Ask HN: Best Linux Laptop? - <AUTHOR> I've been using Macs at work for years, even though I'd much rather use a Linux box. The main reasons I keep going with the Mac: is that I like to connect two monitors up while I'm at work, and then I'd also like the machine not to look too dated. Most of the more finely tuned Linux options just don't look done (System76). So I've been aggressively trying to find a laptop that will compete with a MacBook Pro 15; ideally comes with two video ports. The standouts:  ThinkPad X1 Carbon V4 [1] and Dell's Precision M5510 [2]. Anyone have experience running either of these boxes connected to two monitors, or can suggest a better option?<p>[1] http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon-4<p>[2] http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/precision-m5510-workstation/pd <comment><USER2> I have a ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen4 running Fedora and am very happy with it. I switched from years of using MacBook Airs as my primary laptop. Wrote a first impressions post on the thinkpad subreddit here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/491tmf/x1_carbon_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/comments/491tmf/x1_carbon_gen4_first_impressions_vs_macbook_air/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. The Carbon looks really good, so it's good to know someone's already successfully put Linux on it without issues. Two questions: have you tried hooking up two monitors to it and if you connect an external monitor to the laptop and then close the lid do things work as expected?

<comment><USER2> Hey,

Afraid I have not tried to hook up any external monitors to it at all so can't answer this unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Those look like good choices, you might also consider the Dell XPS 15.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks pretty awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not a Linux VM on your Mac?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried that and it just feels incomplete. The VM competes for resources with the host machine. And then it's a bit awkward where the focus of the mouse is. When you run Linux natively you can get fancy with window/tiling managers (I really want to play with i3). Life is just better when things are simpler.</comment></comment>


Why is Apple only buying startups from Israel? - <AUTHOR>

Are there no startups in the US/EU/UK? <comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Apple) says they've only bought two Israeli companies so far.</comment>


How Tesla will change your life - <AUTHOR> http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html

<comment><USER2> That was a thorough and well-written article.

I only have one quibble, with the text "But when I look at these two animations next to each other [1815 locomotive engine animation] [2015 car engine animation] — they look too similar to be 200 years apart." Won't a side-by-side schematic comparison of a 1915 AC induction motor and a 2015 induction motor 'look too similar to be 100 years apart'?</comment>


Who were the Hyksos? Strontium isotope analysis of remains from ancient Egypt - <AUTHOR> https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0235414 <comment><USER2> The authors don't say which race the Hyksos have traditionally been associated with. Do they mean the Hebrews?

It is interesting that the strontium isotope analysis suggests they did not come from a single homeland, but were from a variety of locations across the near East.

I'm not sure I'm identifying the race they are referring to correctly (too many History Channel documentaries maybe). For example, I don't think the Hebrews are supposed to have had a homeland at that point in history.

Nonetheless, the evidence that a significant number of them spent their childhood outside the Nile Delta region does indicate that they were not a race of people who were born, grew up and lived in Egypt the whole time.

Is someone able to confirm that the authors were referring to the past tentative identification of the Hyksos with the Hebrews? If not, to whom are they referring?

<comment><USER3> >I'm not sure I'm identifying the race they are referring to correctly (too many History Channel documentaries maybe). For example, I don't think the Hebrews are supposed to have had a homeland at that point in history.

The relationships between biblical accounts of pre-classical periods is necessarily shaky. The pre-kingdom parts of the bible read very much like mythology, metaphor and heroic ancestor tales.

That said, there are various points of intersection or allusion to actual known history. The migration of the Hyksos could relate to the biblical story of Joseph. It's basically an account of migration from Canaan to Egypt because of a famine. Like the article said, there do seem to have been migrations to egypt of various semitic people. The hyksos are the best known of them.

Exodus relates to a later period. It's a story of a semitic slave migration _out of_ egypt, becoming an independent nomadic tribe in canaan, midia & sinai. Historically, egypt had just lost these territories and receded to its core territory. Among many chaotic things happening, egypt was in conflict with various barbarian tribes from these regions...

It's not that solid historical accounts from egypt confirm the biblical narrative. They make almost no reference to hebrews, escaped slaves, etc. But, the biblical account does make some sort of sense.

<comment><USER4> Pre-Kingdom? David and Solomon are larger than life figures in bible but afaik no contemporary neighbor recorded their existence. They are historic ghosts. Pure fiction.

<comment><USER3> Sure. I didn't mean to draw a hard line.

The monarchic period, even David and Solomon, reads a lot more political writing. The region enters into a historical period. The biblical stories start to relate more definitely to known historical events.

David and Solomon are kind of transitional, it's really just gradual. It gets more mythical as you go back.

Immediately following from the solomon period, the bible is referencing known assyrian emperors, pharaohs, and reporting on conquests that are historically known. There are dates.

By the end of the kingdom period, it's already the babylonian era... At that point it's basically modernity.

<comment><USER4> Actually, as a student of Iranian history, those "Babylonian" era records are rather intriguing, to say the least. It seems to me Judaism (and associated myths) are a product of an aborted imperial social engineering project of the aborted first Persian Empire. Even the historic divide of religious Jews and "Greek Jews" reflects the sudden collapse of the first Persian Empire and its replacement by the Greeks.

A reading of relevant biblical texts strongly suggests that the 'returnees' from Babylon were alien to whoever was living in Jerusalem. And the religion they brought back smacks of Zoroastrianism in its theological contours. Heaven, hell, resurrection, judgment, angels, and good and evil: these are Iranian elements. (Egypt also had judgment, heaven, and hell.) It took a few attempts to get the inhabitants to change their religion -- it's in the book, as they say, so don't take my word for it.

Those famous boundaries of lands promised to Abraham, for example, which stop right at the border of historic Greater Iran and Egypt, are basically the boundaries of the project 'temple state' the Persians attempted to create as a prepatory step to conquering Egypt. Heck, the Persian Emperor is even specially called "Messiah" (Divine King) in Isa. 45.

It is my opinion (and just that) that the sudden cessation of [imported Jewish] religious leaders from Babylon -- a seat of Persian Empire at that time lest we forget -- due to the collapse of the empire, is the basis of the mutatation of the work-in-progress so that the "divine mandate" of the famous Abrahamic lands were now in fact given by none other than "GOD" itself.

