Latest news with #Devin
Yahoo
a day ago
- Health
- Yahoo
Hillsborough sheriff touts new law that targets juvenile drug dealers
TAMPA — A year ago, two young men bought what they believed were Percocet pills from a drug dealer. Both of them overdosed. One of them, 17-year-old Devin Ramos, died. His death was attributed to the effects of fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid that in the last decade has come to rival alcohol as the nation's deadliest substance. Hillsborough sheriff's investigators learned that the person who sold him the drugs was also 17 — too young to be charged with murder under state laws. Devin's was the story that Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister shared in a Wednesday morning news conference that highlighted a recent change to the law, which aims to hold young dealers accountable for the deaths of drug users. 'If he had used a gun, a knife or any other means to take someone's life, he would have faced murder charges,' Chronister said of the person who sold Devin the drugs. 'This dealer, simply because he was a juvenile, could not be held accountable.' Florida's first-degree murder law has long included a provision that allows drug dealers to be charged when users suffer a fatal overdose. That law was seldom invoked until recent years, when the opioid crisis created a surge in accidental overdose deaths along with demands for accountability. But the law specified that it applied only to people older than 18. The sheriff said he attended Devin's funeral last year. He met his mother, Amy Olmeda, and promised he would pursue a change in the law. That promise became a reality in this year's legislative session. Senate Bill 618 allows juvenile defendants to face a third-degree murder charge in cases where they give fentanyl to someone who dies. It carries a penalty of up to 15 years in prison. The bill passed the Legislature with near-unanimous support and was signed into law last month by Gov. Ron DeSantis. At Wednesday's news conference, Olmeda spoke of her son as a young man who enjoyed making music, playing basketball and hanging out with his friends. He was a 'kind soul' with a 'huge heart,' she said. Olmeda said she was devastated when she learned that the person who gave him the deadly pills could not be prosecuted. She praised Chronister for pushing for the change in law. 'You will never understand how much this means to me and my family,' she said. 'I don't want to see another mother ever go through what I went through.' State Sen. Danny Burgess and Rep. Traci Koster shepherded the bill through the state Legislature. The law takes effect July 1. Hillsborough State Attorney Suzy Lopez, whose office has prosecuted similar cases against adults, said she believes the new law will prevent similar tragedies. 'It will act as a deterrent to the young drug dealers who are out there who think that age is a shield,' she said. ''I can't get charged if I'm under the age of 18.' That is not the case anymore.' While many adults have faced charges under the law allowing murder charges for fatal overdoses, such cases are tricky to prosecute. The state must prove that the accused knowingly gave the victim the drugs and that the same substance caused the death. Juries tend to favor lesser convictions for manslaughter, rather than murder, in such cases. A notable exception occurred last year in the Tampa case of Anthony Mansfield. A jury found Mansfield guilty of first-degree murder for selling fentanyl to 27-year-old Querraun 'Que' Talley, who later died. Mansfield, 47, received a mandatory penalty of life in prison. Several other overdose-related murder cases remain pending in Hillsborough court. Some of them also involve the distribution of fake Percocet pills. Last June, Hillsborough prosecutors charged Baylee Jacobs, 21, with murder in the death of Eric Schertzer, 19, who died after purchasing a Percocet pill that actually contained fentanyl. Federal prosecutors have also brought cases under laws that prohibit distribution of illegal drugs resulting in death. U.S. attorneys in Tampa last June indicted four men on charges related to the death of a University of South Florida student. In that case, too, the victim was given what were said to be Percocet pills which actually contained fentanyl, according to court records.
