I am living in Germany, which has one of the stronger privacy protection laws.

But this was
a) more than 20 years ago
b) considered public data (distributed to every household in printed form any way), so the privacy laws of the time didn’t apply.

The only legal disputes I remember were over questions of copyright for the entries in the phonebooks.

[Edit]
Just checked: at least one of the services still exists and works exactly as I described it before:
https://www.dasoertliche.de/
If you click on “Rückwärtssuche” you open the reverse search.
Here is a phone number to try it with: 0897003671
Note the “Routenplaner” link on the result entry, which shows you a map and lets you plan your route to the number owner.

But not Bundeswehr pilots…

Pilots? News said they returned using a standard civilian flight connection.

They already digitized the books and put them online in searchable databases 30 years ago.

Even including reverse number search (which my socially awkward self loved back then) and later integrated map routing to the address of the number’s owner.

So this argument doesn’t hold.

Perhaps a language understanding issue on my side (no native English speaker…):
Does the “pay” in pay phone has any significance or is it a term like “riding shotgun”, that is still in use but has nothing to do anymore with warding of bandits with actual guns?

That’s a cool idea, reminds me of this big video gateway between different cities (although that escalated somehow, if I remember correctly)

But who will use it if you have to pay for it?
I mean, voice data transmission cost is negligible.
Or is the price you have to pay part of the social experiment?

You have to update the map, the Germans already returned home again.

Tron.

You.pretend not to notice the biscuits because you are polite.

I pretend not to notice the biscuits because I have celiac disease.

We are not the same.

Yes, but even then it was generally only true for the remaining fixed landline phones. Felt just like a public knowledge part of your address, like putting your name on the doorbell button.

To be generally valid for mobile phones you probably would have to go back another 10 years.
Those truely were different times still, also online.
I even remember posting my mail address to a public register at the end of the 90s to distribute the public part of my pgp key…

Looks even more like a converted trash container.

Shouldn’t the “Zoomers” and “Capitalism” captions be reversed?

Well, I am pretty convinced most of the mentioned issues are actually intentional design choices.

Google does want neither the users, nor the app owners to have the best experience, but to control their actions in a way that generates the most revenue for Google.
Prime example for Enshitification.

From Google’s point of view, it must not change any of the issues, as everything is working perfectly for them already.

For me basically anything where the ring finger has to act independent from the others is a little bit hard, but still doable.
(11 is one of those numbers)

So ring finger, middle finger and thumb raised?

Is this some hand sign with special meaning I should be aware of?

Sequential or concurrent playback of the sinewaves?
Or even both?
Then lyrics could be anything you want, look up Fourier Transform.

He probably assumed the sentence selection to be a statistically independent process, which it is not.

I already started going “Hey, but that doesn’t apply to ba…” before realizing those insane vampiric sky ghosts are mammals.

Sometimes its harder to not try 132.

You can even count to 59k using ternary, introducing a third, half-raised, finger position.