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'There's a good chance I get murdered tonight'
Terrified Amazon Echo users reveal Alexa has been emitting 'bone chilling' laughs at random and is ignoring their commands.
Eerie alright! Frankly, though, I wouldn't have such a thing in my home.... or anywhere else for that matter. I just don't trust such gadgets, be it Amazon's, Facebook's or Google's. Windows 10 is about as high tech as I'm going, with voice prompts and so-called assistants disabled. I can understand the need for disabled persons, but I'm still capable of using a mouse and keyboard the old fashioned way.
Amazon is working on a fix.
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/amazon-alexa-devices-strange-laughter
Or a disgruntled Amazon employee messing with peoples heads. There again, he/she may not have been disgruntled and just did it for a laugh.... pun intended.
I once had a giggle bag that would burst into infectious laughing when the string was pulled, but it wasn't as hi tech as this Alexa thing.... I could trust it to not be spying on me.
Nah, tech has come too far too soon for my liking, and while consumers may benefit from various devices, I'm wary of using things like this - Cortana in Windows - because of the data that can be collected and used without your knowledge or explicit consent..... or.... to target you with advertising you neither want or need or asked for.
Humanoid robots runnin' around in Japan, AI and Alexa's maniacal laugh...pretty soon we'll each have our own giggle bots. 
Well I once had my own giggle bag.... held closed by a couple of draw-strings. It had a third string hanging out from a clockwork device... pull that and it would giggle its head off. Well not really! It didn't have a head, but it was hilarious pulling the string in a cinema during a tense and chilling scene during a horror movie. Or in a cafe while others are sipping coffee, then spitting it everywhere it as the the giggle got more and more infectious.
Sadly, I had it confiscated by a teacher after I pulled 'the string' and set the whole class off with uproarious laughter... and the joke and novelty shop I purchased it from was no longer there, so it wasn't easy finding another.
Anyway, the moral to the story? A clockwork giggle box/bag ain't gonna spy on yer and phone home with yer data. In other words, resist the hi-tech giggle bots that spy and can be controlled from home base by mischievous employees who have nought better to do on night shift than make yours giggle while yer: constipated on the toilet; have the opposite problem nowhere near the toilet; in the midst of a sneezing fit; or making love. And with monotonous regularity, your device seems to know when to laugh out loud or giggle infectiously, right while you're in an embarrassing or compromising position.
Yup, if ya want a giggle/laugh device, stick to the old tech. 
My ribs hurt enough from the low tech version, so no thanks to the hi-tech bots. However, having read up on Google Home, and that it can update sports scores and weather, I wouldn't mind a dumbed down version that can't phone home with details of my business.
A cure for vertigo would be nice. Well the blurb reckons you can ask it pretty much anything. And I wouldn't mind this weekend's winning lotto numbers to go with that.
Seriously, while Google Home may have its advantages, quick answers to spoken questions, I can get all that information from Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or Bing on my PC.... and I'm still not too lazy, enamoured by modern tech or past it to type in questions to things I want to know.
Things could change, however. If my typing finger continues to get cramp, I may have to resort to Google home. I'd have to block its ears, though, when I don't want various things phoned home, and cover its eyes when I don't want it seeing any rude bits. LoL.
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