Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. We are at episode four hundred fifty today, which honestly feels like a bit of a milestone. I am Corn, and I am sitting here in our living room in Jerusalem with my brother.
Herman Poppleberry, checking in. Four hundred fifty episodes, Corn. That is a lot of talking. But you know, the topics just keep getting better. And today we have one that is actually quite close to home. Our housemate Daniel sent us a voice note earlier, and it is something that I think a lot of people, especially parents, have probably agonized over at three in the morning.
Yeah, Daniel was asking about emergency communication. He and his wife have a seven month old son, Ezra, and he is looking for a foolproof way to reach each other in an emergency. He mentioned using an app called Pushover, which is a great tool for high priority notifications, but he is worried about it being throttled or silenced by his phone settings, like Do Not Disturb. He is wondering if the answer is actually a throwback to the nineties, a physical cellular pager.
It is such a fascinating question because it touches on this paradox of modern technology. We have these incredibly powerful supercomputers in our pockets, but they have become so complex and so full of distractions that we have had to build all these layers of defense to keep them from annoying us. Do Not Disturb, Focus modes, battery optimization. And now, when we actually need a message to get through with one hundred percent certainty, we are fighting against those very defenses.
Exactly. It is like we have built a fortress to keep the world out, and now we are wondering how to make sure the right person can still knock on the door. So, Herman, let's start with the phone side of things. Daniel mentioned Pushover. For those who do not know, it is an app that allows you to send push notifications to your devices via an application programming interface, or A P I. It is very popular in the home automation and developer communities. But can it really be trusted for a life safety alert?
Well, the short answer is, it depends on the operating system and how much you trust the software stack. On I O S, there is a specific feature called Critical Alerts. This is a special type of notification that can bypass the mute switch and Do Not Disturb. It even plays a sound at a volume you specify, even if the phone is set to zero. But here is the catch, Apple is very protective of this. Developers have to apply for a special entitlement to use Critical Alerts. They have to prove that their app is for health, public safety, or home security. Pushover actually has this entitlement, which is why it is a step above your average messaging app.
Okay, so if Pushover has the Critical Alerts entitlement on I O S, why is Daniel still worried? Is there a failure point we are missing?
There are several. First, you have the network layer. A push notification relies on the internet. It goes from your trigger, say a button or another app, to the Pushover servers, then to Apple's Push Notification Service, and finally to your phone over L T E, five G, or Wi-Fi. If any of those links are congested or down, that message is delayed. Then you have the device level. Even with Critical Alerts, if your phone is in a dead zone, or if the battery dies, or if the operating system glitches and kills the background process, you get nothing.
And on Android, it is even more of a wild west, right? I know Daniel uses Android.
Oh, Android is where it gets really tricky. Android has something called notification channels, and you can set certain channels to override Do Not Disturb. But the real enemy on Android is battery optimization. Manufacturers like Samsung or Xiaomi are notorious for having these aggressive background killers. They see an app like Pushover sitting in the background, not being used for six hours, and they put it to sleep or kill the process entirely to save a tiny bit of battery. If that happens, the notification might not arrive until you manually wake the phone up. There is a great website called Don't Kill My App that ranks manufacturers based on how much they break background processes. It is a nightmare for reliability.
So Daniel's concern about throttling or being overridden is totally valid. Even if you think you have the settings right, an operating system update could change how those priorities are handled. This brings us to his alternative, the pager. Herman, when I think of pagers, I think of doctors in the eighties or, well, let's be honest, we just did episode three hundred seventy six about that Mossad operation involving pagers in Lebanon. But Daniel is talking about a modern cellular pager. What does that actually look like in two thousand twenty six?
It is funny you mention the Lebanon situation, because that actually highlighted why certain groups still use pagers. They are discrete, they have incredible battery life, and they operate on different frequencies than cell phones. But for a civilian like Daniel, a modern pager isn't just a little box that beeps. There are devices now, like the T five or the Gen A from a company called Spok, or devices from American Messaging. These are two way pagers. They do not just receive a message, they send an acknowledgment back to the sender so you know the message was actually delivered and read.
Wait, so it is like a tiny, dedicated texting machine that only does one thing?