Metro
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Metro
Boardwalk Empire actor Devin Harjes dies aged 41 after cancer diagnosis
Boardwalk Empire star Devin Harjes has died aged 41, just months after he was diagnosed with cancer. The actor, who was also known for his role in Manifest and appeared in the likes of Daredevil, Gotham and Orange Is The New Black, was diagnosed with the disease in winter 2024. His representative has confirmed he died on May 27 after complications from cancer. Harjes had been receiving treatment at New York City's Mount Sinai West Hospital. His spokesperson told NBC News in a statement: 'He was an artist of great conviction who never gave less than one hundred percent to any role he undertook. 'As a person, he was generous, kind, understanding and devoted to his family and friends, a great horseback rider and had a magic way with all animals.' After starting his acting career in Dallas-Forth Worth, Texas, he moved to NYC and starting performing in off-Broadway productions and independent films. Harjes then made the switch to television, taking on the role of Jack Dempsey in Boardwalk Empire. He went onto make guest appearances in the likes of Blue Bloods, Orange Is The New Black, Gotham, Daredevil and Elementary. His online obituary reads: 'Outside of acting, Devin was a dedicated student of martial arts and a regular at the gym — he often joked it was safer than getting kicked in the face by a horse.' The tribute continues: 'Devin is survived by his loving parents, Randy and Rosanne Harjes; his sister Trish Harjes and her husband Justin Kelley; nephews Tristin and Sawyer Kelley; nieces Rory and Charly Kelley; his former wife Shiva Shobitha; his beloved cat, Maude; and countless friends whose lives were brighter…or at least more entertaining…because of him.' Meanwhile, his family of asked that in lieu of flowers, mourners can donate to TKC Blessings in his name. They added: 'All proceeds will support scholarships for children pursuing the arts—Devin's true passion in life.' More Trending Filmmaker Debra Markowitz paid tribute to Harjes on Instagram, as she wrote: 'Way too young. RIP Devin.' And director Antonio DiFonzo said on Facebook: 'Terribly sad news as we lost Devin Harjes, an amazing actor and friend. He was constantly striving to be better and put his heart and soul into everything he did! 'We will never forget you and your amazing part in The Boyz of Summer and our lives. Rest in peace, Lion Heart!' Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: Inside Hugh Jackman's relationship with Sutton Foster after ex-wife's Deborra-Lee Furness' 'betrayal' statement MORE: Pregnant Rihanna 'playing hide the bump' in sizzling Savage X Fenty lingerie photoshoot MORE: Rihanna's father Ronald Fenty dies aged 70
Daily Mirror
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Boardwalk Empire star dies aged 41 after brief cancer battle
Boardwalk Empire and Daredevil star Devin Harjes has died aged 41. The actor reportedly had a brief battle with cancer. He appeared on a number of hit TV shows including Daredevil, Gotham, Manifest, Blue Bloods and Orange Is the New Black. Devin died on May 27 at Mount Sinai West Hospital in New York, according to his obituary. His cause of death has not yet been made public. however he is said to have been battling cancer before his death according to the Hollywood Reporter. The actor was born in Lubbock, Texas and launched his career upon moving to New York City. He started off in small roles in student films and off-Broadway shows before landing independent cinema gigs. Devin went on to have huge success and won several top awards. His biggest role being in The Forest is Red which won him best actor at Italy's Tolentino International Film Festival.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
OpenAI's Codex is part of a new cohort of agentic coding tools
Last Friday, OpenAI introduced a new coding system called Codex, designed to perform complex programming tasks from natural language commands. Codex moves OpenAI into a new cohort of agentic coding tools that is just beginning to take shape. From GitHub's early Copilot to contemporary tools like Cursor and Windsurf, most AI coding assistants operate as an exceptionally intelligent form of autocomplete. The tools generally live in an integrated development environment, and users interact directly with the AI-generated code. The prospect of simply assigning a task and returning when it's finished is largely out of reach. But these new agentic coding tools, led by products like Devin, SWE-Agent, OpenHands, and the aforementioned OpenAI Codex, are designed to work without users ever having to see the code. The goal is to operate like the manager of an engineering team, assigning issues through workplace systems like Asana or Slack and checking in when a solution has been reached. For believers in forms of highly capable AI, it's the next logical step in a natural progression of automation taking over more and more software work. 