Store the content on the bitcoin blockchain. Expensive but it'll be available for 500+ years
Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
91–100 of 825 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#92Probably 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 is very clever! You don't need to make your own fame if you ride the coattails of something already famous.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#93Create a perpetual trust. This is legal in some states.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#94If you are using plain HTML and no database or dynamic features and there is not much content ( I am thinking a landing page / portfolio) maybe just engraved it on something in a book form factor
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#95Print it in a book, on good archival quality ink and paper. Make a couple of copies stored in various locations in case of natural disaster.
Look the English language is a lot different today than it was in 1621 and with the pace that technology changes I strongly doubt that anything web related will be able to run. (Assuming that civilization will still be standing, they still have a way to power technology)
So, that pretty much leaves ink and paper. That's your best bet, and even then that isn't a sure thing.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#96How do you know what the internet will look like in 500 years? Sites from 20 years ago are broken, you can expect that unless you’re using plain text and html that standards will change in 500 years and people will not be able to access your site. Then there’s issues with domains. You’d have to setup a trust and again assume we will still be using domains in 500 years. If you use something like S3 then you’ll have to…
There's also the fact that human language will also change over the course of 500 years 500 year old English is nothing like English today
Five hundred years ago is Shakespeare, roughly. Still readily understandable for the most part.
Now if we go back a thousand years…
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#97Really boring answer: Make provisions for it in your will, which likely will mean creating some sort of charitable foundation with the mission of doing this. If the personal page is useful and/or hosts some creative work keeping that alive can be the entire goal of it, otherwise the foundation might have to do some actual charity and the preservation of the page would be a quirk in the statutes.
"small" things like this I assume end up really expensive in wills.
Making a page of text available to the public for 500 years might involve 25 people (each person being responsible for 20 years), and each of them has to be paid enough to care. To ensure each is paid enough, there needs to be a fund to pay them, and that itself needs to be managed by someone, who will also want paying for their troubles.
Also consider that in 25 generations it's pretty likely there'll be a major war, civilization collapse, change of monetary system, etc. To make such a scheme resistant to such things, you're probably going to need multiple people involved in every generation, all geographically separated, and all will need paying.
Even if you set aside $1M of your estate to this, I don't give it more than a 50/50 chance of survival.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#98I've toyed with the idea of putting money into a trust and having the executors of the trust use the money to maintain stuff like this. It's more of an institutional solution than a technical one, but I'm personally more comfortable with an institution lasting 500 years than an unmaintained piece of hardware or software. It's the same strategy used by museums--they take a grant from somewhere (from government, public…
For the trust route it might be worth looking into a corporate trustee vs a natural person. It’s much less likely (though not impossible) for it to fall through the cracks at a bank’s trust department than at Doe & Doe Law Firm.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#99Look at what has lasted 500 years, and use those media. Websites are not among them. 1) stone 2) books if printed on the right kind of paper 3) metal if it's not something subject to rust Even if it is possible to make a website that lasts 500 years, I expect we haven't figured out how yet. I'm sure it took people a while to figure out how to make long-lasting tombstones; early North American ones were often made out…
I recently saw headstones with photos on them. Now I’m thinking about writing a bunch of stuff and encoding it in a QR code on a headstone. The QR code is likely to be replaced with something else, but maybe if it says “QR Code” under it they could snap a picture and figure it out.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#100Look at Arweave. https://www.arweave.org/
Taken from their site:
arweave is a global, permanent hard drive built on two novel technologies: the blockweave, a derivative of the blockchain, and proof of access, a custom incentivized proof of work algorithm. These innovations provide truly permanent data storage for the very first time and at a massive scale.
Essentially it is putting files on the blockchain in a permanent manner.
There are some podcasts out there where the founder talks about the details.