17 ms·

Turkey earthquake: please keep 28.540 clear for communications

196 points by RijilV 4y ago

TaylorAlexander 4y ago
The radio thing is interesting but this is the first I am hearing of this quake, so here is a Reuters article with basic facts. Thousands of lives lost. A serious tragedy. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/major-earthquake-strikes-turkey-syria-about-200-dead-many-trapped-2023-02-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/major-earthquake-s...
- irq 4y ago
  Please, and I do not mean this offensively - I wish I could be as disengaged from world events as you are - can you tell me how you manage it? It used to be useful for me to be on top of everything, but I've been questioning that lately.
  - lmm 4y ago
    You can just not read the news. I generally don't, since I've found it rarely enhances my life.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    People are apparently really surprised but I simply had a busy day today. I have not been sleeping well so I was tired this morning. I woke up and worked on a programming problem that had been on my mind all weekend, listened to one of my favorite youtube channels that talks about news usually a day or two after it happens, posted an update on my programming project to mastodon without reading the feed, entertained my cat before leaving the house, ordered lunch from a local takeout place, made my partner a matcha latte, picked up lunch, brought my partner the matcha and gave them a beanie I knit last week, then drove to work listening to a couple podcasts. At work I got a delivery of circuit boards and I am now debugging a hardware problem and listening to the latest episode of Well There's Your Problem. Idk one thing I do not ever do is open a website like CNN or NYT and read the front page. Please don't misunderstand that statement of fact as a judgement, but you asked about my media habits so I am sharing that. I will hear about major news events, as this very post makes clear. It seems I am hearing about this major earthquake in Turkey 14 hours or so after it happened... which seems fine. There is nothing I can do. I tend to get news from youtube sources (not major outlets though) and these creators take a day or two to produce their videos. Sometimes I listen to Democracy Now or the KPFA evening news (available online), but I do not regularly consume that kind of thing. I am doing as much as I can to help the world with my little nonprofit thing. I learn about things like the police killing in Memphis police killing, the situation with the police training center outside of Georgia, and various foolish things politicians do. But I don't have much appetite for the firehose of details that come out of major news outlets.
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      > Idk one thing I do not ever do is open a website like CNN or NYT and read the front page. Please don't misunderstand that statement of fact as a judgement, but you asked about my media habits so I am sharing that. You're not the only one. I like only occupying my mind with stuff that affects me and I can do something about. Or things I can create. I see more and more people around me doing the same by the way. A lot more since the pandemic, I think everyone got a bit fed up with bad news every day and after it was over started focusing more on the real life they'd been missing out on. It's funny because when I was young everyone would sit down for the 8 o'clock news every day and most would read the paper in the morning. Now news is everywhere and I consume less of it than back then.
  - tjohns 4y ago
    Speaking personally, I just don't usually open Twitter or news sites while I'm at the office. It's not that I don't care. (I do.) I just read everything at a digest at the end of the day. Most news doesn't require a real-time response. Trying to stay on top of everything happening, as it happens 24x7, just leads to emotional exhaustion. If it's not something I have direct control over, I don't need a real-time feed of it. The news will still be there to read in the evening when I get home.
  - blep_ 4y ago
    Not that person, but I'm the same way. You just... stop caring. The only two good reasons to pay attention to news are if it affects you in some way, or if you can do anything about it. The vast majority of news is in neither group. That's the first pass. From there, you adjust your definition of "affects you". I'm in the US, for example, and our government does plenty of bad things I do not approve of. But most of them, even the ones that ostensibly should affect me, don't actually noticeably change anything in my life. After a while, it all blurs into "my team scored a point" or "the other team scored a point". Is this privileged? Of course. But it's also a requirement for my mental health. Paying attention to it wouldn't even improve anything for the people who are suffering, so there's not even any sort of utilitarian tradeoff. It would just be making my life worse for no reason, so I don't.
    - H8crilA 4y ago
      Works until it doesn't - see the high amount of dead Russian soldiers, especially the mobilised soldiers. They delegated political decisions until someone literally grabbed them from their workplace and sent them to die in a ditch. I.e. somewhere along the way they found out that despite them not having an interest in politics the politics found some serious interest in them.
      - swader999 4y ago
        You think the ones in Russia that followed the news are any better off?
        enraged_camel 4y ago
        Uh, absolutely. They saw the way things were going and fled the country before they could be pressganged.
        H8crilA 4y ago
