Welcome to the January 29, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Trump Threatens to Tariff Chips Made in Taiwan
• Chevron Joins Race to Generate Power for AI
• Sanders Named RIT’s President
• Sweden Seizes Ship After Suspected Baltic Sea Cable Sabotage
• LeCun Says DeepSeek's Success Shows Benefits of Open Source Models
• How Many Robots Can One Person Control at Once?
• Online Platforms to Participate in Stress Test Ahead of German Election
• Linux Kernel Source Expands Beyond 40 Million Lines
• Pakistan's Parliament Passes Bill with Sweeping Controls on Social Media
• Mirai Botnet Launched Record 5.6 Tbps DDoS Attack with 13,000+ IoT Devices
• 'DNA Book' Sells for $65, But You Can’t Read It
• China Opens First Humanoid Robot Training Base
• NASA 3D-Printed Antenna Takes Additive Manufacturing to New Heights

Trump Threatens to Tariff Chips Made in Taiwan

In a speech Monday, President Trump said he is preparing to place tariffs on computer chips made in Taiwan. “They left us and went to Taiwan,” he said in an apparent reference to how many of the leading U.S. tech companies have been sourcing their processors from Taiwan’s TSMC. “We want them to come back.” Trump also criticized the CHIPS and Science Act, saying what was needed were not financial incentives to draw manufacturing to the U.S., but rather tariffs.
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Chevron Joins Race to Generate Power for AI

Chevron is partnering with Engine No. 1, a San Francisco-based investment firm, to build natural gas-fueled power plants that will feed energy directly to AI datacenters, joining other oil and gas producers that are adjusting their strategies and leaning into power generation rather than drilling and processing. Last month, Exxon said that it, too, wanted to get into the business of selling electricity to datacenters.
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Sanders Named RIT’s President

ACM Fellow William H. Sanders has been named the next president of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT). Currently the dean of Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, Sanders will assume his new post on July 1. Sanders’ research interests include computing systems with a focus on critical infrastructures. He has directed work as part of national efforts to make the U.S. power grid smart and resilient.
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Sweden Seizes Ship After Suspected Baltic Sea Cable Sabotage

A Maltese-flagged ship has been seized by Swedish authorities on suspicion of damaging a data cable under the Baltic Sea owned by Latvia's state broadcaster, LVRTC. The Vezhen appeared to have a damaged anchor, but despite prosecutors citing an initial investigation indicating sabotage, the ship's owner, the Bulgarian shipping company Navigation Maritime Bulgare, said the anchors hit the sea floor amid high winds.
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LeCun Says DeepSeek's Success Shows Benefits of Open Source Models

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Yann LeCun says the success of the R1 model released recently by Chinese AI company DeepSeek shows the value of keeping AI models open source. It's not that China's AI is "surpassing the U.S.," but rather that "open source models are surpassing proprietary ones," LeCun said in a post on Instagram’s Threads app. "They came up with new ideas and built them on top of other people's work. Because their work is published and open source, everyone can profit from it."
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How Many Robots Can One Person Control at Once?

Researchers led by Oregon State University's Julia A. Adams found that individual humans can manage heterogenous swarms of more than 100 autonomous aerial and ground drones effectively. The study, funded by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, involved observing a human controller's physiological responses while managing heterogeneous robot swarms. The biggest mission observed comprised 110 drones, 30 ground vehicles, and as many as 50 virtual vehicles navigating a physical urban environment and a series of complex virtual hazards.
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Online Platforms to Participate in Stress Test Ahead of German Election

A European Commission spokesperson confirmed that a stress test will be held Jan. 31 to ensure online platforms have implemented the appropriate risk mitigation measures to prevent disinformation prior to the German election in February. Microsoft, TikTok, LinkedIn, Google, Snap, Meta, and X will participate in the stress test, which was requested by German authorities and will cover a variety of scenarios.
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Linux Kernel Source Expands Beyond 40 Million Lines

With the release of Linux 6.14 rc1, the Linux kernel sources have expanded to 40,063,856 lines, double the amount in 2015. This is up from 39,819,522 lines with the release of Linux 6.13 in early January. The Linux kernel sources increase by about 400,000 lines of code every two months, encompassing code as well as comments, documentation, and blank lines for structure and readability.
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Pakistan's Parliament Passes Bill with Sweeping Controls on Social Media

The lower house of Pakistan's Parliament passed the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act on Jan. 23, which will establish the Social Media Protection and Regulatory Authority with the power to order "unlawful and offensive" social media content to be blocked, along with those posting such content, immediately. This includes content criticizing judges, the armed forces, Parliament, or provincial assemblies. Additionally, social media platforms will have to register with the new authority or run the risk of being banned.
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Mirai Botnet Launched Record 5.6 Tbps DDoS Attack with 13,000+ IoT Devices

Cloudflare said the biggest-ever distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack occurred on Oct. 29, 2024, lasting just 80 seconds before being detected and blocked. The 5.6 Terabit per second (Tbps) UDP protocol-based attack originated from a Mirai-variant botnet affecting more than 13,000 Internet of Things (IoT) devices and targeting an unnamed Internet service provider in Eastern Asia. The attack broke the previous record for the biggest volumetric DDoS attack, which occurred earlier in the same month and peaked at 3.8 Tbps.
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'DNA Book' Sells for $65, But You Can’t Read It

DNA-based digital data storage firm CATALOG, in conjunction with Asimov Press, has produced a 240-page book containing nine essays and three science fiction works totaling 481,280 bytes of data, which are encoded into 500,000 unique synthetic DNA molecules. Available for $65, the book is enclosed in a bullet-shaped steel DNA capsule, with the molecules stored as a dry powder under inert gas to allow for long-term preservation. However, the contents of the book cannot actually be read.
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China Opens First Humanoid Robot Training Base

China has opened its first humanoid robot training base in Shanghai. Capable of training more than 100 humanoid robots simultaneously, the Humanoid Robot Kylin Training Ground expects to train 1,000 general-purpose robots simultaneously by 2027, according to a local media outlet. The facility aims to accelerate the commercialization and widespread use of advanced robotics.
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NASA 3D-Printed Antenna Takes Additive Manufacturing to New Heights

The 3D-printing of a magneto-electric dipole antenna designed by NASA engineers demonstrated that 3D printing could be used to create a cost-effective means of transmitting data to Earth. The antenna, made with low electrical resistance and tunable ceramic-filled polymer material, was tested with NASA's Near Space Network relay satellites and flown on an atmospheric weather balloon.
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