> French laws don’t recognize at-will employment. In France, you can’t simply dismiss an employee without reason. In fact, the French labor code makes it extremely clear that it considers termination to be an absolute last resort, especially in cases of voluntary or involuntary personal grounds for dismissal. Instead, it encourages employers to try to find other ways to resolve the problem. For example, let’s say the employee in question is having serious interpersonal issues with their manager or a coworker. You can only dismiss them after you’ve tried everything else, such as holding a meeting in which you talk to the two of them and try to find a solution, or by putting them on different projects so they don’t have to work together directly. If the company is putting technological changes in place to increase its competitiveness, before you can start the dismissal procedure, you must demonstrate you tried another course of action, such as redeployment or employee training.
> Everything must be documented. This is extremely important: You must document evidence of all events and/or incidents that led to the dismissal of the employee, even if the reasons have nothing to do with their conduct specifically. You’ll use this evidence both during the interview when you’re telling the employee why they’re being dismissed and should also keep it in case the employee decides to bring a lawsuit against your company.
---
If someone is having difficulty with their job, you first provide them training before you can fire them. From what I understand, it has to be a "we tried everything for the past year, here's all the documentation and they're still unable to do the basic requirements for the position.
> companies shouldn't be allowed to fire someone except for actual negligence / malice
France sure does a lot of things right here but above is what OP stated that I commented on which isn't the case for France. While one might have to go through some additional paperwork / procedures / ... you can in fact fire an say an underperforming employee
I was actually researching why PAL YUV has the same(-ish) coefficients, while forgetting that PAL is essentially a refinement of the NTSC color standard (PAL stands for phase-alternating line, which solves much of NTSC's color drift issues early in its life).
It is the choice of the 3 primary colors and of the white point which determines the coefficients.
PAL and SECAM use different color primaries than the original NTSC, and a different white, which lead to different coefficients.
However, the original color primaries and white used by NTSC had become obsolete very quickly so they no longer corresponded with what the TV sets could actually reproduce.
Eventually even for NTSC a set of primary colors was used that was close to that of PAL/SECAM, which was much later standardized by SMPTE in 1987. The NTSC broadcast signal continued to use the original formula, for backwards compatibility, but the equipment processed the colors according to the updated primaries.
In 1990, Rec. 709 has standardized a set of primaries intermediate between those of PAL/SECAM and of SMPTE, which was later also adopted by sRGB.
Worse, "NTSC" is not a single standard, Japan deviated it too much that the primaries are defined by their own ARIB (notably ~9000 K white point).
... okay, technically PAL and SECAM too, but only in audio (analogue Zweikanalton versus digital NICAM), bandwidth placement (channel plan and relative placement of audio and video signals, and, uhm, teletext) and, uhm, teletext standard (French Antiope versus Britain's Teletext and Fastext).
Honestly, the weird 16-239 (on 8-bit) color range and 60000/1001 fps limitations stem from the original NTSC standard, which considering both the Japanese NTSC adaptation and European standards do not have is rather frustating nowadays. Both the HDVS and HD-MAC standards define it in precise ways (exactly 60 fps for HDVS and 0-255 color range for HD-MAC*) but America being America...
* I know that HD-MAC is analog(ue), but it has an explicit digital step for transmission and it uses the whole 8 bits for the conversion!
> People don’t realize how many man hours went into those early decisions.
In my "trying to hunt down the earliest reference for the coefficients" I came across "Television standards and practice; selected papers from the Proceedings of the National television system committee and its panels" at https://archive.org/details/televisionstanda00natirich/mode/... which you may enjoy. The "problem" in trying to find the NTSC color values is that the collection of papers is from 1943... and color TV didn't become available until the 50s (there is some mention of color but I couldn't find it) - most of the questions of color are phrased with "should".
This is why I love graphics and game engines. It's this focal point of computer science, art, color theory, physics, practical implications for other systems around the globe, and humanities.
I kept a journal as a teenager when I started and later digitized it when I was in my 20s. The biggest impact was mostly SIGGRAPH papers that are now available online such as "Color Gamut Transform Pairs" (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233784968_Color_Gam...).
I bought all the GPU Gems books, all the ShaderX books (shout out to Wolfgang Engel, his books helped me tremendously), and all the GPU pro books. Most of these are available online now but I had sagging bookshelves full of this stuff in my 20s.
Now in my late 40s, I live like an old japanese man with minimalism and very little clutter. All my readings are digital, iPad-consumable. All my work is online, cloud based or VDI or ssh away. I still enjoy learning but I feel like because I don't have a prestigious degree in the subject, it's better to let others teach it. I'm just glad I was able to build something with that knowledge and release it into the world.
