A Middle Ground Between Contract Worker and Employee - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/11/business/a-middle-ground-between-contract-worker-and-employee.html?ref=us <comment><USER2> Here's the original paper by Kreuger and Harris that this article is built around:

[http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/12/09-moderniz...](http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2015/12/09-modernizing- labor-laws-for-the-independent-worker-krueger-harris)

The authors propose a new employment category: Independent Worker. The authors calculate that there are currently ~600,000 independent workers in the US (0.4% of total employment).

 _In our proposal, independent workers — regardless of whether they work through an online or offline intermediary — would qualify for many, although not all, of the benefits and protections that employees receive, including the freedom to organize and collectively bargain, civil rights protections, tax withholding, and employer contributions for payroll taxes. Because it is conceptually impossible to attribute their work hours to any single intermediary, however, independent workers would not qualify for hours-based benefits, including overtime or minimum wage requirements._

<comment><USER3> The elephant in the room is "minimum wage requirements." here ie finding away around paying minimum wage.

Ask Sports Direct in the UK how fiddling the minimum wage is working out for them.

<comment> J-dawg Sports Direct are a vile, abusive organisation. I'm not sure how the owner can sleep at night knowing that his riches are the direct result of exploiting desperate people.

This is the story that the parent comment is referring to: [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how- sports-d...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/dec/09/how-sports- direct-effectively-pays-below-minimum-wage-pay)

Their shares rose 4% after the Conservatives won the general election, because the market didn't expect them to reform zero-hours contracts. (It seems the market was correct). [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/election-201...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/election-2015-sports- direct-share-price-up-4-per-cent-after-zero-hours-relief-on-conservative- win-10235628.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Alan B. Krueger, a former chief economist to President Obama, and Seth D. Harris, a former deputy labor secretary, argued in a paper released this week that many workers in the so-called online gig economy should have more rights and protections than most do now. At the same time, they wrote, "forcing these new forms of work into a traditional employment relationship could be an existential threat to the emergence of online-intermediated work."

It would be brutal to Uber's profitability, titanic valuation and possibly even their existence, but online-intermediated work is here to stay.

Since their profitability is largely predicated on maintaining the current upward transfer of wealth (from drivers who create the wealth to shareholders who don't), they would, of course, prefer to keep treating their drivers as independent contractors who can be kept precariously employed.

<comment> UK-AL If it was transferring wealth from drivers to shareholders, they wouldn't do the job.

They chose to do the job, so it is at least better than the alternative options they could do.

<comment><USER5> The "wealth" that is getting transferred is a bit more abstract than money going directly from the worker's pocket into the shareholder's. Instead, it looks more like the worker's personal vehicle being worn down over time by work done for the purposes of the company rather than personal purposes. The worker's capital is depreciating more rapidly than during personal use, and the profits generated by this erosion of asset are going to the shareholders, not the worker. The worker receives pay for his labor, but receives nothing for the gradual depreciation of his capital that results from the terms of the gig labor.

<comment> UK-AL I'm fairly sure money received from doing business with uber is meant to account for both depreciation and salary. If you pay money to a company you don't pay separately for labour and deprecation of assets. You pay a single price, it's up the company how to split it.

If the company doesn't set aside the money for depreciation and renewal of assets , they will soon realise and stop doing that activity if its unprofitable.

Stop treating uber drivers like children.

<comment><USER6> Depreciation not deprecation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are a couple great bits in that article, but this is one I've seen as a trend:

 _" Under an employment model, by contrast, the company has a much more reliable and knowledgeable workforce, one that can be held to a specific standard of quality and a more consistent schedule."_

Home Depot learned a similar lesson in the 2000's - [http://archive.fortune.com/2008/09/18/magazines/fortune/fort...](http://archive.fortune.com/2008/09/18/magazines/fortune/fortune500/reingold_homedepot500.fortune/index.htm)

Employee morale is critical in service-oriented jobs.

<comment><USER8> Companies often learn the same lesion over and over. Reliable workers are more in demand so they can more easily find higher paying work for someone else.

If you cut pay or increase workload things can look ok for just long enough that all your good people leave.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Middle ground as in: you (the contract worker) have none of the benefits of an employee and all of the downsides of an independent contractor and the company has all the benefits of having employees but none of the downsides.

That's nicely spread, 50/50.

<comment><USER10> They also have the benefits of being a contractor. No worry about working for multiple companies at the same time. You own your creative work that you get paid to build unless you sign it away with a contract.

<comment><USER11> And set your own schedule right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At the heart of the divide between contractor and employee is America's idiotic healthcare bargain between Democrats and Republicans: employers provide private healthcare and the public system is only for the destitute and old. Obamacare is an attempt to solve this by adding more work for individuals transitioning between jobs. A rational healthcare system would not be so dependent on your employment status.

<comment><USER13> Health insurance being tied to employment is a result of government wage and price controls during World War II. A simple improvement would be to provide the same tax breaks associated with paying for health insurance to individuals rather than companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's no market need for these absurd legal employment classifications. Let people contract with other, and stop creating elaborate arbitrary categorizations as a means of applying complex taxes and regulations.

<comment><USER15> That's a lovely, idealistic premise. But one half of this negotiation has considerably more power than the other, and many would argue the less powerful side needs to have certain rights protected.

<comment><USER16> No, that's the beauty of dissolving these long term employment relationships. You don't need protections from your abusive employer because you can very easily find a better employer.

<comment><USER15> So these changed employment relationships guarantee employment for every citizen in the US? Interesting concept.

<comment><USER16> Nope. A fluid labor market means just means that contracts and labor have a much easier time finding each other.

I'm not particularly interested in guaranteeing employment for anyone, let alone everyone.

<comment><USER15> _A fluid labor market means just means that contracts and labor have a much easier time finding each other._

But why is that preferable for labor, compared to having a reliable job? People have bills, mortgages, etc - a "fluid labor market" is not in their favor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's the thing. If there is a marketplace where you set your own rates, you can still be a contractor. That's one of the tests that marketplaces like Uber failed.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Middle ground" here is going to be devastating to technology employees, especially IT.

Welcome to the Service Request, piecework economy.

</comment><comment><USER11> What's the disadvantage of w2? Wouldn't the costs be about the same?

<comment><USER8> If you pay someone 10$/h as a w2 for even 5 hours a week, the government wants you to contribute an extra 6.2% for social security and 1.45% for Medicare. Plus a range of other benefits which don't show up on there paystub, but still cost you money.

<comment><USER19> The costs, though, are actually about the same, because you're likely paying that contract worker more than an actual employee would be making.

<comment><USER8> It depends on how you slice it. You can sometimes get away with paying contract workers less than a w2 worker at minimum wage. Don't include expenses, lot's of wait time is 'off the clock' even if they can't leave etc.

Many employees also don't realize just how many benefits they are giving up. New Uber drivers for example often drastically overstate what there earning are.

PS: I fell into this trap even as a w2. 52$/hour and zero benefits is significantly worse than I initially thought.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, by a Software Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/decon.html# <comment><USER2> Here's Chomsky on the same issue: [http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on- postmodernis...](http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/chomsky-on- postmodernism.html)

A quote:

"It's entirely possible that I'm simply missing something, or that I just lack the intellectual capacity to understand the profundities that have been unearthed in the past 20 years or so by Paris intellectuals and their followers. I'm perfectly open-minded about it, and have been for years, when similar charges have been made -- but without any answer to my questions. Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand. Of course, if it's all beyond my comprehension, which is possible, then I'm just a lost cause, and will be compelled to keep to things I do seem to be able to understand, and keep to association with the kinds of people who also seem to be interested in them and seem to understand them (which I'm perfectly happy to do, having no interest, now or ever, in the sectors of the intellectual culture that engage in these things, but apparently little else).

