I actually had a very similar idea but the twist is in Africa we don't have access to affordable internet for the average student but we have greatest discounted bundles for social media apps like whatsApp, instagram and facebook. I wanted to use whatsApp to send a screenshot of googles first result page for a given query.
Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
131–137 of 137 posts
Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
#132Cool pet project, admirable engineering etc. My comment is about something else: net neutrality, as someone already mentioned. I was teaching English in Laos for school kids. I was amazed that some of their families struggle with providing (nutritious enough) food for their children, yet, everyone had smartphones with always-on 4G,even in the countryside - however, no WiFi almost anywhere. The brains of these kids ar…
If you know anyone still involved over there you should let them know about the Kiwix project! >Kiwix is an offline reader for online content like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, or TED Talks. It makes knowledge available to people with no or limited internet access. The software as well as the content is free to use for anyone.
Kiwix is nice.
Also from your comment, I feel that I definitely fail to communicate what the actual problem is.
The problem is NOT that the kids (and their teachers) cannot access certain sites. Although they might not be able to afford it, if they want.
The problem is that they DON'T KNOW that internet sites exist. For a kid who was born into the era where a magical handheld thing can show his friends' life and funny videos, a "website" means nothing. I even didn't want to write handheld television screen, because most of them haven't even seen a television before.
They don't know that wikipedia exists at all.
Another anecdote (maybe I should summarize it in a post somewhere) is that the teachers were using Oxford Press's Headway [1] books. Excellent series, many of us in Europe learned English from these books. It improves your vocabulary a lot, teaches you words like "coin", "train conductor", "mp3 player" and so on.
Now let's see what does NOT exist in Laos, at all: - mp3 players - TRAINS!!! - and, well, coins (Lao Kips start at 1.000 bills (10¢) IIRC and last time coins were issued was 40years ago. In the 2mo I stayed there, never saw a coin, nor the kids I was teaching).
It's really a different world, it took me some time to even start my head wrap around it
[1] https://elt.oup.com/student/headway/?cc=nl&selLanguage=en
Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
#133If anyone's looking to reproduce this but in a no-code way then I have a setup to send and receive WhatsApp messages via email[1] using android VM and tasker which could be modified/extended for retrieving other data.
But OP method has lesser moving parts and more easily reproducible if coding is not the barrier.
[1] https://abishekmuthian.com/send-and-receive-whatsapp-message...
Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://internet-in-a-box.org/ might come in handy. Facebook tried the same in India but was quickly shutdown: https://www.wired.com/2016/02/facebooks-free-basics-app-is-n...
This stuff is such a gray area for me. I’m staunchly pro-net neutrality, but depriving people of the internet altogether means losing a huge asset for learning, a platform for financial success that otherwise is unattainable, and more. But then you read about the success of Facebook in emerging markets in Africa and it becomes even murkier. Basics has caused Facebook to become utterly dominant in many African countri…
Is Facebook a "huge asset for learning [and] a platform for financial success"? The utter dominance of Facebook surely prevents competitors that are better suited to these things. I am not at all sure that Facebook-only is superior to no internet at all.
Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
#135How is it technically possible for Delta to limit WhatsApp to "text and emojis"? Is media not end-to-end encrypted?
Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
This stuff is such a gray area for me. I’m staunchly pro-net neutrality, but depriving people of the internet altogether means losing a huge asset for learning, a platform for financial success that otherwise is unattainable, and more. But then you read about the success of Facebook in emerging markets in Africa and it becomes even murkier. Basics has caused Facebook to become utterly dominant in many African countri…
Is Facebook a "huge asset for learning [and] a platform for financial success"? The utter dominance of Facebook surely prevents competitors that are better suited to these things. I am not at all sure that Facebook-only is superior to no internet at all.
> I am not at all sure that Facebook-only is superior to no internet at all
Insofar as the short term success of their users is considered, it's an unequivocal yes. There are an unbelievable number of African businesses that exist only because of the platform.
As you correctly call out, it's the longer timelines that make it a dubious proposition.
Re: Tunneling Wikipedia through WhatsApp to (maybe?) get around WiFi restrictions
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which one do you use?
Not GP, but I've been using the GL.iNet Beryl (GL-MT1300) and I'm really happy with it.
I've been intending to do the same with their Mudi (E750) and between not feeling comfortable trusting their builds and being unable to get my own working (upstream openwrt has stability issues and I guess they have some patches to make the modems work properly; still haven't been able to get a properly working image from working through their repos yet).
It's quite frustrating as it's ideal on paper but they fall on the last mile to make it practically open.