AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after its debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day
www.tomshardware.com
But there remain a few options to plug in your 56K (or slower) screeching modem into.
  • Pope-King Joe@lemmy.worldEnglish
    81·
    4 个月前

    Wow this is one of those instances where I’m simultaneously surprised something still exists and also find it to make a lot of sense that it still exists.

        • sylver_dragon@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          4 个月前

          While not the same thing, cellular internet is not bad these days. I’ve been on T-Mobile’s internet connection for a couple years and other than CGNAT making self-hosting harder, it’s been pretty solid. This is in a rural area where we got to choose between Cable or go get fucked for high speed internet for a long time.

        • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          3·
          4 个月前

          Kuiper and Guowang are currently launching satellites. It will probably be a few years before they are operational though.

        • HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          11·
          4 个月前

          The other satellite players (Hughesnet, Viasat), the fixed 5G boxes (although places sufficiently rural to seriously consider dialup may not have 5G), probably some smaller boutique dialup ISPs.

          • QuarterSwede@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            4 个月前

            Currently, no one compares to Starlink, unfortunately. It’s really that much better. Source: FiL has been on the beta since the first constellation went up.

            • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              6·
              4 个月前

              What we really need to compete against Starlink’s network full of small satellites threatening a Kessler syndrome incident is a second network full of small satellites threatening s Kessler syndrome incident. And a third and a fourth.

              Or put fiber everywhere.

              • HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                3·
                4 个月前

                Starlink satellites are in low Earth orbit. They could still cause Kessler syndrome, but aren’t as much of a concern as higher orbits.

                Here are some quotes regarding this from and Aerospace America article

                Regarding satellite proliferation, while there are many more satellites, the company responsible for most of them, SpaceX, places its Starlink satellites in a low orbit so they can naturally deorbit relatively soon — within five or six years, per SpaceX — if they fail.

                At around 400 kilometers and into the 500-km realm — home to ISS and the SpaceX Starlink satellites among others — atmospheric drag plays a major role. Dead satellites and debris usually slow and burn up in the atmosphere in just a few years. This natural cleansing process accelerates when the sun becomes more active and solar coronal mass ejections strike Earth and cause the atmosphere to swell. “In those altitudes, we can probably do a lot and we will be forgiven,” Linares says.

                • Frezik@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  2·
                  4 个月前

                  That’s just “the worst possible consequences won’t happen”. The danger at higher orbits is that things wouldn’t come down, and we couldn’t safely launch rockets past that orbit. That wouldn’t happen here, but destroying everything in LEO would still be pretty bad. Astronauts would likely die.

  • r00ty@kbin.life
    5·
    4 个月前

    Ahh, I had the older “stylophone” style sportster. 28.8k. I think I have 2 really old miracom couriers somewhere, inherited from when my old office closed down. Actually I might even have an IBM RS6000/220 from the same shutdown at my parent’s house.

    Well that went off on a tangent.

  • rozodru@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    4 个月前

    back in the early 00s I used to do AOL tech support. Even then a lot of people were on cable or DSL. Vast majority of calls we got were from people out in the boonies or the elderly so it doesn’t surprise me that there are still a good chunk of people on dialup.

    Actually by that point most of our calls weren’t even for Dial Up. the thing with AOL support back then was if the user also had other computer issues unrelated to AOL that they brought up while on the line with us we HAD to address them and try to do support for it. Callers would discover this fact and use AOL tech support as a defacto go to tech support for ALL computer issues. They’d start off with some random easy to fix (they knew how to fix) dialup issue and then would say “oh wow you fixed it, I wish you could also help me with this problem I’ve been having for awhile with…” and yup, we’d roll our eyes and say “oh, what what’s wrong?” A good chunk of my calls, believe it or not, would be for printer issues.

    • Raiderkev@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      4 个月前

      I still use my old aim account as my spam email email address. Any business asks for my email, they get that one. There’s like 5,000 unread emails in there. It keeps my actual email uncluttered and not full of spam. It’ll be a sad day when they close down those servers, then I’ll have to to dust off the ole Hotmail account lol

  • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    33·
    4 个月前

    POV: Be a software developer. It’s 2025. You’re maintaining dialer software for an ISP. The software is written in Delphi or Visual Basic. It’s all you’ve done since 1995. You’ve got 5 years to retirement. Corporate announces end of life for dial up services.

    • Ronno@feddit.nlEnglish
      14·
      4 个月前

      Not too bad really, considering that software developer has milked that cow for way longer than anyone would’ve thought. Those last 5 years will be challenging though, but maybe the software developer can sprinkle some AI over their resume and magically land some weird role that nobody can explain why we need it in the first place.

  • PhillyCodeHound@lemmy.worldEnglish
    101·
    4 个月前

    Wow 34 Years of Dialup. Who still uses dial up? I guess that naive of me and is coming from a place of privelege.

    But still dial up??!

    • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      4 个月前

      Up until probably about a decade ago I would occasionally go into small shops that used dial up to process credit card payments. There may still be some places doing that but I haven’t noticed it in a while.

  • Zachariah@lemmy.worldEnglish
    28·
    4 个月前

    … In the U.S., for instance, the latest government census data indicates approximately a quarter of a million remaining dial-up holdouts.

    One of the natural successors for internet connectivity in hard-to-reach places is satellite, with around eight million subscribers in the U.S. …

  • AmidFuror@fedia.io
    69·
    4 个月前

    Well, sounds like this is the end, guys. It was good getting to know you. I knew those 30-day free trials would run out eventually.

    • freddydunningkruger@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      4 个月前

      AOL used to setup kiosk systems at computer stores so customers could experience AOL in the store, and each store was given a login account. Long after the kiosks went down, these accounts remained active, providing those employees “in the know” with free AOL all throughout its pay-by-the-hour years.

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      5·
      4 个月前

      But I only needed three more 30 day trials to finish downloading cd2 of the phantom menace cam that I started in 1999…