in australia they’re still everywhere because when i government sold our state telco they mandated that they maintain the pay phone network at reasonable prices
that doesn’t sound particularly comment-worthy on its own so here’s the cool part: turns out collecting coins is more expensive than the money they got from it so they just stopped charging and now all our pay phones are not only still everywhere, but entirely free and have free wifi embedded in them
Nope that was comment worthy without the other half.
However the second part is super rad in a way only people who grew up with the word “rad” can really understand. Or whatever the Aussie equivalent of 90s slang for “cool” would be.
I'd be shit out of luck using a payphone in today's world.
I don't remember anyone's phonenumbers except my teenage girlfriend's family, because while she has changed her phone number, the mother and brother were just 1 number off so I remember them, especially because the first 7 numbers are same as mine.
But aside from that, idk, maybe my own mother and brother.
But I haven't learned a phone number in fucking decades.
Pretty cool though as you know they're there, so either you can use the WiFi with your own device or just remember a few numbers in case you run out of charge.
yeah - i mostly see them as a public good for low income or homeless people… it allows them a lot of different places they can place free phone calls… perhaps not ideally as private as you’d like to deal with medical or social security things, but services exist for that too - just pay phones are everywhere
Ironically, for homeless people a smartphone is a great investment, since the web allows finding support services and such stuff. But free wifi from the booths is probably great. Idk where they're charging the phones, though — perhaps at sympathetic businesses.
absolutely correct! i used to work for a not for profit that built a big service search engine (largely used for crisis helplines, medical referrals etc) and released a phone app specifically for help finding homeless support services
there are power points in maccas, food courts, libraries, and even randomly dotted around cities outside for maintenance
I have the most important numbers stored in a note on my smartwatch (and my bike's head unit) so I can still call people in an emergency even if my phone is dead. I should probably put them on a note in my wallet too.
I used to have a note in my wallet, but maintaining it was unwieldy and I eventually gave it up.
Probably a bad idea but nowadays I rely on my phones emergency calling. I have my contacts set up and my phone and watch are supposed to call if I get hit by a car. I think there’s a way for calling my emergency contacts even when my phone is locked but I don’t know if anyone knows how to do that.
I’m not sure emergency contacts are actually helpful anymore though. I still have family but they’re scattered. You can call my Mom but it’s a 14 hour drive that she’s too old to make do what’s the point. My ex is local but she’s my ex. My kids should know if I die but I don’t see how they’d help
Everywhere is a bit of an exaggeration they are definitely still around but nowhere nearly as prolific as they where in the 90s. Also anything that wasn't owned by Telecom/Telstra is long gone.
We still have some really cheap parking meters. For example to keep people from using the library parking lot all day, there is a meter and 2 hour limit. It’s only a quarter for half an hour or maybe even an hour.
But who carries quarters anymore? There’s an app for that. You can pay by app. Each quarter has a quarter surcharge. I think that’s unreasonable and refuse but a lot of people are ok with it. I say “100% fee is unreasonable” but they say “25¢ fee is cheap and convenient ”.
Where I am, a few payphones exist here and there, and they use specialized cards that are (iirc) tied to the person. This was probably done just so the police can spy on who makes calls.
I have seen payphones around... like, at all. I've seen the iconic bright pink lit up tops and wifi symbol so I can attest that they are indeed still around, but it's very uncommon to see them. There's not a whole lot left and to say they're "everywhere", I mean... I haven't been interstate for a while but, what part of Australia are you in that these are a common fixture for you?
One thing I know for sure: the term smart or mobile phone is completely obsolete for most people. The default for phone is a smartphone; if you mean something else, you need to qualify. I also heard people refer to landline phones as "something you see in old timey TV shows".
It turns up in the lyrics of "When you wasn't famous" by The Streets, released in 2006. Maybe it was somewhat regional, though, him being from England and all that.
I've heard it somewhere in movies or music. But it was uncommon to use because a lot of the time the camera part wasn't relevant so you'd just call it a phone
Nah, originally just any phone with a camera, as opposed to the models of earlier years which didn't have any.
Nokia 3310 is a legendary phone everyone knows it and it predates camera phones. Not by much, but a few years. After Nokia 3310 I had a 3330 and a 5510, both which were essentially just variations of the 3310. Then I had my first colour screen 3510i, which had a colour display (4096 colours, 96x65 pixels. That one could technically display rudimentary "photos". There weren't any ofc, but the images you could order by SMS were amazing compared to the earlier monochromatic displays. And even with those it was hot to order yourself some funny or racy logo made up of not too many pixels. Like these.
So because everything was so much about images and backgrounds and logos, once the first camera phones camera out, even when their cameras were horrible, it meant that you could just make a custom background for your phone just like that, even if if was a photo you couldn't even tell what of.
So yeah people called them camera phones. Then it took years until the photos were the sort of quality you could actually put up somewhere.
But Sony did have a specific K model as well as their W (Walkman) models. One was more focused on the camera and one on music.
Fun fact: When a new thing comes out and it changes the name of the old thing (landline, snail mail, Star Trek: The Original Series, etc.) the new name for the old thing is called a retronym.
I use the number for my old landline (which has been disconnected for years now) whenever a business asks me for a number and I know they just want to spam me.
There's a 1994 interview with Bill Gates in which he talks about how someday in the future we will have what he calls wallet PCs, and which will allow us to pay for things, be cameras, things we can use to hold our tickets to go into shows, etc. One of the best Playboy interviews.
