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Comment by epolanski | Hacker News Reader

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.

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This is one of the reasons Wikipedia switched to Wayback Machine URLs.

I wonder if HN could do something similar? Any link more than a year old defaults to a Wayback Machine URL?

Maybe they could just add an archive link alongside the regular link for all posts.

Again it is one reason why I wish the history of a browser could take a snapshot of the page I read. At least as a prosumer, opt in feature.

I could afford to store those when storage is so cheap.

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)

RE "...a browser could take a snapshot of the page I read. ....."

I've used a extension to do this for last few years. The extension is available for both Chrome and Firefox

would you care to share the name?

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 )

Are you deliberately withholding the name of this mysterious extension for some reason? If so, it does produce the desired suspense!

Where do they get stored, locally? and what kind of snapshot is it, are they screenshots or saved html pages?

Maybe they just mean SingleFile (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/singlefile/mpiodij...) which is quite handy for archiving – nothing automated based on your history though like the above commenter was describing.

Looks like it also has a companion that runs outside the browser for custom save paths.

Im VERY Sorry for not mentioning the name. I thought I did. Its singlefile extension

It's sad how miserable all browsers have implemented history. Browser link aggregators are pretty useless too.

AFAIK no one has, as yet, built anything to leverage all that information. Maybe one day.

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