[cl3misch]

> The workplace of the coworker I built this for is truly offline, with no potential for LAN or wifi, so to download new models and update the system periodically I need to go pick it up from him and take it home.

I'm surprised that a "truly offline" workplace allows servers to be taken home and being connected to the internet.

[bedstefar]

I worked in the Arctic for the better part of a decade. There's Starlink now, but I've been TRULY OFFLINE for weeks (with plenty diesel generated power) as recently as 2018. Technically we could use Iridium at like $10 per MB, but my full Wikipedia mirror (+ Debian/Ubuntu packages, PyPI etc) did come in handy more than once.

I know some Antarctic research stations (like McMurdo for example) still have connectivity restrictions depending on time-of-day, and I wouldn't be surprised if they also had mirrors of these sort of things, and/or dual-3090 rigs for llama.cpp in the off hours.