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4w ago

[Hypothetical] The internet is getting shut down for 5 years. You have 100 GB of storage available, you have 24 hours to prepare. What do you download?

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?

163 comments

Wikipedia, kernel sources and some LLM models
- 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
- I still have my old Ubuntu CDs no need to worry.

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.
- 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).
- 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.

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".

Guides how to create my own little internet with other people, 7zip and 99GB of RAM.
- Lol bootleg internet?
  I think I head about some place where people actually have a bootleg internet due to government censorship. Forgot where I heard about it.
  
  There is big offline network of sharing data on usb drives in Cuba.
  
  Sounds like a cyberpunk trope.

Nothing, because the rest of the world is trying to do the same thing and the internet is now essentially DDoSed into oblivion 24 hours early.

I wouldn't be too worried. If the internet stops being a thing, we'll just go back to physical media. I imagine there will be huge data storages that sell USBs and DVDs containing specific data people are looking for, so any time I'd want to watch a movie or something I would go to my network of friends and start copying.
- Also known as the 90s
  Dear OP’s world government, chop chop

Download factorio and dwarf fortress
- A few years ago I was living in fear of local government turning internet into intranet north korea-style (dont ask). So - no joke - I've had factorio archived with latest versions of seablock, space exploration and nullius. Figured it'll keep me going for a decade or so.
- Add Rimworld to this list
  
  And Crusader Kings 3
- Best answer. The other 90GB is irrelevant.

As much of pornhub that will fit.
- This guy will be rich in the post apocalypse

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.

Math, science, chemistry, carpentry, gardening, and mechanical/engineering texts.
And repair manuals /guides for everything i own.
All the music on my playlists.
Porn.
- Porn
  Yeah obviously, but what about the rest of my 10s of TBs of porn?

100GB?? I'd be more worried about WTF will happen to the rest of my 100TB of storage
- Confiscated by order of the benevolent United Nations world government.
  You are being liberated from the Internet Opium, do not resist.

Godot, Blender, Gimp, latest tutorial series for all three, Wikipedia (which I already have), music, fill the rest with art assets.
If I can't download games I will simply make them.
- Aside from the fact that playing something youve created is an entirely different experience to discovering something unexpected that someone else has created, you would need space to store your created games still.
  
  I mean, just because the Internet is down doesn't mean you can't go buy another hard drive in a brick and mortar store later.

The internet is going down for 5 years? Books and video instructions about farming prolly, I'll probably be unemployed if there's no 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

100 GB
looks at my nas, already stuffed with several TB of content, chuckling
Some panic, while others were ready since the dawn of time. I'll add that extra 100 gigs to my drive collection though...
(it's lots of games, media, and yiff. And yeah, it is enough to hold me over for 5 years. No, you can't see it. :p)
- You didn't read the post. You're going to be spending all of your time deleting your content because you only have 100 GB's total.

Books. Small games (ROMs or not). Ubuntu (Debian doesn't come with a working desktop). Compress my music collection to AAC192. Stuff like that.

1/10th of a Call of Duty game.
- Just find 9 more people and then y'all can meet up and play the game.

Sorry, but i feel like i have been preparing for this for the last 15 years now. I won't answer the question because I already have 40tb worth of content on my personal NAS. From movies, TV shows, music, and video games, I think I will be good for some time living off of just that. I also have all my docs, and personal pics as well.
Since I live in an area where power goes out a lot and internet can go down once or twice a year (not long but maybe up to 6 hours, worst case) it's already been a great solution that I was able to try out during those events.

ROMs
A 100GB of ROMs

SneakerNet will still exist, so your friends can download different stuff each and transfer it over a local network, or a flash drive. Different people might connect their own local networks to facilitate ease of communication, and boom, you have an internet again. By its very nature of being decentralised, the internet is very difficult to shut down completely.

Wikipedia and a lot of games. A bunch of programming tools and libraries. My Spotify playlist. Video is the least efficient so you'd have to limit that a lot.
- I don't think Spotify works without Internet for long. You'll have to login at some point.
  
  they said their spotify playlist, so i'd assume its downloading it with something like lucida.to

So you're saying it would be my last chance to download a car?
- Lol why do you assume this is a capitalistic world government, maybe its a socialist world government that gives out free cars, who knows 🤷‍♂️. Also you are being liberated from the internet, do not resist. 😉
  (Resistance is deal with by 💥🔫)
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Wouldn%27t_Steal_a_Car#In_popular_culture

Only 100GB? Shit I'm gonna have to decide what porn not to keep...
- Sort by date last viewed, delete everything older than a month ago. You're welcome.
  
  Or to keep things fresh, only keep the oldest 100gb.
  
  But what about those days were you're really in the mood for a particular video from 3 years back?

Oh, I'll get Call of Du... Ah shit it's download didn't finish
- The bigger joke is that (IIRC) all of the latest CoD games require a consistent internet connection to verify that you actually purchased the rights to the video game. Even if you're playing offline.

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.

A collection of older and therefore smaller games. A bunch of music in mp3 (or maybe something like AAC or OPUS). A bunch of ebooks. A handful of my favorite TV shows and/or movies heavily recompressed, like maybe 720p.
- Don't rule out midi or mod music file formats

general info
A large LLM with many parameters

specific info
Wikipedia, WikiHow, TVTropes, various survival Guides, HAM radio operation
- qwen2.5, mistral large, llama3.1/3.2, ...
  Which one would you pick?
  
