16 ms·
When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home
- melenaboija 6y agoI am happy to see some humor at the top of hn, the bar is high though.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoThat's how we like it in here. If you want to joke on HN, you have to put in some work :).
- melenaboija 6y agoSure thing :)
- anaganisk 6y agoGatekeeping
- Uehreka 6y ago“Couldn’t you have waited until the morning?” “No! The committee is using a poorly designed auction system to disburse the awards and if we don’t both accept the award in the next 70 minutes it will go to Piketty!”
- eindiran 6y agoJokes aside, why is it so important that they reach him at 2:15 AM and can't wait until the next morning?
- mikeyouse 6y agoIt’s not really “important” in any sense except everyone is extremely excited to share the news and his friends and family want to celebrate the ultimate capstone to his career as soon as possible.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- timr 6y agoBecause they have to make the announcement, and as soon as they do, the press start hounding the recipient.
- chrisseaton 6y ago> they have to make the announcement But why? Why not wait? And what if they were planning to refuse it?
- dekhn 6y agoBasically, the announcement is a secret until it happens. It happens at a specific time, in Sweden, and they attempt to contact the winners at that time with a personal call (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-call/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-call/). My cynical side suggests it's done mostly to generate PR. See also: https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-call-from-the-nobel-committee/ https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-call-... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/science/where-where-you-nobel-prize-call-stories.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/science/where... Most scientists joke they wouldn't mind receiving a 2:30AM call informing them they won the prize because then at least they could go to work in the morning, have some champagne and relax because getting grants was going to get a lot easier...
- dheera 6y agoI put my phone in airplane mode at night. Don't a lot of people do that? What are they thinking?
- arcticbull 6y agoThey're thinking its a pretty cool phone call to get haha.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoDon’t iPhones put themselves into do not disturb mode at night? I hope the Nobel folks call twice in 3 minutes!
- irrational 6y agoI think that only works for Favorites. Do you have the Nobel committee in your favorites? ;-)
- dylan604 6y agoyou say this as if you don't
- BurningFrog 6y agoI think they want to announce it to the press in Stockholm with as little risk of leaks as possible. If you're a potential winner, you know to be reachable that night :)
- TuringNYC 6y agoIf I wont the prize, I'd want to be awoken at 2:15am. Heck, they could drop a bucket of ice water on me and wake me up to tell me the good news.
- lazyant 6y agoMy guess is to get ahead and be prepared before the onslaught of reporters calling.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jayd16 6y agoSeemed to me the neighbor was far too excited to not wake him up, haha.
- colmmacc 6y agoHere's Doris Lessing being told she won the Nobel Prize for Literature: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBODHFBZ8k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuBODHFBZ8k The committee hadn't managed to contact her. I can't be sure, but I'd bet she would have preferred the call.
- kjs3 6y agoIt's the Nobel Prize. If I'd won the Nobel Prize with my buddy, I'd be right pissed if he waited till breakfast to celebrate. I'd be slightly bitter he came over at 2:15am without a bottle of bubbly. Are you really that dead inside?
- tuananh 6y agoif i won it (like never), i want them to ring me at any time :))
- ponker 6y agoMost people want to know right away if they won the Nobel Prize. Besides Doris Lessing I can’t imagine any of them being too put out by the phone call.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- surround 6y agoHuh. Hacker News normally shows only the domain of the submission in parentheses. For Twitter it looks like it now shows (twitter.com/user).
- asadlionpk 6y agoMaybe a custom format for twitter (and even github: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com)
- eindiran 6y agoYeah, it seems like this is a feature that was added for a few domains this week including Medium, GitHub and Twitter.
- laverya 6y agoIMO it would be pretty useful for Reddit too: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=reddit.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=reddit.com
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y agoThis should also be added for Forbes if it isn't.
- echelon 6y agodang, is this new? I've never seen this before either. Pretty useful.
- sq_ 6y agoGreat for GitHub and Twitter for sure. Much nicer to be able to see the username the repo/tweet is from rather than just "github.com" or "twitter.com".
- _Microft 6y agoI think this changed a few days ago. That's at least when I noticed it for the first time.
- walrus01 6y agothis kind of reads like an astroturfed advertisement for "ring" / "nest" type doorbells and security cameras.
- person_of_color 6y agoWouldn’t surprise me
- bpodgursky 6y agoYes, it would surprise me if Stanford and the Nobel committee were being paid by Nest to perform low-key brand advertising.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y agoI'm sure that's unintentional - don't blame the university, but I'm sure Nest and Ring anticipated their network of cameras worldwide to generate enough notable videos of unusual or funny antics that would be shared, so they shove their logo on their videos. Some people claim you can have the watermarked logo removed but you have to contact Google/Nest directly. I'm going to do that right now (I have 5 cameras... which I bought a week before Google announced they were locking-down the Nest ecosystem and web-service, so I now refuse to buy any more Nest products and I recommend Ubiqiti gear instead now - Ubiqiti have everything Nest does except a thermostat and smoke detector (but they do have a temperature sensor product ("mFI-THS") - and an adapter to bridge any RS-232 connected device ("mPort"), so you could attach an RS-232 controllable thermostat that way - it just wouldn't be as sexy as Nest's giant metal knob).
