Welcome to the July 12, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Europe Seeks Industry Views on China's Older Generation Chips
• U.K. Computing Curriculum Leaving Digital Skills Behind, Research Suggests
• New Blast-RADIUS Attack Breaks 30-Year-Old Protocol Used in Networks Everywhere
• How Does Origami Enhance Bioprinting?
• Whataburger Outage Map? Texans Use Burger Chain's App for Power Updates After Beryl
• High-Tech American Weapons Work Against Russia — Until They Don't
• Simple Firmware Update Completely Hides a Device's Bluetooth Fingerprint
• Extreme Heat Raises Concerns About Durability of Tech Infrastructure
• U.S. Says Russian Bot Farm Used AI to Impersonate Americans
• Your Hologram Doctor Will See You Now
• Physical System Learns Nonlinear Tasks Without Traditional Computer Processor

Europe Seeks Industry Views on China's Older Generation Chips

The European Commission has launched a "targeted consultation" with the EU semiconductor industry on China's move to boost production of older-generation computer chips. A spokesperson said the study could result in "joint or cooperative measures" with the U.S. "to address dependencies or distortionary effects." The commission is seeking feedback on where industrial firms source their chips, information on chip firms' products and pricing, and information on competitors' products and estimated pricing, including those in China.
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U.K. Computing Curriculum Leaving Digital Skills Behind, Research Suggests

The Subject Choice, Attainment and Representation in Computing Project (SCARI) reported the current computing curriculum in the U.K. focuses too heavily on programming skills. SCARI found students, and especially female students, generally hesitant to take on computing subjects. King's College London's Peter Kemp said, "We need to ensure computing is a subject that is appealing to all pupils and meets the needs of young people and society."
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New Blast-RADIUS Attack Breaks 30-Year-Old Protocol Used in Networks Everywhere

Researchers at Cloudfare, University of California San Diego, BastionZero, Microsoft Research, and the Netherlands' Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica found the RADIUS (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) network protocol is vulnerable to an attack that could enable hackers to assume control of industrial controllers, telecommunications services, ISPs, enterprise networks, and more. With "Blast RADIUS," an attacker with an active adversary-in-the-middle position can gain administrative access to devices that authenticate themselves to a server via the RADIUS protocol.
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How Does Origami Enhance Bioprinting?

Researchers at Israel's Tel Aviv University developed a method for precisely positioning sensors inside 3D-bioprinted tissue models. They created a structure based on origami that folds around fabricated tissue and allows for strategic placement of sensors. The Multi-Sensor Origami Platform (MSOP) uses Computer Aided Design software to design a customized multi-sensing structure for a specific tissue model, which is used to generate a physical structure that is folded around the bioprinted tissue, with each sensor inserted into a predefined position.
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Whataburger Outage Map? Texans Use Burger Chain's App for Power Updates After Beryl

Texas residents without power in the wake of Hurricane Beryl are using the Whataburger app as a power outage tracker, given that utility CenterPoint Energy's outage map has not worked since a May derecho. The burger chain's app features a location map, with the "W" logo appearing orange if a Whataburger restaurant is open and grey if it is closed (which may indicate a power outage). Whataburger said the app is updated in real time as its locations reopen.
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High-Tech American Weapons Work Against Russia — Until They Don't

Some high-tech Western precision weapons employed by Ukraine have been thwarted by Russia's electronic countermeasures. Ukraine-made weapons are being overhauled at a rapid rate, but Ukrainian officials are frustrated that Western manufacturers are not doing the same. Said a Ukrainian intelligence official, "It's like updating software on your phone — we and the Russians have to do it every month to keep up. But when we get weapons from the West, the manufacturer put in its software many years ago, and rarely wants to change anything."
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Simple Firmware Update Completely Hides a Device's Bluetooth Fingerprint

A firmware update developed by University of California San Diego researchers prevents a connected device user from being tracked using the device's unique Bluetooth fingerprint. The new method hides the device's Bluetooth fingerprint using multiple layers of randomization. The researchers tested the firmware update on the Texas Instruments CC2640 chipset used in various smart devices and found the level of tracking accuracy achieved in one minute without the firmware update would take more than 10 days of continuous observation with the firmware update.
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Extreme Heat Raises Concerns About Durability of Tech Infrastructure

Heatwaves are raising concerns about the durability of U.S. technology infrastructure, especially given the amount of air conditioning required for datacenters. Companies with datacenters concentrated in a single area face greater risks. The biggest risks for tech firms are longer-term outages affecting critical systems, which could cause cloud outages, disruptions to financial services, communication gaps, and other impacts. These risks will only rise as AI continues to increase energy demand.
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U.S. Says Russian Bot Farm Used AI to Impersonate Americans

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it disrupted a bot farm that used AI software to create profiles on social media platform X to impersonate Americans and disseminate Russian propaganda. Part of a project allegedly approved by the Russian government, the bot farm’s propaganda campaign involved close to 1,000 fake profiles, with X suspending the accounts for terms of service violations.
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Your Hologram Doctor Will See You Now

Crescent Regional Hospital in Texas has partnered with the Netherlands' Holoconnects to experiment with allowing doctors to engage with patients remotely and in real time as holograms. With the 440-pound, 7-foot-tall Holobox, patients see a high-quality holographic image of their physician, while the doctor sits before a camera and views a display showing the patient. Some providers do not believe the benefits of a hologram visit justify the Holobox's price tag ($42,000 plus an annual $1,900 service fee).
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Physical System Learns Nonlinear Tasks Without Traditional Computer Processor

An analog system developed by University of Pennsylvania (Penn) researchers can learn complex tasks like nonlinear regression and "exclusive or" (XOR) relationships. The fast, low-power, scalable system is a contrastive local learning network, whose components learn based on local rules without a centralized processor and no knowledge of the larger structure. Said Penn's Marc Z. Miskin, "Because it has no knowledge of the structure of the network, it's very tolerant to errors, it's very robust to being made in different ways, and we think that opens up a lot of opportunities to scale these things up."
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