Welcome to the May 21, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Japan Enacts Cyberdefense Law
• France, Spain, Greece Want Social Media Age Limits
• Trump Order Targets Barcodes on Ballots
• Austin’s Reign as Tech Hub Might Be Coming to an End
• Nvidia Sets Up Shop in Taiwan
• Miami Schools Lead Students into the AI Future
• Prototype Computer Uses Noise to Its Advantage
• U.K. Weather Forecast More Accurate with Supercomputer
• Coming to a Brain Near You: A Tiny Computer
• Cardiac Digital Twins Offer Insights into the Heart
• Leading Alien Hunters Depend on AI to Speed Their Search
• Japan, Netherlands Win as China's Chip Tool Imports Surge
• Seven-Eleven Testing Delivery Robots in Japan

Japan Enacts Cyberdefense Law

Japan's Parliament passed a bill last week to allow the government to take proactive steps to prevent serious cyberattacks. Under the new law, the government will analyze communications between foreign countries via Japan, and between Japan and other countries during peacetime. If there is a sign of a cyberattack, police and Japan’s Self-Defense Forces will take steps to neutralize threats.
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France, Spain, Greece Want Social Media Age Limits

Digital services ministers in France, Spain, and Greece are working on a proposal calling for mandatory age restrictions for social media users. Under the proposal, any device able to access the Internet would be required to incorporate age verification technology. Additionally, the proposal would require "age-appropriate design" restrictions on pop-ups, personalized content, auto-play videos, and other features deemed "addictive and persuasive."
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Trump Order Targets Barcodes on Ballots

An executive order signed by U.S. President Donald Trump states that voting equipment should not use ballots that include barcodes or QR codes. Although election officials say such equipment is secure and routinely tested for accuracy, University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman testified in a Georgia case that attackers could tamper with the QR codes to change votes or install malware. The order, which is being challenged in court, exempts voting equipment used by voters with disabilities.
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Austin’s Reign as Tech Hub Might Be Coming to an End

Regional tech hubs across the U.S. are losing talent as workers return to the coasts, with Austin being one of the hardest hit. A report from venture capital firm SignalFire found Big Tech employment fell 1.6% last year in Austin, and startup employment there fell 4.9%. Tech employment also declined last year in Dallas, Houston, Denver, and Toronto, while in New York and San Francisco, tech employment increased.
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Nvidia Sets Up Shop in Taiwan

At this year's Computex in Taipei, Nvidia said two AI supercomputers, an "AI factory," and a local complex that will serve as its overseas headquarters will be built in Taiwan. The AI factory, developed in partnership with Foxconn (which will provide its AI infrastructure), will be used by semiconductor giant TSMC when finished and will include 10,000 Blackwell GPUs.
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Miami Schools Lead Students into the AI Future

Miami-Dade County Public Schools, which two years ago blocked AI chatbots over fears of mass cheating and misinformation is leading a national experiment to integrate generative AI technologies into teaching and learning. Over the last year, the district has trained more than 1,000 educators on new AI tools and is now introducing Google chatbots for more than 105,000 students in high school.
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Prototype Computer Uses Noise to Its Advantage

A prototype thermodynamic computer developed by researchers at New York startup Normal Computing harnesses noise to invert matrices. Researchers also used it to demonstrate Gaussian sampling, which underlies some AI applications. The system's prototype stochastic processing unit features eight capacitor-inductor resonators connected by tunable couplers and initialized with randomly generated noise. After a problem is programmed into the couplings and the system reaches equilibrium, a solution can be obtained by reading out the resonator units.
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U.K. Weather Forecast More Accurate with Supercomputer

The U.K. Met Office (formerly the Meteorological Office) is using a new supercomputer that allows the weather agency to issue detailed forecasts up to 14 days in advance, as well as more-accurate rainfall predictions. Operated by Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, the supercomputer can perform 60 quadrillion calculations per second. The supercomputing service is split across two datacenters in south England and is powered entirely by renewable energy.
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Coming to a Brain Near You: A Tiny Computer

The number of people with a brain-computer interface (BCI) is set to double from less than 100 to date over the next year, if the four companies with new experimental-use approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration meet their goals in clinical trials. However, said University of Pennsylvania neurosurgeon Iahn Cajigas, “There is a vision that this is going to be a mass-consumer thing, which is a vision that you can sell. As a clinician, I find that kind of a dangerous way to talk."
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Cardiac Digital Twins Offer Insights into the Heart

Cardiac "digital twins" developed by researchers at the U.K.'s King's College London, Imperial College London, and The Alan Turing Institute were used to investigate the impact of age, sex, and lifestyle factors on heart disease and cardiac electrical function. The researchers used real patient data and electrocardiogram readings from the U.K. Biobank and a cohort of patients with heart disease to develop more than 3,800 anatomically accurate digital hearts.
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Leading Alien Hunters Depend on AI to Speed Their Search

Researchers at the Harvard & Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are developing a detector to identify extraterrestrial technologies as part of the Galileo Project. The researchers, studying unidentified anomalous phenomena, have deployed open-source computer vision programs with the goal of building a database of real and computer-generated images of all known airborne objects. They use AI to process the huge amounts of data being collected in real time from multiple sources.
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Japan, Netherlands Win as China's Chip Tool Imports Surge

China bought a record amount of foreign chipmaking equipment last year as part of its efforts to expand domestic chip production. Of the $30.9 billion in foreign chipmaking equipment imported by China last year, Japan accounted for $9.63 billion, up 28.23% year over year, and the Netherlands accounted for $9.53 billion, up 31.6%, according to an analysis of Chinese customs data. Imports from the U.S. grew 11.5% last year to $3.18 billion.
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Seven-Eleven Testing Delivery Robots in Japan

Seven-Eleven Japan began a trial delivery service using robots on public roads in Tokyo suburb Hachioji on Monday. Two of the chain’s convenience stores have each been equipped with two robots that carry items ordered through the 7NOW delivery service app. The four-wheeled robots are designed to run on sidewalks, obey traffic signals, and avoid obstacles.
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