Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 825 posts

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

#551

Post by bccdee »

marcosdumay wrote: post #411
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…

I see no technical reason for why we can't create some e-reader that will keep your library much safer for much longer than paper. I see no reason why we can't make some that last for a millennium, if the power supply and storage aren't included and it's kept off in some dry place, out of the Sun's light and never overheat. But well, there is no demand for tech that will last for a millennium. In fact, people are pus…

Electronics aren't that sturdy. Hard drives demagnetize, solid-state storage decays, and there's always the chance that a stray cosmic ray will fry something. Even if we could construct something that sturdy: After a millennium, how would anyone know how to operate it? Would we include an instruction manual? Printed on what sort of paper?

Microengravings on metal plates [1] will be more durable than electronics could ever be, and easier to read as well. No power source necessary — just a lens.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD-Rosetta

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

#552

Post by macmccann »

honkdaddy wrote: post #545
mleonhard wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting spoilers without a warning is extremely rude.

Tbf, as someone who's never read or heard of the book, it just seemed like an interesting quote about a hypothetical future for humanity. Definitely didn't occur to me it might be a spoiler.

I haven’t read any of them, but from what I’ve heard of the plot of the first, it seems reasonable to want a spoiler tag here

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

#553

Post by curiousllama »

honkdaddy wrote: post #545
mleonhard wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting spoilers without a warning is extremely rude.

Tbf, as someone who's never read or heard of the book, it just seemed like an interesting quote about a hypothetical future for humanity. Definitely didn't occur to me it might be a spoiler.

Ive read all 3 books, though a while ago. I have to think hard about what this could be referring to.

I remember, now, but it wouldn’t be a spoiler for me.

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

#557

Post by seqizz »

500? Make it past the heat death of the universe to send a signal to the god (or /dev/null if you prefer). Joking aside, why would you want this? As soon as your conscience is gone, it won't matter to you anyway. Which is, "perspectively" speaking, the only thing which matters.

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

#559

Post by [deleted] »

rsj_hn wrote: post #389
markstos wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States government studied this question and came to the conclusion of... acid free paper. So it's now law that "permanent" documents in the US are to be stored on acid free paper: https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rt/perm/permpapr.... Some of us who remember the 5.25" floppy disks, the 3" "floppy" disks, the HUGE Zipdisks, the 5.25" spinning platter drives, the 2.5" spinning platter drives, then t…

Acid free paper is a big improvement, but it's not gonna last 500 years. It's expected to last 200 years. Archival acid-free paper -- paper with cotton added to it -- can last up to 1000 years, but be prepared to pay $2.50 for 1 page[1], so a 400 page book will cost you $1000 for one copy, just for the paper in the book. This type of archival paper might be useful for important contracts or deeds, or legal documents.…

[deleted]

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

#560

Post by bccdee »

LAMike wrote: post #262
Klimentio wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's no technical barrier to truncating a blockchain. Just create a new genesis block and have it initialize every account balance to the balance it held at the end of the previous block chain. You could discard all the junk data as simply as that.
Post reply on HN