[HN Gopher] Internet in a Box
___________________________________________________________________
Internet in a Box
Author : thunderbong
Score : 504 points
Date : 2021-06-20 08:59 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (internet-in-a-box.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (internet-in-a-box.org)
| amelius wrote:
| They should include StackOverflow, but it's probably illegal to
| scrape it.
| detaro wrote:
| The data is CC-licensed and they provide a download for a data
| dump, scraping it is just wasting your time.
| myself248 wrote:
| What? There's a button to include those sites. I configured
| mine to include raspberrypi.stackoverflow and a few others.
|
| All the StackOverflow sites are available as Kiwix ZIM files,
| so if you select the ZIM server to be installed, you can check
| boxes for whatever content packs you want.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| IIAB is just scripts for automating installing other software,
| so it doesn't include content -- you download the content
| separately based on the app you need.
|
| For StackOverflow content, the best way to get it offline is
| through the Kiwix ZIM files (compressed archive suitable for
| web content).
|
| IIAB will install kiwix-serve by default, then you need to
| download the relevant ZIM files from here:
| https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages (search
| for the ones with stackexchange.com )
| ShantiBhardwa wrote:
| With IIAB running on platform like raspberry pi you can carry a
| slice of internet content in your pocket in a safe way. No need
| for any external network connectivity as it acts as local hotspot
| using Wi-Fi. With open source educational content like full
| Wikipedia, TED videos, text books, medical reference material you
| have you own portable reference library which can be shared with
| a group of people for self learning. IIAB opens up access to free
| knowledge which can provide huge opportunities for remote
| communities for a very small set up cost.
| Quequau wrote:
| This seems like an evolution of PirateBox & LibraryBox.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I was reminded of "BBS In A Box" -- a very early CD ROM
| offering of freeware/filez.
| juloo wrote:
| Wikipedia can be browsed offline:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download#Of...
| soared wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkeS_EAIpv4
|
| This is much better at describing how this can be used in the
| real world. A mesh network in town lets people communicate/post
| videos/etc.
| brunoluiz wrote:
| For a second, I thought it was a reference to the IT Crowd.
|
| Anyways, amazing initiative!
| fredley wrote:
| Missed an opportunity to replicate the iconic black casing and
| red LED
| developer93 wrote:
| Article seems to indicate it's just an installation, so it
| could still be made so.
| aaron695 wrote:
| These don't work and never have.
|
| We have 20 years on this. I get in the 90's it would have seemed
| like a quick win. But it didn't work. This inability to move on
| is frustrating.
|
| If you care , which most people don't. But if you do, what you
| want on them is porn and copyright TV. If you don't understand
| why I can't really help you, it's a pretty simple idea.
|
| You can't do that obviously, so how do you do it by proxy?
|
| That is the solution to find.
|
| One simple idea, find places without internet, find a cafe and
| sell them Starlink. You charity sets it up for free, they pay
| something per month. Report what happens. I'd bet it'd be very
| cost effective. Unfortunately it is boring and people don't get
| to feel good about themselves, so it won't get funded, so perhaps
| it's just as dumb.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Yes, what very, very poor rural schools and hospitals in the
| heart of Africa really want is porn and not access to teaching
| aids and medical databases.
| aaron695 wrote:
| What's an example medical database they could and would want
| to setup and will IIAB run those services?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It's literally in the article:
|
| > See Mexico's live demo and these medical examples used by
| clinics in Asia and Africa especially, as hosted by the
| Wikimedia Foundation (Wikipedia).
| aaron695 wrote:
| What is the medical database called?
|
| They have a lot of flat garbage that if you really want
| you can just put on your phone, I can see those.
|
| A database (For Africa as you mention) is a big deal,
| it's queryable store of info. It's rare to see these open
| source (or CC) Does it use MySql? MSAccess? How hard is
| it to set up?
|
| I don't think they will have any. Databases need to be
| updated, it's easier to add 4G if they are needed.
|
| Chemwatch did a pretty good setup with CD that did the 3
| month updates. In the developed world is still ran into
| problems with being up to date enough, I think most would
| be online now. And it cost money because it's a hard
| thing to do.
|
| You can't just say, they will 'run datavbases on the
| IIAB' That's an ongoing commitment that needs to be
| supported. Else it becomes another bricked device in the
| NGO graveyard.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Are you arguing with me or or the article? I'm not a
| doctor, I can't review the databases they include.
