Smithsonian Releases 2.8 Million Images Into Public Domain

[Scope]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smith...ain-180974263/

For the first time in its 174-year history, the Smithsonian has released 2.8 million high-resolution two- and three-dimensional images from across its collections onto an open access online platform for patrons to peruse and download free of charge.

And this gargantuan data dump is just the beginning. Throughout the rest of 2020, the Smithsonian will be rolling out another 200,000 or so images, with more to come as the Institution continues to digitize its collection of 155 million items and counting.

​Listed under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, the 2.8 million images in the new database are now liberated from all restrictions, copyright or otherwise, enabling anyone with a decent Internet connection to build on them as raw materials—and ultimately participate in their evolution.

https://www.si.edu/openaccess

[Trench]

It's great... for kids... maybe. Well some things are fine but what is the end goal of it all is the issue.

What about the sphinx secret chambers that were talked about by the news, historical references, and records?
Or what about the Ancient Greek artifacts in America predating Indians artifacts?
Or ancient Ancient Greek copper identical or the copper ore of the US?
The Petralona Skull where the archaeologist believes 90% of Greek history is intentionally destroyed. Might not fit the world narrative maybe. human skeletons that were dated to be 800,000 years old.
And the list goes on.

How can one learn history when presented in a nice bow and the rest that cant be explained thrown away and not show? Hiding or destroying history is like book burning which everyone says its bad but ok when in other formats as if dyslexia of the mind is happening.

History is literally history to be a distant forgotten memory distracted by other pointless info. Can't make a future with historical facts in the way. The math does not add up. Money talks which that math does make sense.

In the end if the means do not justify the ends and people believe the ends justify the means then they will find a means to their end.
If something can go wrong it will go wrong and if people can be compromised they will be compromised.


https://www.google.com/search?q=sphi...&tbm=isch&sa=X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aris_Poulianos
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2742205?seq=1

[schnaader]

Hmm.. looks like they need some data compression consultant:

Downloaded a 3D model of a George Washington monument:

george-washington-greenough-statue-(1840)-full_resolution-obj.zip		721.439.300	Original               Decompressed size: 3.039.631.289 bytes
george-washington-greenough-statue-(1840)-full_resolution-obj.zip.pcf_cn	721.439.379     Precomp 0.4.7 -cn      Huh? Oh, nice, they are using Deflate64!

Some extracts from the largest file (...-geometry.obj, 3.037.309.675 bytes):

v -964.554993 1094.469971 -107.904999
v -964.713989 1094.349976 -108.806999
[...]
vt 0.602333 0.642798
vt 0.602908 0.642871
[...]
vn -0.127999 0.146316 -0.980922
vn -0.124323 0.121731 -0.984746
[...]
f 4201243/24015712/4201243 4201245/24015713/4201245 4201619/24015714/4201619
f 4201424/24015715/4201424 4201575/24015716/4201575 4200939/24015717/4200939

Well, I know those 3D model formats are unflexible and .obj only seems to support ASCII, but using a binary format would've been much better.
Also, there are much better formats available (using Google's Draco here):

george-washington-greenough-statue-(1840)-master-geometry.obj   	      3.037.309.675	Original
george-washington-greenough-statue-(1840)-master-geometry.drc                    25.884.040     draco_encoder          Default settings used, encode time: 6 minutes (could be better, my machine was swapping)
george-washington-greenough-statue-(1840)-master-geometry.drc.obj             2.034.979.399     draco_decoder          decode time: 40 s

Yes, it's lossy, but the texture to this model is a JPG, too. And it'd save soooo much bandwidth (~30 MB instead of 720 MB). Also, it's possible to view the .drc file directly in the browser.