Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and a love of all things tech. And this is
Speaker 1: the tech news for Thursday, August five, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: We've got a lot of it, including some really crazy
Speaker 1: quantum physics news that I am going to do my
Speaker 1: best to try and impart unto you, dear listener. But
Speaker 1: let's get started with some Facebook stories, because I just
Speaker 1: can't seem to go an episode without talking about Facebook.
Speaker 1: So one of these stories is likely not going to
Speaker 1: be a surprise to any of you listeners at all.
Speaker 1: And that's the fact that many law enforcement agencies are
Speaker 1: crawling on social networking sites to collect images of people
Speaker 1: and use those images for the purposes of facial recognition systems.
Speaker 1: The m Live site, which covers news in Michigan here
Speaker 1: in the United States, published an article this morning about this,
Speaker 1: quoting Eric Goldman of the High Tech Law Institute at
Speaker 1: Santa Clara University, and Goldman said that if you have
Speaker 1: a public social networking accounts, such as a Facebook account
Speaker 1: that posts publicly, it stands to reason that a lot
Speaker 1: of different people and organizations have grabbed your photos at
Speaker 1: some point because they are all publicly available. Publicly available
Speaker 1: information is you know, public, so anyone can see it.
Speaker 1: And we've seen numerous groups use software to crawl through
Speaker 1: enormous platforms to pull down mountains of data for the
Speaker 1: purposes of identification and analysis, and those are acts that
Speaker 1: platforms frequently resist for a variety of reasons, like there's
Speaker 1: an AI platform that has done this that has gotten
Speaker 1: in trouble for it in the past because of that.
Speaker 1: I should also add that while I say if you
Speaker 1: post publicly, that's not even the full picture obviously, right,
Speaker 1: Like let's say you don't even have a Facebook profile,
Speaker 1: you could be in photos that your friends take, right,
Speaker 1: and those photos might be on their their profiles, and
Speaker 1: they might be public which means that those photos can
Speaker 1: be captured and used for facial recognition purposes. So you
Speaker 1: don't even have to be involved in this. You have
Speaker 1: no say at that point if someone is posting your
Speaker 1: photo publicly, and it's fair game for a lot of
Speaker 1: these organizations, at least as far as they're concerned. Now,
Speaker 1: we've also seen that many facial recognition systems have an
Speaker 1: element of bias in them, with a tendency to be
Speaker 1: less accurate for people of color. And that might not
Speaker 1: sound you know, terrible, like, oh, it's less accurate, but
Speaker 1: then you figure that a less accurate system means that
Speaker 1: sometimes a person could be inaccurately identified as, say, a
Speaker 1: person of interest in a legal case, and then you
Speaker 1: can really see how it does become a problem. Such
Speaker 1: a misidentification can lead in a best case scenario, it
Speaker 1: can lead to an inconvenience. That's the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: Worst case scenario ends up being incredibly harmful and disruptive.
Speaker 1: I mean that could even include wrongful arrests which have
Speaker 1: happened as a result of facial recognition software mistakenly identifying
Speaker 1: someone as someone else. And the fact that this disproportionately
Speaker 1: harms specific communities, like communities of color. That's a real
Speaker 1: issue now, as the Peace and m Life points out,
Speaker 1: there have been documented cases of police action based off
Speaker 1: incorrect facial recognition analysis already in Michigan. There's a growing
Speaker 1: resist to the use of this technology. There's been a
Speaker 1: lot more pressure on local and federal governments to outlaw
Speaker 1: it's used there's also been pressure on companies to not
Speaker 1: make that technology available to law enforcement agencies, and this
Speaker 1: ties in with several other stories that are unfolding around
Speaker 1: the world, many of which tap into this issue of
Speaker 1: wanting to lean on technology in order to solve a
Speaker 1: particularly difficult social problem. But the issue is that in
Speaker 1: some cases the technology isn't necessarily reliable enough to depend upon,
Speaker 1: So I may have to do a full episode dedicated
Speaker 1: to that concept because there are a lot of different
Speaker 1: factors and play here. Right, there's a genuine desire to
Speaker 1: right a social wrong or to prevent a particular social
Speaker 1: problem from happening. There's a perception that the technology could
Speaker 1: be the solution to this, and then there's the reality
Speaker 1: of technology that may not be reliable enough for us
Speaker 1: to really leverage it that way, or else we have
Speaker 1: these exceptions pop up that then affect innocent people in
Speaker 1: harmful ways. Moving on, The Guardian published an article about
Speaker 1: how the fossil fuel industry was able to leverage Facebook
Speaker 1: to push climate misinformation. The article cites a group called
Speaker 1: influence Map, which is based in London, which uncovered this issue.
