Posts tagged “Alexa”

• The Falconer time travel sketch is genius, and I can’t believe it took me almost twenty years to see it.
• Space Pants is almost as good. (Check out its Reddit thread and backstory, too.)
• Ballad of a Thin Man has always reminded me of The Second Coming. It’s more than a little disturbing that they’re equally relevant these days. – via my dad
• The Roman Empire’s original smartwatch: portable sundials
• I have been using Dotster as my registrar for this site for more than 25 years. I was a little miffed to learn last year that they were acquired by Web.com, but didn’t think much of it because my site’s registration is paid far in advance and I rarely think about it. Today I got an email telling me that Web.com was acquired by Network Solutions, and I cannot stand their platform. Most of my 50+ domains are registered at Dreamhost, so I’ll likely be switching soon.
• Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world:
  • “The last ship from China will dock at a West coast port on the 29th, and the last Chinese ship will dock on the East coast around May 10th. […] We’re screwed.“
  • [Current] administration officials are placing dozens of posters of arrested unauthorized immigrants along the White House driveway.
  • POTUS pardons Nevada politician who paid for cosmetic surgery with funds to honor a slain officer.
  • A little-known firm with investors linked to JD Vance, Elon Musk, and POTUS could get a piece of the federal expense card system — and its hundreds of millions in fees.
  • Republicans are trying to steal an election in North Carolina.
  • Please understand that when 2A cultists point their fingers at bizarre tragedies – like what happened recently in Vancouver – as some sort of justification for their infantile predilection for firearms, an excruciatingly rational response is that the entire automobile industrial complex is also misguided, cancerous, and evil.

• “Homicides continued to decline in major U.S. cities — by more than 40% in some communities — during the first nine months of the year.” – via @crookedmedia
• How Marcus Smart’s support for cancer patients transformed children’s hospitals – via @theathletichq
• Please spare ninety seconds of your busy day today to watch Miss Piggy roasting Martha Stewart. – via @kottke
• What’s the roundest human-made object ever made? – via @thebadastronomer
• “Building beats talking. It beats being a full-time employee. It beats being well dressed or well spoken or well known. It beats being popular.” – via @ociubotaru
• “If you’re a parent, you know you don’t need a scientific study or some neuroscientist to confirm what you know from experience. There’s a part of you that didn’t exist until you had kids.” – via @dailydad, a fantastic newsletter
• I’m vehemently opposed to styling browser scrollbars, but I like the other nine items in this list of 10 CSS Tricks for UI developers – via @nnnirajn
• It’s effectively impossible to manage uploaded photos on Amazon Alexa devices using the iOS app because if you’ve uploaded more than about two dozen photos, the screen refreshes back to the top any time you scroll down more than a few pages. I posted about this on Twitter a few years ago, and I can’t believe they still haven’t fixed it.
• The complete lack of urgency from players and coaches, in the NFL and college, when down by two or more scores in Q4, makes me question whether any of these guys have ever played Madden. – via me
• The November 17^th Bills–Chiefs matchup wasn’t just the game of the week, it was the most-watched NFL regular-season game of 2024 and the most-watched non-holiday game since 2007. – via @theathletichq

Dear Amazon Music,
If I say, “Alexa, play Taylor Swift songs,” I don’t want to hear anything else. I don’t want to hear songs that remind you of Taylor Swift. I don’t want to hear artists that sound like Taylor Swift. I want to hear… Taylor Swift. This should not be hard.

Has anyone yet discovered the exact phrase to get Alexa to reliably play Taylor Swift‘s Midnights 3AM (explicit version)?

It’s effectively impossible to manage uploaded photos on Amazon Alexa devices using the iOS app because if you’ve uploaded more than about 120 photos, the screen refreshes back to the top any time you scroll down more than a few pages.

I’ve reported this twice now to the Alexa team and gotten no response. I even explained why it was happening and how to fix it! (I had to deal with the same issue with my bartender app.)

Hidden benefit of 11 & 6 yo boys addicted to Moon Knight? Lots of Engelbert Humperdinck streaming from Alexa lately.