The black smoke belching is caused by a fuel rich air mixture that leads to incomplete combustion and is pumped out of the engine as a burning cloud of smog. While this can cause problems with carbon build-up in the combustion chambers, it's not especially difficult to clean that out before the engine suffers permanent damage. Most often the worst case is fouled spark plugs, which are wear items meant to be replaced at regular intervals.

The real damage occurs in the exhaust plumbing, typically rendering the oxygen sensors inoperative and cooking the catalytic converter. However, a common way to induce black smoke is by hardwiring the oxygen sensors to report the engine needs more fuel, so it's not like the oxygen sensors were typically working anyway.

Likewise, in many parts of the country where this sort of "coal rolling" is common, it's also common for the catalytic converter to be forcibly removed from the vehicle and pawned off for the platinum mesh inside by a couple meth heads looking for their next fix, which has the side effect of preventing it from being damaged. The missing portion of the exhaust pipe is frequently repaired by welding in a straight pipe, allowing the black smoke to flow more freely while also making the exhaust notably louder and adding the scent of immediate global warming (note: this is pretty much super illegal in most states).

Vulnerability discovery has essentially moved to a "proof of work" computation model with AI that has some similarities to crypto like BTC or ethereum 1.0. I don't see any reason a well funded adversary couldn't use this same process on open-source code to develop exploits. I'm sure AI would be happy to try and create exploits from the results rather than fixes.

This sort of proof of work has a notable difference from crypto in the asymmetric nature of what each side is targeting. In crypto, each miner was attempting to find a solution to the same problem and they would all move on to a new one once a solution is found. However with AI vulnerability scanning, the non-deterministic nature means an adversary is likely to find different vulnerabilities. Even if it doesn't, the adversaries have a different post-discovery workflow (i.e. probably less compute intensive aka cheaper due to only needing one viable exploit to win) than the software maintainers do.

Considering it's possible both the adversary and their target could both do all this while running Claude puts Anthropic in a real "Merchant of Death" position.

They are referring to MOST graduates of MOST colleges. This is a deliberate overgeneralization about the nature of post-secondary education meant to highlight how it's frequently viewed solely in terms of completion rather than with regards to any skills or knowledge gained from it.

Cause everyone loves a good bonfire and a fresh hot roast.

This is better than my current solution of an actual human with masters degreed intelligence performing all my cognitive tasks for free how? I mean, i'm the first to admit i'm extremely lazy and even i'm over here like "really??"

You think a crude, unoptimised "minefield" is the route that leads to something as delicate as a "fragile equilibrium?" I don't see something as carefully balanced as your unstable equilibrium even being something that could exist without the processes involved having been refined down to a science. The only real alternative that meets your narrative would be that this is an industry that runs entirely on hope and luck (and enough human sacrifices to keep ample supplies of both on hand).

You realize what shoppers and vendors each consider to be "good" e-commerce sites are fundamentally opposed concepts?

The tried and true technique of speeding up completion of an established project by adding more people; well known for the tendency to fail successfully.

The reason AGI couldn't do these is the lack of a suitable interface to the physical world. It would take a trivial amount of effort for these to be designed and built by the AGI. Humans could be cut from the loop after an initial production run made up of just the subset of these physical interface devices needed to build more advanced ones.

Your post describes my coding perfectly. I don't have CS training of any type, never been formally involved in software development (recently started dabbling in OSS) and never used an LLM/agent for help (do use a local SLM for autocomplete and suggestions only).

Yet I can "code." I suspect a (pre-2023ish) software developer would likely tell me "go learn to code" if i asked for review. I don't know the formal syntax people expect to see and it has organization more typical of raging dumpster fires. Doesn't mean it's not code.

Not sure this analogy works as it gives prospective light switch buyers a choice of different light switch types. What google is doing seems more like forcing EVERY light switch to have daylight sensors, thus forcing you to save power (even if you're pro-global warming and just trying to do your part for the cause), then telling people with vision problems relating to suboptimal indoor illumination or suffer from sunlight frequency melting disorder or think they've got some other random "daylight makes life suck" bullshit to create a student/hobbyist account.

And adults.

It used to be that high school students were required to have a graphing calculator. These had to be purchased by the student (iow by their parents) and without factoring in 20+ years of inflation costed more than some Chromebooks available today. I suspect there were (and still are) financial assistance programs as i've known students living below the poverty line and they were able to meet that requirement.