Welcome to the April 20, 2026 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for computer professionals three times a week.

HEADLINES AT A GLANCE

• Humanoid Robot Beats Human Half-Marathon Record in Beijing
• Canada Looking for a Supercomputer Builder
• Hackers Say It Takes 2 Minutes to Break the EU's New Age Checking App
• 3D Map of Universe Could Solve Dark Energy Mystery
• Anthropic’s Mythos Cybersecurity Capabilities Require Urgent International Cooperation, Bengio Says
• BCI Allows Monkeys to Navigate 3D Virtual Reality
• European Police Email 75,000 People, Asking Them to Stop DDoS Attacks
• Inside the 8-CPU Brain of NASA’s Artemis II That ‘Votes’ on Every Move
• Ancient Excel Bug Comes Out of Retirement for Active Attacks
• The Internet's Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril
• EPA Wants Companies to Reuse Water to Cool Datacenters

Humanoid Robot Beats Human Half-Marathon Record in Beijing

An autonomous humanoid robot developed by Chinese smartphone maker Honor won a 21-km. (13-mile) half-marathon in Beijing Sunday, finishing in 50 minutes, 26 seconds—faster than the human world record. In last year’s inaugural race, the winning robot finished in 2 hours, 40 minutes, 42 seconds. While a remotely-controlled robot from Honor was the first to cross the finish line in 48 minutes, 19 seconds this year, under the event's weighted scoring rules the autonomous robot was declared the champion.
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Canada Looking for a Supercomputer Builder

Canada is advancing plans to build one of the world’s most powerful public AI supercomputers through its Sovereign Compute Infrastructure Program, offering up to $890 million to qualified builders. The initiative aims to close a gap in research computing capacity while ensuring Canadian ownership, control, and data sovereignty of the resulting supercomputer. Bidders—which must be led by a post-secondary institute or not-for-profit—must deliver the system within 18 months of signing the contract.
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Hackers Say It Takes 2 Minutes to Break the EU's New Age Checking App

Last Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented an age-verification tool, saying it was "technically ready" and will soon be available to use. Cyber and privacy experts examining the source code on GitHub soon found several issues with the app's design, including that it would store sensitive data on a user’s phone and leave it unprotected, and that it was possible to bypass the app’s biometric authentication features.
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3D Map of Universe Could Solve Dark Energy Mystery

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) mounted at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, AZ, has completed the highest-resolution 3D map of the universe to date. DESI has mapped more than 47 million galaxies in its five years of operation, detailing the impact of dark energy over 11 billion years. It collects about 80 GB of data each night; once the data is fully analyzed, it could help determine whether dark energy is constant or varies over time.
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Anthropic’s Mythos Cybersecurity Capabilities Require Urgent International Cooperation, Bengio Says

ACM A.M. Turing Award laureate Yoshua Bengio warned that powerful AI systems like Anthropic’s Claude Mythos are creating urgent global cybersecurity risks that require global cooperation. Such AI systems can detect hidden software flaws but also could enable large-scale cyberattacks if misused. The companies behind these models have limited access to them to select U.S. organizations; said Bengio, “It doesn’t make sense that private individuals are deciding the fate of infrastructure for everyone else.”
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BCI Allows Monkeys to Navigate 3D Virtual Reality

An intracortical brain-computer interface (BCI) developed by researchers at Belgium's KU Leuven enabled macaque monkeys to navigate complex 3D virtual reality environments using only neural signals. By combining data from multiple brain regions beyond the primary motor cortex, the system achieved more precise and flexible control than previous BCIs. It was trained through passive observation, making it promising for paralyzed patients who cannot move. The system adapts in real time without retraining, relying on brain plasticity.
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European Police Email 75,000 People, Asking Them to Stop DDoS Attacks

Europol and global law enforcement partners have contacted via email over 75,000 individuals suspected of using DDoS-for-hire services to launch cyberattacks. The operation, called Operation PowerOFF, targeted platforms that let users disrupt websites without technical expertise. Authorities identified suspects after seizing servers linked to these services. The crackdown led to four arrests, 53 domain takedowns, and the execution of two dozen search warrants.
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Inside the 8-CPU Brain of NASA’s Artemis II That ‘Votes’ on Every Move

The Orion spacecraft used for NASA’s Artemis II mission featured an advanced, fault-tolerant computing system designed for deep-space reliability. The system included eight processors running identical instructions simultaneously, organized in pairs that cross-check results to detect errors instantly. If a fault occurs, incorrect outputs are ignored and failed modules can be reset and re-synchronized during flight. The spacecraft also used redundant networks, triple-redundant memory that corrects errors automatically, and backup flight software running on separate hardware.
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Ancient Excel Bug Comes Out of Retirement for Active Attacks

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency confirmed that a Microsoft Excel flaw, CVE-2009-0238 (9.3), identified in 2009, is being actively exploited and added it to its Known Exploited Vulnerability catalog on April 14, shortly after Microsoft rolled out 165 patches. Attackers could exploit these flaws to gain complete control of impacted systems. Federal civilian executive branch agencies were given two weeks to implement patches, one week less than they usually get.
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The Internet's Most Powerful Archiving Tool Is in Peril

The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine faces growing threats as major publishers and others restrict its access to their content for archival purposes. According to analysis by AI-detection startup Originality AI, 23 major news sites currently are blocking ia_archiverbot, the Web crawler commonly used by the Internet Archive for the Wayback project. Social platform Reddit is also blocking it, while other media outlets are limiting the project in different ways.
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EPA Wants Companies to Reuse Water to Cool Datacenters

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is promoting water reuse strategies for cooling energy-intensive datacenters powering AI. The initiative aims to reduce freshwater consumption and wastewater generation by encouraging recycling across industries, including AI datacenters and chip manufacturing. Rising concern over water use—especially in drought-prone regions—has intensified scrutiny, as large datacenters can consume millions of gallons daily.
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