unrot•link
Remy has turned his linkrot-battling technique into a service that you can use. He has more details on his blog.
Link tags: linkrot
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No more 404
I really, really like the progressive enhancement approach that Remy is taking here with outbound links:
When a real user clicks on a link, it’s swapped out to be redirected through my own endpoint that checks if the URL is still OK, and if so permanently redirects the visitor, otherwise my endpoint checks the Web Archive for the URL and permanently redirects to that instead.
I think I’m going to do the same! I’d have to rewrite the server-side code in PHP, but that shouldn’t be too tricky.
This could a project for the next Indie Web Camp I attend.
Shame. – Dirty Feed
Deleting your old thoughts may be giving your older self a kick they really don’t deserve. And the beauty of having an archive is that you don’t need to decide whether you were right or not. Your views, with a date attached, can stand as a reflection of a specific moment in time.
Reconciling every past view you’ve ever had with how you feel now isn’t required. It sounds exhausting, frankly.
How Websites Die ⁑ Wesley’s Notebook
This is like the Gashlycrumb Tinies but for websites:
It’s been interesting to see how websites die — from domain parking pages to timeouts to blank pages to outdated TLS cipher errors, there are a multitude of different ways.
The internet that disappears - Embedded
The internet, it turns out, is not forever. It’s on more of like a 10-year cycle. It’s constantly upgrading and migrating in ways that are incompatible with past content, leaving broken links and error pages in its wake. In other instances, the sites simply shutter, or become so layered over that finding your own footprint is impossible—I have searched “Kate Lindsay Myspace” every which way and have concluded that my content from that platform must simply be lost to time, ingested by the Shai-Hulud of the internet.
The Internet Is Rotting - The Atlantic
A terrific piece by Jonathan Zittrain on bitrot and online digital preservation:
Too much has been lost already. The glue that holds humanity’s knowledge together is coming undone.
Robin Rendle ･ Inheritance
My work shouldn’t be presented in the Smithsonian behind glass or anything, I’m just pointing at this enormous flaw in the architecture of the web itself: you’re renting servers and renting URLs. Nothing is permanent because on the web we don’t really own any space, we’re just borrowing land temporarily.
FlickrJubilee (@FlickrJubilee) / Twitter
Flickr is removing anything over 1,000 photos on accounts that are not “pro” (paid for) in 2019. We highlight large and amazing accounts that could use a gift to go pro. We take nominations and track when these accounts are saved.
The Commons: The Past Is 100% Part of Our Future | Flickr Blog
This is very, very good news. Following on from the recent announcement that a huge swathe of Flickr photos would soon be deleted, there’s now an update: any photos that are Creative Commons licensed won’t be deleted after all. Phew!
I wonder if I can get a refund for that pro account I just bought last week to keep my Creative Commons licensed Flickr pictures online.
Why we’re changing Flickr free accounts | Flickr Blog
I’ve got a lot of photos on Flickr (even though I don’t use it directly much these days) and I’ve paid up for a pro account to protect those photos, but I’m very worried about this:
Beginning January 8, 2019, Free accounts will be limited to 1,000 photos and videos.
That in itself is fine, but any existing non-pro accounts with more than 1000 photos will have older photos deleted until the total comes down to 1000. This means that anyone linking to those photos (or embedding them in blog posts or articles) will have broken links and images.
Tears in the rain.
The Internet’s keepers? “Some call us hoarders—I like to say we’re archivists” | Ars Technica
A profile of Mark Graham and the team at the Internet Archive.
“If it’s not curlable, it’s not on the web.” by Tantek Çelik
It was fun spelunking with Tantek, digging into some digital archeology in an attempt to track down a post by Ben Ward that I remembered reading years ago.
AMBER
This is intriguing—a Pinboard-like service that will create local copies of pages you link to from your site. There are plug-ins for WordPress and Drupal, and modules for Apache and Nginx.
Amber is an open source tool for websites to provide their visitors persistent routes to information. It automatically preserves a snapshot of every page linked to on a website, giving visitors a fallback option if links become inaccessible.
The Internet’s Dark Ages - The Atlantic
The promise of the web is that Alexandria’s library might be resurrected for the modern world. But today’s great library is being destroyed even as it is being built.
A fascinating account of one story’s linkrot that mirrors the woeful state of our attitude to cultural preservation on the web.
Historians and digital preservationists agree on this fact: The early web, today’s web, will be mostly lost to time.
What is still on the web after 10 years of archiving? - UK Web Archive blog
The short answer: not much.
The UK Web Archive at The British Library outlines its process for determining just how bad the linkrot is after just one decade.
“The Internet Never Forgets” — sixtwothree.org
The Internet forgets every single day.
I’m with Jason.
I encourage you all to take a moment and consider the importance of preserving your online creations for yourself, your family, and for future generations.
Perma: Scoping and addressing the problem of “link rot” :: Future of the Internet – And how to stop it.
Lawrence Lessig and Jonathan Zittrain are uncovering disturbing data on link rot in Supreme Court documents: 50% of the the links cited no longer work.
The spread of link rot by Felix Salmon
What I fear is that the entire web is basically becoming a slow-motion Snapchat, where content lives for some unknowable amount of time before it dies, lost forever.
» Long Bets Bet – How Durable Are URLs? - Blog of the Long Now
The Long Now blog is featuring the bet between myself and Matt on URL longevity. Just being mentioned on that site gives me a warm glow.
Link Rot « The Bygone Bureau
Brilliant; just brilliant. Connor O’Brien remains skeptical about the abstract permanence of “the cloud.” The observations are sharp and the tone is spot-on.
If your only photo album is Facebook, ask yourself: since when did a gratis web service ever demonstrate giving a flying fuck about holding onto the past?