Latest news with #dialup
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
For years, 'The Wonder Years'' Fred Savage thought guest star Alicia Silverstone gave him a fake phone number
"We've since corrected the situation," the "Clueless" alum says of the misunderstanding after they worked together in 1992. Those over 30 remember the pain: that jump scare of dialing a phone number only to be met with the piercing sounds of a fax machine answer tone — the uninvited cousin of the dial-up modem. That's exactly what The Wonder Years star Fred Savage heard every time he tried to call Alicia Silverstone after they met filming an episode of his family sitcom in 1992. The Wonder Years season 5, episode 11 was Silverstone's first on-screen role. In the episode, "Fred Savage's character [Kevin Arnold] asks me on a date and I say, 'Pick me up at seven,' or something," Silverstone tells Entertainment Weekly. "And that's what makes him decide he needs to get on it and learn how to drive." Savage hoped to connect with Silverstone after filming. "Fred asked me for my number, which was really sweet, 'cause I was 14. My home phone number was also [used for] a fax machine of my dad's work. So he had tried calling that a few times, and it just went straight to fax. So he thought I gave him a fake number or something." Silverstone — who recently graced the cover of EW's '90s Issue — says they have "since corrected the situation." But not all her Wonder Years connections were missed. The Clueless alum (who will reprise her role as Cher Horowitz in an upcoming sequel series) says she and Josh Saviano, who played Kevin's best friend Paul on all six seasons of the ABC series, "became very good friends." "I don't know how our exchange of numbers worked," she says with a laugh, "but that worked." Silverstone shared the fax machine anecdote as part of a larger cruise down Memory Lane, looking back at her iconic '90s roles, including The Crush, Batman & Robin, Blast from the Past, and more. You can also watch the video interview in full above. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly Solve the daily Crossword
Fox News
6 days ago
- Business
- Fox News
The 'R' Word
As seen on Gutfeld!, AOL is shutting down its dial-up service. Also, the 'R' word rears its ugly head. Greg lets you know what that word is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit
The Guardian
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Sashi Perera: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet)
I love the internet. People from the time before the internet always talk about how great that time was. They're lying. Some things were exactly the same: there was love and war, and people pushed doors clearly marked 'pull', especially if someone was watching. But we had to bear these experiences without a tool to ferret out as much information as possible about anything or anyone at any time. So it was definitely a worse time. When a dial-up connection came into my life at 12, I threw myself at the internet with the intensity usually reserved for Backstreet Boys dances. I've aggressively communicated on every virtual platform since its inception, and the best bit is the link to all the funnies. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning I don't have to warn anyone that I'm strange any more – I'm a comedian now so it's assumed – but it was a surprise to myself that this list came out as mostly music and animals. Here it is in no particular order. It's hard knowing that I'll never write a joke as funny as someone falling over. When I'm having a bad day, I watch giant pandas falling over to cackle (they're totally fine, it's part of their development according to this zoo). Sir Attenborough can narrate absolutely anything, including this tortoise trying to mate with a shoe. This article includes content provided by TikTok. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'. There are many wildly talented people in Australian comedy making everyone laugh. No one does it in under 10 seconds like Anisa – here she is pretending to be a snake to get closer to Robert Irwin. This is the sum total of my deep love of Michael Bolton, Erin Brockovich, my nightclub era and the height of Lonely Island's dominance of the internet. There is something about Michael – we are on first name terms, but he doesn't know that – saying 'well hey there, I'm a legal lady' that still gets me. Taylor Swift's Trouble was on every radio wave when my brother happened upon this video mixing the chorus with a screaming goat and it never fails to dissolve me into laughter. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion The year that was 2020 was hard on all of us but this lawyer who turned up to a virtual courtroom as a cat had an especially difficult day. If you've ever wondered what happened in a studio on the day a song was recorded, this man answers it for you. My favourite is Lovely Day. There's a scene in this music video where she smashes a printer in the office in slow motion and I used to watch it on repeat to feel joy. In hindsight, there were many signs that I wasn't happy being a lawyer. If you've tried to put something on Facebook Marketplace, you'll start by relating to this and end by not being able to breathe because you're laughing so hard. That was my experience when I saw it live, it just keeps escalating. My favourite species of birds are the ones named by people who clearly hate birds. (thread) A man named Stu made a list of these then everyone else chimed in and it is my go-to proof that the internet can be used for good. Standstill by Sashi Perera is out now through Penguin. You can also find her on Instagram.
