4 ms·

I like the idea of an LLM that acts as a public knowledge base. But that doomsday framing on the site is pretty annoying.

adsharma 7mo ago
This is not just a random idea. AlexNet -> Tansformers -> ChatGPT -> Claude Code -> Small LMs serving KBs Large LLMs could have a role in efficiently producing such KBs.
waynerisner 7mo ago
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.
- dogma1138 7mo ago
  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.
  - waynerisner 7mo ago
    [dead]
- Yokohiii 7mo ago
  They sell pi's with the names PrepperDisk and Doom Box. They probably thought it is funny. The general Idea of having knowledge backups / offline access is reasonable to me, the doomsday framing is seeding the idea that it's about collapse and that takes away from a something that is generally more useful.
  - pickleglitch 7mo ago
    This site isn't selling anything. It also doesn't say anything about doomsday, or system collapse, or anything sensational.
    - Yokohiii 7mo ago
      On the front page is a table with those descriptions and a "Price". Now that you point that out, I have no clue what "Price" means, it's not explained either. I guess the whole communication on the page is rather confusing. If I got anything wrong, I don't see it as _my_ mistake.
russellbeattie 7mo ago
Doomsday may not be the end of the world, but simply living in a country where you're being unjustifiably bombed by a foreign government lead by a delusional sociopath, and so access to information sources becomes limited.
- DoctorOetker 7mo ago
  What Gulf state do you live in? UAE?
- dogma1138 7mo ago
  You’ll be hanged from a construction crane if they’ll catch you with this project in Iran… :)
  - paulryanrogers 7mo ago
    Why?
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 7mo ago
      Because it'd likely be seen as western propaganda. It probably shows women with uncovered heads, gay people, etc.
  - dryarzeg 7mo ago
    This situation is not unique to Iran.
rendx 7mo ago
There are internet and electricity outages in many places over the world, controlled and uncontrolled. Also natural desasters take out infrastructure at least temporarily. One "popular" example for those whose horizon doesn't extend over US country borders: "Hurricane Katrina devastated communications infrastructure across the Gulf Coast, incapacitating telephone service, police and fire dispatch centers, and emergency radio systems. Almost three million customer phone lines were knocked out, telephone switching centers were seriously damaged, and 1,477 cell towers were incapacitated. Most of the radio stations and many television stations in the New Orleans area were knocked off the air. Paul McHale, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, summarized the damage by stating, “The magnitude of the storm was such that the local communications system wasn’t simply degraded; it was, at least for a period of time, destroyed." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter4.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-... "Our preparedness culture must also emphasize the importance of citizen and community preparedness. […] Thus, citizens and communities can help themselves by becoming more prepared. If every family maintained the resources to live in their homes without electricity and running water for three days, we could allocate more Federal, State, and local response resources to saving lives. Similarly, if every family developed their own emergency preparedness plan, they almost certainly would reduce the demand for outside emergency resources. As the 9/11 Commission Report states, “One clear lesson of September 11 is that individual civilians need to take responsibility for maximizing the probability that they will survive, should disaster strike." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter6.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-...
pickleglitch 7mo ago
What doomsday framing? Where on the site does it talk about anything resembling "doomsday?"

adsharma 7mo ago

This is not just a random idea. AlexNet -> Tansformers -> ChatGPT -> Claude Code -> Small LMs serving KBs Large LLMs could have a role in efficiently producing such KBs.

waynerisner 7mo ago

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.

dogma1138 7mo ago
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.
- waynerisner 7mo ago
  [dead]
Yokohiii 7mo ago
They sell pi's with the names PrepperDisk and Doom Box. They probably thought it is funny. The general Idea of having knowledge backups / offline access is reasonable to me, the doomsday framing is seeding the idea that it's about collapse and that takes away from a something that is generally more useful.
- pickleglitch 7mo ago
  This site isn't selling anything. It also doesn't say anything about doomsday, or system collapse, or anything sensational.
  - Yokohiii 7mo ago
    On the front page is a table with those descriptions and a "Price". Now that you point that out, I have no clue what "Price" means, it's not explained either. I guess the whole communication on the page is rather confusing. If I got anything wrong, I don't see it as _my_ mistake.

russellbeattie 7mo ago

Doomsday may not be the end of the world, but simply living in a country where you're being unjustifiably bombed by a foreign government lead by a delusional sociopath, and so access to information sources becomes limited.

DoctorOetker 7mo ago
What Gulf state do you live in? UAE?
dogma1138 7mo ago
You’ll be hanged from a construction crane if they’ll catch you with this project in Iran… :)
- paulryanrogers 7mo ago
  Why?
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 7mo ago
    Because it'd likely be seen as western propaganda. It probably shows women with uncovered heads, gay people, etc.
- dryarzeg 7mo ago
  This situation is not unique to Iran.

rendx 7mo ago

There are internet and electricity outages in many places over the world, controlled and uncontrolled. Also natural desasters take out infrastructure at least temporarily. One "popular" example for those whose horizon doesn't extend over US country borders: "Hurricane Katrina devastated communications infrastructure across the Gulf Coast, incapacitating telephone service, police and fire dispatch centers, and emergency radio systems. Almost three million customer phone lines were knocked out, telephone switching centers were seriously damaged, and 1,477 cell towers were incapacitated. Most of the radio stations and many television stations in the New Orleans area were knocked off the air. Paul McHale, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense, summarized the damage by stating, “The magnitude of the storm was such that the local communications system wasn’t simply degraded; it was, at least for a period of time, destroyed." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter4.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-... "Our preparedness culture must also emphasize the importance of citizen and community preparedness. […] Thus, citizens and communities can help themselves by becoming more prepared. If every family maintained the resources to live in their homes without electricity and running water for three days, we could allocate more Federal, State, and local response resources to saving lives. Similarly, if every family developed their own emergency preparedness plan, they almost certainly would reduce the demand for outside emergency resources. As the 9/11 Commission Report states, “One clear lesson of September 11 is that individual civilians need to take responsibility for maximizing the probability that they will survive, should disaster strike." https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-lessons-learned/chapter6.html https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/reports/katrina-...

pickleglitch 7mo ago

What doomsday framing? Where on the site does it talk about anything resembling "doomsday?"