Wildfires: Reminder smart devices don't include emergency warnings while streaming

Sun Sep 13 03:11:21 UTC 2020

On Fri, 11 Sep 2020, Matt Erculiani wrote:
> Linking relevant past thread about devices that don't alert for
> emergencies and, of course, a heated debate on if they should:
> https://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/2019-March/199721.html

Yep.  I'm not naive.  I keep saying something, because one day it will 
matter, when the CEOs claim no one said anything.

I fully expect the CEOs of Alphabet, Amazon and Apple in some future 
congressional hearing, after a major disaster, will follow the same 
script as previous CEOs from automotive, tobacco, chemical, etc. 
industries; that they are shocked and saddened, but no one ever said 
something. Later, in past cases, it will turn out someone did say 
something but were ignored.

True, about 100 clear-channel 50,000 watt AM radio stations still carry 
emergency alerts. But its not the 1950s anymore. That's not where most 
people spend their attention span. People are using streaming devices 
now.

There are cases, usually as a result of individual engineer's 
bad experience during a crisis, such as Google's SOS Alerts 
product for people already aware and actively looking for more 
information about a crisis.

https://blog.google/products/search/mapping-wildfires-with-satellite-data/

   "Ten years ago, I was inside the Google office in Haifa, Israel when the
   devastating Carmel Mountain fire started blazing not far from us. The
   team started searching the web to learn more. And while we did find
   some details confirming what we already knew—a large fire was taking
   place outside of our door—we experienced a potentially life-impacting
   information gap. "