21 ms·
Internet in a Box
- MathMonkeyMan 2y agoIt's the Innernette! <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9S2ciB-6jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9S2ciB-6jc>
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gnabgib 2y agoPopular in: 2023 (356 points, 120 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35750165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35750165 2021 (620 points, 142 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27568332
- gioazzi 2y agoBrilliant concept! I recently met the fine folks at Beekee who make something rather similar: https://beekee.ch/beekeebox/ https://beekee.ch/beekeebox/ It's an apparently simple problem on the surface, but quite hard to get it right... I once worked on a wireless network deployment for a transit refugee camp, and at least that was built on the assumption that some sort of Internet connection would be available at all times, making remote management possible. And even then it was tough to manage considering all other constraints. I can only imagine how hard it is to deliver this kind of service reliably when Internet is rarely if ever available.
- Bengalilol 2y agoDid you meet Beekee in Geneva? I bet those kind of boxes work very well when there are less than 30 connections at once. All in all, if it is about accessing useful information, I think this is somehow brilliant (as you wrote).
- gioazzi 2y agoThey are based in Switzerland as I am, but it so happened we met in Doha IIRC they support 40 concurrent users, and in their model that would always be a school class, which I guess shouldn’t be larger anyway
- myself248 2y agoOoo, there's another one to look at. There seem to be a bunch of these with variously-overlapping goals. Two more I'm aware of: https://bibliosansfrontieres.gitlab.io/olip/olip-documentation/en/ https://bibliosansfrontieres.gitlab.io/olip/olip-documentati... https://wrolpi.org/ https://wrolpi.org/ And I feel like the PirateBox concept is sort of adjacent.
- nobodyknowin 2y agoI saw a local agency demo their use of the pirate box for Wildland firefighting. They had a GIS team working on mapping updates to fire lines, cut lines, dozer paths, crew assignments, etc. And as required they'd upload everything to the pirate box and the commanders / captains could download the maps to their tablets. Amazing stuff all without internet.
- syncsynchalt 2y agoThe article is about devices that don't use internet access — they provide a shallow copy of wikipedia, learning sites, and the infrastructure for devices to connect and use these as if they were connected to the full network.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoI thought they meant this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg Chuckles aside, it's a cool concept.
- dmonitor 2y agoTheir device should definitely have a big red light on top of it
- jasoneckert 2y agoThe Internet has been stored safe on my desk since that time: https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/i-created-the-internet/theinternet.jpg https://jasoneckert.github.io/myblog/i-created-the-internet/...
- Brajeshwar 2y agoAnd I have a picture of the real one :-) https://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/113742187/in/album-72057594084120301 https://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/113742187/in/album-...
- al_borland 2y agoI have a very similar picture from The Henry Ford. Ars Technica unboxed it and tried it out. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/opening-an-internet-time-capsule-internet-in-a-box-for-win95/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/openi...
- voidUpdate 2y agoInteresting how the author doubts the integrity of shrinkwrapped floppies. Id expect them to last for ages, it's like a tape backup, just in a circle instead of a ribbon
- timeon 2y agoWe can say in two days: "It's over, April!"
- realo 2y agoSo this allows people in poor countries to have access ONLY to the best curated resources available on the Internet? And those people then have a better chance at a much better education? Why not in developed countries schools as well?
- skylerwiernik 2y agoSomeone already thought of this and uploaded all of the contents of the box to a website! You can find it at wikipedia.com
- sgt 2y agoThat's missing the point. Full Internet access is just too broad. Going to wikipedia and aimlessly browsing about is fun, but a more educative approach can narrow the focus for students and especially for younger learners. How to market it in developed countries is going to be a tough nut to crack though.
- bl4ckneon 2y agoWell there is nothing stopping any school in the developed world from loading this on to a pi or something and having everyone use it too. It's free and open source (from what I can tell). It's aimed at places with little to no, or unreliable, internet. So if you have normal internet speed there is nothing you can't get that's on the box. Also it seems that its not even a curated Wikipedia, it's just a full clone of it (assuming for whatever language your downloading)
- SamBam 2y agoPlenty of schools have network control over the devices that are used in schools, meaning that you can indeed narrow the focus by only allowing a few websites to be accessed. My kid's school uses a software called GoGuardian, which allows individual teachers to whitelist specific websites for the students in their class during their class period.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- netsharc 2y agoI remember encountering this project: https://piratebox.cc/faq https://piratebox.cc/faq , I even still have a compatible hardware at home. I wonder if allowing it to have instant messaging (including offline asynchronous messaging) would change how people in a small community communicate each other. I wonder if, for one, it would induce Internet trolling.