- walrus01 6y agothis reminds me somewhat of the camera software on low-end android phones sold in the developing world which watermarks every photo with "shot on... (blah blah trademark name)", because they trust that 90% of users won't know to look in the settings to toggle off the option. Or don't care. But hey, free advertising right? https://www.google.com/search?q=android+phone+shot+on+redmi+watermark&tbm=isch&ved=2ahUKEwiFmc-ThrDsAhXXgZ4KHUiLAAkQ2-cCegQIABAA&oq=android+phone+shot+on+redmi+watermark&gs_lcp=CgNpbWcQA1D2KViTNWChNmgAcAB4AIABRIgB4wKSAQE2mAEAoAEBqgELZ3dzLXdpei1pbWfAAQE&sclient=img&ei=SdGEX8XQDteD-gTIloJI&bih=1124&biw=1467&client=ubuntu&hs=zdo https://www.google.com/search?q=android+phone+shot+on+redmi+...
- Upvoter33 6y agoHigh class problem to have ...
- peterburkimsher 6y agoThe thread says: The #NobelPrize committee couldn't reach Paul Milgrom to share the news that he won, so his fellow winner and neighbor Robert Wilson knocked on his door in the middle of the night. When Robert Wilson rang Paul Milgrom's doorbell at 2:15 this morning, Milgrom's wife, who's in Stockholm, received a security-camera notification on her phone. She got to watch live as Wilson told Milgrom he'd won the #NobelPrize. The most funny comment on it, in my opinion is: - Knock, knock - Who’s there? - Nobel - Nobel who? - No bell - that’s why I knocked.
- compsciphd 6y agoagreed, I pondered including that as a comment after my post, but figured that be tacky :)
- compsciphd 6y agoalso my second favorite comment was along the lines of: "apparently, the nobel now has a prize patrol".
- teh_klev 6y agoI don't know why you're being downvoted, but I found this funny, just like the submission. There's sometimes an awful lot of po-faced folks on HN, even when the post is funny and heartwarming.
- saagarjha 6y agoSome (quite misguided) people on Hacker News think the site shouldn't accept humor in any form.
- systemvoltage 6y agoWe should allow rare exceptions, such as this instance.
- saagarjha 6y ago
- egh 6y agowhen you win "Not a Nobel Prize" ... https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/economic-sciences/ https://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/economic-sciences/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nabla9 6y agoSomebody always comes up with this thinking that nobody else knows it. The Nobel price in economics has much more prestige than two of the 'real' prices (Peace price and Literature price). Unlike committees for those prices, Riksbank pretty much always selects someone deserving the price.
- niij 6y agoPrize
- tzs 6y agoIt’s awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, not by Riksbank. Riksbank just created the endowment that funds it. It is the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for the physics, chemistry, and economics prizes, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet for the medicine prize, the Swedish Academy for the literature prize, and a committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament for the peace prize.
- chki 6y ago>The Nobel price in economics has much more prestige than two of the 'real' prices (Peace price and Literature price) Prestige is of course somewhat subjective (as is definitely the very last part of your comment) but I would strongly disagree. Those two prizes are highly regarded and their announcements are widely reported. I can for example tell you both laureates of those prizes for this year from the top of my head but I can't name any other prize holder from the other categories. I guess you are projecting your own biases here and there is no real pecking order.
- 6y ago
- rexpop 6y agoOld boys' clubs patting one another on the back. The Nobel Prize is an embarrassment to our species.
- onychomys 6y agoWell, not just for boys, the two winners in Chemistry this year were female.
- rexpop 6y agoTwo things: 1. At 6% women—and, therefore, 94% men—I would say the winners' pool is egregiously sexist. 2. An "old boys' club" is an idiomatic expression referring to exclusive, undemocratic and even unmeritocratic social circles. Not, necessarily, literal "boys." So, in light of those two premises, I don't feel your objections carry any legitimate weight.
- zaarn 6y agoI would say that the noble price has been given out for a long time, if recent rule changes lead to more female winners, then this would not be visible in absolute percentages of all winners. By the definition of "more men than women/nb won the price" it would continue to be sexist even if the exclusively nominated women for several years in a row.
- recursive 6y agoDid you just assume my species?
- whymauri 6y agoI disagree with GP, but, I beg of you, _please_ find a new joke.
- recursive 6y agoSure, I'm always looking. Anyway, I don't recall using this one before. Maybe it happened once sometime. I honestly don't recall seeing this joke anywhere before, so it's kind of surprising that's so thoroughly played out. After googling: apparently, it's a thing. Not really in my circles, but at least now I know.
- redis_mlc 6y agoNeighbors? I wonder if they both live in the subsidized Stanford campus estate. (Star professors get a housing deal as part of their recruitment package.)
- Animats 6y agoBerkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. They even have signs "Reserved for Nobel Laureate". As far as I know, Stanford does not. Doesn't Google had the leaders in auction theory now? Would someone please devise a way to run a stock market as a repeated clocked auction, so that prices change, say, once every 5 minutes and high frequency trading doesn't work.
