5 ms·

California earthquake alarm sounded – 92 years late

roblabla 9y ago
I cannot even begin to understand how this could happen :/. Computers barely existed in 1925, let alone the internet. How could this old quake resurface seemingly randomly now ? Why was the event sent to the media dated 2025 when we're in 2017 ? Seems like a very broken system to me...
- caipre 9y ago
  > The federal body said work it was doing to revise and update information about where the historic quake struck had caused computer systems to misinterpret the data and think it was seeing a novel event. It doesn't seem that implausible for a program to be reading through a dataset and issue a notice for a measurement above some value. If the dataset encoded years in just two digits, it (almost) makes sense that the program would report it 100 years off. Imagine: with open(file) as f: for record in f: year, month, day, time, magnitude = record.split() if magnitude > 5: raise_alarm()
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
> Few organisations reacted directly to the news because it was dated 29 June 2025 - exactly 100 years after the actual event took place. Y2K rears its head yet again?
- rgacote 9y ago
  This was my first thought when I read this. Definitely Y2K flavored.
24gttghh 9y ago
I was wondering why I got an email about this, then a later one saying the event was deleted :S
- sjs382 9y ago
  Same. For anyone wondering what we're talking about, the USGS offers an earthquake notification system that you can sign up for via email. Global alerts are pretty infrequent, so it doesn't hurt to sign up for this if it's something you have a passing interest in. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/ https://earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/
  - 24gttghh 9y ago
    And one can customize the alerts based on region and magnitude, and you can even set nighttime sleep modes to ignore events under a certain magnitude! It's a well put-together service from my perspective.
    - twothamendment 9y ago
      Maybe they need a new feature to allow customization of alerts based on what decade they are in!
lathiat 9y ago
> The LA Times, which uses AI-based software to automatically write up the USGS alerts, did issue a news story based on the alarm notice lol who knew it would be so easy to get into AI. I can use my templating skills (or mail merge for that matter)
- mturmon 9y ago
  As you note, the LA Times has a little bot that generates these headlines. Like you, local journalists are not impressed: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2014/03/la_times_quirky_quake_rob.php http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2014/03/la_times_quirky_qu...
geiseric 9y ago
I get Earthquake alerts from USGS in my email. I saw that alert and was like "Oh crap!", but then it was rescinded a minute later. I don't live in CA, but I would hate for that to happen to folks.
vondur 9y ago
Well to be fair on the geologic time scale, 9 years is practically on time.
takeda 9y ago
Sounds like Y2K bug surfaced :)

I cannot even begin to understand how this could happen :/. Computers barely existed in 1925, let alone the internet. How could this old quake resurface seemingly randomly now ? Why was the event sent to the media dated 2025 when we're in 2017 ? Seems like a very broken system to me...

caipre 9y ago
> The federal body said work it was doing to revise and update information about where the historic quake struck had caused computer systems to misinterpret the data and think it was seeing a novel event. It doesn't seem that implausible for a program to be reading through a dataset and issue a notice for a measurement above some value. If the dataset encoded years in just two digits, it (almost) makes sense that the program would report it 100 years off. Imagine: with open(file) as f: for record in f: year, month, day, time, magnitude = record.split() if magnitude > 5: raise_alarm()
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]

TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago

> Few organisations reacted directly to the news because it was dated 29 June 2025 - exactly 100 years after the actual event took place. Y2K rears its head yet again?

rgacote 9y ago
This was my first thought when I read this. Definitely Y2K flavored.

24gttghh 9y ago

I was wondering why I got an email about this, then a later one saying the event was deleted :S

sjs382 9y ago
Same. For anyone wondering what we're talking about, the USGS offers an earthquake notification system that you can sign up for via email. Global alerts are pretty infrequent, so it doesn't hurt to sign up for this if it's something you have a passing interest in. https://earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/ https://earthquake.usgs.gov/ens/
- 24gttghh 9y ago
  And one can customize the alerts based on region and magnitude, and you can even set nighttime sleep modes to ignore events under a certain magnitude! It's a well put-together service from my perspective.
  - twothamendment 9y ago
    Maybe they need a new feature to allow customization of alerts based on what decade they are in!

lathiat 9y ago

> The LA Times, which uses AI-based software to automatically write up the USGS alerts, did issue a news story based on the alarm notice lol who knew it would be so easy to get into AI. I can use my templating skills (or mail merge for that matter)

mturmon 9y ago
As you note, the LA Times has a little bot that generates these headlines. Like you, local journalists are not impressed: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2014/03/la_times_quirky_quake_rob.php http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2014/03/la_times_quirky_qu...

geiseric 9y ago

I get Earthquake alerts from USGS in my email. I saw that alert and was like "Oh crap!", but then it was rescinded a minute later. I don't live in CA, but I would hate for that to happen to folks.

vondur 9y ago

Well to be fair on the geologic time scale, 9 years is practically on time.

takeda 9y ago

Sounds like Y2K bug surfaced :)