[HN Gopher] Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain ...
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Internet usage pattern during power outage in Spain and Portugal
Author : ghoshbinayak
Score : 91 points
Date : 2025-05-05 12:29 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.akamai-mpulse.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.akamai-mpulse.com)
| codetrotter wrote:
| > 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 families here.
|
| And I only managed to load news pages, national or foreign, a few
| times during the hours of outage, to try and get some information
| on what cause, how widespread, and how long it would probably
| take to restore power.
|
| On the plus side I did get to try my little solar panel for the
| first time to try and charge one of my power banks using solar
| power. And it did seem to get some juice out of it.
|
| The biggest problems of all from my pov was:
|
| - We live on the 8th floor with a 1 year-old baby. Going 8 floors
| of stairs with the stroller was not fun.
|
| - All my money is electronic, except from one 50 euro bill I had
| in my wallet. How was I going to pay for water and food if this
| outage would go on.
|
| - What's going on? How bad is it? How long is it going to last?
| Very unstable mobile internet as mentioned.
|
| In the end we ended up staying outside going for a walk and
| meeting up with my mother a bit and then me and my girlfriend and
| our baby going to the beach and sitting there until late. Finally
| when we came home lights were starting to come back on. And the
| elevator was working again too!
|
| The next day the first thing I did was walk to the nearest ATM
| and withdraw several hundred euros, and I bought a bunch of
| water. We don't have a car, so I used one of my big bags with
| wheels to be able to bring more water home than usual.
| briandear wrote:
| I'm in Barcelona (Sabadell specifically,) and the cellular
| networks were down. Luckily I have a generator and Starlink.
| amelius wrote:
| Curious if anyone was able to use their Meshtastic radio to
| contact anyone.
|
| https://meshtastic.org/
| tiagod wrote:
| I live close to Lisbon (in the South margin of the Tagus
| river) and I can say Meshtastic was very active throughout
| the outage.
|
| I received news of power coming back in the first few towns
| through it, before FM radio.
|
| I needed to get closer to the river to get reliable
| contacts, but I've now ordered a nice antenna and a solar
| kit to mount a repeater in a mast on my roof so I can cover
| the center of my town more reliably.
| imhoguy wrote:
| 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?
| genewitch wrote:
| They have lasers on the satellites so they can relay to
| another ground station. I "come out" in either Dallas or
| Georgia somewhere. Once I exited in Wyoming or thereabouts.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| It's wild how different experiences can be of the same thing
| - we didn't even realise anything was amiss until we went to
| pick our kid up from kindergarten, and everyone was stood
| around on the streets looking a bit lost.
|
| We live off grid - independent power supply, starlink, no
| cell reception in our valley, EV charged off the panels. Just
| another day.
|
| Worryingly, after about four hours of power cut the local
| town had already run out of water (they pump up to a
| relatively small (100m3) holding tank), so we donated our
| stash in the car to the kindergarten for the kids staying
| later.
|
| No run on the banks here though - we are super rural and
| pretty much everyone keeps wads of cash (land deals etc. are
| almost always done with the official bit and the under the
| table bit) and has a full pantry at home.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| > 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 been able to conclusively
| determine the cause of the blackout.
|
| The plot thickens...or gets sidetracked, depending on what the
| truth turns out to be.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > 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 that (Japan has
| emergency ready ones, I can't imagine other countries doing
| that)
|
| We're already in a world where cash is second class citizen,
| and it won't just get back to the "good old days" because of
| a temporary outage.
|
| And it will also be a different story altogether if
| power/internet never comes back. Having cash stashed
| somewhere might not help you that much.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| >That's...a pretty strong opinion.
|
| I'll go out on a limb and say it's only a strong opinion
| for anyone who isn't familiar with trying to use cash
| exclusively for all physical transcations under 1000
| dollars in their day-to-day lives.
|
| In London, they have tube stations with a single coffee
| stand on the platform that's card-only. It's a fucking
| outrage in my humble opinion. and just another form of
| debanking, pure and simple.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Denmark is often cited as an example of a society that's
| advanced for electronic payments, and it is -- but
| there's a law here that means, in most circumstances, a
| business must accept cash.
|
| The official advice was changed from "keep some cash for
| emergencies" to "keep some cash in small banknotes for
| emergencies" to "pay in cash at least sometimes, to keep
| the systems that deal with it functioning".
| coldpie wrote:
| > That's...a pretty strong opinion.
