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Comment by SN76477 | Hacker News Reader

Escaping the matrix becomes harder every year.

Nah, you can still do it via the LinkNYC terminals which let you place calls.

That said, it's vanishingly rare that I actually see anyone using them to make calls, and it looks kind of silly when you do use them because you need to plug headphones into the jack. Their primary utility is for device charging and free Wi-Fi.

- Use your personal device to connect to LinkNYC’s super fast, free Wi-Fi

- Access city services, maps and directions from the tablet

- Make free phone calls to anywhere in the U.S. using the tablet or the tactile keypad and microphone. Plug in your personal headphones for more privacy.

- Use the dedicated red 911 button in the event of an emergency

- Charge your device in a power-only USB port

[...]

Sounds cool! Wish we had terminals like these in Germany. Here, they just remove the pay phones, period.

I imagine that these could be useful to tourists who don't have a local phone plan, and the free Wi-Fi / USB charging / scrolling information bulletins are definitely useful, but I feel like this program came about 5-10 years too late for them to really shine now that a lot of people have smartphones with generous/unlimited data plans and don't necessarily need a kiosk for points 1-4.

From 2010-2017 or so, unlimited data plans were some combination of rare/slow/expensive, and especially in the early 2010s smartphones had a lot less penetration. I imagine these terminals would have been life-savers back then.

In reality, they're:

- monolithic eyesores that take up precious sidewalk space

- yet another bright display running advertisements 24/7

- charging stations for the homeless to use and loiter around

Poor execution of a good idea. I smile whenever I walk by one that has been vandalized.

> monolithic eyesores that take up precious sidewalk space

To be fair, so were the pay phones they replaced. NYC just doesn't have enough sidewalk space in a lot of areas.

> - charging stations for the homeless to use

Isn't that a good thing?

But this limited utility comes at a cost of being inundated by billboards. In NYC there is often 4 per single block - 2 on each side of the street. I don't believe there was a 1 for 1 replacement with the old kiosks, they seem to be far more pervasive than pay phones ever were. There's also a 5G version being introduced that is far more obtrusive than the original design. See pages 15, 16 and and 37 here:

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/designcommission/downloads/pdf/1...

It seems like a pretty false equivalence to me. Who wants to talk to someone on speaker in the middle of a public street? Or remember to bring headphones with them in case they need to make a call? I would be very surprised if they were ever used to make calls outside of very rare emergency situations.

Well, it's not a "false equivalence" per se - the city literally installed the LinkNYC terminals right where the payphones used to be and considers them to be a successor to them - but I agree that the user experience of placing a call with the terminals is pretty bad. You don't get privacy, you (usually) have nowhere to sit, and if you're standing right in front of the terminal then you've got people constantly walking past you.

Frankly, I wasn't making any calls on the old payphones either, and it's been over a decade since I bothered memorizing a phone number, so I don't really feel qualified to pass judgment on whether they're that much better or worse. But I appreciate that the LinkNYC Wi-Fi access points are often easier and faster than those of the stores/cafes around them, and I appreciate being able to stop and charge up my phone a bit if it dies while I'm out and about. (Did this a lot during the Pokemon Go craze!)

The problem is that those are ultimately devices whose purpose is to feed the cancer that is called advertising, while old payphones merely wanted a quarter.

From their privacy policy (https://www.link.nyc/privacy-policy.html):

> We may share Technical Information that is unassociated with you and your device:

> With analytics, search engine, or other service providers that help us improve the Services; > To advertisers and advertising networks to select and serve relevant advertisements.

They're useless for anything besides 911 functionality. I would definitely not recommend connecting to its Wi-Fi service without a VPN and spoofed, one-time MAC address.

> whose purpose is to feed the cancer that is called advertising

Pay phones were the same way. The quarter payment was just on top of the money from advertisements.

That was just generic display advertising targeted by location and market research.

This one collects data about your usage of the device (and the mere fact that you were there at a certain time) and then shares it with lots of "partners" so they can refine the profile they have on you even further.

Well, when the phones were still operated by the regional Bells there was no advertising except for the logo of the phone company. The promotional advertising came only after the incumbents sold the kiosk business to Titan et al.

This was a fun 2002 movie that would make no sense to zoomers:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183649/

it made no sense to anyone by then, in 2002 every adult who wanted the mobile had one already for few years, by then I've had already at least 3rd one and I was really poor, just finished my military service and had no work yet

after all phone booths were always seen mostly in American movies and no average person would use one in home country by 2000

I never understood that part about Matrix. They already had cellphones where they would discuss how to get to the nearest pay phone. Why not just use the cell phone to transmit ? Ah well, it wouldn't be as fun though especially that iconic scene where Trinity almost gets hit by a vehicle.

From an interview with the directors:

Sinclair: Why were they only able to jack in through hard-lines, but still able to communicate over cell?

WachowskiBros: Sinclair, good question! Mostly we felt that the amount of information that was being sent into the Matrix required a significant portal. Those portals, we felt, were better described with the hard lines rather than cell lines. We also felt that the rebels tried to be invisible when they hacked that’s why all the entrances and exits were sort of through decrepit and low traffic areas of the Matrix.

The full interview: https://www.matrixfans.net/movies/the-matrix/wachowski-broth...

More speculation by a fan about this: https://screenrant.com/matrix-phone-hard-line-enter-exit-exp...

Mirrors are still an option, presuming people are still keeping those around post pandemic.

Superman would have something to say about this, too.

Stu Shepard is fine with it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183649/

My first thought exactly when seeing this news!

It'll be interesting that in a few years that will become the most poorly aged portion of the movie.

Nope. The movie takes place in a recreation of 1999.

Yep. And Resurrections, which takes place in a recreation of 2021 (or thereabouts), allows for using cellphones to exit. They even make a point of pointing that out in the film. I think within the context of the movies, they made it very difficult for anything to "age poorly" like that because it's all meant to be a representation of a very specific point in time.

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