
Ask HN: What would you work on without internet access? - bkcreate
My job frequently takes me to places without reliable internet access. What kinds of projects can be worked on with no or unreliable internet? I don&#x27;t want to be forced to stop working on my side projects just because I don&#x27;t have all the data I might need.
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inimino
I have been using Go recently, and I do almost all my development with it
offline. The docs are included and you can run a local doc server so
everything you need to look up is as close as localhost:6060. It's also an
ecosystem that encourages building on the standard library, unlike some other
popular languages I could mention. I absolutely love the productivity and
focus that this setup allows.

I also have a ~/research directory full of academic papers, saved copies of
web pages, for anything I want to implement or play with. When I don't feel
like programming, there's plenty waiting for me to read, rather than needing
to get online and probably distract myself.

There's something very satisfying about being able to sit down and do
productive work with what you have locally, and not needing to worry about
losing productivity because the coffee shop wifi dropped out.

On the other hand, unplugging in general is good for us and I agree with the
other commenters' encouragements to get out in nature or talk to people face
to face. If I'm on a train or plane, I'd much rather put my laptop away and
engage with what's around me.

Constant access to computing systems and networks is very new, and we know it
is changing us, but we don't have the perspective to know how. The
precautionary principle suggests we should spend as much time away from these
systems as possible, especially for those of us who make our livings with
them.

~~~
deathanatos
I've been enjoying working on Rust code for the same reasons: Rust can, for
every library you have in a project, generate static HTML documentation for
all of them. The only part you need Internet for is downloading the
dependencies, but that needs only be done once.

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dev_dull
Get out in nature and think about your problems. Go on walks. Hike. Take up
photography and stargazing.

Use the time to unplug. When you do return to your screen you’ll have a fresh
prospective on a lot of your problems. You’ll also be happier and healthier.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
I think this is fantastic advice, but only up to a point. Unplugging regularly
to recharge is so important, but the length and percentage of time matters. OP
might spend 80% of their time in parts of the world without internet, for
weeks or months at a time. In that context, I don’t think this advice applies
in the same way that it would for someone who spends a day or two offline
every other month.

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ekarulf
UNIX systems programming can be accomplished by looking at man pages and
referencing kernel / user land source code.

I find something cathartic writing C applications and tools. Perhaps I should
seek professional help.

~~~
jxub
Not an expert in C, but there's definitely a refreshing feel of purity about
something old and "sharp", that is powerfully entrenched in the UNIX ecosystem
but can also be dangerous and bite you.

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kopo
Check out kiwix or zeal. Allows reading entire archives of
wikipedia/stackoverflow/ted talks etc etc offline. Plus search. Throw in
elasticsearch and you get really powerful customizable search. You can also
create your own archive of web content. Given the size of modern harddrives
people have no idea how much quality content can happily live on your local
machine. No internet required.

~~~
leowoo91
TIL entire wikipedia is less than 100 GB when compressed.

~~~
arthurcolle
That's with no images, and iirc it also didn't include any of the math markup
last time I looked at one of the xml dumps in one of the loaders (think it was
kiwix)

~~~
leowoo91
Totally forgot about images. I just dug little further and found this:

"The size of the media files in Wikimedia Commons, which includes the images,
videos and other media used across all the language-specific Wikipedias was
described as well over 23 TB near the end of 2014"

Considering 30 TB hdd costs around 1500$, still interesting.

~~~
arthurcolle
I wonder what the size is as of this moment, maybe double? I read somewhere
recently that 90% of the content on the Web was created in the last 2 years.
Not sure if thats "special media" focused, i.e. video & pictures, as opposed
to text. But I'm sure the size of the dump has increased substantially in the
last 4 years.

~~~
leowoo91
Very likely, there at least need of a filter at some level to size down (maybe
getting single language or converting videos to low-res)

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scarecrowbob
Getting more reliable internet access.

I want to move out of Austin. One of my research projects is how to do rural
internet. Just because I am curious if it's doable.

I know that some folks end up in Terlingua cause they want to get away from
everything... I'd just like to get away from most things and keep the comms
channel.

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tlb
Consider Dash [0], an offline documentation browsing tool. It takes a little
while to set up, but then you have all the docsets you need offline with very
fast search.

It also helps me control my internet addiction when I'm not off the grid,
because I can have no browsers running while I code, so I'm not a tab away
from HN.

[0] [https://kapeli.com/dash](https://kapeli.com/dash)

~~~
bkcreate
Is this mac only?

~~~
dddw
Zeal is a good offline code docset reader for linux and windows (but not mac!)

[https://zealdocs.org/](https://zealdocs.org/)

The docsets come from Dash, which is very nice since that is payware. So here
apple users pay for non-apple users it seems :)

~~~
abathur
Use Dash on mac, Zeal on NixOS.

