Welcome to the February 5, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Beijing Unveils AI Child
• FIFA Refloats Idea of Using Algorithm to Set Player Transfer Fees
• Infrared Sensors Can Peer Around Corners
• Computer Model Traces Hidden Evolution of Sign Languages
• Electronics-Free Circuit to Propel Soft Robot Evolution
• Combining Real-World Sensors, VR to Improve Building Maintenance
• FBI Shuts Down China's 'Volt Typhoon' Hackers Targeting U.S. Infrastructure
• Super-Long-Range Wi-Fi Works at 1.8 Miles
• Fiber Optics Listening to Trains
• People More Likely to Trust Robots That Sound Like Them
• India Tells Tech Giants to Police Deepfakes
• Outlook Vulnerability Could Leak NTLM Passwords

Beijing Unveils AI Child

Tong Tong, billed as the world’s first virtual AI child, was unveiled at an exhibition held in Beijing in late January. Developed by the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI), Tong Tong, which means ‘Little Girl’ in English, displays behavior and capabilities similar to those of a three- or four-year-old child. Tong Tong can assign tasks to itself independently and display emotions and intellect. A BIGAI video explains, “Tong Tong possesses a mind and strives to understand the common sense taught by humans."
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FIFA Refloats Idea of Using Algorithm to Set Player Transfer Fees

FIFA President Gianni Infantino recently refloated the idea of using an algorithm to set football transfer fees, rather than clubs negotiating a market value price for contracted players. FIFA’s interest in a price-setting algorithm has come up occasionally since it set up a transfer task force in 2017, but no formal proposal has followed. FIFA spends millions of dollars each year helping fund a masters course and football research unit at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, which says it has been working on a transfer value algorithm since 2010.
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Infrared Sensors Can Peer Around Corners

A sensor developed by researchers at China's Tianjin University extends non-line-of-site imaging to infrared light. The researchers used superconductive nanowire single-photon detectors to achieve non-line-of-sight imaging at infrared wavelengths of 1,560 and 1,997 nanometers, with spatial resolution of about 1.3 to 1.5 centimeters. The algorithm to reconstruct non-line-of-sight images is based on multiple scattered light rays, as well as on a de-noising algorithm that achieved an eightfold reduction in the root mean square error of reconstructed images.
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Computer Model Traces Hidden Evolution of Sign Languages

A computational program developed by researchers at the University of Michigan could improve understanding of the development and evolution of sign languages (SLs). The researchers created a signed vocabulary glossary by amassing a video dictionary of core vocabulary across 19 modern SLs and separating the video demonstrations for the 19 signing variants for different words into their basic phonetic parameters. The program analyzed the glossary and categorized the entries based on handedness, handshape, location, and movement. The researchers also used phylogenetic analysis to trace the evolution of SLs.
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Electronics-Free Circuit to Propel Soft Robot Evolution

An air-powered soft valve circuit system developed by researchers at Germany's University of Freiburg can withstand crushing weights and chemical exposure, demonstrating how well soft robots without electronics can operate. The system, which is flexible and more durable than circuit devices with electronics, is made with 3D-printable pneumatic logic gates that can perform Boolean operations. The gates can function as OR, AND, or NOT gates, depending on the input signals.
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Combining Real-World Sensors, VR to Improve Building Maintenance

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego and Carnegie Mellon University developed a system that combines sensor technologies and VR to enhance building maintenance. The BRICK system features a handheld device with a suite of temperature, CO₂, and airflow sensors and a VR environment that links to a building's electronic control systems, as well as its sensor data and metadata. Building managers can investigate any issues on-site by creating a VR version of the space using their smartphone's LiDAR tool, then overlaying the sensor locations and the data gathered by the handheld device onto the mixed reality environment.
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FBI Shuts Down China's 'Volt Typhoon' Hackers Targeting U.S. Infrastructure

During a U.S. House committee hearing on Jan. 31, FBI Director Christopher Wray disclosed that his agency had shut down the China-backed hacking group known as "Volt Typhoon." The group had hacked hundreds of outdated home and office routers and was targeting U.S. water treatment plants, the power grid, oil and natural gas pipelines, and transportation systems, according to Wray. Microsoft in May had warned of Volt Typhoon’s hacking efforts, advising customers to change their security details.
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Super-Long-Range Wi-Fi Works at 1.8 Miles

Using the HaLow (802.11ah) standard, researchers at the wireless tech firm Morse Micro set a new record for Wi-Fi distance, receiving a signal from 1.8 miles (3 kilometers) away. At maximum range, the connection speed was 1 megabit per second, sufficient to maintain a video call. The test with Morse Micro's MM6108 Wi-Fi HaLow production silicon is notable for its ability to receive a signal at that range amid real-world wireless interference.
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Fiber Optics Listening to Trains

Researchers increasingly are using distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to track the vibrations of trains to identify sudden changes caused by cracked rails or snapped ties or gradual changes related to track alignment issues. Leveraging existing fiber optic cables buried along many railways, researchers typically use interrogator devices to shoot laser pulses down the cables and analyze the light that bounces back. Austria's Sensonic, which develops DAS technology for railroads, has trained AI on real railway data to recognize an event like a rockfall among all the noise, sending an alert to railway operators when necessary.
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People More Likely to Trust Robots That Sound Like Them

A study by researchers at Germany's University of Potsdam found that some people are more likely to deem robots trustworthy and competent when they speak with the same accent. The study involved an online survey of 120 people in the Berlin area, revealing that those more familiar with the Berlin dialect preferred robots to speak with that accent, although overall, respondents generally preferred robots that spoke standard German. Respondents gave lower ratings to robots using standard German when they were viewed on a phone or tablet, which could be associated with increased distractions and a higher cognitive load on smaller devices.
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India Tells Tech Giants to Police Deepfakes

As India prepares for a general election this year, a senior government official said that social media companies will be held accountable for AI-generated deepfakes posted on their platforms. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, India's minister of state for electronics and IT, said India has “woken up earlier” than other nations to the danger posed by deepfakes because of the size of its online population: as many as 870 million of its total population of 1.4 billion people are connected to the Internet, and 600 million use social media.
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Outlook Vulnerability Could Leak NTLM Passwords

Security researcher Dolev Taler at software company Varonis discovered a Microsoft Outlook vulnerability that could give hackers access to NT LAN Manager (NTLM) v2 hashed passwords when a specially crafted file is opened. While the flaw has been patched, Taler said Windows Performance Analyzer and Windows File Explorer, which could be used to leak NTLM hashes, have not been patched. Said Taler, "Usually, NTLM v2 should be used when attempting to authenticate against internal IP-address-based services. However, when the NTLM v2 hash is passing through the open Internet, it is vulnerable to relay and offline brute-force attacks."
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