- blacksmith_tb 2y agoDoesn't seem likely - the key to trolling is lack of accountability, in a small community everyone would know you were being a jerk?
- esseph 2y agoSome people REALLY like jerks.
- netsharc 2y agoWhat if the system allowed anonymous accounts? It'd be interesting if one had to go visit an admin (in real life) to get an account, and accounts are really associated with people.
- squigz 2y agoGuys... people are jerks IRL too, in small communities too.
- blacksmith_tb 2y agoSure, but no one gives them a bag of tomatoes / a pie / helps fix their roof? Being a jerk to people IRL has obvious consequences.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoI have one of these, not in operation but could deploy by just plugging into power and attaching it to a higher gain antenna. It does have a message-baord type function included, but it's anonymous and there's no sign-in so there's also no way to administer it or edit / delete your own messages (piratebox is a product of a more innocent age, maybe). It's also possible to upload files to it, anonymously. Both of these things make me worry about liability in the event of the type of jerks where the term "jerk" is possibly the nicest way to describe the person. (I have it on a GL.Inet Mango device and it took me a lot of digging to find the install binaries and instructions, and I don't even know if said binaries and instructions specific to the Mango exist anymore - I don't have the time / energy / motivation to try to dig it up again, I remember there were lots of trails that led to almost the right information)
- bobsmooth 2y agoThis is cool but I feel like buying a 1000 count of cheap USB sticks and loading them with wikipedia or whatever would be cheaper and more useful.
- jackphilson 2y agoprobably access to chatgpt4o is a million times more useful than wikipedia imo
- cookie_monsta 2y agoYes, why does the developing world need an education system when we could be flooding them with AI hallucinations?
- dymk 2y agoCool all they'll need to do is find $20/month per person for the subscription, how hard could that be in rural South Africa or Nepal?
- urbandw311er 2y agoAnd an internet connection
- minhazm 2y agoWhat would they be plugging these USB flash drives into? Underdeveloped countries / regions have very low penetration with traditional laptops / desktop computers. But nearly everyone has a smartphone of some kind, which has WiFi. That's the reason the form factor of these are mobile hotspots.
- malux85 2y agoThis is such a cool idea. When I was about 7-8 years old I used to get the "Tell me why" books, which were books that had 5-ish pages on all sorts of different topics. https://archive.org/details/heresmoretellmew0000leok/page/n335/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/heresmoretellmew0000leok/page/n3... These books sparked a lifelong curiosity in learning, I would sit for hours and hours and read them in my room. I hope that internet in a box inspires another generation of me's out there, who, like me, wouldn't otherwise have had access to this info.
- amelius 2y agoWhat would it take to give these poor children a Starlink connection?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- WorldWideWebb 2y agoBeing indebted to Elon and the Orange Administration. Probably not the best solution to a problem like this.
- esseph 2y agoSo far my answer would be: "US government subsidies"
- 9x39 2y agoThe answer to ubiquitous Internet in an area is going to look like 5G and mobiles, not highly valuable terminals you now saddle them with having to guard.
- kh_hk 2y agoSeeing the demo I noticed it looks like this "prepper disk" that was submitted days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43790409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43790409 Makes me think the prepper disk was maybe a rebrand of internet in a box without proper attribution?
- entropie 2y ago> PrepperDisk is similar to a DIY, open-source project that started in 2012 called Internet in a Box and which has become popular in rural areas in developing countries where internet access is sparse. The idea is basically that you can carry around an external hard drive-sized, mini version of the internet with you that creates a local network your phone or laptop can access. > 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... From the hn-thread. You might be right.
- prepperdisk 2y agoWe are actually IIAB partners, we attribute to all the various OOS projects (Kiwix, IIAB)in our credits and comply with all the licensing. Our goal was just to make those packages polished as a consumer product and add newer content (some licensed and some commissioned ).
- blacksmith_tb 2y agoCurious why you went with a 512GB SD card for the Prepperdisk, instead of a usb drive? I guess it might make the enclosure bigger, but every RPi thing I have built has been undone by SD card corruption (unless I used the overlay filesystem).
- int_19h 2y agoThese things shouldn't need writable FS though.
- prepperdisk 2y ago
- dcreater 2y agoI've seen many such projects - while the problem is real, these solutions in actual practice/deployment are gimmicky and questionably useful at best. I'd like to hear from the actual people using this on a day to day basis - if any exist.
- thefreeman 2y agoI think part of the point is you _can't_ hear from them... because they don't have access to the real internet?
