Histography – Timeline of History - <AUTHOR> http://histography.io <comment><USER2> It's a brilliant concept, and a timeline is a great way to be able to get a better understanding of disparate events.

And while the UI is beautiful, and beautifully animated, I'd argue that it could use a bit of improvement, it's very difficult to get any sense of what is going on in any timeline, it likes to pull up some major events which is nice, but they have no visual relation or range, and are too few are far between, then I'm just left to search through all the dots on the page for anything interesting. The filters are great, but when one is selected I feel that nothing really comes from it.

But I do really like the effort to provide something of use to explore history. I think some very minor improvements could go a very long way. My primary suggestions would be to have a more robust filtering mechanism, perhaps even arbitrary entry based, and then to use the vertical axis in some sort of capacity, perhaps location based?

</comment><comment><USER3> > Sorry! We are currently not supporting your browser

"Works best with Internet Explorer"?

I thought sane web developers were well past that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't support Firefox for those wondering.

<comment><USER5> I smell WebKit-only APIs.

<comment><USER6> Which I think is OK in this case. It's a work of art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Beautiful.

If you zoom at the last 100 years, the point form something that looks like a voice recording. I wonder what the history is telling us?

\----

Here's a thing I always wanted to see but am too busy to do myself: an explorable map of the world with different overlays you could toggle and a separate temporal scrollbar. Something I could use to see e.g. how the borders changed over time by dragging the scrollbar (and that would be accurate - e.g. took into account that nation-states are a recent invention and borders had a different meaning in e.g. medieval times). Or follow the battles of World War II all over the world. Basically, interactively explorable history of humanity.

\----

Here's another, simpler idea, of something that I really would like to get around doing eventually, but maybe someone will beat me to it. There is a power metal band, Sabaton, that is known for writing historically-accurate songs about historical military conflicts[0]. I would love to see all conflicts referred by them in their music plotted on a map, in a way that would let you select one and listen to the song[0], with lyrics displayed on- screen, along with additional historical information about a particular battle/conflict. Explorable chronologically.

[0] - They've covered World War II and later conflicts pretty well, but also did songs on WWI, earlier wars and particularly they had a whole album concerned with the Thirty Years' War and the history of Sweden. The angle varies between songs and albums - sometimes it's about the tragedy of war, other times it's about individual acts of heroism. They often cover aspects not mentioned in schools during history lessons.

[1] - Since you can find good fan-made music videos portraying the events described in the song you could embed them, but the best would be to get the band itself on board and prepare some professional-quality videos. That's not needed for the MVP though.

<comment><USER2> > Here's a thing I always wanted to see but am too busy to do myself: an > explorable map of the world with different overlays you could toggle and a > separate temporal scrollbar. Something I could use to see e.g. how the > borders changed over time by dragging the scrollbar (and that would be > accurate - e.g. took into account that nation-states are a recent invention > and borders had a different meaning in e.g. medieval times). Or follow the > battles of World War II all over the world. Basically, interactively > explorable history of humanity.

I too have been wanting something like this for a very long time... I even have a couple of very early prototypes lying around.

<comment><USER8> I want this for wikipedia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome work. This may be a college project, but if everybody accomplished this much in life, the world would be a better place.

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow..incredible. Thanks. Like a vastly more detailed [http://www.amazon.com/The-Timetables-History-Horizontal- Link...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Timetables-History-Horizontal- Linkage/dp/0743270037/) \-- more simultaneous dimensions, esp. geo dimensions, would also be useful.

</comment><comment><USER11> Stunningly beautiful. Sure, the UI is quite complicated and arguably not all that intuitive, but it's so fun to play with it hardly matters (though "related events" disappearing once you move your mouse is a bit annoying).

Can anyone figure out the significance of the vertical axis, ie. why is one event in a given year higher than another?

</comment><comment><USER12> Except for the big bang bullshit, very beautiful. The effects of our rampage against the planet in the disaster graph is so nicely visible. Goodby humanity, you had a chance but you blow it...

</comment><comment><USER13> This is really cool, I could spend hours here :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I love the UI, it looks great!

</comment><comment><USER15> Personal favorite: "The Invention of the Silicon".</comment>


Interesting Startup Idea: Photo Sharing (etc) for Couples... - <AUTHOR> http://www.cupcaking.us/

<comment><USER2> That is indeed an interesting idea. I'm not sure about this promise though: "YOU remain in control of them, so you never end up starring in your own sex tape scandal if a nasty breakup occurs."

I'm guessing most people would be uploading video from their hard drive or camera, as opposed to having the site capture it live via webcam, so that means that the media still resides somewhere besides the online site. I'm not sure people would actually delete their hard copy, and thus there'd still be a risk of a sex tape scandal.

<comment><USER3> Even without a hard copy, how would you be able to view the video but not download it? YouTube, Vimeo, etc. are all downloadable with a variety of Firefox plugins & desktop applications.

Let's say that you can solve that problem, perhaps there's a solution out there that I'm not aware of. You still have the ability to record it at the same quality it plays using CamStudio or any other kind of screen recording software.

Ok, so let's pretend you've managed to block any kind of downloading, any kind of screen recording program and any kind of site vulnerability. If I were the kind of person who wanted to download photos to start a scandal, I'd just take a picture of the screen with a digital camera. Sure, the resolution might suffer slightly but with a tripod and a little trial and error I bet I could get them pretty nice.

I like the idea of being in control of when they're deleted from the server or having a time limit, I just don't think it's possible to control where the content ends up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pretty big privacy risk, no matter what the website says.

</comment><comment><USER5> "YOU remain in control of them, so you never end up starring in your own sex tape scandal if a nasty breakup occurs." How so? If an image, video, text or audio of any kind, in any format reaches someone else's computer, THEY are now also in control of it if they really want to be, no matter how hard you try and protect it. What do you think the MPAA/RIAA fussing is all about?

</comment><comment><USER6> I could see these things getting subpoenoed for divorce hearings... (from the mistress' account of course). Interesting moral thought... I wonder if the creators of this site allow you to have share videos with more than one person?? AKA is it intended for couples (married or otherwise), or is it the next big swinger's tool?

</comment><comment><USER7> Does "cupcaking" have any special meaning?

<comment><USER8> <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cup+caking>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was here yesterday and got deleted.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't know that. Wonder why? The idea is maybe in poor taste. I would also be concerned about the security of the site... Also not sure what sort of market there is for it either.. I thought the idea was kind of out there and thus interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Someone forgot about the iPhone snapshot button. It does make photos harder to carelessly share though.

</comment><comment><USER11> So this could be summed up as "secure sexting"?</comment>


How the Great Truth Dawned - <AUTHOR> https://www.newcriterion.com/issues/2019/9/how-the-great-truth-dawned <comment><USER2> I am Russian, and I consider the author to be mostly right. Indeed, we hold our literature to be the most valued of all arts; there were many Russian painters, and musicians, and architects, but these classical novelists (and poets) will always have a special place in our hearts.

The French have probably the closest level of respect to their men and women of letters, but their ideal is an intellectual in general, not necessarily the novelist. For the Germans, their beacons of culture are their philosophers. For the Americans — their inventors and visionaries, nowhere else they have achieved so much respect and so many accolades. But for us, Russians, — our idols are indeed our novelists.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hadn't previously read much about Bolshevik ethics. Fascinating and also a bit terrifying. Ideology wholly unrestrained and completely ungrounded is unimaginable thing. Makes me want to read more Soviet history.

I must have had some prior vague sense of the importance of Russian literature and it's place in their culture (faint memories of struggling through Crime and Punishment in high school are coming back to me). But this article put it an entirely different light, which was quite interesting.

However, I did find it strange how the religious belief described in the article was not critically examined in any depth, and was instead simply dusted with this hue of great significance. The only caveat I noticed was the sentence describing how it didn't seem to matter which religious faith the individual had, just that they had some.

</comment><comment><USER4> > It is worth noting that Russia's most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for > literature, Svetlana Alexievich, also produced literary works that were > purely factual.

Alexievich won with "Secondhand Time"[0], which I absolutely loved. It is essentially a transcribed oral history, but composed in such a way so as to become literature. It is particularly admirable for the way in which it allows narratives which contradict each other to stand in adjacent chapters, which is jarring, but also very honest.

Please read it if you have the patience for hard reading and some deeply sad stories.

[0]: [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541184/secondhand-t...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/541184/secondhand- time-by-svetlana-alexievich/9780399588822/)

<comment><USER5> She is Belorussian not Russian by the way.

<comment><USER6> From the article:

>Alexievich echoed Korolenko by claiming three homelands: her mother's Ukraine, her father's Belarus, and—"Russia's great culture, without which I cannot imagine myself." By culture she meant, above all, literature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Tolstoi's "War and peace" is pure literature. It is factually incorrect all over the place, I don't know of anyone claiming otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER8> Solzhenitsyn's Ex‐Wife Says 'Gulag' Is 'Folklore':

[https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns- ex...](https://www.nytimes.com/1974/02/06/archives/solzhenitsyns-exwife-says- gulag-is-folklore.html)

<comment><USER9> That doesn't contradict the article. Literary truth is its own thing.

