If you could have a copy of one publicly-accessible database, which would you take?

[robkelk]

This is almost a Just for Fun question.

If you were marooned on a desert island with a solar-powered laptop and an offline copy of one publicly-accessible database, which database would you take?

The size of the database doesn't matter -- assume the existence of a multi-petabyte drive in the laptop. (If you really want the Internet Archive as your database, that's fine.) It does need to be legally accessible by the public without charge, though, so please provide a link to it.

Also, the laptop's radio is busted and you're marooned -- once you've chosen your database, there's no updating it. Other than that, you get the standard I/O devices on the laptop.

[classicdrogn]

Taking as written that the scenario also includes a protagonist makeover for sufficient health and athleticism and/or a Fantasy Island abandoned yet fully stocked living area of some sort to handle the survival situation long term, some fiat-backed source of power and lack of maintenance concerns for the lappie, that real world rules otherwise apply so no grabbing a bunch of occult stuff and figuring out working magic, and that my actual personal filesystem is already in place... I'm really not sure, beyond an Internet Archive style "just grab it all" option. At that point just having enough fiction to keep myself amused for the few decades before the weakness of flesh overcomes me is all I'd really care for. Remove that time limit and you basically have my junior high to early high school self's concept of heaven, and one I could still get behind if I believed in an afterlife at all.

[robkelk]

Well, I didn't say all of that... The protagonist is still going to have to put in some work to survive. The laptop, OTOH, was stated to be solar-powered.

[classicdrogn]

Ah, so it was. As for the provided living space or overhaul... well, without one or the other, there's no point in speculating, because I doubt I'd last long enough to worry about it.

[Labster]

I'm going to take the Library of Congress, because you said it had to be publicly accessible and free, but never said the database had to be electronic. In fact, the size of the laptop doesn't even matter, you said! Plus it would be really useful to shelter inside the library on the island. But don't open the hatch underneath the building -- that's the subway to the Cannon Building, full of wild Congressmen. Leave it shut!

[hmelton]

I would say the Gutenberg project there are books that covers many subjects starting from very crude states  including books for surprisingly useful electrical equipment made from very crude starts.(Rusty nails or razor blades are low grade diodes) and that along witha  power source, access to flexible  long conductors and a crude switch is about all you need for a crude radio transmitter.

Destroying the laptop's radios, this had me laughing pretty hard, unless the laptop is made to the highest levels of the "Tempest standard" it's going to be a radio beacon that can be picked up from orbit, especially on a deserted island with no other powered objects for hundreds or is it thousands of miles?

Right now I'm listening to lightning strikes on a modified audio amp that didn't cost $10 dollars and I'm using a small coil and 15 feet of twin speaker wire,  the storm is on my states southern border and I'm living nearly on the Northern border.

The same crude set up lets me know when a "varmit" is trying to get through an electric fence on our chicken house 100 feet away and can pick up the flash charging on a game camera at over 20 feet. Active Cell phones are usually obvious at 30 feet and I have used the same antenna with a Software defined radio to read the location beacons on every aircraft that is above my local 5 foot horizon.


One of the very first small personal computers from the 70's had no speakers and yet the engineers had them playing sounds mostly tones or tunes on AM radios with simple  loop programs accessing various memory locations and other circuits repeatedly


It's not something I'd recommend, but a carefully damaged USB cable will generate huge amounts of radio noise on multiple bands  and a relatively simple program written in say basic trying to access a USB device would let you modulate the noise into Morse code or in very confusing patterns

I've found this out the hard way with cheap USB cables either on my equipment or somewhere on my families equipment.

When I have the time I experiment with Software defined radios for various sensor systems and have a terrible time isolating the old laptops or desktops I use with them.

Metal siding, multiple lengths of wound chokes, clamp on ferrite filters and often quite a bit of tinfoil

The solar powered computer laptop is one very big radio transmitter and It is actually very hard to keep the laptop or for that matter any digital device from transmitting on multiple radio bands and when you put something like that in the middle of a area with no other electronics it's going to stand out like a house on fire.

Sorry for getting off track,  the database I'd chose would be the Gutenberg project.

https://www.gutenberg.org/

HDM

[robkelk]

The solar powered computer laptop is one very big radio transmitter and It is actually very hard to keep the laptop or for that matter any digital device from transmitting on multiple radio bands and when you put something like that in the middle of a area with no other electronics it's going to stand out like a house on fire.

But will it connect to wi-fi? The point to taking out the radio is that you're not getting any updates.

[hmelton]

The solar powered computer laptop is one very big radio transmitter and It is actually very hard to keep the laptop or for that matter any digital device from transmitting on multiple radio bands and when you put something like that in the middle of a area with no other electronics it's going to stand out like a house on fire.

But will it connect to wi-fi? The point to taking out the radio is that you're not getting any updates.

Are you meaning purposely stranded on a desert Island and determined not to escape just use the data base you are carrying in the laptop to survive?

If you put me on that desert Island with a solar powered laptop I'd have a wide band spark transmitter built in a couple of days at the most and unless I made a mistake still be able to use the  laptop, the admittedly crude and weak radio would be transmitting near constant SOS and if the Island is overflown by any aircraft or depending on the solar cycle the SOS would be picked up by HAM radio and located and have me off the Island in hours, days or weeks at worst.


Uh any laptop wi-fi transmitter powerful enough to have a chance to connect to another wi-fi from a desert Island is going to literally be lethal to you and the animals and vegetation on the Island. Wi-fi  even the oldest standards for laptop radios are in the microwave band any wi-fi transmitter with a range of more than a few dozen feet is dangerous to be within touching distance of  in the long and short terms.  The microwave power levels needed for a laptop to transmit off a desert island would possibly set fires and give you microwave burns.

The best range I know of obtain from existing mostly safeh Wi-fii transmitters is about 50 miles using two large repurposed ?5 meter? satellite dishes pointed at each other and high enough to get over the curvature of the Earth over the water.  One was on a tall hill above a research facility on a coastal Island being researched by a university and the other dish was set up on a tower at one of the universities shore buildings.

HDM

[classicdrogn]

relevant music:

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