Since no one has succeeded in showing me what I'm missing, we're left with the second option: I'm just incapable of understanding. I'm certainly willing to grant that it may be true, though I'm afraid I'll have to remain suspicious, for what seem good reasons. There are lots of things I don't understand -- say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat's last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things: (1) I can ask friends who work in these areas to explain it to me at a level that I can understand, and they can do so, without particular difficulty; (2) if I'm interested, I can proceed to learn more so that I will come to understand it. Now Derrida, Lacan, Lyotard, Kristeva, etc. --- even Foucault, whom I knew and liked, and who was somewhat different from the rest --- write things that I also don't understand, but (1) and (2) don't hold: no one who says they do understand can explain it to me and I haven't a clue as to how to proceed to overcome my failures. That leaves one of two possibilities: (a) some new advance in intellectual life has been made, perhaps some sudden genetic mutation, which has created a form of "theory" that is beyond quantum theory, topology, etc., in depth and profundity; or (b) ... I won't spell it out."

<comment><USER3> _Again, they are simple and should be easy to answer, if there is an answer: if I'm missing something, then show me what it is, in terms I can understand._

This is a patently unfair test. Without a doubt, someone with infinite patience could take the time to explain all this to Chomsky-- but the fact that he lacks the inclination to actually study Continental Philosophy, and there aren't any volunteers willing to take the time to spoon-feed it to him isn't a reflection on the subject matter.

As an analogy: imagine if Paul McCartney said that someone should explain Perelman's proof of the Poincare Conjecture to him, and that if they couldn't, it meant that it was bunk.

<comment><USER2> > if Paul McCartney said that someone should explain Perelman's proof of the > Poincare Conjecture to him, and that if they couldn't, it meant that it was > bunk.

Sure, it's possible that Chomsky hasn't taken the time to truly understand Continental Philosophy or lacks the technical training to understand it even if someone were to explain it all to him.

But it's also possible that continental philosophy is just profound nonsense that thrives based on the following fallacy:

1\. Profound stuff (general relativity, quantum mechanics, Poincare conjecture) is very often difficult to understand.

2\. Continental philosophy is difficult to understand.

3\. Hence, continental philosophy is profound stuff.

Frankly, applying the "looks like a duck, talks like a duck, walks like a duck" criteria, I feel it's more likely that continental philosophy doesn't qualify as a genuine area of human knowledge - it's all just nonsense. But it might serve some other important purpose (e.g., a form of harmless mental hashish that's genuinely pleasurable).

At any rate, pressure for greater clarity and simpler exposition is always good in any field.

<comment><USER3> As someone who has actually studies Continental Philosophy, I can tell you that it's not nonsense.

Your "looks like a duck, walks like a duck" test would just as easily apply to nuclear physics or non-Euclidean geometry, if you are not already familiar with the terms of art of those fields.

And the pressure for greater clarity and simpler exposition is admirable, so far as it goes-- but (as many mathematics texts demonstrate) notation matters. Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler-- and this latter part is often difficult.

<comment><USER4> > _And the pressure for greater clarity and simpler exposition is admirable, > so far as it goes_

I agree with you that greater clarity is good, so long as it doesn't sacrifice truth, or accuracy. But the context here is that Continental Philosophy/Deconstruction/the Humanities do not seem to even consider the pursuit of clarity to be worth its while. It seems, in fact, to value verboseness and _unclarity_ above all else.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but that's really not true. In fact, much of the lack of clarity (to outsiders) comes from the desire to be concise, and not verbose. You may think that they are being purposely obscure, but I promise you, they are trying to be as clear as possible without sacrificing truth or accuracy, or nuance.

<comment><USER5> I don't know if anyone else is going to read down this far, but I have something to say. The argument that outsiders need to understand the jargon is a red herring against the ultimate point. Even if someone took the time to learn the jargon and find some intelligent thoughts, there is also language purposefully designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought - this is regardless of the jargon.

I can do it with jargon you already understand, for example,

The totality of the colour blue is the sum of all of the integrals from one meta-point to another meta-point, formed in to spherical husk that can be opened by neither being within or without.

Even though those words are all well-established with their meaning, they are nonsense when strung together.

<comment><USER3> _The totality of the colour blue is the sum of all of the integrals from one meta-point to another meta-point, formed in to spherical husk that can be opened by neither being within or without. Even though those words are all well-established with their meaning, they are nonsense when strung together._

That's true. And if you can find me a sentence from Derrida that is similarly nonsense, I'll tip my cap to you.

Honestly: it's not "designed to be unintelligible in order to conceal an absence of honest thought."

<comment><USER6> That seems like a fun game, though I don't have any opinions on Continental Philosophy. I don't speak French well enough to do it in the original, so I'll have to try in translation:

"And even if one wished to keep sonority on the side of the sensible and contingent signifier which would be strictly speaking impossible, since formal identities isolated within a sensible mass are already idealities that are not purely sensible, it would have to be admitted that the immediate and privileged unity which founds significance and the acts of language is the articulated unity of sound and sense within the phonic."

Taken from here: [http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/f...](http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/derrida.htm)

While reading it, I was honestly asking myself if there were major transcription errors from the original translation, because it's completely impenetrable.

<comment><USER3> That's not a terribly felicitous translation, but it is by no means impenetrable. Of course, we can't take that sentence in isolation-- it is the middle sentence of a short paragraph, so you need to read a bit of context, too.

The paragraph also presumes that you are familiar with the opposition (familiar since Kant, at least) between the sensible and the intelligible, and Saussure's division of the sign into a signifier (which is supposed to be sensible) and a signified (which is the intelligible portion of the sign, _not_ the thing referred to.)

Now, if you have that context, and understand the background, the paragraph is perfectly understandable.

<comment><USER4> Explain it to us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "ac.be" is captured as the hostname here, but that's a domain suffix (it should be ucl.ac.be). It might be worth switching the HN suffix list to the Mozilla's suffix list? <http://publicsuffix.org/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I saw this here originally:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489199>

Thought it was worth its own post - I actually gained a little more respect for deconstruction after reading the article. Before I thought it was entirely nonsense, now I see that it might have some validity if used in an intelligent and honest way. Credit to dmlorenzetti for commenting with the link, very insightful.

</comment><comment><USER8> The lesson here is that intellectual inbreeding is a terrible and sad thing if you're an outside observer. All fields of academic study should once in a while be faced with outside scrutiny because without it the discipline optimizes cleverness instead of actual intellectual content.

<comment><USER9> Of course, in a sense they are subject to this scrutiny. Humanities programs are very often the first ones proposed for the chopping block whenever budget cuts come around. At which time, I assume, they are forced to make appeals as to why they are too important to be slashed. Obviously I don't think these appeals involve explaining the workings of deconstruction to administrators, but presumably they are able to say something convincing enough to stay afloat.

In the end, it probably amounts to most people (very arguably for the better) being unwilling to declare something as bunk just because they don't personally understand it or see the merit.

I think the real test should be outside application. If the supposed advances made in some particular arm of literature can only have meaning, effect and influence within that closed literary community, then what can it really be doing for society as a whole? Ultimately we want a discipline to offer something to the world at large, not just to itself. You don't have to be a scientist to see the merit in studying the human heart, you just have to know (or just be able to conceive) someone with heart disease. And it's not just sciences that could withstand this test. If studying music theory helps people to write more beautiful songs, that will be apparent to many people who have no music training whatsoever.

Point being, I think the real acid test is outside application. I won't leap to the conclusion that deconstructionism is garbage. I just ask to be shown that understanding it does indeed help someone to do something other than write deconstruction papers.

<comment><USER10> The problem for application is in what time frame is it useful? In early biology just cataloging plants, bugs, and animals would be of little or no use to those not in those fields as all they were doing is developing taxonomies. The same might be said of those who started first watching the stars.

I think that Postmodernism may be a bit of a waste of time, but it's too early for me to know. Unfortunately they wish the public fund their work.

