Amazon Prime Day ... what did you find?

[joestein]

Enjoy, Joe!

Not to piddle on your purchase, but allow me to ask this question about these DNA testing services. Joe, are you (or anyone) concerned about your DNA being housed/stored (whatever the proper term is here) with a for profit company? What is to stop this company from selling your DNA to their clients for whatever purposes they may want? For example, might a pharmaceutical company want to purchase a warehouse full of identified DNA and scan it for possible markers of diseases for which that pharmaceutical has a cure?

I don't really see what is wrong with sharing my DNA. Everytime I get a blood test at Quest, they can do the same thing.

However, the idea in another post that a healthcare company might use it to deny coverage is something to consider. As for the "cold cases", I covered up my tracks really good, they will never get me (this is sarcasm JIC someone can't tell).

Joe

 

[MULTIZ321]

Internal Documents Show How Amazon Scrambled to Fix Prime Day Glitches
By Eugene Kim/ Tech/ CNBC/ cnbc.com

• "Amazon wasn't able to handle the traffic surge and failed to secure enough servers to meet the demand on Prime Day, according to expert review of internal documents obtained by CNBC.
• That led to a cascading series of failures, including a slowdown in its internal computation and storage service called Sable and other services that depend on it, including Prime, authentication and video playback.
• Amazon immediately launched a scaled-down "fallback" front page to reduce workload and temporarily killed all international traffic too.

Amazon failed to secure enough servers to handle the traffic surge on Prime Day, causing it to launch a scaled-down backup front page and temporarily kill off all international traffic, according to internal Amazon documents obtained by CNBC.

And that took place within 15 minutes of the start of Prime Day — one of Amazon's biggest sales days every year.

The e-commerce giant also had to add servers manually to meet the traffic demand, indicating its auto-scaling feature may have failed to work properly leading up to the crash, according to external experts who reviewed the documents. “Currently out of capacity for scaling,” one of the updates said about the status of Amazon’s servers, roughly an hour after Prime Day’s launch. “Looking at scavenging hardware.”

A breakdown in an internal system called Sable, which Amazon uses to provide computation and storage services to its retail and digital businesses, caused a series of glitches across other services that depend on it, including Prime, authentication and video playback, the documents show.

Other teams, including Alexa, Prime Now and Twitch, also reported problems, while some warehouses said they weren’t even able to scan products or pack orders for a period of time....."

Getty Images
Amazon.com founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.


Richard

 

[bogey21]

Color me stupid I guess but after reading Jeff Bezos' biography I have never bought anything from Amazon....

George

 

[Sandy VDH]

I received the Firestick today. Installed easily, piece of cake, and works excellent. Definitely worth the $20.

Bonus: Our TV service at home is Comcast's Xfinity. I found a download hack that installs the Xfinity app on the Firestick (which for some reason is not supported by Amazon, but the Fire TV is. ??? Not sure why that is.) But after the install, the Xfinity app works like a charm, right alongside all the other regular apps. Result is I now have Live TV channels on my guest room TV, almost the same as having a cable box connected. My $20 investment will be saving me something like $100 a year. I like that! But now, when someone stays in the guest room, they can watch their favorite channels.

I haven't figured out the Alexa part yet. The remote has a voice control, but other than asking Alexa what the outside temperature is, everything I've tried isn't working right. I think it needs to be set up. When I asked Alexa where we are, she said we were about 75 miles away from where we are. So I think she's got some 'splainin' to do.

Dave

I love my firesticks. I purchased the 4K one this year's prime day from a sailboat in the Bahamas. I have 3 firesticks now, 1 I travel with, 1 on main TV and 1 on Guest TV. My Bedroom TV is smart and has Amazon Video and Vudu already pre-installed.

I sideloaded my Vudu app onto the firestick and onto my fire tablets. That way I can access all my digital copy purchases in one app and on all devices. I had not thought to sideload xfinity on the other firesticks but that is a good idea as I only have 1 cable box in the house, and it is on the MR TV, since that is where I watch TV (if I watch it at all). I will have to do that.

Your Alexa account needs to be setup on your computer or phone. So while the remote can act as an Alexa device, it also acts as the voice control option for the firestick. You can have it look for a movie or an actor and what shows they are in, you can control volume by voice.

I use Alexa to control my lights and my thermostat with voice controls. Which I love.

But here is some more info on Alexa...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...-alexa-can-do-plus-the-best-skills-to-enable/

 

[DaveNV]

I love my firesticks. I purchased the 4K one this year's prime day from a sailboat in the Bahamas. I have 3 firesticks now, 1 I travel with, 1 on main TV and 1 on Guest TV. My Bedroom TV is smart and has Amazon Video and Vudu already pre-installed.

I sideloaded my Vudu app onto the firestick and onto my fire tablets. That way I can access all my digital copy purchases in one app and on all devices. I had not thought to sideload xfinity on the other firesticks but that is a good idea as I only have 1 cable box in the house, and it is on the MR TV, since that is where I watch TV (if I watch it at all). I will have to do that.

Your Alexa account needs to be setup on your computer or phone. So while the remote can act as an Alexa device, it also acts as the voice control option for the firestick. You can have it look for a movie or an actor and what shows they are in, you can control volume by voice.

I use Alexa to control my lights and my thermostat with voice controls. Which I love.

But here is some more info on Alexa...
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/201...-alexa-can-do-plus-the-best-skills-to-enable/

Thank you. I'll explore that. I have Alexa in the Family Room, and it works fine, although we use it rarely. I also have a spare Dot I was going to put in the Guest Room with the Firestick. Again, I haven't explored that option, but I understand it's supposed to expand the capability of the Firestick's voice control. When I'm a bit less busy I'll take time to explore it. For now, just having regular TV channels there is fine.

I watch so little TV when I'm traveling, it hadn't occurred to be that I should take a Firestick along. I'll have to look into that one, as well.

The two apps/options we watch the most at home are Amazon Prime and Apple TV. I'd like to figure out how to take Apple TV when traveling. That'd keep the spouse happy, (although I don't know how much more reruns of reruns of reruns of Downton Abbey I could stand. LOL! )

Dave

 

[Sandy VDH]

Dave

I don't watch much TV, but i do watch movies. So I bring it along for Netflix, Amazon Prime and Vudu.

 

[DaveNV]

Dave

I don't watch much TV, but i do watch movies. So I bring it along for Netflix, Amazon Prime and Vudu.

I can see where it could be very handy. Trick would be getting it to work the way you want, when you want.

Dave

 

[Sandy VDH]

I can see where it could be very handy. Trick would be getting it to work the way you want, when you want.

Dave

You just need wifi. If push comes to shove I have even used my mobile hotspot on my phone as the wifi, as I have unlimited data plan.

Now I am not sitting around watching movies every day, so I don't get to the limits where they are downgrading my connection speed on my mobile.

 

[DaveNV]

You just need wifi. If push comes to shove I have even used my mobile hotspot on my phone as the wifi, as I have unlimited data plan.

Now I am not sitting around watching movies every day, so I don't get to the limits where they are downgrading my connection speed on my mobile.

And I specifically don’t have an unlimited data plan, so this would only work in places where I know they have good WiFi.

Dave