I see it as a no-brainer for anyone who has more code to write than time to
write it. I can't always solve a problem in Dash, but it enables me to work
for hours at a time with wifi off. This is even more important for
productivity when there _is_ wifi available. Only downside that I know I'm
reducing my chance of stumbling on Google Foobar trigger terms :)

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DoreenMichele
Download reading materials in PDF form or other offline friendly formatting
and plan to read them during those times.

If you are on mobile -- phone or tablet instead of a laptop -- some apps will
let you take notes or whatever offline and sync up when internet is available.

Do brainstorming type exercises at that time. Free time to actually think has
real value.

------
wjossey
Two years ago I went on vacation after having downloaded a bunch of the US
Census and ACS datasets. I spent my days by the pool drinking Bahama Mamas and
poking at the data, which was in a local Postgres instance.

Some people like reading a book by the pool. I like looking at demographic
data. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

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navs
Writing a book. I’ve been tinkering with writing a choose your own adventure
book that provides a glimpse into a depressed mind. I’ve actually forced
myself to work on it at the local library , where internet access is slow, as
a means of forcing focus.

~~~
HenryBemis
(my) Scrivener works offline, and with just me and the editor I can focus on
developing my ideas and drawing when necessary (simple mspaint and paste on
Scrivener). Offline is underestimated!

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thinkingemote
Cartography: get the osm rendering stack on your laptop and a bit of data,
then map away!

Programming: get the documentation first, manuals API reference, tutorials,
and use a language that doesn't have much "now install this library"
dependencies.

~~~
cedricium
> get the documentation first, manuals API reference

DevDocs[0] (offline collection of API docs) is perfect for this.

[0]: [https://devdocs.io/](https://devdocs.io/)

~~~
jitl
I travelled to China recently and was unpleasantly surprised to find the
HTML/CSS/DOM docs totally unusable offline, even though I “downloaded” them in
my user preferences before leaving.

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cimmanom
Anything you can run a working copy of on your laptop.

~~~
stephenr
This is the answer that makes the most sense. While I understand that
sometimes we need to check online reference manuals or check if a problem is
caused by a known bug in a runtime or library, I don't quite understand the
concept that you literally need an internet connection to be able to work.

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monk_e_boy
A game? Something like Terraria.

Or something cutting edge like a kitesurf kite. They are only about 15 years
old, so plenty of room for improvement. Just takes time and many prototypes.
Cloth is pretty cheap.

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tomjen3
Stallman downloads all his links and emails once every 24 hours and then
process them. Might be worth considering doing something similar with tech
blogs or what you follow.

However what side projects you could work on really depends on what you are
interested in. I would imagine that anything you could work on on a single
laptop would qualify.

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noobermin
If you have good books you could always use those. I'm a scientist though, so
often stuff I could read through is already in pdf form or in paper form, but
I don't doubt one could find books on various things if need be. Moreover,
especially for non-web stuff you always can have the code to look over
yourself.

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maceurt
Programming in C, because you can do a lot with the OS, and you can just
download documentation before for libraries and stuff. You could also work on
web design stuff if you don't need to use external assets. Also, coding simple
games like sudoku, chess, checkers, tic tac toe, etc. is fun.

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franzwong
I download online course videos to my mobile phone and watch them when
internet is not available. I think the major problem for working on side
project is you can’t access to the API reference when you don’t have the
access to the internet.

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yitchelle
Obviously projects that do not required internet access. :-)

But seriously, personally, I would do some writing. Either a blog post, or
compose a letter / email (to be sent when Internet is back on).

I would also read a physical book as I find the rather therapeutic.

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burtonator
Some sort of satellite constellation to bring Internet online for the masses.

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bart42_0
Art, without distractions from Facebook, Whatsapp, google, etc etc...

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hprotagonist
There’s a whole bunch of pen-and-paper mathematics i need to relearn.

~~~
nimonian
I like to write maths tutorials. Anything in particular you're interested in?

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User23
Hunting, trapping, marksmanship, gardening, building, and cooking.

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dabockster
Anything that can be run in a VM with port forwarding. If Docker can be run
without a connection, that's another option as well.

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xhdix
Traditional agriculture :|

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mitchtbaum
We're gonna need a bigger internet.

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JensRantil
godoc, git and Google Cloud AppEngine SDK all works offline. That's all I
need.

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janci
Writing project documentation.

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jldugger
My steam backlog =)

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edoo
Whenever my internet goes out I start tinkering on random things that almost
immediately require internet searches to make progress. I also seem to forget
the internet is out and continually open up search windows for all the new
exciting things I'm working on.

