Friday Five: Alexa’s sound health advice and sweat-sipping sensors

Zone’s Ross Basham handpicks and shares the five best stories on digital trends, experiences and technologies…

1. Amazon partners with NHS for sound advice

In what seems like a very sensible move to me, Amazon has teamed up with the NHS to offer basic health advice through Alexa. Ask the voice assistant ‘what are the symptoms of chicken pox?’ and it will automatically search the NHS web pages for the answer. The government hopes it will reduce demands on doctors and prove particularly helpful for the elderly and visually impaired.

Naturally some have privacy concerns, especially as Amazon has been making moves in the private healthcare industry, but it insists the data will be kept confidential. And as people google their health all the time anyway, surely it’s better they get advice from the NHS rather than one of the myriad online quacks?

2. Sweat-sipping sensor suitable for soldiers

The latest wearable tech to emerge is a new smart patch that ‘sips sweat’ (what an awful thought) to work out whether a person is dehydrated. Developed in the US, it analyses potassium and sodium in the sweat, as well as the sweat rate, and could prove invaluable to soldiers, outdoor workers and athletes.

This kind of tech is where wearables really come into their own — it’s unobtrusive, done in real time and offers vital information that previously would have required a urine sample. Sorry, I’ll stop talking about bodily fluids now.

3. Insta gives bullies a chance to reconsider

Instagram has released two features aimed at making its platform a nicer place to be. One is an AI-powered warning feature that gives the writer a chance to reflect before posting an offensive comment (contemplation on social? It’ll never catch on); the other is a ‘restrict’ function to limit another person’s interactions with you.

Anything that attempts to curb online bullying has to be welcomed, though trolls won’t care too much about being asked ‘are you sure?’. However, people often don’t block or unfollow their bullies for fear of escalating the situation, so the restrict button — which works without them knowing — could prove particularly effective.

4. Hackers zooming in on Mac users’ webcams

Being spied on via your laptop’s camera is a lot of people’s worst nightmare but a vulnerability in Zoom’s video-conferencing software means hackers could access cameras on millions of Macs. A security researcher found a way to force almost any Mac that has Zoom’s app installed to join a video call.

Zoom says it has updated its software to make sure video is turned off as a default, but news stories like these just add to the Black Mirror-style paranoia that means many people will continue to stick little bits of tape over that dot above their screen.

5. A tastier alternative: Brexit means breakfast

Regardless of your political leanings — and don’t worry, the Friday Five isn’t about to get on its soapbox — one thing we can all agree is that we’re fed up with seeing and hearing the word ‘Brexit’. Well, help is finally at hand, thanks to a Chrome extension that transforms Brexit discussions on the web into breakfast-based alternatives.

Unfortunately, it only changes the headline of the story and not the picture, so you’ll still have to run the risk of your least favourite politician putting you off your Brexit… I mean breakfast.