> You're uninformed. France has that, and it doesn't result in excessive unemployment; in fact, the unemployment rates in France and in the US are practically the same, respectively 7.5% vs. 7.8%.
You might want to expand that to the youth unemployment rate.
> Youth Unemployment Rate in France decreased to 18.90 percent in October from 19 percent in September of 2025. Youth Unemployment Rate in France averaged 20.52 percent from 1983 until 2025, reaching an all time high of 28.20 percent in November of 2012 and a record low of 14.50 percent in February of 1983.
While the overall unemployment rate may be similar, the "hire them once and have to take exterodary action to fire them" significantly impacts the employment rate of college new graduates where it can be difficult to identify how well they actually work in the work force.
> ... High unemployment, especially for young immigrants, was seen as one of the driving forces behind the 2005 civil unrest in France and this unrest mobilized the perceived public urgency for the First Employment Contract. Youths are particularly at risk as they have been locked out of the same career opportunities as older workers, contributing to both a rise in tensions amongst the economically disenfranchised underclass, and, some claim, a brain drain of graduates leaving for better opportunities in Britain and the United States.
> A fun tangent on the "green cast" mentioned in the post: the reason the Bayer pattern is RGGB (50% green) isn't just about color balance, but spatial resolution. The human eye is most sensitive to green light, so that channel effectively carries the majority of the luminance (brightness/detail) data.
From the classic file format "ppm" (portable pixel map) the ppm to pgm (portable grayscale map) man page:
The quantization formula ppmtopgm uses is g = .299 r + .587 g + .114 b.
You'll note the relatively high value of green there, making up nearly 60% of the luminosity of the resulting grayscale image.
I also love the quote in there...
Quote
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is gray, and yellow white
But we decide which is right
And which is a quantization error.
Funnily enough that's not the only mistake he made in that article. His final image is noticeably different from the camera's output image because he rescaled the values in the first step. That's why the dark areas look so crushed, eg around the firewood carrier on the lower left or around the cat, and similarly with highlights, e.g. the specular highlights on the ornaments.
After that, the next most important problem is the fact he operates in the wrong color space, where he's boosting raw RGB channels rather than luminance. That means that some objects appear much too saturated.
So his photo isn't "unprocessed", it's just incorrectly processed.
I didn’t read the article as implying that the final image the author arrived at was “unprocessed”. The point seemed to be that the first image was “unprocessed” but that the “unprocessed” image isn’t useful as a “photo”. You only get a proper “picture”
Of something after you do quite a bit of processing.
>There’s nothing that happens when you adjust the contrast or white balance in editing software that the camera hasn’t done under the hood. The edited image isn’t “faker” then the original: they are different renditions of the same data.
That's not how I read it. As in, this is an incidental comment. But the unprocessed version is the raw values from the sensors visible in the first picture, the processed are both the camera photo and his attempt at the end.
This whole post read like and in-depth response to people that claim things like “I don’t do any processing to my photos” or feel some kind of purist shame about doing so. It’s a weird chip some amateur photographers have on their shoulders, but even pros “process” their photos and have done so all the way back until the beginning of photography.
But mapping raw values to screen pixel brightness already entails an implicit transform, so arguably there is no such thing as an unprocessed photo (that you can look at).
Conversely the output of standard transforms applied to a raw Bayer sensor output might reasonably be called the "unprocessed image", since that is what the intended output of the measurement device is.
You do need to rescale the values as the first step, but not exactly the described way (you need to subtract the data pedestal in order to get linear values).
The summary and justification sections help set the intent of the bill, but they don't define the law itself.
Those uses are:
Section two of this bill adds a new Article 45-A to General Business Law
to require addictive social media platforms which feature predatory
features such as algorithmic feeds, push notifications, autoplay, infi-
nite scroll, and/or like counts as a significant part of the provision
of their service to post warning labels for all users upon access to the
platform. The bill features a series of specific exemptions for certain
types of notifications that fall beyond the scope of the bill (i.e.
those explicitly requested by a user or which are deployed for civic
communication). More broadly, the bill also exempts any feature which is
determined by the Attorney General via regulation to be offered for a
valid purpose unrelated to prolonging use of the addictive social media
platform.
...
... Additionally, as this bill covers only social media
platforms that deploy addictive features such as algorithmic feeds, push
notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, and like counts, any platform
not wishing to display a warning label could simply limit their use of
these features.
