Welcome to the February 8, 2023, edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.

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Customers using digital devices in New York City’s East Village neighborhood. Americans Flunked Test on Online Privacy
The New York Times
Natasha Singer; Jason Karaian
February 7, 2023


Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), the University of New Hampshire, and Northeastern University analyzing the results of a poll of more than 2,000 American adults found most could not pass a test about online privacy. Few respondents said they trusted how online services managed their personal data, while many seemed unaware of the limitations of federal safeguards for online data collection. The report adds to a growing body of research suggesting the notice-and-consent framework that has long served as the basis for online privacy regulation in the U.S. has become obsolete. “The big takeaway here is that consent is broken, totally broken,” said UPenn's Joseph Turow.

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NIST Selects 'Lightweight Cryptography' Algorithms to Protect Small Devices
NIST News
February 7, 2023


Security experts at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have chosen the Ascon family of cryptographic algorithms to be named as the agency's lightweight cryptography standard later this year. An international team of researchers devised the algorithms to shield information produced and transmitted by the Internet of Things (IoT). NIST's Kerry McKay said the programs should be suitable for most small devices. Some or all of the seven algorithms within the Ascon family may become part of NIST's lightweight cryptography standard. The tasks they perform include authenticated encryption with associated data and hashing, which McKay said are among the most critical in lightweight cryptography.

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Community leaders and invited guests signed the final top beam of the 11-story academic building on the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria, VA. Virginia Tech Raises Final Beam on Innovation Campus Building
The Washington Post
Susan Svrluga; Teo Armus
February 7, 2023


Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) has raised the final beam on its Innovation Campus building, slated in open in the fall of 2024 as part of a project by the school, industry, and civic leaders to make Northern Virginia a technology hub. The campus is the centerpiece of Virginia's $1-billion Tech Talent Investment Program to churn out an additional 25,000 computer science graduates from schools over the next 20 years. Virginia Tech's Lance Collins said the project aims to draw more women and underrepresented minorities via partnerships with K-12 schools and other programs.

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The FRIDA robotic arm uses a paintbrush taped to it and artificial intelligence to collaborate with humans on works of art. FRIDA Robot Collaborates with Humans to Create Art
Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science
Aaron Aupperlee
February 7, 2023


A robotic arm developed by computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) uses artificial intelligence (AI) to produce artwork in collaboration with humans. FRIDA (Framework and Robotics Initiative for Developing Arts) can paint pictures based on text descriptions, other works of art, or uploaded photographs. Said CMU's Peter Schaldenbrand, "FRIDA is a robotic painting system, but FRIDA is not an artist. FRIDA is not generating the ideas to communicate. FRIDA is a system that an artist could collaborate with. The artist can specify high-level goals for FRIDA and then FRIDA can execute them." FRIDA uses machine learning to develop a plan to produce a painting that meets the user's goal; while painting, it will evaluate its progress and alter that plan based on images of the painting taken by an overhead camera.

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Major corporations’ expansion to Washington, D.C. is a factor in the growing demand for software engineering talent there. Silicon Valley Layoffs Mean DC Is Hotter Tech Hiring Market
The Wall Street Journal
Lindsay Ellis; Kailyn Rhone
February 7, 2023


Layoffs by technology giants and startups have created a windfall for nontechnology companies in Washington, DC, and New York City starved for software engineers. Workplace-data company Vertis AI estimated the DC region and New York metro area posted roughly 3,815 and 3,325 software-engineering jobs, respectively, at the end of last year, compared to 2,369 in San Francisco and 2,084 in San Jose. Many of the more than 150,000 tech layoffs last year were concentrated in those California cities, while recruiters say businesses like banks, telecoms, and retailers are offering more secure jobs and career growth. Vertis' Sam Hocking said there were more positions for software engineers around the nation's capital compared to those in every other analyzed metro area.

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Automating the Math for Decision-Making Under Uncertainty
MIT News
Rachel Paiste
February 6, 2023


Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the U.K.'s Oxford University have developed ADEV, a tool that differentiates probabilistic models. The researchers designed ADEV to facilitate exploration of models that can consider fundamental uncertainty within underlying situations, such as climate modeling or financial planning. They added that ADEV also could be used for operations research — for example, simulating customer queues for call centers to minimize expected wait times, or tuning the algorithm a robot uses to grasp physical objects. The research was awarded the SIGPLAN Distinguished Paper award at POPL 2023. Said Oxford’s Mathieu Huot, "ADEV gives a unified framework for reasoning about the ubiquitous problem of estimating gradients unbiasedly, in a clean, elegant and compositional way.”

