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aaron42net 23 hours ago [-]
This phone is my project. I'm happy to answer questions.
SamuelAdams 22 hours ago [-]
Can you update the "did not answer" flow to, instead of six busy signals and hanging up, be the dialog to end of the Matrix (1999)? The film concludes with Neo talking into a phone booth phone to the audience and I think it would be fitting here as an Easter egg.
aaron42net 20 hours ago [-]
Yes, that wouldn't be hard with the normal voip.ms call routing.
But my intent was for it to be as visually and functionally identical as possible to a phone booth you would've found on a street corner a few decades ago, just in an unusual place (and free). I've avoided anything in the normal usage of it that would deviate from that.
dandellion 17 hours ago [-]
You could make it 99% of the time a normal phone booth and 1% you get the Matrix easter egg, that would be even more fun.
drybjed 6 hours ago [-]
And the other 1%, a call from the Machine (Person of Interest) with a Dewey Decimal System number callout. It would be even better if the booth itself rang and when somebody nearby answered, you get the numbers.
cutoff 17 hours ago [-]
I saw your Reddit post and decided to post it here (my first HN post). Didn't think it would end up front page, but love to see that people here are calling it and having nice chats with burners. My apologies if this blew up more than intended on your end.
aaron42net 12 hours ago [-]
No worries. I'm happy you found it interesting enough to share, and that others found it interesting enough to upvote and ask questions about.
The single phone line was mostly at capacity with the /r/BurningMan crowd trying to call, though. I suspect with several times as many people dialing, sadly that has to mean fewer people can succeed. Hopefully people are still having fun with it, though.
jonahhorowitz 12 hours ago [-]
In 2003, my first burn, I camped next to embassy around 7:30 and esplanade. One of the guys in my camp brought a VoIP phone and connected it to whatever internet was available at the time. The phone was a lifeline for many people, back in the days when communicating from the playa was incredibly hard.
Your version is way cooler. Thanks for bringing a little magic to the playa.
solfox 19 hours ago [-]
How has it evolved over the years? Certainly internet access on the playa has gotten easier than when you first launched it. What was the first connectivity solution?
aaron42net 19 hours ago [-]
I've had to replace the handset (mic and speaker) and the LEDs in the sign a few times since 2013, but I've mostly left the hardware alone otherwise except switching to Starlink in 2022.
Until then, it got Internet via Burning Man itself through what they call the "participant network", which they still provide: https://internet.burningman.org/
This consisted of setting up a Ubiquiti NanoBridge (then later NanoBeam) with their supplied config on top of a 20 foot tower aimed at the 60 foot radio tower near Center Camp. Sometimes they wouldn't provide the config or get the participant network running until like Tuesday or Wednesday of event week, it might at best provide 400kbit/sec total or have permanent 50% packet loss, or just be down for days at a time. It wasn't great.
I hear it has drastically improved in recent years, but I haven't tried using it.
toomuchtodo 13 hours ago [-]
It’s been some time since I’ve been, but I had good luck with a directional antenna with a hotspot pointed at the closest T-Mobile tower (~12 miles in Gerlach if memory serves) if that might ever be relevant to your backhaul/uplink use cases.
Great work!
ChrisMarshallNY 2 hours ago [-]
You need to have a rotary dial on it. ;)
Good show!
teiferer 9 hours ago [-]
So cool! Thanks for this!
One detail about the status page: the rows read upside down. "Online Phone connection". Once you realize what it means your brain can flip it, but the more natural order would be "Phone connection Online".
andai 22 hours ago [-]
Nice. I'm curious how it works? I don't know much about VoIP, I remember being amazed by Skype back in the day, that it could call landlines.
aaron42net 19 hours ago [-]
The basics are that it's using a cheap VoIP adapter that you'd plug a classic touch-tone phone into, allowing it to make phone calls over the Internet through a low-cost telco provider called voip.ms.
That was the look I was going for, but the base is actually 1" plywood with a 45 degree bevel and rounded corners, painted with a few coats of a grey deck paint. There are 6 massive bolts holding the booth pedestal to the base. Assembled, the whole thing is pretty sturdy.
niwtsol 22 hours ago [-]
I've told you this before, but I'll tell you again - thank you for running this, has been delightful in my experience!
gregcohn 23 hours ago [-]
Very cool project; thanks for making it.
ellis0n 14 hours ago [-]
I like your idea and I was really impressed by the film The Matrix, but how can we know that it’s not another voice agent?
ale42 18 hours ago [-]
So nice to see such projects! Thank you for doing that.
chagaif 21 hours ago [-]
such a cool project! does it show somewhere if the phone is busy? I can see it shows when the last call ended...
aaron42net 21 hours ago [-]
Sadly, not easily. The voip.ms API can show me that the phone is logged in, and I can poll the phone bill ("call detail records") but that only shows calls after they've completed. But there isn't anything available for current call state that I can find.
TZubiri 17 hours ago [-]
Is the phone more used for inbound or outbound? Calling the phone seems fun, but I wouldn't want to get in the way of a bunch of people standing in line to make a call, or use it for emergencies.
aaron42net 15 hours ago [-]
Last year, it was roughly 2/3 outbound vs 1/3 inbound, based on total talk time in the 6.5 days it was set up.
There were 1,460 outbound calls successfully made to 835 different numbers in 23 countries, with a total talk time of 34.8 hours. (This is down about 40% from peak years ago, now that there's more cell service and Internet available at Burning Man.)
There were also 5,658 inbound call attempts, and 676 (12%) were answered with a total talk time of 17.2 hours. 4,070 incoming calls got a busy signal and 912 got no answer.
And you can't make an emergency call on it (which is written in all caps on it); flagging down someone with a radio is the right way to get emergency services out there.
walrus01 3 hours ago [-]
Did you restrict any of the expensive international destinations in the voip.ms control panel? I imagine you wouldn't get that many people who wanted to call really weird places and have a 2 hour conversation from the playa, but some very costly destinations in per minute rate do exist in the voip.ms rate table.
aaron42net 1 hours ago [-]
Currently, it looks like I have it configured to allow all destinations that are $0.40/minute or less with voip.ms's "value" routing. This is enough to call all numbers in ~120 countries and some numbers (usually landlines) in another ~70.
And there are occasionally people who have trouble with the concept of "free 5 minute call" (that it hangs up after) not meaning "just keep dialing back for an hour or two", even with a long line behind them. I can't ban specific outgoing numbers with voip.ms, but once I ended up just disabling all calls to the country that a problematic user kept coming back and repeatedly redialing.
ericwengrowski 23 hours ago [-]
Nice dude, thanks for building it
echelon 23 hours ago [-]
This is amazing and has me wishing we had pay phones again.
Maybe they could come back and offer "free" service in high-density areas and fund via pre-roll ads or something. But perhaps the culture of remembering phone numbers is too far gone and it's easy enough to find charging.
Thank you for making and posting about this!
aaron42net 22 hours ago [-]
I think I've heard of at least a few groups dropping free-to-use phone booths in rural areas without much cell service, sans any form of revenue.
wiml 21 hours ago [-]
Futel runs a handful of non-pay payphones in and around NW Oregon, some urban and some rural. There are other regional organizations doing similar things.
Fuzzwah 19 hours ago [-]
Here in Australia our once public phone company, telstra, have converted many phone boxes to be free to use and also provide a small wifi AP.
Telstra, the formerly state owned incumbent telco is obliged under their universal service obligation to provide a certain number of payphones, but it costs more to collect the coins than the phones earn in revenue.
hhhAndrew 17 hours ago [-]
This is part of the picture. But IIUC Telstra is very keen to keep that "obligation". Why? Because along with it they 1. Are fairly free to decide where to put payphone (eg next time you are in the city, notice sometimes they are slightly impeding pedestrian traffic in the city), and 2. They are allowed to place and sell advertising on the sides which makes bank due to 1.
