111 pointsby doubletwoyou3 hours ago12 comments
  • CSMastermindan hour ago
    It's worth noting that some prediction URLs, for instance: https://longbets.org/6/ are offline.

    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.

    • sublinear24 minutes ago
      > 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.

      • frotaur9 minutes ago
        I think if you trained an LLM specifically for the purpose of passing the Turing test (instead of being helpful, harmful, and so on), its likely it would pass it.

        You would have to train it/finetune it on a couple hundred of 'humans chatting in the context of a Turing test'.

  • mgan hour ago
    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:

    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.

    • vascoan hour ago
      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.
    • fragmedean hour ago
      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.
  • JoshTriplett3 hours ago
    > entering the characters http://www.longbets.org/601 into the address bar of a web browser or command line tool (like curl)

    The part of this that's most likely to fail at some point is the "http://".

    • ludwik2 hours ago
      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.
      • bombcar2 hours ago
        I used to be someone, man, I was a dreamer, a programmer, a man!

        Now I'm a human slave copying text from web browsers to chat windows to get around JS rendering bullshit.

    • ywain3 hours ago
      The detailed terms of the bet include this:

      > 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.

      • kijin2 hours ago
        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.

        • tredre3an hour ago
          > 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.

          https://blog.google/security/https-by-defau/

          Yes this is about Chrome, but all others will follow.

      • oofbey2 hours ago
        Yeah that was a clever bit of foresight there.
  • firefoxd2 hours ago
    One thing I've done is include my redirect rules with the web application. So my links continue to work even when I change them and forget them.

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139686

  • matsemann2 hours ago
    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)
  • vvoyer2 hours ago
    Amazing that Disqus comments are still live for this page. More impressive even than the website itself being live.
    • DonHopkins31 minutes ago
      I'm grateful the comments are still there, since they reminded me to get back in touch with my old friend Craig Hubley!
  • RinatNabiev19 minutes ago
    "Cool URIs don't change" is still the ideal. 301 redirects are the pragmatic reality. Both are right in different ways.
  • RinatNabiev19 minutes ago
    The fact that this bet page itself still exists is a win for both sides. Internet Archive gets $1000 either way, so we all win.
  • sucuri242 minutes ago
    Anyway to find all bets expiring this year? it will be interesting to see. Could not find a way to search for it there.
  • cortesoft21 minutes ago
    This is basically a bet on if you think longbets is going to be around.
  • mike_d2 hours ago
    I'm not sure how it played out in 2011, but as of now it looks like the win condition hinges on the redirect.

    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.

  • EGreg2 hours ago
    It's all a matter of whether someone is willing to pay for the hosting.

    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/

    • hypferan hour ago
      On HN, a TLDR would be helpful, because just clicking your links would potentially mean falling for shilling of ones own side-hustle.

      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.

      • tredre334 minutes ago
        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.

        • bblb18 minutes ago
          Closed-garden mobile-first tech feudalism lobotimized the Internet. I remember trying out the Freenets, I2Ps, and whatnot in the 90's. Too cumbersome nerdy tools to use for anything actually worthwhile. It was born in the idealized world village of the 90's Internet. Maybe real life doesn't work like that, and the lobotimized centralized tech will eventually win.