4 ms·

Abstrusegoose.com Is Gone for Good

66 points by ktosobcy 3y ago

Probably very quirky. There was this comic ages ago Abstruse Goose, one day, also ages ago, it stopped publishing. The page was just white empty. And the other day, after years of the limbo the domain finally expired. To all the lost digital content :-(

arrrtem 3y ago
Looks like the author himself deleted it: "AGI will not be designed by humans. It will be evolved through relentless evolutionary computational processes designed by humans" (https://web.archive.org/web/20231209033410/https://abstrusegoose.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231209033410/https://abstruseg...)
ChrisGranger 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/abstrusegoose.com https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/abstrusegoose.co...
samstave 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20090214012004/http://abstrusegoose.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20090214012004/http://abstrusego...
akeck 3y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20170428055909/http://abstrusegoose.com/572 https://web.archive.org/web/20170428055909/http://abstrusego...
sdwr 3y ago
Aw, I loved that site, and have checked it occasionally through the years, hoping for a new comic.
NikkiA 3y ago
Yes, thus is the ephemeral nature of a commercial internet, if the website owner ceases to live, or ceases to do business, eventually their registar fees will end up unpaid, and the site will vanish. Never rely on anything on the internet being 'forever'.
- hiatus 3y ago
  > eventually their registar fees will end up unpaid, and the site will vanish What is the alternative you envision?
  - viraptor 3y ago
    If you care about the content, mirror it on an ipfs node so others can download it in the future.
  - brian_cloutier 3y ago
    URLs resolve not to ip addresses but to some form of static identifier such as the hash of the content. Static sites are retrieved via static identifier and are therefore incredibly easy to cache and even extremely popular sites are cheap to serve because most requests never make it to the origin server. There is no need to visit archive.org, the internet archive can directly seed the content it deems worthy of archival. Abstrusegoose.com eventually expires and the new owner points it to new content but the old site sticks around indefinitely, it is accessible via hash for as long as someone seeds it.
    - tremon 3y ago
      That's the basic idea behind IPFS: https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/lifecycle/ https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/lifecycle/
    - olliej 3y ago
      In your proposed scheme of URL->hash, everyone is expected to pay a big service to host their data, so that their page is accessible to that service's users? Or what? It sounds like you're saying "use IPFS for web hosting" but that's famously slow and unreliable for anything not incredibly popular. How do you propose a person publishes their data? They get a domain, they create their page, they hash their page, they point that domain at that hash, and then what exactly? They update their content, compute the new hash, and then wait for DNS to propagate the new change? I'm serious here, I'm trying to work out how what you're suggesting would work for the standard use cases of websites, and I'm trying to work out how if it does work for the standard use cases it solves any of the problems that archive.org has to manage, or any of the features people use archive.org for? People don't use archive.org to ask "where did this content get published?" (e.g I have a hash of the page content) they say "what was the content at this location+time?". Definitionally they do not have the content, so they do not have the hash. They have the location, but you've just said the location is just the hash of the content. If you're saying the location of the document is the full url, not just the domain (the only part that involves machine addresses), then what is the hash for? Finally, if the location is based on hash, you don't only break any content that is not 100% static, you break encrypted content, because definitionally encrypted content is not static.
TriangleEdge 3y ago
I loved these comics. I related to a lot of them. My favorite was the comic about sorting Skittles by color. I think you can still find the comics on the internet archive. Anyone have insight to what happened to the author?
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Tell HN:
aaron695 3y ago
[dead]
LorenDB 3y ago
This has me worried about http://hackles.org/ http://hackles.org/. It's still running, but with no new content since 2004.
- ongy 3y ago
  If you haven't heard yet, now's the time to mourn bash.org :(
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  I love Hackles! In ~2009 I emailed Drake, the author, and asked if he had any kind of hint for what Hackles saw at the end, but nah...his girlfriend Jen did the painting and layout for the comics and they were broken up when I emailed him, and he had no plans to continue the comic in any form. We got to talk about Linux during the exchange, I was happy he replied :)
- genericone 3y ago
  Whatever it is, its down now with "This page can't be displayed".
forgotpwd16 3y ago
Yeah, noticed it after someone linked a comic at IA. Anyone happen to have a full archive and can share? Could go through IA but expect someone has already done it.
MattPalmer1086 3y ago
Ah sad. Hadn't been an update for ages, but it was very good.
yongjik 3y ago
Reminds me of when the xkcd forum went down - I never registered or commented, but it had threads for every xkcd comic, plus other geek discussions, some of which were quite funny. I spent hours reading them. And then one day there was a banner speaking of a very serious security breach, the forum was down, and that was it. Good things don't last. :/
- nine_k 3y ago
  Good things last if somebody makes an effort to let them continue. This as well may be you, dear reader. If you see any content you seem to care about, make a local copy. Yours may happen to be the only remaining some time in the future.
arrrtem 3y ago
I've downloaded everything few years ago, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ARyzOcvGFZ-TG4gpZOXaAnnz9tEVATQ6/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ARyzOcvGFZ-TG4gpZOXaAnnz9tE...
- norvig 3y ago
  Thank you for archiving!
- pjlegato 3y ago
  The comic is Creative Commons licensed - can you or someone else put this up on a hosting site?
- thomastay 3y ago
  Thanks! just read a few, was a real blast from the past
- layer8 3y ago
  Not quite everything, you're missing a few.
heyitsguay 3y ago
Likewise, was very sad when picturesforsadchildren went offline! Can't believe no archive survived.
- genpfault 3y ago
  > Can't believe no archive survived. https://bluelander.neocities.org/mr-teal/#pfsc https://bluelander.neocities.org/mr-teal/#pfsc
ceocoder 3y ago
I used to read abstruse goose back in the day! Along with few other really cool web comics from back in the day - Julia Wertz had one called The Fart Party[0]. Thankfully someone saved snapshot of Abstruse Goose - https://web.archive.org/web/20150417182607/http://abstrusegoose.com/572 https://web.archive.org/web/20150417182607/http://abstrusego... ! [0] https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5577 https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5577
layer8 3y ago
This one is a cool idea: https://web.archive.org/web/20150417192008/http://abstrusegoose.com/575 https://web.archive.org/web/20150417192008/http://abstrusego... Followed by a non-comic one: https://web.archive.org/web/20180118210642/http://abstrusegoose.com/576 https://web.archive.org/web/20180118210642/http://abstrusego...
wizzwizz4 3y ago
deleted feels appropriate. https://web.archive.org/web/20231205151609/https://abstrusegoose.com/328 https://web.archive.org/web/20231205151609/https://abstruseg...
- jfil 3y ago
  Just a note that the latest version of "deleted", like a lot of the comic pages, is missing the image. If you go back to an older archived version of the page, the image is there (https://web.archive.org/web/20180101012139/https://abstrusegoose.com/328 https://web.archive.org/web/20180101012139/https://abstruseg...)