<comment><USER8> Ya but at least you could ask a biologist why he was cataloging all those things and he would be able to give you a clear answer and point to possible uses of that catalog, same for the astronomer. Unfortunately, the same can not be said for some of postmodernist theories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It reminds me somehow of "Deconstructing My Car at the Detroit Airport" by Howard S. Schwartz. Originally published in "Organization Studies" 1993, Vol. 14, pp. 279-281. Link to the pdf of the publisher: <http://oss.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/14/2/279> But it also found elsewhere, e.g.: <http://nzmera.orconhosting.net.nz/deconstr.html>

</comment><comment><USER12> "Besides, there is no such way to gain admittance, or give defence to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard them around about with legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefined words : wich yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, than the fortresses of fair warriors"

\-- John Locke

</comment><comment><USER13> While I should just shrug it off and say "haha, you got us, we're certainly stuffy", look at the things we often are trying to discuss in Literature.

Now, it's one thing to question the artistic merits of literature studied in academia, such as the almost impenetrable "Finnegan's Wake". It's not all because of its vernacular (I can't really read too much of it at a time because it blurs into almost gibberish after awhile and I lose track of stuff I'd just read a line prior), but because it seriously doesn't make any damned sense sometimes, which is common when alot of it is written stream of conscious.

But, I get the argument: literary criticism is self-perpetuating, self- congratulatory stuff in many cases. But, just as for every solid software developer who understands the art and science of software construction in the tradition of Fred Brooks or Steven McConnell, there is the spaghetti coder with terrible habits (pushing broken code to the repo, no code commenting, etc.). The same laziness and idiosyncratic behavior is rife in litcrit as well. For every Harold Bloom and James Wood, there's alot of hacks that toss off their "deconstructions" rife with tautologies and dense nonsense. It's part of any discipline to separate the good from the bad; the humanities is no different.

<comment><USER14> Sorry, but that does not make sense to me.

A discipline either establishes common criteria to distinguish good stuff from bad stuff or it doesn't. And these should not be arbitrary otherwise the judgment remains subjective and therefore worthless.

Since you admit that "there's alot of hacks", it seems literary criticism has no criteria or they are mostly subjective. Otherwise, you wouldn't have such a lot of hacks, but just a few.

It obviously produces hardly anything worth knowing, no?

<comment><USER13> Oh, there is structure. Criticism comes in the following best practice, and you'll see this construct throughout most all litcrit (except for, you guessed it, the page-padding hacks who talk around the topic rather than about it):

1) Establish the "text" in question as well as the "context" of the text (certain themes, symbolism, diction, universality, etc.)

2) apply culturual congruity (whether you are applying the criticism to the time when the text was written or to modern times),

3) Establish your point of argument and/or analysis.

4) Apply argument to the text

5) Connect the evidence of this argument.

6) Conclusion

The fact that I use Bloom as a shining example of "good" criticism should steer you in the direction that there is quality there. His just one example of good work.

Is there an API to access Plato's Republic's quality hooks? No, but there are best practices. Just because you refuse to see them as common criteria doesn't diminish the task at hand. If you refuse to accept it as legitimate, you might as well refuse to accept there are such things as great literature and creation beyond the programmatic kind.

<comment><USER15> I have spent a ridicules amount of time reading everything from trash to the classics and most well respected works are terrible. I blame the form of "Criticism" you just described because it does nothing of the sort. Then again I might be the only person who morns all the interesting works never created because the echo chamber effect that infects the literary world. Everyone is to afraid say anything of substance lest they be accused of "not getting it".

<comment><USER6> "There is no great literature, there is old literature and moving literature, but they are not the same thing."

And when most people talk about great literature, they aren't talking about either thing. Most people mean something like Adler's Great Books criteria when they talk about great literature:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_books>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This dawned on me the other day.

Michael Dorfman is right. Deconstruction is not a single method or mechanical process.

Deconstruction is perhaps best understood if you think of Derrida as an elaborate troll. It is a general strategy for trolling philosophers. All the biographies of Derrida I've read have used words like "playful" to describe him, like he's fucking Loki or something. He says "That work of Plato you're so fond of quoting doesn't _really_ mean what you think it means!" and comes up with a convincing argument for why this is so. (The best trolls sound believable, even to those with well-trained and sensitive BS detectors.) It also explains why deconstruction can only be understood within the context of the philosophical tradition: trolling only works if it's tailored to the traditions and preconceptions of its audience.

The beautiful part is that philosophers who've been trolled are surreptitiously recruited into practicing the same trolling technique themselves.

</comment><comment><USER3> Deconstruction is not a method, and does not follow a formula, and pointing out the (numerous, outrageous) errors in this piece would take more time than I have.

I sympathize with the author's desire to make fun of that which he doesn't understand, but ultimately, it's a shallow game.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Deconstruction is not a method, and does not follow a formula, and pointing > out the (numerous, outrageous) errors in this piece would take more time > than I have.

C'mon, this is Hacker News, we don't say "This is wrong, but I won't tell you why" here. For what it's worth, I'd actually like to hear your perspective if you take the time.

The article provided a coherent explanation of deconstruction that jives with what my eyes see, which makes it the best thing I've seen on the topic. But if you see holes in it, why not take the time to point them out? I'd like to understand more since this style of academia seems to be influential in universities these days.

<comment><USER3> OK, I'll try to do this, but honestly, I don't have the kind of time it deserves.

Deconstruction is, roughly speaking (and believe, me, I'm speaking schematically here) for the purposes of this discussion, the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, and his followers. (We'll ignore, for the moment, the more literary analysis of Paul De Man, which often go under the name of deconstruction as well.)

Derrida makes it very clear throughout his writings that deconstruction is not a repeatable method which can be applied to a text, but rather, an engagement with a text on its own terms. So, there is no "formula" or set of steps that can be applied.

Second, despite the author's reduction of deconstruction to a branch of literary criticism, the texts in question are more often from the philosophical corpus than from the literary tradition. While it's true that Derrida devotes more attention to folks like Joyce, Celan and Genet than most philosophers do, the quantity of pages he devotes to them is a tiny fragment of the time he devotes to Heidegger, Husserl and Hegel, for instance.

Despite the author's step-by-step breakdown, deconstruction in practice doesn't work this way. If I were forced to generalize (and I suppose I am), I would say that deconstruction consists most often of a micrological reading (that is to say, a very close reading of the actual words of the text, not not just the broad concepts) which takes into account the (usually unconscious) assumptions that the author is working within. Most often, these assumptions, when taken to their logical conclusion lead to either a contradiction or an aporia, and the text often reflects this, unknowingly. So, a deconstructive reading often picks up on latent implications of the text itself.

I should point out that the author here is completely wrong when he writes "Step 2 -- Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want...." This is egregiously incorrect. In fact, one of Derrida's main points is that we do not decide at all what the text says. (As an aside, _decidability_ is actually a term of art within deconstruction, so the author's abuse of it here is particularly irksome. If he had say "figure out" instead of "decide" he'd have been less wrong on several counts.)

To take a concrete (and much celebrated) example, Derrida's "Plato's Pharmacy" is a reading of Plato's _Phaedrus._ It will make absolutely no sense to you if you haven't already read the Phaedrus closely, and are already familiar with the traditional interpretation of the text within philosophical circles. Sorry, but that's the bar to entry.

Assuming that you know the Phaedrus, then: the central moment in the text (according to the standard reading) is the condemnation of writing-- you know the passage. In the course of this, Plato (or rather Socrates, or rather, an Egyptian king in a legend recounted by Socrates recounted by Plato) compares writing to a drug, using the Greek word "pharmakon". Derrida shows that this word, like the English word "drug", has both a positive sense ("remedy") and a negative sense ("poison"), and cannot be reduced to either singular meaning. Furthermore, the oscillation between these two meanings cannot be fully controlled, but only understood through context, which is never saturated (never fully complete.) Put simply, if you call something a drug, you can't exclude either the positive or negative meaning in the mind of the listener. Now, at this point, Derrida then goes through the entire Platonic corpus, and quotes every time the word "pharmakon" or one of its cognates ("pharmikia", etc.) is mentioned, and shows the range of meanings implied by this term for Plato, and its implications for the passage in the Phaedrus. So far, so good. But here comes the kicker: Derrida shows that although Plato uses a variety of related terms throughout his works, there is one cognate which is notable by its absence: "pharmakos", meaning "scapegoat". And this ghost-reference to scapegoating seems to fit quite well with what Plato is doing with writing.

