If you want to store information for the next billions of years, carve it in a super-material and store it secretly in the Kaapval Craton, so that even when all current continents are gone and a new super continent is formed it has a high chance of survival (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaapvaal_Craton)
Then again, if people did not find your message in all those billions of years it was so well hidden that they will probably not find it also in a couple of billions of years, but at least it remains
Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
371–380 of 825 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
There was an interesting article online a few years back, can't find it now. It claimed that humans can't make anything that will last more that 16 million years. This includes any kind of nuclear pollution. Sure we might get lucky like Jurassic fossils, but not intentionally.
While we're on the topic of nuclear pollution, "nuclear semiotics" is an interdisciplinary field of research focused on creating a "warning message intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future, within or above the order of magnitude of 10,000 years."
While 10K is a few orders of magnitude greater than 500, I imagine the problems may be similar... if not more extreme.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-time_nuclear_waste_warnin...
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#373Store the pages on two SD cards with software RAID in a Raspberry Pi with passive cooling and a small LCD display. Submerge the entire thing in clear epoxy, sans the power and USB cords, keyboard/mouse. Create a laminated set of instructions that describes your language, how to use a keyboard and mouse, and how to build a power generator to output the electrical signal needed to power the device. Put all that in a water-and-air-tight Pelican case with silica gel balls & a zinc anode. Bury it in a stone mausoleum in a cemetery that has the bodies of dead rich people.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never underestimate the power of basic human needs over layers of abstractions. Software's intangibility will be its downfall when our modern society eventually collapses.
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.
The thing is, occasionally those predictions have been right and society reverts to a state less advanced than it was for hundreds or thousands of years. A lot of the technology from Ancient Rome, building techniques, steam engine technology, etc. were lost for thousands of years. It’s totally conceivable to me that 500 years from now scientists have access to a wealth of electronic media, but haven’t invented the computer and thus can’t read it.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#375Print 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…
I’d alternatively recommend microfilm. It’s specifically engineered to last ~500 years and has much higher storage density than paper and ink. The technology needed to read it is fairly low tech and trivial and the format is quite durable.
Particularly if you store it at 0°C.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#376If you can get by with just text, pass it down as part of your family's oral tradition. See https://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/40/the-memoirs-of-sherlock-holmes...
> If you can get by with just text, pass it down as part of your family's oral tradition
Oral storytelling is probably the only thing I'd be willing to bet on over half a century.
The real trick will be making your website interesting enough for your host to read to their children over and over.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
I doubt any commercial/legal entity will live through the upcoming societal transformations. It is naive to believe our current political and economic systems will not change too much even in the next 20-30 years.
There are plenty of Italian and Swiss banks that are over 300 years old. They’ve survived reformations, wars including World Wars, plagues, purges, and the transition from feudal monarchies to empire and to democracy. For example, the British banking giant Barclays was founded in 1690. Here’s a partial list of other ancient banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_banks_in_contin... I think it’s more reaso…
When worrying about surviving for hundreds of years, you need to compare with the data about how many have existed for hundreds of years and then folded anyway.
Note that the above list includes a bunch of "national banks" which were founded at the peak of "national movement" in 1800s (as "nations" started forming "national countries") — with many of them, you can't really leave a deposit and they instead regulate an economy of a country (not sure about "many", but at least National Bank of Serbia is one of those).
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#378Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was an interesting article online a few years back, can't find it now. It claimed that humans can't make anything that will last more that 16 million years. This includes any kind of nuclear pollution. Sure we might get lucky like Jurassic fossils, but not intentionally.
I haven't seen the article, but I don't buy it, there's no likely events that will harm Voyager 1 and 2 in that time period, for instance. They could get really unluckly and hit a star/planet, but it's not at all likely. Along a similar vein many of the satellites that we put in graveyard orbits around earth at the end of their useful life will also plausibly last that long, though there is a lot more debris for them…
> I haven't seen the article, but I don't buy it, there's no likely events that will harm Voyager 1 and 2 in that time period, for instance.
Sure, but nothing will encounter or observe them ever again.
Things we put into heliocentric orbits are likely to be forever, too.
> Along a similar vein many of the satellites that we put in graveyard orbits around earth at the end of their useful life will also plausibly last that long, though there is a lot more debris for them to collide with.
While they won't decay from drag in a few million years, tidal forces and photon pressure become significant over time.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#379Print 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…
The physical book have a symbols array limit.
I'm not sure if archived sites will cost less than 10MB by images and unlimitied private photo streams. Because we created the Internet to look forward, not backward.
Looks like 1+ TB for the minimal common case for the human race
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#380DNA data storage for only data preservation maybe works, but if you want to actively broadcast your content; you can put a compact satellite in geosynchronous orbit with some of the rideshare missions. With redundant avionics and little overkill solar power (or proper RTG if you can afford) it would broadcast your data very long time. But which communication protocol to chose is still mystery.