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Amazon.com's Alexa has a little something to teach your kids about manners. After receiving feedback from some parents concerned about how voice assistants are affecting their kids attitudes, the company updated Alexa to reward children who asks for things nicely. Kids are some of the biggest fans of voice assistants, with some learning to talk to Alexa, Apple's Siri or Google's Assistant before they can form full sentences. But some parents have worried that having voice assistants around the house will make their children more rude, since the youngsters can bark out demands for a favorite television station or song...

Amazon Smile program allows customers to help benefit the charities of their choice through their purchases. That is unless your ‘charity of choice’ happens to be Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF was just dropped by Amazon as a charity option and Christian consumers are in the dark as to why... We contacted Amazon to find out what happened, and lo and behold, Amazon informed us that we were removed because the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) determines who is qualified.” Yes, that SPLC. The one that exploits the terms “hate” and “hate group” against any organization it disagrees with. Without actually...

The company that's conquered the world of online retail is now taking on its hometown City Hall, with Amazon delivering an unprecedented public threat Wednesday against a proposal for a new tax on large employers in Seattle. The retail giant has paused construction planning on a new downtown Seattle tower until the City Council votes on the tax to fund homelessness programs, a spokesman said. Amazon also may sub-lease rather than occupy space in a skyscraper under construction downtown, said the spokesman, Drew Herdener

Amazon is now under scrutiny from both sides of the aisle, as Sen. Bernie Sanders echoed President Donald Trump's criticism of the e-commerce giant in a tweet this week. "You know what Amazon paid in federal income taxes last year? Zero," the 2016 Democratic presidential hopeful said in a tweet Monday evening. The Vermont senator linked to a Forbes article, which pointed to CEO Jeff Bezos' rise in net worth as Amazon's stock benefited from a huge earnings beat last week. Bezos, the world's richest man by Forbes' estimates, added $9 billion to his own value as the stock shot...

The RIC1 facility, which opened in 2012, is approximately 1,100,000 square feet, and its sheer size appears to have created problems for the over 60 firefighters on location. Dinwiddie Fire & EMS Chief Dennis Hale told WTVR that the fire “being in the middle of the building was a significant logistical challenge for the crews to move hose lines that far inside the building through rack storage.” No injuries have been reported and the cause of the incident remains unknown. Whether significant damage was done to equipment or inventory is also not clear at this time. We’ve reached out to...

The U.S. Department of Defense has more than 3,000 datacenters and countless applications. The DOD smartly want to consolidate to save money. In March, the DOD put out a request for a proposal about a compute cloud infrastructure. Business Insider reports that Amazon is currently a shoe-in for the $10-billion contract. One reason is because Amazon has already signed a $600M contract with the CIA to run a more secure datacenter in Washington, D.C. Bryan Crabtree wrote an article talking about why it is a mistake for the U.S. military to choose Amazon. Many don't realize there is already a...

Free two-day shipping may be enticing, but it doesn’t necessarily justify the higher price tag for an Amazon Prime membership. Amazon AMZN, +3.60% raised the annual fee for its Prime membership program for the first time since 2014 — but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s less of a bargain for most consumers. The online retailer announced that it will hike the annual fee for a Prime membership in the U.S. by 20% to $119. The change comes as Amazon revealed that it now has more than 100 million people globally who are members of the program. In January, Amazon raised...

Amazon.com has removed a Catholic group from its donation feature. The AmazonSmile Participation Agreement states that certain categories of organizations are not eligible to participate in AmazonSmile. We rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which charities are in certain ineligible categories. You have been excluded from the AmazonSmile program because the Southern Poverty Law Center lists Saint Benedict Center Inc in an ineligible category.

Looks like James Comey's fifteen minutes of fame have now disappeared and, openly morphed into fifty years of shame. His book has dropped in just about a week in release from #1 to #3 on Amazon.com. Without listing the ABCs of the Comey "criminal" escapades, the chickens, it appears have come home to roost. I hear the birds (FBI Agents) are singing loud and clear, for all Americans to hear. Dropping dime on Comey, McCabe. Obama, Clinton, Holder Lynch Clapper, Brennan, etc. is now in full "vogue" fashion. I guess the old saying that "whatever goes around, comes around" still...