'In the beginning, people just wrote code by pressing every single keystroke,' explains Kilian Lieret, a Princeton researcher and member of the SWE-Agent team. 'GitHub Copilot was the first product that offered real auto-complete, which is kind of stage two. You're still absolutely in the loop, but sometimes you can take a shortcut.' The goal for agentic systems is to move beyond developer environments entirely, instead presenting coding agents with an issue and leaving them to resolve it on their own. 'We pull things back to the management layer, where I just assign a bug report and the bot tries to fix it completely autonomously,' says Lieret. It's an ambitious aim, and so far, it's proven difficult. After Devin became generally available at the end of 2024, it drew scathing criticism from YouTube pundits, as well as a more measured critique from an early client at The overall impression was a familiar one for vibe-coding veterans: with so many errors, overseeing the models takes as much work as doing the task manually. (While Devin's rollout has been a bit rocky, it hasn't stopped fundraisers from recognizing the potential – in March, Devin's parent company, Cognition AI, reportedly raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a $4 billion valuation.) Even supporters of the technology caution against unsupervised vibe-coding, seeing the new coding agents as powerful elements in a human-supervised development process. 'Right now, and I would say, for the foreseeable future, a human has to step in at code review time to look at the code that's been written,' says Robert Brennan, the CEO of All Hands AI, which maintains OpenHands. 'I've seen several people work themselves into a mess by just auto-approving every bit of code that the agent writes. It gets out of hand fast.' Hallucinations are an ongoing problem as well. Brennan recalls one incident in which, when asked about an API that had been released after the OpenHands agent's training data cutoff, the agent fabricated details of an API that fit the description. All Hands AI says it's working on systems to catch these hallucinations before they can cause harm, but there isn't a simple fix. Arguably the best measure of agentic programming progress is the SWE-Bench leaderboards, where developers can test their models against a set of unresolved issues from open GitHub repositories. OpenHands currently holds the top spot on the verified leaderboard, solving 65.8% of the problem set. OpenAI claims that one of the models powering Codex, codex-1, can do better, listing a 72.1% score in its announcement – although the score came with a few caveats and hasn't been independently verified. The concern among many in the tech industry is that high benchmark scores don't necessarily translate to truly hands-off agentic coding. If agentic coders can only solve three out of every four problems, they're going to require significant oversight from human developers – particularly when tackling complex systems with multiple stages. Like most AI tools, the hope is that improvements to foundation models will come at a steady pace, eventually enabling agentic coding systems to grow into reliable developer tools. But finding ways to manage hallucinations and other reliability issues will be crucial for getting there. 'I think there is a little bit of a sound barrier effect,' Brennan says. 'The question is, how much trust can you shift to the agents, so they take more out of your workload at the end of the day?' This article originally appeared on TechCrunch at Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Google's Gemini chatbot can now more easily analyze GitHub projects
Gemini, Google's AI-powered chatbot, can now connect to GitHub — for users subscribed to the $20-per-month Gemini Advanced plan, that is. As of Wednesday, Gemini Advanced customers can directly add a public or private codebase on GitHub to Gemini to allow the chatbot to generate and explain code, debug existing code, and more. Users can connect GitHub to Gemini by clicking the "+" button in the prompt bar, selecting "import code," and pasting a GitHub URL. A word of warning: AI models, including Google's, still struggle to code quality software. Code-generating AI tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and errors, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic. One recent evaluation of Devin, a popular AI coding tool, found that it could only complete three out of 20 programming tests. The new GitHub integration arrives just a few days after OpenAI launched a GitHub connector for ChatGPT deep research, a tool that searches across the web and other sources to compile thorough research reports on a topic. AI companies, including Google and OpenAI, are moving quickly to ship new capabilities in an effort to make their products stand out in an increasingly crowded field. Case in point, OpenAI on Tuesday brought SharePoint and Microsoft OneDrive connectors to ChatGPT deep research.
