This hack prints the number of jobs at select cities from HN who-is-hiring pages. The examples below show the 2 use cases in action. (Notice the systematic increase in the number of jobs in Cambridge MA.)

bash-3.2$ ./city_distribution_in_HN_jobs.py http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831646 52 jobs in Silicon Valley 23 jobs in New York 17 jobs in London 16 jobs in Cambridge MA 5 jobs in Chicago

bash-3.2$ ./city_distribution_in_HN_jobs.py ############################## August 2011 52 jobs in Silicon Valley 23 jobs in New York 17 jobs in London 16 jobs in Cambridge MA 5 jobs in Chicago ############################## July 2011 75 jobs in Silicon Valley 27 jobs in New York 17 jobs in Cambridge MA 8 jobs in London 5 jobs in Chicago ############################## June 2011 58 jobs in Silicon Valley 32 jobs in New York 15 jobs in London 13 jobs in Cambridge MA 5 jobs in Chicago ############################## May 2011 67 jobs in Silicon Valley 14 jobs in New York 11 jobs in Cambridge MA 11 jobs in London 5 jobs in Chicago ############################## April 2011 58 jobs in Silicon Valley 20 jobs in New York 11 jobs in London 6 jobs in Cambridge MA 6 jobs in Chicago

This python code depends on the HTML parser BeautifulSoup, available here: http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/#Download