https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/1ibi2kk/is_moving_466_still_a_problem/
created by glowing-fishSCL on 27/01/2025 at 19:43 UTC
171 upvotes, 14 top-level comments (showing 14)
I've been looking through some old xkcd strips and seeing if the jokes are now obsolete. In most cases, they are still funny, but sometimes they are a bit out of date. So what do we think of this one:
https://xkcd.com/466/[1][2]
The joke is based on having trouble getting internet/wifi hooked up. It came out in 2008. I have moved a lot since then, and most of my internet connections have been automatic (wifi already installed), or got hooked up quickly. Do you think this strip is out of date?
Comment by TheBoozehammer at 27/01/2025 at 19:46 UTC
108 upvotes, 1 direct replies
When I moved into my apartment I had to get Internet installed, took about a week. Spent a lot of time at the library those days.
Comment by Happytallperson at 27/01/2025 at 19:56 UTC
66 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Dependant in location. Some places it still takes a few days, but in my location I'd just hot-spot 5G for those few days.
Comment by pongobuff at 27/01/2025 at 20:48 UTC
33 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I think phone data eliminates this problem. Ignoring that, if Internet hookup is already present, it's still 2 business days to ship a router
Comment by Stellapacifica at 27/01/2025 at 19:59 UTC
23 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I knew I'd need it for my job last time I moved, and I had enough warning to get it set up ahead of time. But before that (a few years ago)? I was a regular at the little coffee shop down the road that did free wifi with any purchase.
Comment by PoisonWaffle3 at 27/01/2025 at 20:26 UTC
16 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I work for a large ISP so I can provide some context.
Yes, there has been some progress, but not as much as we'd like.
Some apartments do have service already set up for each unit, and that works immediately 95% of the time, but that's maybe 1% of customers.
Some homes have FTTH/PON/fiber connections where the ONT ('fiber modem') stays with the house when someone moves out, which allows people to call in to sign up and we can turn it on right away. They still usually need to provide their own router or rent one from us, and probably 10-20% of them end up talking to tech support (though we rarely have to come out to help).
The majority of homes and apartments do still have cable/coax (for us, at least), and they still have to hunt around to figure out which coax outlet/drop is the one that's hooked up and ready for internet. Sometimes they find it but it's not where they want it, so we still send someone out. Sometimes they can't find it at all.
Overall I think "self installs" work about 75-80% of the time, assuming that the home has been serviced recently and that they can even attempt one.
Comment by Euler1992 at 27/01/2025 at 20:01 UTC
14 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I moved to a small rural subdivision maybe 2 miles outside of town and Internet cables hadn't even been run to the neighborhood yet. The only semi decent Internet in the area was unavailable to me because there was a big line of trees in the way.
I ended up having to use Hughesnet for about a year before cellular Internet was available in my area.
This was about 4 years ago.
Comment by broberds at 27/01/2025 at 22:20 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Another example is https://xkcd.com/2275/[1]. It dates from that brief time when the COVID-19 name just wouldn't catch on.
Comment by myothercarisaboson at 28/01/2025 at 00:27 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Given that the comic explicitly mentions they are connected to wifi without an internet connection present, it at least is from a time when people mostly understood that wifi != internet.
Comment by Paul__miner at 28/01/2025 at 02:10 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
When I was young, I rented a room from a couple and got a secondary phone line for dial-up internet, but the line quality was too staticy to maintain a good connection. So I hatched a plan: I ran some phone line out the skylight, then used a bit of rope to lasso a vent on the roof, which in combination with a ladder on the second floor patio, enabled me to pull myself onto the roof. I stapled the line to the roof all the way to the edge, and threw the remainder of the line over the edge. I then went to the phone box on the side of the building and wired my line in. Tada, no more static 😅
Comment by CapeOfBees at 28/01/2025 at 00:06 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
One of my college classes spent a whole week and a half studying internet deserts in places you wouldn't expect them, like Midwest USA. It's definitely still relevant.
Comment by greentrafficcone at 29/01/2025 at 09:47 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Well two points are certainly fairly obsolete.
- Very few routers, especially those supplied by ISPs, have unsecured wifi as default. Good for security, bad for war driving.
- Pringles are moving to pure paper tubes, so the old pringles directional antenna trick won't work fairly soon!
Comment by Scottalias4 at 27/01/2025 at 23:10 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I just had the cable guy over and he replaced some line. I used phone wifi hotspot while my modem was offline.
Comment by Kumirkohr at 27/01/2025 at 23:58 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Speaking of the alt text. I grew up in a house that (when we did finally get WiFi sometime in the early years of the Obama administration) had an unguarded linksys router, but we ostensibly lived in the middle of nowhere and were so far back from the road and our neighbors that I don’t even think a Pringles antennae could get us
Comment by Mountain-Bag-6427 at 30/01/2025 at 08:40 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My current internet took 2 weeks or so to set up but they had the option to buy a heavily discounted mobile internet package as a stopgap, and that arrived in the mail before I had even moved in iirc.