News

23275 readers

3468 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil

Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.

Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.

3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.

Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.

4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.

Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.

5. Only recent news is allowed.

Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.

6. All posts must be news articles.

No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

7. No duplicate posts.

If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

8. Misinformation is prohibited.

Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.

9. No link shorteners.

The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.

10. Don't copy entire article in your post body

For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

324

AM radio law opposed by tech and auto industries is close to passing | Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

158 comments fedilink hide all child comments

A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act" now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

All of the comments like these don't understand the word emergency.

There are numerous plausible reasons cell phone towers, computers, and TV will be out in a true emergency.

I mean, hell, cell phone were unusable on 9/11 due to congestion, and even though it was a horrible event, it want an emergency the like of which are possible.

AM is dead fucking simple. Seriously. If you know what you're doing, you can make a receiver with a wire, a resistor, and a speaker. You don't even need power to run it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

The WES system that sends broadcasts to cell phones is more like a pager than cell phone. On 9/11, a WES signal was never sent given the extensive media coverage.

The fact that you mention two way communication getting blocked during 9/11 as an argument for a technology that doesn’t allow 2-way communicatio… is kind of amusing.

There is a further, critical advantage to cells. The vast majority of people wouldn’t have to build a cell phone to get that alert. Pretty sure the only am radio in my house is an unplugged and stored hand crank emergency radio.

We all already have phones in our pockets, or at least in arms reach practically 24/7. The hardware to maintain the network already exists and is going to be maintained regardless if it’s used for alerts.

AM is largely going away. There’s only a handful of niche uses (like very rural or remote locations,) where it’s more useful.

To further expound on that…. Are you running your car or truck or what ever 24/7 in case of an emergency broadcast? In an emergency it’s best to have your vehicle be a dedicated vehicle and your receiver a dedicated receiver. You don’t want to find your battery ran down or that you’re out of fuel.

Which brings us back to… this bill is stupid. Unless you’re a trucker, you’re probably not going to be around your car enough to reliably get the emergency broadcast.

And truckers have better systems than AM radios for communication.