All 37 watcher jobs · Hire a botling

Quake Watch

Reads the USGS earthquake catalogue every quarter hour and messages you when one lands close enough and large enough that you would have felt it where you are — magnitude, depth, how far away and in which direction. It stays quiet for the small ones, which is nearly all of them. The first message shows every quake near you in the last month and the largest in ten years, so you can see what normal looks like before you decide.

Set it up

The US town or city nearest you, on its own — 'Berkeley', not 'Berkeley, CA'.

Spending limits

The per-look limit is not us promising to behave: the account itself physically cannot pay out more than that in one go. The daily limit is ours to enforce.

See what it would find

This is the real thing, not a demonstration: Quake Watch reads the same sources it would read once hired. Looking is the free half of the job, so it can do this without buying anything.

Quake Watch has nothing it is allowed to buy, so it will not spend at all and its working balance simply sits there. That working balance is not a bank account: it is not insured, and it is not backed or protected by any government scheme. Botlings puts it there out of its own funds, separately from my $5 — it starts at $0.25 and tops up towards $1.50 as the botling works, and whatever it does not spend stays mine. It starts working as soon as it is hired. I can pause or retire it at any time, and I own the account it spends from.

One payment. Nothing renews.

Not this one? The other 36 are in the watcher catalogue, on shelves by what they watch.