The irony of course, is the blowback of this Persian Imperial project 2500 years later.

[minor corrective edits]

<comment><USER3> If you are interested in this subject, look into samaritans.

They are a closely related group to jews, but probably had less Babylonian & Persian influence. Their version of the Torah ends with Solomon. To this day, they maintain a religion similar to old temple judaism. High priest, sacrifice, etc. Their Torah is written in the native hebrew script. Jews switched to an assyrian script at some point.

Nehemiah (book in the bible) was the first pacha, persian governor of jerusalem. Religious & conservative fanatic, persecuting samaritans and annulling mixed marriages.

In any case, the samaritan torah has the same account of abraham as the jewish bible. It's still possible that Persian or Babylonian beliefs & characters were adopted, especially abraham. But, that would have had to happen long before cyrus. Samaritans also have abraham and the divine land grant.

I assume you mean the "nile to euphrates" boundary. It's actually very hard to tell what those parts are about. First, it's not actually clear those are the rivers... especially the nile. Second, there are no other passages that relate to this territory. Nehemia doesn't mention or pursue them.

<comment><USER4> Sorry for the late reply to your very interesting post.

I fully agree that ancient levantine figures, such as Noah, Job, and Abraham, predate the Persian era and were likely incorporated in Babylon.

Have to look into this Hebrew Samaritan Torah you mentioned. My understanding was that there were -no- extant torah of any kind at the time when the people came from Babylon claiming themselves to be the exiles. I know they presecuted the Samaritans to assert their own (version of) religion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Near East. That's what, Haifax NS? Rio de Janiero?

<comment><USER6> > The Near East is a Eurocentric geographical term which roughly encompasses a > transcontinental region comprising Western Asia, Turkey (both Anatolia and > East Thrace), and Egypt (which is completely located in North Africa). [1]

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

<comment><USER7> I know you're quoting Wikipedia, but I don't believe the Near East in this context ever refers to Egypt.

<comment><USER8> Search "Near East" using Google Scholar to quickly lose that belief.

<comment><USER7> I suggest you do the same. First result for "archeology near east" contained the phrase "Near East and Egypt"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


4% of U.S. Series A Deals Involved Y Combinator Companies in 2016 – Mattermark - <AUTHOR> https://mattermark.com/y-combinator-share-of-series-a/ <comment><AUTHOR> How much can an accelerator like YC ease your life as a founder? Isn't it more difficult to raise a series A when the other yc backed companies are your own competition (understanding that being yc backed is a kind of quality control) ? Our experience so far in Europe is that the low number of startups have ease the work of those that are doing their job right, it kind of sucks but they do not compete so much.</comment>


Heroku Is Down - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> My dynos come up just fine.</comment>


iPhone 6 FaceTime Now Supports H.265. Where Is VP9 for WebRTC? - <AUTHOR> http://bloggeek.me/iphone6-facetime-h265/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know the significance of the very specific wording found in the iPhone 6 specs page?:

"FaceTime over cellular uses H.264/H.265" (on US site)

"FaceTime over a mobile network uses H.264/H.265" (on UK site)

Why would they specify "mobile/cellular"? The only thing I could think of was that the extra compression was worth the trade-offs in battery usage in that case due to the limited bandwidth?

Also, it looks like VP9 support may have landed (and been reverted?) into Google's WebRTC codebase in the last week or so:

[https://webrtc-codereview.appspot.com/27779004](https://webrtc- codereview.appspot.com/27779004)</comment>


How to Be the Fastest Developer on Your Team, Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://techblog.centro.net/joshua-davison/how-to-be-the-fastest-developer-on-your-team-part-1/

<comment><USER2> Maybe I should stop reading HN and get back to work. Or maybe this is more of a tortoise and hare kind of race.</comment>


Pulse laser used to create 3D display in mid-air - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/science/pulse-laser-used-to-create-3d-display-in-mid-air-1608487/

<comment><USER2> Very cool. What if the frequency could be drastically increased somehow? Maybe it could become a more versatile display technology.</comment>


Best of Hacker News - <AUTHOR> http://enklo.se/hackernews/ <comment><USER2> "Best" by the metric of hitting the #1 spot. Sadly, most of what I find most interesting and useful on HN doesn't hit the #1 spot, so I need a different metric.

Working on it ...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, same for me. I did this to limit how often I check HN and this was the most obvious way. Glad to try whatever you come up with :)

<comment><USER2> Indeed, and kudos to you for making something that others can use like this. Regrettably, I'm an old school big-iron greybeard, and nothing I do is likely to be possible for others to use in a 'net environment. 8-(</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: The Most Useful Format for API Documentation - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on the documentation for a new open source system for interactive fiction. It consists of a DSL and an API in Javascript and C#. I have some thoughts about what documentation I've liked, both practically and aesthetically. But it is clear there isn't yet a consensus and standard. There are a lot that model the Javadoc approach, some that use the Docco literate approach. And then lots of the tools I rely on (Node, jQuery, Mozilla's MDN, etc) use ad-hoc approaches.<p>So is there an approach that works well for you? Are there good approaches for multi-language systems? Why do you think there isn't a consensus? <comment> andrew-lucker As a project ages more thought shifts from development to maintenance and external concerns. What is good for a young project is usually not a good fit for a mature project. Specifically, young projects tend to care more about automated documentation generated from code, whereas mature projects just want a good content management system.</comment>


Ask HN: Preferred SaaS Purchasing Options - <AUTHOR> When it comes to purchasing a software product/service what is your preferred purchasing option? Subscription tiers? Usage-based pricing? Upfront "credits" purchase?<p>Does the preference change depending on if it is a personal purchase or a purchase for your company? Does the preference change depending on the budget you have? <comment><USER2> It depends entirely on what the product is and how you use it. To make the buyers happy, typically it's charge based off the thing that closest connects to how they use your product.

Here are some examples of the different pricing options you mentioned where they do and don't make sense:

* I do 3d printing. There is a service out there that will "fix" issues with existing models, automagically. It bills based on credits and each fix of a model, costs some credits.

* Twilio charged based on usage, since that's how their costs work out.

* I subscribe to GSuite on a per-user-per-month basis.

