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Comment by dekhn | Hacker News Reader

Basically, the announcement is a secret until it happens. It happens at a specific time, in Sweden, and they attempt to contact the winners at that time with a personal call (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/themes/the-nobel-call/).

My cynical side suggests it's done mostly to generate PR. See also: https://worldneurologyonline.com/article/receiving-the-call-... https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/04/science/where...

Most scientists joke they wouldn't mind receiving a 2:30AM call informing them they won the prize because then at least they could go to work in the morning, have some champagne and relax because getting grants was going to get a lot easier...

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I think also due to their preference on making personal contact: the news will hit the PR landscape in short time afterwards and no soon-to-be-Nobel-laureate wants to find out in some news article

> no soon-to-be-Nobel-laureate wants to find out in some news article

I understand saying that's a problem, but realistically, that's a problem very few people would be unhappy to have. Yes, it could be horribly inconvenient to stumble through a bunch of congratulatory communications before you could confirm you've actually won, but compared to wining a Nobel, it's a trifle.

Exactly same argument can be made for being woken up by a call at 2AM.

Yea, in the unlikely case I were to be considered for a Nobel prize, I think I'd be ambivalent between being woken up and being inundated with congratulations and requests for comment without being able to confirm.

I put my phone in airplane mode at night. Don't a lot of people do that? What are they thinking?

They're thinking its a pretty cool phone call to get haha.

Don’t iPhones put themselves into do not disturb mode at night? I hope the Nobel folks call twice in 3 minutes!

I think that only works for Favorites. Do you have the Nobel committee in your favorites? ;-)

you say this as if you don't

You can have favorites go through on the first call, and repeat calls go through on the second call.

Those are optional settings.

I'm sure people like Sheldon Cooper has a calendar event and stays awake by phone when the awards are announced, hehe :)

A lot of phone behavior has changed since this tradition got started. When it did, people typically had a landline in their bedroom, which seldom rang at night.

This is a big part of the answer IMO. While cultural norms may have shifted past unscheduled phone calls for nearly any reason at all, some things are still best delivered over the phone and I think it's actually quite nice.

I don't. That sounds like an anti-solution, i.e., something that seems to solve a problem, doesn't, but does create new ones. Is there a real problem that it does solve? Is there a geographic/cultural aspect to it?

Interrupted sleep, and sleeping next to an EM radiation source. I don't care what they say, cell phones haven't been around long enough for us to know whether or not there are long term effects.

Also I tend to charge my phone during the daytime so at night I just put it in airplane mode to conserve batteries and make sure it can pull itself through the night to be able to sound the alarm in the morning. The charging port on my phone is busted and the cable needs to be jiggled every now and then, so it's not feasible to charge it reliably at night. Thanks, USB-C, for your horrible, non-rugged design that can't get through 3 years of use.

Because EM radiation follows the inverse square law, placing your phone 3-6 feet away from your bed should decrease the radiation enough to make such concerns moot.

And if you place it on airplane mode and then turn on WiFi (assuming you have WiFi calling), then you both save battery and make radiation insignificant.

> Because EM radiation follows the inverse square law

Unfortunately sound follows the inverse square law as well, and alarms don't wake me up when they are 6 feet away.

can you increase the volume of the alarm? it should be possible to make it loud enough so you can hear it across the room

There should be no concern with your phone being 1 meter or less away from you. Even at full wattage, a phone transceiver will give off around 100mW, in most realistic scenarios it will be less than a tenth of that.

Even if you used the maximum band power of 1 watt, that isn't really enough to do anything. At rest your body will produce about 80 Watts of heat energy, which is a much higher frequency than what your phone gives off and hence has much more energy per quanta. Also keep in mind that 1 Watt is going in all directions, at best you cover half the hemisphere and even assuming phone manufacturers aren't optimizing for phones to radiate away because that gives better reception at lower power, you'd be getting half a watt of energy from a device going maximum transmit power. A standard phone will likely give you less than 5mW of energy dosage.

The most that your phone can do is warm up your ear a bit if you put it under your pillow. By an amount that is likely to be not measurable with modern equipment.

And before noting about ionizing radiation; phones aren't high enough frequency or power to really do that at any appreciable level. Only high frequencies are capable of ionizing since it requires an atom receiving a certain amount of energy per quantum, and the energy per quantum is only related to the frequency, not the transmit power.