Despite the above I love that my kid can just dial my number on any payphone, and they like prank calling me, and they have duly memorised my number .
solfox 24 hours ago [-]
Our first time out on the playa together, my girlfriend and I stopped by this phone booth and made a couple of calls. And because we stopped, we saw the FSM camp next door, and a giant sign saying "Weddings Here", so we inquired. They offered us free rings and then announced our wedding over a loudspeaker. In 2 minutes we had an entire wedding party, complete with best man, an elder to give away the bride, 25+ guests, and an officiant. My newly-minted best man even gave me one of my favorite playa gifts ever as a wedding gift. We opted not to "make it official", though they offered. It was a truly incredible experience. Thanks FSM!
maximilianthe1 23 hours ago [-]
Did you make it official later?
22 hours ago [-]
airstrike 22 hours ago [-]
Blessed be his noodly appendages!
mariusor 21 hours ago [-]
And blessed be short people, for it is on their heads where they rest more heavily.
FuriouslyAdrift 23 hours ago [-]
Flying Spaghetti Monster?
axus 22 hours ago [-]
"For the rest of the week of Burning Man, a phone booth is standing on the dusty street corner of 3:30 and Celba, in front of the Temple of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in Black Rock City, Nevada for anyone to use."
Oh I know about it... I just hadn't seen a reference to it in years. Kind of like seeing JR Bob Dobbs or the Church of the Subgenius mentioned.
gosub100 22 hours ago [-]
Finite State Machine
krogenx 23 hours ago [-]
What was the gift?
k7peak 22 hours ago [-]
That's awesome, congrats!!! Amazing things happen on the playa.
tucnak 21 hours ago [-]
What's the point if not to make it official? Otherwise there are no stakes, no benefit, and the whole thing would amount to cosplay, right?
nilamo 20 hours ago [-]
What's the point of going to a murder mystery diner party, if no one gets arrested at the end?
sebastiennight 19 hours ago [-]
I love how your idea of the failed murder dinner party seems to still include an actual murder ; the problem is only the absence of an arrest.
freeplay 21 hours ago [-]
Oh I thought make it official meant consummating the marriage in front of everyone. If it meant making it an official marriage, I agree.
shawn_w 14 hours ago [-]
Gotta go over to Orgy Dome for that.
20 hours ago [-]
virgil_disgr4ce 21 hours ago [-]
what's the point of going to burning man? What's the point of going outside? What's the point of reading? what's the point of posting a comment on HN?
cjflog 21 hours ago [-]
This is a great project! I've been to Burning Man 10x and interactive projects are my favorite part.
Also, if I may, for folks that might appreciate more phone-based spontaneity, I've built an app to revive the social phone call. It works like a bat signal. Light your beacon and it reaches all your friends at once. The first friend to answer connects 1-1 and every other signal quietly drops. Check it out at trybeacon.chat
metchio 24 minutes ago [-]
I agree this is so nice! Would be awesome if some variation of this becomes the norm in every big city or turistic landmark. It's relatively cheap for local gov to set and maintain couple of those and brings back a different way of using the technology/interacting with people.
sebastiennight 19 hours ago [-]
That... is a great idea. Does the audio call go through your app? Or the regular network?
My phone booth is definitely not the first out there. Brad's was there at least 2004-2006, and this one's been out most years since 2013.
23 hours ago [-]
throwayay4929 1 days ago [-]
Is Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people.
Not trying to be flippant, genuinely curious if my impression is based on reality or am I making things up.
joenot443 23 hours ago [-]
I've been twice and I really enjoyed myself.
Tech, finance, and political people definitely don't make up close to the majority. You'd get sort of laughed at if you tried networking earnestly about like tech stocks or LLMs. Generally I don't prefer socializing with techie types from SF, the folks I met at Burning Man were nothing of the sort.
It's mostly just adults who really like dressing up, building stuff, and staying up really late dancing and partying.
swaraj 23 hours ago [-]
This is exactly the right answer for people asking about BM on hacker news. 100% agreed
jimmydddd 22 hours ago [-]
How long did it take you to leave (get out) at the end? I've heard they often have massive backups in the exit line.
radley 20 hours ago [-]
It depends what time you try to exodus. If you wait until the end, it's 50k+ people trying to leave a campground at the same time.
dmarcos 14 hours ago [-]
You can also stay an extra day. Help clean up and leave with zero traffic. I’ve done it myself.
varispeed 20 hours ago [-]
Can you just smoke weed, enjoy the music and not talk to anybody? Is that sort of experience possible?
radley 20 hours ago [-]
You can, but a big part of the marvel is in walking around (er, biking) and seeing the spectacle. If it's your first year, that's your job: be the audience.
hleszek 20 hours ago [-]
Sure, but you can do that at home too.
varispeed 18 hours ago [-]
Earth is home.
shawn_w 14 hours ago [-]
Smoking weed is iffy; lots of federal cops out here looking for it, since pot is still illegal on federal lands.
Just chilling and doing your own thing is certainly doable.
stickfigure 23 hours ago [-]
I've been a dozen or so times, dating back to 1994.
It's changed over the years - price has gone up, scale has gone up, and rules have become more strict. Not surprising when there are 70k people instead of 3k. Some people (fairly) don't like these changes. And some people like to badmouth things they've never experienced.
It's still the best party going on anywhere in the world that week. Most people you meet are not in tech. The crazy art pieces (most of which are interactive) are like nothing you will find anywhere else. It's definitely fun.
I stopped going regularly because it's a big expense and time commitment and I wanted to allocate my limited budget of both to other adventures. But if you haven't been, you should go.
stickfigure 21 hours ago [-]
I should add - if you want the "old school burning man experience" without big crowds and big expense, go to the exact same place for 4th of Juplaya. The art is smaller but still present; there are people who either got fed up with the bureaucracy, or are field-trialing their projects. You can go to the hot springs and explore the hills. Good place for dirt bikes, if you have them.
It's great both ways.
brettermeier 23 hours ago [-]
> It's still the best party going on anywhere in the world that week.
That's a bold claim, but maybe it's true :D
louison11 17 hours ago [-]
It's absolutely true. When you're there, there is no doubt it is absolutely the best place to be as far as party and creativity goes.
That being said, it depends on what you're looking for in life. But the energy, time and investment that people put into this thing is absolutely mad. It doesn't compare to anything else that exists in the world, not even by a factor of 1:10. It's just insane.
And there are also honestly very few countries that 1/ would let this happen without intervening, 2/ even have such a wide open space to make this happen for 70k people with just desert everywhere in all directions.
barbs 17 hours ago [-]
Whilst I don't think you're necessarily wrong, I would suggest Fusion festival in Germany to come close in terms of scale and dedication.
louison11 12 hours ago [-]
Yes but it’s a festival; with food vendors etc right? Very different from a city that builds itself from the ground.
barbs 8 hours ago [-]
Yes, there are food vendors and professional DJs etc, so it's not the same. But it's similar in the sense of dedication, creativity and DIY spirit.
kakacik 4 hours ago [-]
Dude, check Kumbh Mela before making outrageous statements. 70k is a family meeting in backyard in comparison.
I get it, you dig it passionately and all the power to you, but a bit of modesty and/or world experience would only serve you well.
stickfigure 58 minutes ago [-]
A large religious gathering is not my idea of a good time. It might be yours, that's fine. But these are not similar things.
mlmonkey 22 hours ago [-]
Burning Man is ...... what you make of it.
The last time I went, there was this dude in a camp next to where I was camped. The entire week I was there, I only saw him sitting and drinking; he was totally hammered the entire 7 days and didn't go anwhere (AFAICT). That really saddened me: he could have done the same back home wherever he had come from; what's the point of coming to BM if you're going to just sit in one place and get drunk?
I really wanted to take it all in, so I stayed away from drinking or smoking, and had a great time! There is so much to see, so many creative people to interact with. You can end up having a deep conversation on just about any topic under the sky with random people. I ended up chatting with this Physics graduate student about, of all things, quarks (an area of specialty for him). He ended up patiently explaining various things to me, as if we were long-lost friends.
