There is a misconception that if something's on the internet it'll last for | Hacker News Reader

There is a misconception that if something's on the internet it'll last for

theguardian.com

54 pointsrntn39 comments

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.

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.

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)

RE "...a browser could take a snapshot of the page I read. ....."

I've used a extension to do this for last few years. The extension is available for both Chrome and Firefox

would you care to share the name?

singlefile extension ( I also use a save to PDF extension to save replica of the page for what are high value articles for me. Such as Fireshot and or GoFullPage . These just ones I use, there may be better "savetoPDF" extensions )

Are you deliberately withholding the name of this mysterious extension for some reason? If so, it does produce the desired suspense!

Where do they get stored, locally? and what kind of snapshot is it, are they screenshots or saved html pages?

Maybe they just mean SingleFile (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/singlefile/mpiodij...) which is quite handy for archiving – nothing automated based on your history though like the above commenter was describing.

Looks like it also has a companion that runs outside the browser for custom save paths.

Im VERY Sorry for not mentioning the name. I thought I did. Its singlefile extension

It's sad how miserable all browsers have implemented history. Browser link aggregators are pretty useless too.

AFAIK no one has, as yet, built anything to leverage all that information. Maybe one day.

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?

Maybe they could just add an archive link alongside the regular link for all posts.

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.

Or to put it another way - the longevity of something on the Internet is the inverse of what you’d want it to be.

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.

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.

Every lawyer should be contributing. Wayback machine snapshots come up in court shockingly often.

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.

Even for legal things outside of law firms.

Around Y2K someone was stealing content from my site. I sent a takedown notice and they told me I had no proof. So I used WayBack Machine, which was newish at the time, to show when it appeared on my site, and when it appeared on theirs. I was able to pinpoint within a week when they had stolen the text, because at the time it was being updated quite regularly. I asked, but didn't receive an answer, why they stole it and then took two weeks to publish it without even trying to hide their tracks.

Then I told them I'm writing a publicly accessible article about their theft, complete with the proof I just showed them, and links to the examples on their site, because hey, why not be an awesome example of plagiarism and outright theft in the wild, and how to prove it!

They took it down immediately thereafter, and never spoke to me again. I guess they didn't want the opportunity to be my example.

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.

I notice their message says something like there's only a 3% chance you'll see the message - but I see 3 different versions of it almost every time I use Wikipedia. So either I should by a lotto ticket, or they're not really doing math when they cite a 3% chance of seeing the ad.

Having said that, I did donate to them this year. Every year I choose a different site I use often, or a charity that grabs my attention in time, and donate. There are so many, but each year I choose one, and give them a nice lump sum.

It makes it easier for me to contain how much I donate, but also lets me give sizeable donations just the same. I haven't donated money to archive.org, but I have donated code which they did include in one of their topical collections.

I might pay up some next year. But I never decide until it gets close to the holidays, end of year when I have money set aside for exactly that purpose.

Meh I donate to Wikipedia every year. Those peels go away if you donate, not that it bothers me all that much anyway.

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.

More on this there is a recent trend of tv shows being cancelled from streaming services and being removed completely. Quite a few Disney+ tv shows from the last 5 years can no longer be watched anywhere.

Max as well. I had a couple of those shows I either wanted to finish, or rewatch and they are now gone (maybe to be soon available on one of those free ad-supported platforms).

Some are on roku and prime (raised by the wolves for example)

The internet has a way of forgetting things it should remember, and remembering things better off forgotten.

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.

I had a friend who used to say, if you want to get rid of a weed, treat it like a crop.

Meta: the title is truncated and missing the last word, "ever".

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.

Me too! I first thought it's the actual title of the article. Love it

The Nothing is eating the title.

Artex! No! Nooo!

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.

Yes, the things you want to get at that are legitimate will always disappear. It's the stuff you don't want on the Internet anymore that has trouble disappearing when you want it to. So, yes, your leaked vids are going to stay on the Internet forever - someone's got it archived somewhere. It's on somebody's Torrent feed.

News articles or YouTube vids you saw a few years ago? Probably a deadlink.

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.

We used to say "Once it is released on the Internet, you cannot get it back."

I guess that still holds true - then: you can't (easily) contain its availability, and now: eventually it'll just disappear like everything else.

Fans of all that is blockchain will probably disagree with the current meaning, and hold steadfast to the earlier meaning.

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