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Prepper Disk
- alangibson 1y agoThe "AI Chatbot" model feels a bit like an STC from 40K.
- literalAardvark 1y agoPretty much. It would also explain why STC's can't be recreated or extended with blueprints, though it wouldn't do much to explain why they can't be copied.
- exegete 1y agoIt’s an interesting thought but I think there are better ways to do this than having some external disk. You could download all of WikiPedia, medical articles, etc to a laptop to the same effect. A survivalist book is probably even better since it won’t rely on power. The product offering of an AI chatbot for when the power goes out made me laugh out loud.
- IlikeKitties 1y ago> The product offering of an AI chatbot for when the power goes out made me laugh out loud. To be fair, the current iteration of this is of course bullshit but imagine this in 10 years when raspberry pi sized devices can easily host AIs that outperform or at least match current best models and has been specifically trained to be an emergency assistant. Kinda reminds me of the public access defibrillators that talk you through an emergency [0]. I can see an AI Assistant be useful during emergencies. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zApKRGDs1sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zApKRGDs1sk
- 7952 1y agoI wonder if such a device could be a good counterpoint to cloud services in a business environment. Just as a reaction to the difficulty and cost of compliance when data is online.
- j4mie 1y ago"Please state the nature of the medical emergency"
- xnx 1y ago> in 10 years when raspberry pi sized devices Like a phone
- qwertox 1y agoStuff like this makes me think about the benefits which developing countries currently have. They have access to such a vast amount of information, like Wikipedia, any book on AA or torrents, YouTube tutorials, free AI chatbots and what not. Yet the social problems like the ones caused through corruption, localized conflicts and wars are so big, that none of this information is of any value. Who's to blame?
- IlikeKitties 1y agoBut don't a lot of developing countries have similar access? And especially torrenting is much more common in less developed countries where there's no copyright enforcement.
- geenkeuse 1y ago[dead]
- xtiansimon 1y ago> “…benefits which developing countries currently have.” The story of mobile phone use in African continent, where there are only the worst roads and no land lines, is an astonishing story of leaping forward through technology.
- 542354234235 1y agoIt is of value though. Asian farmers were able to use cell phones to check weather and market prices to be able to grow more and sell for a better price [1]. Mobile banking apps have allowed poor Kenyans access to formal financial services, improving financial stability for those most vulnerable [2]. Being able to send money to disparate family members safely and securely protects them from corrupt local informal networks. Access to modern technology developed in first world countries enable poor counties to skip over expensive intermediate steps, like going from no phones to cell towers without building out a land line network. The #saveourgirls social media campaign in response to the Boco Haram kidnappings was started locally, after frustration with lack of action by the inept/corrupt local government, and brought international pressure, support, and aid. [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2590291124000081 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S259029112... [2] https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/public-finance/how-mobile-banking-transforming-africa https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/p...
- garbagewoman 1y agoAn ai chatbot might be a more accessible way to access information. Also, batteries and solar exist
- danparsonson 1y agoExactly what you want during a disaster - a chatbot confidently hallucinating nonsense answers to your questions when you can't verify them.
- yorwba 1y agoHallucinated nonsense is easily prevented by restricting output to verbatim content from a pre-vetted knowledge base. Think fuzzy search for people who prefer to ask questions instead of listing keywords. I doubt this is what they've done here, but not all AI chatbots have to be thin wrappers around a large language model.
- garbagewoman 1y agoI wouldn’t be that hysterical Dan. It could be used to point the user in a direction that is helpful, in the same way as they are used now. Its well known that chatbots hallucinate, yet many people use them, by choice, because they find them helpful.
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoIt's not hysterical to point out a problem.
- garbagewoman 1y agoIt is - in my opinion - hysterical, to point out a single problem as if its the end of the world
- danparsonson 1y ago> end of the world And I'm the hysterical one?
- api 1y agoAn AI chatbot trained on massive amounts of knowledge about survival, farming, animal husbandry, small scale community management, home building, clothes making, etc would be immensely valuable. “I have chickens and one has stopped laying eggs and become lethargic. What could be the cause?” These things are great lookup tools, much better than web search, and being “jpegs for knowledge” you can pack a lot of knowledge into a small device. You have to check the results but having some old fashioned books on hand would help with that, as would some common sense. I agree about a separate device. A durable laptop and a solar panel to charge it would be best. A lot of special purpose devices are sold as a way to sell software since people won’t buy software. Sell a software and data bundle containing curated data and apps and such and nobody will buy it, but pair it with some e-waste and they will. Same goes for a lot of digital assistants and other gadgets. They could just be apps but people don’t buy apps so they have to come bundled with e-waste.
- mwcampbell 1y ago> These things are great lookup tools, much better than web search Here's an article that argues otherwise, convincingly IMO: https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/information-literacy-and-chatbots-as-search/ https://buttondown.com/maiht3k/archive/information-literacy-...
- jl6 1y agoI think most people would be better off just putting Kiwix on their phones: https://kiwix.org/en/applications/ https://kiwix.org/en/applications/
- dismalpedigree 1y agoThis prepper disk is almost assuredly just Kiwix server on a raspberry pi.
- prepperdisk 1y agoIt isn’t, actually. Kiwix, IIAB, Rachel, and a custom web interface and search implementation- along with licensed and commissioned content. Kiwix is cool (and a partner of ours) but a Prepper Disk is a lot more than Kiwix.
