[teekert]

I feel a certain uncomfortableness when I don't know these things. It's annoying, and yet it brings me many things as well. When I drive off in my car, I half visualize the clutch plates coming into contact with each other etc etc etc.

But my kids call any internet connection WiFi. My wife didn't understand why she couldn't print with the WiFi switch off (back when we had switches). And every time I try to tell them "how the internet flows", I take them to the hotspot and tell them what WiFi is, how the UTP cable goes to the modem and the fiber goes into the ground and somewhere it gets information from some other computer. And I tell them why they have less issues with our local Minecraft server then when he gets invited to a worlds on someone's Playstation across town (in Bugrock).

It's tiring in a way, even more so for people around me. And still, it also brings me many nice things.

[QuercusMax]

I just blew my college sophomore's mind when I showed them that it's literally 10x faster to transfer data over Ethernet than over wifi. They literally had no idea that hardwired cables are massively faster and more reliable than wireless.

[Cyphase]

> But my kids call any internet connection WiFi.

I was listening to a tech podcast last week, and a guest host, who's a tech reporter and an intelligent person, at some point talked about "Wi-Fi plans" and "getting Wi-Fi for your house". I cringed so hard inside.

Nothing against them personally, and I don't think it's super meaningful (e.g. "how could a tech reporter say that?!"), but yeah, it was a little sad for me.

Bonus anecdote:

A while back I was considering renting an ADU-type unit, and I remember bunches of listing saying "Wi-Fi available". One place I looked at in person, the landlord said a similar thing, and seemed nonplussed when I asked if I could pay for my own internet service to be set up (which I can understand for more valid reasons).