Should Netflix and Hulu give you emergency alerts?

[sean at donelan.com (Sean Donelan)]

On Tue, 12 Mar 2019, Michael Thomas wrote:
> What's with perpetuating the thought that it needs to be in the bios? It's
> just a normal app on a normal computer like Biff.

I know, after working with network engineers in too many meetings.

As I keep repeating, for smart devices (Smart TVs, Smart Speakers) 
emergency alerts should be part of the intelligent assistant mediation 
layer (Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant). The specifics vary depending on the 
smart device ecosystem. Its not part of the hardware bios. Its not part 
of a third-party app. Its not part of the content stream. Most of the 
intelligent assistant "smarts" live in a "cloud" in a bunch of data 
centers.

On classic desktop computers, i.e. linux and windows, an emergency alert 
handler is usually implemented as a daemon or background process. Desktop 
computers would likely use a thick-client implementation. There are 
several vendors that sell classic desktop emergency alerting products. If 
you've ever been inside a Department of Defense facility during one of 
their active shooter drills, its a bit insane when all the alerting 
systems go off.

I would suggest a different UX for home users.