Tech
Web Communication Montage cartoon
(Getty Images)
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.

Tom Jones

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?

Dial-up internet chart
Sherwood News

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.

More Tech

See all Tech
tech

FT: Meta considering “tens of billions” in new capital to fund AI

Just days after Google announced a monster $85 billion upsized equity raise, the extremely profitable Meta is seeking to sell “tens of billions of dollars” in stock, according to a new report from the Financial Times.

Meta is planning on spending between $125 billion and $145 billion on AI capital expenditure this year alone.

Shares dropped more than 5% on the news.

tech

FT: Anthropic staff helping the NSA use Mythos for offensive cyberattacks

Anthropic’s Mythos AI model was deemed too dangerous to release to the public, with the company citing its ability to orchestrate novel cyberattacks.

And that’s just what the National Security Agency is doing, with the help of Anthropic staff embedded at the agency, according to a report from the Financial Times.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

Only a small number of companies and US allies have been given access to the advanced model, which means America’s adversaries have not had the chance to shore up their defenses against the AI model’s new offensive capabilities.

The arrangement is especially unusual as the Pentagon has deemed Anthropic’s AI a national security supply chain risk — effectively blacklisting it for defense work — in response to the company’s refusal to allow its technology to be used for any legal application, which could include autonomous killing or mass surveillance. Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the determination.

tech

Longtime Tesla bear JPMorgan upgraded Tesla and raised its price target to $475 from $145

For more than a decade, JPMorgan was Wall Streets most stubborn Tesla skeptic, anchored by auto analyst Ryan Brinkman’s strict focus on traditional car fundamentals and near-term delivery numbers.

But JPM recently handed coverage of the stock to a new analyst, Rajat Gupta, who is throwing that playbook out the window. In a note Friday, the firm upgraded Tesla to neutral from underweight and raised its price target 228% to $475 from $145. (The analyst consensus on FactSet is $403.) Instead of focusing on the company’s struggling vehicle business, the new analyst is orienting himself more toward Tesla’s idea of the future, now modeling Tesla’s physical AI and robotaxi fleets all the way out to the year 2040.

Here are the main reasons for the capitulation:

  • Looking past the car lot: Gupta argues that Tesla is at the forefront of physical AI, entering uncharted TAMs” and therefore deserves the benefit of the doubt to be valued on LT earnings potential rather than near-term speed bumps.

  • Unmatched vertical integration: Teslas control over everything from battery cells to custom silicon gives it a massive moat. JPM notes this starting point advantage is unmatched at an industrial level scale” and “still somewhat under-appreciated and misunderstood.

  • The AWS flywheel effect: Deploying Optimus robots inside its own factories should not only lower COGS for the base automotive business, but more importantly, help validate the product at an industrial scale.” Gupta called it “a classic flywheel effect, somewhat analogous to AWS and Kiva at AMZN.

For Tesla bulls who have argued for years that this is an AI company and not a carmaker, JPM’s sudden $3.9 trillion valuation model is the ultimate validation.

skynet terminator

Anthropic ponders self-improving AI

Anthropic says Claude already writes 80% of its code. A new post asks what happens when the models can improve themselves — and whether anyone could stop them.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC and Chartr Limited produce fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and are fully owned subsidiaries of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Money, LLC, Robinhood U.K. Ltd, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, Robinhood Gold, LLC, Robinhood Asset Management, LLC, Robinhood Credit, Inc., Robinhood Ventures DE, LLC and, where applicable, its managed investment vehicles.