Tech News: Superconductivity and Hype Cycles and TikTok, oh my!

LK ninety nine. Now, if you've listened to recent tech Stuff episodes or you've been following the story in general, you probably heard that some researchers in South Korea believed that they had created this material LK ninety nine, and that it displays the properties of a superconductor at high temperatures. So a superconductor is a material that has some really interesting properties. For one, it has zero electrical resistance, meaning

it is a perfect conductor. Superconductors also reject magnetic fields, and then you get into things like the Meisner effect. But usually we have to either cool a conductor down to wicked cold temperatures like a degree or two above the temperature of deep space. In order to reach super conductivity, we have to get to the critical temperature of this material, or you have to subject the material to really high pressure, and then you can increase the temperature for the critical

nature of the material. But we're talking crazy pressures or temperatures here. Frequently you'd have to do both. LK ninety nine seem to have superconductive features at room temperature and air pressure, which would have been incredibly disruptive if true, and amazing, it would have been so good, But it appears that's not the case. Over the last couple of weeks, various research groups have attempted to replicate the results of the South Korean team, But it looks like LK ninety

nine isn't a superconductor after all. In fact, it's more of an insulator. So how did the South Korean team get this wrong? Well, according to chemist Preschant Jine of the University of Illinois, the issue was that the process to synthesize LK ninety nine tends to introduce impurities. Like that's just part of the synthesizing process, and it's not

always the same each time you synthesize this stuff. But one of the impurities that can be introduced is copper sulfide, and that material has a very low electrical resistance if it happens to also be exposed to air and it's below like one hundred and four degrees celsius. And Jine said that the presence of impurities is what gave researchers the missis stake and impression that the material overall was a superconductor because there was a sudden drop in resistance,

but it was because of impurities like copper sulfide. Researchers have said that LK ninety nine is really tricky because, like I said, synthesizing can lead to samples with varying amounts of impurities. So even the same lab trying to synthesize this material could end up with two different samples with two different amounts of various impurities and different distributions. But unfortunately, it appears that super conductivity is not a

property that LK ninety nine possesses. It might have some ferromagnetic properties, and like I said, with these impurities, there might be pockets of lower electrical resistance, but it's not super conductive at least according to these follow up experiments. So that is a bummer. It's not necessarily a surprise, but you know, you always hope that the thing really is an incredible breakthrough, and then you know, but you prepare yourself for the fact that it's probably not right.

It would have been a truly extraordinary thing had it all worked out. As always, you know, using critical thinking, being skeptical it's important so that way you can really investigate claims and make sure that they have merit. In this case, it seems that sadly they did not. That's not to say that I think the researchers from South Korea were attempting to mislead anyone. I don't believe that. I just think it was a case where they mistakenly

identified a property that just wasn't there. The tech research firm Gartner released its hype cycle for emerging technologies in twenty twenty three, and generative AI is perched right at the tippy top of the peak of inflated expectations. So the hype cycle is Gartner's way of describing the typical pattern we see when and exciting technology starts to gain mind share. So the hype cycle doesn't really say that

much about the abilities of technology itself. It's more about how our perception of that technology and our reaction to that technology often are at a big gap from what the technology does. So it doesn't reflect poorly on the technology, it reflects poorly on us and our tendency to get over excited about things. So you start off at the

innovation trigger. So this is the emergence of some new technology, and at the earliest stages, usually the only people who are paying attention are folks who are directly involved in that sector or field of study, right Like, these are people who are on the forefront of research, and they might get excited about stuff not because they think it's a huge breakthrough, but that it's progress. Then you have this really steep climb to that peak of inflated expectations.

