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

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Nations Warn Key Open Source Programs Not Sufficiently Protected
• Robots Step into One of Asia’s Dirtiest Farm Jobs
• Japan Achieves 402 Tb/s Data Rate with Commercial Optical Fiber
• South Korea Launches Technology Research Centers at 4 U.S. Universities
• Putting Datacenters in Space Could Reduce Their Carbon Footprint
• Algorithm Improves Fall Detection for Older Adults
• AI Accelerates Software Development to Breakneck Speeds
• Hinton Offers $1 Million for Ontario Science Center
• Electricity-Free Mechanical Computer Goes Beyond Binary Data Storage
• Waymo's Autonomous Ride-Hailing Service Available to All in San Francisco
• CARMEN Helps People with Mild Cognitive Impairment
• $1M Prize for AI That Can Solve Puzzles Simple for Humans

Nations Warn Key Open Source Programs Not Sufficiently Protected

The FBI, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and their counterparts in Canada and Australia warn that many open source programs fail to protect against emerging and evolving threat actors. A CISA report found that 52% of 172 open source projects studied contained code written in a memory-unsafe language. The report revealed that Linux comprises 95% unsafe code, compared to open source projects using unsafe code in Tor (93%), MySQL Server (84%), and Chromium (51%).
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Robots Step into One of Asia’s Dirtiest Farm Jobs

Oil palm plantations in Malaysia are turning to drones, self-driving trucks, and other robotic technology to plug a labor gap that has disrupted supplies of the world’s most-consumed edible oil. Oil company SD Guthrie, for example, has started using machines to take over non-harvesting jobs like spraying pesticide or monitoring fruit and yields. Other palm giants like Golden Agri-Resources Ltd. and IOI Corp Bhd. have also invested in mechanization and AI to help harvest the oil.
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Japan Achieves 402 Tb/s Data Rate with Commercial Optical Fiber

A team led by researchers at Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology achieved a data transfer record of 402 Tb/s by using six types of amplifiers and an optic gain equalizer that can leverage the unused 37 THz bandwidth of the optical fiber. The researchers transmitted signals through 1,505 channels over 50 km (about 31 miles) of optic fiber cable, exceeding previous data rate capacity by more than 25% and achieving a 35% boost in transmission bandwidth.
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South Korea Launches Technology Research Centers at 4 U.S. Universities

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy announced at the Korea-U.S. Advanced Industry and Technology Cooperation Forum that it has opened technology cooperation centers at Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Purdue University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology. South Korea will implement joint research and development projects at the centers to secure technologies for new growth engines. Plans call for eight more centers to be established by 2027.
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Putting Datacenters in Space Could Reduce Their Carbon Footprint

Thales Alenia Space, coordinator of a European initiative examining the feasibility of building datacenters in space, found that doing so could cut the carbon footprint of datacenters and generate a return on investment of several billion euros by 2050. The EU-funded Ascend (Advanced Space Cloud for European Net zero emission and Data sovereignty) feasibility study found that space datacenters, powered by solar energy outside the Earth's atmosphere, would contribute to the EU's push to achieve carbon neutrality.
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Algorithm Improves Fall Detection for Older Adults

A human action recognition algorithm developed by Binghamton University researchers could reduce reaction times when older adults fall at home. The Rapid Response Elderly Safety Monitoring (RESAM) system eliminates the need to transmit data from sensors that detect abnormal movements to an off-site processing center. The researchers found RESAM, which can run on a smartwatch, smartphone, or laptop or desktop computer, was 99% accurate in detecting falls, with a response time of 1.22 seconds.
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AI Accelerates Software Development to Breakneck Speeds

A GitLab survey of 5,315 executives and IT professionals revealed that 78% of respondents already are using AI in software development or plan to do so in the next two years, marking a year-over-year increase of 64%. Forty-seven percent said they used AI for code generation and code suggestion/completion, as well as code explanations (40%), summaries of code changes (38%), chatbots allowing users to ask documentation questions using natural language (35%), and summaries of code reviews (35%).
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Hinton Offers $1 Million for Ontario Science Center

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Geoffrey Hinton, emeritus professor of computer science at Canada's University of Toronto, said he would donate $1 million for repairs at the Ontario Science Centre if the provincial government keeps the facility in its current building. Hinton said he had “little faith” a proposed new building, not due to open until 2028, would be as good as the current one.
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Electricity-Free Mechanical Computer Goes Beyond Binary Data Storage

A prototype mechanical computer developed by North Carolina State University researchers expands beyond binary data storage with the use of polymer cubes that allow data to be locked or edited without electronic components. Sixty-four of the cubes inspired by kirigami (the Japanese art of cutting and folding paper) form a functional unit. Pulling the edges of the metastructure stretches the elastic tape connecting the cubes, moving them up or down to allow data to be edited. Releasing the metastructure locks the data.
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Waymo's Autonomous Ride-Hailing Service Available to All in San Francisco

Waymo One, the autonomous ride-hailing service operated by Waymo, has been opened to everyone in San Francisco, not just those on its waitlist. Waymo said around 300,000 people had signed up for its driverless taxi service since the waitlist was launched.
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CARMEN Helps People with Mild Cognitive Impairment

University of California San Diego researchers developed a tabletop robot intended to help improve memory and executive function in patients with mild cognitive impairment (MCI). CARMEN (Cognitively Assistive Robot for Motivation and Neurorehabilitation), developed with input from clinicians, patients with MCI, and their care partners, teaches compensatory cognitive strategies using interactive games and activities.
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$1M Prize for AI That Can Solve Puzzles Simple for Humans

Google and software firm Zapier have launched a $1-million prize fund for AI that can complete the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus (ARC) at human level or better. The ARC test, developed by Google's François Chollet, requires limited reasoning skills (object permanence, goal-directedness, counting, and basic geometry) to identify the pattern linking paired grids of pixelated shapes. A grand prize of $500,000 will be awarded to the developers of an AI system that can score 85% on the test, 1 percentage point more than the average human.
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