Welcome to the November 25, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• ACM Awards Gordon Bell Climate Modelling Prize
• Swiss University Applies Stricter Measures to Chinese Students
• Supreme Court Steps into Fight over Internet Subsidies
• Russian Hackers Breach U.S. Target Through Neighbor's Wi-Fi
• Learning to Code in an AI World
• Scientific Community Finds New Home on Bluesky
• FCC Passes Auto Safety Spectrum Rules
• Race-Blind College Admissions Harm Diversity Without Improving Quality
• Technology Experimental Rules Approved for Collegiate Baseball
• Disappearing Island Nation Recreates Itself in Metaverse
• Australia Critical Infrastructure Faces Cyber Threats
• Quantum Chips Entangled to Work Together

ACM Awards Gordon Bell Climate Modelling Prize

ACM presented a 12-member team with the ACM Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling for the project “Boosting Earth System Model Outputs and Saving PetaBytes in Their Storage Using Exascale Climate Emulators.” The team developed an exascale climate emulator to address the escalating computational and storage requirements of high-resolution Earth System Model simulations.
[ » Read full article ]

Swiss University Applies Stricter Measures to Chinese Students

Switzerland's ETH Zurich has tightened its admissions criteria for master’s and Ph.D. programs in certain science and technology fields to comply with Swiss laws aimed at countering international espionage. Though targeted at internationally sanctioned countries, most impacted will be Chinese nationals. The new policy is aimed at students applying to fields that can have military applications, including information technology, engineering, and AI.
[ » Read full article ]

Supreme Court Steps into Fight over Internet Subsidies

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday stepped into a legal fight over the $8 billion the federal government spends annually to subsidize phone and Internet services in schools, libraries, and rural areas. The justices will review an appellate ruling that struck down as unconstitutional the Universal Service Fund, through which the U.S. Federal Communications Commission collects money from telecommunications providers that pass that cost to customers. Advocacy group Consumer Research had challenged the practice.
[ » Read full article ]

Russian Hackers Breach U.S. Target Through Neighbor's Wi-Fi

Russian military hackers broke into a targeted Wi-Fi network by first hacking into another vulnerable network in a building across the street, remotely hacking into a laptop in that building, and then using that computer's antenna to break into the intended victim's network. At the Cyberwarcon security conference last week, cybersecurity researcher Steven Adair revealed how his firm, Volexity, discovered the unprecedented hacking technique while investigating a network breach targeting a customer in Washington, D.C., in 2022.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

Learning to Code in an AI World

In a 2020 survey of 3,000 coding boot camp graduates by CourseReport, 79% of respondents said the courses had helped them land a job, with an average salary increase of 56%. Yet the industry pulled back from hiring as AI coding tools started to become mainstream. The number of active job postings for software developers has dropped 56% from five years ago, according to data compiled by CompTIA, and 67% for inexperienced developers.
[ » Read full article *May Require Paid Registration ]

Scientific Community Finds New Home on Bluesky

Bluesky is emerging as an alternative to X as the new online gathering place for researchers drawn by its Twitter-like feel. One reason is that many researchers with large followings on X had already established a similar presence on Bluesky without using it much, researchers from Arizona State University (ASU) found. ASU computer scientist Ujun Jeong attributes this to similarities in the two platforms. “Interestingly, people with more influence actually wanted to migrate more,” he noted.
[ » Read full article ]

FCC Passes Auto Safety Spectrum Rules

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has finalized new spectrum rules to push cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communications technology forward. C-V2X will use existing cellular networks to send messages from vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to infrastructure, vehicle to cyclists, and vehicle to pedestrians to warn of each other's presence for safety purposes. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said the rules promote “efficient use of 30 megahertz of spectrum” dedicated to intelligent transportation systems in the 5.9GHz band.
[ » Read full article ]

Race-Blind College Admissions Harm Diversity Without Improving Quality

Ignoring race when considering college admissions leads to less diversity and no improvements in academic credentials, according to a study by Cornell University researchers. The researchers used data from an unnamed university to simulate the impacts of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which prohibits colleges and universities from considering race in admissions.
[ » Read full article ]

Technology Experimental Rules Approved for Collegiate Baseball

The NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel approved experimental rules for collegiate baseball to permit the expanded use of technology in conference games for the 2025 season. Teams will be allowed to use electronic equipment to access analytic and scouting information in the dugout during games. Teams also may collect in-game swing data with the use of bat sensor technology, although data on pitch location and swings will not be accessible.
[ » Read full article ]

Disappearing Island Nation Recreates Itself in Metaverse

Threatened by rising seas, the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu is digitally backing up everything from its houses to its trees. It hopes this virtual replica will preserve the nation's beauty and culture, as well as the legal rights of its 11,000 citizens, for generations to come. In presenting the plan via a video speech at COP27 in 2022, Tuvalu's minister for foreign affairs, Simon Kofe, said, "Our land, our ocean, our culture are the most precious assets of our people, and to keep them safe from harm, no matter what happens in the physical world, we'll move them to the cloud."
[ » Read full article ]

Australia Critical Infrastructure Faces Cyber Threats

A report from the Australian Signals Directorate revealed that over 11% of cybersecurity incidents in Australia last year related to critical infrastructure. Of these, a quarter were phishing incidents, 21% were exploitation of a public-facing interface, and 15% brute-force activities. "We are worryingly seeing an increased focus by both cybercriminals and state actors on our critical infrastructure," said Defense Minister Richard Marles.
[ » Read full article ]

Quantum Chips Entangled to Work Together

The entanglement of a pair of qubits and teleportation of one to a second chip was demonstrated by researchers at IBM. The researchers connected two Eagle quantum processing units, each with 127 qubits, to perform a calculation requiring a total of 142 qubits, more than could fit at one time on either chip alone.
[ » Read full article ]