I read somewhere that Evangelion has similar cultural impact with the Japanese as Star Wars does in the US. In that way naming this app NERV is similar to the US’s “Star Wars” strategic defense initiative…
Except there was a law suit in that case because nobody bothered to get the rights from Lucasfilm
The government didn't call it Star Wars, they called it SDI. Some lobbyists used that term and they were the ones that Lucasfilm tried to sue.
The lawsuit was dismissed, btw.
> On November 26, 1985, the suit was dismissed by Judge Gerhard Gesell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on the grounds that the lobbyists' use of the mark in a noncommercial and non-trade context fell outside the jurisdiction of trademark law. [1]
GP never said the government named it that. Besides which, "Star Wars" was not a term used only by lobbyists, even if they coined it. It's a very common name for that program among the general public.
Arguably Gundam is more equivalent to Star Wars - similar initial release timeframe (late 1970's), aimed at a wide audience, lots of toy and video game deals, many different stories with continuity, etc.
Gundam has definitely wider reach, including governmental recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_Gundam#Gove... (the whole page is interesting read) but Neon Genesis Evangelion also had huge impact on cultural scene of japan from what I have read, and by now it has similarly been deeply embedded in ways other works didn't.
I was so confused when I clicked this link. I saw "NERV" and knew it was related to Evangelion. But then reading the website it seems so real and legit. But then they're using the real NERV logo from Eva, even with the "God is in his heaven, all is right with the world" subtext. Which makes seem like it must be some sort of spoof. But who'd set up something like this, in light of the recent disaster, and even publish real apps.
Man... the cognitive dissonance I went through mentally bouncing back and forth for a few minutes. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that before in my life.
I'm glad all the top comments on HN are about Eva though.
The original Star Wars is a perfect Hero's Journey story told on film. In a vacuum, it's an incredibly inventive and scrappy film.
Evangelion has the benefit of not being owned by Disney, and thus not being milked into oblivion*. If all we had of Star Wars was the original trilogy, and maybe the "Rebuild of Star Wars" aka the sequel trilogy (speaking purely in story terms of soft-rebooting things), it could probably stand toe to toe with Evangelion on prestige. It's just been watered down so much in the last two decades, as opposed to Evangelion which has been fiercely protected by its original creator.
Weird, I didn't think I'd be defending Star Wars in 2024. And I do much much prefer Evangelion.
*I am aware of how badly Evangelion has been milked for merch, but I'm talking exclusively about media appearances in this discussion. There was Evangelion manga, but I can remember there being three series or less for about 20 years (and two of those were gag manga). In terms of visual media outside the main series (anime, EoE, Rebuild films), I'm pretty sure there's just been a smattering of Japanese commercials using Evangelion characters.
Though there are probably at least 10 anime series Americans know about (Pokemon, Naruto, Dragonball-z, Yu-gi-oh, Death Note, Demon Slayer, One Piece, etc.) more often than Eva. Eva is a relatively strange anime in contrast. Is it that Eva is more "Japan"-coded than the other ones, which are more "American"-coded, thus they would have an outsized impact overseas but not comparatively in Japan?
Time and place sort of thing. There could easily be another timeline where Evangelion and Sailor Moon swap places popularity-wise in the US. The demographic for anime on broadcast television in the late '90s and early 2000s, when Evangelion was getting dubbed, just skewed too young for it to really be profitable in any way. If I remember correctly, it only ever had one complete run on Adult Swim, a late night block which really limited its exposure. I don't think End of Evangelion has ever aired on a major broadcast network. (The Rebuild movies did get play on the revived Toonami about a decade ago, though.)
I don't think Evangelion would ever have been a breakout hit, per se, like DBZ, but depending on the circumstances it definitely could have had moderate success.
Isn't Evangelion (in)famous for its use of Western religious and occult symbolism? I don't think it's more "Japan" coded than say Death Note (with Western characters) or One Piece (based loosely on Western pirate lore.)
> The name and logo of "NERV" are used with the explicit permission of khara Inc., the copyright holder of the "Evangelion" series, and Groundworks Corporation, which manages the rights to the series.
I'm japanese.TBH for a long time i had thought this was a parody account.
Around the time of 2011 3.11 earthquake, the NERV Twitter account(the origin of this app) gained popularity and reputation as a reliable source of information in the social media space (At that time government official information provided on Twitter was extremely little).