Speaker 1: Influence Maps said that there was an increase in advertising
Speaker 1: by fossil fuel companies like ex On Mobile in during
Speaker 1: the election season, with the campaign specifically creating a misinformation
Speaker 1: narrative to shape the conversation around climate change and fossil
Speaker 1: fuel policies that were meant to address that problem. Further
Speaker 1: influence MAP alleges that this campaign violated Facebook's own policies
Speaker 1: with regard to false advertising, and yet Facebook did not
Speaker 1: remove or label these posts as being misleading, which allowed
Speaker 1: those views to really take hold within certain communities and Facebook.
Speaker 1: The organization also found something that a lot of people
Speaker 1: have observed over the years that the messaging around conservation
Speaker 1: and you know, having an impact on climate change really
Speaker 1: was shifting the focus to the individual rather than to
Speaker 1: companies and industries. In other words, putting the burden of
Speaker 1: addressing climate change solely on individual people rather than both
Speaker 1: on people and on corporations. So this is kind of
Speaker 1: the message of turn off the lights after you leave
Speaker 1: a room, like or only you can prevent forest fires
Speaker 1: kind of approach, rather than place regulations on or otherwise
Speaker 1: tax companies that are consuming vast amounts of electricity, right
Speaker 1: Like that would be the other message. Uh, we frequently
Speaker 1: see this kind of personalized approach to messaging, and yeah,
Speaker 1: we all do have a part to play here. But
Speaker 1: when that messaging completely ignores how industry contribut mutes to
Speaker 1: a large extent, to climate change issues, then it becomes
Speaker 1: misinformation because it's purposefully omitting important details. Right. If you
Speaker 1: don't say, hey, the transportation industry ends up being a
Speaker 1: massive contributor to carbon emissions and you're instead saying turn
Speaker 1: off the lights and don't run stuff when you're not
Speaker 1: using it, then you allow the major contributing factor to
Speaker 1: go on unhindered, and it then the problem worsens as
Speaker 1: a result. So Facebook has received some pretty critical opposition
Speaker 1: to this trend already and will likely face even more
Speaker 1: scrutiny in the future. And it should. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's cashing those checks, right, The advertising checks are coming
Speaker 1: in and Facebook is cashing them, So it does definitely
Speaker 1: play a part. Oh and the CNN Business story about
Speaker 1: influence maps look into Facebook reveals that these fossil fuel
Speaker 1: ads showed up more than four hundred thirty one million
Speaker 1: times for US users, in which is not a bad
Speaker 1: return on investment for nine point six million dollars that
Speaker 1: was the given amount for that those collective ad campaigns
Speaker 1: now think about this a super Bowl ad. A commercial
Speaker 1: during the Super Bowl costs around five million dollars for
Speaker 1: a thirty second spot, and the last Super Bowl had
Speaker 1: around ninety s point four million people watching it. So
Speaker 1: for a little less than twice the cash, you can
Speaker 1: get four times the number of views by going through Facebook,
Speaker 1: which is not a bad deal right. Meanwhile, the petroleum
Speaker 1: industry companies have spoken out against the Influence Map study,
Speaker 1: claiming that these companies are spending a great amount of
Speaker 1: money on limiting carbon emissions and using carbon sequestration strategies
Speaker 1: and such, which you know, could be totally true, but
Speaker 1: doesn't change the fact that these companies actively try to
Speaker 1: undermine climate action. Heck, and x On lobbyists essentially spilled
Speaker 1: the beans on how they do that on video, which
Speaker 1: then prompted the CEO of x On to apologize for it.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they were sorry that they were caught. And
Speaker 1: we are not yet done with Facebook. We've got one
Speaker 1: more Facebook story here. Bloomberg reported yesterday that Facebook has
Speaker 1: disabled the personal Facebook accounts of some researchers from New
Speaker 1: York University who have been studying political ads on that platform.