<comment><USER8> Sure, just weird that everyone is enamored of a "literary" truth at the expense of grown-up historical research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was really surprised that this article was written by a humanities professor. I understand he's trying to make a point, but the premises in the first paragraphs are indigestible.

> No Westerner would call such a work "literary"

Why? There are plenty of works such as this in western literature.

> Russians revere literature more than anyone else in the world.

Again, I feel this claim is a bit baseless. Let's see why he thinks that:

> When Tolstoy's novel Anna Karenina was being serialized, Dostoevsky, in a > review of its latest installment, opined that "at last the existence of the > Russian people has been justified." t is hard to imagine Frenchmen or > Englishmen, let alone Americans, even supposing that their existence > required justification; but if they did, they would surely not point to a > novel.

Well, this is the opinion of Dostoevsky, a writer. I'm sure similar hyperbolic comments were made by the french naturalists (Zola about Flaubert... ) or German idealists (about Goethe...)

Then the author proceeds to engage in other baseless generalizations about Russians' attitude to literature compared with other cultures.

I appreciate his insights on Russian literature in general and Solzhenitsyn vision in particular. But I do not understand why he needs to precede his text by such myopic comments.

</comment><comment><USER11> What a fantastic read. The sad truth is that all countries that have descended into authoritarianism, whatever their preferred political ideology, result in mass murder. Such pain and suffering caused by such misguided beliefs. Just let people be free! Stop controlling other people.

<comment><USER12> Sure, but can you even count the people killed under capitalism?

<comment><USER13> Please keep ideological tit-for-tats somewhere other than this site.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I will preface this comment by saying that I am sympathetic to the author's criticism of the Soviet system which he has inherited from Solzhenitsyn, but being sympathetic to the communist hypothesis myself, I feel like there are omissions in the article worth picking up on.

The article reads,

>The contrary view, held by ideologues and justice warriors generally, is that our group is good, and theirs is evil. "Evil people committing evil deeds": this is the sort of thinking behind notions like class conflict or the international Zionist conspiracy.

This is wrong, and a cursory investigation of Marx's late works would show that. Not only does the theory of class conflict not rest on the idea that capitalists are "evil people committing evil deeds", but it does not project Marx's "proletariat" as inherently virtuous. Marx, in fact, takes great pains to avoid this misinterpretation of his work; take for example the 1867 preface to the German edition of Capital[0]:

>To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose [i.e., seen through rose-tinted glasses]. But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class- relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.

It is a theory of society, not of some people who, somehow, are evil due to their economic position. Modern commentators on Marx argue that he does not argue for a socialist society on the basis of "justice" or what is "right" \- in fact, he does the opposite - his claim is that would be in the "best interests" of the working class to overcome this unintentionally constructed system. Would the author have compared Smith's invisible hand to people doing intentionally good deeds? I don't think it would - so it's a mystery why it feels the need to misrepresent Marx, especially given the fact you can read all of Marx's works online... for free.

Not so with the theory of the international Zionist conspiracy, which is a right-wing idea predicated on the "fact" of Zionists who are intentionally coordinating with each other for malicious purposes. Of course, the article omits Solzhenitsyn's anti-semitism from this discussion. It would be inconvenient to mention it, I suppose.

The article then reads,

>Mercy, kindness, compassion: these were all anti-Bolshevik emotions, and schoolchildren were taught to reject them. I know of no previous society where children were taught that compassion and mercy are vices.

As much as they may have been anti-Bolshevik emotions, they are also anti- capitalist emotions, and this is exemplified on a massive scale in modern society where even in developed ("first world") countries people starve and die because they cannot afford insulin. The compassion, in fact, only comes from people who aren't out to make a profit even if it means the misery of another.

Later,

>For a true materialist, Lenin maintained, there can be no Kantian categorical imperative to regard others only as ends, not as means. By the same token, the materialist does not acknowledge the supposed sanctity of human life.

The author is clearly unfamiliar with Marx's own theories of morality (which Sean Sayers elucidates in _Marxism and Human Nature_ [1]) and misunderstands the conflict between materialism and idealism in Marx's sense. The materialist argues that morality derives from actual social formations, the "tradition of all dead generations" \- this does not make the morality "invalid" or "wrong", but it is an acceptance of the scientific method as applied to the gaeneology of morals. One can be both a moral realist and a Marxist, since Marxism entails a material analysis of how things have developed in society. In the same way, one can be a moral realist and believe, with Kant's categorical imperative, that it is morally impermissible to lie at any time for any reason, which conflicts with many perspectives on what it is right for a Christian to do.

Then,

>They may have insisted that high moral ideals do not require belief in God, but when it came down to it, morals grounded in nothing but one's own conviction and reasoning, however cogent, proved woefully inadequate under experiential, rather than logical, pressure.

This is simply a re-statement of the old myth that when in mortal danger an atheist will also pray. It's not backed up by anything, but then again - nothing else in the article is either. The author used a pithily inaccurate characterization of class conflict (and failed to link it to the scientific aspect of historical materialism), argued that the core capitalist tenets of thrift and stinginess driving accumulation which are seen so essential to entrepeneurship today are not found in "any previous society", and then tried to reclaim the horrific actions of the Soviet state as being due to atheism while ignoring the fact that it is secularism that brings the tolerance the liberal author is so proud of in Western democracies.

[0] Available here: [https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p1.htm)

[1] [https://books.google.fr/books/about/Marxism_and_Human_Nature...](https://books.google.fr/books/about/Marxism_and_Human_Nature.html?id=Vnr2zjct2-kC&redir_esc=y)

<comment><USER15> > _This is wrong, and a cursory investigation of Marx 's late works would show > that._

The focus here is on Lenin and his progeny, particularly Stalin. Marx claimed the discovery of objective laws of reality through generous application of the Hegelian world-spirit concept[1]. The Bolsheviks expanded Marx's ideas.

The expansion was thus: the Party is the agent of the Proletariat. The liberation of Proletariat is the ultimate end of History. The laws of History dictate that this is so. But if there are objective laws of history, someone must explain what those laws are and act on them: this is the Party. And if the Party observes such laws, then the concept of democracy or debate _within_ the Party is nonsensical, so the Party must follow the doctrinal rulings of the Politburo. But it also follows that debate or democracy within the Politburo is _also_ nonsensical, therefore, only one leader may give meaning, purpose and weight to the objective laws of history.

Leninism laid the ideological rails that Stalin used to railroad Russia straight to hell. Marx's work was not sufficient, but it was necessary.

[1] There is a view that Marx's ideas were purely economical in nature. I don't think this holds up. He was a philosopher first and an economist second. The concept of alienation for example is not just about effort or property, it is a quasi-mystical notion of a fundamental schism of persons, from themselves and from each other.

<comment><USER16> Didn't Lenin advocate "freedom of discussion, unity of action" i.e. democratic centralism?

<comment><USER15> Lenin advocated a lot of things depending on the audience, but in tactical terms he was perfectly happy to advocate what we might today call terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This might be also because while our writers (I am not really sure about poets (Pushkin just does not seem to travel as well as Dostoyevsky, or Shakespear) from the 19th century on actually are "world class" so to speak, Russian painters, composers and architects up until early 1900s were really quite derivative and second rate. With all the complexes Russians tend to have aboutr being compared to Europe, or being considered (or not considered) a part of Europe, idolization of writers is quite understandable.

<comment><USER18> Well, there was certainly much more great writers at the same time, but composers like Rimsky-Korsakov or Borodin were first class by any measure... and those are two I could recall from the top of my head, with my very limited knowledge of 19th century Russian culture, I'm sure there's more...

<comment><USER19> Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky

<comment><USER18> totally, now I feel like an idiot for forgetting Tchaikovsky :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's so hard to read literary criticism with its deluge of questionable logic in every sentence. Whatever Russian word appears in the subtitle and was translated as "literary", how am I supposed to know how the semantics/implications compare between (then) Russian and (then) English? Obviously that is to miss the point of the essay. But my point is I never found out what the point of the essay was because literary criticism is such torture to read.</comment>


M.I.T. Taking Student Blogs to Nth Degree - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/02/education/02blogs.html?partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER2> > Internet Relay for real-time messaging

It seems like they have an IRC channel and the editor thinks it is something really fancy. Maybe we should have told more people about IRC at some point.

<comment><USER3> IRC was actually (almost) mainstream in Portugal as a way of meeting/hooking up with people online before MSN and Facebook took over the "meat market".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"... M.I.T. chooses its bloggers through a contest, in which applicants submit samples of their writing. 'The annual blogger selection is like the admissions office's own running of the bulls' ..."_

Which sort of sucks. Admissions choosing who is the best writer and meritocracy, don't go hand in hand.

<comment><USER5> I would not expect meritocracy from the admissions office of a selective American university. When it happens it is a side effect of a process that is more about fulfilling institutional imperatives, including flattering the admissions's office view of itself as an agent for social change.</comment></comment>


Reddit Is Down Following Routine Software Upgrade - <AUTHOR> http://www.redditstatus.com/incidents/902y2bfc3bq4 <comment><USER2> Reddit Admin's made this announcement a few weeks back:

> A few days ago, we talked about a few technological and process changes we > would be working on in order to improve your Reddit experience and ensure > access to timely information is available.

