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Internet in a Box

internet-in-a-box.org

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Re: Internet in a Box

#71

Post by bobsmooth »

brazzy wrote: post #65
Uptrenda wrote: post #38

I really don't get it. Many of these countries don't even have the resources for clean water, sewage, and reliable agriculture. The idea that they're going to just think their way out of poverty is a very western idea that comes from quite a privileged background. You're not going to be able to do any of that luxurious learning when your stomach is empty and you're having to sleep each night in some war-torn slum. Th…

You're just being contrarian, not more realistic. Which is also a very privileged position. I also suspect that you haven't actually visited many poor countries. Even for extremely poor people, free and easy access to information and communication can have very substantial, practical benefits. A layman's medical encyclopedia that lists smyptoms and treatments for common illnesses may not be an adequate replacement fo…

It's such a privileged position to be even able to underestimate the importance of knowledge.

Re: Internet in a Box

#72

Post by kevviiinn »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #56
kevviiinn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's a very privileged western view that all "third world" countries are destitute and starving

I feel that's exactly what the op was saying in response to gp? There's a spectrum, and while we should have increased empathy and awareness of a LOT of places in the world where life is spectacularly rough and wildly different than ours (2 years of my childhood were in a civil war and my Canadian wife just cannot fathom any of those experiences), there are indeed a lot of places in the world where knowledge and acce…

I was rephrasing the comment I'm replying to in agreement

Re: Internet in a Box

#73

Post by drummojg »

dan_linder wrote: post #68
butz wrote: post #35

It would be great if it had some "snail mail" like features: collect "sent" emails and "posted" posts, and synchronize them with real internet on regular intervals, probably on monthly basis.

Lol, you've just rediscovered "uucp" and the other related protocols!

This comment is bang on.

Re: Internet in a Box

#75

Post by jasonjayr »

stareatgoats wrote: post #36
stareatgoats wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, I think we need to discuss this too. I don't believe we can wish the internet away, but we're still in internet infancy, the "wild west" of plugged in, always online, life. Regulators need to catch up, but at the moment they seem to miss the point, mainly trying to cash in and serve their own narrow interests. We likely need a movement that promotes a healthier use of the tech, which could include things like…

Actually, such local "internet in the box" as per the linked article might prove to be a basis for one such "anti-internet" solution: detach from the internet as a whole and enable local communication, resources and traffic only. Every prepper should really have one!

What's old is new again: if everyone has their own isolated network, then if you need message exchange, you can light up FIDO or UUCP!

Re: Internet in a Box

#76

Post by zamnos »

eru wrote: post #17
nibbleshifter wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience LLM's hallucinate a lot . Often giving "plausible but entirely wrong" output that is hard to discern from factual, real output.

Yes. At the moment they are great for entertainment. But for factual information, you are better off just grabbing a copy of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's information often isn't collated how you want. Eg List the states where the biggest city is larger in population than the state capital? There isn't specifically an article for that. Sure you could take the List of United States cities by population article and assemble the list yourself, or you could just have ChatGPT do it for you.

Re: Internet in a Box

#77

Post by ifyoubuildit »

ChatGTP wrote: post #5
mytheory wrote: post #4

This 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…

I have a similar feeling. I think there is a definite lifecycle to consumer technology (on the internet you have things like wikipedia, youtube, social media, google search, but this also applies to things like smart phones, operating systems, tvs even).

These things all seem to follow a curve. They are released, adopted and improved, they become amazing, and then at some point they start to decline for whatever reason (even as they may be improving in some aspects - like smart tvs continue to get a better picture but only if you can stomach the extra ads, surveillance, and otherwise creepy anti features).

I wish I could just have windows 7 with security updates, a dumb tv with an awesome screen, almost no subscriptions or cloud based doodads.

Id love a frozen version of the internet that nobody can come along and ruin for whatever reason. Internet in a box seems like a good idea to me.

Re: Internet in a Box

#78

Post by troupe »

butz wrote: post #35

It would be great if it had some "snail mail" like features: collect "sent" emails and "posted" posts, and synchronize them with real internet on regular intervals, probably on monthly basis.

So basically a BBS that you access over wifi instead of dial up? :). Long live FIDO net!

Re: Internet in a Box

#80

Post by doodlesdev »

T-A wrote: post #42
CrampusDestrus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are not magic. If wikipedia takes up 100GB of space and your model trained on it is only 5GB big, there is NO WAY it will hold all the original information.

As of 21 September 2022, the size of the current version of all articles compressed is about 21.23 GB without media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia

By the way, note that is the Wikipedia in English which AFAIK is the largest one. For instance, Wikipedia in Portuguese weighs about 13gb with a few pictures in my Kiwix install.
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