My recommendation: jump in with both feet in the spirit of contribution and cooperation. Have fun, respect boundaries, contribute however you can.
457urd6uir 17 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Barbing 12 hours ago [-]
Especially the "jump in with both feet in the spirit of contribution and cooperation" part... wait!
Note parent account created just for this rude comment.
itsmek 11 hours ago [-]
As in programmer's "this"?
flexagoon 24 hours ago [-]
Haven't went myself either, but I've heard from some people that the smaller Burning Man spin-offs retain more of the original vibe and are often cheaper even when you include costs of travel. A lot of people come to AfrikaBurn from all over the world, for example.
That being said, the very nature of the event involves spending thousands of dollars to live in the desert for a week. So the audience is obviously mostly people who have the money to do so.
lukan 23 hours ago [-]
"That being said, the very nature of the event involves spending thousands of dollars to live in the desert for a week. So the audience is obviously mostly people who have the money to do so."
It depends what standard you need, but I have been to (way smaller) desert gatherings where people with no money came. (Not as remote, though, possible to walk there with a tent). But as far as I know, the main thing you need for burning man is a van and water, or know someone who has one.
vladgur 21 hours ago [-]
You dont need a van. You just need to be comfortable at being uncomfortable.
Yes, tickets are expensive. Yes you need to bring survival stuff like water and food.
Yes you will be underslept most likely. But it will be worth it.
flexagoon 22 hours ago [-]
> the main thing you need for burning man is a van and water
And $1000 tickets :P
A fully equipped van is also not exactly a cheap thing to own or rent.
__MatrixMan__ 17 hours ago [-]
I'm under the impression that paying for tickets is not exactly frowned on but isn't the respectable path either. The alternative being to do something awesome at a regional burn and get recruited by an established camp, which comes with free tickets.
I have no idea how common this is. I just know somebody offered free tickets for me and my crew if I joined his camp with my contraption at the big burn.
I like the idea, decommodification being one of the principles and all, but I didn't go because I didn't have time to fix some issues that I deemed critical.
phoghed 24 hours ago [-]
For what it’s worth one of my coworkers has been going for over 20 years and he still loves it. Most people giving you an opinion formed it by reading comments on social media.
I’d encourage you to talk to people that have actually been if you want to have an informed opinion. I don’t know shit about it since my n=1 sample size, but he’s someone who’s opinion I trust so I’d personally probably check it out if I was inclined.
TFNA 23 hours ago [-]
Talking to people with experience might not contradict the internet opinion. I am active in a subculture with a number of people who have been, some multiple times. People who have seen it in the 1990s or early millennium and then later feel that it has declined. People who only went later feel rather let down and assume it was better in the now-distant past.
phoghed 23 hours ago [-]
It’s no doubt different, I’m just saying that we should always be suspicious of hearsay from individuals who are relaying this info through a game of social media telephone.
People hate it, people enjoy it, you probably just have to experience it for yourself if you really want to know what it’s like. And second best is looking for accounts of people that have been.
Things are quite literally better than they have ever been in almost every facet of life, yet the golden age is perpetually behind us
PaulHoule 23 hours ago [-]
My son goes to small Burning Man events in New York and has a great time, these are really affordable in terms of admission, travel, etc. I've met the campers on the last day when my son was packing up and it seemed like a great scene.
I was at a different kind of retreat which in some sense opened a portal to "another world" for a week and I'd say the regional Burning Man events were controversial in that circle. Like some people went to them and thought they were great, other people went to them and picketed the access road to protest their perception that the events were a wasteful use of fossil fuels. Here's an article about similar protests at the main event
> Is Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people.
Why not both?
Well off tech people can have fun too. In fact, the wealthier, the more fun the event can be, because it means more ability to do cool stuff, be generous, and avoid trouble. As for tech people, an event that attracts tech people does not make it a tech event. For instance, tech people tend to enjoy metal music, and you are going to find a lot of tech people in metal festivals, but there, music is what bring people together, not tech.
NickNaraghi 24 hours ago [-]
No don’t go, it sucks! It’s dusty and hot!
bsimpson 24 hours ago [-]
There's a hot spring under the ocean off the coast of Steep Ravine in Stinson Beach. It emerges for like 6h at a time - twice a month - for low tide.
People who were young and adventurous before there was an internet have been going for decades. They intentionally leave bad reviews on places like Maps and Yelp to try to dissuade new people from crowding it.
CSSer 23 hours ago [-]
I feel like there’s a non-zero chance you’re getting downvoted because HN doesn’t understand sarcastic burner humor.
gosub100 22 hours ago [-]
It's funny because his argumentis self-defeating. It's people that make it what it is.
leptons 20 hours ago [-]
It's participants that make it what it is, and not everyone participates. Quite a lot that come are purely spectators.
maest 15 hours ago [-]
> sarcastic burner humor.
Give me a break...
polnoner 5 hours ago [-]
If you actually look at the statistics the income distribution is not much different than the US.
The well off narrative makes it an interesting news story. There is no news story about how burning man has the same income distribution as the US.
I have wanted to go since 1996 but never have. When I was younger, being on the east coast always made it so very remote.
Now with age I wouldn't even want to go to some weekend festivals I went to as a kid let alone burning man.
I think if you are young and really want to go you have to seize the moment. The moment might not come again and not because you can't but because you won't.
rlt 23 hours ago [-]
It’s what you make of it and who you surround yourself with.
Some people treat it like a music festival and chase DJs the whole week. Some people immerse themselves in the rest of the culture.
The demographics have definitely been skewing wealthier over time, but it’s still around 50% under $100k income and 10% over $300,000 according to the (admittedly unscientific) census.
Techies/wealthy people remain a minority, not a majority. In fact, if you tell someone you're in tech, expect to be booed/slightly shamed; as it's the type of people a lot of regular burners have a judgment against.
But again, nobody's gonna ask you what you do at Burning Man. And if they do, just say "I'm alive." That's gonna fit the culture.
What I'll say is you'll definitely see an influx of more superficial/wealthy people coming for the last 3 days. Rich shallow people who don't care about the Burning Man spirit and just want to come for the final party, they don't bother to come for the whole week, they just rent an expensive RV for the last few days.
If you do go, go for the whole week, and you'll get to experience the real burning man in the first few days.
satvikpendem 24 hours ago [-]
My friend went in order to network with tech people and now has met some people pretty high up, some of whom are funding his angel round for his startup. Make of that what you will.
azinman2 23 hours ago [-]
That's a terrible use of burning man and against the ethos of it. It makes me sad to know that even worked.
satvikpendem 23 hours ago [-]
You get what you curate. If the maintainers of Burning Man wanted to, they could ban those sorts of people from coming. But until then, expect that people will continue to do such things as my friend (and to be fair to him, he went half for the music and experience too, but he didn't willfully ignore the networking opportunities either, both can be true).
serf 22 hours ago [-]
show me how to blend "radical self expression" with "carefully curated guest list" and make it work.
kridsdale1 22 hours ago [-]
For some people the Authentic Self they bring, is a capitalist in a suit.
satvikpendem 19 hours ago [-]
Just ban tech bros, not everyone's self expression is equally valid.
vincnetas 1 days ago [-]
yes, being rich makes being self sufficient much much easier :) But there a lots of less well of people and it depends on your definition of "fun". But with right crew and right mood enchanters it can be a blast. But mostly you get what you put in. If you expect to be entertained so this is not the right place.
01284a7e 24 hours ago [-]
If you can make it to Burning Man, then your life is what you make it. And if that's true, then it could be fun.
justinator 23 hours ago [-]
>it's mostly very well off tech people
well you're here at hacker news
cortesoft 16 hours ago [-]
I don't think we can divide things into clean 'fun' and 'not fun' buckets. It totally depends on what things you find fun.
