Welcome to the April 11, 2025 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Europe Unveils Plan to Become 'AI Continent'
• Hackers Spied on 100 U.S. Bank Regulators' Emails for Over a Year
• Kotlin, Swift, Ruby Losing Popularity
• Americans Worry AI Is Coming for These Jobs
• What a Merger of Government Data Might Reveal About Us
• Researchers Catalog Text Input Techniques to Improve Typing in XR
• U.K. Researchers Demonstrate Long-Distance Quantum Network Link
• AI Recreates 'The Wizard of Oz' for the Las Vegas Sphere
• 3D-Printed Open-Source Robot Automates Materials Synthesis
• Leak Exposes Black Basta's Influence Tactics

Europe Unveils Plan to Become 'AI Continent'

The European Commission unveiled on April 9 the "AI Continent Action Plan" to enable the bloc to better compete with the U.S. and China in AI. The Commission said the plan is intended to "transform Europe's strong traditional industries and its exceptional talent pool into powerful engines of AI innovation and acceleration." The plan calls for the development of a network of AI factories, "gigafactories," and specialized labs to boost startups' access to high-quality training data.
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Hackers Spied on 100 U.S. Bank Regulators' Emails for Over a Year

The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has disclosed a cybersecurity incident in which hackers gained access to the emails of 103 bank regulators. According to a draft letter to Congress by OCC CIO Kristen Baldwin, hackers accessed around 150,000 emails in the mailboxes of senior deputy comptrollers, international banking supervisors, and other staff from May 2023 until the breach was discovered earlier this year.
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Kotlin, Swift, Ruby Losing Popularity

The April Tiobe index of programming language popularity showed Kotlin, Swift, and Ruby all dropping out of the top 20. Tiobe CEO Paul Jansen said these programming languages "are likely to go out of fashion" given their use for particular mobile platforms at a time when there are suitable languages and frameworks for cross-platform development.
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Americans Worry AI Is Coming for These Jobs

A Pew Research Center survey of U.S. adults identified jobs the public believes will be replaced by AI in the next 20 years. These include cashiers (73%), factory workers (67%), journalists (59%), and software engineers (48%). The findings also confirmed people’s anxiety about the technology is rising. About 51% of those polled said they were concerned about the increased usage of AI, compared to about 40% in 2021 and 2022, with much of the anxiety tied to jobs.
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What a Merger of Government Data Might Reveal About Us

Under an executive order by President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is working to consolidate the personal data of U.S. residents held in various disconnected data systems across the federal government. DOGE workers are seeking access to 23 data systems across eight agencies. According to The New York Times, more than 300 categories of data about U.S. residents are contained in these data systems.
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Researchers Catalog Text Input Techniques to Improve Typing in XR

Massimiliano Di Luca at the U.K.'s University of Birmingham led an international team that developed the XR TEXT Trove, which catalogues more than 170 text entry techniques compatible with extended reality (XR). TEXT Trove uses 32 codes, including 13 interaction attributes, and 14 performance metrics such as words per minute (WPM), to categorize these techniques. The researchers found the keyboard format still achieves the highest WPM, but typing performance could be improved using haptic feedback, external surfaces, and fingertip-only visualization.
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U.K. Researchers Demonstrate Long-Distance Quantum Network Link

Researchers at the U.K.'s universities of Bristol and Cambridge developed a quantum communications network capable of transmitting data over the more than 410 km (nearly 255 miles) separating the institutions. The network uses encryption keys concealed inside light particles and distributed entanglement. The researchers demonstrated the network's ability to transfer encrypted medical data, make a quantum-secure video call, and secure remote access to a distributed datacenter.
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AI Recreates 'The Wizard of Oz' for the Las Vegas Sphere

Sphere Entertainment turned to Google to recreate "The Wizard of Oz," an 86-year-old film shot with a 35mm camera, to be shown on the Las Vegas Sphere's 160,000-square-foot, curved, immersive screen. To accomplish this, Google Cloud and Google DeepMind researchers developed new AI techniques, "performance generation" and "outpainting," to improve resolution and extend backgrounds to include characters and scenery not present originally. The process also involved the use of Google's Veo 2 and Imagen 3 generative AI models and the addition of sensory elements.
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3D-Printed Open-Source Robot Automates Materials Synthesis

Researchers at Japan's Hokkaido University have developed an open source robotic system to automate material synthesis. The FLUID (Flowing Liquid Utilizing Interactive Device) system was made with a 3D printer and off-the-shelf electronic components. FLUID features four independent modules, each with a syringe, two valves, a servo motor, and a stepper motor, connected to microcontroller boards. Its software allows users to make valve adjustments, control the syringes, and receive status updates and sensor data in real time.
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Leak Exposes Black Basta's Influence Tactics

Researchers at security firm Trustwave's SpiderLabs analyzed 190,000 Russian-language chat messages among members of the Black Basta ransomware group that were leaked last month. The analysis revealed the group is highly structured and efficient, with members having experience in exploit development, infrastructure optimization, social engineering, and other specialties. The chat records were recently leaked to file-sharing site MEGA, which coincided with the unexplained outage of the Black Basta site on the dark web; the site has remained down ever since.
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