Like - I’m excited about sensors that uses higher frequency versions of this for health monitoring. I think that’s a perfectly valid use. But also, in my use, I’d be installing it as an IoT device on a network I control, feeding data to services I own.

This use - where it’s opt in for now, until they figure out how to monetize selling how much time you spend in front of the TV, in the kitchen, bedroom, or bathroom (paired with ‘anonymized’ data about what you’re looking at online in each space) is creepy as fuck.

Can confirm, I live out in the countryside with only coax available, and a measly 1Gbit down 150Mbit up and 9 - 11ms ping. No caps.

Wait, that’s awesome and steady and reliable. Expensive sure but with heavy multiperson usage and no noticeable issues, I am wondering WTF you’re on about unless it’s some weird edge case?

Maybe you are referring to predatory business practices like oversubscribed lines? That’s not a technical problem.

Oh boy, I can't wait for this new wave of paranoid customers claiming their wifi is watching them. Thanks, comcast.

Use your own modem and open source long range router

I live in an apartment building. I wonder if this is useless tech with dozens of WiFi networks from my neighbors going

I still use coax because I buy internet from a reseller third party and this is what they have. I have 400/50 for 35$, which is a lot cheaper yhan the competitors. No reason for me to change.

By default, WiFi Motion is set to detect even small amounts of movement in the motion-sensing areas, including motion caused by small pets.

holy shit lol

If your provider has implemented it (Comcast is the only one i know of in north america) then Active Queue Management is a huge quality of life improvement that you won't know you were missing unless you already had a router that implements queue management. https://www.cablelabs.com/blog/how-docsis-3-1-reduces-latency-with-active-queue-management

DOCIS 3.1 involves more than just speed. No point going over the speed limit if all the traffic lights are timed based on a certain speed. https://www.cablelabs.com/blog/how-docsis-3-1-reduces-latency-with-active-queue-management

Is it really “opt in” or is the opt in only for them to give you the information that they collect? I haven’t read through any terms of service for it but my assumption is they are already selling that data

If anything it's far more dangerous tech due to that. Let's say you live in 304; They know who lives in 303, 305, 203, 204, 205, 403, 404, 405, and the likelihood that your neighbors aren't as tech savvy and use ISP provided routers and modems means that they can use all of those sources to create a 3d image of you and your apartment with the proliferation of 2.4ghz and 5ghz to create a high resolution image that can track your lip movements and even your keystrokes on a computer. That basically just becomes a multi lens 3d camera recording at 5000 fps. The only way to avoid this is to faraday your entire apartment which ironically makes your signal much higher due to the deployment of countermeasures. The ol' "huh, interesting, what are they hiding?" approach.

Well, it very well can be used for exactly that.

open source long range router

Do you have a recommendation?

I remember when MIT had a paper on this around 2000

Asus Rog GT-AX6000 with Merlin OS looks interesting.
Can check list of devices for OpenWRT also.

What the actual Batman fuckery is this. I hope you are wrong or nobody is that motivated to do such things. Either way, scary! Where’s my tin foil hat?

fucking Batman

I have successfully avoided cable up to this point, but I did use my own modem back when I used DSL. It wasn't advertised anywhere, but I just took the details from their modem and called support for the last bit I needed and used my own. It worked well, and I had my router be separate so I was able to just toss the modem when I got better service.

I don't think that's true. Their techs may claim that, but you van buy compatible modems online and find a helpful phone support person to get the details you need. Read up a bit on it first because they're not going to walk you through it.

You can use your own. But at every single point they're going to tell you that your brand new top of the line modem, is out of date and is probably the problem of any issue that you're having. They try so hard to gaslight customers in believing that you need to use their white labeled equipment. They want you to use their stuff and pay the fees so they can resell the Wi-Fi, and they have full control over your device.