There are SO MANY THINGS that other people love that I find miserable, and I know there are things that I find are amazing that other people would never want to do.
segmondy 23 hours ago [-]
Fun is what you make it, and fun is often a personality based thing. The fun people have a blast and the boring people stay bored.
lelandbatey 24 hours ago [-]
It is fun, but in a miserable (hot, dusty, muddy) kind of way. You hear a lot about such rich/out of touch folks, but with 60 thousand people there, they can't all be do-nothing rich people. Someone has to set up all the art and volunteer to help burn down the buildings, and those folks are the most interesting by far. Go there to see all the cool fire art and ask the folks who make it how they did it, what was difficult, other projects they've worked on, etc. better yet, bring your own art or volunteer your labor on another art project. You'll have an amazing time, and see plenty of genuinely interesting folks, as well as contraptions you've never imagined. But beware it takes a lot of effort to participate.
dmarcos 14 hours ago [-]
Yeah. I helped build the temple last couple of years. I highly recommend it.
scarecrowbob 23 hours ago [-]
My buddy called me yesterday just before he got into the playa so I could cover a sound tech gig for him. He's not "wealthy" by most folks' standards.
He is a tech guy, though.
But he keeps having to go to oil production facilities on site in Wyoming to maintain IT infra. It pays okay but it's not the kind of stuff I would do now that I'm mostly able to retire into audio/music work and the minimal amount of festival EMT/ free clinic volunteer stuff I do.
He's a genuine and kind person and has spent a lot of time doing nice things for folks because he likes doing those things. For instance, he was running the makerlab here in the sticks for a couple of years. He got the American legion hall setup so there is now a space for local artists to play.
That's how I know him, at least.
There are a lot of folks in this world who've gotten to some degree of comfortability some way or other, usually some combination of "the old fashioned way" (my parents passed on and left me their IRA) or the more usual way of working for several decades at some tedious skill that pays well in some circumstances.
Folks like my buddy have made a rational decision to just "kind of do whatever"; he has what he needs, he's not super old, and if you've managed to secure a spot out in the middle of nowhere and figure out not-too-annoying-but-inexpensive ways of maintaining that lifestyle, then a lot of options open up.
According to him, he brings a lot of generator equipment and tools (including a welder) and spends his time out there fixing stuff for folks or maintaining stuff like the poorly-configured mesh network equipment other, similarly minded nerds bring out. He troubleshoots folks' generators or vehicles.
Does that sound fun?
It sounds fun to me, to just go somewhere and help folks when I can.
Even if a lot of those folks are spun, or dumb, or party people trying to social climb or whatever. I am certain that given the fame and the proxemity to SF-style wealth there are plenty of well off folks trying to party with folks while networking, but I am equally certain that there are a whole rainbow of other ways that folks are being out there.
I don't like being at events that large, so that rules it out for me, in the same way that I have spent a lot of time at Kerrville Folk Fest but have avoided the Rainbow Gathering.
And to be clear, he's going to a party and it's an easy place to find "unique" substances or people to have fun with.
But I do see how there has to be some amount of community there, given how many folks are going to be with people and not just be tourists.
I am likely projecting to a small degree, but my impression is that largely that's the vibe out there, folks enjoying doing things because they find them satisfying rather than because they can monetize the behavior somehow.
Maybe that satisfaction is dressing up fancy and doing many days worth of drugs. Maybe that is running a bar for strangers, maybe that's making art for other folks to enjoy, maybe it's fixing busted bicycles, maybe it's getting a generator running again.
Having been "involved" with a certain amount of off grid raves and other kinds of gatherings, that's my general understanding of that culture. I'd assume it is in play out there as well.
ChrisArchitect 23 hours ago [-]
Related:
I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
The cool kids went to Wasteland Weekend as of a few years ago. Don't know what the cool place is now.
jzshen 20 hours ago [-]
I’ve been going for a decade. There are some of those because they have the disposable income and job freedom to go but it’s not something you think about because no one talks about work or networking there
prettyblocks 22 hours ago [-]
I haven't been in about 10 years, but yes it's incredibly fun. What you see on social medial is not a representation of the majority of attendees, but it is expensive to attend, especially if you need to travel for it.
0xbadcafebee 23 hours ago [-]
Definitely not fun. I discourage everyone from going. There is absolutely no weird hijinks or chicanery, mind-altering substances, colorful costumes, or gigantic interactive sculptures. Some people claim you can join communal camps and work on a project together but I've never seen it. Don't know where people got the idea that there's random free food and booze. Nobody interesting to talk to, nothing to do, and worst of all, the view is terrible. I don't know why people keep going.
rlt 23 hours ago [-]
It was better next year anyway.
jabroni_salad 16 hours ago [-]
If your impression is from social media, you will mainly be seeing those who love posting themselves on social media.
dfxm12 24 hours ago [-]
It is what you make of it, you can just consume or take a creative role, but once the price/attendance ballooned ~20 yrs ago, they kinda changed their audience. You might have a local group that does similar things if you want to get a taste without such a large commitment.
qarl2 23 hours ago [-]
I heard The Man is smaller this year.
notatoad 18 hours ago [-]
>Is Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people.
not sure what answer you expect to get here, on the forum hosted by the most noteworthy VC firm in silicon valley. the people why say burning man sucks now will usually say it sucks because of the ycombinator types
qgin 23 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure why people really really really want it to be that so they can have a simple reason to hate on it. I'm sure there are fancy people there having a fancy time... but it's 80,000 people and probably 79,000 of them are not millionaires and billionaires. Just friendly weirdos being living in the desert for a week.
In my experience, Burning Man is all 3 types of fun at the same time.
toomuchtodo 23 hours ago [-]
I've had a great experience every time I've gone.
pdntspa 24 hours ago [-]
They're the fringes, along with the increasingly large contingent of tourists/festies/sparkle ponies. The majority are actual burners and they are a wild and unorthodox bunch. Look up the 10 Principles if you want to understand the actual culture
https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ -- "Decommodification" is the most important one to keep in mind, particularly with this audience, as I imagine some here would have trouble not trying to productify/commodify everything
kaycebasques 23 hours ago [-]
I remember asking a friend what makes Burning Man (BM) interesting, and he said "it's a glimpse of a fundamentally different economy." He was talking about how everything is organized around gifts rather than exchange. AFAICT that is still very much true. Most (all?) interactions do not involve money. E.g. at BM you can walk to a tent and get a drink and there's no expectation to pay for it. But of course the whole system only works when everyone agrees to be mutually generous. Sure, people use money to bring all the stuff into BM and to get themselves to BM so it's easy to write it off as fake, but nonetheless I can see how even a week demonstrating a fundamentally different social structure could be quite a profound experience. BM is still on my bucket list because of what my friend said.
dpc050505 21 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty involved in my local regionals. I'm part of DPW at one and I've operated propane fueled flame effects a couple times. I'm throwing my quinceanera at a small unsanctioned regional close to my birthday.
That whole 'money-less' gifting thing makes for a very nice party. It has nothing to do with real economics. The vast majority of people at burns are able bodied, have above average practical skills and are right in the age group where you'd expect folks to be competent to work.
Gifting drinks, cordoning roads, making sure port-o-potties are functional and clean, making a silly art piece and shirtcocking among a few thousand people for a week or so has little to do with maintaining infrastructure, education, healthcare and the logistics to keep billions of people, including children, the disabled and the elderly, fed and housed all the time.
radley 19 hours ago [-]
> Most (all?) interactions do not involve money.
I think we can still buy ice, but I don't think we can buy coffee anymore. Coffee was a fun excuse to go to center camp every afternoon.
shawn_w 14 hours ago [-]
Coffee going away was a sad time. I had a tradition of getting some from Center Camp in the wee hours of the morning on overnight volunteer shifts.
I never thought I'd be the sort of person to go to Burning Man, and this is my first year off since I started going nearly a decade ago.
I started by going to a regional burn (or what some people call a "ten principles event") because a girlfriend had a bunch of friends that wanted to go. I had always been a bit in awe of the art and such from BM itself, but weary of the drugs/party culture (I was a nerd that made the annual trip to San Diego Comic-Con, PAX, etc) and didn't think it'd be my scene.
