LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor • Hacker News Board

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#251

Post by marcosdumay » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:54 PM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #115

TehCorwiz wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a fraud was perpetrated and the scammer got away. The markets are supposed to ignore that? Money was taken out of the market by a bad actor. If anything this encourages quick fraud over slow honesty.

Markets don’t ignore it, they learn from it. They don’t need you or any authority to protect them. Edit: Understand that the scammer has to buy, then release the false information, and then sell. They only “scam” the buyers that don’t critically assess this new information, such as it’s provenance and quality. This means that over time only the best analysts survive and thrive. Smart speculators likely sold the spike…

> they learn from it

And the lesson is that betting markets are a scam.

But then you get people criticizing the ones telling you that lesson. Is it because newborn fools must be preserved until people can take their money?

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#252

Post by macintux » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #143

mellosouls wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets reaction from comments across HN? I find HN one of the most balanced online forums on most subjects. What are good examples of their “disbenefits”? The race to the bottom is all around us.

> The race to the bottom is all around us. You live in SF by chance? Because globally and historically that’s absolutely not what the data says about markets.

The “bottom” is also subjective. I see small-town grocery stores everywhere in Indiana dying due to cheap Dollar General stores popping up next to them.

So much for fresh fruit & vegetables, so much for the Amish bakeries that would distribute baked goods through the local groceries.

But hey, cheaply-made goods from China are more widely available.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#253

Post by 7373737373 » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:00 PM UTC

andersa wrote: post #163

heliophobicdude wrote: post #159

I've been live following this thread: https://twitter.com/iris_igb/status/1685731177523449856

This thread is super frustrating. The person posting it does not at all seem interested in actually demonstrating the effect works... how can you have such a sample and only post this one image which could easily be created by gluing a pebble to the glass? Where's the video of it in action! I want this material to be real so badly.

Agreed, if they are unwilling or unable to demonstrate it well, why even bother, why waste viewer's time and attention?

A bad/unconvincing/incomplete demonstration is indistinguishable from a scam

If they want to show and distribute the capital-T Truth, they need to take their ego out of the equation

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#254

Post by alchemist1e9 » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:01 PM UTC

RedCondor wrote: post #195

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. So this is about “the right” to take a vacation? What are you talking about and what am I? we seem to live in different realities. I can’t even imagine somehow I would have a government “right” to take a vacation. Who is paying for it? I don’t get it.

All so-called "capital returns" are in reality produced by working people, and therefore people get to democratically decide what they do with them, through whatever decision-making forms they politically choose and consent to organize themselves under. Insofar as there are disagreements, because capitalist "geniuses" don't think their riches should be subject to democracy, we have a struggle between socialism and ca…

Except history shows us that in 100% of the cases that working people seize the production and allocate the gains they do a unbelievable bad job. Socialism is the single most failed idea in human history, yet we refuse to properly teach that in our education system. I suspect in the future it will be view a bit like refusing to teach other scientific subjects, like evolution.

In reality a mob of people end up producing nothing without capitalists and markets. There is a joke that the IQ of a mob is roughly the highest IQ in the mob divided by the size of the mob.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#255

Post by dmitrybrant » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

asimpletune wrote: post #177

So, Russian anime cat girl seems to have cooked a sample and demonstrated some of the claimed properties, although she's explicit that it shouldn't be considered a "replication". https://twitter.com/iris_IGB/status/1685731177523449856

The "demonstration" is a photo of a single crumb of material inside a transparent pipette. It's claimed that the crumb is "levitating" inside the pipette, but what's stopping a random internet anon from gluing a crumb onto a pipette and taking a picture of it?

I don't know about you, but if I had just succeeded in replicating a literally history-making experiment, I would perhaps take a video of it, and demonstrate how the crumb actually behaves without the support of the pipette.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#256

Post by alchemist1e9 » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #243

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely government’s fundamental role in human society is regulating against harm. But somehow the narrative is markets are “bad”, they obviously aren’t as they seek out information and efficiency, which is a good thing. Markets are the one’s you should thank for telling you child labor, slaves, and sweatshops are a problem, and the environment issue, so you pressured your government to regulate those issues. With…

> But somehow the narrative is markets are “bad” The mainstream opinion is "markets are ok as long as they are well regulated". The only narrative that is trying to compete with that with any success is "markets are perfect without any regulation". Which provokes the rebuttal you refer to. I've yet to see anybody claiming seriously that "markets are inherently bad and can't be saved". Even in communism there were mar…

We likely actually agree.

