Welcome to the November 1, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• U.S. Announces $825M Investment in Albany Semiconductor Center
• Colorado Accidentally Put Voting System Passwords Online
• EU to Invest $1.5 Billion in Region's Deep Tech Sector
• Python Overtakes JavaScript
• U.S. Census Data Could Be More Accurate with Better Noise
• Whale Tracking Using Autonomous Robots
• Australia Looks to Mining Waste for Chip Materials
• Laser Archeology Finds Lost Maya Cities Under Forests
• AI Helps Driverless Cars Predict Movements of Unseen Objects
• Rural Missouri Town Fights Big Tech
• Police Operation Claims Takedown of Prolific Password Stealers
• Interactive Mouthpiece Opens New Opportunities
• Smart Charger Paves Way for More EVs

U.S. Announces $825M Investment in Albany Semiconductor Center

The U.S. Commerce Department on Thursday announced an $825-million investment for a semiconductor center in Albany, NY. The facility will house extreme ultraviolet accelerator technology, as well as the research and development that supports it. Said Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo (pictured), "We are building a resilient ecosystem that will power everything from smartphones to advanced AI, safeguarding U.S. national security and keeping America competitive for decades to come."
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Colorado Accidentally Put Voting System Passwords Online

Election officials in Colorado disclosed on Oct. 29 that a spreadsheet with a hidden tab containing voting system passwords was mistakenly made available on the Colorado Secretary of State's website for several months before being discovered and removed. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said the matter does not pose a security threat, and there is no evidence of a security breach.
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EU to Invest $1.5 Billion in Region's Deep Tech Sector

EU officials announced that €1.4 billion ($1.5 billion) from the European Innovation Council will be invested in the region's deep tech research sector next year, up almost €200 million from this year. The move comes as Europe works to keep pace with the U.S. and China in the tech sector and as officials focus on tech and AI to bolster the region's economy.
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Python Overtakes JavaScript

GitHub's Octoverse 2024 report revealed that Python is the most popular programming language on the code-sharing platform, overtaking JavaScript. GitHub also reported greater interest in AI agents and smaller models that use less computational power. According to the report, close to 1 billion contributions to open source and public repositories across the platform were made by developers worldwide this year.
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U.S. Census Data Could Be More Accurate with Better Noise

A team led by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania developed a method the U.S. Census Bureau could use to make U.S. Census data more accurate without compromising citizens' privacy. The U.S. Census Bureau implemented a "disclosure avoidance" algorithm for the 2020 Census that added statistical noise to each published statistic to maintain citizens' privacy. To eliminate resulting distortions in the data, the researchers identified a method of improving the noise without having to redesign the algorithm. A Census Bureau spokesperson said the agency will examine the research as part of its “ongoing disclosure avoidance research.”
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Whale Tracking Using Autonomous Robots

Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) and Harvard University researchers developed a reinforcement learning framework that predicts where sperm whales will surface using autonomous aerial drones with very high frequency signal sensing capabilities. The AVATARS (Autonomous Vehicles for whAle Tracking And Rendezvous by remote Sensing) framework uses signal phase and a drone's motion to create an "antenna array in air" capable of estimating the directionality of pings from CETI's on-whale tags.
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Australia Looks to Mining Waste for Chip Materials

Researchers in Australia are working on methods to extract gallium and germanium, materials essential for semiconductor manufacturing, from waste produced by existing mining operations. Australian alumina refiner Rio Tinto, for instance, is working with researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology to extract gallium and germanium from copper refining waste.
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Laser Archeology Finds Lost Maya Cities Under Forests

Researchers have discovered ancient Mayan structures and a previously unknown city using LiDAR to image the rainforests of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. The newly discovered sites reveal a combination of rural farming villages, regional market towns, and a large city with pyramids. Researcher Luke Auld-Thomas said the use of LiDAR "allows us to map large areas very quickly, and at really high precision and levels of detail."
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AI Helps Driverless Cars Predict Movements of Unseen Objects

An algorithm developed by researchers at California cognitive computing firm VERSES AI and Volvo Cars helps autonomous vehicle systems anticipate and predict the trajectories of other vehicles, pedestrians, and cyclists hidden from direct view. The algorithm uses occlusion reasoning to reduce complex, rapidly changing scenarios to a simpler set of movements that could be made by potential hidden objects. When approaching locations where hidden objects are likely, the algorithm could alter the autonomous vehicle's speed or direction and its driving behavior could be updated should sensors confirm hidden objects are present.
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Rural Missouri Town Fights Big Tech

Residents of Peculiar, MO, fought against a proposed datacenter and won. Executives from Diode Ventures sought to rezone 500 acres for industrial use, with plans to build a datacenter campus for an unknown tech client, promising new jobs and more than $1 billion in tax revenue. Residents became increasingly concerned about Diode's unwillingness to name its client, its push for nondisclosure agreements, and internal documents showing the datacenter would create only 100 mainly high-level technician jobs.
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Police Operation Claims Takedown of Prolific Password Stealers

A coalition of international law enforcement agencies led by the Dutch National Police has gained full access to the servers utilized by the Redline and Meta infostealer malware strains as part of Operation Magnus. Such malware has been used to steal passwords, credit card data, search histories, cryptocurrency wallets, and other sensitive data from millions of individuals. The coalition said the infostealers' usernames, passwords, IP addresses, timestamps, registration dates, source code, and Telegram bots were accessed by authorities and that "legal actions are underway."
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Interactive Mouthpiece Opens New Opportunities

A dental brace developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Denmark's Aarhus University can be equipped with sensors, actuators, and other feedback components to collect health data and enable interactions with various devices. MouthIO could be used to track teeth grinding or bacteria in saliva, among other things, or allow motor-impaired individuals to control devices using their tongues.
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Smart Charger Paves Way for More EVs

A smart-charging system for electric vehicles developed by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers is designed to spread out charging over time to avoid overloading the grid. The researchers created algorithms that enable gradual charging and reduce the maximum power draw of a home during the charging process. The algorithms consider consumer preferences and the state of the grid when determining when charging will occur.
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