Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans who don't have internet?

Posted by slydo on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @05:20PM
from the ask-hn dept.

After reading this story https://web.archive.org/web/20150208082806/http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CB_CUBA_SECRET_NETWORK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT i'm left with the question: what would be the most valuable data to get into Cuba to help the local population. Books? Audio? Video? Software? what would you bring?

( 11 comments | 15 points | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by toomuchtodo on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @06:55PM (#11766235)

Wikipedia Offline: http://xowa.org/

OpenStreetMap: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Downloading_data

Project Gutenberg Offline: https://github.com/kiwix/gutenberg

Scihub (google "scihub torrents") (caution: 50TB corpus)

Gitlab (or packaged as a VM to run locally): https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce

Khan Academy: http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/hands-on/how-to-run-khan-...

StackExchange: https://archive.org/details/stackexchange

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by seren on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @07:44AM (#11769029)

Regarding openstreetmap, it might be a good idea in general but I suspect that OpenStreetmap details would be really poor in Cuba because of the lack of contributors. So I am not sure it would be that useful to Cubans (who still have restrictions to travel IIRC).

Just checked, I was wrong : it is actually not that bad: https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/5252057#map=17/23.104...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by astrodust on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @10:15PM (#11767223)

Could this question get more Hacker News?

The service called El Packete is what you'd expect, and it carries every-day stuff: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a1...

If people want Stack Overflow they'll ask for it. They're not without internet access, it's just that their ping times are really, really high.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by dragonbonheur on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @05:35PM (#11765698)

The free scientific comic books linked from this page. Just scroll down for English or Spanish versions. https://www.savoir-sans-frontieres.com/JPP/telechargeables/f...

And try to get ebooks and documents about biogas production, permaculture, survival skills, handicrafts, how various things work, free computer programming books, compiler construction (Jack Crenshaw's work, not SICP), sewing patterns, cake recipe books, cocktail books (tourism is about to increase). No political propaganda.

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Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by slydo on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @05:23PM (#11765614)

https://web.archive.org/web/20150208082806/http://hosted.ap....

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8948525

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Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by MalcolmDiggs on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @05:06PM (#11773088)

All 33 chapters of R Kelly's rap opera: "Trapped in the Closet".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped_in_the_Closet

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Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by qwertyuiop924 on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @12:12PM (#11770846)

I'd bring gutenburg, wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Scihub, KhanAcademy, etc. as already mentioned by others. I'd also bring DOOM. And if they had LAN, I'd bring Quake. Because no matter how grim a situation gets, a good game is fun.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by cyphar on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @07:46PM (#11766551)

If I had enough storage I'd give them a repository of all reasonably large free software projects. I'd also give them SciHub and everything in arXiv.

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Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by tylercubell on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @07:01PM (#11766274)

Wikipedia dump, textbooks on a wide variety of subjects, any practical information that can be useful considering the limited resources on the island.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by bbcbasic on Wednesday May 25, 2016 @12:32AM (#11767675)

This is desert island disks (as opposed to discs).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: What would you bring on a hard drive for Cubans w... by mud_dauber on Tuesday May 24, 2016 @06:07PM (#11765919)

My kickass music library.

[ Parent | on HN ]