        Also this would not have happened had they actually acted on time and had they cared. The level of depoliticisation and degeneration of that society is insane. Consider the practice of hiring an ambulance to get through traffic quickly. Yes, it is a thing. Now you and me would think that it is completely unacceptable to abuse the system in such a way and protest. But many Russians see that and think "gee, I should have that kind of money too". Timothy Snyder half-jokingly asks whether Russia is even a country. Sure, it exists as a state (for example it can wage a war, ineptly but still), however the civil society is nearly entirely demolished. It wasn't always so.
  - User23 4y ago
    I also want to be direct with intent to offend. What is it about world events that demands your attention? Are outcomes going to be worse for your lack of awareness? Will people be hurt if you stop paying attention or be helped if you do? I personally take a great interest in the challenges my local community faces because I can be directly and verifiably helpful.
    - swatcoder 4y ago
      Yup. National and world news is mostly a spectacle that lets us feel engaged even when there’s almost nothing of consequence gained from our rapt, immediate attention. If we get meaningfully involved at all, the extent of our consequential involvement is usually captured in a vote or a donation, and it usually takes all of a late minute’s briefing to catch up enough on a news item to hone in on how we’d proceed with those. The easiest way to disengage is to humbly admit that you’re not important enough to matter very much to almost any issue on that stage, and that the people who do matter probably spend less time soaking up coverage about it than you do. If you want to be anxious or have enthralling dinner party conversations about big events, by all means keep up your hobby. There’s sincerely nothing any more wrong with it than any other idle hobby. But if you think the news is important and that your attention is a resource to invest in things that matter, look to the news from your family, your friends, and your community.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    This happened quite recently: Had my head in a screen of code pretty much and first I heard of this. Shocked that I didn’t hear it over slack though.
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    Yep, just don't check the news. Very little affects your day to day. Grab the Sunday paper if you want to be periodically checked in. I think I'd be happier if I did this. I don't need to read the nyt opinion section every day, or what lie some congressman from New York just told. I need to fold my clothes and schedule my vacation and research for work.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  It’s been headline news on most major sites for some time.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    At the very least even the less hard news consuming folks have probably seen that picture of the street that got turned into something resembling a bowl of black corn flakes.
- mtmail 4y ago
  Breaking news is rarely on HN (guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."). So users don't submit it. It doesn't mean it's ignored by users. It's just assumed that people also read mainstream news websites besides HN already.
  - boomboomsubban 4y ago
    It was posted here, though likely rather quickly deranked. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672314
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    When breaking news makes it to HN that's when it's the most worrying
- eddsh1994 4y ago
  It’s front page news globally, I’m amazed you weren’t aware! Also trending Twitter etc…
  - TaylorAlexander 4y ago
    No need to be amazed. I have had a busy day, I don't use Twitter much anymore, and I haven't checked any news sites today. Anyway there were no comments and I just wanted to add context for anyone who missed it (like me).
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    I also didn't find out until this evening. I don't watch TV (only prerecorded series/movies), don't use Twitter at all, and I only really read tech news sites during the day. I don't even have a live TV subscription anymore. Most of it is just so commercial and crap and I was sick of paying for it. :) I have zero interest in sports. And I never do podcasts nor YouTube. I generally just don't care enough about what happens in the world anymore, though this particular quake is really terrible of course. But there's nothing I can do about it. Just once a day or so I might check the local newspaper website, for things that might affect me. Which is where I heard about it because something this big will make the front page even there. But generally I don't miss the world news at all, I don't feel FOMO or less informed. I'm not a boring person either IMO, I just like being active in tech and the creative (maker) community, with things I can actually influence. I'm very interested in people I meet. It's more about taking control of information. I do the same with instant messaging. I can be quite active but only on my terms. All my group chats are muted, and all but the most important people too. I'll see your messages eventually but when it suits me. If it was urgent you'd have called anyway. It's good to know about this band assignment though as I'm also a HAM operator. But I don't use the 10m band that this frequency is on anyway.
  - tjohns 4y ago
    There's a certain calm that comes from closing the news sites and social networking feeds, and just checking everything as a digest at the end of the work day. Staying informed is good, but there are relatively small number of things that need a reaction in real-time. Eventual consistency is sufficient, and frees cognitive cycles for things I have immediate influence over.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  Thanks for this. I'm also hearing about it for the first time here and now. I read the newspaper once a day in the morning, HN a couple of times during the day, that's it. No other news or social media at all. I get a lot done. I recognize this lifestyle isn't for everyone.