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0400SE...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:0400SEgkXj0J:https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4oedco/lets_all_have_a_town_hall_about_rall/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The tweet: [https://twitter.com/redditstatus/status/763864243015790592](https://twitter.com/redditstatus/status/763864243015790592)

Main Status Page: [http://www.redditstatus.com/](http://www.redditstatus.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it's back! [https://twitter.com/redditstatus/status/763887002462760960](https://twitter.com/redditstatus/status/763887002462760960)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a great week for the company -- it's the second major outage in as much time.

</comment><comment><USER4> It said an emergency outage. What went wrong?

</comment><comment><USER5> Got to rejig again to keep down the_donald</comment>


Show HN: Ind3xlite – Minimalistic Sqlite fulltext search wrapper - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/namibj/ind3xlite <comment><AUTHOR> This is a minimalistic (<120 LOC) commandline wrapper for the FTS5 fulltext search index module. I created it due to the lack of a simple, no-dependencies program that provides fast fulltextsearch over 100MB~1GB of text. A license suggestion would be very much appreciated. PR's are welcome.</comment>


The Vortex: Why Users Feel Trapped in Their Devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/device-vortex/ <comment><AUTHOR> do you still fill productive with your phone on the desk?</comment>


Ask HN: Can I get some advice on how I should handle this hosting situation? - <AUTHOR>

Okay, so I host an imageboard in America. My host made us clear out our image folder because someone spammed child porn in an attempt to get us shut down. I understood that he needed to protect his host, but now he wants us to censor topics and clear our topic database because someone sent a report in. I keep telling him that where the server is located, the first amendment applies (free speech) and that he can't censor text, but he doesn't want to listen. Does anyone have any legal advice on what I should do here? I know this may seem like a strange request, but I haven't gotten any sleep and I can't risk losing any more data.
The only reason I'm still hosting with this guy is because he tolerates the "chan" culture and I don't want to go around searching for a host only to find out that it was a waste of time.
Thanks in advance. I really do appreciate it. <comment><USER2> > I keep telling him that where the server is located, the first amendment > applies (free speech) and that he can't censor text, but he doesn't want to > listen.

The First Amendment states "Congress shall make no law..."

Is the US Congress (or even any part of the US government) your web host? If not, why would you expect the First Amendment to apply?

</comment><comment><USER3> You should leave them, chances are their margins are so slim they'll tell you to piss off anyway because it's not worth having to keep tabs on you especially if someone's complaining.

And check out www.nearlyfreespeech.net.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your host isn't bound by the first amendment unless it's a US government entity (which I find extremely unlikely). The US First Amendment restricts _government_ restrictions on speech, not private entities.

What you can do is register a DMCA claims agent (see <http://www.copyright.gov/onlinesp/> ). The DMCA provides a "safe harbor" for web sites. If you have a registered DMCA agent, there's a set process for the agent (which may well be you from what I recall) to receive a takedown request (content, text, images) and a time period to respond. You in turn will need to take some sort of action.

If you don't have a DMCA registered agent you don't necessarily lose "safe harbor" but it's more difficult to block a service provider from just defaulting to removing content and/or sites.</comment>


Show HN: Carousel: The best way to experience Instagram on your Mac - <AUTHOR> http://carousel.mobelux.com/ <comment><USER2> I just want to say that Carousel is awesome. It's very beautiful and I leave it on my desktop. Great execution and I like that it's not free - I actually paid for it because it was so well done.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very cool.</comment>


Show HN: Thinking Mathematically - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuge8p-oYsKSU0rDMy7jJlA <comment><AUTHOR> This video series is the first step in my goal to transform how STEM subjects are taught in schools. If you watch them, I'd love to get some feedback.</comment>


Oracle introduces it's own JavaScript implementation - <AUTHOR> http://www.wiki.jvmlangsummit.com/images/c/ce/Nashorn.pdf

<comment><USER2> The two points that grabbed my attn:

* Make scripting accessible to Java developers

* Open source is TBD

And what of groovy? Really I just see this as some more rah rah talk. As a professional Java and NodeJS developer I'm just not excited...

It will help if Oracle opened sourced it 100%. Buuuut you know, wheres the money in that?</comment>


If You Build It, Will They Come? - <AUTHOR> http://blakemasters.tumblr.com/post/22405055017/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-9-notes-essay

<comment><USER2> This article was submitted a couple of months ago, maybe you will find the some of the comments helpful:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3930832>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's helpful.

Odd that HN didn't bounce me to that thread and count it as an upvote.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm putting together a pitch deck and this article highlighted the need to really nail our distribution.</comment>


DRY Principles through Python Decorators - <AUTHOR> http://toumorokoshi.github.io/dry-principles-through-python-decorators.html <comment><USER2> How was he able to remove the try/except clause in this final registration function? I might be missing something but he no longer handles errors (if username, email, or password are not in request.POST it looks like register will be called with too few variables).</comment>


Is going vegan actually helping battle climate change? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-mission/is-going-vegan-actually-helping-battle-climate-change-733d946b5226 <comment><USER2> IMO this is a lot harder than just looking at the current numbers. It is relevant to see the individual differences and impacts as well.

A lot of the commonly sold 'vegan' alternatives from the hipster food section in our super markets are produced by big corps and shipped around the world. A lot of the popular super food here in Europe comes from south America. More and more fruits and vegetables either from Asia or some huge (essentially slave holding) agriculture areas in Spain or Italy.

On the other side I consume Mostly local food. I love to waste time in meat areas to find the single most ecological variation I can buy. Rarely eating beef. Except for pure luxury import stuff (mango, pineapple, nuts) I eat my vegs and fruits seasonal.

If you account for all the transports, cooling, storage of imported super foods it could very well be that the local meat eating approach still is a lot better purely based on your ecological footprint.

<comment><USER3> While I agree with you about the complexity of the issue, it doesn't seem fair to compare local meat to imported plants. What about local meat vs local plants? Local plants vs imported meat? Imported meat vs imported plants? By cherry-picking a single one of these combinations, you can make either side look favorable.

<comment><USER4> Local plants vs imported plants is counter-intuitively not always straightforward. Inefficient farming in worse climates can sometimes use more fuel than farming it elsewhere and shipping it, transport only accounts for a small portion of greenhouse gas emissions in the production of the food.

[http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is- local-f...](http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/09/04/how-green-is-local-food/)

[http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of- local...](http://freakonomics.com/2011/11/14/the-inefficiency-of-local-food/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's awesome that going vegan is becoming trendy. Companies are starting to see that creating products that are environmentally friendly actually has a positive effect on their bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like scientific studies about this, but this won't make meat eaters change their mind. Instead, they will feel attacked. Convince them with cool things, not science.

<comment><USER7> If meat eating is bad for the environment then people should be aware of it. It's patronizing to try and woo people into veganism or something else with "cool" stuff, whatever that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's a story on the front page right now about how sea weed reduces methane from cows.</comment>


Wikileaks: Something is up - <AUTHOR> http://morgue.isprettyawesome.com/?p=1361 <comment><USER2> I recall reading a report that was published on wiki-leaks that was by the US government about wiki leaks itself. There were some worrying things in there, the foremost of which was the summary at the top of the document, written not by the US government, but by wikileaks.

In the summary they claimed that the US was recommending trying to fire/expose anyone who posted on wiki-leaks. However, all the article really said was "If people are fired or exposed for publishing on wiki leaks, this will probably serve as a deterrant." Two very different things. The summary was full of exaggerated claims like this one that really, in my opinion, made wiki-leaks look stupid.

The point is that wikileaks has a really awesome ideal, which is to expose bad things that are secrets. However, I worry that they are trying too hard to make everything into a conspiracy theory.

We need to step back and say, "Ok, so in some movies there are conspiracy theories like the ones we're presenting. And those movies are highly entertaining because they are so ridiculous. So, do we believe this because it is true or because we want it to be true?"

In the end, I would really like to know if the US government, or any government, is shooting journalists. But only if it really is true. Otherwise we're no better than schizophrenic conspiracy theorists and it really won't make a difference.

So to tie it in, is something really up with wiki-leaks? If it is that would be good information. But I would not be surprised to find out tomorrow that these claims were highly exaggerated.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Finally cracked the encryption to US military video in which journalists, among others, are shot. Thanks to all who donated $/CPUs." <http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/9412020034> This may have to do with it.

<comment><USER4> I would like to hear more about this encryption cracking, which would seem to be an impressive feat. Anyone have any background?

<comment><USER5> Depends on the exact encryption but from the sounds of the tweet ("$/CPU") it sounds like it could have been just brute forced.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but the obvious question: where did they find a secret military video protected by encryption that is weak enough to be bruteforced?

<comment><USER7> With enough $/CPUs, it's all weak.

<comment><USER8> No, it's not. The amount of computing power that would be needed to break the kind of encryption we should expect them to be using would be immense. It would likely be impossible, or at least impractically expensive. This is a very interesting part of the story.

<comment><USER9> And, if it was distributed computing, presumably we'd have heard about it and wouldn't be having this conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> New Update: "To those worrying about us--we're fine, and will issue a suitable riposte shortly."

