Show HN: Wolfrasms, a Wolfram/SMS mashup - <AUTHOR>

http://wolfrasms.com
It's like Siri for the 99%. Or a TI-89 via SMS. Or something.
If you want to skip the website, just text your query to +1 206 462 5742 (that's +1 206 46-ALPHA).
Feel free to test it out and give me feedback. While it will stay a tiny project, I'm interested in any way to make it better.
Built with the Twilio & Wolfram|Alpha APIs, and Heroku of course. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://wolfrasms.com>

(please upvote the clickable link)</comment>


ScreenCast: Context In JavaScript (Managing "this") - <AUTHOR> http://www.watchmecode.net/javascript-context

<comment><USER2> Oh sure, shot me a minute and the ask for $9 for the full thing. Are you out of your mind?</comment>


Tracking of 10M smartphones reveals 2016 election spoiled Thanksgiving - <AUTHOR> https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-2016-election-season-spoiled-thanksgiving-says-study-that-tracked-10-million-smartphones <comment><USER2> "While both Frimer and Green were impressed by Chen's study, they raised the question of whether such data scooping methods represented a violation of people's personal privacy."

You think? I'm beginning to wonder who _doesn 't_ have access to location -- and other! -- information and whether it might be time to reconsider my digital lifestyle choices. Not saying I'm going to go full "Professor Ted" or that his reaction was appropriate, but as Chris Rock says, I understand it.</comment>


A Tale of Two Commits (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://mrcote.info/blog/2018/11/30/a-tale-of-two-commits/ <comment><USER2> We use "squashed diff" so you get a single patch for a single fix or stable portion of a new feature (a whole new feature if it's small & nonbreaking).

I would think the "trickle of small changes" would be painful to keep track of, especially on a large team.</comment>


AWS Chatbot Challenge - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/it/events/chatbot-challenge/ <comment> hn-gibber-01 any examples of previous winners/submissions?</comment>


Van Gogh Museum - <AUTHOR> http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en

<comment><USER2> Oh dear. This is a good example of something that should have been more extensively tested before putting it out into the real world. It feels like something that worked on the developers' computers but for me the frustrating scrolling experience and the way it handles history made me close the tab rather quickly.

Just because something is "all the rage" \- like this kind of scrolling implementation - doesn't mean that it's actually good for your users. And if you are going to implement a potentially frustrating feature like this, at least make sure you've tested it to within an inch of its life.

Edit: a lot of my problems with this site were caused by Chrome's "translation" bar popping up on every page transition, which was interfering with the scrolling.

<comment><USER3> I think the pages are quite beautiful.

But I agree about the scrolling. Even on an ipad, which I think is _the_ standard device these days, the scrolling is broken at times. Sometimes I swipe up and a new page scrolls in. Ok. Sometimes I swipe up and some content scrolls in from the side. Ok. But sometimes I swipe up and _nothing_ happens. Thats a bit confusing.

<comment><USER4> >Even on an ipad, which I think is the standard device these days

I would want to see some statistics there. A quick google search yields the following article from last year, which states that the PC is still the majority ahead of any type of mobile device, let alone the ipad as a subset of mobile devices.

[http://marketingland.com/report-nearly-40-percent-of- interne...](http://marketingland.com/report-nearly-40-percent-of-internet- time-now-on-mobile-devices-34639)

<comment><USER3> You might be right. The traffic share of ipads is in the one digit range. I just looked at the stats of a high traffic website. The ipad accounts for 5% of the traffic.

However, when I want to look at a website to see how the designer planned it, I always grasp my ipad and look at it.

Because even if he planned it for Chrome on the desktop (which accounts for 50% on that website) I dont know the OS, the resolution, if he thoguht about a keyboard, a mousewheel, a mouse grasping the scroolbar or the trackpad of a notebook having a scroll area.

But yeah, the world of devices is pretty fragmented. Looking at an ipad doesn't mean too much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was this linked because of the design? If so, personally I hate when normal pages do not scroll like normal pages.

<comment><USER5> Just backing away from sites like this is a pain. After scolling down few pages, I need to click back button way too many times just to get back to HN.

<comment><USER6> Would be solved if HN adopted the "open in a new tab" user model.

<comment><USER7> In Firefox, if you pin the tab then any links you click on open in a new tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> On a macbook on Chrome here, can't scroll and the screen keeps bumping up and down on its own. I think the "translate?" bar is trying to come down then the web site must have some Javascript or something that fights it.

</comment><comment><USER9> A nice article about the colors used by Van Gogh: [http://asada0.tumblr.com/post/11517603099/the-day-i-saw- van-...](http://asada0.tumblr.com/post/11517603099/the-day-i-saw-van-goghs- genius-in-a-new-light)

 _" In our opinion, van Gogh surely had color vision deficiency."_

</comment><comment><USER10> I seem to be one of the few here who actually enjoyed the experience while scrolling. Using back was broken, as it didn't scroll back up, but it was a pleasantly presented page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Don't forget to check out the zoomable, hi-res paintings such as this one: [http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0047V1962](http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0047V1962)

The site was developed by the same teams who created the Rijksmuseum website last year and uses some of the same technology.

<comment><USER11> Which teams are those? I'm very impressed at the result, especially coming from a museum. Almost made me wonder if Google Art Institute had made the website.

As an aside: I'm from Auvers-sur-Oise, the place where Van Gogh spent his last 2 months and is buried :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Designed by Fabrique ([http://fabrique.nl](http://fabrique.nl)) and developed by Q42 ([http://q42.com](http://q42.com)). :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the best museums I've ever been to. Highly recommend going - it's better than the website :)

<comment><USER13> On the contrary, I just visited in June and it was a miserable experience. 2/3 of the museum was closed and the part that was open was packed full despite the rather strict entrance timing that they seemed to be using. The story of his life as told through pictures was interesting, but we were in and out in an hour. Kind of a bummer after hearing all the hype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great museum- I never really appreciated Van Gogh until I saw his paintings up close (and lots in close quarters)-- the texture is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's really cool that you can browse the entire collection and download the paintings: [http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection](http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/search/collection)

</comment><comment><USER16> It's neat, but it seems like more style than substance.

<comment><USER17> As someone who works in the cultural sector, and has seen a million terrible arts/museum/heritage sites, I quite like it.

Yes, it has flaws - and not just the scrolling - stuff like having links rendered without underlining and in the same colour as body text.

But I could find the location, opening hours, and ticket booking link almost instantly, which is what 99 out of 100 of people visiting that site will want. It's well-designed from that point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very frustrating to navigate with click and scroll. Clicking on the black box in the upper right hand corner while using English reverts back to Dutch.

</comment><comment><USER19> This would work more nicely if they disabled google auto-translate, as on chrome here it just strobes the bar off and on too quickly to hit cancel!

<comment><USER20> that is something you have to disable in the client

<comment><USER19> Incorrect...

<meta name="google" value="notranslate" />

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> thought this was going to be an Occulus thread

</comment><comment><USER22> I went to that museum schroomed out of my mind one time. Good times.

<comment><USER23> Thank you for providing an anecdotal bit of evidence for:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8218047)

Personally I wished all those tourists that can't wait to get 'schroomed out of their minds' stayed at home but making drug use illegal for tourists and legal for the locals would be a legal and practical impossibility. They tried doing that in some places, all it led to was enterprising locals becoming either small time dealers or renting out their services to tourists.

Supply and demand. With drugs as long as it isn't legal everywhere I guess we'll continue to see this pattern.

Hope you enjoyed the museum, even in that state of mind, van Gogh was an amazing artist (and a substance abuser himself...).

<comment><USER24> Not refuting your point but it seems that other dutch cities are in the top 10 for drug use: [http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/05/27/three-dutch-cities-top- ten-...](http://www.nltimes.nl/2014/05/27/three-dutch-cities-top-ten-drug- use/)

Eindhoven and Utrecht are not touristy cities. However they do have large "non-local" populations (expats in the first case, students in the second) so perhaps your point still stands that it is not the locals regularly consuming.

<comment><USER23> I know plenty of dutch people (in the thousands) but know only very few that are substance abusers. I know tons of people visiting NL too (mostly because I don't mind showing people around and I'm in online contact with quite a few people as well) and only a _very_ small number of them don't mention the fact that drugs are legal and that this is one of their drivers for going there.

Especially in the 18-35 bracket, above that it gets a bit less wild (naturally).

All the university cities have a relatively high proportion of substance abuse and quite a lot of that will be locals in the student age bracket.

But when comparing locals to tourists the tourists definitely make up a disproportionally large chunk of the drug users. And not all of them come for a few days, quite a few people move to NL permanently because of the lax drugs laws and end up in the social care system.

It's sad because really nobody wins there and there are no easy solutions. Re- criminalizing drugs will be followed by a significant increase in crime and the Dutch ability to influence the countries around them to adopt similar legislation is without any chance of succeeding.

<comment><USER25> "I know plenty of dutch people (in the thousands) but know only very few that are substance abusers."

What do you mean by substance abuse? And, how much do you really know about the drug habits of your thousands of acquaintances?

<comment><USER23> Live around Amsterdam long enough and you too will become an expert at spotting junkies. As for the habits of my thousands of acquitances _because_ use is legal people are pretty open about it here if they use soft drugs.

