Basically the title. The fact that we can read an encyclopedia entry on the economic history of the Netherlands from our phone is crazy. Scrolling over to a random island in the middle of the Atlantic to experience a virtual street tour is insane. There are even websites that let you see live security camera footage (shoutout to EarthCamTV). We have so much information that we take for granted.

  • VarykEnglish
    25·
    1 month ago

    you can download updated Wikipedia archives and use the app kiwix to read themon your phone, so that you can have nearly all of human knowledge with reference pictures available offline on your phone.

    it’s insane.

    I used it for years until I regrettably got this pixel piece of shit with non-expandable storage.

    My next phone will have expandable storage and offline Wikipedia on it again.

    • TheSladEnglish
      9·
      1 month ago

      How big is all of (english) wikipedia? I really have no gauge on this. Couple of terabytes? Petabytes??

      • VarykEnglish
        26·
        1 month ago

        they have different tiers, mostly separated by how many pictures are included.

        when I used the archives, the smallest was almost 3 GB, and the largest was 80 GB?

        let me check.

        full wikipedia is 110GB now.

        Wikipedia in simple English is still only 2 and 1/2 GB.

        here are all the libraries in English:

        https://library.kiwix.org/#lang=eng&category=wikipedia

        • TheSladEnglish
          10·
          1 month ago

          Wow I really thought it would be bigger, I was way off!

          • VarykEnglish
            15·
            1 month ago

            I couldn’t believe it. back when I first got it, maybe a decade ago, I think it was only around 45 or 50 GB.

            I was very confused, and figured okay, I’ll just download all of Wikipedia.

            and then I freaking had all of Wikipedia on my phone for years and it was amazing.

            every time there was a reference I didn’t get, every time there was anything I didn’t get, I pulled up Wikipedia and boom there it was.

            and I travel a lot, so I don’t always have data, but I had Wikipedia offline.

            it truly is amazing!

            this is really make me want to get an expandable storage phone again.

      • SomeAmateurEnglish
        51·
        1 month ago

        It depends on what you want. I’ll look on kiwix right now.

        All of it with pictures is 102 Gigs

        The top 100 articles are 368 MB