<http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/10993931099>

<comment><USER11> i have a second source who validates that they're ok, just busy looking for bandwidth in a politically neutral state/jurisdiction. If anyone knows anyone who has that, pls let me know & i'll pass it on....

<comment><USER12> Isn't this a great use case for torrents?

<comment><USER13> Would you be willing to host the torrent file?

It sounds like there'd be some risk involved..

<comment><USER12> Trackerless torrent files combined with hosts like Rapidshare, Zshare, Megaupload, etc should do the trick. Once it starts to spread it's unstoppable.

Or host it in a country that likes to irritate the US government. Iran comes to mind. Venezuela would surely be open to it as well.

If Osama Bin Laden can find hosting there is no reason why a group of clever engineers can't as well.

<comment><USER14> Panama and Hong Kong have several ISPs that are outside U.S. influence. You never know really. Use Tor to upload it to Youtube. See if Google helps out.

<comment><USER15> Panama outside of US influence? We invaded them not that long ago, the current political leadership there were participants in the events leading up to and following Operation Just Cause. I rather doubt that much of import happens in Panama without tacit approval of US authorities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If they really have something that important, why would they drum up attention and wait like sitting ducks, instead of publishing it ASAP?

<comment><USER17> Wikileaks publishes memos, reports, that sort of concrete evidence. I don't think they would officially publish their first hand reports without first trying to get some kind of confirmation through a leaked government file on them, for example.

<comment><USER18> The attention they claim they're getting seems proof enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> WikiLeaks getting in trouble is nothing new. The US Army has admitted to planning attacks on WikiLeaks in the past ( <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/16/army_wikileaks/> ), So far they have always managed to survice - even against damning odds.

If some major press picks up this news, then it will certainly help WikiLeaks. I pushed it through at [http://techie-buzz.com/latest-news/wikileaks-pentagon- murder...](http://techie-buzz.com/latest-news/wikileaks-pentagon-murder-cover- up.html)

I just hope that the information they are sitting on is indeed significant.Though, to be honest it probably is, since WikiLeaks is already popular (too popular for their own good).

<comment><USER20> _The US Army has admitted to planning attacks on WikiLeaks in the past_

Not true. The article you link to only contains quotes from the document Wikileaks published. That is not an admission of anything. Nor does the document actually describe planning attacks on Wikileaks: only Wikileaks' description (and subsequent mis-reporting based on that) characterizes it that way. The actual content of the document does not support that conclusion. I encourage you to read it for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Call me a cynic but this is based on just the Twitter feed. Let's not get too excited till something more concrete appears.

(unless of course your suggesting we should believe everything posted on Twitter as gospel without verification.........)

<comment><USER3> Which is essentially their most important form of communication, with the website only being used to host documents these days.

<comment><USER5> It won't take much to turn this into a headline like "Wikileaks detained by US" (this is the first step...[1]). When _all_ it is so far is unverified postings on the Wikileaks Twitter feed. Is it a publicity stunt? Paranoia? Or the real thing?

We dont know yet. My guess is somewhere between the real thing and publicity - but we should avoid jumping on bandwagons.

I might be slightly more cynical this week because of their last piece of paranoia the other week ;)

1\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1216034>

<comment><USER3> Sure, their PR methods are edgy.

But what is paranoid about that piece the other week? The US Army describes Wikileaks as a potential danger to their operational and information security, due to moles being potentialy able to securely leak information to them. It then calls for, shall we say, further "awareness" of this potential "danger", and for submitting fabricated information, identification and prosecution of whisteblowers etc. What makes you think Wikileaks is being paranoid instead of realistic?

<comment><USER5> They said that the US Army had attacked them and were planning to shut them down.

Which, if you read the document, was not actually the case.

<comment><USER3> Please point to any news article that actually says that.

Quote from the NYT: "Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

"It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release," Mr. Assange said. "It contains the analyst's best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done." "

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/us/18wiki.html?scp=1&s...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/us/18wiki.html?scp=1&sq=wikileaks&st=cse)

If I may say, you do seem to be quick with your assumptions, in this case.

<comment><USER5> Im not sure why a news article is needed... Wikileaks themselves said:

 _U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks_

I admit where I said attacked in the parent that was never explicitly stated; but the emphasis was heavily on the breathy kind of "OMG we were under attack" type.

Honestly I didnt see anything particularly revelatory in the document deserving of such breathless excitement :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wikileaks has gained over 5000 new followers on twitter in the last 24 hours, that's close to +25%. There is an interesting moral question to be argued, whether it would be morally right to withhold information in order to gain funding and/or publicity and/or exposure to more followers, if they were creating drama deliberately (which there is not any indication of, I think, but theoretically possible).

</comment><comment><USER21> WikiLeaks update: "We are fine" - <http://twitter.com/wikileaks/statuses/10993931099>

</comment><comment><USER22> The US practices censorship just like China does. Let's all applaud Google when it agrees to host a WikiLeaks server! Yeah right.</comment>


NanoNeuron – simple JavaScript functions that explain how machines learn - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/trekhleb/nano-neuron <comment><USER2> This is fantastic. Probably the most approachable example I've seen

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad that example was useful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like this a lot, here's a very simple machine learning perceptron[1] example in Golang:

[https://github.com/montanaflynn/simple-go- perceptron](https://github.com/montanaflynn/simple-go-perceptron)

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron)

</comment><comment><USER4> @trekhleb: Can you modify the images used in the README.md - they seem to be PNG files with a transparent background and the formula (or whatever is there) in black; on github in "dark mode" (or with a stylus or similar css modifier for a dark mode) the black text becomes unreadable. t/y

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. Done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> @trekhleb thanks for this write up, it is fantastic. Are you planning on a similar explanation for neural nets?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is possible. But don't have strict plans yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Awesome and perfect to explain machine learning to uninitiated persons. Really a great great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice work op. There is some stuff at fast.ai that you might also enjoy. I recently learned about Swift for TensorFlow from one of their videos which modifies Swift to allow for placing attributes over functions and then having the compiler automatically generated the derivatives of those functions.

</comment><comment><USER8> Approachable, but article could use a grammar check and a bit of linguistic editing.

<comment><USER9> I believe OP's mother tongue is not english. So, I think it is fine

<comment><USER10> Technical writing is hard. Kudos to the writer for trying hard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there any alternative modal for neural networks without math in it?

<comment><USER12> Sadly, no. This OP's writeup is just about the simplest exposition that doesn't miss the point, and it misses the major transition when you go to layers with nonlinearities between them.

There is no royal road to mathematics.

<comment><USER4> > This OP's writeup is just about the simplest exposition that doesn't miss > the point, and it misses the major transition when you go to layers with > nonlinearities between them.

Well - the activation function appears to be linear, and thus close to RELU - and so (maybe?) there wouldn't be any issue with the so-called "vanishing gradients" problem? But I am just a hobbyist who dabbles in this topic, so my opinion doesn't carry much weight...

<comment><USER12> There is no activation function. It's linear regression.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, there's also no layers in linear regression</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Freelancer.com stole from me and ruined my life - <AUTHOR> https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cc32fe1a8436908c40f60eb <comment><USER3> Archived version: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190426163107/https://www.trust...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190426163107/https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cc32fe1a8436908c40f60eb)

<comment><USER4> Seeing that the original has been deleted, would a moderator please update the link to this archived version?

<comment><USER5> It's a completely unsubstantiated ragebait post that's also been posted previously. The only thing a moderator should do with it is drop it into the Trench of Terrible Posts.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I was not aware of that as I have not previously seen this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The next time you think about using a platform / marketplace for freelance work just repeat this to yourself:

 _" I should spend a large portion of my life to become an expert in my craft, and then I should agree to have my privacy stripped away from me while I race to the bottom and undercut my competition because I will actively place myself into situations where I have the highest competition to ensure I receive the lowest rates. Lastly, I will bust my butt and bend the world to satisfy clients who take advantage of me."_

Then it starts to make total sense on what you should avoid them like the plague.

Really, just put in the leg work and build up your own network[0]. It's so worth it.

[0]: [https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful- fre...](https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/how-to-start-a-successful-freelance- business-as-a-software-developer)

<comment><USER7> Its not for everyone.

<comment><USER8> It isn't--but if you aren't prepared to do it, the freelancer sites will _eat you alive_ before you get off the ground anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have used e-lance and upwork to the tune of about $140,000 and in my last year of hiring on UpWork we plugged $36,000 through them. Generally they've been pretty good and usually fast and fair to act, though in all my time of using them I've only had 3 bad experiences, 2 of them were resolved quickly and well, the third was a shit show.

I think a lot of people get screwed on UpWork because someone posts a shitty outline of a job and then expects the world to be delivered for $5. I don't operate like that, we treat it like hiring normally - we thoroughly interview and the spec is very detailed.

The last contractor we hired was for firmware and an issue we had, we needed someone with Rockchip experience and someone who could work on it full time. We explained the problem and the spec of the job repeatedly to him and he agreed. We agreed a fee - a little higher than what we budgeted but honestly didn't care - we were getting this solved.

