5 ms·
Playa Phone
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- isoprophlex 2mo agophone rings Stoned burner picks up, mumbles "Uhhh, hullo, who dis?" into the horn while eyeing two giant wasp-colored octopi overhead making love "Hello sir and or madameperson. I won't take up much of your time. See, your number was posted to the pre-eminent forum for everything that goes fast and breaks things." "Uhhh, yeah whatever man" "I'll cut right to it, seeing that you're an important, busy man like myself. I will just take one short minute to talk to you about our lord and saviour, *VC Money*."
- cuu508 2mo ago"You already have impressive event experience going, but do you know if AIs are recommending it? I will set up llms.txt for free for you, no pressure, not trying to pitch anything. If not interested, just reply 'not interested'".
- tclancy 2mo ago"Have you accepted the Living Musk into your life?"
- mxuribe 2mo ago"Hello sir/madam, I'm calling about the extended warranty for your car!" /s
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- dole 2mo agoBurning man livestream here, still early and setting up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BgytKvsORM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BgytKvsORM Page says it's on "Chomolungma" but it's "Ceiba" on the maps, just in case you can spot the phone on the stream.
- aaron42net 2mo agoThanks for the report. Fixed.
- aaron42net 2mo agoI figured out where the bad street name came from; it's apparently a Google AI Search hallucination. It's apparently what I get for not clicking through to read the relevant page on Burning Man's site.
- niwtsol 2mo agoLooks like the link has changed from when you posted - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYltJN7n6NQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYltJN7n6NQ
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- krogenx 2mo agoWould be fun to read if the calls were recorded and transcribed.
- criddell 2mo agoOr leave them as private, ephemeral experiences for the two involved parties.
- bossyTeacher 2mo agoThank you! The obsession with posting every experience dissected on the internet has no limits! It's as if people disliked the privacy and intimacy that their individuality confers.
- aaron42net 2mo agoI’ve been asked repeatedly to record/transcribe calls, and this has been my stance. Let’s just let two people enjoy a private conversation.
- DiggyJohnson 2mo agoThat seems like it would destroy the “vibe” of the entire concept. Would you use a pay phone if the recording and transcript was publicly available?
- throwayay4929 2mo agoIs Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people. Not trying to be flippant, genuinely curious if my impression is based on reality or am I making things up.
- vincnetas 2mo agoyes, being rich makes being self sufficient much much easier :) But there a lots of less well of people and it depends on your definition of "fun". But with right crew and right mood enchanters it can be a blast. But mostly you get what you put in. If you expect to be entertained so this is not the right place.
- lelandbatey 2mo agoIt is fun, but in a miserable (hot, dusty, muddy) kind of way. You hear a lot about such rich/out of touch folks, but with 60 thousand people there, they can't all be do-nothing rich people. Someone has to set up all the art and volunteer to help burn down the buildings, and those folks are the most interesting by far. Go there to see all the cool fire art and ask the folks who make it how they did it, what was difficult, other projects they've worked on, etc. better yet, bring your own art or volunteer your labor on another art project. You'll have an amazing time, and see plenty of genuinely interesting folks, as well as contraptions you've never imagined. But beware it takes a lot of effort to participate.
- dmarcos 2mo agoYeah. I helped build the temple last couple of years. I highly recommend it.
- 01284a7e 2mo agoIf you can make it to Burning Man, then your life is what you make it. And if that's true, then it could be fun.
- dfxm12 2mo agoIt is what you make of it, you can just consume or take a creative role, but once the price/attendance ballooned ~20 yrs ago, they kinda changed their audience. You might have a local group that does similar things if you want to get a taste without such a large commitment.
- readthenotes1 2mo agoDid the original founders intend burning Man to be a parody on the trash heap that is 21st century human civilization?
- criddell 2mo agoNo. If you are genuinely curious, here are the original ten principles of Burning Man that were established when the event was still in San Francisco: https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/
- DonHopkins 2mo agoAnd don't forget to donate to this important campaign! Build A 300-Mile Wall Around SF During Burning Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO_r6ndZRZY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO_r6ndZRZY >A community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area. >"I'm asking for your help crowdfunding the most ambitious Burning Man project ever a wall that's built around the entire bay area during the week of Burning Man."
- ElijahLynn 2mo agoThat is fantastic! Dude should be on The Onion team!
