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Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

perma.cc

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Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#51

Post by weinzierl »

aaroninsf wrote: post #47
didgeoridoo wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s run by the Harvard Law Library (i.e. backed by a multibillion-dollar university that is substantially older than the country it’s located in) and operated as a decentralized network across multiple public and private library systems. Like any service, it might shut down due to lack of interest, but I doubt Harvard Law is at risk of “going out of business”.

Any discussion in this domain should include an overview of what happened to PURL and purl.org https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_uniform_resource_lo... Regardless of institutional gravitas, projects without wide uptake are mostly doomed on a 20-year horizon.

I am glad I am not the only one who remembers that. Most of the time people mean package url when they use purl.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#52

Post by nikisweeting »

bArray wrote: post #29

Personally, I started building tooling around Data URIs to provide permanent archives to external resources. You can only really store text or single images like this, and you have to get the size below 16KB [1] (64kB at a push) to be reliable. You can do some form of compression, but it would be nicer to have support for longer Data URIs. I've literally embedded these into PDFs and all sorts, all of which still open…

This is how singlefile and some other archiving tools work, they just embed all remote assets as data urls within the page. It works really well, the only inconvenience is if you need to parse the html later on, the massive attribute lengths can crash some html parsers like jsdom or cheerio.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#53

Post by Pikamander2 »

NohatCoder wrote: post #43
Pikamander2 wrote: post #22

Does this solve any of the problems that other link shorteners have, like eventually breaking when the site goes bankrupt or getting blocked by sites like Reddit due to their ability to conceal spam?

It is not a link shortener, it is an archive tool. I thought the same thing when I first saw the headline. Their description is really bad and confusing.

Oh wow, you're right. I guess the example link on their home page makes that more clear, but at a glance I thought it was supposed to be an attempt at creating a googl/bitly/tinyurl clone.

https://perma.cc/63AP-6EHJ

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#54

Post by smarx007 »

emddudley wrote: post #16

PURL ( https://purl.archive.org/ ) is a similar permanent URL service but you choose the URL. It used to be hosted at purl.org and run by the OCLC but in 2016 it was transferred to the Internet Archive. https://web.archive.org/web/20161002094639/https://www.oclc....

PURL is in the same space as w3id.org, not perma.cc. Purl and w3id work by creating stable URLs thar can redirect to a (potentially changing) origin, perma.cc/archive.org/archivebox create WARC archives or the content at a given instant.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#55

Post by immibis »

LorenDB wrote: post #3

Permanent, until they go out of business. We should just standardize on archive.org and figure out a way to distribute redundant copies of its data around in such a way that it can survive even if the original Internet Archive goes down. I hate to push blockchain stuff, but something like IPFS might actually be a good idea here.

IPFS is basically content-addressed HTTP, and it's really slow, and there's no way to discover all the stuff that needs to be redundantly archived (which makes sense because anyone can host anything).

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#56

Post by lrvick »

JackC wrote: post #18

Hi! Perma is made by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I direct, and I wrote a bunch of the early code for it back in 2015 or so. For HN readers, I'd suggest checking out https://tools.perma.cc/ , where we post a bunch of the open source work that backs this. Due to the shift from warc to wacz, (a zipped-web-archive format developed by WebRecorder), it's now possible to pass around fully interactive high fide…

Is there any concept of signing data at time of archive, and verification at time of access, to prove it is not later tampered with, say by a bribed sysadmin?

Similarly are there any general supply chain integrity measures in place, such as code review of dependencies, reproducible builds, or creating archives reproducibly in independently administrated enclaves?

You note archives could be used for instances like Supreme Court decisions, so any anyone with power to tamper with content would certainly be targeted.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#57

Post by jedberg »

JackC wrote: post #18

Hi! Perma is made by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I direct, and I wrote a bunch of the early code for it back in 2015 or so. For HN readers, I'd suggest checking out https://tools.perma.cc/ , where we post a bunch of the open source work that backs this. Due to the shift from warc to wacz, (a zipped-web-archive format developed by WebRecorder), it's now possible to pass around fully interactive high fide…

My first question was "If this is a free service, how do I know it will still be around in even a few years?". This was answered by your comment that it is (or at least appears to be?) funded by Harvard.

In which case, why isn't this prominently displayed on the main page? Or why not use a Harvard library URL, which will significantly boost the trust level? Especially vs a CC TLD which are known to be problematic?

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#59

Post by pbhjpbhj »

lrvick wrote: post #56
JackC wrote: post #18

Hi! Perma is made by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I direct, and I wrote a bunch of the early code for it back in 2015 or so. For HN readers, I'd suggest checking out https://tools.perma.cc/ , where we post a bunch of the open source work that backs this. Due to the shift from warc to wacz, (a zipped-web-archive format developed by WebRecorder), it's now possible to pass around fully interactive high fide…

Is there any concept of signing data at time of archive, and verification at time of access, to prove it is not later tampered with, say by a bribed sysadmin? Similarly are there any general supply chain integrity measures in place, such as code review of dependencies, reproducible builds, or creating archives reproducibly in independently administrated enclaves? You note archives could be used for instances like Sup…

And put the signatures on a blockchain so that the perma.cc holders, or the USA government, can't do easily alter things either.

Re: Perma.cc – Permanent Link Service

#60

Post by gabcoh »

jedberg wrote: post #57
JackC wrote: post #18

Hi! Perma is made by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab, which I direct, and I wrote a bunch of the early code for it back in 2015 or so. For HN readers, I'd suggest checking out https://tools.perma.cc/ , where we post a bunch of the open source work that backs this. Due to the shift from warc to wacz, (a zipped-web-archive format developed by WebRecorder), it's now possible to pass around fully interactive high fide…

My first question was "If this is a free service, how do I know it will still be around in even a few years?". This was answered by your comment that it is (or at least appears to be?) funded by Harvard. In which case, why isn't this prominently displayed on the main page? Or why not use a Harvard library URL, which will significantly boost the trust level? Especially vs a CC TLD which are known to be problematic?

I guess it’s not sufficiently prominent (given that you didn’t see it) but this is discussed in detail in the FAQ section
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