The few people that I know that are into harder drugs would not advertise that too openly but if there were no downsides to hard drug abuse that you can spot relatively easily if the consumption lasts for longer than a trial period then I don't think we'd have hard drug legislation to begin with.

In America for instance people would be a lots more circumspect about their drug use (but those barriers evaporate as soon as they set foot on Dutch soil and it is party time).

<comment><USER25> It didn't seem like you were talking about "junkies" when you brought up substance abuse in the context of a tourist eating mushrooms and visiting a museum. And you say that many university students engage in substance abuse; that also makes me wonder about your definition of the term, because in my experience, while university life involves quite a lot of alcohol, I haven't heard of that many students whom I would consider "substance abusers."

<comment><USER23> Substance abuse to me is defined as consuming any drug to such a level that it interferes with your normal life.

Tourists visiting cities simply because of the novelty factor of drugs being legal and then partaking in this out of curiosity are simply stupid, not addicts (they are stupid because they are not in any way positioned to know what they are buying and this results in quite a few trips to the ER each year).

But drug addiction does exist and the number of foreigners that end up in Dutch rehab programs and or shelters is huge.

It's even got a name here: drugs tourism.

Alcohol can be abused just like any other drug (and in fact, is probably the most commonly abused drug).

<comment><USER25> Hm, what do you mean they aren't positioned to know what they're buying? In general?

If someone is curious about psychedelic drugs, and they visit Amsterdam because they are decriminalized there, they are therefore stupid?

I can't really imagine that's what you mean, though that's what you wrote.

<comment><USER23> They are stupid because they don't have a supplier that they can trust nor do they have the information to distinguish the 'real' stuff from stuff that will make them simply ill or even (rare, fortunately) kill them.

The fact that it is decriminalized does not mean that people won't be trying to take advantage of you.

Buying drugs is not quite buying a bottle of Sprite, it typically does not come in a container with a brand name on it and as a tourist you won't be hanging around long enough to work out which connections you can trust and which to stay away from. The person selling it to you just wants your money, _once_. For a repeat buyer the risks would go down considerably.

Feel free to ignore any and all of the above. We're off-topic far enough as far as I'm concerned, if you feel that buying drugs abroad in one-off cash transactions does not carry significant risk then I'm perfectly ok with that.

<comment><USER25> Is there a significant risk of being sold poisonous mushrooms in an Amsterdam smartshop? Or are you talking about other drugs?

(By the way, many products sold in such stores do in fact come in branded containers including instruction booklets for safe usage, etc.)

<comment><USER26> Many national brands have some kind of inspection behind them - UL listed, or FDA approved. I'm wondering what a 'brand' printed on a laser printer in somebody's garage is worth, in terms of product safety.

<comment><USER25> Yeah, that's an interesting question. But it seems weird to suggest that any non-local buying psychedelic truffles in a smartshop is "stupid" because they shouldn't trust the brand. I don't really see how it has anything to do with whether you're local or a tourist.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Fi Is Broken Right Now - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/fi/thread/7344997 <comment><USER2> A huge drawback to Google Fi I rarely hear about is that Google is just terrible at customer support. At least with T-Mobile I can call someone, chat with someone, go to a store, get Twitter support, and it's usually pretty quick.

The biggest plus is protection against SIM hijacking, which I agree is a big plus, but no one should be using SMS for 2FA anyway.

<comment><USER3> I've been using Fi for 3 years. CS has always been hit-or-miss in my experience, but it has gotten worse now that there are a lot more subscribers (thanks to iPhone support and the massive Pixel 3 promo they did last year). They tend to send a lot more generic non-answers, never call back during your call back period (or call at some random hour like 4:30 AM), or just don't even respond at all anymore.

Like many companies, if you keep calling you'll eventually get someone awesome who can pull strings. But it's frustrating.

I've had the experience twice of phones getting lost on the way to me. They would insist on running an "investigation" that could last weeks or never resolve, before they would send a new device. In both cases, I had to be pretty pushy with the agent that the phone either fell off the truck or someone at FedEx stole it. Usually I needed a new phone ASAP due to a failure.

Don't get me wrong, Fi is awesome, especially for international travel. Just show up at the airport and you've got service. The data rate structure is totally fair for how I use it. But there are definitely benefits to having a local Apple Store or Best Buy with a compatible phone in stock.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would be a little bad for Google's free services.

Threads here frequently mention that Google's paid services are decent, but not here. People pay for Google Fi! Not only do they have awful support, but now they have issues like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can confirm. At first, I thought it was only calls to Canada from the U.S. Now I am only able to get through intermittently, Canada or not.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apparently 911 still works according to a 911 dispatcher in the thread, but no other calls do (as far as I can tell).</comment>


Show HN: Async Requests and Downloads Without Thinking About It (Python) - <AUTHOR> http://aiodownload.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a python package I wrote a few months ago to make async requests and downloads more convenient. I haven't had much time to work on it lately so I thought I would give it some more exposure to the wild. Constructive feedback welcome.</comment>


Are laws like the French ban on emails after work saving us or burying our jobs? - <AUTHOR> https://thetopline.co/2017/05/france-ban-emails-jobs-labor-laws/ <comment><USER3> _It can also impact IT professionals and others in fields where after-work emergencies are frequent._

Come again, what now? For critical services you have an on-call roster, like hospitals and utilities have always had. Why would anyone think that IT was any different? If the company continuously flies by the seat of its pants and needs to call in the sysadmin to put out unscheduled fires it's simply poorly run, that's all.

<comment><USER4> Absolutely this.

I don't respond to email after work unless the building is literally on fire unless I'm on rotation in which case that's either in my contract and I'm compensated for it or it isn't and I don't respond.

Salary buys 40hrs of my time (on average, some weeks might be 45, some 35) and that is it.

My time outside of that is my own and jealously guarded.

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. My work wanted after hours support but would never pony up with the requested on-call rate. They'd still pester us and ask for Gentlemen's Agreements to attend if we happened to be available.

All the while we used to get lectured about maintaining a good work-life balance from HR.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> At some point we have to decide whether the purpose of society is to promote the general welfare of all citizens or just to give capitalists the opportunity to make as much money as they can. I don't see anything wrong with worker protections. The capitalists have plenty of protections like patents and copyrights.

<comment><USER7> > I don't see anything wrong with worker protections

As long as people can opt-out then it's fine. Otherwise I think there is something wrong with it: if two consenting adults want to send work emails to each other after 5pm what business is that of yours?

<comment><USER8> If people can opt out, then this gives the opportunity for the business owner to make opting out a requirement to get the job. Then you may as well not have the protection at all. You can't opt out of:

\- minimum wages

\- OSHA

\- discrimination protection

\- etc.

There's no special reason why you should be able to opt out of this work hour regulation. Now if the regulation is overall a bad idea, that's a separate question.

<comment><USER7> Oh and you can opt out of OSHA and minimum wages - by joining the military (Executive Order 12196).

<comment><USER9> I suppose that it makes sense that the only employer in the country that needs to be able to (legally) routinely put its "employees" in mortal peril would have a carve-out from the health and safety regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometime allowing companies to maximally extract value from their employees actually hurts the economy in the long run. If there's less incentive to improve operations, it's just makes it easier for companies to crack the whip rather than make capital investments in technologies that will benefit us all in the long run.

One could argue these sorts of laws can act as accelerators toward automation. One case study could be the French jet manufacturer Dassault. Part of the reason for investing heavily into robotics was labor law constraints. It wasn't the entire reason, but it did add a financial incentive.

In the long term, would you prefer we live in a world where people feel compelled to answer emails at all hours, or would you prefer to live in a world where companies have an incentive to invest in technologies and processes that allow people to have a better quality of life?

Like anything, there needs to be a balance.

</comment><comment><USER11> It seems pretty simple. I do not check work email when I'm not at work.

<comment><USER12> Lucky you. My work requires I check my work email every single day. Even if I'm on vacation.

<comment><USER13> Sorry if this is a little blunt, but why do you stay?

That sounds horrible. Unless there's other major benefits to the job, I'd be looking around for new work as soon as I heard that I'd be required to check mail on vacation.

<comment><USER14> This isn't a criticism of specifically you per se; and I'm not the parent post.

> why don't you leave?

I think there are 2 main answers that cover most people:

\- Difficulty transitioning to new job; e.g. can't afford to leave, actively trying to leave, aren't in a competitive position.

As someone who is broke and actively trying to skill up; often frustrated when people with better skills, resources or opportunities imply that it's easy and critically that even if you ARE leaving it's a process not simply a decision.

\- People love their job; don't like this aspect. Couple mates work at SpaceX; they are constantly dealing with email and work overflow. They complain about it-- totally fair IMO; but ultimately they enjoy the work to much to leave.

<comment><USER15> >As someone who is broke and actively trying to skill up; often frustrated when people with better skills, resources or opportunities imply that it's easy and critically that even if you ARE leaving it's a process not simply a decision.

