WiFi is wrong. It actually doesn't stand for anything. It just sounded fun and was similar to "hi-fi" that they were like "sure that's marketable, why not".
Because that was also a commonly used acronym for the video variety of them (though 'disc' not 'disk'). Digital Versatile Disc is the physical thing which could have data, video, or audio (DVD-A).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi - "The name Wi-Fi is not short-form for 'Wireless Fidelity',[34]" (https://www.pcgamer.com/i-just-found-out-what-wi-fi-means-and-its-sending-me/)
"According to MIC quoting this interview from 2005 by Boing Boing, Wi-Fi doesn't mean any of these things, and in fact actually means basically nothing at all. Rather, Wi-Fi was a name settled on between a group now known as the Wi-Fi alliance and some brand consultants from Interbrand agency. This kinda feels like when you find out a friend has actually been going by their middle name for years."
I learned Vim because it's on nigh every computer but not to the point of gurudom. Otherwise it's a fancy graphical editor (UltraEdit → jEdit → VS Code) over SSH. My brain has only so much storage.
The graphical fanciness I want is mostly being able to resize fonts and viewports, thin lines, small visual markers, and occasional diagrams such as a Git tree. I like information density.
"A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL
It's just a long nib marker. They're commonly used for marking drill holes through existing holes. I write with them often because I lose all the sharpies and pens in the shop and that's all that's left in the drawer.
Drink some gin, or gingerly gender a giraffe, or whatever else it takes to accept that language is a hodgepodge of use and a wide variety of conflicting sacred cows.
Still used in the missile defense laser turrets aka LAIRCM (Large Aircraft Infrared Counter Measeures), on the C-17 aircraft (and probably others, thats just the one I worked on).
I took Cisco classes in high school and a tech school. Sooo many acronyms. I'm glad they dropped some old language. Like "master and slave drive." Or in business "segregation of duties." Who's naming this shit? I did forget LDAP in an interview once but was still hired.
It was master and slave because how it worked. LIN networks still work with master and slave nodes. Most of tose LIN setups are uni directional. No feedback from the slave node. For drives it was how addressing them worked... iirc, but I'm no expert on this.
I think wifi is wrong. That's just the name, it doesn't stand for/mean anything. People saying it means Wireless Fidelity is something from the recent years, but I never saw actual proof.
In particular, multiple manufacturers had different phrases that corresponded to DVD. They eventually decided to drop the names and keep the acronym so consumers weren't confused
I don't know about the accuracy of the term but it's not recent. I remember hearing somebody on the radio explain the technology when it was new and they used that exact term.
While probably true, it's *derived* from Hi-Fi, short for high fidelity, a term that was very important in audiophile spheres back in the day. From about the 50s through the 80s, it was very common to see speakers, record players, tape decks, radios, and all kinds of other audio equipment advertised as hi-fi, and the term stuck enough that when people were coming up with a name for wireless home networking, a variant on it had the right cachet.
Yeah but wireless fidelity has always been in use, I remember because when we first got a wireless router I looked it up and I was like "the fuck does fidelity mean" that was eons ago. Right after the period nudes pics on porn sites loaded from the top down and then stopped loading right above the nipples
It's not a new thing. WiFi was created by the WECA (now the WiFi Alliance) and is the user-friendly name for IEEE 802.11. It was created by a brand-consulting firm and does not stand for anything. Some people at WECA believed that the name needed a literal explanation : that's why it was advertised as "The Standard for Wireless Fidelity". They droped that tag line after a year.
Yeah, wlan works. It's sorta a squares and rectangles situation, but WiFi is the most common form of wlan afaik, so practically synonymous at this point.
NineByNine
WiFi is wrong. It actually doesn't stand for anything. It just sounded fun and was similar to "hi-fi" that they were like "sure that's marketable, why not".
mmontour
X on WiFi. It's just "WiFi". The other thing is a retcon.
localdisturbance
PEBKAC
Castagere
Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair....nice.
In the old biz, folks would say "It's an ID 10 T kinda day."
virtualchoirboy
PICNIC: Problem In Chair, Not In Computer.
cuprohastes
WiFi is not actually Wireless fidelity. It's not an acronym or a contraction or portmanteau. It's literally just 'WiFi',
paigezero
WiFi doesn't stand for anything and etc isn't a tech term. Otherwise, good stuff to know.
ropetopus
Wi-Fi is a pun on Hi-Fi, which does stand for High Fidelity, but is not short for Wireless Fidelity https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/07/23/wi-fi-definition-origin/
pdp1
When JPG would be better
fueg
JPEG Joint Photographic Experts Group
bubblechaser
JPEG = Joint Photographic Experts Group
pdp1
Oops, I cut off the F in PDF. It stands for “Format”
AReallySatisfyingPoo
Ah yes, the hottest technology standard; "Etcetera"
Heelcat70
I thought it meant someone typoed Peter Cetera
IThoughtIdComeUpWithABetterUserNameThanThis
it's latin, that sounds pretty fukken nerdy to me
vorodar
The Romans were truly ahead of their time when they came up with it.
davej77
PICNIC - problem in chair, not in computer
jimijesus69
Radar is radio detecting and ranging
goflyblind
seems kinda SCSI.
