[HN Gopher] An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
___________________________________________________________________
An Alabama landline that keeps ringing
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 242 points
Date : 2025-05-04 12:02 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (oxfordamerican.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (oxfordamerican.org)
| timcobb wrote:
| It's probably voip :/
| GuB-42 wrote:
| 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 wasn't, and then, I realized that the latency was messing
| with us. Because of the latency, from her point of view, I
| interrupted her, and from mine, she interrupted me. That's when
| I realized how much it mattered, we simply can't have a normal
| conversation with high latency. Either we deliberately take
| turns, as if it was a traditional 2-way radio communication, or
| we may get these awkward situations, neither feel natural.
|
| High latency can be as little as 100ms (corresponding to about
| 30m of distance in real life).
| toast0 wrote:
| > Do you mean it is not analog and latency is higher as a
| result?
|
| Digital teleophony doesn't imply significant latency. PRI
| calling (T1/ISDN) is digital, but the sampling delay is
| minimal, and it's sent one sample at a time, so there's no
| packetization delay.
|
| VoIP tends to run a codec with sampling/encoding delays, and
| tends to be at least 20ms packetization, and then you have a
| jitter buffer and probably input and output buffering too.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| The main problem is packet switching instead of circuit
| switching. Internet sucks for voice
| myself248 wrote:
| It still bothers me. Analog and TDM voice was magical and we
| didn't appreciate it until it was gone. VoIP was so much
| cheaper, the latency became the norm, and people who've never
| known anything different simply have no idea what was lost.
|
| It used to be that if you had two landlines in a large room,
| you could call one from the other, and your voice would go
| into one phone, electrically go across town into the switch,
| back out the other line, and out the other phone, before the
| soundwaves traveled the length of the room. It was _so_ good.
| mncharity wrote:
| > 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.
| choonway wrote:
| how far is the deep learning stack close to replacing them?
| slyfox125 wrote:
| By definition, it will never replace "them."
| rafram wrote:
| They were already "replaced" by the internet decades ago, but
| people keep calling. As the article explains, there are still
| people in the US without access to the internet or knowledge of
| how to use it, as well as a lot of people who just want to talk
| to a human being.
|
| You can call 1-800-CHATGPT if you want, but there's clearly
| still a place for this service.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Haha, I'm on such another plane of technology these days, my
| initial reaction upon reading the headline was that there was
| some persistent seismic event near the border of Mississippi xD
| charcircuit wrote:
| You could hook up one of the voice based LLMs to do this instead
| of the students.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| The value, it would seem, comes from it being precisely not
| that.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Being precisely not a mobile app. I am saying that they can
| expose this functionality through the phone system like they
| are currently doing.
| cubefox wrote:
| Problem with voice based LLMs is that they don't know when it's
| their turn to talk.
| slyfox125 wrote:
| The point of it all is the human connection - not the answers.
| charcircuit wrote:
| The AI can provide both the human connection and the answers.
| jdiff wrote:
| It is a severe reach to say that AI can provide human
| connection. At best, it can provide the illusion, for some.
| And for those people, I'm not going to say that that's not
| valuable or legitimate for them. But it's pushing it one
| step too far to imply that that's a good idea for everyone.
| brookst wrote:
| 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.
| jdiff wrote:
| 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.
| brookst wrote:
| 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.
| slyfox125 wrote:
| Existence of a/the soul isn't the only reason machines
| cannot replace people in the context of something like
| this.
|
| One reason is that the human experience is dependent upon
| the biological nature of man. The biological systems
| color the experience. The pumping of blood, the nervous
| system, the heart beating, and ultimately, one's
| awareness of the specific type of mortality inherent to
| biological organisms, are integral to the experience. If
| you accurately reproduce that experience then perhaps
| you've simply made a human rather than a machine. Of
| course that claim spurs many subsequent philosophical
| arguments. Ultimately though, a video game console
| emulator is not the literal console no matter how
| accurate it is.