I guess a part of the reason of its popularity today belongs to otaku culture on the Internet that was a good fit for this kind of anime-origin stuff.
Plus the company that runs NERV is owned by Sakura-Internet, which is one of the biggest computer infra business, and is believed to provide a reliable system at time of emergency.
In 2022 they also did a collab with MSI. Those components are pretty cool, but they're for a more mid-range build than the premium ASUS components (something like an i7 with an RTX 4060):
Their Japanese Twitter account has 2 million followers, the branding hasn't really caused enough confusion in Japan to hinder them: https://twitter.com/UN_NERV
The UI/UX graphic design from Evangelion is actually pretty cool and clean. The only other sci-fu UI design I've seen that is also clean and nice looking is from star trek the next generation. Actually they made the UI from star trek better with Picard.
Borrowing the name from Eva might be a bit much in this case but borrowing the UI look won't be. They've done both here. They could've even gotten away with borrowing the graphic design look from Eva without citing it as the Eva UI designs are generic enough that it's not an obvious copy.
Because it's strange and distracting? Is this a promotional app or an actual earth quake app?
Imagine this: Star Trek the next generation Earthquake Locator! and it's an Lcars interface.
Additionally Eva was a very divisive series. Popular yes, somewhat main stream in japan but also strange enough that its mostly liked by a certain crowd. I'm part of that crowd but at the same time I get why that crowd is different.
To help illustrate imagine 2010s Justin Beiber or Twilight themed earth quake apps. Right? That's sort of a different crowd from the people who like Eva and not everyone is into that stuff. Are you more likely to download the app if it was themed liked that?
Additionally Anime was not always mainstream in the world. It was considered nerdy to like it. It's become mainstream now in the last decade outside of japan, but in japan it's still considered a little different.
I'm kinda confused, shouldn't this kind of app be developed and diffused by government, open source and not include paid plans to have better information in case of emergency since it should be funded by your taxes ??
It works reasonably well, but a lot of times I just never get an alert. The two minutes of shaking I experience yesterday in Osaka I received no alert. Last year there was a very brief level 3 that they blared the dreaded tones on everyone's phones in Tokyo. Stuff like the NERV application are more accurate and I can customize what earthquake levels that I get alerts for.
It looks like all of the emergency notification features are available in the free version. The data is obtained from public agencies. I know in the US there's a wide variety of apps that present data from NOAA and that you can also get it from NOAA directly.
Its in the NHK World app and turned on by default. I'm not in Japan but my phone went crazy with all the earthquake and tsunami warnings. Remarkable how slow all the non-Japanese media were in covering the earthquake. Remarkable still how every streaming station I looked at was showing the shore somewhere. Fortunately these days without a reporter standing there explaining how dangerous despite the fact they are in harms way. Webcams instead.
Personally: Yeah, I think that would be a good use of tax money. I'd love to see systems like this (as well as ones like covid contact detection) built by governments, in open source, and I literally mean goverment__s__. I'd love it if they had strong encryption and privacy preservation.
Practically: they aren't doing it, so does that mean it shouldn't be made? Government also seems pretty captured by industry (not just US) who are more interested in profits than utility. Sadly that's supposed to be where governments should shine the most as they are supposed to have different incentive structures.
Best note(?): Seems when incentives align and there isn't strong capture that the two can work in tandem pretty well. But that seems more and more rare these days. In fact, this particular app works with JMA (government).
Additional note: But couldn't we also say the same thing about texting, calling, and even email? Are these not social goods? In fact, even in some ways the government does this. It's why the USPS exists, which is not a profit seeking entity and services places that UPS and FedEx don't. Also, the US gov donates to Signal (and Tor and some others) under the Radio Free Asia program. The intent is to get people under oppressive regimes encrypted communication so they can organize against tyrannical rule. But this also causes conspiracy around Signal (and Tor) because there are larger factions of the government that want to destroy encryption. This also creates a lot of distrust, especially among Americans, so would we/they have trust in such a system?
They certainly have a nerve to dilute and add an extra layer to an important public system.
Also the name is somewhat fearmongering, so many might prefer to sign up to this than the real thing.
I read the everything trying to determine supported locations. After finding nothing, I decided to install the app. After agreeing to everything and giving permissions, it informed me that only locations within Japan are supported. I’m not surprised, but it would have been nice to have that information somewhere on the website.
