Discussion
brd529: This is amazing
FugeDaws: Damn this needs building for the UK payphones there are a dying breed too and they used to be everywhere
xd1936: Incredible idea. I love this so much.
brodouevencode: more Silicon Valley/California xenophilia? </sarcasm>
pjmlp: In Germany some of the booths were converted into public libraries, those that people use to freely exchange books.They are rare, but I have already spot some in the wild.
cameronjpr: I love this, it's so creative. The audio recordings were a great idea
p4bl0: This is amazing. I would love to have this game in France!The "love letter to a disappearing piece of infrastructure" bit makes me think of the payphone pictures that are published in each of 2600 magazine issues: https://www.2600.com/payphones
FugeDaws: yeh UK went from 100,000+ now i think theres 20,000 left half of those i bet dont work
rickcarlino: Please expand this to other states. This is such a fun and creative idea.
tantalor: Would benefit from seasons i.e. wipe the leaderboard every once in a while
bknis53423: As a GIS programmer and a payphone nerd. I love love love this.
thaack: This works because California requires licensing for payphones and Riley was able to FOIA state payphone database. I'm not sure if other states require licenses for payphones.
jasonjayr: How is it verifying the calling line? Via ANI, or CID?
libria: Trying to win this from your couch, I see...
jasonjayr: It's in good fun, physically visiting them is way more fun than handing a SIP trunk to a short script + CSV file.The nerd in me is just always curious about the backend :)
summermusic: Real world exploration games like this and Jet Lagged: The Game Hide and Seek are just so cool.I’d play it if payphones from my state were included! I don’t know if they are licensed/registered here though.
acrophiliac: I know of a working payphone that is not on the Payphone Go map. Photo: https://i.postimg.cc/Dw4sCDpJ/payphone.jpg The fact that I know of one makes me wonder, are there are others? Is the list the author obtained from PUC incomplete? Is this phone operating unlicensed? Has the phone died since I last visited a year ago?
analyte123: Please consider extending the game at least by a couple weeks! I’m very curious what percent of all California payphones could be captured with an extended game. I know the game’s phone number isn’t free but I’m sure it could be largely covered by donations.Without even going and playing the game yet, it’s already let me understand more of the local geography. Lots of small nursing homes, behavioral institutions, and halfway houses have a payphone. Places that thankfully I haven’t had to think about and didn’t even know were there. I doubt most of these will be captured.Many have lamented the demise of the payphone but it really bears repeating. If someone loses or is robbed of their phone, they have to rely on the trust of strangers (when they may be looking pretty rough themselves) or scrape up $20-40 for a prepaid phone at a store that’s open, rather than calling at a payphone that’s open 24/7 for 25 or 50 cents or even for free with a collect call.
MarkusWandel: Another cool "just get out there" thing is the Degree Confluence Project. Just checked, and even the web site is still old school. https://confluence.org/My personal contribution: https://confluence.org/confluence.php?visitid=3402
MarkusWandel: Anyway would love to play this payphone game, if only as an excuse for bike outings, but it's only for California and I don't live there.
teddyh: If you just want to find a payphone: <https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2lHO>
macintux: Apropos of absolutely nothing, and impossible to prove, but I've long suspected I might be the youngest person in the U.S. to have won tickets from radio stations both from a rotary phone (at home, ~1989) and from a payphone (while I was delivering pizzas ~1990).Unfortunately I've never really taken advantage of my absurd luck to do something more useful, like retire early.
drkrab: In Denmark there are no payphones. Like none. The copper network is being decommissioned.
citizenpaul: The recording left on this one is super weird and creepy like its from some ARG game which I guess is appropriate.The next night we ate whale, the next night we ate whale.https://walzr.com/payphone-go/?phone=592Runner Up this one playing "Im at a payphone" songhttps://walzr.com/payphone-go/?phone=576
tadfisher: Landline phone calls should just be free at this point. Put like 0.0001% of mobile profit into a fund and surely you can maintain the existing POTS payphone base. POTS-quality voice is like a rounding error in bandwidth, but we're saddled with POTS-era costs for connections.
cyberax: It's not the traffic but the CO equipment and copper line maintenance.
flyinghamster: That's happening piecemeal in the US as well. Any "landline" phone service at this point will be coming from a box hooked up to your internet service, quite the flip from the old days of dialup internet.
lapetitejort: I just visited the closest one to me during lunch. There was just a single dot in the middle of a huge county building. I had to walk through security to get there. I asked if there was a payphone around and the guard said no. Luckily someone else knew. One out of two phones didn't work. The other did, so now my best clean original joke can be heard by anyone.There are three other phones in my city, two in a hospital, one in potentially a corrections facility? I'll stop by on my way hope.
kmoser: > Every payphone has a unique phone number. When you call (888) 683-6697, I see the number you're calling from and match it in my database.Has anybody tried to win by spoofing the caller ID? For science, of course.
