The second edition of the Pascal User Manual and Report, copyright 1974, is on my lap. I wrote my first code as a college junior in Assistant Professor Niklaus Wirth's class, Introduction to Algorithmic Processes, in 1965. It was an Algol-60 maze-solving program; I typed each line on an IBM 029 keypunch into one 80-column card. That course was the most fun I had in a college class. I was hooked for life.

Doesn't collusion require some form of communication among the colluders? The ADM case involved meetings and agreements among vendors. Raising prices where there is reason to believe other vendors will follow -- and not leave the initial raiser "hung out to dry" -- is not price fixing.

It's a prediction of whether price increases will "stick," i.e., are sustainable by demand. Here "stick" means supported by other vendors.

..."nuclear" [scare quotes in original] ... STILL makes the surface HOTTER as a consequence of our civilization than it would have been if we did not exist...

So the real problem is our, i.e., human, civilization. Human civilization is entirely dependent on the consumption and use of energy. The degree of human flourishing is a function of the availability of cheap, reliable energy.

""Thanks to human-induced global heating, our planet faces a future of increasingly severe heat waves, droughts and wildfires that could devastate harvests in future, triggering widespread famine in their wake."

Thanks to human-induced global warming (oh, I mean *heating* of course -- it takes a while to adjust to recent changes in wording), our planet also faces a future of increasing "greening" due the fertilization effects of increased CO2, and also the opening of more northerly growing regions. How do the harmful and beneficial side effects net out? Ignoring the latter would seem to make that difficult to analyze.

I just posted in the What Was Your First Computer thread. What's going on? Some of us are older than others of us, OK?

Manufactured by an OEM. Basically a rack for Q-bus cards, including the CPU and RAM cards. Ran the RT-11 OS, UCSD Pascal. Brought it home in 1977. It was a chore to get the box into the car and then into my apartment.

powerful computers that solve equations in order to "mine" cryptocurrency

Nah. What the computers do is slog through mind-numbing calculations by applying a specified algorithm to any arbitrary number that falls within a range from 0 to a specified maximum. The more powerful -- the faster at doing these kinds of calculations -- they are, the better chance they have of being first among the competing miners to stumble upon the starting number that yields a "correct" result — one that is less than some magnitude criterion, i.e., that has at least a specified number of leading binary zeroes. The magnitude criterion changes periodically so that the rate of mining success stays roughly the same over time.

(1) "U.S. Supreme Court Endorses Gay, Transgender Worker Protections"
The Court did not "endorse" the protections because it did not evaluate whether the 1964 Civil Rights law was a good or bad law. The Court found that the law provides the protections, and that (theoretically) it has done so since it was enacted. The Court interpreted the meaning of the statute.

(2) [In the quoted Reuters story] "The rulings ... recognize new worker protections in federal law."
As implied by (1), the Court did not recognize new worker protections. Rather, it newly recognized worker protections in the language of the 1964 statute.

These errors are symptoms of widespread misunderstandings of the functions of judges. For example, you cannot infer from the majority opinion, which says that the 1964 law protects gay and trans potential or actual employees, that the justices themselves personally approve of those protections. Likewise you cannot infer from three justices' dissenting opinion that those justices themselves personally disapprove of the protections. The opinion and the dissent were about the meaning of the statute, not the goodness or badness of the statute. It is quite possible, even likely, that the dissenting justices, who think that the 1964 law does not provide the protections, would be in favor of Congress amending it to do so.

Caution: this post has nothing to do with the legal case of interest; it discusses only some obscure legal terminology.

"The opinion came down as part of a writ of certiorari"

That is not quite correct, although it's easy to see how the title page of the Supreme Court opinion (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.supremecourt.gov%2Fopinions%2F19pdf%2F18-877_dc8f.pdf) could be misleading. That page contains, "CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT." That means that the Supreme Court agreed to review a case decided by the Court of Appeals for the Fourth CIrcuit. The document containing that annotation is the resulting opinion of the Supreme Court. The opinion is not really "part of" the writ. The writ was previously issued by the Supreme Court when it decided to take the case: as a result of its deciding to take the case, the Supreme Court sent a message, the writ, to the Fourth Circuit court saying, in paraphrase, Hey, we're going to review this case you decided so send us all the documents and records you have on it. That happened many months ago. Yesterday the Supreme Court "handed down" the result of its review in the form of an opinion written by Justice Kagan for the Court.

When the loser of an appeal in a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, or the highest court of a state, wants to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the loser applies to the U.S. Supreme Court for a Writ of Certiorari, informally called an application for "cert," to be issued. If the Supreme Court takes the case, it "issues cert," and if it doesn't, it "denies cert." The Supreme Court issues cert for around one percent of the applications it gets.

"appears to have cleared up the mystery once and for all"

Or not: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bluezones.com%2Fnews...

From the Tesla Model S Owner's Manual:

When active, Autosteer requires you to hold the steering wheel. If it does not detect your hands on the steering wheel for a period of time, a flashing white light appears along the top of the instrument panel and the following message displays: ["Apply light force to steering wheel"] Autosteer detects your hands by recognizing light resistance as the steering wheel turns, or from you manually turning the steering wheel very lightly (without enough force to retake control). Engaging a turn signal, using the cruise control lever to adjust the cruise speed or follow distance, or using any steering wheel button or scroll wheel also qualifies for your hands being detected by Autosteer.
Note: When your hands are detected, the message disappears and Autosteer resumes normal operation.
Note: Autosteer may also sound a chime at the same time that the message is initially displayed. Autosteer requires that you pay attention to your surroundings and remain prepared to take control at any time. If Autosteer still does not detect your hands on the steering wheel, the request escalates by sounding chimes that increase in frequency. If you repeatedly ignore hands-on prompts, Autosteer displays the following message [omitted] and is disabled for the rest of the drive. If you don't resume manual steering, Autosteer sounds a continuous chime, turns on the warning flashers, and slows the vehicle to a complete stop.

I don't use Autosteer that often, but when I do I'm sometimes nagged by the car to apply light torque to the wheel even if I've had a hand on it. A torque sensor is its only means of hand(s)-on detection.

Asleep for 30 minutes? Not buying it.

Does the article adequately cover the subject?????

I'm here after clicking on a Feedly link.

Also an introductory programming course at Stanford; the course title was, "Introduction to Algorithmic Processes." Instructor: Niklaus Wirth, who later created Pascal, Modula, Euler, Oberon, etc.