- sedatk 6y agoBerkeley has a denser campus therefore parking spots are probably more valuable there.
- cxr 6y ago> Berkeley gives you a parking space if you work there and win a Nobel. The rich get richer. I remember filling out school and early job applications. I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. It felt like getting a check and being able to cash it more than once.
- munificent 6y ago> I was struck by how my list of awards and recognitions was kind of a sham—most of them were each a consequence of some earlier achievement, and so on. Achievement and power are runaway positive feedback loops which means we need damping forces to have any reasonable level of fairness where "fair" means reward is proportional to the effort.
- cpach 6y agoI wonder if any previous Nobel prize recipients also were neighbors?
- fortran77 6y agoThey live on Stanford's land. I imagine that when Universities have land where faculty can have houses this has happened before.
- gumby 6y agoThis is not uncommon -- these stories appear every year. I think the three prize committees do it to generate press.
- phendrenad2 6y agoThis really makes me wonder - what if you win a Nobel prize and they actually can't reach you? What if you're on a secret mission to save the world and didn't bring your cellphone?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mrwnmonm 6y agoI guess you won't be able to do deep work that would lead you to a Nobel if people can reach you easily. :)
- justinzollars 6y agocute
- unnouinceput 6y agoWhen you and your neighbor both win Nobel. I mean I'd love to have such a neighbor instead of the single mother that lost control of her 5 yo boy who screams atop of his lungs.
- mleonhard 6y agoIf you earn a lot of money, you can move into a gentrified city like Stanford. The city approves a small fraction of the new housing that is needed to keep up with demand, so prices are inflated 500%. Single mothers and young people cannot afford to live nearby and must commute 3 hours a day to their jobs. Enjoy your old rich neighbors and traffic.
- the_svd_doctor 6y agoThe zoning restrictions are mainly due to Palo Alto (the neighboring city) and Santa Clara (the county) AFAIK. Stanford is an unincorporated area. But otherwise you point stands :-) It’s too damn expensive.
- datapolitical 6y agoYeah they both live in housing on the Stanford campus that is only available for faculty.
- anonymousiam 6y agoThe probability of my ever receiving a Nobel Prize is pretty much ZERO. Coincidentally, that is almost the same probability of anyone being able to reach me at 2:15AM, unless they come pounding on my door (and I still might not hear it). I value my sleep and I have set all of my phones and devices to automatically go into DND mode sometime around 11PM. If it were you, would you rather have a good night of sleep and be pleasantly surprised in the morning (before facing the press), or would you rather be a zombie?
- kjs3 6y agoIf you had a friend, they might come over to tell you.
- mennis16 6y agoI'm usually pretty neurotic about getting enough sleep, but if I just won the Nobel Prize I certainly would want to be woken. That's gotta be the moment of a lifetime.
- spicybright 6y agoI don't see the point though. Either you get woken at 2am, get all excited, then have to sit with it alone and wait until 8am to talk to anyone about it or celebrate. Or, you can get a good nights sleep, wake up to good news, immediately tell people, celebrate with a nice breakfast, etc.
- smabie 6y agoI would want to waken up so I could party
- kleton 6y agoThere is no Nobel prize in Economics
- kjs3 6y agoThere's the Comic Book Guy I knew would show up to condescend to an otherwise kinda funny story. Technically, it's the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Totally not the Nobel prize. Never forget that. (rolls eyes)
- clydethefrog 6y agoPeople like human rights lawyer Peter Nobel (family of) are such comic book guys indeed. https://www.thelocal.se/20050928/2173 https://www.thelocal.se/20050928/2173
- kjs3 6y agoThe story was about two friends sharing a funny moment, which just happened to include a prize. But, thanks, Comic Book Guy #2, for continuing #1's efforts to drain any and all joy out of it. Never let happiness win when there's a minor detail to be obsessed over!
- iJohnDoe 6y agoThe sad reality is that this would have normally been obtained by the local news and these two people would been blasted as criminals. If it were Ring, Amazon would have already used it in a commercial. The other sad reality is that everyone looks like a criminal in these videos. Scum web sites and news media rely on this. Nextdoor, where you at?
- known 6y agoReminds me of https://yts.mx/movies/a-beautiful-mind-2001 https://yts.mx/movies/a-beautiful-mind-2001
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dilpreet_singh 6y agoThat's funny!
- alias_neo 6y agoI love how many people here and in Twitter are complaining about being woken up at 2am, to be told you've won the Nobel prize, incredible. Try having children, sleeping till 2 will be a blessing!
- waspentalive 6y agoDoes one know one is a runner up for this prize? If you knew you might win wouldn't you stay up and stay near your phone and just take the next day off?
- hanche 6y agoA Nobel prize is often rewarded for work that was done a decade or more ago. That alone makes it difficult to anticipate winning it. Also, there will usually be many worthy candidates. On top of that, the list of nominees is kept secret. So no, I guess that most Nobel laureates did not expect the prize when they got it.