This is (theoretically) a programmer forum. I use the programmer definition. By that definition, not having an algorithm is nonsense.

I also hate the way “algorithm” has taken over the public consciousness. You can find people unironically saying “I don’t want any algorithm in my social media feed”, which is a nonsensical statement.

Normally, you don’t want to commit code unless it’s been at least minimally tested, and preferably more than that.

All the CI’s, however, force a workflow where you can only test it by committing the code and seeing if it works. I’m not sure how to fix that, but I see the problem.

Thanks, Sam Harris.

I read “The Moral Landscape”. 90% of it is pretty good, but he’ll randomly drop “and that’s why we need to be worried about Islamic takeover of western Europe” into something completely unrelated. He spends a lot more time complaining about Islamic fundamentalist than he does the Christian fundamentalist who actually have political power in the US (and to a lesser degree, western Europe). Then you get to a chapter that’s all about religious influence on society, but it’s all about relatively relaxed Christians who have Ph.Ds in some field and show up at scientific conferences.

You might expect a word somewhere about the fundamentalist Christians who control roughly half of Congress, but no. It’s all Muslims and Christians who make it a more personal thing.

The “problem” with that tax is that if it’s applied fairly, it gets very big very fast. The damage to the road goes up with weight, but not linearly. Not a square factor, either. Not even cube. It’s to the fourth power.

Start applying that to long haul trucks and the whole industry will be bankrupt in a month. The implication being that we are all subsidizing that industry with taxes on roads. Including that one trucker with a “who is John Galt?” sticker on the back.

That said, this is also a very good argument for improving cargo trains to the point where most long haul trucking goes away.

I’m a little surprised the police didn’t already know about that method. Seems like they’d encounter enough CCTV footage that’d it’d be standard training.

I once again overestimate the training levels of the police.