- flaburgan 2y agoWith the crazy news we have those past months, I actually started to wonder what would happen if internet went offline "for real" (let's say, several weeks) here in developed countries. I know we can easily download Wikipedia and Openstreetmap. But what else? And how to share it? I can do a hotspot home, but would my neighbors understand it? I would need some kind of captive portal to tell them when they connect to me. And then, could they repeat the hotspot, to build a mesh? I know there are projects to do that, but what do they accomplish exactly? I remember 10 years ago, in Ubutu, Empathy was allowing me to chat with people connected to the same network than me. No account, no registration. That would be very useful. Does the Pirate box do all of that? How extensible is it?
- tarruda 2y agoI wonder if it is possible to have some kind of P2P protocol similar to BitTorrent where one can seed incremental snapshots of subsets of the internet. Something like the internet archive, but fully decentralized.
- metasj 2y agoSounds like something r/datahoarders would be / may already be into.
- pixl97 2y agoI started in the ISP business and did Wisp stuff for a while so doing this wouldn't be too difficult for me. Hardest thing would be scaling it with the average equipment and user would have.
- ericb 2y agoI would add an LLM like QwQ-32B to the mix--that has a ton of compressed knowledge embedded in it. I would also store it in a steel Oscar the Grouch style trash can for a cheap faraday cage, which gets you protection from solar flares, and EMP blasts.
- int_19h 2y ago
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoVaguely interesting, but I am far more interested in actual connective technology. The Commotion "Internet in a Suitcase" project (~2012) was much more up my alley. Is much more the sort of thing I wish that, for example the State Department would still fund. > Commotion relies on several open source projects: OLSR, OpenWrt, OpenBTS, and Serval project. So, mesh, wifi, cellular, and voice technologies, packaged onto semi affordable hardware... That's the real stuff! That's what democratic values should look like, that'a what we could build that would embody our (USA's) founding principles, would fight tyrant info-control. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commotion_Wireless https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commotion_Wireless
- yapyap 2y agoI 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 people and earn money by doing anything cause they have seen the way you can live in luxury and start idolizing that. Or you give them just the useful parts of the internet.
- freefrog1234 2y agoI saw many projects while working in Cambodia, including One-Laptop-Per-Child, projects designed to share market information with farmers, etc and none made an impact like mobile phones. One project that was semi-successful were USAID sponsored internet cafes that were supposed to enable access to political information just before an election. The USAID staff were annoyed to find most Cambodians used them for international VoIP calls. Never assume you know better than the end users what they want from the internet. Now mobile companies move in so fast to conflict countries (from my experience in Afghanistan and Iraq), internet access is up there with electricity on the list of requirements.
- thenthenthen 2y ago
- didgeoridoo 2y ago“This, Jen, is the Internet.”
- zkiihne 2y agoI want this but an LLM.
- notarealllama 2y agoOpenwebUI and you can run quantized or low end models (Llama 3 4b or gemma 4b) on a 4-6gb graphic card. It's a game changer to run local (no usage caps for a weekend blitz project)
- drittich 2y agoI played with gemma-3-4b-it-qat recently using a mid-tier graphics card and a few things stood out to me: 1. It was very fast, between 35 and 70 tokens per second, with initial response in under 200ms. That kind of speed is a feature. 2. It was very useful. I had a brainstorming session with it that was both fluid and fruitful 3. I can't wrap my head around so much knowledge being contained in about 3GB of data. It seems to know something about everything. Imperfect, but very useful.
- bdcravens 2y agoI feel like this could be useful in an incarcerated environment, where they offer computer classes but can't grant access to the Internet for security reasons.
- nonrandomstring 2y agoThat sounds like the last few universities I taught in. (quite seriously).
- aaron695 2y agoInternet in a Box DOES NOT WORK I don't know how many more times this needs to be proven. You do not understand data, you do not understand the reality around you, you do not understand 80:20 style engineering rules, you can't look at previous implementations of the Internet in a Box and see it didn't work. Worse, you now live in a Starlink era where you can give them a real "Internet in a Box" and there is no solution people can just roll out. Talking a proper Linux setup, real hacker and nerd stuff, but because it's not Data Hording 101 no one will tackle it. Internet in a Box is a great example of why Western foreign aid is failing and China is moving in. The West no longer builds infrastructure for the poor (like a Linux build) and feeds them wishy washy stuff. Facebook does more for the poor in this area.
- nchmy 2y agoCould you elaborate on/point us towards resources about why it does not work?
