Welcome to the December 2, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• South Korea to Roll Out $10 Billion in Loans for Chip Industry
• China Bombarding Tech Talent with Job Offers
• Diamond Storage Can Save Data for Millions of Years
• 35 Million Devices Targeted by Matrix
• Tesla Hiring Workers to Remotely Control Robotaxis
• Are ‘Ghost Engineers’ Making Six Figures to Do Nothing?
• On the Wings of War
• Glass Chips Offer Hope of Cleaner Future
• Your Body Can Charge Wearables
• OpenAI's Sora Leaked in Protest by Artists
• Most Social Media Influencers Don't Verify Information Before Sharing
• Quant Olympics Seeks to Find Next Generation of Finance Stars

South Korea to Roll Out $10 Billion in Loans for Chip Industry

South Korea intends to ramp up support for its chip industry next year by offering 14 trillion won ($10 billion) of low-interest loans. The funding will include 1.8 trillion won (around $1.3 billion) to finance power line installations at a chip complex under construction in Yongin and Pyeongtaek, touted as the world's largest high-tech chipmaking cluster, in a bid to attract chip equipment makers and fabless semiconductor companies.
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China Bombarding Tech Talent with Job Offers

To gain a competitive edge in advanced semiconductors and AI, Chinese firms are working to poach top engineers from leading tech hubs, including Silicon Valley, Taiwan, and parts of Europe. These firms often establish local ventures to conceal their Chinese origins. Taiwan is cracking down on Chinese tech recruitment, and South Korea is beefing up penalties against individuals who illegally transfer sensitive technology to China and other foreign countries.
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Diamond Storage Can Save Data for Millions of Years

A diamond-based system developed by researchers at the University of Science and Technology of China can store 1.85 terabytes of data per cubic centimeter theoretically for millions of years at room temperature. The team stored images by mapping the brightness of each pixel to the brightness levels of specific sites inside the diamond, achieving 99% accuracy and completeness.
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35 Million Devices Targeted by Matrix

Assaf Morag of Aqua Security warns that 35 million Internet-connected devices have been targeted by a cyber-threat actor dubbed "Matrix." A distributed denial-of-service campaign masterminded by Matrix “demonstrates a growing trend among threat actors to target vulnerabilities and misconfigurations across Internet-connected devices, particularly IoT and enterprise systems," wrote Morag. The attack is believed to have been perpetrated by Russian actors and to be motivated by financial gain, rather than politics.
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Tesla Hiring Workers to Remotely Control Robotaxis

A Tesla job listing advertises a role to build out a remote teleoperations team for the firm’s upcoming robotaxi fleet. The listing notes, “Our cars and robots operate autonomously in challenging environments. As we iterate on the AI that powers them, we need the ability to access and control them remotely.”
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Are ‘Ghost Engineers’ Making Six Figures to Do Nothing?

A recent post on X by Stanford University researcher Yegor Denisov-Blanch highlights the extent to which technology companies have focused on the idea of “overemployment.” Denisov-Blanch wrote, “We have data on the performance of >50k engineers from 100s of companies. ~9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing: Ghost Engineers.” Denisov-Blanch said an algorithmic code review of tech companies’ internal code repositories for the last two years found nearly 10% of employees perform at less than 10% of the median software engineer.
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On the Wings of War

Researchers are studying the physiology and flight performance of hummingbirds as they develop more advanced robots for drone warfare as part of a U.S. Department of Defense-funded initiative. Hummingbirds are of interest because they are extremely maneuverable and can hover indefinitely. However, researchers face challenges in that smaller robots are not yet capable of flying forward at a high rate of speed and the way hummingbirds' wings and tails repeatedly change during flight is difficult to replicate.
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Glass Chips Offer Hope of Cleaner Future

Italian startup Ephos is manufacturing photonic quantum chips using glass instead of silicon in an effort to reduce the industry's carbon footprint. Photonic chips are energy efficient since they can operate at room temperature, and Ephos' Andrea Rocchetto said using glass makes the chips "as recyclable as a glass bottle." Glass chips also can reduce the amount of energy needed to run quantum computers and make it more efficient to transmit photons.
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Your Body Can Charge Wearables

Carnegie Mellon University researchers developed a device that uses radio frequency (RF) signals to wirelessly transmit electricity across skin, allowing users to power small electronic devices. The Power-over-Skin technology uses a battery-powered transmitter that can be integrated into smartphones, smartwatches, and other devices to couple RF energy to the user's skin.
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OpenAI's Sora Leaked in Protest by Artists

After artists testing OpenAI's Sora, an AI tool that can turn text into video, briefly leaked the model, OpenAI ended early access for artists. A letter uploaded to the developer platform Hugging Face by several testers said OpenAI has taken advantage of hundreds of artists [who] provide unpaid labor through bug testing, feedback, and experimental work."
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Most Social Media Influencers Don't Verify Information Before Sharing

UNESCO found 62% of the 500 digital content creators it surveyed from 45 countries and territories do not verify the accuracy of their content before sharing it. Around a third of the creators said they did not check the validity of information before sharing if it came from a trusted source. More than 40% of influencers gauge an online source's credibility based on likes and views, 20% rely on trusted friends and experts, and only 17% said they depend on documentation and evidence.
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Quant Olympics Seeks to Find Next Generation of Finance Stars

The Ruff Boys, three Taiwanese university students, took the $20,000 top prize at the recent International Quant Championship in Singapore. Hosted by hedge fund WorldQuant, the goal was to identify alphas (mathematical models that can predict asset performance), which are ranked based on their hypothetical returns. Said WorldQuant's Nitish Maini, "To help us ingest much of the large amount of data that's out there, we need a big talent pool."
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