- kart23 2mo agoleave no trace is insane. look at the overflowing dumpsters and abandoned bikes in reno. even some people just dumping trash at random peoples homes. think of the amount of diesel burned in generators, trucks hauling tons of steel, shipping containers for camps, just so people can party in the middle of nowhere. https://www.reddit.com/r/Reno/comments/1n5z9kc/burning_man_trash/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Reno/comments/1n5z9kc/burning_man_t...
- throwaway2037 2mo ago> overflowing dumpsters I don't really understand this complaint. Where else are they supposed to put their garbage?
- languagehacker 2mo agoSo happy to see that the comments so far are just Burning Man hate. I appreciate SomaFM's impact on my appreciation for electronic music and alternative music streaming services back in the '90s, but outside of that I'm pretty sure it's mostly been a net negative from a cultural standpoint in total.
- brcmthrowaway 2mo agoLove to see Burning Man hate.
- lukan 2mo agoCan you give reasons? I never was there, but it seems a place where people do creative things, with bringing people together - like this simple project here.
- blululu 2mo agoI have the DroneZone playing on a dedicated SomaFM web radio in my living room right now. This makes up for a lot of negatives in the world. As a genuine question are the specific net negatives of Burningman? (The classic burner who is better than you because he goes to burning man sucks and all but I'm pretty sure that guy would suck just as much if he made his whole personality about anything else).
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- solfox 2mo agoOur first time out on the playa together, my girlfriend and I stopped by this phone booth and made a couple of calls. And because we stopped, we saw the FSM camp next door, and a giant sign saying "Weddings Here", so we inquired. They offered us free rings and then announced our wedding over a loudspeaker. In 2 minutes we had an entire wedding party, complete with best man, an elder to give away the bride, 25+ guests, and an officiant. My newly-minted best man even gave me one of my favorite playa gifts ever as a wedding gift. We opted not to "make it official", though they offered. It was a truly incredible experience. Thanks FSM!
- krogenx 2mo agoWhat was the gift?
- FuriouslyAdrift 2mo agoFlying Spaghetti Monster?
- axus 2mo ago"For the rest of the week of Burning Man, a phone booth is standing on the dusty street corner of 3:30 and Celba, in front of the Temple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Black Rock City, Nevada for anyone to use."
- gosub100 2mo agoFinite State Machine
- 83457 2mo agohttps://www.spaghettimonster.org/ https://www.spaghettimonster.org/
- FuriouslyAdrift 2mo agoOh I know about it... I just hadn't seen a reference to it in years. Kind of like seeing JR Bob Dobbs or the Church of the Subgenius mentioned.
- hackingonempty 2mo agoBrad Templeton did this 20 years ago, https://www.templetons.com/pq/build.html https://www.templetons.com/pq/build.html
- aaron42net 2mo agoMy phone booth is definitely not the first out there. Brad's was there at least 2004-2006, and this one's been out most years since 2013.
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- nandanadileep29 2mo agoWould be fun to see how the calls went lol
- ape4 2mo agoI looked but I don't see how it works. How does it get power? I suppose it uses a some single board computer and VOIP.
- MarkMarine 2mo agothere are a lot of gas generators powering people's camps.
- aaron42net 2mo agoI ripped the coin-aware guts out of a pay phone I bought from Craigslist, and replaced them with a basic touch-tone board, then hooked that up to a voice-over-IP adapter so it can make calls over the Internet. All of that is powered via power-over-ethernet, including the light in the sign above the phone. It used to get a little bit of Internet directly from Burning Man itself via a 20 foot tower pointed near center camp, but now it just uses Starlink, which is easier for my campmates to set up without me and much more reliable. For power, it is now plugged into a solar generator that is occasionally recharged from a gas generator.
- EQVEYWDCHQ 2mo agocalled and got through after three attempts, had a pleasant conversation and it uplifted my mood. thanks!
- aaron42net 2mo agoThis phone is my project. I'm happy to answer questions.
- ale42 2mo agoSo nice to see such projects! Thank you for doing that.
- gregcohn 2mo agoVery cool project; thanks for making it.
- ericwengrowski 2mo agoNice dude, thanks for building it
- echelon 2mo agoThis is amazing and has me wishing we had pay phones again. Maybe they could come back and offer "free" service in high-density areas and fund via pre-roll ads or something. But perhaps the culture of remembering phone numbers is too far gone and it's easy enough to find charging. Thank you for making and posting about this!
- pgoggijr 2mo agoNYC has something just like this - https://www.link.nyc/home.html https://www.link.nyc/home.html
- aaron42net 2mo agoI think I've heard of at least a few groups dropping free-to-use phone booths in rural areas without much cell service, sans any form of revenue.