Now, I've trivialized Derrida's argument in at least a dozen ways in writing this-- and as I said, the above will not make any sense if you're not already steeped in the debates within the philosophical tradition about "writing" versus "speech", which are of little interest to anybody outside of the philosophical tradition. But that's a taste of what deconstruction is like, and how it operates.

I'll note in passing that there is only one "binary opposition" that Derrida is at all interested in within his work-- "interior" vs "exterior"-- and the "speech" vs "writing" discussion in Plato is a proxy for this.

The paper linked here make "jive with what your eyes see", because it was written by somebody on the outside, looking in. And I'm sure that if I were to write an outsider's view of a discipline I knew nothing about (say, astro- physics) it might look completely plausible to another outsider, while in reality bearing little resemblance to what actually goes on within the discipline.

Does that help at all?

<comment><USER17> > I should point out that the author here is completely wrong when he writes > "Step 2 -- Decide what the text says. This can be whatever you want...." > This is egregiously incorrect. In fact, one of Derrida's main points is that > we do not decide at all what the text says. (As an aside, decidability is > actually a term of art within deconstruction, so the author's abuse of it > here is particularly irksome. If he had say "figure out" instead of "decide" > he'd have been less wrong on several counts.)

To me at least, it sounds like perhaps what you are talking about is legitimate, sincere deconstruction, whereas the author is talking (correctly, in my opinion) about an "evil twin" so to speak (ie: conservatives --> neo- conservatives).

>If he had say "figure out" instead of "decide"...

I think that statement illustrates the disconnect...."figuring out" is what _should_ be done, but "deciding" is what is often _actually_ done. To me it seems you are talking about the uncompromised (correctly implemented) theory, whereas he is talking about what the theory has typically become, in actual practice. If that makes any sense.

<comment><USER3> _To me at least, it sounds like perhaps what you are talking about is legitimate, sincere deconstruction, whereas the author is talking (correctly, in my opinion) about an "evil twin" so to speak (ie: conservatives -- > neo- conservatives)._

Perhaps I am; where does this evil twin reside?

I am speaking of the work of Derrida, and the work of his followers that is (for the sake of simplicity) published by university presses-- because that's what I read.

If the "evil twins" are undergrad posers, well, I don't really know or care what they're up to these days.

 _I think that statement illustrates the disconnect...."figuring out" is what should be done, but "deciding" is what is often actually done. To me it seems you are talking about the uncompromised (correctly implemented) theory, whereas he is talking about what the theory has typically become, in actual practice. If that makes any sense._

It makes sense, but it's not what I was getting at.

My point was a Nietzschean one (which Derrida concurs with).

We don't consciously _choose_ how to interpret a text.

Here's a link to an old Usenet post I wrote, which collects a few Derrida quotations, one of which is precisely on this subject:

[http://groups.google.com/group/humanities.classics/browse_th...](http://groups.google.com/group/humanities.classics/browse_thread/thread/9eedd2d168e65073/64de1b94f7a90a4d?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=dorfman+derrida+%22it+might+be+argued%22#64de1b94f7a90a4d)

(Sorry about the crappy formating there...)

<comment><USER18> The evil twin is the John Locke quote above. Anything that consists of spending more time on your internal jargon, codes and scaffolding than on the insights that they produce.

About 70% of the humanities papers I've ever attempted to read had a much lower insight:word ratio than the newspaper. The humanities aren't fundamentally technical in the way physics is - they're always making subjective judgments, and everything's up for interpretation. So just say it, then, don't give me a bunch of stupid .25 cent word padding. I have a good vocabulary, I know those words, and I'm not impressed. If your idea can't be distilled to a simpler formulation than most of the crazy crap I saw in my friends' reading when I was an undergrad, you're probably not saying much of import.

PS your excellent summary above was a case of good writing. You could have made the same point using 4X as much words and a bunch of crazy but still- technically-grammatical-therefore-smart sentence structures, and that would have been the evil twin. Usually, when someone resorts to the silly-season writing, it's a good indicator that they don't actually have a point.

<comment><USER19> I see you're a deconstructionist yourself--you've deconstructed the penny into fourths. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting, although it seems odd to hear a software engineering describe Gödel's incompleteness theorems as a "cheap trick used to try to frighten mathematicians back in the thirties."

Still, I chuckled when I read it.

<comment><USER21> It wasn't exactly Gödel's incompleteness theorem that was being referred to. It was the use of self-reference to create a statement that can be neither true nor false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> i think deconstruction is more often classified as a post-structuralist technique[1]. it has similarities to post-modernism beyond the 'post', but it is different.

[1]barry's intro to critical theory [http://books.google.com/books?id=SNy26bx7L5UC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=SNy26bx7L5UC&printsec=frontcover)

</comment><comment><USER23> I have been studying continental philosophy for a few years now, mostly Kant, Hegel, Lacan and Heidegger. I think it's extremely interesting and rewarding and I recommend it to anyone who doesn't feel intellectually challenged. I read a book about Maurice Merleau-Ponty that included excerpts of his writing in both English and French, and I thought that the French was much clearer, even with my limited knowledge of the language, and it made me want to improve my French and learn German so that I can better understand what they're saying.

So foreign language is another barrier to entry that hasn't been mentioned yet. There are English translations, but often they aren't very good. My process for engaging with a philosopher is an iterative, multi-pass process - I start with several introductory texts or a biography before (very slowly) tackling a main text. At that point, I usually have a good idea about where the argument is going, but only a thin grasp of how we got there, so I go through the material once or twice more. This is complicated by the fact that these ideas don't stand on their own, they are part of a tradition, and it's not really possible to take one thinker and find out what he or she thinks, because it's filled with references to others. It's just not possible to pick up a main text and read it in a weekend and expect to get anything out of it - it's more like a lifetime project, something you'd add to a "Things to accomplish before I die" list. If "Learn French or German" is on there too, you have a head start.

One practical benefit is that reading a difficult text is like running with weights on. It feels like you're flying when you read something easier. And if you're looking for critiques or refutations of postmodernism specifically, continental philosophy is much more interesting than this link. Ironically, it's somewhat self-refuting, since in trying to critique the postmodernists, it unknowingly adopts an important (although distorted) postmodern point: the role of discourse in the production of power and authority. Although, of course, the author uses this to assert the superiority of his preferred rationalist, technocratic regime of truth. In other words, the claim is that postmodernism is an imposter, a bullshit pretender to the throne that Engineering should rightfully occupy. Postmodernists, under the influence of Derrida and Foucault, would say that this claim is "logocentric", a code word which ultimately means patriarchal, racist, colonialist, homophobic, etc. The demand that "postmodernism" present itself as a single well-defined and unified idea would also be seen in this light, which is probably why no postmodernists are here to defend themselves. To them, it's boringly obvious that software engineering is philosophically rooted in patriarchy.</comment>


ZX Spectrum Next – An FPGA-Based Spectrum-Compatible Computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1835143999/zx-spectrum-next <comment><USER2> I know one of the developers on this project. It's got soul, a desire to share the same experiences they had early on with people today.

Smart design, accurate and relevant today. Common sense expansions, such as plugging in a Pi Zero, are brilliant!

Way to go Jim. Home run buddy!</comment>


How We Do Spikes - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sophiedeziel/how-we-do-spikes-4a43f0d19967#.12lrdwr00 <comment><USER2> The idea of putting a timebox around a spike is really good. Then the spike is done whenever you get an answer or the timebox runs out, and "We don't know yet" is an acceptable answer. That clearly distinguishes spikes from other development stories.

So often, our development stories depend on assumptions about how/if a new technology is going to make the change we want to make work. It might not work, and estimating with unfamiliar tech is really hard.

<comment><USER3> To put this differently, putting a timebox around a spike is really good _if and only if_ "we don't know yet" is an acceptable answer. I find that it usually isn't - you're doing the spike precisely because you don't know enough to estimate or do some other piece of work, and if you don't get to the point where you do, you still can't do it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice article, thanks for sharing.

In addition to the great information you've provided, we identify features/decisions/choices that require spikes based on assessment that they are high risk and/or we have low confidence in our estimate. In addition, we sometimes use spikes to break xxx-large estimates into smaller pieces.