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A man walks down steps in front of the Bank of England in London. Britcoin? U.K. Closer to Launching Digital Currency
Associated Press
Danica Kirka
February 6, 2023


U.K. authorities, in announcing British businesses and consumers will likely require a digital pound, solicited public comment on the introduction of a central bank-endorsed digital currency. The U.K. Treasury's Jeremy Hunt suggested, "A digital pound issued and backed by the Bank of England (BOE) could be a new way to pay that's trusted, accessible, and easy to use." The BOE says on its website the digital tender would be "reliable and retain its value over time" compared to cryptocurrencies that can waver abruptly and jeopardize investors' assets. The currency would be held in a digital wallet and used to pay for goods and services electronically.

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Researchers Propose Fourth Light on Traffic Signals – for Self-Driving Cars
NC State University News
Matt Shipman
February 7, 2023


North Carolina State University (NC State) researchers proposed the addition of a "white light" to traffic signals to allow autonomous vehicles (AVs) to help control the flow of traffic. This "white phase" is based on the ability of AVs to communicate with other AVs and the computer controlling the traffic signal. The white light would be activated when multiple AVs approach the intersection, indicating the AVs are coordinating their movement to facilitate more efficient traffic flow. NC State's Ali Hajbabaie explained, "Red lights will still mean stop. Green lights will still mean go. And white lights will tell human drivers to simply follow the car in front of them." The traffic signal would return to the traditional green-yellow-red signal pattern when the intersection is again controlled by human drivers. In simulations, the researchers found AVs and the white phase would improve traffic flow and reduce fuel consumption.

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Robot Hand Pokes Food, Water to Tell If They Contain Mercury
New Scientist
Karmela Padavic-Callaghan
February 6, 2023


Scientists at Taiwan's National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) and South Korea's Chung-Ang University have built a sensor-equipped robotic hand that can detect mercury ions in food or water. The sensor contains tellurium wires 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, which can snare mercury ions; their electric voltages change when they touch other objects. The researchers affixed the sensor to the robotic hand's finger, which they used to test water from a lake and from a laboratory tap, as well as a mercury-tainted apple, shrimp, and spinach leaf. NTHU's Snigdha Roy Barman said the device can identify a few nanomoles of mercury ions in a liter of water.

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System Prevents Personal Metadata Leakage in Online Behavior for Privacy Protection
City University of Hong Kong
February 6, 2023


The Vizard metadata-protected data collection and analytical platform developed by researchers at City University of Hong Kong and China's Wuhan University ensures data owners can securely define data authorization and control data usage. The researchers based Vizard on a distributed point function tool designed as a generic building block to enable secure/encrypted computations for anonymously retrieving data during computation. They built the platform with stream-specific pre-processing, encryption, and throughput augmentation methods. Vizard also utilizes an owner-centric control model so owners can produce customized data-use requirements by inserting operating keys like "AND," "OR," and "NOT." Vizard can handle a data-access query in just 4.6 seconds, assuming it has stored 10,000 owner data ciphertexts and each owner has specified a policy dictating who can use their data.

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Israeli Computer Scientist Helps Crack Secrets of Mary Queen of Scots' Lost Letters
The Jerusalem Post (Israel)
Judy Siegel-Itzkovich
February 8, 2023


Israeli computer scientist George Lasry led an international research team to decipher secret coded letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots, over four centuries ago. Lasry and his collaborators found the previously missing letters within the national library of France's online archives for enciphered documents. They decoded the letters using computerized and manual methods, revealing how Mary maintained connections with the outside world during her years of captivity, and how and by whom the letters were relayed. Said Lasry, “We are not historians, but we have some ideas about history.”

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Aerial drones are part of a system for the visual detection of overcrowding in cities, to curb the spread of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases. Deep Learning-Assisted Visual Sensing to Detect Overcrowding in COVID-19 Infected Cities
Incheon National University (South Korea)
February 7, 2023


Researchers at South Korea's Incheon National University developed a deep learning model that aims to slow the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19 by detecting and managing overcrowding in cities. The visual sensing system uses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and social monitoring systems (SMS) for real-time detection of crowd changes. The system feeds video footage captured by UAVs into a decision-making model using a "modified ResNet architecture" to extract features from the footage and a "water cycle algorithm" to classify the features based on crowdedness level or crowd behavior. The model was found to be 96.55% effective in detecting overcrowded conditions in real time.

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Underdog Technologies Gain Ground in Quantum Computing Race
Nature
Davide Castelvecchi
February 6, 2023


Nascent quantum computing technologies have started to catch up to leading approaches. The two most prominent methods involve encoding quantum bits (qubits) as currents on superconducting loops, and exciting states of individual ions contained in a vacuum by electromagnetic fields. However, qubits comprised of single neutral atoms and held with optical "tweezers" have gained ground in the past two years. This technique might soon allow more than 1,000 qubits to be placed on chips, while Harvard University's Giulia Semeghini said tweezer-based qubits should soon be 99% error-proof. Meanwhile, Microsoft is investing in a method to make qubits degradation-resistant by leveraging "topological states."

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