  - temp_praneshp 4y ago
    What newspaper do you read, that didn't cover this news today?
    - i_am_proteus 4y ago
      A printed copy of the FT that is delivered to my home. I'm sure that news of the quake will be in tomorrow morning's edition.
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  - csomar 4y ago
    It's okay. If you are in the West (Europe) you probably heard of this. If you are in the US or Australia, probably not. I am in SEA and no one has any idea of this going on. It goes the same way though, the Middle-East doesn't hear much about earthquakes in the Philippines or Indonesia. The only exception I can think of is Japan. It seems everyone is aware of Japan earthquakes/Tsunamis.
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- malandrew 4y ago
  I’ve been commenting to my partner all day that it’s crazy how little this has shown up in social media without me actively looking for it by searching on Twitter. I think I saw maybe on post on FB all day and maybe 2 in my main Twitter feed. No company wide email from the thoughts and prayers crowd either. It’s been eerily silent for such a major disaster.
  - King-Aaron 4y ago
    Interesting. For me, this started popping up last night all over facebook and instagram, and every major news outlet in Australia started talking about it during the night.
- genewitch 4y ago
  on fediverse you can search @earthquake@social.yl.ms which is a bot that posts every earthquake that is reported. I saw a 4.5 magnitude sometime this weekend in that country. When i first saw the articles, i was a bit taken aback, both at the delay in reporting and that such a small earthquake had done so much destruction. It is possible i am misremembering, but it could have been a fore-shock, as well. Note: i don't watch fediverse or any social network enough to have seen any other reporting or whatever on this. My phone spammed me about it, the first such notification i've received this year, and i live in a Gulf state in the US.
daveslash 4y ago
I've made this comment here on HN before, but this reminds me of a tweet that I saw last year in which someone said: "In breaking news moments like this, there should be a type of podcast you can listen to in real time, easily accessible for free." To which someone replied: "Radio. You're thinking of radio." https://twitter.com/jodyavirgan/status/1234998790139940865 https://twitter.com/jodyavirgan/status/1234998790139940865 It's always nice to see this technology (and the community) lean in to support disasters like this.
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- ditn 4y ago
  During the outbreak of the Ukraine war, this role was taken up by Twitter Spaces.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    Twitter Spaces... perhaps for people in the West with intellectual curiosity about the play by play. For people on the ground it was Telegram groups and channels. "TG" is huge in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
    - rjzzleep 4y ago
      It's really odd that people on HN see the world as west vs. Slavic countries. The world is MUCH bigger than that, and telegram has much wider spread than that. But yes, twitter spaces is tiny fringe space even in the "west"(a term that always bothered me given how the world is round, and how Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are somehow part of "the West").
      - protonbob 4y ago
aaron695 4y ago
How can I stream this? Is it 28540KH? From this site in Washington there's nothing - http://na5b.com:8901/ http://na5b.com:8901/ A site in France seemed to have nothing. How close does it have to be? [edit] I will say WebSDR is fucking cool. Closest I can see is http://94.137.189.166:8901/ http://94.137.189.166:8901/ Tbilisi - Georgia 500 miles away but doesn't have anything, unless I'm using this wrong.
- jhoechtl 4y ago
  the 10m band typically has a reach like line of sight. it is also very likely that many rescuers will broadcast simultaneously so a wide reach (like > 20 kms/miles) is actually not good
  - unethical_ban 4y ago
    I'm not trained in emergency ham operations, but I assume they know what they are doing. They're a community which is enthusiastic about their utility in crisis, I mean this in a good way.
    - wrldos 4y ago
      Some localities they are useful and some they get in the way. Emergency ham operation is not always required or welcome. It’s very specific to certain localities.
  - mzerod 4y ago
    This is mild pedantry from me, sorry. Fortunately, the 10m band these days has a reach of up to 11000km due to the solar activity. You are quite right that during LOS conditions it’s limited to the elevation of the antenna. Its relatively small antenna needed (5m dipole) and can be used to access some distances, just not ones that might be in the same country as origin because of the skip dead zone from the ionospheric refraction angle. Which depending how it might be used, could be useful. The general rule of thumb is to check the MUF Rating at the time of day collected from ionosondes such as that on https://prop.kc2g.com/ https://prop.kc2g.com/
diebeforei485 4y ago
Honestly very disappointed that phone makers haven't implemented radio in phones.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Implemented? Or enabled?
- cardamomo 4y ago
  Some have! https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom-xl https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom-xl
- est 4y ago
  > phone makers haven't implemented radio in phones It's a ragulation thing.
  - jhoechtl 4y ago
    is it? please provide proof. afaik it's a kneefall to Spotify/apple music/youtube music
    - deleted 4y ago
