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Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

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Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#261

Post by influx »

kadoban wrote: post #243
grey-area wrote: post #193

Etch it onto a metal disk like this[1] inside a capsule that can survive reentry, pay to have it shot into space with a slowly decaying orbit. Then perhaps arrange to have the reentry hit a pond near your ancestral home in about 500 years time. 1. https://longnow.org/artifacts/rosetta-wearable-disk

That's got to be ~impossible by today's engineering. Hitting a specific place or even decaying at a specific time in 500 years is just never going to happen. It'd have to be an active process, which means you need a machine that's still running in 500 years. Even then I bet it's still a hard problem. IIRC NASA aims for like, an ocean and they're happy if they hit the right one.

The Minuteman III is an American ICBM that is accurate to 800 feet. Much closer than hitting an ocean.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#262

Post by LAMike »

Klimentio wrote: post #189
taylorfinley wrote: post #39

Probably unpopular answer: you could store your messages to the future in the op_return field of a series of small bitcoin transactions. I wouldn't recommend making this the only egg in your basket but I think there is a non-zero probability the blockchain history will be preserved even if the currency isn't used any longer, kind of like how you can still go see Song dynasty paper currency from 1,000 years ago.

It should be a balance between readability, findability and integrity. I would not bet on the btc blockchain for it. Its relativly complex to use, its very niche, it is already 360gb big and there might be a time were it either disappears or gets optimized and your information will be gone.

I wrote my name in the Bitcoin blockchain 6 years ago, I barely knew Javascript.

For a blockchain like Bitcoin to fit all of its transactions in only 420GB is an engineering feat that should be admired

The blockchain data will never be "optimized" or "disappear"

Please take the time to learn how Bitcoin works before pontificating

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#264

Post by metalliqaz »

jamesdf wrote: post #250
NoGravitas wrote: post #155

Print it out on acid-free paper with a stable, acid-free ink. Have it bound as a hardback, and seal it into a waterproof container. Entrust it to one of your children, tell them to keep it in a safe-deposit box and take it out once a year to share with their children, and to pass it on to their children with the same instructions. If you have it electronically, the absolute best case in 500 years is that it will be a…

> “What was there to say? Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted five thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time. Leaving behind a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant…

I recall some scifi where some Diety/SuperAI left 'commandments' for humanity carved into giant monuments made of diamond. I presume that was considered the only thing that would survive deep time.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#265

Post by LAMike »

paulpauper wrote: post #103
taylorfinley wrote: post #39

Probably unpopular answer: you could store your messages to the future in the op_return field of a series of small bitcoin transactions. I wouldn't recommend making this the only egg in your basket but I think there is a non-zero probability the blockchain history will be preserved even if the currency isn't used any longer, kind of like how you can still go see Song dynasty paper currency from 1,000 years ago.

do it with ethereum or some other blockchain in a single tx

Then what happens when AWS goes down?

Bye bye Ethereum.

There is only 2,500 ETH nodes today, most run on "cloud" services which cost hundreds of dollars a month, soon to be thousands

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#266

Post by metalliqaz »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #225
dylan604 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question, but why?

I think it's a historically significant dataset. We've seen other datasets be preserved, such as GitHub arctic vault. I agree that it's tenuous. I would give it 20% odds of hitting the 500 year mark at best. And I don't think all of the data will survive. But if archive.org ever becomes unsustainable to run, the existing data will likely be preserved. Lots of companies will be incentivized to continue hosting the dat…

not sure I share your sentiment about companies hosting the data, considering what happened to Geocities and others.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#268

Post by freeslave »

metalliqaz wrote: post #264
jamesdf wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “What was there to say? Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted five thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time. Leaving behind a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant…

I recall some scifi where some Diety/SuperAI left 'commandments' for humanity carved into giant monuments made of diamond. I presume that was considered the only thing that would survive deep time.

not just sci-fi! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#269

Post by goatlover »

LadyCailin wrote: post #260
jjoonathan wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always brings me joy to read doomsday prophecies from decades, centuries, and millenia past. They were legion -- so confident, yet so wrong. I hope your predictions bring similar joy to future readers in the decades, centuries, and millenia to come.

I was very young at the time, but I was absolutely convinced that the world would end at 2020. It didn’t, and that deeply ingrained in me a very substantial amount of skepticism from doomsdaysayers. The only doomsday I believe in now for absolute certainty is the heat death of the universe, but no one reading this will be around for that.

There was quite a lot of doomsday talk during the Cold War, and there has been periodic environmental doomsday predictions since the 60s, starting with overpopulation and chemicals like DDT. Interspersed with that was AI and nanotech apocalyptic concerns. Climate change is the latest. The idea that civilization will manage to avoid the worst case scenarios and find its way through is not as exciting. You probably won't sell as many books or public appearances that way. And it doesn't make for the best Black Mirror episodes. Although there are a couple exceptions.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?

#270

Post by spiderice »

vasco wrote: post #255

All of the internet hasn't been up for even 50 years, it's definitely interesting to consider. I think the likeliest way would be to leave an investment fund with % widthraw rate that would allow paying a developer every few years for some maintenance or needed migrations as well as enough to pay for the administration of all of this. Otherwise you depend on friends or family to continue to do that for free across a…

What motivation does your developer employee have to go hire another developer to continue once he is gone? Seems likely that he'd just go his whole life taking your money and keeping the website up, then let everything go down once he retires/dies.
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