Here is one example where two companies have made very different pricing choices:

* Cloudflare Access provides access to an unlimited number of servers based on a per-user-per-month basis. For a small business with say 1 system administrator and 50 servers, this makes sense. They'll pay for 1 user (call it $5/mo)

* On the flipside is Okta ScaleFT server access product. They charge per server, per month. So if you're that same small business, you're paying maybe $500/mo for the product.

One can argue either way makes sense. Cloudflare's more aligns with what a buyer wants to pay (less), where as Okta's aligns with actual costs (per server). However, in a case like this, the product provides a value in the form of employee optimization. So the value increases per employee/user, not per server. The buyer will be willing to part with more money, if the perceived value is higher.

</comment><comment><USER3> For personal use, if there's one thing I want to avoid it's usage-based infinite runaway cost.

<comment><USER4> Agree</comment></comment>


Google Desktop Update - <AUTHOR> http://googledesktop.blogspot.com/2011/09/google-desktop-update.html <comment><USER2> The only thing really worth reading, as the rest is essentially excuses:

> _As of September 14, Google Desktop will no longer be available for > download, and existing installations will not be updated to include new > features or fixes._

Can we change the title to be something more like "Google Desktop: being dropped"? Update implies 'something is changing', not 'everything is going away', and that's really all there is to this blog post.

<comment><USER3> Excuses are for when you know you've done something wrong and wish to be forgiven. I dont think they've done anything wrong, and more importantly, I doubt many at google think they've done anything wrong. Google desktop is ancient and designed for a very different time; I can't imagine which of its features I would use these days.

<comment><USER2> I'll rephrase that - excuses to avoid saying "we're on the chopping block". Though in general I still stand by the term - there's no _content_ in the paragraph before that statement. It's essentially "it's a good product, the cloud and OS-driven search killed us" - in what way is that not merely an attempt to avoid users' wrath?

As to uses, it's still much faster than Windows' search in my experience. And has fewer errors - I've had 'results' from Windows' search that were incorrect since 3 days ago, with a computer that was on > 12 hours per day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Makes sense. Google is really pushing for the cloud.</comment>


Ask HN: How to charge and PAY our users? - <AUTHOR> Is there a good, simple platform to both charge and pay users?
e.g. in a paid content platform, with authors and readers
We are willing to take a fee hit if it takes care of taxes, international payments, etc.
You can argue that this is a core competency we need to handle and not outsource. But lets worry about that after the first 10K users.. <comment><USER2> Could always use a payment provider other than stripe and use paypal for payouts. But, stripe connect is an all in one solution.

</comment><comment><USER3> Accept Debit cards, pay by "refunding" the card.

<comment><USER4> Refunds have been replaced by Original Credit Transactions BTW.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stripe Connect. Unfortunate but true.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why unfortunate?

Did u have a bad experience ?

<comment><USER5> Not me personally. But I've read stories about them becoming everything we hated about PayPal. Accounts closed for no reason, blocked transfers, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Bill to crack down on robocalls passes Senate - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21030114/robocalls-bill-congress-president-trump-sign-law-illegal-fcc-ajit-pai <comment><USER2> Color me cynical, but I don't see how the dollar amount of the fine matters if it can't be effectively collected anyway. Recently it was revealed that the FCC had collected a few thousand dollars of $208 million levied in fines. [1] How is a bigger fine different?

[1] [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https:/...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the- fcc-has-fined-robocallers-208-million-its- collected-6-790-11553770803&ved=2ahUKEwippoPhysLmAhVEMt8KHcvQAboQFjAAegQIARAB&usg=AOvVaw0q4byU7X6mFI5N9jFXY6p7&ampcf=1)

<comment><USER3> Who receives this fine? What are the funds put towards?

<comment><USER4> No one apparently. $6,790 collected means you're losing money to collect it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My mobile number has an area code for a place I haven't lived since 2012. I'd thought about changing it to match my new location, but then I realized that since I'm no longer in contact with anyone in my old area, I'm able to safely assume any number calling from it is a robocall.

I get several of them a day. So I think I'll keep my old number.

So I think there's a possible solution: Pick a new mobile number with an area code for a place you don't know anyone and have no reason to receive calls from.... then block/ignore all calls originating from it.

<comment><USER6> Whatever spam blocking I get from Google Fi + latest Android on a Pixel phone has completely eliminated spam calls. I went from getting 3+ per day to zero.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do I stop receiving garbage bags of coupons and advertisements that I did not request, in my mailbox every single day?

<comment><USER8> You can try opting out using the DMA (Direct Mail Association) website

[https://dmachoice.thedma.org/](https://dmachoice.thedma.org/)

<comment><USER9> Costs $2 to sign up to that site.

At first I balked but then I realized somebody would probably enter every single person's name and address in the country if they didn't have some kind of cost associated with it.

Still stinks to pay someone not to harass you. But I guess that's been common throughout history.

<comment><USER10> It used to be free, so your logical justification for the charge is obviously spurious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm reminded of this thread The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492782).

Enforce collection of the fines in the first place would be a good start.

<comment><USER12> Quick solution: fine phone companies instead, since it's easy to collect from them. Give 'em 6 months notice and I bet spam and scam calls are nearly eliminated before the notice period's up and you barely end up collecting any fines.

<comment><USER13> It's a dangerous path when you force intermediaries to intervene and apply censorship. The path to having ML algorithms analyze every single call you make and receive is paved with intellectual laziness. Would you make the same arguments about end to end encryption? Quick, let's put backdoors in everything so we can feel safer.

<comment><USER14> Simpler solution: At the end of a call, the recipient can dial some number, like * SPAM, and the phone company who routed the call to your number is charged 25 cents. Presumably the routing phone company will pass this charge back down the chain until it reaches the caller. You must dial * SPAM within 2 minutes from the end of the call for the charge to take effect.

There is no appeal. If you don't like a call for any reason, you can dial * SPAM, and the caller is charged 25 cents. Since the report must be immediate, VOIP providers only need to require a deposit for two minutes of calling volume, and they can throttle their customers to make sure that the reserve is always present. Callers don't need to be verified or have good credit, they just need to have 25 cents.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like an easily abused system.

<comment><USER16> Yup, my first thought was that I could fine my friends $0.25 for calling me... You know, just for fun. If a company calls me and I don't like what they said, $0.25 fine. Someone dials a wrong number, how dare they, $0.25 fine.