Along this route is when the rest of us start to hear about this, and usually things like the media and companies and you know, personalities out there start to hype up this technology and talk about all the different ways that we might be able to use this tech and it will transform our lives and it will, you know, make business processes a billion times more efficient and cheaper, and all this kind of stuff right like, that's where all that conversation starts to happen. And there's a lot

of blue sky thinking going on during this stage. But at some point we start to realize that our perception of the technology and what it can actually achieve are out of alignment, right, that we have put way too much hype on this underlying technology, and then we plunge

into what is called the troth of disillusionment. Now at that stage, some of us might even dismiss that technology outright, say, oh man, it's worthless, it can't do anything, and this is the exact same technology that we were super hyped about earlier. But again our perception and the actual technology itself and its abilities are out of alignment. Now our perception is below what the technology can actually do. We're undervaluing it. So following the trough of disillusionment is the

slope of enlightenment. That's where we start to figure out how the tech can actually be put to good use without overinflating its importance. They might be a much more modest approach than what we were originally thinking when it was going through that peak of inflated expectations. And then that finally leads to the plateau of productivity. That's kind of where the tech sits comfortably and its capabilities and our perceptions of the technology are more or less in alignment.

They're more or less parallel. So if Gartner is on the money here, that means we should be in store for a pretty dramatic reversal on how companies and others are looking at generative AI. There is no shortage of pieces about the technologies, current limitations and drawbacks, so I don't necessarily disagree. In fact, I'm actually a little surprised that Gardner didn't position generative AI as if it were just past the peak and already on its way down.

Other technologies that were included on this projection are things like federated machine learning, cloud sustainability, and post quantum cryptography. All of those are still on the climbing toward the peak of inflated expectations part of the hype cycle, according to Gardner. And again, this is just kind of a way of us kind of taking a step back and looking at how we react to these technologies. It's so interesting to me because again, it's it doesn't have anything

to do with what the technology actually can do. It's all in our perception and leaf of what that technology can do really fascinating, sort of a meta approach. The Associated Press or AP, has updated its policies about journalism and artificial intelligence in general, but also generative AI and specifically chat GPT in particular. So, for example, the AP states that quote any output from a generative AI tool

should be treated as unvetted source material. AP staff must apply their editorial judgment and AP sourcing standards when considering any information for publication end quote. This also doesn't just

include text. AP has also talked about images. The AP says that journalists should never include AI generated or AI altered images unless the story itself is about AI creating or changing images, in which case you can include examples, but you do need to clearly label them in captions so that the reader of the piece is aware of

what that is. The AP also urge journalists to be extra cautious when researching material, to make reasonable efforts to ensure that the sources they're referencing are reliable, because if those sources were generated by AI, they may not be. The AP urges journalists to check multiple sources, which is always a good thing, and to use strategies like reverse image searches to validate information before including it in their

own pieces, which again makes sense. Also, if journalists have any doubts about the validity of the material, they should probably just not use it at all, and that seems like a reasonable benchmark to me. The AP is publishing new updates to the AP style Book today as this episode goes out, and they will include other guidelines about AI.

A big one is not about journalists making use of AI, but how they cover it, and part of that is not buying into the hype or at least not to take claims at face value, specifically from AI developers, and also that journalists should avoid using language that quote attributes human characteristics to these systems end quote, and that makes sense. It's also good to call attention to it, because we humans are often guilty at projecting human characteristics on non

human stuff like animals or even inanimate objects. I mean, how many of y'all have named your cars, for example. I'm sure not all of you have, but I bet some of you have. Anyway, here's hoping that these guidelines can help journalists frame AI stories in a way that leads to more accurate reporting. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we will continue this episode we're back. So, city employees in New York City are now barred from installing and using TikTok on any

city owned devices. So this is a very similar story that we've seen play out in lots of other places, several states here in the US. Several federal agencies here in the US have similar bands, and the concern is that TikTok could potentially pose as a security vulnerability, one that could give unauthorized persons access to, in this case,

