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Playa Phone

playaphone.com

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Re: Playa Phone

#151

Post by radley »

jimmydddd wrote: post #105
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…

How long did it take you to leave (get out) at the end? I've heard they often have massive backups in the exit line.

It depends what time you try to exodus. If you wait until the end, it's 50k+ people trying to leave a campground at the same time.

Re: Playa Phone

#152

Post by sikozu »

aaron42net wrote: post #100
non- wrote: post #89

Phun and wholesome project. What service do you use for VoIP?

voip.ms. They were the cheapest I could find when I built this in 2013, and they’ve worked just fine since.

How much does this project cost you to run? I always considered VoIP to be expensive but things might've changed.

Re: Playa Phone

#153

Post by GuB-42 »

throwayay4929 wrote: post #7

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.

> 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.

Why not both?

Well off tech people can have fun too. In fact, the wealthier, the more fun the event can be, because it means more ability to do cool stuff, be generous, and avoid trouble. As for tech people, an event that attracts tech people does not make it a tech event. For instance, tech people tend to enjoy metal music, and you are going to find a lot of tech people in metal festivals, but there, music is what bring people together, not tech.

Re: Playa Phone

#154

Post by radley »

kaycebasques wrote: post #38
pdntspa wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the fringes, along with the increasingly large contingent of tourists/festies/sparkle ponies. The majority are actual burners and they are a wild and unorthodox bunch. Look up the 10 Principles if you want to understand the actual culture https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ -- "Decommodification" is the most important one to keep in mind, particularly with this audience, as I imagine some here woul…

I remember asking a friend what makes Burning Man (BM) interesting, and he said "it's a glimpse of a fundamentally different economy." He was talking about how everything is organized around gifts rather than exchange. AFAICT that is still very much true. Most (all?) interactions do not involve money. E.g. at BM you can walk to a tent and get a drink and there's no expectation to pay for it. But of course the whole s…

> Most (all?) interactions do not involve money.

I think we can still buy ice, but I don't think we can buy coffee anymore. Coffee was a fun excuse to go to center camp every afternoon.

Re: Playa Phone

#155

Post by radley »

supern0va wrote: post #40
awnird wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bunch of tech bros pretending to be counterculture while hanging out with Grover Norquist, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. If you want to hang out with those people it will be fun for you, but be honest with yourself about what it really is.

How many out of 80k do you think are hanging out with a political operative and two billionaires?

Technically, all of them ;-)

Re: Playa Phone

#156

Post by [deleted] »

dole wrote: post #4

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.

[deleted]

Re: Playa Phone

#157

Post by Fuzzwah »

echelon wrote: post #72
aaron42net wrote: post #48

This phone is my project. I'm happy to answer questions.

This 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!

Here in Australia our once public phone company, telstra, have converted many phone boxes to be free to use and also provide a small wifi AP.

Re: Playa Phone

#158

Post by radley »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #8

Did the original founders intend burning Man to be a parody on the trash heap that is 21st century human civilization?

No. But some of it was certainly a parody of the trash heap that was 20th century human civilization. Those groups are still around.

Re: Playa Phone

#159

Post by aaron42net »

andai wrote: post #97
aaron42net wrote: post #48

This phone is my project. I'm happy to answer questions.

Nice. I'm curious how it works? I don't know much about VoIP, I remember being amazed by Skype back in the day, that it could call landlines.

The basics are that it's using a cheap VoIP adapter that you'd plug a classic touch-tone phone into, allowing it to make phone calls over the Internet through a low-cost telco provider called voip.ms.

Here's a list they maintain of current devices: https://wiki.voip.ms/article/ATA_Devices

Re: Playa Phone

#160

Post by aaron42net »

sikozu wrote: post #152
aaron42net wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

voip.ms. They were the cheapest I could find when I built this in 2013, and they’ve worked just fine since.

How much does this project cost you to run? I always considered VoIP to be expensive but things might've changed.

It's ~$13/year to keep the same phone number, and 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.

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