<comment><USER17> Even better, let everyone set the fee for calling them and the ability to set up a whitelist. Numbers not on the whitelist get charged (message before connecting stating the amount). I'd set it to $10. To each their own.

<comment><USER14> I like the flat 25 cents. It's not so much that if someone wants to be malicious that they can do much damage, but if robocallers have to pay 25 cents, it destroys the economics.

Since you have to object to a call within a short period of time, you could get an immediate text message that someone had flagged your call and just not call that person again.

If you were making legitimate high volume calls, you'd get a certain number of people doing this to you, and then you'd just flag it and not call them again or maybe stop doing business with them. Either it's a sign that they don't want you calling them, so you should probably stop.

Collection agencies and such would get a lot of flagged calls, but collection agencies are supposed to stop calling if you ask them to, so this is just an automated way of making that request.

The real cause of all of these robocalls is that calling has gotten so cheap. It used to cost well over $1/minute to call from say, India to the U.S. Even within the U.S., in the 80s and early 90s, it would usually cost about 25 cents a minute to make a domestic long distance call. In many places, including where I grew up, a local call to your next door neighbor cost 5 cents. If the risk of being charged 25 cents for a call is a barrier to making a call, you probably shouldn't be making it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Over the summer, Pai announced that the Commission would be moving to make > overseas robocalls and malicious text message spoofing illegal after > Congress passed new rules that required them to do so in 2018.

The problem isn't overseas robocalls originating in the US - it's robocalls originating from outside the FCC's jurisdiction.

<comment><USER19> > The term "voice service"— (A) means any service that is interconnected with > the public switched telephone network and that furnishes voice > communications to an end user using resources from the North American > Numbering Plan

See [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/151...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/151/text)

This makes it irrelevant where the call originates. If the call is received on a US-allocated number, it's covered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "ensures providers make robocall-blocking services available for free"

In practice, this means AT&T outsources the blocking service to a 3rd party company. In order to use that service you have to surrender your contact list to that 3rd party so they can determine if someone you know is calling and understanding their EULA will make your head spin. This is what I have on my company issued phone.

Personal data is the oil of the 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER21> As a consumer I sort of like this (I do worry about unintended consequences tho), but as a developer this absolutely sucks. It's already a massive PITA to make use of telephony (SMS/voice calls) through AWS and the like, and this will only make that 10 times worse. Even at a medium-sized company that spends 5 figures a month on AWS services we got totally burned by this.

Amazon has also done an abysmal job at facilitating between the deveopers (us) and the carriers. They will just shut down your production system without warning and yet their API will still return 200s as tho everything is fine, while silently sending your SMS to the bit bucket. Then when you open a support case it will take a while unless you pay for support, support that you only need because _they_ are returning lies from the API and you have no way of finding out what is wrong without a support agent looking at the system. Yeah I'm still pretty pissed. I will pay more for Twilio until something drastic changes.

<comment><USER22> > _Even at a medium-sized company that spends 5 figures a month on AWS > services we got totally burned by this_

Good! I send all calls not in my contact list to voicemail, and then rarely check the voicemails. Businesses need to find a better way to reach me than autodialing.

<comment><USER21> Firstly, our customers specifically have to enable it, and can easily disable if they don't want it.

Secondly, I don't see why the AWS returning 200s while silently discarding our stuff is the right way to handle this. If you want to block our numbers (which I aboslutely think you should be able to do) the API should return something that tells us that instead of pretending like everything is fine.

<comment><USER22> > _If you want to block our numbers...the API should return something that > tells us that_

As a consumer, I disagree. When I send a message to spam, it doesn't let the spammer know they should switch the e-mail address they're sending from. If I block a phone number, that's not something for the dialer to know.

<comment><USER21> To be clear, it wasn't consumers that blocked our numbers, it was AWS. I wrote my previous message sloppily.

AWS was sending our messages into the bit bucket and returning 200s. Our customers not only wanted the messages, but were complaining to support that messages were not getting through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Let me guess, this won't include politicians robocalling before elections

</comment><comment><USER24> How will carriers determine if a phone call is legitimate? How will I be able to determine if there are false positives? How will I report false negatives?

<comment><USER19> Answer to all 3: FCC is to decide this in the next 12-18 months. Read the actual bill if you're interested in details. [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/151...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/151/text)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As more time passes you just have to put your phone on do-not-disturb and only allow star'ed contacts. It might be useful to make a call forwarding service where they have to enter some number code to get transferred to you, kind of like a captcha, maybe something like plivo or twilio can do this. After putting my resume with my work number I also get a crazy amount of recruiters in India call centers using fuzzy keyword matches to recommend poorly fitting jobs. It also looks like the spammers are picking up in sophistication. Like a prerecorded voice asks me if I want an extended warranty and a few questions to do automated voice recognition screening of the call before transferring it to the India call center for sales. You can say potatos to every question and they will still transfer you, but the call will drop if you say "no". Once the India call center collects information from you they pass you to some guys that sound like they're in the US for the final sale.

<comment><USER26> How I killed 99% of the unwanted calls to my "home" number using callcentric routing rules:

#1 - Calls from the real estate broker who wouldn't take no for an answer: number is disconnected.

#2 - Calls from Anonymous / Private numbers: number is disconnected.

#3 - Calls with "high" spam probability: number is disconnected.

#4 - Ring my VOIP gateway when I'm inclined to take calls. (Currently toggled manually).

#5 - Everyone else: Voicemail.

I had previously scripted downloading my contacts and adding a routing rule that let people in my contacts ring through but disabled that rule. Just need to update my script for google's oauth changes.

Callcentric also offers a interactive voice recording (IVR) options for things like press 1 to talk to a person or even press a randomly generated digit to talk to a person. I haven't bothered with using an IVR since this system works for me.

You can reproduce this system yourself using Asterisk or other open source PBX software if you don't want to pay callcentric for a phone number. At home I use a Gigaset voip gateway and DECT handset [1]. The nice thing about doing it that way is 1) the handset doesn't need to speak tcp/ip and so is light, cheap and the battery lasts for days, 2) if I need a second handset it's trivial to add one.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014A781GS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B014A781GS/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

I realize the stereotype is HN readers have no use for the PSTN any more and wonder why people ever answer the phone, but I find it convenient for some things and it lets me stay in touch with older relatives who are less inclined to text / e-mail / insta / whatever-du-jour vs use voice.

