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Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#81

Post by sidewndr46 »

bombcar wrote: post #76
lotsofpulp wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every single person I know in the NYC area turned off amber alerts in 2013 after being woken up by this one in the middle of the night: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/07/ambert-alert-phone-4... Even older parents called their kids to find out how to make sure it does not happen again.

It didn't help at all that phones suddenly had this feature and defaulted to ON (for awhile you couldn't turn off Amber alerts without turning off "They just launched the nukes, kiss your ass goodbye" alerts).

If we're discussing uselessness, I'm pretty sure warnings of impending war are the peak of this. They've actually killed someone in Hawaii. Let me live my final moments in bliss without worrying about that kind of stuff.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#82

Post by MerelyMortal »

lupire wrote: post #12
MerelyMortal wrote: post #4

I want to be able to silence Amber Alerts but still receive them. On Android, my only options are completely off, or full-blast obnoxious tone. I CANNOT have my phone making noise, so it has to be fully off. If there was a choice for silent notifications, I would choose that.

https://www.missingkids.org/gethelpnow/amber#howtoreceiveamb...

I appreciate the attempt to help, but it just gives Facebook, Twitter, and Inatagram links to follow, none of which I use. I click on the link to the Amber Alert .gov website, and they don't offer any (sane) ways to get notifications.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#83

Post by PragmaticPulp »

jerf wrote: post #39
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are they useless? I can’t speak to tornado alerts, but the Amber Alert child alerts were becoming excessive and useless in my state. I was getting alerts from many hundreds of miles away, often while trying to sleep. Other times they’d forget to put relevant information in the first alert so they’d send several more to follow up. When we finally got a series of multiple Amber alerts in the middle of the night,…

"When we finally got a series of multiple Amber alerts in the middle of the night, most of the people I know turned them off." To be honest I wonder if the people in charge were starting to get a kick at waking up so many people, or if they were engaging in some sort of malicious compliance, e.g., maybe the people responsible for sending the alerts out are also pretty pissed off at being woken up to send them out. Th…

> To be honest I wonder if the people in charge were starting to get a kick at waking up so many people, or if they were engaging in some sort of malicious compliance

I doubt it. The messages were just incremental additions of information as it was added: First message had something about the area. Second message had the color of the vehicle. Third one added another detail or a correction or something, I can’t remember.

I just remember that everyone in my local office was visibly tired the next day and we all shared the information to turn the alerts off.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#84

Post by bombcar »

whuthu wrote: post #69
tsm wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a US-specific system for alerting people to missing children. It's named after Amber Hagerman⁰, a 9-year-old who was abducted and murdered in the '90s. On smartphones they can appear as (very loud) notifications with details about the missing child, potential abductors, vehicle, etc. You'll also see the same info on electronic message boards along the motorway. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert#Names…

Thank you for the info. I think I found the equivalent on my Android phone, seems it's the "Emergency Alerts" section of the Settings app. I've never received one though.

Those also cover sever weather warnings (does UK have tornadoes and hurricanes?) and things like "incoming missile".

They amusingly alert when they're not supposed to.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Hawaii_false_missile_aler...

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#85

Post by MerelyMortal »

javajosh wrote: post #61
57FkMytWjyFu wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's when you destroy the attention span of anyone within driving distance of a custodial dispute. There's also silver alerts, where you do the same for a missing old person.

>anyone within driving distance of a custodial dispute. A plausible thing to say, but do you have any numbers to back this up?

Yes, see the other comments in this thread about receiving alerts for places 8 hours away by driving, or the other comment where a user researched the alerts for a while.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#87

Post by jcampbell1 »

whuthu wrote: post #21

What is an "amber alert"? I've never encountered this before, and I don't see any option for it on my phone. I'm an Android user in the UK, if that helps.

The default tone on iOS is a cross between a smoke detector and a baby crying.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#88

Post by PragmaticPulp »

Semaphor wrote: post #78

Reading this thread, I’m not sure what’s worse. The USA, where phones apparently randomly go off at any time for no good reason at a loud volume level, or Germany, where our alerting system is so broken that at the last testing round half of us didn’t get any alerts (these are supposed to be for actual emergencies, not custody disputes), and the rest received them over a time frame of several hours.

> The USA, where phones apparently randomly go off at any time for no good reason at a loud volume

FYI, this isn’t unique to the USA. Canada has serious problems, too, especially in Ontario. There are also various references to Belgium and other countries in this thread.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#89

Post by Elyra »

MerelyMortal wrote: post #4

I want to be able to silence Amber Alerts but still receive them. On Android, my only options are completely off, or full-blast obnoxious tone. I CANNOT have my phone making noise, so it has to be fully off. If there was a choice for silent notifications, I would choose that.

I don't know which phone you're using, but on my pixel if I have my ringer volume on silent, and the phone on "do not disturb" mode, amber alerts come in silent. I'm not sure which one, or the combination actually silences it since this is usually how I keep my phone when the alerts happen to occur.

Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?

#90

Post by PragmaticPulp »

tsm wrote: post #43
whuthu wrote: post #21

What is an "amber alert"? I've never encountered this before, and I don't see any option for it on my phone. I'm an Android user in the UK, if that helps.

It's a US-specific system for alerting people to missing children. It's named after Amber Hagerman⁰, a 9-year-old who was abducted and murdered in the '90s. On smartphones they can appear as (very loud) notifications with details about the missing child, potential abductors, vehicle, etc. You'll also see the same info on electronic message boards along the motorway. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amber_alert#Names…

> It's a US-specific system

It’s deployed in a lot of countries.

Search this thread for “Ontario” (Canada) for example.

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