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I would have thought so too, but it turns out that the USA seems to have the exact same problem! Millions of Texans were woken up at 4AM to an "EXTREME" level

I would have thought so too, but it turns out that the USA seems to have the exact same problem! Millions of Texans were woken up at 4AM to an "EXTREME" level alert because one police officer was shot when he went to serve an arrest warrant to a suspected burglar at his apartment at 11pm earlier the same night. The officer recovered and was back on duty 5 weeks later. This shooting happened in one of the most remote parts of Texas, so people who were over 700 miles / 1.1 megameter / 12 hour drive away all got the notification at 4AM. The only option Texans had would have been to disable all alerts entirely, because this was an "EXTREME" level alert. https://www.404media.co/texas-blue-alert-emergency-notification/ https://www.404media.co/texas-blue-alert-emergency-notificat...

everyday7732 1mo ago
What are they expecting a Texan civilian who gets this alert to even do? This is baffling.
- khafra 1mo ago
  I mean, it is Texas; it's not unreasonable to expect thousands of heavily-armed people to form a posse and shot a few dozen people unrelated to the situation.
  - antonvs 1mo ago
    In Texas, that’s just Tuesday.
chasd00 1mo ago
I live in DFW Texas, use to be when you heard the tornado sirens you hit the deck. Now they go off, not kidding, for pingpong ball hail and “high winds”. That’s basically 1 out of every 4-5 spring/summer thunderstorms.
CatMustard 1mo ago
Completely unrelated to the actual content of your post, but: > megameter Completely valid SI way to represent distance, but I have never seen anyone use this in my entire life! Out of curiosity, do you live in some location or work in some industry where this is used? If so, where?
- nerdsniper 1mo ago
  I did some intercontinental work and found it easier to say (mostly in my own head) that I was “eleven megameters” from home, rather than “seven thousand miles”. I blame my nerdiness and willingness to be slightly weird. But I do enjoy the unit very much now and I think its time might be coming!
  - CatMustard 1mo ago
    I like it. Might start using it myself! I use mm, cm, m, km every day, so why not Mm! Definitely an appropriate unit for international-scale measurement, so it's weird we default to just using thousands of kilometres now that I'm thinking about it.
  - orbital-decay 1mo ago
    Was it straight line or orthodromic distance?
    - nerdsniper 1mo ago
      the latter. (great circle distance)
    - antonvs 1mo ago
      The Earth is spherical. What do you mean by “straight line” here? The direct line through the Earth?
      - orbital-decay 1mo ago
        Yes. Perfectly unconventional, like megameters!
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Hugsbox 1mo ago
I'm in Nova Scotia, Canada, and we had an even more (in my opinion) egregious case about two months ago that I'm still fuming about. Got woken up at just around 3:20 in the morning (I get up to go to work at 5) to an emergency alert blasting over mine and my wife's phones: "WOMAN WITH DEMENTIA MISSING FROM CARE FACILITY IN [town that's an hour from us]" What the hell am I supposed to do about it? Get up and start walking around my town to see if she's somehow walked all this way? I felt bad for the lady, but this isn't a "wake everybody up in the middle of the night" scenario, just get the cops involved and look around the area where she went missing. Fiiiiinally just about get back to sleep (took a while because I was fucking furious), must have been about 4:30 and it starts going off again. "FOUND: MISSING WOMAN IN [town] HAS BEEN LOCATED AND IS SAFE" Found. They woke me up to let me know there was no emergency. Do not even get me started on the absurdity of it, I'm genuinely still absolutely pissed. Best part is? We can't shut off our emergency alerts. The CRTC mandates that there must not be a way to opt out of them. Sorry for the rant, your story reminded me of this bullshit and got me all fired up.
- Scoundreller 1mo ago
  Also in Canada. Ontario would blast the province for technically “abducted” children that were typically joint custody disputes. There was one exception case where children were actively harmed, but already murdered by the time the alert went out. I suspect police couldn’t kick down the door where they were murdered because they didn’t have a warrant/sufficient cause yet: right to peace and privacy in your home but not on your phones! The alerts are 4G/5G only, so for a while I had a shortcut that would downgrade me to 3G at night. Despite everyone questioning the system being labelled as “with the child abductors”, there are far fewer of these alerts. Either abductions are way down, or they’ve tightened up the criteria to blast the province.
- smnrchrds 1mo ago
  That's really egregious to do in Nova Scotia out of all places. Where there was a mass murderer on a 13-hour rampage, they just tweeted about it. This is what they use the emergency alert system for?
  - 1mo ago
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0xffff2 1mo ago
I mean, that happened one time and made national news. It's not nearly the same problem in terms of frequency.