|
| Have you read the article? It has links.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm confused by this comment. They cite examples of it working.
| Similar setups have been working in Cuba for a long time. What
| isn't working?
|
| Are you just saying that actual free internet access would be
| better? Sure, that's true, but not practical everywhere.
| aaron695 wrote:
| > Similar setups have been working in Cuba for a long time.
|
| Official Sneakernet is terrabytes of TV (Government
| 'sanctioned' without porn or politics) -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paquete_Semanal
|
| If this is what it is, then I'm totally wrong. This is a
| really good idea. A wireless hotspot, anyone can setup to
| distribute terabytes of material to others, preferably with a
| charge/login option.
|
| Years ago we did this with a wireless access point 'Login for
| free movies" in our apartment. But couldn't (at the time)
| work out an easy way to distribute the AVI's once randoms
| connected.
|
| Wikipedia not clear IIAB is this and I didn't see it from the
| web site - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet-in-a-Box
|
| To do this, what's vital is cafe owners and teachers and
| students can buy this product and easily dump stuff on. A
| movies section, comics section, a books section they can make
| pretty, they need ownership in their collations.
|
| Their FAQ is on OLPC's site which had a horrific attitude of
| not allowing others to use their products and locking them
| down.
|
| Once you pay someone to set IIAB up, giving them Starlink
| would be around the same price. IIAB has to be open and easy
| to buy.
|
| > They cite examples of it working
|
| Where? The Dominican Republic video was 4 years ago. Is it up
| and running? These things are easy to send in a team for and
| have running for a few months. I would be surprised if one
| was running for more than a year without an expat there.
| abrax3141 wrote:
| Web free As free as the web blows As free as the web grows Web
| free to follow your heart Web free The wiki surrounds you The
| porn still astounds you Each time you look up a star
| tudorw wrote:
| Poetry drops worse than jokes on this crowd, I enjoyed it
| though :)
| edgeform wrote:
| Very cool device. The dean and doctor discussing the document
| they've been writing in Creole (context tells us it's probably a
| local dialect) could be uploaded to the device for everyone else
| that has them to use is a great reflection of how far this device
| can reach.
|
| Agree with the other comment, not what I thought the device was
| going to be initially. Not everything needs a buzzword marketing
| name so it doesn't need to be like Doctr or something like that,
| but maybe Medic-in-a-Box or something that conveys this is a
| medical device.
| Popegaf wrote:
| This makes me think of Freedombox (https://freedombox.org/). Are
| they related / can these be merged?
| julienreszka wrote:
| The name is misleading
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| No it isn't.
| ekianjo wrote:
| Amusing name, but if it's not networked in any way, it's not
| really 'internet', it's just an extract of various sources that's
| pretty much static in time.
| pronoiac wrote:
| Sneakernet updates seem doable? If you follow the "adding the
| quality content" link to
| https://github.com/iiab/iiab/wiki/IIAB-Installation#add-cont...
| , there are many sources mentioned, like Kiwix ZIM files, which
| can include fairly frequent updates.
| ekianjo wrote:
| If you are in a place without connection, how do you get
| updates? Any kind of diff mechanism with USB storage?
| z3ncyberpunk wrote:
| The same way every other sneaker net gets updates?
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| I think a hot swap system would work best. The central
| office of an aid organisation could just send new drives
| along with workers delivering food and other supplies.
|
| I imagine you could keep it relatively up-to-date that way.
| [deleted]
| sidcool wrote:
| Gavin Belson signature collection
| SMAAART wrote:
| A few years ago I read an article describing the sam phenomenon
| in Cuba. Highly interesting
| johnklos wrote:
| I love things like this, and I have a number of open wifi
| networks which could use this, but it seems people have gotten in
| to the habit of thinking that one service should run on one
| device, and that's all. It'd be nice if people would say what the
| software requirements are, regardless of the complexity of setup.
| nchelluri wrote:
| http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#What_hardware_should_I_us...
|
| http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#What_OS_should_I_use.3F
|
| http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#What_services_.28IIAB_app...
| ivan_ah wrote:
| To clarify, the "box" is any UNIX computer (very well suited for
| Raspberry PI devices, since the wifi can act as a hotspot), and
| the "internet" consists of all the best FOSS apps and open
| content that get served from localhost, see full list here:
| http://wiki.laptop.org/go/IIAB/FAQ#What_services_.28IIAB_app...
