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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?

#721

Post by rlt »

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.

Is there any standard for this, and a website (or websites) that publishes the data on the web?

There are obvious problems with blindly republishing arbitrary data from a public blockchain, of course.

Depending on how long you're willing to wait, you might be able to publish with as little as $0.00061 per byte: https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

For reference, the text of the HN homepage (excluding HTML tags) is about 4KB so ~$2 if you're willing to wait, or up to ~$200 if you're in a hurry. I'm not sure if op_return transactions are typically priced the same as standard transactions though.

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

#722

Post by rlt »

bccdee wrote: post #560
LAMike wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"No technical barrier" means nothing with respect to Bitcoin. You have to convince a large majority of Bitcoin users / miners / exchanges / services to switch to your new genesis block or other protocol modifications, otherwise your fork will die off, or at least not "be Bitcoin" as the rest of the world sees it (e.x. Bitcoin Cash, etc)

But really it's not even necessary, nodes can and do prune op_return, spent, and otherwise unspendable transaction outputs.

The point though is someone is likely to always hold onto a complete history of the Bitcoin blockchain, even if most users don't.

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

#723

Post by rlt »

lloydgrossman wrote: post #399
LAMike wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

>The blockchain data will never be "optimized" or "disappear" This is a really bold assumption - you do understand that core dev is still ongoing, yes? You do understand that "infinite data on a disk" doesn't exist, yes? And as the chain goes on longer, more space is going to be needed, and centralization of the miners will continue to increase, yes? Please take the time to learn how Bitcoin works before pontificatin…

The point is someone will always store a complete history of the Bitcoin blockchain, even if most users/miners prune it.

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

#724

Post by 8bitsrule »

I can imagine a monument in a very stable location that very securely stored an incorruptible, no-maintenance, solid-state 2-hour presentation about their lives ... that could without any contact (by magnetic field for example) be 'read' and played on a special player.

If my great-grandparents had such monuments - low-cost, no-maintenance, high longevity monuments - I'd certainly want to 'see them in action', once or twice.

If the monuments looked like worthless rocks, they might go unnoticed for a long time. (Maybe there are some already out there!)

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

#725

Post by necovek »

sramsay wrote: post #693
chii wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to make that web page pertain to something of epochal importance to millions of people which is a hard task. and irrelevant to the OP's question. There are many things that people would want to preserve, but is of no importance to the grand scheme of humanity. You're basically saying that unless your works is of such importance that millions of people generations to come would voluntarily preserve it, the works do…

I've said nothing about what "deserves" preservation, but only what sort of things tend to be preserved over periods on the scale of centuries. And yes: My contention is that unless a substantial community of people voluntarily commit to preserving something, it likely will not survive (or will do so accidentally). I'm not quite following why this is not relevant to the OP's question. I suppose I'm saying that it's n…

I think those are orthogonal.

Sure, you have the biggest chance of having something preserved if enough people care about it. This is a case where, as you rightly point out, technology matters not.

But we can still discuss technologies of preservation, especially in the light of non-physical creations like works presented on a digital machine.

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

#727

Post by pseingatl »

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…

There is no doubt that we are still in the incunabula of the computer age. Paper, we know, can last for five hundred years, but even once ubiquitous and well-understood media--floppy disks--are now scarce and getting scarcer. The only reliable way of writing for millennia is on stone.

The progression of language has been affected by mass media, which has a standardizing influence. Written language will be affected by translation technologies that are at the moment unimaginable. Once complicated problems, e.g. the Chinese typewriter--have been resolved, and ordinary Chinese typing, which used to be limiting to typesetting speeds can now outpace the fastest QWERTY speedster by 2x or 3x or more. Language will not be the problem in the future that it was in the past.

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

#728

Post by jiggawatts »

Clay tablet writing was invented before 9000 BC and lasted until nearly the common era.

Papyrus was invented before 3000 BC and similarly lasted thousands of years.

Pulp paper was invented around 200 CE in China and spread west around 750 CE.

While printing pre-dates Gutenberg, he revolutionised it by inventing moveable-type in 1439 CE.

Hot metal typesetting, typically used for newspapers, was invented in 1884 CE and lasted until the 1950s to 1980s.

Xerography was invented in 1938 has already started to become less commonly used, even in business settings.

Digital printing become popular in the 1980s to early 90s and is still used but also dropping in popularity.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web in 1989.

HTML 2 was 1995.

HTML 3 was 1997.

HTML 4 was late 1997.

XHTML 1.1 was 2001.

HTML 5 was 2008 onwards.

All of the above are technologies used to record and disseminate human knowledge, and form part of the same technological evolution. I type text right now in much the same way as a linotype operator would. I send this out to interested parties in the same way a letter written with quill might be copied several times and mailed to a group a hundred or more years ago.

There were periods of time a hundred generations long where nothing fundamentally changed about how this occurred! You could write things on clay or papyrus, and that was about it.

Notice anything about those periods of time? They're getting shorter and shorter. They went from thousands of years to hundreds, then mere decades and now individual years.

The WWW is nearly unrecognisable compared to its first iteration and has been around for less than most humans' lifetimes. It wasn't just invented after I was born, it was invented at a time that I was already on my third computer!

It is a beyond hopeless task to attempt to predict what the next 500 years will bring. Thanks to this exponential pace of change, I doubt anyone can predict much past the next 5 years with any certainty...

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

#729

Post by KronisLV »

Apocryphon wrote: post #501
rsj_hn wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Cancelling is an online-driven social phenomenon that has existed for- a decade, maybe? Rather odd to view all of human civilizational progress through the lens of one overexposed, extremely online trend.

> Cancelling is an online-driven social phenomenon that has existed for- a decade, maybe?

Ignoring the tone of the parent comment, i don't believe that this subcomment is necessarily correct either.

Sure, "cancelling" is a modern term, but i'm pretty sure that exile to any degree and censorship of the exiled people (or worse) have been prevalent throughout the history of humanity, be it reporting them to the communist spies for non-communist rhetoric, claiming that they're guilty of blasphemy against the church or declaring them a witch.

Thus, regardless of where any of us stand in regards to the political or ideological climate, viewing preserving information for a long time as a social problem definitely has some merit to it. For example, just look at this from almost a century ago: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/stalin-photo-manipulation-1...

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

#730

Post by cm2187 »

fn-mote wrote: post #679
cm2187 wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can walk the street of Rome and read inscriptions that are 2000 years old, they will either be close enough to any latin language or you may have some notions of latin yourself. My point being that english is probably much more significant culturally today than latin ever was. The chances that it will be some sort of forgotten language are pretty slim (though I am sure it will have evolved). Now the real question…

Yes, inscriptions like "long live the LX regiment" or whatever graffiti. (Kind of joking.) Given the extent of the Roman Empire, I think Latin achieved some pretty significant cultural status. Afaik, Catholic mass stopped being in latin in the 1960's. That's ~3rd century to 20th century. So in use roughly 3x as long as English? (Not a specialist.)

It did in europe and northern africa. English is spoken (“airport english” that is) pretty much across the whole world. Entire industries only communicate in english. It is the international language of the elites, very much like latin was at a much smaller scale. And it has already influenced other languages that regularly use english words, and that’s only after a century of influence.
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