  Llama 90B was the last one I tested, I have no idea how the newer ones fare

Books and music. The more the merrier

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

In this thread: dorks using it as an opportunity to brag about their large storage epeens.
But then what happened to my 120 petabyte network attached storage, host to every episode of Inuyasha in multiple releases, languages, and resolutions?! My mother would surely notice having space again in ~~her~~ our basement!
- MUUUUUUUUMMMMMMM the router is downnnnnn plz call the internet people
- Hard drives is the new [male genitalia] measuring contest? 🤔
  
  This thread suggests that some people certainly think so. I suspect the rest of us disagree.

You should make this a writing prompt
- Is there even a "writing prompts" community on Lemmy?
  
  Oh I'm glad you asked! I'm so glad you asked! I'm so very glad you asked!

There used to be a way you could download all of the Wikipedia text as a PDF. I'd pop that bad boy on a Kindle and have my own Hitchhiker's Guide.
- Not a .pdf but a .zim that requires its own software to read. And not "it used to", its still possible now, and new versionnare constantly being added.
  Google "Kiwix". You have to download the reader software, then the .zim file. It's also cross-platform, available on many platforms, you can even have it on your phone.
  Its actually used by various non-profit organizations to spread knowledge in developing/undeveloped countries. The latest version of the entire English wikipedia is like 100GB with photos and audio files, its 50GB with text only.
- still is a way to dl the whole db. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download

Wikipedia
- I think the full dump of wikipedia complete with multimedia is like 5 GB. the text-only version is something like 100MB.
  
  22 gb without media
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download
  
  I checked yesterday, English Wikipedia is 86 GB
  
  English only with media is a bit over 100GB, at least the kiwix package is
- 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.

How to self-host/become your own ISP

personnal files that are stored in the Cloud
Wikipedia
Linux and Raspberry ISO, and some libs/tools packages, sources and docs
sandbox games and rogue likes
wiki for these games
as much porn as I can download with the remaining storage available
Unless it's a fascist government, I don't care about ebooks, mp3, movies or TV show. I'll use books, vinyls and DVD.
- DVDs are digital storage though, so wouldn't they count for the 100 GB limit? I mean otherwise I could just burn a ton of media to bluray discs and be golden
  
  I wasn't thinking of writable DVDs, but factory pressed ones. They are digital, but their use is comparable to vinyl or books.

Not very much with my slow connection.
- RIP
  But on the bright side, you get to touch more grass 😅

Hah, I've been collecting all my needs offline for a while now. Because companies keep turning to subscriptions and other ##. I'm pretty sure my archive of apps is under 100GB

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

5 years? Hm, time to get some stuff from the 90s, when the internet was a timed luxury, so plenty of emulators and roms, they won't take much space. Videos are out, some porn will have to be static pics, some as gifs.
Also, gotta have Factorio, Palworld, dwarf fortress

Ultra high-fidelity version of « Sandstorm » and the same copy of the Vern Troyer porn movie with virus that nuked my gf’s computer.

Start running wires and make a intranet with my neighbors. WiFi would be easier, but would the internet police be looking for signals?
Would Netflix go back to mailing physical disks? Would I have to go buy albums? Weird. You could buy of borrow the physical media and add it to your intranet.
I'd probably download a couple TV series and some music. I'd also get software to make sure I can copy and store everything.
- Wait, the kids are alright potentially

Contact info for all my bills. Everything else is ephemeral so may as well wean off it now.

Sounds like a good chance to catch up with my backlog of games.
I would check so I can play everything I want offline then just get as much as I can.

Well obviously I'd download 100 GBs of more RAM.
But uh, for serious?
DL everything I'd need to build Debian from bare metal... probably some select material from the IA, basic survival stuff, info on how to set up a solar power system... and all the I2P software and source code i can find.
If the Net goes down, but the physical hardware still exists, cables, radios, wifi cards... build your own Net.

Download a zillion movies and whole tv series (in highly compressed versions), a zillion music albums and playlists, the 25 GB downloadable version of Wikipedia, a ton of emulators and game roms, and a bunch of apps covering everything i might wanna do like music creation software.

Since it hasn't been mentioned yet:
Project Gutenberg.
It's pretty much all copyright-less (?) books. About 40GB.
I'd probably also torrent a shitton of less-than-legal books. Mostly because they're copyrighted, not because the books themselves are illegal. I would survive the rest of my life on books. Maybe a few GB of music - I'd need some background noise if I were to study.
Some free OS' like Debian and FreeBSD, and their manual. Maybe some magazine about both?

*Redbox throws hands up in frustration

A couple ROMs, some banger songs and one hyrule warriors legends.
(Had about 700 or so hours I'm the original over a couple of years l).
The internet goomg down is not gonna be as bad as one thinks, at least not for the individual.

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.

Lots of tools and games that are open ended and not contrived as well as the obligatory Wikipedia download.

I have a 100% remote job a few hundred km away. Even if you made the exception for remote work, my job would basically be pointless because our company operates entirely in the online world.
I also wouldn't be able to Skype or even email my aging family back in the US.
Also, in very rural Japan, online shopping is a huge saver of time and money. I'd also have to watch OTA Japanese tv which mostly sucks.
I was thinking just various learning materials, but I think you can just shoot me instead sometime before the bank repo's my house
- I think in this scenario you just have to pretend we are ok economically, because of the Internet went down entirely, the world economy would completely collapse in a few hours to days.

163 comments