Comment by hollow-moe
3 years ago
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.