skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Very interesting. But the focus on New York probably skews the analysis a lot, particularly in early years when rivers and canals would have been important routes. Notice the bend of the 1800 curves up the eastern NY border, and into southeastern Pennsylvania? I bet those reflect the use of the Hudson and Delaware rivers for travel, and possibly linkage to other rivers like the Ohio, Susquehanna and Potomac. Likewise I suspect that in 1830 Chicago was probably closer to New Orleans, on the Mississippi, than it was to New York.

Likewise the transport of goods, rather than passengers, was probably more important in forming perceptions of distance, as that's what would drive commerce and thus ongoing relationships.

Attention to goods and other point pairings probably matter a lot when you get to 1857. I expect internal communications, of goods, in the South reflected high proximity to the nearest port, and that NY was essentially on the other side of the moon. Whereas the North was probably much more homogenous in its travel times (proportionately more railroad, less river) -- but largely isolated from the South. Which would have done a lot to foster disunion among the two geographies.

That view would probably also say a lot about the border states, I bet that would show these were essentially islands unto themselves.
This should come as no surprise to those that are familiar with MSR (Microsoft Research). I've had the fortune of visiting the place a few times and it is amazing, especially the people they get to come in for research (even the interns are geniuses).

Even if you don't know of MSR, this should be of no surprise if you have any recall of the news you read over the years. A lot of the work they do has appeared in the NYTimes and such. For example, I remember very clearly that about 6 years ago, Bill Gates basically said that robots are the future. It didn't take me long to find articles and website to remind myself of what he said (see link below). Although Bill Gates is no longer CEO, he is still chairman and you can certainly bet that MSR will be leading the way in this research.

http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/01/07/bill-gates-r...
Why Model-Driven Application Provisioning is Better than Workflow Deployments
Free Design for Developers Resources
Peer review does not really matter. Articles like this are more along the lines of, "This is a DYI method for tinkering with your life ... because you will never be happy with a retail version of what you think the world should be."

You're never going to prove anything about mindfulness, not from the outside. No one can ever force you to be mindful, so I'm not sure where zealotry comes in.
proud to say I worked on this :)
This article has no connection to HN at all; not even the "your rights online" slant economic policy articles often get. Flagged.
Wow, I'm impressed even though it is just a demo video. One thing that doesn't feel intuitive to me is the left/right edge choices. It's the same problem with Windows 8, I feel like if I pull an app in from one side, I should be able to switch to the previous app by pulling in from the other side.
I got it from The Verge.

"As already teased and promised, today Canonical is taking the wraps off the mobile version of Ubuntu, which is built around the existing Android kernel and drivers, but doesn't use a Java Virtual Machine and promises to use "the full power of the phone.""

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/2/3827922/ubuntu-phone-os-ann...

I got confused with all the simultaneous news articles so sorry about the "it says" part.
Ah, I see, I had no idea it was open source! Thank you for the information.
It's always presented as one or the other: Either do a startup or stay in college. Why not both?

I've managed to continue my undergrad education while co-founding an angel back startup. Although I didn't intentionally plan it, doing both at the same time as really helped me learn. What you learn in school can instantly be translated back to your startup, instead of waiting several years after school when you have forgotten much of it. It goes the other way too, lessons I've learned in my startup help me focus on what matters in school and "project manage" my course-load and homework.

It's not for everyone, and I am not saying that you have to start a company while in school. But at the very least, consider joining a startup while in school. Most startups are very flexible to where you work and what hours you work. It's usually a great fit while in school.
Put a tape measure along a sheet of plywood and prepare to be surprised. At least then you'll know why you always had trouble fitting them :)
Islamic Cleric Permitting Gang Rape of Syrian Women
Chokes with a "Server error" on the following URL validator:

\b(?:((?:https?|mailto|s?ftp): )(?:\/{1,3} |[a-z0-9%]) |w{2,3}\d{0,3}[.]|[a-z0-9\.\-]{1,40}[.][a-z]{2,4}\/)(?: \&[a-z]{2,8}\; | [\w\(\)\.\/\:\@\#\?\=\&\-\!\~\;\'\[\]] | \%[0-9]{2})+

This is after changing ?> to ?: since it doesn't understand the non-backtracking syntax.
I totally agree. I don't get why 37 signals would be at all interested in taking one time $10 payments from Moms and Pops when they have monthly recurring revenue coming in from a bunch of companies. Even if they have the infrastructure, just the support overhead from un-tech friendly folks will be a pain.
This is a great point, and one the maps sort of gloss over, which is you step from transportation system to transportation system you get faster, walking to horse drawn wagon, to train, to car, to plane. And as some have mentioned to the Internet which can eliminate the need to travel at all if you exploit it well.

