9 ms·
Below the Surface – Finds from an archaeological project in the River Amstel
- xiaq 8y agoAmazingly well implemented website. * Works well on mobile * Does fancy tricks with scrolling without breaking normal scrolling behavior or turning into a performance nightmare * Good design and very readable (when many other websites seem to equate good design with low contrast, thin text)
- codedokode 8y agoIt doesn't even work without Javascript. And it uses a preloader. Preloaders are harmful: they block progressive page rendering by a browser; even though they might look fancy, I strongly advise against using them. And what's worse, it shows a preloader on every click. So I would rather consider it a poorly implemented website. Since when do we need Javascript to display a grid of images? This site can be easily implemented in plain HTML; why did they chose to use JS here?
- nebulous1 8y agoIt's an SPA written in react, so unsurprisingly it requires javascript. Preloaders being harmful is purely your opinion, and your example of why they're harmful doesn't seem convincing to me. I can see a case for a static version of the site being available, and I think with a bit more work they could have generated one from the react source. That said, and this is more of a generalization, I think hacker news has a bias towards JS-free sites. Accessibility is an issue, but you can have a fully accessible JS-based site. JS can make it difficult for a scraper to interact with a site, but a separate xml (or whatever) document would be better to allow scraping anyway. Basically, when developing a site at some point you decide how much effort you're going to put into supporting users who don't have javascript (usually out of choice), and for most people the answer is zero.
- codedokode 8y agoSPA is for apps, and websites are often better done with plain HTML. You don't need a megabyte of Javascript to display text with images. I guess that people might prefer SPA because they are not very good at server programming or maybe they think it can make their resume look better (though I don't think choosing a complicated solution instead of simple one makes a good impression of an engineer). Of course there are cases when you can't do without SPA: apps that work offline, interactive apps, online editors etc. But it doesn't make much sense to use SPA for a blog. > at some point you decide how much effort you're going to put into supporting users who don't have javascript (usually out of choice), and for most people the answer is zero. ...until SEO people say that the site is poorly indexed so you need to generate a HTML version of the site. And you understand that it would be easier just to make a plain HTML site from the start.
- jspash 8y agoI have this same conversation most days at work! By the way, I agree with codedokode except for one thing. I believe it should have been implemented in plain HTML but enhanced with JS. Works for everyone. Even the 5%. https://kryogenix.org/code/browser/everyonehasjs.html https://kryogenix.org/code/browser/everyonehasjs.html
- konradb 8y agoThe grid of images seemed considerably large; my guess is if the page was just a static grid of images it would increase their bandwidth costs considerably, and might give rise to issues where if you scroll down far, it would still be loading images from much higher up. Using this technique it looks like when you scroll somewhere, it can load the images that you have navigated to. Maybe modern browsers are smarter in this respect? I'm not sure.
- xiaq 8y agoIf the website were a static one it would make sense to make it separate pages (one era per page, for instance).
- codedokode 8y agoNo, sadly modern browsers are not smarter. If you make a page with thousand of images then they will load all of them. There are JS libraries to fix it, but they make images inaccessible for bots.
- xiaq 8y agoAs much as I would love to see websites working without JavaScript, that ship sailed years ago. What I call HTML fundamentalists - those who believe that content should be in HTML and JavaScript are for interactive features only - make up a very small niche nowadays, even among the more tech-savvy audience. Unless the intended audience is likely to contain HTML fundamentalists, it doesn't really make much sense for web designers today to consider how to make a website that works without JavaScript. I am not implying any contempt towards HTML fundamentalists. A website I made (https://elv.sh https://elv.sh) works without JavaScript, precisely because the ratio of HTML fundamentalists among shell users is likely non-negligible :) It evens works with w3m, for that matter. The "terminal screenshots" are actually just text and they show up in their full glory in w3m. I don't understand your complaint about the "preloader". It is a placeholder while the website is fetching images in the background, and, assuming that it is implemented correctly, it does not add any latency. Without the "preloaders" the images are not going to show up immediately, you will just see a blank page or partially blank page. The preloader gives you some idea that the website itself can be reached and I think it is a nice interactive feature.
- codedokode 8y agoI don't think so. There are cases when SPA provides better user experience (apps that work offline, complicated editors, endless feeds with images, like buttons and comments) but if you need to display text with images, using SPA (and writing two applications) is an overengineering, making a complex solution instead of simpler one. Server-generated HTML is not an outdated technology. > I don't understand your complaint about the "preloader". It makes page load seem slower. Browsers can display HTML progressively even if it is not completely loaded, but preloader makes the user wait until all the resources are fetched. This is effectively discarding all the improvements browsers implemented for faster page rendering. Also it is annoying to see a blank page when you navigate back and forward.