They got some fame because they were posting “too many updates” this morning due to the earthquake/tsunami and got blocked on Twitter and had to tell people to use their app instead.
That’s the reason I heard about them, for the first time, this morning.
I saw the name and had to go digging to see if it was real (yes), if NERV was a real government agency and not fictional as I always assumed (no), or if they stole the name/logo (no).
Shootings affecting many people (ie mass shootings) in America aren’t common, and are over very quickly. Notification apps would not change the outcomes.
Earthquakes in Japan are a fact of life, and affect many many people very often. Mass shootings anywhere (USA included) are rare, freak occurrences, that involve small numbers of people.
Additional fearmongering over the very tiny risk from gun violence in the US actually makes the problem worse, not better. The mass media already does more than enough of that.
In my neighborhood I hear gunshots almost every night. There were several shootings within a block of my house just in the last six months, including one where patrons of the nearest bar had to run and hide in the walk-in freezer while two idiots shot at each other (and both missed). Often times I hear shots and check the police log and can't even find a reference to them.
According to the Gun Violence Archive[0], the US has averaged 2 mass shootings a day over the last three years - less common than earthquakes in Japan, but far from being rare or a freak occurrence.
X cut them off during the Earthquake because they didn't pay for a higher tier plan[1], but they also had a Mastadon account going that was unaffected.
If you rely on this service, you should probably either have the app or use mastodon. X doesn't seem to be a reliable option anymore. Twitter might have temporarily lifted restrictions when such info could save lives, but X wants its $$$ first.
Additionally, Mastodon working well at the current low scale doesn't tell us much. We don't actually know how reliable it will be if it ever reaches X scale.
Mastodon has massive Japanese communities on it, Pawoo (social that was owned by Pixiv, was the largest Mastodon instance before Musk took over Twitter, now it's second), mstdn.jp (used to be second, now third), now there's also Misskey, which is not a Mastodon instance, but it's perfectly compatible with it.
Mastodon was battle-tested by the Japanese, almost no one used it seriously before them.
We have a similar situation for public transport here in Hamburg. The status updates for outages on the S Bahn network are only available on X, if you don’t have an account there there’s no where else to see it
> The name and logo of "NERV" are used with the explicit permission of khara Inc., the copyright holder of the "Evangelion" series, and Groundworks Corporation, which manages the rights to the series.
Does this app report real information relating to actual earthquakes?
My understanding from looking at the website and logo and tagline (“God’s in Heaven, all is right with the world”) is this is an augmented reality game set in the Evangelion universe. Similar to Pokémon Go.
It's a little fascinating to me that Japan's public can so easily take advantage of stuff like this while the USA market seems resistant, while all the next-gen technology that enables the Next Thing is coming out of the USA. Seems like a strange juxtaposition.
The "Enter" button of the splash page is under the cut when my iPad is in landscape mode. The page is also not scrollable, so the whole page makes no sense. Had to turn the iPad 90 degrees for the button to appear and to be able to "enter" the site.
That's it, I can't no longer tell at a glance if it's legit, legit sponsored, satire or derivative work. I don't know if it's something real, if it's something real with an Evangelion sponsoring/branding for acceptance reasons, if it's someone who quickly made a mock-up app to show how NERV started in our world and in the anime's world, if it's related to today's earthquake in Japan. Or maybe I am tired :/ ?
It's real and has existed for several years. They licensed the name and branding from the Evangelion rightsholders. It got attention today because their Twitter account got rate-limited due to frequent updates related to the earthquake.
The japanese rights holders for the logo and the japanese company (?) making it at least disagree I think.
The name and logo if nothing else are pretty recognizable and memorable. I know nothing about features, but they seem to be collaborating with institutions too...
I read somewhere that Evangelion has similar cultural impact with the Japanese as Star Wars does in the US. In that way naming this app NERV is similar to the US’s “Star Wars” strategic defense initiative…
Except there was a law suit in that case because nobody bothered to get the rights from Lucasfilm
The government didn't call it Star Wars, they called it SDI. Some lobbyists used that term and they were the ones that Lucasfilm tried to sue.
The lawsuit was dismissed, btw.
