| ▲ | The EPA Is Quietly Killing Its Web Archive(motherjones.com) |
| 194 points by robtherobber 4 hours ago | 28 comments |
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| ▲ | mike_bob 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Take note Republicans (which I'm doubting many even care anymore), your party thinks short term profits for a few are more important than science and the environment for all. |
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| ▲ | brightball 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | EPA planned to do the same thing in 2022... https://web.archive.org/web/20220124192618/https://archive.e... | | |
| ▲ | nomel 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Relevant text from TFA: > This isn’t the first time the environmental agency has tried to shutter the online web archive. In late January 2022, the Biden administration EPA announced plans to discontinue the online repository, citing burdensome financial upkeep; through a Freedom of Information Act request, Gehrke was able to determine that the agency spent roughly $2 million a year to maintain it. A coalition of environmentalists, historians, and librarians swiftly condemned the decision, with groups like the EDGI and American Society for Environmental History calling the announcement “alarming” and cause for a “tremendous gap” in the historical record. > After five months of public backlash, the EPA acquiesced, in part by announcing it would delay the web archive’s retirement by one year to July 2023. | | |
| ▲ | Grombobulous 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | $2 million a year is wildly insignificant for the federal government. Less than one cent per year per person in federal taxes. | | |
| ▲ | parineum 31 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The epa doesn't have access to the federal budget | |
| ▲ | Ntrails 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And yet the number of projects with similarly insignificant costs is large, and they do add up. The argument cannot be "this money doesn't matter", it has to be "this represents good value for money" (imo) | |
| ▲ | pfisch 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ok, but I could replicate this process and archive for under $20,000k per year(probably way under) and set it up in less than 1 day with claude... | | |
| ▲ | fooqux 19 minutes ago | parent [-] | | You've obviously never worked in government before. The technology is likely not the issue; the bureaucracy is. |
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| ▲ | baggachipz 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Wouldn't want any of that pesky true climate-change-proving data available, now would we? |
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| ▲ | dannyobrien 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I'm presuming this is all preserved in the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_Term_Web_Archive (though making that more easily available would be great -- another project for https://wayback-labs.sf.archive.org/ ) |
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| ▲ | arjie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Has anyone scraped this already for offline use? |
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| ▲ | gs17 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I think Archive Team might have scraped it, but their site is down due to PHP-related reasons at the moment. | | |
| ▲ | arjie 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Thank you. I'm going to scrape for now but I hope there's a bulk download available somewhere eventually. |
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| ▲ | toomuchtodo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| https://web.archive.org/*/https://archive.epa.gov/ Related: The EPA plans to sunset its online archive - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30795719 - March 2022 |
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| ▲ | rtuin 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Wiping and rewriting history is straight from 1984 (novel). It's insane US let this happen. |
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| ▲ | amclennon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I hate to say this because it's so overused, but this move is certainly veering into 1984 territory |
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| ▲ | dyauspitr 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Everything bad is good for this administration. |
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| ▲ | Madmallard 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Why are companies allowed to remove themselves from the web archive? They shouldn't be. |
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| ▲ | jacquesm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | They're not. Someone on HN said that they just mark it as unavailable but they still keep it, I don't know what the expiry is on that though, or if they could be forced to actually delete something 'for real'. Nor do I know how you'd verify that beyond doubt. |
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| ▲ | vfclists 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Where are r/archiveteam when you need them? |
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| ▲ | pstuart 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| If they weren't afraid of the data being public they wouldn't be removing it. The only saving grace of this administration is that their incompetence helps to slow down their evilness. |
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| ▲ | icantevenhold 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| The adverb “quietly” has become such an AI smell to me, even if it’s probably not one in this instance. |
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