BBC World Service Announces Emergency Radio Service for Gaza | Hacker News Reader

BBC World Service Announces Emergency Radio Service for Gaza

bbc.com

44 pointsdivbzero18 comments

Politics aside, this is a good reminder that oldschool radio can still do things modern network-based tech cannot. The ham radio nerds prep for exactly this sort of situation. Blocking the local internet is easy. Such networks can be turned off as easily as a lightswitch. Widespread blocking of radio requires a totally different magnitude of effort.

> Widespread blocking of radio requires a totally different magnitude of effort.

Like bombing every location someone transmits from? It sounds like they very much have the means to do it if they want to.

I was going to say that targeting civilians is a war crime no matter who does it, but that doesn't seem to be an issue

> Like bombing every location someone transmits from?

This is a Medium Wave service, it doesn’t work that way. The signals are reflected by the ionosphere, you can broadcast from thousands of miles away.

Nobody is going to be bombing Cyprus, where the BBC transmit from. The best you could do is jam the signal, but that’s cat-and-mouse at best.

>but that’s cat-and-mouse at best.

How hard is it to buy jammers for the common frequencies?

Powerful enough to jam the BBC across Gaza? Hard.

I’m sure a lot of people would love to bomb the BBC out of existence but that might be hard.

I really don’t mean the BBC. The comment i responded was comparing the ease of shutting down the internet to the supposed hardness of shutting down amateur radio transmissions.

If you were in Gaza and in posession of a radio amateur set would you dare to turn it on? I woudln’t. I would be too affraid that would lead to a strike on my location. Besides with what fuel to power the radio?

You mean not being immediately blocked by ALL factions because it's unidirectional and doesn't allow for coordination of armed forces?

Sure, it can do that.

But I would truly hate if someone made the internet unidirectional.

There's a song out there that uses a remix of a woman saying "This is London calling". I only made a connection that it was the BBC's announcement (why they're "calling" when they're broadcasting, I don't know yet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuJ5_j4U6HQ

They mean calling as in “calling out from afar”, not calling in the way of two way contact like on a phone.

>advice on where to access shelter, food and water supplies

so a looped recording of "get up, grab your kids and walk south NOW"

"Mine is the last voice you will ever hear, don't be alarmed."

Where in the south though? There is artillery/bombings/violence in the south as well, so still important to get information about where to find resources when you're on the ground in the south.

Why no frequency in the announcement?

The page says "The Gaza service will be broadcast on MW 639kHz for morning and evening episodes." So I think this is within the normal AM broadcast band that most car radios can receive.

Hope musk enables starlink for everyone there, right now limited to NGO's

Who's got a receiver apart from NGOs there? It's not like they can make them enter the Gaza strip right now.

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