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    - Johnny555 4y ago
      it's a kneefall to Spotify/apple music/youtube music That seems unlikely, radio (even Satellite radio) is not the same product as streaming music. My car has an AM/FM radio, the only thing I've ever used it for is tuning in to roadside traffic alerts when the sign is lit. The car came with 6 months of XM/Sirius satellite radio -- I tried out the Satellite Radio on a long road trip but didn't last a day before I went back to Spotify where I have full control over the music that's playing and can skip and rewind songs at will. I don't think streaming music has anything to fear from FM radio on phones, I think the reason phones don't still offer it as a feature is because no one wants it.
    - pmontra 4y ago
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mzerod 4y ago
Digital Data Comms if needed: Dial frequency 14.1023 USB - at 1000Hz and 2000Hz for AFSK.300 (two channels for multiple access) - at 1500Hz for VARA or ARDOP OFDM EMCOM Services available: Winlink RMS gateways, APRS HF Relays. Manned Stations prepared on this frequency IW2OHX - Italy Winlink EI2GYB-5 - Ireland - Winlink PE1RRR-8 - Netherlands - Winlink It’s not much but it’s a network nexus with an insane number of backbone links for redundancy. Software and setup tutorial: https://eindhoven.space/radio-experiments/packet-radio/qttermtcp/qttermtcp-setup-tutorial/ https://eindhoven.space/radio-experiments/packet-radio/qtter...
- mzerod 4y ago
  I’ve created a portal in bash to allow HF access to emergency web content, here’s a demo of it going 900km loading HN. https://youtu.be/5CN1nD_xciU https://youtu.be/5CN1nD_xciU
  - lormayna 4y ago
    This is super cool. Do you have more details about hardware, software and radio interface?
- genewitch 4y ago
  my pactor modem doesn't do vara or ardop, are those more common around there? I do know that winlink does that in software modems (and iirc Vara costs money), but without a dedicated and maintained laptop or computer digital modes are fairly awful. Having/using hardware makes stuff like emcom less painful and require less attention.
leot 4y ago
Feel as though it's worth mentioning here that using LTE Direct (https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2014/11/true-or-false-getting-direct-about-lte-direct https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2014/11/true-or-false-gett...) every phone could become a node in a long-range mesh network in an emergency. This approach takes advantage of both the strong radios in smartphones and the available node density provided by smartphone ubiquity. The tech has already been proven—carriers just need to be mandated to add it because there's no business reason to do so.
- RF_Savage 4y ago
  Does any handset anywhere actually implement LTE Direct? My understanding has been that it was specified for Public Safety LTE to have feature parity with TETRA. Especially the infrastructure-less TETRA DMO Direct Mode Operation for ad-hoc communications with the trunking infrastructure down, out of range or over capacity. And everybody in the Public Safety radio space seems to always laugh when LTE Direct is brought up. Apparently poorly specified and adopted by no vendors.
- ISL 4y ago
  How does LTE Direct impact battery-life? Seems like something that could obliterate a handset's battery in the space of an hour or so?
- arcticbull 4y ago
  > The tech has already been proven—carriers just need to be mandated to add it because there's no business reason to do so. People say that but in the decades since it was thought up mesh networks have never actually managed to work, not at any scale. Routing efficiently is extremely complex especially when all the nodes keep moving around. I concede it may be better than nothing in an emergency but I strongly suspect it's just not very useful in general, which is probably why carriers haven't mandated it. After all if it worked you wouldn't need carriers at all, yet here they are...
  - Karrot_Kream 4y ago
    A route on a mesh network is only as big as the smallest link. Of course as a general substitute for connectivity it holds little promise. Like any technology it has its pluses and minuses. In situations without access to a fat, centralized link or situations where resilience is more important than bandwidth or latency, mesh networks are a great choice. Emergencies are such situations but remote areas or low power needs are other situations suited for mesh networks.
RF_Savage 4y ago
Interesting that they are using such a high frequency, I hope it serves them well. Should be reasonably free of long range interference. But surprised that there are no 3.5MHz/7MHz/14MHz band frequencies in use for regional communications. Or they have not been declared yet for emcom use like with Nepal and Puerto Rico.
- genewitch 4y ago
  They will use separate bands for regional "nets", the net controllers will forward any necessary information to whoever is the regional emcom person, and that person will get the message out over the 28.540 (or whatever winlink frequencies.) 28.540 has the benefit that you can push it rather far on a modest antenna -at any hour - much like CB, and with digital modes you don't need to be able to "hear" it to copy and send copyable text. Most regional nets will be on VHF, UHF, or NVIS HF (the 3.5, 7, etc) depending on the conditions and time of day.
lormayna 4y ago
At the moment, I am not getting any traffic on this channel. I am in central Italy, not far away, from a radio perspective, to Turkey.
veysiertekin 4y ago
Once Turkiye's best mobile network (Turkcell) introduced a drone cell tower (never has been used, I think because of battery issues?): https://www.telecomsinfrastructure.com/2019/07/dronecell-turkcell-flying-base-station.html https://www.telecomsinfrastructure.com/2019/07/dronecell-tur...

