Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 825 posts

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

#391

Post by necovek »

bagels wrote: post #291
Trias11 wrote: post #38

If page is static - engrave it in a titanium plate, possibly as a QR code of sorts and pass it through generations. Include instructions for reader to publish it to whatever media analog of today's web page. So basically stay away from technology, get information encoded into lowest and most resilient physical material and rely on future generation to publish and/or update it's content.

QR code? I think many are really underestimating the amount of change in 500 years.

It's about the density of information, quality of preservation (eg. checksumming) and simplicity to decode.

Sure, QR codes are unlikely to be useful in 500 years, but if they have the above properties, they are just as good as anything else. If civilization endures, I am sure they'll be decodable in 5 centuries (whether they are preserved is altogether another matter).

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

#392

Post by bell-cot »

bagels wrote: post #307

I love the hubris of this. It's going to have to be something profound to have anyone, including your progeny, care about it in 50, let alone 500 years after you are gone.

This. I'm old enough to have seen how little the great-grandchildren care about things (heirlooms, family photos, you name it) that were profoundly important to their great-grandparents.

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

#394

Post by blfr »

trinovantes wrote: post #81
tekknik wrote: post #16

How 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

Languages change slower once they're written down. Today's English should be readily comprehensible.

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

#395

Post by srcreigh »

hutzlibu wrote: post #329
srcreigh wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't it a bit silly to ask about whether 1000 year old people can understand modern language? If it's not, I would love to know more about this.

Not sure if you intentionally missunderstood, but the point was, that you probably would be able to make some sense of 1000 year old english, but that is about the border. It depends on the culture of course. There are old cultures with the same references like a bible, that might cover longer timeframes of understanding.

Ah, my apologies. I could be clearer. It was curious for that comment to refer to _mutual intelligibility_ for people on either side of a 1000 year period.

It's a lot easier to ask whether contemporary humans can understand 1000 year old language, than to ask whether humans 1000 years ago can understand contemporary language.

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

#397

Post by satellite2 »

SoylentOrange wrote: post #340
novaRom wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt any commercial/legal entity will live through the upcoming societal transformations. It is naive to believe our current political and economic systems will not change too much even in the next 20-30 years.

There are plenty of Italian and Swiss banks that are over 300 years old. They’ve survived reformations, wars including World Wars, plagues, purges, and the transition from feudal monarchies to empire and to democracy. For example, the British banking giant Barclays was founded in 1690. Here’s a partial list of other ancient banks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_banks_in_contin... I think it’s more reaso…

But I doubt Barclays is currently upholding contracts signed 200 years ago.

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

#399

Post by lloydgrossman »

LAMike wrote: post #262
Klimentio wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 pontificating

Post reply on HN