Speaker 1: Facebook says this group has been using tools like automated
Speaker 1: tools to scrape Facebook of data, which is going against
Speaker 1: Facebook's policy. This is kind of alluding to what I
Speaker 1: was mentioning earlier about facial recognition technologies. You know, Facebook
Speaker 1: isn't supposed to allow that to happen. Now, the research
Speaker 1: team saw their project pretty much hamstrung by Facebook. The
Speaker 1: company deactivated various apps and pages that were associated with
Speaker 1: this research project, in addition to deactivating those personal pages
Speaker 1: of the actual team involved. Now, on the face of it,
Speaker 1: my danger starts to get up on behalf of the
Speaker 1: research team. However, I have to admit this story is
Speaker 1: actually more complicated than that. See back in two thousand nineteen,
Speaker 1: the Federal Trade Commission or FTC here in the United
Speaker 1: States hit Facebook with a fine of five billion dollars
Speaker 1: as billion with a B, which is a princely sum indeed,
Speaker 1: And the reason for that fine was that the FTC
Speaker 1: found that Facebook had not done enough to protect users
Speaker 1: from developers who were relying on Facebook to collect personal
Speaker 1: information on a large scale, think of things like Cambridge Analytica.
Speaker 1: So Facebook has kind of an obligation to push back
Speaker 1: against groups that are using automated means to collect data
Speaker 1: off the platform, even if that group has a seemingly
Speaker 1: good reason for doing so. Facebook requires groups to see
Speaker 1: out permission from the company before using those kinds of tools,
Speaker 1: and this group, you could argue, failed to secure permission,
Speaker 1: and in fact, Facebook had reached out and given the
Speaker 1: group a couple of warnings in the past. Now that
Speaker 1: being said, Facebook is also under a great deal of
Speaker 1: scrutiny for how it serves up political ads and how
Speaker 1: it targets people and how it chooses who gets to
Speaker 1: see what. So, as I said, this is a really
Speaker 1: complicated issue. The study could call more attention to problems
Speaker 1: with Facebook's methods of accepting and serving ads to users,
Speaker 1: which the company would likely want to suppress. It doesn't
Speaker 1: want those problems to be brought into, you know, harsher light.
Speaker 1: But then Facebook also has this obligation under the FTC,
Speaker 1: and that at least gives the company a fairly compelling
Speaker 1: reason to push back. Though one could imagine that this
Speaker 1: issue could be solved if Facebook and the research group
Speaker 1: could just get that permission to the researchers, but I
Speaker 1: really doubt that Facebook is eager to do that. In
Speaker 1: this particular case, we have more stories to cover. But
Speaker 1: before we do that, let's take a quick break. Reuters
Speaker 1: reports that are ransomware attacked targeting more than one thousand
Speaker 1: organizations last month might be just the beginning of a
Speaker 1: trend of attacks on service providers. The attack leveraged vulnerabilities
Speaker 1: in a management software product from a company called CASA,
Speaker 1: which affected more than fifty managed service provider organizations or
Speaker 1: m sps. Now, an MSP is a company that other
Speaker 1: companies rely upon to outsource services of some sort, like
Speaker 1: they could be human resources services or I T services,
Speaker 1: And that means that the MSP represents a really juicy
Speaker 1: target for hackers because you could attack a specific company.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you wanted to target I don't know,
Speaker 1: like like, uh, Intel, you want to target Intel, and
Speaker 1: you want to compromise one of Intel's systems. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a single target. But let's say you go after an
Speaker 1: MSP which could service dozens or hundreds of clients, and
Speaker 1: Intel happens to be one of them, but it also
Speaker 1: services all these others. Well, you can disrupt all of
Speaker 1: those companies by targeting the MSP specifically, right if they
Speaker 1: are providing a service to all these companies and you
Speaker 1: interrupt it, you've affected not just one organization, but potentially
Speaker 1: hundreds of them. This puts immense pressure on the MSP
Speaker 1: companies to solve the problem quickly, because if all of
Speaker 1: its customers are depending upon those services, and you've got
Speaker 1: like a hundred important clients, you might be answering calls
Speaker 1: all day long because you can't get their widgets to
Speaker 1: work because of a problem with your product. You have
Speaker 1: a high motivation to fix the issue that might include
Speaker 1: paying off an exorbitant ransom or worse. The hackers might
Speaker 1: use the MSPs as a launch point and find a
Speaker 1: way to use an MSP product to have a supply
Speaker 1: chain attack and thus infect the MSPs customers as well.
