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for whom the beep tolls

AOL is finally shutting down its dial-up internet service after 34 years

The company said it’ll be discontinued at the end of September.

8/11/25 10:43AM

Like Netflix sending DVDs in 2023, The Rolling Stones still touring six decades after they first formed, or Al Pacino bringing another child into the world at the age of 83, it seems hard to believe that AOL is still offering dial-up internet services in 2025. The latter of those feats is at last going offline, with the internet provider recently announcing that it will discontinue dial-up by the end of next month.

Ringing out

According to PC Gamer, the first publication to pick up the announcement from the murky depths of AOL’s online help pages, the company originally started providing dial-up internet to Americans in 1991. As recently as 2015, AOL counted as many as 1.5 million dialing customers willing to fight through shrill tones and a static wall of sound to get online, though those numbers have obviously dwindled further since.

Still, in the age of ultrafast broadband and 5G, just how many Americans are dialing up at home to listen to Benson Boone’s new album or watch Mr Beast?

Per PC Gamer’s reporting, AOL’s dial-up service subscribers were in the “low thousands” in 2021. But there are, of course, other providers: the most recent data from the NTIA estimated that there were more than 500,000 US households still using dial-up internet services in the same year.

With streaming, social media, and artificial intelligence at every turn, it’s hard to imagine going without internet access in America in the modern world, but it’s more common than you might imagine. Data from Pew Research Center showed that some 4% of Americans polled last year said they don’t use the internet — rough math suggests that’s more than 13 million people across the country.

Jon Keegan16h

Judge blocks Pentagon’s move to blacklist Anthropic

A federal judge in Northern California has granted a preliminary injunction blocking the Pentagon from labeling Anthropic as a national security supply chain risk.

The ruling temporarily prevents the Defense Department from restricting the AI company’s access to federal contracts amid a dispute over its refusal to allow certain military and surveillance uses of its technology. The designation could also have shifted lucrative government work toward competitors, including OpenAI.

Earlier this month, Anthropic, the company behind Claude, sued 17 federal agencies and their heads, alleging the government exceeded its statutory authority.

Rani Molla17h

Report: SpaceX’s record IPO may grant preferential access to retail investors and Tesla shareholders

SpaceX’s impending IPO could raise $40 billion to $80 billion and rank as the largest ever — as well as one of the most unconventional.

The Wall Street Journal reports several ways CEO Elon Musk is considering breaking with IPO norms:

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Exclusive | The SpaceX IPO Will Be Just as Unconventional as Musk Himself

Investors in his other companies, including Tesla, could receive preferential access to shares.
Individual investors may get a third or more of the allocation, far above the typical ~10% mark.
Instead of a traditional road show, Musk wants investors to visit SpaceX facilities in person.

Rani Molla3/26/26

Tesla released estimates for Q1 deliveries and they’re lower than analysts expected

Ahead of first-quarter earnings next month, Tesla released its own company-compiled Wall Street consensus estimate for deliveries: 365,645 vehicles. While that’s lower than the 382,000 FactSet consensus estimate, it represents a nearly 9% jump from Q1 2025, when Tesla sold 336,681 vehicles.

Tesla started releasing its own consensus estimates to the public — not just institutional investors — for the first time in Q4 2025. The move was seen as a way to temper investor expectations, as other estimates were too high. Last quarter, Tesla’s compilation was closer to actual numbers, which fell 16% year over year.

The market-implied odds from event contracts suggest 64% of traders think Tesla’s Q1 deliveries will be more than 350,000, 44% think it will be higher than 360,000, and just 21% have it at higher than 370,000.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

The toughest AI benchmark just got a whole lot tougher

ARC-AGI-3 is the latest version of a clever benchmark that challenges AI models to solve mini video games with no written instructions.

Jon Keegan3/26/26

Rani Molla3/26/26

The US leads the world in robotaxi deployments

Every day it seems another robotaxi launches somewhere in the world. But most of them are in the US.

Of the 171 active robotaxi deployments globally, 69 — or 40% — are in the US, according to a new report from the Bank of America Institute. China, the next largest market, accounts for 24% of deployments.

Most of those deployments are still in testing or early commercial stages. Only 10 US cities currently have fully commercial robotaxi operations, defined as services that operate on public roads, carry paying passengers, run fully driverless without a safety driver, and function all day in any weather.

For now, that effectively refers to Alphabet’s Waymo, which operates commercially in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, San Antonio, and the San Francisco Bay Area. That definition excludes competitors like Tesla, whose Robotaxi service uses safety monitors, and Amazon’s Zoox, which has yet to charge customers for rides.