There's a company in England called "Cascode" who make firefighter alerters. These are really basic "beeper" pagers, which you can program to have a bunch of different tones and LED patterns based on the RIC and Subcode.
I look after several thousand of these across several hundred paging sites.
They're relatively inexpensive (70 quid or so in quantity) and they last about six weeks on a commonly-available AA battery. The batteries go flat enough to trigger the "low battery" beep at about 3am, for some reason. I don't know why.
There's no messaging involved, although the encoders are capable of sending a text string. The message is "get up and get down to the fire station right now", which generally needs no further explanation. POCSAG is unencrypted, so there would be privacy concerns with sending actual incident information in the clear with it.
While we're on the subject of old tech, until BT finally cut the last of them off, we use dialup modems to control the encoders (not dialup internet, just a hundreds-of-miles serial cable) as a backup, and dot-matrix printers to print out a hardcopy message for the crews to pick up.
All very low-tech. All very fixable. All stays working if you don't mess with it.
It's doable but it would be custom firmware and it's not really necessary. Two way paging isn't really worth doing because then you need a massive device with a massive battery, or something that uses uncontrolled mobile phone networks (and generally still has a massive battery, that lasts about a day).
You wouldn't even need particularly good encryption, you'd just need something adequate to stop casual eavesdropping really - "keep them busy for half an hour" would stop people from sniffing the POCSAG traffic and tweeting it, so that people show up at incidents and hang around filming it on their phones.
This incidentally is what a guy in England got arrested for a few years ago, exactly that. It's perfectly legal to listen to and decode pager messages (or any other radio messages), you're just not allowed to pass them on to people or act upon them, and posting them on twitter and then going round to rubberneck at the ongoing incident very much ticks those boxes. As with so many things in the UK, to paraphrase Aleister Crowley, "Don't Be A Dick shall be the whole of the law".
I got into making hot sauces recently. I didn't really care for any of the results until I started fermenting them. Chop up ingredients, add brine, put everything in a jar with a fermentation lid that allows gas to escape. Then let it sit on the counter for a week or two. blend and maybe add a bit of vinegar. That's the basic process, and in my humble opinion, it's the absolute best way to make hot sauce
(YMMV, do your own research, there are obviously risks to letting food sit out at room temperature for two weeks)
It's not very well known or particularly well reviewed. It just clicked with me, I've watched it probably a dozen times. It's about a jewel heist and the drama surrounding it
I liked Heist and especially liked the cast (Delroy Lindo and DeVito are excellent in everything I’ve seen them in as well) - but there’s something up with Mamets direction and cinematography that makes the movies look way cheaper and older than they are. Never understood it, not in Spartan or the Spanish Prisoner (another underrated film IMO) or Heist.
This is perhaps the most random and stupid comment in this thread, but I always hear Lou Costello going "HEY MAMETTTTTTTTTT!!!!!" in my head when I see his name. (Yes, I know he's saying 'Abbott'.)
Looks like Perplexity includes sponsored results at the bottom of your searches, and my UBO isn't blocking them. They seem to be fairly unobtrusive, though, and they are labeled as such. For now, at least.
> They seem to be fairly unobtrusive, though, and they are labeled as such. For now, at least.
This was one of main selling points of Google Search 20-something years ago. Innocent text-only context-relevant ads on the side of the page. How times have changed...
I also thought I had my finger on the pulse of some The Onion/Lopez-Alt beef, like TMZ on the Food Network.
ontopic edit: I am interested in an optimal onion cutting technique, while I'm happy with mine, the upside-down banana teaches that there's always a few ways to approach and learn something.
I'm an American, I lived in Germany for several years around the turn of the century. German roads that I encountered were far superior to American roads. Their construction is far more robust, the roads last much longer. And with German lane discipline (passing someone on the right is practically a cultural taboo, it's a prohibition that's taken quite seriously) they are usually a joy to drive on.
I found the autobahn utterly nerve-wracking to drive on.
In the US, on an interstate, the MPH spread around the speed limit is probably -20 to +20 (i.e. limit is 75, slowest cars are at 55, fastest at 95)
In Germany, on autobahns, you have speed ratios of up to 2x. You have to constantly be 110% aware of every vehicle within 1/4 mile of you, because you could either be closing in the much slower vehicle in front of you, or suddenly approached and passed by a much faster vehicle from behind.
Absolutely. I was stationed in Germany for 3 years while I was in the Army. You could be in the left lane of the Autobahn, doing 90+ passing a truck, and suddenly a Ferrari that wasn't there 5 seconds ago is right behind you, flashing its headlights demanding you get out of the way (apparently you're supposed to merge into the side of a semi).
When I'm driving trough Germany I always encounter at least one worker van going the speed of light and flashing the <insert sport car> for going to slow.
What? passing on the right in Germany?
As far I can search (and recall) it's prohibited except on multilane roads (including the Autobahn) when traffic in the left lane is stopped or is moving at less than 60 km/h
I watched this YT video [1] about the interstate system recently, I found it informative and entertaining
To me, the Eisenhower Tunnel in CO [2] is noteworthy. It crosses the continental divide at altitude. From what I've read and watched, they don't allow HAZMAT trucks to go through, because the risk is simply too high (well equipped fire/rescue departments are hours away, among other factors)
I used to work on Motorola Minitor 5 pagers. Looks like they recently released their newest model, the Minitor 7
I wonder if pagers are still used in hospitals? I imagine so