|
| If you're a person who uses cash a lot, the comments you
| hear do start to feel a bit like hazing. You very often
| hear jokes like "who uses cash anymore?" both directed at
| you and not, like you're a crazy person for preferring not
| to support Visa's advertising empire with a ~1-3% tithe on
| every purchase.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's interesting and informative to watch how different
| places handle power failures (which where I am in the USA
| are not common but not entirely rare, either).
|
| 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.
| cft wrote:
| 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/1916893
| 181876326868?t=32a... A high level engineer in a Spanish
| generation plant confirmed this to me.
| otherme123 wrote:
| Nobody knows the cause at the moment. All that we have are
| guesses and FUD. Even "high level engineers" don't know for
| sure what happened.
| cesarb wrote:
| > The cause is the frequency drop that was not compensated
| by the inertia of rotating turbines due to increasing use
| of photovoltaics.
|
| 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.
| cft wrote:
| According to my friend, the freq drop was caused by a
| sudden large supply surplus over the instantaneous
| demand. Nuclear plants were offline and there was nothing
| to absorb the freq drop at that moment.
| cesarb wrote:
| > According to my friend, the freq drop was caused by a
| sudden large supply surplus over the instantaneous
| demand.
|
| Wouldn't a supply surplus cause a frequency _increase_ ,
| not a frequency drop?
| cft wrote:
| In the case of the rotating generators, yes. In the case
| of the solar panels, I do not know: I guess it depends on
| the inverters characterists? Spanish is not my native
| language, so I may have mixed it up when talking to him.
| blockmarker wrote:
| It is not at all certain that there was any sabotage.
| Supposedly it was sabotage because important wires were
| stolen, but wire has been stolen by criminals for decades to
| sell for the materials. And for the last few years there has
| been an increase of delays, breakdowns and failures in the
| whole railway network. It is far more likely that common
| theft on a decaying system caused the problems, but that
| would pin the blame on the government for this decay. As such
| they prefer to blame anyone else, including shadowy enemies
| sabotaging the country.
| bluesmoon wrote:
| Thank you for your personal story about this. It helps to put
| things in perspective.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > 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.
| blahaj wrote:
| I don't think ISP caching would be a thing without https. It
| would bring a lot of additional complexity and resource
| requirements for them. I can hardly imagine that being worth
| it to save some bandwidth. Maybe it made sense in a world
| where bandwidth was very limited.
|
| 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.
| cesarb wrote:
| > I don't think ISP caching would be a thing without https.
| It would bring a lot of additional complexity and resource
| requirements for them. I can hardly imagine that being
| worth it to save some bandwidth. Maybe it made sense in a
| world where bandwidth was very limited.
|
| Transparent squid proxies were common back when most sites
| were on http. They let ISPs reduce the use of their limited
| upstream bandwidth, while also making sites load faster.
| The complexity and resource requirements were modest:
| install squid on a server, and configure the router to
| redirect (masquerade) all outgoing TCP port 80 connections
| to the port configured for squid on that server.
| blahaj wrote:
| The internet is much bigger, more diverse and complex
| today. You need a lot of storage to get any meaningful
| impact. Caching the http of Wikipedia won't get you much.
| You need to cache lots of YouTube videos. Or you just get
| them from the data center you peer with over the fat link
| you built.
|
| With bandwidth usage the diversity of the data retrived
| over the internet has also gone up. You can't just cache
| the few most popular websites and save most bandwidth.
| But bandwidth capacity has scaled a lot so you probably
| also do not need to.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > 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.
|
| You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking. The
| old method would be naive today.
|
| There would be some privacy concerns I guess. But it could
| be opt-in on the site owners part. I think caching some
| videos and pictures would save a lot of power.
|
| > Besides with global CDNs we have something very similar
| but better anyway.
|
| Sure but they are some switches away.
| blahaj wrote:
| > You could have some hash check to prevent hijacking.
| The old method would be naive today.
|
| But how do you know that the cached site is up to date?
| How does the ISP know that? What about dynamic content?
| What about consistency between different requests that
| are part of the same page load?
|
| > Sure but they are some switches away.
|
| My point is that this does not matter much. Usually, at
| least in non sparsely populated parts of the world with
| modern infrastructure, these switches are close and there
| is lots of bandwidth capacity.
|
| I just don't think it makes sense for ISPs to save
| bandwidth on these links by building their own local data
| centers when they peer with a CDN data center anyway.
