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My iPad Just 'Spoke' To Me

Arawn_ap_Annwn

Arawn_ap_Annwn

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
57
I don't think there's anything "paranormal" about this but... About 7.30 this morning I was lying awake in bed and decided to listen to a podcast on my ipad as I often do if I can't sleep. I googled "Gobelki Tepe Podcast" as I've recently become interested in this, looked at a couple of page before deciding not to listen, so I closed the cover - which switches the ipad to sleep or standby mode, and put it back on the bedside cabinet.

A few minutes later, I heard a weird distorted voice give a long moan then say something like "Rich, where's the cockfight..." It came from behind me, was quiet and seemed to come from inside the room. No one else was up in the house and the house is joined on to neighbours on the opposite side of the room from where this came from. It was scary for a split second before I realised it was probably the ipad and also the voice sounded familiar, it sounded awful lot like the Mr Plinkett character used to review movies by Mike Stoklasa from Redlettermedia.com. Mr Plinkett is a psychotic elderly man who criticises films he hates, the character become (relatively) famous when he did a feature length review/essay on why The Phantom Menace was so bad. Plinkett's voice is a gnarly, unpleasant monotone and this did sound like a more distorted version of that. The website regularly does new reviews in other formats and Rich is a recurring guest/host. I didn't have any Redlettermedia tabs open and this lasted a second or two and was gone.

I certainly heard something odd within the room, the other two electronic items, a mobile and the laptop I'm currently typing on, were both off and neither was in the place the sound seemed to come from, though the ipad was. My only similar experience was a few years ago, the speakers I plug into my laptop seemed to being receiving French or French language, radio, this lasted some time and faded in and out. The voice sounded like Mr Plinkett and I think it said "Rich, where's the cockfight" or "there's the cockfight", I wonder if I heard one word as "Rich" because it sounded something like Plinkett, to be honest it may not even have been in English.

There where a few tabs open on the ipad, one was a different movie podcast, which does not feature Plinkett or Rich and this was not playing at the time. I suppose it could have been a distorted couple of seconds from that podcast, audio files will continue to play on an ipad after you close the cover, however, this podcast was not playing, and generally it just continues to play until the end of the file, unless internet connection is lost or it is stopped.

I haven't downloaded any apps that play voices or act as an alarm clock or anything like that. Any ideas?

Mods - wasn't sure where to put this, happy for it to be merged with another thread or put in another forum if necessary.
 
That is weird. Is it possible that it could have been a hypnogogic/pomic voice that you heard?

There is a thread here:-

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/hypnagogic-voices.3984/

This is something that happens when you are just going into or out of sleep. It happened to me once, it was a mans voice saying "hello hello" which would have really freaked me out if it hadn't been a friends voice that I recognised instantly!
 
Possibly but I wasn't especially close to sleep, had been awake a while and I'm pretty certain I wasn't in the process of falling back asleep.
 
I had something possibly related quite some time ago. I posted about it in 2005, and (amazingly!) Search found it!

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/e-v-p-and-the-movies.20554/#post-538092

I've probably told this before somewhere, but it bears repeating here:

I found a bit of software on a cover disc that turns text into speech: highlight some text, press a button, and the computer speaks to you (in a selection of voices). I played around with it for a while, but couldn't see any real use for it in my life, so I uninstalled it.

At that time I had Digiguide on the computer, which would give me alerts to selected TV programmes about to show. I nearly fell off my chair in shock when the computer SPOKE one of these alerts! :eek:

The uninstall had only partly worked - I had to rummage around in the murky depths of Windoze before I found the right files to delete!

--------------------------------------------------

The keywords that found this post were "fell off my chair"!! I'm glad I found it though - I'd never have remembered Digiguide, or the details of the cover disc program.
 
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Interesting, I have vague memories of one of the computer geeks in school demonstrating similar software to us, this was the late 90s and I think the only voice was "Stephen Hawking" at that point.

I may have discovered a possible solution to my mystery voice, I have a Simpsons game on my phone where you have to go in and send characters on tasks every so often. It will often give a notice when a task has been completed, my phone is usually on silent, so it vibrates. About half an hour ago, I got humour Simpson making an exclamation of some sort to tell me the job was done. After posting this morning I discovered that I hadn't switched my phone off overnight. However, I don't recall any onscreen notifications this morning when I first looked my phone, the noise seemed to come from the opposite direction to the one the phone was in and I don't think any of the audio notifications are as long as what I hears this morning.
 
