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Comment by c22 | Hacker News Reader

The one I hate is when I find old forum posts explaining how to do something in the physical world and all the embedded photos are broken. Not because the image host went out of business or the user deleted them, but just because they didn't log in for a year and the host deactivated their account. This is why whenever I link a photo I upload it to my own server and I never change the URL.

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Or when they're broken because the image host discontinued third party image hosting/started charging for it, despite said feature being the only reason their site caught on in the first place.

Looking at you Photobucket. And all those useful images now replaced with a meaningless Photobucket placeholder.

I apologize in advance as there's no non-morbid way to ask this but... what happens to the images on your server if you die tomorrow? It would be exactly the same situation, right? They would exist until your bill is due in a couple years then your account will be deactivated and your images will linkrot.

I have the server paid up for 10 years and the domain for 15. But it's true, eventually all things must end. I do have credentials for all the things written into my will so I guess it ultimately depends on how much my children care about preserving my helpful forum posts.

He's not advocating people rely on his server, he's saying hosting it himself allows him to quote freely without worry. If someone else wanted to quote him and followed his example, they would not have a problem when he died.

Also 500px (I think--if not a similar image host) has recently banned all 3rd-party images, at least at the free level, which has broken a TON of the old forum posts I want to see. It was the defacto image host, kind of like imgur is now.

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