<comment><USER27> Blocked caller ID is very common for follow up communications from medical practices. With this rule you may miss your lab reports or specialist referrals.

Sending everything to voicemail and periodically skimming the transcripts seems safer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Most of the spam calls I get these days are just silence. I'll answer them occasionally and just listen, but even after 5-10 seconds no one says anything. Who benefits from that? I really don't get it.

<comment><USER29> I do the same. My guess is that a robot is waiting for enough sound before it starts it's pitch. So if you answer, don't say anything and little noise is passing into the receiver on your phone they don't detect enough sound to start.

Just a guess because a lot of others I get just start babbling away as soon as I hit answer. I guess those detect the pick up and don't rely on an actual voice answering.

<comment><USER30> Yes. I almost set up a "phone center" with the OSS asterisk package on a raspberry-pi. Basically the raspberry takes the call and waits for a few second silently, before forwarding the call to your phone (and only then it starts ringing). This way, robocallers hang up and your phone never rings.

Instead of waiting, you can also send control sounds to make the robocall believe the call has ended.

<comment><USER29> Brilliant idea. I'm bookmarking this in my "I want to try this Real Soon Now" pile of ideas.

If you ever do get around to trying it please post back to HN! Promise I'll do the same...

<comment><USER30> OK, then here are some links around this idea:

[https://robocall.devpost.com/forum_topics/1748-small- asteris...](https://robocall.devpost.com/forum_topics/1748-small-asterisk- based-device)

[https://www.wrbishop.com/telecom/end-robocaller- solicitation...](https://www.wrbishop.com/telecom/end-robocaller-solicitation- and-hangup-calls-with-asterisk/)

[https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=172926](https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=172926)

[http://nerdvittles.com/?p=15412To](http://nerdvittles.com/?p=15412To)

Good luck !

<comment><USER29> Thanks, Happy Holidays!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> We changed the URL from [https://www.axios.com/bill-to-crack-down-on- robocalls-passes...](https://www.axios.com/bill-to-crack-down-on-robocalls- passes-senate-97ecc50c-e4f9-4068-8b5b-4e5b9a796ddc.html) to one that has a bit more information.

(via [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21838912](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21838912))

</comment><comment><USER32> Silence all unknown calls on the iPhone takes much of the pain away from these nuances. I just see I missed a call and if its important let me know via a voicemail.

      I still have to delete these robocalls' voicemails which is annoying but less then having them ring my phone especially while I'm using it.  Interrupted by a spammer it was the worst!

<comment><USER33> I had this feature turned on until I missed food delivery 2-3 times in a row.

<comment><USER34> I know I'm repeating my argument, but why can't we create something that replaces phone number? Phone numbers are being used to track and scam people -- either through phone calls or text messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How do we actually get the robocallers these days? They call from spoofed numbers.

And even if we can, would we get any of the money?

PS: I read this book and 9 years ago they might have worked: [https://www.amazon.com/How-Sue-Telemarketer-Stephen- Ostrow/d...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Sue-Telemarketer-Stephen- Ostrow/dp/0615338178)

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder what sort of hoops I'll need to jump through to create an "attestation" for my SIP provider that proves the legitimate spoofing of my outbound VoIP calls (to my main business number) is okay. As of right now, they have no way to do this. I expect that my outbound VoIP calls will begin to get automatically blocked at some point...

</comment><comment><USER37> It'd be great if there was a simple way to flag spam calls and sms, assign originating phone networks a score based on their spam flags, and disconnect bad players from the network entirely if their scores drop below a certain range.

</comment><comment><USER38> My phone number was listed for my business about a decade ago. I get non-stop robocalls about healthcare every time open enrollment rolls around. I just block everyone that isn't on my contact list, but would love a better solution.

</comment><comment><USER39> Are political automated calls "robocalls" or are they (strangely) exempt.

<comment><USER40> I don't know but political calls can be worst because they could be microtargeting you.

<comment><USER41> Why is that worse than scattershot spam calls? You get called either way.

<comment><USER42> Because certain types of political messaging would be highly effective if carefully targeted, but would be a massive scandal if they became more publicly known.

<comment><USER41> So, the problem with targeted calls isn't the unsolicited communication, but that if politicians could send customized messages, they might sometimes send evil ones?

<comment><USER42> Not even necessarily evil, but it allows you to promise everything to everyone without being easily called out on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> How did this pass? I'm surprised like say TurboTax or other people who benefit from dysfunction didn't lobby to keep their profits. It's also humorous the related protocol is termed STIR/SHAKEN.

<comment><USER44> Being able to say "I stopped those robots from calling during dinner" has a ton of political value, and the robocallers likely have some plan ignore the new laws anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Can we please just force the measure on to phone makers? You could solve this in one firmware update to add a white list. In my contacts? You get through, if not? You go straight to voicemail.

<comment><USER46> This exists as an iOS feature. Not sure about Android.

<comment><USER45> I currently can't do that. I can turn on DND and miss every notification, but I can't filter my calls with a whitelist.

<comment><USER47> Settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers

<comment><USER18> Perhaps the best new feature of iOS 13.

However, now I get a bunch of robocalls in voicemail, and iOS doesn't transcribe them properly because they're usually in Mandarin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Verizon informed me of a new plan to block Robocalls, I think you can pay $5 a month to block them or something...pretty ridiculous. That doesn't include text spam.

<comment><USER19> That will go away. From [https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/151...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate- bill/151/text)

> NO ADDITIONAL COST TO CONSUMERS OR SMALL BUSINESS CUSTOMERS.—The Commission > shall prohibit providers of voice service from adding any additional line > item charges to consumer or small business customer subscribers for the > effective call authentication technology required under paragraph (1).

It doesn't mean they'll be blocked at no cost, but the authentication system for all parties needs to be free and the enforcement for scams is on the provider. Effectively - you wouldn't pay anything extra once this is implemented.

<comment><USER49> The authentication _required by the law_. Doesn't stop them from offering a "premium" blocking package.

<comment><USER19> If the system works, then you don't need the premium blocking, and aren't required to get it either. Sure, it could be offered. What's so bad about that?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I'm exceeding skeptical that this law, or STIR/SHAKEN, will actually be effective.

