Welcome to the April 2, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• BCI Helps Stroke Survivor Speak Again
• Assisted Driving Tech Under Scrutiny After Fatal Car Crash in China
• France Fines Apple 150 Million Euros over Privacy Feature
• Social Security Website Crashes as Agency Pushes Users Online
• TSMC Affirms Commitment to Taiwan with New Domestic Fab
• Powering CubeSats Using Deep Learning
• Colleges Face Renewed U.S. Bid to Scrutinize China, Russia Funding
• Efforts to Weed Out Fake Users for Online Advertisers Fall Short
• European Commission Announces €1.3-Billion Allocation for Strategic Technologies
• Are Robot Umps Coming to MLB?
• Wearable Simulates Sense of Touch
• Hundreds of AI Datacenters Go Unused in China

BCI Helps Stroke Survivor Speak Again

University of California (UC), Berkeley researchers developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) equipped with an AI model that translates neural activity into sound in real time. The implant was placed on the speech center of the brain in a 47-year-old woman with quadriplegia who was unable to speak for 18 years due to a stroke. Electrodes recorded her brain activity as she thought about speech, with spoken sentences produced using a synthesizer created with her pre-injury voice.
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Assisted Driving Tech Under Scrutiny After Fatal Car Crash in China

An SU7 sedan produced by Xiaomi drove into a concrete guardrail on an expressway in eastern China on Saturday, killing three people. Xiaomi said the car’s Navigate On Autopilot assisted-driving feature was active when the car, traveling at about 70 m.p.h. (113 k.p.h.), reached a roadblock at a portion of the road that was under repair. China has aggressively promoted assisted driving and driverless technologies.
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France Fines Apple 150 Million Euros over Privacy Feature

The French Competition Authority on Monday fined Apple 150 million euros ($162 million) over privacy features of its app tracking software that require apps to obtain user consent through a pop-up window before tracking their activity across other apps and websites. The regulator said the way Apple implemented its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) software was "neither necessary nor proportionate to the company's stated goal to protect user data;" it also penalized third-party publishers.
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Social Security Website Crashes as Agency Pushes Users Online

The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) said the root cause of a "full outage" of the MySSA portal on March 31 remains under investigation. The outage was the latest in a series of recent crashes, which have occurred as the agency encourages people to use online and in-person services. An SSA spokesperson said some users had trouble signing into their online accounts, adding that the website remained operational during the recent incidents.
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TSMC Affirms Commitment to Taiwan with New Domestic Fab

TSMC said on March 31 its new fab in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, signals its ongoing expansion plans on the island with the addition of 7,000 tech jobs. This comes after TSMC announced plans to invest $100 billion in the U.S. TSMC's Y.P. Chyn said the new fab will commence volume production of 2 nanometer wafers in the second half of 2025. Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai said the chip-maker’s “most important foundations will remain in Taiwan,” adding, “TSMC will always be our national team.”
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Powering CubeSats Using Deep Learning

Researchers led by Abdulazez Abagero at the Ethiopian Space Science and Geospatial Institute developed a Deep Feedforward Neural Network (DFFNN) to optimize CubeSat power consumption. Connected to a standard proportional-integral controller, the DFFNN was found to outperform all other Maximum Power Point Tracking control algorithms, which are intended to get the most power out of the system in any given environment. The DFFNN, which has a 97% efficiency rate based on simulations, uses linear tangents and Neville Interpretation to simplify CubeSat trajectory calculations.
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Colleges Face Renewed U.S. Bid to Scrutinize China, Russia Funding

U.S. lawmakers are renewing efforts to investigate foreign funding at U.S. colleges, warning of the risk that some countries use academic partnerships to access sensitive research on AI and other advanced technologies. Legislation passed last week by the House with bipartisan support would lower the threshold for disclosing foreign donations and contracts. It would also require colleges to report any amount of money coming from countries considered national security threats, including China and Russia.
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Efforts to Weed Out Fake Users for Online Advertisers Fall Short

An Adalytics report found that DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, and Human Security, the top three companies paid by advertisers to detect and filter out bots, frequently missed nonhuman traffic over the past seven years, even in instances when bots self-identified themselves. The report revealed tens of millions of instances during this period when ads for major brands were displayed to bots on thousands of websites.
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European Commission Announces €1.3-Billion Allocation for Strategic Technologies

The European Commission said €1.3 billion (US$1.4 billion) will be distributed over the next three years to support the development of AI, cybersecurity, cloud services, and other strategic digital technologies. Priorities include integrating generative AI in business and public sectors, developing European digital innovation hubs, creating a reserve of reliable cybersecurity service providers, funding digital skills education, and improving the Destination Earth digital model for climate change and natural disaster preparedness.
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Are Robot Umps Coming to MLB?

Although Major League Baseball (MLB) tested Hawk-Eye's Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) challenge system during some 2025 spring training games, the "robot umpire" technology will not be deployed for regular season games. The ABS system lets the batter, pitcher, or catcher challenge an umpire's call. This results in an image with the pitch location and challenge result being shown in the stadium and on television in real time.
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Wearable Simulates Sense of Touch

A lightweight wearable device developed by researchers at Northwestern University simulates the sense of touch in virtual applications through several different kinds of actuators that reside at varying depths in the skin. By combining the newly developed actuators with freedom of motion, Bluetooth connectivity, an accelerometer, and a battery, the device wirelessly simulates a range of sensations, including vibrations, stretching, pressure, sliding, and twisting.
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Hundreds of AI Datacenters Go Unused in China

The datacenter construction boom driven by the Chinese government and private investors has slowed, with local outlets reporting that up to 80% of newly built computing resources remain unused. This comes as the rush to develop large language models is losing steam, smaller tech firms are abandoning the pre-training of their AI models amid DeepSeek's successes, and the industry is shifting toward improved GPUs.
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