- bpicolo 8y ago> It makes page load seem slower Only because in this case, the website is actually quite slow under load. Triggering a full browser page load would seem even more slow.
- therealmarv 8y agoI think it works slow and not good on Android and Chrome here.
- xiaq 8y agoHeh, should have thought twice before posting that from a fairly high-end Android phone :)
- babuskov 8y agoMany locks and keys? And a gun? I bet there's an unsolved crime behind that one.
- sushibowl 8y agoIt's a plastic toy gun: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00448KST001?index=275 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00448KST001...
- reitanqild 8y agoAt least one real as well it seems: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00077MTL069?index=466 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00077MTL069...
- roel_v 8y agoUnder Dutch law, it's equally illegal to a real gun, because it looks like a real gun. Yes, this is insane. (and police are doubling down on it, too - with a recent campaign against 'too real-looking toy guns').
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoA very specific set of things get dropped into rivers it seems - so many coins! So many identification cards! Until it occurred to me - only metal and plastic things last in a river. The river is 'sorting' for these sort of things.
- TomMckenny 8y agoOne item from early 1500s looks amazingly modern. Amazingly Mondrian even. https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00092CER059?index=15887 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00092CER059...
- robertgaal 8y agoMegaman > Mondrian https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00620MTL039?index=1 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00620MTL039...
- TomMckenny 8y agoMaybe life doesn't suck. Today: canal trash is credits cards, cell phones and Megaman. The past: fishing hooks, spear heads, a nazi coin and nothing more fun than tobacco pipes and dice.
- peterwwillis 8y agoWell, really it looks ancient. From the 19th to 20th centuries, artifacts from around the world were increasingly gathered in European museums and curio shops. When painters and sculpters discovered things like sub-saharan african masks, mesoamerican temples, oceanic tiki sculptures, ancient cycladic figurines, japanese woodblock prints, and islamic geometric designs, it had a huge impact on them. Artists like Maurice de Vlaminck and Pablo Picasso would go on to riff on these as Cubism and other forms. Modernist artists and designers such as Mondrian were really just re-discovering forms of art that other cultures had established. I'm no art historian, but according to the website, that fragment is a tin-glaze patchwork mosaic on the inside of a plate or bowl. Since it's 16th century this is probably an Italian Majolica plate, whose origins are an area of Sicily known for a Moorish method of glazing pottery. These designs were inspired by Islamic art from Andalusia (http://www.islamicspain.tv/Arts-and-Science/The-Culture-of-Al-Andalus/Cerami7.jpg http://www.islamicspain.tv/Arts-and-Science/The-Culture-of-A...) and adapted over time to European imagery and patterns (though patchwork mosaics in general are about 5,000 years old)
- bullen 8y agoFirst food, then clothes, money, keys and finally drugs.
- Grue3 8y agoUSSR coins are categorized as Russian Federation, but Yugoslavian coins are categorized as Yugoslavia. Seems inconsistent to me.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- teekert 8y agoA Mega Flippo, an audio tape and those marbles, it's a trip down memory lane for me as well. Very cool project.
- barking 8y agoThere's a philips c12 (iirc) there, I had one circa 2000, really liked that phone. Maybe it was more by association though. My contract allowed one free number and I set that to a landline access number of a discount telecoms provider so i was able to make calls to everywhere really cheaply for the time.
- sbr464 8y agoIt's like Wall-E but now
- ygra 8y agoFor those who may not find it like I did initially: The whole thing has faceted navigation and filtering when clicking on the search icon in the lower left. You can then filter by time range, material, and use.
- noiv 8y agoThis zoomable interface shows all items at once: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/rokin/ https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/rokin/
- jasperk 8y agoThis interface are hi-res pictures of the displays that are built in the new subway station Rokin. The new line will open on July 21 in Amsterdam.
- peter_retief 8y agoI love it, browse through time
- akerro 8y agoSo if you threw out your plastic ID card with your picture 29years, it's still there, readable. Can this be used to prosecute people for flytipping?
- ghayes 8y agoYou'd imagine a good number of these items would have been dropped accidentally, or possibly by not the legal owner (e.g. after a robbery).
- akerro 8y agoThis one, clearly looks like someone tried to destroy it and throw out https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00540KST014?index=45 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00540KST014...
- thecatspaw 8y agoit could as well be stolen and the thief tried to destroy it
- anonymfus 8y agoNo because there is no proof of intent. But there are some thrown away guns in the collection so may be some old crimes will be solved.
- barking 8y agoThat's interesting, I read of someone who got done because a shop receipt was found on the street. They went to the shop with the receipt and were able to find the transaction's credit/debit card details and then went to the bank with those to id the person who was then successfully prosecuted for littering.