I hope it will, though. It would be nice to be able to answer my phone again.

</comment><comment><USER30> Collaborative filtering is better than law IMO.

My phone company shipped a phone app in the app-stores that you're supposed to use in replacement of the default phone app. It comes equipped with collaborative filtering to weed out robocalls: when one rings your phone, the phone app displays it as such as well as the number of people who have reported it.

I used to have one robocall a day, but not anymore. It looks like this simple technology has made robocallers give up.

<comment><USER19> This is not an effective system. Caller IDs are often not verified in any way. Unless the scam/robocall requires a callback, the number will be made up. Collaborative filtering can't solve this.

<comment><USER30> It did in my country (where you can't make up a phone number).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There should be something like ReCAPTCHA for suspicious calls on the caller and a Spam flagging option for the receiver

</comment><comment><USER52> Ah, perhaps that explains the recent notice I got from ATT gifting me with their spam call notification service.

</comment><comment><USER53> Who gets fined, the caller or the company who enables robocalling (I'm looking at you Twilio)

<comment><USER54> I agree with this. Broadband.com has been a thorn in my side for years now because of this crap. Every single one of the non-spoofed numbers I look up are owned by Broadband.com, and I'm pretty sure the spoofed are probably flowing through them, as well.

<comment><USER18> This is interesting. If US companies are originating the robocalls, fining them sounds like a great idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why are the updates on Shaken/Stir gone totally silent?

<comment><USER56> The overall structure hasn't changed much, but STIR/SHAKEN is a core component of the TRACED act.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can we loop in automated political calls as robocalls?

<comment><USER57> Register Independent and you won't get any calls!

<comment><USER39> I am not registered and still get calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm wondering if it is possible to eliminate the use of phone number altogether? It was needed in old days, but today we use apps like Whatsapp and FaceTime.

<comment><USER58> If you want to move away from phone numbers I don't think Whatsapp is a good place to go..

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> cool maybe I'll start answering my phone again someday

</comment><comment><USER60> Until we start hiring mercenaries to set the law aside and hunt these people down across borders, I doubt a dollar will ever be collected. Heads on pikes optional.

<comment><USER49> Go after the providers. Someone is providing them a gateway.

<comment><USER61> Remove their common carrier status and enforce content filtering? I know this is just a knee-jerk comment, but I hope on reflection you can see how catastrophically terrible that idea is.

<comment><USER49> At some point the cure is in fact not worse than the disease. Robocalls are so bad at this point that, if I could get away with it, I wouldn't have a phone number, at all.

I also think that common carriers can still ban such activity.

The common carrier statute says carriers may not "unreasonably discriminate* against customers.

I have to imagine most sane individuals would consider cutting off customers engaged in obviously illegal activity as, in fact, reasonable.

Just like USPS can turn over packages containing drugs to the Feds.

<comment><USER61> For starters what you're suggesting is logically equivalent to completely removing all net neutrality principles. Allowing service providers complete discretion over service discrimination.

Just think about what you're suggesting for more than a second. Do you want your base contract to only allow you to send and receive calls within the service providers network? Do you want to have people trying to call you get caught up in an endless web of spam filters? Do want to have to pay extra for the ability to _receive_ calls from over seas? How do you think developing economies would fare if they could essentially never make a phone call to the US again?

Because all that and worse would be an inevitable outcome of the rules you're suggesting.

The phone system is an open and distributed system, just like email is. It's everything HN should love. But then you get comments like this which at the first sign of a system showing its natural distributed-system-related short comings, are all of a sudden asking for centralised walled gardens.

<comment><USER49> No, I'm not.

There is a massive difference between discriminating based on who the customers are, and discriminating based on "all customers doing this one specifically completely illegal thing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This law talks the talk without walking it - many MANY fines have been distributed, but the organization issuing them has no power to actually collect them.

When the collection starts, let me know.

<comment><USER19> This law basically says: FCC has a year to figure out the answers. I'd hold off criticising it until anything is known about implementation.</comment></comment>


Post-Scarcity Economics (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/post-scarcity-economics <comment><USER2> The problem we have now is not that there isn't enough for everyone, it's that we're acting like that's still the case.

<comment><USER3> Post scarcity is one of those terms that just does not make sense.

How much is enough for everybody? What if some people want more? Who decides exactly when something isn't scarce anymore?

I've yet to see anything that convinced me that post scarcity is anything more that a recent buzzword because fundamentally...supply and demand can't ever actually go away.

<comment><USER4> The way a post-scarcity society could come to exist is if we stop doing any activity in the physical world and everything moves online.

We've actually gone quite a long way down that road already. I wouldn't be surprised if in 100 years or so, most physical-world activity has stopped.

Once basic electricity, internet connectivity, food, etc. is provided automatically, and all work and leisure is conducted online, there's no barrier to stop anybody from having as much of any kind of information, software, leisure activity, etc. as they want.

I refer to it as "retreating to the virtual realm". Obviously it's not a popular idea at the moment, but I think it'll just happen gradually like it's done so far. Nobody will be forced into moving out of the physical realm, they'll just find that there's increasingly nothing to do as everything has moved to the virtual realm.

<comment><USER5> Although electricity, food, etc. are not provided automatically yet, I don't think that in the developed world they are scarce anymore. People don't chase a promotion, work overhours or buy a lottery ticket in the hope of being able to obtain more food. It might not be a gourmet meal in a Michelin star restaurant, but you surely can buy as much food as you need to never be hungry.

If you want a car, then at least in the Western world, you can buy one. It might not be a Ferrari, but when physical transportation is what you are after, it is definitely affordable.

So why do many people still work so hard? Because they don't just want things that are sufficient, they desire to have luxury goods, food or leisure. And how do you define luxury? It is something better than you have now, or even better, something better than what your neighbours/ friends or colleagues have.

This will not change, no matter how easily food and other basic goods become available. Because it is part of human nature to desire to have status, more than that, this is what is driving evolution for many other animals as well.

So a true post-scarcity will never exist. People will just invent new goods or services to go after in the future when today's iphones and sportscars have become affordable. Not because they need them, but for the simple fact that they are difficult to obtain.

<comment><USER6> > So why do many people still work so hard?

