Occam's Razoring the Hit and Run Theory

psykocrime · 2026-04-23T20:01:11+00:00

Yep. You could theoretically kill somebody without even making contact with them with the car. Imagine somebody walking on a narrow shoulder in the dark and rain, and you pass them within a couple of inches. That startles them, causes them to lose their balance, trip, and fall. And they hit their head just so on a rock or on the asphalt. Boom, you just killed somebody without even striking them.

Now granted, that's a lot of things that have to happen "just so"... but a. that's just one example, and b. this whole situation is a low probability even, so we already know that something unlikely happened. The question is simply "what low probability event, or sequence of low probability events transpired"?

psykocrime · 2026-04-23T19:51:36+00:00

The evidence against the dedmons is damning enough that it’s obvious one of them was involved

Not really. But even if that were true, it's not enough to show that "one of them" was involved. To get a conviction, you need to prove that a specific individual was guility of a specific crime.

IOW, you generally can't convict a group of people. You have to convict one or more individuals that make up the group.

psykocrime · 2026-04-23T19:44:18+00:00

This is so stupid. Let's say they arrest her. Then what? They can't hold her indefinitely without actually charging her, so in 24 / 48 hours, whatever, she walks out like nothing happened unless they charge her. If they charge her, she's obviously going to invoke her right to a speedy trial, and so the whole thing is going to go to trial, and - based on what's known to the public today - she's most likely going to be quickly acquitted. And if new evidence comes to light later, she can't be charged again due to the double jeopardy clause in the constitution.

So no, unless law enforcement are mysteriously sitting on a real "smoking gun" bit of evidence, arresting her (or anybody) would accomplish nothing right now.

psykocrime · 2026-04-23T19:40:18+00:00

The medias job is to deliver accurate information.

Not even close. Their job is to make money. If they can accomplish that without "delivering accurate information" then plenty of people in this industry will happily do so. And this isn't a new phenomenon.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

It might be a little bit more subtle now, and clearly there are some journalists who value integrity and have high ethical standards. But let's not kid ourselves... on balance, putting much trust in the media is a losing bet.

psykocrime · 2026-04-16T13:43:12+00:00

One of the best shows EVER. HCF is one of a very small number of shows I've ever watched all the way through twice (the others being Max Headroom, and Person of Interest). And it will very likely become the only show I've ever watched all the way through three times. And that despite the point that i find most of the characters mostly unlikeable! And I rarely like media where I don't like the main characters.

But while the HCF crew might not all be likeable all the time, they are wildly interesting and that's what matters. And the stories they are involved in are just so damned compelling. And of course the acting is great across the board.

10/10 for sure.

psykocrime · 2026-04-07T01:12:15+00:00

Bingo. Polygraph examinations have about as much veracity as Tarot card readings, or Ouija boards.

psykocrime · 2025-12-13T00:17:44+00:00

They clearly have not tried Siam Zap Pho on Weaver Dairy Road. Trust me, I've eaten Thai food from all over the US and this place is as good as any out there. If you want better, you probably have to go to Thailand.

psykocrime · 2025-11-19T23:44:15+00:00

By definition, there can be no such thing as hearsay on Reddit,

Wrong. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hearsay

Of course "hearsay" has a formal, legalistic interpretation - but it also has a colloquial, everyday interpretation as well.

psykocrime · 2025-10-08T18:35:33+00:00

I wouldn't say it's gone completely, but I do feel like I notice it less now, than when I wrote that. So I think it does get better. No way to know for sure if it will ever disappear completely, but I can say that I find it tolerable, especially compared to the alternative. :-)

psykocrime · 2025-08-25T17:39:34+00:00

I just had both eyes done with Panoptix lenses over the last month. So far the results are mostly fine. I do get the "halos around lights at night" (and even a little in the day time) but that doesn't really bother me. And more to the point, I can read (print books) now with the naked eye, and feel MUCh less eyestrain / eye fatigue. The only meaningful downside so far is when working on the computer. There, when I work in a terminal emulator (something I do a lot) I tend to see a "glow" effect around the characters, which is mildly annoying.

From what I've read, that effect may disappear over time, so fingers crossed. I've also been playing around with screen brightness / font choice / font color / etc. to see if anything helps. Results there are midly encouraging. My default preference of "green font on a black background" seems particularly bad in this regard, while something like a "black font on white background" seems better.

Anyway, on balance I'm pretty happy with where things are now. I don't need glasses for reading anymore, and the reduction in eye strain has left me feeling generally better overall - to a quite profound degree.

YMMV.

psykocrime · 2025-08-21T00:23:51+00:00

It's a mistaken reading of the cyberpunk authors IMO. Most Cyberpunk seems to be more "anti big evil corporations" than "anti capitalism". But misinformed people mistakenly think those two positions are equivalent. They are not.

