https://xangis.com/pagerank-lives-openpagerank-by-domcop/

QuoteNow that the PageRank patent has expired, companies are free to implement their own versions. Domcop has done just that, using the Common Crawl data to calculate PageRank for the top 10 million domains on the web.

A miniseries on Netflix about an orphan who discovers chess

Causing a bit of attention, apparently Netflix's most watched miniseries:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F01lb5

Used to play a bit myself. My claim to fame is I played the Scottish champion when I was 11, he spanked my arse (not literally).

Been meaning to spend some time honing some skills at chess but never get round to it. A lot of it online is speed chess to avoid the bots.

Worth a watch, if not for the chess for a woman to turn things upside down.

https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2020/11/goodbye-google-webmasters.html

Seems like the term has went the way of the web ring and <marquee>

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/jpgbdm/firefox_uses_google_geo_api_by_default/

QuoteI've noticed that Firefox uses google api for geo location lookups (at least in Linux version).

you can verify that by going to about:config and search for geo.provider.network.url. it has a value similar to https://www.googleapis.com/geolocation/...

you can change the value to https://location.services.mozilla.com/v1/geolocate?key=test (as suggested here) to use Mozilla API.

you can also change its value to something like data:application/json,{"location": {"lat": 40.7590, "lng": -73.9845}, "accuracy": 27000.0} (as suggested here) to fake your location.

I'm on an older FF version on Debian so it must be a new change. Obviously "wtf" why they chose a Google API as a default when they have their own equivalent, but also a nice way for you to let sites know your chosen location.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54841528

Quote
Work is beginning on what is thought to be the world's first major plant to store energy in the form of liquid air.

It will use surplus electricity from wind farms at night to compress air so hard that it becomes a liquid at -196 Celsius.

Then when there is a peak in demand in a day or a month, the liquid air will be warmed so it expands.

The resulting rush of air will drive a turbine to make electricity, which can be sold back to the grid.

The 50MW facility near Manchester will store enough power for roughly 50,000 homes.

The system was devised by Peter Dearman, a self-taught backyard inventor from Hertfordshire, and it has been taken to commercial scale with a £10m grant from the UK government.

QuotePubs will be allowed to sell takeaway alcohol in a relaxation of planned lockdown rules in England.

Pre-ordered alcohol can be collected by customers as long as they do not enter the premises, legislation says.

They must order their drink via a website, phone or text message. Deliveries are also allowed.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54803070

Maybe the locals will just give them a call but it sounds like a decent shout for a generic app.

(It seems that UK advice changes daily, so it may be short-lived, but the opportunity has also arisen out of nowhere)

Moving house this month, just a 10 minute walk down the road. It's not this one:

https://bannermanburke.co.uk/property/cavers-hawick/

Talk about a fixer upper. Works out to about $450K USD/EUR. About 600 square metres of room and 18 acres.

Decent project for those with some spare collateral!

Lengthy read but may be of interest

Quote1 July 2020: We have published the final report of our market study into online platforms and digital advertising. We have found that competition is not working well in these markets, leading to substantial harm for consumers and society as a whole.

We recommend that the government passes legislation to establish a new pro-competition regulatory regime.

https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/online-platforms-and-digital-advertising-market-study

One random quote from the report

QuoteGoogle explained that removing all Wikipedia results from the Google Search results would cause Google's Information Satisfaction number to drop by 0.6 points.

Looks like people put a lot of trust in wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fenn_treasure

Such a cool story that I only discovered today. The man made a good life for himself and thought he was terminally ill and wanted some kind of legacy, so hid $1m worth of treasure somewhere in/near the Rocky Mountains and left some vague hints about where it'd be in a poem. From what I gather, he just wanted people to enjoy the thrill of the chase.

He faced lawsuits from people implying it never existed, just the other day someone found it. It's taken ten years.

Watched one of those 'myths debunked' type videos on YouTube dated a year or two ago and it seems like they followed the clues pretty well but they found nothing.

