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The forgotten war on beepers

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Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#261

Post by karma_pharmer »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #162
karma_pharmer wrote: post #106

It really upsets me that the VHF pager networks were shut down. VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your location to surveillance. All satellite pagers require transmit-before-receive, and of course LTE requires that plus actively cooperating with the towers' triangulation of the receiver. VHF POCSAG over large urban areas is something we never should have let go of…

"VHF pagers were the last way you could recieve notifications without having to offer up your location to surveillance" ...and instead anyone in your city can read every single text message with a trivial amount of hardware?

They can read my AES-encrypted ciphertext all day long and I don't care.

You can even buy two-way pagers that transmit with AES-128 encryption. Hospitals have to use this due to HIPAA:

https://www.spok.com/blog/standard-or-encrypted-pagers-whats...

I think you're confusing commercial pager services with Ham radio.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#262

Post by lxgr »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #215
nvy wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it difficult to exist in modern society without one?

Getting a mainstream email account is now impossible without one! How far we’ve fallen since the days when usernames were opaque numbers and anonymity was prized.

I’m aware that Google and some others require phone number verification for account creation these days, but do they actually require a smartphone?

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#263

Post by Izkata »

sokoloff wrote: post #89
dylan604 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in US culture and society that makes it so hostile towards As far as schools go, zero tolerance policies have been put in place. The concept of zero tolerance is something that just makes no sense to me. Not every thing that happens in a school needs police involvement, but because the rules/laws that have been put in place removes common sense and power from principals so that everything is now a police matter. Le…

> removes common sense This happened about 5 miles from where I grew up: https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/7-year-old-suspende... In the 80s, kids would have bows or hunting rifles in the car or truck in the school parking lot. Now eating your pastry the wrong way gets you sent home.

In the early 2000s my middle school had archery for a few days as part of gym class as a special event. Only the girls were actually allowed to do it though, they had something else for the boys (don't remember what though).

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#264

Post by karma_pharmer »

karma_pharmer wrote: post #108
lagniappe wrote: post #31

I dont own a phone, but to me a beeper is an okay compromise. During the quest to find one, I came across some really cool things. - Some beepers are made to only RX, not TX, as to not skew results of medical equipment - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices - Beepers are still sold today, new in box - Two-way pagers have been almost totall…

Have you found any that still have service over a significant area in the US? Particularly the one-way (RX only) pagers. Very interested in this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40070092 > - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices If you get a chance to add the names/links of these companies I would really appreciate it.

For posterity: one of the services appears to be https://spok.com

Still would like to know what the other one is.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#265

Post by asveikau »

cyberax wrote: post #256
asveikau wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you underestimate the rate of wrongly accused and wrongly convicted. Estimates vary, iirc I've seen some papers claiming 5% and others claiming as high as 20%. There is a lot of over-charging going on too. Then, most cases don't get to trial, so you have people pleading guilty to things they did not do because they fear wrongful conviction for something worse.

Sorry, not buying it. There's no way 20% of convictions are wrong. Even 1% is honestly pushing it, especially these days. Extrapolation from convictions overturned via the DNA evidence also results in about 0.5-1%. I volunteered as an unpaid IT support at a non-profit working with ex-cons who were trying to get back to normal life. So I got to speak with lots of people who were actively trying to get away from the pr…

You can keep believing this and being confidently wrong.

Seems like my point about plea deals blew past you. Repeat: Innocent people often plead guilty to lesser charges because they fear wrongful convictions for something more serious. The system is set up around this.

When wrongfully convicted, it's also very common to get denied parole because you don't admit to doing something wrong. From what I've heard it's very very hard to overturn a wrongful conviction, even in the presence of new evidence or signs of misconduct the system fights it at every turn.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#266

Post by bruce511 »

throw_pm23 wrote: post #138
munchler wrote: post #96

In the 90's, I was a project manager for a software consulting company. I carried a beeper onsite so my superiors could reach me when needed (e.g. to discuss growing the account). During a lunch meeting one day, two of my bosses at the consulting company suggested that I upgrade to a cell phone, like they had done. I said I was reluctant to do that, because I valued my independence and didn't want to be on a short le…

I had the same thought process in the 90s, and it is the reason why I still don't have a smartphone :)

I resisted having a phone at all until 2013. People were amazed even then.

I ended up getting one for development. It proved useful enough that I used it myself, but I've managed to limit usage to WhatsApp (and SMS), web reading (like HN now) and not much else.

Lots of Web stuff (especially financial stuff) requires 2FA so SMS is now more-or-less required.

People have learnt though that my phone is always on silent, and I mostly don't check it during the day. I don't have email on it, and I don't do social media. I treat it as "my device" not as an "interruption device".

Of course the joy of them is that for every person it's different. You can use it whatever way you prefer.

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#267

Post by lxgr »

karma_pharmer wrote: post #260
wkat4242 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes!! This. I would totally carry a pager if the network still existed. Not all the time, but just sometimes when I'd like to feel free. Ps there is still the iridium paging service which is one way and is not transmit before receive. But they want to get rid of it and stopped selling hardware. It's really hard to find now second hand.

No, iridium is definitely transmit-before-receive. The only thing you can receive without transmitting is a one-bit "message waiting" indicator, so you don't waste uplink bandwidth polling the satellite unless there's something there for you. Basically the satellite broadcasts a list of terminals that have messages waiting for them. I recall there being some kind of bloom filter, so technically it's less than one bit…

No, the original Iridium paging service really is (was?) one way.

You had to manually update your paging location by dialing some number or by using a web interface when moving significantly, or link an Iridium phone to your pager, which would then automatically update the paging area (MDA) every time you made a call.

What you mean is probably Iridium SBD, but that’s a different, bidirectional service (also used for pager-like devices these days).

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#268

Post by lxgr »

karma_pharmer wrote: post #108
lagniappe wrote: post #31

I dont own a phone, but to me a beeper is an okay compromise. During the quest to find one, I came across some really cool things. - Some beepers are made to only RX, not TX, as to not skew results of medical equipment - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices - Beepers are still sold today, new in box - Two-way pagers have been almost totall…

Have you found any that still have service over a significant area in the US? Particularly the one-way (RX only) pagers. Very interested in this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40070092 > - Basically 2 companies, operating with antequated websites (and prices) still provide service at the historic prices If you get a chance to add the names/links of these companies I would really appreciate it.

Iridium still offers it, I believe — 100% global coverage!

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#269

Post by lxgr »

My dad used to be really into collecting Swatch wristwatches when I was in primary school in the 90s. The coolest one was definitely one called “The Beep”: It had a built-in pager!

Battery life was about a day or so when in reception mode (it came with a key ring battery holder and the battery was hot swappable!), and sending a numeric-only message was horrendously expensive, but it was still just about the coolest thing ever when I got to borrow it.

(Close second: “Swatch Access”, which let you store RFID ski passes.)

Re: The forgotten war on beepers

#270

Post by amyjess »

wddkcs wrote: post #258
the__alchemist wrote: post #4

I remember learning about these in elementary school. We were sitting in assembly in a room called "The Pod". Listening to rules and administrative things. On the list of banned items never to bring to school, along with drugs, guns, and knives, beepers were listed. I wasn't sure what they were, but from the context and too many cartoons, I assumed they were an explosive device that beeped a few times before blowing…

Kids aren't allowed to have beepers because that implies they have jobs.

And the job in question was always assumed to be "drug dealer".
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