
The Swedish Number – Talk with a Random Swede - iriche
http://theswedishnumber.com
======
nadu
Carl from Sweden who actually received calls, recollects his experience here -
[https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-from-the-swedish-
numbe...](https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-from-the-swedish-
number-50ca1a2d11a2#.plh1f75f6)

~~~
jamesblonde
Like nearly all other Swedes, you can google 'carl heath' and find a page with
his phone number, home address, birthday, and a button 'send him flowers':
[http://personer.eniro.se/resultat/Carl+Heath](http://personer.eniro.se/resultat/Carl+Heath)

~~~
alekseypo
haha yes! I used interflora

~~~
jamesblonde
Oops, just found out he's a colleague :)

~~~
carlheath
And we can also use google to find stories on ourselves too, in Sweden. Havent
seen any flowers yet, though. ;)

------
exabrial
Anyone try this yet? I've always wondered what Swedes think about IKEA in
America...

~~~
nxcho
As a Swede currently living in California who also has visited IKEA in several
different countries I can report that the general experience of visiting IKEA
is pretty much as stressful and disorienting here as in Sweden. There are some
local variations in the product portfolio both due to different standards like
in bed sizes and kitchen and cultural differences. You cannot find a cheese
slicer in my nearest IKEA and they have icing on their cinnamon buns (almost
blasphemy).

To be honest, IKEA is a Swedish company by brand only. The products are
sourced from wherever it is cheapest to manufacture right now and the
ownership structure is so complex, multinational and tax-avoidance schemy that
probably only the head honcho Ingvar Kamprad (IK in IKEA) who until recently
resided in Switzerland, knows where the profit ends up.

(edit: got Ingvar Kamprads name wrong first time around)

~~~
Dutchie
The Swedes are using cheese slicers too? I always thought the Dutch were the
only people in the world to use cheese slicers.

~~~
tricolon
Finn here. How else are you supposed to slice cheese?

~~~
nxcho
Knife i guess or buy factory sliced. Most cheeses in america is a bit to soft
to slice with a cheese slicer anyway.

~~~
Dutchie
American cheese? Does that relate to real cheese as Pizza Hawaii compares to
an actual Italian pizza?

~~~
fennecfoxen
Don't look for American cheese, look for Wisconsin or Vermont cheese. Maybe
California in a pinch. Those will be good.

~~~
tamana
That makes no sense. The geographic source of the cheese is trivila compared
to the way it is made. You can get cheap American process ccheese food or you
can get expensive classic varieties of cheese from anywhere.

------
nodesocket
Hej Hej! I spent 4 months (in the dead of winter) consulting in Stockholm
Sweden and it has a special place in my heart. I meet some great people...
Some from just posting in reddit /stockholm.

Highly recommend visiting, if you can, go during June (end) for midsummer. I
was there Dec - March, it was damn cold.

------
mengyalan
Ahh the new SaaS(Swede as a Service).

~~~
elcapitan
SaaB (Swedish as a Business)

------
trondeh80
I am from Norway, and decided to call. Ended up talking 30 mins with an
extremely nice lady in the south of sweden. 10/10 would recommend - Swedes are
awesome

------
raitom
Can't wait to see what /b/ will do with that.

~~~
jdmoreira
I'm not Swedish but I'm living in Sweden. This past weekend, my girlfriend,
who is Swedish, wanted to participate in this phone number thing. I told her
it was a terrible idea and I had to show her /b/ to convince her.

~~~
distances
Shame. other people seem to have had lovely connections with the service, like
Karl mentioned in another comment: [https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-
from-the-swedish-numbe...](https://medium.com/@carlheath/stories-from-the-
swedish-number-50ca1a2d11a2)

------
GBond
Interesting but not surprising website. I visited Stockholm for the first time
recently and I was impressed with the usage of tech to increase everyday
efficiencies. Things like: app for the rail station tickets/yellow cabs/buses,
electric/hybrid vehicles commonplace, free wifi in abundance...

------
OJFord
This was featured on BBC R1 last week - the presenters calling random Swedes
via the number looking for a 'Freida'.. it's as bizarre as it sounds.

------
cm3
Did people sign up for this or was it involuntarily and anyone, including
those who don't want to be bothered, will get calls?

~~~
yincrash
People sign up. There is also a
[http://twitter.com/sweden](http://twitter.com/sweden) that is also run by
citizens who sign up (it rotates every week).

~~~
cm3
How does that twitter profile switching work technically. Is there actual
shadow account support available to Pro Twitter accounts?

~~~
Ambroos
"Here you go, the password is bfGeAgwRHU5bwMNd."

Some technical problems don't need technical solutions.

~~~
alkonaut
So there is some kind of 2fa that prevents whover has the account that week
from changing the password and email?

~~~
Ambroos
They don't just give the account to random people. It's always people with
already some kind of social media presence, and stealing an account as well
known as @Sweden is not something someone like that would just do.

------
malditojavi
We had a similar initiative but with other purpose here in Brussels after the
November terrorist attacks on Paris

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/09...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/01/09/in-
order-to-win-back-tourists-this-european-capital-wants-visitors-to-dial-up-
random-locals/)

------
Zikes
Similarly, the @Sweden Twitter account is given to a different random Swede
every week.

~~~
draugadrotten
The abuse of the @Sweden Twitter account is obvious -- just look at the
lebanese immigrant Elias Kreidy who wrote “I’m the immigrant f __king your
daughter while you’re trying to sleep ignoring her moans calling me ‘daddy '”.