|
| The use case is to make apps/content/tools normally requiring
| internet accessed work offline (either on localhost or local area
| network). In practice, using IIAB goes a little something like
| this: 1. find device (the more storage the
| better) 2. install free software on device using IIAB
| scripts 3. download free content (various content packs)
| 4. deploy device anywhere in the world to enjoy all the
| FOSS and free content on local network
|
| The IIAB scripts make installation and download setup fully
| automatable (battle-tested Ansible scripts
| https://github.com/iiab/iiab/tree/master/roles ), which is
| exciting because you can provision "learning server" devices very
| easily.
| brador wrote:
| Surely an old android smartphone can do all this better than a
| hard to replace/repair UNIX "internet-in-a-box"?
|
| Old Android phone:
|
| 1. Has screen - (strong, tested, replaceable).
|
| 2. All the Android apps.
|
| 3. Wifi hotspot functionality + FTP + server hotspot.
|
| 4. MicroSD slot for massive and switchable data store.
|
| 5. Solar powerable, with removable and replaceable battery.
|
| 6. Touch friendly, kid friendly, low IQ requirement UI/UX.
|
| 7. Easy to code to extend functionality any way you like.
|
| Any old Samsung would be great, S4 was good and less than $50 a
| shot used with an OLED 1080p screen.
| mdorazio wrote:
| I think you're misunderstanding the point of this. It's not
| meant to be a device that people directly interact with. It's
| meant to be a local server that anyone nearby with a wi-fi
| connection can tap into regardless of broader internet
| availability. In that way it's likely to last much longer
| since it can be placed somewhere safe and not run the risk of
| being stolen/fought over/dropped/smashed/etc. and the end
| point used by the local population doesn't matter - a
| chromebook, second-hand android phone, whatever.
| desktopninja wrote:
| Your thoughts are in the right place. Reuse old Android
| devices for this purpose. Could be one very phat app :)
| tehbeard wrote:
| Ignoring the other comments point that this is meant as a
| server rather than a direct kiosk, lets smash each of these
| points.
|
| > 1. Has screen - (strong, tested, replaceable).
|
| Broken/scratched/hard to read in sunlight/draining power.
|
| > 2. All the Android apps.
|
| All the android apps for that old version of android,
| presuming they work without a wifi connection.
|
| > 3. Wifi hotspot functionality + FTP + server hotspot.
|
| Very dependant on the phone make/model, and server/hotspot
| wouldn't be that performant.
|
| > 4. MicroSD slot for massive and switchable data store.
|
| Again, very dependant on the make/model.
|
| > 5. Solar powerable, with removable and replaceable battery.
|
| Solar power I will give you, but you'll be hard pressed to
| find a phone suitable as server/hotspot with a removable
| battery.
|
| > 6. Touch friendly, kid friendly, low IQ requirement UI/UX.
|
| That's very dependant on the app developers if we go with
| point 2, I know plenty of apps with terrible UI/UX.
|
| > 7. Easy to code to extend functionality any way you like.
|
| Not on phone, you can maybe automate stuff with the likes of
| Tasker (see counterpoint 6 about UI/UX though) To really
| extend it you'd need a PC at which point... just use the PC?
| Or a pi.
| squarefoot wrote:
| It could also be made with ultra cheap repurposed routers such
| as the old TP-Link TL-MR3020 or similar ones, whose hardware is
| really limited for doing anything serious but still can run
| older OpenWRT versions. All it needs is to activate a file
| sharing service and stick an USB drive to be shared with the
| usual protocols. I mention it because I've found some at flea
| markets for 5 to 10 Euros.
|
| Actually a possibly better solution would be to use a
| ESP32-like board (therefore no Linux or any other OS) to keep
| power consumption as low as possible, in order to supply it
| through solar power, de facto turning it into a self sustaining
| device in which passers by could download files or even upload
| their ones, including messages, photos etc. that would stay
| online say for some time before being deleted. I have no idea
| though if the ESP32 network stack implementation and resources
| would allow that.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I would love to have one myself. I may have to put one
| together.
|
| Just thinking if I had the device and if even only Wikipedia
| were on it -- would save perhaps a small amount of internet
| traffic? Maybe negligible, but I think if I knew I had a "local
| cache" of all of Wikipedia I might rely on it more.
