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Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

projectnomad.us

181–190 of 236 posts

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#181

I went on to install this, but it seems very US centric, which isn't apparent in anything else than the domain name. The maps only cover the US, you can only download English dumps of Wikipedia, etc. It's not the biggest deal if you're proficient in English, but I wasn't even able to download the full dump of English Wikipedia as their hardcoded link to it just seems to return 404. The Docker setup leaves much to be…

> Command center

> "Military"-looking font

This is larping as a prepper, not anything more.

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#182
post #52

There's a company which sells something like this, as "Prepper Disk".[1] In the 1950s, US Civil Defense had a set of microfilms on how to rebuild society. These were packaged with a sunlight reader and stored in larger fallout shelters. Someone should find one of those. [1] https://www.prepperdisk.com/

joke’s on the survivors who have to go find sunlight in nuclear winter

Anyone who thinks they can prepare for nuclear winter is delusional.

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#183

I went on to install this, but it seems very US centric, which isn't apparent in anything else than the domain name. The maps only cover the US, you can only download English dumps of Wikipedia, etc. It's not the biggest deal if you're proficient in English, but I wasn't even able to download the full dump of English Wikipedia as their hardcoded link to it just seems to return 404. The Docker setup leaves much to be…

> Command center > "Military"-looking font This is larping as a prepper, not anything more.

I don't see the problem with trying to make knowledge more decentralized, offline-ready and accessible in the case of catastrophe.

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s a difference between doomsday framing and preparedness. Offline access and local models aren’t about assuming collapse—they’re about treating knowledge as infrastructure instead of something implicitly guaranteed. That feels more like resilience than pessimism.

They sell pi's with the names PrepperDisk and Doom Box. They probably thought it is funny. The general Idea of having knowledge backups / offline access is reasonable to me, the doomsday framing is seeding the idea that it's about collapse and that takes away from a something that is generally more useful.

This site isn't selling anything. It also doesn't say anything about doomsday, or system collapse, or anything sensational.

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#185

I went on to install this, but it seems very US centric, which isn't apparent in anything else than the domain name. The maps only cover the US, you can only download English dumps of Wikipedia, etc. It's not the biggest deal if you're proficient in English, but I wasn't even able to download the full dump of English Wikipedia as their hardcoded link to it just seems to return 404. The Docker setup leaves much to be…

> Command center > "Military"-looking font This is larping as a prepper, not anything more.

This is just some guy's hobby project that he is sharing for free. I don't get why everyone is so keen to shit all over it.

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#187
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we did it all without a manual the first time, so it stands to reason we (or more accurately, our descendants) could figure it out.

Yes, and it took our ancestors 200k years. I would like to give our descendants an head start.

Even knowing the broad concepts of Crop Rotation, Germ theory, or Computation, means that you shouldn't take that long to get back to an advanced stage, you probably won't actually get to whatever SOTA you had on those fields for a long time, but knowing where to look is quite significant in cutting wasted time

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#188
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And we did it all without a manual the first time, so it stands to reason we (or more accurately, our descendants) could figure it out.

We did it in a pristine world the first time. The next time we do it in a world stripped of natural resources and easy energy with a collapsing biosphere soaked in poison and radioactive waste. Not impossible but I doubt we get another Industrial Revolution.

I mean, there's still quite a number of resources on the surface, plenty just sit there because the ratio of setup cost / profit isn't there

The demand a smaller civilization would have should be quite less significant than what we currently have, so it stands to reason it would make sense for them to use those

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#189

I went on to install this, but it seems very US centric, which isn't apparent in anything else than the domain name. The maps only cover the US, you can only download English dumps of Wikipedia, etc. It's not the biggest deal if you're proficient in English, but I wasn't even able to download the full dump of English Wikipedia as their hardcoded link to it just seems to return 404. The Docker setup leaves much to be…

> Command center > "Military"-looking font This is larping as a prepper, not anything more.

Larping or not, it seems useful. If they want to play prepper while providing a useful widget to the rest of us, let them

Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

#190
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have lived in places like that, and absolutely prep like that when the environment calls for it. I'd expect a non zero proportion of the HN readership has as well. See: Burning Man, the fanciest refugee camp on Earth, where you need to schedule, plan, haul in, and haul back out again everything you need to survive. (I've also spent time living in legit BFE where the closest store for something can be more than an h…

The most important aspect of Burning Man and why it works is the thing most preppers/American Libertarians ignore: the community. Burning Man isn't interesting because a bunch of individuals pitch tents in the desert, it's interesting because a society is built in the middle of the desert, spontaneously.

The "preppers" I encounter are on ham radio, and I'd say they are more community conscious then the average person. Many of them work in public services (EMTs and the like) or are retired and formerly did. Most have stocked pantries, gardens are common. Most are willing to help out when there's a power outage or a fire. The anti-social picture that popular culture paints of preparedness-minded people is entirely not true in my experience.
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