- wiml 2mo agoFutel runs a handful of non-pay payphones in and around NW Oregon, some urban and some rural. There are other regional organizations doing similar things.
- 1attice 2mo agoAn old injury, but I'm always devastated to see BRC stuff on HN. It's like watching Elon snap a Nazi salute at inauguration: an unwelcome but undeniable admission that something (or someone) admirable can shift smoothly to moral horror without losing (or perhaps even burnishing) its reputation. BRC was an artistic rebellion, and now it's where people like me go to network. I can't take me anywhere.
- crancher 2mo agoIt's really not that entirely. I've been attending for the past 20 years without networking once. I design and build and run and strike my camp. It's great and zero people try make do anything else. I am sure there are certain percentage of networking striver types but they're flotsam on the sea of the ongoing "artistic rebellion" required to make it happen.
- 1attice 2mo agoThank you for keeping the authentic spirit alive. <3
- charcircuit 2mo agoI bet the dataset of who is calling who is pretty valuable. It's people related to others who were willing to drop a bunch of money to go to the desert, so you know they likely have some disposable income. If this operator isn't collecting this, it may be a good business opportunity for a competitor.
- jspaetzel 2mo agoSlow your roll, not everything is a startup, some things are just for fun
- charcircuit 2mo agoThe best kind of things are both fun and profitable enough to make them financial viable to keep doing.
- Klonoar 2mo agoIt’s an art piece, numbskull.
- charcircuit 2mo agoWhat are you trying to imply? Beautiful things should not be allowed to make money?
- aaron42net 2mo agoThe only data I collect is my phone bill, and the only thing I do with it show hourly stats on the site and a summary of calls at the end of the event.
- ElijahLynn 2mo agoThis is a beautiful example of hacking, making something useful!
- ginkgotree 2mo agoBrings whole new meaning to "Burner Phone." Nice.
- non- 2mo agoPhun and wholesome project. What service do you use for VoIP?
- aaron42net 2mo agovoip.ms. They were the cheapest I could find when I built this in 2013, and they’ve worked just fine since.
- sikozu 2mo agoHow much does this project cost you to run? I always considered VoIP to be expensive but things might've changed.
- aaron42net 2mo agoIt's ~$13/year to keep the same phone number, and <= $0.01/minute for all incoming calls and any outgoing calls to North America. Most of the cost comes from outgoing international calls, whose price varies (see https://voip.ms/pricing https://voip.ms/pricing), but I do disable some of the most expensive destinations. With paying for ~60 hours of calls for the week it runs, I think it's still usually well under $100, though.
- k7peak 2mo agoThis is great. I have a COCOT myself with an ATA adapter. So so much fun, great job!
- teh_infallible 2mo agoI had an idea like this years ago, only my idea was to put two of these on the playa and have them only call each other. Do you could pick one up, the other would ring, and you could talk to a random person.
- Our_Benefactors 2mo agoFun! Just wished someone a happy burn.
- Helldez 2mo ago[dead]
- kodai_tech 2mo agoThe live status dashboard at the bottom is a fantastic touch. Reminds me of the best kind of hacker projects that combine physical retro hardware with modern web telemetry.
- cjflog 2mo agoThis is a great project! I've been to Burning Man 10x and interactive projects are my favorite part. Also, if I may, for folks that might appreciate more phone-based spontaneity, I've built an app to revive the social phone call. It works like a bat signal. Light your beacon and it reaches all your friends at once. The first friend to answer connects 1-1 and every other signal quietly drops. Check it out at trybeacon.chat
- sebastiennight 2mo agoThat... is a great idea. Does the audio call go through your app? Or the regular network?
- cjflog 2mo agoThrough Beacon via encrypted VOIP!
- metchio 2mo agoI agree this is so nice! Would be awesome if some variation of this becomes the norm in every big city or turistic landmark. It's relatively cheap for local gov to set and maintain couple of those and brings back a different way of using the technology/interacting with people.
- HardwareLust 2mo agoDammit I left my acoustic coupler at home.
- NelsonMinar 2mo agoThere's a bunch of neat public payphone art projects out there. A friend of mine runs Futel, which has some fairly elaborate voice menus and several phones installed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futel
- chislobog 2mo agoNo phonebooks there. Just a map. Oper-a-tor?
- tehnoslow 2mo agoThe real-time stats on the website are fascinating. Did you set those up to satisfy your own curiosity, or to give remote callers a sense of "presence" at the playa?