Essentially, yes. But the magic is in the network. Traditional paging networks operate in the nine hundred megahertz range. These frequencies have much better building penetration than the higher frequency bands used by five G or even some Wi-Fi. If you are in the basement of a hospital or a thick stone building in the Old City of Jerusalem, a cell signal might drop out, but a pager signal often gets through. Also, paging networks use something called simulcast. Instead of your device jumping from tower to tower, every tower in the region broadcasts the same signal at the exact same time. It is incredibly robust.
That sounds much more reliable. But Daniel mentioned cellular pagers. Is that different from the nine hundred megahertz paging network?
Yes. Some modern pagers use L T E Cat M one or N B I o T. These are low power, wide area cellular networks designed for Internet of Things devices. They are designed to be extremely reliable and have great range, but they still rely on the cellular infrastructure. If the cell towers are congested because of a local event or a network outage, those pagers might face the same issues as a phone, although they are usually prioritized lower on the data scale, which sounds bad, but it means they can slip through when the high bandwidth data is choking.
So if you are Daniel, and you want that one hundred percent "the baby needs you" alert, does the pager win?
In terms of pure "did it beep," yes. A pager is a dedicated hardware device. It doesn't have an Instagram app competing for resources. It doesn't have a Do Not Disturb mode that you might accidentally leave on. Its entire purpose for existing is to make a loud noise when a specific signal arrives. The battery lasts for weeks, not days. If you leave it on your nightstand, you know it is on.
But there is a friction cost, right? Now Daniel's wife has to carry a second device. In my experience, people are very good at carrying their phones, but they are very bad at carrying a second thing that only does one thing. If she leaves the pager in her purse in the other room, is it any better than a phone on silent?
That is the human element, and that is usually where these systems fail. If the device is inconvenient, it won't be used. However, for a seven month old, the stakes are high enough that you might accept that friction. But there is another middle ground I want to explore, which is hardware buttons integrated with the phone. Corn, have you looked into things like the Flic buttons or physical triggers?
I have, actually. And it is an interesting way to solve the "sending" side of Daniel's problem. He mentioned that Pushover is great for receiving but doesn't have a great "push to page" button out of the box. You could set up a physical button, like a Flic button, which is a tiny bluetooth button you can stick anywhere. You could have one on the nightstand, one in the kitchen. When you press it, it triggers an automation on your phone to send that high priority Pushover alert to the other person. It removes the friction of having to unlock the phone, find the app, and type a message.
I love that for the sender. It makes the emergency alert as simple as a physical gesture. But we still have the receiver problem. If I'm the one receiving the alert, I still need to hear it. This leads me to another thought, what about wearable integration? Most people wearing an Apple Watch or a Garmin have their notifications mirrored. Even if the phone is across the room, the wrist vibrates.
True, but watches are subject to the same software filters as the phone. If your watch is in Sleep Mode or DND, it might not tap you. And let's talk about the "Do Not Disturb" bypass again. On I O S, there is a feature called Emergency Bypass that you can set for specific contacts in your address book. If Daniel sets his wife's contact to Emergency Bypass for both phone calls and texts, her calls will ring and her texts will chime even if the phone is on silent or in Do Not Disturb. Herman, is that reliable enough to skip the pager?
It is very good, but it is not "pager" good. The reason is that Emergency Bypass is still a software feature buried inside a very complex operating system. I have had instances where a software update reset certain privacy settings, or where a Focus mode was configured in a way that had an unexpected conflict. The pager's strength is its simplicity. There is no "Focus mode" on a pager. If the signal hits the antenna, the speaker makes noise.
Okay, so let me push back a bit. If Daniel buys two pagers, he has to pay a monthly subscription fee for the paging service. It is usually around fifteen to twenty dollars a month per device. Over a year, that is nearly five hundred dollars. For a young family, that isn't nothing. Is there a way to build a "private" paging system? What about LoRa?
Now you are talking my language. LoRa, which stands for Long Range, is a radio modulation technique that allows for very long distance communication with very low power. You can buy these little devices called Meshtastic nodes. They are basically small radios with a battery and an antenna. You pair it to your phone via bluetooth, and you can send text messages over miles without any cellular network at all.
We talked about Meshtastic briefly in episode two hundred eighty four when we were discussing numbers stations and off grid comms. But for Daniel's use case, could he have a Meshtastic node that just sits on the nightstand and acts as a dedicated alarm?
Absolutely. You can configure them so that when a message comes in, it triggers a loud buzzer. Since it is a completely separate radio frequency, usually in the nine hundred fifteen megahertz band in the U S or eight hundred sixty eight in Europe, it doesn't care if the cell network is down. It doesn't care about your phone's Do Not Disturb settings. It is your own private, encrypted paging network.