The text of the law, however, does not define "algorithmic feed" (sorting by date post could be considered "an algorithm" by some).
"[S]uch as algorithmic feeds" in the description and justification remains undefined in the text of the bill itself.
I don't see how "Addictive feed" is circularly defined. The definition given is [1]:
> "Addictive feed" shall mean a website, online service, online
application, or mobile application, or a portion thereof, in which
multiple pieces of media generated or shared by users of a website,
online service, online application, or mobile application, either
concurrently or sequentially, are recommended, selected, or prioritized
for display to a user based, in whole or in part, on information
associated with the user or the user's device, unless any of the
following conditions are met, alone or in combination with one another:
> (a) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on
information that is not persistently associated with the user or user's
device, and does not concern the user's previous interactions with media
generated or shared by other users;
> (b) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is based on
user-selected privacy or accessibility settings, or technical
information concerning the user's device;
> (c) the user expressly and unambiguously requested the specific media,
media by the author, creator, or poster of media the user has subscribed
to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user has subscribed
to, provided that the media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized
for display based, in whole or in part, on other information associated
with the user or the user's device that is not otherwise permissible
under this subdivision;
> (d) the user expressly and unambiguously requested that specific
media, media by a specified author, creator, or poster of media the user
has subscribed to, or media shared by users to a page or group the user
has subscribed to pursuant to paragraph (c) of this subdivision, be
blocked, prioritized or deprioritized for display, provided that the
media is not recommended, selected, or prioritized for display based, in
whole or in part, on other information associated with the user or the
user's device that is not otherwise permissible under this subdivision;
> (e) the media are direct and private communications;
> (f) the media are recommended, selected, or prioritized only in
response to a specific search inquiry by the user;
(> g) the media recommended, selected, or prioritized for display is
exclusively next in a pre-existing sequence from the same author,
creator, poster, or source; or
> (h) the recommendation, prioritization, or selection is necessary to
comply with the provisions of this article and any regulations
promulgated pursuant to this article.
Ahh... thank you. That's a different part of the already established legislation and wasn't part of this one (which is why I couldn't find it at first glance - I was looking at 1520 and this is 1500). It was referencing it and saying it was itself.
That does clear it up.
With that definition in mind, to answer the question "does HN need to have this label?" ...
... "unless any of the following conditions are met" ...
and it would appear that under (a) that the prioritization or selection of articles displayed is not associated with a user or a user's device, nor does it concern the user's previous interactions with media generated by others...
So my layman's read of this is that "No, Hacker News does not fall into the definition of an addictive feed."
> Social media platforms with infinite scrolling, auto-play and algorithmic feeds will be required to display warning labels about their potential harm to young users’ mental health under a new law, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Friday.
> Legislation S4505/A5346, under the chapter amendment, requires social media platforms that offer addictive feeds, auto play or infinite scroll to post warning labels on their platforms.
§ 1520. DEFINITIONS. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS ARTICLE, THE FOLLOWING
TERMS SHALL HAVE THE FOLLOWING MEANINGS:
1. "ADDICTIVE FEED" SHALL MEAN AS DEFINED IN SUBDIVISION ONE OF
SECTION FIFTEEN HUNDRED OF THIS CHAPTER.
2. "ADDICTIVE SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM" SHALL MEAN A WEBSITE, ONLINE
SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, OR MOBILE APPLICATION THAT PRIMARILY SERVES
AS A MEDIUM FOR COVERED USERS TO INTERACT WITH MEDIA GENERATED BY OTHER
USERS AND WHICH OFFERS OR PROVIDES COVERED USERS AN ADDICTIVE FEED, PUSH
NOTIFICATIONS, AUTOPLAY, INFINITE SCROLL, AND/OR LIKE COUNTS AS A
SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE SERVICES PROVIDED BY SUCH WEBSITE, ONLINE
SERVICE, ONLINE APPLICATION, OR MOBILE APPLICATION. "ADDICTIVE SOCIAL
MEDIA PLATFORM" SHALL NOT INCLUDE ANY SUCH SERVICE OR APPLICATION WHICH
THE ATTORNEY GENERAL DETERMINES OFFERS THE FEATURES DESCRIBED HEREIN FOR
A VALID PURPOSE UNRELATED TO PROLONGING USE OF SUCH PLATFORM.
...
7. "LIKE COUNTS" SHALL MEAN THE QUANTIFICATION AND PUBLIC DISPLAY OF
POSITIVE VOTES, SUCH AS BUT NOT LIMITED TO THOSE EXPRESSED VIA A HEART
OR THUMBS-UP ICON, ATTACHED TO A PIECE OF MEDIA GENERATED BY A COVERED
USER.