66 points by ktosobcy 3y ago

arrrtem 3y ago

Looks like the author himself deleted it: "AGI will not be designed by humans. It will be evolved through relentless evolutionary computational processes designed by humans" (https://web.archive.org/web/20231209033410/https://abstrusegoose.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20231209033410/https://abstruseg...)

ChrisGranger 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/abstrusegoose.com https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/abstrusegoose.co...

samstave 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20090214012004/http://abstrusegoose.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20090214012004/http://abstrusego...

akeck 3y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20170428055909/http://abstrusegoose.com/572 https://web.archive.org/web/20170428055909/http://abstrusego...

sdwr 3y ago

Aw, I loved that site, and have checked it occasionally through the years, hoping for a new comic.

NikkiA 3y ago

Yes, thus is the ephemeral nature of a commercial internet, if the website owner ceases to live, or ceases to do business, eventually their registar fees will end up unpaid, and the site will vanish. Never rely on anything on the internet being 'forever'.

hiatus 3y ago
> eventually their registar fees will end up unpaid, and the site will vanish What is the alternative you envision?
- viraptor 3y ago
  If you care about the content, mirror it on an ipfs node so others can download it in the future.
- brian_cloutier 3y ago
  URLs resolve not to ip addresses but to some form of static identifier such as the hash of the content. Static sites are retrieved via static identifier and are therefore incredibly easy to cache and even extremely popular sites are cheap to serve because most requests never make it to the origin server. There is no need to visit archive.org, the internet archive can directly seed the content it deems worthy of archival. Abstrusegoose.com eventually expires and the new owner points it to new content but the old site sticks around indefinitely, it is accessible via hash for as long as someone seeds it.
  - tremon 3y ago
    That's the basic idea behind IPFS: https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/lifecycle/ https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/lifecycle/
  - olliej 3y ago
    In your proposed scheme of URL->hash, everyone is expected to pay a big service to host their data, so that their page is accessible to that service's users? Or what? It sounds like you're saying "use IPFS for web hosting" but that's famously slow and unreliable for anything not incredibly popular. How do you propose a person publishes their data? They get a domain, they create their page, they hash their page, they point that domain at that hash, and then what exactly? They update their content, compute the new hash, and then wait for DNS to propagate the new change? I'm serious here, I'm trying to work out how what you're suggesting would work for the standard use cases of websites, and I'm trying to work out how if it does work for the standard use cases it solves any of the problems that archive.org has to manage, or any of the features people use archive.org for? People don't use archive.org to ask "where did this content get published?" (e.g I have a hash of the page content) they say "what was the content at this location+time?". Definitionally they do not have the content, so they do not have the hash. They have the location, but you've just said the location is just the hash of the content. If you're saying the location of the document is the full url, not just the domain (the only part that involves machine addresses), then what is the hash for? Finally, if the location is based on hash, you don't only break any content that is not 100% static, you break encrypted content, because definitionally encrypted content is not static.