> On November 26, 1985, the suit was dismissed by Judge Gerhard Gesell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, on the grounds that the lobbyists' use of the mark in a noncommercial and non-trade context fell outside the jurisdiction of trademark law. [1]
[1] "Lucasfilm Ltd. v. High Frontier, 622 F. Supp. 931 (D.D.C. 1985)". Justia Law. (via Wikipedia) https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/6...
GP never said the government named it that. Besides which, "Star Wars" was not a term used only by lobbyists, even if they coined it. It's a very common name for that program among the general public.
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Arguably Gundam is more equivalent to Star Wars - similar initial release timeframe (late 1970's), aimed at a wide audience, lots of toy and video game deals, many different stories with continuity, etc.
Gundam has definitely wider reach, including governmental recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_impact_of_Gundam#Gove... (the whole page is interesting read) but Neon Genesis Evangelion also had huge impact on cultural scene of japan from what I have read, and by now it has similarly been deeply embedded in ways other works didn't.
Also laser swords.
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I was so confused when I clicked this link. I saw "NERV" and knew it was related to Evangelion. But then reading the website it seems so real and legit. But then they're using the real NERV logo from Eva, even with the "God is in his heaven, all is right with the world" subtext. Which makes seem like it must be some sort of spoof. But who'd set up something like this, in light of the recent disaster, and even publish real apps.
Man... the cognitive dissonance I went through mentally bouncing back and forth for a few minutes. I don't think I've ever experienced anything like that before in my life.
I'm glad all the top comments on HN are about Eva though.
They even have Shinji in the contact form as a placeholder, it's definitely not an accidental naming thing.
I've often had this thought myself. It's the simile I've used to explain Eva to people who don't know anything about anime.
But then I think about some of the things in the series and movies and it's incredibly hard to fathom those showing up in any kind of Star Wars IP.
But I love that about it... I've always thought Star Wars sucks to be honest. I love that Japan's is so much darker and angstier.
The original Star Wars is a perfect Hero's Journey story told on film. In a vacuum, it's an incredibly inventive and scrappy film.
Evangelion has the benefit of not being owned by Disney, and thus not being milked into oblivion*. If all we had of Star Wars was the original trilogy, and maybe the "Rebuild of Star Wars" aka the sequel trilogy (speaking purely in story terms of soft-rebooting things), it could probably stand toe to toe with Evangelion on prestige. It's just been watered down so much in the last two decades, as opposed to Evangelion which has been fiercely protected by its original creator.
Weird, I didn't think I'd be defending Star Wars in 2024. And I do much much prefer Evangelion.
*I am aware of how badly Evangelion has been milked for merch, but I'm talking exclusively about media appearances in this discussion. There was Evangelion manga, but I can remember there being three series or less for about 20 years (and two of those were gag manga). In terms of visual media outside the main series (anime, EoE, Rebuild films), I'm pretty sure there's just been a smattering of Japanese commercials using Evangelion characters.
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I thought the same until Rogue One. :)
Though there are probably at least 10 anime series Americans know about (Pokemon, Naruto, Dragonball-z, Yu-gi-oh, Death Note, Demon Slayer, One Piece, etc.) more often than Eva. Eva is a relatively strange anime in contrast. Is it that Eva is more "Japan"-coded than the other ones, which are more "American"-coded, thus they would have an outsized impact overseas but not comparatively in Japan?
Time and place sort of thing. There could easily be another timeline where Evangelion and Sailor Moon swap places popularity-wise in the US. The demographic for anime on broadcast television in the late '90s and early 2000s, when Evangelion was getting dubbed, just skewed too young for it to really be profitable in any way. If I remember correctly, it only ever had one complete run on Adult Swim, a late night block which really limited its exposure. I don't think End of Evangelion has ever aired on a major broadcast network. (The Rebuild movies did get play on the revived Toonami about a decade ago, though.)
I don't think Evangelion would ever have been a breakout hit, per se, like DBZ, but depending on the circumstances it definitely could have had moderate success.
Isn't Evangelion (in)famous for its use of Western religious and occult symbolism? I don't think it's more "Japan" coded than say Death Note (with Western characters) or One Piece (based loosely on Western pirate lore.)
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> Though there are probably at least 10 anime series Americans know about ...
I can't help but feel you're significantly overestimating the "average familiarity" here.
https://xkcd.com/2501/
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>I read somewhere that Evangelion has similar cultural impact with the Japanese as Star Wars does in the US.
related: "Can You Live Entirely Off of Evangelion Merchandise?" by Red Bard[0].
