I use an SXT, as I got it cheap, but the wap LTE kits, the LTAPs mini or the hap AX lite should do as well - softwarewise they are all the same anyway. (Just watch out for hardware without LTE modem card and be aware of the difference between LTE-M and LTE as in the knot.)

Sometimes you find decent older ones on eBay as well.

I don’t know where you live,but as you are mentioning 911 I guess it’s the US - there are a shitton of ambulance services that use nurses as BLS or ALS providers around the world. (The netherlands, sweden, Italy, Spain, just to name a few. I intentionally do not name the US here,see below)

For the US, UK and to a lesser extent Germany there is a simple reason: You guys did fight tooth and nail not to do so.

But let’s go back a bit further: If you look into the history of EMS it’s not like that the fire departments were that happy to do so (and to this day I am a staunch opponent to them doing so. It’s an all around bad idea) and in many parts of these countries police, cab services and funeral homes did provide the first ambulances, other than charity organisations.

When it became clear that prehospital care was needed in these countries the fire departments or independent “transport only” ambulance services had become the norm in most areas and there indeed were some people that pushed for nurse staffed ambulances - as nurses during the war had shown to be beneficial in that role.

But they were basically scolded, often even publicly insulted, by nursing associations:

• Nursing back then was far from an independent profession like it is today. Back then actual medical skills were largely dependent on doctors orders with very little leeway for interpretation. (From a nursing book in 1958 “if the blood pressure of a patient is too high or too low must,under all circumstances,be decided by the doctor and it’s not upon the nurse to decide this.”) Asking someone who is fully dependent on another profession for decision making to now make independent decisions without that profession and in the worst possible environment and use skills that the same person wouldn’t be allowed to use in their regular workplace understandably was a major cause for concern, dissent and resentment back then. And to some extent this is understandable.

• The second factor was based on the issue of gender and “morals”. Nursing back then was a mostly female profession. Putting them to the scenes ambulances need to respond to (brothels, crime scenes, etc.) would, according to a female nursing director in a UK hospital “corrupt my girls”. Additionally, due to the fact that heavy lifting would be required(see below) and the ambulances would need to be driven by someone, the “poor nurses” would need to work alongside male ambulance drivers and that would also lead to immorality. (Their words, not mine. In case of the UK somewhat insulting to their Queen,imho)

• Another factor was surely the fact that “transport only” ambulances already existed and that (also due to the lack of proper equipment) it was (rightfully so) considered backbreaking work - patients did need to be lifted far more than today, lifting equipment was primitive and medical equipment was far heavier. (I remember defibrillators that had 40kg…and I am not that old). So adding a third person would mean extra cost while you still need men (according to their reasoning back then). And as the first paramedic provides little more than BLS+ it was not that resource intensive to teach the people already doing the job.

Nowadays nursing has developed a lot. But so has paramedicine and it is an independent health care profession in the more professional systems (CAN,UK,IR,AU,NZ,GER,POL,etc.). Because skills,mindset and approaches towards patient care are different. The US with it’s abhorrent EMS system uses nurses in some roles,but tbh, the main reason is a lack of proper paramedic training standards, standardisation and oversight and the results are, well, underwhelming.

And why are nurses not named in line with other first responders in the US and similarly in a lot of other countries?

Because they aren’t first responders. The issue with being a first responder is not the level of care, it’s the “unknown”. Hospitals are, to a certain extent a controlled environment. Even in the ED you most of the time know what’s happening next, even if the next patient is a multi system trauma and comes in without prior notification it’s still your playing field. You have light, it’s warm/cold, you are rarely alone, you have your equipment where it was the day before and the day before. On scene it’s different. The next call might be a mansion. Or in a ditch. Or a methlab. It’s the same people you see in the ED, but now it’s their home turf. I have resuscitated an almost naked 12 year old in -20° C alone (as a in “single responder”) in a park known for it’s shady people. That’s different.

