?
“Thank you for calling the U.S. nuclear arsenal command system. To launch nuclear missiles, press one. Para Español, marque dos.”
Just to screw with people more, “… Para Español, marque uno.”
Fire ze missiles!
But I am le tired!
Two chicks at the same time.
Fuckin’ A.
My cousin broke, don’t do shit.
I get what kind of chicks would double-up on a dude with a million dollars, but I’m suddenly VERY curious about the kind of chicks that would do that for a dude with a 1-800 number.
Entrepreneurial ones, I guess. They hear about a magic bottomless phone line and see an arbitrage opportunity.
Two chicks who call that number and independently report they’d be down for a completely anonymous FFM three-way - and follow through?
It could happen, life’s a weird thing, but there’s unicorns and then there’s this. If everyone leaves without a disease and with all their kidneys they should probably go buy lottery tickets.
What does 1-800 number mean? I guess it’s an USA thing, isn’t it?
A 1-800 number is immune to long distance charges, free to call by anyone in the US— the owner of the 800 number pays any fees associated with the call. Traditionally, 800 numbers are owned by companies in order to sell stuff. (The 1- portion of a 1-800 number means that it’s a long distance call… which was a thing when I was growing up in the 80s/90s, but basically isn’t a thing anymore in the age of cellphones)
The opposite of an 800 number is a 900 number. The person calling a 900 number has to pay, usually by minute, and most of that money goes to the owner of the 900 number. Famously used for phone sex lines.
To add to this, the 800 part is effectively an international convention for toll free numbers at this point. Most countries use either “800”, “0800”, or “1800”. On top of that the +800 country code is used for international toll-free numbers, but AFAIK it only works in a few countries.
To add further more: often also 810 or 820 numbers exist, where a phone call might have a toll up to 10 or 20 cents per minute respectively. With 900 numbers you usually dont know, how expensive they are, when only looking at the number.
The 1- portion of a 1-800 number means that it’s a long distance call
The 1 is the Country Code for the US. If you are dialing outside the US, you would start with the Country Code for the country you are calling. If you are outside the US dialing a US number, you start with a 1 to designate that the number is within the US.
The 1 is the Country Code for the US.
for North America and some island countries/territories*
So it’s a really expensive phone number to own? I would sell or delist it.
But you get it for free, I assume the costs are covered
I have one, it costs me like 1.5$ a month to own, and 0.02$/min. It’s cheap.
Are long-distance charges a thing anymore? I haven’t paid any fees for domestic long distance in over a decade - I thought they were extinct.
800 is really just an easy-to-remember area code for businesses now, aren’t they? Like .com.
Well, is it a vanity number or just a bunch of random digits?
Let’s say you have a 50/50 chance of getting your choice of a vanity number or a randomly assigned 800 number - what do you do in either outcome?
- Research the highest selling ever vanity number, consult with the largest vanity number holders, find out what the most expensive vanity number is.
- If I get it, sell it.
- If it’s random, ask a bunch of people on Lemmy what their ideas would be if that happened.
Post about it on Lemmy
I would set up a BBS with lots of text based games on it.
But who has a modem to dial it these days?
I probably have an old laptop somewhere with a modem on it, but then my next impediment is I don’t have a landline any more.
Not a lot of people, but there are retrocomputing hobbists who’d probably be stoked to find something like this.
Apparently you can tunnel through using a VoIP device, but it’s not great. Or get a cellular modem (do not know what kind of connection quality you’d have in 2024, or if it’s even a real option).
The other option would be finding an old payphone that works with an acoustic coupler. See here (Wayback link as on my phone, direct one doesn’t seem to work on all browsers, fine in Firefox but host pretends the site doesn’t exist in my default one that opens in Jerboa*)
https://web.archive.org/web/20220520161806/http://wrybread.com/WryRoad/gadgets/coupler.htm
I am admittedly a giant dork, but a quest to try and find a payphone that still exists AND you could actually do this with sounds fun. Seeing someone sitting next to a payphone with a buncha wires and a computer would be some high weirdness I can get behind.
*Sidenote: Anyone know how to change the default brower Jerboa on Android uses?
1-800-DRUIDIA
Not use it, as much as I don’t use all my other numbers
If I could, just use it for any and every single service that requires you to sign up using a phone number and don’t allow things like VoIP.