Anyway fast forward and he has done about 50% of what we agreed - we ask him when can we get the next 50% he said when we pay him more - we said, that's not what we agreed, it's in the contract (on the job spec) in the UpWork messages (again reemphasized) and we agreed over phone calls and emails and he signed. He said he didn't care he wanted more money before he would complete it. At this point the firmware he has done is essentially useless to us without the last 50% so I go to UpWork and explain everything - hoping they would give him a nudge - we had everything outlined on their system - <USER2> response - you need to pay him. I was baffled. So I opened a credit card dispute to get the money back.

UpWork's behaviour became down right embarassing. The disputed amount was in the range of about $1000 and they became so hilariously hostile, then angry, then sorry, then hostile, then derrogatory, and eventually demeaning (offering us $50 credit if we withdraw the dispute) we said no. They said they wouldclose our account - we said fine.

How stupid of a company do you have to be - not only that - we had about $30,000 more lined up for the next 6 months - now we just go through our network and other job boards. We will NEVER use them again.

<comment><USER10> How many hours of work was $1000?

<comment><USER11> > The last contractor we hired was for firmware and an issue we had, we needed > someone with Rockchip experience and someone who could work on it full time.

"Full time" for $1000!

And it was an "issue with Rockchip", which sounds exactly like a problem that could be easily specified but impossible to predict how many hours it would take to fix.

GP seems like a rant from someone abusing a fixed price worker.

<comment><USER12> I do freelance embedded systems development. I do fixed bid work because I prefer it that way.

If I bid $2,000 to produce something, I either produce it for $2,000 or I say (hopefully within the first day) "sorry, I underbid this. I need to re-quote you, or you can have your down payment back." I've "eaten" quite a few underbids and only once returned a down payment and ended the job because the buyer kept increasing the scope.

OP's not "abusing a fixed price worker," he's holding them to what they agreed to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I did a lot of work on similar freelancing sites in the 2000s. While it is true that there is always more than one side to the story, there's also a massive power imbalance with these services.

Most of the workers come from outside of the US, work for already ridiculously low fees, and they have no recourse if they do end up having their payments cancelled or their accounts frozen / locked.

It's not the easiest way to make a living.

<comment><USER14> It's an incredibly stupid way to make a living and all the workers there should unionize and quit using sites like that.

<comment><USER15> You need a third party to prevent abuses, like you don't get paid. But the issue is that this third party does not want you to build a relation between developer and the employer because if you build trust then you don't need the third party.

This is how I started, I found some small projects, then me and the other person worked on other tasks, trust built and we then worked directly.

<comment><USER14> The union can act as a third party and provide a similar site. Where then the interests are more closely aligned and not affected by the profit motive. The purpose of such a union would be to get developers jobs at equitable rates for their living conditions and their home market.

<comment><USER15> Is there a legal way to create a union to represent people from different countries,that work as free lancers? I can see this attempts getting stuck in the laws that probably were not designed for such a scenario.

Some competition would help but the big ones buy the small competitors.

<comment><USER16> Not sure about actually having protected collective bargaining rights (i.e., in the US subject to the NLRA), but pooling resources to have staff attorneys, etc -- certainly possible. e.g., the IWW tries to do this, organizing "unorganizable" workforces (most recently, for freelance journalists [https://freelancejournalistsunion.org/](https://freelancejournalistsunion.org/))

<comment><USER15> The only issue I see is that lawyers are expensive in US relative to how low most of the beginner developers get paid on freelancer.com (you could earn 2.5$/hour or less).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are similar stories for Upwork (brand name after Odesk + Elance merger).

I was literally blackmailed by an Upwork contractor who refused to release the already paid-for source code unless I gave them a 5-star rating. I notified the platform and they didn't care - and the solution was for the platform to prevent my ability to leave a review at all, making the contractor happy.

That contractor/agency was still on the platform at least a year after it happened.

<comment><USER18> I've hired a lot of fiction writers over the years on upwork, used to spend a few hundred a month on getting stories written, I've tapered off a little bit, mainly because managing a team of writers was getting to be more work than it was worth for a never ending supply of mediocre fantasy and sci-fi. I even stopped updating the site I was publishing them all to[1].

All of the writers but 1 were amazing from the start. I had a single bad experience that eventually I made a good experience by just communicating with the writer, telling them I knew they were better than the quality they provided, and to just give it another go. That story eventually became one of my favorites[2].

1: [http://fictorio.us/](http://fictorio.us/)

2: [https://fictorio.us/2017/10/12/zeta- mu/](https://fictorio.us/2017/10/12/zeta-mu/)

<comment><USER19> How much do services of these fiction writers [from Upwork] cost?

<comment><USER18> Typically between 3 and 10 cents per word.

I hired from all over the world to get different viewpoints, and my prompts were usually very open. It would be something like: An historic fiction set in your country's or region's capitol city during a war.

And I would have 5 openings for stories similar to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I tried Freelancer.com for hiring. After a quite search and failure to find someone to do the job, I decided to pull out. They refused and did hold around $500 of my money there. They also ended up locking the account. That was many years ago. Needless to say, I stopped using these websites for good either ways (hiring or being hired).

</comment><comment><USER21> Disclosure: I worked for Freelancer.com seven or eight years ago back in Australia and know the founder.

This is a "new" post from an old and now deleted post [1] by the same author.

In the initial post [1] they state "I've been a member in this platform for over 5 years". In the new post they state "I have worked on this platform for over 7". The initial now deleted post [1] was posted two years ago.

Make of that what you will.

Edit: I was hoping HN would actually read the deleted post too and/or assume I didn't have a nefarious motive. It's from the same author, isn't a repost, the story has an entirely different fact pattern and the deletion of the previous story (with no reference to it when it was previously posted on HN at [2]) is at least odd at best. I merely wanted to raise the possibility that an unsourced post is potentially not the best thing with which to sharpen knives.

I literally just wanted to add this data point to the discussion, that's all =[

[1]: [https://web.archive.org/web/20171104123112/https://www.trust...](https://web.archive.org/web/20171104123112/https://www.trustpilot.com/reviews/59fdae7d31302a07249dc4fe)

[2]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677)

<comment><USER22> What I make of that is 5 + 2 = 7, which of course surprises no one.

<comment><USER23> I think the implication is that the poster has continued to work there for two more years despite still having the same complaint.

<comment><USER22> And what of that? I struggled to find work in software development in spite of claims of worker shortages. It's only due to my being stubborn and having a decent safety net that I could shrug off participating on freelancing sites. Not everyone can hold out for a better offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Am I the only one to notice the rest of reviews? All of them seem generic with the same names I see in my spam directory:

> cindi m was a great help. she fixed my issues right away and her bosses > should give her a raise. cheers

<comment><USER24> Forgot to mention: they are all 5-star reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you can land a contract for development work on freelancer.com you can find a decent paying job for the same work.

Freelancer.com provides nothing, and takes money out of your pocket.

<comment><USER26> That's not true at all.

We spent $100k on upwork. The slightly lower rates are nice, but the value is the contractor rep so we don't get ripped off and dealing with moving money. Note that moving money requires more than physical xfer, but also the legal structures and corps and whatever else to make sure we comply with all relevant laws, both here and abroad. The latter is not a trivial bit of work.

Without upwork, we would not be using contractors in Russia or Argentina.

<comment><USER27> It sounds like what you are saying is UpWork provides great value for businesses looking to hire inexpensive contractors. For US-based contractors, which I assume your parent poster might be, it doesn't sound like they provide such great value. At least, none of your reasons help the contractor any. And being in a system where they can easily be underbid by overseas labor doesn't sound so fun, either.

<comment><USER28> > Without upwork, we would not be using contractors in Russia or Argentina.

>> what you are saying is UpWork provides great value for businesses looking to hire inexpensive contractors

Or translators from Russian and Spanish, people can hire overseas for several different reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why is this random Trustpilot review suddenly on the frontpage? Is there anything I'm missing? People that had an issue with Freelancer.com just upvoting the headline?

</comment><comment><USER30> It also should be noted that Trustpilot itself is horribly gamed and its ratings should never be taken as a signal for trust. It can be useful if you think other ratings have been manipulated (i.e., Yelp) and you find it has a peerless Trustpilot rating -- yep, they're fakin' it

</comment><comment><USER31> recently scammed by freelancer.com and it is already on Bank Of America's fraudulent businesses list. Correctly so, BofA refused to honor a $10 charge through my PayPal account freelancer.com was attempting to steal from me. That forced PayPal to drop my BofA checking account as a payment method. It wasn't too disruptive for me because I don't use PayPal all that much. Anyway, I convinced PayPal rather easily that i never agreed to pay freelancer.com anything and the charge was fraudulent.

Just a warning, using freelancer.com in any capacity can have more downward side effect on your life then you think. You are doing business with, imho, a company that is likely surviving as a cleaner for laundered money, aka, a pure illegal enterprise.

</comment><comment><USER32> I stopped freelancing after someone sent me death threats for cancelling work on a $200 project that they kept increasing the scope of. Not worth it.

</comment><comment><USER33> Any low-cost freelancers here? (Mobile & Web UI)

How much do u earn on these platforms ?!

Also - i find it ridiculous that they try to enforce non-external- communication with the people u hire. I want to talk to these guys 5 times a day, share repositories, etc. Its weird

<comment><USER34> I haven't used the platforms in a few years but I used to. I think the highest pay I ever managed was like $25 or maybe $40 per hour. It seemed pretty hard to get those projects though.

