Encode the personal page into a best-selling novel that becomes a classic across the world. The rest of civilization will deal with the redundant storage for you.
If it's small enough, encode it into a catchy children's song or rhyme.
Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
201–210 of 825 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#202500 years is too long for modern tech. You will definitely need many copies of different types of storage, down to atomic-level records such as DNA. GitHub's Arctic Code or Amazon vault looks like the first Godzilla computers, but you're asking for a "500-years PC". Perhaps there will be a technology that allows you to write site files in the DNA directly of your children and run a micro-DNA web server in the body, a…
Microsoft Research has been working on DNA storage: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/dna-storage...
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you keep the battery from degrading after a few decades? Are there specific battery types that are long-term (hundreds of years?). Such as capacitors? And the solar panels themselves would need maintenance, even if it is simply cleaning.
That's why we print the book copies of the book. Once people stop caring to fix the machine, eventually they can still find the books.
Where/how is the book being printed? Locally? What's powering the printer? How do you ensure that the materials (paper, ink, lubricant, etc.) last all those years? What about binding/collating those pages?
Or is the printing occurring once (since the site is static)?
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#204Print 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…
As entertaining as this is, I have a bit more faith in archive.org.
Serious question, but why?
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#205Probably 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.
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.
The first blockchain will almost certainly be preserved for historic significance
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#206I 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…
Haunting
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#207I think I saw some sort of upsell on GoDaddy for 500 year hosting the other day.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
The second part of your answer is hilarious and depressing.
Never underestimate the power of basic human needs over layers of abstractions. Software's intangibility will be its downfall when our modern society eventually collapses.
Hopefully some remnant of humanity will cast out among the stars with ultra-high density storage holding archives of most of human knowledge.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#209Go to a big legal firm that's been around for at least a few hundred years. With them, set up a trust with a sufficient endowment to be run indefinitely (barring total societal or economic collapse), with the mission of maintaining this specific website in accessible format (including updates and format shifts as necessary).
It will be expensive, but this general structure is already used by various organizations with one mission or another.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years?
#210There are several comments here that involve other people doing things over the generations. Printing stuff, reminiscing or reflecting on anniversaries, taking legal and fiscal responsibility, etc etc.
Has anyone here been on the other end of the equation? By which I mean, has anyone here been born into a family with a similar ongoing situation?
The most effective way might be to create a work of art or science or whatever that is of such significance that others are motivated to archive and disseminate or for you. So... a trite answer might be... inspire others to memor(ial)ise you. Good luck with that :)
PS. I initially intended to mention the Rosetta project and I'm glad to see that here. Philosophers, economists, psychologists and many others have written plenty about issues with archiving, definitely worth looking into.
PPS. I'm also very pleased to see a reference to Ozymandias. I was thinking about the Buddhist philosophy that, simply, _suffering exists_. It would be worth examining your motivations. Not that I disagree with them; quite the opposite.