My wife and I took the California Zephyr from Oakland to Chicago and then the Capitol Limited from Chicago to Washington DC. It took several days (we overnighted in Chicago as the chances of making the connection there on Amtrak are effectively zero). It was a lot of fun, and quite relaxing, but clearly cross country trains sort of peaked in the late 40's early 50's and haven't moved a whole lot since in this country.
Nokia as a company has existed since the 1800s and first released a mobile telephone in the 1960s. Apple was incorporated in 1977. Motorola is the company that came out with the first handheld mobile phone in the 1970s.

You have made sweeping and broad overgeneralizations that betray the complexity of the situation. Apple's masterstroke was not in inventing the concept of a smartphone, but in producing one that provided a much better user experience that the rest of the market. As for the differences in hardware and rf engineering, I'll leave that to someone more qualified to explain because my knowledge in the area is far from complete.
Mainstream Influence Of Functional Languages
Major root cause that could be fixed without hurting anyone other than patent trolls: the relatively anonymous registration of patents. If I'm being threatened with a lawsuit for patent infringement, how can I not find out the owners of the patents? That is crazy.

If you want to leverage a patent, you should have to be registered with the patent office so that you can be held accountable. Anyone using a patent for legit reasons wouldn't be hampered by this, but it would make hunting down patent trolls a whole lot easier.
Anecdotal evidence + overgeneralization + bad usage of statistics. For example:

"If we use wealth as a measure of success, Forbes’ January 2012 edition reveals that about 85% of America’s 400 Richest People (shown left) do, in fact, have a college degree."

So there is a correlation between extreme wealth and college education. What does that show? Do you account for the fact that rich families have a much easier time sending their kids to college? If you flip it and say "15% of America's 400 richest people don't even have a college degree" that sounds impressive as well. What did you expect? What does that have to do with startups?

I abhor these empty advice posts based on a single data point. I wouldn't give out generic advice about whether to stay in school or not, that's a personal decision that completely depends on the circumstances.
I've seen these graphics before in Dell's presentations. Do you work for Dell?
Airbnb acquires Nabewise
For those interested in this, look up Thompson's Algorithm (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thompson%27s_const...).
IANAL, but I believe that in the United States you're free to use whatever name you like so long as it's not done for fraudulent purposes.
This is exciting. They are truly talking about a single device that does it all for you -- your phone is your computer.

The phone UI looks a bit different, he says "clean and simple," but just from the video it seems like a bit much to do things. That could just be an initial reaction based on years of other phone OS usage.

Why hasnt anyone run with WebOS' UI approach? The whole cards thing seems like the best approach i've seen thus far
No, it's called a finite state machine ;)
Agreed. And let's not forget that Tablet PCs, with stylus, WiFi, etc. running full Windows, much like the much touted Yoga, were championed by Microsoft in 2001 - 2002. (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP/Compaq_TC1000 ).
Why don't you simply use your phone number, nobody else has the same one as you.

You do know that multiple people can share a phone number, right?
Analyze this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQX8FakToj0 :)
OK I'm missing something...if this post wasn't labeled "Beautiful regexp visualizations" I don't know if I would've poked around for more than a couple minutes (and I love regexes)...perhaps the opening screen should by default have one of the more appealing examples? I hadn't known that I had to hit "Enter" for anything to happen...I still don't know what I'm supposed to be seeing, though I'll support anything that makes regexes more accessible.
## SEEKING FREELANCER ##

Looking for a talented ActionScript developer with experience working with Adobe AIR 3 to cross-compile apps for iOS and Android (both mobile and tablet environments). Pure-play development, with design assets and functional specifications to be provided.

Key skills:

* Strong Flash/Flex development skills with examples of interactive interfaces with 2-D animations

* Experience interacting with native-hooks and mobile UI - e.g., accelerometer, single touch flick/swipe - via AIR

Nice to have:

* Experience developing child-oriented games (e.g., simple mechanics)

* Ideally can work on-site in NYC, but remote is fine.

Nondisclosure, noncompete, etc. required.