196 points by RijilV 4y ago

The radio thing is interesting but this is the first I am hearing of this quake, so here is a Reuters article with basic facts. Thousands of lives lost. A serious tragedy. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/major-earthquake-strikes-turkey-syria-about-200-dead-many-trapped-2023-02-06/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/major-earthquake-s...

irq 4y ago
Please, and I do not mean this offensively - I wish I could be as disengaged from world events as you are - can you tell me how you manage it? It used to be useful for me to be on top of everything, but I've been questioning that lately.
- lmm 4y ago
  You can just not read the news. I generally don't, since I've found it rarely enhances my life.
- deleted 4y ago
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- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  People are apparently really surprised but I simply had a busy day today. I have not been sleeping well so I was tired this morning. I woke up and worked on a programming problem that had been on my mind all weekend, listened to one of my favorite youtube channels that talks about news usually a day or two after it happens, posted an update on my programming project to mastodon without reading the feed, entertained my cat before leaving the house, ordered lunch from a local takeout place, made my partner a matcha latte, picked up lunch, brought my partner the matcha and gave them a beanie I knit last week, then drove to work listening to a couple podcasts. At work I got a delivery of circuit boards and I am now debugging a hardware problem and listening to the latest episode of Well There's Your Problem. Idk one thing I do not ever do is open a website like CNN or NYT and read the front page. Please don't misunderstand that statement of fact as a judgement, but you asked about my media habits so I am sharing that. I will hear about major news events, as this very post makes clear. It seems I am hearing about this major earthquake in Turkey 14 hours or so after it happened... which seems fine. There is nothing I can do. I tend to get news from youtube sources (not major outlets though) and these creators take a day or two to produce their videos. Sometimes I listen to Democracy Now or the KPFA evening news (available online), but I do not regularly consume that kind of thing. I am doing as much as I can to help the world with my little nonprofit thing. I learn about things like the police killing in Memphis police killing, the situation with the police training center outside of Georgia, and various foolish things politicians do. But I don't have much appetite for the firehose of details that come out of major news outlets.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    > Idk one thing I do not ever do is open a website like CNN or NYT and read the front page. Please don't misunderstand that statement of fact as a judgement, but you asked about my media habits so I am sharing that. You're not the only one. I like only occupying my mind with stuff that affects me and I can do something about. Or things I can create. I see more and more people around me doing the same by the way. A lot more since the pandemic, I think everyone got a bit fed up with bad news every day and after it was over started focusing more on the real life they'd been missing out on. It's funny because when I was young everyone would sit down for the 8 o'clock news every day and most would read the paper in the morning. Now news is everywhere and I consume less of it than back then.
- tjohns 4y ago
  Speaking personally, I just don't usually open Twitter or news sites while I'm at the office. It's not that I don't care. (I do.) I just read everything at a digest at the end of the day. Most news doesn't require a real-time response. Trying to stay on top of everything happening, as it happens 24x7, just leads to emotional exhaustion. If it's not something I have direct control over, I don't need a real-time feed of it. The news will still be there to read in the evening when I get home.
- blep_ 4y ago
  Not that person, but I'm the same way. You just... stop caring. The only two good reasons to pay attention to news are if it affects you in some way, or if you can do anything about it. The vast majority of news is in neither group. That's the first pass. From there, you adjust your definition of "affects you". I'm in the US, for example, and our government does plenty of bad things I do not approve of. But most of them, even the ones that ostensibly should affect me, don't actually noticeably change anything in my life. After a while, it all blurs into "my team scored a point" or "the other team scored a point". Is this privileged? Of course. But it's also a requirement for my mental health. Paying attention to it wouldn't even improve anything for the people who are suffering, so there's not even any sort of utilitarian tradeoff. It would just be making my life worse for no reason, so I don't.
  - H8crilA 4y ago
    Works until it doesn't - see the high amount of dead Russian soldiers, especially the mobilised soldiers. They delegated political decisions until someone literally grabbed them from their workplace and sent them to die in a ditch. I.e. somewhere along the way they found out that despite them not having an interest in politics the politics found some serious interest in them.
    - swader999 4y ago
      You think the ones in Russia that followed the news are any better off?
      - enraged_camel 4y ago
        Uh, absolutely. They saw the way things were going and fled the country before they could be pressganged.
        H8crilA 4y ago
        Also this would not have happened had they actually acted on time and had they cared. The level of depoliticisation and degeneration of that society is insane. Consider the practice of hiring an ambulance to get through traffic quickly. Yes, it is a thing. Now you and me would think that it is completely unacceptable to abuse the system in such a way and protest. But many Russians see that and think "gee, I should have that kind of money too". Timothy Snyder half-jokingly asks whether Russia is even a country. Sure, it exists as a state (for example it can wage a war, ineptly but still), however the civil society is nearly entirely demolished. It wasn't always so.
- User23 4y ago
  I also want to be direct with intent to offend. What is it about world events that demands your attention? Are outcomes going to be worse for your lack of awareness? Will people be hurt if you stop paying attention or be helped if you do? I personally take a great interest in the challenges my local community faces because I can be directly and verifiably helpful.
  - swatcoder 4y ago
