Parents sue Apple after Amber Alert "tore apart" son's eardrums

boing
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Short of impending nuclear weapons impact or an asteroid strike, I don’t want unknown third parties sending me alerts of any sort any way unless I specifically choose to get them by category.

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Same. During the uprising in Minneapolis we got several alerts about curfews etc. that almost gave me a heart attack! It was terrifying and deeply traumatizing.

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my gal just played video on her phone which she turned all the way up as the sound was redirected to my AirPods

goddamnit apple, let me set shit to “never connect”, instead of remove from everywhere. fucking bullshit.

I haven’t heard an amber alert through them yet, but it would surprise me if it was played at full blast as apple has had headphone danger functionality for awhile, and it would also not surprise me if it was rare enough to have been overlooked completely

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If you’ve lost one (or both) you can go into the “Find My Devices” app on your phone and click “Play Sound” The iPhone displays a Volume warning that says “Your AirPods may be in use. Be sure to remove them from your ears before you continue. A loud sound will be played which could be uncomfortable for anyone wearing them.” If you hit the Play Sound button, the AirPods will chirp loudly enough to be heard within a several foot distance.

Clearly, that’s not what happened with the Amber Alert. It’s almost unbelievable that Apple would intentionally play any sound at that volume when they’re being worn. They have “in-ear-detection” so the little things know when they’re actually being worn, presumably to prevent damage like this.

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the AirPods have some kind of a bug that bypassed the safety checks. Because this amber alert thing seems like the exact situation it would have been designed to prevent.

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I’ve never heard, or heard of Amber Alerts until this report came up on Flipboard. Is this some sort of American thing?
I do get alerts on my phone, but they’re things like message alerts, which is just a ‘ping’, not particularly loud even when I’m wearing IEM’s.
Edit: OK, having seen several other comments about it, I understand what it’s about.
I’ve just checked my phone, and it does have Emergency Alerts, Extreme and Severe, but I’ve never heard of them being used here in the U.K.

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Why do they call it an AMBER Alert?

AMBER stands for America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response . The acronym was created as a legacy to 9- year-old Amber Hagerman, who was kidnapped while riding her bicycle in Arlington, Texas, and then brutally murdered.

How helpful are AMBER Alerts?

AMBER Alert Resolutions. In nearly 7 in every 10 AMBER Alert cases, children are successfully reunited with their parents . And in just over 17 percent of cases, the recovery is a direct result of the AMBER Alert. Just under 6 percent of cases end up being unfounded, while just over 5 percent are hoaxes.

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From Wikipedia:

Some outside scholars examining the system in depth disagree with the “official” results. A research team led by criminologist Timothy Griffin reviewed hundreds of abduction cases that occurred between 2003 and 2006 and found that AMBER Alerts actually had little apparent role in the eventual return of abducted children. The AMBER Alerts tended to be “successful” in relatively mundane abductions, such as when the child was taken by a noncustodial parent or other family member. There was little evidence that AMBER Alerts routinely “saved lives”, although a crucial research constraint was the impossibility of knowing with certainty what would have happened if no alert had been issued in a particular case.

I don’t know, maybe you have to have grown up with it bit I find this entire thing incredibly creepy. Probably because it turns the entire population into vigilantes.

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My personal experience with my X [mother to my son] that tried to unlawfully move to another state [in the middle of the night] w/ my son without prior consent or knowledge that was agreed on by the Family Court joint shared custody until he was 15. This transpired in Arizona in early 00’s. Before she got to the Arizona state line she was caught via the statewide “Amber Alert” system. So I neither advocate for it, or deride it, but if she got over the State line, I truly believe I would not have seen him for a protracted time, if ever. That’s my story on this, perhaps others had different outcome, but I was happy with mine.

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I don’t want to dispute your personal story because you know the details while I don’t, and it is an emotional topic, but the system as a whole just feels icky to me. We all know what people will do to “save the children” if given half an excuse, from ramming vans off the road to holding a pizza place at gunpoint. Involving the public like that seems like it could do more harm than good (again, on a systems level).

ETA: thinking a bit more about it and why I don’t necessarily have the same problem with a police Wanted poster, I have come to the conclusion that what makes me instinctively recoil is the fact that it specifically involves the public in policing in a fast-developing and changing situation. It’s one thing to look for a mafia contract killer from 20 years ago with a poster and quite another to turn every human in a certain area into a paranoiac ready to accuse anyone of being an abductor who they see with a child that looks vaguely similar to what they were told about.

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You’re entitled to an opinion. No you weren’t there, I’d remember if you were, like every detail from the horrible event that now is embedded into my brain forever to haunt me. I do hope no person ever has to have this experience, but for lack of any other viable system the Amber Alert gives some hope they will see their child again.

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I think you may misunderstand what’s in AMBER alerts. It basically describes a vehicle and license plate involved in a possible abduction. It’s not really the dystopian surveillance nightmare you seem think it is.

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I’m not 100% sure that the “saved lives” bit is meant to be directly related to the previous sentence, but it’s a mistake to think that a child’s life is safe just because the person abducting them is a family member.

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I have been trying to fix a weird Alsa bug on my Lenovo laptop for TWO YEARS to no avail.

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I have it working on my musicbox Pi, but I only look it once a year when something changes. (Like they made pulseaudio the default.)

I have an unorganized collection of links:

ALSA, Fucking ALSA

Docs

Files/directories

  • ~/.asoundrc user config file
  • /etc/asound.conf system config file.
  • /var/lib/alsa/asound.state state of sound card
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This list is going to be really useful, thanks!

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