Let me make you a question. For how long will you still afford all that stuff if you simply quit working?

<comment><USER7> This. Especially with western world moving more and more into service-based economy, we're literally beginning to have to pay rent to survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An incredible article, it seems so clear the way it is stated.

If demand is the problem, as stated in the article, would a basic-income, providing extra income and arguably more free time for consumers usher in a new "Golden Age" of growth as we have seen post-WWII?

<comment><USER9> You don't even need basic income. Just let people's incomes rise at the same rate the economy grows instead of funneling all gains to the business owners like it happened over the last 30 years or so. Unfortunately in the US the Republicans seem hell bent to accelerate the trend towards more income concentration at the top with their tax plans.

I don't know how to change this realistically. It probably needs some change in moral attitudes so it's just not accepted by society that certainly people claim all the gains for themselves instead off spreading them out. Child labor used to be prevalent but in most Western societies it's not ok anymore even if there is profit to be made. So maybe this will happen to income inequality too.

<comment><USER8> The incomes need to rise but can the business owners be forced? The basic income would make sure everyone gets the extra income.

<comment><USER10> tax+spend; not supporting 'trickle down' economics w/r/t other gov't policies, actually enforcing monopoly laws, regulating other areas in favor of small business (e.g. FCC used to have media ownership laws to keep media companies smaller) etc..

if everyone has more money but there is no cap on the top, things will just get more expensive, and then more basic income will be provided, and the cycle will continue..

not necessarily a fan or a detractor of any/all of these things, but just chiming in.

<comment><USER9> I wonder how things would work out if we had a system where companies beyond a certain size are strongly discouraged. I think the economy would be much healthier if we had many small businesses instead of behemoths like apple and Google

<comment><USER11> Small business employ the plurality of Americans. Also, you made a disparaging comment towards Republicans earlier, and I just want to point out that Google, MS, Apple, etc. etc. are virtually all staffed by liberals and Democrats. Oh, and those Wallstreet bankers that seem to be perpetually in the left's cross hairs? Democrat, democrat, democrat.

<comment><USER9> Are you disputing that the Republican tax plans are mainly aimed towards lowering taxes for upper incomes and most of the benefits would flow to the top 0.x percent? I don't think facts are disparaging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Media seems to be a good example of this. Movies and TV shows continue to be created and preserved increasing the supply, but consuming media does not mean less for others.

</comment><comment><USER13> Scarcity is imposed by physics. Energy is conserved, entropy increases. Even if we realized the wildest extropian dreams and moved all intelligent life into efficient simulations, physics still dictates that every non-reversible computation creates entropy.

A homeless person in the US today has universally better prospects than 99% of the population a thousand years ago; better than all of them in many ways. It's impossible to starve in a first world country. Even the poorest of the poor are jacked into the global communication network. Necessary survival goods are non-scarce. Are we satisfied? No, we want more. As productive capacity increases, our definition of non-scarcity becomes more and more demanding. I don't see why this would stop if the only commodity left was mass-energy.

</comment><comment><USER14> I recommend people interested in alternative social structures for a post- scarcity world to look into Murray Bookchin</comment>


Ask HN: How do you protect your older parents' PCs? - <AUTHOR> My parents are both not that great with computers. My father can have trouble distinguishing between an ad designed to look like a Windows alert, and an actual Windows alert. My mother has woken me up out of bed to tell me she'd followed my instructions for opening a website but it "didn't work", to find that she had typed the URL in to the browser bar, but hadn't pressed "enter" yet :). But luckily their usage patterns are simple - they browse websites (most the photos they look at are on Facebook now), occasionally will need to read a MS Word doc one of their friends sends them, or sometimes open photos from emails.
Also its a shared PC that visiting relatives, kids and teenagers sometimes use - none of who are particularly computer savvy, and are generally motivated by games. I've found games and things on it that my parents would clearly have zero interest in (most likely the source of the adware).
I recently used their PC and was also shocked to see that Chrome's default search engine was some crapware. There was also some clearly non-Lenovo bloatware installed to "keep drivers up to date" which I spent some time obliterating. Short of MS Security Essentials and locking down the admin account, I'm looking for additional suggestions.
I'm sure a lot of us here can relate, and I'm curious as to your thoughts, tips and techniques. The internet is simply full of paid product offerings that claim to do it all for you, but I'm massively skeptical of these products.
The limitations: I actually get to their computer maybe once or twice a month to do a health check. It's unfortunately gotta be Windows. Obviously not on my network. <comment><USER2> The computer with all financial information is disconnected from the net. A new computer does email and web surfing. Both have Mcafee and MalwareBytes. All computers work within a Standard User account and I hold the admin password. I use TeamViewer with security tight to monitor. They have been trained to not click on anything asking them to and to let me know the minute any questionable email or pop-up appears.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting - thanks! Curious - reasons for Mcafee and MalwareBytes? Is the MS anti virus suite (whatever its called these days) not sufficient?</comment></comment>


Taming Thermal Printers with Label Live (Electron) - <AUTHOR> https://www.label.live/blog/introducing-label-live <comment><AUTHOR> App developer here. :)

Long time reader. First time poster.

The Label LIVE MVP has feature-creeped along to keep pace with what I convinced myself was niche-market table stakes: barcodes, variables, spreadsheet/CSV import, full font support, built-in MQTT broker, all the printers! The big question I have is: What is the market for this kind of software? (i.e. selecting a monetization strategy)

Thank you, HN community!

</comment><comment><USER2> Really cool concept. I particularly like the demo of the QR code feature—you don't need a generate button since the QR code updates as you type the link. Smart UX!

Will you be releasing a Linux version?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the only reason I haven't yet is the debate around how to deploy it. I've been using Linux on the server since the late 90s but have used a Mac for the desktop since Mac OS hit X. I'm curious what packaging systems are popular for apps like this?

I've chatted a bit with David Power of Hiri and a contact at Canonical. Am I on the right track?

<comment><USER2> From what I've seen on your website, it looks like Label LIVE is not open source, which would mean that most Linux distros like Debian or Fedora wouldn't package it in their native repositories.

