Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, Diamond executive producer with I Heart Radio, and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, January twenty three, and we've got another couple of interesting bits of chat GPT, slash open AI, slash chat bought news. First up, The Verge reports that academic publishing company Springer Nature has updated its policies such that a I writing tools like chat GPT cannot be credited as an author of a scientific paper. And considering the reports of how tools like chat GBT can and do get stuff wrong on occasion, not to mention some plagiarism issues, we will talk about in justice. Second, all of this makes sense. Springer Nature does say that these tools can be used in the process of creating ideas for research or even assisting in writing, as long as the paper is transparent about this, which potentially could even mean specifying which bits of the paper were AI generated. But ultimately these things cannot be credited as an author, and that really does make sense. These tools tend to have a lack of transparency and you don't know how they get to the point of generating the text they create. You also don't get things like citations for references and that kind of thing. And so without knowing where the author is drawing information from, one you can't be certain that the information being presented as reliable, and too, you can't be sure that the author's conclusions are valid because you don't know where the conclusions were drawn from. It sounds like Springer Nature is opti mystic regarding how AI can play a part in scientific research and writing, but that it's going to take a lot of work to foster the positive use of AI, as well as a lot of work to prevent the negative use cases. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how the website Futurism had uncovered c nets use of AI to write articles in the c net Money channel, and you only knew about if you clicked on the little dropped down that would appear if you highlighted the s net money staff byline. Well, futurism keeps coming up with great reporting with more updates on that. They have pointed out how several of the articles written by this AI included factual errors and just as concerning also included examples of plagiarism. Now, in some cases, the AI appears to have largely lifted language, almost entirely untouched from other sources, including from c net itself. As Future is a reporter John Christian puts it, quote, a new futurism investigation found extensive evidence that the c net ais work has demonstrated deep structural and phrasing similarities to articles previously published elsewhere without giving credit. In other words, it looks like the butt directly plagiarized the work of red Ventures competitors, red Ventures being the owner of Set, as well as human writers at bank Rate and even Senet itself end quote. And as I mentioned a moment ago, these chat bots fail to credit their sources, and so it all comes across as the AI is passing work off as its own when it's not. And that sort of stuff can get you fired or banned from publications. So this really is a big problem, particularly when you consider that AI in this context is being relied upon to generate articles in place of a human being doing the writing. So if it turns out your robot is copying humans, not only are you denying a person a chance to write the article. So you're denying a person a job. Your robot is also stealing work from other humans. It's kind of like a double dipping of bad AI practices. Now, to be fair to see Net and to rend Ventures, UH, they've stopped using AI to generate articles, at least for the time being. I highly recommend you read the full article that's on futurism. It has the title c nets AI journalist appears to have committed extensive plagiarism and another AI fail news item. You might remember I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Do Not Pay, the company that helps normal everyday folks try to do stuff like cancel their streaming subscriptions all the way up to getting out of parking tickets, that that it was going to participate in a court case next month, namely, a person who was charged with a traffic citation in California was going to wear some glasses equipped with cameras and a microphone and wear an earp and then do Not Pay as AI assistant would attempt to help the accused defend themselves in traffic court. Those plans are now off the table because Do Not Pays CEO Joshua Browder says the company has scrapped the idea after receiving threats from quote multiple state bar associations end quote, and that he and the company could stand accused of the unauthorized practice of law, which at least in some states can land you in the pokey for up to six months. For those not familiar with the phrase the pokey, that's that's jail. So AI will not be pulling a matlock this February. I'm I'm dropping a lot of old people references in this episode. Give me a shout if you're if you're picking them up. Meanwhile, state bar associations across the United States are evaluating how to handle situations like this, which just a year ago would have seemed like a silly fantasy. Also, Do not Pay was in the news because it offered up a million bucks to any all your schedule to argue before the Supreme Court, saying all you have to do is use an earpiece and it will connect to our AI tool and the AI will tell you what to argue in front of the court and you'll get a million dollars. Most folks seem to portray Browder as the kind of executive who likes to get a lot of publicity through really splashy stunts, And in this case, it's kind of hard for me to dispute that particular portrayal. On Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange had a rough morning. Stock prices for normally stable companies began to swing as much as twenty in a short amount of time. According to Bloomberg, more than two hundred fifty companies were affected. So why is this in tech stuff? What was causing these extreme stock fluctuations? Was it economic instability? Was it news that the doomsday clock is now sitting at ninety seconds? Was it fears about how Russia is going to react to Germany and the United States sending tanks to Ukraine. No, the while morning was due to an n y s E employee forgetting to turn off a backup system properly. All right, So, clearly, for something as important to the global economy as the New York Stock Exchange, that is, the n y s E, then a backup is necessary, right. There needs to be a way to switch on a backup quickly in the event of a failure of the primary system or else trading ends up being affected and in a worst case scenario, it could prompt a real financial crisis. So of course, the n y s E has backups, and employees are supposed to check up on these backup systems regularly, and typically this involves turning the backup on after