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Comment by jpablo | Hacker News Reader

The power to send mass messages to a whole country is the worst thing google/apple have given to governments across the world.

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This implies that governments didn’t already have this ability, which appears to be largely untrue? To my understanding, many countries already had emergency messaging systems, and mobile integrations are just a way of modernizing them.

(It seems exceedingly good that the government can warn every civilian about natural disasters, etc.)

Governments had poorly thought out poorly secured barely functional systems involving the network operators and those were then integrated with default system apps that have terrible UX without fixing any of the problems AFAICT. Agreed that it's clearly necessary functionality but it's worse than useless when it's so far proven to be (at absolute best) a constant stream of irrelevant alarms.

These aren't from Google or Apple, they're from the wireless providers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_Broadcast

This is not related to Google or Apple. And this extreme alert, it's sent even to cable TV automatically. In a few countries, it's sent even on Fax lines.

If you say so. In the meantime I’ll continue to appreciate the occasional tornado warning.

I've yet to receive one of those that was useful. Meanwhile the 70+ year old storm sirens mounted on the nearby office buildings work perfectly in my experience, being audible even indoors from many miles away.

Even then. During a recent storm, they went off erroneously in Denver. (Looks like the other two erroneous alerts were via phone though.)

> Denver emergency officials say they are working to rebuild public trust after a mistaken tornado siren activation Monday became the third improper emergency alert issued in the city this year.

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/denver-tornado-alarms-...

Where do AI-based military target selection systems fit in your ranking?

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