Speaker 1: So the MSP becomes the entry point and then all
Speaker 1: of its customers become targets. That multiplies the number of
Speaker 1: targets that the hackers are able to to actually compromise,
Speaker 1: and potentially multiplies the number of ransoms that they could
Speaker 1: receive as a result. Reuters states that hacker groups are
Speaker 1: feverishly researching ways to target MSPs for just that reason,
Speaker 1: which suggests we should be on the lookout for similar
Speaker 1: attacks in the future, and it should serve as a
Speaker 1: warning to all organizations MSP and otherwise to be extra
Speaker 1: cautious with security. Moving on on, the state of Massachusetts
Speaker 1: is seeing a group called the Massachusetts Coalition for Independent
Speaker 1: Work Lobby to have a special ballot introduced that would
Speaker 1: create some special exemptions for companies like Uber and Lift
Speaker 1: to be largely excluded from the restrictions and regulations of
Speaker 1: the state's labor laws. And you will be shocked, shocked,
Speaker 1: I tell you to learn that Uber and Lift run
Speaker 1: this special interest group whose name makes it sound like
Speaker 1: it's a worker advocacy organization. The companies have actually done
Speaker 1: this before. In fact, they did so successfully in California
Speaker 1: by introducing a measure called Proposition twenty two, which effectively
Speaker 1: excluded them and several other gig economy companies from having
Speaker 1: to abide by the laws that govern other businesses in
Speaker 1: the state of California. And it looks like the companies
Speaker 1: are going to spend a lot of money in Massachusetts
Speaker 1: to fight the same sort of battle there. Whether that
Speaker 1: were us are not remains to be seen, because generally speaking,
Speaker 1: there's a growing awareness regarding the company's efforts to avoid
Speaker 1: things like acknowledging the drivers are in fact employees as
Speaker 1: opposed to you know, contracted freelancers and so on. But
Speaker 1: we'll have to watch to see how this plays out,
Speaker 1: because we have to keep in mind these companies already
Speaker 1: have a track record for selling a political message effectively
Speaker 1: to the public, and they might do it again. And
Speaker 1: now for the latest of if misogyny in the workplace
Speaker 1: is such a problem, why don't more women come forward? Department, Well,
Speaker 1: to you, I submit the story of Ashley Giovic, a
Speaker 1: program manager at Apple's engineering department. According to the verge,
Speaker 1: Yovic found herself put on administrative leave indefinitely. In fact,
Speaker 1: she actually requested that, but we'll get to that. After
Speaker 1: she tweeted about how she found Apple to be a
Speaker 1: hostile work environment and one that tolerates sexism within the workplace.
Speaker 1: She had already gone through internal system ms numerous times
Speaker 1: in order to address this, so tweeting this out was
Speaker 1: kind of like, you know, the fact that she wasn't
Speaker 1: seeing progress being made within the company. And when you
Speaker 1: see a company essentially sideline someone after they come forward with,
Speaker 1: you know, these these issues, that's really one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why more women don't come forward because they've they've
Speaker 1: been intimidated. They've seen time and time again that the
Speaker 1: people who speak out end up getting sidelined. Gil Vic
Speaker 1: tweeted quote so following raising concerns to hashtag Apple about
Speaker 1: hashtag sexism, hashtag hostile work environment, and hashtag unsafe work conditions.
Speaker 1: I'm now on indefinite paid administrative leave per hashtag Apple
Speaker 1: employee relations while they investigate my concerns. This seems to
Speaker 1: include me not using Apple's internal back end quote. Giovic
Speaker 1: also said that the company offered to provide her medical
Speaker 1: leave rather than address the underlying issues, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like saying, hey, I know Pete in accounting keeps
Speaker 1: stabbing you, but we've got these band aids so you
Speaker 1: can patch yourself up every time it happens, rather than,
Speaker 1: you know, going to arrest Pete from accounting. Apple is,
Speaker 1: of course, just one of dozens of companies currently being
Speaker 1: called to reckon with its culture, and once again, it
Speaker 1: it's stories like these that feed into that feeling that
Speaker 1: human resources isn't there to protect the humans who work
Speaker 1: for the company, but rather to protect the company. Let
Speaker 1: us now segue over to a moment i'd like to
Speaker 1: call we live in the future, which can sometimes be
Speaker 1: on inspiring and sometimes terrifying. We'll start with something terrifying.
