Sahil Lavingia, previously a DOGE operative at the Department of Veterans Affairs, is now a career employee at the IRS. He said at WIRED's Big Interview event that he expects to work there 10 years. Sahil Lavingia, the former member of Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) first identified by WIRED, has a new job in government at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Lavingia joined the IRS in November. In a conversation at WIRED's Big Interview event with former acting commissioner of the Social Security Administration (SSA) Leland Dudek and David Foote, outside counsel for the US Institute of Peace, Lavingia said, "I'm working at IRS for online accounts."

Large language models (LLMs) achieve remarkable performance in code generation tasks. However, a significant performance disparity persists between popular programming languages (e.g., Python, C++) and others. To address this capability gap, we leverage the code translation task to train LLMs, thereby facilitating the transfer of coding proficiency across diverse programming languages. Moreover, we introduce OORL for training, a novel reinforcement learning (RL) framework that integrates on-policy and off-policy strategies. Within OORL, on-policy RL is applied during code translation, guided by a rule-based reward signal derived from unit tests. Complementing this coarse-grained rule-based reward, we propose Group Equivalent Preference Optimization (GEPO), a novel preference optimization method. Specifically, GEPO trains the LLM using intermediate representations (IRs) groups. LLMs can be guided to discern IRs equivalent to the source code from inequivalent ones, while also utilizing signals about the mutual equivalence between IRs within the group. This process allows LLMs to capture nuanced aspects of code functionality. By employing OORL for training with code translation tasks, LLMs improve their recognition of code functionality and their understanding of the relationships between code implemented in different languages. Extensive experiments demonstrate that our OORL for LLMs training with code translation tasks achieves significant performance improvements on code benchmarks across multiple programming languages.

Abstract--Low-altitude wireless networks (LA WNs) represent a promising architecture that integrates unmanned aerial vehicles (UA Vs) as aerial nodes to provide enhanced coverage, reliability, and throughput for diverse applications. However, these networks face significant security vulnerabilities from both known and potential unknown eavesdroppers, which may threaten data confidentiality and system integrity. T o solve this critical issue, we propose a novel secure communication framework for LA WNs where the selected UA Vs within a swarm function as a virtual antenna array (V AA), complemented by intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to create a robust defense against eavesdropping attacks. Specifically, we formulate a multi-objective optimization problem that simultaneously maximizes the secrecy rate while minimizing the maximum sidelobe level and total energy consumption, requiring joint optimization of UA V excitation current weights, flight trajectories, and IRS phase shifts. This problem presents significant difficulties due to the dynamic nature of the system and heterogeneous components. Thus, we first transform the problem into a heterogeneous Markov decision process (MDP). Then, we propose a heterogeneous multi-agent control approach (HMCA) that integrates a dedicated IRS control policy with a multi-agent soft actor-critic framework for UA V control, which enables coordinated operation across heterogeneous network elements. Simulation results show that the proposed HMCA achieves superior performance compared to baseline approaches in terms of secrecy rate improvement, sidelobe suppression, and energy efficiency. Furthermore, we find that the collaborative and passive beamforming synergy between V AA and IRS creates robust security guarantees when the number of UA Vs increases. Jiahui Li, Xinyue Liang, and Hui Kang are with the College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China (E-mails: lijiahui@jlu.edu.cn; Geng Sun is with the College of Computer Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China, and also with the Key Laboratory of Symbolic Computation and Knowledge Engineering of Ministry of Education, Jilin University, Changchun 130012, China. He is also with the College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798 (E-mail: sungeng@jlu.edu.cn).

--Bit-level sparsity in quantized deep neural networks (DNNs) offers significant potential for optimizing Multiply-Accumulate (MAC) operations. However, two key challenges still limit its practical exploitation. Methods designed to exploit dual-factor sparsity are still in the early stages of exploration, facing the challenge of partial product explosion. Second, the fluctuation of bit-level sparsity leads to variable cycle counts for MAC operations. Existing synchronous scheduling schemes that are suitable for dual-factor sparsity exhibit poor flexibility and still result in significant underutilization of MAC units. T o address the first challenge, this study proposes a MAC unit that leverages dual-factor sparsity through the emerging particlization-based approach. The proposed design addresses the issue of partial product explosion through simple control logic, resulting in a more area-and energy-efficient MAC unit. In addition, by discarding less significant intermediate results, the design allows for further hardware simplification at the cost of minor accuracy loss. T o address the second challenge, a quasi-synchronous scheme is introduced that adds cycle-level elasticity to the MAC array, reducing pipeline stalls and thereby improving MAC unit utilization. Evaluation results show that the exact version of the proposed MAC array architecture achieves a 29.2% improvement in area efficiency compared to the state-of-the-art bit-sparsity-driven architecture, while maintaining comparable energy efficiency. The approximate variant further improves energy efficiency by 7.5%, compared to the exact version. Due to the limited computing power of edge devices, deploying fixed-point quantized models in edge DNN architectures has become a common practice [1], [2].

