Welcome to the October 21, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• U.S. Engineers’ Salaries Up in 2023
• GPS Jamming is Screwing with Norwegian Planes
• Microsoft Goggles’ Cost Must Drop From $80,000 Each, Army Says
• U.S. Opens Competition to Accelerate Semiconductor Advanced Packaging Tech
• India Plans Laptop Import Curbs to Boost Local Manufacturing
• U.S. Charges Sudanese Men with Running Cyberattack-for-Hire Gang
• AI Scans RNA ‘Dark Matter,’ Uncovers 70,000 New Viruses
• U.S. Tech Firms to Invest More Than $8 Billion in U.K. Datacenters
• Algorithms That Policed Welfare Systems Are Under Fire in France for Bias
• FCC Opens Probe into Caps on Internet Data Use
• Anguilla Turns AI Boom into Digital Gold Mine

U.S. Engineers’ Salaries Up in 2023

The IEEE-USA 2024 Salary and Benefits Survey Report found that the median income of U.S. engineers and other tech professionals who are IEEE members was $174,161 last year, up about 5% from $169,000 in 2022, excluding supplemental earnings. The report also found unemployment fell to 1.2% last year from 1.4% in 2022. Those specializing in circuits and devices earned the highest median income, $196,614, followed by those working in communications ($190,000) and computers/software technology ($181,000).
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GPS Jamming is Screwing with Norwegian Planes

GPS jamming in the northern Norway county of Finnmark is so constant that Norwegian authorities decided last month they would no longer log when and where it happens—accepting these disturbance signals as the new normal. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, jamming has dramatically increased across Europe’s eastern edges, with authorities accusing Russia of overloading GPS receivers with benign signals.
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Microsoft Goggles’ Cost Must Drop From $80,000 Each, Army Says

The U.S. Army says the cost of Microsoft’s Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS) goggles should “be substantially less than” than the projected $80,000 each if they’re to generate large orders in the future. IVAS goggles, based on Microsoft’s HoloLens “mixed reality” goggles, are intended to give soldiers capabilities such as night-vision and warnings of incoming airborne threats. The Army plans to order as many as 121,000 of the devices contingent on the results of combat tests.
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U.S. Opens Competition to Accelerate Semiconductor Advanced Packaging Tech

The U.S. has issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity funded by the CHIPS and Science Act to enable the domestic semiconductor industry to adopt innovative new advanced packaging flows for semiconductor technologies. Up to $1.6 billion in total funding will be available through multiple awards across five R&D areas: equipment, tools, processes, and process integration; power delivery and thermal management; connector technology; chiplets ecosystem; and co-design/electronic design automation.
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India Plans Laptop Import Curbs to Boost Local Manufacturing

India is expected to limit imports of laptops, tablets, and personal computers after January, in a bid to boost domestic manufacturing. A similar plan to restrict imports was withdrawn last year following backlash from companies and lobbying from the U.S. India has since monitored imports under a system set to expire this year and has asked firms to seek fresh approvals for imports next year.
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U.S. Charges Sudanese Men with Running Cyberattack-for-Hire Gang

U.S. prosecutors charged two Sudanese brothers with running a cyberattack-for-hire gangs, accusing them of orchestrating 35,000 denial-of-service attacks in a single year. The pair are alleged to have operated Anonymous Sudan, which managed to knock offline key pages on the sites of Microsoft, OpenAI, and PayPal since January 2023, and impairing computers in at least one hospital in the U.S. The group also took down government sites in the U.S., Dubai, Chad, Bahrain, and other nations.
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AI Scans RNA ‘Dark Matter,’ Uncovers 70,000 New Viruses

AI was used to uncover 70,500 previously-unknown RNA viruses. Using the protein-prediction tool ESMFold, developed by researchers at Meta, Shi Mang at Sun Yat-sen University in China and colleagues created a model, called LucaProt, and fed it sequencing and ESMFold protein-prediction data. They trained the model to recognize viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, a key protein used in RNA replication, and used it to find sequences that encoded these enzymes in the large tranche of genomic data.
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U.S. Tech Firms to Invest More Than $8 Billion in U.K. Datacenters

The U.K. Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology said it secured a combined investment of $8.23 billion in datacenters from four U.S. tech companies. The commitments underscore growing appetite among U.S. businesses to expand their presence overseas in an effort to gain an edge over rivals in the AI race. U.K. Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said the investment pledges came after the government designated datacenters as critical infrastructure for the economy.
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Algorithms That Policed Welfare Systems Are Under Fire in France for Bias

A coalition of human rights groups has launched legal action against the French government over its use of algorithms to detect miscalculated welfare payments, alleging the algorithms discriminate against the disabled and single mothers. The algorithms, used since the 2010s, violate EU privacy rules and French anti-discrimination laws, the groups said.
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FCC Opens Probe into Caps on Internet Data Use

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is opening a formal inquiry into why broadband providers cap data use by some customers, and how it impacts consumers and competition. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel noted during COVID-19 many fixed and mobile Internet service providers refrained from enforcing or imposing data caps, "suggesting that our networks have the capacity to meet consumer demand without these restrictions."
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Anguilla Turns AI Boom into Digital Gold Mine

The British territory of Anguilla, allotted control of the .ai Internet address in the 1990s, is capitalizing on the AI boom. Google, for example, uses google.ai to showcase its AI services, while Elon Musk uses x.ai as the homepage for his Grok AI chatbot. Anguilla’s earnings from Web domain registration fees quadrupled last year to $32 million, fueled by the surging interest in AI.
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