
Google says Android's built-in earthquake warning system alerted 11.4 million people before the Venezuelan earthquake hit — here's how to find it on your phone
THE SO WHAT
Billions of Android devices are now a de facto distributed sensor network, with 11.4 million people getting early warning in one event — that’s planetary-scale edge compute quietly doing real civil defense work. If you operate critical infrastructure or dense campuses, revisit how you can plug into or mirror these public alert rails instead of building standalone notification systems.
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