I guess the convenience of having all of those potential contracts is a trade off with the fact that you are competing with everyone on Earth that signed up and looked at that web page. So people that have $100 rent in a small Indian village can and do bid extremely small amounts sometimes and they end up making much more than their friends in the village and are happy to have it.

The reason they try to stop the external communication is because people go outside the site for projects once they have made a connection with a client. To me it's questionable whether it should be legal to force people to do all transactions on your platform. But from a business standpoint it is the aspect that has the most impact on how much cut they collect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Btw, after having experience with certain car rental company on trustpilot, I don't really trust those ratings anymore. I posted a negative review, then was contacted by trustpilot to provide proof of what went wrong or trustpilot would remove the review in 7 days. I'm pretty sure that is not needed for positive ones...

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have the content of the review? Seems like it was removed.

</comment><comment><USER37> Well, now its 404.

<comment><USER24> Here's the original:

AladinBS 1 review 29 minutes ago STAY AWAY FROM FREELANCER, STAY AWAY!!!!!! THIS IS A WARNING TO ANYONE WHO USES FREELANCER, STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY, STAY AWAY!!!

This company has screwed me over so many times and screwed so many developers and clients that it's a mystery how they haven't been shut down yet.

It all started with a simple contract i received, and once i received an initial payment of $1300, my account got limited and frozen, i contacted them asking about the reason behind this, and they just simply told me it was because of outside communication, to which i responded that it's very normal call to go over everything, that is a business standard, and the contract went through the platform and so did the payment, so there was no reason behind these extreme majors they took.

The money was frozen and they told me that it would stay that way, up until they closed my account for good one week after with a simple email, saying that they closed my account.

I have worked on this platform for over 7 years, finished countless projects with full perfect five star reviews, never hurt anyone or hurt the platform in any way, and the only thing i did occasionally that was frowned upon was a call here or there to explain something to a client or to share my screen with them, and its not my fault that they did not provide these features on their platform and i had to use something else to make up for their short comings.

In conclusion, i gave them 7 years of my life; they closed my account for nothing, stole from me, and took away my main source of living.

I have not been able to even leave my house for the past week, and had to force myself to write this review, even as just a warning for people, and I'll make sure that everyone hears about what happened to me.

<comment><USER38> From what I can see... user lost $1300 and ability to use Freelancer.com. I'm not sure what lead to "not been able to even leave my house".

Just move on and use Upwork.com.

<comment><USER39> Comprehensive reading: user lost all but an initial payment of $1300 …

<comment><USER38> I'm not sure that's even clear. "The money was frozen and they told me that it would stay that way" What is "the" money. The only money mentioned prior to that is the $1300. No where does the user say all money was lost except the $1300. They say their account was closed, were they sitting on a ton of cash in their account that they didn't transfer out? They don't state that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> There are two (or more) sides to every story. Would love to get a full 360 perspective on this scenario.

<comment><USER41> Normally I'm the first to shout the same, but given how many similar stories about freelancer.com exist, I'm leaning toward believing this by default

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Similar story, different middleman company...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427086](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18427086)

The point is, as a freelancer, you are on your own.

<comment><USER43> Similar headline and discussion from 18 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677) (355 comments)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Sales is a learnable skill, and in practice I found it straightforward to cut out the middlemen/women completely and avoid platforms and agents. I wrote a sales guide here, with all the tricks I picked up over the years. I'm not selling anything or have ads, I just want other coders to have this freedom, too: [https://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/sales.html](https://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/sales.html)

</comment><comment><USER45> Now, how would freelancer.com know that the people are communicating outside of the platform? I guess if you exchange contact info over their channels... Is that banned?

What if you send encrypted messages via GPG? Or is that forbidden too? Just sending a public key for GPG, will reveal an e-mail address.

How do you exchange passwords and other sensitive access info without encryption?

<comment><USER46> They normally do not act like this; they only go bezerk if they suspect you are paying someone outside the platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here is a project attempting to provide a decentralized alternative to Freelancer and Upwork [https://kleros.io](https://kleros.io)

Here is another one [https://www.cryptotask.org](https://www.cryptotask.org)

<comment><USER46> Does that make it better? Does it fix this kind of issue and how?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Never get payment through a third party if you don't expect something like this to happen.

And its insane to freelance develop without contacting the customer/screen sharing outside the platform. Its amazing the guy lasted 7 years like this...

</comment><comment><USER48> Hope the guy doesn't get an Upwork account now. He'll be really screwed then.

</comment><comment><USER49> Pretty sure I've seen this in 2018.

<comment><USER50> Nov 2017 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15624677)

<comment><USER49> Time flies...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> seems like the post has been deleted?

</comment><comment><USER52> The link is 404ing now.

</comment><comment><USER53> I've tried hiring artists for video games, and the quotes from Upwork/Freelancer.com were about double the going rates (I understand that the platform fee of 20% contributes to part of that). I've had much better success with free, community-run forums instead:

[https://polycount.com/categories/artist-looking-for- work](https://polycount.com/categories/artist-looking-for-work)

[https://www.gamejobforum.com/](https://www.gamejobforum.com/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/](https://www.reddit.com/r/gameDevClassifieds/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Small Claims Court

<comment><USER13> A large majority of people providing work on these sites is very far from any country where such a notion exists.</comment></comment>


VC North Bridge Sponsoring a $75k Seed Competition - <AUTHOR> http://www.gigsly.com/2010/04/06/vc-north-bridge-sponsoring-a-75k-seed-competition/

<comment><USER2> hmmm. the link inside this article to the rules is not up yet. Is this a $75k investment or free money? If it's an investment, then this is totally bogus.

<comment><USER3> Investment. I agree, I don't see why it needs to be a contest, if there are good companies, why not just seed them. It is a better dollar value deal than YC, but if Northbridge doesn't fund you after the seed you will be DOA (or at least perceived as such).

<comment><USER4> Link is up now: [http://primaryentrepreneur.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/04/No...](http://primaryentrepreneur.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/04/North-Bridge-75k-Seed-Competition1.pdf)

It's even worse than it first appeared.

$25k of the prize is composed of " _in-kind development support from one of our software development partners_ ".

The remaining $50k, the cash amount, is just a max upper limit amount (" _Up to $50k in seed capital_ "), so who knows what the winners will actually get for the 5-10%.</comment></comment></comment>


A street photographers' code of conduct - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@_mmelo/a-street-photographers-code-of-conduct-7fd549dce433 <comment><USER2> I love street photography, but I just can't do it myself.

Taking photos of strangers just seems... wrong. Also I think as a an unatrractive guy with a camera I'm going to be automatically labelled as a creep taking photos of people on the street you don't know. There's also the problem of someone might accidentally think a kid was in the frame when they aren't... That's a can of worms I do NOT want to touch.

I think you can get some great photos but the potential grief isn't worth it for me.</comment>


Is it great to be a U.S. worker? Not compared with the rest of developed world - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/04/is-it-great-to-be-a-worker-in-the-u-s-not-compared-to-the-rest-of-the-developed-world/ <comment><USER2> Americans seem to be constantly comparing themselves to Europe. Serious case of envy going on there. Meanwhile, in the non-developed world, we'd pretty much kill for the US's economic indicators.

I'm not trying to minimize the suffering of workers in a bad situation, but lately I've been feeling like Americans really don't value how good they have it.</comment>


Despite the enormous cost, is MIT a ideal school? - <AUTHOR>

Despite the enormous cost, is MIT a ideal school to get a Computer Science degree from? Let me know what you think. <comment><USER2> No.

I will be as vague and provide as few details as this question. :) You seriously need to define "ideal." Because there are hundreds of variables in determining whether one school is better than another. And some people value different things from others. One person might value the quality of the social opportunities. Another might value the quality of research opportunities. Another might value the quality of undergraduate teaching. Etc. Etc. Etc.

<comment><USER3> As argonaut says, you should provide your goals :) .

It does sound like a great place for bright and motivated people, but it also sounds hard and grinding, plus you might have to get into debt and/or you might not get in.

If I had the opportunity and the means, I'd probably do it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Let me add to my previous answer. There is no ideal.

Some pros for MIT (not all deal with CS):

1\. great research opportunities for undergrads

2\. you'll be surrounded by lots of smart, technical people (and TONS of CS people as well).

3\. great recruiting for big tech companies and large and mid-size startups.

4\. Boston/Cambridge is a really great city for college students (there are so many of them).

Some cons:

1\. The Boston startup scene is much less active compared to SV (which also means less small startup recruiting).

2\. You are required to take a lot of classes you might not really find useful or enjoyable (physics, chemistry, etc.)

3\. The social scene can be a bit of a mixed bag. There are a lot of different social circles.

And the biggest con, I believe:

4\. MIT classes will grind you down with work. You will have a lot less time to work on side projects / startup ideas while at MIT.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone else find it odd that the OP is using "a ideal?"

I realize we are not all native English speakers, but this kind of crap just kills me while reading HN. I normally keep it to myself, but since this post pertains to education I thought it relevant.

