Internet in a Box
internet-in-a-box.org
Internet in a Box
1–10 of 121 posts
Re: Internet in a Box
#2Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568332 (620 points | June 20, 2021 | 139 comments)
Re: Internet in a Box
#3Eventually, when local compute gets good enough, running LLMs on this kind of system will be far more useful than most internet resources could be directly.
Re: Internet in a Box
#4This is a fantastic project, and we need more of those.
Let's keep in mind that 50% of the world's population did not connect to the internet in the last three months (last un UN starts).
On my end, I worked on an Android version since getting & maintaining a Raspberry Pi or a Linux machine is difficult in remote communities - where finding reliable access to a network or electricity can be tricky. Still, you will see those inexpensive Android phones everywhere. If you are curious: grey-box.ca/uni Early stuff, but we managed to deploy and test in 12 countries, and we are looking for volunteers for some of our digital divide open-source projects.
Re: Internet in a Box
#5This is a fantastic project, and we need more of those. Let's keep in mind that 50% of the world's population did not connect to the internet in the last three months (last un UN starts). On my end, I worked on an Android version since getting & maintaining a Raspberry Pi or a Linux machine is difficult in remote communities - where finding reliable access to a network or electricity can be tricky. Still, you will se…
I know this will get absolutely smashed but is this such a bad thing anymore ? If you can’t connect to the internet you’re immediately protected from a lot of garbage information, attention hijacking, scams and hacking, child grooming, IP theft, you’re job is probably a lot more secure etc.
I know there is access to information which is beneficial but at some stage I’m not convinced having internet access will necessarily be considered a luxury in the best future.
I know it’s an outrageous sounds claim but I still feel it could go either way.
Re: Internet in a Box
#6This is great. Thank You for the link!
I have spent a little time each year over decades planning a library. The first draft planned a shipping container full of rack-mounted equipment, and several more shipping containers full of the equipment to power the library. That version never got built.
My current iteration uses a bunch of 18 TB HDDs in a HP Z-series workstation.
If I had the money to actually deploy prototypes outside my home, I would switch to much more power efficient SATA SSDs, a Raspberry Pi, some kind of hat that connects many SATA drives, and a low-power Wi-Fi router that connects many users at once.
Over the years I learned that: * The US Library of Congress (LOC) cataloging system is the best way to index information, but... * Databases are temporary. Files on disk are much more permanent. You will change databases several times while leaving the same files on disk.
LLMs will change my design, as will StarLink and other satellite-based Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
Re: Internet in a Box
#7This is a fantastic project, and we need more of those. Let's keep in mind that 50% of the world's population did not connect to the internet in the last three months (last un UN starts). On my end, I worked on an Android version since getting & maintaining a Raspberry Pi or a Linux machine is difficult in remote communities - where finding reliable access to a network or electricity can be tricky. Still, you will se…
I know this will get absolutely smashed but is this such a bad thing anymore ? If you can’t connect to the internet you’re immediately protected from a lot of garbage information, attention hijacking, scams and hacking, child grooming, IP theft, you’re job is probably a lot more secure etc. I know there is access to information which is beneficial but at some stage I’m not convinced having internet access will necess…
Access to high-quality internet resources is absolutely a luxury. You can pick and choose what resources you want, it's not TV.
It's like saying that access to a well-stocked university library is not a privilege because most pop books that get published are crap. It's not even the same category of "book".
Negatives of the internet do exist but you're overstating your case. This is about getting basic resources to people who couldn't otherwise access them, I don't see how it can possibly be net negative.
Re: Internet in a Box
#8Imagine an LLM that is trained on public data like the internet archive and it is made available on these boxes without the internet, now we can have almost the entirety of human knowledge accessible on a single box.
I know that LLMs sometime hallucinate and practical limits of computation power availability etc. but imagine how quickly we can spread the knowledge. It is almost like the printing press during the renaissance.
Re: Internet in a Box
#9How long has this project been an Ansible script?
Iirc the Internet-in-a-Box project pre-dates Ansible, which was started sometime in 2012.
Re: Internet in a Box
#10Honestly this is something I would love to setup for my future family some day, even when full internet is an option.