New York City's networks. The ban is effective immediately, and as I have said in previous episodes, I think this is perfectly reasonable for a city owned system or a government owned system. If you are a city worker and the city has assigned to you a smartphone, that phone isn't really yours, it's for you to use with respect to your job working for the city. City workers are still allowed to use TikTok on their personal devices. It's

not like they're forbidden from using TikTok at all. And I've also said this before too, but I agree that banning TikTok from government owned devices makes sense. I don't have any issue with that. I think unless your job for the government requires you to have TikTok, like maybe you're a pr person or something, it doesn't make sense to have TikTok on a government owned device. I also think that singling out TikTok exclusively when we're talking about

concerns around data security and data privacy is absurd. So in other words, yes, I think it makes sense to ban it from government owned devices, but I also think it's ridiculous to single out TikTok as the one evil boogeyman in the data security space, because wild TikTok can

be a threat to security and privacy. That's true for tons of apps right like x slash, Twitter has those issues, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, pretty much any app that's collecting information about us, and especially apps that have the information later make their way to data brokerage markets. All of those pots as security and privacy threats to us. But that's a soapbox I've

been on so many times. I'll just move on. The cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase has secured regulatory approval to allow US based customers to deal in crypto derivatives, so globally, cryptoderivatives make up the majority of crypto trades, but here in the US they weren't allowed. If you wanted to deal with crypto here in the US, you had to actually buy or sell actual cryptocurrencies, not derivatives. So derivatives are stuff like futures and options. And I'm going to

be honest, y'all, this is outside my wheelhouse. And the more I read about stuff like stocks and futures and options, the more I'm left with the sinking feeling that nothing is real. And the only reason the financial world keeps moving at all is that enough folks have agreed it's too importan and to let it fall to pieces. So we just have to shut our eyes and believe in fairies and the whole thing will just keep on going.

But that's not very helpful for this particular news item, right, So a future, in case like me, you really had heard the term, but you were like, I don't even know what that really means. A future is a contractual agreement to buy or to sell a certain asset at a certain price at a certain time. So it's where a buyer and a seller agree upon what is going to be bought slash sold, when that's going to happen and at what price. It's a lot like making a bet on what you think the future value of an

asset might be. So let's use an example to help clear things up. So right now, as I record this, the price of a single bitcoin is around twenty eight thousand, three hundred bucks. But let's say that you think that in three months bitcoin is going to surge in value.

So you want to secure a futures contract. You want to purchase one bitcoin, but you want to purchase it in three months at the price of Let's say you've agreed, You've negotiated it to twenty nine thousand dollars, so it's more than what it's valued at now, but you think that in three months it's going to be worth way

more than that. Now, let's say that someone else who owns bitcoin thinks that the price of bitcoin is actually going to dip in three months, so they have an incentive to make a deal, especially to sell one bitcoin at twenty nine thousand dollars, which is again higher than what the current market value is. So the two of you enter into an agreement, You create a contract, you sign on the dotted line three months go by, and now it's actually time for you to pay for that

bitcoin and take possession of it. So the agreed upon price was twenty nine thousand dollars, and it turns out you were right. Let's say that the market did surge, and now the market price for bitcoin is close to forty thousand dollars. That means you're able to buy a forty thousand dollars bitcoin at twenty nine thousand dollars. So you've already made a profit as soon as you make

the purchase. Or let's say the seller was right, and now the current price a bitcoin is down to twenty thousand, but you've already agreed to pay for it at twenty nine thousand. Now you might say, Jonathan, why would you trade in futures when you could just buy or sell the actual cryptocurrency in real time. If you think the price is gonna go up, why not just buy it now?

And to that, I say, beats me. Maybe it's that you don't have the money right now, so that three months would give you enough time to gather the money you would need to buy the asset. That's one way of doing it, although that is putting yourself on a deadline.