TriangleEdge 3y ago

I loved these comics. I related to a lot of them. My favorite was the comic about sorting Skittles by color. I think you can still find the comics on the internet archive. Anyone have insight to what happened to the author?

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

Tell HN:

aaron695 3y ago

[dead]

LorenDB 3y ago

This has me worried about http://hackles.org/ http://hackles.org/. It's still running, but with no new content since 2004.

ongy 3y ago
If you haven't heard yet, now's the time to mourn bash.org :(
I_Am_Nous 3y ago
I love Hackles! In ~2009 I emailed Drake, the author, and asked if he had any kind of hint for what Hackles saw at the end, but nah...his girlfriend Jen did the painting and layout for the comics and they were broken up when I emailed him, and he had no plans to continue the comic in any form. We got to talk about Linux during the exchange, I was happy he replied :)
genericone 3y ago
Whatever it is, its down now with "This page can't be displayed".

forgotpwd16 3y ago

Yeah, noticed it after someone linked a comic at IA. Anyone happen to have a full archive and can share? Could go through IA but expect someone has already done it.

MattPalmer1086 3y ago

Ah sad. Hadn't been an update for ages, but it was very good.

yongjik 3y ago

Reminds me of when the xkcd forum went down - I never registered or commented, but it had threads for every xkcd comic, plus other geek discussions, some of which were quite funny. I spent hours reading them. And then one day there was a banner speaking of a very serious security breach, the forum was down, and that was it. Good things don't last. :/

nine_k 3y ago
Good things last if somebody makes an effort to let them continue. This as well may be you, dear reader. If you see any content you seem to care about, make a local copy. Yours may happen to be the only remaining some time in the future.

arrrtem 3y ago

I've downloaded everything few years ago, https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ARyzOcvGFZ-TG4gpZOXaAnnz9tEVATQ6/view?usp=drivesdk https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ARyzOcvGFZ-TG4gpZOXaAnnz9tE...

norvig 3y ago
Thank you for archiving!
pjlegato 3y ago
The comic is Creative Commons licensed - can you or someone else put this up on a hosting site?
thomastay 3y ago
Thanks! just read a few, was a real blast from the past
layer8 3y ago
Not quite everything, you're missing a few.

heyitsguay 3y ago

Likewise, was very sad when picturesforsadchildren went offline! Can't believe no archive survived.

genpfault 3y ago
> Can't believe no archive survived. https://bluelander.neocities.org/mr-teal/#pfsc https://bluelander.neocities.org/mr-teal/#pfsc

ceocoder 3y ago

I used to read abstruse goose back in the day! Along with few other really cool web comics from back in the day - Julia Wertz had one called The Fart Party[0]. Thankfully someone saved snapshot of Abstruse Goose - https://web.archive.org/web/20150417182607/http://abstrusegoose.com/572 https://web.archive.org/web/20150417182607/http://abstrusego... ! [0] https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5577 https://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/5577

layer8 3y ago

This one is a cool idea: https://web.archive.org/web/20150417192008/http://abstrusegoose.com/575 https://web.archive.org/web/20150417192008/http://abstrusego... Followed by a non-comic one: https://web.archive.org/web/20180118210642/http://abstrusegoose.com/576 https://web.archive.org/web/20180118210642/http://abstrusego...

wizzwizz4 3y ago

deleted feels appropriate. https://web.archive.org/web/20231205151609/https://abstrusegoose.com/328 https://web.archive.org/web/20231205151609/https://abstruseg...

jfil 3y ago
Just a note that the latest version of "deleted", like a lot of the comic pages, is missing the image. If you go back to an older archived version of the page, the image is there (https://web.archive.org/web/20180101012139/https://abstrusegoose.com/328 https://web.archive.org/web/20180101012139/https://abstruseg...)