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The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

longbets.org

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Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#11

Post by kijin »

ywain wrote: post #3
JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

> entering the characters http://www.longbets.org/601 into the address bar of a web browser or command line tool (like curl) The part of this that's most likely to fail at some point is the "http://".

The detailed terms of the bet include this: > A 301 redirect from www.longbets.org/601 to a different URL containing that text would also fulfill those conditions. I assume this would cover the HTTP->HTTPS redirect scenario.

I think the parent is referring to the possibility that one day, browsers might put up a blanket security warning for HTTP URLs instead of following redirects. Or they might try to be a little too clever with HTTPS upgrades.

In particular, the automatic upgrade feature in modern browsers is based on several heuristics rather than explicit configuration like HSTS, so there's always a bit of room for breakage there. For example, they don't even check if the server returns a 301 redirect, which can be problematic if the server wants to redirect to HTTPS on a different host/port or make some changes to the path.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#12

Post by oofbey »

ywain wrote: post #3
JoshTriplett wrote: post #2

> entering the characters http://www.longbets.org/601 into the address bar of a web browser or command line tool (like curl) The part of this that's most likely to fail at some point is the "http://".

The detailed terms of the bet include this: > A 301 redirect from www.longbets.org/601 to a different URL containing that text would also fulfill those conditions. I assume this would cover the HTTP->HTTPS redirect scenario.

Yeah that was a clever bit of foresight there.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#13

Post by someguyiguess »

bombcar wrote: post #8
ludwik wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, the part that is most likely to fail is "return an HTML document that still contains the following text." Nowadays, more and more "HTML documents" do not contain any content at all, just some JavaScript that is responsible for then fetching and displaying the content.

I used to be someone, man, I was a dreamer, a programmer, a man ! Now I'm a human slave copying text from web browsers to chat windows to get around JS rendering bullshit.

One of those things is true

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#14

Post by mg »

It is actually pretty easy to keep alive URLs if there is a will to do so. Just have tests in place so you can't mess them up accidentally. And convert things that are not changing anymore to static html.

One of my first web projects involved a music forum and I have been keeping the URLs alive for 24 years now:

https://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/

I feel like I owe it to the people who participated to keep it online forever. Also as a document of history.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#15

Post by hypfer »

EGreg wrote: post #5

It's all a matter of whether someone is willing to pay for the hosting. Which is not, in my opinion, how things should be hosted on the Web. Freenet had a different approach, even back in the early days (two decades ago). I interviewed Ian Clarke about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ I wrote about it for years: https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-... And recently I built Safeclo…

On HN, a TLDR would be helpful, because just clicking your links would potentially mean falling for shilling of ones own side-hustle.

I bet there's complexity to the topic, but I am sure you could put it into a few words instead of just leaving a hook for others to click on.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#16

Post by vasco »

mg wrote: post #14

It is actually pretty easy to keep alive URLs if there is a will to do so. Just have tests in place so you can't mess them up accidentally. And convert things that are not changing anymore to static html. One of my first web projects involved a music forum and I have been keeping the URLs alive for 24 years now: https://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/ I feel like I owe it to the people who participated to keep it online…

It's not easy. Part of the instructions would need to contain things like "how to convince your boss to not just delete the old thing" and "what to do when the startup you worked for went bankrupt" among others. Most URLs don't disappear by mistake.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#17

Post by fragmede »

mg wrote: post #14

It is actually pretty easy to keep alive URLs if there is a will to do so. Just have tests in place so you can't mess them up accidentally. And convert things that are not changing anymore to static html. One of my first web projects involved a music forum and I have been keeping the URLs alive for 24 years now: https://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/ I feel like I owe it to the people who participated to keep it online…

Well, and pay registrar and hosting fees for 100 years, and then just hope the hosting company doesn't fold in the interim after your passing. The problem isn't "can you make sure it stays up while you're alive", the problem is, after you're gone, you're no longer there to keep the flame alive and there are no guarantees anyone else picks up the torch.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#18

Post by CSMastermind »

It's worth noting that some prediction URLs, for instance: https://longbets.org/6/ are offline.

The original long bet was whether or not computers could pass the turing test by 2029: https://longbets.org/1/

You'd think that LLMs fulfill this, but I do wonder if a clever human could still discern between them given their particularities.

https://longbets.org/9/ is another interesting one depending on whether you think covid leaked from a lab or not.

Re: The original URL for this prediction will no longer be available in 11 years (2011)

#19

Post by tredre3 »

kijin wrote: post #11
ywain wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The detailed terms of the bet include this: > A 301 redirect from www.longbets.org/601 to a different URL containing that text would also fulfill those conditions. I assume this would cover the HTTP->HTTPS redirect scenario.

I think the parent is referring to the possibility that one day, browsers might put up a blanket security warning for HTTP URLs instead of following redirects. Or they might try to be a little too clever with HTTPS upgrades. In particular, the automatic upgrade feature in modern browsers is based on several heuristics rather than explicit configuration like HSTS, so there's always a bit of room for breakage there. Fo…

> Or they might try to be a little too clever with HTTPS upgrades.

They're not going to get any cleverer than they are now. In October we'll finally be done with heuristics or central databses of https-first websites used by the various browsers or the half a dozen of headers that you must dance around to get the upgrade to work securely and reliably. They will just default to https first.

https://blog.google/security/https-by-defau/

Yes this is about Chrome, but all others will follow.

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