|
| A second reason is simply the subjective experience of a
| person. Regardless of how accurate the simulation is,
| ultimately, if the person is aware the other end isn't
| human, the experience is tainted (for better or worse
| depending on the individual's opinion - but tainted
| nonetheless). Knowledge of the truth will necessarily
| affect the experience. The alternative - being in the
| dark or outright deception - raises other questions of
| genuinity that taint the experience.
|
| A conversation with a human, by another human, will never
| be the same as a conversation with a machine - by
| definition.
| charcircuit wrote:
| And the illusion only has to last the duration of a phone
| call. I think it's a reasonable bar that can be passed
| today.
| slyfox125 wrote:
| It cannot because it is not human. It can emulate the
| experience but it will never be genuine. Generally, if a
| caller ever became aware that it wasn't truly a person on
| the other end it would lessen the interaction. Whether that
| is justified or not is debatable, but it is nonetheless the
| case and thus the end result is not the same.
| charcircuit wrote:
| It may not be the same, but it could be a better overall
| experience compared to using humans.
| slyfox125 wrote:
| Interesting point that I also alluded to elsewhere. The
| perspective of good/bad could vary highly depending on
| the individual. And really, it could vary highly based on
| what any one individual is looking for out of a
| particular conversation at that moment: unconditonal
| affirmation, critical obversations, etc.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| AI can provide a human connection if it's programmed to
| route calls to a real human.
| alt227 wrote:
| How can a machine provide a human connection on its own?
| charcircuit wrote:
| The same way a machine can pass the turing test.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| yes let's remove every social bond we have and replace it with
| a computer
| frohrer wrote:
| You can already call 1-800-242-8478 if you want to talk to a
| computer, this is not that.
| trollbridge wrote:
| 800-GOOG-411 was planned to do a similar thing; the difference is
| that was online for 3 years and unceremoniously shut down, versus
| this one which is still in operation 72 years later.
| Etheryte wrote:
| The true Google way, someone got a promotion and then the
| product dies.
| kaonwarb wrote:
| Google has squandered so much good will over the years. This is
| a good example: expenses wouldn't even be a rounding error, and
| it could have given so many average folks a positive experience
| with the company.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| I'm still using 2 RSS readers (Inoreader and TheOldReader)
| that I switched to after Google Reader shut down.
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| Aha! Minor blast from the past. I just realised my a/c
| might still be alive on there and there it was. I think I
| logged in after 3 or 4 years. Old Reader. I think I had
| deleted my a/c on Ino Reader. I used to follow couple of
| _niche_ Hindi blogs and they shut down years ago; some
| Engish language as well (from all over the world). Most of
| them were anon. I kept coming back for years but they were
| gone. That 's what killed the RSS/blogs for me, not the
| demise of Google Reader. It stopped being the place I knew
| in my own individual/idiosyncratic way.
|
| I suspect something similar would happen to podcasts for
| me, maybe sooner than I am hoping for. And podcast player
| apps.
| bigthymer wrote:
| It probably would have turned into a customer service line
| for all of their products they notoriously fail to adequately
| support.
| kbutler wrote:
| This is a good theory and may have been an actual
| motivation to shut it down.
| ashu1461 wrote:
| How about calling 1-800-CHATGPT (1-800-242-8478) now ?
|
| Wonder how many queries which the university is calling can now
| be automated
| jtwoodhouse wrote:
| Where's the joy in that? We don't have to replace humans for
| everything.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Cha-Cha was first
| icameron wrote:
| 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.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Yeah but... who still uses dumbphones?
| devilbunny wrote:
| 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).
| srhtftw wrote:
| My "daily driver" is a dumb Consumer Cellular Link II.
|
| SMS based services are useful to me when traveling without
| my laptop.