That sounds like a dream for a nerd like you, Herman, but for Daniel's wife, carrying a Meshtastic node might be even more annoying than a pager. Those things usually have antennas sticking out and look like walkie talkies.
Fair point. They aren't exactly "purse friendly" yet, although some of the newer commercial versions are getting smaller. But let's look at the "reliability versus convenience" spectrum. On one end, you have a standard text message. High convenience, low reliability for emergencies. In the middle, you have Pushover with Critical Alerts and Emergency Bypass. High convenience, medium high reliability. On the other end, you have a dedicated pager or a Meshtastic node. Low convenience, very high reliability.
I think the "aha moment" here for Daniel might be realizing that he doesn't have to choose just one. Redundancy is the hallmark of any safety system. If I were Daniel, I would start by maximizing the phone's capabilities. Step one, enable Emergency Bypass for each other's contacts. Step two, use Pushover with Critical Alerts for a dedicated "Emergency" sound that is distinct from a normal text. That way, if you hear the "Nuclear Alarm" sound, you know it is the Ezra-Emergency.
I agree. Redundancy is key. But I would add a third step, which is a "confirmation of receipt" protocol. This is something people often forget. If Daniel sends an emergency alert, he needs to know his wife got it. If she doesn't respond in sixty seconds, he needs a backup plan. Maybe that is when he calls a neighbor or a nearby family member. The technology only works if there is a human protocol behind it.
That is a great point. No device is one hundred percent reliable. Even a pager can have a dead battery or be left in a coat pocket. So, Daniel, if you're listening, the "protocol" is just as important as the "pager." But let's go back to the pager for a second. Herman, if someone really wanted to buy one, where do they even go? You can't just walk into a Best Buy and ask for a pager anymore.
You actually have to go through specialized resellers. Companies like Pagers Direct or American Messaging. You can buy the hardware and a one year service plan. They usually give you a dedicated phone number. You call that number, type in a code or a short message, and it beams it out. Some even have an email to page gateway. So Daniel could set up a button on his phone that sends an email to "wife-pager at paging-company dot com," and it would show up on her hip.
One thing we haven't touched on is the "Do Not Disturb" culture. We are so conditioned now to ignore our phones. I think part of Daniel's anxiety is that he knows he and his wife both have their phones on silent ninety percent of the day. There is a psychological peace of mind that comes with a dedicated device. When that thing beeps, you know it is important. It is like the "red phone" in the White House. You don't use it for "hey, can you pick up milk," you only use it for the big stuff.
Exactly. It creates a "sacred channel" for communication. And honestly, for a parent of a seven month old, that peace of mind might be worth the twenty dollars a month. Think about it, how much do we spend on baby monitors, fancy car seats, and organic purees? Twenty dollars a month to ensure that if something goes wrong, you can reach your partner instantly? That is actually a pretty good deal.
It is. But I also want to mention a common misconception. People think that if they have "Full Bars" on their phone, they are fine. But as we saw in the recent major carrier outages in the U S and even some of the network instability we have seen globally, "bars" don't mean "data." The paging networks are often the last things standing because they require so little bandwidth. It is the same reason why the "number stations" we talked about in episode two hundred eighty four are still used. Low frequency, low bandwidth, high penetration.
Right. It is the "tortoise and the hare" of communication. The cellular network is the hare, it is fast and flashy but it can trip. The paging network is the tortoise. It is slow, it only does a few characters at a time, but it almost always gets there.
So, let's summarize the recommendations for Daniel. Herman, if you had to give him a tiered approach, what does it look like?
Tier one, the "Zero Cost" approach. Set up Emergency Bypass on both phones. This is a must for everyone, honestly. If you haven't done this for your spouse or your parents, do it right now. Go into your contacts, hit edit, go to ringtone, and toggle Emergency Bypass to on. This ensures that even if the phone is on the "moon" icon, their call will ring.
And do the same for text messages. It is a separate toggle.
Correct. Tier two, the "Software Specialist" approach. Use Pushover. It is a one time five dollar fee. Configure the "Critical Alerts" on I O S or the "High Priority" channels on Android. Make sure you go into your battery settings and tell Android "Do Not Optimize" for Pushover. This is crucial. Give it permission to run in the background forever. Then, use a distinct, loud sound that you only use for emergencies.
