|
Whats happening? Alien invasion drill?
"If we don't change direction, we'll end up where we're going"
|
|
|
|
|
The UK govt has decided in it's infinite wisdom (in a time of horrendous inflation and a cost of living crisis, strikes by emergency services, teachers, medic, and so on) that the best thing to spend money on is an alert system that sends a priority notification along with a siren noise to every cell phone in the country. Just in case 50 nukes are headed this way, they can tell us all to kiss our *** goodbye.
Today was the first test of the system. Herself didn't even notice - she assumed the siren noise was on the TV, not her phone ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It wasn't revealed as a hoax. The original broadcast was on Halloween and was done as a series of "news flashes", with each news flash preceded with "this is a fictional story" or something along those lines. People still panicked.
|
|
|
|
|
OriginalGriff wrote: The UK govt has decided in it's infinite wisdom
Not only UK... we have had it too... twice. And my phone didn't get any of them (work phone got the second one though)
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
Isn't the whole point of testing to find out how it works live, and to reveal where improvements should be made?
There's always someone whining about something. If there was a life threatening danger near you and you weren't warned, my guess is that you'd be whining about that too.
I used to live in a flood area. We got alert messages over the landline, and I can tell you that the flood warnings were very useful in giving us time to prepare. However cellphone warnings would have been even more useful, for obvious reasons.
|
|
|
|
|
haughtonomous wrote: We got alert messages over the landline, and I can tell you that the flood warnings were very useful
But of course the land line can't move around.
I stopped the weather alerts when I started getting hail warnings for areas that were 100 miles from where I was. Then the traffic alerts service that provided alerts from other side of the city where I have never been.
Then the very handy app to live track where the commuter rail car was until I realized that it was not in fact live at all but just programmed to follow where the car should be (as in the train didn't show at all but the app showed it arriving and leaving.)
Presumably they will get better, one can hope.
|
|
|
|
|
OriginalGriff wrote: Today was the first test of the system. Herself didn't even notice - she assumed the siren noise was on the TV, not her phone ...
I was on-call over the weekend and had left my work phone upstairs. My wife, also upstairs, called down that she thought work were trying to contact me as it was making a loud noise! 
|
|
|
|
|
|
Nothing for Mrs Pete, daughter number 1, or myself. We're the first to go in the zombie apocalypse.
|
|
|
|
|
Apparently you need Android 11 (or similar iPhone level) at least for it to work fully. I have Android 9 and only got the visual alert, but that was enough. My wife has A11 and hers worked perfectly. She's now moved to "somewhere safer". Could be the warning was just an excuse ....
|
|
|
|
|
As we have the latest generation Android and iPhone incarnations, I don't think that caused the problem here.
|
|
|
|
|
I have a Samsung Galaxy Young. It's tiny, cost £9.99 and is ten years old. It runs Android 4.4.2
Unsurprisingly, I didn't get the alert  and would have been astonished if I had.
My wife's £10 Samsung (no idea of model, but it seems to do everything and reasonably quickly) did. My SiL's £300 Samsung A50 from 4 years ago got nothing. My daughter's phone was off at 3pm yesterday, she turned it on later that evening. She got the alert at 10am today... As I told her, at least it will give the rescuers something to aim for in the rubble...
I get it when commercial companies target only latest/later versions, they want to minimise the options they write for. It annoys the hell out of me when things like the Covid app or the more general NHS app target only the latest versions of Android; what features are they trying to use that make the app unavailable to (slightly) older phones?
|
|
|
|
|
I have a little OrangePi Zero 2 which in theory is a great little device, since the components that make it up are sourceable and the schematic is available.
Orange Pi Zero 2 build of linux: Worked last I checked - have to try again, maybe my SD card is bad? Takes too long to boot anyway, and the boot screen with all the services starting displayed is unacceptable in production.
Armbian linux: Works except for Wifi, so it's an option, because I have no plans to put a wifi module on this board for any of our client projects unless i need something better than wireless G (i'd rather use an ESP32 for this). Same issue with booting taking too long and showing too many details.
Orange Pi Zero 2 build of android (10 i think?) - black screen after boot. The backlight turns off and no LEDs on the board shortly after powering on! I can't get this to work at all even though it might be my best option for production. Figured out the problem. I need to burn the image with a particular piece of software that crashes on my machine. Googling shows no results. Claims it works in win11. Compatibility mode no work either. Watched a youtube video on fixing problems with it. Tried that. No results. Gonna try it on hubby's laptop when he wakes up. Found a russian version of the SD burner that works on my machine. Tried the image and get a black screen but at least the backlight is on. Progress. 
Zephyr RTOS: This is what I wanted to use. They support the Arm Cortex A53 but none of the peripherals for my AllWinner H616 SoC. I'd have to switch to a much harder to source NXP NXP MIMX8 that supports HDMI, and I'm not even sure Zephyr supports one of those variants.
Running into walls everywhere I go. I don't have the resources to port Zephyr on my own. Android 10 might be my best bet if the sucker would boot. Gotta try a new SD but hell this is ridiculous. - brand new SD card - same result
There has to be a way to come up with a reasonable OS solution for this H616 that doesn't take man-years of effort to put together.
At least I think I have the sunxi toolchain and cross compiler and stuff for this SoC installed on my VM. That's something.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
modified 23-Apr-23 15:20pm.
|
|
|
|
|
With armbian you have to configure wifi, what I usually do is, start with a wired connection, ssh into the box, then run armbian-config to configure the wifi - never had a problem
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
|
|
|
|
|
From forum posts I've seen, it just doesn't work with the Orange Pi Zero 2. It gave me the option to configure it. Listed my WiFi SSID, "connected" and then immediately dropped every time. Also that issue doesn't matter to me.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
|
|
|
|
|
welcome to embedded, but I'm ducking now. 
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
|
|
|
|
|
Apparently the tulip fields in the NoordOost polder are becoming a bit too popular, as we could see this morning ...
Tulips - Google Photos[^] 
|
|
|
|
|
Tiny Tim or everybody?
Give me coffee to change the things I can and wine for those I can not!
PartsBin an Electronics Part Organizer - An updated version available! JaxCoder.com
Latest Article: Simon Says, A Child's Game
|
|
|
|
|
Same thing in a lot of place overcrowded due to mass tourism.
I've seen guards around very popular vineyards in usually very nice wine areas with a lot of photographic opportunities.
I remember, just before the turn of the millennia, I was able to quickly walk to the vines in one of the more famous burgundy vineyards.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
|
|
|
|
|
Wordle 673 4/6*
⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
|
|
|
|
|
Wordle 673 4/6
⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜
🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟨🟩🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
|
|
|
|
|
Wordle 673 4/6
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛🟩⬛🟨⬛
🟩🟩⬛🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
|
|
|
|
|
Wordle 673 6/6
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜
⬜⬜🟨🟩⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
