Transcript

[00:00:01.130] Announcer: Welcome to Tech News of the week with your hosts, Bruce Springsteen and the E street band.

[00:00:08.850] Ned: Welcome to Tiki. Torch Thursday. Luau. News break. Nope, still ain’t got it.

[00:00:15.250] Chris: Not expecting that.

[00:00:17.970] Ned: I’m Ned, and with me is Chris. And what’s that smell? It’s tech news garbage, of course. Let’s dig in. Chris, go ahead.

[00:00:27.690] Chris: Local DevOps event happening soon ish. And if you’re so inclined, there’s still time to apply to ah, the magic of the local tech scene event. Now, as we have talked about before, big conferences are increasingly filled with marketing nonsense and stale bagels and also body odor. I say this on the eve of the annual Defcon Black Hat Conference weekend in Vegas, where upwards of 30,000 security aficionados will be in small rooms looking at each other suspiciously. Now, as we’ve discussed, giant conferences are not totally worthless, but it’s definitely a different vibe. Local events are much more intimate and centered around the local tech scene, making networking opportunities much more valuable. Plus local events usually cheaper. One event, called DevOps Days is coming up in the Philadelphia area in Philadelphia on October 2. And third, DevOps Days is making its triumphant return from a COVID caused hiatus. Now, even though this particular event that I’m talking about is local to Philly, versions of DevOps days happen all over the world. So check their upcoming events calendar to find one that’s closest to you. Oh, and if you’re a speaker interested in DevOps and being on stage for these types of things, applications for sessions are being accepted for a few more days.

[00:02:06.570] Chris: Now, they close on August twelveTH. No minute like the last minute. Now get out there and iterate I said iterate wrong.

[00:02:16.970] Ned: It’s okay. We’ll fix it in post. We won’t fix it in post. The SEC Demands Faster Breach Disclosure Cybersecurity attacks are on the rise, as clearly demonstrated by the main article in this week’s Chaos Lever. The SEC wants public companies to be more me in disclosure of breaches that have a material effect on their bottom line. By requiring disclosure of the incident within four business days of its discovery, you note that’s slightly shorter than the one month it took Microsoft. The SEC is primarily worried about investors. That is sort of their Baileywick. But this rule could also assist with standardizing how and when disclosures are made and alert other companies to be on the watch for similar incidents. Naturally, companies are complaining that the timeline is too short, that it’s outside of the SEC’s purview, and that it might aid cybercriminals looking for ripe targets. I say maybe you should spend more time securing your crap and less time complaining.

[00:03:25.250] Chris: I’m actually frankly shocked that so far Elon Musk hasn’t come out and said this infringes on his First Amendment rights.

[00:03:32.790] Ned: I am scared to check Twitter to see if he has.

[00:03:38.550] Chris: Zoom entering the generative AI game while also entering the appropriate your content to train their generative AI game it’s a twofer. My, oh, my. Did Zoom have a rough Monday? First, they released a return to the office mandate, which is just the very definition of irony. No, I mean, it’s cool. I checked with Alanis. I totally nailed this one. Zoom, the company that made their fortune and reputation on enabling remote work, is requiring its employees to come back to the office for a minimum of two days per week or leave. Wow. So apparently this was inspired by the CEO seeing an intern who stayed late one day.

[00:04:31.590] Ned: Nobody’s going to like that intern.

[00:04:35.130] Chris: Damn it, Derek. You had one job and you stayed there late? He probably fell asleep at his desk. Who are we kidding? Anyway? That mandate pissed off their workforce. I don’t know if you’re on blind, but it’s quite entertaining over there right now.

[00:04:52.560] Ned: Not, but I’m about to be.

[00:04:56.270] Chris: Zoom decided that wasn’t enough and decided to double down and piss off their customers as well. This actually happened a while ago, but it took us until now to notice that Zoom silently updated their terms of service to basically say, zoom reserves the right to use customer data to train AI, effective July 27, with no opt out. You use the service, we use your shit.

[00:05:24.480] Ned: Yes.

[00:05:25.930] Chris: This was so outrageous and evoked such a critical storm that Zoom had to release new terms this week that now basically, okay, we won’t use your data to train AI without your consent, but if you use the generative AI features, we’re counting that as consent. These people, they do know that doctors and lawyers use Zoom, right? Or maybe I should put that in the past tense.

[00:05:59.490] Ned: I would recommend Microsoft Teams, but that whole episode before this one.

[00:06:11.250] Chris: Not use customer data.

[00:06:14.210] Ned: Yeah, I mean, you might be hacked, but at least your data is no, it’s not safe. Moving on.

[00:06:21.580] Chris: Yeah, you really landed that plane into a lake.

[00:06:27.750] Ned: First. Room temperature superconductor seems suspect. On July 22, a team of researchers from the Quantum Energy Research Center and Ku Kist Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology, which is, I swear, not a made up thing, published a paper claiming they had created a room temperature stable superconductor. The material, called LK 99, was created from lead, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorus, and copper, mixed and heated to 925 degrees Celsius in a vacuum chamber. The researchers claim that the resulting material has near zero resistivity at room temperature.

[00:07:10.880] Chris: You are making up so much stuff in this article.

[00:07:13.770] Ned: Superconductors are immensely useful and so far have only been created by applying extremely high pressure or incredible cold. Like, we’re talking zero kelvin cold. The paper has produced a flurry of activity in the scientific community, with some scrambling to try and reproduce the team’s results, while others remain incredibly skeptical about the team’s claims. The paper’s results actually only show the Messener effect, which is indicative of superconductivity, but it’s not a direct proof. Additionally, the team may have forged some of their credentials, and the paper is not peer reviewed. Still, I’m pulling for a positive result. We could all use some good news on the science front, since everything else seems to be a complete disaster.

[00:08:07.110] Chris: Everything’s on fire, and it’s still somehow absolute zero.