Internet in a Box • Hacker News Board

Re: Internet in a Box

#91

Post by gehwartzen » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:27 AM UTC

freedomben wrote: post #90

audiodude wrote: post #82

Volunteer for Kiwix here ( https://kiwix.org ), we do a lot of offline Wikipedia stuff. I've personally worked on MWOffliner ( https://github.com/openzim/mwoffliner ) which scrapes MediaWikis, primarily Wikipedia. We have apps for basically every platform. Our PWA even supports IE 11! You can use the WP1 tool which I'm the primary maintainer of ( https://wp1.openzim.org/#/selections/user ) to create "selections" whic…

Neat, thanks! I'm CTO of Ameelio (non-profit) and have been eyeing Kiwix for awhile. Getting content to incarcerated people is a unique challenge due to the exceptional security requirements, and an offline solution like kiwix might fit in well. Being able to narrow down categories is a huge capability for us. Thank you!

Just wanted to comment on what a great mission Ameelio seems to have! Glad you guys are helping some of the most unseen in our society. Kudos!

Re: Internet in a Box

#92

Post by nsonha » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:28 AM UTC

So by intent it's like a CDN node, but decentralized

Re: Internet in a Box

#93

Post by Sparkyte » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:30 AM UTC

Title reminds me of that time Moss introduces Jen to the internet.

Re: Internet in a Box

#94

Post by nchmy » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:39 AM UTC

aaron695 wrote: post #40

Internet in a Box DOES NOT WORK I don't know how many more times this needs to be proven. You do not understand data, you do not understand the reality around you, you do not understand 80:20 style engineering rules, you can't look at previous implementations of the Internet in a Box and see it didn't work. Worse, you now live in a Starlink era where you can give them a real "Internet in a Box" and there is no soluti…

Could you elaborate on/point us towards resources about why it does not work?

Re: Internet in a Box

#95

Post by asdefghyk » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:41 AM UTC

Reminds me of a research paper I once saw many years ago.. It described a dual caching ( web traffic) proxy system. with a (very) slow/ unreliable link in between. The proxies worked together to compress the data as it was transferred across the link. ( The proxy on the receiving sided cached information and only retried if it had changed.) My recollection is it also had options to reduce the resolution of images.

Re: Internet in a Box

#96

Post by pryelluw » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:06 AM UTC

Sparkyte wrote: post #93

Title reminds me of that time Moss introduces Jen to the internet.

I don’t think the elders of the internet would mind.

Re: Internet in a Box

#97

Post by VikingCoder » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:13 AM UTC

So if I bought the $58 one from the Wikipedia Store...

What exact solar products (panels, battery, converter?) would I need to buy, near Chicago, to run one of these 24/7, year round, and let's say it's gotta be up and running most of the time - say, 99% of the time. (That means it can be down over 3 days a year, and still be acceptable to me.)

Re: Internet in a Box

#98

Post by zipping1549 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:31 AM UTC

lutusp wrote: post #88

> ... Now you too can put the internet in a box and customize it with the very best free content for your school, clinic or family! Yes ! And at very low cost! It doesn't require a network, a power connection or high technology! It prepares its users for adult life! How can people read this article and not think, "Wait ... don't we already have books?"

Books - take up a lot of space - are not free & not necessarily cheap - are not searchable - take a lot of effort to index - are heavy, prone to damage & loss - cannot be accessed by multiple users simultaneously - need physical copy to back up

Re: Internet in a Box

#99

Post by ninjazee124 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:50 AM UTC

"This Jen, is the internet"

Re: Internet in a Box

#100

Post by pastage » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:54 AM UTC

VikingCoder wrote: post #97

So if I bought the $58 one from the Wikipedia Store... What exact solar products (panels, battery, converter?) would I need to buy, near Chicago, to run one of these 24/7, year round, and let's say it's gotta be up and running most of the time - say, 99% of the time. (That means it can be down over 3 days a year, and still be acceptable to me.)

This is not for that kind of setup, this is more of a button you press to get internet when you need it IMHO. It is 1 watt idle, so you need 24Wh to keep it running if there is no sun. On bad short days you might get 5% of solar power. A battery system might lose you 30% on that. Uptime is not primarily an technical issue, it depends on what your goals, skills and needs are.