Speaker 1: Apparently the Pentagon is making use of an AI application
Speaker 1: to analyze real time information in an effort to predict
Speaker 1: what the enemy will do next, with the Pentagon claiming
Speaker 1: that the AI can let them see quote days in
Speaker 1: advance end quote. As a result, makes me think of
Speaker 1: the precogs in Minority Report, except instead of being put
Speaker 1: to use in law enforcement to predict crime, they are
Speaker 1: being put in military use to predict what the enemy
Speaker 1: is going to do in any given situation. And it
Speaker 1: also makes me think of Grand Admiral Thrown in the
Speaker 1: Star Wars Extended Universe. He could look at a culture's
Speaker 1: work of art and figure out what that culture how
Speaker 1: they would react, you know, to any given situation, which
Speaker 1: is pretty far fetched. But using AI to analyze what's
Speaker 1: going on within a specific region and then make a
Speaker 1: strategic decision seems like it's a little bit less fantastical, right.
Speaker 1: I Mean, you could argue that this is just an
Speaker 1: extremely much more complicated version of a war game, like
Speaker 1: a simulated war game. The AI is part of the
Speaker 1: Global Information Dominance Experiment or g I d E. And boy,
Speaker 1: that name is kind of scary. Obviously. The goal is
Speaker 1: to predict what an enemy might do in order so
Speaker 1: that we could prepare against that very move, potentially protecting
Speaker 1: the lives of soldiers and civilians in the process and
Speaker 1: maximizing the effectiveness of an armed presence in any given region.
Speaker 1: We might dissuade someone from doing something. For example, if
Speaker 1: the analysis says, hey, based upon historical data, such and
Speaker 1: such country is likely to launch a submarine from this
Speaker 1: port in the next two days, if you build up
Speaker 1: a show of force around that area, then you might
Speaker 1: dissuade them from doing that. That kind of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: the Pentagon points out that this is work that people
Speaker 1: have actually been doing for years by analyzing data in
Speaker 1: search of patterns and trying to make predictions. But obviously
Speaker 1: it took a long time in the past, so we
Speaker 1: are now in an era where we can collect and
Speaker 1: more importantly, analyze mountains of information rapidly, so we can
Speaker 1: find those patterns much more quickly and then act on
Speaker 1: that information. Of course, this requires a very careful design
Speaker 1: of the algorithm, and it's always possible for an algorithm
Speaker 1: to mistake noise for a meaningful pattern. But that's why
Speaker 1: this initiative is in a testing phase, and it concerns
Speaker 1: some critics of artificial intelligence in use with, you know,
Speaker 1: military applications, because they see it as a potential starting
Speaker 1: point for a slippery slope in which AI ends up
Speaker 1: not just pointing out possible enemy decisions as a result
Speaker 1: of what's going on in the world, but then going
Speaker 1: on to potentially making life or death decisions of its own,
Speaker 1: and then potentially even getting to the point where it
Speaker 1: enacts those decisions without human oversight, because obviously human oversight
Speaker 1: slows things down. So if you have really powerful AI
Speaker 1: making all the decisions, and you have at least assumed
Speaker 1: that the AI is infallible, you rely on the AI.
Speaker 1: We're always off from that sort of dystopian future, but
Speaker 1: being wary of that eventuality is probably not a bad idea.
Speaker 1: So while you could argue that it's premature to worry
Speaker 1: about that kind of stuff, the counter to that is, well,
Speaker 1: if we don't bring it, bring it up now, we
Speaker 1: could see this evolved slowly enough where it happens before
Speaker 1: we were even aware of it. I've got a couple
Speaker 1: more stories to tell, but before we get to that,
Speaker 1: let's take another break. Okay, it is time, my friends,
Speaker 1: and by time, I mean it's time to talk about
Speaker 1: time crystals, which full disclosure, I did not even know
Speaker 1: we're a thing before this morning. Apparently, time crystals are
Speaker 1: a phase of matter, kind of like you know how
Speaker 1: gas is a phase of matter, solids, liquids, plasmas, and
Speaker 1: that the most likely context we would observe such a
Speaker 1: thing as a time crystal is on the quantum level,
Speaker 1: so you know, they're they're they're very small, like smaller
Speaker 1: than Natman small. Some Google scientists have written a paper
Speaker 1: that still has to go through the pure review process,
Speaker 1: so we can't just assume that they got everything right.