Without going down an entire rabbit hole: it changed the entire trajectory of my life. I've made the best friends I've ever had and now spend a good chunk of my time working on large art projects, helping run a theme camp, and being involved in this group of weirdos year round.
A few years of being involved locally made the desert seem like an inevitability, and when I finally went, it wasn't the life changing experience everyone told me it'd be: because it already was, even without me being there. But it did quickly become one of my favorite places in world.
My honest advice? If you're anywhere near a Burning Man regional event, find a way to get involved and check that out first. I think that's a great way to see if you vibe with the culture around the event, and it'll give you a sense of whether trekking out to the desert is a good fit.
Also, as an aside on the wealthy tech/finance front: one of the first camps I shacked up with was mostly a bunch of blue collar types who liked to work hard, with two retired grandmother-type figures who helped run camp logistics. Tech money (including mine) certainly helps fund things (because the city is expensive to build), but at least in the scene I run in, the tech types are not the majority, and sure don't act like your typical tech bros.
solfox 24 hours ago [-]
It has always been a challenging but highly rewarding experience for me. It is what you make of it - if you choose to be cynical about "very well off tech people", that's all you'll see. But Burning Man is multitudes. For me, it's about witnessing pure human creativity and playfulness. Your first time out on the playa at night will likely be one of those lifetime memories you'll appreciate having.
yieldcrv 12 hours ago [-]
the other perspective is that its the crowd that has gotten all their dopamine and serotonin fixes all around the world and choose to do this
people don’t generally say what they do for capitalism there, so it doesn’t matter about the performative social standings after disclosing, its fun af
there are no guard rails, at least compared to other events. it is only strict compared to its former self.
awnird 24 hours ago [-]
It’s a bunch of tech bros pretending to be counterculture while hanging out with Grover Norquist, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt.
If you want to hang out with those people it will be fun for you, but be honest with yourself about what it really is.
joenot443 23 hours ago [-]
Have you been?
supern0va 23 hours ago [-]
How many out of 80k do you think are hanging out with a political operative and two billionaires?
radley 19 hours ago [-]
Technically, all of them ;-)
supern0va 18 hours ago [-]
I guess that means by living in Seattle, I also technically hang out with Bill Gates. Neat. ;)
reaperducer 23 hours ago [-]
Is Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people.
You're not far off.
Burning Man is like Coachella, SxSW, and San Francisco, itself.
It used to be cool, and interesting, and counter-culture.
But then it got overrun by tech people and grifters and assorted wannabes who think they can buy their way to coolness, when that's something that can only come from within.
rlt 23 hours ago [-]
It’s inevitable cool and interesting things will evolve, and the people there early will bemoan how it used to be cooler.
It’s inevitable cool and interesting things will evolve, and the people there early will bemoan how it used to be cooler.
No, it's not inevitable. Burning Man is just making excuses for selling out.
Look at how high school kids dress these days. The cool kids today style themselves much the same way as the cool kids did back in the 2000's, the 1980's, the 1950's, and to some extent even back to the 1930's.
Blue jeans and white t-shirts. Concert shirts. Doc Martins. The infamous "little black dress." Dorm room posters and pin-ups. Even hair styles. Some things are "classic" and always cool. Burning Man isn't one of them.
cortesoft 16 hours ago [-]
I feel like you are just listing things you think are cool. I don't think everyone finds those things you listed cool.
rlt 22 hours ago [-]
Fair. My less cynical take is Burning Man made the choice that what they had created should be experienced by lots of people, even at the expense of it being a little less cool or counter-culture.
Personally I think the world is a little better off by it going somewhat mainstream.
DonHopkins 22 hours ago [-]
They should rename it Jumping Shark.
simian1983 17 hours ago [-]
I called. Talked to a perfectly decent guy who was there for the first time. He was there with his wife, but didn’t bring his younger children. Pleasant conversation. And there was a line of people waiting.
I figured out where the bad street name came from; it's apparently a Google AI Search hallucination. It's apparently what I get for not clicking through to read the relevant page on Burning Man's site.
22 hours ago [-]
19 hours ago [-]
NelsonMinar 21 hours ago [-]
There's a bunch of neat public payphone art projects out there. A friend of mine runs Futel, which has some fairly elaborate voice menus and several phones installed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futel
ginkgotree 22 hours ago [-]
Brings whole new meaning to "Burner Phone."
Nice.
kripy 20 hours ago [-]
In Australia, Telstra is required to keep the payphone network up and running. You can make free outgoing calls to landlines and mobile phones. And I just read that you can call inbound as well (which I did not know). Now the fun begins.
ikr678 9 hours ago [-]
Telstra are one step ahead of you and encouraging an ingress style territory control game with the payphones.
I just had a great chat with Michael, who was having a hard time because his girlfriend didn’t come with him to Burning man. Great chat!
azhenley 12 hours ago [-]
I'm not sure why, but my ISP blocked this page and sent a push notification saying, "This device tried to visit a website that may compromise it or contain dangerous content."
SkinTaco 11 hours ago [-]
Your ISP sent you a push notification? How?
tobinfekkes 11 hours ago [-]
My guess would be via one of those white-labeled apps required to set up your home router. For example, a Comcast, Spectrum, Astound, T-Mobile, etc.
numberwan9 13 hours ago [-]
For a moment I thought this would be related to 2600's payphones of the world [1]
Nokia feature phones were always the ultimate "playa phone." Dropped it a hundred times, still worked.
teiferer 9 hours ago [-]
Does anybody have experience putting out such a phone somewhat permanently in a public space?
dalton74 10 hours ago [-]
Lost my main phone to the playa dust once. Now it's always a €20 burner, zero regrets.
EQVEYWDCHQ 23 hours ago [-]
called and got through after three attempts, had a pleasant conversation and it uplifted my mood. thanks!
doublesocket 20 hours ago [-]
I always wanted to build a local mesh network of pay phones on the playa and call it Black Rock Telecom. Maybe 12 or more phones set on plazas. Geographically not being located in the US made this project tricky to realise.
k7peak 22 hours ago [-]
This is great. I have a COCOT myself with an ATA adapter. So so much fun, great job!
isoprophlex 1 days ago [-]
phone rings
Stoned burner picks up, mumbles "Uhhh, hullo, who dis?" into the horn while eyeing two giant wasp-colored octopi overhead making love
"Hello sir and or madameperson. I won't take up much of your time. See, your number was posted to the pre-eminent forum for everything that goes fast and breaks things."
"Uhhh, yeah whatever man"
"I'll cut right to it, seeing that you're an important, busy man like myself. I will just take one short minute to talk to you about our lord and saviour, *VC Money*."
cuu508 1 days ago [-]
"You already have impressive event experience going, but do you know if AIs are recommending it? I will set up llms.txt for free for you, no pressure, not trying to pitch anything. If not interested, just reply 'not interested'".
tclancy 24 hours ago [-]
"Have you accepted the Living Musk into your life?"
mxuribe 24 hours ago [-]
"Hello sir/madam, I'm calling about the extended warranty for your car!" /s
tehnoslow 21 hours ago [-]
The real-time stats on the website are fascinating. Did you set those up to satisfy your own curiosity, or to give remote callers a sense of "presence" at the playa?
aaron42net 21 hours ago [-]
A little of both. It was popular enough off of a Reddit post last year that people were hearing a lot of busy signals. I thought it might entertain some folks to see just how busy the phone has been in the last hour.
perarneng 21 hours ago [-]
0 outgoing, nobody knows numbers anymore and even if you could look it up you won't punch numbers like its 1992.
With that said, amazing project. super cool that people can call in
aaron42net 20 hours ago [-]
It has changed a bit in recent years, but there's still only very spotty cell service at Burning Man. Enough people can figure out how to look up a phone number that this phone still dials out thousands of times during the week.
The bigger problem for this project is because of phone spam, fewer people will answer calls from unknown numbers, so a lot of those calls go to voice mail.
retired 19 hours ago [-]
Is it possible that people don’t realize you can make free calls? Perhaps they think you need coins, which they don’t have on them.
