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Comment by blackbrokkoli | Hacker News Reader

Aw, man!

I really don't have anything substantial to say, but this is incredibly refreshing: No dark patterns, no marketing ploy, no signup, no bullshit. No licenses, no traps, no business interests!

Javascript not required, but smooth UI & UX! Just pure knowledge. API access; millions of files! Works right down to Lynx, an has a 3D previewer which is smooth and gentle to my mid range laptop.

I think this is gonna be my new example if someones says that commerce & ads are the backbone of the internet. If anyone of the responsible people happens to read HN, please continue to do good in the world!

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This is a great example of tax dollars at work. The Smithsonian is part of the United States government.

It's a 501c3 which is ~half funded by taxpayers and half funded by philanthropy. Almost like it forces you to recognize the benefits of both types of funding

I think it's more complicated than a pure 501c3. Their vehicles get US Gov licence plates from the GSA.

Indeed, the Smithsonian is completely unique under US law[1].

https://www.si.edu/ogc/legalhistory

The Smithsonian is unique.

If interested in the history of how it came to be, Mike Rowe tells the story well in "The Illegitimate Son-of-a-Smith" podcast: http://thewayiheardit.rsvmedia.com/episode-135-the-illegitim...

The Institution is 62% federally funded (a combination of the congressional appropriation and federal grants and contracts). ... the Smithsonian has trust or non-federal funds, which include contributions from private sources (endowments; donations from individuals, corporations and foundations; and memberships) and revenues from the Smithsonian Enterprises https://www.si.edu/newsdesk/factsheets/smithsonian-instituti...

From https://www.si.edu/ogc/legalhistory

created by Congress in 1846 to exercise the authority of the United States in carrying out the responsibilities Congress undertook when it accepted the bequest of James Smithson "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."...

...the Smithsonian is not an agency or authority of the Government...

...the Smithsonian is so "closely connected" to the federal government that it shares the immunity of the United States from state and local regulation...

> commerce & ads are the backbone of the internet

I'm sorry, what? Everyone uses Wikipedia, and probably so much, that they don't consciously realize it...

I think what the GP is referring to is the dominant narrative over the last 15+ years that every website has to be 'monetised' with varying degrees of advertising based user abuse. Wikipedia has obviously been a conspicuous counter-example to that but it's been the large exception that proves the rule (in terms of narrative). It's always refreshing to see new examples of the web being used as a medium to freely disseminate information and culture without any form of user abuse attached. Commerce is fine but I personally see any form of push advertising as user abuse (even without the user tracking that nearly always comes with it).

Edit to add: I see that another reply (from jimmaswell) is still running the advertising 'business model' narrative.

...the dominant narrative of people who want to sell you advertising technology, yes.

A shopping website will want to do two things: Provide the customer with the most comfortable shopping experience while cutting down the cost of providing it. Advertising is a null-sum game in this case (cuts down costs by adding additional revenue, but makes user experience worse, thus leading to fewer customers), so it only makes sense if that's all you're selling.

How the internet nonetheless became "infested" with ads is obviously a mystery to me...

Categorizing ads as "user abuse" is hyperbolic and I doubt any significan fraction of users feel they're being abused when they see a banner ad for potato chips. Bringing customers and companies together is a basic and necessary aspect of living in a market economy. I've seen commercials for new food offered at restaurants, wanted it, gotten it, and felt good about the whole chain of events; have I been abused?

Further if "tracking" makes ads more relevant then all the better for everyone involved. Some electrons in a server in a rack on the other side of the country, that you'd never know existed if people didn't stir up a hysteria over, not even directly correlated to your real identity or containing anything more important than a preference for high end silverware, can't hurt you and have no just cause to be demonized.

I agree that not all ads are "abuse", but some either are or are borderlining it, depending on your definition.

If you're genuinely interested in the advertising industry's development the last 100 years or have a few hours to spare, check out the 4-part documentary "The Century of the Self" by the BBC made in the early-2000s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04

> Categorizing ads as "user abuse" is hyperbolic

Push advertising is deliberate mind pollution. You are pushing information onto people that they are not seeking and doing it in highly manipulative ways. It's fine to market your services or products in places that people go to to seek out that information; it's not fine to push it on them.

> and I doubt any significan fraction of users feel they're being abused when they see a banner ad for potato chips.

Victims (I use the term loosely) of the obesity epidemic may disagree. How dominant would junk foods like potato chips be in our diet today without the extensive advertising campaigns over the last 70+ years?

With regards to your second paragraph on user tracking, the fact that you use the word 'hysteria' to discount concerns indicates to me that it's not even worth engaging with you there.