That is scary, my friend. You get close to that three months and you're like, oh man, I need to scrounge up that twenty nine K. But I am not at all an expert in financial matters, which is more than evident, right, And I am sure there are lots of really legitimate, smart financial reasons to trade in futures. I mean I get it for like physical stuff like agriculture. I totally understand it in that context. But in things like stocks and cryptocurrencies, that blows my mind. So it's

outside my wheelhouse. And you might as well just tell me it's magic, and I'll believe you because it totally escapes me. Anyway, the fact that regulators have now approved derivatives for Coinbase is a huge deal both for US investors and for the crypto exchange itself. Meanwhile, in the UK, PayPal will pump the brakes on customer crypto sales starting

in October. That's because UK regulators are implementing new rules and restrictions regarding crypto trading in the UK starting October eighth, and PayPal execs say they need to pause crypto features to make certain that the company's operations satisfy these new rules will still be able to sell their crypto through PayPal,

but they won't be able to buy. And that's because these new rules are going to include giving clear and understandable warnings about the risks that are surrounding the investment into cryptocurrencies. So regulators have been really concerned that customers in the UK don't fully understand those risks, and so these rules are more about raising awareness about possible consequences if you were to pour your money into the cryptocurrency world.

And because they say that, a lot of people just view it as this is a guaranteed way to get rich and they don't take into consideration the very real possibility that your investment could just disappear. That you could invest all that money and then the asset could fall through and then you've lost all that money. So it's not an outright ban on the buying and selling a crypto, but more about making sure that any any company that facilitates the buying and selling of crypto has to be

able to express these risks to customers. So that's why PayPal is going to put a pause on things. Well, they make sure that they comply with those rules. Okay, I've got three more stories to go, but we're going to take another quick break to thank our sponsors. Okay.

So this is an important one if you happen to drive a Ford vehicle that was made between like twenty fifteen and twenty twenty one, in particular, So, Texas Instruments recently discovered a vulnerability in a Wi Fi driver that the company supplies to the automaker Forward and this is for the use in the SINC three infotainment system. And this is a bad one because this flaw makes it possible for a hacker to tap in through a vehicle's WiFi and to execute remote code on that infotainment system.

So essentially a hacker can take over that infotainment system. Ford at least has reassured the public that the infotainment system is firewalled off from critical driving systems like breaking and steering in that kind of thing. So the good news is that while this is a critical security vulnerability, there's not really any risk of hackers getting the ability to force board vehicles off the road by exploiting this vulnerability in the SINC three infotainment system. Nothing like that

should be possible. Still, The recommendation is for people who own a Ford that was made after twenty fifteen that has this Sink three infotainment system in it, they should go into their Wi Fi settings and turn off Wi Fi while they wait for Ford to issue a security patch, which they would then have to install via USB or bring it into a Ford dealership to have it installed there.

The current version of the infotainment software on Ford vehicles made since twenty twenty one is Sync four, So if you have a Sink four infotainment system, this shouldn't apply to you. At least Ford has not revealed any vulnerabilities

in that generation of the infotainment system. So again, if you own a Ford it was made between twenty fifteen and twenty twenty one, it's got Sync three infotainment system, go into those settings and turn off Wi Fi until Ford has a security patch, and you know, just keep an eye on Ford's own website about this issue, and that way you can avoid having your car get hacked

into by hackers. What a world right. Earlier this week, I talked about how San Francisco recently authorized robo taxi companies Waimo and Cruise, which is owned by General Motors. Weimo is owned by Alphabet, you know, Google's parent company. But anyway, they have authorized these companies to operate within the city of San Francisco. They've got certain things that they have to follow in order to be able to

charge for rides. But anyway, I also talked about how several vehicles owned by Cruise, maybe as many as a dozen, created a bit of a traffic jam in San Francisco when they stopped on a street in the San Francisco neighborhood Doe to sell service interruptions and interference. There was this big music festival that was hogging all the data, and the cars were unable to navigate properly, so they just kind of parked it on the street and caused

a bit of a traffic jam. Now there's another report out of San Francisco that says a Cruise vehicle made a booboo when it drove over a construction site and then into wet concrete. Apparently the car registered the wet concrete as being just fine to drive on, and so it drove in and got stuck. Crewise employees had to

come to its rescue. A little bit later on, the Cruise vehicle was not carrying passengers at the time at least, but does illustrate that these vehicles have limitations and we're likely to see similar issues while engineers work to make the vehicles better. It might lead some people to ask if perhaps these cars are in operation a bit prematurely,

and I think that's a fair question to ask. Others would say that, well, the whole purpose of operation at this stage is to find out where these problems are so that we can fix them and make them better. But when you're talking about a device that is that big, can move that fast and can potentially kill somebody, I think you got to hold it to a very, very

very high standard. Finally, our last story is a bunch of foe folks who owned three D printers made by the company Bamboo Bambu found that their devices spontaneously began to print in the middle of the night recently. So it is the machine uprising, only it's just the three D printers and they can't do very much else other

than you know, print stuff. But they were trying to print previous print jobs, sometimes printing over an earlier print job or a print job that had been going and then just stopped and now it had been restarted, so printing on top of it and just ruining the whole thing. It also meant that the machines were sometimes because they were trying to print on top of existing print jobs, causing issues like banging into stuff and potentially damaging the

machine itself. So what made the machines do this Well, apparently Bamboo's cloud services had an interruption, and this is what prompted the printers to go into print mode on their own once the interruption was corrected. This actually reminds me of how once upon a time there was an issue with some podcast servers that went offline and when they came back on, they pushed out all the episodes on the server as if they were brand new episodes.

So if you were subscribed to one of these podcasts, you would get all existing episodes sent to you as if they were brand new. And for some shows which have, say, I don't know, two thousand episodes, that's a lot. It hogs up a lot of space and it makes it very frustrating to use the podcatching app. Yeah, so that's a very similar situation. In this case. The servers went offline when they reconnected because the cloud service was unable to verify that the last print job actually went through

it just initiated it again. But this actually comes with some pretty big risks, right, Like one thing is, as I said, it's possible for the printers to end up damaging themselves because they're printing on top of an existing print job in some cases. But also three D printers can run very hot, so if there were some issues, there's also the danger of it overheating and potentially becoming

a fire hazard. You know, there's supposed to be protections in place to prevent that from happening, but it's hard to you know, verify that in fact those protections are are sufficient until disaster strikes. Right. There's also the concern that if it's something that can be remotely initiated like that, it could be a security vulnerability. So yeah, not the

best little thing to happen. Although I will say that according to everything I've read, Bamboo has been very forthcoming about the issue and has accepted responsibility for the problems here, although it remains to be seen what the company will do for people who have a three D printer that was perhaps damaged as result of this unforeseen issue. Now before I go, I do have a recommendation for an article for y'all. The article is titled It's Time to

Rethink Our Relationships with Streaming Services. It was written by Charles Pulliam Moore and it's on the Verge. So if you just go to the Verge and look for It's Time to Rethink Our Relationships with Streaming Services, you can

read up on it. It's obviously a piece that's talking about what has been going on with streaming services over the past couple of years, the issues that we're seeing, the price hikes that have been going on, and maybe that it requires some reflection and decisions about are you really getting the value out of these services that you

deserve based upon how much you're paying for them. I know if I were being honest about that for myself, I would have to come to the conclusion that I need to cancel several subscriptions because I know I've got subscriptions to about half a dozen streaming services and I

use maybe two of them frequently. So really I should follow this advice and really reevaluate the relationship I have with these streaming services and whether or not it is a healthy one, Because I would suggest that perhaps it's not, and I need to I need to pay attention to the same recommendations I give everybody else. And that's it for today's episode. I hope you are all well. Thank you for those of you who sent nice messages making sure that I was okay. I am okay, or at least.

I'm definitely better than I was yesterday. I'm not at one hundred percent, but I'm way better than in the last two days, so that's good. And I will talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.