Similar to interactive installations in museums. People are afraid to touch things in museums. You really need a big sign to tell them it is the purpose to play with it.
ElijahLynn 22 hours ago [-]
This is a beautiful example of hacking, making something useful!
24 hours ago [-]
krogenx 1 days ago [-]
Would be fun to read if the calls were recorded and transcribed.
criddell 24 hours ago [-]
Or leave them as private, ephemeral experiences for the two involved parties.
aaron42net 22 hours ago [-]
I’ve been asked repeatedly to record/transcribe calls, and this has been my stance. Let’s just let two people enjoy a private conversation.
bossyTeacher 22 hours ago [-]
Thank you! The obsession with posting every experience dissected on the internet has no limits! It's as if people disliked the privacy and intimacy that their individuality confers.
DiggyJohnson 22 hours ago [-]
That seems like it would destroy the “vibe” of the entire concept. Would you use a pay phone if the recording and transcript was publicly available?
victor22 13 hours ago [-]
Wish I was on playa right now… thank you for your gift! Hope I’ll be home again soon
)’(
22 hours ago [-]
ape4 24 hours ago [-]
I looked but I don't see how it works. How does it get power? I suppose it uses a some single board computer and VOIP.
aaron42net 23 hours ago [-]
I ripped the coin-aware guts out of a pay phone I bought from Craigslist, and replaced them with a basic touch-tone board, then hooked that up to a voice-over-IP adapter so it can make calls over the Internet. All of that is powered via power-over-ethernet, including the light in the sign above the phone.
It used to get a little bit of Internet directly from Burning Man itself via a 20 foot tower pointed near center camp, but now it just uses Starlink, which is easier for my campmates to set up without me and much more reliable.
For power, it is now plugged into a solar generator that is occasionally recharged from a gas generator.
MarkMarine 24 hours ago [-]
there are a lot of gas generators powering people's camps.
kodai_tech 21 hours ago [-]
The live status dashboard at the bottom is a fantastic touch. Reminds me of the best kind of hacker projects that combine physical retro hardware with modern web telemetry.
non- 22 hours ago [-]
Phun and wholesome project. What service do you use for VoIP?
aaron42net 22 hours ago [-]
voip.ms. They were the cheapest I could find when I built this in 2013, and they’ve worked just fine since.
sikozu 20 hours ago [-]
How much does this project cost you to run? I always considered VoIP to be expensive but things might've changed.
aaron42net 19 hours ago [-]
It's ~$13/year to keep the same phone number, and <= $0.01/minute for all incoming calls and any outgoing calls to North America. Most of the cost comes from outgoing international calls, whose price varies (see https://voip.ms/pricing), but I do disable some of the most expensive destinations.
With paying for ~60 hours of calls for the week it runs, I think it's still usually well under $100, though.
chislobog 20 hours ago [-]
No phonebooks there. Just a map. Oper-a-tor?
HardwareLust 21 hours ago [-]
Dammit I left my acoustic coupler at home.
1 days ago [-]
underlipton 20 hours ago [-]
What do you even talk about on a phone call like this?
I have both intense social anxiety and FOMO. Knowing that this thing exists for a week and then no more is torture.
aaron42net 20 hours ago [-]
Anything or nothing.
One of my favorites is to ask the person what's the most amazing thing they've seen that day, and you'll likely get widely varying answers given where they are.
But you could also call and try to sell someone an extended warranty for their couch without breaking. It doesn't matter as long as you (and hopefully they) have fun with it.
teh_infallible 22 hours ago [-]
I had an idea like this years ago, only my idea was to put two of these on the playa and have them only call each other. Do you could pick one up, the other would ring, and you could talk to a random person.
aussieguy1234 11 hours ago [-]
In Australia, all payphones have been made free.
These provide a lifeline to homeless people, domestic violence victims whose phones may be monitored and others in vulnerable situations.
Statistics show a large percentage of calls go to support services such as domestic violence hotlines.
barbs 11 hours ago [-]
Just gave it a go, but I'm getting "That number is no longer in service", so there might be power/connectivity issues?
nandanadileep29 24 hours ago [-]
Would be fun to see how the calls went lol
Our_Benefactors 22 hours ago [-]
Fun! Just wished someone a happy burn.
kris-memoket 13 hours ago [-]
Dude this is a amazing idea...
1attice 23 hours ago [-]
An old injury, but I'm always devastated to see BRC stuff on HN. It's like watching Elon snap a Nazi salute at inauguration: an unwelcome but undeniable admission that something (or someone) admirable can shift smoothly to moral horror without losing (or perhaps even burnishing) its reputation.
BRC was an artistic rebellion, and now it's where people like me go to network.
I can't take me anywhere.
crancher 2 hours ago [-]
It's really not that entirely. I've been attending for the past 20 years without networking once. I design and build and run and strike my camp. It's great and zero people try make do anything else. I am sure there are certain percentage of networking striver types but they're flotsam on the sea of the ongoing "artistic rebellion" required to make it happen.
1attice 33 minutes ago [-]
Thank you for keeping the authentic spirit alive. <3
6 hours ago [-]
8 hours ago [-]
tobin1994 12 hours ago [-]
[dead]
Helldez 22 hours ago [-]
[dead]
readthenotes1 1 days ago [-]
Did the original founders intend burning Man to be a parody on the trash heap that is 21st century human civilization?
criddell 1 days ago [-]
No.
If you are genuinely curious, here are the original ten principles of Burning Man that were established when the event was still in San Francisco:
look at the overflowing dumpsters and abandoned bikes in reno. even some people just dumping trash at random peoples homes. think of the amount of diesel burned in generators, trucks hauling tons of steel, shipping containers for camps, just so people can party in the middle of nowhere.
>A community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area.
>"I'm asking for your help crowdfunding the most ambitious Burning Man project ever a wall that's built around the entire bay area during the week of Burning Man."
ElijahLynn 22 hours ago [-]
That is fantastic! Dude should be on The Onion team!
radley 19 hours ago [-]
No. But some of it was certainly a parody of the trash heap that was 20th century human civilization. Those groups are still around.
charcircuit 22 hours ago [-]
I bet the dataset of who is calling who is pretty valuable. It's people related to others who were willing to drop a bunch of money to go to the desert, so you know they likely have some disposable income. If this operator isn't collecting this, it may be a good business opportunity for a competitor.
jspaetzel 22 hours ago [-]
Slow your roll, not everything is a startup, some things are just for fun
charcircuit 21 hours ago [-]
The best kind of things are both fun and profitable enough to make them financial viable to keep doing.
Klonoar 13 hours ago [-]
It’s an art piece, numbskull.
charcircuit 8 hours ago [-]
What are you trying to imply? Beautiful things should not be allowed to make money?
aaron42net 22 hours ago [-]
The only data I collect is my phone bill, and the only thing I do with it show hourly stats on the site and a summary of calls at the end of the event.
languagehacker 24 hours ago [-]
So happy to see that the comments so far are just Burning Man hate. I appreciate SomaFM's impact on my appreciation for electronic music and alternative music streaming services back in the '90s, but outside of that I'm pretty sure it's mostly been a net negative from a cultural standpoint in total.
blululu 23 hours ago [-]
I have the DroneZone playing on a dedicated SomaFM web radio in my living room right now. This makes up for a lot of negatives in the world. As a genuine question are the specific net negatives of Burningman? (The classic burner who is better than you because he goes to burning man sucks and all but I'm pretty sure that guy would suck just as much if he made his whole personality about anything else).
lukan 23 hours ago [-]
Can you give reasons?
I never was there, but it seems a place where people do creative things, with bringing people together - like this simple project here.
But my intent was for it to be as visually and functionally identical as possible to a phone booth you would've found on a street corner a few decades ago, just in an unusual place (and free). I've avoided anything in the normal usage of it that would deviate from that.
The single phone line was mostly at capacity with the /r/BurningMan crowd trying to call, though. I suspect with several times as many people dialing, sadly that has to mean fewer people can succeed. Hopefully people are still having fun with it, though.