Industry 4.0 is transforming manufacturing and logistics by integrating robots into shared human environments, such as factories, warehouses, and healthcare facilities. However, the risk of human-robot collisions, especially in Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) scenarios like around corners, remains a critical challenge. Existing solutions, such as vision-based and LiDAR systems, often fail under occlusion, lighting constraints, or privacy concerns, while RF-based systems are limited by range and accuracy. To address these limitations, we propose mmMirror, a novel system leveraging a Van Atta Array-based millimeter-wave (mmWave) reconfigurable intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) for precise, device-free NLoS localization. mmMirror integrates seamlessly with existing frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radars and offers: (i) robust NLoS localization with centimeter-level accuracy at ranges up to 3 m, (ii) seamless uplink and downlink communication between radar and IRS, (iii) support for multi-radar and multi-target scenarios via dynamic beam steering, and (iv) reduced scanning latency through adaptive time slot allocation. Implemented using commodity 24 GHz radars and a PCB-based IRS prototype, mmMirror demonstrates its potential in enabling safe human-robot interactions in dynamic and complex environments.

The Trump administration recently announced that it would be laying off approximately 6,700 workers at the Internal Revenue Service, about 8% of the people employed by the agency. Tens of thousands of federal employees at other agencies are also losing their jobs. The timing could not be worse. Millions of returns will need to be processed. Questions will need to be answered.

Intermediate Representations (IRs) are essential in compiler design and program analysis, yet their comprehension by Large Language Models (LLMs) remains underexplored. This paper presents a pioneering empirical study to investigate the capabilities of LLMs, including GPT-4, GPT-3, Gemma 2, LLaMA 3.1, and Code Llama, in understanding IRs. We analyze their performance across four tasks: Control Flow Graph (CFG) reconstruction, decompilation, code summarization, and execution reasoning. Our results indicate that while LLMs demonstrate competence in parsing IR syntax and recognizing high-level structures, they struggle with control flow reasoning, execution semantics, and loop handling. Specifically, they often misinterpret branching instructions, omit critical IR operations, and rely on heuristic-based reasoning, leading to errors in CFG reconstruction, IR decompilation, and execution reasoning. The study underscores the necessity for IR-specific enhancements in LLMs, recommending fine-tuning on structured IR datasets and integration of explicit control flow models to augment their comprehension and handling of IR-related tasks.

Credit scoring is a systematic approach to evaluate a borrower's probability of default (PD) on a bank loan. The data associated with such scenarios are characteristically imbalanced, complicating binary classification owing to the often-underestimated cost of misclassification during the classifier's learning process. Considering the high imbalance ratio (IR) of these datasets, we introduce an innovative yet straightforward optimized activation function by incorporating an IR-dependent asymmetric adjusted factor embedded Sigmoid activation function (ASIG). The embedding of ASIG makes the sensitive margin of the Sigmoid function auto-adjustable, depending on the imbalance nature of the datasets distributed, thereby giving the activation function an asymmetric characteristic that prevents the underrepresentation of the minority class (positive samples) during the classifier's learning process. The experimental results show that the ASIG-embedded-classifier outperforms traditional classifiers on datasets across wide-ranging IRs in the downstream credit-scoring task. The algorithm also shows robustness and stability, even when the IR is ultra-high. Therefore, the algorithm provides a competitive alternative in the financial industry, especially in credit scoring, possessing the ability to effectively process highly imbalanced distribution data.

The United States Treasury Department is turning more to artificial intelligence (AI) to fight fraud, using the technology to thwart 4bn in improper payments in the last year. The agency released the estimate in a press release Thursday announcing the success of its "technology and data-driven approach". In fiscal year 2024, which ran from October 2023 to September 2024, the Treasury used machine-learning AI to halt 1bn in cheque fraud, it said. At the same time, its AI processes helped weed out 3bn in other improper payments, including by pinpointing at-risk transactions and improving screening, it added. The 4bn total annual fraud prevention was six times higher than that captured in the previous year, according to the agency.

This article introduces a novel heuristic for Task and Motion Planning (TAMP) named Interpretable Responsibility Sharing (IRS), which enhances planning efficiency in domestic robots by leveraging human-constructed environments and inherent biases. Utilizing auxiliary objects (e.g., trays and pitchers), which are commonly found in household settings, IRS systematically incorporates these elements to simplify and optimize task execution. The heuristic is rooted in the novel concept of Responsibility Sharing (RS), where auxiliary objects share the task's responsibility with the embodied agent, dividing complex tasks into manageable sub-problems. This division not only reflects human usage patterns but also aids robots in navigating and manipulating within human spaces more effectively. By integrating Optimized Rule Synthesis (ORS) for decision-making, IRS ensures that the use of auxiliary objects is both strategic and context-aware, thereby improving the interpretability and effectiveness of robotic planning. Experiments conducted across various household tasks demonstrate that IRS significantly outperforms traditional methods by reducing the effort required in task execution and enhancing the overall decision-making process. This approach not only aligns with human intuitive methods but also offers a scalable solution adaptable to diverse domestic environments. Code is available at https://github.com/asyncs/IRS.