| devilbunny wrote:
| It would be somewhat niche, but if you have an iPhone and
| somehow wanted the Hey Google reaction instead of Siri, could
| still find use as a hands-free information source.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| It's pretty well understood (and was at the time) that the
| project was aimed at collecting voice sample data for further
| voice-recognition and AI work:
|
| "Google Shuts Down GOOG-411" (October 9, 2010)
|
| _The service has helped Google build a large database of voice
| samples and improved the voice recognition technology. Here 's
| what Google's Marissa Mayer said about GOOG-411:_
|
| _" The speech recognition experts that we have say: If you
| want us to build a really robust speech model, we need a lot of
| phonemes, which is a syllable as spoken by a particular voice
| with a particular intonation. So we need a lot of people
| talking, saying things so that we can ultimately train off of
| that. ... So 1-800-GOOG-411 is about that: Getting a bunch of
| different speech samples so that when you call up or we're
| trying to get the voice out of video, we can do it with high
| accuracy."_
|
| <https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/10/google-shuts-
| down-...>
|
| ""The 411 Parable": Make sure you are playing the same game."
| (2011)
|
| _But just when the "head-to-head" competition was rolling
| Google announced GOOG-411 was no more... they'd captured all
| the human speech they needed to train their algorithms and were
| on to bigger and better things... Huh, voice recognition...
| algorithms?_
|
| <https://web.archive.org/web/20130810032940/http://buildconte..
| .>
|
| Not that the sudden death didn't kill what was at the time a
| useful service, and squander goodwill in the process.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| What a heartbreaking way to end that article... but, what a way
| to make the message stick.
| divbzero wrote:
| I was wondering if that missing period was intentional...
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| This is such a lovely read! I might even call the line later
| today.
| delichon wrote:
| Somewhere 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.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| There are still elevators that you need to be certified to
| use like mine elevators, and other form of
| commercial/construction devices so you could certainly see an
| elevator operator existing in one of those places.
| blamazon wrote:
| 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.
| FroshKiller wrote:
| I visited a shopping mall in India in 2019 that still employed
| elevator operators.
| theobeers wrote:
| As recently as five years ago, the Fine Arts Building on
| Michigan Ave. in Chicago employed elevator operators. It
| probably still does.
| skinner927 wrote:
| They're being replaced.
|
| https://wgntv.com/news/cover-story/fine-arts-building-
| manual...
| tharant wrote:
| I was hoping for a Desk Set reference; thank you.
| toast0 wrote:
| Elevator operators are pretty common at arena events. I think
| to help ensure the elevators aren't under or overloaded.
|
| Of course, observation towers tend to have elevator operators
| too.
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| I think the GP is referring to manually operated elevators,
| in which a human inside the elevator pulls a lever to tell
| the elevator when to move. When I was a kid, my dad worked in
| a building with a semi-automated elevator that had floor
| buttons and an automatic return to the ground floor, but
| still had the lever. There was an operator inside on
| weekdays, but if you came in on the weekend you had to
| operate the elevator yourself.
| tecleandor wrote:
| I think it was in Lima, not many years ago (6? 8?) that I
| saw in a federal building the elevators were manually
| operated. They had physically disabled persons in charge of
| them, so I guess it was a way of integrating some of those
| jobs.
| sbuttgereit wrote:
| Here's a song inspired by a real elevator operator that works
| an elevator at the Chicago House of Blues:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiP0FpY88E4
|
| The song is naturally called Elevator Operator.
| nunez wrote:
| elevator operators are still in use in NYC
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| They still exist in certain NYC buildings
|
| Either cause the elevator is super old or because union
| contracts require them.
|
| Then there are hospitals I've been in that have them.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| What a fun surprise to hear about the Foy info desk on HN! When I
| went to student orientation at Auburn, they made a point to call
| the desk as a demonstration and ask how many M&Ms would fit into
| Jordan-Hare Stadium. The answer was provided in under a minute.