normal trading hours when the stock exchange is closed, then verifying that the system is working the way it's supposed to, and then shutting the system down again. But on Tuesday, someone failed to do that last step of shutting it down again, and when the primary system came online, it performed as if it had been going for a while, like instead of being the beginning of the trading day, it was acting as if it had gone down and came back up while the backup was in operation. And this through everything into a tizzy because there were all these auctions that were supposed to go off first thing in the morning, and it kind of bypassed all this, and that's why prices started to fluctuate like crazy because things were not going the way they were supposed to. So then the New York Stock Exchange had to spring into action and address this problem. And now the n y s E is in the process of reversing the trades that happened during the whole confusing process, and that's gonna be a pretty expensive fix. So this is a case where have you tried turning it off and on again? Is the wrong approach. It's just have you tried turning it off. Reuter's reports that according to Standard Media Index, advertising spend on Twitter was down seventy in December two. This was bad news, particularly after the rough November, which reportedly saw a fifty five decline in ad spending. And if you're ready for another percentage, Twitter relies on advertising to make up of its revenue. So this is really bad news for Twitter, and there have been a lot of factors that could have contributed to add money drying up. First up, there's this general global economic situation we're all in where companies across the board are cutting costs all over the place, which includes ad spend. Marketing typically is one of the first areas hit when companies want to buckle down and tighten their belts. Then there's the concern that Twitter is turning into a more chaotic, toxic, and frankly dangerous platform, especially for brands. With Elon Musk's rather mercurial leadership style. Leading the way. Musk himself has laid a lot of the blame on activist groups lobbying companies to pull ad money off Twitter. But keep in mind, one of the reasons Musk gave when he was still trying to back away from buying Twitter months and months and months ago, back in mid two was that he saw an economic downturn coming, and that could mean that he was already worried about drops in revenue for Twitter. Also, Musk recently announced that Twitter would offer a subscription tier that would cost a little bit more than the normal subscription, but would come with an ad free experience, and that he said Twitter already has too many ads on it. It's weird that he's saying this while he's also simultaneously trying to bring advertisers back on board with Twitter, using various incentives to bring them back into the fold. It's getting to the point where you really don't know what to believe as a user or as an advertiser. Okay, while we sort all that out, let's take a quick break. We'll be back after these messages. We're back. Next up, we've got some stories about censorship and how tech companies are reportedly bowing to it, and Apple customers in Hong Kong reported that Safari blocked at least for a while access to certain sites like get lab last year, and apparently this was because Apple has worked with Tencent in China, and Tencent has a blacklist of sites that Chinese users are not supposed to be able to access, which you know, usually these directives come from the government, they're sent to these these big companies, and Apple partners with ten Cent in order to operate within China, so that's where this was apparently coming from. But Hong Kong citizens have enjoyed less authoritative oversight in the past, and it appears as though ten cents blacklist was now extending to Hong Kong users, something that Apple appears to have confirmed at some point late last year. And the reason we have to be vague about this is that it's not that Apple came out and released a statement about this. Rather, Apple at some point late in updated it's Safari privacy notice in Hong Kong, and it took a while for folks to notice that had happened, which is why we're only just now hearing about this in the West. Apple has essentially refused to comment on this. They Apple has said, you know what, you need to go talk to ten Cent. It's like ask your mom, Apple saying go talk to tensent and tense. It is refusing to comment it on it too. So that's where we are with that now. On a related note, and in another Twitter story, the Intercept reports that Twitter has bowed to political pressure in India and is actively blocking links to a BBC documentary that accuses India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking a prominent role in carrying out Gina side in Gujarat in two thousand two. The Indian government has denounced this documentary, calling it propaganda and demanding that companies like Twitter and YouTube block links to it within India, and several people, including actor John Cusack, have reported that their tweets that included links to this documentary have been banned and blocked in India, and Cusack has actually gone on to say that his whole Twitter account is banned in India full stop. The Intercept is pretty darn critical of Twitter and of Musk. In the article I read this morning, uh, the Intercept rather cheekily points out that Musk has been framed as a free speech absolutist, and yet here's an example of his company cow towing to authoritarian pressure. It's very much not a free speech thing, like it's the opposite. It's it's it's government censorship. Musk, for his part, says he was not even aware of the issue and that all his attention has been divided between Twitter, Tesla, and Space Sex, which is a pretty dangerous thing for him to even tweet, because there are a ton of Tesla investors who have been angry about him for that specific reason that his attention has been divided, and they've seen Twitter as this big diversion that has in in turn caused Tesla to suffer. And like if you look at the stock price for Tesla, it's been in a rough place for the last year. Anyway, it is concerning to see a government be able to ban any news that it doesn't like, whether Musk himself was aware of the issue or not. And again I should also add Google agreed several times in the past two demands from India's government to since there certain links and videos, So it's not like Twitter is alone here. It's one prominent example of a tech company appearing to comply with an authoritarian government's demands to sensor materials so that citizens aren't able to access it, but it is by no means the only one doing it. Last year, I mentioned how Bloomberg reported on the Army's experience with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System or IVAS, and this