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0Qr9rztRw4
I very much doubt that they licensed the NERV logo from Gainex here.
> The name and logo of "NERV" are used with the explicit permission of khara Inc., the copyright holder of the "Evangelion" series, and Groundworks Corporation, which manages the rights to the series.
I'm japanese.TBH for a long time i had thought this was a parody account. Around the time of 2011 3.11 earthquake, the NERV Twitter account(the origin of this app) gained popularity and reputation as a reliable source of information in the social media space (At that time government official information provided on Twitter was extremely little).
I guess a part of the reason of its popularity today belongs to otaku culture on the Internet that was a good fit for this kind of anime-origin stuff. Plus the company that runs NERV is owned by Sakura-Internet, which is one of the biggest computer infra business, and is believed to provide a reliable system at time of emergency.
For those unaware, the name and logo are inspired by NERV from the Japanese anime Evangelion (1995): https://evangelion.fandom.com/wiki/NERV
It's very funny and odd that they retained the "God's in his heaven, all's right with the world" text.
“Pippa’s Song”
THE year’s at the spring,
And day’s at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d;
The lark’s on the wing;
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in His heaven –
All’s right with the world!
Robert Browning (1812-1889)
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It's the message I'd hope to see in relation to natural disaster prediction!
That's what made me think that it was a parody at first... Like.. that's just the Eva NERV tagline.. must be an Eva account.
I imagine to the average Japanese person, that's just cool English text and nothing more.
The logo isn't even just inspired by, it just outright is the NERV logo from Rebuild https://wiki.evageeks.org/Nerv_Logo
The company behind it is called gehirn to add more fun to the story. :)
I'm honestly kinda spooked out at the multiple websites and companies here that seem to be from NGE. I can't really tell if these are fake or real.
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My first thought. Both cool but also a little weird, given the content of the anime.
The creator is a die hard fan of EVA according to Asahi Shinbun's interview in 2020.
https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13996940
For another fun Eva partnership, check out the ROG x EVANGELION collection: https://rog.asus.com/microsite/ROGxEVANGELION and https://rog.asus.com/microsite/ROGxEVANGELION-02. I would love to have these, but I have daycare to pay for.
In 2022 they also did a collab with MSI. Those components are pretty cool, but they're for a more mid-range build than the premium ASUS components (something like an i7 with an RTX 4060):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0MHh1l5QLY
This is interesting, but feel like the name and logo do it a disservice. I took way too long figuring out whether this was a parody app or not.
100%, I had to pop into the HN comments after opening it because I wasn't sure which it was!
Though perhaps there is something we're missing that the target audience would more quickly identify it as real.
Since a lot of people seem confused, this is a real disaster prevention app made in partnership with the Japan Meteorological Agency that's been on app stores since 2019: https://www.gehirn.co.jp/en/news/2019-09-01/01-press-nervapp...
Their Japanese Twitter account has 2 million followers, the branding hasn't really caused enough confusion in Japan to hinder them: https://twitter.com/UN_NERV
https://unnerv.jp/about/more
they have an excellent mastodon instance
And was in the news today because their Twitter account hit the API limit and so was unable to send out emergency warnings.
They apparently failed to register with as a public utility which bypasses the API restrictions https://x.com/un_nerv/status/1741794666218180929
The UI/UX graphic design from Evangelion is actually pretty cool and clean. The only other sci-fu UI design I've seen that is also clean and nice looking is from star trek the next generation. Actually they made the UI from star trek better with Picard.
Borrowing the name from Eva might be a bit much in this case but borrowing the UI look won't be. They've done both here. They could've even gotten away with borrowing the graphic design look from Eva without citing it as the Eva UI designs are generic enough that it's not an obvious copy.
Examples:
eva: https://medium.com/astromono/the-amazing-ui-design-of-evange...
lcars: https://www.thelcars.com/themes/lcars-ultra-picard.html
Why not use the name? It's very memorable.
Because it's strange and distracting? Is this a promotional app or an actual earth quake app?
Imagine this: Star Trek the next generation Earthquake Locator! and it's an Lcars interface.
Additionally Eva was a very divisive series. Popular yes, somewhat main stream in japan but also strange enough that its mostly liked by a certain crowd. I'm part of that crowd but at the same time I get why that crowd is different.
