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Comment by zbrozek | Hacker News Reader

I heard on NPR this morning that the test will be of an alert level that cannot be squelched by settings on the handset. Is that true?

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Generally yes for stock OS. I like that GrapheneOS doesn't give a shit (and they don't have to, because they're not selling phones):

"Wireless alerts are fully optional since GrapheneOS adds a toggle for the otherwise mandatory presidential alert type. This is particularly useful in Canada where the government abuses the system and sends every type of alert as a presidential alert to stop users from being able to opt out of weather and amber alerts." https://grapheneos.org/features

That’d be a nice sub plot for a movie. Undercover spy in the bushes has his phone on silent and gets cover blown when FEMA alert is sent out.

based

Au contraire - GrapheneOS gives a shit and actually represents the user.

It's funny - if I found some national opt-in list to where one could sign up for national/regional alerts delivered by email or SMS I would probably sign up. But alerts that commandeer my phone with some loud siren type thing? Fuck that (literal) noise.

In case anyone is curious, this is the commit that implements the change: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_CellBro...

EDIT: For folks with rooted devices, all alerts can be disabled with:

    adb shell su -c 'pm disable com.google.android.cellbroadcastreceiver'

and reenabled with:

    adb shell su -c 'pm enable com.google.android.cellbroadcastreceiver'

For folks on custom Android builds (or older stock Android builds without APEX module support), the package name is `com.android.cellbroadcastreceiver` (without the `.google`).

I believe the alerts from FEMA cannot be blocked on the device [0]

> Devices may offer the capability to disable most CMAS messages, but end-users must not be able to disable alerts issued by the President or Administrator of FEMA ("National Alert"), as prohibited by the Warning, Alert, and Response Network Act.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts#Part...

I'm not sure, but i've had my handset set to what i felt were pretty reasonable yet safe settings for emergency alerts, and got enough of them at 2 and 3am that i had to disable it.

I don't like this, i would prefer leaving emergency alerts on, but why are we testing it in the middle of the night? That's encouraging people to disable...

In what world is 2:20pm the middle of the night.

The comment said am

And the article said 2:20 PM ET.

And the comment said " got enough of them at 2 and 3am that i had to disable it." not directly referring to the article.

And the comment also said:

> …but why are we testing it in the middle of the night?

Referring to the test occurring at 2:20 pm ET, leading the other poster’s question which wasn’t about the part you are quoting.

I guess it depends whether the 2am alerts he had been getting were tests or not

I mean, any relativistic world that has simultaneous day and night periods.

A 'world' was a strange geographical constraint here. Like measuring the width of a cell in watermelons.

I thought you couldn't disable this one? I know opting out of silver or amber alerts doesn't cut it. That has spawned some more conspiracy theories, because 5g and fema... people built faraday cages for today.

I saw this in Kingsman. It's gonna be bloody and Sammy ain't gonna like it.

You're getting tests in the middle of the night, or actual alerts(Amber, Silver, etc)?

This comment has the test timing backwards, but is otherwise correct that these alerts are used way too often and are set to make phones behave way too severely. I completely disabled them after I got woken up by some garbage AMBER Alert at 3 AM, and some other time when my phone deafened me to alert me to some road flooding across town. Feels crummy to disable what could be a genuinely useful feature, but you blew it, boy who cried wolf. They're all off now and will be for the rest of my life.

In Texas they send "Blue Alerts" whenever a criminal shoots a cop or something.

Terrible as it is in reality, getting one of these for an event over a THOUSAND MILES away boils my blood so fast that I feel the desire to absolutely ruin the life of the person who chose to send it out and everyone who enabled them along the way.

Just wait until you find out that the child in that garbage amber alert was never in any danger, and was merely stuck in a custody dispute between two quarreling parents. Most amber alerts are just one parent taking their own child from the other parent. I have no reason to believe that the police are on the right side of such a custody dispute so I will never participate in an Amber alert.

I explicitly disabled all emergency alerts in the myriad android settings, and I kept the radio on just to see what would happen. I got the alerts.

I turn off all alerts on my phone and I will turn the unit off at 2pm today.

Meanwhile at the government:

"Sir, cellular telemetry reports 0.1% of devices dropped offline, mere minutes before the broadcast." "NOOOOOOOOoooooooo!"

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