Welcome to the April 3, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• U.S. Public, Private Sectors Hold Joint Cyber Drill
• Tech Lets People Play Games with Their Thoughts
• Daniel C. Lynch, Founder of Interop, Dies at 82
• U.S., U.K. Partner to Test AI Model Safety
• Spider Conversations Decoded with Machine Learning
• Inner Mongolia Launches Ancient Books Database Platform
• Software Engineer Stops Attempt to Add Backdoor to Linux Operating Systems
• Hundreds of Terabits Sent Long-Distance Underwater
• Universities Preparing for Quantum Computing
• Will Liquid Circuits Enable Brain-Imitating Computers?
• Google Pledges to Destroy Browsing Data to Settle ‘Incognito’ Lawsuit
• Whole-Brain Big Data Processing Enables VR via Optogenetic Control

U.S. Public, Private Sectors Hold Joint Cyber Drill

During last week's Tri-Sector Cyber Defense Exercise, companies from the U.S. telecommunications, financial services, and power sectors engaged in a joint cybersecurity exercise with government agencies. Security staff from AT&T, Lumen Technologies, Southern Co., Mastercard, and Southern California Edison were divided into offensive and defensive teams and engaged in digital battle, while the U.S. departments of Energy and the Treasury, other federal agencies, and company executives engaged in a tabletop exercise to test the companies' incident-response processes.
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Tech Lets People Play Games with Their Thoughts

University of Texas at Austin engineers developed a brain-computer interface with machine learning capabilities that can be self-calibrated through repetition. The one-size-fits-all device could be used by multiple patients without undergoing the traditionally lengthy calibration process. In tests, users wearing the device were able to control a car racing game, and to balance the left and right sides of a digital bar, using their thoughts.
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Daniel C. Lynch, Founder of Interop, Dies at 82

Computer network engineer Daniel C. Lynch, known for founding the Interop exhibitions on networking equipment and helping to commercialize the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s, passed away on March 30 at age 82. "He was essentially helping get the word out every way he could that the Internet was not just a flash in the pan or just a research experiment, that it was a real thing, worthy of attention and investment," said ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Vinton G. Cerf, a past ACM president and chief Internet evangelist at Google.
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U.S., U.K. Partner to Test AI Model Safety

Under an agreement signed by U.K. Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Michelle Donelan (pictured, right) and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo (pictured, left), the nations will partner to safety test AI models. The U.K. and U.S. AI Safety Institutes will formulate an AI safety testing approach that uses the same methods and underlying infrastructure, exchange employees and information, and undertake a joint testing exercise on a publicly available AI model.
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Spider Conversations Decoded with Machine Learning

Using an array of contact microphones with sound-processing machine learning, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Ph.D. student Noori Choi captured the vibratory movements of wolf spiders across sections of forest floor. In all, he collected 39,000 hours of data, including over 17,000 series of vibrations, and designed a machine learning program capable of filtering out unwanted sounds while isolating the vibrations generated by three specific wolf spider species.
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Inner Mongolia Launches Ancient Books Database Platform

Researchers at Inner Mongolia University (IMU) and the Inner Mongolia Academy of Social Sciences in northern China have launched a database platform containing digital versions of 11,291 volumes of ancient Mongolian books, 1.163 million images of ancient documents, and 240,000 items of knowledge graph triplets from ancient books. IMU's Fei Long said the use of advanced AI technologies allows the platform to automatically identify the contents of ancient books, followed by automatic proofreading, indexing, and classification.
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Software Engineer Stops Attempt to Add Backdoor to Linux Operating Systems

Microsoft software engineer Andres Freund last Friday uncovered a backdoor in XZ Utils, an open source set of data compression tools widely used across Linux and Unix-like operating systems (OS). Freund found a component within XZ Utils can inject unauthorized code into a Linux installation to spy on a user's computer and execute additional malicious code. In response, Linux OS providers Red Hat and Debian issued security advisories.
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Hundreds of Terabits Sent Long-Distance Underwater

A submarine cable tested by researchers at Japan's NEC and NTT transmitted hundreds of terabits over 7,280 km, potentially paving the way for faster Internet speeds under water. The cable contains a 12-core multicore fiber, featuring 12 optical signal transmission paths within a standard outer-diameter optical fiber. To eliminate interference due to the added cores, the researchers developed an algorithm that uses multiple-input multiple-output technology to separate and demodulate high-speed received signals.
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Universities Preparing for Quantum Computing

To help students become familiar with quantum computing, some universities are launching new education and research programs. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is offering a new certificate in quantum information science and technology for STEM majors, while the University of Maryland is working to integrate quantum knowledge into its curriculum. Additionally, South Dakota’s Dakota State University is partnering with other institutions in the state to establish the Center for Quantum Information Science and Technology.
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Will Liquid Circuits Enable Brain-Imitating Computers?

Researchers at Switzerland's École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) have developed a fluidic memristive device that mimics the brain's synapses by moving ions around. The device is made with a silicon chip, a silicon nitride membrane with a circular pore, layers of graphite and palladium, and a solution containing potassium ions. The researchers are the first to connect multiple fluidic memristors to form a circuit.
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Google Pledges to Destroy Browsing Data to Settle ‘Incognito’ Lawsuit

Google pledged to destroy data that reflects millions of users’ Web-browsing histories as part of a settlement of a lawsuit that accused the company of tracking people without their knowledge. The class action, filed in 2020, accused Google of misleading users about how Chrome tracked the activity of anyone who used the private “Incognito” browsing option. The settlement sets out the actions the company will take to change its practices around private browsing, including destroying billions of data points the lawsuit alleged it improperly collected.
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Whole-Brain Big Data Processing Enables VR via Optogenetic Control

A big data processing system developed by researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences can analyze large-scale, whole-brain neuron activity in real time, enabling closed-loop study of neural dynamics. The FX system, based on a field programmable gate array-graphics processing unit (FPGA-GPU) hybrid architecture, also allows for whole-brain, optical interface-mediated VR. It can achieve real-time registration, signal extraction, and analysis on data streams up to 500 MB/s, and can extract activity from upwards of 100,000 neurons.
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