> You'd think that LLMs fulfill this, but I do wonder if a clever human could still discern between them given their particularities.
You don't even have to be that clever. We've all tried using it for work. They fail.
In the first place, the Turing test was always a loosely defined thought experiment. I suppose it's still serving that purpose, but at least half of HN takes it way too seriously. It's absolutely not proof of <engagementbait> endorsed by Alan Turing himself.
It is actually pretty easy to keep alive URLs if there is a will to do so. Just have tests in place so you can't mess them up accidentally. And convert things that are not changing anymore to static html.
One of my first web projects involved a music forum and I have been keeping the URLs alive for 24 years now:
It's not easy. Part of the instructions would need to contain things like "how to convince your boss to not just delete the old thing" and "what to do when the startup you worked for went bankrupt" among others. Most URLs don't disappear by mistake.
Well, and pay registrar and hosting fees for 100 years, and then just hope the hosting company doesn't fold in the interim after your passing. The problem isn't "can you make sure it stays up while you're alive", the problem is, after you're gone, you're no longer there to keep the flame alive and there are no guarantees anyone else picks up the torch.
In my mind, the part that is most likely to fail is "return an HTML document that still contains the following text." Nowadays, more and more "HTML documents" do not contain any content at all, just some JavaScript that is responsible for then fetching and displaying the content.
I think the parent is referring to the possibility that one day, browsers might put up a blanket security warning for HTTP URLs instead of following redirects. Or they might try to be a little too clever with HTTPS upgrades.
In particular, the automatic upgrade feature in modern browsers is based on several heuristics rather than explicit configuration like HSTS, so there's always a bit of room for breakage there. For example, they don't even check if the server returns a 301 redirect, which can be problematic if the server wants to redirect to HTTPS on a different host/port or make some changes to the path.
> Or they might try to be a little too clever with HTTPS upgrades.
They're not going to get any cleverer than they are now. In October we'll finally be done with heuristics or central databses of https-first websites used by the various browsers or the half a dozen of headers that you must dance around to get the upgrade to work securely and reliably. They will just default to https first.
At a certain bet size it would almost be self-fulfilling, heh, as one side would be very incentivized to keep at least that url working (buying the domain + hosting it if the page were to die)
I know nothing of Safecloud, but freenet failed for a very valid reasons:
1. Data retention isn't infinite. If the source disappears from the network, peers will prune it shortly. This is exponentially true in our multimedia-heavy world.
2. Despite 1, if you actually want to delete something you published, you can't. Absolutists will see this as a good thing. Normal people will see this as a problem.
3. Peer-to-peer doesn't work in a mobile-first world, and not enough people will host nodes as a hobby. If all website publishers/hosters have to host a node, then we're just back to the current model but with extra steps.
The original long bet was whether or not computers could pass the turing test by 2029: https://longbets.org/1/
You'd think that LLMs fulfill this, but I do wonder if a clever human could still discern between them given their particularities.
https://longbets.org/9/ is another interesting one depending on whether you think covid leaked from a lab or not.
You don't even have to be that clever. We've all tried using it for work. They fail.
In the first place, the Turing test was always a loosely defined thought experiment. I suppose it's still serving that purpose, but at least half of HN takes it way too seriously. It's absolutely not proof of <engagementbait> endorsed by Alan Turing himself.
One of my first web projects involved a music forum and I have been keeping the URLs alive for 24 years now:
https://www.gnoosic.com/discussion/
I feel like I owe it to the people who participated to keep it online forever. Also as a document of history.
The part of this that's most likely to fail at some point is the "http://".
Now I'm a human slave copying text from web browsers to chat windows to get around JS rendering bullshit.
> A 301 redirect from www.longbets.org/601 to a different URL containing that text would also fulfill those conditions.
I assume this would cover the HTTP->HTTPS redirect scenario.
In particular, the automatic upgrade feature in modern browsers is based on several heuristics rather than explicit configuration like HSTS, so there's always a bit of room for breakage there. For example, they don't even check if the server returns a 301 redirect, which can be problematic if the server wants to redirect to HTTPS on a different host/port or make some changes to the path.
They're not going to get any cleverer than they are now. In October we'll finally be done with heuristics or central databses of https-first websites used by the various browsers or the half a dozen of headers that you must dance around to get the upgrade to work securely and reliably. They will just default to https first.
https://blog.google/security/https-by-defau/
Yes this is about Chrome, but all others will follow.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139686
For the heck of it I confirmed "http://www.longbets.org/601" does in fact result in a 301 redirect to "https://longbets.org/601/". I suspected they might have used a 302.
Which is not, in my opinion, how things should be hosted on the Web.
Freenet had a different approach, even back in the early days (two decades ago). I interviewed Ian Clarke about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWrRqUkJpMQ
I wrote about it for years: https://community.intercoin.app/t/who-pays-for-storage-nfts-...
And recently I built Safecloud to be different: https://safebots.github.io/Safecloud/
I bet there's complexity to the topic, but I am sure you could put it into a few words instead of just leaving a hook for others to click on.
1. Data retention isn't infinite. If the source disappears from the network, peers will prune it shortly. This is exponentially true in our multimedia-heavy world.
2. Despite 1, if you actually want to delete something you published, you can't. Absolutists will see this as a good thing. Normal people will see this as a problem.
3. Peer-to-peer doesn't work in a mobile-first world, and not enough people will host nodes as a hobby. If all website publishers/hosters have to host a node, then we're just back to the current model but with extra steps.