|
| Then I wonder if there was a way to integrate it with my
| browsing of the actual internet -- perhaps keeping a running
| feed of Wikipedia article links somewhere in my UI as I type
| words or as some script scans the contents of the pages I am
| browsing so that detail on any topic is literally a click away.
| With the local Wikipedia cache of course I have no privacy
| concerns.
| karmanyaahm wrote:
| For my wikipedia cache I use IPFS companion and
| https://en.wikipedia-on-ipfs.org/wiki/. All the devices that
| use this approach on a local network can share data. And to
| make sure unused wikipedia pages aren't garbage collected,
| https://github.com/ipfs/distributed-wikipedia-
| mirror#cohost-...
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "With the local Wikipedia cache of course I have no privacy
| concerns."
|
| This is one reason why bulk data downloads are (IMO)
| extraordinarily useful. Speed and reliability are some
| others.
|
| There is no reason to limit this approach to Wikipedia. It
| can be applied to any data that we consume regularly. I use
| this approach for DNS data and some websites (= frontends to
| databases) I use frequently, though none of those sources
| facilitate bulk dowloads the way Wikimedia does.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I use Kiwix in my iPad to store all of Wikipedia (with
| images). It's a 88gb download.
|
| Just the text is smaller at 11gb.
| nine_k wrote:
| Do you even update it? Like maybe once a year?
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| A large omnidirectional antenna could be a decent addition?
|
| The RPi inbuilt module doesn't have the much range, assume the
| other options are the same, antennas are cheap and even better
| can be homemade quite easily with instructions and raw materials.
| myself248 wrote:
| That's how I have mine set up.
|
| You don't need to use the pi's built-in wireless, but it's a
| cheap way to get started and covers most use-cases where the
| users are very near the device. I've got an old Ubiquiti Bullet
| M2HP mated to a broomstick omni acting as the AP for my IIAB
| network, and you can hit it from halfway down the block.
| Further if I get some more height under the 'tenna.
|
| I wish 802.11ah was more common; a low speed long range option
| would be perfect for lightweight content like this. But until
| phones have the radios, the use-case just isn't there.
| pentae wrote:
| This would be really useful in a Zombie apocalypse
| poxwole wrote:
| This Jen, is the internet.
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| Does this solve real people's actual problems?
|
| Selling the 32 gig SD card together with an Android app to browse
| the data seems far better. The majority of the world either has
| an Android phone (possibly a decade old), or a family member with
| one.
|
| Have the android app available in the app store and the data
| downloadable for those who occasionally have internet
| connectivity (for example visiting a big city), but don't have
| money for an sd card.
| tyingq wrote:
| >Does this solve real people's actual problems?
|
| It's unclear what product you're asking that about. The post is
| from "Internet in a Box" who don't sell anything. Just
| volunteers that put the software together. They do mention a
| few things being sold by others that use the work created by
| "Internet in a Box".
|
| >Selling the 32 gig SD card together with an Android app to
| browse the data seems far better.
|
| There's a couple of versions of this mentioned. The one used by
| clinics would fit on that, but it only has medical info. The
| hardware for the more general purpose one is using a 1TB drive.
| I assume that's for the Wikipedia + Maps + Literature + Khan
| Academy content mentioned.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| At this point there are still an number of people who for any
| reason can't or don't want to use a smartphone.
|
| Pushing a 60 year old to understand a completely new paradigm
| is fine if you are putting the time and energy to assist them
| until they are proficient, but otherwise they might be better
| with an old computer and check pages through local wi-fi.
|
| There also enough remote locations where phone connectivity is
| just bad, and they keep 2G rugged phones around for their main
| use. In these situation I'd imagine a laptop being easier to
| use than a second phone just for that.
| sgt wrote:
| If you think a smart phone lasts 10 years in the hands of poor
| people, you are extremely optimistic.
|
| From what I can tell, even here in South Africa's townships
| they are using fairly new Samsung, Huawei etc smart phones
| (always with a broken screen - this happens without exception),
| albeit cheap ones.
|
| Even my gardener has a Samsung 10 something. Not entirely sure
| how he can afford it, but I suspect he borrowed a lot of money
| to afford it. Having next to nothing, the smart phones becomes
| your communication channel and your media center, news and..
| hopefully learning.
|
| You'd be surprised how many poor smart phone users exists in
| all of Africa. And 3G or better is almost everywhere now.
|
| The pricing has come down and that is truly bridging the
| digital divide.
| alienthrowaway wrote:
| > Not entirely sure how he can afford it, but I suspect he
| borrowed a lot of money to afford it
|
| There's a gray/black market for second hand phones whose
| provenance is...questionable. As someone who involuntarily
| contributed a phone to this surprisingly international
| parallel supply chain, the sellers are probably not selling
| at Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price.
| roughly wrote:
| Hell, you don't even need theft to handle most of the
| supply problem. The MSRP of a 5 year old android phone is
| effectively $0.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| In this case, It's a Galaxy S10, a 2 year old phone that
| currently retails on Ebay for US$200-US$300.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > always with a broken screen - this happens without
| exception
|
| Are the devices super-low end? Users underestimate how
| sensitive they are to breakage? Regularly thrown? Broken
| units that are usable end up there for export or?
| laumars wrote:
| There's a lot of African countries where that isn't the case.
| I recently did some work for a mobile based game targeting a
| number of African countries and we had to support WAP and
| SMS.
|
| India is another country where poorer regions wouldn't have
| good cell coverage with most people without phones (let alone
| smart phones).
|
| If you live in a region that can have luxuries like a
| gardener, then you're likely already more affluent than those
| who this project is targeting.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| > Does this solve real people's actual problems?
|
| I have seen a IIAB device used in a school in a remote area
| (one IIAB for several clients on the WLAN, old PCs with wired
| network, phones, and tablets).
|
| The IIAB scripts,
| https://github.com/iiab/iiab/tree/master/roles , make setting
| up such servers very easy (including best FOSS apps, wifi hot
| spot, networking, and web admin interface). You just need to
| bring one beefy hard disk and you suddenly have access to all
| of Khan Academy, wikipedia in dozens of languages, and all
| kinds of other collections of educational and reference
| materials.
|
| Of course nothing prevents you for copying content over to
| individual mobile phones and tablets (like takeout), but
| centralized setup of a "learning resources hotspot" that people
| can connect to is very efficient first start.
|
| Related: see related info about installing Kolibri and Kiwix in
| this comment (these are two of the apps that are available via
| the IIAB install scripts)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26137100
| desktopninja wrote:
| Oh for a minute I thought you meant Kolibri-OS ... love that
| project!
| telesilla wrote:
| Get on a plane and then a bus and then a microbus or some kind
| of informal rural transit, go as far as you can into the
| mountains or the desert or the jungle and take with you one of
| these and a mikrotik router and a source of solar power. You
| won't be able to get much of a cell signal - or it's slow or
| expensive - and community access to Wikipedia and health-care
| information could be the most useful treasure you bring with
| you, without needing to worry about the kind of devices they
| run.
| mysterydip wrote:
| In addition to the use cases mentioned, I'd love to have an
| offline reference like this when I'm developing in places without
| internet access.
| myself248 wrote:
| That's the use-case I set mine up for, just for fun. Unplug my
| cable modem and see how long I can still be productive.
|
| With a local copy of most StackOverflow sites and Wikipedia,
| I'm pretty well equipped for a certain set of problems.
|
| Next up, I need to figure out how to wield the various github-
| mirror-an-entire-org scripts I've found, to keep a local copy
| of Adafruit's github, since their code and libraries power a
| lot of the hardware I have sitting around. And then maybe a
| mirror of Seeed Studio's wiki and whatever else I can find.
|
| then this: https://blog.thelifeofkenneth.com/2018/01/off-grid-
| raspbian-... but I'll need to add more disk space.
| mysterydip wrote:
| How much disk space does wikipedia and SO take for you?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| On Kiwix, the entire english Wikipedia with images but not
| videos is 90gb. 6.3m articles.
|
| You can pick and choose categories to some degree (e.g. I'm
| downloading some to get the videos as well), but I think
| this leads to some redundancy.
|
| 134gb for stackoverflow, but it's from 2019. This guy does
| sql files, but viewing is another story:
| https://www.brentozar.com/archive/2015/10/how-to-download-
| th...
|
| There are torrent links here:
| https://wiki.kiwix.org/wiki/Content_in_all_languages but I
| think in iOS, you're stuck downloading over http.
| IncRnd wrote:
| The headline is extremely misleading, which is a shame, since the
| product seems very useful. I had expected to see a remote
| Internet router of some kind, yet this is literally NOT the
| Internet.
| pronoiac wrote:
| It's an offline stash of free knowledge, such as Wikipedia, Khan
| Academy, and OpenStreetMap.
|
| It brought to mind El Paquete Semanal, Cuba's sneakernet culture
| drop: https://blog.cloudflare.com/the-cuban-cdn/
| graderjs wrote:
| If you're interested in offline HiFi archiving checkout my
| project 22120 to create a personal offline browsing archive:
|
| Https://github.com/i5ik/22120
| tyingq wrote:
| _" An archivist browser controller that caches everything you
| browse, a library server with full text search to serve your
| archive."_
|
| Ah, wow, that's a very cool way to build up the content.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Data hoarder that I am I would like it to scrape more of
| the site than I actually visit ... in case I missed
| something when I'm browsing offline later.
| tyingq wrote:
| Yeah, a "spider this page with depth X" would be a neat
| addition.
|
| Edit: Though the way it works as a sort of proxy, it
| seems like you could combine it with something like this,
| and it would just work: https://github.com/naoak/chrome-
| site-spider
| graderjs wrote:
| Cool thanks for that, indeed it seems like it would work.
| vishnugupta wrote:
| Webaroo[1] was one such product
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webaroo
| mast wrote:
| Nice idea, but as other commenters has pointed out, maybe not the
| best name. Back in the 90's when I first connected to the
| internet, my ISP provided a package called Internet in a Box made
| by a company called Spry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox
| falcor84 wrote:
| >back in the 90's
|
| I'll just put this here https://youtu.be/FBw-Z8ULwcc
| ashleyn wrote:
| This was my first thought as well! Our first computer came with
| Spry Internet in a Box in 1996. Mosaic was already aging pretty
| badly at that point, the early web changed fast.
| Krasnol wrote:
| Never heard of the company but I think it's much better than
| what we see otherwise. Like names of food or things that sound
| like something which has absolutely no relation to the product.
| codeulike wrote:
| _Back in the 90's_
|
| Well forget it then, it might as well have been a billion years
| ago. Internet in a Box is an ideal name - describes exactly
| what it does.
| tyingq wrote:
| The 90's Internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfMrVKnGzwg
|
| _" On your marks, get set...we're riding on the Internet"_
| foolinaround wrote:
| maybe there is already an internal search engine app that does
| the indexing of the local contents of the drive, to provide a
| quick search interface on the topic - with links to the actual
| material?
|
| Also, based on trends, would'nt most of the populated world (even
| 3rd world) be covered by internet in the next decade? The prices
| may not come down enough to serve the needs of the population?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The complaints about the name for a free product, created by a
| charity, that aims to help the deeply poor and remote because it
| "conflicts" with an inside joke from a cult BBC comedy that
| wrapped up 8 years ago are, at best, a bit silly.
| Natfan wrote:
| "The IT Crowd is a British sitcom originally broadcast by
| Channel 4"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IT_Crowd
| batch12 wrote:
| I saw one complaint and a few jokes. The fact that the top
| comment is a complaint about a complaint is sillier. Why not
| reply to that single person?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| There were several name complaints and several jokes and they
| formed the bulk of the initial comments. The complaint that
| triggered me to write this comment has been deleted since I
| made my comment and it looks like a couple of others have
| been deleted as well.
| culopatin wrote:
| I thought of "It's a d** in a box!".
|
| https://youtu.be/Rt0spqQtMKg
| Nzola wrote:
| The Lokole email benefit to the offline communities: When a
| community has no Internet availability or its population cannot
| individually afford existing Internet data, it will be very
| difficult for this community to use traditional email
| sustainably, but condemned to use SMS. As you know, SMS has a
| limited capacity. The Lokole is the solution to this problem. The
| Lokole brings the online email full power to offline use for the
| unconnected communities in a shareable, affordable and
| sustainable way. Using the Lokole reduces the cost of data to
| more than 95%. For instance in the Congo DRC, 100 people can
| share US$ 0.50 a day to send a hundreds of emails with
| attachments. The Lokole creates a shareable local email network
| in the office, school, or clinics and church facilities without
| Internet. The Lokole email can also be accessed online such as
| Internet cafe.
