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- Hacker News
- I 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.
- In 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.by kripy
- Telstra 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--th...
by ikr678 - I 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!
- Brings whole new meaning to "Burner Phone." Nice.by ginkgotree
- There'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/Futelby NelsonMinar
- Burning man livestream here, still early and setting up: 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.
by dole - Thanks for the report. Fixed.by aaron42net
- Looks like the link has changed from when you posted - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYltJN7n6NQby niwtsol
- I 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.by simian1983
- Is 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.
- Definitely not fun. I discourage everyone from going. There is absolutely no weird hijinks or chicanery, mind-altering substances, colorful costumes, or gigantic interactive sculptures. Some people claim you can join communal camps and work on a project together but I've never seen it. Don't know where people got the idea that there's random free food and booze. Nobody interesting to talk to, nothing to do, and worst of all, the view is terrible. I don't know why people keep going.by 0xbadcafebee
- My son goes to small Burning Man events in New York and has a great time, these are really affordable in terms of admission, travel, etc. I've met the campers on the last day when my son was packing up and it seemed like a great scene.
I was at a different kind of retreat which in some sense opened a portal to "another world" for a week and I'd say the regional Burning Man events were controversial in that circle. Like some people went to them and thought they were great, other people went to them and picketed the access road to protest their perception that the events were a wasteful use of fossil fuels. Here's an article about similar protests at the main event
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-...
by PaulHoule - For what it’s worth one of my coworkers has been going for over 20 years and he still loves it. Most people giving you an opinion formed it by reading comments on social media.
I’d encourage you to talk to people that have actually been if you want to have an informed opinion. I don’t know shit about it since my n=1 sample size, but he’s someone who’s opinion I trust so I’d personally probably check it out if I was inclined.
by phoghed - It 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.by lelandbatey
- Haven't went myself either, but I've heard from some people that the smaller Burning Man spin-offs retain more of the original vibe and are often cheaper even when you include costs of travel. A lot of people come to AfrikaBurn from all over the world, for example.
That being said, the very nature of the event involves spending thousands of dollars to live in the desert for a week. So the audience is obviously mostly people who have the money to do so.
by flexagoon - Burning Man is ...... what you make of it.
The last time I went, there was this dude in a camp next to where I was camped. The entire week I was there, I only saw him sitting and drinking; he was totally hammered the entire 7 days and didn't go anwhere (AFAICT). That really saddened me: he could have done the same back home wherever he had come from; what's the point of coming to BM if you're going to just sit in one place and get drunk?
I really wanted to take it all in, so I stayed away from drinking or smoking, and had a great time! There is so much to see, so many creative people to interact with. You can end up having a deep conversation on just about any topic under the sky with random people. I ended up chatting with this Physics graduate student about, of all things, quarks (an area of specialty for him). He ended up patiently explaining various things to me, as if we were long-lost friends.
My recommendation: jump in with both feet in the spirit of contribution and cooperation. Have fun, respect boundaries, contribute however you can.
by mlmonkey - I've been a dozen or so times, dating back to 1994.
It's changed over the years - price has gone up, scale has gone up, and rules have become more strict. Not surprising when there are 70k people instead of 3k. Some people (fairly) don't like these changes. And some people like to badmouth things they've never experienced.
It's still the best party going on anywhere in the world that week. Most people you meet are not in tech. The crazy art pieces (most of which are interactive) are like nothing you will find anywhere else. It's definitely fun.
I stopped going regularly because it's a big expense and time commitment and I wanted to allocate my limited budget of both to other adventures. But if you haven't been, you should go.
by stickfigure - I've been twice and I really enjoyed myself.
Tech, finance, and political people definitely don't make up close to the majority. You'd get sort of laughed at if you tried networking earnestly about like tech stocks or LLMs. Generally I don't prefer socializing with techie types from SF, the folks I met at Burning Man were nothing of the sort.
It's mostly just adults who really like dressing up, building stuff, and staying up really late dancing and partying.
by joenot443 - Brad Templeton did this 20 years ago, https://www.templetons.com/pq/build.html
- My 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.by aaron42net
- This 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
by cjflog - That... is a great idea. Does the audio call go through your app? Or the regular network?
- I 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.by metchio
- Our 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!by solfox
- That's awesome, congrats!!! Amazing things happen on the playa.by k7peak
- What was the gift?by krogenx
- so a pantomime of an actual wedding? what was her take on that? transient vows, transient friends , transient rings, a parody minister? Quite possibly the most Reddit experience I've ever heard of.by tonymet
- What's the point if not to make it official? Otherwise there are no stakes, no benefit, and the whole thing would amount to cosplay, right?by tucnak
- Flying Spaghetti Monster?