- aaron695 2y agoIt's been around since 2012 and the best Wikipedia has - "explored using these boxes in the Dominican Republic for three months." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box Where is a follow up study 3 years later? Are there any follow up studies [1]? (I have said in past comments the medical version might work, it failed in the Dominican Republic [1]) One follow up study - [1] https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2023-01/Internet%20In%20a%20Box.pdf https://www.sipa.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/2023-01/In... which is not real positive. Why does it not work? An idea to think about, physical encyclopedias and university textbooks have been around forever and accessible. I've worked in schools with 1000's on one ADSL trying to use proxies to cache. I've volunteered for a few years in country on mobile apps for use in very low PPI villages without internet. I'm not coming at this with zero experience. It's impossible to discuss these things on HN, there is neither the technical or process knowledge here, I could be totally wrong but I have looked hard to disprove myself. The solution I propose Starlink -> box with billing / access control + terabytes of offline vids/books + fun online games, that an idiot with determination can manage and make a profit or run free and works well in a country where the MPAA doesn't exist.
- einpoklum 2y agoIt is the opposite of Internet in a box. This exemplifies how, in our day and age, "The Internet" is mostly a one-sided experience where a few large organizations offer a bunch of content, which they control, for your perusal. It would have been more "Internet in a box" if it would have helped people set up their own services and pages; and if it were extensible using other radio-capable devices.
- SamBam 2y agoI was thinking this too. They do talk about using FileZilla or Nextcloud to upload files, and mention using CMSes like WordPress, so maybe it's quite possible, just not a big focus. I agree that making it easy for teachers, students, and anyone in the community making their own discoverable webpages would be a great aspect to this.
- avni5 2y agoTeachers / organizers being able to share their own content is a top-requested feature indeed. A few years ago, we implemented functionality similar to LibraryBox, to mount "teacher content" from USB sticks / drives and make it instantaneously available for students. More recently, after a teacher in the Yucatan requested it in November, we implemented functionality to enable students to be able to submit homework privately to their teacher OR share their summer photos (or any other content) akin to a traditional community bulletin board with their peers, i.e., Upload2USB. There's much more to be done, but the ability to share your own content and create community exchanges of information and ideas is central to Internet-in-a-Box's (IIAB)'s ethos. Related FAQ #4, #5 here: - https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#Can_teachers_display_their_own_content https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#Can_teachers_display_their_own_c...? - https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#Can_students_upload_their_own_work https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#Can_students_upload_their_own_wo...? and README: - https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/roles/usb_lib/README.rst https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/roles/usb_lib/READM...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- zeroday28 2y agoInternet with privacy
- teleforce 2y agoThis is the limited offline version of the Internet for the rural communities but what we need is the local-first version of the Internet for the rural community [1]. Fun facts, about one third or 2.6 Billions of the world's population has no or very limited Internet connectivity [2]. The main root cause is most probably power not the infrastructure. Most of the people in authority probably don't realize that this rural connectivity does not need a fast high speed network as long as it has connectivity. It can be slow as kbps bandwidth, a kind of "sipping" Bittorent based download, but a download nonetheless. The main problem of the Internet connectivity it's not really the infrastructure itself but the overall power budget requirements for the connectivity infrastructure. We need to bring back the very efficient wireles modulation for the remote and rural Internet as exemplify by the DMR with its very efficient 4-FSK [3],[4]. This type of wireless modulation employed constant envelope modulation that is far more efficient (8 to 15 times more efficient) than the alternative TETRA with comparable bandwith [5]. It's reported that DMR operates on 1 kWh per day while TETRA is on 15 kWh per day thus the former can be sustained by only solar panels but not the latter. Please note that TETRA itself is not a very efficient modulation with π⁄4 differential quadrature phase-shift keying (π⁄4-DPSK) since it requires linear amplifiers due to its non-constant envelope wireles modulation. It's even worst for typical OFDM based system (e.g Wi-Fi HaLoW, LTE, 5G, etc) [6]. This is because a similar power budget setup to DMR would have required probably around 100 times more power or more than 100 kWh per day including the air-conditioning systems for the linear power amplifier systems [7]. Thus these remote and rural base stations can be potentially powered by merely solar panels and the infrastructure does not need to be expensive since the base station structure can be made from bamboo [8]. [1] Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud: https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/ https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/ [2] About one-third of the global population, or 2.6 billion people, remain offline. https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2023-09-12-universal-and-meaningful-connectivity-by-2030.aspx https://www.itu.int/en/mediacentre/Pages/PR-2023-09-12-unive... [3] Digital mobile radio (DMR): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_mobile_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_mobile_radio [4] DMR networks for health emergency management: A case study: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220761899_DMR_networks_for_health_emergency_management_A_case_study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220761899_DMR_netwo... [5] TETRA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TETRA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TETRA [6] Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-division_multiplexing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthogonal_frequency-division_... [7] Base Station ON-OFF Switching in 5G Wireless Networks: Approaches and Challenges: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315696556_Base_Station_ON-OFF_Switching_in_5G_Wireless_Networks_Approaches_and_Challenges https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315696556_Base_Stat... [8] IEEE Connecting the Unconnected (CTU) 2022 Challenge Winners: https://ctu.ieee.org/challenge/2022-ctu-challenge-2/ https://ctu.ieee.org/challenge/2022-ctu-challenge-2/
- caseyy 2y agoI wonder if Starlink et al won't soon solve the global internet access problem.