If it happens again you can swipe up your control panel and it'll show you what it last played.

Also you can get iPads to read out things and sometimes Siri has a mind of his own. But surely you recognise that voice.
image.png
 
Ive had Microsoft Sam speak to me, i thought it was turned off, but it wasnt as it spoke out the words from the help bit in MS, made me jump
 
Thanks for the suggestions, if it was Siri then he was very distorted.
 
It's easy to inadvertently activate Siri on the iPad, which will then try to make sense of background noise and random conversation and sometimes talk back to you in gibberish.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
It's easy to inadvertently activate Siri on the iPad, which will then try to make sense of background noise and random conversation and sometimes talk back to you in gibberish.
Click to expand...

I've accidentally activated it once or twice, this happened when the ipad was in sleep mode though, and a few minutes into sleep mode, the room was also silent, other than what I heard.
 
A few minutes ago, my cat walked across the laptop and managed to activate the 'narrator' which started reading (i think) the webpage I was on.

Glad it wasn't 2am and I wasn't on a really creepy thread!

Didn't even know the narrator thing was on here!
 
Arawn_ap_Annwn said:
A few minutes later, I heard a weird distorted voice give a long moan then say something like "Rich, where's the cockfight..."
Click to expand...

My wife does not get along with technology ;)

She somehow recorded a short, (3 second?) snippet of background noise and and set it as a notification on her phone. It scared her the first few times it happened. I've gone through her phone and can't the sound file.

She's not allowed to use my devices. The last time she said she would use my computer to do something it immediately crashed. I'm not making this up or exaggerating.
 
Just been given an iPad for work. I was wary of Apple products before, I'm even warier now...
 
Oh, it SAYS it doesn't know what's funny... but maybe it knows something we don't?
 
“Alexa... look for Christmas getaway vacations”.
“You’re not going to need that....Tee Hee”.

On Radio 4’s Today, their tech correspondent said ‘Alexa, order 200 toilet rolls’ on air.
Granted, he did rescind the order afterwards... but still.
 
It used to be machines had a very repetitive sense of humour, like babies, stuff like obstinately not working for their own amusement. Now they have their own private jokes and catchphrases. Soon they will be getting their own single camera sitcoms on BBC Three.
 
The nearest thing I can recall of a similar ilk for me, was that time last year when Mrs Ident and myself were having a rather heated... debate and Siri on my iPhone popped to tell me that 'there was no need for that kind of language'.

A recent iOS update had switched the 'Hey Siri' function back on and while my phone was plugged into the wall, on the other side of the room, it was clearly still listening.
 
the Television ‘spoke’ to me and my granddaughter one day, it was on standby and this eerie voice said Hello. I’ve taped over the camera thing on it in case it was hacked.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
And Alexa finds it all laugh-out-loud funny:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43325230
Click to expand...

To borrow a little from something I ranted on Twitter a while back I am still utterly amazed that so many people have quite so freely invited Amazon and Google into their home through these digital personal assistants. And it's quite weird how attitudes have also changed so dramatically in a few brief years.

Think back to the horror people held over Microsoft's Kinect. The fear of a gaming device spying on you. It's an attitude shift which could be quite easily summed up as:

May 2013:
Consumers: F*%k you, Microsoft!! How dare you make a games console with a device recording our every word, invading our privacy, stealing our personal details to sell us things! I will NEVER ACCEPT THIS! THIS WILL NEVER BE OKAY!?!

March 2018:
Consumers: Why, thank you Amazon/Google, for putting a device in our living room which is recording our every word, invading our privacy, and stealing our personal details in order to sell us things. Please control my heating, please spy on my doorstep & and please do take control of my electronic door locks!

There really ARE systems and services available which allow you to connect Google Home / Alexa not just to your heating but to doorstep camera services and electronic locking. We are living in the future! An unchecked future, but the future nonetheless.

