Alexa, Who Am I Speaking To?: Understanding Users’ Ability to Identify Third-Party Apps on Amazon Alexa

Many Internet of Things devices have voice user interfaces. One of the most popular voice user interfaces is Amazon’s Alexa, which supports more than 50,000 third-party applications (“skills”). We study how Alexa’s integration of these skills may confuse users. Our survey of 237 participants found that users do not understand that skills are often operated by third parties, that they often confuse third-party skills with native Alexa functions, and that they are unaware of the functions that the native Alexa system supports. Surprisingly, users who interact with Alexa more frequently are more likely to conclude that a third-party skill is a native Alexa function. The potential for misunderstanding creates new security and privacy risks: attackers can develop third-party skills that operate without users’ knowledge or masquerade as native Alexa functions. To mitigate this threat, we make design recommendations to help users better distinguish native functionality and third-party skills, including audio and visual indicators of native and third-party contexts, as well as a consistent design standard to help users learn what functions are and are not possible on Alexa.

Experiments on Stability of Tetrapods on Rear Slope of Rubble Mound Structures under Wave Overtopping Condition

In this study, hydraulic model tests were performed to investigate the stability of armor units at harbor side slope for rubble mound structures. The Korean design standard for harbor and fishery port suggested the design figures that showed the ratio of the armor weight for each location of rubble mound structures and it could be known that the same weight ratio was needed to the sea side and harbor side (within 0.5H from the minimum design water level) slope of rubble mound structures. The super structures were commonly applied to the design process of rubble mound structures in Korea and the investigation of the effects of super structures would be needed. The stability number (Nod = 0.5) was applied (van der Meer, 1999) and it showed that the armor (tetrapod) weight ratio for harbor side slope of rubble mound structures needed 0.8 times of that for sea side slope.

Evaluation of Flood Mitigation Effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions Potential Cases with an Assessment Model for Flood Mitigation

In recent years, climate change has been widely discussed around the world. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) in 2021, which stated that with the intensification of global warming, heavy rainfalls are becoming more severe and frequent. Economic development in recent years has also caused the proportion of impervious areas in urban regions to increase with the advancement of urbanization. When the two aforementioned factors are coupled together, the result is faster surface runoff speeds and reduced infiltration rates, which in turn result in worse flooding. Thus, water disaster mitigation is becoming a topic of great importance to developed and developing countries. This study examined five Nature-based Solutions (NbS) cases (A, B C, D, E) for the Nangang river in Taiwan. Case A is to design levees with a 100-year return period flood design standard. Under steady flow conditions, floods can be smoothly discharged downstream without any significant inundation in most situations. Case B and C used gabions with a 10-year return period flood design standard and discontinuous levees with a 25-year return period flood design standard, respectively. Though neither case is as effective in flood mitigation, both cases B and C can still reduce inundation from the flooding disaster relatively well. Case D is to dredge local areas of the main channel, but the steady flow simulation showed little flood mitigation effect. Case E is the implementation of “Room for the River”, and employs main channel dredging and floodplain land grading to increase flood conveyance capacity. Case E provides good flood mitigation.

Proposal to transform “AS(AS/NZS) 5100 Bridge Design Standard” to “AS/NZS 5100 Bridge and Transport Infrastructure Design Standard”

<p>The 2017 AS(AS/NZS) 5100 <i>Bridge Design </i>Series is an evolution of former road authority and (heavy) rail authority standards that can trace their initial roots to 1960s. Originally written in an era when all bridges were owned by public organizations. The 21st century has both public and private ownership of bridges. The scope of transport infrastructure has also expanded and now includes managed motorway gantries, noise barriers and large sign structures</p><p>This paper has identified an inconsistent approach to scope. It proposes a new wider scope of transport infrastructures to be included in the standard. This consistency in approach will remove inconsistent treatment of non-bridge structures relating to fatigue and load combinations in the current standard. The paper has also identified that high frequency metropolitan trains has resulted in fatigue cycles being grossly underestimated.</p><p>The paper proposes a name change from bridge to transport infrastructure design to fully capture the scope of the changes.</p>