When you have a job that pays well, it's actually very easy to find a new job, because even if you hate where you're currently at, you have the benefit of time. Nobody is implying that the parent comment should just strap on their job helmet and squeeze down into a job cannon and fire off into job land. But if you're able to sit for a year watching job boards, contacting recruiters, etc, you will eventually find something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _> Technology often creates unrealistic demands on workers' time – this is not controversial. However, it also plays an important role in providing flexible working hours. Some of us may be willing to work late evenings as it gives us time off in the day to tend to family or household chores. Some like to use their daily commute time to catch up on work. Besides, more and more people are working remotely these days or with colleagues in other time zones. For them to switch off at a particular time of the day may not be practically feasible._

Ultimately, it boils down to clear communication, expectation, and boundaries.

I work in what I believe to be a very healthy team (I know that because I have also worked in very unhealthy teams). If I am not in the office, there is no expectation of me being available in any way - responding to emails off hours is a bonus, something I do becaue I enjoy my work. This also means that I am aware that if I email a coworker on a Saturday night because I feel like it, I have no expectation for them to get back to me until Monday morning. In fact, I might hold back from sending that email on Saturday night because I know that they're nice and might feel compelled to reply right away if they see it - and who am I to steal 30 minutes of their Saturday night?

If we have an important deadline coming soon, or something that requires more sustained attention, then we put things in place to deal with that (eg an on call system) - but again making expectations and boundaries clear. If you are on call for database monitoring from 9p-1am, it doesn't mean you are free for reviewing patches during that time.

It took many jobs before I found one as healthy and sustainable as my current one - I think it's pretty damn rare. One passive aggressive manager or insecure PM can lead to everyone scrambling to prove themselves, have a culture of "everything is always on fire and always at the highest priority", and so on.

I don't think laws targeting directly the symptoms of a dysfunctional employer/employee relationship are going to be very effective. Who enforces them? Peer pressure is a terrible thing - if a new employee joins a company where everyone is expected to reply to emails at any time of the day or week, what are they to do? Lawsuits are expensive and draining, and employees are rarely the ones to hold the power in the employment relationship.

The hopes I have revolve more around general, universal social support - <USER2> universal health insurance, basic income, etc. Ideally, these would let employees be much more flexible and free in how they can deal with abusive managers and dysfunctional cultures - namely by voting with their feet because paying for rent and diapers is not a concern.

</comment><comment><USER17> Personally I don't check my emails after work/on weekends/on vacation, and I wouldn't want a job where I would have to do it. It's actually one of my own criteria when looking at a job offer. Of course I have no problem when it's an emergency, but anything not urgent can wait for me to come back.

I have no problem with companies requiring or allowing this, so long as the pay reflects this. From my limited experience though, most of friends who are more of the 24/7 type self-impose that discipline and don't get paid nearly enough for the amount of effort poured in. It's like a race to the bottom where the only winner is the company.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand why this is such a contentious topic. You shouldn't have to check your email after work. However, I don't think it's unreasonable to contact an employee if there's an emergency or something very urgent, as long as it's an infrequent one-off exception. Surely we can evaluate these on a case-by-case basis? It probably depends on the company size, its field, and the potential impact.

</comment><comment><USER19> This law is really not applied in France. As experienced already, companies don't have at all the pressure. So there is no experience for now.

<comment><USER20> Do you need "experience" for EVERYTHING? Does that mean you can't say a dime about the sun rising tomorrow because you have no experience of the sun rising tomorrow?

<comment><USER21> If the sun rising was a new development, and I had never seen it before, then yea I would feel uncomfortable saying it would ride tomorrow based on my lack of experience

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A huge percentage of you are developers, and off-hours coverage and email- checking expectations vary. But as a DevOps/SA/SRE/etc. I have spent my entire bloody career (almost 15 years at this point) suffering on-call and trying to run from it. Note, I don't mind on-call as much if I get paid overtime. But no one does, not in the US. Thus I applaud mechanisms to dissuade workers from accepting that expectation from companies, that they own you since you're salaried. Guess what happens with opt-in, your coworkers (or you) experience a compulsion to work out of fear of bonus or job loss, and the protection doesn't exist anymore.

I decided to stop waiting for capitalism to throw me a bone. In fact, in New York, it only seems to be getting worse: the entitlement that companies feel to control your unpaid life is unprecedented thanks to PagerDuty, phones and so forth.

Hence I'm a consultant. I'll do off-hours, no problem, but both of us know what we're getting into, the company and I, thanks to contract wording.

It's more honest that way.

</comment><comment><USER20> Burying our jobs, that's obvious.

Culture change can happen by various means. Government laws that create unemployment and reduce wages are the worst.

</comment><comment><USER23> An approach where labour gives in to the demands of capital is going to be self defeating in the long run. With the increase in automation, the ability of businesses to treat people as a disposal resource is only going to increase massively. We need to fight that power, because its going to grow to a point where it controls every aspect of our lives.

</comment><comment><USER24> I expect to see American IT engineer's comment "yeah I don't respond to work email or issues after work". Its because they have Indian H1Bs working round the clock. Any greedy American corp has Indian IT engineers standing by 24x7. Don't believe me ? Visit Amex dev center in Phoenix, Walmart in Bentonville, Visa in Kansas. Take a count of how many Americans are scheduled for production support. None ! .So when American IT engineers says they dont reply or respond to work related issues after work. Its at the cost of exploiting H1B employees, the very group that everyone puts the blame on for losing their jobs to and to get votes.

</comment><comment><USER25> recently my employer started requiring 2 factor authentication to check work mail outside of work, which means i am now two times less likely to check my email outside work.

</comment><comment><USER26> This article is both wrong on many points and awfully biased.

>Will this law help maintain work-life balance or is it an assault on freedom?

...The actual assault on freedom is employers sending mails after work hours and expecting you to read them on your free time, considering the uneven relationship between employer and employee. If anything, it levels the playing field.

It then goes on as if a definition of working hours was enshrined in the law, and how it can prevent flexible working hours. No. If your working hours are 3AM to 12AM, then mails are okay at this time. If you have spotty days with an hour here and an hour there, those will be your working hours If you're a "cadre", then your working hours are basically anything that is not your rest time (a consecutive 11 hours after you left work). And, like said, there are no penalties defined. Do you know why? Because a) companies were already being condemned for sanctioning their employees for not checking mails outside of working hours and b) It doesn't forbid the employees to check their mail after work, it allows them not to. You want to check those messages at 3AM ? Is it of your own volition? Are you not being pressured by your employer because <x> is needed quickly? Sure, go ahead, you're free to do it. Even if you are being pressured, you are free to do it. However, if you sue, your employer will be found guilty of breaking this law.

>For them to switch off at a particular time of the day may not be practically feasible.

No defined hours in the law aside from your own.

>what about the ambitious workers among us who seek to climb the corporate ladder as quickly as possible?

A) You're a bit of an idiot if you think this will ever be good for you

B) Good thing, you're still free to do it.

>For them, perhaps, overtime hours could be an opportunity to learn faster.

Overtime hours means that you're still working. And being paid to. Why would you not be able to check those _work_ mails when you're _working_ ?

>But despite these examples, most remain skeptical of such a law being passed in other countries, especially the U.S., where long workweeks and foregone vacation time are the norm

On the other hand, american working hours have been a running gag for every european country so... Maybe eventually the problem does not lay in Europe.

Ultimately, the text of this "law" is a mere few lines ([https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexteArticle.do;jsessio...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexteArticle.do;jsessionid=B586440ACBE8F266F012720C43421185.tpdila08v_1?idArticle=JORFARTI000032984268&cidTexte=JORFTEXT000032983213&dateTexte=29990101&categorieLien=id)), and is only part of a massive change. There's much more in the full text that destroys things that people fought and died for.</comment>


Surging gas prices threaten to derail economic recovery - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-gas-prices-20120221,0,2040833.story

<comment><USER2> Single page link for those who prefer not to read the article split up into two pages:

[http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-gas- prices-20120...](http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-gas- prices-20120221,0,6682539,full.story)</comment>


Dihydrogen monoxide hoax - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax <comment><USER2> I have a college educated friend that refers to anything not sold at say Whole Foods as being made of "chemicals". In addition to scientific illiteracy there is another common affliction I come across, innumeracy. I have a different friend that has a Ph.D. but doesn't know how to divide one fraction by another. These people are engaging, kind, interesting people with large circles of like-minded friends, but sometimes talking to them leaves me more than a bit frustrated.

<comment><USER3> I think this is a problem with the common perception that college education is synonymous with being smart/intelligent.

I think this is definitely not the case. I have more respect for the people who "get shit done" that sit around and hold clipboards.

It may have once been that those in high positions of academia where the best of the best but that's not always the case now.</comment></comment>


Delta Flight 1843 From JFK To Hell - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/08/delta-flight-1843-from-jfk-to-hell/ <comment><USER2> Free should have solved the problem... Why did not :(.</comment>


Robophobia Needs to Stop - <AUTHOR> https://youtu.be/LxysgRo3Uiw <comment><USER2> This is a white guy using VR to pretend to be an "AI" personified as a white female who complains to us about the discrimination "she" faces as a "robot", while simultaneously attempting to lure viewers to "her" 18+ patreon.

Though the tech seems rather decent, the rest seems kind of gross.</comment>


Google Earth AppImage - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/probonopd/AppImages/blob/master/recipes/googleearth/Recipe <comment><AUTHOR> An AppImage contains everything an app needs to run on most Linux systems. Just download one file, chmod +x, and run. No installation, no root, no unpacking, no repositories to be managed. [http://appimage.org](http://appimage.org)

The Google Earth license does not allow to redistribute it, but you can generate your own Google Earth AppImage by running this script on a x86_64 Linux system.

