The worst technology of 2022

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Published

5 months ago

January 1, 2023

mansbrand

We’re back with our latest list of the worst technologies of the year. Think of these as anti-breakthroughs, the sort of mishaps, misuses, miscues, and bad ideas that lead to technology failure. This year’s disastrous accomplishments range from deadly pharmaceutical chemistry to a large language model that was jeered off the internet.

One theme that emerges from our disaster list is how badly policy—the rules, processes, institutions, and ideals that govern technology’s use—can let us down. In China, a pervasive system of pandemic controls known as “zero covid” came to an abrupt and unexpected end. On Twitter, Elon Musk intentionally destroyed the site’s governing policies, replacing them with a puckish and arbitrary mix of free speech, personal vendettas, and appeals to the right wing of US politics. In the US, policy failures were evident in the highest levels of overdose deaths ever recorded, many of them due to a 60-year-old chemical compound: fentanyl.

The impact of these technologies could be measured in the number of people affected. More than a billion people in China are now being exposed to the virus for the first time; 335 million on Twitter are watching Musk’s antics; and fentanyl killed 70,000 in the US. In each of these messes, there are important lessons about why technology fails. Read on.

The FTX meltdown

Night falls on made-up money

Imagine a world in which you can make up new kinds of money and other people will pay you, well, real money to get some. Let’s call what they’re buying cryptocurrency tokens. But because there are so many types of tokens, and they’re hard to buy and sell, imagine that an entrepreneur creates a private stock market to trade them. Let’s call that a “cryptocurrency exchange.” Because the tokens have no intrinsic value and other exchanges have gone belly-up, you’d make sure yours was ultra-safe and well regulated.

That was the concept behind FTX Trading, a crypto exchange started by Sam Bankman-Fried, a twentysomething who touted sophisticated technology, like a 24/7 “automated risk engine” that would check every 30 seconds to see if depositors had enough real money to cover their crypto gambles. Technology would assure “complete transparency.”

Behind the façade, though, FTX was seemingly just old-fashioned embezzlement. According to US investigators, Bankman-Fried took customers’ money and used it to buy fancy houses, make political donations, and amass huge stakes in illiquid crypto tokens. It all came crashing down in November. John Ray, appointed to oversee the bankrupt company, said that FTX’s technology “was not sophisticated at all.” Neither was the purported fraud: “This is just taking money from customers and using it for your own purpose.”

Bankman-Fried, an MIT graduate whose parents are both Stanford University law professors, was arrested in the Bahamas in December and faces multiple counts of conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering.

To learn more about cryptocurrency promoters, we recommendif Wolf of Wall Street were about crypto, a satirical video by Joma Tech.

From medicine to murder

How fentanyl became a killer

Back in 1953, the Belgian doctor and chemist Paul Janssen set about creating the strongest painkiller he could. He believed he could improve on morphine, designing a molecule that was 100 times more potent but with a short duration. His discovery, the synthetic opioid fentanyl, would become the painkiller most widely used during surgery.

Today, fentanyl is setting grim records—it’s involved in the accidental death of around 70,000 people a year in the US, or about two-thirds of all fatal drug overdoses. It’s the leading cause of death in American adults under 50, killing more than car accidents, guns, and covid together.

Fentanyl kills by stopping your breathing. Its potency is what makes it deadly. Two

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By: Antonio Regalado
Title: The worst technology of 2022
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/21/1065625/worst-technology-2022/
Published Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2022 12:00:00 +0000

Motor

Cool Whip: HB-Custom’s crisp Suzuki DR650 scrambler

Published

8 hours ago

May 28, 2023

mansbrand

If we had to use one word to describe the bikes that roll out of Holger Breuer’s workshop, it would be ‘crisp.’ Whether he’s building a bobber or a scrambler, the man behind HB-Custom has an eye for perfect proportions and liveries that pop. Even when he’s working with a tired old Suzuki dual-sport as a donor, Holger manages to make magic.

This 1994 Suzuki DR650 came to the HB-Custom workshop in Husum, Germany, all the way from Berlin. Holger’s client actually booked two bikes in at once; an old BMW boxer to turn into a bobber for solo rides, and the Suzuki, which was destined for around-town duties and the occasional two-up jaunt.

The bike arrived as a rolling chassis with a very loose brief, so Holger envisioned a svelte scrambler for whipping through Berlin’s city streets. He’s built a number of handsome custom Honda Dominators, and figured that he could apply the same formula to the Suzuki DR650. And he was right.

But first, the Suzuki’s well-worn motor needed attention. Holger tore it down and rebuilt it, complete with new seals and gaskets and a fresh coat of paint. This engine might be almost three decades old, but it’s clean enough to eat off of.