- metasj 2y agoEvery such provider likes to play games with who they give good rates to or who they exclude altogether from their network. People said the same about cellular access and it's still far too expensive for most people in most rural areas.
- freefrog1234 2y agoWhich countries are you referring to? I know from personal experience everyone in Cambodia and Afghanistan owns a mobile phone with internet access. They might not have a computer or reliable power, but they have Facebook accounts. Rest of ASEAN has excellent coverage as well, and I've heard Africa is similar
- GuinansEyebrows 2y agoIt's a rare for-profit corporation that will solve a global problem. Even less common, one headed by a person like Elon Musk.
- asdefghyk 2y agoThis article made me remember, that in the early 90s there was a service to retrieve any webpage by email
- dredmorbius 2y agoRMS still largely browses in this way: I generally do not connect to web sites from my own machine, aside from a few sites I have some special relationship with. I usually fetch web pages from other sites by sending mail to a program (see <https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/womb/hacks.git>) that fetches them, much like wget, and then mails them back to me. Then I look at them using a web browser, unless it is easy to see the text in the HTML page directly. I usually try lynx first, then a graphical browser if the page needs it. <https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html>
- asdefghyk 2y agoA feature that would be good to have is if a "Internet in a Box" could also store the update files for serving to other "internet in Box" machines. ( However having worked as a technical software tester in similar systems for over 20 years , its probably to complex to implement reliably, being able to handle all the edge cases. Is my GUESS )
- iwantonething 2y agoI would love a little box that contains a huge database of info with an LLM on top that I could use offline.
- avni5 2y agoFor small pieces of content, doable through the IIAB implementation of usb_lib and upload2usb. Content is also easily available to client machines that are connecting to the IIAB. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814433#43816392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43814433#43816392 For less ephemeral learning bouquets (i.e., curated content), an implementor can customize their IIAB their specific content and then image/clone as needed. https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#How_do_I_customize_my_Internet-in-a-Box_home_page https://wiki.iiab.io/go/FAQ#How_do_I_customize_my_Internet-i...?
- yishanchuan 2y ago[flagged]
- aspectmin 2y agoSuch a cool idea. In addition to Wikipedia, I’d love to see a mirror of all the health (NIH) and similar data - key imagery, for example the human body - (wishful) chatGPT 4o
- asdefghyk 2y agoThis seems to be the Wikipedia webpage for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box
- metasj 2y agoThere's also a longer overview here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box And (when supplies return) you can get one in a 3d-printed box with Wikipedia pre-installed here: https://store.wikimedia.org/products/internet-in-a-box https://store.wikimedia.org/products/internet-in-a-box Sustained by a wonderful international community of builders, authors, and translators (and always looking for more to join in)
- aspectmin 2y agoA mirror of Khan Academy would be great as well.
- FerretFred 2y agoThat's already an option on IIAB.
- Uptrenda 2y agoThis has off-grid written all over it. You could build your own content pool for education + entertain and you would never have to pay a forever subscription for an Internet connection. (Assuming you don't work online or something.) Quite an interesting idea to consider how to add the tools to this so its practical to unplug. This idea appeals to me a lot tbh.
- Brajeshwar 2y agoI’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 (one of the most remote corner of India). We did and I got a few young kids to be the maintainer, have a few desktop (not Laptop) that they carry around and watch videos to learn to program. It was good while it lasted. Now, those isolated places that I was scared to go alone when I was a kid have fiber Internet connections. On a fun note, I do have a picture of an "Internet in a Box". This was Detroit in the mid 2000s. https://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/113742187/in/album-72057594084120301 https://www.flickr.com/photos/brajeshwar/113742187/in/album-... 1. https://www.mars.college https://www.mars.college
- sans_souse 2y agoAwesome!
- fitsumbelay 2y agoReminds me of PirateBox/Library Box -- more the latter in terms of mission -- but w/ RPI instead of a router running OpenWRT (which was a wild experience ....)
- audiodude 2y agoVolunteer for Kiwix here (https://kiwix.org https://kiwix.org), we do a lot of offline Wikipedia stuff. I've personally worked on MWOffliner (https://github.com/openzim/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 https://wp1.openzim.org/#/selections/user) to create "selections" which let you have your own custom version of Wikipedia, using categories that you define, WikiProjects, or even custom SPARQL queries.
