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Why does the US have only two main political parties? Is it because that's what people want? Nope! It's just an artifact of our system of voting. From C.G.P. Grey, a video explaining the problems with first-past-the-po

-or- Engineering Is Always Yak-Shaving.

Update (7/13/2017): Since this post was published, IPv6 supported has been extended and now supports 15 Regions and Multiple AWS Services. The continued growth of the Internet, particularly in the areas of mobile applications, connected devices, and IoT, has spurred an industry-wide move to IPv6. In accord with a mandate that dates back to 2010, […]

As the threat of cyber attacks and hacking has increased over the past couple of years, the website security industry has undergone some pretty significant developments and changes. Understanding how the industry is changing for the better is important for every webmaster and business owner. The Growing Threat of Website Mischief Just because your website […]

The best way to build a brand that matters, a story that spreads, an impact that we remember, is to understand a simple but painful trade-off: If you want to stand for something, You can’t st…

This Figshare dataset contains the files created by and used in a related PLOS ONE paper, entitled 'An economic geography of the United States: from commutes to megaregions', by Garrett Dash Nelson and Alasdair Rae, published 30 November 2016. Update: 27 January 2017 - see item 7. belowIn addition to the files listed below, we have also provided a series of maps here, as high resolution PNGs. The fifth file below can be styled in QGIS using the QML style file provided in number 6.Information on files1. A us_ttw_v3_US_only_epsg5070v2 zipped shapefile (for use in GIS software such as ArcGIS or QGIS) containing individual census tract to census tract commuter links for the entire United States, based on the 2006-2010 American Community Survey dataset, as cited in the paper.2. The commutes.net file is a Pajek format file used in the derivation of our megaregions within Combo, the partitioning algorithm we used in the paper. Pajek (Program for Large Network Analysis) is a free software package. Combo is an open source modularity optimisation program developed by researchers at MIT, and the source code can be accessed at: http://senseable.mit.edu/community_detection/3. A us_ttw_v3_US_only_upto160km_epsg5070v2 zipped shapefile. This is an extract of 1. above but includes only those commutes of 160km or less (approx 100 miles).4. A us_ttw_v3_US_only_800km_10plus_epsg5070v2 zipped shapefile. This is an extract of 1. above but includes only those commutes of 10 or more which cover a distance of 800km or more (approx 500 miles). There are just over 28,000 of these and we expect these may be occasional, weekly or otherwise irregular 'commuters' but we are not able to discern this from the underlying dataset.5. A merged_ttw_v3_origin_and_dest_communities zipped shapefile. This contains the commute data but each line also has a 'community assignment' field. The ofips_comm (origin community) and dfips_comm (destination community) fields tell you which megaregion each line belongs to. They are mostly the same, but in some cases a flow line crosses between two megaregions. The dfips_comm field was used to decide which megaregion an area belongs to.6. We also include a community_colors_20_dec_2016_v3.qml file to accompany 5. above. This is a QGIS style file and can be used to style the maps in the same way as our dark background images on Figshare.7. We have also uploaded a zipped folder with two US megaregion shapefiles - one generalized and one at full resolution. These files are similar to Figure 11 in our paper. Whereas Figure 11 was somewhat fluid in terms of the precise location of the boundaries, these files are constructed from Census Tracts so they do not match exactly the lines shown in Figure 11. However, they do provide a very close match to the regions labelled in Figure 11 of the paper. These files are provided so that other researchers can then analyse associated data at these scales. The Shapefiles have three columns - one contains the original megaregion names from the PLOS ONE paper, another contains a new megaregion name based in part on post-publication interactions with readers, and the third column indicates the name of a major city in each megaregion. We hope you find these files useful.Please see the attached readme file for full information.

If you’re tired of spending all of your time writing email, or feel like your email requests never get properly fulfilled, give this military-based system a shot.

Regardless which productivity system or method you prefer, Zenkit is an all-in-one webapp that can help you manage your big projects and activities using the system that works for you. It’s free (for now, it’s in beta), but it looks good—minimal and distraction-free, but powerful under the hood.

We need more text and fewer videos and memes in the age of Trump.

Thanksgiving Flight Patterns is a cool animated, interactive data visualization from the NY Times TheUpshot that looks at where people traveled to for the Thanksgiving holiday last week. On the interactive version on the NY Times site, you can hover over any included city to see only those connec

Technology, startups, programming, technical management and software architecture

Standing in the way of the state's high-horsepower rail line are a bunch of horse owners.

So it's too bad the US is no good at planning regionally.

From Singapore to Paris, here's why you can't avoid the Brooklyn look.

Vogels channels his inner Ballmer with pitch to code monkeys

IT can secure any Play Store apps for Lollipop users, but earlier Android versions require special app versions

Consumerization of the enterprise presents more risks to sensitive corporate information. It’s important for IT departments to know how and when to use secure container applications to protect that...

  Android 5.0 or later devices only A work profile can be set up on an Android device to separate work apps and data from personal apps and data. With a work profile you can securely and privat

It is ironic to tell entertainers to shut up about politics when we just elected a greasy reality show host to the highest fucking office.— Chuck Wendig (@ChuckWendig) December 1, 2016

System meant to alleviate police resources disproportionately targets minority communities, threatens the Fourth Amendment

The next time you read a report about the low numbers of female software engineers in the field, keep in mind the irony of this: It was a woman who coined the term "software engineer." That woman, pioneering NASA software engineer Margaret Hamilton, was just awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama for…

In the 20th century, oil was black gold. But as we march deeper into the 21st century, we could have a lucrative new fuel on our hands. One that’s blue-green and sometimes a little smelly. It’s found in wastewater, but it’s capable of powering jets. Let’s… #corespirit #wellbeing #wellness #mindfulness #health #knowledge

GoAccess is an open source real-time web log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems or through your browser.

How Golang's concurrent GC achieves low latencies in real-time systems: a visualization of the algorithm and an empirical comparison with other languages.

Internet infrastructure giant Akamai last week released a special State of the Internet report. Normally, the quarterly accounting of noteworthy changes in distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks doesn't delve into attacks on specific customers. But this latest Akamai report makes an…