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Driving home from Burlington, VT after the eclipse. Traffic was crawling. Cell data wasn’t working. FM seemed like all automated stations from far away. Yknow w

Driving home from Burlington, VT after the eclipse. Traffic was crawling. Cell data wasn’t working. FM seemed like all automated stations from far away. Yknow what did provide information on traffic and scaled to the huge influx of people in the area? A news station on AM radio. But that brings up a bigger problem, many many radio stations are essentially on autopilot or run from a distance without the ability to address local situations. Without support for truly local stations, AM radio may be present, but generally without significant value.

darby_eight 2y ago
Also a big fan of AM radio in vermont, but the flipside of this is that it's been used to peddle misinformation for decades.
- 15155 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - badhackernews 2y ago
    [dead]
  - gibbitz 2y ago
    Quite the opposite. This board should be responsible for making sure all "fringe" voices are heard, not just the alien conspiracy, ultra right-wing and religious zealotry groups. I haven't been confronted with any programs about satanism, fairy folk, living on the Sun or say... gay rights on Midwestern AM radio.
    - 15155 2y ago
      I don't disagree - maybe an open auction house/marketplace for AM time slots. If the spectrum is a public resource anyway...
  - darby_eight 2y ago
    > "contrarian political opinions" That is not the same thing as misinformation. One deals in reality, the other in opinions.
    - 15155 2y ago
      The point is that someone must define what "misinformation" is. "Reality" is often open to interpretation.
      - datameta 2y ago
        Perhaps we can call it the Ministry of Reality Determination or something like that? Maybe Ministry of Truth even, that should work well!
      - darby_eight 2y ago
        Actually i'm asserting precisely that misinformation deals in lying about trivially disprovable statements about the universe. If "reality" is open to interpretation i'm dealing with a bad-faith actor and I'm not going to waste my time. That said, you don't have to hunt very far on vermont to find an ass flapping in the wind on some conservative christian channel.
- HumanProtractor 2y ago
  [dead]
- pizzafeelsright 2y ago
  There is only information. No dis or mal or contra.
  - Tagbert 2y ago
    Case in point ^
phkahler 2y ago
AM is something I don't normally use, but I depend on in situations like that. It's more reliable than the internet by far too.
- ajross 2y ago
  It's 100% not more "reliable" than the internet is. AM stations are down regularly, receivers are (c.f. this very article) inconsistently deployed and many users don't know how to use the ones they own. What you're saying is that it's a useful backup for a service that remains imperfect. But if you had to pick just one emergency notification technology for the modern world, it would be mobile telephones. There's really no significant argument there.
  - dataflow 2y ago
    > But if you had to pick just one emergency notification technology for the modern world, it would be mobile telephones. There's really no significant argument there. Definitely disagree. Mobile phones have a million failure modes. The only reason I'd choose them is 2-way communication, not reliability of 1-way communication.
    - ajross 2y ago
      Was the last emergency notification you received actually on an AM radio? I was in Taiwan last week during the earthquakes and got them at 2am on my foreign phone via a temporary SIM I got for $9 at the airport. Sorry, there is more to reliability analysis than just analyzing failure modes. Whether or not a technology is productively useful for its intended purpose is important!
      - dataflow 2y ago
        They're useful for different kinds of emergencies. Nobody said one of them subsumed the other. You might as well say "when was the last time 911 helped you? I just used a first-aid kit last week and it saved me from my bleeding."

darby_eight 2y ago

Also a big fan of AM radio in vermont, but the flipside of this is that it's been used to peddle misinformation for decades.

15155 2y ago
[flagged]
- badhackernews 2y ago
  [dead]
- gibbitz 2y ago
  Quite the opposite. This board should be responsible for making sure all "fringe" voices are heard, not just the alien conspiracy, ultra right-wing and religious zealotry groups. I haven't been confronted with any programs about satanism, fairy folk, living on the Sun or say... gay rights on Midwestern AM radio.
  - 15155 2y ago
    I don't disagree - maybe an open auction house/marketplace for AM time slots. If the spectrum is a public resource anyway...
- darby_eight 2y ago
  > "contrarian political opinions" That is not the same thing as misinformation. One deals in reality, the other in opinions.
  - 15155 2y ago
    The point is that someone must define what "misinformation" is. "Reality" is often open to interpretation.
    - datameta 2y ago
      Perhaps we can call it the Ministry of Reality Determination or something like that? Maybe Ministry of Truth even, that should work well!
    - darby_eight 2y ago
      Actually i'm asserting precisely that misinformation deals in lying about trivially disprovable statements about the universe. If "reality" is open to interpretation i'm dealing with a bad-faith actor and I'm not going to waste my time. That said, you don't have to hunt very far on vermont to find an ass flapping in the wind on some conservative christian channel.
HumanProtractor 2y ago
[dead]
pizzafeelsright 2y ago
There is only information. No dis or mal or contra.
- Tagbert 2y ago
  Case in point ^

phkahler 2y ago

AM is something I don't normally use, but I depend on in situations like that. It's more reliable than the internet by far too.

ajross 2y ago
It's 100% not more "reliable" than the internet is. AM stations are down regularly, receivers are (c.f. this very article) inconsistently deployed and many users don't know how to use the ones they own. What you're saying is that it's a useful backup for a service that remains imperfect. But if you had to pick just one emergency notification technology for the modern world, it would be mobile telephones. There's really no significant argument there.
- dataflow 2y ago
  > But if you had to pick just one emergency notification technology for the modern world, it would be mobile telephones. There's really no significant argument there. Definitely disagree. Mobile phones have a million failure modes. The only reason I'd choose them is 2-way communication, not reliability of 1-way communication.
  - ajross 2y ago
    Was the last emergency notification you received actually on an AM radio? I was in Taiwan last week during the earthquakes and got them at 2am on my foreign phone via a temporary SIM I got for $9 at the airport. Sorry, there is more to reliability analysis than just analyzing failure modes. Whether or not a technology is productively useful for its intended purpose is important!
    - dataflow 2y ago
      They're useful for different kinds of emergencies. Nobody said one of them subsumed the other. You might as well say "when was the last time 911 helped you? I just used a first-aid kit last week and it saved me from my bleeding."