Exposure Notifications inactive

How does it know if someone has Covid? What alarm goes off if it senses Covid? I can't get that image of the Lost in Space robot out of my head. DANGER DANGER DANGER WILL ROBINSON

Some cut.

No, it will not. How can it know you are leaving home?

I have BT on full time, and I stay most of the time at home. No impact on battery, I get to bedtime with 2/3 of battery left.

I need BT when I get to the car, and I prefer not forgetting to switch it on.

And what does it mean?

These apps just keep track of other phones that have the Covid app on them that come near your phone. Later if someone with the app on their phone learns that they have Covid they can voluntarily put that into the app and then all the people who had the app on their phone, who were near the infected person's phone, get notified that they were near someone who was Covid positive. From what I've seen not many people are using it. I don't because so few people have it that there is little value. For it to really achieve effectiveness there would have had to have been a national plan, encouraging everyone to use it. That didn't happen because we have a federal govt that refused to have any national plan at all.

With GPS. Or seeing wifi hotspots change. But I agree, I don't think it's likely that it will give an alert that BT is off just because you leave home.

Some batteries have to be labeled as HazMat. I eventually kept the laptop but when I was going to return it to Amazon the return label to be printed out included a red hazmat notification.

Well it's a little computer. It should know. Google or something knows everything.

But what I meant was, When I'm leaving the house and I turn the phone on again, I hope the reminder re-appears.

Now I have a reminder. At least if it shows up again.

They need to follow some sort of rules to ship batteries. They must have been made for Li-ion batteries. I'm not at all convinced they apply to alkaline batteries or AAA batteries. But even if they do, Amazon solved any problem by shrink wrapping them in groups of 12 so no + could touch a - end. Clear, rather stiff shrink wrap. Maybe that's not the right word.

It gets told that they tested positive.

It doesn?t work like that.

You installed a [Covid] contact tracking app. Those are used to record when your phone has been near another phone for some minimal amount of time, like 5 minutes. It doesn't track when YOU have been close to someone else for that long. It tracks when the phones were near each other, like on side tables on a charger alongside beds in separate apartments across a common wall. The pretense was when the phones are near then so are the people using those phones, but that is incorrect. They might help, but only if widely adopted, and the adoption rate has been dismal in countries where users are not mandated by law to use them.

Those apps do NOT identify you were near an infected person. After testing positive, a user gets a code from a medical authority which is then used to alert other phones that tracked you were close to them. Sending the alert is voluntary, especially since sending an alert lets the servers track who sent an alert to know who is infected, and is outside the purview of, say, a hospital that is supposed to keep your records private. Just because someone else's phone tracked your phone, and that someone else got infected, does NOT mandate that you get an alert you were close to them (and within the incubation period since ancient contacts are worthless).

Since Bluetooth pinging to find other nearby Bluetooth devices is how these tracking apps work, it's no surprise that the tracking app you installed complains that you disabled Bluetooth.

If you leave Bluetooth disabled, you'll only get the notification from the tracking app when it loads. You leaving the house does somehow magically reload the app. YOU will have to remember to reenable Bluetooth when you leave home. Unless you live in an apartment, condo, or other dwelling that has shared walls or live where you are in very close proximity to others (to eliminate false tracking with those you do not have contact since there were walls between you), why turn off Bluetooth unless you're concerned about your old Android's Bluetooth vulnerabilities?

Someone mentioned the app might use GPS. Apparently that responder doesn't realize that GPS is not always accessible. It can get blocked: metal studs, file cabinets, concrete, refrigerators, plaster (not sheetrock), water, brick, and other objects along with RF interference can block the GPS signal. How would the app know when you entered and exited your car since while you are in the car then you aren't exposed to others (just like walls in an apartment mean you are not exposed despite your phone's Bluetooth can reach another phone's Bluetooth)? The app would have to monitor for a rate of change in GPS that would represent the speed of travel for a car, like greater than 30 miles per hour, but then the app falsely tracks other Bluetooth phones when you're stuck at a stoplight or rush-hour traffic for many minutes.

Then you might want to consider how paranoid you are regarding the vulnerabilities of leaving Bluetooth enabled all the time, even when you are moving around outside your home. Does the promise however slight of getting notified you might be infected (and have to pay for testing if not covered by health insurance) outweigh the possibility of getting hacked via Bluetooth? You won't get a latter version of Bluetooth (5.1) unless your phone maker supplies an OS update. After a phone is no longer supported, the OS updates disappear (unless you get a Google phone). You won't get a new version of Bluetooth until you get a newer version of the OS (well, maybe if you root your phone than you can decide when to update the BT stack).

