3 ms·

I 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

I 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 get lost very often. It was during that time when it was drilled into my head that the network access comes and goes. That it should not be taken for granted. So a lot of the stuff that I use nowadays, I also have in an offline format. I keep offline docs either in pdf or in html format of most of the programming languages and frameworks that I use. I keep the source code of various projects that are essential to me. I keep a local wiki with notes on various things that are useful to me. Obviously it's not enough for a major catastrophe but it's better than nothing. I'm by no means a prepper, but I also believe that each of us should be prepared for short term disruptions of various kinds. The network should not be taken for granted.

cortesoft 7mo ago
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.
- kirubakaran 7mo ago
  Have you seen this Monty Python skit of Four Yorkshiremen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
- mememememememo 7mo ago
  Email IRC Gopher etc. download. Just connect 10 min a day.
badsectoracula 7mo ago
Yeah, that is normal for me too. If i find any article that i think is interesting i use SingleFile to download a local copy and ytdlp to download any video i find interesting/informational (e.g tutorials/howtos/etc). I avoid cloud-based stuff, preferring to use local/desktop software instead (and 99.9% of it is open source). And when it comes to AI i use local models only - with inference engines written in C++ (to avoid the dependency hell that is Python - which for some reason seems 100x worse when it comes to AI projects too). And yeah, i have downloaded Wikipedia (in ZIM format) :-P It isn't really for some doomsday preparation reason, it is just that sometimes the internet doesn't work (it doesn't happen often but it does happen) or i do not have internet access for whatever reason or stuff simply disappears/changes. In fact just yesterday night i wanted to lookup how something is done in Bash and after trying to search for it, i noticed my Internet wasn't working (it took ~1h to resume, it was quite late in the night). So i just started a local LLM and asked that instead :-P (i do have the info manuals for bash - and other stuff - installed but they are a PITA to search if you don't know exactly what you're looking for). One thing that annoys me though is that it is basically impossible to have an offline copy of a modern Linux distro. Sometime during the late 2000s i bought the full set of Debian DVDs, but Debian stopped providing ISOs years ago. Of course with how big distros are nowadays you'd probably need something like 100 DVDs :-P. At least there is Slackware.
- canpan 7mo ago
  For your linux distro needs, debian still provides the base iso and you can make a second disk with packages you need and apt-offline.
  - badsectoracula 7mo ago
    Well the point of this is to have a distro that contains "everything" (or at least a large number of stuff) since i can't know ahead of time what i'd need. I think it is still possible to use jigdo to make Bluray disks, but i do not have a bluray drive :-P
- anthk 7mo ago
  9front a good bunch offline software repos from shithub can fit under a 4GB pendrive or DVD. Not very usable to run current day stuff, but you have both netsurf, a video player, audio players, a PS/EPUB/PDF/image viewer, doc/xls readers to TXT (and converters) and Unix tools and games among 8/16 bit emulators. With a bit of thinkering it can do a lot, look at the plan9 desktop page with 9front. There's a Golang port too, and the AWK guide can be a godsend. This is not for anuclear winter but maybe for an internet outage, which can be a real threat.
beeburrt 7mo ago
> have in an offline format. I keep offline docs either in pdf or in html format of most of the programming languages and frameworks that I use. I keep the source code of various projects that are essential to me. This is such a good idea. Thanks. I'm going to start to do the same. > I keep a local wiki with notes on various things that are useful Can you recommend a good wiki software?
- prima-facie 7mo ago
  I would recommend Obsidian to new users. I've been using Zim Wiki for years; back then there was nothing better available and now I can't be bothered to migrate formats. Plus I've already contributed a bunch of plugins to Zim :) https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/ https://zim-wiki.org/ https://zim-wiki.org/
  - bovermyer 7mo ago
    Obsidian is good, but I switched to Zettlr last year and I like it much better. https://www.zettlr.com https://www.zettlr.com
canpan 7mo ago
I travel a lot and do the same. Yes most places have internet. But I don't need much. And it's easier to have an "offline" folder with docs you need compared to carrying around a satellite dish. Also works in an airplane. Mine contains language, library and game engine docs. Sometimes I back up some sites completely. But it's getting harder to do that as many sites block crawling now.
bombcar 7mo ago
I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals in PDF format; I often end up reading them when on a plane. I'd love something like Kiwi designed to be like modern online-sharing software like Box etc where it just caches stuff until your drive is mostly full, deleting as necessary.
komali2 7mo ago
I recently re read Walkaway and it made me yearn for an offline-first internet, where every computer is a node, and nodes are constantly refreshing each other's cache when they get the chance (the network works), but otherwise are basically mirroring much of the internet.
- toofy 7mo ago
  oh, thanks! you just sparked me to reread this, such a good book.

