Title is a little sensational but this is a cool project for non-technical folks who may need a mini-internet or data archive for a wide variety of reasons:

“PrepperDisk is a mini internet box that comes preloaded with offline backups of Wikipedia, street maps, survivalist information, 90,000 WikiHow guides, iFixit repair guides, government website backups (including FEMA guides and National Institutes of Health backups), TED Talks about farming and survivalism, 60,000 ebooks and various other content. It’s part external hard drive, part local hotspot antenna—the box runs on a Raspberry Pi that allows up to 20 devices to connect to it over wifi or wired connections, and can store and run additional content that users store on it. It doesn’t store a lot of content (either 256GB or 512GB), but what makes it different from buying any external hard drive is that it comes preloaded with content for the apocalypse.”

  • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    13 hours ago

    If you are asking this question, this product is probably not for you.
    It’s for the non-technical prepper type, the guy who has 10,000 rounds of ammo and dried food for 10 years but still uses AOL.
    The idea is just get this thing, plug it into a solar power bank, and then you can get information you might need to survive which wouldn’t be available online if there is no more internet. You could absolutely put the same thing together yourself without a problem. If you have the skill and the wherewithal to do that, you don’t need this. If you don’t have that skill, then you are the target market of this product.

    • DarkFuture@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      10 hours ago

      I mean, I could make tacos at home. Or I could pay a bit more to go pick them up somewhere. I could change my own oil, or I could have someone else do it.

      I could spend time downloading all this data and uploading it to a hard drive I purchase. I know how to do it all. But for the price they’re charging for the drive AND Raspberry Pi and the service of gathering and uploading the data, it’s not that bad of a deal. Especially if you work a full time job and want to use your free time to not do a chore like this. I mean I’m pretty sure there’s torrents for Wikipedia. Not so sure about WikiHow.

      If the price was higher I’d be complaining. It’s pretty reasonable. It’s a peace of mind thing without hassle for anyone with even a little extra cash lying around.

      • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        5 hours ago

        Yeah exactly. And from what I understand of this thing, it has a fairly easy to use auto update system. So every couple months just plug it into your router and hit the update button. I don’t think it’s a ripoff.

      • Texas_Hangover@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 hours ago

        You really should change your own oil and filter. Its stupidly easy, and the shit I’ve seen happen at lube shops makes me wake up in cold sweat.

        Nobody touches my vehicle unless I absolutely cannot accomplish the job myself.