- freedomben 2y agoNeat, thanks! I'm CTO of Ameelio (non-profit) and have been eyeing Kiwix for awhile. Getting content to incarcerated people is a unique challenge due to the exceptional security requirements, and an offline solution like kiwix might fit in well. Being able to narrow down categories is a huge capability for us. Thank you!
- gehwartzen 2y agoJust wanted to comment on what a great mission Ameelio seems to have! Glad you guys are helping some of the most unseen in our society. Kudos!
- benoitberaud 2y agoFeel free to reach to us (Kiwix), we've already helped NGO deploy our content to prisons for the exact reason you mention.
- freedomben 2y agoNeat, thanks! I'll definitely do that :-)
- strofocles 2y agoMay I suggest somebody out of your company reviews the website. It is not clear to me what you do, what the apps do and so on. The copy is also kind of abstract "we make the world a better place" type of copy. From your comment I understand you do good work and would be a shame for people new to your products to struggle understanding what are you doing.
- aussieguy1234 2y agoLet put this "internet in a box" and send it via baloon into North Korea
- lutusp 2y ago> ... Now you too can put the internet in a box and customize it with the very best free content for your school, clinic or family! Yes ! And at very low cost! It doesn't require a network, a power connection or high technology! It prepares its users for adult life! How can people read this article and not think, "Wait ... don't we already have books?"
- zipping1549 2y agoBooks - take up a lot of space - are not free & not necessarily cheap - are not searchable - take a lot of effort to index - are heavy, prone to damage & loss - cannot be accessed by multiple users simultaneously - need physical copy to back up
- lutusp 2y agoMost of these points are true for computer media as well if separated from some degree of computer power, especially "not necessarily cheap". > ... need physical copy to back up Certainly true for computer storage, which, if left to the whims of nature and given time, will self-destruct. Years ago I got a call from Tom Clancy, who was writing "Hunt for Red October" using my word processor "Apple Writer." He said a diskette had become unreadable and asked how to recover its contents. I delivered the bad news and recommended that he use his backup diskette. I'm sure you can guess how that turned out.
- nsonha 2y agoSo by intent it's like a CDN node, but decentralized
- Sparkyte 2y agoTitle reminds me of that time Moss introduces Jen to the internet.
- pryelluw 2y agoI don’t think the elders of the internet would mind.
- asdefghyk 2y agoReminds me of a research paper I once saw many years ago.. It described a dual caching ( web traffic) proxy system. with a (very) slow/ unreliable link in between. The proxies worked together to compress the data as it was transferred across the link. ( The proxy on the receiving sided cached information and only retried if it had changed.) My recollection is it also had options to reduce the resolution of images.
- VikingCoder 2y agoSo if I bought the $58 one from the Wikipedia Store... What exact solar products (panels, battery, converter?) would I need to buy, near Chicago, to run one of these 24/7, year round, and let's say it's gotta be up and running most of the time - say, 99% of the time. (That means it can be down over 3 days a year, and still be acceptable to me.)
- pastage 2y agoThis is not for that kind of setup, this is more of a button you press to get internet when you need it IMHO. It is 1 watt idle, so you need 24Wh to keep it running if there is no sun. On bad short days you might get 5% of solar power. A battery system might lose you 30% on that. Uptime is not primarily an technical issue, it depends on what your goals, skills and needs are.
- jzemeocala 2y agoI actually did something just like this with the second raspberry pi and an offline copy of Wikipedia. Although I don't know this devices specs I recall being able to reliably power the pi 2b + a 3.5 inch touchscreen with a random 15,000mah solar power Bank from amazon
- godelski 2y agoIt is running a Pi Zero 2 W, and that should run max draw 2.5A@5V (12.5W)[0]. So a Watt hr is using a Watt for an hour. So the question is how many hours continuously you would allow your Pi to run. For 24hrs, that's 24hrs*12.5W = 300Whrs. Just for an estimate, a shargeek is $100 and will give you 24 Whrs[1]. I'm sure you could build your own solution for much better, but assuming since you're asking, I'm assuming this isn't a great option. So probably a bit more expensive than you're thinking. Especially if you're putting it outside, as you'll need to make the thing more secure from weather. But also the good news is you probably aren't going to actually be pulling those 12.5Ws on your pi. You should probably measure and see. For solar, I'm not sure especially since you'll need to adjust for your requirements. But there are nice resources that can tell you average capacity, but be careful to note that these will usually show averages and you're going to be significantly affected by seasons in Chicago. Honestly, I'd get a small battery (like for a phone) and hook it up to an outlet and tuck it away somewhere. That's a much cheaper option. Even if you're "going rogue" with it... the power draw is so little you won't really notice it. [0] https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-started.html#power-supply https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/computers/getting-... [1] https://sharge.com/products/shargeek-170 https://sharge.com/products/shargeek-170
- ninjazee124 2y ago"This Jen, is the internet"
- dredmorbius 2y agoFor the culturally deprived: <https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/the-it-crowd-the-internet/ https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/the-it-crowd-the-i...>
- lovegrenoble 2y agoBrilliant idea btw!