Sci-fi had portable ‘communicator’ devices for a long time, e.g. in ‘Star Trek’ — I see smartphones as the implementation of those. It's kinda-sorta obvious that once you have a pocket computer, you want to stuff everything you can in there too.
Our house still has a working landline. It's there from when my parents owned it and we didn't shut it off because it's cheap to run and for some of our older relatives it's the only way they know how to reach us. We get a lot of those "Microsoft tech support" scam calls on it, presumably because they just assume landlines are all vulnerable old people.
In Finland it's even rarer, even old people gave up on landlines a long while ago, and nowadays only companies have them. Of course there's likely to be a few outliers, but the vast, vast majority.
Oh, no, these people are for sure outliers here too, I genuinely find it odd that I know someone who still uses a landline. They have cellphones but they hardly answer them.
I house-sat for them while they were out of the country and I genuinely had forgotten how much I hated a voicemail -device- that beeped at you every 2 minutes if there was a message waiting… (I was not about to answer their landline phone.. I don’t know who would call them..)
You just reminded me my house technically has a phone number, but I haven't had a landline phone in something like 20 years. I remember WoW had just come out, was moved into a new home, and by then the home phone was never used so never got one plugged in again.
Not only were there public pay phones everywhere, but if you dialed zero, a person we called The Operator would immediately answer and you could ask them to look up a phone number for you or ask them to dial a number for you.
This operator would pick up when you dialed zero from your home landline too.
Wait until you find out about all the free water fountains literally everywhere so if you were thirsty you could just stop and get an ice cold drink of water and go about your day.
In the UK you could also sign up for a thing where you dialed 144 and then an account number and you could call anywhere without coins and it would charge it to your home phone bill. I still have that ~15-digit phone number memorized from when I was a kid lol.
Free water fountains still exist but good luck finding a public bathroom in walking distance of said fountain. I literally have every port a potty mesmerized in my city because no one will let you use the bathroom, even then some get locked up or completely removed 🥲
Well I pass one on my bike and make a mental note. I live in smallish city so for me its essential to know. I have peed in alleyways and bushes off the trails but I much prefer the privacy of the port a potty, or an actual bathroom. There use to be some by the hotels and recently renovated buildings, also in some parks. I been out of commission cause I broke my collarbone, biking, so I don't know a lot of the recent spots admittedly
I love the public washrooms in parks that are closed 'after hours', despite the park facilities being rented out for adult sports outside of those hours
they're really streamlining that sex offender pipeline by telling adults to piss in the woods next to a park, often near a school
Not where I am. They turned off the old ones--even the ones that were in parks. I see one here and there but they used to be literally everywhere. Every store had one either inside or out front. Every park had them. Every downtown area had them at every block.
I used to give out a payphone number as my own back before i had a cell. It was close to where I hung out with friends, so there was a decent chance I would be there if you called.
I saw a cool movie that had guys literally riding on the backs of the horses. It was a clever spin on the worm scene from Dune, even if it wasn't a completely original idea.
There's a single payphone still standing at the end of the road in the town nearest me. It was disconnected when I found it, but I got phreaky and hooked it back up + bypassed the coin mechanism. Mostly out of nostalgia, partly for the love of fixin' stuff :)
Neato. Out of all of those I passed in my travels, the last one I could tell you the location of off the top of my head was this one, but I notice that as of this year it's also gone. If you check the latest Street View image you'll see the cables dangling from where it used to be. There ain't no hooking this one back up, alas, unless you bring your own.
Note the horse and buggy. Where we are standing is indeed out in the sticks.
I was in a random diner somewhere in Appalachia this year which had a functioning payphone and one of those old pull-knob cigarette vending machines in the back. I don't recall exactly where it was. I should have taken a picture or written it down.
There was a bank of five or six payphones in the common area at my high school. Someone found out there was a number you could call which, after you hung up would immediately generate a callback to the phone it was called from. It was not uncommon to have all the phones ringing constantly.
We had a deaf school in our high school, so one of the payphones had a keyboard and an operator would read your messages to the other party. My friend used to use it to call his friend and see how many dirty words he could get the operator to say.
When I managed a hardware store back in the day we got scam calls fairly regularly via these types of teletext-to-operator schemes. It was always some bullshit about somebody needing 144 chainsaws or 200 lawn mowers or some shit, and they always wanted to try to pay with a check routing number, and they always wanted it delivered sight unseen to some highly suspicious location. It must have been extra infuriating for the operators, because they know damn well it's a scam but apparently they weren't allowed to interject or add to the conversation in any way to tell the recipient this. Of course we knew what was up, so I'd instruct the operator to relay to the scammer the longest and most inventive list of insults I could think of to see if I could get them to giggle. The operator, that is. Not the scammers.
I presume the scammers were connecting to the phone network via the internet, probably itself dial-up at the time.
weren’t allowed to interject or add to the conversation in any way
I think the best they can do is press a button that says they've "become biased" and will connect you to another operator. My friend got them to do that once.
My high school only had one pay phone. It had a bad connection in the hand set, so sound cut in and out constantly. People rarely ever bothered making calls on it. The coin return also had some sort of obstruction inside it. If you inserted a quarter and then hit the coin return lever, you'd hear it fall, but it didn't actually come out. When enough quarters built up though, they would all flood out into return tray at once. Naturally, it got used as a slot machine. Drop in a quarter, pull the tiny lever, and see if you hit the jackpot.
I worked for a company back in the '00s that made most of their money off of pay phones. Even 20 years ago pay phones were obsolete so I was somewhat mystified by this during my job interview. Turns out they managed pay phones in prison - which are still a thing.