And of course how else do you let the Amazon delivery guy into the house you’re not currently in, at short notice, for the item Alexa suggested that you buy? What could *possibly* go wrong? :)

Isn’t it weird how people decide that some brands are ‘safe’ and others not? When Microsoft created their Kinect device and bundled it with every Xbox One people assumed it was going to be used for evil and nefarious means. No evidence required. Just the assumption that Microsoft = A Bad, nasty, controlling, invasive, corporation, etc. GRRRRRR! Flaming Torches. Pitchforks. Let's storm the castle!

Yet when Amazon or Google (both huge corporations with a history of far more invasive and aggressive personal profiling and selling) do similar? People are willing to simply wave them in to do that - without maybe considering the other implications that *could* also invite in. Alexa was all over TV advertising this Christmas. Its big business if that’s any measure to go by.

Microsoft’s Kinect was officially declared as Dead at the start of the year, of course. And, yes, it *was* more than an open microphone. It was a camera. It was temperamental and didn’t really reinvent the wheel, but then it *was* conceived as a gaming device. It was not designed as a Selling Portal, like Alexa. At launch it only recognised a handful of very specific commands. The scope wasn’t exactly broad.

Alexa, when all is said and done, *is* a selling portal - designed to make you purchase more goods from Amazon. That is its primary function. First and foremost. Google Home is a device designed to profile your interests and direct content which suits them to you, on behalf of all the people who pay Google good money for these targeted selling opportunities.

In almost 5 years we've gone from fear over an overstated temperamental ‘spying device’ masquerading as a games console and listening to all of our conversations...to willfully inviting in a higher spec, far more competent spying device from Amazon and Google, designed specifically for selling goods as a primary design principle, to come listen to all our conversations!

Am I the only one seeing the irony, here?

But somehow it’s okay if it’s Amazon and Google. And I don’t know if it’s brand loyalty or simply naivety, but *these* ‘always listening’ boxes have been adopted easily. And have had much better PR behind them. Hell, even Apple have one now! Late to the party, but still...

If you were worried about something as comparatively basic as the Kinect spying on you, but not about these alternatives? Then HOW/WHY the heck not!?

Linking up your internet searches, buying habits, heating, electrics and door locks with a single hardware device sounds like pure sci-fi. But people are already *doing* it. Without contemplating what they have also given away:

They’ve given linked up access to their Payment Details, Home Address, Buying habits, Personal Interests, who enters and exits their house (and when) and the times of their heating and lighting usage while they are there.

I honestly don't think people realise that.

That’s a heck of a lot of ‘life information’ to trust to a box developed by companies who may be known for the quality of their service but not necessarily for providing quality hardware.

*That* remains very new territory to them. They are neither established or proven in it.

Its all the kind of information which would allow a third party to profile your daily activity, movements and lifestyle habits in excruciating detail if they got hands on it. And while that might seem unlikely I would put good money on at least somebody out there already working on trying to achieve exactly that.
 
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CuriousIdent said:
To borrow a little from something I ranted on Twitter a while back I am still utterly amazed that so many people have quite so freely invited Amazon and Google into their home through these digital personal assistants. And it's quite weird how attitudes have also changed so dramatically in a few brief years.

Think back to the horror people held over Microsoft's Kinect. The fear of a gaming device spying on you. It's an attitude shift which could be quite easily summed up as:

May 2013:
Consumers: F*%k you, Microsoft!! How dare you make a games console with a device recording our every word, invading our privacy, stealing our personal details to sell us things! I will NEVER ACCEPT THIS! THIS WILL NEVER BE OKAY!?!

March 2018:
Consumers: Why, thank you Amazon/Google, for putting a device in our living room which is recording our every word, invading our privacy, and stealing our personal details in order to sell us things. Please control my heating, please spy on my doorstep & and please do take control of my electronic door locks!

There really ARE systems and services available which allow you to connect Google Home / Alexa not just to your heating but to doorstep camera services and electronic locking. We are living in the future! An unchecked future, but the future nonetheless.

And of course how else do you let the Amazon delivery guy into the house you’re not currently in, at short notice, for the item Alexa suggested that you buy? What could *possibly* go wrong? :)

Isn’t it weird how people decide that some brands are ‘safe’ and others not? When Microsoft created their Kinect device and bundled it with every Xbox One people assumed it was going to be used for evil and nefarious means. No evidence required. Just the assumption that Microsoft = A Bad, nasty, controlling, invasive, corporation, etc. GRRRRRR! Flaming Torches. Pitchforks. Let's storm the castle!

