The archaeologists know that and say as much in TFA:

"The paints used in the reconstructions are chemically similar to the trace pigments found on parts of the surface of the originals. However, those pigments formed the underlayer of a finished work to which they bear a very conjectural relationship. Imagine a modern historian trying to reconstruct the Mona Lisa on the basis of a few residual pigments here and there on a largely featureless canvas.

How confident could we be that the result accurately reproduces the original?

This point is not actually disputed by supporters of the reconstructions. For example, Cecilie Brøns, who leads a project on ancient polychromy at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen, praises the reconstructions but notes that ‘reconstructions can be difficult to explain to the public – that these are not exact copies, that we can never know exactly how they looked’."

Contemporary historic preservation sees itself as the guardian of historical substance. The content of a monument is bound to the preservation of the inherited material.

Georg Dehio’s principle of "conserving, not restoring" is often invoked as a synonym for this self-conception. Old and new need to be clearly separated.

It is a counter-movement to the 18th century historicism which ”destroyed” a lot of old monuments beyond repair.

Personally, I think we went too far on the conservation angle (at least in Germany, not sure about other countries), and should restore a bit more again with the knowledge we have. But much more intelligent people have debated that for centuries, so I guess their answer would be the same like https://askastaffengineer.com/.

I'm in the conserving camp. It's more truthful than the narrativization that accompanies attempts to restore. We should remember that we all had a reptilian vision of dinosaurs for decades (centuries?) before the latest feathered view. We would have been better with neither. Just display the bones: what we have. Everything else burdens the public with guesses.

Idealy, for me as a layperson who is only going to see these in a museum, I'd love to see a series of pieces...

First, the original, untouched (preserved but not restored?) sculpture.

Second, the reproductions highlighted in the article. With appropriate notations about "these are the base layers, not complete, etc"

And third, a best-guess at what the original could have looked like, based on the first two. Yes, this might be wrong and need to change over time.

They show us what the base layers were, and what pigments of the day looked like.

It may be an academic point. But they are academics.

Well they might as well show the texture of unprocessed marble as well. This is not particularly different.

I mean, showing the texture of the underlying stone is how the vast majority of statues from classical antiquity are displayed, and indeed how most pastiches are created.

(and half the objection to the paint jobs comes from the fact we've come to incorrectly associate decorative elements from the classical period with the colours of bare stone)

Associating them with garishly and almost certainly inaccurately (based on pretty much all the indirect evidence we have) painted sculptures doesn't seem like much of an improvement, though?

I totally agree with. This is not a reconstruction because the shading, detail and subtler colors are completely left off. It's just a reconstruction of the statue as it would have been in an incomplete state!

I'm just happy that both VHDL and ADA are in the list.

VHDL (or Verilog) seems like another weird entry. It's one of those description languages that feels a lot like programming, but doesn't actually produce programs.

I've been using gemini for writing my init.el So many ideas so little time, I'm glad I have the chance

It's not even just that: the shadows go mid-character, instead of using characters as pixels. It is just not ASCII ART at all, just some ASCII characters used as a filler.

oooh. Good point. I didn't even noticd that at first glance as I was floored that anyone would show off something so totally wrong. But yes, not responsive ascii art if you're just throwing a transparent circle over the same bunch of characters.

Different extension. The Honey like one is Capital One Shopping.

Well, you may not have to worry, but if you have large unpoured areas on a design with a professional PCB manufacturer (of the traditional, high-touch kind), they will ask if you want to pour some copper there. Reason being that it makes the process faster, more consistent and reduce possible side-etching on lanes. It may not a make a difference in most cases, but you may just save some time and effort by doing this.

The reason is that the copper is already there, it gets etched away. So it actually costs more to not have copper than to have it.

At industrial scale, surely they recover that copper from the etching fluid?

Even if they do, the recovery itself would surely have costs. It can't be easy.

Indeed, the enchant is very nasty stuff, it's not easy or clean to do so.

Yes, but this costs pales in the cost of redoing in case of problems with side-etching and the overall tightened manufacturing constraints.

And yes, they get to recover the copper, at the very least to make treatment easier for discarding (copper is a very bad pollutant). But not only there's a cost, this is dealt with by waste treatment companies that will at most use the copper value to recoup some of the cost of the treatment.

The dom comes from some of the tame ads...

I went through the same thing, it was a really unfortunate choice of words in the context.

> It's also a counterexample to the bureaucracy of standards bodies --- the standard that actually became widely used was the one that got released first.

Sounds like a cautionary tale: whatever gets released first will stick. If you make a blunder, generations will have to live with it (like IPv4).

> Parliament absolutely can, legally. The issue is that it’ll set a bad precedent that’ll get brought up by the buyer the next time the government want to privatise something.

Great, maybe they'll be more wary of taking advantage of this kind of blunder if they can get corrected.