Lets say you live in a world where the world government has decided people are getting too addicted to the internet and ordered the internet to be shut down for 5 years. The 100 GB of storage is all you have (excluding essential system files for your Operating System). You have 24 hours before the internet is getting shut down. What do you download?
Is it 100 GB in addition to what I already have saved or 100 GB of total storage? Because if it’s 100 GB of total storage then I wouldn’t be thinking about downloading, I’ll be thinking about what I want to keep.
Total storage. If you have more, government agents might randonly burst in and confiscate excess storage. 😉
First thing would be to seriously look into data compression, and live with heavily lossy-compressed media (my music collection would be ring-fenced though). Throw out backups of physical media (take the chance on disc-rot); I guess any backups wouldn’t be possible in this universe anyway so it will all be left to chance. And then see what’s left.
I mean… if we’re optimizing for covert physical presence… you can hide these fuckers in tons of interesting places.
Kids these days don’t understand how mind-blowing that card is. 1 TB on a little micro-SD card? For real?
Tell me about it… my 8mb compact flash card broke my mind back in the day.
Yeah 1.4mb floppies (not just AOL diskettes) we’re still everywhere when CF cameras came out.
100GB is ridiculously low nowadays. I don’t think I have a single device in regular use (including my phone) with such small storage.
Just my picture archive (that is, pictures I took since I got mit first digital camera) is about 400GB.
But without such a low storage limit, this wouldn’t be a fun question. The point is to really think about what files we cherish and what are we okay with losing access to (for at least 5 years).
Can my current drives be placed into storage and returned 5 years later, or do they have to be destroyed? That makes a big difference.
All confiscated by the all powerful and #benevolent world government. Who knows what happens after 5 years, maybe you’ll get them, maybe not. But one way or another this internet addiction has gotta stop. Its for your own good, you know the government never lies, right? You are being liberated. Do Not Resist. 😉
I disagree there - I think it makes the question pointless as that changes the actual question to “what is the single computing device I decide to keep, after downgrading its storage”. Which in many cases will not even be possible.
You’re overthinking it. It’s 100GB that can be saved to, nothing saying that it’s 100GB on a single device and you can’t pick anything else
See other comments from OP where he’s stating that it’d be 100GB total, and anything else would be confiscated if found out.
I’m interpreting it as him coming up with a way to guard against people saying they’ll have 100 copies of 100gb drives with different stuff.
Just think about what 100gb of data you’d save from the internet, including any you have already downloaded prior. So you can’t just be like “I have 5tb of tv shows already so Im good on that front”
He stated “100GB only” in reply to my comment that I have a 400GB picture library - all own creation, completely unrelated to anything internet.
I have a library card and they have plenty bluerays and audiobooks there. I think I’d download all Debian packages and maybe some pornography? Because that seems to be missing in the city library for some reason.
Petition to have Debian packages back in city libraries
Petition to have pornography back in city libraries
I still have to work right?
This reminds me, there were a lot of sd shows that were around 60megs a pop.
That’s a lot of shows. Just sayin
Well you are only getting one chance of downloading stuff for the next 5 years, so you might wanna call out from work. Or you know, just set it to download automatically and go to work, and hope your computer doesn’t crash or windows try to update itself.
Stellarium Gardening and Plant ID recognition software Mesh Networking Tools Obscure recipe and craft books File Sharing Tools Encryption Software Clonezilla 7-zip A Linux distro
Wikipedia, music, cool videos.
Can I assume that things like movies, TV, and games will still be available in physical form? If so, the Wikipedia backup is the obvious answer
Maybe, maybe not. Remember you are dealing with a scenario where there is a world government desperately trying to stop what they perceive to be “internet addiction”.
Wikipedia
I think the full dump of wikipedia complete with multimedia is like 5 GB. the text-only version is something like 100MB.
English only with media is a bit over 100GB, at least the kiwix package is
i wonder where i got the low number from then :/ can’t find it now
22 gb without media
is that for all languages and with history?
I checked yesterday, English Wikipedia is 86 GB
huh. wonder where i got that from then.
If you were smart about it and had time to prepare, you could find a way to restrict the size of the Wikipedia download by eliminating things that are likely to also be in print books and therefore much less important to preserve. It might have to involve some sort of machine learning element.
I’ve been meaning to download the Beats In Space Radio mixes from their archive so I’ll just add that
Offline wikipedia, original Finnish “Hobitit” as the movie cut, both seasons of the original Polish “Wiedzmin”, latest versions of the usual rust crates, especially everything bevy related, so that I have plenty to do for years even without internet. Probably some sort of copy of stack overflow too, or sections of it, if possible. Offline version for docs.rs, also offline documentation for lua, react, dotnet etc, that I could foresee maybe needing during those 5 years. Reaper DAW with some of my most trusted plugins. No heavyweight synths or vsti though, have to trust people getting more into actual instruments without internet and me being able to record them. Latest Krita, Blender and Obsidian. The most essential plugins, brushes, scripts etc for those too. Starting to close in on the 100gb I guess, so the rest Id dedicate on extremely compressed (but not horrible) versions of my most listened playlists of music; a few of my favorite movies and/or series; and as big of an archive of ebooks (as in fiction) I could muster in a day. If I have space left, my audiobook library, or at least a segment of it, too. I could live without porn, I suppose, as long as the other areas of entertainment and escapism are covered.
Email/PM everyone I’m in contact with online and ask them for their current phone numbers and addresses, and send them mine. Subscribe to 2-3 local and regional newspapers, and one good national or international one.
Offline contact info for every place I do business with online, and scrape a list of all businesses within 20 miles of home or work. Offline contact info for all the government agencies I or family or friends may need to contact for the next five years. Offline contact info for every local, state, or federal official who supposedly represents me, my family or friends.
A full listing of all my online accounts, with full transaction histories. Copies of all Terms of Service and privacy policies, copies of all warranty, repair and refund policies.
Phone numbers of my favorite restaurants and copies of their current menus. Phone numbers, addresses, visitor information, prices and (where applicable) attraction information for all museums, parks and other attractions in my area.
All my archived email or stored files that’s still on a server somewhere. Copies of every single bookmark on every device I have. And copies of every story on AO3.
All my movies and TV and wikipedia.
I watched a 87gb rip of Godzilla Minus One last night… I might need to bring down my bitrate standards if I want to fit all my movies
Wikipedia, kernel sources and some LLM models
I still have my old Ubuntu CDs no need to worry.
I’d replace kernel sources with a full Linux distribution (unless this is already part of “essential system files”)
And some Stallman memes for good measure
An LLM pointed at a local copy of Wikipedia, and every book I can get my hands on. I already have hundreds of music CDs, and a couple dozen vinyl records, so I’m good for music.
music CDs
Those would count towards the 100gb limit, right? They are digital
With the stipulation that it’s 100GB total and not on top of what I already have, then the question is not what I would download, but rather which of my family photos/videos I’m okay with losing.
