All posts tagged: limits

Saudi Arabia Learns the Limits of Pay to Play

Saudi Arabia Learns the Limits of Pay to Play

Published by Daniella Wilson

Faithless, chaotic, and corrupt: Donald Trump’s character also shapes his foreign policy. The latest victim is Saudi Arabia—not a sympathetic victim, maybe, but a victim all the same. On July 22, United States Energy Secretary Chris Wright and his Saudi counterpart signed an agreement for a Saudi-U.S. civilian nuclear partnership. The multi-decade, multibillion-dollar deal allows American companies to develop and operate commercial nuclear power plants on Saudi soil, potentially including a uranium-enrichment facility. The Saudis have sought such a deal for almost 20 years. United States presidents from Barack Obama onward have expressed openness to it, but on two conditions: Any deal must include safeguards against Saudi use of enrichment for nuclear weapons and also a normalization of relations with Israel. With the return of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2024, the Saudis surely hoped their moment had arrived. Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in Trump and the Trump family, including licensing deals with the Trump Organization potentially worth billions of dollars and a huge commitment to the private-equity firm founded by Trump’s son-in-law …

Almost in Love, and AI’s Limits of “Close Enough”

Almost in Love, and AI’s Limits of “Close Enough”

Published by Jenni Sidey

Think about it. A photograph of a fire will warn you not to touch the stove. But it won’t burn your hand. For that job, close enough is not just adequate, it’s the whole point. Nobody wants the real fire for a warning label. Yet, most of what we ask AI to describe lives in that same category. It’s a simple summary or the directions to a new restaurant. Close enough gets you there, and there was never a reason to demand more. But it’s my contention that this phrase has begun represent something it really shouldn’t. AI can generate a description of a banana split so vivid you can almost taste it. The ice cream against the hot fudge covered with whipped cream waits for us as digits that are transformed into dollops. Each sensory detail arranged in the right order, learned from ten thousand other descriptions of ten thousand other banana splits. It reads close enough to convince you it knows. The key word here is almost, not taste—because AI doesn’t know. It …

Scientists reveal limits of AI – where it succeeds and where it fails

Scientists reveal limits of AI – where it succeeds and where it fails

Published by Jenni Sidey

Artificial intelligence promises clear answers from complex data. Yet new research suggests there are limits that no amount of data can overcome. Some problems, scientists now show, cannot be solved by AI at all. A study explores where machine learning succeeds and where it fails. Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University of California Santa Barbara designed mathematical systems meant to expose these limits. Their findings reveal a deeper truth. In some cases, learning is not just difficult, it is impossible. Mapping The Boundaries Of AI Modern science often relies on AI to study systems that are too complex for traditional equations. These include ocean currents, brain activity, and robotic motion. Instead of writing down exact rules, scientists collect data and train algorithms to learn patterns. Convergent general-purpose methods for Koopman learning. (CREDIT: Nature Communications) This approach has led to major breakthroughs. Still, it does not always work. Models can give unstable results or predictions that drift over time. Dr Matthew Colbrook, the study’s lead author from Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and …

Firing of top prosecutor in Seattle tests limits of Trump’s power

Firing of top prosecutor in Seattle tests limits of Trump’s power

Published by Sam Flores

The Trump administration’s latest firing of a U.S. attorney is intensifying the Justice Department’s assertion of presidential control over prosecutorial picks. Roger Rogoff was sacked Wednesday as the top federal prosecutor in Seattle after a panel of 17 judges appointed him. The firing made good on the warning from acting Attorney General Todd Blanche that the… Source link

Tour de France crash and concussion cases expose limits of roadside checks | Cycling News

Tour de France crash and concussion cases expose limits of roadside checks | Cycling News

Published by Sam Flores

Published On 14 Jul 202614 Jul 2026 As happens every year, crashes have punctuated the opening week of the Tour de France, with several incidents highlighting how difficult it remains to manage concussion in a sport where the clock is always ticking. Of the eight riders ⁠⁠who have abandoned the race since it began in Barcelona, Spain, on July 4, three withdrew because of concussion: Frenchman Clement Berthet of Groupama-FDJ United, Dutch rider Alex Molenaar of Caja Rural-Seguros RGA and Norway’s Torstein Traeen of Uno-X Mobility, who briefly wore the yellow jersey. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list All three had one thing in common: they crashed, completed ⁠the stage and then withdrew later that evening once the diagnosis had been made. Berthet went down heavily during the opening team time trial, Molenaar crashed 5km (3 miles) from the finish of stage five, while Traeen hit the ground the following day on the descent of the Col du Tourmalet while wearing the race leader’s yellow jersey. “It is never very satisfactory for us …

