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?
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.
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 💥🔫)
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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?
Download factorio and dwarf fortress
Add Rimworld to this list
And Crusader Kings 3
Best answer. The other 90GB is irrelevant.
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.
I would buy a ton of storage devices as secretly as possible and hide them, hoping the government doesn’t notice. Then I’d use the drives to make a sneakernet type situation.
Lots of anime. Some cherished games. I feel like i don’t need a while lot of porn. Maybe those 5-6 vids that I currently frequent. That will probably get me through. Other than that; House; maybe all of Stargate but prob would never get to it; HBO watchmen series is totally rewatchable and would probably grab the movie too; bunch of misc horror films; all of law and order. Probably missed some stuff but the biggest loss would be all the new stuff that won’t be released.
I did all of Stargate some 15 years ago. I feel a lot of nostalgia for it. If you never went through it all - definitively get that on your 100GB.
It’s probably been 15 years since I watched them all. I just don’t imagine I’d get that bored in just 5 years.
I’d download as much 480p TV, movies, etc as possible as quickly as possible.
