Facebook was born in 2003 as ‘Face match’, an application to flirt. Who would imagine that the platform would be used to influence elections worldwide? Google was created with the mission of “organizing the information of the world and making it accessible and useful”, but its director, Eric Schmidt, has recognized the complex evolution of his search engine: “One of the things I did not understand in the beginning was that these systems can manipulate public opinion in ways that do not match what we think of democracy. ” This duality in the use of technology is also observed in the ways in which world leaders govern their territories.

China has a surveillance network of more than two hundred million cameras, and the Government has promoted technological advances whose applications have been questioned by human rights activists. It has established a social credit system that evaluates the behavior of each citizen according to the parameters of the Government, and some cities have giant screens that publish lists of delinquents.

These types of surveillance measures to control the population do not remain in Chinese territory, but the Government of Chinese President Xi Jinping is exporting them as a model of success.

The success of Jinping China has seduced many leaders worldwide with a model that academic Shoshana Zuboff has described as an “incubator for terror capitalism.” An investigation by Freedom House revealed that China has sold technology to 18 countries and 36 have participated in training seminars on topics such as “guiding public opinion.” US Senator Marco Rubio has accused the country of being “in the business of exporting its authoritarianism.”

Venezuela has joined the list. The telecommunications company ZTE has helped the government of Nicolás Maduro create the “card of the motherland”. It is not a simple identity document. The Maduro government has invested about 70 million dollars to offer subsidies through it, but its membership is not free. Citizens provide a large amount of data such as family information, income, political membership and activity in the social networks used by the Government.

In Ecuador there are more than 4,000 cameras that nurture police monitoring centers. A New York Times article revealed that Ecuadorian police spend their days reviewing the recordings within 16 centers that employ more than three thousand people throughout the country. The technology is Chinese and was installed in 2011. The American newspaper revealed that the recordings have also ended in the dreaded National Intelligence Agency that under the mandate of former President Rafael Correa accumulated a long history of monitoring, intimidation and attack on political opponents.

Another buyer is Zimbabwe. The African state acquired from the arte start up ’Cloud Walk a series of artifacts to build a facial recognition system and strengthen its security. Although the Cloud Walk company is a private company, numerous media outlets in the region confirm that it has received millions of grants from the Jinping Executive.

Chinese surveillance and security company Yitu Technology sold portable cameras with facial recognition technology to Malaysia to strengthen security in public spaces, according to local authorities. The company’s technology can identify a person in its database of 1.8 billion people in three seconds with 95% accuracy.

And Chinese rulers have access to the different databases generated by their companies both in their territory and abroad.

Another of China’s most controversial customers is North Korea. Huawei and the state-owned company Panda International Information Technology built a telephone network in the country, according to a Washington Post investigation. This investment has been criticized for going against the sanctions that have been imposed on the peninsula to force its denuclearization.

These models have not originated from day to morning. In 2010 a delegation of countries, including Syria and Russia, went to the United Nations with a request: to establish sovereign borders in the digital world. The request did not prosper, but Russia has led attempts to achieve it. The Kremlin has tried to design an independent Internet project, and the Russian Government has carried out temporary disconnections to see if in case of foreign aggression Russia could be unplugged from the global network.

These practices contradict the optimism with which many saw technology. Foreign Affairs analysts detected that these uses of technological tools represent a setback in the liberalization of authoritarian countries because it allows them to make changes in people’s quality of life and maintain their control at the same time. Scholars point to that matching

An underwater or Interoceanic cable is that copper or fiber optic cable installed on the seabed and primarily intended for telecommunication services.

However, there are also submarine cables for the transport of electrical energy, although in this case the covered distances are usually relatively small and they are also inserted into a special pipe to avoid risks from contact with water since it handles high powers.

Currently, fiber optic submarine cables are the basis of the global telecommunications network. 1 2 The submarine cable is shown as a robust and effective solution, due to weather resistance, lower latency, and greater bandwidth than satellite communication, all of which positions it as a more reliable and higher capacity infrastructure, Once installed and tested.

Satellite communication has been relegated since the 1990s to the transmission of specific sporting and / or cultural events, the communication of extremely remote sites, and maritime / aeronautical navigation. It takes advantage of the flexibility of being able to “get on the satellite” instantly where the “footprint” of the satellite allows, and even move without losing connectivity, something that the cable cannot give.

