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My first job in IT was at AOL tech support and we could rattle off AT modem strings from memory :)

Someone also posted a link to the Hayes command set and I was glad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567961


That's funny. I clicked on the HN article on the home page about the AT Protocol[1] expecting an article on the Hayse set. And then I scrolled down and saw this article.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49527123


My first job in IT was at AOL tech support and we could rattle off modem strings from memory :-)

I still think to Hayes AT commands almost every time I see an article about the AT protocol, thinking "who is still using analog phone modems"?

They're still used today for cellular modems

Yep. And not your grandpa's AT command set - it's been extended to support HTTP.

https://computer.rip/2026-04-26-voice-modems.html

> Modem vendors continue to build on AT. If you look at LTE modems made for IoT applications, for example, it's common for them to provide a complete HTTP implementation (and sometimes MQTT, and sometimes some kind of proprietary message broker protocol) accessible via AT commands. That means you can implement an IoT device without a network stack at all, deferring all network operations to the modem itself. With a JSON-over-HTTP backend, for example, you might send AT commands with JSON payloads over the serial control channel and then get JSON back. You never interact with the network at all, the modem is a completely self-contained system. At the extreme, you might implement your entire device using exclusively the modem. This is a common approach for telematics devices like GPS trackers: they consist of nothing but a cellular modem, the telemetry application is built for the modem using an SDK from its vendor, and you interact with it using AT commands. IoT-class modems frequently provide GPIO and user flash for just this purpose.


I couldn’t help but notice that there was an equally cold spike at the bottom.


Can you please define "equal"? (and exactly which pic you're referring to?)


-3.5 sigma in the middle of the year in the only graph the article has.


OfferUp also has a ton, as does AutoTempest and even good old fashioned AutoTrader. I'm currently shopping for my son.

Facebook seems to have the lowest cost cars, but it also seems to be the least successful way of contacting people. When I bought a car for my sister in April, I contacted (no exaggeration) 70+ sellers and heard back from about ten of them. And yes, I changed the default "Is it still available?" message to something demonstrating urgency e.g. "I have cash and would like to buy." But with persistence, I found her the right car through Marketplace. Really hate the FBook search interface though, it's total garbage.

I spend most of my time looking on CList and OfferUp.


> I'm currently shopping for my son.

Same! I recommend an old (2017-) Nissan Leaf. I got one for very cheap when gas was at a local peak, and now that's it's going down, I'm seeing even better deals. The low range can be a plus when it's a 16-year-old driver whom you have no interest in seeing drive out of the city. haha


Also relevant quote that I think about when this subject comes up:

“If Microsoft ever does applications for Linux it means I've won.” ~Linus Torvalds

In this case, an entire freaking distro.


This is not the first distro coming out of Microsoft, see Azure Sphere OS.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/shows/internet-of-things-s...

I would rather say UNIX won the server room, Linux just happens to be the UNIX clone most people hack on nowadays, and can change tomorrow as companies take over and people like Linus eventually pass the torch.

You can already see that on embedded, other FOSS OSes are being adopted, without GPL licensing, like Zephyr, NutXX, FreeRTOS,...


a distro is the opposite of an application


Correct, but who 25 years ago could have imagined they’d have gone so far as to roll their own? I remember the Balmer days.

But the fact that they’re rolling a distro tells me they’re likely also writing software for Linux. I’m sure their Azure Linux contains apps they wrote and maintain, used by the OS.

Then there’s Microsoft apps on Android, with Linux under the covers.


I develop C#/F# applications in Windows that run on Mac OS, iOS, Linux, and Windows. It's by far the best environment for this sort of thing. You can get native performance in a much lighter environment than those crappy electron apps.


I personally am itching for more hardware H.264 or even H.265. There's the ESP32-P4 but it requires a second ESP32 to handle the WiFi. I got it working, but it feels like a hack, and the BOM cost is more than 2x a single chip.

Course more PSRAM and hardware encoding would drive up the price...


Air-gapped attacks are the most fascinating. Change my mind


Yes, and aircraft carriers are more fascinating than OTS drones carrying grenades.

Yet...


What fun!

I’d love to also go the opposite direction, a full-sized laptop with an ESP32 running tiny386 and Windows 95 ^_^

https://www.hackster.io/news/he-chunhui-s-tiny386-turns-the-...


diy 486 schematics (around year 2000)[0]. no longer available. Discription/overview[3]. :( But, current linux doesn't support 486 cpus.

Was turned into something commerical (?2002[2])[1]. Perhaps modern version would be the old AMD cyrix chips?

-------------------------

[0] : http://boole.stanford.edu/cebit/

[1] : https://megagames.com/news/matchbox-pc-smallest-world

[2] : https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petition...

[3] : https://www.paloaltoonline.com/morgue/monthly/1999_May_26.MI...


This could be great if the rest of the chassis was filled with batteries.


The laptop is 4kg but the battery life is 6 months


Now you’re talking!


It’s got more horsepower than my first desktop computer


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