- bestnameever 8y agoIt looked I saw some bones too as I traveled back a few hundred years. Wonder if they are human.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoI was going to ask why there's no smartphones in the collection, but it would appear that this was all dredged up in 2005. Fascinating gallery anyway. I'm amused at how many pipes they managed to dredge up, but a bit surprised at how many of them appear to be tobacco pipes.
- joelhaasnoot 8y agoThis was done as part of building a new metro/subway line straight through the city (the "North - South Line"). Unfortunately, it's taken this long to finish, should open in three weeks.
- tbabb 8y agoIs there a word for "time vertigo"? So many lifetimes and stories associated with each one of those little shards of object; these are just the ones discarded and found in this one small place. The magnitude of all the human lifetimes and endeavors that are now all but non-existent makes my head spin. The depth of history is staggering.
- DC-3 8y agoI think this is what 'sonder' is supposed to mean, but the purpose of that word is pretty much wholly to appear in Buzzfeed lists.
- ljcn 8y agoNot really, sonder is the realization that every other person alive today is living a life "as complex as one's own". The gp is about the number of lives in one spot through time. They're sort of vertical slices vs. horizontal slices of the same concept.
- ryanSrich 8y agoIf you're into this kind of work, I suggest spending an hour or so reading/looking through "Here" by Richard McGuire. It's a fascinating conceptual graphic novel that really gave me a new way of thinking about time. Even now, years after reading it, I find myself appreciating the history of physical spaces, even spending time to research buildings and different places I visit each day. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/richard-mcguires-here.html https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/books/review/richard-m...
- barneyrubble 8y agoWhat the. I thought I recognized that book instantly upon seeing that preview of it and skimming the article, but the fact that it had been released only a few years ago made no sense to me--I was sure I'd seen previews of it something like 15 years ago, and then I suddenly remembered, vividly, how eerie it had seemed at the time, and I remembered being in this same house I'm in right now, looking at it online and feeling weirded out. But just now, after more reading, I found out the book is based on some earlier and similar black and white pages he'd drawn back in 1989 for Raw magazine, which must've been what I saw online 15 years ago. So basically the last 10 minutes of my life have been super weird and totally appropriate in the context of that dude's work. Gaaah. Thanks for the link, and the bizarre meta experience I just had.
- newman8r 8y agoanyone who thinks this is fascinating should take a look at magnet fishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet_fishing - it's a pretty cool hobby.
- dddw 8y agook that sounds like fun, how do you start with that. get a magnet... and then find a spot?
- newman8r 8y agoYeah it's basically that simple. All you need is a rope and a good neodymium magnet. If you search for magnet fishing on amazon you can get set up for pretty cheap. There's tons of videos on youtube about it and there's also a subreddit that looks pretty helpful: /r/magnetfishing/
- aw3c2 8y agoAnd please don't leave the garbage you found on the curb. People around here do that and it's such a disrespectful way of treating the local.
- huseyinkeles 8y agothere is a very interesting subreddit [0] for that, I remember people finding rifles and stuff. [0] - https://www.reddit.com/r/magnetfishing/ https://www.reddit.com/r/magnetfishing/
- Odenwaelder 8y agoOh great, another internet rabbithole!
- donquichotte 8y agoIt's striking how disposable the newer plastic items look compared to pre-1930 items, which are made mainly out of ceramics, metal, glass and wood.
- arghwhat 8y agoThe reason that there are no Nokia's in the collection is due to them all still working and holding charge, so they were taken and put to use.
- avenius 8y agoIt's fascinating how you can see hints of the city's history through these items. E.g. from the "golden age" (16-1700s) there are tons of items from the bustling cloth and textile trade. It's also interesting to see how the apparent quality of items has gone down over the centuries - even though there's probably some survivorship bias, most recent items are just paper and plastic, and probably wouldn't have lasted very long.
- tribby 8y agobeautiful website, well beyond its functional requirements. I wonder if any other cool stuff gets found when the canals are fished for bikes (another interesting thing about NL canals I heard about on HN[1]), or if that happens in mostly the same areas, making them more likely to be over-fished. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAIzp9MCkg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFAIzp9MCkg
- mirimir 8y agoSmall cars, too: http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/707-amsterdam-smart-car-canals http://www.dutchamsterdam.nl/707-amsterdam-smart-car-canals
- r3bl 8y ago> or if that happens in mostly the same areas There aren't that many canals outside of Amsterdam's center. The ones outside of the center tend to be cleaner as well, because, well, less people around them at all times, and more logically separated from the population (think: parks around them, not houses and bike parking spots right next to the canal). I didn't put a lot of effort in finding the exact location of this excavation, but there are some mentions of Damrak on the site, which is as center Amsterdam as it can get.