RuBisCO1
Oh I always thought dvd was digital video disk.
quzar
Because that was also a commonly used acronym for the video variety of them (though 'disc' not 'disk'). Digital Versatile Disc is the physical thing which could have data, video, or audio (DVD-A).
SciFiGuy2018
And TWAIN?
stevelepastis
RTFM
HappyShark
Imgur - I'm Grr
pickledpunk021
LOL
SilverStarling
WiFi doens't actually mean anything, it was called that because it sounds cool.
SilverStarling
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi - "The name Wi-Fi is not short-form for 'Wireless Fidelity',[34]" (https://www.pcgamer.com/i-just-found-out-what-wi-fi-means-and-its-sending-me/)
SilverStarling
"According to MIC quoting this interview from 2005 by Boing Boing, Wi-Fi doesn't mean any of these things, and in fact actually means basically nothing at all. Rather, Wi-Fi was a name settled on between a group now known as the Wi-Fi alliance and some brand consultants from Interbrand agency. This kinda feels like when you find out a friend has actually been going by their middle name for years."
theskirrid
TWAIN - Technology Without An Interesting Name
As someone who struggled to get scanners to work on Windows ME I relate.
StrandedonEarth
Because “never the ‘Twain shall meet”
Mokisan
Actual meaning. TWAIN is not actually an acronym, but since it is typically upper-cased, most people think it must be.
pm1001
TLA
Hammerwell
Laughs in SANE - bitterly.
theskirrid
He he he, now easy my arse!!
tellm1by
What is PDF included in this list?
My uncle is under arrest for being one and this has nothing to do with technology.
IThoughtIdComeUpWithABetterUserNameThanThis
i bet they found a lot of pedo files on his computer though
1245restatemyassumptions
Wait till you get to recursive acronyms, e.g. GNU - GNU's Not Unix, PHP - PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
modus0
Or what about GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program - GNU's Not Unix Image Manipulation Program?
1245restatemyassumptions
rigello
Who else remembers WYSIWYG and SCSI?
gemaeuer
and Gopher :-)
KremlinOfAges
GIGO
SlyeFox
What You See Is What You Get.
philsnow
EMACS - eight megs and constantly swapping
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
Emacs Makes A Computer Slow/Suffer/Swap was the joke back in the day.
Another is that it's a great operating system in need of a good text editor.
philsnow
I wouldn't trade it for anything though. Almost all software is trash, but emacs is a joy.
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
I learned Vim because it's on nigh every computer but not to the point of gurudom. Otherwise it's a fancy graphical editor (UltraEdit → jEdit → VS Code) over SSH. My brain has only so much storage.
philsnow
I hear you about vim, that was my start as well, and left it entirely because elisp is terrible but it's so much better than vimscript
emacs can also be a fancy* graphical* editor over SSH through tramp-mode, for what it's worth
* fanciness subject to your aesthetic sense and graphical-ish-ness subject to whether you're running it in a terminal
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
The graphical fanciness I want is mostly being able to resize fonts and viewports, thin lines, small visual markers, and occasional diagrams such as a Git tree. I like information density.
PauliePlaysPoorly
I thought URL was Universal Resource Locator.
turbodog
It is.
amp99
"A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI), although many people use the two terms interchangeably." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL
PauliePlaysPoorly
Doing the hard work. Thanks.
Mokisan
In original form, it was "uniform" but today it can mean whatever you want. That's the joy of language.
digitreal
How are they writing all of this with a screwdriver?
ButteryBiscuitBass
+1
LogicalLimes
SCREWDRIVER
Supremely Crafted, Reliable Everyday Writer Designed to Radiate Inspiration, Value, Elegance, and Refinement
🤓
Wizdos
That's a Kids Next Door acronym right there
TheGhastHunter
Universal Positive Verification Of Terminological Eexcellence
UPVOTE
baldbear
Ok, upvoted. But get out now. You scare the normal ones.
LogicalLimes
Yeah, I get that reaction a lot. 🤣
Donaldbain
IDK, LOL
willpostanything
I dont know, laughing out loud.
goflyblind
SmoeAhsolse
Use the red settings!
ourari
By dipping it in ink! (But really, it's a long tip marker.)