And tier three, the "Nuclear Option." Get a physical pager. If you find that you are still missing alerts or if you work in an environment with terrible cell service, like a hospital or a large warehouse, get a dedicated two way pager. The peace of mind of having a separate battery and a separate network is hard to beat.
And I would add a tier four for the true nerds, the LoRa Meshtastic setup. If you live in a city like Jerusalem where the topography is hilly and cell service can be spotty in stone buildings, having your own private radio link is actually quite viable. You could have a node in the nursery that, if triggered, sends a signal directly to a node in your pocket. No internet required.
I can see Daniel now, building a custom LoRa enclosure for the stroller. He is definitely that kind of guy. But you know, there is one more thing. There are apps specifically designed for this that aren't just "notification" apps. Have you heard of the app "Lantern" or some of the "Lone Worker" safety apps?
I have. Those are interesting because they often have a "dead man's switch" feature. If you don't check in by a certain time, it automatically alerts your emergency contacts. That might be overkill for Daniel's "urgent contact" needs, but it is another layer of the safety onion.
It really is an onion. And the more we peel it back, the more we realize that our modern devices are actually quite fragile when it comes to the basics. It is funny that we are even having this conversation in two thousand twenty six. You would think we would have solved "sending a loud beep to a specific person" by now.
You would think! But as we keep adding features, we keep adding failure points. Every new "Smart" feature is another potential "Dumb" mistake by the software. I think the takeaway for all of us is to look at our most critical needs and ask, "Is this dependent on a chain of ten different things working perfectly, or is it dependent on two?" The pager is a two link chain. The smartphone is a fifty link chain.
That is a great way to frame it. The length of the chain determines the probability of failure. Daniel, I think you should try the Pushover plus Emergency Bypass route first, but be very disciplined about the Android battery settings. If you still feel that "did she get it?" anxiety, then the pager is your best friend.
And hey, if you get a pager, you get to feel like a surgeon from a ninety's medical drama. That has to be worth something. "Code Blue in the nursery, I need five milligrams of apple juice, stat!"
Oh man, don't give him ideas. He will be wearing a lab coat around the house. But seriously, this is such a universal problem. We focus so much on the "latest and greatest" that we forget about the "tried and true." This is actually a theme that comes up a lot on this show. We talked about it in episode thirty five when we discussed secure messaging. Everyone wants the fancy encrypted app, but sometimes the most "secure" way to get a message through is the simplest one.
Absolutely. Simplicity is a feature, not a bug. And speaking of features, Corn, we should probably mention our own "simple" way for people to support the show.
Right! If you are enjoying these deep dives into the weird corners of technology and preparedness, we would really appreciate it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app or on Spotify. We have been doing this for four hundred fifty episodes now, and the reviews are still the best way for new people to find us. It genuinely helps the show grow.
It really does. And if you have a "weird prompt" of your own, like Daniel did, you can head over to our website at myweirdprompts dot com. There is a contact form there, or you can even send us a voice note like Daniel did. We love hearing from you guys.
We really do. Daniel, thanks for the prompt. It gave us a great excuse to talk about radio frequencies and the "tortoise" of technology. I hope you and your wife find a solution that lets you sleep a little sounder. Ezra is a lucky kid to have parents thinking this far ahead.
He really is. Alright, I think that covers it for today. My name is Herman Poppleberry.
And I'm Corn. You've been listening to My Weird Prompts. We are on Spotify, and you can find our full archive and the R S S feed at myweirdprompts dot com.
Stay safe out there, stay connected, and maybe check your battery settings one more time.
Good advice. We will see you in the next episode.
Bye everyone!
So, Herman, are you actually going to buy a pager now? I saw you looking at them on your phone while I was talking.
Look, if I can find one that works on the local Israeli frequencies and doesn't look like a brick, I might. Think of the street cred, Corn. I'll be the only person in the coffee shop with a pager. It's the ultimate "I'm too busy for your D M's" statement.
Or the ultimate "I'm stuck in nineteen ninety four" statement. But hey, to each their own.
Nineteen ninety four was a great year! The Lion King came out. Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage. And pagers were king. I'm just waiting for the cycle to come back around.
It always does. Everything old is new again. Anyway, let's go see if Ezra is awake. I think I heard a "low frequency" cry from the other room.
That is my cue. Catch you later.
