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Cake day: June 17th, 2025

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  • here, the area code is ostensibly still tied to a geographic area, and it is optional when dialing a number in the same area code, even for cell phones, i believe. when you get a cell phone number the area code is just the area code where you first got the number. so like i live in a college town, and you can fairly reliably tell where somebody is from based on their phone number.


  • i am guessing you’re not from the US, and OOP is. in the US, first of all, a billion is 10^9. secondly, phone numbers here are typically 7 digits, with an additional 3 digit area code tied to a geographical region, the first digit of which can’t be a 0.

    when i was a kid, before cell phones really took off, it was pretty standard to omit the area code, since we were usually all in the same area code where i lived, but since cell phones have become common, and people are likely to retain their phone numbers when they move, it has become much more typical to include the full ten digits, which would be at least 1.21 billion dollars, by american standards.