UK Testing Emergency Alerts | Hacker News Reader

UK Testing Emergency Alerts

gov.uk

61 pointsbennyp10132 comments

If there were any sense in the world this would be a repeated klaxon with Lance Corporal Jones [1] shouting "Don't panic! Don't panic!"

[1], for left-ponders, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Corporal_Jones

What's a “left-ponder”? Are there also “right-ponders”?

"across the pond" usually means the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. [1]

So in this instance, left-ponders would be Americans to someone in the UK, and right-ponders would be English to someone in the USA.

[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/across_the_pond

You are left pondering if you're a little confused and/or unsure about something.

"I ordered lunch for my parents as they spent too long pondering over the menu and wouldn't make a decision."

Quick edit : I've heard of "over the pond" to mean the other side of the Atlantic, but never heard the phrase "left ponder" at all, let alone to refer to Americans.

I don't know why this is getting downvoted. The generally accepted colloquialism is 'across the pond', used by Brits to refer to America. It is possible that some of our cousins from over the pond, with whom we have a special relationship, might be left pondering over all this palaver.

Just a Britism for the USA :-)

The usual variant I've seen is leftpondian, though.

So apparently having to ask the operators nicely to send all their customers an SMS (as they did last year for the first lockdown) is not ideal, and it might be worth spending the money on setting up an alert system after all!

The main advantage here seems to be that it is highly targeted based on location. It can both catch tourists and and avoid bothering people who are out of town.

The downside is that people are more familiar with alternate communication methods with SMS or EMail where people can check their history, forward to people who need it.

Furthermore (like SMS) this requires a connection to the cell tower, which some tablets may not have even if they have internet.

But overall it seems like a good idea.

> Furthermore (like SMS) this requires a connection to the cell tower, which some tablets may not have even if they have internet.

Seems like the government just needs to provide RSS feeds per location, so that internet-only devices can receive the alerts too.

I'm actually surprised there is no easy way to access said alerts (whether emergency weather alerts or Amber) over the internet in the US last time I checked. Strange for a system whose sole purpose is to alert as many people as possible, but I bet some scum is rent-seeking by charging exorbitant amounts for these data feeds and certain companies are bound by law to display those alerts and have no choice but to pay that.

> Furthermore (like SMS) this requires a connection to the cell tower, which some tablets may not have even if they have internet.

Some people don't have tablets OR cell phones. I doubt the objective is to reach 100% of all people.

Presumably they're using the existing GSM/LTE Cell Broadcast mechanism. There may have been some work to do on agreeing protocols for access to it, but I don't think they're building anything from scratch.

I just checked my phone settings (Android) and I have cell broadcasts enabled, but test messages are turned off. I wonder what message category they'll use.

They are using 4G/LTE cell broadcast, with integration on the back-end to Gov.UK notify.

There's nothing truly from scratch here (thankfully), other than integration at non-telecoms layer to get the system working.

I believe there is some interest (based on activity on GitHub around standards) in using some existing emergency alerting XML standards for the non-telecoms parts of the system too.

Which doesn't seem to have been communicated very well, judging by the comments on some local news sites ...

There's a lot of "my privacy" and "I didn't consent to this" etc going on sigh

There's some explanatory content available at https://www.gov.uk/alerts but it doesn't seem like many people are aware cell broadcast is a privacy preserving solution...

Is this similar to the technology used for the US Wireless emergency alerts?

Yes, WEA uses cell broadcast.

"Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEAs) are short emergency messages from authorized federal, state, local, tribal and territorial public alerting authorities that can be broadcast from cell towers to any WEA‐enabled mobile device in a locally targeted area. Wireless providers primarily use cell broadcast technology for WEA message delivery."

https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integr...

What for? We haven't needed one until now?

There are parts of the country that regularly flood. The environment agency use an opt in system for SMS alerts at the moment, I can see a targeted broadcast being a lot more effective.

Also, waiting until you need an emergency system is a really bad idea!

Just gonna drop this here... https://youtu.be/zybgpvd3ExE (How they test the alarms in Switzerland)

Or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSI-je-V-xk for the real one.

That is much more musical the Denmark's emergency sirens, which apparently use the "European tone set" of the WPS-2800 siren: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4Qgk886dIg

The WPS-2800 is an American design, and the original/American tone set sounds even more boring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDjdZICCNiQ

But none of this was relevant for Covid, and we just received text messages.

As a left-ponder, I must say: be careful what you wish for. Alerts are so over-used and even abused here that a lot of us have turned them off. The final straw for me was a series of "silver alerts"[1] for somebody in a county 150km away..

[1] Silver alerts are intended to help find elderly folks with dementia who have wandered off.

So.. Has anyone got that test alert? It's now 2:10PM.. It was supposed to happen between 1PM and 2PM.

I didn't get it, hopefully they fix it before an actual emergency happens.

Likewise. Feeling a bit sad I didn't get a test alert.

Apparently iPhone were not included this time: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/22/uk-emergency-alerts-tes...

I got one, at 1:01pm. I explicitly enabled the two "test" options in Emergency alerts on my Android phone beforehand, however I don't know if that is why I saw it.

Be alert. Britain needs lerts.

How does cell broadcast work with either wifi or wifi calling? And is a cell broadcast a single point in time, i.e. what happens if I'm out of range at the time the broadcast sent?

> You may get alerts about: severe flooding, fires, explosions, terrorist incidents, public health emergencies

So not a dispersal order then.

[Edit for format and dreadful spelling].

Hopefully better than track-and-trace!

I didn't get a test alert. I'm feeling sad.

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