is essentially it's a militarized and ruggedized version of the Microsoft Hollowlens mixed reality headset. It's it's one that specifically developed and tuned for the Army, and the Army's goal was to work with Microsoft and develop a system that helps soldiers be more effective in the field, including support for stuff like target acquisition and better marksmanship. But as it turns out, soldiers didn't much care for the technology. Reports said that soldiers experienced health issues ranging from next train to motion sickness, and that they were more accurate and efficient when they were relying on their older equipment. So a lot of soldiers just opted to not use the headset at all. While some of this could be chalked up to the adjustment period anyone encounters when they have to in corporate new equipment into their their daily tasks, the messages seemed to be that ives was performing well under expectations. Task and Purpose dot Com published a piece earlier this week saying Microsoft still allegedly had plans to develop the platform and improve it further and release updates to the IVAS platform, and that the Army still intends to deploy this very very expensive headset because it had already purchased thousands of the things, and each headset, by the way, cost the Army forty dollars a piece grand for one of these headsets. And I thought the upcoming Apple headset was going to be expensive at three K. But the Army could be waiting a really long time before getting that new and improved Iva's headset. Because one area within Microsoft that was hit very, very hard by recent layoffs and cutbacks is the mixed reality divisions within the company. I said one area. I guess areas would be more appropriate, because it's separate departments that we're all working within this general field. Gizmoto has an article that's titled Microsoft cuts VR staff and leaves questions about its metaverse ambitions, written by Kyle Barr, and a lot of other outlets have also reported on this as well. It's just I relied on Gizmoto as my prime source for this particular news item. Essentially, it sounds like the mixed reality division inside Microsoft was positively gutted, in some cases to the point for all intents and purposes of being eliminated. All Space VR, which Microsoft acquired in seventeen, announced it will be shutting down in March. The few folks from the Alt Space VR team who still are at Microsoft are going to be shifted to work for Microsoft Mesh. This is Microsoft project to bring VR into its Teams product. Other mixed reality departments were either severely downsized or outright jettison. It's possible that the Hollow Lens has actually seen its final days, and lots of news outlets are suggesting that Microsoft maybe pulling back or even abandoning plans to develop the Metaverse. And it was going to be a really important partner with meta for that particular project. And y'all you know, I've been super critical about the hype around Metaverse. I still question the usefulness and and uh importance of the Metaverse, but I definitely did not want to see it all come crashing down like this, especially at the expense of people's jobs. I would have much rather have seen people get repurposed into other projects that could potentially have greater benefit. I really questioned the benefit of the metaverse. But yeah, I hate seeing folks getting laid off like this. Our next story takes us to New York City and Madison Square Gardens, So Masson Square Gardens or MSG, is one of the famous venues here in the United States. I think of Mass and Square Gardens the same way I think of things like the Hollywood Bowl. A lot of sporting events and concerts and stuff take place there. And whenever I think of Mass and Square Gardens, honestly, I just imagined professional rassling, maybe with a couple of immortals ready to have a big hold sword fight with one another. Give me a shout out if you actually understand that reference. But recently, MSG has been in the news for a controversial practice, namely using facial recognition technology at security checkpoints in order to identify and then deny entry to certain folks, namely people who have been identified as working for law firms that are currently or have previously been involved in lawsuits against MSG Entertainment, even if that person had was not an active part of that particular lawsuit. In other words, imagine that you show up to go see a concert and you get to security and you find out at the security checkpoint that you're not allowed inside because the owner of the building doesn't like the company you work for. That's the only reason. Oh, you work for X, Y or Z, you can't come in. We don't let you in here. Go home. That would really stink, right, and it has New York's Attorney General going after MSG Entertainment investigating if the company is violating civil and human rights by relying on facial recognition tech and denying entry in this way that it could be retaliatory and against the law. Even if it turns out it's not technically against the law, it sure does sound scummy, doesn't it. By the way, Masson Square Gardens, in case you were wondering, I look just like Ben Bolan of stuff they don't want you to know. Okay, I've got a couple more stories to finish up on that are kind of cool and science, but we'll get to those after this quick break. Okay, let's get all science and stuff for our final two news items for today's episode. First up is an article from side Tech Daily about how research in the Physical Review Research Journal details how artificial intelligence is helping the quantum computing discipline. It can help maintain coherence within quantum systems. This is something that's really tricky and incredibly important in quantum computing, but it does require a bit of explanation. So quantum systems are incredibly complicated and they are also very delicate. You've probably heard about quantum experiments where you are able to get really cool results until you observe the system and then it all breaks down into one or the other. So the classic example is light behaving like a wave and a particle at the same time, but when you observe the system, it breaks down into one or the other. It cannot be both at the same time. Well, you observe it because the system is broken down into a classical system. Well, Quantum computers can be used to tackle problems where there are perhaps thousands of potential solutions and the system is trying to determine what is the best solution out of all those thousands, and it's essentially doing that simultaneously. It's it's essentially solving the problem with every potential solution at the same time. However, if the quantum system collapses, it can't do that anymore, and it becomes a classical system, and it becomes a very underpowered classical system. And the killer of it is these quantum systems