Welcome to the May 3, 2024 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Robert Kahn: The Great Interconnector
• Killer Asteroid Hunters Spot 27,500 Overlooked Space Rocks
• BASIC Turns 60
• Biden Boosts Security of U.S. Critical Infrastructure
• Australia to Fund $620-Million 'Utility-Scale' Quantum Computer
• Apple Targets Google Staff to Build AI Team
• App Allows Voters to Swipe for Electoral Mates
• Drones Dance Using ChatGPT
• From Baby Talk to Baby AI
• Panel Says France Must Curb Child, Teen Use of Smartphones, Social Media
• Most Brain Monitors Sold to Consumers Don't Keep Data Private
• Programming Living Materials with Synthetic Biology, 3D Printing
• Russia Accused of Meddling in GPS Systems

Robert Kahn: The Great Interconnector

ACM’s 2004 A.M. Turing Award laureate Robert Kahn (pictured, center) has been awarded the 2024 IEEE Medal of Honor for his work on packet communication technologies that served as the foundation of the Internet. In the mid-1960s, Kahn wrote several reports about how to implement a network of computers, which led to him working on what would become ARPANET. Kahn also was instrumental in the development of the Transmission Control Protocol, now known as TCP/IP.
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Killer Asteroid Hunters Spot 27,500 Overlooked Space Rocks

Researchers at the Asteroid Institute and the University of Washington report that an algorithm developed to identify potential killer asteroids by scanning old images of the night sky has found 27,500 previously unidentified solar system bodies, including around 100 near-Earth asteroids. The THOR (Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery) algorithm can determine whether a dot of light captured in different images is the same object.
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BASIC Turns 60

The BASIC (Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) programming language turned 60 on May 1. Intended to make computing accessible to a broader audience, BASIC was popular among beginner computer programmers for its use of plain English keywords. BASIC continued to evolve over the years and is still popular among retrocomputing enthusiasts. Its descendants include Microsoft's Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, and Small Basic.
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Biden Boosts Security of U.S. Critical Infrastructure

A national security memorandum signed by President Joe Biden on April 30 calls for a government-wide effort to secure U.S. critical infrastructure, which will be led by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The memo also directs the U.S. intelligence community "to collect, produce and share intelligence and information with federal departments and agencies, state and local partners, and the owners and operators of critical infrastructure."
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Australia to Fund $620-Million 'Utility-Scale' Quantum Computer

The Australian federal government and the Australian state of Queensland announced A$940 million (US$620 million) in funding for startup PsiQuantum to support efforts to develop "the world's first utility-scale quantum computer." The startup uses standard silicon wafers, photonic qubits, and technology adopted from optical communications kits to build machines comprised of optical fibers connected to a photonic processor, eliminating the need for substantial cryogenic cooling systems.
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Apple Targets Google Staff to Build AI Team

An analysis of hundreds of LinkedIn profiles, public job postings, and research papers by the Financial Times found that Apple has built up a team of AI experts and established an AI lab in Zurich, Switzerland, in recent years. Since 2018, when it poached Google's John Giannandrea as its top AI executive, Apple has hired at least 36 specialists from the rival tech firm. Apple's secretive Zurich-based "Vision Lab" stems from its acquisition of local AI startups FaceShift and Fashwell, known for VR and image recognition, respectively.
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App Allows Voters to Swipe for Electoral Mates

The Palumba app provides voting advice as a means of bolstering youth participation in EU elections. Similar to the dating app Tinder, users "swipe" right to agree with proposals and left to disagree, with options for mild approval/disapproval or neutral responses. The app ultimately "matches" users with a European Parliament political group based on their responses. Slated to go public May 9, the open source app will be available in all 27 EU member states in more than 30 languages.
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Drones Dance Using ChatGPT

Researchers at Germany's Technical University of Munich (TUM) successfully choreographed an in-air drone performance using ChatGPT, directing six drones to fly in circles without colliding. This involved selecting a music track and entering text that ChatGPT translated into choreography. TUM's Angela Schoellig said because ChatGPT "initially knows nothing about the properties of drones and physical limits for their flight paths," a safety algorithm was developed to map out flight paths to avoid collisions.
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From Baby Talk to Baby AI

Researchers at New York University (NYU) developed an AI model trained on a child's experience, particularly their language acquisition, based on videos captured by toddlers wearing GoPro-type cameras on their heads. The goal is to gain better understanding of how human intelligence develops, in order to develop smarter AI models. Said NYU's Brenden Lake, "If the field can get to the place where models are trained on nothing but the data that a single child saw, and they do well on a huge set of tasks, that would be a huge scientific achievement."
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Panel Says France Must Curb Child, Teen Use of Smartphones, Social Media

In a report released April 30, an expert panel commissioned by French President Emmanuel Macron called for limits on smartphone and social media use by children and teenagers. Specifically, the panel called for prohibiting the use of cellphones for children under 11, the use of smartphones with Internet access for children under 13, and the use social media apps for children under 15, with only platforms deemed "ethical" allowed for minors over 15.
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Most Brain Monitors Sold to Consumers Don't Keep Data Private

A Neurorights Foundation study of 30 firms that sell neurotech devices or services to consumers found that many collect users' neural data and maintain the right to share or sell the data without additional permission from users. Twenty-nine of the 30 companies investigated do not provide meaningful limitations on the sharing of users' neural data; just one said it would not share customer data.
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Programming Living Materials with Synthetic Biology, 3D Printing

Researchers from China's Nanjing Tech University and the U.K.'s University of Cambridge developed a 3D-printed bioink comprised of genetically modified plant cells that can produce complex, self-repairing materials. They combined tobacco plant cells, gelatin, and hydrogel microparticles containing Agrobacterium tumefaciens to create an engineered plant living material with customizable behaviors and capabilities. The mixture was 3D-printed into a container with another gel to form various shapes.
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Russia Accused of Meddling in GPS Systems

GPS signal interference at Tartu airport in Estonia is being attributed to Russia. An increase in such incidents, where signal jamming or spoofing make it difficult to land aircraft safely, has prompted Finland's Finnair to stop its aircraft from landing there over the next month. About 46,000 aircraft flying in and out of Britain since August 2023 have reportedly encountered GPS signal issues over the Baltic Sea.
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