We had heard that there were communities that would benefit from an offline version of Stack Overflow and wanted to understand what it would take to create. We first set out to create this project in the fall of 2019. Unlocked Labs is one of the organizations we’ll be working with, but there are many others, spanning from the justice system, to scientific research, to university education in areas where internet access is scarce. We’re working with a non-profit, Kiwix, to ensure that an up-to-date version of our dataset is easily available for those who need it, and will work to improve its readability and reduce its size so there is less friction for end users. Today, we’re happy to announce a new initiative called Overflow Offline. With that raw material, Hicklin and her co-founder built out a curriculum and learning management system that is now utilized by individuals studying through Unlocked Labs. Eventually, a friend who worked in tech sent her an XML file containing Stack Overflow’s quarterly data dump. “My experience with the internet ended with America Online and dial-up modems.” At first she relied on textbooks, but they were often out of date. She had no access to the internet while incarcerated. Many coders would say they rely on Stack Overflow to get work done, but Hicklin’s situation is different. Unlocked Labs would not exist without Stack Overflow.” “It was the difference in making our project work. Key to their success, says Hicklin, is the knowledge contributed by the Stack Overflow community over the years. The organization supports coding education programs in three prisons across the state of Missouri, and runs a development shop at one prison, empowering currently incarcerated individuals to build software that improves access to education in prison more broadly. Earlier this year, after 26 years, she left the justice system a free woman, and set to work in her new role, as CTO of Unlocked Labs. Try it out for yourself: all the instructions are shown in the Github page.Jessica Hicklin was 16 when she entered a juvenile correctional facility. You can then play with Kiwix on your personal machine or even set up your router to make Kiwix available to everyone connected to your local area network. To make it “easier” to set up a Kiwix Server, I have a Dockerfile that creates a Linux virtual machine, installs the Kiwix software, installs your chosen ZIM files, and starts up the server for you. Setting up a Kiwix Server Docker container This could all change, however, as development progresses. Also, it only runs on Linux, which means one must use virtualization in order to deploy or experiment with it on a non-Linux machine.įor people wanting to write custom applications around Kiwix Server, the API to interact with it programatically are also pretty limited. add, delete, update them) as in the desktop app. It is not as easy to manage ZIM files (e.g. There are some downsides to using Kiwix Server, however. Using this approach, one could run Kiwix on a shared server and allow many users to connect to it on their own computers through a local area network. Instead of using a dedicated desktop app to view ZIMs, one runs this server and simply connects to it using their favorite web browser. Kiwix Serverįor users interested in using Kiwix on a desktop, another solution is to use “kiwix-serve” or Kiwix Server, which is a Linux program that runs a server for ZIM files. However, the latest release of the desktop app is version 0.9 which was released in 2014 and does not appear to be under active development (the mobile apps do appear to be under active development, however). There also exist ports for iOS and Android. The desktop version of Kiwix can be downloaded for Windows, macOS, and Linux and basically serves as a browser for viewing ZIM files. This is possible through the availability of ZIM files that are essentially compressed versions of these websites at a moment in time (visit this link to see the kinds of content you can download). Kiwix is a software project that lets you view several popular websites like Wikipedia, TED, and StackOverflow without having to connect to the internet. Host a local version of Wikipedia and other sites for you and your friends and family What is Kiwix? What are ZIM files?
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