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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?

#811

Post by samstave »

mlinsey wrote: post #330

Other comments have given ways to physically archive the webpage. Continually hosting it is a much trickier endeavor. Beyond just keeping the servers up, technologies will shift such that eventually html webpages, servers that talk using tcp/ip, datacenters that connect via fiber cables, etc will all be deprecated. That said, if we have a very liberal definition of the word "website" to include any successor technolo…

A titanium or tungsten box engraved with all instructions how to operate it. The power supply is an array of solar, but also a deep-geothermal. In a concrete bunker.

The guts of the box carry a multi array of small, cheap computes's and a very large array of SSDs. Encased in material to protect from damaging scenarios.

The instructions on the outside of the box are diagrams, and text written in all current languages on earth.

A copy of Wikipedia/whatever archive is included. As well as your personal autobiography.

It figures out the healthiest way to stay dormant when not in use. And the healthiest way to use a subset of the hardware in the box to ensure a 500+ lifespan.

Cover plate for interfaces to be removed/opened to use.

If you give a university 1B for a 500 year commitment, that means you're paying the university $5,000 a day to keep that service up.

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

#812

Post by hi41 »

pugworthy wrote: post #161

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appe…

Few months back, I came across this poem in the anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. There is a story that begins at 30 mins. That story stayed with me for a long time… It’s a story of how things undergo obsolescence and how it was relevant to my own life. I used know a technology which became out of date and I lost my job.

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

#813

Post by selcuka »

bloopernova wrote: post #760
chrisweekly wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, reminds me of "If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript" https://www.amazon.com/Hemingway-Wrote-JavaScript-Angus-Crol... which is actually kind of amusing and creative.

Holy Carp and Salmon, that's great! This Shakespeare JavaScript is fantastic and I want to write all my comments in this style: https://imgur.com/gallery/IKlBAX0 EDIT: huh, imgur removes the word "javascript" from post titles and descriptions. Weird that they couldn't find a better way to stop javascript attacks.

Not only comments. You can write your whole program in Shakespeare Programming Language:

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

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

#814

Post by grae_QED »

Download your website, engrave it on a quartz crystal[0], and hope your progeny have something to read the data from. If you want something that will last ~30 years, then tape and tape drives are a good way to go.

When it comes to web hosting, archive.org maybe? Who knows if they'll exist in 500 years. But in terms of publically accessible webpages from generations past, they seem reliable to me.

[0] https://gizmodo.com/optical-data-storage-squeezes-360tb-on-t...

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

#816

Post by wizzwizz4 »

rdevsrex wrote: post #719
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least, the Torah has survived with minimal change.

Well we don’t have the autographs for any holy text past a certain point, so I’m not sure that’s true. But with faith it doesn’t matter.

We have physical copies of older versions. Just because it's religion, doesn't mean it's made up.

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

#819

Post by livrem »

mlinsey wrote: post #330

Other comments have given ways to physically archive the webpage. Continually hosting it is a much trickier endeavor. Beyond just keeping the servers up, technologies will shift such that eventually html webpages, servers that talk using tcp/ip, datacenters that connect via fiber cables, etc will all be deprecated. That said, if we have a very liberal definition of the word "website" to include any successor technolo…

National libraries are institutions created for this purpose. The National (Royal) Library here in Sweden, established in 1668, started downloading and storing Swedish web sites in 1997. Compared to other solutions that might have a relatively high chance of actually being able to preserve sites for 500 years.

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

#820

Post by c-oreills »

jodrellblank wrote: post #657
7thaccount wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that rate, just make sure it's part of the human genome :)

Short story where SETI programmers turn new message hunting code on archived files and it detects a message in the human genome rather than in radio signals from the cosmos: https://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/sftriple/gpic.html ( https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/252832/short-story... )

Comic with a similar twist: http://dresdencodak.com/2009/07/12/fabulous-prizes/
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