In the last month, our landline was hacked, our mobiles wouldn't work at home unless we wandered all over the place outside to find a signal, and we lost our internet connection several times. Progress ? How we take it for granted that all these things will keep working - what happens if they don't? Devastation? How would this affect you
Just glad for time away from school. And employees, customers, cpa's, lawyers and other pillars of the community that want money from me.
Tetters, the affect for us would be minimal. Mostly the scheduled payments would be delayed, but without penalty. I'd really miss reading GardenStew posts, but I could catch up on those later. We have no landline, since that was so unreliable that we just gave it up. We don't rely on internet. It is a convenience for us, not a necessity (I still have my quill pen and parchment paper to communicate with!).
Before Covid, one day I went to do the grocery shopping at the local Tesco superstore. During the exciting venture, all the computers crashed and the customers were herded outside into the car park - leaving their shopping trollies behind (complete with frozen goods) we were advised what had happened , and told they couldn't serve anyone unless the computers were back up and running correctly.....made me think (ouch) In some cases it is not just up to the individual. Hospitals, and doctors surgeries all depend totally on computers these days -for example.
We found out the hard way that our phones are network backups and can broadcast a local wifi hotspot home network to which we may connect our home router. The first world problem with this is called total harmonic distortion, where the generator creates electrical static in addition to the power. The 3 and 5 volt boards in the electronics cannot handle the errant wave spikes of voltage and can burn out or short chips. Reportedly there is a fix, where the generator feeds a rectifier and turns AC current to smooth DC and then that is fed into a inverter, which turns smooth DC back into the smoothed sine wave of AC power. Turns out rectifiers that can handle a house cost as much as the generator. Inverters are not as bad. This is a demonstration of my superpower whereby I can turn an inexpensive project into an expensive one by not reading ahead in enough detail.
Well IF I could understand all this stuff DM it would indeed be something of a miracle. All I do know is that if this new and very clever line of communication breaks down - for whatever reason, many of us will be totally stuffed in so many ways. There are a few ''old fashioned'' things in the UK that I think are ''improving'' by going full pelt backwards. Old fashioned telephone lines will need to be ripped out (to salvage the copper no doubt) even if they actually work and suffice for many people - particularly those in outlying places where there is no other form of communication since smoke signals were phased out. Some among us of a certain age will find ways to cope in an entire blackout, but the younger ones will have no experience to fall back on.
Pen and paper still work and never go down ! Problem is most of the younger generation do not know how to work them !
We don't depend on WiFi for our phones (both cell phones), we live in an area with good coverage. If your internet router was hacked, you should be able to restore it to factory settings and then reset the password. If that doesn't clear it up, your provider should replace it and get things back on track. If our router were to be hacked, it would be a bit of a hassle, but it wouldn't be a long term problem.
@toni, the phone we had that was hacked was a wired one with British Telecom. The new one we have now is voip. Evidently the general plan here seems to be - get rid of all the old fashioned wired phones. I think our router is protected with the Internet Provider....hope so!
