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posted by CoolHand on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the wrapped-in-a-comfy-warm-blanket dept.

The world's poor could benefit from a system that is blanketing half Earth's surface with a signal that provides free access to Wikipedia and other useful websites.

What do you get if you cross a satellite TV receiver with the Internet? According to startup Outernet, a way to bring billions more people the benefit of online information.

By renting communications satellites, Outernet is currently blanketing about half Earth's surface with a signal that transmits data including much of Wikipedia, open-source software, health resources from the Centers for Disease Control, and international news coverage. Cheap devices based on regular satellite TV receivers store the data that the signal gradually transfers and create a local Wi-Fi network to let nearby computers, phones, or tablets access the downloaded content.

Outernet is putting together the first 100 prototypes of those devices, code-named "Pillars," and starting to test them in the field. One is up and running in a village in western Kenya. Another is in the Dominican Republic, and a third will soon be installed at a Detroit anarchist community attempting to live off the grid. Outernet's current signal broadcasts about 200 megabytes of data over the course of a day, making it possible to update content such as daily news and weather forecasts periodically. It covers North and Central America, all of sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and parts of Asia and the Middle East.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/537411/startup-beams-the-webs-most-important-content-from-space-free/

 
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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by CortoMaltese on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:21AM

    by CortoMaltese (5244) on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:21AM (#183935) Journal

    Whoa man, like not everyone is out to get you. I say its fine that they want to provide information to poor people, some of this villages are hours away from cities, with the right information you can learn first aid, water potability, solar energy and the like, if the thing you object is "international news coverage" well I can say most of it is shit but not necessarily only sjw shit.

     

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:26AM (#183938)

    Whoa man, like not everyone is out to get you.

    [Citration needed] and stay out of my spine!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:12AM (#183954)

      Kuro5hin is calling!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:33AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:33AM (#183944)

    Why would some remote African village care about there not being "enough" women working in Silicon Valley, or there not being "enough Asian-Americans attending Harvard?

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:31AM (#183966)

      You don't realize it but you are joe-jobbing your own cause, whining like that about trivial shit.
      Might as well just say the SJWs are right and be done with it.

  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @11:15AM (#184011)

    Calm down oh mighty paladin, GP was just being snarky. It takes a special kind of brain-damaged stupid (<sarcasm>like conservatives [conservapedia.com]</sarcasm>) to truly believe that Wikipedia doesn't contain vast quantities of useful information, not the kind that would usually find their way to sites such as this one.

    That said, it is valid criticism as Wikipedia is infested with SJWs and their agenda-pushing biased articles [wikipedia.org] which are completely detached from (NSFW)reality [8ch.net].