That and does GP have a WiFi router a few meters from the bedroom, which they always unplug at night (disclaimer: I used to do that). And the clock next to the bed? Battery or socket?

You also cannot unplug all of your neighbours routers, TVs and other devices.

It is very easy to get paranoid about specific wireless technologies, it is almost impossible nowadays to avoid "electrosmog" or particularly wireless emitters entirely though.

I have absolutely gotten very late night calls in Europe when I've been traveling, mostly SPAM, some wrong numbers, but also idiot people at my company which could have been dealt with using a text or email. (Haven't actually gotten the latter for a while; people don't randomly call someone outside of specific circumstances at this point.)

My contacts go through, there's the call twice workaround, and honestly I'm from a period when you just couldn't always reach someone immediately and I'm fine with that.

> I'm from a period when you just couldn't always reach someone immediately

Sure, me too, but that's exactly where I'm coming from when I ask. It's the same set of sensibilities that says that if there's going to be a call in the middle of the night, it's probably for a good reason. I would think we'd have to fast forward from there to reach the place that views regularly taking the phone off the hook as the natural solution, due to e.g. jadedness/cynicism/etc.

I'd definitely be open to an argument that it may be reasonable to DND my phone when I'm traveling to Europe/Asia but not otherwise especially given that I no longer have a landline. In fact, given that isn't happening anytime soon maybe I'll turn it off. (I have very few notifications on anyway.)

The real problem it's solving is people living different lifestyles and existing in different timezones, wanting to talk to each other on the phone, and not wanting their work or sleep interrupted.

I don't. I considered it, but I decided that the remote risk of there being a real emergency outweighs the even more remote risk that I'll get an unimportant call in the middle of the night.

(If I ever did get an unimportant call in the middle of the night, the person on the other end would get an earful.)

I have a friend who calls me at 3am (or something equally ridiculous). I always answer in case he is in trouble, when he's just pissed I'm grateful it isn't anything serious and chat away with him.

"Pissed" meaning inebriated and not angry.

Had a colleague at one job who was from London and he was describing the steps he had taken to fix his car. I had to tell him he lost me at bonnet. Two countries sharing words.

“[…]divided by a common language”. (Commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw.)

you are a good friend to have.

We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.

Oh yeah, try that and I'm dropping any business relationship with you that I have the next morning. Or if I don't, then I'll pay a visit to the local office of our Office of Competition and Customer Protection.

Ah - you're in Europe. In the US that's a very common spam call to receive. It may come from a different number every time and the FCC and FTC (the relevant authorities) can't or won't stop it. I've had it in the middle of the night a couple of times, though I think that's not as common. It's the reason my phone is always on Do Not Disturb now.

I'm in the US and I get an incredible amount of spam calls, as well as (before) calls from coworkers about non-urgent things.

I since just have my phone block all calls except those pre-made appointments on my Google calendar, and the number by which people can reach me changes depending on the scheduled hour, all programmed via Twilio.

I have a couple of whitelisted incoming numbers for family/SO and that's it. Everyone else has to make an appointment, or send me an email or instant message which I will usually see within a few hours. I generally tell people that email is the fastest and most reliable way to reach me.

Europe is not that serene as you may think. I get plenty of spam calls from entities I'm in a relationship with - like my mobile operator or my bank[0]. It's one of the reasons my phone is on silent during the day[1]. The problem with those is the usual fake "market choice": every mobile operator and bank is pulling this crap, so I don't abandon mine, because alternatives are no better.

Then there are occasional random scams calling in - most common recently is "your number has been randomly selected as a winner and you're eligible for ${insert useless reward that's just a bait for scam here}". But none of them, ever, tried to call late at night. If they did, I'd file a complaint.

[0] - The most annoying spam call from a bank was an upsell that happened last year. I was doing the usual checkup on my account balances via their web page, and out of curiosity decided to check out what they have on the "offers" tab. I clicked to the tab, skimmed the list of loan and investment offers, and got back to managing my money. The next day, a marketer calls, trying to upsell me some credit. When pressed, he straight up admitted that I got flagged in the system because I clicked on the "offers" tab and didn't buy anything. As you can imagine, the next time the bank called to take a "quality of service" survey, I said a lot of words about what I don't like about their service.