<comment><USER5> Typos hapen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you'd be good with anything on this list: [http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/...](http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best- colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate) or this one: [http://grad- schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-gradu...](http://grad- schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-science- schools/computer-science-rankings)

</comment><comment><USER7> As someone from outside the USA, it certainly looks impressive on a CV.

</comment><comment><USER8> You might as well go to Stanford, at least there is you'll see the sun more often there :p</comment>


Real-time, in-camera background compositing in The Mandalorian - <AUTHOR> https://ascmag.com/articles/the-mandalorian <comment><USER2> Hi all, really cool that you have taken an interest in this project, a lot of your comments below are very insightful and interesting. I work on the team that deploys this tech on set. We focus on how the video signals get from the video output servers to the LED surfaces, coordinating how we deal with tracking methods, photogrammetry, signal delivery, operator controls and the infrastructure that supports all of this. As noted in some of the comments, the VFX industry solved tracking with mocap suits a long time ago for the post-production process. What we are exploring now is how we can leverage new technology, hardware, and workflows to move some of the post-production processes into the pre-production and production (main/secondary unit photography) stages.

If you are interested in checking out another LED volume setup, my team also worked on First Man last year. This clip shows a little more of how we assemble these LED surfaces as well as a bit of how we use custom integrations to interface with mechanical automation systems. [[https://vimeo.com/309382367](https://vimeo.com/309382367)]

<comment><USER3> Thanks! This work is really inspiring! Are these OLED screens, matrices of separate LEDs of the usual InGaAs and GaN type, or LCDs backlit with LEDs? The 2.84 mm pixel pitch makes it sound like it's separate inorganic LEDs.

Are there times short of sunshine where you need more directionality to the lighting than the screens can provide? Because the screens can emit _from_ any direction but not _toward_ any direction, being quasi-Lambertian emitters.

<comment><USER4> Discrete LED screens go all the way down to 2mm or even 1.9mm pitch (I have a few 2mm tiles at home). These are certainly discrete LED panels, not OLEDs. I'm not aware of OLEDs being used in "wall" applications like this.

When you hear LED walls, think millions of discrete LEDs mounted on PCBs (and thank China for making this low cost enough to be viable!)

<comment><USER5> LED video walls are down in the 0.7mm dot pitch vicinity. Not quite the ~0.3mm of a 4K 55" LCD, but we're getting there. And the brightness and contrast ratio can't be beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is the Unreal Engine tech they are using: [https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/unreal- engine-...](https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/spotlights/unreal-engine-in- camera-vfx-a-behind-the-scenes-look) . This is a video of it in action: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bErPsq5kPzE&feature=emb_logo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bErPsq5kPzE&feature=emb_logo) .

<comment><USER7> Here's a video of it in action on The Mandalorian set:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk)

<comment><USER8> That explains a lot to me. The actors need those visual cues, and it shows through in the final product. It was a great result. I look forward to improved acting as this tech makes its way into other works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is super interesting stuff and I've been following it for some time. I just wrote it up with a bit more context:

[https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/how-the-mandalorian-and- il...](https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/20/how-the-mandalorian-and-ilm- invisibly-reinvented-film-and-tv-production/)

It's not just ILM and Disney either, this is going to be _everywhere_. It's complex to set up and run in some ways but the benefits are enormous for pretty much everyone involved. I doubt there will be a major TV or film production that doesn't use LED walls 5 years from now.

<comment><USER10> I wonder how much this reduces the environmental footprint. The explosion in shows and movies always looking for raw nature or awesome settings has me wondering how much destruction it makes. And how much waste it produces.

<comment><USER11> Environmental footprint? A local trade show, movie theater or small office building probably uses more electricity. Let's try to keep things in perspective.

<comment><USER12> I think he meant flying large crews, including actors, caterers etc., to Iceland to film a movie vs a small photogrammetry team.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The solution was ... a dynamic, real-time, photo-real background played back on a massive LED video wall and ceiling ... rendered with correct camera positional data."

Gee, that sounds a lot like a holodeck. We've come a long way from using Wii Sensor Bars[0] for position tracking.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC_KKxAuLQw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC_KKxAuLQw)

<comment><USER14> For the VFX industry, the tracking had already been solved for ages, with those reflective little balls on suits etc. in a mocap system. The Wii sensor bar's thing was that it was really cheap.

But yes, damn close to a holodeck. But you can't see depth in this setup, right?

<comment><USER15> If it's perspective corrected for the camera, it would probably look very distorted for anyone else on set -- whether there's depth or not

And that's certainly not the goal with this. Something along those lines has been around for a while ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_automatic_virtual_environment)). This system seems specifically targeted for solving challenges for film production, as it probably should be.

I am pretty impressed that real time rendering has gotten good enough to use for these purposes. I certainly wouldn't have expected that those backgrounds in the show were coming out of a video game engine.

<comment><USER16> They mention they cannot push enough GPU juice to the screens, so they only render the camera focus area in full resolution. Also there is 12 frame lag which prevents moving camera too fast.

<comment><USER17> I don't fully get this. They could just employ different computers to render different parts of their cave. It seems more like a cost savings thing than a technical limitation.

And I'm not sure why you'd skimp on a few PC's if you're already building a humongous led wall, so maybe there's something I'm missing.

<comment><USER18> I worked in a somewhat similar project in 2015, though not as complex as this, to build background videos for DotParty, using UE4 for panoramas and then stitching them. One of the hugest issues we found was that, because of this being a game engine, a lot of things are not deterministic, so if we used multiple cards or computers, particles and other environmental effects would not be in sync, and the stitches were glaring.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, that's a good point. And taking out the particles and doing those separately is probably near impossible.

For the non-visible screens it wouldn't matter that much, but they'd still end up with the moving fulcrum for the main engine.

<comment><USER18> I believe it's been improved in later versions, as they've focused in these use cases, and there might even be deterministic particles now, but I'm not sure, because I've been out of the VFX market for quite a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how the photogrammetry aspect will intersect with intellectual property laws. The example used - scanning in a Santa Monica bar so that you can do reshoots without revisiting the location - would be an obvious example that might raise someone's hackles ("because it's our bar you're using to make your money" for instance). If you add that bar to your digital library, do you have to pay them royalties each time you use it? Is it any different to constructing a practical replica of a real-life location?

Can someone wearing a few cameras walk through a building and digitise it completely without getting the owner's permission? Here in Australia, "copyright in a building or a model of a building is not infringed by the making of a painting, drawing, engraving or photograph of the building or model or by the inclusion of the building or model in a cinematograph film or in a television broadcast," for instance. (Copyright Act 1968 §66)

<comment><USER20> A potential analogy might be something like using Carrie Fisher's image in the new Star Wars movies. I would assume the estate got paid for that. Or holo- tupac.

Practically speaking I think it will come down to what you negotiate. If you negotiate usage of the bar for your series then you can use it, otherwise not. If you negotiate resale of that model then that's legal, otherwise not. Most large productions will probably want to stay far on the right side of the law and get a written/financial agreement until things are hammered out, then you'll have amateur filmmakers who have to do vigilante shoots.

And again, probably something that will have to be legislated out for the long term.

In France, the appearance of buildings can be copyrighted, famously the Eiffel Tower is very aggressive about suing photographers.

<comment><USER21> It's not the Eiffel Tower that is copyrighted, but the light installation that is turned on at night. Taking pictures during the day is free from such restrictions: [https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of- eiffel...](https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/business/use-image-of-eiffel-tower)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Fascinating, but this article needs a proofread, damn...

"The virtual world on the LED screen is fantastic for many uses, but obviously an actor cannot walk through the screen, so an open doorway doesn't work when it's virtual. Doors are an aspect of production design that have to be physical. If a character walks through a door, it can't be virtual, it must be real as the actor can't walk through the LED screen."

Not to mention the multiple paragraphs that are basically re-stated immediately afterwards. It's like they hit publish in the middle of editing.

</comment><comment><USER23> The Mandalorian was probably a very likely candidate for this kind of approach, since it's essentially a western, meaning a lot of wide landscape shots.

The LED screen approach works nicely for fairly uncomplicated background geometry, like a plain. Try shooting Spiderman climbing up walls on that, and things will get tricky fast.

As the article notes, slow camera moves are a plus as well. The reason given is technical, but I also wonder how far you could really push the camera motion even if tracking lag wasn't an issue. The background is calculated to match the camera's viewpoint, so I expect it would be very disorienting for the actors if the camera was moving at high speeds.

<comment><USER24> Spiderman climbing up a wall can be done via forced perspective. It's also an action scene, reducing the need for a background to help the actor. And some brave souls will Harold Lloyd it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> "Once Upon a Time" (2011-2018, with Robert Carlyle as Rumplestiltskin!) was shot on virtual chroma-keyed sets with real time integrated pipeline tools to preview how it would look.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_\(TV_series\))

The tech behind Once Upon a Time's Frozen adventures

[https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-tech-behind-once- upon...](https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/the-tech-behind-once-upon-a-times- frozen-adventures/)

Once Upon a Time" TV Series VFX Breakdown

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180623020817/http://www.animat...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180623020817/http://www.animationboss.net:80/once- upon-a-time-tv-series-vfx-breakdown/)

</comment><comment><USER26> For those wondering, this appears to be not nearly as expensive as I thought. The 20" square panels used are available for around $1000 each if you buy a lot of them used. Compared to a typical production budget for a high-quality franchise, it's surprisingly cheap to build one of these walls. The equipment to run it, on the other hand, is likely not cheap at all.