| agnidh wrote:
| For those who are interested here are some links to examples of
| curations done by implementers:
|
| http://iiab.me/jamaica/
|
| http://iiab.me/mexico/
|
| http://iiab.me/haiti/
|
| http://iiab.me/en-medical/
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| This is awesome. A friend of mine and I once did something for
| the local kids of our hometown way back (I guess, 2005-2007)
| where there was no proper Internet in that part of the country. A
| local LAN setup with few Desktop computers, where we load up
| videos for education. While kids takes turn to use the computers,
| they can watch videos in groups -- Videos which are readily
| available for free on the Internet. It didn't really "succeed"
| due to many reasons and I gave up.
|
| On a lighter note; here is an "Internet in a Box"
| https://www.dropbox.com/s/52f9ceusbm9kd4j/internet-in-a-box....
| eigenvalue wrote:
| I vividly remember my dad buying that internet in a box thing
| in the 90s. What a ridiculous product.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| I worked for the division of CompuServe responsible for that.
| I even have "Internet In a Box For Kids" still in the shrink-
| wrap on a shelf behind me. I keep it in case I ever need to
| bootstrap the Internet after a disaster.
|
| That division had some .. uh .. interesting sales ideas. One
| of the ones I remember painfully was an attempt to cross-
| promote our sign-up disks with a heavy metal band. Disks were
| given out for free at concerts. The net result, to be
| expected, I suppose, was an impressive number of confused
| fans calling up support and asking when the next concert was.
| _hyn3 wrote:
| I don't think it was ridiculous, except perhaps for the name,
| but non-tech people back then didn't even really know what
| the Internet was. It probably didn't seem far-fetched, since
| most (all?) products were basically tangible things that
| could fit into a box, and it probably bridged the gap.
|
| In that box was a browser and list of dial-up POPs and
| designed to compete with AOL, which offered AOL's version of
| the Internet and was peppering the country with free floppies
| (and later CD-ROM's).
|
| Other than AOL, most people in the country could only do
| dial-up to gain access to the _World Wide Web_ (it sounds so
| quaint when you write it out now!).
|
| Juno did this even better -- for free, with ads:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juno_Online_Services
|
| Shockingly, they're still doing it today! I had no idea there
| was a market for free dial-up internet in 2021! That is so
| cool.
|
| https://www.juno.com/free
|
| A lucky few within a certain distance from their CLEC's CO
| could get DSL or would spring $800/mo (or a lot more!) for a
| 1.5Megabit/s T1.
|
| I think it was around the late 90's that Time Warner and a
| few other cable companies started testing out high-speed
| cable.
|
| So, to me, the Internet-In-A-Box product was a cool thing
| that didn't last that long because most people migrated from
| dial-up to broadband as quickly as they were able. I wonder,
| though, why it died so quickly while Juno is still around
| 20-something years later! Freemium is a better business
| model?
| jlanger wrote:
| The name is confusing, I also was expecting a reference to the IT
| Crowd. As others have suggested, a more direct and contextual
| name might help.
| Nzola wrote:
| The Lokole email benefit to the offline communities; When a
| community has no Internet availability or its population cannot
| individually afford existing Internet data, it will be very
| difficult for this community to use traditional email
| sustainably, but condemned to use SMS. As you know, SMS has a
| limited capacity. The Lokole is the solution to this problem. The
| Lokole brings the online email full power to offline use for the
| unconnected communities in a shareable, affordable and
| sustainable way. Using the Lokole reduces the cost of data to
| more than 95%. For instance in the Congo DRC, 100 people can
| share US$ 0.50 a day to send a hundreds of emails with
| attachments. The Lokole creates a shareable local email network
| in the office, school, or clinics and church facilities without
| Internet. The Lokole email can also be accessed online such as
| Internet cafe.
| MandieD wrote:
| I like the idea as part of our power outage prep kit - running on
| a single Raspberry Pi means it can run off one of those
| ubiquitous power banks that can be safely charged from our small
| generator.
| jimmar wrote:
| Who first coined "Internet in a box?" When I saw the title, I
| thought back fondly to 1994 when my dad came home with a package
| of software called "Internet in a box" -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBox.
| pridkett wrote:
| Same here. I remember thinking it promised so much, but there
| were always problems with getting it to work. I managed to have
| someone walk me through how to get Trumpet Winsock to work with
| a university dialup a few months later and the rest was
| history.
| s_dev wrote:
| The naming reminds me of MailInABox: https://mailinabox.email/
| gnabgib wrote:
| Perhaps S3E4 of [IT
| Crowd](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0487831/episodes?season=3)?
| from 2008.
|
| https://theitcrowd.fandom.com/wiki/The_Internet
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| first ting I thought of was _The IT Crowd_ :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
| midasuni wrote:
| Did Stephen Hawking demagnetise it? Shouldn't it be on top of Big
| Ben?
