data hoarders will become heroes
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2025
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This is literally true though, why is it on the onion?
Article was posted in 2017
I think it is safe to say The Onion has basically turned into a Time Machine rather than a Satire site. It seems to be predicting just how crazy things will be in the future.
Oh I didn't notice that, thanks.
Not enough onion flavor here. I just downloaded a full copy of Wikipedia last week in case the trumpanzees go after it.
Hey, don't insult chimps like that!
Not chimps, chumps.
I did that in February... after my copy from early January got damaged.
Been lowkey prepping for a while.
I've been keeping a copy of the Zim for ages just waiting for doom :)
good time for local copies of books/movies/tv
good time to have a decent stock of long-term food staples.
keeping a copy of some LLMs around isn't bad either; they're not great, but they are bang for the buck (compression wise) FULL of data from all over the net, you just need to be careful and not just trust it openly.
I can't say i'm happy that it seems like it might be useful in my lifespan.
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This one is true.
EDIT - There are many people trying to save all types of facts before they are removed from the internet.
Well, fuck me, that's just. I'm at a loss.
How can he ever have been seen as a candidate to lead a fucking McDonald's, let alone a country. Fuck sake.
I don't think he could even run a shift properly at a mcD joint without getting sued into the ground.
He'd be way too giddy around the happy meals.
Modern day book burning. Funny how history rhymes like that.
I have been doing this just so when my kid comes home from high school in ten years to tell me what they learned in "history" class, i can set the record straight
My linkwarden has been VERY busy.
I've been careful to categorize only reportable fact, seeing it condensed all on a page from just a couple of months is fucking horrifying.
Backup wikipedia yall
It's been backed up a zillion times already. Scanning a rare old book and uploading it to Internet Archive and/or Libgen/Z-lib, seeding Anna's Archive torrents, stuff of that sort is more valuable than an another copy of Wikipedia on your hard drive where nobody will ever touch it.
Por que no los dos?
Also, donate to the internet archive. If they go down the internet is megafucked.
is more valuable than an another copy of Wikipedia on your hard drive where nobody will ever touch it.
You're assuming they don't manage to make ISP's shut down suspected torrent users and nuke IA from orbit.
If it's on your HD, they have to come and take it from you directly for you to lose it.
Still contribute to IA and AA, absolutely, but don't except them always to be there.
Unless things change direction, all that shit is going to have to way further underground and we might end up sneakernetting shit if they decide high-speed internet is to be completely censored.
I know the IA has mentioned in the past they have projects in place to try to back up their archive. I hope their backup plans are true, and if they are attacked by the US, they can relocate to a new safe haven and come back online quickly. The IA has been such a wonderful resource for research and accountability.
I suppose the major bit of hope I have about the IA is with their partnership with the Library of Congress.
As for ISPs shutting down Torrent users, I suspect they would do that strictly based on bandwidth usage alone. I know my local Cable company will send nastygrams if they see you using a disproportionate amount of bandwidth compared to other customers. I've seen them also shut down Business Internet accounts for doing the exact same thing!
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Done. I've also been hitting up estate sales looking for any kind of book with knowledge in it, especially tables, numbers, conversions, or formulas. I don't trust our AI riddled internet to tell me how many pints are in a gallon at this point.
Yes, yes, metric system blah blah. I didn't choose the system, I just make brownies with it.
4 quarter gallons to the gallon, 2 pints to the quart, 2 cups to the pt, 8 US fluid Ounces to the cup, 2 table spoons to the floz, 3 teaspoon to the tbsp, 5 ml to the tsp.
Oh, and a HAndLe is a HALf gallon, and a FIFTH is one FIFTH of a gallon. You can remember that because it starts with ha for half, and fifth for fifth.
Not satire...
Uhhhhh, I have specifically downloaded an offline version of Wikipedia. I'm pretty sure this is just regular reporting from The Onion.
Where can you download the entirety of wikipedia and how do you actually use it?
Wikipedia actually hosts various snapshots of the entire website that you can download. If you download the text only version in English it's less than 10GB if I recall. If you want photos and other things it's in the hundreds of gigs.
The easiest I'm aware of that requires the least effort and knowledge is an open source application called Kiwix which has apps for Android (both F-Droid and Play Store), Windows, Linux, iOS, and MacOS.
aard2 is primary a dictionary app, but it has wiki* snapshots as well. (https://github.com/itkach/slob/wiki/Wikipedia)
Me too, and I'm not even American. I fully expect the Wikimedia foundation to be attacked.
Yo, I literally did this because I think they're going to shut down the internet soon.
I don't think that the fed will shut down the Internet. Not just because it's effectively impossible to do for a timeframe that's anything less than a month, but because it would literally destroy the entire country and the regime's ability to do anything.
There's a reason China still has the Internet, and why VPNs are still kind of tolerated. The U.S. nor any industry in it cannot survive without it. We are dozens of much less serious (but still serious) steps away from an internet shutdown, and I genuinely think that we won't reach internet shutdown at all.
Without the Internet it's not just credit cards that stop working, it's literally the capability for any store to order stuff to sell. Or the capability for every federally regulated employer (nearly all of them) to pay employees. Third world countries can get away with it because their economy isn't anywhere near as modernized as that of western countries.
Additionally, the way that the U.S. government is organized makes attacks on the Internet very difficult without Congress.
I hope you're right.
I'm still going to have my local archives of Wikipedia and the like.
And I'm also going to have my meshtastic and software defined radio
Edit: what stops the USA from cutting all fiber and just using Nazi starlink?
They likely can't do it overnight, but they can do it the same way they've been stripping everything else: Joke about it, hint at it, do it a little bit, do it some more in secret, blame liberals for it, do it in Texas or Florida, and then do it completely. They can get exactly the Internet they want us to have if we let them.
The US hosts a lot of critical infrastructure for the rest of the Internet, still. There have been a lot of projects to decouple from the US for this exact reason. If you also look at Cable maps, the connectivity between Europe and Asia relies on those high capacity links going through the US. There have been more connections constructed between Europe and Asia to eliminate the US as the only path over the years, but some of those cable routes also tend to venture through contested / not-so-friendly territories. Thus, transit over those paths is also more expensive!
We also have to consider that Starlink can only do so much. I believe they have trialed or have even activated Inter-satellite connectivity. But that is still a US-based company, and other countries like China are working to launch their own constellations out of fear that US and Europe-based Satellite companies can just come in someday and turn off service.
Also, cutting that Fiber will break the Public Telephone Network, which is essential for any business. I don't know how many Telcos maintain Satellite uplinks between continents these days for the PSTN, but the end result won't be pretty for anyone. Total economic collapse, especially for the US!
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Shut it down? No. Fascist firewall it and fill it with shitty boot-licking AI answers? Sure.
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I’m not pirating content, I’m saving it.
My plex server is the library of Alexandria.
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Did this with Wikipedia in 2024 before they took over.
Anyone interested, look up kiwix. Offline browser and there should be whole bunch of wikis up on the site if you poke around a bit
Here's the Kiwix library too which can be a bit hard to find. Click on the "blue" link for a given file to get a download including a torrent.
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Wow, It's crazy how onions make you cry.
facts are useful in emergencies
Yes I do have the entirety of Wikipedia on my personal cloud. That is a prudent step. You should too.
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conservatives arnt stockpiling thats for sure.
They prefer ammo over facts
Mirror Anna's archive!
I actually downloaded all of Wikipedia to self-host. The Onion van not even make Onion stuff any more.
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