If the HTML differs, it would get a different address; just like the Wayback Machine, but the addresses are based on content rather than timestamp, and it's dis

If the HTML differs, it would get a different address; just like the Wayback Machine, but the addresses are based on content rather than timestamp, and it's distributed. Anyone can do that right now, without any changes by (or permission from) the site operator (YCombinator in this case). You couldn't host the "live" version of Hacker News (with user accounts, new comments, etc.) unless YCombinator open up their databases, and re-architect the system to work in a distributed-friendly way. The latter is an interesting idea, but isn't required to fix HTTP issues like link rot.