They literally do not exist at all in many places. Why wouldnt you question their existence? Sure its easy to figure out whether they were real, but people on social media constantly ask questions without doing any research for themselves.
I have seen gramophones and telegraphs in museums, I wonder if one day I will live to see payphones in normal non specialty museums?
Also right now we still have some payphones here, but what I haven't seen in probably more than 20 years are payphone cards.
I've seen and heard a gramophone in person. I have owned a victrola. Never seen a telegraph in use, but I've talked to someone a long way off on a ham radio.
I've owned typewriters. Payphones vanished pretty abruptly with the rise of cellular. Still incredibly smoothbrained to question their being real.
Some people never grow into object permanence or conspiracy theory media beats it out of them. Moon landing? I didn’t see it happen, therefore it didn’t happen. Pay phones? Helen Keller? Spherical Earth? Vaccinations? Dinosaurs? I’ve not directly observed them, thus they must be wholly fake.
Don't have to be stupid to think things they never saw in real life weren't as common as they are in movies. I have a kid in high school who never saw a working public phone that I'm aware of. When I pointed out a place where one used to be mounted outside shesaid "Oh, so it is like in the movies."
Movies do often exaggerated things, so asking is reasonable if someone is young enough.
Payphones have not been around/in good condition for a very long time in the uk. Hollywood has created more mundane shit before, why wouldn't they do the same for payphones?
True, but it was pretty common in old movies for someone to go down to a hotel lobby and have the clerk say, "Sir, this came for you," then hand them a message where every 3rd word was, "stop." It didn't make much sense to me, but I didn't think it was made up for the movies.
Also, kids today still know what a phone is and what its used for. It doesn't take a genius to realise that phone boxes aren't needed anymore now that everyone has a phone in their pocket.
Pay phones were cool.
As teens, we used to go spend the summer camping with my friends in a super remote place and the only thing available connecting us with our parents was the pay phone.
We'd go there twice a week to tell them we're still alive and will eventually come back home if we run out of food.
Somebody should describe the insane hack to these youngins where you can make a collect call to your parents from a pay phone and tell them your name is "HEY COME PICK ME UP!"
It's like you can send information to somebody across town without having coins in your pocket!
We had an automated reverse charges number we'd call from the payphone. You got to say your name and the system would then call my parents at home and ask "Do you accept a reverse charge call from 'mumimatthestation'?"
Then my mum would hang up and come get me from the station.
Yep! A friend would occasionally walk to the nearest payphone, initiate a collect call, and when it asked for a name he would state the payphone number (we didn't have caller id). He'd hang up and I could call the payphone and we would make our plans.
I remember in NYC, I think once my dad's phone either ran out of battery or forgot to bring it... so he used the payphones, and the conversation had to be quick because otherwise you gotta put in more quarters. I think it was just to know where to meet up or something, cuz we lived in Brooklyn and some of our relatives were in Manhattan, and so we'd just meet like every so often especially like holidays. I remember being in that Chinese Restaunt near Canal St... like often.
It turns out people like using the phone in their pocket more than the one used by strangers, tagged, with none of their numbers and a ripped up phone book attacked to a hard plastic case, that always makes your hands smell like metal after you dial.
yeah, but Im over here trying to figure out how to connect an old Nortel Millennium so that the display works for caller ID.... (I want to put one of these in the garden)
You've got a payphone you're trying to setup? That's awesome! I've always wanted something like that, but I would have to be able to make it actually work.
Currently I got hold of an old 1950's wall-mounted rotary phone and it's hooked to a Bluetooth adapter that makes it work via my cell phone.
Havn't bought one yet. Just eyeing my next project (realistically 2 projects from now). I narrowed down the Millennium cause I think I could get the most utility out of it. If I were to really do it how I would like Id need a pbx and thats a project Im definitely not willing to take on for some time.
Well, and the whole 'unlimited nationwide calling for $20 a month' (at least in the states) replacing '$2 a minute with a $19.99 line fee per month' making cell phones a lot more financially feasible playing a tiny role in this, too...
Where I live, not only do they still exist, but they're also free to use and occasionally also offer free wifi. Why? No idea tbh, my guess is the government contract probably required the provider to keep them working for a certain amount of time.
Ah man. This kind of shit makes me feel old dammit.
I had a payphone booth close to my house that I somehow got the actual number of, meaning you could call that booth. I used it to communicate secretly with my GF at the time, to keep my parents from knowing (this was before cellphones).
About 10 years ago my kids went to a summer camp with a pay phone. The thing is they weren’t allowed to use cellphones in any public area plus reception was horrible, so they had to learn
as a kid i had a phone card. they were introduced the year i was born and by the time i was eight, the payphones no longer took cash.
turns out, when living out in the country there aren't that many payphones either. i could call home from school, which was a few towns over from where i lived, or from the bus terminal which was in yet another town even further away. it was a strange time, but we made it work for like seven years.
Great, now I'm reminded of a project I abandoned and the pile of weird business cards I have in my junk drawer...
I set up a toll-free number a year or so back with the idea of finding (eventually) all remaining payphones in public spaces in my city, white listing the numbers and leaving a card inviting folks to call. I stopped after about a week and like 10 phones, meaning to get back to it and never did.
Did run into people legitimately using them while doing so though, which was slightly unexpected.
In my city there is only 1 payphone (that I know off) and it is literally just used as a decoration. Like red box for 1 person. It probably had it's use in the past, but now is mere decoration in city centre.
