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Ask HN: What would you work on without internet access?
My job frequently takes me to places without reliable internet access. What kinds of projects can be worked on with no or unreliable internet? I don't want to be forced to stop working on my side projects just because I don't have all the data I might need.
- ekarulf 8y agoUNIX systems programming can be accomplished by looking at man pages and referencing kernel / user land source code. I find something cathartic writing C applications and tools. Perhaps I should seek professional help.
- jxub 8y agoNot an expert in C, but there's definitely a refreshing feel of purity about something old and "sharp", that is powerfully entrenched in the UNIX ecosystem but can also be dangerous and bite you.
- monk_e_boy 8y agoA game? Something like Terraria. Or something cutting edge like a kitesurf kite. They are only about 15 years old, so plenty of room for improvement. Just takes time and many prototypes. Cloth is pretty cheap.
- noobermin 8y agoIf you have good books you could always use those. I'm a scientist though, so often stuff I could read through is already in pdf form or in paper form, but I don't doubt one could find books on various things if need be. Moreover, especially for non-web stuff you always can have the code to look over yourself.
- tlb 8y agoConsider Dash [0], an offline documentation browsing tool. It takes a little while to set up, but then you have all the docsets you need offline with very fast search. It also helps me control my internet addiction when I'm not off the grid, because I can have no browsers running while I code, so I'm not a tab away from HN. [0] https://kapeli.com/dash https://kapeli.com/dash
- bkcreate 8y agoIs this mac only?
- dddw 8y agoZeal is a good offline code docset reader for linux and windows (but not mac!) https://zealdocs.org/ https://zealdocs.org/ The docsets come from Dash, which is very nice since that is payware. So here apple users pay for non-apple users it seems :)
- abathur 8y agoUse Dash on mac, Zeal on NixOS. I see it as a no-brainer for anyone who has more code to write than time to write it. I can't always solve a problem in Dash, but it enables me to work for hours at a time with wifi off. This is even more important for productivity when there is wifi available. Only downside that I know I'm reducing my chance of stumbling on Google Foobar trigger terms :)
- cimmanom 8y agoAnything you can run a working copy of on your laptop.
- stephenr 8y agoThis is the answer that makes the most sense. While I understand that sometimes we need to check online reference manuals or check if a problem is caused by a known bug in a runtime or library, I don't quite understand the concept that you literally need an internet connection to be able to work.
- xhdix 8y agoTraditional agriculture :|
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- navs 8y agoWriting a book. I’ve been tinkering with writing a choose your own adventure book that provides a glimpse into a depressed mind. I’ve actually forced myself to work on it at the local library , where internet access is slow, as a means of forcing focus.
- HenryBemis 8y ago(my) Scrivener works offline, and with just me and the editor I can focus on developing my ideas and drawing when necessary (simple mspaint and paste on Scrivener). Offline is underestimated!
- scarecrowbob 8y agoGetting more reliable internet access. I want to move out of Austin. One of my research projects is how to do rural internet. Just because I am curious if it's doable. I know that some folks end up in Terlingua cause they want to get away from everything... I'd just like to get away from most things and keep the comms channel.
- thinkingemote 8y agoCartography: get the osm rendering stack on your laptop and a bit of data, then map away! Programming: get the documentation first, manuals API reference, tutorials, and use a language that doesn't have much "now install this library" dependencies.
- cedricium 8y ago> get the documentation first, manuals API reference DevDocs[0] (offline collection of API docs) is perfect for this. [0]: https://devdocs.io/ https://devdocs.io/
- jitl 8y agoI travelled to China recently and was unpleasantly surprised to find the HTML/CSS/DOM docs totally unusable offline, even though I “downloaded” them in my user preferences before leaving.
- jimktrains2 8y agoQgis is a good, f/oss desktop gis system.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoDownload reading materials in PDF form or other offline friendly formatting and plan to read them during those times. If you are on mobile -- phone or tablet instead of a laptop -- some apps will let you take notes or whatever offline and sync up when internet is available. Do brainstorming type exercises at that time. Free time to actually think has real value.
- bart42_0 8y agoArt, without distractions from Facebook, Whatsapp, google, etc etc...
- dev_dull 8y agoGet out in nature and think about your problems. Go on walks. Hike. Take up photography and stargazing. Use the time to unplug. When you do return to your screen you’ll have a fresh prospective on a lot of your problems. You’ll also be happier and healthier.