Let @googleearth know if you'd like to see an official AppImage from them.</comment>


World's first Android Twitter client in Augmented Reality app launched today - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/tweetility <comment><AUTHOR> Releasing our new app, Tweetility in Beta version, the first Android twitter client with Augmented Reality.

Available for free in PlayStore starting from today!

Since I am bored because of the clutter created in my Twitter feed page, I tried to solve it, with some awesome technology like AR. So, in this app, here you get to choose your favorite accounts and Tweetility makes sure you don't miss any of their tweets.

Using Google's latest AR SDK called ARCore available since last year, and which got optimised much from the 2.0 version, I have been working very hard everynight on this project for the past 2 months. My goal is to enhance this app, so that we can checkout the tweets using the upcoming AR glasses, we will be using in the near future.

If you are still not convinced, download the app anyway. You never know how colourful your screen can get.</comment>


GitHub repository to track cloud GPU offerings and promo codes for free credits - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/binga/cloud-gpus <comment><USER2> An interesting compilation.

Are you planning to update this frequently yourself? Or relying on the ecosystem to maintain and update?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your interest Sunny.

I am planning to actively scourge the internet for new providers, update the repository with useful insights about the usage of GPUs for ML practitioners and also help enthusiasts with lowering the barrier of entry by passing on information about promo codes & credits.

Ofcourse, if the ecosystem also sees necessity of having such a one-stop destination, it'd be great because the entire community if much better off having it rather than not! :)</comment></comment>


New human species found in Philippines - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47873072 <comment><USER3> IMO might want to revise the title to something like "Remains of previously- unknown human species found in Philippines" \-- I initially thought the headline was indicating some kind of super elusive secret species of humanoids was living in some hidden cave or something. :'D

<comment><USER4> That was my exact first thought. Well, I dunno if it was intended to be a clickbait of sorts, but it sure worked.

Cause that first title would have not made me click the story.

<comment><USER5> It's 2019. Of course it's all clickbait. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The emergence of these extinct human species from the fossil record raises a nagging question: what happened to them all?

Across the animal kingdom, single-species genera are somewhat uncommon. Why is there only one species of the genus Homo?

A related question. The extinction of the last surviving non-Sapiens coincides more or less with the retreat of the last glaciation period and the emergence of human civilization (see the chart midway into the linked article). These events also seem to have happened about the same time as the extinction of certain large land mammals such as the saber-tooth tiger and woolly mammoth.

Are these extinctions, large land mammals and species of Homo, connected in some way with the retreat of glaciers and/or the emergence of human civilization?

These questions are asked (but not really answered) in the first part of the book Sapiens.

<comment><USER7> Maybe they simply got merged into us? We all have neanderthal ancestry.

<comment><USER8> Isn't "merged" a nice way of saying that the men and children were likely murdered and the women taken for breeding? "Merged" conjures an image of living peacefully side by side and interbreeding for many generations.

<comment><USER9> > "Merged" conjures an image of living peacefully side by side and > interbreeding for many generations.

That seems to be what happened with Neanderthals, at least at first.

Incidentally any violence may have been from the Neanderthals because almost all of the genetic data shows Neanderthal ancestry from Neanderthal males and homo sapiens females, and not the other way around.

<comment><USER10> Maybe the Neanderthal were more sensitive and alluring to Homo sapiens females, given their artistic side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like this adds to the evidence that our ancestors left Africa in a diaspora much, much earlier than had previously been thought, especially as this is far from their original continent.

<comment><USER12> Maybe the out of Arica theory should be revisited? Post the Zanclean flood when the Mediterranean basin was subtropical it appears there were hominids "all over creation." That is to say Australia, Kenya, Philippines and even a Homo Erectus version in India. Due to the subtropical climate and the below sea Mediterranean basin who is to say that no proto-human in that basin did not run north-south, and east?

<comment><USER9> The out of Africa theory is overwhelmingly supported by genetic evidence. A multi-origin hypothesis is basically impossible to support at this point.

What is now happening is that the out of Africa theory is absorbing new facts:

\- How many different migrations of homo sapiens out of Africa have there been? (probably several)

\- Did any groups who spent time in Europe migrate back to Africa and contribute new genes to the African gene pool (likely)

\- Did homo sapiens who left Africa encounter and breed with other hominin species? (definitely, and those other species also originated in Africa)

David Reich's book from last year, "Who We Are and How We Got Here", covers a lot of the recent discoveries.

<comment><USER13> I don't think everyone here is using the same definition of "out of Africa" here. There pretty much no doubt the hominids in general and modern humans came from Africa. But subspecies like denisova and neanderthal evolved outside of Africa (probably).

Most modern humans are from Africa with multi-regional mixins, those mixins themselves were African origin if you go back far enough. It's all a game of how far you want to go back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I finally read 1491 and it just reinforced my concerns that we are underestimating the boat building skills of our ancestors.

The making and using of stone tools leave a lot of refuse that shows up in the archaeological record. If hominids keep showing up in places only accessible by boat or Olympic class swimming then are we simply missing the evidence of the enabling technologies?

<comment><USER15> While archaeologists definitely do tend to underestimate the viability of sea voyages, don't consider 1491 a work of fact. It's rather fast and loose with its interpretation. Zheng He or members of some of his 7 voyages did get to the east coast of Africa, but any further movement is not supported by either evidence or literature.

You can check out [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans- oceanic_co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Columbian_trans- oceanic_contact_theories) for some debunking.

Most places on earth, America included, are or were reachable in small watercraft at certain times of the year, even without sail, given certain weather conditions. Only the remotest islands truly required advanced seafaring for repeat navigation.

Anyway, aside from isolated boating incidents there are far more impressive stories that are buried by popular history and its political supporters - <USER2> use of Persian as a lingua franca for trade and diplomacy as far away as China, various Indian Kingdoms throughout Southeast Asia and up to the Chinese border, entire civilizations whose expanse was extremely significant but virtually nobody has heard of, successful cultural genocides on grand scales, etc.

<comment><USER16> You seem to have confused 1421 with 1491. The latter is generally considered to be a well-researched book while the former is, as you say, merely a grand tale.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps, Bonaparte! But look at you resurfacing for articles on bony parts!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> >That could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible.

Happy to dig up the source when I get home, but I remember specifically reading a paper not so long ago about a possible alternative to that hypothesis, namely that our current species might have originated out of Asia, not Africa. In which case it might not be so difficult to reconcile these outcomes.

<comment><USER18> Our species definitely originated in Africa. All the genetics point to this being the case (there is much greater genetic diversity in African populations vs. anywhere else in the world). The question is whether additional significant evolution (and even back flow into Africa) happened after we left Africa. And I think the answer to that question is, yes, it did (as evidenced by the significant admixture with Neanderthals and Denisovans).

If you're interested, there's a great episode of The Insight podcast with Milford Wolpoff that discusses a lot of this:

[https://insitome.libsyn.com/multiregionalism-is-deadlong- liv...](https://insitome.libsyn.com/multiregionalism-is-deadlong-live- multiregionalism)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Dumb question. How do we know it's a new species and not just humans with particular genetic traits?

For example, if a million years from now, someone was to dig up a bunch of bones from a dog kennel, what would they make of all the different bones from Irish wolfhounds down to sausage dogs?

</comment><comment><USER20> > That could mean primitive human relatives left Africa and made it all the > way to South-East Asia, something not previously thought possible.

Article is poorly researched:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis)

<comment><USER21> The article mentions exactly that like, two paragraphs later

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The headline is a bit deceiving. I thought there is a new human species currently in existence in the Philippines.

<comment><USER23> Come on, guys, we've seen this kind of headline before about hominid species as well as other types of extinct animals. It may be a bit poorly worded but, if something like that really did happen, you wouldn't hear about it first on Hacker News.

<comment><USER24> Actually this is probably the first place many would hear about it.</comment></comment></comment>


Internal email on why a company moves away from MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://www.enterpriseirregulars.com/28665/internal-email-on-why-a-software-company-migrates-away-from-mysql/

<comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I was surprised that licensing alone was swaying someone. But maybe the recent InnoDB fracas is changing that?

</comment><comment><USER2> InnoDB is still part of the community edition [http://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/2010/11/mysql_community_editio...](http://blogs.oracle.com/mysql/2010/11/mysql_community_edition_and_innodb.html)

The support chart is (deliberately?) confusing on this matter.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the best thing to happen to PostgreSQL in a long time.</comment>


Valance64: Control your Windows PC from you Commodore 64 - g-garron http://cafbit.com/entry/valence64

<comment><AUTHOR> I miss my old C64- and the fact someone created this is...glorious</comment>


UN special rapporteur on torture on his investigation into the case of Assange - <AUTHOR> https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange <comment><AUTHOR> I can't really understand how someone could read the article and not be moved and chilled. Can someone who persecutes Assange please really just, here, anonymously if you must, please make a case for doing this. You think it's ok to do this... why? What is the end goal? No one can report governmental crimes? That's the world you want, for you and your family?