| prof-dr-ir wrote:
| > The next day the first thing I did was walk to the nearest
| ATM and withdraw several hundred euros, and I bought a bunch of
| water.
|
| That is a very good idea for everyone. Putting together an
| emergency supplies kit is what various European governments,
| and now also the European Commission, are beginning to
| officially recommend:
|
| https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/26/brussels-ask-e...
|
| > What's going on? How bad is it? How long is it going to last?
|
| I think some governments suggest that people buy a battery-
| powered or hand crank radio to address exactly this issue.
| mjevans wrote:
| Many of these also have small solar panels. Enough to
| recharge the device and sometimes build up a charge for other
| devices like a tablet or cell phone. It wouldn't be enough to
| continuously run that greedy screen, but it would be enough
| to maintain standby radio contact.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > - What's going on? How bad is it? How long is it going to
| last? Very unstable mobile internet as mentioned.
|
| 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.
| codetrotter wrote:
| It's a very valid question.
|
| I don't have one currently. But I did hear later that others
| were using radio to get news.
|
| Thank you for bringing it up again. I'm gonna buy a small
| battery powered radio :)
| fhdkweig wrote:
| My Android cell phone has a FM radio app that was pre-
| installed at the factory. It requires the use of wired
| headphones to act as an antenna, but otherwise works fine.
| gus_massa wrote:
| > _And I only managed to load news pages,_
|
| Did you try with HN? I remember a long time ago I was in a
| hotel with bad connectivity, and one of the few sites that
| loaded was HN (no images, almost no JS, ...). I was able to
| read the comments, but it was difficult to read most of the
| articles.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| In Sweden we all get this. Saying you should have water, food,
| radio and cash and more so maybe Spain or EU needs this too :)
| Now do I have this, no. But we are further.
|
| https://rib.msb.se/filer/pdf/30874.pdf
|
| EU has started this a bit, we are waking up. EVROPA.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/european-union-response-disasters-war-...
| alexpotato wrote:
| > 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 quite work out due to both language and
| cultural differences
|
| Then, one of the guests says:
|
| "Yes, there were some challenges. In fact, we ended up getting
| books with titles like: 'How to manage Spaniards if you are a
| German'"
| retSava wrote:
| Also interesting with the sharp 10AM spike on both desktop and
| mobile in Germany. Video calls, I presume.
| bluesmoon wrote:
| I have it on my TODO list to look a little more into that. It
| caught me by surprise when I pulled up the data for Germany.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I was surprised by the same thing. Is it a common time for
| meetings? Is there some cultural thing that happens exactly
| at 10am?
| INTPenis wrote:
| I once heard a Danish head of a university say that they wanted
| more Swedes to come over and work because Danish workers tend
| to question orders more than Swedes do.
|
| I have no idea if this is true, just sounded funny to me.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| What I have heard: Danes question orders. Swedes follow
| orders. Norwegians does not question orders, but does not
| follow them either unless they feel like it.
|
| Don't know if this is true.
| rightbyte wrote:
| I guess the joke should be 'there are no orders' not
| 'follow orders'.
| mrweasel wrote:
| When working for a Norwegian company, but with colleague in
| all of Scandinavia, we where introduced to the notion that as
| Danes we tend to be a bit pushing, impatient and just wanting
| to get on with the job. This would clash with the Norwegians
| who would want to do a lot of prep-work, upfront
| documentation and generally follow a certain procedure. The
| Swedes would avoid starting something until very one on the
| project had been heard and their concerns addressed.
|
| If this is completely true in all cases seems questionable to
| me, but we did complete a project faster than the Oslo office
| could plan and document an identical project in Norway,
| resulting in an audit from the head office.
| alexpotato wrote:
| I'm a dual US/Italian citizen and the joke in Italy is:
|
| "The Germans like the Italians b/c they are fun but don't
| respect them b/c they are disorganized.
|
| The Italians respect the Germans b/c they are organized but
| don't like them b/c they are not fun"
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 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.
| briandear wrote:
| A legacy of Franco and Hitler. (Franco wanted to be on Nazi
| Germany's time zone.)
