Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 154 posts

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

#111

Post by palmscenter »

bombcar wrote: post #6
tyleo wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are they useless? I grew up in an area with tornadoes and when one came ripping through my childhood suburb and destroyed some houses I was happy to have forewarning.

We get them every single time a thunderstorm sniffs at anything in the tricounty area. There may be a way to turn off the "Watch" alerts and still keep the "we are gonna die" alerts. The one time we got the green sky of doom the phone did explode in a way not normally seen, so I assume they know something about crying wolf. As for amber alerts being useless - something like 90% (?) of the time it's a custody dispute…

I know of no state in the USA where a child not returning on time is enough to trigger an Amber alert.

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

#112

Post by palmscenter »

bombcar wrote: post #108
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on where you are. In Canada, our system sends everything as "National/Presidential Alerts". We don't use the different levels at all. So AMBER Alert, Weather Alert, etc are all Presidential/National Alerts.

Does Canada even have a president?

Canada doesn't have a president, but until it passes a law that requires phones sold in Canada to have Canada-specific features in the alert display, it will say what it says in the USA. And in USA the Presidential Alert is switching to National Alert.

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

#114

Post by palmscenter »

antifa wrote: post #113

When an amber alert pops up, what happens 100% of the time is I'm like "holy shit wtf stop that loud noise!" and then after the message is dismissed and untrievable I try to read it, resulting in me having no idea what it said.

Title 47 of the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Section 10.500(h) requires the alert to be preserved "in a consumer-accessible format and location for at least 24 hours or until deleted by the subscriber."

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

#115

Post by JCharante »

tpict wrote: post #57

On a similar note to the linked article: the low battery alert of the AirPods Pro can be ear-shattering, and there's no means of reducing the volume. I suspect it tries to scale volume with environmental noise because it ranges from "startling" to "painful".

I've had my airpods pro die while in my ears but I've never heard them to be loud. It's like a dot sound right?

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

#116

Post by JCharante »

Mockapapella wrote: post #86

It's really weird to me to see so many people discussing Amber Alert spam when I can count on one hand the number of alerts I've received in my lifetime

I've had them on a flight while flying over Ohio. Really terrifying when there's suddenly 100 phones screaching in the cabin and it takes a few seconds to realize that distributed alarms like that must be an amber alert.

Didn't even realize you could get them on a flight. Must be because of the in-flight wifi.

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

#117

Post by palmscenter »

gedy wrote: post #47
sidewndr46 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Texas. I get Amber alerts for missing children that are 8 hours of interstate driving away from me. That's completely useless.

Same in California, and the ones I've received were custody battles between parents...

A child was abducted, and in some cases - as happened just a few days ago - the noncustodial parent threatens to kill the child. And does. The fact that the abduction involves a custody dispute is only one of the factors that goes into the decision to send an alert.

Many abductions are vehicle thefts where the thief takes off without noticing or caring that there is a child in the car.

In one recent case, the thief threw the baby out the window into a ditch. Citizens who received the Amber alert found the child.

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

#118

Post by palmscenter »

JCharante wrote: post #116
Mockapapella wrote: post #86

It's really weird to me to see so many people discussing Amber Alert spam when I can count on one hand the number of alerts I've received in my lifetime

I've had them on a flight while flying over Ohio. Really terrifying when there's suddenly 100 phones screaching in the cabin and it takes a few seconds to realize that distributed alarms like that must be an amber alert. Didn't even realize you could get them on a flight. Must be because of the in-flight wifi.

It has nothing to do with Wi-Fi. If people leave their phones on, not in Airplane Mode, while in the cabin they could well receive the alert from any cellular service area they are flying over. And it doesn't have to be an Amber alert, it could be a wireless emergency alert for anything.

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

#119

Post by tablespoon »

radford-neal wrote: post #26

I very much doubt that there is any technical reason for the alerts always being loud. It's a deliberate decision. Like the whole idea of amber alerts, it is a matter of authorities taking decisions that make them feel good, without considering the consequences. Amber alerts are bad. We get them now and them in Ontario at 3am, sent to the entire (rather large) province. This is idiotic. The probability that someone w…

> Amber alerts are bad. We get them now and them in Ontario at 3am, sent to the entire (rather large) province. This is idiotic. The probability that someone would be awake and in a position to observe an abducted child at 3am is negligible. The probability that someone woken at 3am will not be able to get back to sleep, drive to work in the morning when drowsy, and consequently get into an accident that kills someone, is not negligible.

That's why I disable them totally. In my experience, they're always just a description of a car, and realistically there's literally nothing I can do with that information. When I'm at home, I'm not going to check license plates, and when I'm driving I'm not going to check my phone (nor remember a random license plate number for more than 10 seconds to check anything).

They're also always "non-custodial parent took the kids," and I'm pretty sure the police in that case can quickly discover much better information than I could ever give them. There was one recently in my area that a friend of mine received. Later I read in the paper that they just tracked the guy's cell phone to find him.

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

#120

Post by RegnisGnaw »

Elyra wrote: post #107
RegnisGnaw wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What province?

Ontario

We have the option to disable 'AMBER Alerts' on both our Pixel and S22 phones. However it does nothing as the alerts all come in as National/Presidential Alerts.

We are on Telus/Videotron.

Post reply on HN