That way, until a project/plan/item has low (enough) risk, and high (enough) confidence, it needs more spikes.

We've found this model is a great way of identifying what needs spiking, and when a spike is 'done'. And, it also helps to ensure spikes don't end up consuming too much time.

Hope this is useful.

<comment><USER5> I often hear people use the word spike w/r/t this kind of thing, but it seems to me that "spike" is used as an agile code word when speaking with stakeholders to conceal what is actually going on: good ol' fashioned _research_. There's nothing wrong with research or planning, but I've seen a lot of engineers who seemed constitutionally incapable of calling it this in front of stakeholders.

You mention defining when a spike is 'done', and timeboxing. I understand why we do this, but there are times where I believe it contradicts the very nature of doing adequate research. We have a known unknown, and so we do some research to make that unknown known. In the course of doing research though, you will discover there's a cascading set of new unknowns which must also be understood. So, identifying a 'done' state, depending on the nature of the research we're talking about, can be a totally fraught activity.

Kinda ranting here, but this is a common scenario: "Within the next week, we'll spike to get a more accurate estimate of the time it will take to build a cluster that meets the requirements we've agreed to, and propose several technical recommendations which will fit the budget." I've seen too many instances of this where 2 more days, another week, maybe a whole month could have been spent answering these questions _correctly_. Now sure, if you have a trusting relationship with your stakeholders, you can easily negotiate that you think a solid set of recommendations will take another week, but there is a certain amount of pressure to just be done with it and smile, and I've seen this kind of thing backfire over and over again depending on the level of trust that's been established between product teams, stakeholders, and engineers. 3 months into the project, the realization settles in that the database you've chosen will not scale on writes the way you'd hoped it would. Now what?

I don't recall where this quote is from, so if someone knows the source please let me know: "Weeks of programming can save you hours of planning."

<comment><USER4> Rant as much as you like :-)

I _think_ we are saying the same thing. I'd put 'done' in quotes for exactly the reasons you mention.

Timeboxing is merely used as a forced checkpoint; to re-assess across all activities/plans. It doesn't mean we can't follow on with more spike work.

At the end of the day, we, as a business, have to determine what we do (or don't do) and when. And we use spikes (or 'research', sic) to try to help inform those decisions.

If a problem occurs - as per your scalability example - or we identify more 'unknowns', we now need to make more decisions, and use spikes (and experience, and etc) to help inform those ... rinse/repeat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great article! What did you end up replacing the asset pipeline with?

<comment><USER7> I'm curious about this too. I'm at the point in my current project where the asset pipeline is becoming somewhat of a burden, and want to know what others have done to replace it or mitigate it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on my ToDo list to write a blog post about the technical problem itself :) Not only the replacement of the assets pipeline but also what we did before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Following this approach is very effective for getting R&D credits in Canada. Documenting your process in a lightweight manner like this helps tremendously.

</comment><comment><USER9> I found this very helpful. Thank you for the advice, Sophie.</comment>


Why Are States So Strapped for Cash? There Are Two Big Reasons - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-are-states-so-strapped-for-cash-there-are-two-big-reasons-1522255521 <comment><AUTHOR> Link for app/extension to get Guest Pass for WSJ articles for free (weekly resubscription required): readacrosstheaisle.com</comment>


On S3 and EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.25hoursaday.com/weblog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=7221bfb9-d465-44fd-85c5-9c6ef5da20e2 <comment><USER2> We have yet to get any VC money and are going to be depending on S3 + EC2 for our startup. Our biggest reason is because we are going to have extremely spiky traffic (it is a website centered on hurricanes and tropical cyclones), so it is very appealing to be able to call N-dozen EC2 instances into action when the need comes (which for us is predictable) rather than have to have our own setup year-round.

We have considered going with a grid system from a different provider, but given our satisfaction with S3 and the free travel between S3 and EC2 instances, we are going to try Amazon all the way through.

My partner got our first EC2 image up and running just a day or two ago, and it was without much trouble largely thanks to the documentation and ironing- out that has been done by those that have already blazed the trail.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think if they launch a database product then it would be even more useful.</comment>


How to Improve Security Awareness of Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://blog.dashlane.com/sstic-2019-improve-security-awareness-of-software-engineers/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps test teams could include a security sub-team as well..

So, for example, if a tester is working on whether the file upload feature is done right, another tester could start uploading known malicious files to see how they get handled.</comment>


Indie Android Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/06/23/Derek-James-Polyclef <comment><USER2> Bad title dude.

"And as for revenue, I'm on pace this year to exceed six figures solely from monetizing Android apps."

Making 6 figures with Android Apps would have got you to the top of the home page.</comment>


Ask HN: The founders' visa?  - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN community,
    I am an international student from Myanmar (Burma). Currently i am a rising senior.I am very passionate about making web/mobile applications that other people find useful. I want start a start up after I graduate next year with a friend of mine who is also an international student. If i start a company in US, are there any ways i can stay here? Any advice? Thanks. <comment><USER2> My business partner went through the same thing last year. The stated regulations are tough - you can't just start a company and sponsor yourself. The company needs to be already established and capitalized and has to demonstrate that no native people can do the job you want to do. Also, the "soft" regulations are getting tougher. They are not granting as many visas as they used to, and are denying applications without denying them by asking for more and more paperwork until people give up. It's not a fun time to be an immigrant.

That said, if you are coming from Myanmar there might be some refugee visa or other special exception available to you.

<comment><USER3> When you say "already established" and "capitalized" do you know the exact criterion? I am just curious because I will be going through the same hassle very soon.

<comment><USER2> Not exactly, and I am not a lawyer. But from what I understand the business needs to exist as a legal entity and be reasonably able to pay you a living wage. I can't be a LLC with $500 in the bank. If it is less than one year old, and/or has no revenues, etc, they will ask for a _lot_ of detailed business information.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does HN remember client sessions without using cookies? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I have a cookie containing my username and a hash of some sort.</comment>


Digital Security Tips for Protesters - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/11/digital-security-tips-for-protesters <comment><USER2> Right to protest

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_protest#:~:text=The%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_protest#:~:text=The%20right%20to%20protest%20may,right%20to%20freedom%20of%20speech.&text=Nor%20is%20it%20necessarily%20civil,the%20laws%20of%20the%20state).</comment>


Apple officially scraps headphone jack for cordless 'Lightning' EarPods - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apple/2016/09/07/apple-officially-scraps-the-headphone-jack-for-cordless-earpods-with-lightning-charging/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNextWeb+%28The+Next+Web+All+Stories%29 <comment><USER2> I think I'm going to use some "courage" and switch to Android when I upgrade my iPhone 6s next.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Apple ~~officially~~ courageously scraps headphone jack

They are very brave.

I don't like this. Maybe I should treat it like ripping off a bandaid and just switch and be done with it.

Until you know, they scrap lightning in a few years. Then I can get another dongle or new headphones or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER4> The telling thing for me was Phil had to defend the idea with three different arguments, along with an inflammatory photo of a switchboard. When Steve Jobs deleted the floppy drive, he simply declared that floppies had no future.

</comment><comment><USER5> They actually did it. Those crazy bastards actually did it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't care less. Have a Sony that is full waterproof and works well with normal headphones.

Good luck with that wireless and constant charging thing..</comment>


Landing Pages Come In Many Flavours (and my search for the right one) - <AUTHOR> http://iancackett.wordpress.com/2013/08/22/landing-pages-come-in-many-flavours/

<comment><USER2> Awesome...lots of useful intel here. Please do update when you have some more results. Intuitively, I'm thinking a mix of as few words as possible to convey the use/value because I'm only going to give you about 5 secs of attention span. So at that point, I am either leaving or I want to know a little more, so there is where it gets interesting on how much and what kind of things produce the best results..maybe also a testimonial or two to build confidence.

