Welcome to the February 7, 2022, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.

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Inside the Cheyenne supercomputer, which runs climate models for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Climate Scientists Encounter Limits of Computer Models
The Wall Street Journal
Robert Lee Hotz
February 6, 2022


State-of-the-art computer models simulating climate change grapple with the complexity of climate change physics, the limitations of scientific computing, and the challenge of keeping up with rising greenhouse gas levels. Simulating clouds is one of the biggest challenges for scientists refining climate models, and new models factor in clouds' physics in greater detail; doing so, however, may have introduced errors that could reduce accuracy, according to a 2021 analysis by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists. NCAR officials said a finer model of climate systems would take 1,000 times more computer power than the Cheyenne supercomputer at NCAR's Mesa Laboratory in Boulder, CO, can provide. Researchers now face pressure to produce reliable local forecasts of future climate changes so policymakers can protect heavily populated areas from extreme weather events.

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Meta to Bring in Mandatory Distances Between VR Avatars
The Guardian (U.K.)
Dan Milmo
February 4, 2022


Meta, formerly known as Facebook, will impose mandatory distances between users' digital avatars following warnings that the so-called metaverse will fuel a new surge of online harassment. In December, a user testing Meta's Horizon Worlds virtual reality (VR) application said they were groped online, and demanded a protective bubble around their avatar. Meta has subsequently announced the introduction of default virtual four-feet-long personal boundaries in its VR apps Horizon Worlds and Horizon Venues. "If someone tries to enter your personal boundary, the system will halt their forward movement as they reach the boundary," the company said, adding, "We think this will help to set behavioral norms—and that's important for a relatively new medium like VR."

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Student-Built Robot Rover on Track to Explore the Moon
BBC News
Paul Rincon
February 2, 2022


Iris, a tiny wheeled robot built by students at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), is expected to become the first uncrewed rover from the U.S. to explore the Moon. The robot, slated for a mid-2022 launch, will travel aboard Astrobotic's Peregrine lunar lander. Said CMU’s William "Red" Whittaker, the rover "is so highly specialized and integrated, the degree of difficulty and the challenges that had to be overcome were incredible." Once on the moon, Iris will be driven by commands sent from operators on Earth, and will send back images of the terrain via onboard cameras to help plan driving routes. Whittaker also helped to build the MoonRanger, which will be launched in 2023 on a Masten Systems lander. Unlike the student-built rover, MoonRanger will drive autonomously on the Moon’s surface, traveling beyond the lander's radio communications range.

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Demystifying ML Systems
MIT News
Adam Zewe
January 27, 2022


Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a system that aims to understand the inner workings of black box neural networks by automatically producing descriptions of the individual "neurons" that process data in natural language. The descriptions were found to be more accurate and specific than those provided by other methods. The researchers used the MILAN (mutual-information guided linguistic annotation of neurons) system to determine the most important neurons in a neural network. MILAN also was used to audit models to determine whether they learned something unexpected in their results, and to edit neural networks by removing neurons that detect bad correlations in the data. Said MIT's Sarah Schwettmann, "We want to tap into the expressive power of human language to generate descriptions that are a lot more natural and rich for what neurons do."

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A 2018 Tesla Model S sedan outside a showroom in Littleton, CO. Tesla Will Recall More Than 50,000 Vehicles Over Software's 'Rolling-Stop' Feature
The Washington Post
Aaron Gregg; Faiz Siddiqui
February 1, 2022


A U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration advisory says electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla will recall 53,822 cars amid concerns that its driver-assistance software can allow users to roll past stop signs without fully stopping. The function only applies when the car is approaching an intersection at less than 5.6 mph (9 kph) and no other vehicles are detected nearby. Tesla programmed the driver-assistance systems with various driving personalities, and rolling stops were a feature of their assertive mode. Rolling stops are unlawful in many jurisdictions. The company says it will recall the ‘Rolling Stop’ feature in its Full Self-Driving software, and the software will be updated so “a ‘Rolling Stop’ will no longer be possible.”

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Programming Languages: Python Dominates, but Developers Are Adding Skills to Stand Out
ZDNet
Liam Tung
February 1, 2022


O'Reilly Media's 2021 learning platform analysis indicates that interest in the programming language C++ is on the rise, driven by the Internet of Things and game development. Meanwhile, developer interest in cybersecurity has increased in the wake of high-profile ransomware attacks. O'Reilly's learning platform has seen a 270% increase in content usage on ransomware over the past year. The report found that programming languages Python and Java continue to dominate platform usage, while content development in Go and Rust rose 23% and 31%, respectively, over the past year. Said O'Reilly's Mike Loukides, "Whatever your specialty or your primary language, fluency with next-generation languages like Go and Rust gives you added value." Interest also appeared to be on the rise regarding container software (up 137%), machine learning (35%), neural networks (13%), reinforcement learning (37%), and adversarial networks (51%), among other content areas.