BrokenAnimal
Often used by crafters of various trades as the long tip makes it easier to mark in hard to reach places. I used to have one like that.
RadioSilenceDW
I think its a kind of pen called a repitograph
belindashort
Rapidograph is a technical pen
sf111
Easier than doing it with a mojito
Leonon
Wrest216
YES! im stealing this puuuuurrrfect meme thank you
jridley
It's just a long nib marker. They're commonly used for marking drill holes through existing holes. I write with them often because I lose all the sharpies and pens in the shop and that's all that's left in the drawer.
luceid
GIF - Jraphic Interchange Format
GuitarBobMonterey
No Ragrets
modus0
I regret that I have only one upvote to jift you.
theskirrid
Oh, Jod, not this shit again!!
mairusupawa
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/jpeg
ElbowDeepinaTinyOctopus
Drink some gin, or gingerly gender a giraffe, or whatever else it takes to accept that language is a hodgepodge of use and a wide variety of conflicting sacred cows.
Zalm
Jiraffe
Marikhen
Gerald the Giraffe was a gentle giant who freely shared his genitals with the gentiles of the zoo.
symmetry7
Did they use that format in Jrraphic Park?
pipatron
PCMCIA - People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
electronicbovine
TWAIN - technology without an interesting name
Spaceqowboy
Wasn’t it toolkit? That’s how i recall it. Wasn’t it s scanning/imaging toolkit/driver suite?
NachoPete
My favorite.
tolderlund
People can't memorize completely insane abbreviations
chrispisme
People cant memor…….what did it say again?
MioTaalas
theskirrid
Personal Computer Memory Card International Association, sadly.
skwint
Please Crush My Computer Into Atoms
Teledabby
MCSE: Minesweeper Consultant and Solitaire Expert
Fn0rd
I laughed at this one.
EatinButtsAndBustinNuts
PICNIC error - person in chair, not in computer
ID10T error - pretty self explanatory
ropetopus
PICNIC is *problem in chair, not it computer
SirVG
PEBCAK - problem exists between chair and keyboard
mrputter
JohnBluehill
Holy shit, User Friendly. One of the first webcomics I ever read.
Zioxyl
Lol
stercusmoriturussum
And by the time I was able to pronounce it, the standard was pretty much dead.
mrputter
When I worked for a software company back in the late 90s, we universally just pronounced it "Picky-Mickey."
NachoPete
Not completely dead though.
pipatron
I still keep buying stuff, latest find was a tiny 520 MB PCMCIA harddrive, mechanical 1" I think.
hatsuseno
Ahh, good old IBM microdrives. Lovely miniturization tech, slow as balls and easy to wreck, loved 'em at the time tho.
OhBaeWan
Still used in the missile defense laser turrets aka LAIRCM (Large Aircraft Infrared Counter Measeures), on the C-17 aircraft (and probably others, thats just the one I worked on).
stercusmoriturussum
Yeah, well, FAA is still (at least partially) running on floppy discs and Windows 95: https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/faa-eliminate-floppy-disks-outdated-tech-air-traffic-control-system/
VaultGirl69
I took Cisco classes in high school and a tech school. Sooo many acronyms. I'm glad they dropped some old language. Like "master and slave drive." Or in business "segregation of duties." Who's naming this shit? I did forget LDAP in an interview once but was still hired.
vizeroy42
It was master and slave because how it worked.
LIN networks still work with master and slave nodes. Most of tose LIN setups are uni directional. No feedback from the slave node.
For drives it was how addressing them worked... iirc, but I'm no expert on this.
VaultGirl69
You could use the words Primary and Secondary instead. It's not how it works that's the problem, but the words they chose to describe it.
a1b2c3Cat
They completely went overboord with that, suddenly puppetmaster had to be renamed, because it had the word master in it.
HonestCommentFarmer
tp0d
do i look like i know what more mpeg is????
NachoPete
/gallery/does-look-look-like-i-know-what-jpeg-is-FXQLiEE#yYdvMmc
Twofutures
Wifi doesn't stand for anything, they just thought it sounded good.
Subtilico
Wifi stands for doesn't.
LtRooney
Based on HiFi, which is short for High Fidelity.
ropetopus
Based on, yes; but as a play on the term, not because it actually stands for Wireless Fidelity: https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/07/23/wi-fi-definition-origin/
Twofutures
Hifi is short for that, but wifi isn't.
Evenmoreuselessname
You're both correct!
TallynNyntyg
Yeah, why would Wifi be short for high fidelity?
Denvercoder09
The W is silent and the H is hidden.