Don’t get me wrong: Nursing has it’s own challenges - I worked both sides long enough to know that I sure as hell won’t ever work another hour in nursing. As a para you have 1 patient most of the time. Not 25. Once you know your call,you can be almost sure that you won’t have another patient until you complete the call there won’t be another patient suddenly taking away your attention. You can leave the patient after like an hour max. And you rarely see them again.

All these things are different in nursing. Multiple patients, changes in priorities, seeing patients day after day - it is its own beast. But it’s different.

I am happy for everyone who does nursing. So am I for every midwife. Or every guy and gal that takes up paramedicine. We all have our place in this hellish trade.

(Source: Working as a paramedic -critcare nowadays - for almost 25 years now, worked inside hospitals for 7, mainly anaesthesia, critcare and ED, now consulting hospitals and EMS)

I use a cheap Mikrotik LTE Router as a second route. It has the smallest data plan my provider offers - but it’s enough for maintenance and if I need more due to the main line being faulty it’s the same provider’s fault and they pay the bill anyway.

It mainly goes into the OPNsense as a second gateway,but it also allows me to VPN in and reboot the OPN if needed.

If the OPN would be fucked totally in theory I could run the network directly over it,but that would be nasty.

A friend of mine actually has a pretty nifty solution,but he is an absolute pro at these things. He has a small device (don’t ask me what SBC exactly) ping and check (I think DNS and a http check is included as well) various stages of his network, including his core switch, firewall and DSL modem. If one of them freezes the device sends a data packet via LoraWAN. He can then send a downstream command to reboot the devices.

Currently working on a sideproject using meshtastic and conventional LoraWAN: We have dozens of smaller streams here that are somewhat flash flooding prone, often with extremely locally limited precipitation. (The last time I took damage the cell was 500m wide and the damage area was only 1.2km long. We received almost 80l/m² in one hour) This makes monitoring and warning extremely difficult and the official water level probes by the government are too far downstream and only show larger issues - for the people living on the smaller ones the damage is done - for some it might also be too late to warn them off upcoming backwater as the communication options are often difficult for them.

The idea is to use no-contact water level probes deployed to strategically useful locations and maintained by locals to monitor the level and flow of the water, transmit via conventional LoraWAN and meshtastic and inform both the local communities and official emergency response channels of the levels.

Currently still in an early stage but we are seeing more interest in that and it might end up as an official research project by a local university. (If anyone has any recommendations for cheap reliable sensors let me know…this is the current main issue - the whole node needs to be under 250€ in the end)

Good, that makes it a bit better. Sorry if I am a bit salty about this topic, but I literally had to attend a 13 year old girl who got hit by a car due to someone “racing to hospital” once - was not a pleasant call and ended with life altering injuries. (And the reason for the “emergency” absolute bullshit).

The “drive safely” is relative,btw - even for professionals, believe me. There is a small study that compared the driving skills of regular first responders (lights&siren drivers) in a simulated family/partner/work-partner emergency under regular driving conditions (no lights and sirens) to their normal driving skills. It’s between 4 and 7 times more likely to commit a potentially accident producing traffic infringement.

Anyway: Just because we can send these resources doesn’t mean we always do - emergency medical call takers generally know what they are doing and will ask you the right questions. It won’t be “I need an ambulance, by kid got stuck by a bee in the neck” “okay,we send one,bye!”.

And even if they decide to make it an “all out” call there are plenty of people along the way who can stand resources down once they reach you and assess you. But we would rather send resources 10 times and be not needed 9 times than have the one call that actually needs that response not getting it. So… Don’t be mortified. In doubt,call us.

First of all: Stay calm. It’s extremely rare for people to go to the doctor to late just due to “not caring enough” unless it’s old (mostly rural)folks. (One of the first things I learned: When a farmer calls an ambulance, always take full ALS gear with you) Or caused by mental health issues or financial constraints. People are far more resilient than we generally think.

