
Two quakes in two days, no warning from ShakeAlertLA - danso
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2019-08-14/earthquake-early-warning-app-shakealertla-released
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Rebelgecko
I'm a bit skeptical of the app. The city very briefly open sourced it. After
people dug through the code and raised some privacy concerns, the city removed
it from github.

The architecture of the app seems a bit weird to me. Your position is
continuously reported to a central server to determine whether or not you are
sent an alert, as opposed to filtering that client-side. I suppose it's easy
to criticize when I'm not aware of some of the constraints they may have had
to deal with, but it was frustrating that the app wouldn't even open unless I
gave it fine-grained location permissions on my phone.

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kkarakk
well maybe if you were affected by a shake and your phone sent your location
to the govt then you could be helped? the only possible usecase for it though

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viraptor
But not an advertised one as far as I can tell now. So I don't believe they
were doing anything like that.

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parksy
Why not let the users pick their own threshold? People who are used to smaller
quakes and not concerned can ignore these, and elect to receive alerts only
for stronger quakes.

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sieabahlpark
Thank you, this is exactly what should be configurable

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cryptoz
No mention of MyShake [1], a California-based effort to use smartphone sensors
to detect earthquakes. The potential is incredible but with actually popular
apps - presumably like ShakeAlert - not contributing data it seems like an
epic lost opportunity.

Phones have been able to detect earthquakes, changes in the weather, magnetic
field changes, but we (the tech community) are not doing _any_ of those things
at scale. IMO all these things should be built-in to phones OS' as a kind of
distributed multi-purpose sensor network. For now, we just have a smattering
of not-very-popular apps that can _potentially_ do neat things but are not
centralized or popular enough to actually do them right.

[1] MyShake article: [https://www.popsci.com/now-you-can-download-an-
earthquake-se...](https://www.popsci.com/now-you-can-download-an-earthquake-
sensor-onto-your-smartphone/)

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DecoPerson
Being familiar with this, have you seen any info about how this would affect
battery life?

The potential of using smartphones as massive sensor array for various
purposes has always been a curiosity of mine, but most material I've read on
the matter shows battery life to be a significant limiting factor.

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cryptoz
I think battery life is quite simple to solve for, actually. A common method
to work through this, especially for earthquakes, is to only capture sensor
data when the phone is stationary and plugged in+charging. If the phone is
moving or unplugged, no data needs to be gathered. Sure, this limits the
quantity of data you can get in the short-term, but relaxes users long-term
and keeps the app installed. Offering these settings as toggles also helps.

FWIW, I mostly work on barometers. New versions of Android lock down the
sensor access so it cannot be done in the background; my solution is low-
resolution data (15-minute intervals, rather than ideal 1-minute) and for user
privacy, I can discard location data after summarizing pressure data into
gridded anonymous areas.

I do this in All Clear Weather:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearweather.android)
(US, Android)

Sensor code:
[https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary](https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary)

I am also interested in gathering magnetic data, and presently also collect
temperature, light sensor and humidity from phones that have it. I believe all
this data could be useful for weather prediction, which is my current target.

But earthquake alerts, magnetic field/solar storm warnings, sound pollution
(microphone), and various other distributed sensor networks should also be
possible.

I have not noticed any battery degradation or over-use of resources in my
dealings with sensors. As long as the developer takes care in the code and
respects users' wishes, I think it's totally doable.

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foota
This may not be a good idea. Desensitizing the public by exposing them to
alerts for what are essentially non-harmful events could mean they don't react
in the face of a large incident.

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chrisbolt
I live in LA and neither quake was worth warning anyone. They were hundreds of
miles away. Why bring it up a month later?

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WheelsAtLarge
What is so hard about letting the app users decide at what point the app will
trigger an alert? I suppose you give it a default setting and if the user
decides that the alarms are too intrusive then the users can change them.
That's my quick thought. My point is that there should not be one setting for
all users there should be ways to customize it. My guess is that it would only
take a small bit of code to let the users adjust the setting.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/sIrdZ](http://archive.is/sIrdZ)

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jkingsbery
Possibly from the makers of Tornado Guard?
[https://xkcd.com/937/](https://xkcd.com/937/)

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basicplus2
It is strange that i cannot find this app in Google Playstore..

I am in another country but that should not stop me from seeing the app or
installing it.

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cryptoz
You shouldn't have any trouble finding the Play Store page online:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.shakea...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.shakealertla).
I believe the Play Store shows users any app they're looking for, even if it
is not distributed in your region. The store will restrict your ability to
install it based on the Dev Console settings by the app owners.

App developers are allowed to restrict by location on both platforms for legal
reasons. The stores do not force developers to support regions that the
developers do not / cannot support.

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basicplus2
Issue is if i wish to travel to LA then i am prevented from using it...