Its not an app, but check out the www.theleanstartup.com I like how its rich with info in just the right places, then it draws you in deeper. Thanks for the info.</comment>


Simple social networks in less than 90 seconds (video: Fridge & Grumo Media) - <AUTHOR> http://keepitfresh.frid.ge/post/3068783455/fresh-fridge-video-for-all-we-3-grumomedia

<comment><USER2> I guess I'd sort of be interested in this, but Facebook already does what I want. I haven't used Frid.ge (no friends to try it with) so I don't know exactly how the groups work, but part of the value in Facebooks customisation is the ability to hide stuff from a single person without making the distinction clear. With this anyone who uses Frid.ge understand that you're going to be hiding stuff from them, assuming a person I want to hide stuff from cared about what is happening with me enough to add me as a friend here, they're going to be pissed when they find I hide stuff from them, "don't you trust me?". If you have a boss who is touchy about you partying, they're probably going to care when you hide it from them, it goes from "it doesn't happen!" to "it does happen but I don't want you to see it". It implies you have something to hide.

Facebook already allows me to hide the rare thing I don't want certain friends seeing, this seems overkill, although I'm assuming there is more to Frid.ge than just being able to hide from certain people so I won't say it's a terrible idea, but based on the video I am not attracted to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea of not just hiding information for certain people, but the clean slate idea. Once the sharing ends, the information and content is swiped clean preventing others from leveraging that after the fact. Time sensitive groups are relevant to how we interact in our actual social circles today.

FB groups do not capture this reality, the groups that are created stay and information shared is always available even after an event, or group moves on.

I believe fridge is on to a more accurate social graph. Add business and commerce solutions and you got your self a relevant business model.

Businesses don't care about who you where 2 years ago, they care about who you are now! (Time Sensitive)

Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice video! Grumo videos are way cool :)

</comment><comment><USER5> this kind of sounds like what Diaspora was trying to accomplish. I wonder whatever happened to those guys. They were the toast of silicon valley and I haven't heard anything since then.

</comment><comment><USER6> what is the difference between the fridge and facebook groups?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fridge lets you connect with friends, family, strangers you just met, co- workers, soon to be acquaintances, etc... around specific events, relationships, or groups.

Don't have to add anyone as friends or worry about privacy or permissions. Clustered social graphs mimic how you meet and interact with your real life network.

Some of these may work on FB but many topical, time and event based relationships would not work within the FB friend request structure.

<comment><USER7> > Some of these may work on FB but many topical, time and event based > relationships would not work within the FB friend request structure.

Could you explain why they wouldn't work with a public group, or a public event page, where there is no need for friend requests? And for the sake of argument, could you also say why I should trust you with my data instead of Facebook?

<comment><AUTHOR> Public groups or events on FB could work but they suffer two things:

\- people not invited, not involved, or random people start to get messages about the event and it becomes noise and adds to the clutter. Interactions around specific and esoteric groups, events or interests in a public forum isn't really the best way to spur real conversations.

\- be yourself: post, message, comment, heart what you want in the confines of that topic, event, group. Fridge takes permissions and privacy around access to profiles, pictures out of the picture and lets you post and share what you want with exactly the right people

it all comes down to social context and not having a one size fit all hierarchy of relationships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> video isnt loading on my macbook air =/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the direct Youtube link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt493X2IPCc></comment></comment>


You Had Them at 'Jerry Maguire': This Art Exhibit Stocks Just One Movie - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/15/arts/jerry-maguire-vhs-exhibit.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> EIT tours as a costumed crew showing found VHS footage.

They are also involved with VHS preservation.

They have fairly twisted yet entertaining full length releases which consist of bizarre clips edited together from long forgotten direct-to-video films.[1]

Pushing the boundaries of fair use and artistic preservation.

I have collected 66 "Jerries" that will be finally going home as part of this project.

[1]: [http://watch.everythingisterrible.com/?p=5401328194173648619](http://watch.everythingisterrible.com/?p=5401328194173648619)

</comment><comment><USER3> > "I don't know anyone who could tell you the plot of that movie," he said. > "The average person just says, 'Show me the money,' 'You had me at hello,' > 'The human head weighs eight pounds.'"

Sports agent Jerry Maguire has a professional epiphany that gets him fired. He enters serious personal relationships with his last client and one employee who left with him, and together they all achieve athletic success and personal happiness.

<comment><USER4> Leaving out the part where he effectively abandoned his last client in the quest for the holy grail (#1 QB who stabbed him in the back) and did abandon his relationship with his employee (don't remember why, couldn't watch the whole thing without fast forwarding).

It's a memorable movie and a notably unmemorable movie.

<comment><USER5> It's more like she asks him to leave, because he's more dedicated to his work than he is to his relationship. Or to paraphrase the Late Great Dicky Fox: "If the heart is empty, the head doesn't matter."

I dunno, I loved the movie. I avoided it for years because I expected a cheesy comedy chick-flick romance (and it is), but instead I found a great representation of the bootstrapped "escape from cubicle nation" story that hits harder the older I get. From the idealistic naivety to the fumbling along, being scrappy & taking unconventional directions to keep things afloat. I've watched it at least as many times now as I've seen The Social Network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Also by this group: "Doggiewoggiez! Poochiewoochiez!", a remake of Holy Mountain made entirely out of found footage of dog films. It's really astounding, especially when you consider how much effort it took to go through all of the material they had to create something cohesive.

[https://youtu.be/l4QOf1cspMM](https://youtu.be/l4QOf1cspMM)

</comment><comment><USER7> >Wikipedia claims that itis the best-selling, non-Walt Disney VHS film ever. But according to a 1998 press release from Blockbuster, the film "Titanic" broke records in video home sales, surpassing several Disney filns as well as "Jerry Maguire."

Why print a wikipedia claim you know is incorrect? Also, two errors in one paragraph (itis, films)</comment>


There are now 234 pregnant women in the US with confirmed Zika virus - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/so-far-234-pregnant-women-have-contracted-zika-in-the-us-says-cdc <comment><USER2> A really good source for both lay public and health care providers is the CDC (perhaps not a surprise). They do a good job of explaining what we know and importantly what we don't know. See for example:

[http://www.cdc.gov/zika/pregnancy/question- answers.html](http://www.cdc.gov/zika/pregnancy/question-answers.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm just surprised at the lack of basic, non-identifying info being presented here. No mention of general locale, no mention of how far along in terms of percentages these women are, no mention of travel history statistics for the group, no information on whether or not the two deaths were from pregnancy- related causes, no info on how many non-microcephaly births, no info on anything, period. What's the point of this other than to spread hysteria?

<comment><USER3> This is in an earlier comment below, but I think it's worth repeating:

"We can't provide a lot of information about where these women are in their pregnancy. We don't want to inadvertently disclose information about difficult decisions these women are making about their pregnancies"

<comment><USER4> Sort of off topic, but it seems were much more concerned about privacy when it involves women.

I wonder if there's any merit to this hypothesis.

<comment><USER5> There is a large fraction of the country that regards termination of pregnancy as literal child murder. Severe microcephaly is as good a reason to terminate a 'viable' pregnancy as can be found, with care for a microcephalic child costing far greater wealth than the average family has in their future; Most of the women not being identified will choose to abort.

"Abortion is murder" is something we've been deadened to through repetition, but the literal proclamation of abortion to be "murder", and "murder" to be murder, ethically requires extreme measures to fight it, to the believer. It is only through utter cowardice or lack of true belief that we manage to operate abortion clinics with a rate of violent assault in the last few decades cumulative of around 10%. These people are potentially dangerous, but within a family are also likely to do things like shunning/disowning relatives or seeking a divorce if this info becomes public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zika was first detected in Uganda. It seems that the first HIV cases occurred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). And EVD near the border of South Sudan and DRC.

That's also pretty much where we humans came from. Is that just random coincidence? Or is there perchance a reservoir of sequences that are well prepared to mess with humans?

<comment><USER7> Like most invasive species, humans face significantly less predation and parasitism in foreign lands.

The mosquito in question doesn't live in colder environments, this is the same reason why Massachusetts doesn't have a Malaria problem.

