[HN Gopher] There is a misconception that if something's on the ...
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There is a misconception that if something's on the internet it'll
last for
Author : rntn
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-12-26 19:46 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| epolanski wrote:
| I read HN almost everyday and when there isn't much interesting
| topics (to me) I generally start browsing the same day in past
| years (e.g. I would be browsing 26th of December 2022 then 2021
| and so on).
|
| Once you get few years back most links start breaking due to
| various reasons (websites being online, deleting the content,
| changes in url structure etc).
|
| I always thought it was sad, especially when I could see vibrant
| discussions to topics I care for.
| ksec wrote:
| Again it is one reason why I wish the history of a browser
| could take a snapshot of the page I read. At least as a
| prosumer, opt in feature.
|
| I could afford to store those when storage is so cheap.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| There's ways this could be optimised too. Such as using page
| open time as a reference for what to save (if you open a tab
| and close it within within a few seconds then odds are you're
| not going to miss a snapshot of that page)
| hnlmorg wrote:
| This is one of the reasons Wikipedia switched to Wayback
| Machine URLs.
|
| I wonder if HN could do something similar? Any link more than a
| year old defaults to a Wayback Machine URL?
| hex4def6 wrote:
| Probably a good reminder archive.org has a fundraiser going on
| right now. It would a sad day indeed to lose access to that
| resource.
| myself248 wrote:
| Every lawyer should be contributing. Wayback machine snapshots
| come up in court shockingly often.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Governments should be too. It's probably the cheapest way to
| get the most justice done to "just" have things durably
| publicly archived, not to mention historical research,
| adminstrative utility and so on. An equivalent amount of
| other "spending on justice", e.g. by actually funding various
| agencies properly would cost hundreds of millions at the
| least. Not to mention it's an extremely transparent way to do
| it.
|
| Of course, there's not much juicy pork there: even if they
| cared about the cause, a real government is probably more
| likely to throw a few billion at Iron Mountain and G4S via
| McKinsey to fail to get a tiny fraction of the utility.
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| Fundraiser with matching no less. Wikipedia doesn't need any
| more money, the Internet Archive is a far better use for a
| donation. And they don't use fake-urgency manipulation to beg
| for it either.
| bitwize wrote:
| The internet has a way of forgetting things it should remember,
| and remembering things better off forgotten.
| unwind wrote:
| Meta: the title is truncated and missing the last word, "ever".
| happytiger wrote:
| Isn't it one of the most ironic posts you've seen in a while
| because of that error? I couldn't help but chuckle to myself.
| shafyy wrote:
| Me too! I first thought it's the actual title of the article.
| Love it
| hinkley wrote:
| The Nothing is eating the title.
| happytiger wrote:
| Artex! No! _Nooo!_
| jonahrd wrote:
| There's an interesting dichotomy:
|
| As a single user, you must assume that anything you upload to the
| Internet will be there forever, because anyone can download a
| copy and maintain it. This means users need to be careful about
| privacy-sensitive information, controversial opinions, etc.
|
| But on a broader level we don't actually dedicate much effort at
| all to maintaining the bulk of what's posted online, meaning most
| important things will eventually be deleted.
| bombcar wrote:
| Or to put it another way - the longevity of something on the
| Internet is the inverse of what you'd want it to be.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| I'd phrase it like this - the longevity of something on the
| internet is correlated with its need/usefulness.
|
| If someone needs that 'thing', they will download & keep a
| local copy, and then when if it disappears, then someone will
| ask for it on Reddit and voila! you shall provide.
| looofooo wrote:
| If you want something to stay online it will vanish in no time.
| If you want something disappear from the internet, it will stay
| there forever.
| hinkley wrote:
| I had a friend who used to say, if you want to get rid of a
| weed, treat it like a crop.
| loughnane wrote:
| I had a longer post put together, but then I remembered this XKCD
| comic that does a better job explaining it.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1150/
|
| The only difference is that when we talk about relying on things
| on the internet so many of us are relying on other people storing
| their stuff in other people's garages.
|
| Best to take the time to have your own garage for the stuff
| that's important to you.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed, my primary use case for JellyFin is to archive media
| which is likely to disappear. The obscure, the weird, the niche
| films and TV from decades past - not relevant enough for a DVD
| release.
|
| Some of this stuff, I search for years before finally finding it.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| I always like to say, _" If it happened before the internet, or
| there isn't an archive of it somewhere online, did it really
| happen??"_
|
| A huge ongoing problem for years, and in particular with recent
| generations, their ephemeral disdain for history, only existing
| in the now, discardable/temporary. It's sad, and also losing our
| history bit by bit, is a threat to our collective cohesion on a
| longer term scale. You can already see the smaller impacts of
| this in many spaces.
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(page generated 2023-12-26 23:01 UTC)