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Internet in a Box

internet-in-a-box.org

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Re: Internet in a Box

#211

Post by photochemsyn »

katabasis wrote: post #182

I'd love to see something like this that is marketed to parents or schools who want to give kids a way to access the good parts of the internet (Wikipedia, e-books, etc) without the toxic parts. Maybe throw in some kind of de-centralized social media or file sharing for collaboration with other students or like-minded families. Kiwix + Pi-hole + Activity Pub basically. The device could create its own network (that on…

Wikipedia qualifies as toxic Internet for many people for several reasons: it's heavily manipulated by political and corporate interests as part of their image polishing media strategy, the links that are used to provide credibility for articles are poorly curated and often broken, and the internal power (deciding which articles get heavily edited by invested interests etc.) structure of Wikipedia is mostly hidden from the public.

If anything, children should be taught that Wikipedia is not a reliable source, meaning citing a Wikipedia article in a bibliography for a paper should never be allowed by any responsible educational institution.

Re: Internet in a Box

#212

Post by avni5 »

asdefghyk wrote: post #61

A feature that would be good to have is if a "Internet in a Box" could also store the update files for serving to other "internet in Box" machines. ( However having worked as a technical software tester in similar systems for over 20 years , its probably to complex to implement reliably, being able to handle all the edge cases. Is my GUESS )

For small pieces of content, doable through the IIAB implementation of usb_lib and upload2usb. Content is also easily available to client machines that are connecting to the IIAB.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814433#43816392

For less ephemeral learning bouquets (i.e., curated content), an implementor can customize their IIAB their specific content and then image/clone as needed.

https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#How_do_I_customize_my_Internet-i...?

Re: Internet in a Box

#213

Post by avni5 »

flipgimble wrote: post #180
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…

If I'm reading this right, the last full zim archive of all of english wikipedia is wikipedia_en_all_maxi_2024-01.zim which is now about 16 months old. Is that right, or is are another more recent sources? The current US administration is actively trying to interfere with Wikipedia and censor public speech or information that is detrimental to their disinformation campaign. [1] Do you know if there is an effort to pu…

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Re: Internet in a Box

#216

Post by nchmy »

aaron695 wrote: post #111
nchmy wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's been around since 2012 and the best Wikipedia has - "explored using these boxes in the Dominican Republic for three months." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box Where is a follow up study 3 years later? Are there any follow up studies [1]? (I have said in past comments the medical version might work, it failed in the Dominican Republic [1]) One follow up study - [1] https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/si…

Just read the follow up study. A local affiliate of Rachelplus was the one who I mentioned in my other comment as being bewildered and worthless. It's just some clueless and not particularly invested bureaucrats running it, and they are evidently incentivized to just get devices in schools, with little regard for how effective it ends up being (or if the devices even end up working at all)

The guy running it was bewildered and even offended when i said a huge medical encyclopedia was worthless - there's like 10 conditions that affect the majority of people here (smoke, parasites, diabetes, dental issues, obesity, malnourishment, sleep deprivation, emotional/psychological trauma, etc), all of which are simple to treat and also to fix/prevent with basic technologies and living practices. As with people who have access to all information, they don't actually need it - just live well. If they need real medical knowledge, they'll need to find their way to a doctor anyway. The same applies to the rest of the knowledge - they'd learn more effectively anyway through practical, effective projects.

I also tried to talk to/work with the people in charge of rachelplus technology in improve it in many ways, but they were enormously disinterested as well. Such are the ways of the majority of non-profit orgs in the social/economic development world (and probably in most other realms as well)

Re: Internet in a Box

#217

Post by freedomben »

benoitberaud wrote: post #189
freedomben wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Feel free to reach to us (Kiwix), we've already helped NGO deploy our content to prisons for the exact reason you mention.

Neat, thanks! I'll definitely do that :-)

Re: Internet in a Box

#218

Post by theospeak »

RajT88 wrote: post #179
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #4

I thought they meant this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg Chuckles aside, it's a cool concept.

It's so light! The internet doesn't weigh anything Ohhh!

One of my absolute favourite shows. what a gem - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg . Also one of the best bits in my opinion - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj490uNht4o . For those who have never indulged - Enjoy :-)

Re: Internet in a Box

#219

Post by thenthenthen »

freefrog1234 wrote: post #126
yapyap wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that giving the poor(er) people access to just the information that’s accessible on the internet, like Wikipedia, like Khan academy to learn programming. Is so much more helpful than handing them access to “the internet” as in what the internet is for people in the rich parts of the western world. Sure, we can hand them access to all of the internet and have them scrolling social media till they’re hollow peo…

I saw many projects while working in Cambodia, including One-Laptop-Per-Child, projects designed to share market information with farmers, etc and none made an impact like mobile phones. One project that was semi-successful were USAID sponsored internet cafes that were supposed to enable access to political information just before an election. The USAID staff were annoyed to find most Cambodians used them for interna…

Nail on the head! Glad to hear this in between the technical tangents here in the comments. Also, what is the OLPC XO image doing on that page? Is this project related?
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