Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/03/orange-alert.html
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WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO DO THIS IF ALL YOU MILLENNIALS WOULD STOP CORD-CUTTING.
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What was wrong with the old system that sent out messages via Emergency Raven?
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Too many collisions.
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Before Tangerine Hitler, this wasn’t a bad idea. If there’s enough checks on it to keep it from being abused (huge if, admittedly) it’s still not.
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He vibrated my nether regions. EWWWWWWWW!
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You misspelled collusions.
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There was no orange alert waiting for me when I turned it back on. So there is indeed a way to avoid the orange awfulness.
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My awesome feature phone didn’t receive it. Hooray for ancient tech!
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Same here.
But. . . what kind of list are we now on? And does the name of the list include the word treason??
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Kind of interesting that the message includes “Presidential Alert”, even when it’s not anything of the sort. It’s coming from a federal agency (FEMA, I believe). If the orange ass weren’t trying to insert himself into everything, everywhere, I’d expect the message to be called “National Alert” or “Federal Alert” or something a bit less intrusive.
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I guess it isn’t a surprise from a technical standpoint, but it’s kind of an issue that you will miss these alerts if your phone is not in its coverage area when they are sent. In the event of an actual emergency you would be in the dark.
I can think of ways to engineer this such that it doesn’t miss messages, but they all require more effort than the simple “send it via SMS broadcast” system. The best would require some extra work on the part of the phone, which isn’t happening anytime soon with the thousands of kinds of out-of-support phones in the wild.
Too much unkindness, rather.
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these public servants sure are getting mouthy.
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“No Action is Needed” translates to, “34 days until you get your ass to a voting booth!”
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That being one of the unblockable, effectively unavoidable text messages from President Trump that we are assured has no potential for future political misuse.
It isn’t a text message though. If it was, it wouldn’t be as annoying. It’s a warning, like the Amber alerts or severe weather alerts.
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Non-broadcast SMS messages already get mailboxed by the carrier and delivered to me once my phone’s back on the network, though…
On iOS you can turn these off: Settings>Notifications, scroll all the way to the bottom. There are separate settings for Amber Alerts and “Emergency Alerts” (the Orange Alert is the latter). Of course you’ll also miss out on legitimate notifications of earthquakes and hurricanes, and if you’re in Hawaii, North Korean ICBM false alarms…
I have Amber Alerts disabled since one woke me up at 5AM. Waking me up with a loud beep that bypasses my phone’s mute switch and do-not-disturb mode to let me know that I should keep an eye out for a blue sedan because it might be a kidnapper is not cool.
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