ACM TechNews, Monday, September 30, 2024

Welcome to the September 30, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

Say g**dby# to Annoying Password Rules

The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology has proposed the elimination of certain password requirements, such as mandatory resets, required or restricted use of certain characters, and security questions. “Highly complex passwords introduce a new potential vulnerability: They are less likely to be memorable and more likely to be written down or stored electronically in an unsafe manner,” the proposal reads.
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California Governor Vetoes AI Safety Bill

California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a state measure that would have imposed safety vetting requirements for powerful AI models. Newsom said the legislation “does not take into account whether an AI system is deployed in high-risk environments, involves critical decision-making, or the use of sensitive data.” He said of the bill, "I do not believe this is the best approach to protecting the public from real threats posed by the technology.”
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Turning OpenAI into a Real Business is Tearing It Apart

The exit of OpenAI CTO Mira Murati (pictured) is the latest in a series of departures as the firm shifts from a nonprofit lab to a for-profit corporation. So far this year, 20 researchers and executives have left OpenAI. Concerns expressed by current and former employees include rushed product announcements and safety testing and CEO Sam Altman's absence from day-to-day operations as he travels on fundraising missions.
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Devs Gaining Little (if Anything) from AI Coding Assistants

An Uplevel study of 800 developers' output over three months while using GitHub Copilot found no significant increase in productivity compared to the three-month period prior to adopting the AI coding assistant. Developers using Copilot also did not report substantial improvements in pull request (PR) cycle time or PR throughput, the study found, while 41% more bugs were introduced by Copilot use.
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Older Workers Fear Gen Z Is Keeping Them Out of Tech Jobs

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said workers aged 25 to 39 account for 40.8% of the high-tech workforce, but just 33.1% of the overall U.S. workforce. The agency reported the share of tech workers over 40 fell to 52.1% in 2022 from 55.9% in 2014. EEOC added that age-related discrimination accounts for nearly 20% of charges filed in the tech industry, compared to 15% in other industries.
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Stretchy Wearables Can Heal Themselves

A biodegradable conductor developed by an international team led by researchers at the Korea University Graduate School of Converging Science and Technology is stretchable, self-healing, and biocompatible, paving the way for more flexible wearable sensors and implanted sensors that degrade over time and do not have to be removed via invasive procedures. The material can stretch up to 500% and can recover conductivity in its circuits within two minutes of being cut.
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Security Protocol Shields Data from Attackers During Cloud-Based Computation

A security protocol developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers protects data sent to and from cloud servers during deep-learning computations. The protocol uses laser light to encode the weights of deep neural networks into an optical field, preventing attackers from intercepting or duplicating information while maintaining the accuracy of deep-learning models.
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Robotic Moving ‘Crew’ Preps for Work on Moon

Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center have demonstrated the LANDO (Lightweight Surface Manipulation System AutoNomy capabilities Development for surface Operations and construction) robotic system, designed to move payloads from landers to the Moon's surface. LANDO first used a robotic arm with a hook to move a small metal box on a pedestal to a replica of the lunar surface; it then repeated the demo with a small model rover.
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AI Crawlers Are Hammering Sites

Some websites are being hit with so many queries from AI crawlers that their performance is impacted. iFixit recently reported close to a million queries in just over 24 hours, which it attributed to a crawler from Anthropic. Game UI Database said its website almost came to a halt due to a crawler from OpenAI hitting it around 200 times a second. Said iFixit's Kyle Wiens, "There are polite levels of crawling, and this superseded that threshold."
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What Voice Assistants Know About You

Researchers at Northeastern University and the University of Southern California found that some smart voice assistants use voice interactions to learn users' personal preferences and habits in order to create consumer profiles. The researchers fed more than 24,000 voice queries and text-based Web searches, simulating a variety of people, into voice assistants from Amazon, Google, and Apple. Amazon's Alexa was 100% accurate in labeling personas with their interests, while Google Assistant was 70% accurate in identifying married personas and 50% accurate in identifying which possessed advanced degrees. Apple's Siri did not use voice interactions to build consumer profiles.
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Spurned by Social Media, Publishers Chase Readers on WhatsApp

With traffic to news sites via Google and Facebook down, digital news publishers increasingly are turning to WhatsApp, taking advantage of the messaging app's Channels feature to boost readership and audience engagement. With WhatsApp Channels, the publishers can send videos, texts, and links to followers, who are not required to provide private data.
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Ultrathin Graphene Brain Implant Tested in a Person

Surgeons at the U.K.'s University of Manchester implanted an ultrathin graphene brain-computer interface from Spain's InBrain Neuroelectronics on the cortex of a patient undergoing surgery to remove a tumor. The device, a transparent sheet half the thickness of a human hair, featured 48 graphene electrodes and conformed to the brain's surface. During the 79 minutes the implant was in place, researchers said it distinguished between healthy and cancerous brain tissue with micrometer-scale precision.
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