|
| Back in the early 2010s when I was going to Auburn, the
| smartphone internet was still pretty young. It wasn't uncommon to
| call the Foy info desk to settle an argument.
|
| Really makes me want to swing back to Auburn for a visit. War
| damn Eagle!
| masto wrote:
| I remember RPI had something like this in the 1990s. I can't
| remember what it was called though. But I do remember how
| impressed everyone was: if you call this phone number, they can
| answer ANY question!
|
| I believe those of us who were around from then to now
| experienced peak information. We went from having to look things
| up in libraries to being able to find anything with a Google
| search. We're on the downward slope now. Business models have
| changed, spamvertisers are winning the war against search, and
| generative AI slop is already the dominant source of "content",
| ensuring the genie can never be put back. This is not an anti-AI
| rant, it is just an acknowledgement that like so many things, we
| were foolish to think that access to information was just going
| to keep getting better. I did not expect that in my lifetime, I
| would see the best it was ever going to be.
|
| Maybe in the future, calling a trained human for help will be the
| only way to sort through the mountain of infogarbage to find
| something. Or we'll have to go back to the library.
| graemep wrote:
| Sadly, I agree with you.
|
| More optimistically, I hope doubt about know whether you are
| dealing with a real person or an LLM will encourage people to
| be more social offline.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I remember "learning to use the library" was a thing growing up
| in the 90's. It was funny because we'd come far along enough
| with the internet stuff that even the adults teaching this
| basically knew it was going to be a very niche skill. But
| still, something that every educated person was supposed to
| know how to do.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| That's still an important skill! You might think that
| everything that can be digitized has been and is easily
| available online, but that's not the case. Especially so for
| more obscure books and publications that are mostly relevant
| to your local area.
|
| When I moved to my current town and visited their library, I
| very quickly found some books written about the local area
| for which not much info existed online. It's a great way to
| spend some time if you're into that kind of thing!
| RebeccaTheDev wrote:
| What 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 questions I got then were from other students,
| most around when a certain class started or where it was located.
| This is was the early 2000s and, while a lot of this was
| available via OASIS (the Auburn student system) for any student,
| many either didn't have the computer savvy to use it or ...
| didn't have a computer at home at all!
|
| The most unusual call I took was from a student who was lost in
| Haley Center (the largest building on Auburn's campus - at the
| time, not sure about now as I haven't been back in decades - and
| somewhat difficult to navigate if you aren't familiar with its
| layout). The poor kid sounded absolutely panicked. I actually had
| to pull up a map and walk the him turn-by-turn until he found the
| main hallway again.
|
| As an aside, it's neat to see a few other Auburn alums on here.
| WDE!
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| 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.
| RebeccaTheDev wrote:
| 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
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| But do you remember how many bricks there are in Haley Center?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I worked a reference desk around the turn of the century. Your
| public library probably still has one, though I think they may be
| pooled across different areas now, I'm not sure.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| I have called them,simply, twice only to thank them for their
| work.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| We 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
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Desk-Telephone-2500-Analog-Phone/dp/B...
| ipython wrote:
| 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.
| nunez wrote:
| This is amazing. Feels similar to college radio: still more
| incredible than it should be for a "dying" medium.
| Vaslo wrote:
| I feel like a lot of schools had this kind of number to ask
| questions, including my undergrad. Though I don't think they go
| back 70 years.
|
| A popular question was "how many severed heads can fit into our
| stadium" and a couple of kids reasoned it out.
| dheera wrote:
| Got 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.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/uTmqaox.png
| brudgers wrote:
| _James 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.
| todd_moses wrote:
| I 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.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| The NY Public Library used to have similar service. Been few
| years since I tried it.
|
| I'm actually curious if anyone knows how they've adapted it for a
| LLM-era
| deadbabe wrote:
| This kind of gave me the vibes of an SCP: a mysterious eternal
| phone number you could call and get answers to anything --
| _anything_ -- except perhaps about the phone line itself.
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