- ryanwaggoner 8y agoI think this is fantastic advice, but only up to a point. Unplugging regularly to recharge is so important, but the length and percentage of time matters. OP might spend 80% of their time in parts of the world without internet, for weeks or months at a time. In that context, I don’t think this advice applies in the same way that it would for someone who spends a day or two offline every other month.
- kopo 8y agoCheck out kiwix or zeal. Allows reading entire archives of wikipedia/stackoverflow/ted talks etc etc offline. Plus search. Throw in elasticsearch and you get really powerful customizable search. You can also create your own archive of web content. Given the size of modern harddrives people have no idea how much quality content can happily live on your local machine. No internet required.
- leowoo91 8y agoTIL entire wikipedia is less than 100 GB when compressed.
- arthurcolle 8y agoThat's with no images, and iirc it also didn't include any of the math markup last time I looked at one of the xml dumps in one of the loaders (think it was kiwix)
- leowoo91 8y agoTotally forgot about images. I just dug little further and found this: "The size of the media files in Wikimedia Commons, which includes the images, videos and other media used across all the language-specific Wikipedias was described as well over 23 TB near the end of 2014" Considering 30 TB hdd costs around 1500$, still interesting.
- crtasm 8y agoIf you grab those WD Easystore 8tb drives when they're on sale you can have 32tb for around $560
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- yitchelle 8y agoObviously projects that do not required internet access. :-) But seriously, personally, I would do some writing. Either a blog post, or compose a letter / email (to be sent when Internet is back on). I would also read a physical book as I find the rather therapeutic.
- burtonator 8y agoSome sort of satellite constellation to bring Internet online for the masses.
- JensRantil 8y agogodoc, git and Google Cloud AppEngine SDK all works offline. That's all I need.
- hprotagonist 8y agoThere’s a whole bunch of pen-and-paper mathematics i need to relearn.
- nimonian 8y agoI like to write maths tutorials. Anything in particular you're interested in?
- janci 8y agoWriting project documentation.
- dabockster 8y agoAnything that can be run in a VM with port forwarding. If Docker can be run without a connection, that's another option as well.
- mitchtbaum 8y agoWe're gonna need a bigger internet.
- inimino 8y agoI have been using Go recently, and I do almost all my development with it offline. The docs are included and you can run a local doc server so everything you need to look up is as close as localhost:6060. It's also an ecosystem that encourages building on the standard library, unlike some other popular languages I could mention. I absolutely love the productivity and focus that this setup allows. I also have a ~/research directory full of academic papers, saved copies of web pages, for anything I want to implement or play with. When I don't feel like programming, there's plenty waiting for me to read, rather than needing to get online and probably distract myself. There's something very satisfying about being able to sit down and do productive work with what you have locally, and not needing to worry about losing productivity because the coffee shop wifi dropped out. On the other hand, unplugging in general is good for us and I agree with the other commenters' encouragements to get out in nature or talk to people face to face. If I'm on a train or plane, I'd much rather put my laptop away and engage with what's around me. Constant access to computing systems and networks is very new, and we know it is changing us, but we don't have the perspective to know how. The precautionary principle suggests we should spend as much time away from these systems as possible, especially for those of us who make our livings with them.
- deathanatos 8y agoI've been enjoying working on Rust code for the same reasons: Rust can, for every library you have in a project, generate static HTML documentation for all of them. The only part you need Internet for is downloading the dependencies, but that needs only be done once.
- wjossey 8y agoTwo years ago I went on vacation after having downloaded a bunch of the US Census and ACS datasets. I spent my days by the pool drinking Bahama Mamas and poking at the data, which was in a local Postgres instance. Some people like reading a book by the pool. I like looking at demographic data. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- jldugger 8y agoMy steam backlog =)
- edoo 8y agoWhenever my internet goes out I start tinkering on random things that almost immediately require internet searches to make progress. I also seem to forget the internet is out and continually open up search windows for all the new exciting things I'm working on.
- User23 8y agoHunting, trapping, marksmanship, gardening, building, and cooking.
- franzwong 8y agoI download online course videos to my mobile phone and watch them when internet is not available. I think the major problem for working on side project is you can’t access to the API reference when you don’t have the access to the internet.
- tomjen3 8y agoStallman downloads all his links and emails once every 24 hours and then process them. Might be worth considering doing something similar with tech blogs or what you follow. However what side projects you could work on really depends on what you are interested in. I would imagine that anything you could work on on a single laptop would qualify.
- maceurt 8y agoProgramming in C, because you can do a lot with the OS, and you can just download documentation before for libraries and stuff. You could also work on web design stuff if you don't need to use external assets. Also, coding simple games like sudoku, chess, checkers, tic tac toe, etc. is fun.