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Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

Do I understand correctly that bleary eyed users were uninstalling the alarm rather than turning it off? (Because by design it's a hassle to turn it off, i.e. to ensure user stays awake for at least some length of time?) That's pretty funny.

My friend (an absolute bear of sleepiness) had a "wifi alarm clock" back in the day: he had to actually stumble over to his router (get a certain wifi signal level) for the alarm to switch off!

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I used to have issues walking up during university, leaving my phone on the other side of the room, taking it and turning it off and falling asleep again without memory if it.

I got an alarm app that required solving math questions to do more than snooze. I had set it to three digit numbers +/- another. Worked great. Until I partied a bit too hard, and had to repeatedly snooze it, because even on the bus to university, I was too hungover to figure out the answer ;)

But in general, I was very grateful for the app.

There were not many such apps. Probably I used the same app about 10+ years ago. And also I was leaving my phone somewhere in the room where I must walk to, so I can actually get out of the bed. On many occasions if someone ring me I can answer and talk to them, assure them that I'm on my way and continue to sleep without even remembering. I listened to recordings, it is funny because I try to change my voice to sound like I am fully awake without even remembering. Btw, it turns out it was because of my unmanaged t2 diabetes. Now as it is under control, things are kind of normal.

>unmanaged t2 diabetes

Diabetes causes sleepwalking? Or mega tiredness?

It can do things like that. People who have diabetes have high blood glucose because their bodies are not actually using the sugar. If it gets bad enough it can actually feel like you're perpetually fasting despite having eaten. The energy is just uselessly circulating in the blood stream. Body thinks it's starving.

If this process continues the body starts producing ketones which acidify the blood which generally causes a lot of symptoms including depression of the nervous system.

> There were not many such apps. Probably I used the same app about 10+ years ago.

Funnily enough, I still use one with that feature, though I don’t think I’ve ever used that feature with it. It’s Gentle Alarm (originally a paid app), which requires unpacking the apk, editing the manifest, repacking, sideloading, and giving "draw over other apps" permission to use on modern Android. The developer long ago abandoned it, the website is not registered anymore, the support mail fails, and their Google account is deleted. But it’s by far the most featureful Alarm app I know, and if any Android update completely broke it, I’d debate staying on an older version.

Clever.

A student once made a whimsical motorized alarm clock that could drive around the bedroom, the idea being that the drowsy person would wake up in course of chasing it.

Another student made an alarm clock on the computer, which would require them to be alert enough to solve a differential equation.

> Another student made an alarm clock on the computer, which would require them to be alert enough to solve a differential equation.

That seems like it’d end badly after a rough night. Not only can you not keep sleeping, you can’t function enough to shut off the alarm so you just lie in bed without actually resting. Worst of all worlds. I love it!

It might've done long-term psychological damage to the student. They went on to become CEO for a very prominent company. :)

This is when the power plug comes out of the wall, the battery comes out, or the forced shut down happens.

> whimsical motorized alarm clock that could drive around the bedroom

It’s called “Clocky”: <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clocky&oldid=1221...>

> Do I understand correctly that bleary eyed users were uninstalling the alarm rather than turning it off?

A legitimate reason to do this would be if you're on a red-eye flight somewhere, and your alarm goes off. You can't turn it off because your special object or QR code or whatever is in your checked bag. Your only option is to either turn off your phone or uninstall.

>turn off your phone

I was wondering about this, smartphones don't turn on when your alarm goes. (So you could just turn it off to bypass the "super alarm"?)

I have vague memories that older cell phones used to turn on when the alarm would ring, but I might be imagining it.

Yes, older phones would turn on to ring the alarm. At least the 3 I owned did, and they were all different brands.

Symbian was on a lot of different brands, so based on a sibling comment I’d say it was a Symbian feature.

Not really it was Siemens c35i era that have no problem with ringing alarm when switched off.

You're absolutely correct. At least Nokia Symbian phones had this feature.

I'm thinking about the old brick phones.

Ooh sleep like an android app is crazy good at this. You can turn it off, volume down, and try yo uninstall all you like. The darn thing WILL sound.

I like two of the puzzles it has : laugh out loud for some time, or should swear words

When I was in university, I experimented with an alarm app called "sleep as android". I had set it up so I had to scan an NFC tag to turn it off, and for that I used a spent subway ticket I kept in the kitchen.

It worked, until I figured out I could just "force stop" the app lol.

There's nothing worse than having a roommate that sleeps through their alarm that can be heard every where with no escaping it.

I have been both people in that situation and in both cases we agreed that since the alarm had been set for a reason, a water spray bottle was a perfectly acceptable response once the alarm had been going off for a while.

I also had alarm clock problems in uni. My solution was a Raspberry Pi, a piezoelectric buzzer, and an ultrasonic distance sensor pointed at the bed.

The buzzer would ring until the distance sensor could see the opposite wall, and restart if I went back to bed. As a bonus, it took a few measurements during the night to track sleep quality.

Unfortunately the whole thing was running from a finicky breadboard and needed frequent calibration.

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