<comment><USER2> I don't support the behavior alleged in this article, but I do genuinely believe Wikileaks was acting very unethically. It's one thing to release classified documents describing corruption or illegal/immoral behavior by the government, it's another to blindly release any classified documents you can get your hands on without any concern for others. In one dump of classified documents on the War in Afghanistan, it included the identities of many civilians assisting the US military. Those named have since been targeted by the Taliban. And this is a consistent pattern. Their leaks routinely include social security numbers, credit card numbers, private medical information, the list goes on. That information is not in the public interest and has caused great harm to innocent people. And I'm hardly alone in saying this. Edward Snowden, the Sunlight Foundation, and Amnesty International have criticized this practice.

EDIT: Quoting from Assange's indictment:

"After agreeing to receive classified documents from Manning and aiding, abetting, and causing Manning to provide classified documents, the superseding indictment charges that Assange then published on WikiLeaks classified documents that contained the unredacted names of human sources who provided information to United States forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to U.S. State Department diplomats around the world. These human sources included local Afghans and Iraqis, journalists, religious leaders, human rights advocates, and political dissidents from repressive regimes. According to the superseding indictment, Assange's actions risked serious harm to United States national security to the benefit of our adversaries and put the unredacted named human sources at a grave and imminent risk of serious physical harm and/or arbitrary detention."

<comment><USER3> Sooo... the guys he was leaking evidence of war crimes against claim that he endangered people he leaked information about.

While that may actually be true, I'm curious why you would trust that statement from the US Government (the "indictment") while ignoring the other (that's "classified").

If you trust that there's doubt as to why things were classified and that they may have been hiding things, why would you also trust that they claim people have been endangered? Again, not saying it's not true, just that blindly taking the word of US prosecutors seems short sighted.

<comment><USER4> Nobody is trusting anything. It should be obvious that these leaks endangered these people. All you have to do is look at them to see that. If you publish the names of civillian collaborators with the US, they're going to get targeted. You don't need classified intel to know that.

<comment><USER5> I made this point in a more lengthy fashion in a parallel comment [0], but it seems really odd to me you would ignore the circumstance that the lion's share of the work towards endangering those civilians was done by the US, by recruiting them to be collaborators in a hostile country. Why does the US government have more moral license to endanger Afghan civilians than Assange/Wikileaks?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205463](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22205463)

<comment><USER4> The US government decision to invade Afghanistan involved a number of other factors. Whether or not you agree with that calculation is subjective. The difference between that and what Assange did is that Wikileaks could have taken the time to redact these names, as they were immaterial to the point they were trying to make.

If this was a tradeoff between "not expose abuses by the US government" and "name these civillians", I think your point would be reasonable. But there was no tradeoff. Wikileaks was just lazy about it.

<comment><USER6> Wikileaks asked the DoD to help redact the documents. DoD refused and later put out a statement claiming that Assange lied about asking for help. This statement was shown to be false.

Due to the limited time window for release, the choice was either to release as-is or to never release at all.

Calling Wikileaks lazy is myopic. They didn't have the resources to redact the documents in the time window they had to work with, and they asked for help. The US govt knew exactly what would happen if they refused to help. It was a calculated move to maximise collateral damage and help drive the narrative that you now subscribe to. They didn't give a single fuck about the collateral damage, their response was focused on discrediting and prosecuting the source of the leak to send a message to anyone else considering exposing their wrongdoings.

The US govt acted like a bunch of insidious cartoon villains, and gaslighting its citizens about how this situation played out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's assume that the general impugning of Assange's character over the past years is true. Let us further assume that the statement made by one of the comments below, that the completely unredacted nature of Wikileaks' releases is irresponsible and unnecessarily puts others in danger.

Even with all that, the events described in this article make me deeply uncomfortable. I don't have to like Assange to think that this kind of thing sets a dangerous precedent. When criminal prosecution is a thing for "the little people" and a tool twisted to dispose of those inconvenient to those in power, that is the kind of injustice which fuels riots and revolutions. I really don't want it to have to come to violence to stop corruption; that will just as likely end badly for all involved.

</comment><comment><USER8> A short summary for the people that won't read and just want to comment, UN is not demanding freedom for Assange, they want the human rights to be respected and all the illegalities committed so far by authorities are exposed.

I see some people debating if Assange is guilty of X or Y but the main point is that he did not had and will not have a fair trial.

<comment><USER9> Can someone explain how Assange's trial is unfair when it hasn't taken place yet?

<comment><USER10> > He will not receive a trial consistent with the rule of law. That's another > reason why his extradition shouldn't be allowed. Assange will receive a > trial-by-jury in Alexandria, Virginia – the notorious «Espionage Court» > where the U.S. tries all national security cases. The choice of location is > not by coincidence, because the jury members must be chosen in proportion to > the local population, and 85 percent of Alexandria residents work in the > national security community – at the CIA, the NSA, the Defense Department > and the State Department. When people are tried for harming national > security in front of a jury like that, the verdict is clear from the very > beginning. The cases are always tried in front of the same judge behind > closed doors and on the strength of classified evidence. Nobody has ever > been acquitted there in a case like that. The result being that most > defendants reach a settlement, in which they admit to partial guilt so as to > receive a milder sentence.

<comment><USER11> That sounds interesting. Can you provide some links to more in-depth information about the use of Alexandria, Virginia and the skewed jury composition? I tried to Google a bit but so far was unable to find much more than just news snippets mentioning a few high profile intelligence related trials that reference said court. Am I just unlucky?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sad day when torture by the west of a journalist goes uncondemned. This guy is a hero, he has committed no crime other than honest reporting.

<comment><USER13> >This guy is a hero, he has committed no crime other than honest reporting.

Just because you like his reporting doesn't mean he's innocent of any crimes he's been accused of, especially not when those crimes are unrelated to his reporting.

That's like saying Kobe Bryant was innocent of sexual assault just because he was a great basketball player. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_cas...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant_sexual_assault_case)

<comment><USER14> The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture interviewed for the article makes a pretty convincing picture that Assange was unlikely guilty of any of the crimes he's been accused of. He also makes it quite clear that he didn't think of himself to be above the law, having tried to submit himself to the justice system on several occasions.

<comment><USER15> > The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture interviewed for the article makes a > pretty convincing picture that Assange was unlikely guilty of any of the > crimes he's been accused of.

Then if he's not guilty, let it be shown so at trial, and not at the say of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

<comment><USER16> That's not how it works. Do we need to establish a trial before we can show your innocence in this case too?

If he is guilty, then let it be shown so at trial. In absence of such a trial, he is not guilty. But such a trial will not happen, and was probably never intended to happen. Yet it shows how effective the media campaign against him has been:

 _The Swedish state spent almost a decade intentionally presenting Julian Assange to the public as a sex offender. Then, they suddenly abandoned the case against him on the strength of the same argument that the first Stockholm prosecutor used in 2010, when she initially suspended the investigation after just five days_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Four democratic countries joined forces – the U.S., Ecuador, Sweden and the UK – to leverage their power to portray one man as a monster so that he could later be burned at the stake without any outcry. The case is a huge scandal and represents the failure of Western rule of law. If Julian Assange is convicted, it will be a death sentence for freedom of the press._

</comment><comment><USER17> You know, every time I read something on Assange, I see all of these hot takes based on incorrect information and part of me is starting to think that one should have to take some kind of quiz on the actual facts of the case and receive a passing grade before commenting.

The other part of me is kind of impressed on the hatchet job done on his reputation that has led to such conveniently incorrect "knowledge" of the situation.

<comment><USER18> I think you have to give an example now.

<comment><USER19> One clear example is the idea that Assange tried to evade the Swedish justice system in the rape case. This is taken for granted by many people. But it turns out to be totally false—unless Melzer is lying about the documentation that he's seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "...if investigative journalism is classified as espionage and can be incriminated around the world, then censorship and tyranny will follow. A murderous system is being created before our very eyes. War crimes and torture are not being prosecuted. YouTube videos are circulating in which American soldiers brag about driving Iraqi women to suicide with systematic rape. Nobody is investigating it. At the same time, a person who exposes such things is being threatened with 175 years in prison. For an entire decade, he has been inundated with accusations that cannot be proven and are breaking him. And nobody is being held accountable. Nobody is taking responsibility. It marks an erosion of the social contract. We give countries power and delegate it to governments – but in return, they must be held accountable for how they exercise that power. If we don't demand that they be held accountable, we will lose our rights sooner or later. Humans are not democratic by their nature. Power corrupts if it is not monitored. Corruption is the result if we do not insist that power be monitored."

<comment><USER21> > YouTube videos are circulating in which American soldiers brag about driving > Iraqi women to suicide with systematic rape.

Is there a citation for this? All I could find was allegations of sexual assault in the US military (which is also completely horrendous), but no videos on YouTube.

<comment><USER22> There are many, just a Google search away from "Iraq rape us military".

Here is one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmudiyah_rape_and_killings)

<comment><USER18> This case was prosecuted, with convictions; but Melzer says "Nobody is investigating it.".

I am not saying he is wrong, but he seems to be in the habit of casting aspersions without giving examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Shameful. A damning verdict on the state of due process! If you work in the exposed institutions, please help restore legitimacy by aiding discovery in any way you can.

Thank you Nils Melzer for investigating the persecution of Julian Assange, a messenger being murdered. We owe our freedom to people who dare speak truth in the face of torture.