The issue is politicians tend to push redistribution and direct action of the government over rules and regulations.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#257

Post by kakwa_ » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:05 PM UTC

alchemist1e9 wrote: post #103

mellosouls wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is always a subtle anti-markets theme on many HN debates, likely from highly educated ans literate posters. I believe we still in this age simply don’t provide proper education on the massive benefits that markets bring to so mang problems I think we are all too aware of markets and their benefits and disbenefits. It's not clear why you think the "education" is missing only in one direction.

You don’t observe a frequent knee jerk like anti-markets reaction from comments across HN? What are good examples of their “disbenefits”?

Vast topic.

Markets definitely have their issues.

Here are a few:

* The most obvious one is the fact it's an overhead, it doesn't produce goods or services by itself. That's not a major issue, but for example in the US ~5% (~7M of ~150M) of the workforce is dedicated to this overhead.

* It's prone to internal instabilities. Too often, the markets disconnect from the underlying economic reality, sometimes with only mild effects (for example, that time petroleum prices went negative), sometimes with more serious ones (2008).

* It can lead to overly quantitative views, ignoring the qualitative. It's the "metrics becoming the objective and thus compromising the value of the metric" (example: tech stock prices).

* It over-emphasizes individual interests over the collective one (think for example: environmental issues & global warming).

Markets definitely have their issues. But so far, the other systems we experimented with (planned economy) were even less able to cope with the incredibly difficult task of balancing an economy.

Lastly, it is to be noted that we are not operating in a pure market economy.

We are in an hybrid system where States (hopefully representing their people) definitely have a lot of say in economic matters and that's probably for the better.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#258

Post by qingcharles » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

TrailMixRaisin wrote: post #150

beowulfey wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few things: * the paper wasn’t ready, and internal drama is what led to it being released * I’ve read that the process of making it is quite difficult. There probably are not many samples out there in the world Basically, it wasn’t ready for primetime, but I believe it’s close

The topic on how hard or easy it is to replicate seems to be as fast changing as other information. The first time I read about it, it was deemed to be super easy as all you needed are the two base materials and a vacuum furnace. But with all the drama involved I would not be surprised if the process is actually very complicated.

The paper is vague unfortunately. Here are some of the questions Andrew McCalip has (and he is fairly far along the path of actually making LK99):

Precursors:

•What level of purity is required for the precursor materials?

•Are there any necessary preparatory steps for the precursors just before use?

•What are the required particle sizes for the precursor materials?

Thermal steps:

•What is the environment (air or vacuum) for the Lanarkite reaction?

•What are the temperature ramp-up and ramp-down rates for all three reactions?

•Are there any thermal annealing steps involved?

•How sensitive is LK99 to the duration of the final 925°C step?

Results:

•Could you elaborate on the observed differences between the bulk material and the thin film?

•Does the bulk material share the same composition as the thin film?

•How repeatable is the prescribed recipe, is SC behavior stochastic across samples?

•Could you provide details on the equipment used, setup photos, and procedures employed to measure the critical current in response to an applied magnetic field, as seen in figure 8 of paper 3?

Thin film deposition:

•What type of glass substrate was used in the vapor deposition process for the thin film?

•Could the exact set-point temperatures of the tungsten boat be provided, instead of ranges? (e.g., 550 ℃ to 900 ℃, 900℃ to 2000 ℃)

•In patent figure 22, from which region was the resistivity value taken? The light gray or the dark gray area?

https://twitter.com/andrewmccalip/status/1685891722675687424

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#259

Post by twoodfin » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #197

twoodfin wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hedge is still a signal of the degree of risk you ascribe to the possibility your technology won’t work.

If I invest in technology (hoping it will work) but use the prediction market to hedge in case the technology won't work, how does that tell anyone watching the prediction market that people have net positive feelings about the technology?

If you were 100% confident you wouldn’t hedge at all. If you’re 80% confident you’d hedge less than if you were only 60% confident.

This all translates into an price signal if the market is functioning and liquid.

Re: LK-99: The live online race for a room-temperature superconductor

#260

Post by Hakkin » Mon, Jul 31, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

ChemSpider wrote: post #192

I am surprised that anyone still thinks this thing is legit. I mean, I wish it was true, but the publication, the approach and the infights in the team do not instill confidence. To me, it seems they can not recreate the "effect" themselves. Otherwise they would be shipping their samples around the world by now.

I'm not necessarily saying I believe it's real, I'm still on the fence, but if anything, the in-fighting for credit from the researchers almost makes it more credible for me. Why would they be so desperate for credit if they knew their findings would be disproven in a week or two? It seems obvious they're vying for a Nobel Prize. So at the very least, I believe the researchers believe what they published is true.