"Although the climate in some newly invaded areas is conducive to reproduction and survival of this mosquito, in other areas, harsh winters may prevent survival of overwintering eggs into the spring." See [http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/06/07/jme.t...](http://jme.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/06/07/jme.tjw072)

<comment><USER6> > Like most invasive species, humans face significantly less predation and > parasitism in foreign lands.

Right. Good point!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "We're sort of in a hard place," Jamieson told The New York Times. "We can't > provide a lot of information about where these women are in their pregnancy. > We don't want to inadvertently disclose information about difficult > decisions these women are making about their pregnancies."

Is there a point where the impending public health crisis becomes more important than patient privacy?

<comment><USER9> Yes, because you can not make one exception otherwise it will be used all the time to circumvent patient doctor privilege. The old saying, "give them an inch and they take a mile" is exactly this case.

<comment><USER8> Of course you can make one exception. That's why it's called an exception. The law is chock-full of exceptions, often carefully written to delineate their scope.

<comment><USER9> That is a terrible justification and sets a bad precedence

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think it's worth reminding people that we do have the ability to wipe out specific mosquito species, and that aedes aegypti is an invasive one that spreads most Zika.

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

[http://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/feb/10/should-we- wipe...](http://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/feb/10/should-we-wipe- mosquitoes-off-the-face-of-the-earth)

</comment><comment><USER11> One important thing to note is that as of today's data, the CDC is not reporting any locally acquired cases [1] in the States (though that does not apply to US Territories). It is possible to infer, though certainly not conclusive, that the current pregnancy-related cases are either due to travel- related or sexual transmission, or possibly local if the pregnancy is in a Territory.

[1] [http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united- states.html](http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/united-states.html)

Stay safe everyone.

</comment><comment><USER12> I find zika to be problematic. I get that we're all supposed to be scared, and that we should not have children. But there seems to be a severe lack of facts that reminds me of the recent ebola situation. It turns out, ebola isn't very contagious, nor is it deadly to first world countries. I get the feeling zika is being hyped for reasons that have a lot more to do with cya than actual facts in evidence.

<comment><USER13> Isn't Ebola very contagious, just not airborne? Also didn't a strain of it go airborne in a primate enclosure Virginia in the 1990s? Asking because I thought that was the case but can't remember. I read "In the Hot Zone" a few years back but don't remember the details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Set in 2027, when no child has been born for 18 years and science is at loss to explain the reason, African and East European societies collapse and their dwindling populations migrate to England and other wealthy nations."

Terrific but possible scenario. Quote from "children of man synopsis"

<comment><USER15> The idea that Zika is somehow worse than the numerous common infections that cause microcephaly and birth defects (cytomegalovirus, toxoplasmosis, chicken pox) is prima facie radiculous. Zika is native to and widespread in Africa which seems to be having no problem increasing its population. Additionally it's been present in Asia for quite a while and although it caused the same problems, maternal immunity basically negates the problem of a fetus catching the disease in utero. Honestly the best thing we could do is to get our children infected and immune.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> To me this simply raises the case of why abortion should always be a choice.

<comment><USER17> If you ever find yourself in an awkward but enlightened moment of actually reading Roe v Wade, you won't fall for that false dilemma ever again.

The entire case doesn't hold up to our standards of legal review, and isn't even capable of happening today.

<comment><USER16> More clearly I meant the right choice, but still a choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how big this number has to get to light the fire under Congress's ass.

<comment><USER19> To do what?

<comment><USER20> Release some money to start combatting Zika? Educating people to start using Deet, tracking clusters, hiring people to start eradicating standing pools of water, doing more comprehensive tracking of impact on people, babies, and, if it actually gets really bad, taking heightened measures to wipe out mosquitos that are vectors in more problematic areas - including releasing male mosquitos that are unlikely to fertilize larvae that will grown into yet more zika passing mosquitoes.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: An app I built with hopes of improving access to African Stock Markets - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/nse-ticker/id929687799?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi all, I am happy to answer questions about the app or my experiences in developing the app. Also, any feedback on possible improvements will be most appreciated.</comment>


Ask HN: Which editor do you use for JavaScript Development? - <AUTHOR> Webstorm? VS? VSCode? Any others options you think are better? <comment><USER2> VSCode with the vimstyle extension. Sometimes I turn off vimstyle because it conflicts with my existing keyboard shortcuts. Still a learning process, + I've started using the ultimate hacking keyboard and its arrow keys are mapped to I for up ( which is INSERT MODE in vim ), and j/l for over ( vim uses h/l ), and K for down ( vim uses K for UP ), so there is a HUGE learning curve to use both vim + vscode shortcuts + uhk. But it's getting a lot easier with practice.

<comment><USER2> One thing I've kind of decided on is minimal use of hjkl keys in vim in favor of UHK's MOD +

                        I
                      J K L

The biggest thing I use vimstyle for is 'U' for undo and line jumping with <line> SHIFT+G.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> VSCode, although when Panic's successor to Coda drops I'll probably switch to that. [https://panic.com/next/](https://panic.com/next/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interested in this as well; have you worked with a pre-release or what gives you confidence in switching?

<comment><USER3> No early access or anything! I've just been happily using their software for 10+ years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google Docs, because, according to the Google interview process, that makes some sort of sense.

<comment><USER5> There is nothing like writing code in a word processor.

<comment><USER6> I did this recently and it kept autocapitalizing/correcting things, and I kept wasting time reflexively changing them. There's probably a code syntax option buried somewhere in there but heck if I know where it is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I use Vim with vim-plug, vim-javascript, ctrlsf, ctrlp, and some custom bindings in my .vimrc to help me use the "gf" command to jump to source. I've spent the time to invest in learning how to use vim and it has served me well across many languages, from writing Javascript, HTML, CSS, to Python, Ruby and Golang.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sublime Text 3. It's simple but blazing fast and rock solid. I have tried Atom and VSCode over the years, but they are both just a bit slower at almost everything, and I didn't find it worth the investment to remap my muscle memory accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER9> IntelliJ Ultimate (for everything)

<comment><USER10> Same here. I love having a single IDE that can handle all the languages I use. VSCode is great and I used to use it (with VSCodeVim) a lot, but it just doesn't handle Java or Python nearly as well. I ended up deciding I preferred to stick with one set of IDE/configs/keybinds, so I went with the more powerful option.

I think my impression of VSCode is that it feels more like an editor à la Sublime Text, or at an extreme, a well-configured vim, than an actual IDE. But I want the IDE experience - primarily global refactoring and fast auto- complete. IntelliJ provides that (along with IdeaVim for the improved text editing experience too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> vim/neovim with plugins. i've been using vim for so long now (from my accounts, about ten years?) that using anything else feels just wrong (including VSCode with vim mode, it's quite good but there's like 10% of my usage that it doesn't cover properly and it's super annoying).

</comment><comment><USER12> Emacs, same as for everything else.

</comment><comment><USER13> Webstorm for my day job, VSCode for my passion projects when I'm at home, Neovim for my passion projects when I'm remote.

</comment><comment><USER14> Almost all the developers (~50 total) where I work use VS Code. I think it's pretty much industry standard for js/ts at this point.

Personally I use vim with ale, youcompleteme and tern plugins.

</comment><comment><USER15> Emacs, when it's just part of a larger application using a different language, or when the whole environment is even more effed up than usual for JS (eg. ExtJS) and you could parse the code as well as Perl anyway.

VSCode as a stop-gap solution for more substantial JS code. The gap being until I either can configure Emacs properly (language server or something similar), or preferably when I can get rid of JS (and no, not with MS JS++).

<comment><USER16> spacemacs has a pretty ok js configuration. you can use LSP with tern and it seems to do a good job most of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For JS and TypeScript, I use VSCode cos of all the extensions and the ecosystem.

I used to use Sublime with a lot of configuration and some custom plugins but I gave up its performance to VSCode convenience.

I use VIM for other stuff and VIM key bindings on both VSCode and Sublime.

I sometimes miss the experience with Sublime but just too lazy to set it up properly for JS and TypeScript.