- aaron42net 2mo agoA little of both. It was popular enough off of a Reddit post last year that people were hearing a lot of busy signals. I thought it might entertain some folks to see just how busy the phone has been in the last hour.
- perarneng 2mo ago0 outgoing, nobody knows numbers anymore and even if you could look it up you won't punch numbers like its 1992. With that said, amazing project. super cool that people can call in
- aaron42net 2mo agoIt has changed a bit in recent years, but there's still only very spotty cell service at Burning Man. Enough people can figure out how to look up a phone number that this phone still dials out thousands of times during the week. The bigger problem for this project is because of phone spam, fewer people will answer calls from unknown numbers, so a lot of those calls go to voice mail.
- retired 2mo agoIs it possible that people don’t realize you can make free calls? Perhaps they think you need coins, which they don’t have on them. Similar to interactive installations in museums. People are afraid to touch things in museums. You really need a big sign to tell them it is the purpose to play with it.
- doublesocket 2mo agoI always wanted to build a local mesh network of pay phones on the playa and call it Black Rock Telecom. Maybe 12 or more phones set on plazas. Geographically not being located in the US made this project tricky to realise.
- underlipton 2mo agoWhat do you even talk about on a phone call like this? I have both intense social anxiety and FOMO. Knowing that this thing exists for a week and then no more is torture.
- aaron42net 2mo agoAnything or nothing. One of my favorites is to ask the person what's the most amazing thing they've seen that day, and you'll likely get widely varying answers given where they are. But you could also call and try to sell someone an extended warranty for their couch without breaking. It doesn't matter as long as you (and hopefully they) have fun with it.
- kripy 2mo agoIn Australia, Telstra is required to keep the payphone network up and running. You can make free outgoing calls to landlines and mobile phones. And I just read that you can call inbound as well (which I did not know). Now the fun begins.
- ikr678 2mo agoTelstra are one step ahead of you and encouraging an ingress style territory control game with the payphones. https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/what-is-payphone-tag--the-street-game-turning-our-payphones-into https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/what-is-payphone-tag--th...
- simian1983 2mo agoI called. Talked to a perfectly decent guy who was there for the first time. He was there with his wife, but didn’t bring his younger children. Pleasant conversation. And there was a line of people waiting.
- RufusJacksons 2mo agoI just had a great chat with Michael, who was having a hard time because his girlfriend didn’t come with him to Burning man. Great chat!
- numberwan9 2mo agoFor a moment I thought this would be related to 2600's payphones of the world [1] 1. https://www.2600.com/payphones#0/19/8 https://www.2600.com/payphones#0/19/8
- victor22 2mo agoWish I was on playa right now… thank you for your gift! Hope I’ll be home again soon )’(
- kris-memoket 2mo agoDude this is a amazing idea...
- tobin1994 2mo ago[dead]
- azhenley 2mo agoI'm not sure why, but my ISP blocked this page and sent a push notification saying, "This device tried to visit a website that may compromise it or contain dangerous content."
- SkinTaco 2mo agoYour ISP sent you a push notification? How?
- tobinfekkes 2mo agoMy guess would be via one of those white-labeled apps required to set up your home router. For example, a Comcast, Spectrum, Astound, T-Mobile, etc.
- barbs 2mo agoJust gave it a go, but I'm getting "That number is no longer in service", so there might be power/connectivity issues?
- aussieguy1234 2mo agoIn Australia, all payphones have been made free. These provide a lifeline to homeless people, domestic violence victims whose phones may be monitored and others in vulnerable situations. Statistics show a large percentage of calls go to support services such as domestic violence hotlines.
- dalton74 2mo agoLost my main phone to the playa dust once. Now it's always a €20 burner, zero regrets.
- brinepot 2mo agoNokia feature phones were always the ultimate "playa phone." Dropped it a hundred times, still worked.
- teiferer 2mo agoDoes anybody have experience putting out such a phone somewhat permanently in a public space?
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- wnmurphy 2mo agoI just want to say thank you. The playa phone is a fixture. I think in 2008 I walked by it and said "oh, that's a funny art installation." Then the phone rang, and I said "wait, what? is that a working pay phone?" I picked it up and someone asked me if I was satisfied with my home insurance.
- RougeChain 2mo ago[dead]
- javier_e06 2mo agoAll is missing is the white pages phone book tethered by a chain. Pick a name at random and dial it and say: "Michael Davenport?, It's me!"