Your version is way cooler. Thanks for bringing a little magic to the playa.
Until then, it got Internet via Burning Man itself through what they call the "participant network", which they still provide: https://internet.burningman.org/
This consisted of setting up a Ubiquiti NanoBridge (then later NanoBeam) with their supplied config on top of a 20 foot tower aimed at the 60 foot radio tower near Center Camp. Sometimes they wouldn't provide the config or get the participant network running until like Tuesday or Wednesday of event week, it might at best provide 400kbit/sec total or have permanent 50% packet loss, or just be down for days at a time. It wasn't great.
I hear it has drastically improved in recent years, but I haven't tried using it.
Great work!
Good show!
One detail about the status page: the rows read upside down. "Online Phone connection". Once you realize what it means your brain can flip it, but the more natural order would be "Phone connection Online".
Here's a list they maintain of current devices: https://wiki.voip.ms/article/ATA_Devices
There were 1,460 outbound calls successfully made to 835 different numbers in 23 countries, with a total talk time of 34.8 hours. (This is down about 40% from peak years ago, now that there's more cell service and Internet available at Burning Man.)
There were also 5,658 inbound call attempts, and 676 (12%) were answered with a total talk time of 17.2 hours. 4,070 incoming calls got a busy signal and 912 got no answer.
And you can't make an emergency call on it (which is written in all caps on it); flagging down someone with a radio is the right way to get emergency services out there.
And there are occasionally people who have trouble with the concept of "free 5 minute call" (that it hangs up after) not meaning "just keep dialing back for an hour or two", even with a long line behind them. I can't ban specific outgoing numbers with voip.ms, but once I ended up just disabling all calls to the country that a problematic user kept coming back and repeatedly redialing.
Maybe they could come back and offer "free" service in high-density areas and fund via pre-roll ads or something. But perhaps the culture of remembering phone numbers is too far gone and it's easy enough to find charging.
Thank you for making and posting about this!
Telstra, the formerly state owned incumbent telco is obliged under their universal service obligation to provide a certain number of payphones, but it costs more to collect the coins than the phones earn in revenue.
Also, if I may, for folks that might appreciate more phone-based spontaneity, I've built an app to revive the social phone call. It works like a bat signal. Light your beacon and it reaches all your friends at once. The first friend to answer connects 1-1 and every other signal quietly drops. Check it out at trybeacon.chat
Not trying to be flippant, genuinely curious if my impression is based on reality or am I making things up.
Tech, finance, and political people definitely don't make up close to the majority. You'd get sort of laughed at if you tried networking earnestly about like tech stocks or LLMs. Generally I don't prefer socializing with techie types from SF, the folks I met at Burning Man were nothing of the sort.
It's mostly just adults who really like dressing up, building stuff, and staying up really late dancing and partying.
Just chilling and doing your own thing is certainly doable.
It's changed over the years - price has gone up, scale has gone up, and rules have become more strict. Not surprising when there are 70k people instead of 3k. Some people (fairly) don't like these changes. And some people like to badmouth things they've never experienced.
It's still the best party going on anywhere in the world that week. Most people you meet are not in tech. The crazy art pieces (most of which are interactive) are like nothing you will find anywhere else. It's definitely fun.
I stopped going regularly because it's a big expense and time commitment and I wanted to allocate my limited budget of both to other adventures. But if you haven't been, you should go.
It's great both ways.
That's a bold claim, but maybe it's true :D
And there are also honestly very few countries that 1/ would let this happen without intervening, 2/ even have such a wide open space to make this happen for 70k people with just desert everywhere in all directions.
I get it, you dig it passionately and all the power to you, but a bit of modesty and/or world experience would only serve you well.
The last time I went, there was this dude in a camp next to where I was camped. The entire week I was there, I only saw him sitting and drinking; he was totally hammered the entire 7 days and didn't go anwhere (AFAICT). That really saddened me: he could have done the same back home wherever he had come from; what's the point of coming to BM if you're going to just sit in one place and get drunk?
I really wanted to take it all in, so I stayed away from drinking or smoking, and had a great time! There is so much to see, so many creative people to interact with. You can end up having a deep conversation on just about any topic under the sky with random people. I ended up chatting with this Physics graduate student about, of all things, quarks (an area of specialty for him). He ended up patiently explaining various things to me, as if we were long-lost friends.
My recommendation: jump in with both feet in the spirit of contribution and cooperation. Have fun, respect boundaries, contribute however you can.
Note parent account created just for this rude comment.
That being said, the very nature of the event involves spending thousands of dollars to live in the desert for a week. So the audience is obviously mostly people who have the money to do so.
It depends what standard you need, but I have been to (way smaller) desert gatherings where people with no money came. (Not as remote, though, possible to walk there with a tent). But as far as I know, the main thing you need for burning man is a van and water, or know someone who has one.
Yes, tickets are expensive. Yes you need to bring survival stuff like water and food. Yes you will be underslept most likely. But it will be worth it.
And $1000 tickets :P
A fully equipped van is also not exactly a cheap thing to own or rent.
I have no idea how common this is. I just know somebody offered free tickets for me and my crew if I joined his camp with my contraption at the big burn.
I like the idea, decommodification being one of the principles and all, but I didn't go because I didn't have time to fix some issues that I deemed critical.
I’d encourage you to talk to people that have actually been if you want to have an informed opinion. I don’t know shit about it since my n=1 sample size, but he’s someone who’s opinion I trust so I’d personally probably check it out if I was inclined.
People hate it, people enjoy it, you probably just have to experience it for yourself if you really want to know what it’s like. And second best is looking for accounts of people that have been.
Things are quite literally better than they have ever been in almost every facet of life, yet the golden age is perpetually behind us
I was at a different kind of retreat which in some sense opened a portal to "another world" for a week and I'd say the regional Burning Man events were controversial in that circle. Like some people went to them and thought they were great, other people went to them and picketed the access road to protest their perception that the events were a wasteful use of fossil fuels. Here's an article about similar protests at the main event
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2023/aug/28/burning-man-...
Why not both?
Well off tech people can have fun too. In fact, the wealthier, the more fun the event can be, because it means more ability to do cool stuff, be generous, and avoid trouble. As for tech people, an event that attracts tech people does not make it a tech event. For instance, tech people tend to enjoy metal music, and you are going to find a lot of tech people in metal festivals, but there, music is what bring people together, not tech.
People who were young and adventurous before there was an internet have been going for decades. They intentionally leave bad reviews on places like Maps and Yelp to try to dissuade new people from crowding it.
Give me a break...
The well off narrative makes it an interesting news story. There is no news story about how burning man has the same income distribution as the US.
I have wanted to go since 1996 but never have. When I was younger, being on the east coast always made it so very remote.
Now with age I wouldn't even want to go to some weekend festivals I went to as a kid let alone burning man.
I think if you are young and really want to go you have to seize the moment. The moment might not come again and not because you can't but because you won't.
Some people treat it like a music festival and chase DJs the whole week. Some people immerse themselves in the rest of the culture.
The demographics have definitely been skewing wealthier over time, but it’s still around 50% under $100k income and 10% over $300,000 according to the (admittedly unscientific) census.
https://blackrockcitycensus.org/sociodemo
What I'll say is you'll definitely see an influx of more superficial/wealthy people coming for the last 3 days. Rich shallow people who don't care about the Burning Man spirit and just want to come for the final party, they don't bother to come for the whole week, they just rent an expensive RV for the last few days.
If you do go, go for the whole week, and you'll get to experience the real burning man in the first few days.
well you're here at hacker news
There are SO MANY THINGS that other people love that I find miserable, and I know there are things that I find are amazing that other people would never want to do.
He is a tech guy, though.
But he keeps having to go to oil production facilities on site in Wyoming to maintain IT infra. It pays okay but it's not the kind of stuff I would do now that I'm mostly able to retire into audio/music work and the minimal amount of festival EMT/ free clinic volunteer stuff I do.
