undefined | Better HN

0 pointsdsacco8y ago0 comments

This might sound insane, but if you modified this into a browser extension that runs locally (with options for one-off or continuous saving for entire browsing sessions) I would probably download it. Personally, I have well over 100TB of personal hard drive space in my home, and I would love to just download entire portions of my browsing history locally for archival reasons (and to truly defeat link rot).

As it is now, I personally wouldn't use it (but it's a cool project, definitely please keep working on this idea!).

0 comments

chongli8y ago

modified this into a browser extension

I was just thinking about this last night while I was explaining my use of the Firefox tab groups extension to a friend. I use bookmarks and tabs to keep track of information. Neither is fully convenient and the whole system fails whenever a page changes or a link rots.

I would love a system that archives a page I bookmark so that the bookmark will always work to give me that information. Give me an 'ephemeral' checkbox if I want my bookmark to change when the site changes. Hmmm.

rahiel8y ago

I made a browser extension [1] that automatically archives bookmarks to archive.is or (currently Chromium only) locally as MHTML files.

[1]: https://github.com/rahiel/archiveror

pdfernhout8y ago

Cool, Rahiel! Thanks for doing this.

Here is a related idea I proposed a couple years ago to a Knight News Challenge on Libraries: https://web.archive.org/web/20161104175911/https://www.newsc... "Create a browser addon so when people post to the web they can send a copy for storage and hosting by a network of local libraries. ... While the Internet Archive is backing up some of the internet, it is another single point of failure. We propose developing data standards, software applications, coordination protocols. and hardware specifications so every local library in the world can participate in backing up part of the internet. ..."

Sad that the Knight News Foundation has changed their software and so all the old Knight News contributions are no longer available. It's an example of the very thing that contribution was about -- the need for distributed backups. Glad that info is still findable in archive.org -- until perhaps the Knight News Foundation puts up a broad robots.txt and makes it all inaccessible.

Thanks again for creating a great plugin!

1 more reply

WhiteOwlLion8y ago

For one-off, you can use a bookmarklet:

For example, Wayback Machine:

Save Current URL: javascript:q=(document.location.href);void(open('http://web.archive.org/save/*/'+location.href.replace(/https..., ""),'_self ','resizable,location,menubar,toolbar,scrollbars,status'));

GoBack Current URL: javascript:q=(document.location.href);void(open('http://web.archive.org/web/*/'+location.href.replace(/https?..., ""),'_self ','resizable,location,menubar,toolbar,scrollbars,status'));

thallesr8y ago

Using zotero's webshot feature should do this. i use it this way

agamble8y ago

Great idea, thanks for the feedback :)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse