The EPA Is Quietly Killing Its Web Archive(www.motherjones.com)

222 pointsby robtherobber6 hours ago13 comments

mike_bob4 hours ago
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.
- brightball4 hours ago
  EPA planned to do the same thing in 2022...
  https://web.archive.org/web/20220124192618/https://archive.e...
  - nomel3 hours ago
    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.
    Grombobulous2 hours ago
    $2 million a year is wildly insignificant for the federal government.
    Less than one cent per year per person in federal taxes.
    Ntrails2 hours ago
    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)
    Grombobulousan hour ago
    They literally don’t add up. Just look at a pie chart of the US government budget. The administrative state is a bargain.
    Departments like the EPA are so small that they have to be put in the “other” umbrella that makes up 1% of federal spending (go to the Agency tab):
    https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
    pestat0man hour ago
    sad, the spending chart doesn't load in my version of firefox, and both links in the caption also have page-load issues. very sad.
    Sabinusan hour ago
    Works for me on 158.0.1
    ninjagooan hour ago
    > "this represents good value for money" (imo)
    Wouldn't you say this archive represents good value for the money?
    A nation that forgets its past is a nation that repeats its mistakes.
    blurbleblurblean hour ago
    This is so disingenuous. We all know where the money goes.
    parineum2 hours ago
    The epa doesn't have access to the federal budget
    Grombobulous2 hours ago
    That’s not really the point, the point is that $2 million isn’t a lot of money for a service that is for the benefit of over 300 million people.
    kulahan13 minutes ago
    It serves a lot more than just the citizens of the US, for what it's worth.
    pfisch2 hours ago
    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...
    Grombobulousan hour ago
    I’ll come back in 3 days and you can share the link with your web archive. I’ll Venmo you $20 for your Claude pro subscription.
    nomelan hour ago
    Looking at the 2024 to 2025 archive, it's around 1TB/year:
    https://app.browsertrix.com/explore/usgov-archive/collection...
    If that's true, something has clearly gone wildly wrong with the, most likely several, departments involved/created with maintaining this. I suspect if you look at the breakdown, it's 90% administrative costs, with the rest being inflated Cisco contracts, or whatever other parasite latched on.
    As others have said, it's been archived already.
    fooqux2 hours ago
    You've obviously never worked in government before. The technology is likely not the issue; the bureaucracy is.
- kfkickdcimdvisi4 hours ago
  [flagged]
  - SetTheorist4 hours ago
    Only one party is systematically attacking research and destroying irreplaceable archives.
  - Kodiack4 hours ago
    Why yes, 10-minute-old account with random letters for a name and one single comment, both sides are absolutely the same and people just shouldn’t feel encouraged to vote am I right?
    You’re not even remotely subtle smh
  - 9dev4 hours ago
    Don’t make this a Both-sides thing please. There’s a clear difference between those who are working hard to void any environmental protection we have, and those who oppose that.
baggachipz5 hours ago
Wouldn't want any of that pesky true climate-change-proving data available, now would we?
- amelius5 hours ago
  We have alternative facts now.
  - schiffernan hour ago
    "There'd be fewer cases if you stopped testing..."
dannyobrien5 hours ago
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/ )
arjie4 hours ago
Has anyone scraped this already for offline use?
- gs173 hours ago
  I think Archive Team might have scraped it, but their site is down due to PHP-related reasons at the moment.
  - arjie3 hours ago
    Thank you. I'm going to scrape for now but I hope there's a bulk download available somewhere eventually.
- MadrasThorn4 hours ago
  [flagged]
toomuchtodo6 hours ago
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
- icantevenhold5 hours ago
  A “proper” mirror alongside archive.org would be good too
  - 5 hours ago
    undefined
dyauspitr5 hours ago
Everything bad is good for this administration.
Madmallard5 hours ago
Why are companies allowed to remove themselves from the web archive?
They shouldn't be.
- jacquesm4 hours ago
  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.
vfclists4 hours ago
Where are r/archiveteam when you need them?
pstuart4 hours ago
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.
amclennon3 hours ago
I hate to say this because it's so overused, but this move is certainly veering into 1984 territory
LW20265 hours ago
[flagged]
rtuin3 hours ago
Wiping and rewriting history is straight from 1984 (novel). It's insane US let this happen.
icantevenhold5 hours ago
The adverb “quietly” has become such an AI smell to me, even if it’s probably not one in this instance.
- paimapi5 hours ago
  Pangram v4 shows 100% human written: https://www.pangram.com/history/aa7e5cb1-0070-4bcc-8694-6180...
  Don't let AI tells ruin professional writing for you.
- Kapura5 hours ago
  well, they certainly aren't advertising it, are they?
- jimmiles5 hours ago
  I hate the click-bait smell of "quietly". For me it's in the same category as "eviscerated." The hyperbole factory rolls ever onward...
  - cucumber3732842an hour ago
    There's this whiff of snooty superiority all over the word "quietly" that I just don't like. I can't quite put my finger on it but it's like I'm being talked down to.
- mahboi3 hours ago
  Well, they didn't call the archive load-bearing