This is such a weird story <https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/hamilton-customers-unable-to-lock-cars-after-shopping-centres-mystery-system-fault/B6WBHITBZDC774B2TFYDMNFRBQ/>, and right in our neighbourhood, too:
Customers at a Hamilton shopping complex were mysteriously unable to lock their cars on the weekend after a rather bizarre fault in the centre's system.
...
On January 11, The Base Shopping Centre confirmed the issue on social media.
"We have received reports of an issue that interfered with vehicle remote locking over the weekend.
"This has been linked to an incident off-site which was out of our control and is being addressed. No malicious or intentional signal blocking activity was involved."
The next day:
"An external electrical event had caused a fault to onsite equipment resulting in the interference - this equipment has now been reset and checked by authorities. ..."
No mention of what exactly the “system” or “equipment” was, or the “event” was about ...
Were any readers of this list there at the time?
No, but I had a similar experience a while ago: the car alarm could no longer be operated via remote at Spotlight on Te Rapa. According to the car alarm guy, Spotlight and Wintec seem to be locations where this is happening. Something must be interfering there with the public frequency spectrum that the remote is operating in... Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 (office) +64 (7) 577-5304 (home office) https://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/