WIRED
7 days ago
- Business
- WIRED
AOL Will Shut Down Dial-Up Internet Access in September
Benj Edwards, Ars Technica Aug 12, 2025 6:55 PM The move will pinch users in rural or remote areas not yet served by broadband infrastructure or satellite internet. Around 175,000 households still use dial-up internet in the US. A logo for America Online photographed in the early 2000s, when the company provided internet access for millions of people over phone lines. Photograph:After decades of connecting US subscribers to its online service and the internet through telephone lines, AOL recently announced it is finally shutting down its dial-up modem service on September 30, 2025. The announcement marks the end of a technology that served as the primary gateway to the web for millions of users throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. AOL confirmed the shutdown date in a help message to customers: "AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet. This service will no longer be available in AOL plans." Along with the dial-up service, AOL announced it will retire its AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser on the same date. The dialer software managed the connection process between computers and AOL's network, while Shield was a web browser optimized for slower connections and older operating systems. AOL's dial-up service launched as "America Online" in 1991 as a closed commercial online service, with dial-up roots extending back to Quantum Link for Commodore computers in 1985. However, AOL didn't provide actual internet access yet: The ability to browse the web, access newsgroups, or use services like gopher launched in 1994. Before then, AOL users could only access content hosted on AOL's own servers. When AOL finally opened its gates to the internet in 1994, websites were measured in kilobytes, images were small and compressed, and video was essentially impossible. The AOL service grew alongside the web itself, peaking at over 25 million subscribers in the early 2000s before broadband adoption accelerated its decline. According to 2022 US Census data, approximately 175,000 American households still connect to the internet through dial-up services. These users typically live in rural areas where broadband infrastructure doesn't exist or remains prohibitively expensive to install. For these users, the alternatives are limited. Satellite internet now serves between 2 million and 3 million US subscribers split between various services, offering speeds far exceeding dial-up but often with data caps and higher latency. Traditional broadband through DSL, cable, or fiber-optic connections serves the vast majority of US internet users but requires infrastructure investments that don't always make economic sense in sparsely populated areas. The persistence of dial-up highlights the ongoing digital divide in the United States. While urban users enjoy gigabit fiber connections, some rural residents still rely on the same technology that powered the internet of 1995. Even basic tasks like loading a modern webpage—designed with the assumption of broadband speeds—can take minutes over a dial-up connection, or sometimes it doesn't work at all. The gap between dial-up and modern internet connections is staggering. A typical dial-up connection delivered 0.056 megabits per second, while today's average fiber connection provides 500 Mbps—nearly 9,000 times faster. To put this in perspective, downloading a single high-resolution photo that loads instantly on broadband would take several minutes on dial-up. A movie that streams in real time on Netflix would require days of downloading. But for millions of Americans who lived through the dial-up era, these statistics tell only part of the story. The Sound of the Early Internet For those who came online before broadband, dial-up meant a specific ritual: clicking the dial button, hearing your modem dial a local access number, then listening to the distinctive handshake sequence—a cacophony of static, beeps, and hissing that indicated your computer was negotiating a connection with AOL's servers. Once connected, users paid by the hour or through monthly plans that offered limited hours of access. The technology worked by converting digital data into audio signals that traveled over standard telephone lines, originally designed in the 19th century for voice calls. This meant users couldn't receive phone calls while online, leading to countless family disputes over internet time. The fastest consumer modems topped out at 56 kilobits per second under ideal conditions. AOL didn't invent dial-up internet access, but the company perfected the art of making it accessible to non-technical users. Where competitors required users to understand concepts like PPP settings and TCP/IP configurations, AOL provided a single software package that handled everything. Users just needed to insert one of the billions of CD-ROMs the company mailed out, install the software, and click 'Connect.' The company's cultural impact extended far beyond mere connectivity. AOL Instant Messenger introduced many users to real-time digital communication. Chat rooms created some