[1] - I have a smartwatch that vibrates when I get a call, giving me an unobtrusive way to look at the number and reject it without taking the phone out.

> mobile operator or my bank

Yeah no, these companies should NEVER be calling people, period. It's way to easy to phish people for information by calling them and claiming to be their bank. Too many people will fall for it:

"Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Before we go further I would just like to confirm your identity. Could you please provide your name? Your address? Your mother's maiden name? The last four digits of your SSN?"

Banks should adopt a policy of only interacting with customers physically, via their web interface with a login, official mobile app, or by the user calling the bank's official, publicized number. Never by calling the user.

That way they can post big signs saying "We will never call you, if someone calls you claiming to be us, it's fake" and people will get it.

Yeah no

Which is it?

You either don't travel, don't travel for very long, or don't travel anywhere interesting.

I've had several experiences over the years where using a credit card in a country I didn't expect to be in got a call from the bank to verify it was me.

You may tell your bank you're traveling in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland for a week, but on night three of your trip, when you get invited to a party in the Czech Republic by your friend's pretty sister, you get on the train and keep talking. You don't say, "Hold your hormones for a sec, I need to tell my bank I'm going out of bounds."

> Which is it?

1 * 0 = 0

> You either don't travel, don't travel for very long, or don't travel anywhere interesting.

I would prefer you didn't make assumptions.

I travel to lots of interesting places, and I have had my credit card disabled several times. Once because my idiot geography-illiterate bank didn't know that Bulgaria was a part of Europe. Good thing I had a stack of cash with me. For less prepared travellers, the bank is doing nothing but stranding their own customers cashless in unfamiliar places.

In any case, my point still stands that they really shouldn't be calling to verify it is me when I don't even have my home country's SIM card in my phone.

They should be e-mailing me instead, which is the only reliable way to reach me while travelling and SIM swapping. Most people are more reachable easily by e-mail than by phone when travelling for the exact same reason.

> I've had several experiences over the years where using a credit card in a country I didn't expect to be in got a call from the bank to verify it was me.

Me too. My bank sent me a message telling me to call them using the number on the back of my card. That is an easy solution to the problem.

Maybe things are different where you travel but I've travelled to many countries and I don't think my SIM card from the previous country has ever worked in the next one. Even if it did, I wouldn't dare talk to anyone on it in case of some exorbitant roaming charge.

Well. You sir seem to have interesting banking stories to tell.

It is possible to make it secure. "Hi, this is SomeDude from Bank of America, and we noticed some suspicious activity on your account. Please go to the Bank of America website and find the number labeled 'Customer callback number' and call us there. That way, you can confirm you're talking to us, at which point we will confirm your identity, and then work with you on the issue."

I've seen this proposed. I don't know if anyone is actually doing it.

I've had my bank call me, wanting to talk about something important (I think it was loan payment that didn't go through or something of that sort) and the first thing they said was: "This is Bank XYZ and I'm calling to inform you of something. But before we do that you have to prove your identity. Can you tell me what your account number is?"

I said: "I'd be happy to, but first can you prove your identity to me? After all, you're the one that called me"

What followed was a hilarious discussion where they were unable to prove anything to me (for example, telling me something about my account that only I would know) because they're not allowed to tell anything to me until I proved who I am.

Finally I told them that I'd be happy to call them back and I asked them where I can find the number to call. I was obviously not going call a number the person would give me. They didn't know how to find the number to the customer service, so I found it myself and called back.

When they answered, I explained the situation but obviously there was no way to actually get in touch with the person with whom I had spoken earlier, and the person that I did speak to didn't know what the topic was. I asked them to call me back.

Well, they did eventually called me back, but what was the fist thing they asked after they did? "We need you prove your identity, can you tell me XXXX?"

They've stopped doing this now, and the mest recent thing they called me to inform me about something they just went to the point right away. I wonder if I've been flagged as someone who doesn't need verification or if they changed their policy.

For my bank they just send a verification request to the app (or web page using your one time code book if you prefer that) to verify who you are. So basically the same process as logging into the bank and/or verifying payments.

Correct me if I misunderstood, but that sounds insecure.

I imagine an attack where someone attempts to log in to your Internet bank account, and at the same time calls you and tells you that they are the bank and that they have sent you a notification on the phone to confirm this.