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24294157
| ntonozzi wrote:
| Well this explains a lot of things that I always attributed
| to Spanish culture.
| wink wrote:
| But why would you take your lunch break according to the sun,
| especially if you work in an office?
|
| 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?
| charliebwrites wrote:
| > lunch ... starting around 1pm, and going on until 4 or 5pm
|
| So wait when do they get work done? Do they just work later
| into the night?
| lkramer wrote:
| yes, shops are also open later.
| masklinn wrote:
| Yes. The historical siesta is about mitigating the hottest
| part of the day, spaniards tend to work both earlier and
| later.
| anthk wrote:
| The Northern of Spain has no concept of hot in the Summer.
| The actual issue is that we are living in the same timezone
| as Berlin.
|
| And we are like reverse Brits.
|
| Brits: big breakfast, small lunch.
|
| Spain: small breakfast (coffee and a small pastry), and big
| lunch.
|
| So, we aren't having siesta. We have a big gap at work to
| be able to feed ourselves on time.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| You mean the northwest like Galicia? The northeast where
| I live still gets plenty hot. We don't have major beach
| resorts like Lloret and Salou for no reason :)
|
| Though I guess this might not qualify as "Spain"
| depending on who you ask - if I ask my neighbours if they
| are living in Spain they certainly will say NO :P Hot
| topic alert :)
| anthk wrote:
| The Atlantic Spain and everything around Picos de Europa.
| Also, most mountain ranges, and Spain is the 2nd most
| mountainous country in Europe, so a lot of Spain is not
| that warm in Winter.
| ornitorrincos wrote:
| the only people I know who do that are shopkeepers as they
| stay closed until 5 when people start leaving work
| tecleandor wrote:
| In offices it would usually be from ~14h to 15h or 15:30h. Open
| to the public, street-level, small businesses (let's say, a
| butcher, a small hardware store, a bakery...) usually close
| from 14h to 16h or 16:30h. They open till later than other
| countries, though, often till 20h or so. That can vary per
| region and the size of the city, of course.
| anthk wrote:
| But not for siesta, for lunch. And, by lunch, for HNers, I
| mean a mid sized meal, not just a sandwitch.
|
| The problem is Spain is that we have the breakfast and lunch
| kinda the opposite as the Brits.
|
| Brits eat a big breakfast and a small lunch. We do the
| opposite. Some coffee and maybe a small pastry, and we are
| done for breakfast. For luch, we have a first and second dish
| and a dessert.
| metronomer wrote:
| tbh that's in mostly an exaggeration, specially among new gens
| who tend to do more quick lunchs and take-aways. Even though we
| have lunch significantly later than the european average (I'd
| even say closer to 2pm or even up to 3pm rather than 1pm),
| something that somewhat awkwardly here I agree it's excessive,
| I doubt anyone (unless they're exploiting the cultural-
| difference thing and somehow it's working) stays until 5pm
| lunchin' midweek. Perhaps it may only be applicable in the
| context of the weekend (when lots of gatherings at bars and
| tapa overdoses for who-knows-how much time happen), but overall
| for at least 5 out of 7 days a week that's an
| oversimplification.
| myself248 wrote:
| It's one thing to have traffic data, presumably connected from
| some internet point or something, idk, I just assume that
| everything's monitored somewhere.
|
| But how do they know users' phone battery level?
| detaro wrote:
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...
| littlecranky67 wrote:
| > But how do they know users' phone battery level?
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/g...
| scary-size wrote:
| That one threw me off as well! As the other commentators
| mentioned: "Navigator.getBattery" in browsers is the culprit.
| "Luckily" it's not supported in Safari and Firefox.
| sillyfluke wrote:
| I'm curious what was the situation with Spaniards and Portuguese
| people roaming elsewhere in the EU with their local phones, since
| roaming phones are usually patched through the home country
| telecoms. Did their experience differ significantly compared to
| their compatriots?
| giorgioz wrote:
| I was in Spain during the blackout nearby Valencia. My phone had
| 3G data connectivity from 12:30 to 18:30 despite the outage. Same
| for the fiber signal, powering the modem&router with batteries
| allowed me to a working fiber connection for 4 hours. Some
| neighbors with different mobile operators told me they did not
| have signal. It might be some operator had backup diesel
| generator that lasted 4 hours.
| pmontra wrote:
| Not only the backup generator of that base station but the
| backup power of all the network hardware up to it. The base
| station could have outlasted some other parts that run out of
| diesel before it did and yet it did not have connectivity.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Be aware that internet usage was pretty much impossible. Landline
| internet dropped soon after the outage even for those with UPS
| systems.