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By: Wesley Reyneke
Title: Cool Whip: HB-Custom’s crisp Suzuki DR650 scrambler
Sourced From: www.bikeexif.com/suzuki-dr650-scrambler
Published Date: Wed, 24 May 2023 17:01:22 +0000

EDM

LISTEN: Planet Zuzy Drops Debut Single “Higher”

Published

9 hours ago

May 28, 2023

mansbrand

A multi-talented music producer, DJ, creative director, and entrepreneur hailing from Poland, Planet Zuzy is a jack-of-all-trades. After releasing a slew of earworm remixes, Planet Zuzy makes her debut with “Higher.”

An ode to her global upbringing and love for euro dance music, “Higher” is the amalgamation of Planet Zuzy’s life experiences and inspirations. The single draws its authority straight from the dance floor, with a nuanced approach to classic club sound. Effortlessly combining trance-y romps with a mainstage pop-like edge, “Higher” is designed for dancing.

“My debut single ‘Higher’ is inspired by one of my most cherished memories of dance music,” said Planet Zuzy. “As an 11-year-old, I received a Numark Mixtrack controller from my parents, and despite being unfamiliar with its purpose, I spent countless hours learning, exploring, and immersing myself in the world of dance music. It was during one of these sessions that I stumbled upon Avicii’s ‘Levels’ shortly after its release. Attempting to describe the emotions I experienced while listening to this song for the first time would do them little justice, but ‘Higher’ comes very close. The elation, freedom, and rapture that I felt in that moment continue to fuel my passion for creating dance music.”

Planet Zuzy stands out in any room she walks into. Her suave, energetic, and hip personality radiates from behind the decks. With her hyper-energetic sounds, she is someone to keep an eye out for. Watch this space.

Stream “Higher” wherever you find your music here, or below on Spotify.

‘LISTEN: Planet Zuzy Drops Debut Single “Higher”

The post LISTEN: Planet Zuzy Drops Debut Single “Higher” appeared first on Run The Trap: The Best EDM, Hip Hop & Trap Music.

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By: Hunter Thompson
Title: LISTEN: Planet Zuzy Drops Debut Single “Higher”
Sourced From: runthetrap.com/2023/05/22/listen-planet-zuzy-drops-debut-single-higher/
Published Date: Mon, 22 May 2023 14:40:04 +0000

Tech

High-quality data enables medical research

Published

9 hours ago

May 28, 2023

mansbrand

One unexpected side effect of the covid-19 pandemic was that the usually obscure world of health data was brought to national attention. Who was most at risk for infection? Who was most likely to die? Was one treatment better than another? Was getting covid-19 more or less dangerous than getting a vaccine?

These complex questions, usually the province of medical research, became concrete seemingly overnight. While amateur epidemiologists scoured the internet for statistics to support their personal beliefs, professionals often appeared on the nightly news, even if just to say, “We don’t have good enough data.”

While our focus on the pandemic has now subsided, our health data quality problems remain. We’re swimming in health data—by some estimates, one-third of all data generated in the world is related to health and health care, and that amount increases more than 30% every year.

With all that data, then, why can’t we answer our most pressing heath questions? Which of the five top diabetes drugs (if any) will be best for me? Will back surgery be more effective than physical therapy for my spine? What are the chances that I will need chemotherapy in addition to radiation to make my tumor go away?

EHRs have become ubiquitous

Electronic health records (EHRs) have become pervasive in the U.S., largely thanks to a multi-billion-dollar federal initiative that made interoperable EHRs a national goal. The 2009 HITECH Act provided incentives for healthcare providers who computerized and penalties for those who did not. In addition to the improved patient care this would enable, the millions of digitized health records would create opportunities to transform medical research.

“Prior to EHRs, clinical research was all on paper,” says Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer at Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO), a healthcare data enablement company that offers clinical terminology and tooling to improve the quality of medical data. “You would transfer that paper-based data to spreadsheets and do your own data analysis in a very small local environment. It didn’t give a broader view of a patient’s life, and it certainly didn’t enable any kind of broader population analysis.”

Theoretically, EHRs should make it possible to aggregate, analyze, and search through information collected from millions of patients to discover patterns that aren’t evident on a smaller scale—as well as to track a single patient’s health status methodically over time. Imagine being able to quickly compare and analyze the cases of the few thousand people who have a particular rare condition or to follow users of a certain drug over a set period of time to observe long-term side effects that weren’t obvious in trials.

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By: MIT Technology Review Insights
Title: High-quality data enables medical research
Sourced From: www.technologyreview.com/2023/04/06/1070902/high-quality-data-enables-medical-research/
Published Date: Thu, 06 Apr 2023 17:14:39 +0000

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