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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?

#521

Post by terafo »

mcculley wrote: post #249
jazzyjackson wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious what this would cost and found a thorough stackexchange post [0] that puts the price at 0.032 ETH per KB stored on-chain. Comes out to around 12,000 USD for a small 100kb static site. I would guess this cost is competitive with carving binary data into stone, not bad for permenant storage, reading the data is free. [0] https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/872/what-is-the...

Hmm. Putting 1 gigabyte in S3 for 500 years at today's most expensive price ($0.023 per gigabyte month) would be $138. Prices are certain to decrease over time. This says something about the cost of using the Ethereum blockchain for storage.

Add 1 download per day for 500 years and you will get 21k.

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

#522

Post by KingFelix »

zarmin wrote: post #459
cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

Maybe a better question is, what would HTML have looked like in the time of Shakespeare? Forsooth!

brilliant!

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

#523

Post by _jstreet »

zarmin wrote: post #459
cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

Maybe a better question is, what would HTML have looked like in the time of Shakespeare? Forsooth!

TIL: There's a "Shakespeare" esoteric programming language.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_Programming_Langua...

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

#524

Post by wevwevwe »

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.

This. It's a gross abuse of bitcoins network, but bitcoin is a time keeping database at its core and it would not be impossible. That only accounts for data storage and retrieval though. For the end user to connect to the website, you still need some sort of server stack. Maybe IPFS could be used to overcome that part.

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

#525

Post by runarberg »

zarmin wrote: post #459
cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

Maybe a better question is, what would HTML have looked like in the time of Shakespeare? Forsooth!

I’d like to think HTML would have used different notation for syntax e.g. the section sign for open tags and pilcrow for closing:

    §doth whence="bæc"§ Forsooth! ¶doth¶

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

#526

Post by Lordarminius »

JimTheMan wrote: post #507
cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

Ironically the dictionaries you mention have greatly stabilised language. Language is going to be far more stable over the next 500 years. I wouldn't worry about it in the slightest.

Is it ? The language is evolving very fast. Compare English from the 50's to what is spoken now, take into account the major dialects around the world...

I don't see much stability.

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

#527

Post by longivitate »

cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

Yes.

500 years is but a drop in the ocean of the future. We have lost a fair amount of the past and find even little fragments from long ago to be incredibly illuminating. e.g. the Rosetta Stone, or the dead sea scrolls. What would we know now if the library of Alexandria didn't burn?

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

#530

Post by terafo »

csmeder wrote: post #449

As we saw with Inspiration 4, SpaceX is willing to take commissions, thus: This might not be the cheapest way, however, if you can engineer a satellite to last 500 years [1], you could then have SpaceX put it up in orbit for over 500 years[2]. Have this satellite broadcast your website via radio [3]. Then setup a trust with a consortium of lawyers to maintain a ground station network that hosts the website on earth's…

Single sat wouldn't be able to broadcast 24/7 because batteries will fail after some time and sun won't be available all the time. Because sat won't be powered on all the time it will collide with something eventually even if there is fuel left(I believe that you can't hold fuel for ion drives for that long because gases leak). One sat is definitely not going to work, dozen might have a chance. But I think they all will be hacked in less than a century.
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