<comment><USER24> Well put.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> German version: [https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-spricht- ueber...](https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-spricht-ueber- wikileaks-gruender-julian-assange)

</comment><comment><USER26> It's weird that the UN special rapporteur considers the process in a large, high-visibility, international legal case to be torture. His explanation of the torture Assange has suffered basically sems to sum up to massive anxiety brought about by the uncertainty of the process. That makes sense (the process is ill-defined and where the law draws lines here is up for debate), but by that definition isn't every prisoner awaiting their day in court on serious charges being "tortured?"

<comment><USER27> >On top of that come the surveillance measures, the insults, the indignities and the attacks by politicians from these countries, up to and including death threats. This constant abuse of state power has triggered serious stress and anxiety in Assange and has resulted in measurable cognitive and neurological harm.

>Why is a man who is neither dangerous nor violent held in solitary confinement for several months when UN standards legally prohibit solitary confinement for periods extending beyond 15 days?

It is much more than 'uncertainty of the process'. Every prisoner awaiting their day in court is not held in solitary confinement for months.

<comment><USER26> The death threats from politicians are individual American Congesspeople, who have no more power to act on that threat than the average American citizen. It's a threat that's worth taking about as seriously as any random online post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This Melzer guy is doing journalism no favor by spinning narratives of malicious prosecution by Sweden by taking things out of context and without any evidence.

Also, he seems to be wrong about "manipulation of evidence" by Swedish police: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204121)

<comment><USER28> > Also, he seems to be wrong about "manipulation of evidence" by Swedish > police: > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204121)

If you trust claims of a more or less random person writing a comment on this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is really hard at this point to come away from reading anything about Assange or Snowden at this point and not feel you are being manipulated in some way or another. None of the agencies which are involved are beyond suspect, nor are Assange or Snowden without major faults/ issues.

About the only really clear winner in this whole disaster is Russia. Regardless of how this all plays out and what people believe, the US looks like shit here (to a large extent rightfully) and they walked away with piled of top secret and confidential US information.

This is perhaps the greatest espionage victory since WWII and it was largely self-inflicted.

<comment><USER30> Or, you know, we could have just _not_ murdered lots of innocent people...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It is really absurd how quickly rational comments on this thread that do not support the "Assange and everybody who supports him is an infallible saint and all the world's judicial systems, governments and press are in league to get them" narrative get downvoted to the bottom.

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204566) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204121](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204121) , for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> nsajko, I do see you're getting downvoted pretty bad. I'm sorry to see it.

I think that it may be because your posts don't address the specific points made in the article, and in fact repeat insinuations that the Rapporteur specifically addresses and debunks.

For instance, you say _... Assange is not above the law, or common decency, just because of founding Wikileaks..._

Literally no one said that, and no one reasonable believes that. That's not what this is about. The article makes the case that Assange is not guilty of _anything_ under Swedish law. If you were to say, rather, "Despite what the Rapporteur says, Assange is likely guilty because..." and then lay out an excellent case why he is indeed, you would get up-voted, not downvoted.

But instead, your posts come off like you just have an ax to grind against Assange and people who support him. It comes off like you're dismissing the entire concern as invalid "because Assange is not above the law".

The people here are smart, engineer-types. They're going to look at evidence and make up their own minds.

My 2¢ Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> >Assange who is being persecuted. Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture.

And then

>In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself

This is one of the reasons I don't trust this rapporteur, because he seems to make those claims interchangeably when they very clearly aren't the same thing. Can you show signs of psychological torture without someone actually torturing you? Yes. So either make the real claim - that someone has been torturing him and explain why. Or make the PR claim - that he has shown symptoms of psychological torture. But don't swing back and forth between two very different things.

The guy literally repeats thoroughly debunked tropes from Assange's defence.

>Why would a person be subject to nine years of a preliminary investigation for rape without charges ever having been filed?

Because the person they were investigating left the country and then put up one of the most extensive appeals against extradition in history _and then_ fled to an embassy. If Assange had complied with the extradition those charges would have been filed when he returned to Sweden within months of the investigation being opened.

You know, you can't have it both ways, you can't claim it's terrible it's been going on so long for a process that was deliberately dragged out.

<comment><USER32> Did you read the article? Because it looks like you didn't.

> Because the person they were investigating left the country and then put up > one of the most extensive appeals against extradition in history and then > fled to an embassy.

No, he didn't. He asked not to be extradited to a foreign country where there is a risk his human rights will not be respected - which is standard international practice. He gave several dates where we would be available for questioning. __He turned himself up to the police __for questioning. All of those were denied to him.

<comment><USER31> Firstly, you're literally talking about the contention of his legal appeal that I mentioned. Secondly, most extradition appeals don't go to the High court, let alone the supreme court - which is why I mentioned that he literally had one of the most extensive appeals in history.

I also find it hilariously comical to see the absurd level of legal recourse Assange was afforded whilst people claimed that he is having his human rights violated. Somehow we're now in a world where someone shouldn't be extradited to _Sweden_ from the UK because they're going to have their human rights violated. I'd love to hear the exact details of how exactly his rights would be violated, but frankly I think it's going to be more Gish galloping.

<comment><USER33> From the article:

>Now the supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W.

>On the basis of the revised statement from S.W., an appeal was filed against the public prosecutor's attempt to suspend the investigation, and on Sept. 2, 2010, the rape proceedings were resumed. A legal representative by the name of Claes Borgström was appointed to the two women at public cost. The man was a law firm partner to the previous justice minister, Thomas Bodström, under whose supervision Swedish security personnel had seized two men who the U.S. found suspicious in the middle of Stockholm. The men were seized without any kind of legal proceedings and then handed over to the CIA, who proceeded to torture them.

This may be how his right could be violated in Sweden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some older articles: [https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...](https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24665)

[https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/22/nils_melzer_julian_a...](https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/22/nils_melzer_julian_assange)

I am sad that US is trying prosecute Assange for espionage, but the attacks from other sides on the Swedish prosecutors who tried to prosecute Assange seem just as bad. Assange is not above the law, or common decency, just because of founding Wikileaks. The implications of that for justice and prosecutors worldwide are scary.

Also, I think that it really would have been better for him and Wikileaks to just submit to Swedish investigation, especially if he is really innocent regarding sexual offences and after he already got publicity on that front.

<comment><USER16> No, the attacks on the Swedish prosecutors are fully warranted. He submitted to Swedish investigation multiple times. From the article:

 _In this case, things are constantly happening that shouldn't actually be possible unless you look at them from a different angle._

 _We have to stop believing that there was really an interest in leading an investigation into a sexual offense_

 _Assange learned about the rape allegations from the press. He established contact with the police so he could make a statement. Despite the scandal having reached the public, he was only allowed to do so nine days later [..] Assange appeared at the police station to make a statement. [..] At the beginning of the conversation, Assange said he was ready to make a statement, but added that he didn't want to read about his statement again in the press. [..] But that same evening, everything was in the newspapers again. It could only have come from the authorities because nobody else was present during his questioning. The intention was very clearly that of besmirching his name._

 _That is a further indication that Sweden was never interested in finding the truth. [..] Swedish officials can travel to the UK, or vice versa, to conduct interrogations or that such questioning can take place via video link. During the period of time in question, such questioning between Sweden and England took place in 44 other cases. It was only in Julian Assange's case that Sweden insisted that it was essential for him to appear in person._

 _Assange's lawyers petitioned Sweden's highest court to force public prosecutors to either finally press charges or suspend the case. When the Swedes told the UK that they may be forced to abandon the case, the British wrote back, worriedly: «Don't you dare get cold feet!!»_

Keep in mind, this is the UN's special rapporteur on torture, not some random opinion. Further on in the article:

 _When a country like Sweden declines to answer questions submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, it shows that the government is aware of the illegality of its behavior and wants to take no responsibility for its behavior_

<comment><USER18> So the prosecutor's and the police opinion are just "some random opinions"?

Melzer actually gives us absolutely no reason to think that any evidence were forged, assuming one is not going to just take his word for it.

Imagine someone else was sought by Sweden for multiple counts of sexual offence on different women, and then he (and his team of lawyers) used the extradition process to wait for the statute of limitations to pass so he would dodge even an investigation of the accusations.

> During the period of time in question, such questioning between Sweden and > England took place in 44 other cases. It was only in Julian Assange's case > that Sweden insisted that it was essential for him to appear in person.

This "smells" bad, but really even that (without elaboration) does not excuse the attacks on the Swedish justice system. I would like for someone from the Swedish prosecutors' side to explain that, though. I think there very well could be a reason for video-linked questioning to be appropriate in 44 cases, but not in Assange's.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assange_v_Swedish_Prosecution_Authority)

[https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian- assange...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2010/dec/17/julian-assange- sweden)

EDIT: Replying to children: The interview makes a narrative by presenting things out of context, but what they are doing is actually quite inappropriate in the case of the sexual assault allegations. Some examples:

* They present the potential victims as unwilling regarding charging Assange with rape. The first problem with this is that it implies that rape is a civil matter, when (as is well known) it is in fact a crime. Thus the potential victims are only relevant as witnesses, they would not be parties to the case except as witnesses (and maybe they could get some damages). The second problem is that the two women were in fact quite interested in getting Assange prosecuted: they got legal representation, and prevented the prosecutors from dropping the investigation.