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| What? No one has mentioned Moss' "This is the Internet"?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDbyYGrswtg
| maxwelldone wrote:
| The one that's kept on top of the Big Ben?
| smoldesu wrote:
| I hope the advent of machine learning will afford us a way to
| filter out 50-95% of the laugh tracks in The IT Crowd. I'd love
| to be able to watch it for more than 5 minutes at a time again.
| amelius wrote:
| Not my kind of humor (I'm the guy in the audience who wasn't
| laughing).
| bruce343434 wrote:
| "the internet" [crowd start laughing uncontrollably, the
| booms of hystericallity are so loud they create a big bang]
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| That particular gag is rather meh, compared to the rest of
| the show, IMHO.
| iso1210 wrote:
| It's iconic, but there were many more subtle gags
|
| The IT Crowd popularised "have you tried turning it off and
| on again"
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| When I read the headline, I had an alternate vision of this.
|
| A super hardened computer, drop proof, waterproof, weatherproof,
| sandproof, rated for at least 20 years of use.
|
| No moveable parts and everything stored on PROM.
|
| It would come with a kit to use any power source possible
|
| That should be able to survive in remote village with no
| supervision required for a long time.
|
| I did not imagine a PI with a plastic case and a standard
| harddrive.
|
| Clearly the rugged one would cost magnitudes more and things like
| WordPress and other programs like it would not be possible on
| rugged version either.
|
| I would think that as a plus not a minus.
|
| If a village fills up a blog or some other such software with
| large amounts of data and the harddrive crashes its gone. Does
| not come with a backup as far asI can see
| myself248 wrote:
| There's absolutely nothing preventing you from building your
| IIAB into precisely such an enclosure with such a power supply.
| IIAB is a set of scripts to load the software onto such a box,
| and they also have a cheap hardware recipe that'll get you
| going for the 99.9994% of situations where being sandproof is
| not important.
|
| But you can use those very same scripts to install the content
| on your sandproof ultramachine. What's the gripe?
| agnidh wrote:
| I should add that there is backup to another sdcard for cloning
| or archiving. Cost is a major criterion for most deployments
| that use a Raspberry Pi.
| nfriedly wrote:
| I think that's a little unfair. The focus here is on the
| software. Yes, the examples show it running on a pi, but they
| don't limit it to that. It should also be able to run on your
| hypothetical rugged box.
| anamexis wrote:
| As you mention, this would cost magnitudes more. Why not just
| send at least 20 RPis instead?
| Balduran wrote:
| I also thought of this. What's the max life of a device like
| raspberry pi? 5? 10 years? What could be the causes of their
| failure?
| pcdoodle wrote:
| A USB booting pi should last 30+ years if it's kept out of
| the sun and rain.
| evilstark wrote:
| I'm going to put one of these in my "zombie-apocalypse" go-bag.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Confusing name.. It made me think it's some sort of alternative
| mesh network for the internet, or an alternative internet.
|
| It's basically wikipedia and other things on an access point,
| right?
| imranq wrote:
| I like the idea. It would be cool if multiple devices could
| create a mesh network where students and teachers could
| communicate with each other without a connection to the global
| internet
| agnidh wrote:
| Most IIAB installations are single server, but some have indeed
| implemented a mesh network including long distance links using
| wifi extenders. Of course this is no longer a low cost project.
| raidicy wrote:
| This was my thought exactly. Excuse my naivety, but shouldn't a
| wifi-enabled pi be able to broadcast and automatically connect
| to others around it? And as long as they all have unique names
| shouldn't <piname>:port_number be possible for a simple web
| sever on them?
| insaaniManav wrote:
| It's evolving , just backwards (read:arparent)
| myself248 wrote:
| see also https://github.com/iiab/iiab/issues/1540
|
| there's thinking along this line, just needs some muscle behind
| the implementation
| spicybright wrote:
| I love it! I just hope this gets deployed with more rugged
| hardware than a raspi. Especially if they're relying on it for
| medical info.
|
| Sd cards suck.
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