Workers at FEMA worry that demanding disaster survivors access services using email could shut out people without internet connectivity from receiving government aid.
  • frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io
    43·
    3 days ago

    I had zero electricity, cell signal, or any sort of communication service during and after Hurricane Beryl, and that wasn’t even a strong hurricane. There was no power north of me for 11 days. How are you going to check email with nothing to power these devices?

  • IphtashuFitz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    281·
    3 days ago

    20 or so years ago I worked at Akamai for a while. They were one of the first, and at the time the largest CDN provider in the world. They have racks of networking gear in literally thousands of data centers around of the world.

    One day while still learning their systems I was digging through old tickets in their Network Operations Center and stumbled on one that was a few years old and still open. The initial message in the ticket was merely an automated message that a node at a Midwest ISP was down. There were a few comments by various Akamai folks who tried to remotely access the equipment, followed by attempts to reach the ISP by email and phone. None of that was successful.

    The last entry in the ticket was a statement that the ISP’s datacenter had been destroyed by a tornado.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    28·
    3 days ago

    Modernizing communication makes perfect sense, but it should be an addition to improve flow of information, not a replacement that leaves some people behind for whatever reason. Most people would move to such a system willingly, freeing up resources for the older methods to work for those who need it. This sounds like a move to “accidentally” filter out certain demographics.

    • londos@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 day ago

      The post office should be modernized into a national ISP. It’s not a huge conceptual leap to go from mail delivery to more broadly enabling communication in all forms.

      And postal banking too!

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        2·
        1 day ago

        Great idea. Along with that we should sink some money into the digital infrastructure to make sure as much of the country is connected at the best possible level. Wait…we did that in, what, the 90s? Gave a lot of money to the companies of the time and…shit, where’d that money go?

      • Rhaedas@fedia.io
        6·
        2 days ago

        Older people, or those who don’t have access or aren’t familiar to technology. Maybe even other situations I don’t know about. Why wouldn’t we offer help and a way to access that help to anyone? I don’t care how they voted or who they are. I wish they’d come around to thinking differently, but they’re still people.

          • Rhaedas@fedia.io
            3·
            2 days ago

            All I can say is the wisdom from George Carlin: “It’s a Big Club, and you aren’t in it.” None of these people, Republicans or not, aren’t either. They just haven’t realized it, and may never.

  • HubertManne@piefed.socialEnglish
    14·
    2 days ago

    thankfully every citizen is guaranteed a permanent email address that can never be taken away by the state.