Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/08/01/wikipedias-58-gadget-lets-you-access-its-entire-library-offline.html
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An intriguing device (and at $58 kinda seductive) to be sure, yet
Wikipedia is selling a small $58 gadget that provides offline access to a full-copy of Wikipedia via a Wi-Fi hotspot.
“offline access” “via a Wi-Fi hotspot” (while i think i ‘get’ it) is a bit of a lingo twister …and/or couldn’t we get it in a large-ish memory stick form for super-duper-offline access?
from 2017: How to Download All of Wikipedia Onto a USB Flash Drive
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I believe that there are complete archives ready to download for someone who wanted to roll their own.
(Just watch out for Adeptus Mechanicus come to collect your Standard Template Construct!)
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I guess that you might need a sizable Land Memory-Skull; as discovered by Arkhan Land.
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Years ago, before ubiquitous cellular data, there was a local trivia contest that, for some reason, decided to allow any resource that you could bring in. This was in the earlier days of Wikipedia, and I had access to a Sony Vaio UX. So I installed an Apache server on the Vaio and downloaded the latest Wikipedia dump for the fun of it.
The damn thing was so slow it was hardly any help, but the thought was fun.
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Wikipedia has a page offering several ways to get dumps of data from Wikipedia.
I could see this device (along with a laptop or tablet and a solar-powered and/or human-powered charger to recharge it when needed) being part of a survivalist’s emergency kit. Perhaps that laptop or tablet could also include some of the emergency survival books on Google Play Books and/or the Amazon Kindle store (downloaded to it before any emergency rather than waiting until the Internet may no longer be available.)
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See here for this project: https://internet-in-a-box.org/
Had to do some digging to find it. I was curious how it would get updated. Yes it’s possible but it still seems pretty manual. They comment “bringing it from the rural village to a big city overnight to download a new version” etc.
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Heh. They have my configuration, a RPi and a big portable drive.
At least a RPi4 is wise. I started in 2014 with Mediawiki on a RPi1, but as soon as the pages got more complex, with templates, it kind of bogged down. 
(Asking a RPi3 to run Mediawiki and be a Friendica node was probably a step too far. Upgrading soon.)
I do convert Mediawiki to a single mostly self-contained TiddlyWiki HTML file, but I highly suspect that couldn’t scale to handle Wikipedia!
The TiddlyWiki project was originally so that I could sit in the park outside the Ontario Provincial Legislature, and blanket the building with an open access point on a high-gain wifi. I might try that again someday.
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I’m no prepper, but I have thought of this scenario more often than I care to admit. I think I’ll grab one of these, if nothing else than just to support what I feel is one of the internet’s most vital resources. It’s one of the few entities I’ve ever donated money to, so getting a cool gadget is a major bonus.
ETA: Sold out! 
I’m on the waitlist, though.
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I saw the topic before the story came into my RSS feed 
I’ve slapped Kiwix on my phone before now. There was a degree of “you can have any resource you can reasonably carry on you” in a modern LARP, so my hacker absolutely was turning up with the entire text of English wiki. Also useful when roaming.
Also, relevant XKCD - xkcd: Kindle
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So, uh …
Hardware: Contains a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
but Kiwix says
The hotspot does NOT work on the Raspberry Pi zero 2W as the device is too limited in memory.
So buyer beware, I guess.
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It is called wikireader. I still have one I picked up for $5 and keep it updated with a script. It is truly offline, uses a e-ink touch screen. It is my own Hitchhiker’s guide. And there used to be pirate box, it could run on a router using WRT firmware.
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Of course there’s a wikipedia page about it. Seems it’s been around for a while and grew out of the One Laptop Per Child project.
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DON’T PANIC.
Would make it more reassuring.
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Seeing a local cache server intended to support a LAN described as “internet in a box”; rather than being the baseline default that you take special measures to link to a certain collection of internetworked networks makes me feel old enough to just lich-crumble into a handful of dust.
That’s not to be interpreted as criticism, far from it; anything that even slightly nudges the needle against the contemporary hellscape of the thickest hardware in history enmeshed in systems that turn it into de-facto thin clients is good with me; but still a “I sued to be with ‘it’; but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t ‘it’ any more and what’s ‘it’ seems weird and scary.” moment.
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You should sue autocorrect next.
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I have a modified version of a PirateBox called LibraryBox; it’s a nice way of sharing electronically stored information without having to deal with little things like cellular connectivity or ‘pay to use’ hotspots.
I bought one of those ‘travel router’ devices that is basically an ethernet port, USB port, and a wireless adapter with just enough horsepower to run WRT. the WRT firmware lives on what little internal storage the device has, and the software for the piratebox server and it’s file store are on the USB drive. The USB drive I picked is one of those nubbie styles that is designed to remain plugged into it’s USB port and sticks out about as much as a mouse dongle.
I should go and dredge it back up, the hardware is sitting in a drawer and I should probably see what I had parked on the flash drive it uses.
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I was a big fan of the wikireader project, which, while lacking images, might be a better choice for an “end of days” scenario.
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