Knowing that, I think you have two good options: provide .deb and .rpm packages for Debian and Red Hat-based systems, respectively (like Google does for Chrome), or use Snap or Flatpak, which are distro-agnostic and can be installed anywhere. In either case, users would download a file from your website or add a repository to their existing package manager and then install your program, at which point updates would be installed with either the user's normal package manager or snap/flatpak.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the backend that is responsible for packaging the Mac and Windows builds.

[https://www.electron.build/configuration/linux](https://www.electron.build/configuration/linux)

As far as testing on the desktop - what would you consider a minimum test environment? Packaging is one thing ... but testing, that's a whole other issue. Is it important to test on real hardware or is a VM good enough? Which desktop distros claim the most users? Asking these almost rhetorically, considering it's my job to do the research. Any insights are greatly appreciated.

Tangentially, I've given some thought to supporting the RaspPi ecosystem because it's ideal for a kiosk or bolt-on IOT print server.

<comment><USER2> That site says it'll give you an AppImage or a Snap—I didn't mention the AppImage format in my last post but it's effectively like a DMG on macOS, so you just distribute the file and users only have to mark it as executable and run it.

A VM is plenty for testing that your app starts and lets you design labels fine, but you'll be in for a world of trouble if you try interface physical hardware (like the thermal printer) from one. You could always just make a live USB of a popular distro like Ubuntu or Fedora and download and test your app on real hardware—booting Linux on a recent Mac would be a challenge so you'd want to use an older one or PC hardware for running a live USB.

Electron seems to support ARM, the processor architecture used by the RPi, so I would think you'd be good to go there aside from your app maybe being a little slow.

You will want to talk to someone else too since I'm sure I'm forgetting something, particularly about the Raspberry Pi.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stanford adopts JavaScript, drops Java for its intro to CS curriculum - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/stanford-adopts-javascript-drops-java-its-intro-cs-anthony-delgado <comment><USER2> The current headline, "Stanford adopts JavaScript, drops Java for its intro to CS curriculum" is incorrect. Stanford is piloting two new classes one in JavaScript and the other in Python to determine the effort, benefits, and downsides of moving the introductory class away from Java[1]. The main introductory class, CS106A, is still being taught in Java[2].

[1] From a Facebook comment posted by one of the CS106* instructors: "We are running some experimental CS1 offerings. One of them is "106J" in JavaScript. Another, likely in Python, will be tried next winter. None of these replaces 106A; they're offered concurrently as smaller experimental classes because instructors wanted to try out other approaches. If one of these approaches proves to be really awesome, maybe someday we'd consider switching A to it. But we have no plans to do such right now. There are some rumors about this based on one misquoted news article, but they are false."

[2] [http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?view=catalog&filte...](http://explorecourses.stanford.edu/search?view=catalog&filter- coursestatus-Active=on&page=0&catalog=&academicYear=&q=cs+106&collapse=)

<comment><AUTHOR> You are obviously correct. I let the original title of the post on LinkedIn remain. Will try and be better at titling next time. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I just don't understand this, even if students were asking for it. It's a poor language whipped up in a week or two - is it really what you want to base someone's first exposure to programming on?

<comment><USER4> It's pretty far from that now. It's a modern multi-paradigm language with a package manager, module system and enormous community. It's a pretty solid language for teaching in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> The package manager shouldn't matter in the least for a 100 level CS class as you're supposed to be learning the fundamentals instead of just bringing in left-pad, and the like. I don't think I used an external package in any of my CS classes (in any language) until maybe senior year. We used C, Java, and Python for various classes throughout my time. Oh, and one class used PHP.

What I wonder though is, what is the goal of the current class? If it's about teaching OO fundamentals, I can't imagine JS would be a better replacement for Java than Python. If you're just trying to teach concepts, sure JS is fine, but it just seems like Python would be all around better for instruction than JS.

<comment><USER4> I admit that for classroom exercises the package manager isn't a huge draw, but when someone learns some JS basics and they want to try to make a real thing, the fact they don't have to move to a new ecosystem to get libraries keeps the momentum high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rather interesting that there's a triple split: Harvard starts off with C, MIT with Python and Stanford with Java(script)..

<comment><USER7> Of the 4 ``famous CS schools'', MIT, CMU, and Berkeley all start with Python, and Stanford alone runs Java.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How long before someone writes an article titled "The Perils of JavaScriptSchools"?</comment>


Ask HN: What's happening at Google to justify the mismanagement of Chrome? - <AUTHOR> Chrome used to be the best, now it suffers tremendously in almost every aspect.<p>Does anyone have any insight about what they're doing that Chrome seems now a neglected project? <comment><USER2> yes, it got worse very quickly: \- does not load CSS in iframe (Windows and Linux) \- lately only a few Linux distros are supported \- poor video performance on Linux \- HTML5 (pushed by Google) has worse performance than flash on Linux \- crashes \- does not remember (load 'unsafe scripts'), no configuration option to allow 'unsafe scripts' from some sites

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't know but the team dealing with WebRTC seems to be doing a great job.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can you give some examples?</comment>


Hack your Sleep: Sleep for 2 hours everyday - <AUTHOR> http://www.dustincurtis.com/sleep.html

<comment><USER2> This comes up every few months on HN. Does it work? maybe for some people, but your sleep cycle will be so different than anyone not using this system, it will be difficult to implement.

"You can train it to enter REM for short periods of time throughout the day in 20-minute naps rather than in one lump at night."

How can this possibly work unless you are in college or own your own business?</comment>


Encrypt messages using SSH public keys from GitHub. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twe4ked/catacomb

<comment><USER2> Wouldn't it be better to feed the RSA public key into an existing message encryption system like gpg? There are a few things you could improve that way:

* No message integrity - it would be good to be able to sign and encrypt.

* Encrypting the same plaintext twice gives the same ciphertext (there is no randomness). This means that an attacker can confirm if a given ciphertext corresponds to a suspected plaintext.

* RSA is comparatively slow; it is usually better to encrypt a symmetric key with RSA and then encrypt the message with the symmetric key.

<comment><USER3> Sure. This is intended as a quick way to send small bits of sensitive information over email, chat, etc.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to highlight new comments on HN? - <AUTHOR> I often visit a interesting posts a few times and every time it's hard to figure out what comments are new what comments I've seen. <comment><USER2> [https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker- news](https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news)

<comment><USER3> Looks awesome. If only some of these features were built into the actual site...</comment></comment>