He admitted that people have been 'within several hundred feet' of the treasure and it had me wondering whether he knew that via private correspondence or from looking at such videos on YT. How excruciating would that be, knowing that they're that close.

He hasn't revealed the true location of where the treasure was found, though - just that someone had posted a picture of them finding it. Sounds a bit dodgy but I think he was genuine.

There's a few ugly stories of people jacking jobs and losing lives to find it - but it's a great idea IMO.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/03/google_foundem_high_court_seo_expert/

https://medium.com/against-surveillance-capitalism/how-a-chinese-company-built-a-250-million-search-hijacking-empire-35f957566852

commentary: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21743941

Noticed this one this morning. The medium post got removed with a 410 status and saying the 'account was pending investigation'. The post has since re-appeared with a bunch of sourced attached.

Seems like someone's not happy with being outed.

Posted in on WMW https://www.webmasterworld.com/webmaster/4966813.htm

Much wisdom here.

Sort of feels like this kind of question is asking a flogged horse, but I hope not.

As a caveat, I was a teenager when I first joined Wmw, almost 40 now. Most of you guys were there throughout. I'm asking this through the lens of Mojeek, who are about to announce they've had a few mil investment. We have conversations about the role of a search engine, and where it ends - i.e. the ten blue links, knowledge graph answers and beyond. For me, it's a 50/50 question, a 'rewind' of where Google went wrong, or maybe not.

Spoiler: Google wins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMpj33Y95ZU

https://www.cnet.com/news/anti-surveillance-clothes-foil-cameras-by-making-you-look-like-a-car/

https://www.android.com/choicescreen/

Not quite sure whether this will apply to the UK

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/apvfrj/were_building_mojeek_the_worlds_alternative/

Part of my remit with Mojeek is to identify how to improve search engine results.

There's an emphasis on being a strong alternative to main search engines just now.

Obviously within this group there's an insane amount of experience in information retrieval and Google's weaknesses.

Free hand, how you you improve search results from your own perspective?

One line of thought I see often is simply offering an alternative to the strong brands that prevail in lots of results, and offering 10 different blue links. Separately, do you think there's a utility for offering  a toolbar/form that provides a way to customise the ranking algorithm? Is it just an interesting toy or real world useful option?

A C&P from what I've posted on a FB group - if you like hiding domains behind cloudflare but want to vary the nameservers a bit, this is useful.

Something possibly useful for you, a list of Cloudflare nameservers. https://www.indicina.it/cloudflare.txt - 436. Quite likely not all of them but a decent chunk. Something interesting I noticed is that their 'add domain / change nameserver' process gives you two specific nameservers to change to, they do this in case there's multiple people trying to add the same domain at the same time. It seems that after verification, you're free to change to any of the other namesevers. I haven't tested over a longer period of time, but it seems useful if not for simple diversity, and saves you creating multiple accounts. YMMV.

"at cost" for gTLDs

https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-registrar/

https://dash.cloudflare.com/domains

I'm just tidying up my bookmarks and thought I'd share these which may be of use, feel free to add others you use

Visual Event - Highlight all events on a page
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View Source - Show the source of a page (thanks to th3core)
javascript:(function(){%20function%20htmlEscape(s){s=s.replace(/&/g,'&amp;');s=s.replace(/>/g,'&gt;');s=s.replace(/</g,'&lt;');return%20s;}%20x=window.open();%20x.document.write('<pre>'%20+%20htmlEscape('<html>\n'%20+%20document.documentElement.innerHTML%20+%20'\n</html>'));%20x.document.close();%20})();

G Serp Ranks - Prepend organic SERPs with a rank
javascript:(function()%20{var%20h3%20=%20document.getElementsByClassName('r');%20var%20len%20=%20h3.length;%20for(var%20rank%20=%200;rank%20<%20len;rank++)%20{var%20str%20=%20(rank%20+%201)%20+%20'%20&mdash;%20'%20+%20h3[rank].innerHTML;%20h3[rank].innerHTML%20=%20str;%20}})();