University of Florida

Two 'University of Florida' stories May 2014 - August 2014

Murder suspect really did ask Siri for advice on hiding a body

One of the best-known Siri easter eggs is its response to the question “Where’s a good place to hide a body?” Siri’s usual response was to ask “What kind of place are you looking for? Swamps. Reservoirs. Metal foundries. Dumps.”

In a story you really couldn’t make up, Kirotv reports that ‘a Florida man’ on trial for a 2012 murder seriously did ask Siri for this advice, according to evidence presented in court yesterday.

New evidence presented Tuesday in the trial of a man accused of killing his roommate showed he apparently asked Siri on his iPhone, “I need to hide my roommate.”

Pedro Bravo is accused of killing University of Florida student Christian Aguilar in 2012.

The Huffington Post reports that the query no longer works, but trying it myself today, the response I got from Siri was “What, again?”.

It was reported in June that Apple is looking to replace Siri’s Nuance-powered back-end, while the former Siri team are working on a next-generation virtual personal assistant.

Update: Bravo’s lawyer argued in court that while the query was made out on the defendant’s phone, it was not done on the night of the murder and is ‘not evidence’ that Bravo was the one who made it. The detective in the case agreed.

Crowd-sourced crime-reporting and safety app Tapshield goes public

A crowd-sourced crime-reporting and safety app trialled on selected university campuses has now been rolled out to everyone. Tapshield allows real-time viewing of crime stats and suspicious activity in an area, and allows you to summon help when in trouble.

An award-winning mobile safety app and response dashboard, TapShield uses collaboration and crowd-sourcing to build safer communities & improve response times. Think of TapShield as your social safety network with you wherever you want to go.

The way the app works is that users can report crimes in progress and anything else they spot that concerns them, and those locations and incidents are then automatically shown to other Tapshield users in the area.

When a crime is reported, Tapshield sends a message to campus security when used within one of the participating colleges, and dials 911 when used elsewhere. You also have the option of sending a non-emergency alert to police when you see something that concerns you but which doesn’t justify an immediate emergency response – such as a bunch of street lights out, leaving a path in darkness.

If you have to make a journey that concerns you, you can specify your route and ETA and allow family and friends to follow your journey remotely, raising the alarm if you go off-route or don’t reach your destination when expected.

Finally, the app has a ‘yank’ mode, which automatically sends an alert if headphones are forcibly pulled from the device, such as when your phone is snatched by a thief.