers. I used to get harassed a few times a week, now only one made it through in the past month. I still am able to get calls from those that aren't in my contact list, like an insurance or credit card company (that I have an account with). I've even had AT&T call me with their (obviously) spoofed number and everything worked fine.

Of course, it's an easy tell when your phone number's area code doesn't match the area code of your home address. These 'neighbors' are easily 700 miles away.

Something, something, 3 was the only true KDE!
Pry 4.whatever from my cold, dead hands!

Exactly this.
Studios have settled on the cable tv mantra of 20 min of commercials per hour for $10 a month. Once one has better-than-average content, no ads, and a reasonable price then *everyone* will flock to it.
It worked for Netflix back in the beginning, now everyone wants their own home-grown money stream and won't play well with others. Greed is gonna bite them in the ass yet again.

"Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it" and all that.

Where do we draw the line? There's thousands (tens of thousands? more?) of undocumented immigrants. Many are here pursuing a better life and will (hopefully) become documented and work toward citizenship. Others have less than noble goals. When is it okay to do something about the latter? Before or after they hurt a legal citizen?

Where in the DEA's list of responsibilities does it say anything about traffic fines? I could see local PD using these for that sort of thing - it's a mobile speeding camera. The fed has no jurisdiction for traffic management and enforcement. The best we could get from them is tracking foreign license plates, which I would argue is a *good* thing. See previous paragraph. I don't see it as any more of an intrusion than using Google Maps. So someone knows you passed 1st and Main on Tuesday around noon. So did dozens/hundreds of others.

Where I grew up the common story was to remove your license plate and pants, then rip by speeding cameras on your motorcycle.

I can only assume the police found it amusing to get pictures of the great white streak. Not sure if tickets were ever actually given.

This is exactly why I haven't signed up for Apple Pay, Google Wallet, or any other non-banking financial ANYTHING. I don't even like PayPal - considering they refused to investigate fraud committed on a stolen credit card and fake account.

I'll stick with my tried-and-true banks and credit unions, thanks.

Further than that, what about the push for higher and higher resolutions?
Neflix 1080p encoded video is at least 3Mbps (higher recommended). What about 4k? 8k? What about other parts of the stream (e.g. locally computed updates)?

To say "we've got it handled in a few years" is incredibly naive -- they're claiming they're going to hit a moving target. Every time we get a new technology, we find ways to push its limits, then we develop better technology, rinse, repeat.