cortesoft 7mo ago

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.

kirubakaran 7mo ago
Have you seen this Monty Python skit of Four Yorkshiremen? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue7wM0QC5LE
mememememememo 7mo ago
Email IRC Gopher etc. download. Just connect 10 min a day.

badsectoracula 7mo ago

Yeah, that is normal for me too. If i find any article that i think is interesting i use SingleFile to download a local copy and ytdlp to download any video i find interesting/informational (e.g tutorials/howtos/etc). I avoid cloud-based stuff, preferring to use local/desktop software instead (and 99.9% of it is open source). And when it comes to AI i use local models only - with inference engines written in C++ (to avoid the dependency hell that is Python - which for some reason seems 100x worse when it comes to AI projects too). And yeah, i have downloaded Wikipedia (in ZIM format) :-P It isn't really for some doomsday preparation reason, it is just that sometimes the internet doesn't work (it doesn't happen often but it does happen) or i do not have internet access for whatever reason or stuff simply disappears/changes. In fact just yesterday night i wanted to lookup how something is done in Bash and after trying to search for it, i noticed my Internet wasn't working (it took ~1h to resume, it was quite late in the night). So i just started a local LLM and asked that instead :-P (i do have the info manuals for bash - and other stuff - installed but they are a PITA to search if you don't know exactly what you're looking for). One thing that annoys me though is that it is basically impossible to have an offline copy of a modern Linux distro. Sometime during the late 2000s i bought the full set of Debian DVDs, but Debian stopped providing ISOs years ago. Of course with how big distros are nowadays you'd probably need something like 100 DVDs :-P. At least there is Slackware.

canpan 7mo ago
For your linux distro needs, debian still provides the base iso and you can make a second disk with packages you need and apt-offline.
- badsectoracula 7mo ago
  Well the point of this is to have a distro that contains "everything" (or at least a large number of stuff) since i can't know ahead of time what i'd need. I think it is still possible to use jigdo to make Bluray disks, but i do not have a bluray drive :-P
anthk 7mo ago
9front a good bunch offline software repos from shithub can fit under a 4GB pendrive or DVD. Not very usable to run current day stuff, but you have both netsurf, a video player, audio players, a PS/EPUB/PDF/image viewer, doc/xls readers to TXT (and converters) and Unix tools and games among 8/16 bit emulators. With a bit of thinkering it can do a lot, look at the plan9 desktop page with 9front. There's a Golang port too, and the AWK guide can be a godsend. This is not for anuclear winter but maybe for an internet outage, which can be a real threat.

beeburrt 7mo ago

> have in an offline format. I keep offline docs either in pdf or in html format of most of the programming languages and frameworks that I use. I keep the source code of various projects that are essential to me. This is such a good idea. Thanks. I'm going to start to do the same. > I keep a local wiki with notes on various things that are useful Can you recommend a good wiki software?

prima-facie 7mo ago
I would recommend Obsidian to new users. I've been using Zim Wiki for years; back then there was nothing better available and now I can't be bothered to migrate formats. Plus I've already contributed a bunch of plugins to Zim :) https://obsidian.md/ https://obsidian.md/ https://zim-wiki.org/ https://zim-wiki.org/
- bovermyer 7mo ago
  Obsidian is good, but I switched to Zettlr last year and I like it much better. https://www.zettlr.com https://www.zettlr.com

canpan 7mo ago

I travel a lot and do the same. Yes most places have internet. But I don't need much. And it's easier to have an "offline" folder with docs you need compared to carrying around a satellite dish. Also works in an airplane. Mine contains language, library and game engine docs. Sometimes I back up some sites completely. But it's getting harder to do that as many sites block crawling now.

bombcar 7mo ago

I love that the Tex Live distribution comes with thousands and thousands of well-written manuals in PDF format; I often end up reading them when on a plane. I'd love something like Kiwi designed to be like modern online-sharing software like Box etc where it just caches stuff until your drive is mostly full, deleting as necessary.

komali2 7mo ago

I recently re read Walkaway and it made me yearn for an offline-first internet, where every computer is a node, and nodes are constantly refreshing each other's cache when they get the chance (the network works), but otherwise are basically mirroring much of the internet.

toofy 7mo ago
oh, thanks! you just sparked me to reread this, such a good book.