- petesergeant 2y agoSurprised that there are still so many people without access to the internet[0], and even more surprised that that's true in India and China, both of which have pretty high population densities (in most areas, but also, those are the areas people live in, obviously). > But these user figures also suggest that 652 million people in India did not use the internet at the beginning of 2025, suggesting that 44.7 percent of the population remained “offline” at the start of the year.[1] I guess I'm mentally comparing this to SE Asia, where smart phone usage (and cell coverage) is ubiquitous; Vietnam at 80%, Philippines at 75%, Thailand at literally everyone. Fewer in Indonesia, but geography there is especially challenging 0: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1155552/countries-highest-number-lacking-internet/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1155552/countries-highes... 1: https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-india https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2025-india
- Akatama 2y agoHey everyone! I actually recently learned about Internet-in-a-Box myself and started contributing. Its cool to see that for the most part people seem to think this is a positive idea! Internet-in-a-Box has been around for a while (at least 10 years) and it's a great project with a lot of very passionate people working on it.
- rishikeshs 2y agoI was thinking about this recently! Can we make an LLM-in-a-box ?
- npteljes 2y agoThe ability is there for sure: https://www.prepperdisk.com/products/prepper-disk-premium-ai-1tb-device-with-ai-chatbot-llm-preorder https://www.prepperdisk.com/products/prepper-disk-premium-ai...
- GuinansEyebrows 2y agoOh good! Offline slop! /s
- fsckboy 2y ago>I also need an IC to convert the I2S signal (currently sent to the MAX98357A) to a headphone output. I haven't researched options yet. The motherboard will need additional routing to send the I2S signal from the ESP32-S3 to both the MAX98357A and this new IC. Suggestions welcome! isn't a headphone just a high impedance speaker? you just grab the same output that goes to the speakers and reroute it through a big resistor to the headphones. did a little searching, here you go (the extra resistance isn't that great) https://samtechpro.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-use-speaker-output-for.html https://samtechpro.blogspot.com/2014/03/how-to-use-speaker-o... put your efforts into stereo, speaker and headphones, why wouldn't stereo set the stage for more complex brain development?
- denysvitali 2y agoWrong discussion?
- kajal0302 2y ago[dead]
- CoolDogs 2y agoHuge respect to everyone who’s worked on this, it's really cool!
- keepamovin 2y agoI like the idea of a hardware set up for this. One thing I'm considering for DiskerNet (dn - an offline, searchable, curated archive of the web that works in a normal browser) is using NNCP for updates. That way you can "request" pages that aren't in the archive, and "patch" them in from hardware updates later, USB sticks, floppies (haha) - whatever! And securely, thanks to the crypto in NNCP. If anyone has a better idea of a protocol for this than NNCP, please suggest at: https://github.com/DO-SAY-GO/dn/issues/221 https://github.com/DO-SAY-GO/dn/issues/221
- FerretFred 2y agoI've set up IIAB and tried Kiwix as well. I used a Pi Zero 2 and as it's only me using it, I found the user experience was good, although given the Zero's power, not high-speed. I managed to gain enough knowledge to create my own ZIM files of some selected YouTube content ( including my own). Being aware of the recent propensity of useful data to "vanish" I've approached a couple of online content providers to see if they'd ask to get their content added to Kiwix: sadly I heard nothing back, but I'll keep trying.
- gaopeng860330 2y ago[dead]
- dragonw 2y agoThis could be helpful even for people who already have internet access. The internet is full of distractions, and we often end up seeing ads instead of actually learning something. It would be great to create personal collections of useful websites and have a powerful search tool to explore them—without relying on Google and getting sidetracked. Right now, Kiwix’s search function is quite basic and doesn’t work well with large amounts of content. It might be worth exploring the use of a generative language model or embedding model to improve its accuracy and usefulness.
- rollcat 2y agoThese devices are insanely underpowered for running LMs. We've had pretty decent search long before the current hype wave. Postgres has built-in support for FTS in multiple languages[1]; if you want to get fancy you can maybe throw in a table of common synonyms. [1]: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/textsearch-intro.html https://www.postgresql.org/docs/17/textsearch-intro.html Otherwise agreed.
