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Ask HN: What is going on at archive.ph?

19 points by shrvtv ↗ HN
The queue has been in 5 digit numbers for a few days. And for a few weeks before that it was possible to get articles archived by archiving them when americans are sleeping (at GMT morning). Nowadays it is no longer possible and the waiting line is about 2-3 days. What on Earth is going on?

12 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 47.6 ms ] thread
navjack27
In times like these I always like to urge people to figure out what these services are that you like using online and see if there are ways that you could roll them yourself at home for your own personal use.
octoberfranklin
So with stuff like SearX, invidious, nitter, etc you can run your own instance.

Can you run your own instance of archive.ph? Obviously not their software (they don't release it), but is there a version you can run yourself?

The important parts of what archive.ph provides are:

1. Headless chromium that works around 99.9% of the "headless fingerprinter" techniques. Yes, they do actually spin up a full browser engine; that's what sets them apart.

2. Decent curated collection of paywall-bypass tactics.

#2 is definitely available from other sources. So really what we're looking for is a one-click "headless chromium that deals with 99.9% of the fingerprint detectors".

scrollaway
It’s not strictly the same but ArchiveBox is very well maintained and recognised for personal archives

https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox

Kaibeezy
Clueless here. What sort of “personal archiving” are you talking about? Like Evernote? I’ve only ever used archive.ph to facilitate sharing articles without worrying about links changing (looking at you, BBC).
scrollaway
For example if you want to save a web page you're browsing, or a whole website, in a way that is a bit more reliable than hitting ctrl+s; and then want to search through those etc.

Web archival is a very, very complex and deep topic. If you're interested in it, the archiveteam's wiki is a good resource. Start here, I think:

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Introduction

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Software

https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/The_WARC_Ecosystem

Tomte
Just a few hours ago I tried ArchiveBox again. Used the docker-compose version, imported around 600 bookmarks and... 5 hours later everything is pending, it has stopped creating new files and folders in the data folder, and I have no idea how to find out what's wrong.

I'm not terribly motivated right now to dive into the community and ask for help, so I won't seriously complain, but it's at least not trivial to use.

m-p-3
I use this from time to time to archive web page for my own use

https://github.com/webrecorder/archiveweb.page

I also convert web snippets I find useful to the markdown format and store it in my Joplin notebook, so that way it lives on even if the website is gone.

gerbh
Works alright for me. Maybe you've been rate limited?
shrvtv
What is the average number you see after submitting the link? Mine are in 20.000
chunk_waffle
.ph is the Philippines TLD, Typhoon Noru just went through it. Not sure if archive.ph is hosted there but I recall when living there I could always expect network issues and outage when there were strong Typhoons. Maybe related?
cpach
I have the same issue. I just sent an email to the admin about it.
cpach
Update: Now it works fine again.