Yes. The point is that if you try doing that for links far in the past, you'll often get a dead page. By "dead" I mean different content than the one that was

Yes. The point is that if you try doing that for links far in the past, you'll often get a dead page. By "dead" I mean different content than the one that was submitted to HN at the time. So you need a way of specifying the date. There's a way to do that, though, which is interesting. My edit above points out a comment to get it.