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.
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 )
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.