Speaker 1: But that paper claims that they have found a way
Speaker 1: to use quantum computers to study time crystals, which is
Speaker 1: pretty much the most science fiction sentence I think I
Speaker 1: could say today. But let's break this down a bit,
Speaker 1: because that's just words salad, right unless we understand what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. Quantum computers are very complicated machines that
Speaker 1: only somewhat resemble classic computers, and they are very delicate
Speaker 1: as well. They have this tendency toward decoherence, which means
Speaker 1: that your quantum computer kind of breaks down and becomes
Speaker 1: a very low powered classical computer as a result. So
Speaker 1: with a traditional computer, we talk about information in terms
Speaker 1: of the basic unit of a bit or a binary digit,
Speaker 1: which can either be a zero or a one. Quantum
Speaker 1: computers are different. They have a cubit as the basic
Speaker 1: unit of information, and a cubit or a quantum bit
Speaker 1: can kind of sort of be both a zero and
Speaker 1: a one at the same time, and every value in between. Technically,
Speaker 1: this is a thing called superposition. Uh. There's also the
Speaker 1: issue of entanglement, but we're not going to get into
Speaker 1: all that. That would require a full episode by itself.
Speaker 1: But the important thing with quantum computers is that with
Speaker 1: the proper design of algorithms, that is, processes that are
Speaker 1: specifically engineered to take advantage of these quantum properties, computer
Speaker 1: scientists could use these quantum computers to solve particularly difficult problems. Now,
Speaker 1: a quantum computer would not be much good for your
Speaker 1: classic computer processes, so in other words, you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: these as a gaming rig so you can play Overwatch
Speaker 1: on it or something, but quantum computers would be really
Speaker 1: good at tackling certain subsets of computational problems that would
Speaker 1: tie up a classical computer for thousands of years or more.
Speaker 1: So that's quantum computers from a very very high level. Alright,
Speaker 1: what about time crystals. Well, here we got to talk
Speaker 1: about entropy. So you can kind of think of entropy
Speaker 1: as the natural tendency for stuff in the universe to
Speaker 1: kind of fall apart or more accurately, to go from
Speaker 1: more ordered two more disordered. So let's say you've got
Speaker 1: a big room and you've subdivided this big room with
Speaker 1: a removable panel, like it completely bisects the room in half,
Speaker 1: and the panel has like heavy thermal insulation, and you
Speaker 1: make one side of that room really hot, and you
Speaker 1: make the other side of the room that's on the
Speaker 1: opposite end of this panel, like on the opposite side
Speaker 1: of the panel, you make that side really cold. So
Speaker 1: you've got effectively two rooms here, right, You've got one
Speaker 1: that's really hot, one is really cold. Then you remove
Speaker 1: the panel. Well what happens, But we would actually see
Speaker 1: these temperatures mix, right, we would see these the molecules
Speaker 1: from the cold side and the molecules from the hot
Speaker 1: side would intermingle, and eventually the room would reach an
Speaker 1: equilibrium temperature, so you would not have one side of
Speaker 1: the room just stay hot and the other side just
Speaker 1: stay cold. In other words, that those ordered systems would
Speaker 1: break down and you would have this entropy take effect
Speaker 1: unless the room itself was a time crystal. In that case,
Speaker 1: a time crystal can get stuck in two different high
Speaker 1: energy configurations. So in our example, we would say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: that means hot and cold in this case, and then
Speaker 1: a time crystal would switch back and forth, never actually
Speaker 1: moving towards equilibrium. So we would have a room that
Speaker 1: at times would be very hot and that other times
Speaker 1: would be very cold, or would have hot and cold
Speaker 1: on specific sides and then hot and cold on opposite sides.
Speaker 1: Now I can't pretend to really understand this because it
Speaker 1: flies in the face of the second law of thermodynamics.
Speaker 1: But apparently it's a thing, and Google says it can
Speaker 1: use its quantum computing systems to study time crystals. Further,
Speaker 1: as it stands, there's no real application for time crystals
Speaker 1: that anyone has proposed, but it wouldn't mean learning more
Speaker 1: about how our universe works and whether there really is
Speaker 1: a big exception to an otherwise extremely well established rule,
Speaker 1: that being the second law of the thermodynamics, which again
Speaker 1: blows my mind. Finally something that doesn't blow my mind
Speaker 1: nearly as much but still is really cool. Sony introduced
Speaker 1: a new VR technology for the PS five to developers
Speaker 1: this week. It's kind of a pitch to developers to say,
Speaker 1: we've got this hardware coming out, we want you to
Speaker 1: make stuff for it. The headsets will have oh LED
Speaker 1: screens with two thousand by twenty forty resolution per eye,
Speaker 1: which is pretty darn incredible. They will also have a
Speaker 1: degree field of view, which is an improvement over the
Speaker 1: current ps VR system that's on the market. These systems
Speaker 1: might also support HDR that's high dynamic range. That is
Speaker 1: a technology that can enable more vibrant colors to be
Speaker 1: displayed through greater dynamics between those colors and brightness or luminosity.
