Surfing on a Matchbox (1999)
14 comments
·July 7, 2025NoboruWataya
Interesting how he was kind of, but not quite, on the right track in terms of predicting where technology would go. Small "wearable" (in the sense that you carry them on your person) computers obviously became huge, but not in the way that he was thinking. I was a kid back then, so wasn't thinking too deeply about the future of technology, but mobile phones were already a thing and some were becoming internet-compatible, so in hindsight smartphones seem a more obvious next step than "a special glove that can recognize a digital sign language". Maybe not at the time though.
revx
Anyone know the current record-holder for world's smallest web server? :)
femto
Probably just a matter of loading the necessary software onto this MCU:
https://www.ti.com/about-ti/newsroom/news-releases/2025/2025...
kingstnap
According to the specs, it has 1kB of ram. You're going to need to be quite clever to implement a working TCP-IP stack and an HTTP server in that.
An RSA key is 4kB by itself, so TLS is out of the picture.
em3rgent0rdr
I was also going to suggest that... But I imagine that the Ethernet port or antennae wire (and necessary battery to power antennae) would dwarf the size of that MCU. But thinking again, I suppose if the rules permit the MCU to be directly wired to the Ethernet cable, then could bitbang an early Ethernet standard with this MCU's pins...
st_goliath
If you're going to use an Ethernet jack anyway, you might as well use one that has an ARM SoC already built in and runs Linux:
https://www.digikey.at/en/product-highlight/d/digi-intl/digi...
femto
I'd do a serial connection using the UART. Serial is a perfectly valid transport.
aa-jv
I have a web server (not public) that runs on my M5Stack device ..
And my magicShifter also serves web pages to anyone in my environment ..
But I guess the standard is 'on the public web', akin to most publicly accessible web surfers .. for that, I'd be a bit uncomfortable exposing my m5stack/magicshifter to the web, for the time being ..
teekert
It’s sad isn’t (wasn’t) such a professor as a waste of money? I mean the market dictates what we get, with some influential persons and companies, but it’s all chance.
Why do we have these well paid professors working on stuff like this?
I think if we feel that we do need them, they should be laser focused on making sure there are societal benefits to tech. Not “working on cool stuff”.
Or is this no longer happening?
ribcage
[dead]
Ahh, back in the hopeful days of the early net when we imagined people of the future would be in possession of and run their own webservers...