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Comment by jabbernotty | Hacker News Reader

An alternative number has been spread through the national broadcasting association (the publicly funded tv, radio and web news).

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Yep, I just received it on my phone, which wasn't fun because I was listening to music, my phone blasted the emergency tone at full volume through my earpods. It really hurt :(

Anyway, good to see that the emergency system works. I just received a second message with a whatsapp number and twitter handle which you can use in case of emergency.

Oh shit -- it was a really loud jarring sound, it must have been painful. They have recently started sending test phone alerts at the same time they perform the regular first Monday of the month noon emergency alert siren tests in Amsterdam. Maybe you should set an alarm just before then to make sure you're not listening to music!

https://www.government.nl/topics/counterterrorism-and-nation...

Or just turn emergency alerts off on your phone.

Average number of millimorts saved by those alerts I bet is really low.

I don't want to turn it off, but it should obey the volume setting if headphones are connected (your phone can detect that).

But I guess this is vendor specific, in my case it was a Samsung S9, maybe other vendors implement it differently

>est phone alerts

What is that? SMS? Phone call?

Cell broadcast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast

Oh, I'm using this since early 2000s. And I've subscribed to several channels like location, emergency, tourism, football, weather. Most of them don't work. I get location messages regularly but they make SMS like sound. And my LG G5 doesn't have special sound settings in Cell Broatcasting app. So it looks like wheter you have the alert sound depends a bit on what phone/software you are using. I though that there is a new protocol. But anyways, I like cell broatcasting.

I feel like that is a pretty significant issue with the alert system, and could cause legitimate hearing damage. If you have headphones in, it should be assumed that you are paying attention and don't need to be woken up, and play at low volume.

Strange thing is that it didn't send it over my Bluetooth headset as I wasn't listening at the time.

>> it should be assumed that you are paying attention and don't need to be woken up

That assumption is false. Last week we got one for likely dangerous smoke and we had to get out of the smoke and close all windows and stop ventilation in the house. You might want to wake up for that as some people use the headphones and fall asleep.

I think you missed the "if you have headphones in" part.

Or you missed the "some people use the headphones and fall asleep" part. In that case, cranking up the volume still makes sense.

That's true, it is possible that someone could be sleeping with headphones in or something, but I don't think that is common enough to justify potentially giving people hearing damage. Maybe as a compromise it could play at the current volume (or lowest volume if volume is off) through headphones, rather than going up to full volume.

or just play the emergency alert through the speakers of the phone, instead of the headphones.

Their app has push capability, as far as I know that has been used as well.

They have a very wide reach.

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