To help illustrate imagine 2010s Justin Beiber or Twilight themed earth quake apps. Right? That's sort of a different crowd from the people who like Eva and not everyone is into that stuff. Are you more likely to download the app if it was themed liked that?
Additionally Anime was not always mainstream in the world. It was considered nerdy to like it. It's become mainstream now in the last decade outside of japan, but in japan it's still considered a little different.
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I'm kinda confused, shouldn't this kind of app be developed and diffused by government, open source and not include paid plans to have better information in case of emergency since it should be funded by your taxes ??
The Japanese government already has its own system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_Early_Warning_(Japa...
It works reasonably well, but a lot of times I just never get an alert. The two minutes of shaking I experience yesterday in Osaka I received no alert. Last year there was a very brief level 3 that they blared the dreaded tones on everyone's phones in Tokyo. Stuff like the NERV application are more accurate and I can customize what earthquake levels that I get alerts for.
It looks like all of the emergency notification features are available in the free version. The data is obtained from public agencies. I know in the US there's a wide variety of apps that present data from NOAA and that you can also get it from NOAA directly.
NHK has an app, this guy does it anyway. Somewhat redundant, but redundancy is not always a bad thing.
Its in the NHK World app and turned on by default. I'm not in Japan but my phone went crazy with all the earthquake and tsunami warnings. Remarkable how slow all the non-Japanese media were in covering the earthquake. Remarkable still how every streaming station I looked at was showing the shore somewhere. Fortunately these days without a reporter standing there explaining how dangerous despite the fact they are in harms way. Webcams instead.
Personally: Yeah, I think that would be a good use of tax money. I'd love to see systems like this (as well as ones like covid contact detection) built by governments, in open source, and I literally mean goverment__s__. I'd love it if they had strong encryption and privacy preservation.
Practically: they aren't doing it, so does that mean it shouldn't be made? Government also seems pretty captured by industry (not just US) who are more interested in profits than utility. Sadly that's supposed to be where governments should shine the most as they are supposed to have different incentive structures.
Best note(?): Seems when incentives align and there isn't strong capture that the two can work in tandem pretty well. But that seems more and more rare these days. In fact, this particular app works with JMA (government).
Additional note: But couldn't we also say the same thing about texting, calling, and even email? Are these not social goods? In fact, even in some ways the government does this. It's why the USPS exists, which is not a profit seeking entity and services places that UPS and FedEx don't. Also, the US gov donates to Signal (and Tor and some others) under the Radio Free Asia program. The intent is to get people under oppressive regimes encrypted communication so they can organize against tyrannical rule. But this also causes conspiracy around Signal (and Tor) because there are larger factions of the government that want to destroy encryption. This also creates a lot of distrust, especially among Americans, so would we/they have trust in such a system?
They certainly have a nerve to dilute and add an extra layer to an important public system. Also the name is somewhat fearmongering, so many might prefer to sign up to this than the real thing.
I read the everything trying to determine supported locations. After finding nothing, I decided to install the app. After agreeing to everything and giving permissions, it informed me that only locations within Japan are supported. I’m not surprised, but it would have been nice to have that information somewhere on the website.
It’s on the front page underneath the headline.
“Delivering the most appropriate information at the fastest level in Japan”
How effective is this at detecting Second Impact? That's the only thing that really worries me.
This is somewhat eerie considering the earthquakes happening in Japan over the past day.
They got some fame because they were posting “too many updates” this morning due to the earthquake/tsunami and got blocked on Twitter and had to tell people to use their app instead.
That’s the reason I heard about them, for the first time, this morning.
I saw the name and had to go digging to see if it was real (yes), if NERV was a real government agency and not fictional as I always assumed (no), or if they stole the name/logo (no).
Is there any actual reason this is not open source?
It is like a biological company named Umbrella.
You know what would be great would be an app like this for shootings in America. (Unfortunately).
Citizen does this (https://citizen.com)
I used it for a bit, and it had decent UX, but it seems designed to raise your anxiety until you pay for a snake oil subscription. YMMV
Citizen was also exploring offering private security services. Great synergy I guess
Are they really that frequent, and would an app actually help?
I thought the gun lobby advocated for more guns so they can shoot down shooters.
