As far as we know, Google is not giving up any data. The crawler still must store a copy of the text for the index. The only certainty we have is that Google is no longer sharing it.

Here’s the heart of the not-so-obvious problem:

Websites treat the Google crawler like a 1st class citizen. Paywalls give Google unpaid junk-free access. Then Google search results direct people to a website that treats humans differently (worse). So Google users are led to sites they cannot access. The heart of the problem is access inequality. Google effectively serves to refer people to sites that are not publicly accessible.

I do not want to see search results I cannot access. Google cache was the equalizer that neutralizes that problem. Now that problem is back in our face.

From the article:

“was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.” (emphasis added)

Bullshit! The web gets increasingly enshitified and content is less accessible every day.

For now, you can still build your own cache links even without the button, just by going to “https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:” plus a website URL, or by typing “cache:” plus a URL into Google Search.

You can also use 12ft.io.

Cached links were great if the website was down or quickly changed, but they also gave some insight over the years about how the “Google Bot” web crawler views the web. … A lot of Google Bot details are shrouded in secrecy to hide from SEO spammers, but you could learn a lot by investigating what cached pages look like.

Okay, so there’s a more plausible theory about the real reason for this move. Google may be trying to increase the secrecy of how its crawler functions.

The pages aren’t necessarily rendered like how you would expect.

More importantly, they don’t render the way authors expect. And that’s a fucking good thing! It’s how caching helps give us some escape from enshification. From the 12ft.io faq:

“Prepend 12ft.io/ to the URL webpage, and we’ll try our best to remove the popups, ads, and other visual distractions.”

It also circumvents #paywalls. No doubt there must be legal pressure on Google from angry website owners who want to force their content to come with garbage.

The death of cached sites will mean the Internet Archive has a larger burden of archiving and tracking changes on the world’s webpages.

The possibly good news is that Google’s role shrinks a bit. Any Google shrinkage is a good outcome overall. But there is a concerning relationship between archive.org and Cloudflare. I depend heavily on archive.org largely because Cloudflare has broken ~25% of the web. The day #InternetArchive becomes Cloudflared itself, we’re fucked.

We need several non-profits to archive the web in parallel redundancy with archive.org.

Bingo. When I read that part of the article, I felt insulted. People see the web getting increasingly enshitified and less accessible. The increased need for cached pages has justified the existence of 12ft.io.

~40% of my web access is now dependant on archive.org and 12ft.io.

So yes, Google is obviously bullshitting. Clearly there is a real reason for nixing cached pages and Google is concealing that reason.

This is probably an attempt to save money on storage costs.

That’s in fact what the article claims as Google’s reason. But seems irrational. Google still needs to index websites for the search engine. So the storage is still needed since the data collection is still needed. The only difference (AFAICT) is Google is simply not sharing that data. Also, there are bigger pots of money in play than piddly storage costs.

Among the primary benefits: no commute, flexible work schedules and less time getting ready for work, according to WFH Research.

They forgot: being able to secretly simultaneously work 3 full-time overlapping jobs to triple your income.

Not sure what Grafana is but I can’t even visit the site because they block Tor (403). Gotta love how easy it is to see-and-avoid some privacy-hostile venues. If you were using Tor you might not have wasted 1 minute with that site.

Are flues water-tight? When I would close the flue in other homes, I would typically hear the sound of metal hitting something hard, which somewhat implies they don’t have a rubber seal.

There are 3 tubes & none of them have caps, so apparently it’s deliberate. Most of the neighbors have no caps either and I think most fireplaces are blocked off in the region.

It freezes but I guess I wouldn’t expect pressure on the masonry because the chimny seems to be a cast iron tube so I would think the expansion would be forced to happen vertically.

~48cm per year & humidity is around 70%.

Going from memory, when I was standing on the roof I think at least the first few cm/inches are open. It might be hard to get close enough to stick my head in, but maybe I can toss a snake cam in for a better view.

I briefly considered adding a 2nd floor to a 1-story home, and the 2nd floor would be a self-contained passive house, effectively, because for environmental reasons I’m unwilling to build anything that’s not passive (that needs heating and cooling). The new floor would need its own support system (could not simply be supported by the existing structure). So the cost came out to the same building costs as it would be for building a whole new home. Upon realizing this, I scrapped the idea. I might as well be building a separate home on an empty lot at that point.

