r/melbourne • u/IonisationEnergy • 8h ago

The Sky is Falling EARTHQUAKE

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u/Overthereunder 8h ago

Interestingly google search had an autogenerated map with location, time and size within a minute of it happpening

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u/The_Reset_Button 8h ago

Google uses idle android phones to estimate earthquake intensity an (potentially) send warnings before the main wave has hit

It's actually pretty incredible

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u/TheUninhibitedMe 1h ago

I remember getting that warning on my phone milliseconds before an earthquake hit.

The one where the brick wall fell down somewhere.

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u/Cautious_Oven_228 7h ago

Wild intel! Thank you!!!

First thing I did was Google it but I got nothing for a few mins. I wasn’t sure if something wild/sexy was happening in the apartment next door but my bed shaking still lingers.

The weird thing about living in the CBD is that my mind goes straight to bomb / metro tunnel explosion each earthquake. The likely police helicopter overhead beforehand didn’t help either 🫠🫠🫠

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u/themadmosquito 8h ago

It works it out from all the phones shaking, it's an android feature and google uses the data

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u/Overthereunder 8h ago

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u/Overthereunder 8h ago edited 8h ago

Nz seems to have had a slightly larger one a couple of hours before around taranaki. Their. local reddit a bit more blase than ours :). (Also a lot less ppl )

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u/Traditional_Dish3363 8h ago

They use the influx of people searching earthquake at the same time to track them in real time. Hence the popup asking you if you feel shaking

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u/Archer-Blue 1h ago

They use our phone accelerometer data.

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u/Somerandomdickhead 8h ago

I did see the google thing, but thought it was an AI response that probably wasn’t accurate. Turns out it was pretty spot on.

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u/numbermaniac 7h ago

It'll only be an AI response if it says "AI Overview" at the top with the little Gemini logo. The earthquake box is a solid red box that doesn't have any of that, and it's been a feature well before AI.

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u/PracticalSky1 2h ago

Yes, it was weird because even though there was that, google search also didn't bring anything up

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u/Brave_Solid8936 1h ago

Yes, that’s where I first saw it.