Daily Tech News 2 August 2023

• Google Assistant - which is apparently a thing - is getting a big reboot using generative AI. (Ars Technica)
  
  Could we not?
  
  
  
• Facebook plans to use chatbots to boost its user numbers. (Ars Technica)
  
  I can't wait until social networks are all just chatbots screaming at each other and we can get on with stuff.
  
  
  
• YouTube meanwhile is planning to use AI to summarise YouTube videos. (The Verge)
  
  If it can make sense of Pippa's stream today - where she returned in spider form after celebrating reaching 250,000 subscribers by eating a tarantula - I'll be impressed.
  
  

• Remember that amazing new room-temperature superconductor announcement? It might not be rubbish after all. (In the Pipeline)
  
  Yes, the experimental data is imperfect, but the details provided are sufficient for both empirical testing and theoretical analysis.
  
  There's an unconfirmed report of an independent replication demonstrating the Meissner effect in a small sample of the material, and the video doesn't look like any cooling is involved at all.
  
  Separately, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory took a look at the structural data on the material - called LK-99 - and said:

  I present the calculated spin-polarized electronic structure in Fig. 3. Remarkably, I find an isolated set of flat bands crossing the Fermi level, with a maximum bandwidth of ∼130 meV (see Fig.4) that is separated from the rest of the valence manifold by 160 meV. Such a narrow bandwidth is particularly indicative of strongly correlated bands. . .unlike other correlated-d band superconductors, in this system the Cu-d bands are particularly flat – there is minimal band broadening from neighboring oxygen ions. If previous assumptions about band flatness driving superconductivity are correct, then this result would suggest a much more robust (higher temperature) superconducting phase exists in this system, even compared to well-established high-TC systems.

  Which is saying that on a purely theoretical basis this looks just like what we'd expect from a high-temperature superconductor.
  
  Lowe (the author of In the Pipeline) concludes:

  I am guardedly optimistic at this point. The Shenyang and Lawrence Berkeley calculations are very positive developments, and take this well out of the cold-fusion "we can offer no explanation" territory. ... This is by far the most believable shot at room-temperature-and-pressure superconductivity the world has seen so far, and the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely damned interesting.

  
  
  
• Testing graph databases and reporting the results as seventy pages of text and a handful of illegible microscopic scatter plots. (Mihai)
  
  Well, that was a waste of time.
  
  
  
• Nim 2.0 is out. (Nim)
  
  If you want a statically compiled, statically typed Python, this is your best bet.
  
  
  
• Nvidia's new AI image generate fits on a floppy disk and takes 4 minutes to train. (Decrypt)
  
  And not one of those fancy 1.44MB floppies either, we're talking about an Apple II single-sided single-density jobbie.
  
  
  
• Facebook's ban on Canadian government propaganda - laughingly referred to as "news" - takes effect today. (Engadget)
  
  Okay.
  
  
  
• Twitter is suing "hate speech researchers" - which is to say fascists - for scaring off advertisers - which is to say mostly also fascists. (Ars Technica)

  Lawsuit comes as Musk and Yaccarino seize control of X's trust and safety team.

  Now? Only now you are doing this?
  
  Day one you should have fired them all. Every single one.
  
  
• Speaking of Twitter, they've made changes to the ads to get around AdBlockPlus.
  
  It sucks. And that's with supposedly reduced ads on a paid account.
  
  
  
• Apple asked users why they were turning off the "conversation awareness" feature on their AirPods. (9to5Mac)
  
  Users: Because it sucks.
  
  
  
• Anker's new USB-C power adapter can fast-charge a 16" MacBook Pro. (The Verge)
  
  It can put out 140W on one port for a large laptop while still having 100W left over to charge your phone and tablet.
  
  USB-C itself now supports charging at up to 240W - 48V at 5A - though I haven't seen anything using that full power yet. The Framework Laptop 16 comes with a 180W USB-C charger, which is getting there, and hopefully dedicated chargers will soon disappear even for gaming laptops.
  
  
  
• The Galaxy Z Fold 5 is here, which is odd because it seems the Z Fold 4 only came out a week ago. (Tech Crunch)
  
  As before, it's expensive and awkward, too narrow when folded up and too wide when unfolded. You'd be better off in almost every way with a regular phone and a regular small tablet EXCEPT THERE ARE NO GOOD SMALL TABLETS SAMSUNG I'M LOOKING AT YOU.

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:00 AM

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