December Technology News

4 minute read

Updated: December 01, 2020

December’s Tech Updates

Who: Brazil’s Goias and Huawei
What: The Brazilian farm state rolled out a pilot project on Thursday to increase productivity and take fast action against disease using fifth-generation technology and equipment provided by China’s Huawei Technologies Co.
When: 3rd of December, 2020
Why: Because the 5G communications will allow producers to improve crops through the collection of information by sensors placed in the fields - by sensors placed in the fields, on harvesters and drones, so that it can be readily crossed with meteorological and humidity data.
How:
- Combining fast broadband communications with real time cloud data processing will give farmers the information so they can rapidly take actions against diseases and other threats to their crops.
- The pilot was launched in the soy-farming town of Rio Verde, and uses a 5G network built by telecom company Claro, a unit of Mexico’s América Móvil.
So?: Brazil’s government decided not to ban the use of Huawei equipment in next year’s auction of 5G frequencies spectrum; telecommunications regulator Anatel has proposed rules that do not exclude the Chinese Company.
Link to the article

Who: The European Union
What: European Commission guidelines have been set out, making Google, Microsoft and other tech giants to be more transparent in how they rank online search results.
When: 7th of December, 2020
Why:
- Because smaller rivals and some companies have long complained about arbitrary and opaque practices, as it affects how their products and services are ranked in search results.
- Also, the standard for algorithmic ranking transparency and will increase fairness in the online platform economy, which drives innovation and welfare for millions of Europeans.
How: Vestager, A Danish politician will on Dec. 15 present draft rules to rein in tech giants - setting out a list of dos and don’ts and increasing their responsibility to take down illegal and harmful content from their platforms, with fines and other sanctions to encourage compliance.
So?: The companies will have to identify the algorithmic parameters that determine ranking and to share them with companies.
Link to the article

The talk explores the melding of art with artificial intelligence, delivered by a media artist Refik Anadol.
He claims: Data can only become knowledge when it’s experienced, and knowledge and experience can take many forms.

Project 1: Archive Dreaming

One of the first AI-driven public installations in the world, exploring approximately 1.7 million documents that span 270 years.
The resulting work was a user-driven immersive space that challenges immutable concepts of the archive, while destabilizing archive-related questions with machine learning algorithms.

Project 2: Machine Hallucination

An exploration of time and space, challenging the conventional definition of ‘space’ as the boundless, experienced through NYC public photographic archive.
Represents a wide-ranging selection of architectural styles and movements and reveals the hidden connections between these moments in history
Explores the ways in which knowledge can be experienced spatially.

Project 3: Ted talk Archive

They collected 7705 ted talks, extracted 487,168 sentences, to further extract into 330 unique clusters of topics like nature, global emissions, extinction, computation and etc.
These clusters are then connected to each other by an algorithm, that generated 113 million line segments, which reveal new conceptual relationships.
The result is a space where you interact with various feelings attributed to learning, remembering, questioning and imagining all at the same time, expanding the power of the mind.


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This article is a follow-up of 9th’s news.

Who: The European union and big tech firms such as Google and Facebook.
What: Tech giants will be fined up to 6% of turnover if they do not tackle illegal content and reveal more about advertising on their platforms under draft EU rules.
When: The EU draft rules known as the Digital Services Act (DSA will be published on Dec. 15.
Why:
- The strict rule comes amid growing regulatory scrutiny worldwide of tech giants and their control of data and access to their platforms.
- It is to address public policy concerns and the systemic risks posed by their services.
How:
- The companies will be required to publish details of their online advertisers and show the parameters used by their algorithms to suggest and rank information.
- Then, independent auditors will monitor compliance with the EU enforcements.
So?:
- However, the draft rules could take a year or more to come into force as they have to take into account feedback from EU countries and the European Parliament.
Link to the article