Amazon announced its number of Prime customers for the first time last week. The online retailer counts 100 million of them — who, excluding students and others affiliated with educational institutions, each pay $99 — around the globe to subscribe. Sixty-seven million of these Prime customers live in the United States. A majority of U.S. households voluntarily joined this exclusive club, which, the numbers indicate, is not very exclusive. Members benefit from discounts, streaming television, movies, and music, expedited shipping, and other perks. Might Amazon soon offer health insurance coverage to Prime subscribers? The company, as CNBC reports, already sells...

https://theintercept.com/2018/04/19/amazon-snap-subsidies-warehousing-wages/

At Business Insider's IGNITION conference, Scott Galloway gave a blistering presentation on why "The Big Four" — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google — should be broken up. Galloway is a professor of marketing at the NYU Stern School of Business and the author of "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google."

Rush Limbaugh had a caller that said that he couldn't give a bad review (one-star) on the Amazon site for James Comey's ghostwritten piece of excrement, "A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership," based upon substance. He is a verified buyer of the book, so it wasn't a spam posting. Limbaugh's staff went ahead and tried to post, each having purchased the book, but weren't allowed to post either. The only reviews are 4- and 5-star reviews (though there's one or two 1-star reviews that must have sneaked through the algorithm). Go ahead and try this. If you have Kindle,...

It meant workers operated a “toilet bottle” system. Mr Bloodworth said: “People just peed in bottles because they lived in fear of being ­disciplined over ‘idle time’ and ­losing their jobs just because they needed the loo.” He said the warehouse in Rugeley, Staffs, is like a prison with airport-style security ­scanners where workers are checked and patted down in case they steal. Hoodies and sunglasses were banned along with mobile phones as a ­security measure, he said. An Amazon spokesman said: "Amazon ensures all of its associates have easy access to toilet facilities which are just a short walk...

Amazon has filed a patent that could allow its Echo devices to one day listen in on conversations to help with user recommendations. A handy feature or more fodder for conspiracy theories? Should you whisper around your Amazon Echo, lest it whisper back to you? That’s the future suggested by a patent recently filed by the company, which examined the possibility of eavesdropping on conversations held around its voice-activated devices in order to better suggest products or services to users. The idea seems to be to turn Alexa, the company’s virtual assistant, from a dutiful aide under the user’s command...

Ask Alexa about chemtrails, and she'll tell you it's a government conspiracy. Seriously. "Chemtrails: Trails left by aircraft are actually chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for a purpose undisclosed to the general public in clandestine programs directed by government officials," my Amazon Echo responds when asked "What's a chemtrail."

Critics might be right that President Trump is more interested in attacking the Washington Post than the Amazon/U.S. Postal Service shipping deal. But Trump is right that the deal is a bad one for the Postal Service and for U.S. taxpayers.As I wrote last September, Amazon has a deal with the Postal Service to handle the last mile of delivery for its packages. Even though Amazon presorts most of the packages and prepares them for delivery at its depots, the Postal Service has continued to improperly allocate its costs, which has resulted in undercharging Amazon for delivery of those packages by...

Sally and Kristen haven’t hung out in forever, so Sally suggests taking a selfie. After Sally uploads the photo to Facebook, the app suggests she tag Kristen based on its facial-recognition system, which Kristen has given permission to use. ````````````````````````` DATA PROVIDED FACEBOOK ..Uploaded photo ..Text submitted with photo ..Facial recognition ADDITIONAL DATA COLLECTED FACEBOOK ..Photo analysis ..Location of the photo (if included in metadata) ..Date ..Type of device (iPhone X) ..Device ID ..Device operating system ..Battery level ..Signal strength ..Bluetooth signal ..Connection speed ..Available storage ..App and file names and types ..Nearby Wi-Fi beacons and cell towers ..Nearby devices...

Eighteen years after the collapse of the dot com bubble, US tech companies find themselves in another precarious situation. During the current economic expansion, stocks like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google (FAANG) have led the soaring Nasdaq stock index. However, valuations have become stretched, and the party may be coming to a dramatic end very soon. The wind has already been taken out of the sails of Facebook. A few weeks ago, #DeleteFacebook went viral after it was revealed that Cambridge Analytica gained access to the information of millions of Facebook users to learn about their identities and influence...

If Mark and Sheryl only speak up when caught and claim they did not inhale then who is really in charge