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Internet Data Is Rotting

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Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#51

Post by est31 »

mnl wrote: post #36
scarejunba wrote: post #25

I don't care. In fact, I prefer it this way. Death in species is an evolutionary advantage. So too with culture. We mustn't let it ossify. For the whitewashing thing, it will happen anyway. Only vigilance can protect against rewriting. Websites can be altered. There is no provenance. I'm not convinced infinite recall is useful.

I don't think it's for us to decide. We've been mourning the loss of the Library of Alexandria for circa 1,500 years and I can't notice that we're getting radically wiser during the last 25 ones. Letting all go is definitely the cheaper and convenient attitude... for us. But we might be leaving nothing to build upon for the future generation. They should have the same opportunity to ignore what they want that we have…

And this is an important era in the history of our species. We just invented an almost-free communication medium capable of communication across the globe. This is as big as the discovery of fire.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#52

Post by [deleted] »

Crinus wrote: post #11
hashkb wrote: post #2

> Then there is also a problem of software preservation: How can people today or in the future interpret those WordPerfect or WordStar files from the 1980s, when the original software companies have stopped supporting them or gone out of business? This issue in particular we have great solutions for (open formats / text), but they are of course less profitable than only-my-app-can-read-this formats.

FWIW those particular formats are widely understood even if they are proprietary (well, at least in WordStar's case). And as long as the software runs (be it natively or via an emulator or VM), you can always open and convert/print the files (e.g. you could use vDOS to run WordStar or whatever and use its printer emulator functionality with Windows' PDF printer to create a PDF from the WordStar files).

[deleted]

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#53

Post by rchaud »

Causality1 wrote: post #5

I read somewhere that the lifespan of the average hyperlink is only about two years. I count myself lucky I was introduced to the HTTRACK archiver program many years ago and thus have complete offline copies of many of my favorite websites of the early 00's.

I run a music review website in my free time and I'm extremely envious that you were able to archive that stuff. The indie music sites of the early '00s (pre-social media) were a goldmine of non-corporate DIY journalism and analysis that simply doesn't exist anymore.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#54

Post by rchaud »

Causality1 wrote: post #41
adossi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of these 'favorite websites'? I'm interested in knowing what kind of website would be so interesting that I would want an entire offline copy of it. (Besides maybe Wikipedia)

Mostly defunct webcomics but also some of the small personal sites that documented and collected resources for particular events or strange people. A lot of those arose out of the SomethingAwful forums. For example, there was a guy named Brian who wrote batshit insane fanfiction about himself. One of these sites archived the fiction, interviews with Brian, videos, recordings of collaborative reading skype parties, et…

Are you able to navigate through the sites using the original links? I notice that on the Wayback Machine, internal site links only work if that particular page was also archived.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#55

Post by gdy »

1000units wrote: post #38
dev_dull wrote: post #13

I’m okay with internet rot and you should be too. I’m not sure where we got the idea that “our data must be preserved forever”. This can be especially harmful for teens and young adults whose indiscretions now follow them forever. Think of the privilege you had when you were younger. You could do something stupid and nobody could whip out a high def camera to record it and make it part of your history forever. Let it…

I think that ship has sailed. All our most personal data is being archived forever competently by multiple parties.

Good thing we are going to die and it won't matter.

So let's think about what we can do for the generation that is about to be born.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#56

Post by grincho »

gambler wrote: post #16

This needs to be solved on the protocol level. Of course, the players who have control over our protocols are exactly the people who don't want this to be solved at all. The next best thing would be to redefine what "bookmarking" is. When I bookmark a page, I want it to be permanently stored on my local machine and full-text indexed. In fact, it's rather ridiculous that after 25 years browsers don't have anything of…

Check out https://blog.webmemex.org/. It serializes pages, inlining their external resources, full-text indexes them, and saves them locally. Browser extensions are available for Firefox and Chrome.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#57

Post by Causality1 »

rchaud wrote: post #54
Causality1 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly defunct webcomics but also some of the small personal sites that documented and collected resources for particular events or strange people. A lot of those arose out of the SomethingAwful forums. For example, there was a guy named Brian who wrote batshit insane fanfiction about himself. One of these sites archived the fiction, interviews with Brian, videos, recordings of collaborative reading skype parties, et…

Are you able to navigate through the sites using the original links? I notice that on the Wayback Machine, internal site links only work if that particular page was also archived.