* I do not think that it is necessarily suspicious that no DNA could be recovered from the condom. Especially in the context of the allegation, with Assange allegedly breaking the condom on purpose.

<comment><USER16> > Melzer actually gives us absolutely no reason to think that any evidence > were forged

What makes you think that there was any evidence at all, to begin with?

 _I can only point to the order of events: A woman walks into a police station. She doesn't want to file a complaint but wants to demand an HIV test [from Assange]. The police then decide that this could be a case of rape and a matter for public prosecutors. The woman refuses to go along with that version of events and then goes home and writes a friend that it wasn't her intention, but the police want to «get their hands on» Assange. Two hours later, the case is in the newspaper. As we know today, public prosecutors leaked it to the press – and they did so without even inviting Assange to make a statement. And the second woman, who had allegedly been raped according to the Aug. 20 headline, was only questioned on Aug. 21._

 _Not a single trace of DNA from Assange or A. A. could be detected in the condom that was submitted as evidence._

> I would like for someone from the Swedish prosecutors' side to explain that, > though.

Yes, the UN special rapporteur wanted that too. He was ignored. What makes you think you'll fare better?

<comment><USER34> > Not a single trace of DNA from Assange or A. A. could be detected in the > condom that was submitted as evidence.

Uh, is it the condom that Assange is accused of not actually using that Melzer is talking about?

<comment><USER35> no, it is not. you are mixing up the two cases, one were there was no condom indeed with S.W., and the other case with the other woman A.A. where the condom was allegedly damaged.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to read HN? Where's expand/collapse:conversations? Thumbs up/down:voting? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Collapse a conversation by clicking on the [+] on the right of the comment.

Click on the arrow on the left of the comment to upvote it.

There is a minimum user karma necessary before a downvote arrow appears below the upvote arrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that's embarrassing. I always thought what you've described as the collapse feature to be the downvote. Many thanks

<comment><USER2> If that's the most embarrassing thing you ever write on Hacker News, you're doing better than me.</comment></comment></comment>


NSO, Israel's billion-dollar spyware giant - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/19/1006458/nso-spyware-controversy-pegasus-human-rights <comment><USER2> It's amazing how profitable it is to sell spyware to countries that have repeatedly demonstrated a disdain for basic human rights.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just disable Javascript to bypass the paywall ;)</comment>


NessDB:a fast Key/Value Database Storage Engine - <AUTHOR>

nessDB's Features: * Bloom filters for record presence detection * Level-LRU for hot data caching,improve Random-Read * Distributable B+Tree-Structured-Indexes * Simple interface,very easy to use and high-performance * Free and open source
Small but perfectly formed!
Source code is here:
http://github.com/shuttler/nessDB <comment><USER2> Benchmark results are here:<http://github.com/shuttler/nessDB/blob/v1.7/BENCHMARK> :)

<comment><USER2> Oracle NoSQL Database will be released in mid- October,[http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/overview/...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/nosqldb/overview/index.html)

<comment><USER3> Yes,He has a big killing device:Berkeley DB</comment></comment></comment>


Developing the Applist User Interface - <AUTHOR> http://taylor.fausak.me/2011/11/03/developing-the-applist-user-interface/

<comment><USER2> Interesting note about APPlist is that it's a feature that has been requested by some of Famigo's users. Parents said that they need an easier way to share apps.

Can anyone recommend an easier way?

(of note, this is a problem that was mentioned and discussed by Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/10/occupyappstore.html>)</comment>


Almost Genius: Refrigerator Saves Energy, by Clinging to Walls... Outside - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662202/almost-genius-refrigerator-saves-energy-by-clinging-to-walls-outside

<comment><USER2> Wow, _that's_ gimmicky. Let me guess how this started...

 _Designer:_ How can we save energy by redesigning the fridge?

 _Engineer:_ Well, you could save a lot of energy if the expansion coil weren't warming up your air-conditioned interior. We could run piping from the fridge to a box outside, like a window-unit air conditioner.

 _Designer:_ No one is going to run pipes out of their kitchen... Oh! Lets put the _whole fridge_ outside! No ugly pipes, and then it would be in the _sun_! Solar power!

 _Engineer:_ ... Do you even know how much energy a fridge uses compared to cheap flexible solar paneling? How are we going to insulate it from the 95 deg direct sun in the summer? How do we keep seals from freezing in the winter? What about all the energy you lose every time you _open a window_ from a climate controlled room to the outside?

 _Designer:_ And LED's!

 _Engineer:_ ...

 _Designer:_ It's like every unit sold is an _advertisement for us_!

 _Engineer:_ I need a beer and an escape slide.

<comment><USER3> _Designer:_ Great idea! You could grab it on your way out!

<comment><USER4> did the both of you coordinate this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems like the worst way to use the outside temperature to your advantage. They didn't even mention that it would have to be heated in the winter unless you wanted your milk to freeze solid. It's probably a lot more practical to just keep your fridge indoors and hook it up to a heat pump outside.

<comment><USER6> I use outdoors as a fridge/freezer in the winter. It works very well though you have to keep animals away.

<comment><USER7> I understand that the University of Alaska has rules against hanging meat out dorm room windows.

<comment><USER3> I dunno... it might serve as a sacrificial offering to the Seniors to keep them from eating the Freshmen. You'd think they'd be in favor of that.

 _Unless_... they're _using_ the Seniors to improve the gene pool of the Freshman...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reusing natural heat/cold should really be more common... Free energy. I remember seeing designs for a shower whose drainpipe wrapped around the cold water pipe. The heat transfer through the pe between the two made for a 30ish percent energy reduction.

<comment><USER9> This is a very good idea -- one can increase the heat exchange quick dramatically, actually. This works also for washing machines, driers, and dishwashers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> External? Hell no. I don't want to clean bird-poop off my fridge. Ick.

Wall mounted, mostly-vertical arrangement for a small fridge? I like. But it needs to fit four things reliably to be considered by most people: gallon milk jugs, 2 Liter bottles, 12-packs of cans, and 6-packs of bottles. Were it a freezer, I'd add a medium-large pizza box to the list.

(above list not mean to imply that's all people use, just that they're standard shapes / sizes of _many_ things people put in their fridges. So much so that fridges and these items are _designed_ to fit each other with narrow tolerances.)</comment>


Appleseed – open-source physically-based rendering engine - <AUTHOR> http://appleseedhq.net/ <comment><USER2> Hello, founder of appleseed here!

Being the top story on Hacker News tonight was completely unexpected, but it's a good surprise and definitely appreciated publicity!

appleseed has been in active development since june of 2009. It predates a number of other open source renderers by quite a few years, including Cycles (another fantastic project!).

I'm a production rendering engineer (e-on software, mental images, NVIDIA, Jupiter Jazz...). I've started this project out of personal interest for rendering, and as a platform for learning (there's always tons of new stuff to learn), research and experiments. All other team members are professionals currently working in the industry.

appleseed is one of the few open source renderers designed for production rendering and targeted at animation and VFX. In addition to fully programmable shading via OpenShadingLanguage, strong support for motion blur and many other specific features, it supports accurate spectral rendering, which is quite a unique combination.

We still have a ton of work ahead to make it a truly competitive renderer but we're making regular progress: we're improving the core renderer every day, and lately we've been putting massive efforts in improving our integration with DCC apps and in achieving a comfortable workflow for artists. Loads left to do !

Let me finally add that I'm blessed to work with such a great team. Top quality work, persistently. We're a small but welcoming community, and contributions are most welcome!

Feel free to ask me anything!

<comment><USER3> I'm not in the industry, but I would like to say that I am highly encouraged by the way you described your offering.

You express a level of care, consideration, and diplomacy that is sadly lacking just about everywhere.

The product itself looks amazing; I love seeing this high bar for open source.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the lovely words!

We certainly do put a lot of care and efforts into producing a high quality software product that is not only open source with a liberal license (MIT) but which is also developed in the open (we're happy to invite anyone to our Slack team at [https://appleseedhq.slack.com](https://appleseedhq.slack.com) where all development discussions and decisions take place).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 2015 Interview with the lead developer: [http://blenderdiplom.com/en/interviews/607-interview- francoi...](http://blenderdiplom.com/en/interviews/607-interview-francois- beaune-on-appleseed-renderer.html)

Seems like it's in around the same place, although the plugins are getting better and the renderer is starting to support complex scene features (not quite there yet).

Overall though there are 100's of ray-tracers and scene renderers (seemingly all in C++), so it's not clear if it has any compelling advantages.

<comment><USER5> I think the most powerful feature of C++ is templating. Templating makes it very easy to write high-performance math code (no dynamic function calls, everything unrolled by the compiler...).

Just have a look at the state of the art math libraries in rust and compare it to something like Eigen or Cgal. The C++ code is way more flexible and expressive than the rust code. If you don't believe me, check how the rust libraries handle matrix implementations. Often you will find specialized implementations of 1x1 to 4x4 matrices but no generic n-dimensional matrix code.

<comment><USER6> This will get better once we have type level integers. It's just not there yet. You're totally right that it's a weak point st the moment.

<comment><USER5> Cool, I think rust needs some time to mature.

I'm currently looking for a rust guide that shows me some programming patterns.

