Daily Tech News 17 August 2023

• LK-99: Not a superconductor. (Nature)
  
  Ace already posted on this a couple of days ago but this article in Nature seems to explain what the Korean researchers were observing.
  
  Pure LK-99 is not a conductor at all, so what the were measuring was LK-99 "doped" with specific impurities. And the important one looks to have been copper sulfide, which shows a phase transition and change in conductivity right at the point where the researchers thought they were seeing a transition to superconductivity.
  
  But it was just the temperature at which their sample's resistance dropped by a factor of 10, not by a factor of infinity. Below that temperature the electromagnetic properties of their sample changed drastically, but it was still not actually a superconductor.
  
  So, no flying cars for another twenty years I'm afraid.
  
  
  

• Google is testing an AI system that offers life advice. (New York Times) (archive site)
  
  On the one hand, this is a terrible idea.
  
  On the other hand, can it be much worse than the people who already offer life advice?
  
  On the third hand, yes. Yes it can.
  
  
  
• A Windows Server feature that keeps your system's clock in sync if your network isn't configured to use NTP to handle that task properly can instead set your clock incorrectly... By nearly two months. (Ars Technica)
  
  It's not clear exactly why it does this, except that it appears the feature only ever worked by accident.
  
  
  
• AMD's Threadripper Pro 7995WX could be very fast. (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Something like four times as fast as the company's fastest mainstream desktop chip, the Ryzen 7950X.
  
  Expect it to cost about twenty times as much, though.
  
  
  
• New York City has banned TikTok on government devices. (The Verge)
  
  Bolsheviks vs. Mensheviks, again.
  
  
  

posted by Pixy Misa at 04:07 AM

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