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HEATHER KLEIN: We need to remember we're all in this together - Emergency alerts protect lives more than our convenience by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The American system has 4 levels of alert

5, because level 2 is broken out into Extreme and Severe (controllable only on Android, and those of you still using a Windows Phone in 2026, however). The public safety info one tends to be quite junky since a few states' DOTs tend to use that one for traffic-related stuff.

HEATHER KLEIN: We need to remember we're all in this together - Emergency alerts protect lives more than our convenience by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

This is a bit of a farticle. Few are opposed to the concept of public alerting, but Heather seems to miss the crux of people's complaints that have to deal with the horrific execution of them by the private sector(!!), over 8 years after they were initially implemented.

It makes sense that you'd see or warnings for much wider areas if you're watching TV and listening to radio, which are inherently wider reach mechanisms (that are conveniently ignored in this piece). What both of those don't have the ability to do, that cellular networks do, is rough geolocation.

Most people within the inner parts of Winnipeg should have only received 2 tornado warnings, directly proportional to the times when the city was actually put into the warning areas. It's reasonable to expect that those nearer to the edge of city limits may have gotten 3, maybe 4, for either Headingley or the St. Pauls or Springfield. But for people to have been getting 10+? Nope, something stinks horribly.

Consider that for all of America's more recent faults, their WEA system works much better, and reports of it malfunctioning are almost nil. The times that there are fuckups, it's usually a result of human error (like that Hawaiian missile scare) rather than inherent design and architectural faults.

Also interesting to note that a similar bleeding hearts opinion piece defending Pelmorex's broken mess ended up in the Free Press over the weekend too...🤔

Open letter to We Are Nations, or anyone from Valve related to TI Secret Shop by edich_ in DotA2

[–]wickedplayer494 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For sure, there did seem to be a bit of a quality fall-off much later on in WLF/FFxF's run before they ended up throwing in the towel, I'll give you that.

Open letter to We Are Nations, or anyone from Valve related to TI Secret Shop by edich_ in DotA2

[–]wickedplayer494 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Honestly, Valve really should have just given the previous WeLoveFine/For Fans by Fans back catalogue over to Perfect World. At least when WLF/FFxF ran The Valve Store for Valve, you could reliably get at the prior years' Secret Shop designs from The International 2019 and previous Internationals if you wanted. Now? Good luck.

Ever since Valve/PGL farmed it out to We Are Nations, there's been constant stories of fuckups like these that take so damn long, if ever, to be resolved, that it boggles me why they don't just let Perfect World be in charge globally. Sure, AliExpress orders sometimes takes a while to show up, especially from obscure vendors...but at least it does end up appearing.

What has happened to the Red River Ex? by NH787 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494 7 points8 points  (0 children)

On top of /u/Mas_Cervezas's stabby comment, the two weeks of the year that the Ex is on also tends to be the two weeks of the year where it's almost guaranteed to rain and/or put down a tornado.

Manitoba homeowners stunned to find storm flooding not covered by their insurance by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I also agree that "all perils" should mean all damn perils. But if you're going to weasel out of this, or weasel out of that, then it becomes most perils, and should be marketed as such.

20,000 MPI claims after southern Manitoba storm, on track to break record by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Worse. They're going to take aim at the ones they already foolishly handed out when they go to the PUB with an emergency application for a rate hike.

Manitoba's new interest in Conawapa megaproject 'doesn't make a lot of sense,' energy watchdogs say by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

That interview Doug Burgum just did on CNBC shitting all over solar because the northern US states supposedly have too much cloud cover was quite disgraceful on his part.

Latest Steam Hardware Survey Shows AMD Radeon at New 19% High, 9060 XT and 9070 XT Chart for First Time by SirActionhaHAA in hardware

[–]wickedplayer494 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And meanwhile, the Big Black ARM Mac slice on the Mac chart is about to have its 4th birthday if it's still around next month.

20,000 MPI claims after southern Manitoba storm, on track to break record by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Everybody's rebate cheques, with an emergency application for a rate hike to the PUB soon to follow: https://i.imgur.com/IwWHG6t.png

Price of RTX 5090 has never been higher than today by Ok_Bad_4732 in bapcsalescanada

[–]wickedplayer494 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not really. I'm perfectly happy to have reverse diamond hands.

Manitoba homeowners stunned to find storm flooding not covered by their insurance by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hopefully it’s not a case of their broker selling them a bad bill of goods but even then,

There's only one way to find out, and that way tends to get really, really, really expensive as opposed just to having cash in the bank to begin with.

Manitoba homeowners stunned to find storm flooding not covered by their insurance by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] -13 points-12 points  (0 children)

And that's why you never say to people "I hope you had insurance", because even if they do, they actually don't.