Then: Most industrial nations have “medical helplines”. In Australia it’s 1800 022 222, in Canada 811, in Germany 116 117, etc. Resesarch your local number and if unsure: Call them.

Then: Look at the so called ABCDE Scheme.(Extended version of blood goes round and round and air goes in and out and any deviation from that is bad)

Airway: Anything that fucks up an profoundly airway for more than 30 seconds is an issue - call an ambulance. Aspiration, foreign body obstruction, anaphylaxis reaction with airway issues. Extremly runny noses (as in RSV) and associated breathing problems warrant an ED visit. (But seriously people, get your kids vaccinated)

B: Breathing: Anything that continuously makes breathing problems is a “go to the ED” or “call an ambulance” thing. Continuously (!) is the point. It’s normal for someone to have a coughing fit or breath a bit heavy when having a flu. But there is a difference between “my lungs are gonna kill me, i need to stay on the sofa and watch netflix” to “breathing has become so bad I actually have to focus on it and one flight of stairs slowly would make me feel woozy” to "okay,now I really really need to fight to breath enough ".The second one is a reason for an urgent care visit, the later one for an ambulance call. Also: Look for the lips and the area around it. Does it look blueish? If yes: Seek help. There are countless examples online. With children it’s a bit more difficult, to be fair. But as a parent you often will know when - when you manage to stay calm. Signs of acute need to seek help: Children whose chest kind of “cave in” between the ribs need an ambulance. Children who can normally focus on you or other things and don’t due to being focused on breathing? Call an ambulance. Children who are having audible breathing problems (as in: you hear them in a quiet room and it’s not their nose) will need an ED visit. And again: If they become blueish/whiteish. But again: There is scientific proof that parents who manage to remain calm and get a calm observant look on their kid identify urgent and critical cases better than healthcare professionals. The staying calm part is hard,though.

Circulation: In adults: For fuck sake people: If you have chest pain that is not triggered by a certain action (e.g. a pain to the wall of the chest when breathing in deeply, a slight pain when coughing, etc.) call an ambulance. And especially for women: Strange abdominal pain, neck, arm or jaw pain counts. Especially when paired with shortness of breath, when it gets worse when you exert yourself. Or when it stays more than a few hours. Or is paired with very low or high blood pressure relative to your normal blood pressure. If you feel something pulsating in spots where normally nothing should be pulsating maybe see urgent care. Previously unknown dizziness when standing up? ED.

With children again it’s a bit more difficult. The good news is: They very very rarely are compromised circulation wise,they hold themselves together for a long time (and then crash). But: It takes a lot for the latter to happen. Generally: Massive and sustained vomiting or diarrhoea are an indication to go to the ED, sooner than you would do as an adult and the smaller the earlier. A very good indicator is the recap test, look it up online.

D is “disability” in this scheme and meant in the sense of “neurological issues”. They are actually easier than most people think. It’s obvious that an unconscious person should get an ambulance, as well as a seizure (please also call for febrile seizures). If someone is showing neurological deficits by either being disoriented, absent or having sensory or paralysis-like issues don’t wait,call an ambulance. If someone is suddenly vomiting uncontrollably and having a headache or any other neurological issues: Get to the ED. Likely a migraine,but there is a slight chance for a very very bad other reason. (And migraines aren’t fun either).

In children look up meningism signs - can happen due to fever as well, but that’s a good reason to go to the Urgent care clinic.

E is meant here as exposure,but covers bleeding,trauma, abdominal issues and infection as well. Seek help for scaldings/burns and any bleeding that you can’t stop within minutes or that requires more than a large bandaid. Seek help for anything that does belong in the body. Sustained abdominal pain that makes a child unable to be calmed down for more than 1 hour is a very good reason to go to the ED. A bladder infection in a child is a good reason to go to urgent care. An abdomen that gets hard as a brick when a little bit of pressure is applied is a reason to call an ambulance.

