
Self-contained, Internet-less Wikipedia machine. - asciilifeform
http://thewikireader.com/
======
redthrowaway
I know this sounds trite and stupid, but I have a recurring fantasy of
travelling back in time and using my modern knowledge to change history. My
greatest [imagined] downfall has always been a lack of access to Wikipedia,
and how to get around it. This solves my hypothetical problem perfectly.

~~~
pjscott
It's much more interesting to try to actually learn enough about how things
work that you could, theoretically, reconstruct some of them. Take gasoline,
for example: could you work out how to refine oil by partial distillation? If
you needed to measure the temperature, could you make a basic thermometer and
calibrate it? Do you know how to make metals from ore? If you go back to
before the bronze age, being able to mix copper and tin could be a big deal.

This is really fun stuff to learn about. Plus, this way you won't have to
worry about battery life.

~~~
redthrowaway
It is, but we run into the barrier of expected utility. What is a better thing
for me to learn: how to scale rails apps, or how to construct a solar panel
from iron age technology?

Don't get me wrong, both are awesome. Absent a working time machine or the
ability to leap into a novel or Z-Day, however, only the former will have any
benefit for me.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Time travel could be impossible, but the end of the world could be right
around the corner. I’m not a doomsdayer, but I do think it’d be fun to
contribute my brains to a survival group. Better than contributing them to a
zombie’s maw, wouldn’t you say?

~~~
redthrowaway
How far down the rabbit hole do we go, and how much of my irredeemable
nerdiness am I willing to admit to?

If we're talking Z-Day, then the most economical solution seems to be either
to buy and convert an old mine, or to grab an old nuclear silo[1]. Either way,
one could reasonably assume that a full, automated backup of Wikipedia and
other helpful sites would be stored on local servers.

If you're not a member of the "I can buy Minuteman silos, whatever bro" club,
then your currency is best spent on ammunition and the pre-determination of
likely gathering points.

If, in the unlikely event that you're just a nerd putzing around on the
Internet when you should be doing Real Work, you have access to none of these,
then I suggest you move quickly towards a zombie-proof survival plan.

[1] <http://www.missilebases.com/properties>

------
kylelibra
I am disappointed by the lack of comments referring to this as the
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy finally realized.

~~~
sophacles
Don't panic. I'm sure they are coming.

~~~
keenerd
They are already here.

<http://kmkeen.com/tmp/wikireader1.jpg>

I think this weekend I'll release the image view for the wikireader I've been
working on. It can smoothly pan/zoom images that are thousands of pixels wide.

------
mwhite
You can get it for $27 on Amazon at the moment (normally $99).
[http://www.amazon.com/Pandigital-Handheld-Electronic-
Encyclo...](http://www.amazon.com/Pandigital-Handheld-Electronic-Encyclopedia-
WikiReader/dp/B0039NLVB2)

I'm almost inclined to get one to replace mine, whose screen went permanently
dim at some point.

The code is open source, so you could theoretically use it with custom content
that you adapt to their build formats. They also provide downloads for a bunch
of other-language Wikipedias, as well as Wiktionary, Wikitravel, and Project
Gutenberg. You can swap out the built-in microSD card (8GB?) for a much larger
one and just put everything on it.

<https://github.com/wikireader/wikireader>

~~~
CWuestefeld
I've got one of these too, and really like it. We take it when traveling, so
if we find ourselves at, say, a Civil War battlefield, we can look up the
story behind it.

One might think that you'd just use the browser on your phone. But very
frequently, places of interest are also places with no cellular coverage.
Having this data offline is great.

 _They also provide downloads for a bunch of other-language Wikipedias, as
well as Wiktionary, Wikitravel, and Project Gutenberg_

I tried to do this. Bought a card just for the purpose, downloaded the GBs of
torrents, and set up the card as they suggest (as best I could decipher). I
was never able to get it to boot up with my substitute data card.

------
asciilifeform
I would dearly love to see a ruggedized, solar-powered version of this device
created for our descendants.