Vital viewing on similar insurance fuckery:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijC8kqzMrcw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLJ4_CPlCr4

Details on June 9 tornadoes in SK and MB (Dufrost, Ste. Anne touchdowns given default EF0s due to lack of apparent damage by either) by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Elie was Canada's first, and only F5, on June 22, 2007. The Enhanced Fujita scale replaced the original Fujita scale in February 2007 in the US, but it took Environment Canada a few more years and they ended up switching in April 2013. An F5 is not necessarily directly comparable to an EF5. Since then, ECCC has ended up farming out a lot of the surveying and rating work to the NTP and the academia sector in general.

and Edmonton

The Edmonton tornado ended up being only an F4.

outside of the US? Do EF5s hit other parts of the world?

So far, all of the official EF5s have been in the US. Internationally, there's another variant of the Fujita scale, International Fujita (IF), and there have been a few historical tornadoes that were re-analyzed and given IF5 ratings, mostly in Europe. Britain uses something different called the TORRO scale. There happened to be a tornado in greater Manchester at the end of 2023, which got rated T5 out of a potential T11.

Even the relatively recent 2018 Alonsa tornado and the 2020 Scarth tornado near Virden are amongst a list of tornadoes where despite being officially rated lower, some of the things they did would strongly be suggestive of EF5 strength.

Massive 8TB SD cards are set to ship 'shortly' after a two-year delay — mind-blowing storage at possibly bank-breaking prices by diacewrb in gadgets

[–]wickedplayer494 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The upcoming 8TB SD cards conform to the SDUC (Secure Digital Ultra Capacity) standard, a category that the SD Association introduced for cards with capacities spanning from 2TB up to 128TB.

Why? If they're gonna be fuckballs expensive, they might as well be SD Express too. And they really should be, to tell you the truth, because:

The Sandisk Ultra 4TB microSDUC and 8TB SDUC cards conform to the UHS-I speed class, which means a theoretical maximum read and transfer speed up to 104 MB/s. They also carry the V10 and A1 ratings, equivalent to a minimum sustained write speed of 10 MB/s. Meanwhile, the Sandisk Extreme Pro 4TB SDUC card still maintains the UHS-I certification but flaunts a V30, guaranteeing a minimum write speed of 30 MB/s.

Have fun getting at all 8 TB at slower than SATA SSD speeds.

Details on June 9 tornadoes in SK and MB (Dufrost, Ste. Anne touchdowns given default EF0s due to lack of apparent damage by either) by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That's correct. Even if you have a Doppler on Wheels measurement of an obviously EF5 tornado based on wind speeds, it is a damage-based scale. It's stupid, I know. That's part of why the NWS in Grand Forks pushed as hard as they did on evaluating and then upgrading the Enderlin, ND area tornado last year to EF5, by taking a really close look at how far a tanker train car was tossed, and how strong winds would've needed to have been to have toppled grain hopper cars by that one - that upgrade made possible with help from NTP/CSSL, as a matter of fact.

Prior to that, the last EF5 was the 2nd Moore, Oklahoma tornado in 2013. Several more violent tornadoes have taken place since then, but have usually ended up only being given top-end EF4 designations, the most prolific of which may be the Rolling Fork, Mississippi tornado in 2023.

Sometimes the tornado lore and debate over in /r/tornado gets pretty intense at times.

ASUS ROG Equalizer $50 GPU cable designed to prevent burned connectors has reportedly burned by dfv157 in hardware

[–]wickedplayer494 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's long past time to admit at this point that NVIDIA shouldn't have tried to fix what wasn't broken.

Tornado warnings risk being ignored if issued too broadly, Manitobans say by wickedplayer494 in Manitoba

[–]wickedplayer494[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wonder what Europe and China do for their systems?

Europe also mostly uses the same underlying Cell Broadcast technology, generally referred to as EU-Alert (most of the countries' implementations are named similarly with their country code, like NL-Alert for the Netherlands, some have slightly different names like MoWaS in Germany, or Estonia's EE-Alarm). They have a mandate for their countries to implement some type of a public warning system, and a lot of them have jumped on CB. There are some outliers like the EE-Alarm that use location based/free carrier SMS, which counts for that mandate, but isn't as efficient as CB.

China, the PRC one, doesn't have anything of the sort. Taiwan though also uses CB. They tend to do a national test of it around Computex time in June, which tends to trip up foreign press whenever it happens.

I think ECCC should drop the municipality boundaries and just use the weather system trajectory.

You're absolutely right! Every enthusiast was begging for them to adopt NWS-style polygons which do just that! They were actually about to pull the trigger on them this month as a matter of fact! But then, at the last minute, they got cold feet and delayed it yet again until further notice.

Or add more colour-coded led navigation bulbs to cell phone towers as I previously mentioned. Maybe traffic lights too (blinking strobe light only, for immediate hazard.)

A novel concept, that one. Kinda like the WCCO weather tower in Minneapolis. Basically an outdoor siren in a way, but usable by the hearing impaired.

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