    Yup. National and world news is mostly a spectacle that lets us feel engaged even when there’s almost nothing of consequence gained from our rapt, immediate attention. If we get meaningfully involved at all, the extent of our consequential involvement is usually captured in a vote or a donation, and it usually takes all of a late minute’s briefing to catch up enough on a news item to hone in on how we’d proceed with those. The easiest way to disengage is to humbly admit that you’re not important enough to matter very much to almost any issue on that stage, and that the people who do matter probably spend less time soaking up coverage about it than you do. If you want to be anxious or have enthralling dinner party conversations about big events, by all means keep up your hobby. There’s sincerely nothing any more wrong with it than any other idle hobby. But if you think the news is important and that your attention is a resource to invest in things that matter, look to the news from your family, your friends, and your community.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  This happened quite recently: Had my head in a screen of code pretty much and first I heard of this. Shocked that I didn’t hear it over slack though.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  Yep, just don't check the news. Very little affects your day to day. Grab the Sunday paper if you want to be periodically checked in. I think I'd be happier if I did this. I don't need to read the nyt opinion section every day, or what lie some congressman from New York just told. I need to fold my clothes and schedule my vacation and research for work.
lostlogin 4y ago
It’s been headline news on most major sites for some time.
- jandrese 4y ago
  At the very least even the less hard news consuming folks have probably seen that picture of the street that got turned into something resembling a bowl of black corn flakes.
mtmail 4y ago
Breaking news is rarely on HN (guidelines: "If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."). So users don't submit it. It doesn't mean it's ignored by users. It's just assumed that people also read mainstream news websites besides HN already.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  It was posted here, though likely rather quickly deranked. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672314 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34672314
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  When breaking news makes it to HN that's when it's the most worrying
eddsh1994 4y ago
It’s front page news globally, I’m amazed you weren’t aware! Also trending Twitter etc…
- TaylorAlexander 4y ago
  No need to be amazed. I have had a busy day, I don't use Twitter much anymore, and I haven't checked any news sites today. Anyway there were no comments and I just wanted to add context for anyone who missed it (like me).
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I also didn't find out until this evening. I don't watch TV (only prerecorded series/movies), don't use Twitter at all, and I only really read tech news sites during the day. I don't even have a live TV subscription anymore. Most of it is just so commercial and crap and I was sick of paying for it. :) I have zero interest in sports. And I never do podcasts nor YouTube. I generally just don't care enough about what happens in the world anymore, though this particular quake is really terrible of course. But there's nothing I can do about it. Just once a day or so I might check the local newspaper website, for things that might affect me. Which is where I heard about it because something this big will make the front page even there. But generally I don't miss the world news at all, I don't feel FOMO or less informed. I'm not a boring person either IMO, I just like being active in tech and the creative (maker) community, with things I can actually influence. I'm very interested in people I meet. It's more about taking control of information. I do the same with instant messaging. I can be quite active but only on my terms. All my group chats are muted, and all but the most important people too. I'll see your messages eventually but when it suits me. If it was urgent you'd have called anyway. It's good to know about this band assignment though as I'm also a HAM operator. But I don't use the 10m band that this frequency is on anyway.
- tjohns 4y ago
  There's a certain calm that comes from closing the news sites and social networking feeds, and just checking everything as a digest at the end of the work day. Staying informed is good, but there are relatively small number of things that need a reaction in real-time. Eventual consistency is sufficient, and frees cognitive cycles for things I have immediate influence over.
i_am_proteus 4y ago
Thanks for this. I'm also hearing about it for the first time here and now. I read the newspaper once a day in the morning, HN a couple of times during the day, that's it. No other news or social media at all. I get a lot done. I recognize this lifestyle isn't for everyone.
- temp_praneshp 4y ago
  What newspaper do you read, that didn't cover this news today?
  - i_am_proteus 4y ago
    A printed copy of the FT that is delivered to my home. I'm sure that news of the quake will be in tomorrow morning's edition.
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- csomar 4y ago
  It's okay. If you are in the West (Europe) you probably heard of this. If you are in the US or Australia, probably not. I am in SEA and no one has any idea of this going on. It goes the same way though, the Middle-East doesn't hear much about earthquakes in the Philippines or Indonesia. The only exception I can think of is Japan. It seems everyone is aware of Japan earthquakes/Tsunamis.
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malandrew 4y ago
I’ve been commenting to my partner all day that it’s crazy how little this has shown up in social media without me actively looking for it by searching on Twitter. I think I saw maybe on post on FB all day and maybe 2 in my main Twitter feed. No company wide email from the thoughts and prayers crowd either. It’s been eerily silent for such a major disaster.
- King-Aaron 4y ago
  Interesting. For me, this started popping up last night all over facebook and instagram, and every major news outlet in Australia started talking about it during the night.
genewitch 4y ago
on fediverse you can search @earthquake@social.yl.ms which is a bot that posts every earthquake that is reported. I saw a 4.5 magnitude sometime this weekend in that country. When i first saw the articles, i was a bit taken aback, both at the delay in reporting and that such a small earthquake had done so much destruction. It is possible i am misremembering, but it could have been a fore-shock, as well. Note: i don't watch fediverse or any social network enough to have seen any other reporting or whatever on this. My phone spammed me about it, the first such notification i've received this year, and i live in a Gulf state in the US.