Contact: iamanonon@outlook.com
That is a great counterpoint. School definitely isn't for everyone, and there are definitely flaws in the system (rising tuition, teaching the wrong things, etc but that is almost a whole other article).

Do your colleagues have any recommendations on gaining the proper skills and experience outside of college for those that want to try a different path?
Chrome Plugin: Coupons at Checkout
This also has a precedent in Lisp, see change-class: http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/f_chg_cl.htm

There's even a protocol for notifying instances that their class has changed so they can make any necessary adjustments: http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/07_bb.htm
Travel infrastructure seems like a 'chicken or egg' problem. Why build a rail line to the middle of nowhere? Conversely how will towns develop if people can't reach them? Much of the development of the heartland US was bootstrapped by the transportation/rail needs between the east and west coasts.

I wonder how different the US would be today without the CA gold rush. Or if the gold rush had been somewhere closer to the eastern seaboard like the Appalachians.
I'm not trying to be judgmental. I don't mean that it's "wrong" to meditate for concrete reasons. Just that to do so is in a fundamental sense missing the point. Of course, reality transcends my notions of it.

Respectfully, I must also disagree with Yasutani Roshi. The dynamic power he refers to is the energy of mindfulness. While meditation is certainly a powerful way to cultivate it, if your ability to remain mindful recedes without it, you have a problem with leaky insight, not with inadequate sitting time. With the right insight, everything becomes meditation and mindfulness a way of life. The ability to be in doing is a pretty important step along the path. I am of course not encouraging not practicing sitting. By all means, practice diligently.

All the same, I have nothing against anyone practicing meditation for any reason.
Here are some that I really liked, which aren't "here's how to program" type books. I'm not going to repeat books that were mentioned in the OP, except to say...The Algorithm Design Manual.

1. Python Essential Reference - Beazley

2. Modern C++ Design - Alexandrescu (mind-blowing; he now works on the D language)

3. Internet Core Protocols: The Definitive Guide - Hall (not a work of any particular genius, but this is stuff everyone should know, in my opinion)

4. Applied Cryptography - Schneier

5. Think Bayes - Downey

6. Interconnections: Bridges, Routers, Switches and Internetworking Protocols - Perlman
Human are capable of amazing things.
Rémi Gaillard has for example been known for this very specific skill for years.

One example can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
Nice job. I love these kinds of small helper/utility sites, it's big part of why I follow HN.

Is there a directory of sites like this somewhere, by the way?
I think there would be tremendous value in a train service departing NYC after work, stopping in Philadelphia and DC, then offering a decent dinner and breakfast and reaching LA before lunchtime the next day. This is possible with speeds similar to the French TGV.
Tiny Interactions Often Hold Volumes of Information
Canonical announces Ubuntu for smartphones - Hacking
Ah yes, spent 3 days on a train in India. First night with nowhere to sleep due to double booking.
The Erostar terminates in North London so that the vast majority of its passengers who are from north of London don't have to get across the city. Despite heading in the wrong direction its quicker than the underground.

You have ebbsfleet and Ashford for passengers from south of the city.
Cool! Though it would be great if you could have a shareable link to the regex visualized.
If it matters, I stood completely by my statements. It is not always easy to evaluate whether my tone is appropriate or not, which is why I followed the path of the least resistance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia - they've been a corporation since 1871. They developed their first mobile phone network system in 1971, ARP. It had 100% countrywide (Finland) coverage in 1978.
> Where did you see that? Are you sure you're not confusing it with the "Ubuntu for Android" project? That is a different project from this.

It was mentioned in the keynote video, towards the very end ~21:00.
yep, this is one possible solution :)
Amen!

If we can bootstrap on 10 hours a week with a day job we can do same from college.
No, everybody will be going just a tad slow for a while.
Makes sense to me. Or Microsoft shops that can't just throw Mailman on a random machine and can't get around the Exchange administrator's policies. They may not be able to skunkworks a new @foocorp.com email but they can have a third-party host it.
My problem with what you've said is that you've accused Microsoft of placing patents on their research, and of not publishing their results.

These accusations are false. MSR does not generally patent their work. I'm in language research and have not encountered any of their work that they've patented. Also, MSR's researchers and evaluated and appraised based on their publication record, so the only incentive is to publish. Microsoft's people publish a huge amount. Most university researchers are envious of how much they manage to publish, which they achieve through very high quality people, properly compensated, with lots of resources and being left alone.