This Notion rival claims to sync seamlessly without the cloud, so I pushed it to its limits on four devices

This Notion rival claims to sync seamlessly without the cloud, so I pushed it to its limits on four devices

Published by skeptic

Anytype has built a devoted following as the privacy-first answer to Notion, and writers here have praised it as a gorgeous open-source note app with an ambitious object-based design. Its boldest claim, though, is technical: your data lives on your devices, end-to-end encrypted, and syncs between them peer-to-peer with no cloud required. That claim is easy to make but hard to test, so I dug in a little deeper, installing it on a MacBook Air M5, an MSI Cyborg gaming laptop, and both a Pixel and an iPhone. I forced each app install into Anytype’s local-only mode, too, to see if it would sync up easily and quickly. The answer is a qualified yes, with less “easily” and “quickly” for the nuance. What Anytype’s “without the cloud” means It uses your local network First up, Anytype defaults to its own servers when you create a vault. Every new vault joins the Anytype Network, which syncs your encrypted data via a backup node that offers 1GB of free storage. That’s still a cloud solution, in my …

Russia and America Are Rediscovering the Limits of Nuclear Weapons

Russia and America Are Rediscovering the Limits of Nuclear Weapons

Published by Daniella Wilson

Henry Kissinger often said that nuclear arms are “weapons in search of a doctrine.” After the Cold War, some strategists have tried to figure out what, exactly, these weapons could buy them beyond deterrence. The answer, as it turns out, is: nothing. Two wars taking place right now are cases in point. The ongoing American attacks on Iran and Russia’s desperate campaign of atrocities in Ukraine have produced dramatic footage of two major powers taking on middleweight military opponents, inflicting grievous damage, and yet failing to achieve their goals. Among other painful lessons, the Americans and the Russians are learning, again, that their impressive array of nuclear weapons does not offer them a victorious path out of such conflicts. Americans since the end of the Cold War haven’t bothered to think much about nuclear weapons. Last spring, the Trump administration decided to default to its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, a report that is supposed to explain U.S. nuclear-weapons policy to Congress and the American people, rather than issue an update. But a lot has changed …

Sperm donors need limits, says a European fertility group

Sperm donors need limits, says a European fertility group

Published by skeptic

Many countries already have legal limits for donors. In Malta and Cyprus, for example, both egg and sperm donors are allowed to contribute to the birth of just a single child, according to data presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) meeting in London on July 8. Other countries set limits based on the number of families a single donor can contribute to, allowing recipients to have children who share a genetic link. In the UK, that limit is set at 10 families per donor. But these limits are difficult to enforce, partly because donated gametes don’t necessarily stay in their original country. In Denmark, the national limit is set at 12 families. But the country is a major exporter of sperm. In the UK, for example, more than half of sperm donations in 2020 were imported—with most of those coming from either Denmark or the US. “The only thing that really makes sense is a transnational limit,” Jackson Kirkman-Brown, a professor of reproductive biology at the University of Birmingham, said at the …

Graham Platner’s New Scandal and Authenticity’s Limits

Graham Platner’s New Scandal and Authenticity’s Limits

Published by Daniella Wilson

Last September, the progressive strategist Morris Katz confessed to The New Yorker that the process by which he decided that Graham Platner was qualified to run for U.S. Senate required less time than drinking a cup of coffee. Actually, it seems to have been less a confession than a boast. “Within a few minutes of talking to him, I was, like, ‘This guy owes it to the country to run for Senate,’” Katz recalled. In the 10 months that have followed, a procession of unflattering stories have made clear how dreadfully irresponsible it was for Democrats to entrust the task of flipping what seems like the most necessary seat to secure their potential Senate majority to a man who had never run for office or led an organization of any size. The almost-certain final straw is a Politico report that alleges Platner raped a woman named Jenny Racicot in 2021. The story includes messages referring to the incident sent by Racicot two years later, before Platner contemplated running for office. Platner called any allegation of …