In case industrial civilization, well.. fails to go the distance. A Wikipedia-
equivalent volume of paper is rather bulky and fragile.

~~~
ComputerGuru
Again and again, this topic keeps coming up and the surprising truth is: paper
_is_ the answer. Don't discount it.

There was entire writeup about this (I think it was posted to HN) that I can
no longer find and would be grateful if someone could point me at (my Google-
Fu is failing me on this one) that of all the data storage mechanisms we have,
_paper_ is the one that we best know how to maintain and preserve. It's
nowhere near as "bulky" as people make it out to be, and when done right and
taken care of properly, can last centuries.

Here's a link that touches on the topic of preserving info for future
generations, a great read: <http://www2.library.ucla.edu/about/2483.cfm> (What
do you preserve? How do you do it? Why? For whom?)

The other article I was referring to earlier pointed out the pitfalls with all
the modern "wonders" of storage and how woefully inadequate they would be for
attempting to preserve knowledge/data in the big picture. Namely interfaces,
specs, requirements, readers, electricity, and all the other goodies that
silently play their role in powering your USB stick or bluray disc.

~~~
asciilifeform
Paper is a good answer. Unless civilization has collapsed, and libraries are
burning. (They are burning - or rather, being closed down permanently, one
after another, _right now_ in the USA.) Paper is the answer, unless you are a
refugee living in your car (should you still have gas) or running with what
you can carry.

Paper is not the answer for a pauper with no room to call his own, nor for a
factory hand living in a dormitory. There are many people alive _right now_
for whom paper is already not the answer. But some of them could benefit from
a Wikipedia "gameboy."

Yours or my paper library will carry knowledge into the ages quite well -
until some vagrant burns it to warm himself in the wintertime. A piece of
electronics, on the other hand - assuming we could make one that _really
lasts_ \- could be passed down as an heirloom. And, should it begin to flicker
out, the words could always be read off and set to paper.

------
orblivion
The first thing that comes to mind is that any inaccuracies or vandalism are
going to be stuck on their devices until they make an update.

~~~
abhaga
Exactly. Whenever I read about one of these projects that are distributing
Wikipedia content offline, my first thought is - How do they check all the
content for vandalism? They most probably neither have the time nor the
expertise. On the WP site, such things get detected and rolled back quickly
and that is one of the reasons the whole thing works. Once you take that out,
it is shaky territory.

~~~
fusiongyro
They don't curate it at all, they just load snapshots.

In practice, it's no shakier than before. Whenever you load a Wikipedia page,
there is a certain probability it's vandalized. I'd be surprised if the
probability were going down, since as it is more widely used it attracts more
trolls. If the probability is staying relatively constant, it doesn't matter
if you are looking at the current data or a snapshot from six months ago, the
probability of a random page being in a vandalized state is about the same.
And of course, if the vandalized page rate is going up, a snapshot would be
better than the live site.

You could argue that, if you discover a vandalized page, you can't do anything
about it on the Wikireader. You could argue that once you find a vandalized
page, it's going to stay vandalized until you load another snapshot. But those
are consequences of the tradeoff for the size and network independence of the
device.

~~~
abhaga
You are right when considering an individual. When you consider a group of
people, the probability that all of them saw the vandalized version on
Wikipedia site goes down as the number of people increase. With the offline
version, it stays the same.

If you consider the case of disadvantaged children whom some of these projects
aim to reach, the whole peer group now has the same vandalized information and
there may not be a secondary source of information.

~~~
fusiongyro
That's a good point. Ultimately it's going to come down to risk versus
benefit.

------
rabidsnail
Gameboy pockets seem to run around $20. They seem almost perfect for this sort
of thing. They can run on two tripple-A batteries continuously for 10 hours.
And since they boot instantly and actually turn off when you tell them to,
under normal usage that will last you weeks. The screen resolution could be
better but for reading short articles it's good enough.

And when you take the wikipedia cartridge out, you have a gameboy.

I wonder how much it would cost to make a Wikipedia gameboy cartridge?

~~~
Lammy
The Game Boy can address a maximum of 4 megabits of ROM:
<http://fms.komkon.org/GameBoy/Tech/Software.html>

Quite a far cry from the gigabytes of Wikipedia data you get with this, I'm
afraid.

~~~
rabidsnail
The cartridge interface is general-purpose, so you can stick whatever
electronics you like in the cartridge. If I was producing these at scale I'd
burn into an asic the compressed data, the decompression logic, and some
paging/addressing logic. So you say "give me article 1234" to the cart and it
streams you the decompressed article. You could do that with an fpga if you
were making them in low volume.

For an example of the crazy things you can do with gameboy cartridges look at
Gameboy Camera.