From what I could tell, the Bluesky OP had a private conversation with the younger fellow who simply just wanted to find out something from someone they might personally know.
It isn't wrong to ask someone a question which could be easily googleable since the question is simply a way to converse and find out more about the person you're questioning.
If they really are someone who just seeks attention, they'd just make ragebait about this topic publicly.
Meh, scroll on and ignore it. How in the hell do you have the energy to get that excited about a stupid Internet post? Cut the kids some slack, they've never not had attention. You don't have to give them yours.
I wouldn't exactly say common. I really needed one when I was in Tokyo about 10 years back and had a hell of a time finding one. And in the countryside you can pretty much forget about it these days
I guess they seem really common if you're not looking for them because they're so out of place in the 2020s, but not common at all if you actually need one.
140 Comments
pupbiru@aussie.zone · 167 pts · 269d
in australia they’re still everywhere because when i government sold our state telco they mandated that they maintain the pay phone network at reasonable prices
that doesn’t sound particularly comment-worthy on its own so here’s the cool part: turns out collecting coins is more expensive than the money they got from it so they just stopped charging and now all our pay phones are not only still everywhere, but entirely free and have free wifi embedded in them
ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 35 pts · 268d
Nope that was comment worthy without the other half.
However the second part is super rad in a way only people who grew up with the word “rad” can really understand. Or whatever the Aussie equivalent of 90s slang for “cool” would be.
pupbiru@aussie.zone · 15 pts · 268d
rad works :p you could go with BONZA MATE if you’re really putting it on ahah
ApathyTree@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 268d
That’s amazing to me. So far apart but so lame together 🫶🏻
Bonza mate sounds pretty awesome by comparison, but maybe because I wasn’t bathed in it throughout my life…?
Nah, it’s awesome anyway.
Dasus@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 269d
I'd be shit out of luck using a payphone in today's world.
I don't remember anyone's phonenumbers except my teenage girlfriend's family, because while she has changed her phone number, the mother and brother were just 1 number off so I remember them, especially because the first 7 numbers are same as mine.
But aside from that, idk, maybe my own mother and brother.
But I haven't learned a phone number in fucking decades.
Pretty cool though as you know they're there, so either you can use the WiFi with your own device or just remember a few numbers in case you run out of charge.
pupbiru@aussie.zone · 9 pts · 268d
yeah - i mostly see them as a public good for low income or homeless people… it allows them a lot of different places they can place free phone calls… perhaps not ideally as private as you’d like to deal with medical or social security things, but services exist for that too - just pay phones are everywhere
also i guess for calling 000 (our 911)
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Ironically, for homeless people a smartphone is a great investment, since the web allows finding support services and such stuff. But free wifi from the booths is probably great. Idk where they're charging the phones, though — perhaps at sympathetic businesses.
pupbiru@aussie.zone · 3 pts · 267d
absolutely correct! i used to work for a not for profit that built a big service search engine (largely used for crisis helplines, medical referrals etc) and released a phone app specifically for help finding homeless support services
there are power points in maccas, food courts, libraries, and even randomly dotted around cities outside for maintenance
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 268d
The only number I can remember of hand is my own childhood house line. Like I literally just had to look up my own mobile number!
horse@feddit.org · 5 pts · 268d
I have the most important numbers stored in a note on my smartwatch (and my bike's head unit) so I can still call people in an emergency even if my phone is dead. I should probably put them on a note in my wallet too.
Dasus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 268d
I have no important people or anyone who would care about me, so needless for me, but a fair idea for those who do.
I don't even have an emergency contact anymore.
AA5B@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 268d
I used to have a note in my wallet, but maintaining it was unwieldy and I eventually gave it up.
Probably a bad idea but nowadays I rely on my phones emergency calling. I have my contacts set up and my phone and watch are supposed to call if I get hit by a car. I think there’s a way for calling my emergency contacts even when my phone is locked but I don’t know if anyone knows how to do that.
I’m not sure emergency contacts are actually helpful anymore though. I still have family but they’re scattered. You can call my Mom but it’s a 14 hour drive that she’s too old to make do what’s the point. My ex is local but she’s my ex. My kids should know if I die but I don’t see how they’d help
bitchkat@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 268d
You haven't learned new numbers in decades but you have a teenage girlfriend?
Dasus@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 268d
The girlfriend I had when I was a teenager — decades ago.
I'm sure that was clear from the context but I'm not gonna leave that hanging no matter how much of a joke, lol.
AA5B@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 268d
I think the joke involved Epstein, or maybe “Bubba”
RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 268d
Best solution that could have happened.
MCHEVA4EVA@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 268d
Everywhere is a bit of an exaggeration they are definitely still around but nowhere nearly as prolific as they where in the 90s. Also anything that wasn't owned by Telecom/Telstra is long gone.
ICastFist@programming.dev · 6 pts · 268d
Fuck me, that's actually good and I'd make good use of that
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 268d
I'm surprised that they didn't just embed a card reader in the phones.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 268d
Still not really feasible. The card charges on a $0.20 call would be "unreasonable".
AA5B@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 268d
Depends on how you define unreasonable….
We still have some really cheap parking meters. For example to keep people from using the library parking lot all day, there is a meter and 2 hour limit. It’s only a quarter for half an hour or maybe even an hour.
But who carries quarters anymore? There’s an app for that. You can pay by app. Each quarter has a quarter surcharge. I think that’s unreasonable and refuse but a lot of people are ok with it. I say “100% fee is unreasonable” but they say “25¢ fee is cheap and convenient ”.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 267d
Anyone would consider a 20c fee on a 20c charge to be unreasonable.
