Hi folks. I'm in way over my head with an AWS problem. Mainly because I don't understand how to use AWS at all, but in 2013 I used a tool called FastGlacier to backup my data (including baby picture and videos) to Amazon Glacier. I also had them on a local drive and a HDD I gave to a friend. Alas, my drive failed a few years ago, and he lost the other in a move.

Anyway, I'm not a coder, and AWS baffles me. I'd like to retrieve these data but don't know where to start. Would anybody well versed in AWS be willing to walk me through the process? The AWS guidance is over my head.

Many thanks in advance.

I've had a ring camera for several years. Historically I've been mostly satisfied with it, but lately they are adding some features that are pretty annoying.

The worst is that they've been adding neighborhood alerts and other proximity alerts, with categories for traffic and weather and lost pets and things like that. Today I got a "community alert" which was actually an advertisement for a local animal shelter. I don't have anything against animal shelters, but my motion detector camera alter is not the correct venue for this message. It's clear that amazon is trying to muscle in on Nextdoor. I don't use Nextdoor. I find it to be like facebook, full of cranks and advertisements and nosey annoying people.
So now I had to wade through a few pages of menus to find where to turn of this new annoyance. Obviously, if I could I would opt out of all new features.

The other annoying thing is that they turned on some AI evaluation of what the camera sees. So I was getting messages like "there's someone with a garden hose on your lawn" or "a person is carrying a cardboard box". There were a few things wrong with this

• I didn't sign up to have this and it slows down the alerts so they are up to 30 seconds after the motion is detected
• The AI sometimes made errors, especially at certain times of day where it misidentified different things in the yard (for example, some place marked by shadow was interpreted as a sidewalk when there isn't a sidewalk there). This happens of course because the AI doesn't know anything about my property, it evaluates everything from scratch each time it looks at an image.
• The ring app started bugging me with upselling messages to pay extra for the AI messages

So yeah. I just wanted to vent about the enshittification of this thing. I'm also aware of the privacy issues of ring cameras and how they're going to use the "pet finder" functionality to keep track of everyone. But this rant isn't really about that more important stuff, just the frustration of how these tech companies won't just leave anything alone because they have different goals than us.

I'm wondering if anyone here might be able to help me with this.

We've bought a Amazon Echo Dot for my Grandma who's no longer able to see very well. The idea was to connect it to her Smart TV so that she would be able to navigate it using voice commands rather than the remote (which she can't see).

I've been able to add the TV as a device on the Alexa app, however I'm unable to get Alexa to carry out any commands on the TV - change the channel, open an app etc.

I believe that what I need to do is connect the TV to the Echo Dot via Bluetooth. Is this correct? Is it functionally a different thing than having something as a device in the app? Currently when I go to the TV under devices and click to manage linked Alexa devices, the Echo Dot is greyed out because it's already paired with a device (presumably the iPad where I've downloaded the app as there are no other devices connected).

If the lack of bluetooth connection is the issue, I'll need to buy a Bluetooth transmitter for the TV has it doesn't have bluetooth capability. So I just wanted to see if anyone had any advice for me before I invest in another piece of tech.