Shootings affecting many people (ie mass shootings) in America aren’t common, and are over very quickly. Notification apps would not change the outcomes.
Earthquakes in Japan are a fact of life, and affect many many people very often. Mass shootings anywhere (USA included) are rare, freak occurrences, that involve small numbers of people.
Additional fearmongering over the very tiny risk from gun violence in the US actually makes the problem worse, not better. The mass media already does more than enough of that.
Loss of life from mass shootings in America is a far more regular occurrence then loss of life from earth quakes in Japan.
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I didn't mean mass shootings.
In my neighborhood I hear gunshots almost every night. There were several shootings within a block of my house just in the last six months, including one where patrons of the nearest bar had to run and hide in the walk-in freezer while two idiots shot at each other (and both missed). Often times I hear shots and check the police log and can't even find a reference to them.
According to the Gun Violence Archive[0], the US has averaged 2 mass shootings a day over the last three years - less common than earthquakes in Japan, but far from being rare or a freak occurrence.
I would agree that it would be pointless, though.
[0]https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/
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The best way to stop gun violence is to stop "fearmongering" and shrug it off? Doesn't make any sense.
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X cut them off during the Earthquake because they didn't pay for a higher tier plan[1], but they also had a Mastadon account going that was unaffected.
If you rely on this service, you should probably either have the app or use mastodon. X doesn't seem to be a reliable option anymore. Twitter might have temporarily lifted restrictions when such info could save lives, but X wants its $$$ first.
[1]https://www.dexerto.com/tech/japanese-disaster-prevention-x-...
Japan has a very high penetration of X usage, but not Mastodon, so it is natural for them to have X instead of Mastodon.
Additionally, Mastodon working well at the current low scale doesn't tell us much. We don't actually know how reliable it will be if it ever reaches X scale.
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Mastodon has massive Japanese communities on it, Pawoo (social that was owned by Pixiv, was the largest Mastodon instance before Musk took over Twitter, now it's second), mstdn.jp (used to be second, now third), now there's also Misskey, which is not a Mastodon instance, but it's perfectly compatible with it.
Mastodon was battle-tested by the Japanese, almost no one used it seriously before them.
We have a similar situation for public transport here in Hamburg. The status updates for outages on the S Bahn network are only available on X, if you don’t have an account there there’s no where else to see it
> The name and logo of "NERV" are used with the explicit permission of khara Inc., the copyright holder of the "Evangelion" series, and Groundworks Corporation, which manages the rights to the series.
Does this app report real information relating to actual earthquakes?
My understanding from looking at the website and logo and tagline (“God’s in Heaven, all is right with the world”) is this is an augmented reality game set in the Evangelion universe. Similar to Pokémon Go.
Yes, check the footer for links to the company behind it. The original developer was just a huge EVA fan and got permission to use the branding.
The About page explains what data they use and where it comes from. The landing page itself could probably use more details, however.
This would motivate me to use this app if I lived in Japan.
It's a little fascinating to me that Japan's public can so easily take advantage of stuff like this while the USA market seems resistant, while all the next-gen technology that enables the Next Thing is coming out of the USA. Seems like a strange juxtaposition.
I hope the app plays this as the alarm sound: https://youtube.com/watch?v=8KKkdIODSok
The "Enter" button of the splash page is under the cut when my iPad is in landscape mode. The page is also not scrollable, so the whole page makes no sense. Had to turn the iPad 90 degrees for the button to appear and to be able to "enter" the site.
Just FYI if the devs are here.
That's it, I can't no longer tell at a glance if it's legit, legit sponsored, satire or derivative work. I don't know if it's something real, if it's something real with an Evangelion sponsoring/branding for acceptance reasons, if it's someone who quickly made a mock-up app to show how NERV started in our world and in the anime's world, if it's related to today's earthquake in Japan. Or maybe I am tired :/ ?
It's real and has existed for several years. They licensed the name and branding from the Evangelion rightsholders. It got attention today because their Twitter account got rate-limited due to frequent updates related to the earthquake.
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The japanese rights holders for the logo and the japanese company (?) making it at least disagree I think.
The name and logo if nothing else are pretty recognizable and memorable. I know nothing about features, but they seem to be collaborating with institutions too...
You think that they created this app, got permission to use nerv and all the infrastructure to detect earth movements in a day after the earthquake??
Please be more realistic.
You may be confused about the history of this app.