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Visa executives find it perfectly reasonable, apparently.
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
Where I am, a few payphones exist here and there, and they use specialized cards that are (iirc) tied to the person. This was probably done just so the police can spy on who makes calls.
Jimmycrackcrack@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 267d
I have seen payphones around... like, at all. I've seen the iconic bright pink lit up tops and wifi symbol so I can attest that they are indeed still around, but it's very uncommon to see them. There's not a whole lot left and to say they're "everywhere", I mean... I haven't been interstate for a while but, what part of Australia are you in that these are a common fixture for you?
pupbiru@aussie.zone · 1 pts · 267d
in melbourne CBD is guess there’s at least 1 per corner
MissJinx@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
My first thought was "wait it doesn'tl exist everywhere?" guess not
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 56 pts · 269d
One thing I know for sure: the term smart or mobile phone is completely obsolete for most people. The default for phone is a smartphone; if you mean something else, you need to qualify. I also heard people refer to landline phones as "something you see in old timey TV shows".
LadyButterfly@reddthat.com · 56 pts · 269d
And there was the brief time we said camera phone...
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 13 pts · 269d
Honestly I never heard that one but even the term phone camera is almost obsolete.
rumschlumpel@feddit.org · 2 pts · 269d
It turns up in the lyrics of "When you wasn't famous" by The Streets, released in 2006. Maybe it was somewhat regional, though, him being from England and all that.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 269d
I've heard it somewhere in movies or music. But it was uncommon to use because a lot of the time the camera part wasn't relevant so you'd just call it a phone
Cavemanfreak@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 269d
I remember camera phones being phones that had more focus on their camera
Dasus@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 269d
Nah, originally just any phone with a camera, as opposed to the models of earlier years which didn't have any.
Nokia 3310 is a legendary phone everyone knows it and it predates camera phones. Not by much, but a few years. After Nokia 3310 I had a 3330 and a 5510, both which were essentially just variations of the 3310. Then I had my first colour screen 3510i, which had a colour display (4096 colours, 96x65 pixels. That one could technically display rudimentary "photos". There weren't any ofc, but the images you could order by SMS were amazing compared to the earlier monochromatic displays. And even with those it was hot to order yourself some funny or racy logo made up of not too many pixels. Like these.
So because everything was so much about images and backgrounds and logos, once the first camera phones camera out, even when their cameras were horrible, it meant that you could just make a custom background for your phone just like that, even if if was a photo you couldn't even tell what of.
So yeah people called them camera phones. Then it took years until the photos were the sort of quality you could actually put up somewhere.
But Sony did have a specific K model as well as their W (Walkman) models. One was more focused on the camera and one on music.
Rant over
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
What the hell are those ‘s’es in ‘uusimmat’ and ‘suosituimmat’? Is it ‘ß’? Why is it there?
Dasus@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
Huh. Seems like a version of cursive s, but am not sure.
Atherel@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 269d
And an iPaq which ironically wasn't made by apple
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 13 pts · 269d
Fun fact: When a new thing comes out and it changes the name of the old thing (landline, snail mail, Star Trek: The Original Series, etc.) the new name for the old thing is called a retronym.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 7 pts · 268d
That is a fun fact
edit: the list is long
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 269d
I use the number for my old landline (which has been disconnected for years now) whenever a business asks me for a number and I know they just want to spam me.
Dragonstaff@leminal.space · 3 pts · 268d
I did this at grocery stores for decades. But now they require responding to a text code.
marzhall@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 269d
There's a 1994 interview with Bill Gates in which he talks about how someday in the future we will have what he calls wallet PCs, and which will allow us to pay for things, be cameras, things we can use to hold our tickets to go into shows, etc. One of the best Playboy interviews.
SARGE@startrek.website · 2 pts · 268d
SlurpingPus@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
Sci-fi had portable ‘communicator’ devices for a long time, e.g. in ‘Star Trek’ — I see smartphones as the implementation of those. It's kinda-sorta obvious that once you have a pocket computer, you want to stuff everything you can in there too.
ButteryMonkey@piefed.social · 4 pts · 268d
I know people who currently have and use a landline.
They are old tho so that fits actually.. they had me add days of our lives to my server, and I felt a bit dirty.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 268d
Our house still has a working landline. It's there from when my parents owned it and we didn't shut it off because it's cheap to run and for some of our older relatives it's the only way they know how to reach us. We get a lot of those "Microsoft tech support" scam calls on it, presumably because they just assume landlines are all vulnerable old people.
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · 3 pts · 268d
In Finland it's even rarer, even old people gave up on landlines a long while ago, and nowadays only companies have them. Of course there's likely to be a few outliers, but the vast, vast majority.
ButteryMonkey@piefed.social · 1 pts · 268d
Oh, no, these people are for sure outliers here too, I genuinely find it odd that I know someone who still uses a landline. They have cellphones but they hardly answer them.
I house-sat for them while they were out of the country and I genuinely had forgotten how much I hated a voicemail -device- that beeped at you every 2 minutes if there was a message waiting… (I was not about to answer their landline phone.. I don’t know who would call them..)
saltesc@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 269d
You just reminded me my house technically has a phone number, but I haven't had a landline phone in something like 20 years. I remember WoW had just come out, was moved into a new home, and by then the home phone was never used so never got one plugged in again.
bluegreenpurplepink@lemmy.world · 55 pts · 269d
Not only were there public pay phones everywhere, but if you dialed zero, a person we called The Operator would immediately answer and you could ask them to look up a phone number for you or ask them to dial a number for you. This operator would pick up when you dialed zero from your home landline too.