daveslash 4y ago

I've made this comment here on HN before, but this reminds me of a tweet that I saw last year in which someone said: "In breaking news moments like this, there should be a type of podcast you can listen to in real time, easily accessible for free." To which someone replied: "Radio. You're thinking of radio." https://twitter.com/jodyavirgan/status/1234998790139940865 https://twitter.com/jodyavirgan/status/1234998790139940865 It's always nice to see this technology (and the community) lean in to support disasters like this.

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ditn 4y ago
During the outbreak of the Ukraine war, this role was taken up by Twitter Spaces.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  Twitter Spaces... perhaps for people in the West with intellectual curiosity about the play by play. For people on the ground it was Telegram groups and channels. "TG" is huge in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
  - rjzzleep 4y ago
    It's really odd that people on HN see the world as west vs. Slavic countries. The world is MUCH bigger than that, and telegram has much wider spread than that. But yes, twitter spaces is tiny fringe space even in the "west"(a term that always bothered me given how the world is round, and how Australia, New Zealand, and Japan are somehow part of "the West").
    - protonbob 4y ago

aaron695 4y ago

How can I stream this? Is it 28540KH? From this site in Washington there's nothing - http://na5b.com:8901/ http://na5b.com:8901/ A site in France seemed to have nothing. How close does it have to be? [edit] I will say WebSDR is fucking cool. Closest I can see is http://94.137.189.166:8901/ http://94.137.189.166:8901/ Tbilisi - Georgia 500 miles away but doesn't have anything, unless I'm using this wrong.

jhoechtl 4y ago
the 10m band typically has a reach like line of sight. it is also very likely that many rescuers will broadcast simultaneously so a wide reach (like > 20 kms/miles) is actually not good
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  I'm not trained in emergency ham operations, but I assume they know what they are doing. They're a community which is enthusiastic about their utility in crisis, I mean this in a good way.
  - wrldos 4y ago
    Some localities they are useful and some they get in the way. Emergency ham operation is not always required or welcome. It’s very specific to certain localities.
- mzerod 4y ago
  This is mild pedantry from me, sorry. Fortunately, the 10m band these days has a reach of up to 11000km due to the solar activity. You are quite right that during LOS conditions it’s limited to the elevation of the antenna. Its relatively small antenna needed (5m dipole) and can be used to access some distances, just not ones that might be in the same country as origin because of the skip dead zone from the ionospheric refraction angle. Which depending how it might be used, could be useful. The general rule of thumb is to check the MUF Rating at the time of day collected from ionosondes such as that on https://prop.kc2g.com/ https://prop.kc2g.com/

diebeforei485 4y ago

Honestly very disappointed that phone makers haven't implemented radio in phones.

Tao3300 4y ago
Implemented? Or enabled?
cardamomo 4y ago
Some have! https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom-xl https://www.unihertz.com/products/atom-xl
est 4y ago
> phone makers haven't implemented radio in phones It's a ragulation thing.
- jhoechtl 4y ago
  is it? please provide proof. afaik it's a kneefall to Spotify/apple music/youtube music
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  - Johnny555 4y ago
    it's a kneefall to Spotify/apple music/youtube music That seems unlikely, radio (even Satellite radio) is not the same product as streaming music. My car has an AM/FM radio, the only thing I've ever used it for is tuning in to roadside traffic alerts when the sign is lit. The car came with 6 months of XM/Sirius satellite radio -- I tried out the Satellite Radio on a long road trip but didn't last a day before I went back to Spotify where I have full control over the music that's playing and can skip and rewind songs at will. I don't think streaming music has anything to fear from FM radio on phones, I think the reason phones don't still offer it as a feature is because no one wants it.
  - pmontra 4y ago

