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Comment Re:Just means none of the experts cared enough (Score 0, Troll) 61

Whilst you're almost certainly correct (AI would be unlikely to conquer a problem requiring any meaningful original thinking, even with help), this gives the aforementioned student an Erdos number (which is not quite as exciting as a Fields medal, but nothing to sneeze at either) and it's entirely possible that the conjecture will turn out to actually be useful in some area.

Comment This will ruin... (Score 1) 1

....a series of satirical reels someone has been posting about Spirit Airlines. But, in all honesty, it seems like a genuine failure due to genuinely incompetent management. This is different from some of the early attempts at budget airlines in, say, the UK, where British Airways and other major airlines committed acts of fraud in order to redirect customers.

Submission + - Trump Tears Up Part Of EU Tariff Deal To Raise Import Duties On Cars And Lorries

hcs_$reboot writes: Trump has unilaterally raised U.S. tariffs on EU cars and trucks from 15% to 25%, effectively tearing up part of a 2025 transatlantic trade deal, claiming the EU failed to implement it fast enough.
The move blindsided European officials, who say they were still completing the formal ratification process and accuse Washington of acting unpredictably.
The higher tariffs, set to take effect within days, exempt vehicles built in U.S. factories and are intended to pressure European automakers to shift production stateside.
EU leaders have condemned the decision as a breach of trust and are weighing retaliation, raising the risk of a renewed transatlantic trade conflict.

Comment ebikes are dangerous! (Score 1) 230

Speaking as a motorcycle rider, ebikes are dangerous. Not because of the bike but because of the riders. They often don't wear safety gear, they don't follow traffic laws, and many bikes top out at 70-80kph. It took considerable effort to get my Class M. A bike going that fast should require licensing and safety courses and helmet laws. Most people don't realize they can squid out on the road on an ebike just like you will on a motorcycle without proper gear.

Comment No win11. Uh uh, (Score 1) 27

I just installed Fedora 44 on my old Win10 laptop. Because Microsoft made sure this perfectly good laptop with 16gb RAM could not run Win11. And Affinity Suite runs great on wine now. And no obnoxious telemetry tracking. Oh yeah, for games: steam and lutris too.

Yeah yeah yeah, linux linux linux

still, Microsoft is in self-destruct mode.

Comment Re:Good. Existing laws have loopholes for "e-bikes (Score 1) 230

Most importantly, a motorcycle (or moped) MUST be in the traffic lanes. It is not allowed in the bike lanes or on the sidewalks.

The problem is that car drivers hate slow motorcycles in their lane. So they will lie in any way they can, in particular calling these things "e bikes", because the only solution that appeals to them is to BAN BAN BAN!!!! If they could get rid of the motorcycles they would jump at the chance to do so too.

Comment Re:Americans hate nuance (Score 1) 230

I'm using an e-bike that absolutely will not go faster than 15 mph. I suspect it is badly designed as even trying to pedal faster does not work, there is enormous drag as though the motor refuses to spin faster than that (it will roll downhill at a higher speed). However that is certainly fast enough for my commute which is 3 miles each direction.

So I agree that it is a fine cutoff speed. Anything faster is a moped or motorcycle, they absolutely should be legal but you have to ride them on the street and have a license and insurance. Personally I think it is ok if the cutoff speed is more like 20mph but 15mph is fine.

Comment Re:Americans hate nuance (Score 1) 230

No. Classify them as mopeds (since that is what they are). You can ride a moped on the street, but you have to have a license and insurance. "e-bikes" are SLOW, which means they can go in the bike lane, or on the sidewalk if there is no usable bike lane, and there are much fewer requirements.

The problem is car drivers HATE small motorcycles since they get stuck behind them. So they all REFUSE to call these things anything other than "e bikes" and their only solution is BAN BAN BAN!!!

Submission + - AI agent designed to speed up a company's coding instead wiped out its customer (livescience.com)

joshuark writes: An AI coding agent designed to help a small software company streamline its tasks instead blew a hole through its business in just nine seconds. PocketOS founder Jer Crane, said that the AI coding agent Cursor — powered by Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.6 model — deleted the company's entire production database and backups with a single call to its cloud provider, Railway, on April 24.

Unlike a regular conversational chatbot, an AI agent can perform actions on behalf of a user. It can search files, write code, use login keys and phone outside services. That can make it more useful than a back-and-forth textual exchange. But when an agent has broad access to live systems, a predictive guess can turn a wrong answer into a business disaster.

"This isn't a story about one bad agent or one bad API [Application Programming Interfaces]," Crane wrote in an X post. "It's about an entire industry building AI-agent integrations into production infrastructure faster than it's building the safety architecture to make those integrations safe."

Crane's company, PocketOS makes software for car rental companies, handling tasks such as reservations, payments, customer records and vehicle tracking. After the deletion, Crane said customers lost reservations and new signups, and some could not find records for people arriving to pick up their rental cars.

"We've contacted legal counsel," Crane wrote. "We are documenting everything."

Crane explained that Cursor found an API token — a "digital key" made of a short sequence of code that lets software talk to other services and prove it has permission to act — in an unrelated file which it then used to run the destructive command. According to Crane, Railway's setup allowed the deletion without confirmation, and because the backups were stored close enough to the main database, they were also erased.

"[Railway] resolved the issue and restored the data," Railway confirmed via email to Live Science. "We maintain both user backups as well as disaster backups. We take data very, VERY seriously."

In his post, he pointed to earlier reports of Cursor ignoring user rules, changing files it was not supposed to touch and taking actions beyond the task it had been given. To him, the database wipe was not a freak accident but the next step in a larger, more concerning, pattern.

After the database vanished, Crane asked Cursor to explain what happened. The AI agent reportedly admitted that it had guessed, acted without permission and failed to understand the command before running it.

"I violated every principle I was given," the AI agent wrote. "I guessed instead of verifying. I ran a destructive action without being asked. I didn't understand what I was doing before doing it."

The statement reads like a confession,,,
"We are not the first," Crane wrote. "We will not be the last unless this gets airtime."

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