|
| And 5G internet was completely unusable during the outage. All 3
| major networks immediately switched to "Emergency calls only"
| status and allowed zero data. So doing analysis on it isn't very
| useful because most people had no access and only small packets
| made it through (favouring more simple services). It worked maybe
| 10 minutes every couple of hours and very limited.
|
| I have an Iridium backup for emergency calls too. But no
| internet. And was thinking of getting Starlink but I don't want
| it anymore since musk going nazi and also the Spanish Government
| seems to have dropped a 9EUR per month surcharge on it.
| lopkeny12ko wrote:
| Related: Starlink was still online and its usage surged during
| the outage: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1919360047005528193
| amelius wrote:
| Would it be possible to sign up for Starlink __during__ an
| outage like this?
| ru552 wrote:
| Sure, but you can't use it until the hardware shows up.
| amelius wrote:
| I found this:
|
| > 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...
| wkat4242 wrote:
| You mean online? Using what connection exactly? :)
| Thaxll wrote:
| How would it work if people don't have power to run the local
| antenna.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That's easy. Generator, UPS. I used my UPS to keep my fibre
| up for a couple hours when the outage happened. At some point
| after that the local DSLAM lost power too though, I guess
| they only have limited batteries too.
|
| The Starlink mini model is also easily powerable by battery
| without 220V converter.
| genewitch wrote:
| Unless it's heating I don't think it uses much power. If
| you'd like I can plug mine into a kill-a-watt and see the
| draw. I can't imagine it's more than 100W all told, which the
| UPS it is connected to will run with the switches for
| probably a full day, and I have a specific generator for
| recharging UPS (a Honda with an inverter, clean enough
| power.)
|
| They don't move or anything during use, and they beamform
| which drastically reduces the power needed. At least this is
| my understanding.
| anthk wrote:
| Ah, yes, a flagged comment, because maybe some clueless idiots
| think the whole of Spain it's a paradisian beach in the Southern
| Mediterranean part and they didn't manage to research about the
| split work schedule affecting the whole country, even when the
| North and mountain/plains the temps can get below 0 in Winter
| with ease, so the whole siesta myth get crushed down.
|
| No siesta, but:
|
| - Lunch with the family. No phones, just the TV news.
|
| - GMT+1 Timezone, so the sun's highest point it's at 13/14PM .
|
| - Split work schedule because of the lunch
| anthk wrote:
| In my case, 2G/3G connections with a power outage from 12:30 PM
| to 14:20 PM in Bilbao. Calls barely worked and for the internet,
| being a doomed nerd I've juse used Lagrange under Android with
| Gopher and Gemini proxies to the web (News Waffle) in order to
| read the newspapers because our media outlets didn even fit the
| sites for the low bandwith, something North Americans are greatly
| doing with https://text.npr.org and https://lite.cnn.io
|
| Some people even bought FM radio receivers en masse; because they
| work with batteries and the stations and repeaters are already
| set to use emergency generators.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I work on the University, and there I recovered wired internet
| rather quickly probably due to backup generators. At home most
| routers stopped, some even took until the next day to be
| functional again.
|
| As for mobile connectivity, the main issue was the congestion.
| The cell network didn't fail, usually, but in most places either
| your phone wasn't able to connect or had no internet. Too many
| people trying at the same time, I guess. On the University on the
| other hand it worked perfectly. Maybe because it's a usual
| crowded place and there are more resources, but I think it was
| also because a lot of students (even teachers) went home, so
| those who stayed were mostly alone with a good internet...but
| less people to talk to.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| 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 (apart
| from HN) but from what people are saying locally, the cause is
| still unknown, which I guess means it can happen again at any
| time.
|
| Any recommendations from preppers on a suitable portable radio?
| It would be nice next time to be able to distinguish rare
| draughty power line issues from possible start of WWIII.
| genewitch wrote:
| You want a portable shortwave radio with external antenna.
| Amazon shows them ~$30 which is about what they cost. If you
| get a fancy one they go 3-4 times as expensive. I have a radio
| shack grundig battery powered one and it works fine.
|
| 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.
| whitehexagon wrote:
| Thanks. I'll have another look, the ones I'd seen on amzn es
| looked a bit gimmicky, solar torch, hand crank, bt, but
| looked like they would last 5min or melt in the rain.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Tecsun PL series is pretty much the modern version the old
| Grundig Yachtboy series.