Now imagine this guy answering a phone line as an ambassador for the country!

NSFW article about the tweet: [http://www.infowars.com/im-the-immigrant-fking-
your-daughter...](http://www.infowars.com/im-the-immigrant-fking-your-
daughter/)

~~~
distances
This site seems to be run by a conspiracy theorist [1]. Next time a more
reasonable source would probably be in order.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_%28radio_host%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones_%28radio_host%29)

~~~
bjourne
[http://www.friatider.se/jag-ar-invandraren-som-knullar-
din-d...](http://www.friatider.se/jag-ar-invandraren-som-knullar-din-dotter)

[http://curatorsofsweden.com/curator/elias-
kreidy/](http://curatorsofsweden.com/curator/elias-kreidy/)

Use Google Translate. Obviously English sources for _Swedish_ news is hard to
find. It is, afaik, not the first the time @sweden account has been used for
trolling by douches.

------
sheraz
There is an American living in Sweden that is answering calls. He's got some
interesting perspectives on life in Sweden. Not sure if he is still taking
calls or not.

------
VLM
Nobody has mentioned the language issue yet?

Unfortunately what I've seen implies they talk in English. Not that there's
anything wrong with that. But my son has been taking French language class in
school and this provides the obvious extension to their idea of "talk to a
random French-speaking person" or whatever other language someone wants to
learn. Something like that probably already exists anyway. I suppose there
would be the predictable issues with most foreign language learners being
minors.

~~~
ascorbic
I've visited Sweden quite a few times and have travelled around quite a bit. I
didn't meet a single person who couldn't speak English to some extent. I
didn't meet a single person under about 50 who wasn't completely fluent.

------
coldcode
I can't image the US ever doing this.

~~~
nxzero
Imagine it quickly being turned off due to abuse.

~~~
hartator
I've troubled imagining how you can abuse this though.

~~~
balls187
"Is your refrigerator running?"

~~~
dceddia
Well yeah, why?

~~~
nxzero
"Is your refrigerator running?"

"Yes."

"Well, you’d better go catch it!"

(Click.)

------
lpbonenfant
Do swedes get to opt out of this?

~~~
svantana
It's opt in. In a radio segment the other day they said 6k people have
volunteered. Which makes it very much non-random, but still, cute concept.

~~~
roywiggins
probably a good thing, you wouldn't want most of the calls to be answered by
people very unhappy to be cold-called by some random foreigner...

------
sneak
Reminder: A trumped-up Swedish arrest warrant is the reason that Julian
Assange has been trapped for years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London and
denied his right to asylum... all for journalism that made the US government
look bad.

Don't travel to Sweden. Don't support the Swedish government in any way. They
are cooperating in a large-scale effort to censor the types of things you can
read about in the newspaper.

------
carlheath
Watch the Swedish Prime Minister answer The Swedish Number.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S087OHdCG8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S087OHdCG8I)

------
ioab
I can only praise the idea and wish it to be an initiative that others follow.
It sure helps connect people around the globe.

------
vit05
I'm working on an application, submitted to fellowship, that will allow people
to confess about something and others will be able to comment on this
confession.

This topic makes clear that I need really good, and fast, moderation tools

------
tilt_error
The prime minister answering the call :)

[http://youtu.be/S087OHdCG8I](http://youtu.be/S087OHdCG8I)

------
jkot
Skype has something similar back in 2005. You could ring random person and
have a chat.

I dont understand obsession about Sweden. It is expensive country in decline
with high crime. There are better places in Europe.

~~~
stenl
We're in 64th place for crime, just behind UK and Australia and way behind the
US (obviously). But Japan is absolutely great if you're looking for low crime
rates, and the food is fantastic too.

[http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp](http://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp)

~~~
fludlight
That index claims that there is less crime in Colombia and Russia than in the
US. Also that there is less crime in Azerbaijan than in New Zealand.

~~~
stenl
Yes, sorry that was a terrible reference; I should have been more careful. But
take instead the murder rate from Wikipedia (which gets stats from the UN):
Sweden is in place 205 out of 218 countries and no other nordic country is
lower except Iceland (and the rate in Iceland is not accurately measurable
since they had only a single murder).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate)

This despite the fact we're in the top ten for gun ownership:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country)

------
clamprecht
Swede-roulette

------
7373737373
This reminds me of [https://mapc.am/](https://mapc.am/), a browser based
variant.

------
osfa
[https://vimeo.com/162594920](https://vimeo.com/162594920) though

------
praptak
Does the Swede in question get notified beforehand about the source of the
call?

~~~
JensRantil
No. They simply get a call where the caller ID is the "Sweden number".
However, they can hang up at any time if getting abuse calls.

------
b123400
I wonder how long will it last until it is filled with junk calls

------
lvs
Cisco Web Reputation is blocking this domain for malware.

~~~
kuschku
Another case of malware blocking gone wrong. Well, it’s not malware, but if
you don’t trust it, you can probably use the archive.org version of the site.

------
known
Ingenious; Will also reduce suicides;

~~~
JensRantil
Let's clear this up once and for all; That Sweden has a high suicide rate is a
rumour and not true. Sweden's suicide rate is below the average of the OECD
countries. Feel free to read up on it here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Sweden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_Sweden)

------
return0
Low tech chatroulette.

------
cel1ne
OT: i submitted this 3'days ago, I wonder how this got resubmitted.

~~~
Numberwang
Me too.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11449020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11449020)
:)

~~~
cel1ne
I thought you can't post the same link twice?