Fever is a bit of a hit and miss situation, especially in children: First: Fever and sepsis are NOT the same. You can have a bad sepsis and have zero fever. (The last guy I nearly lost to fever had 34.5°C and never went beyond 36.5° before). Second: Fever sadly has the issue of causing febrile seizures and putting a lot of strain on the circulatory system. Which is bad. Third: But a bit of fever is nothing bad per se and there is more and more scientific evidence that an too aggressive approach to reducing fever is a bad idea as well in children. So…in the end it’s a bit of a question of moderation. Give something when the child is actively “sick” and unable to do most things due to that. Give something when the fever goes beyond 39.5° C. Fever itself is not a reason to go to ED or call an ambulance - the symptoms that go along with it might. (And please get a proper thermometer and not one of these “forehead” or touchless ones. And don’t try the house remedies of lowering fever like putting cold wet towels on the patient…they have all been proven to make it worse)

This is just a little bit of advice. And you don’t know if I really know what I am talking about. So please read up yourself. Get a first aid course and a children’s first aid course. Check local resources and where urgent care options are. The ED and ambulances are the worst options - both in treatment quality, resources and often comfort.

Critical care Paramedic here: The reaction above is the worst one basically. Worse than doing nothing. Don’t do that.

Yes, anaphylaxis is bad and kills people. If it is that bad ,you will know that something is wrong within 60-120seconds. (That’s why epipen exist)

But: There is a shit load of things that can be done in between “getting stung” and “cardiac arrest” in terms of first aid - and emergency medical dispatchers can and will tell you what to do. None of them can be done properly in a moving private vehicle.

But what happens - more often than it should is people doing these stunts risking the lives of others, having an accident themselves or simply delivering a dead patient to a hospital that could have easily been saved by basic first aid and an ambulance.

And to make matters worse: You will very likely be in a even worse spot. EDs in a lot of countries(it is surely the case in Germany)are not necessarily staffed by people who are experienced with paediatric anaphylaxis patients and only a minority of hospitals deal with any paediatric patients at all. If you’re unlucky an intern with 1.5 years of post graduation experience who didn’t even see an adult anaphylactic reaction so far will staff the ED, has no equipment to deal with paediatric patients and one can only hope the intensivist/anaesthesiologist on duty is not currently dealing with other stuff. While ambulance staff get trained in this shit regularly, it has more than enough equipment available, and can bring in specialist staff (critcare, physician response units, helicopters) - and believe me,most ambulance systems will make that a “send everyone” call. (For my neck of the woods: Neighbourhood app alarm to send off duty personnel, volunteer first responders from a charity or closest BLS ambulance, ALS resource, physicians response car, potentially helicopter with paediatric intensivist)

So…for fucks sake people,call an ambulance. In most industrial nations they will be faster, they will know what to do, where to transport and you won’t risk crashing into other people or having a dead patient in the backseat by the time you arrive.

(BTW: It’s extremely rare for an sting into the skin of the neck to actually impede the airway due to it’s location - there are very few tissues where this can become an issue. Totally different for stings within the airway and mouth, but most stings outside that lead to airway obstruction would have led to the same result for a sting into the arm. The location does not have direct causation for the location of the systemic reaction)

I have central (water circuit based) heating with individual control per room. Additionally I have a weather station on my roof that tracks the sun and wind,temp, etc. and presence detectors in almost all rooms and electric blinds. The components are all KNX based, the logic part is home assistant based.

Basically what we do: I have a “normal mode” that is supported by two addon modules. Normal mode means:

• On schooldays the system tracks when school starts. If none is present in the kids rooms for more than 30min it assumes the kid is gone and goes into energy saving mode for that room (18 instead of 21). The system then looks when the kid is likely to come back and puts the room temperature up on time.