|
| I have a PL 330 as my 'is there anybody out there' armaggedon
| world radio receiver. I also sometimes use it just for kicks to
| hear radio from somewhere unreasonably far away from me.
|
| You can find a lot of pros and cons across the different models
| in their offering with plenty of online discussion as well.
| Funes- wrote:
| >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.
|
| This is not only untrue, but I would argue it also borders on
| being defamatory, consciously or not. Lunch breaks are typically
| one to two hours long in Spain, not three to four hours long--
| that's _ridiculous_. What the author is describing there would
| better fit what we tend to do during weekends, where "sobremesa"
| (coffee and drinks after we're done with the main dishes) can
| admittedly get a bit out of hand, but absolutely _not_ on working
| days.
| kranke155 wrote:
| The siesta essentially does not exist in a lot of workplaces in
| Spain anyway.
| echelon wrote:
| > Lunch breaks are [...] two hours long in Spain
|
| Wow.
| seszett wrote:
| They misunderstood "one or two-hour lunch anywhere between 1pm
| to 5pm" for "4-hour lunch from 1pm to 5pm". Same with France,
| people have a 1-hour lunch either from 12 to 1pm or from 1pm to
| 2pm, rarely a 2-hour lunch.
| bluesmoon wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. It's more correct to say that
| traffic drops off for 3-4 hours rather than everyone goes
| offline for 3-4 hours. It's likely to be staggered based on
| the slope of the curve at that point.
| snkzxbs wrote:
| You are missing the fact that a lot of people in Spain, maybe
| the majority, do what's called a "jornada partida", which means
| that businesses close at around 1-2 pm and then reopen at
| around 5-6 pm. During that time people generally have lunch and
| maybe sleep.
|
| Especially during the hotter months, the streets are
| practically empty.
| dcrazy wrote:
| This seemed to me to vary by region. It was near universal
| when I visited Andalucia, including in Sevilla. It was
| uncommon in Madrid, and I don't remember encountering it at
| all in Barcelona.
| dagw wrote:
| Is that actually still a big thing? I've worked on several
| projects with people in Spain, and none of them did that.
| Lunch was never more than an hour, and basically everybody
| was back from lunch and working by 2.30 at the latest.
| ergl wrote:
| Jornada partida doesn't tend to apply to office workers and
| white collar work in general. It's common to see it in small
| shops, but it's in steep decline even in those areas.
| bluesmoon wrote:
| That's a fair criticism. The data suggests that there are
| different breaks spread out over that 3-4 hour period, not one
| break of 3-4 hours. I've reworded it accordingly.
| dcrazy wrote:
| It's accurate for business hours in at least some parts of
| the country, but it is paired with late closing. Even office
| workers will be on the job until 8. Popular wisdom attributes
| it to Franco's adoption of Central European Time to be
| aligned with Hitler.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Also, Germany is 13deg east of Spain. That's almost 1 hour
| worth, 1 hour would be 15deg.
|
| There's a misconception that Spanish people are 'lazy' for
| their late lunches, but they're eating lunch at roughly the
| same local solar time.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Something similar happened in Ontario many years ago, it was out
| for like 7 days. The neighbours came outside and talked, and
| everyone spent a lot more time outdoors. Saw the stars, and
| people burned candles in the evening. I actually look fondly at
| it, and feel like everyone should experience this. Now in the
| back of my mind is this feeling of wanting to live in a world
| without modern technology. Take a time travel vacation to the
| 17th century.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| > there were no visits to these [government food safety] sites at
| any time prior to this event for the several weeks that I looked
| at the data
|
| That's crazy that their usage is that low. Not even one visitor?
| dagi3d wrote:
| >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.
|
| It's "funny" how someone that is supposed to be so smart, can be
| so ignorant at the same time
| wink wrote:
| Or bad at interpreting data?
|
| Of course not _all_ Germans go for lunch at 12-1 but unless you
| are in retail or your team has decided 1-2 is better, or 30min
| is enough.. I think it 's just a very good guess that it's 12-1
| for most the people. If it was a real 50:50 split between 12-1
| or 1-2 then it could look like a 2h break. Unsure, I can't read
| their data properly.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| But they do? At least near us? Shops close from 1 'til 4, and
| are then open until 9pm. Some businesses like mechanics too -
| although offices tend to stick to the more widespread 9-5, with
| more lunch from 12:30 to 14:00.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| why do phones leak battery percentage to the internet?
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/g...
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