Fakecall: helping polite introverts stay productive | Hacker News Reader

Fakecall: helping polite introverts stay productive

fakecall.net

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This

> DELETE http://api.fakecall.net/v1/account/(your number)

does this

> This really deletes your account and leaves no trace. We use "rm -rf /path/to/1234567890" (really).

Really hope they don't allow a number like "../*"

Does it really matter if they do?

it does if `rm -rf /var/www/fakecall.net/accounts/../../../../usr` actually hits /usr and mangles the server.

That would simply be poor system design. Why would you run the service and/or the rm's as root?

Ok. You run the service/rm's as a user specially created user. So think about what happens when they do the above.

Hint: not nothing.

Or to put it more bluntly: What about `rm -rf /var/www/fakecall.net/accounts/../*`?

I understand what would happen, what I mean is this is a free service the guy is offering for fun. Does it really matter if all the accounts are deleted? I mean, it could be annoying, but I don't generally expect account protection on free side-project hobby services.

Well if we're looking at it like that, would it really matter if somebody did do a `rm -rf /` as root? I can't imagine it'd take him more than a few minutes to redeploy.

In that case, either all data of all users is permanently destroyed, or they have backups in which case their "rm -rf" command is just a sham.

> Does it really matter if all the accounts are deleted?

Yes. Who said it's going to be free forever?

If you consider that the above example could be avoided with a single line of code, it does matter in the sense that he's avoiding a huge headache, not so much that he's offering any sort of guarantee to users.

(I'm the author). The number is put through a regex first and only digits are allowed.

Glad to hear it :)

Any chance of seeing some of the source, or maybe just a quick technical blurb on what kind of things you've used and how?

The last addition "... (really)" is what bothers me most. To my experience, this usually means quite the opposite. That is, why does this need to be emphasized? Does it mean that the author usually doesn't take other's privacy seriously, but this time he'll try? No flame intended, but that's what is usually associated with such an exaggerated placation.

It's kind of the same phenomenon as with emails which start with "URGENT!!!" or similar. Almost always those aren't urgent at all.

But maybe it's just a cultural thing. I'm living in Germany, maybe things are different in Canada.

I take it as opposed to some others like Facebook, who keeps (kept?) all your data after you "delete" your account.

I think it's generally assumed that many are hesitant to give out personal info, especially when considering other companies that have been reluctant to erase your data (ahem Facebook), I can see the need for some to emphasize that your data really will disappear when you want it to. I don't see anything sinister here.

Sorry to sound harsh, but this seems really silly to me (the concept, not the code which I'm not competent to comment on).

Be human, tell other people to fuck off when they are bothering you. End of story.

I find the lack of verbal communication skills among programmers/techies their biggest disability. Learn to talk to other people, you might notice the world will become a much easier place to function in.

Disclaimer: I was super-shy when I was younger, so I know what I'm talking about. I never went to these kinds of lengths to avoid talking to people though, this is crazy.

> Be human, tell other people to fuck off when they are bothering you

> lack of verbal communication skills

I'm not seeing it...

That kind of post doesn't work as well when the text isn't green.

Yes, thank you. Hiding behind silly web apps doesn't help anyone.

BUT, "telling people to fuck off" isn't much better. A polite "hey, I'm trying to get some stuff done, I'll be with you soon" is sufficient.

I thought it was clear that it was an exaggeration, perhaps it would be clearer if I had used quotes. A polite ”sorry man, I have things to do” will suffice.

I think you're all missing the point. Its purpose is not to be a commentary on/solution for programmer archetypes, it's just a technological proof of concept. A concept which uses said archetype as an example use case.

In my experience, that only works with a not very large percentage of the population. Others will ignore you as if you had said nothing until you're actually rude, which will create a bad atmosphere.

Agreed, communication skills are important, trying to avoid communication with others about work-related topics, where they may need your input, is bound to get you labeled as "that guy" where people basically think you're a one-dimensional dweeb. Part of working within a team evnironment is learning the skill to handle some interruptions.

about work-related topics

What about other topics?

>Be human, tell other people to fuck off when they are bothering you. End of story.

> Learn to talk to other people, you might notice the world will become a much easier place to function in.

obviously the world has become a much easier place for you ... and much harsher place to the people you've "learned to talk to".

You're not acknowledging some of the political realities of the work place that make such silliness necessary.

At my last job the IT guy, who had at some point been frightened by soap and had since managed to evade it in every form, would come and stand in front of my desk for as long as it took for me to acknowledge him. He could not be out-waited.

Thing is, he got his feeling tremendously hurt if you told him you didn't have time to talk to him, you were busy, etc. And next time you needed a server provisioned or something you were in for a long wait.

So my officemate and I wrote a very similar tool to the OPs that would place a call to our desk phones so that we could get out of these situations.

Silly? Absolutely. But 100% necessary given the personalities involved.

Agree with the sentiment. I work in a room full of developers on one side and admin staff on the other. The admin staff are talkative and have a laugh. The developers are deadly silent and bizarrely averse to a bit of pleasant chat. Even just letting on is difficult.

People should respect you're busy, but you don't need to use some API to manufacture an excuse to not talk to someone. How about a, "sorry mate I'm a bit busy at the mo, can you put it in an email and I'll get to it as soon as I can?"