• Our offices are always in energy saving temp and only get into normal temp once someone has been there for 15min or one of our computers is put on - both the wife and I work home office full time,but travel a fair bit.

• The system tracks if our mobile phones are “pingable” locally. If they aren’t for 30min it assumes we are all gone and puts the whole house into “away” mode,including reducing the temperatures. Then it looks at our outlook calendars (and the school schedule) and puts the temperature back on as required.

• Additonally a room that has a window open is always cut off from heating and the system sends a message when the outside temp is either too hot or too cold after a certain time.

Additionally we have two prediction based module The system looks at three different weather predictions (my area is a bit of a problem for these) and creates a mean expected minimum and maximum day temperature.

If the expected max and min is below a certain point it switches on “winter mode” - this means the system tries to keep the shutters up as much as possible and open them as early as possible (based on the sun position) so the house absorbs as much sun as possible. Doesn’t help that much,but at least a bit. Additionally the time for “open window notifications” is reduced.

If the expected max is above a certain degree the system goes into summer mode. Then it’s basically vice-versa. The system tries to keep the blinds/shutters down as much as possible according to the position of the sun and opens them only after the sun has passed. That works fairly well and reduces the room temperature significantly - in the worst room around 3.8° on average. It also reminds the inhabitants to open windows in the morning when it’s still cold and close them in time.

I literally told you the actual scientific approach that is currently used by disaster response management professionals. The methods used in OPs case are utterly insufficient and potentially dangerous. I also gave you an example why.

So…

That can easily be done by cell broadcasts (which can absolutely have different stages of priority nowadays), mass-SMS (every cellphone that first registers in an affected area gets a SMS, via designated disaster management apps, by placing handouts on peoples doors (you usually do that by identify people at risks e.g. homecare patients, then you go by high to low risk areas - depending on the search of the contamination) and last but not least a few trucks with loudspeakers (even regular cop cars do) do wonders.

What happens here if someone is not at home when called, is not an actual customer of the water company, etc.?

There are dozens of better ways than how this was handled in OPs case.

Source: I consult community and disaster response organisations on this stuff.

Syncthing and nextcloud are not a good backup solution. Like ever. Potentially they aren’t even a backup solution at all. Or even cause data loss.

You sadly didn’t tell us too much about what you are actually trying to backup and how your infrastructure looks like.

If I understand you correctly you want to centralise the files that are currently hosted on a diverse set of devices into a central file storage on your server and backup from there. Right? That’s a fair goal and something I absolutely do myself - and both NextCloud as well as syncthing will help you make the files accessible for devices.

Now,back to the backup part.

You want basically three things from backup: They need to reliable (doesn’t help when you can’t access your files anymore because they are corrupted), you want them to be as unaffected by any potential risks as possible and let’s face it,you probably want them cheap. The second part basically dictates that for an online backup you want something that can do versioning so corrupted data (e.g. from ransomware) is not simply written over.

My current approach is: I have an internal backup server (see below), an external backup in the cloud, and a cold storage backup in a bank safe. Sounds like a lot? We will see.

Let’s look at cloud storage first. There are a multitude of solutions available for free with Duplicati, urBackup or goMFT being some fairly popular ones - I personally use Duplicati. These periodically scan the folders for changes, encrypt the files and send them to a cloud provider of your choice (e.g. an S3 bucket.) and to some extent can also do the versioning. (Although it’s safer to regulate that via a bucket policy as otherwise the application needs delete rights - which means in theory could delete all the data when compromised). Main benefit is the ease of access - you need to restore a single file? Done fast and easy. Not so much for a whole setup, restoring things can get quite expensive.

If you use ZFS there is also the option to use ZFS sent to backup, but as there is currently no reliable European Union ZFS sent provider I am aware of (rsync.net does this,but is US based) legally cannot use them. So no experience on that.

