Should Netflix and Hulu give you emergency alerts?

Tue Mar 12 21:50:37 UTC 2019

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 13:45:23 -0700, William Herrin said:

> In many cases, only the foreground app has a clear understanding of the
> state of the screen. Not the OS and definitely not the hardware platform.
> I'd be super pissed if I died in Overwatch because the BIOS tried to take
> over the screen to display an amber alert.

Would you be super pissed if you died  for real because Overwatch suppressed a
tornado or other severe weather alert relevant to your location?  Serious
question here.

Seems like the amber alert problem is a configuration issue - just tell your
device's system configuration manager to not interrupt with amber alerts, just
post a small "there is an alert" status of some sort.  My Android-based phone
tells me in a little thing in the top bar that I have 2 Google News items, a
missed phone call, and some Skype activity - it shouldn't be difficult to add
"3 weather alerts, 2  Amber alerts and a partridge in a pear tree" to it.

And doing a similar thing for any device smart enough to play Overwatch
shouldn't be a big technical hurdle in 2019.