6 ms·

This means we might be able to make a literal version of the hitchhikers guide. All of human knowledge in your hand, no network connectivity needed.

politician 12y ago
> I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices [of copyright attorneys and trade industry groups] suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
- pistle 12y ago
  You dropped your phone on the corner?
- pavement 12y ago
  Guess again. All that storage represents a virtually limitless crypto-space within which intellectual property rights holders can create one-time-pads, and disenfranchise future consumers with. When combined with ubiquitous 4G coverage, all they'll ever need to stream are the limitless persistent auth tokens, as locking and unlocking assets as frequently as bandwidth will allow, while remaining profitable. I bet some of the greediest and most tyrranical IP controllers will have 1:1 authentication ratios, with each and every text character, audio sample and pixel per video frame, such that they'll never reduce bandwidth, and even create backlogs of access history, for billing purposes, when network connectivity returns. Yes, because you accessed five seconds of full motion video, and witnessed content in which Lady Gaga's eyes moved five pixels to the left, while she pronounced a fricative syllable in the third verse of her top 40 hit single, you now owe Viacom 1/20th of one cent. NOTE: Costs do not include third-party fees covering closed-captioning for the hearing impared.
fchollet 12y ago
All of Wikipedia (English) already fits on a smartphone with a 64GB SD card.
- sp332 12y ago
  With no history and no pictures. It's useful, but it's not really "wikipedia" anymore :)
  - thom 12y ago
    Weird side point, but I'd be really interested to hear how people weight the importance of Wikipedia text vs media vs history. For me the first is 99% of the point, but clearly others feel differently.
    - sp332 12y ago
      Yeah, you're probably right. But the history can be really important on certain pages. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671756 And images can make some of the math articles useful since they are too-often dense pages of formulas.
      - valarauca1 12y ago
        Isn't most the math just latex? So it could be rendered client side?
        sp332 12y ago
        I mean the formulas are not very good at explaining the concepts. Sometimes it's helpful to have a picture.
    - sixothree 12y ago
      I find that Wikipedia's text heavy presentation disappointing especially considering that the articles are almost exclusively what I would consider extremely terse. It's like the worst of both worlds.
    - rodgerd 12y ago
      History and talk pages can be very important. When I saw that the film Defiance was based on a interesting-sounding real set of events, I looked at them on Wikipedia. The history and talk pages had an ongoing edit war with a sizable number of commentators who appeared to feel that the Bielskis should be treated as criminals and murderers rather than fêted as heroes, due to their killing of local Nazi sympathisers. If you just stuck to the hashed-out Wikipedia page that was current, you'd be completely oblivious to the whole controversy.
jacquesm 12y ago
You'd need the network connectivity anyway just to stay 'in sync'. But in off-line mode life would be a lot easier.
- LaikaF 12y ago
  It could reduce the amount of data a smartphone needs. I'd like to keep a copy of my local area in my google map and then have it check in once a week to look for changes.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    A smartphone could have an onboard map today. It's a conscious choice by google to make it work the way it does. Look at TomTom or any other navigator (and possibly some smartphone apps too) that come with integrated maps. That service is just grafted on there, it's not a necessity. It's the google way of doing things.
    - zevyoura 12y ago
      Actually, Google Maps allow you to cache portions of maps for offline use: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/2650377?hl=en https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/2650377?hl=en There are other navigation apps that do store offline maps; the reason they're not popular outside of outdoor enthusiasts is that they take up a huge amount of space. It seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        Since when is caching a substitute for integration?
        zevyoura 12y ago
        I'm not sure I understand what you mean by integration; are you proposing that the mapping app contain the complete map data, which is then occasionally updated as needed? There's a clear advantage to not storing several GB of data you rarely if ever need on a device with very limited storage space.

politician 12y ago

> I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices [of copyright attorneys and trade industry groups] suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.

pistle 12y ago
You dropped your phone on the corner?
pavement 12y ago
Guess again. All that storage represents a virtually limitless crypto-space within which intellectual property rights holders can create one-time-pads, and disenfranchise future consumers with. When combined with ubiquitous 4G coverage, all they'll ever need to stream are the limitless persistent auth tokens, as locking and unlocking assets as frequently as bandwidth will allow, while remaining profitable. I bet some of the greediest and most tyrranical IP controllers will have 1:1 authentication ratios, with each and every text character, audio sample and pixel per video frame, such that they'll never reduce bandwidth, and even create backlogs of access history, for billing purposes, when network connectivity returns. Yes, because you accessed five seconds of full motion video, and witnessed content in which Lady Gaga's eyes moved five pixels to the left, while she pronounced a fricative syllable in the third verse of her top 40 hit single, you now owe Viacom 1/20th of one cent. NOTE: Costs do not include third-party fees covering closed-captioning for the hearing impared.

fchollet 12y ago

All of Wikipedia (English) already fits on a smartphone with a 64GB SD card.

sp332 12y ago
With no history and no pictures. It's useful, but it's not really "wikipedia" anymore :)
- thom 12y ago
  Weird side point, but I'd be really interested to hear how people weight the importance of Wikipedia text vs media vs history. For me the first is 99% of the point, but clearly others feel differently.
  - sp332 12y ago
    Yeah, you're probably right. But the history can be really important on certain pages. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1671756 And images can make some of the math articles useful since they are too-often dense pages of formulas.
    - valarauca1 12y ago
      Isn't most the math just latex? So it could be rendered client side?
      - sp332 12y ago
        I mean the formulas are not very good at explaining the concepts. Sometimes it's helpful to have a picture.
  - sixothree 12y ago
    I find that Wikipedia's text heavy presentation disappointing especially considering that the articles are almost exclusively what I would consider extremely terse. It's like the worst of both worlds.
  - rodgerd 12y ago
    History and talk pages can be very important. When I saw that the film Defiance was based on a interesting-sounding real set of events, I looked at them on Wikipedia. The history and talk pages had an ongoing edit war with a sizable number of commentators who appeared to feel that the Bielskis should be treated as criminals and murderers rather than fêted as heroes, due to their killing of local Nazi sympathisers. If you just stuck to the hashed-out Wikipedia page that was current, you'd be completely oblivious to the whole controversy.

jacquesm 12y ago

You'd need the network connectivity anyway just to stay 'in sync'. But in off-line mode life would be a lot easier.

LaikaF 12y ago
It could reduce the amount of data a smartphone needs. I'd like to keep a copy of my local area in my google map and then have it check in once a week to look for changes.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  A smartphone could have an onboard map today. It's a conscious choice by google to make it work the way it does. Look at TomTom or any other navigator (and possibly some smartphone apps too) that come with integrated maps. That service is just grafted on there, it's not a necessity. It's the google way of doing things.
  - zevyoura 12y ago
    Actually, Google Maps allow you to cache portions of maps for offline use: https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/2650377?hl=en https://support.google.com/gmm/answer/2650377?hl=en There are other navigation apps that do store offline maps; the reason they're not popular outside of outdoor enthusiasts is that they take up a huge amount of space. It seems like a reasonable trade-off to me.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      Since when is caching a substitute for integration?
      - zevyoura 12y ago
        I'm not sure I understand what you mean by integration; are you proposing that the mapping app contain the complete map data, which is then occasionally updated as needed? There's a clear advantage to not storing several GB of data you rarely if ever need on a device with very limited storage space.