You don't need to be a dick about it, and there's nothing at all wrong with being firm and polite with someone. If the other person trying to talk to you wants to be a dick about that, you are then well within your rights to call them out on it.

Someone will say this is naïve because office politics trump civility or some shit. I think that's a lazy excuse, much like the API.

A few other commenters below had it right; this was mainly a toy app, but it did scratch the itch of more than one person I told about it, so why not code it up?

> Sorry to sound harsh, but this seems really silly to me

Agreed!

> I find the lack of verbal communication skills among programmers/techies their biggest disability.

I find the lack of non-verbal communication skills among techies their biggest disability. My non-programmer friends (musicians, doctors, retail, teachers, etc.) don't need to be told "fuck you" to figure out when they are bothering me.

Possessing communication skills doesn't mean that you want to talk with everyone at every moment of the day. Not only people with lack of verbal communication have use for fake phone calls... It can be used to get out of various awkward situations.

The cow-orkers bit is somewhat off-putting, but this service looks very useful.

15 years ago, I used a service like this (PC->modem programmed to call my pager) when I was dating... if the date was going well, I would tell my date "Oh, that was work, but I'm going to ignore them" and if it wasn't, it was my "exit call" and I aborted the date.

I imagine this kind of service can be useful in many situations, combine with a fake contact detail on your smartphone and it can seem like your CEO/Wife/etc is calling and you get an option to cut short meetings.

However, these days an SMS or email can provide almost as much excuse so it's not as critical to get a call for interruption purposes.

This is cool. I developed a Voice Call reminder iPhone app - http://JustRemindIt.com. When I developed it, its soul purpose was to send Voice Call reminders to anyone. I didn't think too much at that time for what else people can use this app.

Couple customers sent me feedback email saying that this app is really cool as it helps them to get out of a boring meeting. They simply schedule a Voice Call reminder to themselves. And my app does the reliable job of calling them. When phone rings, they just walk out of a meeting without faking much :).

Couple of people said they use it as a "Future Voice Mail" service. Send real message to someone, not just "reminding" specific.

I guess use case mentioned in this article could be another use case for my app :).

Neat.

"Use at your own risk. I can't afford a lawyer, so don't do anything stupid with this, please." is a nice touch.

Nice idea. I may have use for that. Does it work internationally? I'm in Europe :/

Another important thing:

> All passwords are hashed with SHA256 before storage

SHA256 is NOT suitable to hash passwords. In this case it's rather unimportant, because only phone numbers are stored, but SHA/MD5 et al. are often used when security matters too. So, use bcrypt: http://codahale.com/how-to-safely-store-a-password/

Actually, a better use case is probably hot girls at bars who don't want to be hit on. They could have an app on their phone that tells this script to call them in 1,5 or 10 minutes.

There's an app in the App Store called "Fake Call" that does exactly that. It shows a perfectly mocked-up phone call animation, complete with contact photo and custom ringtone.

Women don't go to bars to avoid social interaction, how many attractive women do you know that don't know how to tell a guy off?

This could be really useful one day and I love the idea of providing a REST api instead of a UI! Are you going to add support for european numbers (or would you open-source the code)?

Twilio just launched in Europe a couple of weeks ago I think; I need to get myself a Euro number and make a few code adjustments. Gimme a week or so.

This is incredible.

I created an account for myself and my non-technical office mate and created a page hosted internally we've bookmarked. Now if someone walks in to chat about something trivial and one of us wants to keep working, we have a little button to push that sends the request and redirects back to the previous page.

Thanks for this!

If you run OS X, look for my little applescript on the main page that you can bind to a keystroke. Very handy! :)

Brilliant. I don't work with cow-orkers, but I'll keep this for friends who do. Congrats on a nice app. :D

Thanks. I submitted this to hn earlier this summer, but must have hit the wrong time of day or something because it just languished. I don't think I got more than one karma point from it. The irony is that this coverage has only given me real karma points, and no hn karma (pg's URL de-duplication tester doesn't go back in time far enough) :)

To be honest, I went digging through the "New" tab and found your app. There's a nonzero chance I helped you get to the front page. :P

Anyway, good luck!

What sorts of things does Steve say? It would be nice if I could pass a string for him to pronounce.

Steve is pretty boring, but I have Big Plans to make his conversation a little more... customizable.

He asked me if I could configure an EC2 server for him.

I had the idea to do something like this a while ago. I then googled it and turns out there were already a number of services doing this, though none here in Japan. Unfortunately Twilio is not available here yet. I wonder if there's another way of doing it cheap.

I never thought of using with coworkers though. In that case I'd simply tell them I'm busy with something important. My idea was for dates and other social situations where you need an excuse to "escape".

I like it. I can think of many situations where this would be a handy tool. Part of me wishes it was a simple app that would allow me to simply type a couple of numbers in and begin using it. However, I can also see that if it became too easy to use and too widely available, people might get wise to it. Then, you'd have those "cow-orkers" stopping by your office to show you this cool new app that fakes calls.

Would a polite introvert pick up their cell phone whilst talking to another individual?

If it's supposedly a work-related phone call, yes.

Since when is it polite to lie? I think that's very impolite.

I use http://www.phonemyphone.com/ . It doesn't have an API but it does what I need.

Nice. I once developed an ad-hoc version of something like this (it had "call at time X" functionality) to page me out of meetings...the next logical step would have been to tie into my appointment calendar, so that scheduled meetings automatically triggered the page request.

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