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Algorithm Amplifies Trustworthy News Content on Social Media Without Shielding Bias
University of South Florida Newsroom
February 3, 2022


Researchers at the University of South Florida (USF), Indiana University (IU), and Dartmouth College have developed a method for amplifying trustworthy news on social media. The researchers analyzed content amplified on newsfeeds by recommendation algorithms, targeting a source's reliability score and the political variegation of their audience. They devised an algorithm using data on Web traffic and the self-reported partisanship of 6,890 persons who reflect the sexual, racial, and political diversity of the U.S., and reviewed the reliability scores of 3,765 news sources based on the NewGuard Reliability Index. They found that adding a news audience's partisan diversity to the algorithm can boost the reliability of recommended sources while still supplying relevant recommendations, irrespective of partisanship. IU's Filippo Menczer said, "This is especially welcome news for social media platforms, especially since they have been reluctant of introducing changes to their algorithms for fear of criticism about partisan bias."

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The IBM logo at the SIBOS banking and financial conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. IBM Partners with Quebec in Quantum Computing Push
Reuters
Allison Lampert
February 3, 2022


IBM's Anthony Annunziata said the company has partnered with the Canadian province of Quebec to boost quantum computing by deploying its IBM Quantum System One in Canada. He said the system should be available at IBM's facility in Bromont by early next year, with the goal of combining quantum computing with cloud technologies, high-performance computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) to meet broader challenges like the environment. Annunziata said innovation in battery technology has been very slow and, "If we bring AI and quantum into the picture, that can start to change and we can actually start to understand what's happening at the heart of batteries and understand new materials and new processes to build much better ones."

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An exterior view of the Michigan Central train depot in Detroit. Google to Work with Ford on Detroit Research Hub
ABC News
Corey Williams; Mike Householder
February 4, 2022


Google will work with automaker Ford Motor to convert a defunct Detroit train station into a research center focused on electric and self-driving vehicles, as part of Detroit’s Michigan Central Innovation District. Google will open a laboratory on the 30-acre site to teach high school students computer science, and will support a certification program. Ford Motor's Mary Culler said, "Ford would, obviously, accept those people that have that kind of certification in our future state,” even if they lack a college degree. Google's Ruth Porat said the company aims to equip people with digital skills and coaching in order to succeed. "Michigan is front and center in tackling big issues of the day," she said. "We think this is the right time and the right place to really create this kind of digital skills effort."

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A variety of computer chips. Tiny Chips, Big Headaches
The New York Times
John Markoff
February 7, 2022


With transistors in computer chips shrinking in size, concern is growing about larger and more intricate cloud computing networks' fundamental dependence on less reliable and less predictable chips. Recent studies by Facebook and Google researchers described outages with difficult-to-diagnose causes, arguing that underlying hardware was to blame. Stanford University's Subhasish Mitra said people increasingly think manufacturing defects correspond with silent hardware errors, while scientists worry they are finding rare defects because they are attempting to meet bigger computing challenges, leading to unexpected system stressors. The smallest error in a microprocessor hosting billions of transistors can disrupt systems that routinely execute billions of calculations each second, and mounting evidence suggests the problem is getting generationally worse. Proposed remedies include software that proactively monitors for hardware errors.

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Food-Tracking AI System to Reduce Malnutrition in LTC Homes
University of Waterloo News (Canada)
January 31, 2022


Researchers at Canada's University of Waterloo, the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging, and the University Health Network have developed a smart system that uses artificial intelligence to track food consumption by residents of long-term care (LTC) communities. The system analyzes photos of plates of food to estimate how much of each kind of food was eaten and calculate its nutritional value. Waterloo's Kaylen Pfisterer said, "Right now, there is no way to tell whether a resident ate only their protein or only their carbohydrates. Our system is linked to recipes at the long-term care home and, using artificial intelligence, keeps track of how much of each food was eaten to make sure residents are meeting their specific nutrient requirements." The researchers found the smart system to be accurate to within 5%, compared to error rates of 50% or more associated with manual consumption estimates recorded by staff.

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A Much Sharper Picture of the Universe with Algorithms, Supercomputers
Leiden University (The Netherlands)
January 31, 2022


Leiden University researchers in the Netherlands used new algorithms and supercomputers to produce a more detailed map of the cosmos, which Leiden's Frits Sweijen said "has almost as many pixels as previous maps of the entire sky had." The map is based on radio waves captured from space with the International LOFAR (Low Frequency Array) Telescope, and the team used algorithms from the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy to correct ultraviolet radiation's blurring effect in the atmosphere. The Academic Leiden Interdisciplinary Cluster Environment supercomputer and the SURF Cooperative's Spider platform in Amsterdam completed the process in just seven days. As a result, "We can now study the evolution of black holes and the galaxies in which they are found in greater detail than before," Sweijen said.

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