are so delicate. A couple of things can end up causing problems. There's this issue called damping, which is when essentially internal motion within the system starts to slow down and it can potentially come to a standstill. Another is collapse from environmental noise. Something external from the system causes the system to collapse. So maintaining the quantum system within a quantum computer is of vital importance and it's very hard. But this research shows that AI can be used to help keep the system healthy and it does that through the the the judicious use of things like intense light and changes in voltage and applying different voltage to the system. And it has to be done precisely at just the right time and just the right intensity, which is why AI is being used to do this. That AI is creating the system in which uh, these different effects can be applied to the quantum computer to keep it operational, which is crazy science fiction kind of stuff to me. Uh, And I love that AI can help us make another equally fascinating technology more effective through the use of zapping that technology at just the right time and just the right amount of power. And finally, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a quote unquote robot out of a magneto active phase transitional matter or MPTM. And that sounds really complex, but when you start to break it down, it's actually not that hard to understand. It's hard to do, but you can at least understand what's going on. So magneto active tells us that this material reacts to magnets and magnetic fields. So you can conclude from that that this is how controllers can manipulate the robot. They can move it around and and move and manipulate in various ways using magnets and magnetic fields. All right, got it. So it's got some sort of magnetic material inside of it, but one of about phase transitional matter. What does that mean? Well, it means that the matter in question can move between different phases such as liquid and solid, and that, in fact is what we're talking about in this specific case. So this is a robot in air quotes that can go from solid to liquid and back to solid again, and it can be manipulated by magnets, which is super freaking cool. So the researchers relied on gallium. Uh, this is a metal that has a very low melting point. Gallium will go from solid to liquid at around eighty five and a half degrees fahrenheit or just under thirty degrees celsius. Now, this means that you can do some really neat stuff with gallium because gallium will be solid at room temperature, but it will melt if you hold a piece of it in your hand because your body temperature is higher than eighty five point five. And I've seen lots of videos of people playing with gallium where they've used gallium and poured liquid gallium into a mold of like a spoon for example, and so it looks like a regular metal spoon. But then if you were to use it to say, stir some hot tea, the spoon would just dissolve. It would melt into the You wouldn't want to drink that tea. By the way, it is non toxic, but you still don't want to be drinking gallium um. But yeah, it's it's it's just cool, like a cool special effect kind of thing, and it's really trippy to see it in video action. It has actually been used in high temperature applications for thermometers, for example, instead of mercury. It only works if the temperatures you're measuring are above the melting point for gallium. But it is really useful because it's also non toxic, unlike mercury. The researchers then took this gallium, pure gallium, and they doped it with magnetic particles, so they essentially implant magnetic particles inside gallium and when it solidifies, those magnetic particles are locked in place, and so in solid form, it was really easy to manipulate the gallium using magnets because those those magnetic particles again, they're they're locked where they are, so you can use a magnet and just scoot that little solid piece of gallium all over the place. When it was in liquid form, it was much more difficult to make make the gallium move through magnetic force. You could get some movement, but it was really tough to do. But the research includes a really fun video and the video shows a little figuring. Its shaped kind of like a lego minifig and it's inside a black plastic cage, and the researchers use a magnet to move the figure around inside the cage, so the figure paces back and forth and then except it's not actually like its legs aren't moving, it's just scooting across the surface of the that's on I guess it's a table. It's hard to see because it's a really closed up video. But then they use magnetic resonance to heat the material up, so it went beyond the melting point, and so then it turns into this silvery globe and it slowly pours out through the bars of the cage and then flows into a mold that's in the shape of the original robot figure. It cools down and then resolidifies, and the boom. We have a very cute recreation of a famous scene from Terminator to where the T one thousand goes into liquid form and passes through the bars of a jail cell. Now, admittedly this is a very primitive robot. When it's in solid form, there are no real moving parts, there are no circuits, there are no processors or anything inside of this thing. It is completely manipulated by external forces. Being a physical magnet or something generating magnetic fields. And because it has this very low melting point, there aren't a lot of practical applications for this particular approach to robotics just yet. However, this could be the first step to doing some really cool work in creating robots that can change form depending upon the situation and the need, and that could be useful in all sorts of different applications, including medical procedures. So it is really neat, but we have to keep in mind this is like a demonstration of a concept and that we're very far away from having a practical version of this that could do useful stuff in the real world. Still fun to watch the video though, And that's it for this episode. The news for Thursday, January twenty three. I hope you are all well. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. You can do that in a couple of different ways. One is you can go over to Twitter and send me a tweet. The show handle is tech Stuff hs W, so just tweet at that and I'll see it. Or if you prefer, you can download the I Heart radio app spree to downloads free to use, and you can type text stuff into little search field. Go right to the tech stuff page. You'll see there's a little microphone icon on that page. If you click on that, you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length and let me know what you would like to hear and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Welcome to tex Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. He there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host Jonathan Strickland, Diamond executive producer with I Heart Radio, and how the tech are you. It's time for the tech news for Thursday, January twenty three, and we've got another couple of interesting bits of chat GPT, slash open AI, slash chat bought news. First up, The Verge reports that academic publishing company Springer Nature has updated its policies such that a I writing tools like chat GPT cannot be credited as an author of a scientific paper. And considering the reports of how tools like chat GBT can and do get stuff wrong on occasion, not to mention some plagiarism issues, we will talk about in justice. Second, all of this makes sense. Springer Nature does say that these tools can be used in the process of creating ideas for research or even assisting in writing, as long as the paper is transparent about this, which potentially could even mean specifying which bits of the paper were AI generated. But ultimately these things cannot be credited as an author, and that really does make sense. These tools tend to have a lack of transparency and you don't know how they get to the point of generating the text they create. You also don't get things like citations for references and that kind of thing. And so without knowing where the author is drawing information from, one you can't be certain that the information being presented as reliable, and too, you can't be sure that the author's conclusions are valid because you don't know where the conclusions were drawn from. It sounds like Springer Nature is opti mystic regarding how AI can play a part in scientific research and writing, but that it's going to take a lot of work to foster the positive use of AI, as well as a lot of work to prevent the negative use cases. A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how the website Futurism had uncovered c nets use of AI to write articles in the c net Money channel, and you only knew about if you clicked on the little dropped down that would appear if you highlighted the s net money staff byline. Well, futurism keeps coming up with great reporting with more updates on that. They have pointed out how several of the articles written by this AI included factual errors and just as concerning also included examples of plagiarism. Now, in some cases, the AI appears to have largely lifted language, almost entirely untouched from other sources, including from c net itself. As Future is a reporter John Christian puts it, quote, a new futurism investigation found extensive evidence that the c net ais work has demonstrated deep structural and phrasing similarities to articles previously published elsewhere without giving credit. In other words, it looks like the butt directly plagiarized the work of red Ventures competitors, red Ventures being the owner of Set, as well as human writers at bank Rate and even Senet itself end quote. And as I mentioned a moment ago, these chat bots fail to credit their sources, and so it all comes across as the AI is passing work off as its own when it's not. And that sort of stuff can get you fired or banned from publications. So this really is a big problem, particularly when you consider that AI in this context is being relied upon to generate articles in place of a human being doing the writing. So if it turns out your robot is copying humans, not only are you denying a person a chance to write the article. So you're denying a person a job. Your robot is also stealing work from other humans. It's kind of like a double dipping of bad AI practices. Now, to be fair to see Net and to rend Ventures, UH, they've stopped using AI to generate articles, at least for the time being. I highly recommend you read the full article that's on futurism. It has the title c nets AI journalist appears to have committed extensive plagiarism and another AI fail news item. You might remember I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Do Not Pay, the company that helps normal everyday folks try to do stuff like cancel their streaming subscriptions all the way up to getting out of parking tickets, that that it was going to participate in a court case next month, namely, a person who was charged with a traffic citation in California was going to wear some glasses equipped with cameras and a microphone and wear an earp and then do Not Pay as AI assistant would attempt to help the accused defend themselves in traffic court. Those plans are now off the table because Do Not Pays CEO Joshua Browder says the company has scrapped the idea after receiving threats from quote multiple state bar associations end quote, and that he and the company could stand accused of the unauthorized practice of law, which at least in some states can land you in the pokey for up to six months. For those not familiar with the phrase the pokey, that's that's jail. So AI will not be pulling a matlock this February. I'm I'm dropping a lot of old people references in this episode. Give me a shout if you're if you're picking them up. Meanwhile, state bar associations across the United States are evaluating how to handle situations like this, which just a year ago would have seemed like a silly fantasy. Also, Do not Pay was in the news because it offered up a million bucks to any all your schedule to argue before the Supreme Court, saying all you have to do is use an earpiece and it will connect to our AI tool and the AI will tell you what to argue in front of the court and you'll get a million dollars. Most folks seem to portray Browder as the kind of executive who likes to get a lot of publicity through really splashy stunts, And in this case, it's kind of hard for me to dispute that particular portrayal. On Tuesday, the New York Stock Exchange had a rough morning. Stock prices for normally stable companies began to swing as much as twenty in a short amount of time. According to Bloomberg, more than two hundred fifty companies were affected. So why is this in tech stuff? What was causing these extreme stock fluctuations? Was it economic instability? Was it news that the doomsday clock is now sitting at ninety seconds? Was it fears about how Russia is going to react to Germany and the United States sending tanks to Ukraine. No, the while morning was due to an n y s E employee forgetting to turn off a backup system properly. All right, So, clearly, for something as important to the global economy as the New York Stock Exchange, that is, the n y s E, then a backup is necessary, right. There needs to be a way to switch on a backup quickly in the event of a failure of the primary system or else trading ends up being affected and in a worst case scenario, it could prompt a real financial crisis. So of course, the n y s E has backups, and employees are supposed to check up on these backup systems regularly, and typically this involves turning the