When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home • Hacker News Board

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#101

Post by dheera » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:12 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #92

TallGuyShort wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah - you're in Europe. In the US that's a very common spam call to receive. It may come from a different number every time and the FCC and FTC (the relevant authorities) can't or won't stop it. I've had it in the middle of the night a couple of times, though I think that's not as common. It's the reason my phone is always on Do Not Disturb now.

Europe is not that serene as you may think. I get plenty of spam calls from entities I'm in a relationship with - like my mobile operator or my bank[0]. It's one of the reasons my phone is on silent during the day[1]. The problem with those is the usual fake "market choice": every mobile operator and bank is pulling this crap, so I don't abandon mine, because alternatives are no better. Then there are occasional rand…

> mobile operator or my bank

Yeah no, these companies should NEVER be calling people, period. It's way to easy to phish people for information by calling them and claiming to be their bank. Too many people will fall for it:

"Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Before we go further I would just like to confirm your identity. Could you please provide your name? Your address? Your mother's maiden name? The last four digits of your SSN?"

Banks should adopt a policy of only interacting with customers physically, via their web interface with a login, official mobile app, or by the user calling the bank's official, publicized number. Never by calling the user.

That way they can post big signs saying "We will never call you, if someone calls you claiming to be us, it's fake" and people will get it.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#102

Post by jayd16 » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:15 PM UTC

eindiran wrote: post #3

Uehreka wrote: post #2

“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!”

Jokes aside, why is it so important that they reach him at 2:15 AM and can't wait until the next morning?

Seemed to me the neighbor was far too excited to not wake him up, haha.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#103

Post by School-Cotton » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:17 PM UTC

Animats wrote: post #45

Berkeley 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.

What’s the value in making HFT not work? What harm is it causing?

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#104

Post by copperx » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #19

dekhn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, 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/ ). My cynical side suggests it's done mostly to generate PR. See also: https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-call-... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/scien…

I put my phone in airplane mode at night. Don't a lot of people do that? What are they thinking?

I would only do that if I had no friends or family, all alone in the world. Or maybe if I was 20 and my parents and friends were young and in great health. Instead, I turn on do not disturb with friends and family going through and repeated calls also go through.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#105

Post by justinzollars » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:22 PM UTC

cute

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#106

Post by systemvoltage » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:26 PM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #100

teh_klev wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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.

Some (quite misguided) people on Hacker News think the site shouldn't accept humor in any form.

We should allow rare exceptions, such as this instance.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#107

Post by copperx » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #65

cxr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't. That sounds like an anti-solution, i.e., something that seems to solve a problem, doesn't, but does create new ones. Is there a real problem that it does solve? Is there a geographic/cultural aspect to it?

Interrupted sleep, and sleeping next to an EM radiation source. I don't care what they say, cell phones haven't been around long enough for us to know whether or not there are long term effects. Also I tend to charge my phone during the daytime so at night I just put it in airplane mode to conserve batteries and make sure it can pull itself through the night to be able to sound the alarm in the morning. The charging…

Because EM radiation follows the inverse square law, placing your phone 3-6 feet away from your bed should decrease the radiation enough to make such concerns moot.

And if you place it on airplane mode and then turn on WiFi (assuming you have WiFi calling), then you both save battery and make radiation insignificant.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#108

Post by mediaman » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:29 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #80

eindiran wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very interesting article and I think it points to the main reason its so important to reach the winners: > If, like Saul Perlmutter (Physics, 2011), you live in California and the call comes, unanswered, in the middle of the night, then it could be the television news vans outside your house that alert you of your prize.

> If you don’t pick up the phone, the ceremony continues without you. The public announcement comes at noon. Why don't the Nobel people just wait until you've been successfully informed before telling anyone else? Where does this self-imposed deadline come from?

The real question is: why don't they try to contact the recipients during the 24hr period prior to the announcement, at that recipient's acceptable local time zone?

I don't think a Nobel recipient is going to spill the beans on the announcement.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#109

Post by jedberg » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:33 PM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #68

This 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?

They announce it anyway and you get to find out from the press or people calling you. It's happened before.

Re: When You Win a Nobel and They Can't Reach You at Home

#110

Post by nabla9 » Mon, Oct 12, 2020, 11:36 PM UTC

chki wrote: post #67

nabla9 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somebody 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.

>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 he…

Would peer evaluation suffice?

There is one peace prize winner criticized by other peace prize peers for her role in genocide.

Then there is the nomination of President Obama less than two weeks in office. He received it after less than nine months in the office. The prize was seen more as criticism of Bush administration than awarding Obama.

I nominate Samatha Power (Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights under Obama, then 28th United States Ambassador to the United Nations) and Cass Sustein (United States Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) to judge Obama's Peace price.

Experts from the book: "The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir" by Samatha Power

>In October of 2009, I awoke to a very different form of bad news: Barack Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Less than a year into his presidency, Obama was receiving an award previously bestowed on Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

>When I relayed the news to Cass, he looked stricken, as if I had told him someone we knew had fallen ill. The choice seemed wildly premature,

[...]

>Jon Favreau and Ben Rhodes, Obama’s two gifted speechwriters, took on the difficult task of drafting the Nobel address. I popped into Jon’s tiny office on the first floor of the West Wing, and he told me that the President had decided to directly confront the awkwardness of receiving the prize so early in his presidency.

I mean, 60% of American did not understand why Obama received the award. Obama himself was not happy and felt awkward. People he worked with felt it was not deserved.