Why do you "suspect" that only 1% is published? Where do you get that number from? Have you worked there? Have you collaborated with them? If they're only publishing 1%, the research would be superhuman.

You have put a false accusation to a group of people, and that pisses me off. It's not even like it's a difference of opinion - you've clearly not worked with these people or studied their publications, and are just making assumptions.
Excellent point, they must have strong tie-ups with OEM partners, who can make in-expensive devices, otherwise its not going anywhere.
this is really a problem in software development? a lack of opinions?

i wish i lived in the author's world. in mine, developers seem to take it as a badge of honour to have an opinion about everything. and if they can be an intolerant, insufferable arse about it: bonus points!

[edit: actually, i should clarify. my colleagues are actually pretty good about this; it's online where the volume is always turned to 11.]
Does that make me as clever as the guy that first said that? :-P I think I've probably read that somewhere before.
So, what's better? Ruby on Rails or PHP? Probably Ruby on Rails... but then, Facebook and half the internet has made amazing stuff out of PHP in likely less time (and more bugs) than it would take to do with Ruby of Rails.

So.. Your Mileage May Vary ?
Baby's First Birthday: Lessons from a Brazilian E-commerce Start-up
Everything else aside, can someone explain to me the obsession with fractions (w/out common denominators, even!) in the imperial system?

I love metric, but I have no problem using the imperial system for my work - however, the fact that all objects made for the imperial system are built on fractions makes it impossible to work with. There is no 0.1" there's only 1/8. There is no 0.15", there's only 5/32. etc.

Given the bottom is almost always a power of two (2, 4, 16, 32, and 64 at the most) the conversion isn't hard but there is a definite cognitive overhead to comparing 1/8" vs 5/32" whereas comparing .125" to .15" is an order of magnitude simpler.
I wish he would use real examples in these kind of posts, instead of just talking about abstract good and bad ideas.
Both Cloudera (CDH) and Hortonworks (HDP) distros make it easy to configure small clusters.

You just need to make sure all nodes have clocks properly set and synchronized, hostnames and DNS names are set for each machine, SE Linux is turned off, and firewall settings (on each node) allow machines to talk to each other.

Also, Dell offers a downloadable Crowbar ISO for Hadoop - and that's Puppet-based, if you are familiar with Puppet.
On competing visions
Yeah, I loved that, but it wasn't a mobile OS, it was just Ubuntu running as an Android app. It didn't even have a UI om the phone, IIRC.
On Pager Duty
Technically it is trivial to fix the overload by disconnecting part of the generators (at their entry-point, not an "island mode") so that the grid will survive - it can be even done automatically in a fraction of a second, although the wind generators themselves will suffer damage.

The problem is economical/political - who will have the authority to say that we'll disconnect generator X and won't pay for it's electricity since noone needs it at that specific time.
The letter from the patent trolls actually explains why they don't do that (the real reason is probably because it's easier to get a 30 person small business to pay up instead of a giant corporation with a retainer of lawyers).
I thought the same thing when I came across the DCI pattern. It is very useful for beautifying and simplifying use cases that span lots of objects.

I do something slightly different. I create a class directly for the context and then fire an object into it.

class TheContext
def initialize
# ...
end

def execute(the_object)
# ...
end

end
People suggest faraday cages all the time, but they will not work for things like this!

Faraday cages only work for high frequencies, but geomagnetic storms and EMP's are low frequency, and will pass right through a faraday cage. (Unless you made an incredibly thick one.)

You need Mu-metal for this kind of shielding. (Not that it would work here anyway - the currents are induced in the long powerlines, not in the transformer.)

Also, foil it very thin, so it only works for frequencies above 50Mhz or so.
This doesn't necessarily hold true for technology.

In fact, the longer in the field the the more dated the education becomes. Our field is changing and knowledge is turning over so fast that a ten year old degree is borderline irrelevant vs someone who has experience in "today's technologies, methodologies, etc".

There are fundamentals which hold true from college, but a large majority of the technologies, techniques, etc are no longer relevant.
The real question: will the executives at Microsoft be able to drive that strategy based on the pieces R&D is giving them?

Historically, Microsoft R&D has come up with some great stuff, it just really hasn't made it into their user products. Bill Gates was hammering on tablets and touch interfaces for years, but Apple made it happen. They have had great microkernel OS or modern language OS R&D projects, yet the Windows kernel hasn't changed dramatically. There is a missing step between R&D and revolutionary product improvements.