> most recent, active archive entry. As far as I know, this isn't easy to determine.
https://web.archive.org/$link will always take you to the most recently archived version of the link.
https://web.archive.org/$link will always take you to the most recently archived version of the link.
By "dead" I mean different content than the one that was submitted to HN at the time. So you need a way of specifying the date.
There's a way to do that, though, which is interesting. My edit above points out a comment to get it.