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Comment by jgrahamc | Hacker News Reader

Must be a slow Saturday if this is near the top of HN. But if you are interested in hacking the old French Minitel, you may enjoy my other two posts:

Voiding the warranty on a 1993 Minitel 2 to run arbitrary firmware https://blog.jgc.org/2022/03/voiding-warranty-on-1993-minite...

Using a Minitel 1B as a serial terminal https://blog.jgc.org/2022/03/using-minitel-1b-as-serial-term...

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I have pondered buying a Minitel at many a French flea market, this might turn that pondering into purchase, thank you!

https://www.leboncoin.fr/recherche?text=minitel

Funny story, well, funny to me anyways. I was living in Paris and dead broke after college. I had a steady cam system to sell, and obviously, I put it on leboncoin and went to deliver it near the Bastille. I went into the apartment with a dear friend, and as we sat down to do the sale, the purchaser pulled out a gun on me and asked if we could lower the price. I laughed, out of panic, and said something in French to the effect of, "Bitch, I'm from Detroit", I then realized, the gun was in fact a toy, and the purchaser relented. I gave them a 10 euro discount, and they made us both a nice proper pastis and we all eventually had a laugh. I haven't used the website since.

“Bitch, I’m from Detroit” is the best possible response to that, even if they had a real gun they would’ve (or should’ve) relented after that response, lol.

It worked, another funny story, the last time I had a gun pulled on me it was a very real shot gun, in a very sketchy part of Detroit. My response, "Thank god the first time I had a gun pulled on me in Detroit was by someone Asian, I love representation and defying sterotypes!". They ended up buying me a schwarma and we had a laugh about it.

Go on

Haha, reminds me of Casa Blanca, “Well there are certain sections of New York, Major, that I wouldn't advise you to invade.”

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