What's something people use the internet for that can be done just as easily offline?
For me it's calculating. Too many people put math into their search engines and not their calculator.
Reading- I am absolutely horrible at this. I'll read anything and everything online, but never make the time to read a physical book.
Reading online fanfiction is free. Sure, the quality varies, but I can quit any time I want. I just don't want to.
Reading anything online is free if you're slightly motivated.
Recently I was sitting in a bus for hours. My Steam Deck was already empty. Bravely, I decided to finally continue reading Dune. I was enjoying the experience (after the initial confusion from forgetting who everyone was). But somehow, despite being interested in what was written, my brain constantly wanted more stimulation. To grab the slate of glass that provides endless dopamine. To click buttons. To have a constant stream of simple information.
I'm kinda scared tbh. This shit is an addiction, and I'm addicted. But most other people around me seem just as much or even more addicted. What happened to just being able to do something for an hour without feeling the need for different stimulation. We're all poisoning or minds until we're incapable of paying attention for more than a few seconds.
I also do this. But I do not necessarily think it as a bad thing.
I do not need to finish the book in one sitting, it's fine to wander, I usually just just went on a tangent on a relevant topic though. Reading for an hour is fine, as is a 5 minute session.
Maybe immersing myself reading books just not that fun for me. But I can sit for hours studying music even without touching my instruments, just reading the chart and analysing the harmony and what not. I think reading like any other skill, needs training and I just haven't give it enough time.
I'm a late millennial, and like it or not I'm used to being able to access relevant context and information with just a click (like Wiki).
Finding books. I have no idea why I do that, when there's a bookstore I really enjoy right across the lot from me, but i'll literally browse book reviews for 30 mins before wandering over there and just... buying whatever looks good.
Total waste of time, I didn't value the opinions of the reviewers in the first place, and the process is always inconclusive.
Store important telephone numbers on your phone. No need to do a google search everytime you call your doctor/dentist/mechanic/whoever.
But I might want to not use this doctor for my yearly specialty visits for the first time in over a decade!
Woah now, maybe I like googling my mom's office line every time she doesn't answer her cell phone! I actually never even thought of saving it
To turn off and on light bulbs
But that would require getting up off my sofa and walking across the living room.
Remotes exist
Note taking
For me it's ordering takeout. I never order takeout online, I always call up the place with my phone 🤷♀️ much easier to customize an order this way too
And often cheaper as they aren't getting gouged by apps. My local pizzeria happily said ' call us direct and you'll get a discount'
I've had local places refuse to take my order over the phone.
"use our app or come in"
yeah, they don't last long. I can imagine their last thoughts are, "why won't anyone eat here?"
Asking what people use the internet for that can be done just as easily offline.
Too many people put math into their search engines and not their calculator.
People are doing what now? fr? There's a whole ass app for that.
If you type it the search bar, it pulls up a calculator with the answer on it. I do it all the time.
Search engine UI is better for it than most default calculators. I use Kubuntu and KCalc is usually pretty crap in comparison.
Say I want to calculate 220480*(1.0523-1.0522). Now I want to 220480*(1.0524-1.0523), doing that in KCalc requires awkwardly typing out the entire thing again. Doing it in duckduckgo I just change 23 and 22 to 24 and 23.
But I also don't use a calculator often enough to look for a better one to install.
I use librecalc - I would've used excell in a previous life, but most spreadsheets will do - and what I like about it is that I can keep a running tally of the entire calculation chain as I go. And once you learn to use the tool, it can do much, much more powerful things.
Once you go apt install qalc you never go back
Edit: or the gui version, idk, I pretty much live on the command line so maybe I'm biased but this thing does everything I've ever wanted from a calculator. Also use it on my phone now, yes from the command line, because I still haven't found a proper mobile app that can conveniently do more than multiplication
For those things I use bc
It's probably already installed. You can curse me later when you find what it is.
Whacking off
Analog masturbation just hits different. Or so I've been told
How does one do that online?
You haven't seen the latest chatGPT update?
Look up The Handy
To check whether it's raining
I don't have windows in my office :(
🌧️
Listening music and E-Magazines. You download them and of you go. Specifically for music, I download songs on my phones using newpipe, or I listen CD's from my collection, no need for youtube or spotify all the time.
I've had the thought to go back to downloaded files but discovering new artists/song is just so easy with a streaming service. It's not like I add new songs to my playlist every day, but I do it enough that I'm not listening to the same songs over an over. I don't really have an idea on how that would keep going when switching.
I still listen only though, but not so long as I used before,. There also songs that I don't think even listen to them, I just download them and listen after.
Writing documents
I am also guilty of this since i really like google docs
I self host a lot of software. something like 20 different apps.
the amount of self hosted open source software that uses CDNs for libraries is too damn high.
it became such a problem for me that I created my own locally managed CDN and use rewrite rules on any of my apps to replace remote packages with local ones.
I've even cloned entire repos, replaced the references with local ones.
IMO, if your software is "self hosted" it should be a fully functioning service that will run without the internet. your app is broke shit if it doesn't work when the internet goes down and is meaningless to self host at that point.
my point, any app you use online can, in theory, be done offline. you just need the skill, knowledge, and drive to make it that way.
Chat
I can't shout loud enough for people 900 miles away to hear me
Practice, practice, practice.
Not sure about 900 miles, but you can avoid shouting by..
learning sign language and lip reading and get a telescope.
learning morse code so you can use blinking light.
learning smoke signalling.
Get a pigeon or 2.
Buy a plane ticket (but buying a ticket offline the day of is suspicious)
Translating and dictionary, see the app Aard 2, you download Wiktionary in your preferred language (hoping it's available) and it's all in your phone.
Calculators. Why use the Google calculator, when there's one pre-installed in every device you own.
Usually convenience if you're on a computer and already have a browser open.
But even then half the time I pull my phone out to use the calculator app instead. And I don't think I've ever used a browser as a calculator while on my phone.
Ordering a pizza
Transferring files between their devices, apple dummies think the only way to transfer files is to upload it first to their cloud drive and then download it on the other device from it, because apple won't let them just connect their dumb iphones to a computer using a cable and just copy paste stuff to it like any other normal phone, heck they don't even know about local network file transfer apps like Send Anywhere or Resilio Sync, all they know is airplay which only works between apple devices
Searching the filesystem. There's no reason Windows Search needs to access the internet. Fucking Bing.
It does what now? Why would it do that?
It's just a search bar located in the start menu and on the task bar, that combines local search with web results. For pro users it is pretty terrible, but I wouldn't be surprised if many regular users like it. You still have a normal local file search from within the file explorer.
It helps use Microsoft's Windows monopoly to promote Bing.
I imagine that at some point the EU antitrust people might get grouchy about that.
That's not true, all my files are stored on onedrive nowadays, which is super fast and responsive. Oh wait... it's actually slow and laggy and randomly deletes stuff from your pc and you're not even allowed to give your files perfectly normal names like .aux files in a LaTeX project.
Convenient indexed search was the only real improvement Windows made since XP and now they've ruined it. Windows XP is once again superior.
It took 5 minutes to get my father in law to open teamviewer because he kept clicking on the first result which for some reason brought him to the teamviewer website instead of opening the fucking software he had installed already.
And you know what? I can't blame him at all
True story!
I blocked bing.com on my PC (invalid hostname resolution through
hostsentry) because despite best efforts to disable any websearch functionality in Windows search, it still showed up.