This WebRTC telephony solution offers high quality audio. When I first posted about this in March [1], it was only possible for others to call me. Now everybody can register unique phone numbers and receive calls from anybody else. WebCall basically mimics a small telco now. You can use my WebCall server, or run your own. If you do this, please let others use your server as well. Traffic and load are really low. It is possible to host up to 30K concurrent users on a 1GB server. But you can also limit the number of users and run WebCall "on the side", like an e-mail server.
I will be here again at 21:00 Berlin (3pm NY) to answer any questions. In the meantime, why not register a (burner) phone number and post it so others can call you? You can always fetch a new phone number when you need one.
One detail maybe worth mentioning. Sebald wrote The Emigrants in German. But he also contributed to the English translation. Sebald left Germany and moved to England in 1966 when he was 22. By the time The Emigrants was translated to English, he has already lived in the UK for close to 30 years.
This article (first published in The New Republic) is really great. It contains a lot of detail about Sebald's life and all the things that are often said about him. These kind of articles are supposed to create an appetite for the author and his books. So after reading it, you are hopefully convinced of reading something from the author itself.
But I don't think his life says anything about the quality of his writing. Here on HN I will try to convince you by pointing out that Sebald is writing the most beautiful code. Skip all articles and go read one of his books. For instance The Emigrants. You can read the long articles about his life afterwards.
Let's call it super audio-only. When you talk to someone on WebCall, their voice will be clearer and more present than it is in most real-life situations. This alone is worth everything.
But there are many other aspects. Whenever you call someone on their phone, you interrupt that person in the middle of something. When you set up a call with Duo, you give the person a bit of lead time. I love this.
In the future, telephony will be much better than what it is today. And it won't be video.