<comment><USER27> If the mandolorian was filmed entirely on location with vfx in post it would have cost hundreds and hundreds of millions. The sets were incredibly detailed. So i think they saved a ton of money for the output quality. I also doubt they bought second hand gear.

<comment><USER11> Multiple hundreds of millions to shoot in the desert with red cameras and add buildings behind armored people with their hair hidden? Plenty of movies have been done like that and they didn't become the most expensive movies ever made (which is actually Pirates 3).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sony had a big demo of this in their CES booth a few weeks ago. They showed the camera moving around the Ghostbuster's Ecto-1 car and the background moving as well. You could see from the overhead screens what the final composite looked like. It was pretty awesome, given it was all set up in a booth at a trade fair. [1]

As expensive as all this is now, I think this is really going to make an impact in lower-budget movies. Not having to fly all over the world or having massive sets to film convincing scenes might be a really good thing.

1\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh2Q9pCxuJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh2Q9pCxuJw)

</comment><comment><USER29> Funny that this is practically the same concept as shooting in atelier with exterior background painted on walls as it was done in old movies. The progress is only in technology - now it's created by game engine and projected to giant LEDs, back then in 1930s it was done by hand by painters.

<comment><USER30> I think the innovation is the perspective correction of the background depending on the camera. That could have been accomplished with rear projection in film if it had been necessary by having the camera follow a preset path, but I don't think even BTTF attempted that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This reminds me of The Mill BLACKBIRD - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnBC5bwV5y0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnBC5bwV5y0)

</comment><comment><USER32> "Postproduction was mostly refining creative choices that we were not able to finalize on the set in a way that we deemed photo-real."

Does anyone know how they were able to swap out the in-camera version of the background originally shown on the LED wall with something more convincing later? Seems like it'd be tough since it's not a green screen!

<comment><USER33> While currently they are using "green screen" in those instances, given that the camera positions are already being tracked, and the image displayed on the screens is known, it would be possible to re-render what image the camera should have seen if the foreground elements hadn't been present and use the difference with the recorded image as a mask for further post-processing.

(which would be very cool as it would also allow using a low-resolution version of the background during production that could then be re-rendered with a higher resolution image after the fact)

<comment><USER30> It seems to me that making the system be able to perform masking itself (instead of projecting a green screen) would reduce the ability to completely replace the scene easily, but the reflections already give you that problem. The advantage you would have is that the real elements in the scene would no longer need any feathering around the edges causing them to look hazy, because now you can take a few pixels of the projected background as a transition to the higher resolution render.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I think the demise of Lytro was a huge missed opportunity for the film industry. They had this and a number of other features in their cinema camera before they became defunct a few years ago.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qXE4sA- hLQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qXE4sA-hLQ)

<comment><USER35> I watched that video, it doesn't really seem like the same thing in this article (although it's very cool). This is a real screen behind the actors rendering the scene from the perspective of the camera

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why is this one person always referred to with "ASC, ACS" after their name?

> Greig Fraser, ASC, ACS

<comment><USER37> It means they are a member of the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC) and I believe the Australian Cinematographers Society (ACS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I've had a peripheral interest in virtual sets and real-time compositing by way of a colleague from grad school.

A quick visual summary of this tech: [http://www.lightcrafttech.com/portfolio/beauty- beast/](http://www.lightcrafttech.com/portfolio/beauty-beast/)

This video was from a pilot several years ago, and it didn't make it to air, but it was visually wonderful.

<comment><USER28> With F. Murray Abraham as well! Nice. He's looked the same since 1984's Amadeus. Crazy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This seems slightly limited in its current form in that they either have choose to either shoot the rendered background as-is (making it harder to modify in post production) or specifically turn the areas around the actors into green screens (sort of defeating the purpose).

I wonder if they could use some sort of trick like projectors synced with high fps cameras to make the real time rendering invisible to the cameras instead?

</comment><comment><USER40> The highest resolution LED panel pixel pitch I've seen to date is 0.7mm...wouldn't this result in a lower resolution capture of the projected background? Specifically, when they're trying to shoot movies at or above 4K range? Also, how do they cope with the scan rate of the background video being played back to sync with the camera recording the footage?

<comment><USER41> In some photos, you can see that from the camera's POV, the area around the actors is displayed on LED as green screen so the actors can be masked out. Then, a higher resolution background is composited in. Thus, the original LED serves to accurately light the scene to reflect the background but not always to actually be the background.

<comment><USER40> This makes more sense!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This technique will produce potentially significant rendering artifacts in the final image. The backdrop is correct only from the position of the camera. A reflection from any surface will not be geometrically correct (as seen by the image from the article) I think that even ambient lighting would contain noticable deformations.

<comment><USER43> It's much better than the reflection of a green/blue screen or an empty studio with some cameras and people.

Glossy surfaces are usually not a problem unless they're (near) perfect mirrors. Even then -- lights are usually what you see in most reflections because they're orders of magnitude brighter than the rest of the set.

If reflections are problem with this new technique in certain settings, they would be even more with the current state of the art.

In those cases you replace them digitally. No way around this; either way.

Related trivia: The chrome starships in EP1 were actually rendered with environment mapping and reflection occlusion[1]. Even most games do better stuff today. Did you notice? :]

[1] [http://www.spherevfx.com/downloads/ProductionReadyGI.pdf](http://www.spherevfx.com/downloads/ProductionReadyGI.pdf) 5.3 Reflection Occlusion, pp. 89

<comment><USER42> Right but the artifacts here will still show up on glossy surfaces. Here is how games now fix these kinds of artifacts. [https://seblagarde.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/image-based- ligh...](https://seblagarde.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/image-based-lighting- approaches-and-parallax-corrected-cubemap/)

However the technology in the article cannot be corrected in this manner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Can you get a decent job just by knowing Unreal Engine well? Maybe by just doing small POC projects?

<comment><USER45> If by "well" you mean including Blueprints and physics-based-shaders then probably yes; although stuff like 3D rigging and modeling which is done on different third-party tools are a must for a lot related jobs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is so cool. How do they connect the virtual scene with the ground? Do they have screens on the floor as well?

</comment><comment> web-cowboy So we'll be able to play video game adaptations of the locations in the episodes really easily/soon, right? ;)

<comment><USER47> That has to be a consideration. But I don't know how much it would really speed up production of a AAA Mandalorian game. Some... maybe a 6 month head start on a 4-5 year game.

It would definitely help make the game environments higher quality and be a cost saving to the studio.

<comment><USER48> It could be really cool to have in-game art using the exact same assets from the actual film. Even whole scene cinematography could be taken from scene data used in a movie.

I can imagine a consumer experience using high-end VR (say an attraction at Disneyland)... take the assets and cinematography from a scene in a movie, digitally recreate everything that WASN'T already digital from the scene, and then you could relive a scene in VR, with the bonus that you can navigate it in realtime and see it from different perspectives. This would be especially adaptable for franchises like Avatar where everything in the film is already composited in 3D.

On a darker note, you could combine all this with things like the Body Transfer Illusion, take some kinda psychedelic and star in your own horror flick where gruesome things are done to your own body in VR. Good times for the whole family!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> How cool would it be to hook your Xbox up to the wall. Or a TV receiver.

</comment><comment><USER47> So I guess the next step will just be movies made entirely inside of Virtual Reality environments, and an Actor in a MoCap suit who plays his virtual Avatar right?

</comment><comment><USER50> The car, the man, DeLorean!

Oh wait, never mind . . .

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't care how "groundbreaking" the graphics pipeline. I watched couple of episodes and I had to force myself to keep watching to, I don't know, give it a chance?

I wonder when The Industry figures out the story is more important than the graphics. You don't buy books for beautiful cover and typesetting... at least not most you and not most of the time.

<comment><USER52> I enjoyed the story and apparently many other people did too. It's fanservice for sure, hence all the callbacks to characters and aliens that had background or very brief appearances in the original movies and left people wanting more. Cheesy, perhaps, but the entire franchise is pineapple pizza in space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Please send me a link of someone that watched the original Star Wars, the later trilogy and finally the last "attempt" and really appreciated it. I even watched "Rogue One" in the biggest screen available around me, with high expectations, and I'm feeling really sad because of that.

<comment><USER54> I watched the original trilogy in the theaters when they were released. (Admittedly I was a bit young for the first one.)

I've seen all the follow-ups/addons/sequels/rewrites that exist. Rogue One is the movie that I waited 30 years to see another story in the SW universe. It wasn't perfect but it was damn good enough.

The Mandalorian gives me hope that 'Grownups' are in charge and can create something worth looking at.

I am holding out hope that a story and plot will emerge. I really hate "baby yoda", but if that's what it takes to move a real story along I am willing to tolerate it.

#1 It looks incredible. Must win Emmy for best cinematography! #2 It feels real. It feels right.

I'm sorry you didn't like Rogue One.</comment></comment>