danpat

Obviously the data is imperfect, and there are lots of edge cases (https://github.com/Project-OSRM/osrm-backend/issues/2145). But overall, it works pretty well. There are regional disagreements about the highway hierarchy (primary/secondary/tertiary/etc), but as long as the structure is locally consistent, you generally get the routing results you expect (routes tend to major arteries, etc).

ETA calculation is a bit hit-and-miss, but the only way to correct this is to use real-world measurements.

The great thing is that if you find something weird, you can just fix it. This happens overwhelmingly more often that people deliberately introducing errors.

and more specific to cellular phones:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_Wideband

Search for "HD Voice" from the big cellular companies in the US. It usually requires handset support.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_matching

and GraphHopper https://graphhopper.com/

And for the UI, you can use https://github.com/perliedman/leaflet-routing-machine

all of which you can self-host using OpenstreetMap data.

  http://vermontsnowflakes.com/poster2.shtml

Part art, part science :-)

Because the earth isn't a sphere, the common length-on-a-sphere great circle distance equation isn't perfect for the earth. However, it's a lot faster to calculate than the haversine length, which takes into account the squashed sphere that we live on.

We were calculating driving routes at high latitudes. The difference in the length calculation meant that east-west road lengths were being calculated as slightly longer than they really were.

Amortized across a long-distance route, this led to the mysterious tendency of the shortest-path algorithm to prefer north-south oriented roads a lot more often than you'd expect.

While we knew we were using the less precise great-circle distance, the deviation is not all that big, so we didn't really expect the difference to manifest in the output.

Those were some mysterious detours.

https://github.com/danpat/uledger

I wanted to be able to group all my assertions together. This means the assertion needs to be able to retroactively calculate the balance on a given date. ledger-cli's assert doesn't support this. hledger does, but, well, I'm not a Haskell guy and the whole Haskell ecosystem seemed...cumbersome...to install.

uledger supports a useful-to-me subset of ledger-cli, primarily nested accounts, multiple currencies and out-of-order assertions and transaction entry. It has a bunch of tests and a very simple web balance interface. My favourite feature is the accounting-equation balance feature:

    2015-01-01 Opening Balance
            Equity:Owners Contributions   $-100
            Assets:Bank                   $100
    2015-01-01 Buying widgets
            Liabilities:Credit Card       $-50
            Expenses:Parts
    2015-01-03 Some Income
            Income:Consulting             $-200
            Assets:Bank                   $200

    assert balance 2015-01-02 Expenses  $50
    assert equation 2015-01-04 Assets - Liabilities = Equity + Income - Expenses

Disclosure: I work for Mapbox, we offer a directions service based on OSRM, I'm paid to work on it daily.

I suddenly found myself finding big-game hunting a whole lot less morally repugnant when I realized that the big money that goes into it is very much used to keep many species alive. Operators of paid hunting areas have a very strongly vested interest in keeping their revenue stream going, and thus, in keeping viable populations around.

I am not pro-hunting by any means, but given a world where wildlife is hopelessly outmatched by man for resource competition, the only way to keep endangered species populated is to harness some aspect of humanity to fight for their preservation in ways that matter. Paid big-game hunting and animal cultivation is an effective way to do that and should be done more.

The conflict between man and wildlife is one-sided enough that blanket "protection" is not sufficient to save many animal populations. They need active cultivation and encouragement if they're not to be wiped out through attrition (via illegal poaching, loss of habitat, etc). Simply making it more illegal isn't going to prevent that.

We built and use this tool:

    http://osmlab.github.io/to-fix/

There are some really cool things in mapping tech. For example, Strava has made available a whole dump of point data that can be used to look for un-labelled trails and roads (see the "Strava" layer in to-fix).

Perhaps the "right-brained" are already very good at programming other people, working with faulty, non-deterministic, somewhat chaotic computing environments where "left-brained" patterns of software development fall short....

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~motionplanning/papers/sbp_papers/inte...

As long as the usable sensor density is higher than how tightly we can pack these vehicles, then we're probably OK.

Many coding jobs, but a lot of other stuff too.

There are several job boards dedicated to remote-only work listed on that page.

This has the advantage of removing the native UI toolkit question. This might make it easier to develop a native executable that's easy to package and distribute.

It's up to the border officer to decide whether you meet the critera or not. They're not experts in any particular field, so generally, they look to make sure that all the right keywords are hit in the job application and your qualifications.

Contacting USCIS will generally only get you generic advice. An immigration lawyer, while not necessary to do the paperwork (it's pretty easy) should be able to give you a reasonable opinion as to whether you'd be successful or not. They're the only people that deal with this often enough to have a feel for when an application might be successful or not.

Do some google searching on "TN visa" and "web developer", there are lots of stories out there that should give you a feel for what's involved.

http://www.nafsa.org/_/file/_/amresource/8cfr2146.htm

The TN visa has the advantage that the company doesn't need to do anything really, just make sure the job description ticks all the boxes for the immigration officers at the border. Other visa classes are more complex and costly (H1-B) and usually have the same kind of qualification requirements.

"Computer Systems Analyst" is the usual job title for programming jobs, you will need either a degree, or some post-secondary school training + 3 years experience. You can probably word your degrees + training to satisfy the education requirement.

The steps to get this visa are outlined here:

http://travel.state.gov/content/visas/english/employment/naf...

Probably through penalties listed in the contract, or simply suing for breach of contract.

While many US states allow at-will agreements that allow either party to depart at any time for any reason without penalty, as far as I know, you're not required to be employed at-will if both parties agree to the terms of the contract.

While it's a somewhat special case, I know the US federal government often employs people with though-shalt-not-break-without-penalty contracts. Examples are military service, and many of the higher-education loan-forgiveness programmes.

https://careers.mozilla.org/en-US/position/oXqA0fwH

I already do pretty well with low bandwidth (thank-you DVCS and virtualization), but telemedicine might be out for the missus.

Call quality in poor signal (e.g. 2G) areas is terrible, but in urban areas with HSPA or LTE, it works great. I talk very little.

Look for the "flex-rate" plans that Rogers/Telus/etc offer. I sometimes pay as little as $5/mo if I don't use my phone, it scales with data usage.

Apple MagSafe connectors are on the same voltage (20V) as these new Type C connectors, although Type C seems rated for a higher current (5A).

Looking at the pinout, the GND and VBUS are a bit longer, so will disconnect last upon removal. This may be to allow for the voltage to be dropped in anticipation of a disconnect, but you'd need enough intelligence at the power supply end to notice that. Lowering the voltage prior to disconnect would reduce the arc size.

But it's nothing like that. What the hell are open enrolment periods for? I get a 300 page contract, how the hell am I supposed to read and properly comprehend that in the 10 days allotted before committing to paying $$$/month for at least a year?

Having lived in single-payer countries for most of my life, it's definitely a step backwards for me, both cost wise, and "how much I have to think about it" wise. The intellectual capital drain due to the complexity of the system here cannot be insignificant.

> You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else. - Winston Churchill

However, I suspect that niche is nowhere near big enough to support Radio Shack's size. All those retail outlets can't be cheap to run. They needed a business/market that was easy to transition to and would support their existing size. They chose wrong, but I don't think ditching the hobby market was necessarily a wrong move in their position. Once the improved experience of ordering hobby electronics online became more widely available, "storefront supply of hobby electronics" was not a business model that could ever support a massive chain of retail stores.