Want to reach me? WhatsApp or a good old fashioned email. Your call be unanswered and I haven't listened to voicemail in years.
Life is too short for inane babbling. I can read faster than the average person can talk.
I hate telephones
101–110 of 449 posts
Re: I hate telephones
#102I receive about 20 spam calls per day. In contrast, I receive about 0.2 legitimate calls per day. Google itself suspects that these are spam calls, because it pops up a bright red "SUSPECTED SPAM CALLER" warning when the phone begins ringing. And yet, I have found no option to have the phone automatically decline the call. There's not even an option to silence the ringer for any call not from my contacts; I actually…
This isn't exactly what you're asking for but on Android: Settings > Sound > Do Not Disturb > Allowed in Priority Only > Calls From Contacts Only (or Calls from Starred Contacts Only if you really want to lock it down). Optionally enable: If the same person calls a second time within a 15 minute period, allow it (might allow someone really trying to reach you to get through, might also allow a spam caller through).
I appreciate the advice, I hadn't considered using DND, but wouldn't that also silence e.g. texts as well?
Re: I hate telephones
#103Unsolicited or unexpected phone calls are annoying, but this guy has an anxiety disorder and should probably attend CBT or psychotherapy as it is obviously significantly impacting his life in a negative way. Also, text is not always a the best way of communicating- a lot of information is conveyed in someone’s voice which is often difficult to put on paper. It can also be way faster to speak to someone, particularly…
Internet psychiatric diagnosis is not ok in HN comments. As a trope it is perhaps second only to you're-the-shill-no-you're-the-shill in the degradation it causes to discussion. And consider that the author posted this, so you're talking about someone in the room.
I'm sure you didn't mean it that way, but it's still something we all need to have the discipline and good taste to avoid. If we have to we'll add it to https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, but I'd rather avoid having a laundry list of verbotens.
Re: I hate telephones
#104Me too. No land line, no mobile. I don't have an anxiety response as detailed here so much as a properly calibrated respect for my own uninterrupted time. Job wants me to get a mobile phone but we'll see. Email makes sense: it's a pull interface. If you want a push interface to communicate with me you'll have to ring my door bell I recently made the mistake of helping carry the load at work by answering the phone the…
You do realize that you likely wouldn't have a job without those annoying customers who are calling for support?
Wow presumptious much? I didn't call the customers annoying-- though I'll admit sometimes you get that person. Most of the time people are happy to be interacting with someone who at leasts knows what they're doing & can solve their problem. Woe is me for being problem oriented rather than customer oriented
You do realize those annoying customers wouldn't have anything to call about if it without those introverted developers who are busy programming whatever's been management's whim since last sprint?
Re: I hate telephones
#105Rarely can I get the same level of service out of companies over text that I can easily over the phone. Talking to a human over the phone is by far the most customer friendly medium of communication. I can do it without physically going anywhere, yet I get almost all the benefits of visiting the business. Online chats on websites are usually undermanned and overall useless. On the phone I am sure I have at least one…
Hahaha, like "using the phone" means "talking to a human", that's a good one. Using the phone means 1. Listening to a long list of automated selections, none of which are ever useful (pretty much information more easily available over the Internet). 2. Getting placed on hold for tens of minutes or an hour or more. 3. Talking to someone who will ignore your question and ask if you have tried some obvious or irrelevant…
I have no trouble getting to a human in a reasonable time (under 10 minutes) as a regular customer for services like cable/Internet, mobile, building maintenance. And for business services I usually have a real person's card and a direct phone number to them.
Re: I hate telephones
#106Usually, posts like this, where the submitter's username matches the domain name of the posted article, get flagged and killed pretty quickly.
Nothing wrong with someone posting their own stuff, if it's good. I haven't read this article, but presumably lots of HN upvoters have assessed it that way.
Re: I hate telephones
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought AWS allowed you to verify via text?
I had to phone them and reread the text. The first two times they didn't understand me. I felt stupid. It was like shouting nonsense in the woods. Perhaps they have different identification rules for people not in the US.
In NZ they call me with their verification code. A bit hard when I'm deaf... ;-) Took me a few tries!
Re: I hate telephones
#108Sounds to me like this guy has an anxiety disorder that he's masking as a hatred of phones.
Please don't do internet psychiatric diagnosis on HN. Like accusations of astroturfing and shillage, it does far more harm than good, even accounting for the few cases where it might be right.
More elsewhere in thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15678214
Re: I hate telephones
#109I receive about 20 spam calls per day. In contrast, I receive about 0.2 legitimate calls per day. Google itself suspects that these are spam calls, because it pops up a bright red "SUSPECTED SPAM CALLER" warning when the phone begins ringing. And yet, I have found no option to have the phone automatically decline the call. There's not even an option to silence the ringer for any call not from my contacts; I actually…
Strangely enough, given Android's comparatively-customizable nature, I think this is an area where iOS does it better? (Others might correct me.) iOS 10 added "call blocking" as an app-type, which lets you choose apps which can filter phone calls for you. They can flag calls as possible-spam, or completely block them. (See [1] for Hiya's options screen, as an example.) An "only ring for my friends" feature is sort of…
Android can absolutely do this. Either via settings or replacing the default calling app.
Re: I hate telephones
#110No way to contact the guy through his website?
I had some thoughts to share with him but never mind. I'll call next time ;-)