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Internet in a Box

internet-in-a-box.org

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231–240 of 263 posts

Re: Internet in a Box

#231

Post by nchmy »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #226
nchmy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent the past 8 years focused on this theme, more or less, because my conclusion after finding things like internet on a box (and various similar projects) was that they offer too much information (and also present it in a useless manner). I've lived in many deeply impoverished communities, and they don't need a full version of Wikipedia, or a medical encyclopedia. They need to know how to easily and cheaply im…

Agreed - it's not all of wikipedia, it's the parts that matter. They could do this with much less storage. Maybe just an SD card in an old phone?

What I'm getting at is that even wikipedia is not useful for communities who completely lack education (and perhaps even reading ability), technology, and economic stability. They need, more than anything, to get sanitation, clean air, nutrition, larger crop yields from healthier soil and better practices, etc... Wikipedia doesn't have any of that info. Even Appropedia doesn't really - its too superficial (and not translated) to be actionable, especially for these groups of people.

Once those issues are sorted out via more appropriate teaching and logistical methods, solidarity, etc... they'll have health, time, and money with which academics and anything else can be pursued.

Its just basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs...

All of the people who are working on these sorts of offline education projects are completely out of touch.

Re: Internet in a Box

#233

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

aspenmayer wrote: post #143
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…

> Or you give them just the useful parts of the internet. Implying you (or anyone) knows better what is most useful to someone else isn’t fair to them. What if the sites that are most useful aren’t included in the backup because of blind spots or license/copyright issues? Saving a single page to view offline is simple enough for me, but many non-technical folks would struggle. A whole site? That is a bit harder. Most…

It may not be fair, but honestly, neither is the fact that the web has been completely ruined by moneyed interests.

Re: Internet in a Box

#236

Post by Rediscover »

Rediscover wrote: post #194
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…

Didn't England or GB do (does?) a curated dump precisely for that purpose? I'll pull up the info tonight if no one else chimes in.

The closest I found, which partially matches my memory, was from SOS Children that claims "This selection of articles from Wikipedia matches the UK National Curriculum ..." and "... we’ve checked all the articles, tidied them up a bit, ..."

https://web.archive.org/web/20171022101730/http://schools-wi...

Re: Internet in a Box

#237

Post by ForOldHack »

themadturk wrote: post #230
flipgimble wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Is there concern for AI-produced slop in Wikipedia? I have the 2024-01 version which may be out of date, but may also have less slop.

Look at the Wired article on fighting people rewriting the history of Germany and the George Galloway article. Any one can edit it, including a recently convicted ex-congressman

Re: Internet in a Box

#238

Post by ForOldHack »

hoseja wrote: post #139
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…

I had an offline copy of wikipedia from like five years ago, just in case. When I recently needed it I opened the kiwix app and everything was broken by some godforsaken overhaul update. I don't have an offline copy of wikipedia on my new phone anymore.

Does archive.org have a mirror of the iso?

Re: Internet in a Box

#240

Post by sans_souse »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #73

I’ve encountered a few instances (mostly friends) who have done similar ideas. Around 2007 - 2012 (ish) many corners of India were yet to have access to the Internet (Jio hasn't introduced super cheap, almost free Internet). A few friends did like download Wikipedia and take it to these corners and teach kids. In my case, a friend/colleague Freeman Murray,[1] had that idea and I told him I will try in my hometown (on…

Awesome!
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