Ask HN: Best way to host a website for 500 years? • Hacker News Board

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

#631

Post by cm2187 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:49 AM UTC

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…

> That said, universities are used to accepting gifts with sometimes eccentric strings attached.

Until some woke student in 499 years gets offended by a sentence on your website because it doesn’t align to 2520 politics, and gets the university to wipe out all traces of it.

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

#632

Post by arensc » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

Take steel and write it on steel tablets, and plan well in advance.

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

#633

Post by wrycoder » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

clarkmoody wrote: post #208

franky47 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And some ancient civilization will entertain themselves by bidding against each other to win the rights to the contents of the archive.

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

#634

Post by 4242 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

Already done for the next 1000 years.

https://archiveprogram.github.com/arctic-vault/

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

#635

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:05 AM UTC

mleonhard wrote: post #492

jamesdf wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “What was there to say? Civilization was like a mad dash that lasted five thousand years. Progress begot more progress; countless miracles gave birth to more miracles; humankind seemed to possess the power of gods; but in the end, the real power was wielded by time. Leaving behind a mark was tougher than creating a world. At the end of civilization, all they could do was the same thing they had done in the distant…

Posting spoilers without a warning is extremely rude.

Worse, the past tense of "begot" is "begat."

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

#636

Post by whatever1 » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

blondin wrote: post #597

cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

great answer to a very interesting question! for inspiration on how to preserve things for future generations we may look at religion.

So kill whoever does not memorize my website?

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

#637

Post by wrycoder » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC

leephillips wrote: post #172

arcticbull wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Github arctic code vault appears to have created TAR archives and turned them into a sequence of QR codes on a kind of film. And then thrown them in a hole under 250 meters of permafrost in Svalbard.

Black & white photographic film is the most stable practical storage medium that we have.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire

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

#638

Post by iamcurious » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

tomxor wrote: post #623

cstross wrote: post #336

The world wide web is only 28 years old. We've had computers for 76 years at this point. We're discussing this topic in modern English, but if you look back 500 years William Shakespeare wouldn't be born for another couple of generations: vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anythi…

> vocabulary and grammar have changed a lot since then, and if you look back a further 500 years (to 1021AD) the "English" spoken in those days was a lot closer to Frisian than anything we'd understand. The world was also a very different place, I suspect language will evolve far slower over the next 500 years due to the vast new interconnectedness that society has never experienced before. I think in 500 years, some…

We went from fotolog to Facebook to Instagram to tiktok in a decade or so. In a few years more it will be something 3d we can't completely envision, who knows in a few decades. In each iteration language changes faster, cause memes are language.

In 500 years this will be gibberish. Who knows if people will even know how to read?

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

#639

Post by phnofive » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:17 AM UTC

numbsafari wrote: post #240

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…

By the by, if you haven't seen the Coen brothers' film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs", which features this poem, I highly recommend stopping everything, popping some corn, and watching it as soon as feasible.

> "First time?"

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

#640

Post by murphyslab » Sat, Oct 23, 2021, 1:21 AM UTC

walrus01 wrote: post #296

NoGravitas wrote: post #155

Print 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…

> The most likely case, though, is that in 150 years, the servers it was stored on, which have not been running for 80 years, will be picked over and/or melted down for precious metal contents by a tinker who wanders between mud-hut villages repairing their ancient metal pots in exchange for dried fish. somewhat reminds me of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz

That's such a good book. I first read it after reading Wikipedia's "Terminal Event Management Policy" (a humorous page) which noted:

> In the longer term, archivists are encouraged to pool the resources of the encyclopedia for the common good. A suggested model of collaboration is based on the Leibowitz-Canticle report of the 1960s, which suggests pooling of archives in a centralized location, which might serve as a hub for reconstruction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Terminal_Event_Manag...

After reading that I quickly found a copy in the library to enjoy. Not many sci-fi books from 1959 have remained as relevant and fresh 6 decades later.