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Welcome to the June 11, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.
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The Ukrainian military recently used drones to carry out an attack on at least four Russian military air bases. The operation involved smuggling into Russia 117 drones in trucks with retractable roofs, which were stationed near the targeted military bases. The drones were remotely piloted to strike Russia's nuclear-capable bomber fleet. Ukraine’s SBU security service explained that due to signal loss, some drones switched to AI to guide the mission along a pre-planned route.
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Reuters; Mike Collett-White; Prasanta Kumar Dutta; Mariano Zafra (June 5, 2025)
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Structured Query Language (SQL) ranked No. 12 in the Tiobe popularity index for June, its lowest-ever ranking. “SQL will remain the backbone and lingua franca of databases for decades to come,” said Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen. “However, in the booming field of AI, where data is usually unstructured, NoSQL databases are often a better fit.”
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InfoWorld; Paul Krill (June 9, 2025)
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AMD's El Capitan and Frontier supercomputers ranked first and second in Top500.org's latest list of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Coming in at No. 3 was Intel's Aurora. All three are operated by U.S. Department of Energy laboratories. No. 4 was Germany's Jupiter Booster, while Microsoft's Eagle came in fifth. The U.S. extended its numerical lead in the total number of systems on the list, while China continued its downward trend as it no longer submits results of its latest systems to Top500.org.
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Tom's Hardware; Anton Shilov (June 10, 2025)
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Despite the purported risks AI poses to the software engineering job market, employers are still investing in nascent software-engineering talent, data from ZipRecruiter show. Software engineering interns can expect to earn between $20 and almost $29 an hour according to research from the job site, making the category the highest-paid among internships this summer. Overall, ZipRecruiter's survey found that engineering internships are among the most popular job postings in 2025, while opportunities in data and analytics more than doubled.
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Bloomberg; Emma Haidar (June 10, 2025)
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IBM on Tuesday announced its new Quantum Nighthawk processor, which runs quantum circuits with 5,000 gates, as well as a roadmap to develop a large-scale, fault-tolerant Quantum Starling computer by 2029. The roadmap sets a timeline for building the components needed. This year, the company is building the Quantum Loon chip, to be followed by the Quantum Kookaburra quantum processor module next year, and the Quantum Cockatoo adapter in 2027.
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CNBC; Chris Eudaily (June 10, 2025)
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A new tool developed by The Guardian's product and engineering team and computer science researchers at the U.K.'s University of Cambridge allows individuals to share stories and tips with the publication's journalists safely through the Guardian app. With Secure Messaging, the communication cannot be distinguished from data sent to and from the app by regular users, helping protect The Guardian's sources. The technology's source code also has been published so other organizations can embed secure messaging within their apps.
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The Guardian (June 8, 2025)
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OpenAI aims to create "AI-native universities" with its ChatGPT Edu service. The company's goals for the service include students having AI assistants, professors providing customized AI study bots, career services offering recruiter chatbots for practice job interviews, and more. California State University is rolling out ChatGPT to students across its 23 campuses, which would make it "the nation's first and largest AI-empowered university system," the university said.
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The New York Times; Natasha Singer (June 7, 2025)
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U.S. prosecutors have charged Richard Ho (pictured, center), a former trader at the quantitative trading firm Headlands Technologies LLC, with theft of trade secrets for allegedly stealing the "alpha" models used to predict prices based on real-time data and the "atoms" used to build those models to develop the source code that cost Headlands more than $1 billion to produce. Ho, a computer science graduate of the U.K.'s Cambridge University who faces up to 10 years in prison, allegedly implemented the exact same code, with various cosmetic and formatting changes, at his own firm.
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Bloomberg; Chris Dolmetsch; Steve Stroth; Justina Lee (June 9, 2025); et al.
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AI-generated video company Runway kicked off its week-long annual AI Film Festival in New York on June 5, showcasing 10 short films made, at least in part, using AI. Festival submissions jumped from around 300 for the first event in 2023 to about 6,000 this year. Creators are encouraged to use Runway's AI tools for their films, but use of other AI tools is allowed, and some of the films combine AI-generated elements with real-life images and sounds or live-action shots.
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Associated Press; Wyatte Grantham-Philips (June 7, 2025)
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U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acting Administrator Chris Rocheleau told the U.S. House Appropriations Committee that the agency's goal is to update the nation's air traffic control system and eliminate its reliance on paper strips, floppy disks, and computers that run Windows 95. The FAA has issued a Request for Information seeking data from companies interested in participating in a system upgrade, and announced "Industry Days" during which companies can pitch their ideas to the U.S. Department of Transportation.
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Tom's Hardware; Jowi Morales (June 7, 2025)
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 Executive orders signed by President Donald Trump are intended to help U.S. drone manufacturers better compete with China. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has been directed to accelerate its work on a new rule allowing operators to fly drones out of sight. Additionally, the federal government, local police, and other first responders were directed to prioritize the use of U.S.-manufactured drones.
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The Wall Street Journal; Heather Somerville (June 6, 2025)
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An international team that included researchers from the Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study of University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University developed an AI model that uses DNA sequences to produce 3D facial images. Combining the pre-trained Transformer AI model architecture and spiral convolution technology, the Difface model uses around 10,000 points to form a point cloud to develop each face, with each feature represented by point clusters.
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Global Times (China); Liu Caiyu (June 4, 2025)
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A senior judge on the High Court of England and Wales last week warned that attorneys could be criminally prosecuted for presenting false AI-generated materials. The ruling by Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division of the High Court; a second judge detailed two recent cases in which fake material was used in written legal arguments that were presented in court. Wrote Sharp in the ruling, "There are serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system if AI is misused."
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The New York Times; Lizzie Dearden; Cade Metz (June 8, 2025)
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