- askmike 8y agoThat's the Prinsengracht, I used to live in the little street in the top left of the video!
- louisjpe 8y agoI inferred the items were mostly dredged up from the Amstel riverbed, rather than a canal. Either way, as an Amsterdam resident this is a fascinating deep dive into the city's history (and its international visitors).
- chilledheat 8y agoMy car keys!
- agumonkey 8y agoFunny how materials of each era have very different durability (and complexity)
- c3534l 8y agoI thought it was interesting to see ID cards and paper currency show up for modern times and to see plastic emerge as a new durable material among the ancient metals and pottery.
- agumonkey 8y agoNot so fast https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17438042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17438042
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoThere's a canal in Oxford I walked along regularly, over the course of a year I pulled five bikes out of it, one of them looked brand new.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoBrand new bike in a canal sounds suspicious as heck to me...
- Coding_Cat 8y agoPSA from the Netherlands: never park your bike next to the canal without chaining it to something immovable or some drunk asshole will throw it over.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoI'm sure they were all stolen.
- askmike 8y agoMost bikes in Amsterdam are stolen at some point. There is little crime except when it comes to stealing bikes. Mostly because the police doesn't do anything when bikes are reported stolen, so unless you're caught red handed you have little to worry about.
- Symbiote 8y agoA friend has pulled a couple of nice bicycles out of Copenhagen's harbour. He has a favourite spot, which is deep and silty — "easy" methods to retrieve a lost bike, like a hook on a rope, are difficult there. None have been reported stolen (there's a website to check this). We think people fall in when cycling drunk at night.
- Coding_Cat 8y agoI have a feeling they're not including the bikes in this project. I've seen them dreg up bikes from the canals before and from the looks of it the entire bottom is covered in them. IIRC it's 4000 bikes per year in Utrecht.
- pforpineapple 8y agoAmazed to see such good colors on even cardboard items (like that pokemon pog). Isn't the water supposed to fade paint layers?
- mathijs 8y agoThat's a plastic 'Flippo'. Similar to cardboard milk caps but they came in bags of potato chips and are made of plastic.
- jlebrech 8y agodo any of those IDs belong to missing persons i wonder.
- tnolet 8y agoSlightly off topic: When in high school me and some mates actually found a dead body in the canal. This was not in Amsterdam but Utrecht, which has very similar canals. My school was right on the canal and it was an early winter morning. Turned out it was a homeless person who probably fell in while drunk, at least that was what the police said. Not a nice morning...
- tzahola 8y agoWorks horribly in Safari.
- therealmarv 8y agoAlso in Chrome on Android (both newest version). Got also an error on loading often.
- ricklamers 8y agoToo bad it keeps breaking for me :( "OEPS, ER GING IETS GRUWELIJK MIS."
- mcv 8y agoI've got the feeling this is supposed to be showing a lot more objects than it does. The timeline goes way back, but only the top bit if filled with fairly recent items. I'm watching this with Chrome on a Mac. Possibly not the combination they made this for.
- more-coffee 8y agoYep, had the same in Safari. But when I use Firefox and click on -119000 it shows the objects almost immediately.
- frusciante19 8y agoWorks great in Safari.
- Angostura 8y agoNot here, for me on Mac
- everyone 8y agoTheres an Irish pound coin near the top.. lol random.
- everyone 8y agoOk, theres also a 50 pence and 20 pence piece.. I reckon they were all dropped in at the same time.
- Angostura 8y agoSeems broken in Safari Mac - the facet search doesn't work and scrolling down simply stops after a while.
- nkrisc 8y agoInterestingly, there appear to be as many smoking pipes found in recent years as in 1650. Some things never change, except perhaps what goes in the pipe.
- defterGoose 8y agoI think that doesn't change so much either...
- noisy_boy 8y agoI find it intriguing that the design of the buckle[0] is over 600 years old and practically unchanged. [0]: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZR2.00536MTL065?index=18227 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZR2.00536MTL065...
- zkascak 8y agoThe archaeologist in me wants to go down to the Cuyahoga River and see what kinds of things that get thrown in there. But then I remember that this is the Cuyahoga River and do I really want to go in it even in a wetsuit?
- allochthon 8y agoIt's really cool to see present-day artifacts as someone 400 years from now might see them. "Flippo disk." "Mobile telephone."
- braymundo 8y agoAs a D&D player, this amuses me: https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00442FAU026?index=18583 https://belowthesurface.amsterdam/en/vondst/NZD1.00442FAU026...