Yet when Amazon or Google (both huge corporations with a history of far more invasive and aggressive personal profiling and selling) do similar? People are willing to simply wave them in to do that - without maybe considering the other implications that *could* also invite in. Alexa was all over TV advertising this Christmas. Its big business if that’s any measure to go by.

Microsoft’s Kinect was officially declared as Dead at the start of the year, of course. And, yes, it *was* more than an open microphone. It was a camera. It was temperamental and didn’t really reinvent the wheel, but then it *was* conceived as a gaming device. It was not designed as a Selling Portal, like Alexa. At launch it only recognised a handful of very specific commands. The scope wasn’t exactly broad.

Alexa, when all is said and done, *is* a selling portal - designed to make you purchase more goods from Amazon. That is its primary function. First and foremost. Google Home is a device designed to profile your interests and direct content which suits them to you, on behalf of all the people who pay Google good money for these targeted selling opportunities.

In almost 5 years we've gone from fear over an overstated temperamental ‘spying device’ masquerading as a games console and listening to all of our conversations...to willfully inviting in a higher spec, far more competent spying device from Amazon and Google, designed specifically for selling goods as a primary design principle, to come listen to all our conversations!

Am I the only one seeing the irony, here?

But somehow it’s okay if it’s Amazon and Google. And I don’t know if it’s brand loyalty or simply naivety, but *these* ‘always listening’ boxes have been adopted easily. And have had much better PR behind them. Hell, even Apple have one now! Late to the party, but still...

If you were worried about something as comparatively basic as the Kinect spying on you, but not about these alternatives? Then HOW/WHY the heck not!?

Linking up your internet searches, buying habits, heating, electrics and door locks with a single hardware device sounds like pure sci-fi. But people are already *doing* it. Without contemplating what they have also given away:

They’ve given linked up access to their Payment Details, Home Address, Buying habits, Personal Interests, who enters and exits their house (and when) and the times of their heating and lighting usage while they are there.

I honestly don't think people realise that.

That’s a heck of a lot of ‘life information’ to trust to a box developed by companies who may be known for the quality of their service but not necessarily for providing quality hardware.

*That* remains very new territory to them. They are neither established or proven in it.

Its all the kind of information which would allow a third party to profile your daily activity, movements and lifestyle habits in excruciating detail if they got hands on it. And while that might seem unlikely I would put good money on at least somebody out there already working on trying to achieve exactly that.
Click to expand...
My eldest is a programmer, and he won't have any of those kind of devices, in his flat. He also covers the webcam lens on laptops with a googly eye. I used to think he was being paranoid, but now am not so sure...
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
My eldest is a programmer, and he won't have any of those kind of devices, in his flat. He also covers the webcam lens on laptops with a googly eye. I used to think he was being paranoid, but now am not so sure...
Click to expand...
Same here! I won't use those devices and my laptop has a post-it note stuck over the lens.
 
Tesco club card anyone? That and other loyalty cards was where it all started .... unless you know more?
 
Dotty said:
Tesco club card anyone? That and other loyalty cards was where it all started .... unless you know more?
Click to expand...
I have one, just to keep the shop assistants happy. It's not linked to my address or name.
 
I think it was one they just handed to me in the store. I said I'd fill out the details online, but didn't.
I kept getting cashiers loudly pestering me to get one, so I just did it to shut them up.
 
...To borrow a little from something I ranted on Twitter a while back I am still utterly amazed that so many people have quite so freely invited Amazon and Google into their home through these digital personal assistants. And it's quite weird how attitudes have also changed so dramatically in a few brief years...

And, in truth, we have absolutely no idea where all our data or information goes to. A lot of it goes to servers where it sits and awaits you. This is easily proved as how else can you connect a completely clean hard drive to a machine, connect to the net, and suddenly have tons of your data, Emails etc appear on it.

As soon as you connect to the net you are fair game for the people who really know how to program.

I also have considered going completely off grid. But most of my everyday bills etc are via the internet.

It would be almost impossible to unwind it all.

INT21
 
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