You accept the notification on the phone and all of a sudden they're not just logged in to your Internet bank, but also on the phone with you, with you trusting that they are indeed the bank.

The only way I see that this could be avoided is if they provide you with a verification code that will appear on your phone.

The verification app does tell you what the verification request is for. Also you can't really do anything in the bank without verifying yourself again (basically any change/write requires you to approve again)

Basically in the app you see if the verification is for logging in, providing strong auth for some service, approving transfer of X euros from Y account to account Z, etc

In general we have had really well working online banking since the late 90s here in Finland (first versions are actually from the early 80s where you dialed directly to the bank instead of your ISP with your modem). Haven't really heard of any major security flaws ever so they do have a really good track record. This is also why the governments attempt at creating their own strong auth service failed. The banks already effectively provide that and everyone is used to using them.

Yes my phone was always on silent as well - until you have your kid in daycare and are supposed to really answer your calls as they arrive.

It is serene compared to the US where it's common to receive 30 robocalls a day.

I tried to get a company name or mailing address out of them once, but they're pretty cagey.

They were definitely using a soundboard, they'd repeat phrases that were approximate answers to my questions.

I eventually got a Google voice number in a different area code than where I have ever lived, so it's just really easy to see them coming now.

Automatic call screening is another solution. Or the authentication protocols that are rolling out way too slowly. Or just using OTT services. We never fully fix any old communication systems we just make new ones anyway.

What business relationship? The car warranty spammers aren't working for your car manufacturer.

The iPhone has an option to let phone calls ring if called twice in a row. I've told everyone that might possibly be calling me in an emergency to do so if they really need to get through. You can alternatively create an emergency list of numbers and let them ring through on the 1st attempt. I assume Android has something similar.

You can choose to let contacts through. The potential fail is calls coming from an emergency service like the police or a hospital who don't try a second time. I choose to use Do Not Disturb anyway but reasonable people can disagree on the most appropriate thing to do. (And it may depend on individual circumstances.)

The GP or so was talking about airplane mode though. I assume nothing gets through in that case. Personally I'd use DND rather than airplane mode.

DND with contacts excepted is good, but it has another failure mode: food delivery. They do tend to call twice, but the whole thing is more pleasant when disabling DND at time of ordering. Naturally, reenabling DND tends to happen only after the next spam call.

Yeah you can always disable it for a short time when you're expecting food, not a big deal. Just write a script that allows you to disable for 30 minutes and it auto-reenables after that.

Spammers have learned this and will call twice. This got REALLY annoying when I was in work meetings and my phone would start ringing to tell me about my car's extended warranty.

They never seem to call me twice... I would hang up if they did.

I have numbers not in my contact list sent to voicemail but I have noticed I commonly see two calls in a row, never put that together before

Yes, Android also has a DND-mode with configurable exceptions: what type of message/call gets through, who gets through right away, or after how many repeat calls.

Further, you can schedule it or even trigger by certain calendar events. Very convenient if you have small children and don't want the random calls from grandparents or old friends checking in at inconvenient times (apparently if they don't have children but working a lot they don't consider 9pm to be "a bad time" - how should they?).

We used Airplane mode at nights before (even before we had kids), but were stressed about missed emergencies from relatives and stopped doing that.

Disclaimer: I get approx. 2 calls per week, and this is mostly businesses calling back, etc. I still don't want to miss emergencies though.

I’m reminded of my favorite Simpsons moment, when Homer gets a robo-dialer. It calls everyone in Springfield.

It keeps waking up Flanders and his wife. After, like, the third time he picks it up, his wife says, “why don’t you just unplug the phone!?”

And Flanders yells, “it could be my mother!!”

To which Homer shouts from next door, “would you shut up!? People are trying to sleep!”

I can think of 0 times in my 15 years of owning a cellphone when I received a call that was worth losing sleep to.

Aeroplane mode has two advantages for me: I don't receive calls or notifications for the night, and I aren't tempted to immediately go to my cellphone to check whether I got a notification when I wake up.

Are you expecting to win a Nobel soon? Perhaps it is not a problem for you, but a high-profile scientist has to think about those things. That’s part if the minutiae of their existence.