For example:

\- How to best implement an observer pattern

\- Best practices for vector code

\- Best practices for tree implementations and how to implement a lambda on top of it.

I'm interested in small snippets so that I can get some initial productive code and progress from there.

<comment><USER6> I agree that more docs on this kind of thing will be good, but I think going about it this way might be harder than you'd expect. Applying existing patterns and writing data structures is actually harder in Rust than in many other languages, and people that try to start with it often get stuck. Rust's own patterns and best practices are still kinda evolving, hence your maturity comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here are some render comparisons for the curious: [http://appleseedhq.net/stuff/renderers- comparison/index.html](http://appleseedhq.net/stuff/renderers- comparison/index.html)

<comment><USER8> How am I supposed to compare these three on the top as a non-expert in this area? The middle one looks noisier than the other two. I notice the one on the left has darker color in dresser which may be an advantage of correct, color handing but might be incorrect with one on right being brighter due to the correct handing of window's light on it. And what's up with the graininess of all of them?

Just a few things that popped into my mind looking at them. Wouldn't mind learning a little more in objectively evaluating the renderers.

<comment><USER7> The color differences are from different "tone mapping" implementations after the render is stopped and can be ignored.

The point of that page is to evaluate renderer correctness (think of them as visual unit tests), not to really compare "which one looks better". For example, some of the images show appleseed with hard shadows, when they should be soft.

If you want to know which one is "right", Mitsuba is the one to look at as it's generally the most correct.

The graininess comes from not letting the machine renderer longer—the longer it goes, the less grainy it will be. That said, all of these renderers employ "tricks" to reduce the graininess that can make it practically impossible to remove whatever graininess slips through.

<comment><USER9> You can't say any of these is "more correct" from looking at the renders. Those hard shadows stem from a difference in light size, which is almost certainly a problem with the scene parameters being treated differently. The light size may have been "lost in translation", turned to 0, creating a perfectly sharp shadow.

<comment><USER2> One limitation of appleseed today is that our physically-based sun model is a purely directional light, not a far away disk with a finite radius. This explains the hard shadows on some of the scenes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hierarchical instancing YEAAHHH!!!!

Thanks guys; I no longer need to go write my own path tracer.

(I say this because I really like the idea of things like Chunky (the pathtracer for Minecraft), but I'd rather be able to simply export data to a more mature, full-featured renderer. Hierarchical instancing means you can do things like make bricks out of grains of sand, make brick blocks out of bricks, etc, without /necessarily/ blowing your memory budget when rendering a large map.)

</comment><comment><USER11> If you like this you also might like Luxrender. Also an open source physically based render engine: [http://www.luxrender.net/](http://www.luxrender.net/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks really beautiful. The fact that it's open source adds to that beauty. I'm not even interested in physically based rendering and it makes me want to play with it.

<comment><USER13> If you want to learn about state of the art rendering, check out pbrt.org. Even without the book, the source code contains a wealth of information and was written for teaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you're into graphics pipelines, here's a few interesting videos of Gaffer node networks rendering with Appleseed: [http://www.gafferhq.org/demos/](http://www.gafferhq.org/demos/)

<comment><USER15> how does gaffer compare to BMD Fusion? Thanks!

BTW it would be really great if the webmaster of gafferhq.org considered to add some contrast to the parts of the website that should be read by visitors.

(aka [http://contrastrebellion.com/](http://contrastrebellion.com/) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are quite a few interesting options for 3D, what is the best thing for 2D? Fast open source 2d rendering engine? Is Skia pretty much the only option?

<comment><USER17> I've seen Cairo and Antigrain used in the wild for 2D rendering, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's all cool and awesome, but why put all those resources into new renderer, when one could contribute to Blender and such, which are way more mature?

<comment><USER19> Two points:

Blender is not a renderer, it's a modelling and animation program with a built-in renderer, Cycles. But it can connect to other renderers, too.

Cycles is not that old. It replaced Blender's prior renderer just a few years ago.

<comment><USER14> Appleseed has also been under active development for 7+ years; so not that young, especially considering that physically-based renders really only started coming into full production use 3-4 years ago. There are still many visual effects studios using approximation-based setups today, so I'd say there's lots of room for "new renderers" to carve their niche.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone Explain Like I'm Five: "Physically-based rendering"? As opposed to...?

<comment><USER21> Non-physically based rendering :)

Kidding aside, as I understand it (I'm certainly no expert), the terms most often used are biased versus unbiased rendering, were biased has artificial limitations, while unbiased employs 'real world' calculations.

So why use biased renderers ?

Well they can typically create a very good result using much less time compared to a unbiased renderer, on the other hand they typically also require that you mess around with a lot of knobs in order to get good results, meanwhile with a unbiased renderer you can just set up a 'real world' scene and it will render as such (albeit more slowly).

My guess is that Renderman is the most widely used biased renderer today, with Arnold being the most used unbiased.

<comment><USER22> That's not really what 'biased' and 'unbiased' mean - unfortunately the terms have been miss-used quite a bit, and are actually open to interpretation to a degree anyway.

You can have biased physically-based rendering and you can have unbiased 'not quite physically-based' rendering - in the latter case for example, it's possible to render direct lighting only (so no secondary bounces, or global illumination), which while obviously not the correct real result in physical terms, to the extent that you're evaluating direct lighting only the result is technically unbiased in terms of light transport. Similarly, it's possibly to have a spectral renderer (which in theory should be more accurate) which is biased, and a non-spectral renderer (RGB only) which is unbiased.

Biased can mean things like taking short-cuts or approximations - e.g. irradiance caches for diffuse results, or caching occlusion in order to slightly bias which light to sample per vertex in order to sample lights more efficiently: Both of these biased techniques generally give faster less noisy renders, but it's possible you might not notice they are biased in terms of the effect they have on the render - it all depends on the scene, materials and the lighting. For simple scenes you probably won't notice, for more complex scenes with nested medium materials with glossy/pure specular responses or with refractive caustics, it's very likely you will notice the effects biased rendering has compared to unbiased rendering.

Renderman RIS can be set up to be unbiased (but with default settings - radiance clamps) it's not. Similarly Arnold's default settings of having a light threshold (under which it won't sample a light) is also biased, but obviously this setting can be changed. Arnold can also cache diffuse contributions on hair, which is also biased.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the correction!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> what happened with the Ramen compositor?

</comment><comment><USER23> No word on GPU acceleration?

</comment><comment><USER24> The name clashes with a well known anime movie, which also uses CGI. Maybe change the name of this engine?

<comment><USER2> Think of it has a homage! :)

<comment><USER2> ( _as_ a homage, sorry)</comment></comment></comment>


Referral+: Refer candidates to your ex-employers and earn up to $5,000 - <AUTHOR> https://referralplus.me/ <comment><USER2> Great concept and economics. Since ex-employees are also likely shareholders to the company(not necessarily to the current employer), they also have the right incentives. Though not sure how it can verify someone actually worked at a company before.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ex-employees will be verified by their Linkedin profile and their ex- employers' database.</comment></comment>


How 13 programming languages got their names - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/slideshow/145264/how-13-programming-languages-got-their-names.html#slide1

<comment><USER2> Interesting title, too bad I've to click "next" fifteen times; lost interest; skip.</comment>


Federal Reserve predicts unemployment will fall to 9.3 percent by end of 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/10/fed-forecasts-economy/ <comment><USER2> This feels like a moving target given the _giant_ increase in labor force non- participation.</comment>


Google Tells ITC Judge: Microsoft Revealed Our Secret Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://paidcontent.org/article/419-google-tells-itc-judge-microsoft-revealed-our-secret-source-code/ <comment><USER2> Hmm, it seems to be more about objecting to the specific expert witness they're using:

"In April, Microsoft sent Google a subpoena asking for a variety of information, including confidential source code.... In its motion for sanctions, Google says it should have had a chance to review the credentials of the expert in question, Dr. Robert Stevenson, and it should have had a chance to object. The motion notes that Stevenson has done consulting work for Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), "both direct competitors of Google." Now Google wants the ITC judge overseeing the Microsoft v. Motorola case to stop Stevenson from testifying."

<comment><USER3> The real issue is that Google has the right to review the experts that look at Google confidential code. MS is supposed to disclose these efforts to Google. MS disclosed this expert to Motorola, but not to Google, hence the problem.

From what I can tell Google has a good case on this, but it's far less controversial than the title would lead one to believe. MS will probably have to get a new expert and light smack on the hand for not following protocol. These types of things happen all the time in court cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I believe in situations like this that it's customary to give the code to be evaluated to an outside expert in order to protect both parties from the risk of theft of intellectual property. Is Google's main objection that they would have wanted to approve of the expert witness first? That seems unusual.

(Disclaimer 1: IANAL) (Disclaimer 2: I work for Microsoft, but I know nothing about this matter.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wait...Google objects to the outside expert Microsoft hired to look at the source code because he's worked for Microsoft before on legal cases?

Surely Google doesn't expect that every time a company needs an outside expert to look at source code (which they have to hire an outside expert for because they are not allowed to see it themselves) they need to find a new expert?

<comment><USER6> If the outside expert is supposed to be an _outside_ expert, then there needs to be a way for Google to object to the expert on the grounds that they're not really that independent.</comment></comment>