ACM TechNews, Wednesday, September 11, 2024

Welcome to the September 11, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

IT Unemployment Hits 6%

A Janco Associates analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data revealed the unemployment rate for IT workers climbed to 6% in August. Janco's Victor Janulaitis said the rate is the highest since the end of the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s and attributed the increase to "seismic changes" in the tech landscape brought on by AI. On the other hand, said Janulaitis, AI and cybersecurity roles are experiencing growth.
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Australia to Impose Age Limits on Social Media Use

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said new laws will be introduced in the coming months to impose age limits for social media websites. He said the government plans to work with states and territories to set the age limit, noting that a ban with an upper age limit of 14 to 16 was under consideration. This comes as the government tests age assurance technology to limit children's access to inappropriate online content.
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U.S. Proposes Requiring Reporting for Advanced AI, Cloud Providers

The U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security has proposed mandatory reporting requirements for AI developers and cloud computing providers regarding the development of "frontier" AI models and computing clusters. The reporting would cover cybersecurity measures and outcomes from "red-teaming efforts," such as testing whether AI models can assist in cyberattacks or enable non-experts to develop chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.
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C Language Slumps in Tiobe Popularity Index

Programming language C dropped to fourth place in the Tiobe Programming Community Index of language popularity, its lowest position in the monthly ranking since the index's introduction in 2001. September's index was topped by Python, followed by C++ and Java. C and C++ were the focus of a February report from the White House Office of the National Cyber Director, which recommended software developers abandon them in favor of memory-safe counterparts such as Rust.
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DOJ Argues Google Created Ad Tech Monopoly

In a trial that began Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is accusing Google of using its size and influence in the advertising technology space to lock out competitors. The trial stems from a case the DOJ and eight states filed against Google last year, accusing it of violating antitrust law. It is the second federal antitrust trial the company has faced in a year, with a federal judge ruling in the other case in August that Google had illegally maintained a monopoly over online search.
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U.S. GPS Modernization Faces Delays, Technical Challenges

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report said the delivery of 24 M-code-capable satellites for military operations may be delayed until the 2030s amid technical challenges in modernizing GPS technology. The ground control segment of the modernization efforts, OCX, has a projected military acceptance date of December 2025, although newly identified deficiencies in microchips and cards that process M-code signals, along with potential shortages of GPS chips and cards, could extend that timeline.
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India Emerging as Key Player in Global AI Race

India is working to become a major global player in the AI space, with the government committing $1.25 billion to the IndiaAI mission to facilitate computing infrastructure, startup, and AI application development in the public sector. A number of Indian startups have begun developing their own large language models, and the government has procured 1,000 GPUs to provide computing capacity to AI developers.
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Cars Collect Troves of Data. Should They Share It?

With the help of a $20-million federal grant, Utah officials are taking steps to ensure every vehicle on the state's roads can communicate with each other and roadside infrastructure, enabling alerts about congestion, accidents, road hazards, and weather conditions. The goal is to "Connect the West" with vehicle-to-everything (V2X) technology extending to neighboring Colorado and Wyoming. However, privacy advocates are concerned smart road systems can gather sufficient information about specific vehicles to identify drivers and their destinations.
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ESA 3D-Prints Metal Shape in Space

The European Space Agency (ESA) has 3D-printed the first metal part in space, the first of four that will be produced on the International Space Station and sent to Earth to be studied. The printer can take 10 to 25 days to produce a sample equivalent to the outer dimensions of a soft drink can. ESA's Daniel Neuenschwander said the accomplishment "paves the way for long-distance and long-duration missions where creating spare parts, construction components, and tools on demand will be essential."
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EU Opened a Door to a Universal Wallet. Berners-Lee Wants to Enter

The EU plans to launch the European digital identity (eID) by 2026, allowing citizens to use a single digital wallet app to manage finances, access services, sign contracts, and travel. ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Tim Berners-Lee and his startup Inrupt recently launched a universal data wallet infrastructure that enables interoperability across multiple servers, securely hosting data in personal data "pods," with the user maintaining control. Berners-Lee said he expects the EU to set an “important bar” for wallets and enforce “a standard” for credentials.
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Smart Speakers at Crime Scenes Could Provide Valuable Clues

Data can be extracted from smart speakers at crime scenes, without having to obtain it from their owner or the manufacturer. In a test of Amazon's Echo Show 15, researchers at Germany's University of Erlangen-Nuremberg were able to access the device's local data and data stored in the cloud. The Echo Show's unencrypted file system provided logs of detected movement and faces recognized by the built-in camera and AI.
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Video Game Performers Reach Agreement on AI

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) last week reached agreements with 80 video games over AI protections for video game performers. The individual video games entered into interim or tiered budget agreements with SAG-AFTRA and agreed to the union's AI provisions. The dispute centered on the ability of games to replicate the likenesses of voice actors and motion-capture artists using AI, without their consent or fair compensation.
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Autonomous Vehicles Get a Boost to See in the Dark

Researchers at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences improved the ability of an autonomous vehicle navigation system to "see" in the dark by applying the Retinx theory, which suggests humans can recognize colors under low light-conditions by discerning both the reflectance and illumination components of light. The researchers employed two algorithms, one that compensates for changes in brightness like the human eye and another that removes background noise when processing the reflective properties of incoming light.
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