Why do Americans need amber alerts? How come the rest of the world apparently doesn’t?
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Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
131–140 of 154 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no such thing as Phone/Mobile AMBER Alerts in Ontario. The US system has different levels of alerts: Presidential/National Alerts, AMBER Alerts, Extreme Weather Alerts, Dangerous Weather Alerts, etc. On my Pixel 6, everything but the Presidential/National Alerts can be disabled. Same with my wife's Galaxy S22. I assume the same for iPhones. However the Canadian system (which is heavily based on the American…
> However the Canadian system (which is heavily based on the American system) is setup differently. All alerts are sent as 'National/Presidential Alerts'. None of the other alert levels are used. That's the dumbest thing ever. A presidential alert basically means "nukes incoming."
Here in the states, the Trump administration sent one out as "a test". I was not sober at the time and I genuinely was very nervous for the few seconds it took to open my phone and read the message.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#133Earlier 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,…
I made an effort to look them all up for a while, almost all of them are custody disputes and the child isn't in real danger. I mostly ignore them now. We did have a girl nearby that was actually missing and they couldn't issue an amber alert because it didn't meet the criteria. It took them a few days to decide to issue one in exception to the criteria and within that day the girl was found (due to the amber alert).
The vast vast majority of "child kidnappings" are just a divorced set of parents bickering, or one parent ignoring court orders and trying to just run away with the child.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#134Although there are no such things where I live, I turn off all cells for the night. Why don't you?
Too lazy to start it in the morning.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However the Canadian system (which is heavily based on the American system) is setup differently. All alerts are sent as 'National/Presidential Alerts'. None of the other alert levels are used. That's the dumbest thing ever. A presidential alert basically means "nukes incoming."
Here in the states, the Trump administration sent one out as "a test". I was not sober at the time and I genuinely was very nervous for the few seconds it took to open my phone and read the message.
> Here in the states, the Trump administration sent one out as "a test". I was not sober at the time and I genuinely was very nervous for the few seconds it took to open my phone and read the message.
That's kind of understandable, though. If the nukes really are incoming, you want to make sure your alert system actually works, and the only way to really do that is to test it.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think this was an accident or result of poor training, I've got a Stone Arch Bridge to sell you. Law enforcement here is unsupervised and completely out of control and regularly interferes with elections.
What is your point - that the alerting agency is evil and wanted to disturb more people than necessary?
I have no trouble perceiving the point that the problem is intentional vs unintentional misuse of a facility.
An honest mistake is an accident that isn't repeated, or if repeated, happens in a random manner rather than exhibiting any particular pattern (seems to express neither a conservative nor a liberal worldview, nor any other potential agenda, consistently).
If someone has a desire to do something like use some position or tool they happen to have access to for some purpose of their own rather than it's intended use, and lacks the integrity to avoid doing so on their own, that desire and that lack of integrity doesn't change or stop even if they get chastised for some misdeed. They still want to do things like that, and they still don't see what the problem is, and they still do the same things, merely trying to do a better job of camoflage and deniability.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Seems like the phone alert system is being used to push public perceptions rather than public safety. Yes, they absolutely are. Just a couple weeks ago, local law enforcement sent out an incredibly vague shelter-in-place active-shooter alert across the entire Twin Cities area for a situation in a suburb that was resolved about five minutes later[1]. Schools were locked down, buildings closed, etc. And wouldn't you…
FWIW, I live in Minneapolis and didn’t receive that alert (just confirmed that I have emergency alerts enabled in iOS).
I was in my car in St. Paul at the time when the message went out. I heard the alarm and assumed that it was an Amber alert. When I got to the next stop light I glanced at my phone and saw two messages. One telling me to shelter in place (why?) and the next saying that the suspect was apprehended.
This was completely useless and actually distracting considering that I was in heavy traffic at the time.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#138On 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".
Same for other headsets. Soundcore, planteronics, Sony - all seem to have fixed volume levels for low battery. Always makes me jump.
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Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#139Do the people who get these alerts really act on them at all? I know the second after I read the license plate number that its gone out of my head, and I usually don't know what the make and model of the vehicle would actually look like since I don't pay attention to what most cars actually look like.
When I used to drive a lot I'd use a mnemonic to keep the plate in mind in case I saw it.
Re: Ask HN: Why is there no way to lower amber alert volume on headphones?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect it's all automated, and since the vast majority are custody issues, there's probably something like "you were supposed to hand over your daughter by 10 PM, but we don't count it as late until after midnight, and THEN your ex-wife has to call and complain, and by the time it's in the system it's 3 AM, and the system automatically sends the alert". And then they don't even send another alert saying she was fo…
There is nothing automated about originating those alerts. The actual procedure for transmitting the alert is manual. The incident has to meet state criteria including likelihood of harm to the child, criminal activity, information about the vehicle and other facts. A missing child in a custody dispute alone is rarely enough to trigger an alert. One of the leading types of child abductions leading to alerts is vehicl…
> One of the leading types of child abductions leading to alerts is vehicle theft with a child in the vehicle. Not a custody dispute.
"The vast majority of child abductions are carried out by a relative or close acquaintance of the victim, often a divorced parent who was not granted custody... about 20 percent involved a kidnapping by a stranger or slight acquaintance of the child. In the other 80 percent of cases, the youngsters were taken by a relative (most often a parent) or an acquaintance (frequently a babysitter)."
source: https://psmag.com/social-justice/amber-alerts-largely-ineffe...