ACM TechNews, Monday, August 19, 2024

Welcome to the August 19, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

U.S. Releases Plan to Let Cars Communicate

The U.S. Department of Transportation released a roadmap to facilitate the deployment of technology that will let cars communicate wirelessly. V2X (vehicle-to-everything) technology will allow vehicles to exchange location information with each other, and potentially with cyclists and pedestrians, as well as with roadway infrastructure. The plan aims to have V2X infrastructure in place on 20% of the National Highway System by 2028.
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Water Consumption Soars in ‘Datacenter Alley’

Water consumption by facilities in Virginia’s “datacenter alley” has grown by nearly two-thirds since 2019. Home to the world’s largest concentration of datacenters, the area’s warehouses, full of computers and networking gear, used at least 1.85 billion U.S. gallons (7 billion liters) of water in 2023, compared with 1.13 billion gallons in 2019.
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Federal Court Upholds Block on California Child Online Safety Law

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco on Friday largely upheld a lower-court decision blocking key provisions of California’s 2022 child online safety law, ruling the law’s requirement that tech companies inspect whether their products may harm children before rolling them out probably violates the First Amendment. The court ruled the requirement triggered constitutional scrutiny “because it clearly compels speech” by forcing companies to “opine” on what content could be harmful to children.
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Texas Instruments to Get $1.6 Billion in Federal Funding for Chip Plants

As part of the 2022 Chips and Science Act, Texas Instruments has entered a pact with the U.S. Department of Commerce under which it will receive up to $1.6 billion in U.S. grants and $6 billion to $8 billion in tax credits to continue building three chip factories. An additional $10 million is being set aside for workforce development purposes. The plants will manufacture 300mm wafers.
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Number of Women Taking CS Degrees in U.K. Continues to Grow

BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, cited data from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service in reporting an 8% increase in U.K.-domiciled 18-year-old women enrolled in degree-level computing programs this fall, compared to the 2023-24 school year. While still at around 4:1, the male to female ratio in the area continues to narrow as participation by female students increases.
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Utah's Software Developer Salaries are High and Growing Fast

Software developers' salaries are rising faster in the Salt Lake metropolitan area than anywhere else in the U.S., recent data from the ADP Research Institute show, and are now higher there than in much bigger, costlier cities. Previous analyses showed tech salaries in Utah lagged behind the rest of the West, but with 35% growth in salaries since 2018, developers in Salt Lake now earn more than in Denver and Portland, and even major cities like Chicago and Washington, D.C.
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California's Digital Driver's Licenses to Work in Apple, Google Wallets

California's digital driver's license rollout has reached 500,000 users since its trial launch in September, accounting for about 2% of the state's licensed drivers. That figure could rise when Apple and Google begin supporting the mobile California driver's license in wallets pre-loaded onto iPhones and Android smartphones.
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Android Phones Sold with Hidden Insecure Feature

Google’s master software for some Android phones includes a hidden feature that could be activated to allow remote control or spying on users, according to security company iVerify, which found the feature inside phones at a U.S. intelligence contractor. The feature is intended to give employees at stores deep access to phones so they can demonstrate how they work. The application, called Showcase.apk, is normally dormant, but iVerify was able to enable it on a device in its possession.
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Instagram Fails to Curtail Hate Speech Against Women Politicians

In a report published Aug. 14, the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) accused Meta Platforms' Instagram of failing to remove hate speech targeting female political candidates. The nonprofit's study of more than 500,000 comments on Instagram posts by female politicians (five Democrats and five Republicans) identified more than 20,000 "toxic" comments, 1,000 of which included sexist and racist abuse and threats of rape or death. Despite violating the platform's standards, 93% of these comments were not taken down.
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Harris Campaign's Google Ads Rewrite News Headlines

The campaign of U.S. presidential contender Kamala Harris has been editing news headlines and descriptions within Google search ads to make it appear as if major media publishers support her. The ads say they are sponsored, but it's not immediately clear the text that accompanies real news links is written by the campaign and not by the media publication itself.
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Photonic Chip Cuts Cost of Hunting Exoplanets

Researchers at the National Research Council of Canada developed a photonic chip for use with CubeSats (small standardized satellites) to reduce the size, weight, and cost of components needed to detect exoplanets. The chip features a photonics integrated circuit (PIC) filter that can identify subtle gas signatures during an exoplanet "eclipse." The researchers found that when integrated into a custom 3U CubeSat platform, the silicon nitride PIC detected the absorption signatures of CO₂ in incoming light.
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