5 ms·

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

by fchollet 12y ago

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.
  - gyom 12y ago
    I've never considered this, but the history of Wikipedia over the next 100 years might be an insanely valuable source of insight about culture.
- hatu 12y ago
  I'm sure you could batch process the pictures to a reasonable size and store all those on a big flash drive today already.
- Keyframe 12y ago
  I remember reading about Xowa and there was stated that English wikipedia requires 25GB and images additional ~80GB which you can all download and access offline with Xowa. Considering there are 128GB SD and micro SDXC cards readily available for ~$100... that's actually amazing.
  - darkmighty 12y ago
    I suspect if you selected 5% of the most "useful" articles you'd miss out almost nothing and be able to pack in a very small size actually.
comex 12y ago
You could also just strap a portable terabyte hard drive to your phone. Not as cool as this, but it does fit in your hand.
sitkack 12y ago
All of the textual wikipedia is about 10GB compressed, even with the garbage pages. I'd say a good chunk of the history and the images could fit in the remainder.

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.
- gyom 12y ago
  I've never considered this, but the history of Wikipedia over the next 100 years might be an insanely valuable source of insight about culture.
hatu 12y ago
I'm sure you could batch process the pictures to a reasonable size and store all those on a big flash drive today already.
Keyframe 12y ago
I remember reading about Xowa and there was stated that English wikipedia requires 25GB and images additional ~80GB which you can all download and access offline with Xowa. Considering there are 128GB SD and micro SDXC cards readily available for ~$100... that's actually amazing.
- darkmighty 12y ago
  I suspect if you selected 5% of the most "useful" articles you'd miss out almost nothing and be able to pack in a very small size actually.

comex 12y ago

You could also just strap a portable terabyte hard drive to your phone. Not as cool as this, but it does fit in your hand.

sitkack 12y ago

All of the textual wikipedia is about 10GB compressed, even with the garbage pages. I'd say a good chunk of the history and the images could fit in the remainder.