Otherwise, I ain’t got no use for it.
Never answer it unless they texted me first.
Just use it as my phone number.
“Put that fork down. You can do it. The urge will go away in 30 minutes. Be strong. Wait a while. Eat an egg. Wait a while longer. Be strong. You are doing it. Love yourself being strong.”
If it’s magically free, is it also magically permanent?
An audio-based SSH client, maybe. It could be used for good or evil, but at this point any open SSH connection is regularly targeted anyway. It’d be really neat to be able to do whatever computer task over an old landline or one of the remaining payphones.
Magically permanent if you want it to be/give some “Yes I’m still using it” feedback to the shadowy organization giving it to you. Otherwise it’s active for one year.
Oh, good. I was asking because otherwise it’s the sort of thing that they’d try to shut down the first time it was misused.
I actually have a toll free number. I was going to potentially use just for a goofy project, however once robodialers find out you have a working number you might get a flood of spam calls. This sucks because you(as the toll free owner) are billed for any minutes for calls that connect to you.
Someone would have to foot those bills and that’s really how you’d only get a 1-800 number “for free”.
That sucks - though depending on the provider (I’ve been digging around on this), there are some that offer unlimited minutes as part of their monthly/annual package. Not all, though, and those seem to be on the pricier end (though in the grand scheme of things, not crazy expensive).
I thought that was what’s being implied.
And yes, 100% free in this magical scenario, no paying for the number, minutes etc.
I can’t believe it took me two days to ask the obvious - as someone toying with some goofy project ideas themselves, what was yours?
I shouldn’t have even said or eluded to any kind of real project - just more of a loose idea. I wanted to set up something similar to Lenny but not necessarily for the same application against telemarketers. Just wanted to tinker around but never got off the ground - mostly because of some painful stupidity on my part trying to set up FreePBX and deleting my whole HDD accidentally.
What was yours?
One of the following ideas, in order of how likely I could get it running (given I wouldn’t have the foggiest what I’m doing):
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Forward the 1-800 calls to a free VoIP voicemail service, inviting callers to leave to leave the date, their location, and a message. Print stickers with the number, slap them on however many payphones I can find, and see what happens. I could do this tomorrow if I wanted.
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Same idea, but routing to a FreePBX set up with whitelisting. While slapping up stickers, dial an echo number (don’t think that’s the right term - one that just reads back the number you’re calling from, not one that echos what you’re saying to test latency), add number to whitelist. That payphone is now activated. Activated payphones get to leave a message, anyone else gets ‘Good bye’ and disconnected. Some reading suggests this is possible, but with many, many things to learn between now and then (especially whitelisting). I’d be starting from 0 knowledge.
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The above, but when you hit # to end your message, you get access to some automated menus with some fun/weird stuff (qotd, show times for upcoming bands I find interesting, a party line would be cool, etc.). See all comments demonstrating ignorance.
Why? It’s pretty dumb, but seems like it’d kill some time and could garner some interesting/weird audio. I do like the idea of whitelisting payphones only, both to cut down on bot call vectors and to push the like 3 interested people to use the disappearing comms anachronisms around town.
Lol really fascinating and fun sounding honestly. But why do you keep referring to calling party numbers as payphones? Am I missing something or what do payphones have to do with this.
Probably just poor writing.
I had an interaction a while back that made me start thinking about payphones, and since you can call toll-free numbers from payphones here without depositing any coins (checked to make sure this is still a thing last week), this seemed like an interesting idea.
I have some artsy-fartsy thoughts about it, too: creative uses of dying infrastructure; ‘true’ anonymity - the info I’m getting from people is basically the number they’re calling from, as a product of that their location during the call, and whatever audio they want to shove down the pipe - that’s it; ideas about locality and physicality in an age where mass communication has erased borders in many senses, but people feel disconnected from their local communities more than ever, etc.
If you have some time to kill, I wrote a long-winded comment about it earlier and put it on a pastebin clone here (due to length limitations for comments here): https://pastes.io/paoqsezsjn
Basically, I like the idea of this weird number you can only reach from payphones someone slapped a sticker on in 2024, that doesn’t ask for money (even the .50 to connect), doesn’t try to sell you anything, and primarily just offers a box to leave some audio in. Could yield nothing, could yield something neat.
Hah I like it! Saving your link to read later! Thanks for sharing
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