Dan Lewis' April 21, 2026 "Now I Know" newsletter covered the subject of Garfield (the comic cat) phones washing up in France. It is a good (and well-sourced) story, but here I will focus on his opening sentence: "If you grew up in the 1980s, there's a decent chance you had a novelty telephone in your home — one shaped like a football, a hamburger, or perhaps a cartoon character." While I was…

I read Dave Luna's interesting hacker story Hacking the Compaq iPAQ IA-2 Internet Appliance. I learned many things from reading. But one fact which jumped out to me was a note about Microsoft's MSN Dial-Up service.

...I was surprised to learn that MSN dial-up is still available as of March 2026.

I do not recall ever having thought about MSN dial-up (we had AOL back in the 90s), but I too am…