One factor to consider: you never want to be the best house on the block. The low value of other homes will pull yours down while your higher value will prop their values up. Not sure if your plans are significant enough for this to matter. Or perhaps it doesn‘t matter to you anyway. Just something to be aware of.

My assumption would be it’s for airation. I’ve seen pipes like that before and have no idea why they are so high off the ground.

I know someone who has a septic tank with an airation appliance. It’s basically a dog house with AC power and an airator on a timer that you can hear periodically turn on. Perhaps that’s an alternative. I would figure an electronic appliance would more effectively air out the septic.

FWIW, I’ve heard that if you let vines grow directly on the exterior (or if you run cables and plant the kind of vines that need to climb cable), the vegetation will insulate/shade the house from the extreme sun.

I can’t say it’s 1st-hand knowledge but perhaps worth looking into. Evaporatie cooling might have a small role in that too. Of course the caveat is if you let vines grow directly on the stucco, they will destroy the stucco which many folks consider a bad trade-off. The other caveat is plantlife brings insects so you might not want to bring insects right up to your walls.

Thanks for the suggestion.

When it rains sometimes it drips water along the top interior window frame. One one occasion water collected behind the interior wall paint and formed a water balloon. I took a guess at how the water was entering and corrected it. But even after that I still have water dripping from the top window frame.

I like the lime idea. Lime comes in many forms (e.g. quicklime, hydraulic lime). I’m not sure I’d be keen to work with the stuff that needs a complex number of steps with a mixer that can withstand heat. Suppose I buy “white lime” (which is marketed as a whitewash for trees as an anti-pest control, and for cosmetic changes on brick walls). Will that do the job? I think I simply mix it with water. How do I bond it? With PVA?

(edit) Since I guess you speak French, perhaps you can tell me if this stuff is right for the job:

https://www.espace-emeraude.com/chaux-blanche-white-lime-2-5-kg.html

^ I have some of that stuff already on-hand but it was opened ~14 months ago, so it might be oxidized into chalk. I’m not sure how to test to see if it’s still usable.

It appears the #Cantillana varieties of lime render are simply rendered on with no bonding steps or additives.

I would be thinking along the lines of #Steampunk. Rivets, fake leather, copper paint, exposed gears, guages, rope, etc.

The thin grid-style rebar that’s used in concrete might work. Though you’d want to paint it.

If you decide to keep the vented dryer, it’s worth noting that humidity is good for energy efficiency in the cold season. Some vented dryers in some parts of the world are even designed with no ducting (the dryer just vents where it sits). Not ideal, but just a bit of perspective. Anyway, this guy explains how and why to vent into the house.

Ideally you would have a humidistat that vents into the house until a threshold is reached, then switches to vent outdoors. If you don’t want a complex ventilation project, it might be wise to simply vent indoors in the cold season and space the loads a day apart, and manually move the ducting to go outdoors in the summer.

Probably good advice, but I should note that I’ve been in several home improvement stores the past few days and they all have green particle board. One even had green plywood. I’ve seen how conventional particle board becomes like a sponge to water, so it’s a bit surprizing that they can treat it well enough to make it suitable for moist environments.

I told a salesman that although I would prefer a foam cement board Wedi type of thing, it’s too expensive. He then suggested the green particle board. It looks like they soaked the sawdust so that every spec of wood gets the water-resistent treatment before pressing it together. So perhaps it would be good for this.

I’m currently leaning toward using sticks of green (treated) solid wood for the frame, and ordinary drywall for the surface because I have this on hand. Then I would smother the whole thing in a liquid rubber of sorts. The particular liquid rubber I would use is most common in roofing but they advertize that tiles can be glued to it.

(edit) The liquid rubber brocure lists things it can be applied to.

“To be applied on bituminous foundations and on the most common construction materials such as concrete, stone, wood, steel, aluminium, cement plaster and polyester”

Hmm… no mention of drywall. So perhaps I will need to make it entirely from wood before using the liquid rubber on it.

I can’t even see the drawing. Perhaps an incompatibility between lemmy and kbin.