</comment><comment><USER18> Neovim with the autozimu language client plugin and this lsp: [https://github.com/theia-ide/typescript-language- server](https://github.com/theia-ide/typescript-language-server)

</comment><comment><USER19> Used VS Code for a year. Realised it was just an editor and not an IDE. Paid for webstorm. Never going back.

If you prefer IntelliJ IDEA to emacs etc for Java, you should probably switch to webstorm. Batteries included, nicer UI.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sublime text

</comment><comment><USER21> VSCode for everything, though my boss offered to get me Webstorm...

</comment><comment><USER22> Emacs with some extension that highlights undefined variables and missing semicolons. My laptop is off now, I can't check which one. Probably one of the common modes.

</comment><comment><USER23> Vim with plugins. At this point I am the only one at my company who does not use VSCode, it would be nice to be able to share new tricks with someone...

</comment><comment><USER24> vim \- vim-javascript \- tern_for_vim \- vdebug \- ale

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really interesting to see everyone's responses. Do you know if there is a survey capability in HN for these types of things? I may revisit the thread later and aggregate the results too if others would find that helpful, but this might be nice as a native Ask HN feature. I suppose I could have just linked to a poll but there is value is in the comments vs the results too.

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://2018.stateofjs.com/other- tools/#text_editors](https://2018.stateofjs.com/other-tools/#text_editors)

VSC is monster good and it makes me wonder of the competition in this space for the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER26> I use Vscode because of the decent ecosystem and debugging support. It's certainly slower than a native editor, notepad++ for example but I can forgive the little pause here and there for the benefits it brings.

</comment><comment><USER27> mapped my workspace so I can work directly within the chrome debugger. not the most petty way but it's darn effective since all objects and data are laid before my eyes and can be inspected and manipulated without braking context

<comment><USER28> I'd love to read a blog post about this. I often pause the chrome debugger and keep it open in a window next to my editor (VS Code, for those counting).

<comment><USER27> this is the gist of chrome configuration [https://developers.google.com/web/tools/setup/setup- workflow](https://developers.google.com/web/tools/setup/setup-workflow)

but the rest depends on your backend because you need the server to hot reload changes from the filesystem

<comment><USER28> Sweet. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> For TypeScript, Emacs TIDE is very good. Not sure how well it works with vanilla JS.

</comment><comment><USER30> VSCode or Neovim

</comment><comment><USER31> IntelliJ ultimate for TypeScript. Have tried vscode but it was slow on Windows for monorepos; haven't tried vscode on mac for this same project yet

</comment><comment><USER32> VSCode with Synthwave 84 theme, plugins for everything

</comment><comment><USER33> Neovim. VSCode with Vim keybindings if I had more RAM.

</comment><comment><USER34> Webstorm because VSCode ways of handling global search and replace does not work for me.

</comment><comment><USER35> Sublime text

</comment><comment><USER36> Webstorm.

</comment><comment><USER37> Neovim with coc.nvim.

</comment><comment><USER38> Vim with snipmate (and a bunch of other plugins).

</comment><comment><USER39> Notepad++

It is minimal and I think Im not supposed to use it.

</comment><comment><USER40> IntelliJ Idea Ultimate with IdeaVIM

</comment><comment><USER41> Sublime Text 3.

</comment><comment><USER42> vim with vim-javascript ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment><comment><USER43> vim (MacVim, gvim or just plain vim)

</comment><comment><USER44> IntelliJ or else plain Vi[m].

</comment><comment><USER45> atom

</comment><comment><USER46> TypeScript

<comment><USER47> > TypeScript

I assume this means vscode?

<comment><USER48> This would seem a weird answer indeed if you don't have context -- which is that VSCode (Microsoft) is developed with native handling of Typescript (Microsoft) -- so is somewhat of the standard in that regard.

<comment><USER46> The answer is tongue-in-cheek. Basically, don't write JavaScript, write TypeScript and transpile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> sublime text too

</comment><comment><USER49> vim or vscode, depending on my mood.

</comment><comment><USER50> Atom

</comment><comment><USER51> sublime text

</comment><comment><USER52> vim

</comment><comment><USER53> ST3

</comment><comment><USER54> Webstorm!

</comment><comment><USER55> Phpstorm

</comment><comment><USER56> VSCode

</comment><comment><USER57> sublime</comment>


Sony Pictures reportedly breached, 'over 1 million accounts' compromised - <AUTHOR> http://thisismynext.com/2011/06/02/sony-pictures-security-breach-lulzsec/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if in any way Sony regrets suing those who created the PS3 hack after all of this. I know I would. These hacks have cost Sony more money and done more damage than the PS3 hack ever could have dreamed of doing.</comment>


Finding the natural size for your company - <AUTHOR> http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1068-finding-the-natural-size-for-your-company <comment><USER2> I'll remember this wise and helpful advice when I hit 5 million dollars in revenue.

If only we all had these problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best part of the article - the ironic ad atop the page:

"eBaum's World is looking for a Web/UI Designer."

Talking about finding your size. very funny.

</comment><comment><USER4> Three word rule of thumb: hire behind revenue.</comment>


Io v. Veoh: Important ruling for sites comprised of 'user-generated content' - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/08/required-reading-user-generated-content-sites-io-g The article is a good summary, but you should really read the entire ruling. Really important stuff for any company that takes advantage of the DMCA safe harbor. <comment><USER2> This is a good day for user-generated site owners, and it sounds like their willingness to comply with the law is what saved them. I guess that's the difference between them getting off the hook and other sites who just "play dumb" to having tons of illegal content and end up being held responsible for it. Still, with many such sites nowadays, they're just providing search results, not much different than Google...

<comment><USER3> "Still, with many such sites nowadays, they're just providing search results, not much different than Google..."

Veoh, YouTube, and "such sites" host the videos and aren't search engines. Since the videos in violation would be hosted on their servers rather than merely linked to, they have much different requirements under the DMCA and copyright law than Google.

<comment><USER2> I guess I wasn't clear, but that last line was referring to the other sites, the ones "playing dumb" about having tons of illegal stuff on them and doing nothing about it. Generally, many of _those_ sites nowadays are simply search engines (many torrent sites or sites like binsearch, for example), which seems to be how they argue around having to care about copyright issues. Thanks for pointing that out though, better to be clear :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just remember: Veoh had the deep pockets necessary to fight this in court and take it all the way to a decision. While that may be the case for larger sites, it's totally different for the small sites. If you can't afford the court costs to defend yourself, you lose as soon as the suit is filed.

<comment><USER5> Not entirely true. The US runs completely on case law, so having a precedent like Veoh helps you out a lot. People will be less willing to even take you to court if they see that it's likely they'll lose under a similar ruling. And if you do get to court, your burden will basically be to live up to whatever Veoh did.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention that a judge will usually throw out a case that looks exactly like another one. If you are a small site like Veoh and you get sued, this case will decrease the likelyhood that your case ever goes to trial. (And that's where the expense is.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is Io going to appeal? Personally, I don't get excited until the Supreme Court rules. This "victory for user-generated content sites" could easily be overturned.

</comment><comment><USER7> Take a look at page 16, line 28 in the decision :) Also page 6 line 26.

I don't know if judges should really be using wikipedia that way - what if it was vandalized on the day they checked it?

<comment><USER8> Is _"Site complies with law, wins law suit"_ less of a story than _"Judge cites Wikipedia definitions in ruling"_?

In this city a high school student who cites Wikipedia without a secondary source gets a (provisional) F.

If Wikipedia is an authority sufficient for the judiciary the world really has transitioned from the Britannica era.

<comment><USER6> I don't think that's particularly important. What an IP address is and what a Flash video are weren't really important to the case. It sounds more like the judge was curious.

If Wikipedia was vandalized and the judge based his ruling on incorrect information, that would be grounds for an appeal, I'm sure.

Wikipedia may not be 100% correct, but I think we all use it as a starting point. A lot of times it _is_ correct, and it gives us the background information we need to understand other sources. Not something I'm going to complain about. (Cue the inevitable responeses -- "I hate the Wikipedia admins", or "I'm so smart I never need to look anything up." Yeah, yeah. Tell someone who cares.)</comment></comment></comment>