backup on after normal trading hours when the stock exchange is closed, then verifying that the system is working the way it's supposed to, and then shutting the system down again. But on Tuesday, someone failed to do that last step of shutting it down again, and when the primary system came online, it performed as if it had been going for a while, like instead of being the beginning of the trading day, it was acting as if it had gone down and came back up while the backup was in operation. And this through everything into a tizzy because there were all these auctions that were supposed to go off first thing in the morning, and it kind of bypassed all this, and that's why prices started to fluctuate like crazy because things were not going the way they were supposed to. So then the New York Stock Exchange had to spring into action and address this problem. And now the n y s E is in the process of reversing the trades that happened during the whole confusing process, and that's gonna be a pretty expensive fix. So this is a case where have you tried turning it off and on again? Is the wrong approach. It's just have you tried turning it off. Reuter's reports that according to Standard Media Index, advertising spend on Twitter was down seventy in December two. This was bad news, particularly after the rough November, which reportedly saw a fifty five decline in ad spending. And if you're ready for another percentage, Twitter relies on advertising to make up of its revenue. So this is really bad news for Twitter, and there have been a lot of factors that could have contributed to add money drying up. First up, there's this general global economic situation we're all in where companies across the board are cutting costs all over the place, which includes ad spend. Marketing typically is one of the first areas hit when companies want to buckle down and tighten their belts. Then there's the concern that Twitter is turning into a more chaotic, toxic, and frankly dangerous platform, especially for brands. With Elon Musk's rather mercurial leadership style. Leading the way. Musk himself has laid a lot of the blame on activist groups lobbying companies to pull ad money off Twitter. But keep in mind, one of the reasons Musk gave when he was still trying to back away from buying Twitter months and months and months ago, back in mid two was that he saw an economic downturn coming, and that could mean that he was already worried about drops in revenue for Twitter. Also, Musk recently announced that Twitter would offer a subscription tier that would cost a little bit more than the normal subscription, but would come with an ad free experience, and that he said Twitter already has too many ads on it. It's weird that he's saying this while he's also simultaneously trying to bring advertisers back on board with Twitter, using various incentives to bring them back into the fold. It's getting to the point where you really don't know what to believe as a user or as an advertiser. Okay, while we sort all that out, let's take a quick break. We'll be back after these messages. We're back. Next up, we've got some stories about censorship and how tech companies are reportedly bowing to it, and Apple customers in Hong Kong reported that Safari blocked at least for a while access to certain sites like get lab last year, and apparently this was because Apple has worked with Tencent in China, and Tencent has a blacklist of sites that Chinese users are not supposed to be able to access, which you know, usually these directives come from the government, they're sent to these these big companies, and Apple partners with ten Cent in order to operate within China, so that's where this was apparently coming from. But Hong Kong citizens have enjoyed less authoritative oversight in the past, and it appears as though ten cents blacklist was now extending to Hong Kong users, something that Apple appears to have confirmed at some point late last year. And the reason we have to be vague about this is that it's not that Apple came out and released a statement about this. Rather, Apple at some point late in updated it's Safari privacy notice in Hong Kong, and it took a while for folks to notice that had happened, which is why we're only just now hearing about this in the West. Apple has essentially refused to comment on this. They Apple has said, you know what, you need to go talk to ten Cent. It's like ask your mom, Apple saying go talk to tensent and tense. It is refusing to comment it on it too. So that's where we are with that now. On a related note, and in another Twitter story, the Intercept reports that Twitter has bowed to political pressure in India and is actively blocking links to a BBC documentary that accuses India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi of taking a prominent role in carrying out Gina side in Gujarat in two thousand two. The Indian government has denounced this documentary, calling it propaganda and demanding that companies like Twitter and YouTube block links to it within India, and several people, including actor John Cusack, have reported that their tweets that included links to this documentary have been banned and blocked in India, and Cusack has actually gone on to say that his whole Twitter account is banned in India full stop. The Intercept is pretty darn critical of Twitter and of Musk. In the article I read this morning, uh, the Intercept rather cheekily points out that Musk has been framed as a free speech absolutist, and yet here's an example of his company cow towing to authoritarian pressure. It's very much not a free speech thing, like it's the opposite. It's it's it's government censorship. Musk, for his part, says he was not even aware of the issue and that all his attention has been divided between Twitter, Tesla, and Space Sex, which is a pretty dangerous thing for him to even tweet, because there are a ton of Tesla investors who have been angry about him for that specific reason that his attention has been divided, and they've seen Twitter as this big diversion that has in in turn caused Tesla to suffer. And like if you look at the stock price for Tesla, it's been in a rough place for the last year. Anyway, it is concerning to see a government be able to ban any news that it doesn't like, whether Musk himself was aware of the issue or not. And again I should also add Google agreed several times in the past two demands from India's government to since there certain links and videos, So it's not like Twitter is alone here. It's one prominent example of a tech company appearing to comply with an authoritarian government's demands to sensor materials so that citizens aren't able to access it, but it is by no means the only one doing it. Last year, I mentioned how Bloomberg reported on the Army's experience with the Integrated Visual Augmentation System or IVAS, and