Welcome to the October 23, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.
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The U.S. Department of Justice formally proposed regulations to prevent or restrict the sale and transfer of Americans’ sensitive personal data to adversarial countries. The proposed rule stems from an executive order issued by the Biden administration in February and imposes restrictions on how American entities can sell “bulk” sensitive data across six categories: personal data like driver’s license and Social Security numbers, precise geolocation data, biometric identifiers, human genomic data, health information, and financial information.
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CyberScoop; Derek B. Johnson (October 21, 2024)
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Computer scientist E. Allen Emerson of The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) passed away Oct. 16. Emerson received ACM's A.M. Turing Award for his work on the Model Checking automatic verification technique. He also was recognized with ACM's Paris Kanellakis Award for Theory and Practice. Said UT Austin's Don Fussell, "Allen's work was a huge step forward in the development of tools that help designers create systems with known, verifiable properties."
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The University of Texas at Austin; Marc Airhart (October 21, 2024)
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The annual "State of the Software Supply Chain" report from software company Sonatype found that developers are on track to download more than 6.6 trillion software components in 2024, including a 70% increase in downloads of JavaScript components and an 87% increase in Python. Sonatype's Brian Fox said while the advent of AI is driving speedier development cycles, it is also making security more difficult.
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Dark Reading; Robert Lemos (October 22, 2024)
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Meta said it will crack down on "celeb-bait ads" by using facial recognition technology to compare images in the post with those on the celebrity's Facebook or Instagram account. The tech giant said it will block such ads when the images are confirmed to match. Meta also is testing the use of facial recognition technology for users locked out of their accounts, allowing them to submit video selfies that unlock the account when the new video matches photos on the account.
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Bloomberg; Kurt Wagner (October 21, 2024)
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Researchers at Switzerland's ETH Zurich discovered cryptographic flaws in five cloud services offering end-to-end encryption (E2EE). The researchers tested Sync, pCloud, Seafile, Icedrive, and Tresorit with 10 potential exploits, identifying serious vulnerabilities in four of the E2EE services that could let attackers, after compromising a cloud server, access, tamper with, or inject files. While Tresorit had the fewest vulnerabilities, it could enable some metadata tampering and use of non-authentic keys when sharing files.
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SC Media; Laura French (October 21, 2024)
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South Korean company Bitsensing is partnering with the Italian city of Verona and Italy-based Famas Systems to manage traffic at Porta Nuova, a gateway to the city that has been standing for nearly 500 years. Bitsensing installed 10 of its traffic insight monitoring sensors (TIMOS) overlooking Porto Nuevo’s five entrance lanes and six exit lanes. The sensors’ on-device AI collects and transmits real-time data to an operations center supported by local servers.
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IEEE Spectrum; Lawrence Ulrich (October 21, 2024)
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Cornell University researchers developed two types of on-skin electronics that can be customized by users directly on their bodies to monitor vital signs and posture, or perform proximity sensing and interactive prosthetic makeup, among other things. The SkinLink on-skin electronic interface may be fabricated directly on one’s body, while the ECSkin electrochromic display interface can be arranged on the body as needed.
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Cornell Chronicle; Tom Fleischman (October 21, 2024)
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About 1,700 people gathered at Portugal's University of Lisbon's IST school of technology earlier this month, setting a Guinness World Record for the largest computer programming lesson in a single venue. The previous record was held by the 724 participants of a Dallas programming lesson on Oct. 31, 2016. Said IST chief Rogerio Colaco, "Everyone must know a little bit about computer science, about programming, to live in the present world."
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Reuters; Miguel Pereira (October 12, 2024)
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Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researchers led a team that demonstrated the use of cloud-based quantum computing and AI-assisted data analysis tools for computational chemistry. The researchers used Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Perlmutter supercomputer, Microsoft's cloud-based Azure Quantum Elements platform, and the PNNL-developed computational chemistry software package NWChem to simulate chemical interactions involving “forever chemical” perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA). The simulation outlined a process that broke some of PFOA's molecular bonds, identifying a possible pathway to breaking down the persistent environmental pollutant.
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GeekWire; Alan Boyle (October 21, 2024)
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Researchers at Spain's Distance University of Madrid and Colombia's Mision Critica-Data Center found that datacenters can harness the airflow generated by cooling fans to produce their own electricity. Vertical axis Tesup V7 wind turbines were installed on top of chillers and used to capture the waste wind. Six wind turbines produced 513.82 MWh of gross electricity annually from the artificial airflow, with a surplus of 131.2 MWh.
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TechRadar; Wayne Williams (October 19, 2024)
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A recent hack forced the Internet Archive to be taken down, the first time in its almost 30-year history it has suffered an outage longer than a few hours. The DDoS attack was a rude awakening for founder Brewster Kahle (pictured), who has been working with his team since the incident to identify and fix vulnerabilities that left the digital archive open to attack.
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The Washington Post (October 18, 2024)
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A transport drone developed by researchers at South Korea's Seoul National University of Science and Technology could be used to carry goods up and down stairs. The "flying shopping cart" is comprised of a cargo platform affixed to the top of a multi-rotor drone, and it can carry up to 6.6 pounds. The Palletrone, which also features flexible, self-correcting rotors for reliable horizontal stability, is guided by a human as it hovers in mid-air.
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Reuters; Minwoo Park (October 21, 2024)
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