Ask HN: Where to put a static page that would last forever

54 points · DanielBMarkham · 27 days ago

As I get older, I've decided to write physical books. I want something of a legacy for after I leave.

In the back of the book, I'd like to put a 2D barcode to send folks to a static webpage somewhere, maybe for further information, an update, text changes, etc.

But where would that go? If I buy a domain I've got to renew it every year. Same goes for AWS static page hosting. I thought about using my GitHub account, but each year they keep screwing around with keys and logins and whatnot. I'm sure that most all of these places I'm using will delete both my account and data after a certain number of years of inactivity.

So where do I put a static webpage I can link to and be assured (mostly) that it'll be around 100 years or more from now?

93 comments
crazygringo · 27 days ago
Just put it on your own domain and keep it there while you're alive. Renewing it is not that hard, especially with auto-renew on a credit card.

And make sure the Internet Archive indexes it. When people find old links that don't resolve anymore, IA is where they go.

Don't overthink this. Nothing lasts forever, but right now I'd say IA is the most likely repository to survive over the longest term, certainly in comparison to any for-profit company.

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gmuslera · 27 days ago
100 years is too long. Maybe not because the company or institution where you will host it directly or indirectly will vanish (the Lindy effect matters choosing one), but because we, as internet and its users, moved on. The changes are accelerating, in the last very few years AIs are being used as search engines and providing content, new generations doesn't read so much (as they consume things like Instagram or TikTok), and that is a relatively recent development.

You may still find user pages on universities that goes back to the early 90's, before that simply there was no web, and that was just 30 years back, 10 years earlier was the start of TCP/IP, mail and DNS protocols. But 20 years later from now things may be very different to what we know so far.

Maybe it would be for the better to ride the waves, and instead of doing things like we did till a few years back, rely on AIs or other systems that will hold that knowledge somewhat and that can be interacted with. And hope that where you put the today's style static web page with your book addendum gets indexed by them and used when the consumer of the content you created request it somehow.

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generalizations · 27 days ago
Ultimately you have to give a human direct responsibility for it; or in your case, a series of humans.

I'd suggest you do buy a domain, but set up a legal/financial framework so that a long-standing law firm will keep up the payments for N decades (or for as long as the firm & its successors exist).

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kjellsbells · 27 days ago
Your problem isnt so much "content storage" as it is "addressing". For example, you could carve the info into a rock, and instruct an immediate descendent to maintain it, and have them tell their children, etc. Or create a religion that maintains The Rock.

But lets imagine you found a crystalline web server that ran off sun light and was backed by rock storage. Who is to be assured that the https scheme will still exist in 100 years? Or that DNS is still the resolution method? FTP had a 20 year run before dying. Gopher lasted under a decade. Http is dying out under the weight of security and corporatization. Even DNS is under pressure to be centralized and otherwise fiddled with in the name of convenience (eg locality). So your descendents might not be able to resolve your URN locator scheme, or have a usable client to reach it, no matter how good your long term storage is.

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simne · 26 days ago
100 years is too long time. Modern science don't know, how to make something, which will exist so long. This is because, even when we could make machine which will work so long, nobody could guarantee existence of jurisdiction where machine will be. And to move machine to other place will need some people, but people active lifetime is much less.

For this problem, even Darpa created special research program and at the moment only exists one serious applicant - https://100yss.org/

You could try to ask some of Japanese oldest organizations to host your page, as they have few entities existing hundreds years. But you should ask not one but few, I think at least 3, because just few years ago bankrupted 700-years old Japanese bank.

Other possible candidates - some churches and property communes in Western countries. But also, each additional host will just make higher probability but will not guarantee anything.

Also possible to ask your family to save your site, but even if your family is reliable enough, who knows, how will look like society in 100 years, and if your book/site will be legal.

I think, if you will place something on Moon, exists high probability nobody will reach it in 100 years (I think, large share territory of Moon will be desert like now), so it will save. And yes, it is possible to make laser communication system, so somebody could buy components for some reasonable cost and make call and receive data from your site there.