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Welcome to the July 11, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.
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The European Commission on Thursday published a code of practice to help companies follow its landmark AI Act that includes copyright protections for creators and transparency requirements for advanced models. The code will require developers to provide up-to-date documentation describing their AI’s features to regulators and third parties looking to integrate it in their own products. Companies also will be banned from training AI on pirated materials and must respect requests from writers and artists to keep copyrighted work out of datasets.
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Bloomberg; Gian Volpicelli (July 10, 2025)
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 Tiobe's language popularity index for July confirms a trend seen over the past two years, according to Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen, in that long-established languages continue to exceed the popularity of rising stars like Rust, Kotlin, and Julia. Jansen said the index has not seen much change among leading languages such as Python, C#, and Java over the past two years, while there is more movement among older languages such as Visual Basic, SQL, Fortran, Ada, Perl, and Delphi.
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InfoWorld; Paul Krill (July 10, 2025)
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With little publicity, Australia at the end of June introduced rules forcing companies such as Google and Microsoft to verify the ages of logged-in users, in an effort to limit children's access to harmful content. Starting December 27, the two tech companies will have to use some form of age-assurance technology on users when they sign in, or face fines of almost A$50 million (about US$33 million) per breach.
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Australian Broadcasting Corporation; Ange Lavoipierre (July 10, 2025)
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TikTok is preparing to launch a standalone app for U.S. users that operates on a separate algorithm and data system from its global app, according to insiders. The initiative, known internally as “M2", lays the groundwork for a potential sale as Chinese parent company ByteDance faces continued political pressure to divest its U.S. business. The new U.S.-only app is designed to function independently like Douyin, the version of TikTok available exclusively in mainland China.
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Reuters; Krystal Hu (July 9, 2025)
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Researchers at Chicago’s Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham found that Fitbits can help predict a child’s risk of postoperative complications following an appendectomy. The researchers developed a machine learning algorithm that uses health data collected by Fitbits to calculate a child's normal biorhythms and retroactively predict postoperative complications.
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Gizmodo; Ed Cara (July 9, 2025)
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers developed a chip that takes advantage of 5G standards to improve Internet of Things (IoT) efficiency while reducing interference. Based on 5G reduced capacity, the chip enables IoT receivers to work flexibly across a range of frequencies. The chip features a mini bank of capacitors that can turn off and on based on the needs of the frequency range, and successfully filters out 30 times more interference than conventional IoT receivers while using single-digit milliwatts of power.
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IEEE Spectrum; Margo Anderson (July 9, 2025)
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New York University Tandon School of Engineering researchers found users of Adblock Plus' "Acceptable Ads" tool saw 13.6% more ads considered problematic than users without ad blocking software. The researchers used OpenAi's GPT-4o-mini model to categorize more than 1,200 ads in the U.S. and Germany, with seven categories for "problematic" ads. The study found close to 10% of ads shown to minors violated regulations intended to protect them from such ads.
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NYU Tandon School of Engineering (July 9, 2025)
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Microsoft on Wednesday said it will distribute more than $4 billion in cash and technology services to schools, community colleges, technical colleges, and nonprofits for AI education. Additionally, the company is rolling out the Microsoft Elevate Academy, tasked with helping 20 million people obtain AI certificates by "delivering AI education and skilling at scale."
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The New York Times; Natasha Singer (July 9, 2025)
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Researchers from Johns Hopkins, Stanford, and Columbia universities demonstrated the use of an AI-trained surgical robot to perform surgery by having it remove pig gall bladders without assistance from human surgeons. The robots performed the procedure in slightly more than five minutes, autonomously correcting course an average of six times per operation. The researchers said the robots made less jerky movements than human surgeons, covered shorter trajectories between tasks, and adapted to variations in anatomy.
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The Guardian (U.K.); Robert Booth (July 9, 2025)
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A new record for transmon qubit coherence time has been achieved by researchers at Finland's Aalto University (AU) using high-quality transmon qubits built in cleanroom facilities using superconducting materials from VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. The researchers' echo coherence time of 1 millisecond exceeded the previous record of about 0.6 milliseconds. Said AU's Mikko Möttönen, “This landmark achievement has strengthened Finland’s standing as a global leader in the field."
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Interesting Engineering; Christopher McFadden (July 8, 2025)
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The University of Washington (UW) Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) said more than 100 engineers from its latest graduating class of 650 students have been hired by Amazon. Microsoft, Meta, and Google each hired more than 20 recent CSE graduates from the university, emphasizing its ties to Seattle's tech industry.
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GeekWire; Taylor Soper (July 8, 2025)
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_logo.svg.png) ACM's new open access AI Letters (AILET) journal will feature peer-reviewed contributions to AI research that accelerate knowledge dissemination across academia and industry. The journal will prioritize theoretical breakthroughs, algorithmic innovation, practical real-world applications, and critical societal implications. It will also offer a venue for rigorously reviewed opinion pieces and policy briefs. Said Dame Wendy Hall, co-chair of the ACM Publications Board, "With AILET, we’re filling a need for a letters-style venue—one that accommodates rapid peer-review, late-breaking results, policy briefs, AI action plans, and highlights."
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ACM Media Center (July 9, 2025)
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A consortium of 15 leading European media organizations has rolled out ChatEurope, a chatbot trained on news articles from verified and trusted sources with the goal of combating online disinformation by providing responses that are bias-free and factually correct. Developed by Romania's DRUID AI, ChatEurope uses a large language model from France's Mistral and is hosted on infrastructure from French open-source software provider XWiki.
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Computing (U.K.); Penny Horwood (July 9, 2025)
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