Wait until you find out about all the free water fountains literally everywhere so if you were thirsty you could just stop and get an ice cold drink of water and go about your day.
CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 268d
In the UK you could also sign up for a thing where you dialed 144 and then an account number and you could call anywhere without coins and it would charge it to your home phone bill. I still have that ~15-digit phone number memorized from when I was a kid lol.
pewgar_seemsimandroid@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 269d
no the free water fountains still exist...
Aneb@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 268d
Free water fountains still exist but good luck finding a public bathroom in walking distance of said fountain. I literally have every port a potty mesmerized in my city because no one will let you use the bathroom, even then some get locked up or completely removed 🥲
bluegreenpurplepink@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 268d
How do you mesmerize a port a potty? I'm almost afraid to ask, but here I am lol
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 268d
You look deep into it's soul... "porta-potty, I'm going to count back from ten to one, when I reach one, you will be a coffee shop... ten, nine..."
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 268d
There's a mobile game in there somewhere.....
Aneb@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 268d
Well I pass one on my bike and make a mental note. I live in smallish city so for me its essential to know. I have peed in alleyways and bushes off the trails but I much prefer the privacy of the port a potty, or an actual bathroom. There use to be some by the hotels and recently renovated buildings, also in some parks. I been out of commission cause I broke my collarbone, biking, so I don't know a lot of the recent spots admittedly
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 268d
I love the public washrooms in parks that are closed 'after hours', despite the park facilities being rented out for adult sports outside of those hours
they're really streamlining that sex offender pipeline by telling adults to piss in the woods next to a park, often near a school
bluegreenpurplepink@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 268d
Not where I am. They turned off the old ones--even the ones that were in parks. I see one here and there but they used to be literally everywhere. Every store had one either inside or out front. Every park had them. Every downtown area had them at every block.
real_squids@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 269d
so do payphones, but most of them have been disconnected/abandoned
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 268d
Go back far enough and they were even color-coded! So handy ...
comradegreetingcard@lemmy.ml · 42 pts · 269d
LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz · 26 pts · 268d
I used to give out a payphone number as my own back before i had a cell. It was close to where I hung out with friends, so there was a decent chance I would be there if you called.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 25 pts · 268d
I saw horses in Western movies, surely they could have just driven to the gunfight?
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 268d
I saw a cool movie that had guys literally riding on the backs of the horses. It was a clever spin on the worm scene from Dune, even if it wasn't a completely original idea.
HugeNerd@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 268d
Like, without a steering wheel!?
moonshadow@slrpnk.net · 21 pts · 269d
There's a single payphone still standing at the end of the road in the town nearest me. It was disconnected when I found it, but I got phreaky and hooked it back up + bypassed the coin mechanism. Mostly out of nostalgia, partly for the love of fixin' stuff :)
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 14 pts · 269d
Someone having an otherwise really bad day is going to send your soul to the Good Place
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
Neato. Out of all of those I passed in my travels, the last one I could tell you the location of off the top of my head was this one, but I notice that as of this year it's also gone. If you check the latest Street View image you'll see the cables dangling from where it used to be. There ain't no hooking this one back up, alas, unless you bring your own.
Note the horse and buggy. Where we are standing is indeed out in the sticks.
I was in a random diner somewhere in Appalachia this year which had a functioning payphone and one of those old pull-knob cigarette vending machines in the back. I don't recall exactly where it was. I should have taken a picture or written it down.
Davel23@fedia.io · 20 pts · 269d
There was a bank of five or six payphones in the common area at my high school. Someone found out there was a number you could call which, after you hung up would immediately generate a callback to the phone it was called from. It was not uncommon to have all the phones ringing constantly.
ch00f@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 269d
We had a deaf school in our high school, so one of the payphones had a keyboard and an operator would read your messages to the other party. My friend used to use it to call his friend and see how many dirty words he could get the operator to say.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 5 pts · 269d
time to call a telephone sex hotline via the operator
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
When I managed a hardware store back in the day we got scam calls fairly regularly via these types of teletext-to-operator schemes. It was always some bullshit about somebody needing 144 chainsaws or 200 lawn mowers or some shit, and they always wanted to try to pay with a check routing number, and they always wanted it delivered sight unseen to some highly suspicious location. It must have been extra infuriating for the operators, because they know damn well it's a scam but apparently they weren't allowed to interject or add to the conversation in any way to tell the recipient this. Of course we knew what was up, so I'd instruct the operator to relay to the scammer the longest and most inventive list of insults I could think of to see if I could get them to giggle. The operator, that is. Not the scammers.
I presume the scammers were connecting to the phone network via the internet, probably itself dial-up at the time.
ch00f@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 267d
I think the best they can do is press a button that says they've "become biased" and will connect you to another operator. My friend got them to do that once.
EpeeGnome@feddit.online · 13 pts · 269d
My high school only had one pay phone. It had a bad connection in the hand set, so sound cut in and out constantly. People rarely ever bothered making calls on it. The coin return also had some sort of obstruction inside it. If you inserted a quarter and then hit the coin return lever, you'd hear it fall, but it didn't actually come out. When enough quarters built up though, they would all flood out into return tray at once. Naturally, it got used as a slot machine. Drop in a quarter, pull the tiny lever, and see if you hit the jackpot.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 269d
I know this would be annoying as heck, but I’m laughing my ass off imagining this.
