71–80 of 115 posts
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I'm in Barcelona (Sabadell specifically,) and the cellular networks were down. Luckily I have a generator and Starlink.
Isn't Starlink using country-local ground stations for the Internet connectivity? Likely they had power-backup but could it switch to foreign country stations?
> Germans take a 1 hour lunch from 12-1pm. Spaniards have a later lunch, starting around 1pm, and going on until 4 or 5pm. This could possibly be due to the tradition of afternoon siesta. NPR had a podcast episode (Planet Money maybe?) about how the EU was supposed to make it easier for firms to hire cross border and employees to move around. The idea was to be more like the United States. Apparently, this didn't qui…
Solar noon in Madrid is at 2:13PM due to the absurd time zone that Spain's in. Having lunch at 1PM is early, not late.
I'm not trying to play dumb, but sun rises at 6 in the summer in Germany - most people take their lunch break at 12. Sun rises at, I dunno, 8? in the winter - lunch break at 12. Nothing changes and people are usually awake for a while already.
I couldn't tell you when the majority of office workers starts. I would say 9, especially as it's also averaging out 8 and 10 - but I am not sure. Do people in offices (who are not in media agencies) more typically start at 10 or 11?
We awoke to power the next day, but mobile phone services only returned some hours later. Amazing how busy the banks were with people desperately seeking cash. Unfortunately the banks dont handle cash here now, and the ATMs were all offline. The first few hours were scary, due to complete lack of information. I am not sure how people had internet access, seemed like all networks were down here. I dont follow any news…
Look at reviews, I guess, or try and find an old grundig. I'm sure other people have other brands/models.
If I can remember the last decent one I was looking at I'll comment again, but hopefully this will set you on the right track.
> some information services were still able to stay online and available I’m in Valencia, Spain. The mobile internet connectivity here during the power outage was very unstable. Cellular phone signal strength was also very very low for the majority of the time. Even sending SMS or WhatsApp messages would not work most of the day, because of just how unusable mobile connection was for me and my girlfriend and our fami…
> And I only managed to load news pages, national or foreign, a few times during the hours of outage I think this is a problem with https. I remember intermittent connectivity as way better before Google forced the issue. And yes I like https. But it comes with drawbacks. E.g. no isp caching.
Also I am very happy that it is not a thing and that ISPs cannot do that. When I go to a website I want to get the website from the webserver exactly as the server delivers it and not some other page that my ISP thinks is how the website should look.
Besides with global CDNs we have something very similar but better anyway. I don't get the site from the other side of the world but from the closest CDN server that does caching. The important difference is that the CDN server is authorized by the website to cache the page and the webmaster has control over what it does.
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> All my money is electronic Yes, one positive aspect of these types of events is that the hazing against the cash-first minority worldwide has ebbed slightly. Sweden seems to be backtracking from their cashless push due to the threat of Russian cyberattacks as well. In related news, high-speed trains appear to have been sabotaged in Spain today, causing transportation chaos again. This happened while they have not b…
The cause is the frequency drop that was not compensated by the inertia of rotating turbines due to increasing use of photovoltaics. See https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1916893181876326868?t=32a... A high level engineer in a Spanish generation plant confirmed this to me.
Related: Starlink was still online and its usage surged during the outage: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1919360047005528193
How would it work if people don't have power to run the local antenna.
They don't move or anything during use, and they beamform which drastically reduces the power needed. At least this is my understanding.
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Would it be possible to sign up for Starlink __during__ an outage like this?
Sure, but you can't use it until the hardware shows up.
> SpaceX Corp. has launched six Starlink satellites that can provide internet access for smartphone users without requiring them to purchase additional hardware such as antennas.
https://siliconangle.com/2024/01/03/spacex-launches-first-si...
> some information services were still able to stay online and available I’m in Valencia, Spain. The mobile internet connectivity here during the power outage was very unstable. Cellular phone signal strength was also very very low for the majority of the time. Even sending SMS or WhatsApp messages would not work most of the day, because of just how unusable mobile connection was for me and my girlfriend and our fami…
Silly question but do you have AM or FM radio? When the lights went out in the northeast blackout of 2003 we turned to our cars to put on AM radio. Even after Hurricane Sandy my mother was without power for 3 weeks and she was running a battery powered radio.
I shudder to think of a future where moving information requires high performance digital electronics vs. a crystal radio set.
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> All my money is electronic Yes, one positive aspect of these types of events is that the hazing against the cash-first minority worldwide has ebbed slightly. Sweden seems to be backtracking from their cashless push due to the threat of Russian cyberattacks as well. In related news, high-speed trains appear to have been sabotaged in Spain today, causing transportation chaos again. This happened while they have not b…
> hazing against the cash-first minority That's...a pretty strong opinion. Otherwise cash will still have it's issue during a blackout. For instance I'm not sure most shops would operate their POS during a blackout or without any connectivity, at least if there is any hope of resuming normal operations within days, it would screw the ledgers. ATMs of course are dead. Vending machines are also probably not ready for t…
Most of the bars keep serving to cash customers, and use paper to make notes for future bookkeeping. Some even start using paper tabs.
Big companies switch to backup generators (Walmart) or immediately cease business (also Walmart, because the card communication failed).
Some smaller ones had no lights to continue to be safe inside, so chased everyone out.
Other ones had enough windows and kept selling on a cash basis, making notes by hand. Some of these could open the cash drawer others couldn't, but made do with what they could.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All my money is electronic Yes, one positive aspect of these types of events is that the hazing against the cash-first minority worldwide has ebbed slightly. Sweden seems to be backtracking from their cashless push due to the threat of Russian cyberattacks as well. In related news, high-speed trains appear to have been sabotaged in Spain today, causing transportation chaos again. This happened while they have not b…
The cause is the frequency drop that was not compensated by the inertia of rotating turbines due to increasing use of photovoltaics. See https://x.com/shellenberger/status/1916893181876326868?t=32a... A high level engineer in a Spanish generation plant confirmed this to me.
But what caused the frequency drop? Large-scale grids are designed and operated in such a manner that any single fault, even one which causes a frequency drop (like a generator or a power line getting disconnected), will not cause a blackout. Which means: if there isn't enough inertia to compensate the frequency drop caused by a single fault anywhere in the grid, the system operator will either order photovoltaics and wind turbines to reduce their generation to a safer level, or order traditional rotating generators to operate as synchronous condensers (which adds inertia without adding generation).
Which means that either there was a double fault (two faults close enough in time that there wasn't enough time to reconfigure the system to a safer state before the second fault), or that the modeling of how the photovoltaics and wind turbines would react to a single fault was incorrect (for instance, expecting them to stay connected for longer on that level of frequency drop). My personal guess is that we're going to see a repeat of what happened here in Brazil in 2023, as I explained in another comment on an earlier thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43821801), where a single fault was enough to destabilize the system because the inverters in wind and solar power plants disconnected earlier than expected.