On a cruise ship, isn't the cheap walkie talkies still a thing? Or did those die with cell phones?

For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless, not much I can do on it, might as well sue a purpose built device. They're also very cheap.

Even better if Nextel still worked on phones (but without service).

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fc417fc802 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> For me the cell phone without internet is almost useless

Projects like this one are a step towards fixing that. Personally I choose to keep both street and topographical maps of the entire continent locally on my phone. There are plenty of uses for a computer without a WAN connection.

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cbdevidal 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I once wrote an article detailing as many prepper uses for an offline phone as I could think of. Dozens of offline apps useful for a survival situation. My favorite might be ATAK, which is from the US military and allows a team to communicate encrypted over Wi-Fi or radios, completely offline. Share GPS coords, camera feeds, messages, map markers, all kinds of goodness.

And if nothing else, you can always rupture the battery and start a fire :-)

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drittich 4 hours ago | parent [-]

And of course you can now run local LLMs on your phone as well.

	▲	cbdevidal an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Prepper J.A.R.V.I.S. :-)

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Elfener 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The fact the even simple encryption with walkie-talkies is basically illegal might be problem (though I have no idea how/if that applies to at-sea ships).

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6510 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The boat could do a captive portal and provide it's own LAN?

	▲	Elfener 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is definitely a thing (though sometimes comes with a fee): https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/texting-on-a-cruise-7-...
	▲	mlrtime 5 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The boat could do a lot of things, but providing tech for free is not high on the list.