(note that there is no public display of positive votes on HN)
HN doesn't have push notifications, autoplay, infinite scroll, or like counts.
"Addictive feed" is poorly defined.
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Edit: The harmful nature of social media is something that HN has recognized for well over a decade. There is a feature "noprocrast" to help manage this if you do have this problem.
7 Nov: Anti-procrastination features
Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero.
As an aside, there's an app out there is an app for the iPad called "Cuboro Riddles" which is a "how do you make the marble go from here to there using the blocks." Given that there are multiple ways that a block can channel a marble, this is a tricky one.
... and then if you get this over into the lego domain (not as "just something to fiddle with..." it gets you into the GBC. There is a standard for how one connects to another described at https://www.greatballcontraption.com/wiki/standard ... and then at lego conventions people hook them all up. https://youtu.be/avyh-36jEqA
Tangent - Monktoberfest 2016: Bryan Cantrill - Oral Tradition in Software Engineering https://youtu.be/4PaWFYm0kEw?si=avSAlBsCVUzjW2xo&t=163 (only 2:43 in ... so after the relevant clip, start over and you'll catch back up quickly)
> so let's just do a little experiment here ... um ... so if I say Jingle Bells Batman Smells you say ...
> okay where did you learn that? If that's not a movie reference; it's not not from a TV show; you learn that the way I learned that you learned that - on the playground. You learned that from another eight-year-old another seven-year-old ...
> Tariff of 1791 or Excise Whiskey Tax of 1791 was a United States statute establishing a taxation policy to further reduce Colonial America public debt as assumed by the residuals of American Revolution. The Act of Congress imposed duties or tariffs on domestic and imported distilled spirits generating government revenue while fortifying the Federalist Era.
> After a spirited debate, the House passed, by a 35 to 21 majority, the Excise Whiskey Tax—legislation that proved wildly unpopular with farmers and eventually precipitated the “Whisky Rebellion.” The measure levied a federal tax on domestic and imported alcohol, earmarked to offset a portion of the federal government’s recent assumption of state debts. Southern and western farmers, whose grain crop was a chief ingredient in whiskey, loudly protested the tax. In 1794, farmers in western Pennsylvania attacked federal officials seeking to collect tax on the grain they had distilled into whiskey. The administration of President George Washington dispatched a force of nearly 13,000 militia to put down a feared revolt. Resistance, however, dissipated when the troops arrived.
> The Whiskey Rebellion (also known as the Whiskey Insurrection) was a violent tax protest in the United States beginning in 1791 and ending in 1794 during the presidency of George Washington. The so-called "whiskey tax" was the first tax imposed on a domestic product by the newly formed federal government. The "whiskey tax" became law in 1791, and was intended to generate revenue to pay the war debt incurred during the American Revolutionary War.
> Kentucky, home to 95% of the world’s bourbon inventory, is the only state in the nation that charges a tax on aging bourbon barrels but that is about to change. Kentucky distillers paid a record $33 million in 2021, more than triple the $10.7 million paid in 2009. That $33 million is projected to more than double in the next six to seven years as bourbon barrel inventory is expected to swell as production increases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_(employment)_in_Fran...
https://www.rippling.com/blog/termination-in-france
In particular the parts:
> French laws don’t recognize at-will employment. In France, you can’t simply dismiss an employee without reason. In fact, the French labor code makes it extremely clear that it considers termination to be an absolute last resort, especially in cases of voluntary or involuntary personal grounds for dismissal. Instead, it encourages employers to try to find other ways to resolve the problem. For example, let’s say the employee in question is having serious interpersonal issues with their manager or a coworker. You can only dismiss them after you’ve tried everything else, such as holding a meeting in which you talk to the two of them and try to find a solution, or by putting them on different projects so they don’t have to work together directly. If the company is putting technological changes in place to increase its competitiveness, before you can start the dismissal procedure, you must demonstrate you tried another course of action, such as redeployment or employee training.
> Everything must be documented. This is extremely important: You must document evidence of all events and/or incidents that led to the dismissal of the employee, even if the reasons have nothing to do with their conduct specifically. You’ll use this evidence both during the interview when you’re telling the employee why they’re being dismissed and should also keep it in case the employee decides to bring a lawsuit against your company.
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If someone is having difficulty with their job, you first provide them training before you can fire them. From what I understand, it has to be a "we tried everything for the past year, here's all the documentation and they're still unable to do the basic requirements for the position.
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