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Internet Data Is Rotting

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Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#31

Post by papln »

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…

Saving data locally is not a protocol problem.

Chromium is almost there.

Chrome had “chrome://flags/#show-saved-copy” which would do you want if you could make Chrome's cache arbitrarily large and persistent, but it appears to be gone now.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#32

Post by darepublic »

I think it's good that data is lost . Only items where someone gives enough of a duck to save it should be preserved. It's not as if physical paper content, which ends up recycled or in a landfill 99.999 of the time is any different. It's true that digital formats change but fighting that is the cost of preservation. A museum of software needs to also preserve the context on which software was run in order to save it from the mists of time, albeit temporarily.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#33

Post by papln »

oceanplexian wrote: post #21
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'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…

Why is it so important to blame someone now for something they haven't said publicly in over 13 years?

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#36

Post by mnl »

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.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#37

Post by uwuhn »

adossi wrote: post #14
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.

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)

The Rotten Library is the first thing that comes to mind.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#38

Post by 1000units »

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.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#39

Post by DFXLuna »

This seems like a good time to plug running a storage server on your local network. You can pick up old workstations off eBay for 100$. Stick a couple of drives in it, load it up with data to preserve and then put encrypted backups in the cloud. Back blaze B2 is something like .001$ per gigabyte.

It's a fun experiment with clear, practical use.

Re: Internet Data Is Rotting

#40

Post by 1000units »

everdrive wrote: post #30
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…

I think if the last 10 years have taught us anything, it's that preserving the past does nothing to impede the changing moral zeitgeist. More records simply mean more people to attack for holding an opinion that has simply gone out of fashion. If the past decade wasn't characterized by tribalism and moral hysteria I'd be more inclined to worry about stringent preservation. At this point, I'm not really comfortable wi…

Embrace humanity. It's not that nice, but pretending otherwise only puts you at a disadvantage for understanding and dealing with the world.

Our history is an inseparable part of who we are, and it should not be forgotten.

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