He's a genuine and kind person and has spent a lot of time doing nice things for folks because he likes doing those things. For instance, he was running the makerlab here in the sticks for a couple of years. He got the American legion hall setup so there is now a space for local artists to play.
That's how I know him, at least.
There are a lot of folks in this world who've gotten to some degree of comfortability some way or other, usually some combination of "the old fashioned way" (my parents passed on and left me their IRA) or the more usual way of working for several decades at some tedious skill that pays well in some circumstances.
Folks like my buddy have made a rational decision to just "kind of do whatever"; he has what he needs, he's not super old, and if you've managed to secure a spot out in the middle of nowhere and figure out not-too-annoying-but-inexpensive ways of maintaining that lifestyle, then a lot of options open up.
According to him, he brings a lot of generator equipment and tools (including a welder) and spends his time out there fixing stuff for folks or maintaining stuff like the poorly-configured mesh network equipment other, similarly minded nerds bring out. He troubleshoots folks' generators or vehicles.
Does that sound fun?
It sounds fun to me, to just go somewhere and help folks when I can.
Even if a lot of those folks are spun, or dumb, or party people trying to social climb or whatever. I am certain that given the fame and the proxemity to SF-style wealth there are plenty of well off folks trying to party with folks while networking, but I am equally certain that there are a whole rainbow of other ways that folks are being out there.
I don't like being at events that large, so that rules it out for me, in the same way that I have spent a lot of time at Kerrville Folk Fest but have avoided the Rainbow Gathering.
And to be clear, he's going to a party and it's an easy place to find "unique" substances or people to have fun with.
But I do see how there has to be some amount of community there, given how many folks are going to be with people and not just be tourists.
I am likely projecting to a small degree, but my impression is that largely that's the vibe out there, folks enjoying doing things because they find them satisfying rather than because they can monetize the behavior somehow.
Maybe that satisfaction is dressing up fancy and doing many days worth of drugs. Maybe that is running a bar for strangers, maybe that's making art for other folks to enjoy, maybe it's fixing busted bicycles, maybe it's getting a generator running again.
Having been "involved" with a certain amount of off grid raves and other kinds of gatherings, that's my general understanding of that culture. I'd assume it is in play out there as well.
I co-founded Burning Man. The festival has lost its soul
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49494151
not sure what answer you expect to get here, on the forum hosted by the most noteworthy VC firm in silicon valley. the people why say burning man sucks now will usually say it sucks because of the ycombinator types
What type of fun it ends up being for you is the question - the fun scale: https://kellycordes.com/2009/11/02/the-fun-scale/
https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/ -- "Decommodification" is the most important one to keep in mind, particularly with this audience, as I imagine some here would have trouble not trying to productify/commodify everything
That whole 'money-less' gifting thing makes for a very nice party. It has nothing to do with real economics. The vast majority of people at burns are able bodied, have above average practical skills and are right in the age group where you'd expect folks to be competent to work.
Gifting drinks, cordoning roads, making sure port-o-potties are functional and clean, making a silly art piece and shirtcocking among a few thousand people for a week or so has little to do with maintaining infrastructure, education, healthcare and the logistics to keep billions of people, including children, the disabled and the elderly, fed and housed all the time.
I think we can still buy ice, but I don't think we can buy coffee anymore. Coffee was a fun excuse to go to center camp every afternoon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_Rh3PbnAdw
I started by going to a regional burn (or what some people call a "ten principles event") because a girlfriend had a bunch of friends that wanted to go. I had always been a bit in awe of the art and such from BM itself, but weary of the drugs/party culture (I was a nerd that made the annual trip to San Diego Comic-Con, PAX, etc) and didn't think it'd be my scene.
Without going down an entire rabbit hole: it changed the entire trajectory of my life. I've made the best friends I've ever had and now spend a good chunk of my time working on large art projects, helping run a theme camp, and being involved in this group of weirdos year round.
A few years of being involved locally made the desert seem like an inevitability, and when I finally went, it wasn't the life changing experience everyone told me it'd be: because it already was, even without me being there. But it did quickly become one of my favorite places in world.
My honest advice? If you're anywhere near a Burning Man regional event, find a way to get involved and check that out first. I think that's a great way to see if you vibe with the culture around the event, and it'll give you a sense of whether trekking out to the desert is a good fit.
Also, as an aside on the wealthy tech/finance front: one of the first camps I shacked up with was mostly a bunch of blue collar types who liked to work hard, with two retired grandmother-type figures who helped run camp logistics. Tech money (including mine) certainly helps fund things (because the city is expensive to build), but at least in the scene I run in, the tech types are not the majority, and sure don't act like your typical tech bros.
people don’t generally say what they do for capitalism there, so it doesn’t matter about the performative social standings after disclosing, its fun af
there are no guard rails, at least compared to other events. it is only strict compared to its former self.
If you want to hang out with those people it will be fun for you, but be honest with yourself about what it really is.
You're not far off.
Burning Man is like Coachella, SxSW, and San Francisco, itself.
It used to be cool, and interesting, and counter-culture.
But then it got overrun by tech people and grifters and assorted wannabes who think they can buy their way to coolness, when that's something that can only come from within.
https://journal.burningman.org/2016/10/philosophical-center/...
No, it's not inevitable. Burning Man is just making excuses for selling out.
Look at how high school kids dress these days. The cool kids today style themselves much the same way as the cool kids did back in the 2000's, the 1980's, the 1950's, and to some extent even back to the 1930's.
Blue jeans and white t-shirts. Concert shirts. Doc Martins. The infamous "little black dress." Dorm room posters and pin-ups. Even hair styles. Some things are "classic" and always cool. Burning Man isn't one of them.
Personally I think the world is a little better off by it going somewhat mainstream.
Page says it's on "Chomolungma" but it's "Ceiba" on the maps, just in case you can spot the phone on the stream.
https://www.telstra.com.au/exchange/what-is-payphone-tag--th...
1. https://www.2600.com/payphones#0/19/8
With that said, amazing project. super cool that people can call in
The bigger problem for this project is because of phone spam, fewer people will answer calls from unknown numbers, so a lot of those calls go to voice mail.
Similar to interactive installations in museums. People are afraid to touch things in museums. You really need a big sign to tell them it is the purpose to play with it.
)’(
It used to get a little bit of Internet directly from Burning Man itself via a 20 foot tower pointed near center camp, but now it just uses Starlink, which is easier for my campmates to set up without me and much more reliable.
For power, it is now plugged into a solar generator that is occasionally recharged from a gas generator.
With paying for ~60 hours of calls for the week it runs, I think it's still usually well under $100, though.
I have both intense social anxiety and FOMO. Knowing that this thing exists for a week and then no more is torture.
One of my favorites is to ask the person what's the most amazing thing they've seen that day, and you'll likely get widely varying answers given where they are.
But you could also call and try to sell someone an extended warranty for their couch without breaking. It doesn't matter as long as you (and hopefully they) have fun with it.
These provide a lifeline to homeless people, domestic violence victims whose phones may be monitored and others in vulnerable situations.
Statistics show a large percentage of calls go to support services such as domestic violence hotlines.
BRC was an artistic rebellion, and now it's where people like me go to network.
I can't take me anywhere.
If you are genuinely curious, here are the original ten principles of Burning Man that were established when the event was still in San Francisco:
https://burningman.org/about-us/10-principles/
look at the overflowing dumpsters and abandoned bikes in reno. even some people just dumping trash at random peoples homes. think of the amount of diesel burned in generators, trucks hauling tons of steel, shipping containers for camps, just so people can party in the middle of nowhere.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Reno/comments/1n5z9kc/burning_man_t...
Build A 300-Mile Wall Around SF During Burning Man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PO_r6ndZRZY
>A community effort to construct a 300-mile wall in one week and prevent Burning Man attendees from returning to the Bay Area.
>"I'm asking for your help crowdfunding the most ambitious Burning Man project ever a wall that's built around the entire bay area during the week of Burning Man."
I never was there, but it seems a place where people do creative things, with bringing people together - like this simple project here.