I would totally have done this too.
moody@lemmings.world · 4 pts · 269d
I used to do this at my school, and sometimes the payphones in the metro. Can confirm, I was annoying.
SethTaylor@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 268d
Oh my god, this is wild! You know who would like this meme? My friend, Tony
Operator, connect me to Tony, please
Rooster326@programming.dev · 4 pts · 268d
ivanafterall@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 268d
Now, Sarah, I reckon you know plum well which Tony, seein' as there ain't but one in all of Mayberry...
echodot@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 268d
I lived on a farm so it was out in the middle of nowhere, and apparently our first phone number was 3
Apparently the numbersused to just be sequential
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 268d
I worked for a company back in the '00s that made most of their money off of pay phones. Even 20 years ago pay phones were obsolete so I was somewhat mystified by this during my job interview. Turns out they managed pay phones in prison - which are still a thing.
LadyButterfly@reddthat.com · 7 pts · 268d
Ahhhhh that makes sense
MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca · 15 pts · 269d
Is it rage bait or are the some of the younger ones really that stupid?
unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de · 53 pts · 269d
They literally do not exist at all in many places. Why wouldnt you question their existence? Sure its easy to figure out whether they were real, but people on social media constantly ask questions without doing any research for themselves.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world · 39 pts · 269d
I’ve never seen a gramophone or telegraph in my life but I know they’re real things
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 23 pts · 269d
Nope. God put those in old photographs to test our faith
Sirence@feddit.org · 4 pts · 269d
I have seen gramophones and telegraphs in museums, I wonder if one day I will live to see payphones in normal non specialty museums? Also right now we still have some payphones here, but what I haven't seen in probably more than 20 years are payphone cards.
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 269d
I've seen and heard a gramophone in person. I have owned a victrola. Never seen a telegraph in use, but I've talked to someone a long way off on a ham radio. I've owned typewriters. Payphones vanished pretty abruptly with the rise of cellular. Still incredibly smoothbrained to question their being real.
Axolotl_cpp@feddit.it · 4 pts · 269d
Yeah, like in Italy i never saw one
s@piefed.world · 18 pts · 269d
Some people never grow into object permanence or conspiracy theory media beats it out of them. Moon landing? I didn’t see it happen, therefore it didn’t happen. Pay phones? Helen Keller? Spherical Earth? Vaccinations? Dinosaurs? I’ve not directly observed them, thus they must be wholly fake.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 269d
And yet somehow God is real...
yakko@feddit.uk · 10 pts · 269d
Reality itself is rage bait.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistentialism
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 269d
'PC LOAD LETTER'? The fuck does that mean?!
A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 269d
snooggums@piefed.world · 4 pts · 269d
Don't have to be stupid to think things they never saw in real life weren't as common as they are in movies. I have a kid in high school who never saw a working public phone that I'm aware of. When I pointed out a place where one used to be mounted outside shesaid "Oh, so it is like in the movies."
Movies do often exaggerated things, so asking is reasonable if someone is young enough.
arudesalad@piefed.ca · 4 pts · 269d
Payphones have not been around/in good condition for a very long time in the uk. Hollywood has created more mundane shit before, why wouldn't they do the same for payphones?
A_norny_mousse@feddit.org · -1 pts · 269d
Starting with "sorry if this is a silly question" should tell you enough.
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 267d
Calling bullshit on this. I never received a telegraph, but I never assumed they were made up for the movies. This kid is either a troll or a moron.
Cactopuses@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 267d
I don’t disagree but in his defence pay phones used to be everywhere and are practically gone today vs relatively few telegraph offices.
pjwestin@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 267d
True, but it was pretty common in old movies for someone to go down to a hotel lobby and have the clerk say, "Sir, this came for you," then hand them a message where every 3rd word was, "stop." It didn't make much sense to me, but I didn't think it was made up for the movies.
Jason@feddit.uk · 3 pts · 267d
Also, kids today still know what a phone is and what its used for. It doesn't take a genius to realise that phone boxes aren't needed anymore now that everyone has a phone in their pocket.
tino@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 268d
Pay phones were cool. As teens, we used to go spend the summer camping with my friends in a super remote place and the only thing available connecting us with our parents was the pay phone. We'd go there twice a week to tell them we're still alive and will eventually come back home if we run out of food.
pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 268d
Living the dream
Zink@programming.dev · 12 pts · 268d
Somebody should describe the insane hack to these youngins where you can make a collect call to your parents from a pay phone and tell them your name is "HEY COME PICK ME UP!"
It's like you can send information to somebody across town without having coins in your pocket!
ArcaneSlime@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 8 pts · 268d
The real phone "hacks" were called phreaking back in the day.
null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 6 pts · 268d
In Australia the receiving phone would "ring" even if you didnt put any money in.
You'd dial and let it ring a few times and then hang up.
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 11 pts · 269d
I remember trying to find quarters to call my mom to come pick me up.
Evil_Incarnate@sopuli.xyz · 19 pts · 269d
We had an automated reverse charges number we'd call from the payphone. You got to say your name and the system would then call my parents at home and ask "Do you accept a reverse charge call from 'mumimatthestation'?"
Then my mum would hang up and come get me from the station.
Duranie@leminal.space · 12 pts · 269d
Yep! A friend would occasionally walk to the nearest payphone, initiate a collect call, and when it asked for a name he would state the payphone number (we didn't have caller id). He'd hang up and I could call the payphone and we would make our plans.