- hobofan 1y agoKiwix also offers a physical product just like this that comes in a few different flavours: https://kiwix.org/en/kiwix-hotspot https://kiwix.org/en/kiwix-hotspot
- xwat 1y agoHere are some Kiwix datasets for preppers https://library.kiwix.org/?lang=eng#lang=eng&tag=preppers https://library.kiwix.org/?lang=eng#lang=eng&tag=preppers (you may have to clear the URL params if you don't see any results)
- theodric 1y agoI would be concerned about long-term data viability on an SSD that would likely be mothballed until SHTF, especially in light of the recent update released by HTWingNut ( https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/unpowered-ssd-endurance-investigation-finds-severe-data-loss-and-performance-issues-reminds-us-of-the-importance-of-refreshing-backups https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/storage/unpowered... + https://youtu.be/rx3Y5x6uzKQ https://youtu.be/rx3Y5x6uzKQ )
- userbinator 1y agoInteresting how the comments on that article have a few "but I have much older SSDs which I stored unpowered fr over a decade and they're fine"... which is exactly what you'd expect of the MLC or even SLC flash that was common back then.
- nkrisc 1y agoI think I’d rather have as much of this information as possible in a laminated, ring-bound book with the holes in the pages reinforced. Also the content could be tightly edited and laid out to maximize the amount of information in the book. Of course that would actually be a lot of work to both write and manufacture, so better to just get something that will be useless the first time it gets wet or power runs out.
- garbagewoman 1y agoGetting something useless on purpose sounds like an odd thing to do
- rlupi 1y agoDo you mean an encyclopedia? I bet there are tons of physical encyclopedias on sale on Ebay.
- xattt 1y agoDoesn’t have to be an encyclopedia. It would be a reference guide or an enchiridion.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThe critics seem to forget how much space a traditional encyclopedia takes up. A device like this is ideal for data sharing during a crisis or in closed regimes, assuming electricity and digital devices are available.
- estsauver 1y agoPart of the reason I bought a new macbook with a decent amount of ram was that I wanted to make sure I could have a couple of local LLMs available locally just in case for some reason the frontierlabs/other models eventually became restricted.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- rcarmo 1y agoCute. I have a local instance of kiwix (mostly to avoid distractions) and can see how this would be useful.
- bombcar 1y agoI used to lose Internet access every spring when the snow would melt - a good time to see what I could still do without it. Answer is usually: Jellyfin, iTunes (local music), and various PDFs and kiwix. Surprisingly large amounts of software and even the OS slow to a crawl if they can't contact the Internet (but think they should be able to). Annoying.
- imglorp 1y agoIs there a public list of shtf type materials like this if someone wanted to collect or edit their own material?
- bombcar 1y agoThere are a number of various things you can find, depending on what you're looking for. Years ago I found a torrent called "The Ark" which is a collection of various other torrents from different sources, and includes all sorts of random data that could be quite useful in a shtf scenario. At 238GB it's not that large.
- multjoy 1y ago404 Media did an interview with the owner: https://www.404media.co/sales-of-hard-drives-prepper-disk-for-the-end-of-the-world-have-boomed-under-trump/ https://www.404media.co/sales-of-hard-drives-prepper-disk-fo...
- panki27 1y ago170€ for a "Raspberry Pi 4B with 2GB of RAM and a 512GB premium SD memory card". Any bets how long that SD card is gonna last?
- userbinator 1y agoA few years, if recent SSD retention experiments are any indication.
- mattlondon 1y agoI wonder how much useful info you could cram onto a 1.44mb floppy disk in just ascii files? Perhaps markdown with a basic TUI reader with hyperlinks? I guess the weakest link then would be finding a computer with a working floppy drive, but it is a fun thought experiment.
- xattt 1y agoIt’s tempting to assume that older technology is more reliable technology. Right now, that argument is being made for good reason to keep AM receivers in cars. Floppy discs are older, but are still complicated beasts. It’s not like you would be able to repair a broken unit with basic tools. Hard drives or whatever storage tech you can think of are similar, and you should use what is at hand. I would imagine that a flash drive, or an external SSD, remains more appropriate given the absence of mechanical parts. At the end of the day, information is information, and you’re better off transcribing it onto paper for true 100% reliability.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- josefritzishere 1y agoIt seems unlikely that collapse would ocurr in a sequence conveinient to the use of tech toys for survival. The correct steps and sequence are to read books, practice skills, buy seeds, build off-grid infrastructure. That doesnt mean zero tech, but it's strictly tertiary.
- RetroTechie 1y ago> It seems unlikely that collapse would ocurr in a sequence conveinient to the use of tech toys for survival. That's a common misunderstanding: Our 'installed base' of technology / equipment would not disappear or disintegrate in most types of collapse. Your gadgets would keep working just fine (hardware-wise, that is). What is susceptible to failure: communications (internet, cell networks, electronic payment systems, etc), power grid, logistics chains (supermarket supply, postal services etc), social structures, law & order (riots, looting), 3rd party-provided services, and probably more. Also: unless a km+ sized meteor hits, truly large-scale collapse is more likely to happen gradually rather than overnight. So: think power out, internet cut & riots in the street. With off-grid solar, and software (+data) that works offline, you can enjoy your tech toys just fine. The tricky thing here is the degree to which daily-used tech requires external services to do anything useful.