alt Hacker NewsI’m building a shed at the moment, and it’s become basically impossible to find reliable advice on tools or techniques by searching the web. It’s all just slop feeding back on itself now, unless you are lucky enough to find a forum post from before, say, 2023.
For example, try searching about what sort of nails you should be using to attach cedar lap siding.
On Google, you might find a few good results, but you’ll really need to scrutinize them to make sure they’re reliable. Most are slop on the ‘blogs’ of siding and roofing contractors.
On DDG, it’s even worse. Usually nailerguy.com ranks highly - it seems to be completely AI generated, complete with contradictions and impossible pictures. And, often, nailicy.com, a (seriously) nail salon in New Hampshire that I’m sure is confused about why all their web traffic isn’t translating into clients.
YouTube is about the only ‘reliable’ source for recent advice.
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Thank you for mentioning DDG - I don’t know what it is about their search algos but whenever I tried switching I found I got far less helpful results compared to Google. Like at least half the first results were total slop fest unusable.
Have you tried going to a library or a bookstore? Or even Amazon, since the return policy is excellent. Books are still a reliable resource for anything that hasn’t changed in the last 5 years (since there will be a pre-LLM text). Fortunately that includes loads of DIY tasks.
Don’t get me started on Google’s propensity to show a full page of unwanted shopping results now without any way to show websites unless you turn verbatim on. “Brand picks” what garbage.