The warning may be due to shipping restrictions on certain types of batteries. Lead-acid batteries sold without the electrolyte (sulfuric acid) should be shippable, but not if the electrolyte was added. Sulfuric acid requires special hazard shipping requirements. Shipping of hazardous materials costs extra and requires special handling. Since the "provision" wasn't mention, no idea what might be the provision, regulation, shipping restriction, or whatever.

In my area, alkaline batteries can be disposed of in your regular trash disposal. Same for other "disposable" batteries, except those using mercury which is poisonous. The recyclable content is very low, and they are not a fire hazard (but I'd still put tape on one end). Lithium batteries are poisonous, so they must be dumped at a hazardous disposal facility. NiCads contain lead, so they are poisonous, so also require special disposal. MiMH and, in general, rechargeable batteries require special disposal. You need to check what are the rules in your area.

I put tape across the contacts, and store up the old NiCd, NiMH, and lithium batteries (don't use mercury batteries) to take them in as a bunch to the local hazard disposal facility. Cost is $10 per trip, so I stow up a lot before making the trip (10 miles away, but I can combine with trips to grocery, hardware, and other stores). Some hardware stores (e.g., Home Depot via Call2Recycle bins) have disposal service. There may be local rechargeable recycling drop-offs in your area.

If the battery says "Battery Must Be Recycled" or has a recycle icon, they require special disposal.

Which doesn't work inside my house. Google maps history always ask me to confirm that I'm home, it never knows.

Ah, ok. I don't know, my phone is on full time.

Ah.

I know there is a regulation for liquid acid batteries. New rechargeable batteries have some risk of fire. But plain "basic AAA" batteries :-? Maybe they stuck the label "just in case".

Certainly, if you short the ends of any battery there is a risk of fire.

Rod Speed explained on 1/11/2021 :

Why not?

Or maybe a population that simply refuses to put one more tracker on their phone. I am not affected at all. My phone doesn't have "apps" and I seldom actually have it anyway.

Rod Speed presented the following explanation :

You can be notified that you had an exposure though.

Yeah, well HCWs should assume they are being exposed anyway.

But it is even less so with the fomite vector where you pick up particles left some time ago by an infected person you never even got close to.

IOW, it works *best* for the aerosol vector.

I didn't know google maps kept a history on me, not that I mind. It will help my mother find out where I am.

It never asks when to confirm I'm home, but the GPS does work inside my house, I think .

I want to be able to say "Alexa, I'm leaving", and it will turn my cell phone on, lower my heat, turn off the stove, turn off the bathtub water, eject from the closet the proper coat for the current weather, and display in my glasses a list of things I need to bring with me that day. Just kidding. I'm happy when Alexa leaves me alone.

Goole Maps app, tap your microicon at the top right, then tap on the "timeline" entry in the menu.

Oh, we will get there alright :-D

Some of it you can do now, if you install on your house the proper servos.

Why do you have your cell phone off at home? Most people have it on wherever they are, except maybe at night or if they have a low battery and need to conserve power.

"So? does turning Bluetooth off save battery?

No, not really.

Over the course of our 26-hour ?typical day? test, leaving Bluetooth on consumed just 1.8% more battery compared to the test with Bluetooth off."

Hi "&y",

Given your "posting record", I suspect you're a troll, but I will wait for you to troll further to confirm that suspicion (or, perhaps, you'll prove to be real, which I would welcome).

Nonetheless my point of responding is that you may not get a reply from this "micky" troll (at least not from the server it opened this thread with).

Facts: o "micky" was booted off Eternal September in late December (about the 23rd or so as recall - based on facts presented to Wolfgang) o "micky" immediately started spamming on Paolo's server (aioe) (who timed him out, but for an unknown time frame, AFAICT) o "micky" subsequently moved to UsenetFarm to spam this ng (who kicked it off just now, only moments ago, in fact, AFAIK)

Note: I'm not sure if the "Bod" troll was also kicked off, as they're one and the same anyway - where the Usenet Farm server admin wasn't explicit.

BTW, this thread was always just a "credibility troll" anyway, (IMHO), where you can tell by a whole bunch of obvious clues, not the least of which is the OP's never put any energy into them (they just fabricate the question of of thin air, toying with anyone who tries to help, by throwing up arbitrary obstacles and by not acting upon any advice nor proving a single word it says).

One by one, the facts will get these trolls kicked off its servers.