Sorry ( as I continue to derail⊠)
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I think the core here is that a phone is not meant to be listening to you. Alexa is.
Although I do get your point. But for meâŠ
If I want privacy, I can just take the batteries off my phone, or leave it in another room.
With Alexa this isnât so simple.
Also, please correct me if this has changed, but on the terms and conditions from when I read into it, to use alexa I needed to consent with my voice being used to drive further improvement.
That makes perfect sense, since you want to run my samples against a machine learning algo so the whole service improves to everyone.
Yet this also means you do have all my conversations stored in a server somewhere.
(not sure if it is still like that on the terms and conditions though. itâs years that Iâve looked into it.)
ps: Iâm using a âgenericâ you. not you you. 
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So not an expert on the legal side of things and [insert lengthy and boring disclaimer about these being my personal opinions and understandings and not representing amazon beliefs or anything else]âŠ
You can opt out of voice recording, although it is not just to improve the product it should also improve it for like you directly as I understand it. You can also remove voice clips etc if you do have recording enabled. This help article seems to back that up
On this note, you can unplug the echo device or go to a different room from the device all the same? It also has a physical mute button.
This is also untrue, the device has a system called the wake word engine, it is a small specialized voice recognition engine that runs locally, only when you say the selected wake word (by default âAlexaâ) will it transmit data to the server, the blue light on the device will always light up when it is doing this. So only conversations following the wake word and for a max time of like 15 seconds (Cant recall the exact time) should ever be transmitted to the servers.
One last thing to add that I guess sums it up:
I do not think you should trust a company to look out for you but I do tend to trust them to look after themselves. Large scale recording of all conversations that at that scale would be very costly even just to store let alone to try process and if it was leaked that a company did that it would be a nightmare for them. I am more worried about a malicious entity hacking them than amazon personally. But in the grand scheme of things it is not a significant part of my personal threat model rn.
The only thing that may constitute an endorsement is that as someone who is privy to the inner workings of the tech and the company I have 8 of them personally, not like dev units for work, 8 that I purchased myself and use daily.
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That is the core logic behind any of my serious assessments about whether or not to trust a company.
Also, those points I raised were more about reasons to thw âwhyâ you asked than personal reasons.
I do use aws quite extensively (although only comfortable because I do control the entry node. wouldnât be the same thing with Alexa)
My solution to this with any IOT gadgets I have is that if it needs internet access, isolated vlan with wan and any other devices it needs (So like all Alexaâs sharing a vlan along with the fire TVs etc) and if it doesnât need internet access (but might try call home) its on an isolated vlan with no internet access and can only talk on the ports I expect to my home automation server.
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What do you mean by âdouble gloveâ in this instance? When I first read those words, I thought you meant wearing 2 pairs of gloves, but when I read the rest of the sentence, it sounds like youâre meaning something entirely different. Because you say âifâ, which would mean that you canât âinsert to the popâ without doing the previous step, so Iâm very confused about what this step is.
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You read it right. I mean two pairs of sterile gloves on.
You are also right on the second part. It is tied into the rest of our conversation. Look further up about the clamp on my arm. We were attempting to think of sterile ways to do stuff.
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Oh, okay. Thank you for explaining. And yes, I read the rest of the conversation. I like very much the paper clamp idea, since I donât have forceps, but do have new paper clamps, & the means to sterilise them. It was very interesting, and informative to read through this postâs replies.
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two sterile gloves at the same time seems unnecessary, much like 2 condoms at the same time 
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Itâs more for how sterile you want to be.
I guess I didnât figure I would sterilize the paper clip thing. So one glove could get âdirtyâ and you could have a fresh under in case you needed to manipulate things.
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Double gloving is sometimes practised with invasive surgeries, and is documented as reducing infection risk, both to the OR personnel, and to the patient (though mostly done to protect the staff).
Gloves (and condoms you mentioned), are not perfect, sometimes they break, sometimes they get micro-tears, and other perforations (which are quite common). So having 2 on, means less risk of whatever is on your hands, entering the surgical site. Hereâs a study about it.
And, because the âI know where my hands have beenâ / âI scrubbed inâ counter-points are often thought of, itâs worth while to consider this story, and the doctor was likely entirely unaware of the herletic whitlow on his finger.
Granted, these installations arent so involved, but more safety is certainly nice.
Just a spare 2 cents ere:
Even tough this is a valid practice, It isnât a good Idea to do that with any kind of glove.
Many of the cheap âsanitary latex glovesâ you can buy for regular stuff (such as tattooing, applying home injections, etc) are actually too thin or coated in weird powders, which makes it so that on double gloving you might cause one (or both) of them to burst and not even notice that.
So⊠yeah, it can be efficient, but make sure you have high quality gloves first.
Otherwise just make sure you have the sanitary cuff fold so you can safely replace gloves you used for touching dirty surfaces/clamps.
My tattooist, and I use the same gloves that are used in hospitals, made by 3M. Nitrile, uncoated gloves, because powder is irritating, some people are allergic to latex, and theyâre good quality.
As for thickness of the gloves, Idk that this would make much of a difference, since itâs more about elasticity, because if a glove with very little stretch gets caught up, then itâs more likely to tear whilst youâre putting it on. But even so, if the gloves were cheap, and ripped easily, then it wouldnât be a problem, because if they ripped whilst youâre putting them on, then you can just toss the ripped one(s), and get a new glove.
Anyway, it seems weird that you acknowledge that itâs valid practice, then say that itâs not good to do with any kind of glove (cheap, or otherwise) in the same sentence.
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It is a valid practice =
- There is nothing wrong with the act in itself. May even be proven to yield better results than alternative practices (in certain conditions).
itâs not good to do with any kind of glove =
- Depending on the quality/type of gloves used it might backfire, leaving you more exposed to risk/contamination instead.
Given that this is a forum where people come in silently, read stuff, then go around and try to replicate it⊠I find it quite important to make that mention.
If such a reader goes about with surgical grade gloves, then Double Gloving is a valid practice (i.e. may work well in its favour despite being unnecessary in many scenarios)
but if a reader just grabs default generic latex gloves⊠then it would be much safer to not double glove, since in such case it might end up with fissures and bursts in the gloves which it might not even realise.
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