> Victims (I use the term loosely) of the obesity epidemic may disagree.

Come on. Victims? They were forced to eat too much? Do people not have any agency at all? We still have junk food advertising and we have people that aren’t obese. So are they immune to the messages?

Or perhaps, is the “epidemic” one of a sedentary lifestyle? Perhaps the rise of the information economy and the lack of having to go plow a field?

Classing fat peoples as victims is ridiculous unless they were attacked by a spoon.

OP was careful to frame the term. It's not a later edit, as you quote the framing too.

So the intention there is clearly a rhetorical one, that not being the point, but that advertising has managed to manipulate people against their better judgment. In that sense, yes, they are victims.

Besides, believing that people suffering from an ill that is destroying their lives are free to choose (when reality clearly shows they aren't) is a callous remark.

Eating disorders are very complicated. Eating is such a low level activity that easily supersedes any rationalisations. That's why it's a good example of how bad advertising can be. So again OP is right in calling those people victims.

We're inundated with health activism constantly, some of it government funded. The only instance informed choice doesn't come in is where people have no access to/ability to afford healthier food.

There's clearly a dilemma. Yes we know that there are messages that, on average, create a bias in people towards particular outcomes. So, collectively, you could say that we can be manipulated.

At the same time, we have to assume that most individuals are capable of breaking this spell if necessary, for instance by making a conscious decision to read up on what unhealthy food does to us.

Otherwise, you would have a justification to take away any and all freedoms from everybody.

Commercial advertising is not the only form or motivation for trying to make people do things. "Manipulation" exists in personal relationships, it exists in religion, it exists in political messaging. We even call it dog whistle politics. And the motivations are not necessarily any more noble than those for running chocolate chip adverts.

We don't have an external all-knowing referee to decide what is good for us, what our priorities should be, and what we only do or believe because we are being manipulated. So if we put too much emphasis on this manipulation and victimisation narrative, we create a huge incentive for someone to assume that role.

There is no dilemma. We agree that people can be manipulated to some degree. We also agree that - if they don't suffer from an illness - that manipulation only goes so far. Finally, we agree that we shouldn't force a lifestyle on anybody.

So now you can manipulate (or nudge) people either towards behavior which is considered as beneficial (regular exercise, healthy food, etc.), or you can manipulate them towards unhealthy habits (e.g., smoking).

It is a good idea to limit the ability of actors to nudge people towards unhealthy habits. That will help everybody except a few people who will earn less money. It is also a good idea to foster nudging good behaviors, even if there is no commercial value behind it.

The dilemma only starts to occur if we try to put all things into either the good or the bad box. Probably most ads are in the large grey area in between these extremes. However, ads fostering smoking addiction or obesity should be called out as bad for all of us. There is no downside of this call-out.

A handful (probably already the maximum that the model supports) of websites can get by on donations (and then have their hands tied as to how to use the money, potentially preventing expansion or major changes), and a website that's nothing but "<primarily offline company>'s website" doesn't need ads or anything in the first place because it's just for information on the main business (but if they'd profit more from running some ads on it I wouldn't blame them; optimally that would lower prices but in reality it would just go to the CEO's bonuses); these do not disprove that the ad/subscriprion models are the most viable way for most internet businesses to operate.

The internet is more than just internet businesses. It costs me 70€ per year (paid in small monthly installments) to run a site to share my thoughts and info & tips related to hobbies. I don't need ads & tracking, donations nor any other form of monetization to run the site.

...and in some countries, those costs (assuming hobbies have any alignment with work skills) can be reclaimed via tax reclamation as well.

Apart from that, self-hosting is even cheaper, and easier, than ever.

You are absolutely right, it is not all bleak out there of course. Most people also use a lot of open source software without realizing as well, to give another example. I merely wanted to express how delighted I was when I clicked on this particular HN link, which did stand out as remarkably bullshit-free at least for me.

I agree, the website looks nice, the content is great, thank you American tax dollars for this contribution to human history.

I just didn't want to leave that statement there and have people unconsciously take that statement about "commerce & ads" to heart without consciously realizing, that Wikipedia is probably our most popular counterexample.

Depending on your definition of 'backbone'... it's maybe not a truth humanity is particularly proud of, but I have this figure in my mind that 75% of the web's bandwidth is used by porn?

Was that ever true, is that still true, are those numbers accurate? Or is that just a common myth?