this is essentially it's a militarized and ruggedized version of the Microsoft Hollowlens mixed reality headset. It's it's one that specifically developed and tuned for the Army, and the Army's goal was to work with Microsoft and develop a system that helps soldiers be more effective in the field, including support for stuff like target acquisition and better marksmanship. But as it turns out, soldiers didn't much care for the technology. Reports said that soldiers experienced health issues ranging from next train to motion sickness, and that they were more accurate and efficient when they were relying on their older equipment. So a lot of soldiers just opted to not use the headset at all. While some of this could be chalked up to the adjustment period anyone encounters when they have to in corporate new equipment into their their daily tasks, the messages seemed to be that ives was performing well under expectations. Task and Purpose dot Com published a piece earlier this week saying Microsoft still allegedly had plans to develop the platform and improve it further and release updates to the IVAS platform, and that the Army still intends to deploy this very very expensive headset because it had already purchased thousands of the things, and each headset, by the way, cost the Army forty dollars a piece grand for one of these headsets. And I thought the upcoming Apple headset was going to be expensive at three K. But the Army could be waiting a really long time before getting that new and improved Iva's headset. Because one area within Microsoft that was hit very, very hard by recent layoffs and cutbacks is the mixed reality divisions within the company. I said one area. I guess areas would be more appropriate, because it's separate departments that we're all working within this general field. Gizmoto has an article that's titled Microsoft cuts VR staff and leaves questions about its metaverse ambitions, written by Kyle Barr, and a lot of other outlets have also reported on this as well. It's just I relied on Gizmoto as my prime source for this particular news item. Essentially, it sounds like the mixed reality division inside Microsoft was positively gutted, in some cases to the point for all intents and purposes of being eliminated. All Space VR, which Microsoft acquired in seventeen, announced it will be shutting down in March. The few folks from the Alt Space VR team who still are at Microsoft are going to be shifted to work for Microsoft Mesh. This is Microsoft project to bring VR into its Teams product. Other mixed reality departments were either severely downsized or outright jettison. It's possible that the Hollow Lens has actually seen its final days, and lots of news outlets are suggesting that Microsoft maybe pulling back or even abandoning plans to develop the Metaverse. And it was going to be a really important partner with meta for that particular project. And y'all you know, I've been super critical about the hype around Metaverse. I still question the usefulness and and uh importance of the Metaverse, but I definitely did not want to see it all come crashing down like this, especially at the expense of people's jobs. I would have much rather have seen people get repurposed into other projects that could potentially have greater benefit. I really questioned the benefit of the metaverse. But yeah, I hate seeing folks getting laid off like this. Our next story takes us to New York City and Madison Square Gardens, So Masson Square Gardens or MSG, is one of the famous venues here in the United States. I think of Mass and Square Gardens the same way I think of things like the Hollywood Bowl. A lot of sporting events and concerts and stuff take place there. And whenever I think of Mass and Square Gardens, honestly, I just imagined professional rassling, maybe with a couple of immortals ready to have a big hold sword fight with one another. Give me a shout out if you actually understand that reference. But recently, MSG has been in the news for a controversial practice, namely using facial recognition technology at security checkpoints in order to identify and then deny entry to certain folks, namely people who have been identified as working for law firms that are currently or have previously been involved in lawsuits against MSG Entertainment, even if that person had was not an active part of that particular lawsuit. In other words, imagine that you show up to go see a concert and you get to security and you find out at the security checkpoint that you're not allowed inside because the owner of the building doesn't like the company you work for. That's the only reason. Oh, you work for X, Y or Z, you can't come in. We don't let you in here. Go home. That would really stink, right, and it has New York's Attorney General going after MSG Entertainment investigating if the company is violating civil and human rights by relying on facial recognition tech and denying entry in this way that it could be retaliatory and against the law. Even if it turns out it's not technically against the law, it sure does sound scummy, doesn't it. By the way, Masson Square Gardens, in case you were wondering, I look just like Ben Bolan of stuff they don't want you to know. Okay, I've got a couple more stories to finish up on that are kind of cool and science, but we'll get to those after this quick break. Okay, let's get all science and stuff for our final two news items for today's episode. First up is an article from side Tech Daily about how research in the Physical Review Research Journal details how artificial intelligence is helping the quantum computing discipline. It can help maintain coherence within quantum systems. This is something that's really tricky and incredibly important in quantum computing, but it does require a bit of explanation. So quantum systems are incredibly complicated and they are also very delicate. You've probably heard about quantum experiments where you are able to get really cool results until you observe the system and then it all breaks down into one or the other. So the classic example is light behaving like a wave and a particle at the same time, but when you observe the system, it breaks down into one or the other. It cannot be both at the same time. Well, you observe it because the system is broken down into a classical system. Well, Quantum computers can be used to tackle problems where there are perhaps thousands of potential solutions and the system is trying to determine what is the best solution out of all those thousands, and it's essentially doing that simultaneously. It's it's essentially solving the problem with every potential solution at the same time. However, if the quantum system collapses, it can't do that anymore, and it becomes a classical system, and it becomes a very underpowered classical system. And the killer of it is these quantum