PineappleIsDeliciousOnPizzaFightMe
What is the deal with that pen
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
"long nib marker"
IThoughtIdComeUpWithABetterUserNameThanThis
so that's what DVD disc stands for! how interesting, anyone know what PIN number or ATM machine are short for?
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
Paramount International Networks number, Ass To Mouth machine.
IThoughtIdComeUpWithABetterUserNameThanThis
wow, i never would have guessed, also i think i've been using the ATM wrong
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
for that you have to enter a special Parts In Nethers number
IThoughtIdComeUpWithABetterUserNameThanThis
is it 6969?
ByThePowerOfSCIENCE
use the letters, Luke - four of them
NeedToMakeAPoint
I think wifi is wrong. That's just the name, it doesn't stand for/mean anything. People saying it means Wireless Fidelity is something from the recent years, but I never saw actual proof.
seehemewe
DVD is revisionist history
It was originally
Digital
Video
Disc
but then computer industry saw potential for it, so it was renamed
Digital
Versatile
Disc
Sprikut
Yeah it specifically was just a nonsense term created cause it sounds good LIKE Hi-Fi or Wireless Fidelity it doesnt actually mean that.
B99Reactions
You are correct
GussDeBlod
Wireless Immediate Furry Integration.
BellicoseBreakfast
Same with DVD. The consortium never agreed whether it stood for digital versatile disc, or digital video disc. It officially stands for nothing.
sabrinadiesatdawn
In particular, multiple manufacturers had different phrases that corresponded to DVD. They eventually decided to drop the names and keep the acronym so consumers weren't confused
sometimesarobot
Wifi means wifi
baldbear
EmeRgencyDrD
Prounounced: whiffy
wallybeavis
Do you mean whiffy, or whiffy? I always pronunced it whiffy, but I've also heard it pronounced whiffy, and in rare cases whiffy
EmeRgencyDrD
Yes
amp99
tomobach
I don't know about the accuracy of the term but it's not recent. I remember hearing somebody on the radio explain the technology when it was new and they used that exact term.
Oatmealman1
It is wrong, wifi is just wifi
dribblingviking
Correct. Hi-Fi stood for High Fidelity, but Wifi was just a good marketing play on "Hi-Fi"
kylepayton1360
I thought it was pronounced WiFi.
Gogoglovitch
While probably true, it's *derived* from Hi-Fi, short for high fidelity, a term that was very important in audiophile spheres back in the day. From about the 50s through the 80s, it was very common to see speakers, record players, tape decks, radios, and all kinds of other audio equipment advertised as hi-fi, and the term stuck enough that when people were coming up with a name for wireless home networking, a variant on it had the right cachet.
GroovyLiberator
That's why it's called WLAN
HoldingAccount
WiFi is a type of WLAN. Not all WLAN are WiFi.
ProxyPlayerHD
in germany the term "wi-fi" is pretty rare. we use the term "WLAN" instead for the same exact purpose.
NateintheNorth
Wireless Local Area Network, ja?
ProxyPlayerHD
ye
unannouncedguest
Dude... Under what rock have you been living?
NeedToMakeAPoint
That big one, over yonder. Also known as a kei.
unannouncedguest
Yeah but wireless fidelity has always been in use, I remember because when we first got a wireless router I looked it up and I was like "the fuck does fidelity mean" that was eons ago. Right after the period nudes pics on porn sites loaded from the top down and then stopped loading right above the nipples
NeedToMakeAPoint
That's fair. I didn't encounter it until a few years ago and thought "what the hell does that even mean? Wireless Fidelity?"
fishboy81
I always thought it meant Wireless Fireless
LogicalLimes
Awwww. hahah Reminds me of FireWire. 😃
linuxfailer
Let me tell ya a wireless router is not necessary fireless.
NeedToMakeAPoint
"I thought the creator was named William Finkles"
WhatzitTooya
Would make more sense than the wireless fidelity nonsense, would it?
DreamPhreak
Wilson Fisk
IndianJoe
It's not a new thing. WiFi was created by the WECA (now the WiFi Alliance) and is the user-friendly name for IEEE 802.11. It was created by a brand-consulting firm and does not stand for anything. Some people at WECA believed that the name needed a literal explanation : that's why it was advertised as "The Standard for Wireless Fidelity". They droped that tag line after a year.
Hammerwell
The usual name for it, here were I am, is wlan.
kgbofficer
Yeah, wlan works. It's sorta a squares and rectangles situation, but WiFi is the most common form of wlan afaik, so practically synonymous at this point.
WhatzitTooya
I suspect he's from Germany, here it's called WLAN. WiFi is, if anything, merely present as a little stamp on certified products.