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mzerod 4y ago

Digital Data Comms if needed: Dial frequency 14.1023 USB - at 1000Hz and 2000Hz for AFSK.300 (two channels for multiple access) - at 1500Hz for VARA or ARDOP OFDM EMCOM Services available: Winlink RMS gateways, APRS HF Relays. Manned Stations prepared on this frequency IW2OHX - Italy Winlink EI2GYB-5 - Ireland - Winlink PE1RRR-8 - Netherlands - Winlink It’s not much but it’s a network nexus with an insane number of backbone links for redundancy. Software and setup tutorial: https://eindhoven.space/radio-experiments/packet-radio/qttermtcp/qttermtcp-setup-tutorial/ https://eindhoven.space/radio-experiments/packet-radio/qtter...

mzerod 4y ago
I’ve created a portal in bash to allow HF access to emergency web content, here’s a demo of it going 900km loading HN. https://youtu.be/5CN1nD_xciU https://youtu.be/5CN1nD_xciU
- lormayna 4y ago
  This is super cool. Do you have more details about hardware, software and radio interface?
genewitch 4y ago
my pactor modem doesn't do vara or ardop, are those more common around there? I do know that winlink does that in software modems (and iirc Vara costs money), but without a dedicated and maintained laptop or computer digital modes are fairly awful. Having/using hardware makes stuff like emcom less painful and require less attention.

leot 4y ago

Feel as though it's worth mentioning here that using LTE Direct (https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2014/11/true-or-false-getting-direct-about-lte-direct https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2014/11/true-or-false-gett...) every phone could become a node in a long-range mesh network in an emergency. This approach takes advantage of both the strong radios in smartphones and the available node density provided by smartphone ubiquity. The tech has already been proven—carriers just need to be mandated to add it because there's no business reason to do so.

RF_Savage 4y ago
Does any handset anywhere actually implement LTE Direct? My understanding has been that it was specified for Public Safety LTE to have feature parity with TETRA. Especially the infrastructure-less TETRA DMO Direct Mode Operation for ad-hoc communications with the trunking infrastructure down, out of range or over capacity. And everybody in the Public Safety radio space seems to always laugh when LTE Direct is brought up. Apparently poorly specified and adopted by no vendors.
ISL 4y ago
How does LTE Direct impact battery-life? Seems like something that could obliterate a handset's battery in the space of an hour or so?
arcticbull 4y ago
> The tech has already been proven—carriers just need to be mandated to add it because there's no business reason to do so. People say that but in the decades since it was thought up mesh networks have never actually managed to work, not at any scale. Routing efficiently is extremely complex especially when all the nodes keep moving around. I concede it may be better than nothing in an emergency but I strongly suspect it's just not very useful in general, which is probably why carriers haven't mandated it. After all if it worked you wouldn't need carriers at all, yet here they are...
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  A route on a mesh network is only as big as the smallest link. Of course as a general substitute for connectivity it holds little promise. Like any technology it has its pluses and minuses. In situations without access to a fat, centralized link or situations where resilience is more important than bandwidth or latency, mesh networks are a great choice. Emergencies are such situations but remote areas or low power needs are other situations suited for mesh networks.

RF_Savage 4y ago

Interesting that they are using such a high frequency, I hope it serves them well. Should be reasonably free of long range interference. But surprised that there are no 3.5MHz/7MHz/14MHz band frequencies in use for regional communications. Or they have not been declared yet for emcom use like with Nepal and Puerto Rico.

genewitch 4y ago
They will use separate bands for regional "nets", the net controllers will forward any necessary information to whoever is the regional emcom person, and that person will get the message out over the 28.540 (or whatever winlink frequencies.) 28.540 has the benefit that you can push it rather far on a modest antenna -at any hour - much like CB, and with digital modes you don't need to be able to "hear" it to copy and send copyable text. Most regional nets will be on VHF, UHF, or NVIS HF (the 3.5, 7, etc) depending on the conditions and time of day.

lormayna 4y ago

At the moment, I am not getting any traffic on this channel. I am in central Italy, not far away, from a radio perspective, to Turkey.

veysiertekin 4y ago

Once Turkiye's best mobile network (Turkcell) introduced a drone cell tower (never has been used, I think because of battery issues?): https://www.telecomsinfrastructure.com/2019/07/dronecell-turkcell-flying-base-station.html https://www.telecomsinfrastructure.com/2019/07/dronecell-tur...