systems are so delicate. A couple of things can end up causing problems. There's this issue called damping, which is when essentially internal motion within the system starts to slow down and it can potentially come to a standstill. Another is collapse from environmental noise. Something external from the system causes the system to collapse. So maintaining the quantum system within a quantum computer is of vital importance and it's very hard. But this research shows that AI can be used to help keep the system healthy and it does that through the the the judicious use of things like intense light and changes in voltage and applying different voltage to the system. And it has to be done precisely at just the right time and just the right intensity, which is why AI is being used to do this. That AI is creating the system in which uh, these different effects can be applied to the quantum computer to keep it operational, which is crazy science fiction kind of stuff to me. Uh, And I love that AI can help us make another equally fascinating technology more effective through the use of zapping that technology at just the right time and just the right amount of power. And finally, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a quote unquote robot out of a magneto active phase transitional matter or MPTM. And that sounds really complex, but when you start to break it down, it's actually not that hard to understand. It's hard to do, but you can at least understand what's going on. So magneto active tells us that this material reacts to magnets and magnetic fields. So you can conclude from that that this is how controllers can manipulate the robot. They can move it around and and move and manipulate in various ways using magnets and magnetic fields. All right, got it. So it's got some sort of magnetic material inside of it, but one of about phase transitional matter. What does that mean? Well, it means that the matter in question can move between different phases such as liquid and solid, and that, in fact is what we're talking about in this specific case. So this is a robot in air quotes that can go from solid to liquid and back to solid again, and it can be manipulated by magnets, which is super freaking cool. So the researchers relied on gallium. Uh, this is a metal that has a very low melting point. Gallium will go from solid to liquid at around eighty five and a half degrees fahrenheit or just under thirty degrees celsius. Now, this means that you can do some really neat stuff with gallium because gallium will be solid at room temperature, but it will melt if you hold a piece of it in your hand because your body temperature is higher than eighty five point five. And I've seen lots of videos of people playing with gallium where they've used gallium and poured liquid gallium into a mold of like a spoon for example, and so it looks like a regular metal spoon. But then if you were to use it to say, stir some hot tea, the spoon would just dissolve. It would melt into the You wouldn't want to drink that tea. By the way, it is non toxic, but you still don't want to be drinking gallium um. But yeah, it's it's it's just cool, like a cool special effect kind of thing, and it's really trippy to see it in video action. It has actually been used in high temperature applications for thermometers, for example, instead of mercury. It only works if the temperatures you're measuring are above the melting point for gallium. But it is really useful because it's also non toxic, unlike mercury. The researchers then took this gallium, pure gallium, and they doped it with magnetic particles, so they essentially implant magnetic particles inside gallium and when it solidifies, those magnetic particles are locked in place, and so in solid form, it was really easy to manipulate the gallium using magnets because those those magnetic particles again, they're they're locked where they are, so you can use a magnet and just scoot that little solid piece of gallium all over the place. When it was in liquid form, it was much more difficult to make make the gallium move through magnetic force. You could get some movement, but it was really tough to do. But the research includes a really fun video and the video shows a little figuring. Its shaped kind of like a lego minifig and it's inside a black plastic cage, and the researchers use a magnet to move the figure around inside the cage, so the figure paces back and forth and then except it's not actually like its legs aren't moving, it's just scooting across the surface of the that's on I guess it's a table. It's hard to see because it's a really closed up video. But then they use magnetic resonance to heat the material up, so it went beyond the melting point, and so then it turns into this silvery globe and it slowly pours out through the bars of the cage and then flows into a mold that's in the shape of the original robot figure. It cools down and then resolidifies, and the boom. We have a very cute recreation of a famous scene from Terminator to where the T one thousand goes into liquid form and passes through the bars of a jail cell. Now, admittedly this is a very primitive robot. When it's in solid form, there are no real moving parts, there are no circuits, there are no processors or anything inside of this thing. It is completely manipulated by external forces. Being a physical magnet or something generating magnetic fields. And because it has this very low melting point, there aren't a lot of practical applications for this particular approach to robotics just yet. However, this could be the first step to doing some really cool work in creating robots that can change form depending upon the situation and the need, and that could be useful in all sorts of different applications, including medical procedures. So it is really neat, but we have to keep in mind this is like a demonstration of a concept and that we're very far away from having a practical version of this that could do useful stuff in the real world. Still fun to watch the video though, And that's it for this episode. The news for Thursday, January twenty three. I hope you are all well. If you have suggestions for topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me. You can do that in a couple of different ways. One is you can go over to Twitter and send me a tweet. The show handle is tech Stuff hs W, so just tweet at that and I'll see it. Or if you prefer, you can download the I Heart radio app spree to downloads free to use, and you can type text stuff into little search field. Go right to the tech stuff page. You'll see there's a little microphone icon on that page. If you click on that, you can leave a voice message up to thirty seconds in length and let me know what you would like to hear and I'll talk to you again really soon. Yeah. Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.