- RenThraysk 2y agoADLink make Pocket AI https://www.adlinktech.com/en/pocket-ai-with-nvidia-rtx-a500-egpu https://www.adlinktech.com/en/pocket-ai-with-nvidia-rtx-a500...
- rollcat 2y agoYeah that's $350 vs $35 - just to run text search?
- RenThraysk 2y agoI don't think determining factor is price, it is how easy or hands off the appliance can be. Every postgres search implementation has atleast one internet connected postgres nerd on standby.
- 2y ago
- renegat0x0 2y agoWhile I did not put Internet in a box I put "search" in a box. https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database Contains Internet links, channels, etc. Work in progress. You can find various domains, channels etc.
- flobosg 2y agoSomewhat related: Cuba’s “El Paquete Semanal” – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36285363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36285363)
- joncrane 2y agoThis is what I immediately thought of. "El Paquete" is an ingenious solution to the issues on the island.
- drmacak 2y agoWould be great to have this kind of internet in box but for 90s or 00s internet.
- GuB-42 2y agoIt is a bit of a tangent, but I noticed that the picture on the lower right features an OLPC XO laptop. These are very interesting little machines from around 2010 [1], I wonder if some of them are still around today. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Laptop_per_Child
- whywhywhywhy 2y agoThey never really delivered on the promise and the non-profit structuring of the org wasn’t conducive to actually delivering a product.
- npteljes 2y agoThere is some on ebay, at least.
- xvokcarts 2y agoHow does it work?
- tulangdo 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- kolleykibber 2y agoHave to mention World Possible (https://worldpossible.org/ https://worldpossible.org/) here. They are doing amazing similar work, with rpis and Intel CAP servers. They also have Datapost (https://datapost.site/map https://datapost.site/map) which uses android phones as data carriers between the remote location and the Internet, for email, stats and updates.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- asdefghyk 2y agoLow bandwidth recollections I have Dialup modems , 2400 baud 33K and finally 56K Dialup connections early in morning, say 5 - 6 am would give very noticeably faster webpage loading times Mail client ( like Eudora email client) connect and just load email headers ( or titles) then select which emails I wanted to retrieve the bodies for... This would have been early 90s to early 2000s , when I stopped using dial up connection.
- souhail_dev 2y agoraspberry pi + SSD + http server
- katabasis 2y agoI'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 only allowed access to an allowed list of sites, defaulting to a list of educational projects). If no one produces such a device I may need to make one myself by the time my toddler gets old enough to go online.
- daniel_iversen 2y agoYou could maybe install something like NextDNS? (even the free version might cut it) - I think that can block major categories including. the ones you mention.
- fritzo 2y agoIt's exciting seeing grassroots censorship efforts like this.
- settsu 2y agoThat is entirely not how a healthy society works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- fritzo 2y agoDo you think katabasis' proposal is unhealthy for a society? It strikes me as healthy for parents to keep their kids at ideological home during an information pandemic, to provide access to educational material and shelter from social media.
- jeffhuys 2y agoI think your original comment was mostly parsed as sarcastic.
- JasserInicide 2y agoThe fact that this has a promotional image from someone using one of those One Laptop per Child laptops (which was an abject failure) just says to me this is another misguided "white savior" attempt to solve a problem in parts of the world they don't fully understand.
- econ 2y agoAgreed, pirate box was more fun.
- danielktdoranie 2y ago[flagged]
- burtness 2y agoMan, you really suck
- danielktdoranie 2y agoNo, they really stink. Have you been to India? Have you been around large groups of Indian men? They smell so bad it's offensive.
- DyslexicAtheist 2y agoI understand the main use-case, but wonder if there is another one: distracted, and social media exhausted Tech workers, or distracted writers, ... people who might not want to kill all access entirely but maintain accessibility to selected sources of information (Gutenberg, Wikipedia, anything that is on libgen lol). Like an offline whitelist of sources you trust not to distract you while you're reading that 1000+ page book.
- darkmodeduck 2y ago[flagged]
- m3047 2y agoNot a collab environment (or wifi firing range), more of a curated collection of mostly static resources. But it's a good idea.
- ashoeafoot 2y agoCould thos run a ai emulation layer, so you can experience reddit without the tubes?
- mdnahas 2y agoI tried to send Wikipedia (Kiwix) in 3 languages, free ebooks, and other digital goodies to a refugees camp. I mailed it twice on a large SD card that would work in the recipient’s phone. But it never arrived. I presume stole or censored along the way.