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And for those who are only vaguely familiar, this ZIM file format is not the same as the https://zim-wiki.org one.

I think there’s a difference between doomsday framing and preparedness.

Offline access and local models aren’t about assuming collapse—they’re about treating knowledge as infrastructure instead of something implicitly guaranteed.

That feels more like resilience than pessimism.

This is not just a random idea.

AlexNet -> Tansformers -> ChatGPT -> Claude Code -> Small LMs serving KBs

Large LLMs could have a role in efficiently producing such KBs.

Doomsday may not be the end of the world, but simply living in a country where you're being unjustifiably bombed by a foreign government lead by a delusional sociopath, and so access to information sources becomes limited.

ZIM or not, I think the “LLM as optional sidecar” part is the right idea.

The durable asset is the knowledge base itself. A local model can be useful on top, but it should stay a layer, not become the dependency.

Solar cells work no matter what, I agree that maybe less processing is more useful but LLM is uniqely useful as well

No need for a battery, you just need someone to hit the pedals on that dynamo.

This is not true for me. I would want an LLM after the apocalypse. I'd become like the Wizard of Oz, the all-knowing oracle.

Two different uses of "offline", I think. From my own understanding:

To "go offline" means for something to become inaccessible that was once accessible "online". ("Offline" is an adverb.)

Meanwhile, an "offline" thing is one which is usable even without ever being "online". ("Offline" is an adjective.)

So it becomes:

> "Knowledge That Never [Becomes Inaccessible]"

> "Node for [Accessible-Without-Connection] Media, Archives, and Data"

But definitely confusing to put them right next to each other like that. You'd think a copyeditor would flag it or something.

My guess is

>Knowledge That Never Goes Offline

Means

>Knowledge That Never becomes inaccessible to you

While the next offline means you can access it even if you don't have access to a wider network.

At least that's how I would read it.

It might be an interesting idea given that the Steam Deck has reasonable amount of RAM/GPU. The main issue for a knowledge base might be the lack of a physical keyboard though.

Not sure how good of an idea a Steam Deck would be for this. If you can't access Wikipedia, I imagine a replacement for its unprotected glass screen would be harder to come by if you drop it.

A friend made this years ago. I never used it but the idea is awesome.

https://github.com/ligi/SurvivalManual

They specifically state that they’re aiming for a “fatter” model that expects higher-end hardware, and other projects like Internet in a box already target rpi-style devices.

Also https://kiwix.org/en/about/

I used it on a long train trip. There was no internet due to drone attacks, and with Kiwix I could browse pre-downloaded Wikis

I’m convinced that the multitude of off-line Internet tools is a ploy to keep any one of them from gaining traction

You can use Kiwix, OpenStreetMap and Kolibri as an AI-free equivalent. Adding AI to those is exactly the differentiator of this project.

I get the hate on AI for many reasons (hype, resource greediness, threat to civilization, etc), but having a local LLM that could help guide and reason about the data within seems like a win, especially if it's optional.

It never goes offline by already being offline.

Yeah, that game was really ahead of its time. I still hold out hope some indie studio will attempt a spiritual successor.