Are we on different websites? I used the search box to search "cat" and the "enter" key doesn't work to perform a search, I have to mouse over and click the magnifying glass to get it to work. It takes about 45 seconds to load about 2 screens of cat pictures. I have to scroll down and then click "Show more" to get some more. There's no indication of how many times I have to click "Show more" to get all the cat pictures. Once I click "Show more" it appears that nothing is happening, but about 30-45 seconds later the screen starts blipping and then another couple of screens of cats start popping into view. Clicking on an image takes another 30 seconds and then it brings you to a slightly bigger view, and then clicking it again shows another slightly bigger view but trapped into some weird-scrolling viewer with 3 layers of vertical scrollbars. The back button is also broken, having to click it multiple times to escape the single-image screen.

I think a simple pager with a fixed number of images on each page would have been a much better experience. It would also let me link to specific pages so I could share the page I'm viewing.

EDIT: I'm leaving the post above but right after submitting it I felt regret because it sounds really harsh and I didn't mean it that way. I love the fact that the images were released and I hope government and private institutions continue to do this. I have very minor gripes about the ui but that shouldn't take away from the accomplishment.

On iphone, type "cat", hit enter key, see 2657 cat photos (possibly worlds smallest online collection of cat photos but still...)

This is cool, and reminds me of the book illustrations and images released last month - there seems to be a corner turned in opening up collections, in as GP implies, knocking holes in the walls of the gardens.

I am impressed by this too. Kudos to the big museum in DC.

As for your experience, well perhaps a cat was sitting on your keyboard while you searched? They can be annoying like that

> On iphone, type "cat", hit enter key, see 2657 cat photos

Did you actually see all of them? Using Firefox Preview on Android, I got told that there were this many results, but I was only shown a handful before I had to tap on "view more".

There is no solution for displaying 2657 cat photos in a client browser in 2020 which does not include one of the following:

* some sort of pagination, like a iterating "See more" button or the classic "Next page" stuff

* fancy JS in the background simulating that process making the page much heavier, ruining accessibility and most likely the back button

* instantly draining the clients monthly data, crashing the device, timeouting the server and making the infrastructure team cry, roughly in that order

I kinda think you are? Zero of that is true for me, and I mean zero.

Hitting enter searches for me. It shows results instantaneously. It says clearly at the top in big letters "7,636 results for cat" so you know that you can pretty much hit "show more" endlessly. Which instantly loads. And when I click on something yes there is a 2nd scrollbar (not 3) but it's only for the "object details" sidebar... it doesn't apply to the main page viewer part. And the back button works perfectly.

Honestly it sounds like you just have a terrible network connection maybe, or they had temporary traffic congestion? Or what browser are you using... perhaps it's one they haven't tested against? (I'm using Chrome on a MacBook.)

I don't really want to put more focus on this but...

I was using firefox on a new mac. Some extensions like ublock installed. I just tried again now with a different browser (latest vivaldi, no extensions) and it behaves the same (search bar, but only if you have "collection images" highlighted, enter key works as expected if you have "all" highlighted). I am still experiencing the slowness and image "popping" when using the show more link. I'm still getting 3 layers of scroll bars on the image viewer. The back button is a little bit better but of course since it's some psuedo-infinite-scroll when I click back I'm landed back at the top of the list with all my "show more" clicks undone (so lost where I was in the results list as is common with infinite-scroll and SPA).

I can't dispute possibility of network issues, could be the site is being slammed, but speedtest.net says my connection is >300Mbps.

I use Firefox on a Macbook as well, also with ublock.

The site is definitely slow at the moment, but enter key worked for me and on the top of the page I see the number of results that were found...

I have tracker blocking extensions and ad blockers to the hilt, which makes some sites almost unusable. For example: I simply don't see ReCaptchas with how the browser is configured.

The easy solution (if you trust the site) is to restart Firefox without add-ins:

Hamburger Menu > Help > Restart with add-ons disabled

You then get a dialog box, where you can restart in safe mode, or clean-up your Firefox installation.

Don't forget to restart with add-ons re-enabled (can also be done from the help menu.

None of this mirrors my experience. Sounds like a network problem to be honest, either on your side or server hiccup? Loading any images will have some inherent network load, sure. But I'm having no problems despite the decently shitty connection I have. Scrollbars are also working as expected...the 'show more' button has to be there in the end, you can't load all 3 million images at the same time (which would be the case using '' as search term otherwise). Sure you could do classic pagination as well, but again the real pain sounds like connection issues...

It's great that a government website is receiving praise, but not really fair to compare them to the needs of a for-profit enterprise that needs to generate revenue.

Normal people not on lynx will see doubleclick, addthis, forsee, google analytics, etc on the pages. Just saying...

Is it smooth though? Very slow to load, but i am in a different continent.

Reminder to myself: donate to them when I get home.

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