this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2025
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This kind of shit is going to save us from the garbage apocalypse. I wish our brightest minds could be working in this kind of stuff instead of figuring out the best way to serve ads.
Well, probably not this thing specifically; it's highly inefficient on so many levels to use several POTS landlines in one household.
But the home computer waste is so insane in general. In 2012, I bought a state-of-the-art system for a little over 2k, because my old one had gotten too slow for professional backend development. It was very nice, and, well, I still have it to this day. Right now I'm doing stick-boots to try if I can run Linux with a mix of Nvidia and Radeon GPUs after Win10 support ends.
I think that the computer game industry is a scam, and only retro-gaming makes sense. Why? It diverts the question. The actual question is: Are newer games more fun? And I think the answer is no, not just for myself, but for pretty much everyone. Did the people playing vanilla WoW have less fun, or the people playing PS-1...Wii with their friends? I doubt it. Why not? Because the fun does not increase even one bit when the graphics is more realistic. We already have realistic graphics in the real world, or we can look at a photograph, watch a show; there is 0 gain from having it also in our games. It's just a 1-time "woa Dude" effect. Advertisement creates an artificial need which cleverly checks several boxes. Just to name a few: Gaming PC / Console as a symbol of status, working towards a goal and then attaining it. And the ones who see through it are pulled in anyway, because their online games are being abandoned.
And it's getting more and more insane like you get a GPU with 12GB VRAM and thousands of stream processors for thousands of euros to play a game...
And all they produce is frenetic shooters or dark pattern games.
It's not even credible anyore, make a Red Alert with a new story (so some video + 12-20 maps) every now and then and it would be an immediate success. Make a good slow RPG that's not based on hitboxes and that has a good story with say 40 side lines, believe it or not, instant success.
Or so I believe 😁
But no, let's make videogames like they make marvel, without soul or depth, but with lots of stylish effects... kids love it, or so I have heard (after having it shoved down their throats day in and day out).
/Rant off
Specific to what theylre doing here, the problem is that analog modems are really designed around working around the limitations of past telco systems, doing data transport over systems designed to move only voice, and those mostly don't exist any more.
I mean, it's theoretically possible that you have 12 analog lines available to you and no way to directly put digital data on a line, but I'd guess that it's not very likely. I was actually looking to see if there are still any ISPs in the US that provide nationwide dial-up internet service at all, and IIRC, the answer is "yes", but it's down to one or two, and I suspect that they're just doing it because they basically have all the remaining users for whom the technical barrier of switching to some form of digital transport is too much of a hurdle.
EDIT: Also, there are various forms of wireless Internet now. IIRC, one gets about 100 ms of latency on a PPP connection running over an analog modem. I bet that even LEO satellite Internet like Starlink beats that on latency.
kagis
https://www.starlink.com/legal/documents/DOC-1470-99699-90
Yeah. And that's gonna be one of the weakest points of satellite Internet service.