back to article Open source plugin aims to defeat link rot

A new open source plugin designed to prevent the creation of dead content links online – so called "link rot" – has launched. Amber has been designed by Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society and it provides what it calls a "persistent route" to information on the internet by automatically taking and retaining a …

  1. mad physicist Fiona

    More shitty animated GIFs

    Are El Reg actively trying to kill their readership through mass epileptic fits?

    1. Bronek Kozicki

      Re: More shitty animated GIFs

      Happy to hear my GPU isn't broken ...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: More shitty animated GIFs

        "Happy to hear my GPU isn't broken ..."

        It is if you can hear it.

        Anyone who is synergesic around here is probably frantically trying to blow white noise out of their nose after seeing that headline piccie.

    2. Anonymous Curd

      Re: More shitty animated GIFs

      Half a megabyte and flashing. Bravo subeds.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hosts

    Edited to block https://regmedia.co.uk

    Again.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Hosts

      Funny how things come to bite you. I have been using "Privacy Badger" as a plugin within Chrome for yonks. I was introduced to it via an article here. Tonight - I'm on GMT - I noticed el Reg go a bit odd as those bloody huge piccies vanished and the headlines mangled a bit.

      I don't know exactly what criteria you have to meet to incur the wrath of PB but finally, after several years, regmedia.co.uk has managed to slither over the line.

      Congratulations: You've shit it.

      Oh God, I had to do it. Turned off PB and my retinas burned

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hosts

      Hosts??? If I was a betting man, I would guess your hosts file is at c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc Has that not ever struck you as an odd place for a config file? Real nerds keep theirs in /etc/ . Actually, real nerds run their own DNS server or at least their own (configurable) resolver, such as "unbound".

      Pointing remote sites at yourself via "hosts" is not a good idea. I am assuming that, according to a lot of intertube wisdom, you are making entries like this:

      127.0.0.1 www.site.ihate.com

      Don't

      1.1.1.1 www.site.ihate.com

      is safer. Even better (minimally) is a decent set of firewalls, AV/AS/etc, a web proxy and perhaps a solid grounding in IT Security. None of those are beyond a household budget (many good (best) ones are Open Source and hence free)

      1. Charles 9

        Re: Hosts

        Windows has it where it is due to it being the location of the TCP/IP stack. No such thing as /etc here.

        As for protection, find one that's not only free but simple: turnkey simple, or Joe Ordinary won't get it.

        PS. Why not use localhost? It resolves instantly, never goes out on the wire, and can be handled to your tastes, unlike any other number you can think of.

        1. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: Hosts

          To late-comers to this thread: There was a ghastly animated GIF that has now been replaced by a nice warm picture of some chains.

        2. VinceH

          Re: Hosts

          "PS. Why not use localhost? It resolves instantly, never goes out on the wire, and can be handled to your tastes, unlike any other number you can think of."

          Good question. (Especially since I've just suggested using 127.0.0.1 to people on a mailing list!)

      2. Crazy Operations Guy

        Re: "1.1.1.1"

        How the fuck is 1.1.1.1 safer? Its an actual IP address and is owned by the US DoD and was later given to ICANN / APNIC for testing so there very well could be something alive that responds to that IP. Or someone could poison BGP and start hosting attacks on that IP block. Much better to just point it to 127.0.0.2 if you really are afraid that you have a webserver running on your local machine that you don't know about (Which if you do, you have much, much bigger problems to worry about)

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: "1.1.1.1"

          Much better to just point it to 127.0.0.2 if you really are afraid that you have a webserver running on your local machine that you don't know about

          Anything in 127/8 resolves to the loopback interface. 127.0.0.2 will only avoid your local web server if the request is made using HTTP/1.1 (or HTTP/2), and said server checks the Host header, and it declines the request if it is addressed to 127.0.0.2. The second seems unlikely (you're running a server configured for virtual hosting on your browsing machine?) and the last unlikelier still.

          But props for noting that 1.1.1.1 is a valid, assigned IPv4 address.

          If you really want a destination IP address that's not routed to loopback or the Internet, then something in one of the RFC 1918 private address networks (10/8, 172.16/12, and 192.168/16) that you aren't already using would be the appropriate choice.

          There are IPv6 equivalents, of course, but who wants that?

  3. Ole Juul

    caring is sharing

    "There are lots of reasons for link rot: websites are restructured or shifted to a new content management system and break all the previous URLs . . . "

    In other words the reason is incompetent website management. This is standard practice for government sites in these parts and it just goes to show that they value fashion over content. They just don't care. Idiots.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not dead

    Hidden

  5. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    The web developers equivalent...

    ...of spaghetti code.

    Question: Is it possible to generate an infinite loop?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I would gladly welcome our new link masters

    I've been thinking about it (while shaving) over the last couple of years. I mean, that somebody clever should come up with a tool to quickly analyse the link, look for server content and offer most likely "match". On the other hand, it does encourage website owners sloppiness (why bother being tidy with your links, when a bot would sort it out anyway?).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I would gladly welcome our new link masters

      The CMS I wrangle for work does that – it will store all previous locations of a page when moving/renaming it and auto-redirect to the last known, failing that, it will, I think, use the last component as a search term for the site.

      At least, you'll still end up with the most recent information, unlike this scheme here, which would happily inform in-house punters of the queue names for continuous form paper printers we retired ten years ago.

    2. Eddy Ito

      Re: I would gladly welcome our new link masters

      Soooo, Google?

  7. phil dude
    Coat

    uBlock origin...?

    Not sure what everyone is on about...

    P.

  8. Trigonoceps occipitalis

    "rather than returning a 404 error page"

    Should that be:

    rather than returning a 404 error page or a list of useful* link suggestions carefully selected** by my ISP

    *As in: not useful at all.

    **As in: Show me the money.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Simples

    Daily link check.

    No?

    Zero tolerance.

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