frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

fp.

Open in hackernews

Ask HN: Will "indirect phones" replace today's phones?

1•amichail•7mo ago
With an indirect phone, you’d never speak directly to anyone.

Instead, you’d talk to an AI that serves as your communicator.

When someone calls, the AI answers and later relays a summary of the message to you. You can ask the AI for more details about what the caller said.

If you want to reply, you do so via the AI.

For example: “Tell Joe that we can have a business meeting on Tuesday.”

Do you think such indirect phones would become popular?

Comments

JohnFen•7mo ago
If someone doesn't want to talk to me, I'd much prefer they just don't talk to me rather than employ an intermediary.
amichail•7mo ago
I think direct communication will be considered rude in the future.
JohnFen•7mo ago
Perhaps, perhaps not.

If so, that will be a shame for me as it would reduce the amount of communication I have, and so increase isolation. Indirect communication is reduced communication.

reify•7mo ago
I am just imagining how it would work out in an argument.

between a husband and wife say.

its bad enough when you have done something wrong to upset your better half,

How would they scream and shout at you down the phone if the message went through a chatbot.

How would a chatbot express and convey your emotions at that time. Highy unlikely a chatbot would get that right.

hey chatbot, shout this at my husband. make sure you are really angry with him.

chatbot summarised reply: in a balanced chatbot voice. your wife is really angry with your for cheating on her. you naughty bad bad husband.

might work for some power hungry, domineering manager, demanding action from an employee.

but the general public, no way.

I like people and like the sound of their voices. I can tell what sort of mood people are in when I call them.

humans need to express all their emotions, thats what humans do.

might be handy if you were arrested by the police,

Dear copper, please refer your questions via my chatbot.

your under arrest son.

marssaxman•7mo ago
A friend of mine already does something much like this: she communicates by talking to her phone, which transcribes her messages and sends them as text. She practically never has a live phone conversation, nor writes any messages herself. I'm sure she would take to a system like you describe quite naturally, describing what she wants to say instead of strictly dictating it.

For me, I so rarely make or receive voice phone calls that I would likely not bother setting up such a service even if it were given to me for free; nor do I ever use voice interfaces, if I can help it. I much prefer to write.

JohnFen•7mo ago
But that's still direct communication. It's not involving an intermediary. Perhaps I misunderstood the question. I took it as meaning the elimination of all direct communication, not just voice.
marssaxman•7mo ago
Either I don't understand what you mean by direct communication, or we have different impressions of what the "indirect phone" proposal meant. What I heard didn't sound so different from the way I already use my phone - I almost exclusively send and receive messages, asynchronously, rather than having synchronous voice conversations. I thus took the proposal to be about automated ways of generating and digesting these messages. What were you envisioning?
JohnFen•7mo ago
What I mean by "direct communication" is that my words go directly to who I'm talking with and their words go directly to me. I'm interpreting "indirect communication" as used in the OP to mean that I tell an intermediary (an LLM in this case) what I want to say, and the intermediary says it for me (and vice versa).

I wasn't thinking that the medium used (voice, text, whatever) was an important part of the direct/indirect distinction.

moritzwarhier•7mo ago
Wasn't this the promise of Google "Duplex"? (edit: not Duo).

A tech demo from 2018.

But what's the point of this over text messages from the start?

TTS is a thing, and if you can't organize your speech properly, you could of course use an AI agent like ChatGPT to summarize your message while it's turned into text, or even into any arbitrary structured format.

You can even check that the output matches what you meant before submitting!

An open replacement for the IBM 3174 Establishment Controller

https://github.com/lowobservable/oec
1•bri3d•2m ago•0 comments

The P in PGP isn't for pain: encrypting emails in the browser

https://ckardaris.github.io/blog/2026/02/07/encrypted-email.html
1•ckardaris•4m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Mirror Parliament where users vote on top of politicians and draft laws

https://github.com/fokdelafons/lustra
1•fokdelafons•4m ago•1 comments

Ask HN: Opus 4.6 ignoring instructions, how to use 4.5 in Claude Code instead?

1•Chance-Device•6m ago•0 comments

We Mourn Our Craft

https://nolanlawson.com/2026/02/07/we-mourn-our-craft/
1•ColinWright•8m ago•0 comments

Jim Fan calls pixels the ultimate motor controller

https://robotsandstartups.substack.com/p/humanoids-platform-urdf-kitchen-nvidias
1•robotlaunch•12m ago•0 comments

Exploring a Modern SMTPE 2110 Broadcast Truck with My Dad

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/exploring-a-modern-smpte-2110-broadcast-truck-with-my-dad/
1•HotGarbage•12m ago•0 comments

AI UX Playground: Real-world examples of AI interaction design

https://www.aiuxplayground.com/
1•javiercr•13m ago•0 comments

The Field Guide to Design Futures

https://designfutures.guide/
1•andyjohnson0•13m ago•0 comments

The Other Leverage in Software and AI

https://tomtunguz.com/the-other-leverage-in-software-and-ai/
1•gmays•15m ago•0 comments

AUR malware scanner written in Rust

https://github.com/Sohimaster/traur
3•sohimaster•18m ago•1 comments

Free FFmpeg API [video]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RAuSVa4MLI
3•harshalone•18m ago•1 comments

Are AI agents ready for the workplace? A new benchmark raises doubts

https://techcrunch.com/2026/01/22/are-ai-agents-ready-for-the-workplace-a-new-benchmark-raises-do...
2•PaulHoule•23m ago•0 comments

Show HN: AI Watermark and Stego Scanner

https://ulrischa.github.io/AIWatermarkDetector/
1•ulrischa•23m ago•0 comments

Clarity vs. complexity: the invisible work of subtraction

https://www.alexscamp.com/p/clarity-vs-complexity-the-invisible
1•dovhyi•24m ago•0 comments

Solid-State Freezer Needs No Refrigerants

https://spectrum.ieee.org/subzero-elastocaloric-cooling
2•Brajeshwar•25m ago•0 comments

Ask HN: Will LLMs/AI Decrease Human Intelligence and Make Expertise a Commodity?

1•mc-0•26m ago•1 comments

From Zero to Hero: A Brief Introduction to Spring Boot

https://jcob-sikorski.github.io/me/writing/from-zero-to-hello-world-spring-boot
1•jcob_sikorski•26m ago•1 comments

NSA detected phone call between foreign intelligence and person close to Trump

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/07/nsa-foreign-intelligence-trump-whistleblower
10•c420•27m ago•1 comments

How to Fake a Robotics Result

https://itcanthink.substack.com/p/how-to-fake-a-robotics-result
1•ai_critic•27m ago•0 comments

It's time for the world to boycott the US

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/2/5/its-time-for-the-world-to-boycott-the-us
3•HotGarbage•27m ago•0 comments

Show HN: Semantic Search for terminal commands in the Browser (No Back end)

https://jslambda.github.io/tldr-vsearch/
1•jslambda•27m ago•1 comments

The AI CEO Experiment

https://yukicapital.com/blog/the-ai-ceo-experiment/
2•romainsimon•29m ago•0 comments

Speed up responses with fast mode

https://code.claude.com/docs/en/fast-mode
5•surprisetalk•33m ago•1 comments

MS-DOS game copy protection and cracks

https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/game_cracks.php
4•TheCraiggers•34m ago•0 comments

Updates on GNU/Hurd progress [video]

https://fosdem.org/2026/schedule/event/7FZXHF-updates_on_gnuhurd_progress_rump_drivers_64bit_smp_...
2•birdculture•34m ago•0 comments

Epstein took a photo of his 2015 dinner with Zuckerberg and Musk

https://xcancel.com/search?f=tweets&q=davenewworld_2%2Fstatus%2F2020128223850316274
14•doener•35m ago•2 comments

MyFlames: View MySQL execution plans as interactive FlameGraphs and BarCharts

https://github.com/vgrippa/myflames
1•tanelpoder•36m ago•0 comments

Show HN: LLM of Babel

https://clairefro.github.io/llm-of-babel/
1•marjipan200•36m ago•0 comments

A modern iperf3 alternative with a live TUI, multi-client server, QUIC support

https://github.com/lance0/xfr
3•tanelpoder•37m ago•0 comments