News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by michaelteter on Sunday October 06, 2024 @11:46PM (#41762604)
If you are in a car, and you're under the age of 40, you probably don't even know how to switch to your AM radio. Unless you are one of the rare drivers who knows about AM radio and uses it, it's not going to be something you think of using while fleeing a catastophe.

It may have technical merits, just as horseshoes still do (because we do still use horses), but that doesn't mean we should force every car to have it. It certainly could be an option for those who see value in it.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by rblatz on Monday October 07, 2024 @12:04AM (#41762697)
I’m in my 40s and have no way to receive AM broadcasts. My wife and I both have Teslas, and we don’t have any radio tuners in the house. I wouldn’t even notic if the Tesla didn’t have FM either, I’ve lived in my current city for 12 years and couldn’t tell you a single radio station in the city.

AM is dead, and FM is nearly there as well.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by lubujackson on Monday October 07, 2024 @12:25AM (#41762796)
I just listened to the 49ers game on AM today while driving, so YMMV. Anyone in the Bay Area should have a go bag for earthquakes and it should probably have an AM radio in it. Old, stable tech is uncool until it is necessary.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by grogenaut on Monday October 07, 2024 @12:33AM (#41762836)
I live in a city. All of my vehicles except my motorcycle (no radio) can recieve FM and AM. All of my current and old android phones can get AM/FM. The old boombox I have in the shed, several of my ham radios, clock radio, and some bluetooth swim headphones. And 2 of my TVs.

Also I don't assume that my life experience represents everyone else's but then I don't drive a tesla or go on HN to tell people why they're wrong.

The last one is a lie, but the rest is true.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by hetman on Monday October 07, 2024 @03:54AM (#41763719)
So your car relies on the very things that may be unavailable in a major disaster scenario? I wonder if we're building insufficient redundancy into our civilisation always assuming all the modern niceties must always be there.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by dartos on Monday October 07, 2024 @05:30AM (#41764240)
What an out of touch take.

“Me, being successful in my 40s and living in a city with 2 teslas don’t listen to AM or FM radio, so those technologies are dead and should be abandoned”

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by michaelt on Monday October 07, 2024 @05:54AM (#41764402)
Well, there's also the data point that demand is so low the AM radio industry has literally gone to congress and asked to make receivers mandatory.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by dartos on Monday October 07, 2024 @06:31AM (#41764594)
Consumer demand in populated areas sure, but out in the boonies digital radio doesn’t work as well.

Not being popular isn’t a reason to declare something as dead or useless.

Tho none of that is a reason to force auto makers to include AM radio.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by stickfigure on Monday October 07, 2024 @09:55AM (#41766055)
> Not being popular isn’t a reason to declare something as dead or useless.

Spectrum is a finite, shared resource. Especially these lower frequency bands.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by dartos on Monday October 07, 2024 @11:40AM (#41767110)
And AM has use as an emergency utility and FM is more accessible than digital radio.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by rblatz on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @07:37AM (#41776208)
Why do you keep jumping from AM to digital radio? What does that even mean, are you talking about XM? You do know FM exists and is analog, right?
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by dartos on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @08:49AM (#41776795)
Digital radio: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_radio

The commenter with the teslas was saying that AM is dead and FM is nearly dead.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by gosub100 on Monday October 07, 2024 @08:27AM (#41765313)
Look at the numbers. Fewer people listen to the crappy DJs, payola music, annoying commercials, or hate-wing talk radio. Radio is dying.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by xpe on Monday October 07, 2024 @09:58AM (#41766088)
There is a difference between "declining" and "dying". The former is descriptive. The latter is a prediction.

There is little debate that radio is declining. To me, it more interesting how it is changing: the audience, the programming, the impact. Whether (and when) radio might completely "die" is a prediction that requires some kind of clarification about the details.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by rblatz on Monday October 07, 2024 @12:08PM (#41767422)
12 years ago I wasn’t nearly as successful, but I did have Bluetooth in my car. Even in my old Hyundai and my wife’s Honda we never used the tuners.
Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by xpe on Monday October 07, 2024 @09:52AM (#41766022)
> AM is dead, and FM is nearly there as well.

Overstated and incorrect. (The author reveals their own bubble in the preceding paragraph.)

Word selection matters; there is not point in using "dead" when we have more accurate words like "declining".

Talk is cheap. If the parent commenter wants to make a prediction about if/when AM and/or FM will die, I recommend going to a prediction market and practice making testable predictions. Most people are poorly calibrated. Many people would benefit from seeing how poorly calibrated they are firsthand. Losing is a powerful motivator for course correction.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by rblatz on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @07:50AM (#41776289)
We just had a news story where an active AM station had its tower stolen and no one noticed until the landscapers reported it was gone.

And what bubble did I reveal, because it could be that I’m able to afford cars that cost ~$30k, like used Teslas or a new Toyota Camry, it could be that I like technology (but that’s mostly a given here), did you mean I’m an early adopter? Stop discounting me and my opinion baselessly by placing me in a bubble you won’t even define. How am I to even discuss with you when you use weasel wording.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by dartos on Tuesday October 08, 2024 @08:51AM (#41776811)
> We just had a news story where an active AM station had its tower stolen and no one noticed until the landscapers reported it was gone.

In your local area I presume…

> I’m able to afford cars that cost ~$30k, like used Teslas or a new Toyota Camry, it could be that I like technology (but that’s mostly a given here), did you mean I’m an early adopter

Yeah, exactly. You also mentioned you live in a city, which are pretty dense and don’t require much effort to spread emergency information in. Most people can’t afford new Camrys or teslas at all…

> Stop discounting me and my opinion baselessly by placing me in a bubble you won’t even define

No… and I did define it.

“ being successful in my 40s and living in a city with 2 teslas”

That is not a common situation… especially nowadays where something like 40% of American households would be in danger of a debt spiral when faced with any kind of unexpected $400 bill.

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by xpe on Monday October 14, 2024 @09:14PM (#41843958)
This is the bubble that I was referring to:

> My wife and I both have Teslas

Even if they are bought used at affordable prices, you have convenient access to electric charging, right? This often involves homeownership or relatively high quality housing rentals or employers with that capability. This is a small segment of the population, as I see it. Fair?

Re:Congress fights to keep AM radio in cars by xpe on Monday October 14, 2024 @09:25PM (#41844017)
This?

https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-...

In context, your comment could easily be read as suggesting the radio tower was so unimportant that zero people noticed something amiss until a landscaping crew saw that it was physically missing.

If so, ok, that would be a pretty big waste of a radio tower. But did it really happen like your comment implies? No regular listeners tuned in and heard … static? Unlikely. Nobody scratched their head? Nobody who worked at the station got curious?

Here is what the article wrote:

> The theft was discovered Feb. 2, when a maintenance crew arrived in the wooded area where the tower once stood and found it gone.

This makes perfect sense because one does typically have to put eyes on the thing (or the lack of it) to conclusively prove that a theft occurred. I don’t think it would be possible to steal a radio tower while it was broadcasting. I don’t think it would be likely that the talk radio guy or DJ would say “sorry the transmission is about to be terminated because the tower is getting stolen.”

Or it was the middle of the night and the station wasn’t broadcasting. Anyhow. This is one of the sadder and more hilarious windows into what people will do for money. Where do you sell a stolen AM radio tower? How much is it worth?