Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah but... who still uses dumbphones?
Ever been in an airport with no WiFi and overloaded cell towers? Text doesn't use much bandwidth no matter how it's transmitted (SMS, RCS, or data).
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An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
71–80 of 113 posts
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#72It's probably voip :/
So what? Do you mean it is not analog and latency is higher as a result? Then yes, it matters. I hate latency in voice calls, I already went into arguments because of that. I remember in a remote work meeting, we had a frantic discussion, with some disagreements and strong opinions, but it was productive and purely technical, nothing personal. But then someone angrily told me "stop interrupting me!", the thing is, I…
> interrupting [... timing ...] turns
There's an old linguistics tale, AFAIR fuzzily, of Inuit kids going off to boarding school, and upon return, having lost interest in hearing from adults. The kids believe the adults have little to say to them. ... Because the kids' conversational turn-taking invitation pauses had shortened, and were going unrecognized.
> as if it was a traditional 2-way radio communication
If there was a low-latency side-channel for the end-points to coordinate, they might provide mic clicks and carrier noise for awareness? Like an electric car playing engine rumble.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#73What a fun surprise to see this on HN! I had the opportunity to work the Foy Desk a few times during my undergrad at Auburn in the early 2000s - mostly as a volunteer while the regular workers would be in meetings. At the time we had a multi-page list of common questions and answers, the Internet (as it was then), as well as access to university computer systems for things like class schedule lookups. The most common…
War damn! Talking about being lost in the Haley center gave me flashbacks to freshman year. I still have dreams sometimes of trying to find the stairwell/elevator bank and the layout keeps changing like the backrooms.
WDE!
Ugh, yeah, some of those hallways especially in 1st and 4th quadrants where there aren't very many classrooms and not many people can have a very, very liminal space feel to them. I can totally understand how he got lost in there.
Literally nothing about that building makes any sense unless you stand on your head until you almost pass out. :D
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
God help us if we determine there is nothing special about human cognition. A lot of people are putting a lot of faith in what amounts to the soul. I’m not at all sure it exists.
Both can be true. There can be nothing physically or metaphysically "special" about human cognition, and at the same time, we can also be very, very far away from creating even a holistic facsimile. We've got echoes of it in statistical, predictive models, though, and that's shoved the idea into the discourse far before its time.
I agree. My point is that if there’s no mystic soul, it’s probably a mistake to say AI can’t provide the same actual connection that humans do. Today’s AI can’t, for most people, but it’s a statement about maturity of the tech, not human special-ness.
I also maybe agree with “very very far away”, in the 20ish year range. Farther than some people think, closer than others do.
If and when we get to a place where AI reaches that holistic facsimile, I’m not sure what I’ll think of humans who reject the idea and insist that we are qualitatively different because (insert biological or spiritual rationale here). I suspect it will feel like seeing someone mistreat a call center employee because they happen to be in India, or sound like a disliked minority.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#75Got accosted by a popup when I entered the site so I bounced. Tip: If you want users to read your content, don't cover it up.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#76James E. Foy Information Desk
Jim “Dean Foy” Foy was a wonderful human being.
I got to know him a little through Rotary in the last years of his life because I had an off and on honor of chauffeuring him to and from meetings in the Grand Caravan. Even got to bring my boy along on the days he didn’t have school.
He was an Auburn University legend — the Foy Information Desk was created when they remodeled Foy Hall. [1]
Anyway, ironically Jim graduated from Tuscaloosa despite his Auburn being his familial allegiance. The Boll Weevil drove his parents out of Eufala and to Tuscaloosa for work and so he went to college there.
During the war he flew Corsairs and told me and the boy about bailing out and hanging from a tree as we drove home from a meeting.
He’d been Club president in 1953 and had 100% attendance for about 60 years. And always led the Club in a War Eagle before home football games until he couldn’t.
I am truly blessed to have spent time with Jim and more blessed that my boy now man did.
[1] At the time, the plan was to rename the building, but Google streetview shows that didn’t happen and now even the street is named for Jim. Yeah he was that big a deal.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even their SMS api (GOOGLE) was shut down. That was just an automated google search and didn’t have to be staffed. Used it all the time to ask a trivia question or convert some units or get nearby locations. Like text pizza and my zip code and it would reply with 3 names and phone numbers. It made dumb phones smart.
Yeah but... who still uses dumbphones?
My "daily driver" is a dumb Consumer Cellular Link II.
SMS based services are useful to me when traveling without my laptop.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#78I went to Auburn just as the internet was beginning. When the internet was only available on Sun Workstations in the basement of the math building using the Mosaic web browser. Calling Foy was our Google.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#79Somewhere someone is probably still working as an elevator operator too. Like when I was a kid I had a job shoveling coal into a boiler. And someone is still manufacturing buggy whips. The future is unevenly distributed. Call Bunny Watson and ask her, she'll confirm.
There's probably some high bureaucracy workplace somewhere where only certain people are allowed to use the freight elevator but it needs to be used by others so much they just station someone who can use it there.
I know of an elevator that is also a ticketed access point to a stadium so the elevator operator also scans tickets and gives out wristbands. Very nice for wheeled accessibility.
Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
#80We got an old landline big red phone and we had it for quite a while using Magic Jack. It was a fun anachronism to have and use and give out to friends as a number we will always hear if it rings. I'm going to get it again when we move in a few weeks to a new house. As my friend Nick described it when we got rid of it- "It feels like the world lost a bit of whimsy". The world we live in needs whimsy. The Red Phone ht…
We still have one and our younger kids use it to call their friends. We refuse to provide them “smart” phones - at least for now.