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What becomes possible? The entire internet could effectively get rid of hosting account providers, with each page in every site being contained in a hashify URL

What becomes possible? The entire internet could effectively get rid of hosting account providers, with each page in every site being contained in a hashify URL, and with each page linking to other pages using other hashify URLs. Trouble is, there might be a DNS-like system needed to match hashify URLs to more human-readable strings (or a way for existing DNS to resolve to hashify style URLs). Neat idea.

vidarh 15y ago
The data needs to be stored somewhere. In their implementation they in effect use bit.ly as the hosting provider for the data by shortening the url's, so while it's a fun little experiment, it boils down to a content addressable system. We already have good examples of content addressable systems. Git for example is built on content addressable storage.
- djhworld 15y ago
  It also assumes that there's no limit on URL space that bit.ly provide. Tomorrow they could just max out the "long_url" field or whatever they call it to just accept 1500 chars or something
  - mattvot 15y ago
    There is: "Storing a document in a URL is nifty, but not terribly practical. Hashify uses the [bit.ly API][4] to shorten URLs from as many as 30,000 characters to just 20 or so. In essence, bit.ly acts as a document store!" http://tinyurl.com/3n6h8px http://tinyurl.com/3n6h8px
    - zalew 15y ago
      hence the "bit.ly – "rate limit exceeded" :\" message on top... maybe switch to goo.gl?
    - djhworld 15y ago
      This was my point, they're passing their 30,000 char URL to bit.ly to return a short URL (20 chars) But what happens if bit.ly just say "Sorry incoming URLS (long urls) can only be a maximum of 1500 chars"?
      - andypants 15y ago
        And then the next paragraph: While the HTTP specification does not define an upper limit on the length of a URL that a user agent should accept, bit.ly imposes a 2048-character limit.
  - brador 15y ago
    Wouldn't the document also be stored in your URL browsing history?
friggeri 15y ago
The real trouble is that when you link to a hashified URL, you are actually embedding in your web page (an encoding of) the content of the page you are linking to. Think matryoshka.
- LeafStorm 15y ago
  Not to mention that makes link cycles impossible.
  - aurelianito 15y ago
    Nah! I am pretty sure that a quine can be made using this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)
- austintaylor 15y ago
  Right. Even without link cycles, any link would have to contain (nearly) the whole internet.
seanp2k2 15y ago
in essence, this would be moving away from a model of "large networks of connected pages/sites" to "a large amount of single documents with no meaningful mechanism of inter-connectedness". Think about this like a PDF where stuff is embedded instead of in separate files.

vidarh 15y ago

The data needs to be stored somewhere. In their implementation they in effect use bit.ly as the hosting provider for the data by shortening the url's, so while it's a fun little experiment, it boils down to a content addressable system. We already have good examples of content addressable systems. Git for example is built on content addressable storage.

djhworld 15y ago
It also assumes that there's no limit on URL space that bit.ly provide. Tomorrow they could just max out the "long_url" field or whatever they call it to just accept 1500 chars or something
- mattvot 15y ago
  There is: "Storing a document in a URL is nifty, but not terribly practical. Hashify uses the [bit.ly API][4] to shorten URLs from as many as 30,000 characters to just 20 or so. In essence, bit.ly acts as a document store!" http://tinyurl.com/3n6h8px http://tinyurl.com/3n6h8px
  - zalew 15y ago
    hence the "bit.ly – "rate limit exceeded" :\" message on top... maybe switch to goo.gl?
  - djhworld 15y ago
    This was my point, they're passing their 30,000 char URL to bit.ly to return a short URL (20 chars) But what happens if bit.ly just say "Sorry incoming URLS (long urls) can only be a maximum of 1500 chars"?
    - andypants 15y ago
      And then the next paragraph: While the HTTP specification does not define an upper limit on the length of a URL that a user agent should accept, bit.ly imposes a 2048-character limit.
- brador 15y ago
  Wouldn't the document also be stored in your URL browsing history?

friggeri 15y ago

The real trouble is that when you link to a hashified URL, you are actually embedding in your web page (an encoding of) the content of the page you are linking to. Think matryoshka.

LeafStorm 15y ago
Not to mention that makes link cycles impossible.
- aurelianito 15y ago
  Nah! I am pretty sure that a quine can be made using this! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine_(computing)
austintaylor 15y ago
Right. Even without link cycles, any link would have to contain (nearly) the whole internet.

seanp2k2 15y ago

in essence, this would be moving away from a model of "large networks of connected pages/sites" to "a large amount of single documents with no meaningful mechanism of inter-connectedness". Think about this like a PDF where stuff is embedded instead of in separate files.