everyday7732 1mo ago

What are they expecting a Texan civilian who gets this alert to even do? This is baffling.

khafra 1mo ago
I mean, it is Texas; it's not unreasonable to expect thousands of heavily-armed people to form a posse and shot a few dozen people unrelated to the situation.
- antonvs 1mo ago
  In Texas, that’s just Tuesday.

chasd00 1mo ago

I live in DFW Texas, use to be when you heard the tornado sirens you hit the deck. Now they go off, not kidding, for pingpong ball hail and “high winds”. That’s basically 1 out of every 4-5 spring/summer thunderstorms.

CatMustard 1mo ago

Completely unrelated to the actual content of your post, but: > megameter Completely valid SI way to represent distance, but I have never seen anyone use this in my entire life! Out of curiosity, do you live in some location or work in some industry where this is used? If so, where?

nerdsniper 1mo ago
I did some intercontinental work and found it easier to say (mostly in my own head) that I was “eleven megameters” from home, rather than “seven thousand miles”. I blame my nerdiness and willingness to be slightly weird. But I do enjoy the unit very much now and I think its time might be coming!
- CatMustard 1mo ago
  I like it. Might start using it myself! I use mm, cm, m, km every day, so why not Mm! Definitely an appropriate unit for international-scale measurement, so it's weird we default to just using thousands of kilometres now that I'm thinking about it.
- orbital-decay 1mo ago
  Was it straight line or orthodromic distance?
  - nerdsniper 1mo ago
    the latter. (great circle distance)
  - antonvs 1mo ago
    The Earth is spherical. What do you mean by “straight line” here? The direct line through the Earth?
    - orbital-decay 1mo ago
      Yes. Perfectly unconventional, like megameters!

deleted 1mo ago

[deleted]

Hugsbox 1mo ago

I'm in Nova Scotia, Canada, and we had an even more (in my opinion) egregious case about two months ago that I'm still fuming about. Got woken up at just around 3:20 in the morning (I get up to go to work at 5) to an emergency alert blasting over mine and my wife's phones: "WOMAN WITH DEMENTIA MISSING FROM CARE FACILITY IN [town that's an hour from us]" What the hell am I supposed to do about it? Get up and start walking around my town to see if she's somehow walked all this way? I felt bad for the lady, but this isn't a "wake everybody up in the middle of the night" scenario, just get the cops involved and look around the area where she went missing. Fiiiiinally just about get back to sleep (took a while because I was fucking furious), must have been about 4:30 and it starts going off again. "FOUND: MISSING WOMAN IN [town] HAS BEEN LOCATED AND IS SAFE" Found. They woke me up to let me know there was no emergency. Do not even get me started on the absurdity of it, I'm genuinely still absolutely pissed. Best part is? We can't shut off our emergency alerts. The CRTC mandates that there must not be a way to opt out of them. Sorry for the rant, your story reminded me of this bullshit and got me all fired up.

Scoundreller 1mo ago
Also in Canada. Ontario would blast the province for technically “abducted” children that were typically joint custody disputes. There was one exception case where children were actively harmed, but already murdered by the time the alert went out. I suspect police couldn’t kick down the door where they were murdered because they didn’t have a warrant/sufficient cause yet: right to peace and privacy in your home but not on your phones! The alerts are 4G/5G only, so for a while I had a shortcut that would downgrade me to 3G at night. Despite everyone questioning the system being labelled as “with the child abductors”, there are far fewer of these alerts. Either abductions are way down, or they’ve tightened up the criteria to blast the province.
smnrchrds 1mo ago
That's really egregious to do in Nova Scotia out of all places. Where there was a mass murderer on a 13-hour rampage, they just tweeted about it. This is what they use the emergency alert system for?
- 1mo ago

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0xffff2 1mo ago

I mean, that happened one time and made national news. It's not nearly the same problem in terms of frequency.