Davel23@fedia.io · 10 pts · 269d
Is your name Bob Wehadababyitsaboy?
hperrin@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 268d
You’ve just unlocked a memory.
DeathByBigSad@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 268d
I remember in NYC, I think once my dad's phone either ran out of battery or forgot to bring it... so he used the payphones, and the conversation had to be quick because otherwise you gotta put in more quarters. I think it was just to know where to meet up or something, cuz we lived in Brooklyn and some of our relatives were in Manhattan, and so we'd just meet like every so often especially like holidays. I remember being in that Chinese Restaunt near Canal St... like often.
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 269d
It turns out people like using the phone in their pocket more than the one used by strangers, tagged, with none of their numbers and a ripped up phone book attacked to a hard plastic case, that always makes your hands smell like metal after you dial.
GorGor@startrek.website · 18 pts · 269d
yeah, but Im over here trying to figure out how to connect an old Nortel Millennium so that the display works for caller ID.... (I want to put one of these in the garden)
IcedRaktajino@startrek.website · 9 pts · 269d
You've got a payphone you're trying to setup? That's awesome! I've always wanted something like that, but I would have to be able to make it actually work.
Currently I got hold of an old 1950's wall-mounted rotary phone and it's hooked to a Bluetooth adapter that makes it work via my cell phone.
GorGor@startrek.website · 3 pts · 269d
Havn't bought one yet. Just eyeing my next project (realistically 2 projects from now). I narrowed down the Millennium cause I think I could get the most utility out of it. If I were to really do it how I would like Id need a pbx and thats a project Im definitely not willing to take on for some time.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 269d
Well, and the whole 'unlimited nationwide calling for $20 a month' (at least in the states) replacing '$2 a minute with a $19.99 line fee per month' making cell phones a lot more financially feasible playing a tiny role in this, too...
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 268d
Hang on, I'm getting a page.
UnrepententProcrastinator@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 268d
Why is there text on your page mine is only a callback no.
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 268d
It was really just a pretty elaborate number code.
Signitures, locations, times
We should go back
Walk_blesseD@piefed.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 269d
Where I live, not only do they still exist, but they're also free to use and occasionally also offer free wifi. Why? No idea tbh, my guess is the government contract probably required the provider to keep them working for a certain amount of time.
Kyrgizion@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 269d
Ah man. This kind of shit makes me feel old dammit.
I had a payphone booth close to my house that I somehow got the actual number of, meaning you could call that booth. I used it to communicate secretly with my GF at the time, to keep my parents from knowing (this was before cellphones).
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 268d
You carry payphones in your pockets nowadays
AA5B@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 268d
About 10 years ago my kids went to a summer camp with a pay phone. The thing is they weren’t allowed to use cellphones in any public area plus reception was horrible, so they had to learn
Fedegenerate@lemmynsfw.com · 5 pts · 267d
You have a call from "mom come get me" would you like to accept the charges?
lime@feddit.nu · 5 pts · 269d
as a kid i had a phone card. they were introduced the year i was born and by the time i was eight, the payphones no longer took cash.
turns out, when living out in the country there aren't that many payphones either. i could call home from school, which was a few towns over from where i lived, or from the bus terminal which was in yet another town even further away. it was a strange time, but we made it work for like seven years.
Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 268d
Great, now I'm reminded of a project I abandoned and the pile of weird business cards I have in my junk drawer...
I set up a toll-free number a year or so back with the idea of finding (eventually) all remaining payphones in public spaces in my city, white listing the numbers and leaving a card inviting folks to call. I stopped after about a week and like 10 phones, meaning to get back to it and never did.
Did run into people legitimately using them while doing so though, which was slightly unexpected.
Una@europe.pub · 4 pts · 269d
In my city there is only 1 payphone (that I know off) and it is literally just used as a decoration. Like red box for 1 person. It probably had it's use in the past, but now is mere decoration in city centre.
P1nkman@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 269d
Are you Norwegian?
Una@europe.pub · 2 pts · 268d
Nope
MourningDove@lemmy.zip · 4 pts · 269d
Famko@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 269d
From what I could tell, the Bluesky OP had a private conversation with the younger fellow who simply just wanted to find out something from someone they might personally know.
It isn't wrong to ask someone a question which could be easily googleable since the question is simply a way to converse and find out more about the person you're questioning.
If they really are someone who just seeks attention, they'd just make ragebait about this topic publicly.
Pat_Riot@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 269d
Meh, scroll on and ignore it. How in the hell do you have the energy to get that excited about a stupid Internet post? Cut the kids some slack, they've never not had attention. You don't have to give them yours.
MourningDove@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 269d
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 268d
Matt Damon aging meme.
kittenzrulz123@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 4 pts · 268d
Ive seen a couple in New York and several when I visted Palestine
NikkiDimes@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 267d
They're not super uncommon in Japan still. Plus they have that cool neon green paint, making them pretty hard to miss.
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 268d
Oh, Kiddy...
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 3 pts · 268d
They're still pretty common in Japan
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 268d
I wouldn't exactly say common. I really needed one when I was in Tokyo about 10 years back and had a hell of a time finding one. And in the countryside you can pretty much forget about it these days
Alcoholicorn@mander.xyz · 2 pts · 268d
I guess they seem really common if you're not looking for them because they're so out of place in the 2020s, but not common at all if you actually need one.
hOrni@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 269d
https://comb.io/DvxOGQ
thesohoriots@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 268d
Excellently used alongside cell phones in the high school neo-noir film Brick.