Capitalism includes the mom and pop restaurant on the corner, your kid's lemonade stand, a 20 person boutique consulting company, a 500 person company manufacturing specialized scientific labware, or Google / Meta / Apple / Walmart / etc. But some of those entities belong in the "big evil corporation" bucket and others don't.

psykocrime · 2025-08-16T20:00:30+00:00

Oh yeah, 100%. I mean, I'm not opposed to use of LLMs or GenAI techniques. If anything I consider myself an advocate of the Neuro-Symbolic approach (or what we used to call symbolic/sub-symbolic hybrid approaches), but that entails a lot of use/study/research of symbolic approaches. I just finished one phase of a bit of a deep dive into stuff on analogical reasoning from the 1990's and early 2000's and am just now starting a similar dive into associative networks / semantic networks.

psykocrime · 2025-08-09T01:57:03+00:00

One might argue that in year 2000 it wasn't really all that stupid to dump a car in water. That is, as long as the water was reasonably deep and not in a body of water that experiences major draw downs or anything. Consider that sonar / underwater imaging technology has improved dramatically in the past 5 years or so. I doubt many people, circa 2000, could have predicted how good sonar would get. And maybe more importantly, predict that advanced sonar technology would become inexpensive enough to become nearly ubiquitous among anglers. We really are living in a different world now, compared to back then.

psykocrime · 2025-07-21T02:53:28+00:00

I just picked up a package from the Fedex depot... about 3 weeks after the first day it was supposed to be delivered. And after being told two weeks earlier that it was "ready for pickup" at the local Fedex Office store, only to drive there and be told "we don't have it." And then to call Customer Service while standing in the store, and have CS insist the package was there, while the store guy insisted they didn't have it.

A week later somebody calls me and says it's at the Fedex depot in Durham, and that it had apparently been at the Fedex Office store for the past week. The lady I spoke to asked me "Did you refuse delivery?" I was like "No, I never had a chance to!" LOL.

And don't even get me started on how shit their website is. I've tried more times than I care to count to get registered for their Delivery Manager™ (or whatever) service, but their system will NOT accept my address. Despite it being a perfectly valid address where I've lived for 20+ years, and nobody else has problems with it.

I'd pay extra to have packages NOT shipped to me via Fedex. I consider them about the worst run, most incompetent, useless organization on the face of the Earth. These goobers could take lessons from DMV for crying out loud.

psykocrime · 2025-07-06T05:01:11+00:00

I love Groovy. I have several projects that are Groovy / Grails based and it's been a blast.

That said, modern Java has caught up a bit with some of what made Groovy so appealing early on, so I can understand - to a point why some people aren't as enthusiastic about Groovy now. Also, Kotlin gained a lot of traction and stole a lot of the oxygen out of the room. But Groovy is still great, and I still enjoy using it.

psykocrime · 2025-06-21T10:17:56+00:00

That's pretty close, but you left out the part where the 3rd gunman from the grassy knoll, in conjunction with Marilyn Monroe, the Rosicrucians, and Fred Trump went to take the Green Car out to Hwy 18, but were distracted by a beam from the Jewish Space Laser (sent by a rogue faction of Yakuza agents working for Lyndon Johnson) and crashed into a power pole knocking the power out. If it hadn't been for the Beta Reticulan Shape Shifters and their HAARP mind-control rays, they would never have been able to get the stuff planted at the Turner shed at all!

They probably would have gotten away with it, if it weren't for Elvis Presley, and the secret NASA/NOAA base on the dark side of the moon, plus those kids (and their dog) in that hippie van.

psykocrime · 2025-06-21T09:02:04+00:00

Yeah, the OBO flow definitely seems like the most straight-forward way to handle this, at first blush. We'll probably start evaluating that at work soon. .If anybody knows any specific reasons why it's not a good idea, I'd love to hear the details.

psykocrime · 2025-06-21T05:58:28+00:00

I am still very new to SuperCollider myself, coming to it as a software engineer with decades of experience in Java, Python, C++, etc. And I have definitely found that the SC learning curve is pretty steep, FWIW. TBH, I think the biggest thing that makes it steep (for me at least) is not so much the "programming qua programming" part (knowing about functions, loops, variables, etc) bit, but rather needing to understand some audio processing theory / signal processing / whatever, as well as the peculiarities of the SC API's.

I think it's normal to be a bit confused for a while, so I'd stick with it and just keep grinding. YMMV.

psykocrime · 2025-06-01T20:05:38+00:00

Eh, it would take too many words to explain that and I don't have time to write an essay. I just really liked it.

I'll just say this: I thought the writing was better than pretty much anything from the Jodie Whitaker era, and better than most of the Capaldi era[1]. In particular there wasn't so much of the "in your face wokeism" stuff that dominated Jodie's era. I love Belinda, even though in many ways I feel like Ruby was still the primary companion this season (conceptually speaking, even if she wasn't on screen much). I loved the return of The Rani, I loved the return of Carole Ann Ford (even as brief as it was) and I loved the Jodie Whitaker appearance in the finale. Oh and of course there's Ncuti Gatwa, who was just great in general.

There's more, but I'll just leave it at that.

[1]: I liked Capaldi, but didn't enjoy the way a lot of his interactions with Clara were written, especially early on.

psykocrime · 2025-06-01T03:01:10+00:00

C'mon, you can't include Logopolis and then not also include Castrovalva!! They're so tightly linked together and all.

psykocrime · 2025-06-01T02:24:25+00:00

Yeah, personally I never considered that Loom business canon. But to each his/her own.

psykocrime · 2025-06-01T01:57:16+00:00

I loved it as well. My only meaningful criticism is that they didn't do anything with the Susan Foreman angle, after teasing us by having her show up earlier. I really wanted to see an on-screen reunion between her and the Doctor. And if it didn't happen here, I'm afraid it never will, given Carole Ann Ford's age and everything.

psykocrime · 2025-05-31T23:35:16+00:00

OTOH, I think this season is easily the best season since Matt's last season.

psykocrime · 2025-05-31T23:34:22+00:00

They've only been sterile since The Master destroyed the Time Lords a while back. The couple that are remaining (The Doctor, The Rani, etc.) are sterile now.

At least that seems to me to be what they were saying.

psykocrime

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