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Playa Phone

playaphone.com

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Re: Playa Phone

#231

Post by aaron42net »

walrus01 wrote: post #227
aaron42net wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last year, it was roughly 2/3 outbound vs 1/3 inbound, based on total talk time in the 6.5 days it was set up. There were 1,460 outbound calls successfully made to 835 different numbers in 23 countries, with a total talk time of 34.8 hours. (This is down about 40% from peak years ago, now that there's more cell service and Internet available at Burning Man.) There were also 5,658 inbound call attempts, and 676 (12%)…

Did you restrict any of the expensive international destinations in the voip.ms control panel? I imagine you wouldn't get that many people who wanted to call really weird places and have a 2 hour conversation from the playa, but some very costly destinations in per minute rate do exist in the voip.ms rate table.

Currently, it looks like I have it configured to allow all destinations that are $0.40/minute or less with voip.ms's "value" routing. This is enough to call all numbers in ~120 countries and some numbers (usually landlines) in another ~70.

And there are occasionally people who have trouble with the concept of "free 5 minute call" (that it hangs up after) not meaning "just keep dialing back for an hour or two", even with a long line behind them. I can't ban specific outgoing numbers with voip.ms, but once I ended up just disabling all calls to the country that a problematic user kept coming back and repeatedly redialing.

Re: Playa Phone

#232

Post by stickfigure »

kakacik wrote: post #225
louison11 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's absolutely true. When you're there, there is no doubt it is absolutely the best place to be as far as party and creativity goes. That being said, it depends on what you're looking for in life. But the energy, time and investment that people put into this thing is absolutely mad. It doesn't compare to anything else that exists in the world, not even by a factor of 1:10. It's just insane. And there are also honest…

Dude, check Kumbh Mela before making outrageous statements. 70k is a family meeting in backyard in comparison. I get it, you dig it passionately and all the power to you, but a bit of modesty and/or world experience would only serve you well.

A large religious gathering is not my idea of a good time. It might be yours, that's fine. But these are not similar things.

Re: Playa Phone

#233

Post by 1attice »

crancher wrote: post #228
1attice wrote: post #49

An 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.

It'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.

Thank you for keeping the authentic spirit alive. <3

Re: Playa Phone

#234

Post by metchio »

cjflog wrote: post #118

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…

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.

Re: Playa Phone

#235

Post by nashashmi »

83457 wrote: post #202
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying Spaghetti Monster?

https://www.spaghettimonster.org/

The FSM is a fetish attempt to mock some of the world’s largest religions. One day I hope to see the FSM come to be the exact mockery of the people who made it, ie the ones who take somethings in life so damn seriously that they make it something they serve and worship, and then ask it to help them back.

Re: Playa Phone

#236

Post by wnmurphy »

varispeed wrote: post #143
joenot443 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 st…

Can you just smoke weed, enjoy the music and not talk to anybody? Is that sort of experience possible?

Every sort of experience is possible.

You could spend the entire week high as a kite, biking around and just looking at everything without talking to anyone, though the vast majority of the community are people you probably would enjoy interacting with. I find most burners thoughtful, compassionate, playful, caring, etc.

What I suspect would happen is you'd start out this way ^, but then you'd gradually discover that the community is great and interactions with people are pretty fun actually. Part of the experience is the opportunity to get outside of your normal baseline personality if you want. You can be anyone for a week. Most people don't even want to talk about their lives off the playa.

Culture changes on the weekend, when you get a lot of "partiers" just for the man and temple burn. There are a bit more irresponsible and inconsiderate people then, but not enough to ruin the overall community vibe.

Re: Playa Phone

#237

Post by CSSer »

maest wrote: post #187
CSSer wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like there’s a non-zero chance you’re getting downvoted because HN doesn’t understand sarcastic burner humor.

> sarcastic burner humor. Give me a break...

Actually if I must be literal it’s a pretty big part of the culture out there. The playa is rife is with inside jokes that lately revolve around people telling you to have a terrible time, or saying there’s absolutely nothing at some place with a wink. Discovery and resilience is the point.

And sure, there’s a bit of old guard/new guard here, where the new guard is a bit softer about it. Personally, it was never my favorite aspect, but dismissing it says more about you than me.

Re: Playa Phone

#238

Post by wnmurphy »

I 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.

Re: Playa Phone

#240

Post by tonymet »

solfox wrote: post #24

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…

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.
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