Yet another irreplaceable natural landmark destroyed by idiot hooliganism. There is nothing the courts can do that will ever bring that tree back.

Edit: Apparently the tree sprouted from its stump.

“Classmates warn Heimrich Himmler he risks enabling descent ‘into fascism’”

In the US, number plates are in Highway Gothic which is designed to maximise legibility at a distance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Gothic?wprov=sfla1

Average Internet forum experience—saying something true but downvoted because it was said opposition to a popular view

Can’t say I agree. This is anecdotal but the council installed some camera-like devices on one of the main roads in my city and people got scared of them and slowed down as a result. I don’t think the cameras are actually turned on and issuing fines as I don’t know any people who have gotten a fine from them, but their presence scares people into safer driving.

Automated law enforcement in fields where guilt can be obviously and objectively determined (resist the urge to make a fallacious slippery slope argument) is, on average, a good thing. People’s tendency to bad behaviour is strictly because they think they won’t get caught. Telling people there’s a $500 fine for speeding means nothing because they know the chance of getting caught is in the neighbourhood of 1 in 10,000. Most people speed every day on every road they drive on but they get maybe 1 ticket every other year. But if they know that speeding on one particular road will result in a 90% chance of getting a $50 fine, they’re not going to speed on that road. That’s why the cameras are usually painted bright orange or white—to get people to see them and think “oh shit, I don’t want a ticket; I’d better slow down”.

As long as we have democratic control over our own local governments and strong privacy laws regarding how that data can be used, I do not view misuse of automated number plate recognition systems as a serious threat. In fact, I think it’s probably a net bonus. There’s a show called Police Interceptors which follows British police and it’s absolutely shocking how many stolen cars they recover because someone drove it past an automated number plate recognition camera and it got flagged.

That issue is not really the problem of the camera though. That’s like saying you don’t like running water because people have drowned in water before. If the cameras are being misused then that is a political issue.

In my city, the police department operates the cameras and they will send at least one warning before you get a fine unless the violation is very egregious (e.g. double the speed limit in a school zone)

Say what you will about electronic plate readers but they do make speed and red light enforcement and toll collection much easier. And be honest, most people only dislike them because they make it harder to get away with bad driving habits that people previously took for granted that they could get away with.

I guess that’s true but number plates are typically read by cameras anyway. They are primarily used by speed/red light cameras, toll collection systems, and law enforcement.

If you assign random numbers to cars, it’s pretty likely that the last four or five digits plus the make and model of the car will uniquely identify a vehicle or at least narrow it down to just a few possibilities. If the assignment software is smart it could probably even guarantee this uniqueness.

I wonder what the practical reason is for not just allowing full alphanumeric number plates. Each digit would then have 32 possibilities (I, O, Z, and S should be avoided to prevent confusion with 1, 0, 2, and 5). This gives 34.36 billion possible number plates which seems sufficient for at least the next couple years.

Ever since the untimely death of CentOS I feel like Debian and its spin-off Ubuntu have been pulling double their weight in server applications.

The Catholic Church has been a political institution for almost its entire existence. It is probably the *oldest * political institution in Europe, having existed since AD 30 according to its own history (though as you get further back in time, history starts turning into legend and mythology; it’s really not clear where that line is).

During the Middle Ages, you could very well be burnt at the stake for heresy or be sent to die in the Crusades, upon the orders of the pope. And for over a millennium, the Church directly ruled over a pretty sizeable piece of territory in central Italy.

I believe I saw someone say on Tumblr that if you enjoy having rights then you should advocate the strongest for criminals enjoying rights as well, because otherwise, the Government can always just take your rights away by labelling you a criminal.

Or, as has been trendy lately, a Salvadoran gang member.