------
binarysolo
$15 shipped -
[http://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?forumchoice%5B%5D=9&...](http://slickdeals.net/newsearch.php?forumchoice%5B%5D=9&q=wikireader&showposts=0&archive=0&firstonly=1)

Based on this (see: 1saleaday), this item got excessed/liquidated by a
distributor last... fall probably. Judging by the low ratings/views on
Slickdeals most people just aren't interested in such a device, even at
$20/pc. Several players (maker/distributor/liquidator) probably took losses
unless they were on consignment.

Judging from the initial response on HN, this item totally could've been
remarketed better. :)

~~~
ars
The $15 deals are over. Cheapest price currently is $25.

~~~
binarysolo
Just trying to share some experience here since I used to do retail pricing
analytics. The $15 prices will come back, if not lower (though perhaps through
alternate offline discount-store channels).

If you look at how the price continues to fall after October through Christmas
shopping season by one inventory holder (1saleaday, probably has 10k+ pieces
to liquidate) and how poorly the deal has been moving even with guerilla
marketing (see: views on each thread, as well as thumbs-up)... all I'm saying
is that this deal's been a dog in retail.

~~~
ccoggins
I believe this. I bought one from 1saleaday for 15 shipped. Since then I've
seen it on 1saleaday twice more. Another 15 and also one day for 9.99 with
free shipping.

------
sargun
This was made by the OpenMoko guys, after that project failed. It's a pretty
neat device, that's surprisingly powerful, but unfortunately there is no
commercial backing to drive development.

------
jmonegro
Wow, user stories/bios are pretty darn powerful. Convinced me of the
usefulness of a device I'd initially discarded.

------
SquareWheel
If you're looking to have a Wiki dump on your iPhone/iPod Touch, I can
recommend this software: <http://www.brilliantish.com/allofwiki/>

Disclaimer: I got a free copy because the dev is a nice guy. Well worth the
$9.00 though.

~~~
Estragon
I use wikidroyd on my android phone. There may be something better by now, as
I installed it a couple of years ago and haven't investigated since.

------
ilaksh
It would be cooler if they at least gave a token amount of the purchase as a
donation to Wikipedia.

------
ekianjo
I don't see the use a new device for a single function like this. Why not
include this kind of function into any e-reader instead? Who wants to carry
tons of devices around?

~~~
asciilifeform
Where is the $100 e-reader that runs for a year on one set of AAA batteries?

~~~
zokier
While Kindle touch won't run a year on AAA batteries, it's not that far away
of it. Based on my calculations I'd guesstimate that Kindle should run at
least a month with 2xAAA batteries (assuming same "multiplier" that WikiReader
uses, 90 hours = 1 year => 10 hours = 1 month). I'd argue that it's good
enough.

------
edward
Also <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader>

~~~
TeMPOraL
Open this page on your WikiReader to get fully meta :).

------
njharman
Making one of these available to every 5-7th (or so) student would be massive
improvement to education than just about anything of comparable cost/effort.

------
Androsynth
According to the wiki article on the WikiReader: _The device can also run
programs written in Forth_ , so you can write WikiReader 'apps' also.

------
peterhajas
I bought one of these recently during a sale. Picked it up for about $30.

It's really nice. microSD is easy access, and AA is awesome as a power source
for this little thing. I love the idea of giving these to kids in school.

The software is open source, and you can add custom wikis to the existing
software.

------
6ren
specs <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader>

cpu S1C33E07 <http://www.epson.jp/device/semicon_e/product/mcu/32bit/> (bottom
of table)

------
fady
this looks awesome and what not, but i feel the screen itself is my biggest
gripe. i'm only judging this based on the pictures on amazon, so it could look
better in person. the screen makes it look like a device you would have found
in the 90's :\

~~~
redthrowaway
What it really looks like is one of the shitty "handheld videogames" your dick
uncle gave you for Christmas instead of a GameBoy game. You know the ones,
with predefined sprites in predefined positions that would sort of move around
with the eventual refresh? The kind your Casio calculator outperformed? The
kind you could find in the dollar stor for $6?

I love the idea, but I'm with you on the screen. I'd be willing to shell out
more for something Kindle-like.

------
swang
This is kinda what I wanted to do with the peek devices that were being given
away last month. Unfortunately very little progress has been made with the
Peek and Linux.

------
evincarofautumn
And so the encyclopedia has come full-circle!

I might buy one of these someday for the sheer enjoyment of developing
something silly for it.

------
rickyconnolly
I think 'internet-less' is a doomed technology

------
bbrizzi
Isn't there an app for that?

------
hackermom
I'm still eagerly waiting for an e-ink version to show up.

