California fires: smart speakers and emergency alerts

Mon Oct 16 15:48:04 UTC 2017

On Mon, Oct 16, 2017 at 8:32 AM, Sean Donelan <sean at donelan.com> wrote:
> A smart speaker suddenly announcing "There is a tornado warning in this
> area, would you like to hear more?" will probably freak-out those same
> non-technical people.

Simple programming problem.

Speaker: "There is a tornado warning in this area, would you like to hear more?"

User: "How did you get my phone number?"

Speaker: "You have opted out of tornado warnings"

Fast forward to the next tornado and techno-darwinism will take effect.

Alternatively you could have the speaker ramble on for 10-15 minutes
about how the weather alerting system works and maybe the end-user
will hang around long enough listening to the explanation...

-A