Speaker 1: The headset is said to also have some haptic feedback
Speaker 1: built in, That is, systems that provide a tactile or
Speaker 1: touch based feedback system. So for example, you might feel
Speaker 1: a slight vibration through the headset as you use a
Speaker 1: controller to move around a virtual environment. The idea being
Speaker 1: that you're kind of tricking your brain into thinking you're
Speaker 1: actually walking around this virtual space while you are, in
Speaker 1: reality physically standing still inside your living room, for example,
Speaker 1: and hopefully this would cut down on the motion sickness
Speaker 1: than some folks like me experience when they are using
Speaker 1: VR sets. There's also talk of technology that will detect
Speaker 1: where a user is looking while they are wearing the headset,
Speaker 1: which can be useful because developers could build beefier VR
Speaker 1: experiences and really lean on this, because anything you're looking
Speaker 1: at directly would need to be distinct and in high resolution,
Speaker 1: so that's where it would need to really look good.
Speaker 1: But the stuff at the periphery of your vision could
Speaker 1: be a bit more hazy and you wouldn't notice because
Speaker 1: that's not the way humans focus, right, And that could
Speaker 1: cut down on the work that the PlayStation five would
Speaker 1: have to do in order to provide whatever this experience is.
Speaker 1: That really just means that developers can have a bit
Speaker 1: more elbow room to really push the hardware to its limit.
Speaker 1: And Sony is reaching out to some big Triple A
Speaker 1: studios essentially saying, hey, why don't you know, make something
Speaker 1: really cool for this? So we've seen time and again
Speaker 1: that you know, hardware can be really exciting, but unless
Speaker 1: there's a strong software library to go with that hardware,
Speaker 1: it doesn't tend to have very much staying power. Tends
Speaker 1: to fade into obscurity. And VR has always had an
Speaker 1: issue when it comes to building out a really diverse,
Speaker 1: compelling library of experiences. And of course there's a pretty
Speaker 1: good reason for that. VR tends to be pretty expensive,
Speaker 1: and my guest this new headset is going to be
Speaker 1: no different. I'm guessing it's going to be a pretty
Speaker 1: expensive piece of equipment. And when something is expensive, that means,
Speaker 1: by nature, fewer people can afford to buy the product,
Speaker 1: which means that developers are looking at a smaller pool
Speaker 1: of potential customers. And that means that whatever return they're
Speaker 1: going to get from selling something that runs on that
Speaker 1: platform is going to be relatively smaller than it would
Speaker 1: be for, you know, a more widely adopted platform. So
Speaker 1: if you're a game studio, you might have yourself saying,
Speaker 1: so do we pour a hundred million bucks into developing
Speaker 1: this game that is going to target ten of the
Speaker 1: PS five owners? That's the number I'm just kind of
Speaker 1: pulling out the air. By the way, or do we
Speaker 1: instead pour million bucks developing a more traditional style console
Speaker 1: game and target all of the PS five owners. And
Speaker 1: you can see how this situation becomes a vicious cycle, right,
Speaker 1: Some folks will resist buying into VR because they see
Speaker 1: there's a lack of content, and then developers are reluctant
Speaker 1: to make content because there's a lack of VR owners
Speaker 1: out there. But maybe this will be the device to
Speaker 1: really break that open for Sony. Rumor is that the
Speaker 1: hardware will get a reveal sometime early next year, so
Speaker 1: we won't have to wait too long to learn more.
Speaker 1: And that's it. That's all the news that I have
Speaker 1: for you guys today, Thursday, August five, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: I hope you are all well. I'm on the mend myself,
Speaker 1: so each day is going to get better. That's my hope. Anyway,
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for topics I should cover in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me.
Speaker 1: The best way to do that is on Twitter. The
Speaker 1: handle for the show is text Stuff h s W
Speaker 1: and I'll talk to you again really soon, y. Text
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