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Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
61–70 of 236 posts
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#62Earlier 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.
If current frontier online LLMs are made inaccessible due to a local or global cataclysmic event running models locally will be the least of your concerns. This isn’t prepping for anything it’s cosplaying as a vault dweller. P.S. Having TED talks as part of the “educational” curriculum of this project is probably the biggest circle jerk imaginable.
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Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#63There'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/
I had thought of building those exact Civil Defense devices a few years ago. Maybe it’s a viable product?
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#64Whats not in there ? Why ? Are the LLM's cencored ?
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#65I come from a time when internet connectivity was not permanent. It was only available a few times per day when you connected via the phone line. My first ISP gave me an allowance of 20 hours of internet per month. You would dial-up, check the news, check your email, read a page or two, download what you had to download, and then disconnect. The internet was very slow by today's standards, and the connection would ge…
20 hours? My first internet (actually not even internet, it was called eWorld) gave you 4 hours a month… which actually was ok because there wasn’t much to do on it, and you couldn’t go long without someone in your family accidentally picking up the phone anyway, and everyone would be mad if you kept the phone line busy for very long, too.
Have you seen this Monty Python skit of Four Yorkshiremen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#66There'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/
> There's a company which sells something like this, as "Prepper Disk".
They mentioned it in their video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_wt-2P-WBk&t=350
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#67Missing a chance to note (or configure for?) installation on a Raspberry Pi --- that'd make an affordable option to leave powered down, but ready to go in an EMI-shield/Faraday Cage.
They specifically state that they’re aiming for a “fatter” model that expects higher-end hardware, and other projects like Internet in a box already target rpi-style devices.
I think there are technically some 3 bit byteshape quants that are aimed specifically at running up to 30B MoEs on the 16GB Pi 5, so it would be possible to do something reasonably fat at very low speeds and extremely short contexts (like 4k maybe). One of those 32 or 64GB Rockchip based boards would do better, but there's rarely usable software to go along with them.
An industrial grade Jetson Thor would probably be the ultimate platform for this if you ignore the money part.
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#68If I gonna face an apocalypse, I would choose Panasonic Toughbook 55 with NetBSD + printed manual for OS. I will have an eternity to compile everything they provide in pkg archive from scratch :)
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#69Normally I cringe at doomsday preppers but given how many dictators out there love the idea to cut their country off Internet whenever anything starts going not in their favor, I imagine a lot of people may find this useful. I wouldn’t want to lose access to knowledge how to fix a sink or which medication is better, just because the local kingface currently feels that free exchange of opinions about him threatens his…
I am not a prepper, but I always found immediate dismissal of their stance odd. If you see clouds on the horizon, reasonable people start preparing. Some preparations take longer than others so longer than others. And this does not account for the fact that one the steady lull ( in US and most of Europe ) of the past 70 or so years is not the norm in our world.
Re: Project Nomad – Knowledge That Never Goes Offline
#70Normally I cringe at doomsday preppers but given how many dictators out there love the idea to cut their country off Internet whenever anything starts going not in their favor, I imagine a lot of people may find this useful. I wouldn’t want to lose access to knowledge how to fix a sink or which medication is better, just because the local kingface currently feels that free exchange of opinions about him threatens his…
Stuff like this is why I keep a small library at my house.
Full encyclopedia set, Merck Manual, home repair book, etc. May never use them, but I like having them.
Facebook ads even successfully targeted me for that “how to rebuild all of civilization” book. :)