Yes. It also lets you designate a particular number of "steps" outside the original site it will also archive. So I give it a site and a 1-step limit, I'll get the site and also any individual other webpage linked to somewhere on the original site. It doesn't do so well with modern sites that full of CDN-hosted content and pages that depend on data from two dozen different domains to function properly but it's great for old pre-web2.0 stuff.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#58

Post by 781 »

rchaud wrote: post #50
oceanplexian wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm OK with it because otherwise you are whitewashing history. For example I have recordings of the Colbert report going back to ~2005. Some of his skits released during that time would be classified as "hate speech" in 2019. Of course he, and mainstream broadcasting companies would love it if you didn't think about that. There are plenty of news clips and interviews where mainstream politicians (on Left AND Right) c…

> Some of his skits released during that time would be classified as "hate speech" in 2019. Yeah, I'm going to need some proof for that. Eddie Murphy's '80s HBO standup routines are available in full on YouTube, and some of that material is absurdly homophobic. He isn't a pariah by any means. People do see nuance and understand that values and mores change over time, and what might have been socially acceptable at on…

Eddie Murphy is black. Like Kevin Hart is too. GLAAD and the left are very careful in calling out homophobic views of black people, and instead of calling for their resignation or "cancelation" as they would for a white person, they are instead demanding for "this to be a teachable moment"

> GLAAD: Kevin Hart ‘Shouldn’t Have Stepped Down’ as Oscars Host, but Used Gig to Bring Unity

https://www.indiewire.com/2018/12/glaad-kevin-hart-oscars-ho...

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#59

Post by asdff »

gambler wrote: post #18
fooker wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wget -r ?

No. There are some cases where it is useful to download many pages in a batch, but what I am talking about is, effectively, partial local replication. Bookmarking I describe should create a tiny (but useful) version of the web on your computer. It needs to be seamless. It needs to be searchable. It would be incredibly useful if it would capture relationships between pages (links) in addition to pages themselves to na…

I would loooove this. Open one of your bookmarks and you can't tell it's the local copy unless you looked at the local path sitting in the URL bar. Maybe make an option to fetch a live copy though for sites like the front page of HN that are in constant turnover, but it would be great. Storage has never been cheaper, let me hoard!

You can even take it a step further and create a viewable timeline of all the pages you've visited in case you have something at the tip of your tongue, but need to retrace your steps and logic to get there. Browsing history is kinda lackluster for this. My last ten entries on firefox are three hackernews articles with "Add Comment" dispersed half a dozen times in that list. If I had something along the lines of zoteros timeline for papers I could probably find stuff way easier.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#60

Post by asdff »

dev_dull wrote: post #13

I’m okay with internet rot and you should be too. I’m not sure where we got the idea that “our data must be preserved forever”. This can be especially harmful for teens and young adults whose indiscretions now follow them forever. Think of the privilege you had when you were younger. You could do something stupid and nobody could whip out a high def camera to record it and make it part of your history forever. Let it…

I encountered rot today when I was trying to repair a set of speakers. I found the guide on some audiophile forum, step by step with pictures for every removed screw and multiple angles. Only the pictures were originally hosted on photobucket and since retroactively removed.

Some reddit users are egregious about it, installing scripts that overwrite their comments after x amount of time, seemingly oblivious to the fact that every edit on reddit can be found through archival tools. The solution is to take better care to not conflate your anonymous online persona to your real life persona—just don't post identifying information publicly online and you will be head and shoulders above many users on the internet in terms of privacy. There's no need to purge the internet of it's collective knowledge and history.

We are very lucky to have the wayback machine preserving this stuff from dissapearing into the void, but it doesn't cache everything on the internet, especially if that forum I visited had shut down and became impossible to find in a search result.

Side note: Is there an extension or bookmarklet available to automatically pull a web archive?

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