of the internet's first social networks. The famous "You've Got Mail" notification became so iconic that it was a title for a 1998 romantic comedy. For better or worse, AOL keywords trained a generation to navigate the web through corporate-curated portals rather than open searching. Over the years, Ars Technica documented numerous dial-up developments and disasters that plagued AOL users. In 2015, 83-year-old Ron Dorff received phone bills totaling $24,298.93 after his AOL modem started dialing a long-distance number instead of a local access point—a problem that had plagued users since at least 2002, when New York's attorney general received more than 50 complaints about similar billing disasters. The financial risks weren't limited to technical mishaps: AOL itself contributed to user frustration by repeatedly adjusting its pricing strategy. In 2006, the company raised dial-up rates to $25.90 per month—the same price as broadband—in an attempt to push users toward faster connections. This followed years of subscriber losses that saw AOL's user base fall over time as the company struggled with conflicting strategies that included launching a $10 Netscape-branded service in 2003 while maintaining premium pricing for its main offering. The Infrastructure That Remains AOL's shutdown doesn't mean dial-up is completely dead. Several niche providers like NetZero, Juno, and Dialup 4 Less continue to offer dial-up services, particularly in areas where it remains the only option. In the past, some maintained dial-up connections as a backup connection for emergencies, though many still use it for specific tasks that don't require high bandwidth, like processing credit card payments. The Public Switched Telephone Network that carries dial-up signals still exists, though telephone companies increasingly route calls through modern packet-switched networks rather than traditional circuit-switched systems. As long as traditional phone service exists, dial-up remains technically possible—just increasingly impractical as the web grows more demanding. For AOL, maintaining dial-up service likely became more about serving a dwindling but dependent user base than generating meaningful revenue. The infrastructure requirements, customer support needs, and technical maintenance for such a legacy system eventually outweigh the benefits. The September 30 shutdown date gives remaining dial-up users just over one month now to find alternative internet access—a challenge for those in areas where alternatives don't exist. Some may switch to satellite or cellular services despite higher costs. Others may lose internet access entirely, further widening the digital divide that dial-up, for all its limitations, helped bridge for three decades. This story originally appeared on Ars Technica.
South China Morning Post
12-08-2025
- Business
- South China Morning Post
You've Got Mail no more – AOL is bidding farewell to dial-up internet
AOL's dial-up internet is finally taking its last bow. Yes, while perhaps a dinosaur by today's digital standards, dial-up is still around. But AOL says it's officially pulling the plug for its service on September 30. 'AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue dial-up internet,' AOL wrote in a brief update on its support site – noting that dial-up and associated software 'optimised for older operating systems' will soon be unavailable on AOL plans. AOL, formerly America Online, introduced many households to the World Wide Web for the first time when its dial-up service launched in 1991, rising to prominence in the 90s and early 2000s. In Hong Kong, AOL briefly offered dial-up access in the late 1990s, arriving in a crowded internet service providers market dominated by Netvigator. South China Morning Post coverage at the time captured both industry unease at its launch and early reviews of its pricing, software and bilingual content. Play The creaky door to the internet was characterised by a once-ubiquitous series of beeps and buzzes heard over the phone used to connect your computer online – along with frustrations of being kicked off the web if anyone else at home needed the landline for another call, and an endless bombardment of CDs mailed out by AOL to advertise free trials. Eventually, broadband and wireless offerings emerged and rose to dominance, doing away with dial-up's quirks for most people accessing the internet today. Still, a handful of consumers have continued to rely on internet services connected over telephone lines. In the United States, according to Census Bureau data, an estimated 163,401 households were using dial-up alone to get online in 2023, representing just over 0.13 per cent of all homes with internet subscriptions nationwide. AOL will pull the plug and end its dial-up internet service after more than 30 years. Photo: TNS AOL was the largest dial-up internet provider for some time, but not the only one to emerge over the years. Some smaller internet providers continue to offer dial-up today. Regardless, the decline of dial-up has been a long time coming. And AOL shutting down its service arrives as other relics of the internet's earlier days continue to disappear.