I would only do that if I had no friends or family, all alone in the world. Or maybe if I was 20 and my parents and friends were young and in great health. Instead, I turn on do not disturb with friends and family going through and repeated calls also go through.

Apparently people who are likely to win the prize tend to hear rumors beforehand and are mentally prepared for this (especially if they care)

I would assume they know they night the calls go out and take their phones off DND. I bet many don't even sleep that night in anticipation of the phone ringing.

Have you ever been called in the middle of the night that prompted this behavior? I have only been woken by my phone twice and both times I'm glad I was.

Just join a WhatsApp group with some friends in a different timezone.

Or have e-mail on your phone, making a sound whenever you receive an e-mail.

Or get an SMS from your cell provider when you run out of data, even if you somehow run out of data at 4am.

(Of course, I know I wouldn't be anyone's first phone call in an emergency)

> Or have e-mail on your phone, making a sound whenever you receive an e-mail.

Why on Earth would any sane person set their phone up to do this?

Also https://www.rd.com/article/what-its-like-notify-nobel-prize-...

This is a very interesting article and I think it points to the main reason its so important to reach the winners:

> If, like Saul Perlmutter (Physics, 2011), you live in California and the call comes, unanswered, in the middle of the night, then it could be the television news vans outside your house that alert you of your prize.

> If you don’t pick up the phone, the ceremony continues without you. The public announcement comes at noon.

Why don't the Nobel people just wait until you've been successfully informed before telling anyone else? Where does this self-imposed deadline come from?

Because normally they have hundreds of journalists and scientists onsite a ceremony and don't want to make them wait.

> they have hundreds of journalists and scientists onsite a ceremony

Maybe they shouldn't have done that before checking if the person was ok with being awarded the prize?

Since when do you need someones consent to say a thing about them?

You don’t need someone’s consent to say a thing about them.

But they clearly want to tell them, so why are they trying to do it in the middle of the night in a hurry rather than doing it calmly?

Why this self-imposed rush?

Nobel winners are all over the world, regardless of when you pick, there will always be a chance it's "the middle of the night" for someone. With the current time slot that happens to be for people in the US.

They could pick a slot that's during the day in the US, but then it'd be night for someone else. What justifies the US importance to make such a change? Using the timezone of the committee as they do now seems as reasonable a compromise as any...

But why does it need to be done at a single moment? Why not take a day or week to make sure you’ve got in touch with people? There’s no rush except what they create for themselves.

Too bad the winner isn't one of them.

Not everyone wants to travel around the world to be at an award ceremony they only have a small chance of winning.

The real question is: why don't they try to contact the recipients during the 24hr period prior to the announcement, at that recipient's acceptable local time zone?

I don't think a Nobel recipient is going to spill the beans on the announcement.

It's a bit unfair to ask someone to keep their mouth shut when they've received one of the most prestigious awards possible in the world. Given that, it's reasonable to assume they'll share with _someone_ during said embargo and once that cat is out of the bag you might as well assume the news will leak. Hence the curtesy call ahead of the general news breaking just a bit beforehand.

> Basically, the announcement is a secret until it happens.

I too had thought that this was the case, but it appears the press does get at least some advance notice. Last Wednesday Jennifer Doudna found that she had won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in a phone call from a reporter. Ref: paragraph 7 of [1]:

> At a press briefing today, Doudna noted she was asleep and missed the initial calls from Sweden, only waking up to answer the phone finally when a Nature reporter called. "She wanted to know if I could comment on the Nobel and I said, Well, who won it? And she was shocked that she was the person to tell me."

[1] https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/10/crispr-revolutionary...

That doesn't contract it being a secret beforehand, though, or indicate journalists are given advance knowledge. It sounds like the timeline was:

1. They fail to contact Doudna to inform her she's a winner

2. They publicly announce she's a winner

3. Journalist calls to ask her about it

Sounds like Doudna had her phone muted during the night. Apparently some phones do that.

My phone is set to Do Not Disturb from 10-7 or something like that. Although I think repeated calls (or calls from my contacts) go through. Otherwise, during normal times, I'd get woken up in the middle of the night with junk calls when traveling.

The announcement is given at a press conference, so the reporters learn it at that time. The link above says that they try to call the winners a few minutes before it is announced at the press conference, but like your quote says, Doudna missed that call because she was sleeping.

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