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Remember back in the last century when bicycles were human-powered and thieves stole them by clipping locks and riding them away? How quaint! Now the bicycles have motors and people steal them by using artificial intelligence:
Here’s how:
Alvo said the scammer also fabricated screenshots of YouTube analytics.
“A YouTube creator would know it’s fake, but 99 per cent of people wouldn’t.”
He believes AI tools played a role. “This is a pretty clever scammer, but it’s unlikely he did this without the help of Chat GPT,” Alvo said.
And here’s a local news story with more deetails:
I have to admit I am torn. On one hand using someone’s good name to steal merchandise is reprehensible and disgusting. Yet on the other hand I’m oddly tempted to pretend to be Path Less Pedaled and scam $50,000 worth of wildly undergeared bicycles:
I wish him luck on what at this point can only be a quest to discover a gear so low that pedaling it will actually propel the bicycle backwards.
Speaking of e-bikes, are they replacing car trips, or are they turning our shared recreational spaces into a hellscape? I dunno, but there does seem to be more anecdotal evidence of the latter:
Of course, many of these problems are nothing new. For example, old-timey non-motorists have been failing to yield to pedestrians in Central Park for years, one rider’s commentary notwithstanding:
Some believe bikes, electric bikes, or e-bikes, and pedestrians are sharing the road well in Central Park with new markings only improving things.
“When I’ve been in Central Park, it’s never been a problem with people crossing,” said Ira Gershenhorn, a cyclist who lives near 104th St. and Riverside. “People get across.”
Sure, some of them do get across…eventually, if they’re lucky enough not to get hit by someone in a PNS jersey:
[“Can you describe the rider who hit you?” “Yes, he was wearing a flesh-toned bodysuit that said PNS on it.”]
If this was the standard we applied to traversing stuff then we’d still be crossing the Atlantic via Viking longship:
Presumably the reporter asked the cyclist a follow-up question, but he was already talking to another reporter for a story about housing prices in the area:
[“People buy apartments.”]
Meanwhile, another local resident and park user was rear-ended by a kid on an e-bike:
Columbus Circle resident Roberta Simon was running in Central Park when she was hit from behind by a 15-year-old on an e-bike. She woke up four days later after brain surgery.
“E-bikes should not be in the park. They are motor vehicles,” she said. “A common thread is enforcement. There is no enforcement. There are a lot of accidents that happen that are not reported.”
That’s what happens when you don’t wear a running helmet.
Central Park is also home to the Century Road Club Association, which runs bike races in the park, and if there’s one phrase that scares the ultra-competitive Fred set even more than “mechanical shifting” it’s “raised crosswalks:”
“If we recognize that there needs to be raised crosswalks at some locations to slow people down, that’s something we could continue to talk about,” David Saltonstall, the Central Park Conservancy’s Vice President of Government Relations, Policy and Community Affairs, said. “Hopefully, everything will get worked out at some point in the near future. This is an ongoing process.”
The CRCA has been competing with the running clubs over use of the park for years, and if the raised crosswalks come in you can say goodbye to bike racing in the park once and for all.
As for me, I’m torn. As a pedestrian I say raise all the crosswalks and put barriers across them for good measure. As a cyclist I say kick out all the ebikes and add more pedestrian crossings under the roadway. And as a contrarian I say if people can’t agree how to use it then they should just remove the roadway altogether. I mean isn’t it a park? Why the hell do you need to go around and around it in circles? Isn’t that why we have a velodrome?
Oh, right, that’s in Queens. Eeew.
Finally, further to yesterday’s post about reinventing mountain bikes as gravel bikes and gravel bikes as mountain bikes, Pinarello have just taken their mountain bike and decided, “Fuck it, it’s a gravel bike now:”
I mean they’re not even trying anymore:
While the press release waxes lyrical about how the Grevil MX is “shaped and reinforced to withstand the high torsional forces typical of aggressive gravel riding”, the bottom line is that the frameset is a repurposed Dogma XC mountain bike. A review of the geometry numbers corroborates our assumptions, with the same 67.75-degree head angle, 75-degree seat tube angle, 101mm trail, and 425mm chainstays (in medium) as the Dogma XC. It even utilises the same 100mm 32 Float Step-Cast (SC) Factory fork. The main difference lies in the inclusion of the Most Talon Ultra Light cockpit, which is found on the brand’s flagship road and gravel bikes.
Now that’s a scam. Still, this does look like it could be the ultimate Central Park bike. I think I’ll pose as a gravel influencer, get one in for review, and see how it handles itself on those raised crosswalks.