To backup clients completly and VMs/LXC it might also make sense to use a designated backup server,e.g. the proxmox backup server. These do require local (as in “where the PBS is running” storage, though, so a local PBS and a cloud storage behind doesn’t work. (There is a “hosted PBS” Service available, though from Tuxis. They work really well). But it can make sense to let a zimablade run a few old hard drives for a few hours a day for that.

For offsite and online backup - as a full restore is always expensive and time consuming from the cloud- I also use two USB hard drives. One is always stored in a locker in a bank vault and every few months I change drive - so in case of a full server loss I only would need to restore the state of a (at max) 4 month old server via USB and then update stuff from the cloud for the 4 months after that.

Now, to be extra sure I also burn the most important files (documents about the house,insurances,degrees,financial and tax data, healthcare records, photos of lifetime events, e.g. weddings, birthdays,births, graduations as well as “emergency data restore howtos”, password files, basically all the stuff I want to make sure my heirs/kids have access to if I die) on blue archive (important, not normal disks!) M-Discs. They are supposed to last far longer than normal blue rays and most consumer accessible media. These are stored locally,in the safe and at the court that holds our will. The reasons for that? Powered off hard drives lose data quite fast and if the wife and I perish at the same time, eg. because we have a car crash or the house burns down the issue is time: Cloud backup might not be available anymore as our bank accounts are frozen and therefore the backup is no longer paid for. The bank safe is not accessible for a long time for the same reason. When someone then accesses the USV drive it might be of no use. The server might be powered off or damaged. And sadly the legal system here can take years (up to 7 years are my planning times) before they can actually access the data.

Where I wish it would be:

• Somewhere where there are more customisationS of how it actually stores files.

• Somewhere where it’s possible to sync instances.

To be honest as someone who works alongside these people occasionally: That’s a rather small security detail and I know of people with far far less money that have bigger security details.

20 people is not even a close protection detail, a chase car and an advance party plus medics, even less so if you consider that some people will be off duty, etc.

Fair enough!

For the Mozilla users: There is a shitton of Tampermonkey (an extension) scripts that automatically redirect you to old.reddit.com.

From what I understand,yes, but she said “they showed us a guy they beat to pulp, he said he is sorry. But the guy wore a ski mask when he robbed my aunt. How should we know if it was him or if that was just some homeless person?”

I know someone whose family founded a small retail chain (with like 5 shops or something, each operated by another relative) in an east European country shortly after the fall of the iron wall that is, well, pretty much associated with mafia-like structures.

According to her after the initial mayhem they did have a group establish themselves that was more “mafia” like. Think black suits,old Mercedes Benz cars,etc. They actually had a “emergency number” they were supposed to call and where someone picked up 24/7. And according to her someone actually came - unlike the police back then (who also wanted money). They responded fairly fast - and to them it seemed like they actually at least tried to find perpetrators. But they were never quite sure if some of the people who robbed them were actually sent by these groups themselves to prove how much the shops needed protection. Over the times things got more extreme and the “group” only wanted money to protect people from themselves - possibly because drugs got involved and the “thugs” got younger. But at least then the police stepped up their game and did more.

Just saw that my way of doing this isn’t actually needed anymore, there is an integration now:

https://github.com/Amateur-God/home-assistant-technitiumdns

Yeah, absolutely - nevertheless it can inspire that reaction - which is a shame, because it’s indeed fairly easy.

I absolutely second Technitium as well. That thing is rock solid, can be used for basically everything, has blocking with a multitude of options and does provide a nice graphical GUI.

I have it running in a dual DNS setup (main server+a Zimablade nowadays) and that shit just works - it’s the container that has caused the least amount of problems in the last 3 years.

The API is fairly handy and quite easy - I have it integrated into HomeAssistant so I have a “Disable DNS Blocking” button in my “Network control” tab in the app.

The only downside is the fact that initially it can be quite overwhelming, especially if you are not an DNS guru and just did the step from AdGuard/PiHole - but soon you realise that you actually only need a few fields for basic operations.