The cables are currently not very thick, they can reach the size of a human arm. Paradoxically, the greater the depth, the less mechanical protection is needed, as there is a lower probability of damage to the cable by anchors, trawls, or others. They usually have the optical fibers in the center, plastic coatings, steel cables for mechanical resistance, copper conductors for repeater feeding, and an outer sheath of polyethylene terephthalate to completely isolate it.

And you will be wondering about the capacity of data transmission. Well, hold on to your chair. Neither more nor less than 3,840 giga-bits per second, that is 102 DVD discs in those seconds, this is possible by the optical fiber. A cable consists of 16 fiber threads, therefore 1,700 DVD discs are filled per second, above 60 terabits per second.

Repairing a cable at such depth is impossible, so it is fixed on the surface. Damaged ends are rescued with an underwater robot, and damage is repaired, attached or fixed on board special ships. There are not many ships dedicated to this work

There are several reasons why the cables are damaged, but basically it is because of ship anchors, fishing nets, or fish. The marine fauna can eat the coating of the cables – sharks -, attracted by the magnetic fields. Fortunately, the new cable designs contemplate this problem and reduce the possibility of cuts or complications from these causes.

Other cases that are contemplated are earthquakes. In 2006, one with magnitude 7.0 broke eight wires in the Taiwan area, seriously affecting communications in China. A total of eleven ships spent 49 days working on the repair.

Currently, movement recognition systems are being incorporated in the ocean floor for possible earthquakes, which may lead to something more complicated. It is known that they originate there, so we can count on the speed with which the cable can warn of what is happening, this gives us a very large room for maneuver to prevent situations in cities.

At present, the cables are not protected by the countries and every year there are between 100 and 150 cuts of submarine cables.

This technological marvel allows us to achieve the interconnection we enjoy today.

SOURCE: Wikipedia

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber, made by drawing or extruding glass (silica) or plastic in a diameter slightly thicker than that of a human hair. Optical fibers are more commonly used as a means to transmit light between two points of a fiber and have a wide use in fiber optic communications, where they allow transmission at greater distances and bandwidth (data rate) than the electric wires. Fibers are used instead of metal wires because the signals travel through them with less loss; In addition, the fibers are immune to electromagnetic interference, a problem from which metal cables suffer widely. Fibers are also used for lighting and imagery, and are usually wrapped in packages to introduce or remove light from tight spaces, such as a fibroscope. Some specially designed fibers are also used for a wide variety of diverse applications, some of which are fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers.

Typically, optical fibers have a core surrounded by a transparent coating material with a lower refractive index. The light is maintained in the nucleus due to the phenomenon of total internal reflection that causes the fiber to act as a waveguide. Fibers that allow many propagation paths or transverse modes are called multimode fibers (MM), while those that allow only one mode are called single mode fibers (SM). Multimode fibers generally have a larger core diameter6 and are used for short distance communication links and for applications where high power transmission is required. Single mode fibers are used for communication links larger than 1000 meters.

Being able to join optical fibers with low loss is important in fiber optic communication. This is more complex than joining electrical cable and involves careful adhesion of the fibers, precise alignment of the fiber cores and the coupling of these aligned cores. For applications that need a permanent connection, fusion splices are made. In this technique, an electric arc is used to melt the ends and thus join them together. Another common technique is mechanical splicing, where the end of the fibers is kept in contact by means of a mechanical force. Temporary or semi-permanent connections are made through a specialized fiber optic connector.

The field of applied science and engineering responsible for the design and application of optical fibers is called fiber optics. The term was coined by the Hindu physicist Narinder Singh Kapany, who is widely recognized as the father of fiber optics.

The optical fiber is used as a means of transmission in telecommunications networks because of its flexibility the optical conductors can be grouped together forming cables. The fibers used in this field are plastic or glass and sometimes of both types. Because of the low attenuation they have, glass fibers are used in interurban environments.

SOURCE: Wikipedia

We all hear about Facebook’s algorithm, Google’s algorithm … but … what is an algorithm?

In mathematics, logic, computer science and related disciplines, an algorithm (from Latin, dixit algorithmus and east from Greek arithmos, which means “number”, perhaps also influenced by the name of the Persian mathematician Al-Juarismi) is a set of defined and non-ambiguous, orderly and finite instructions or rules that typically allow solving a problem, computing, processing data and carrying out other tasks or activities. Given an initial state and an entry, following the successive steps a final state is reached and a solution is obtained. Algorithms are the object of study of the algorithm.1

We could call the algorithm a road map, based on logical, mathematical or computational reasoning, to obtain the concretion of a basic or complex question or objective, using the tools mentioned above. This added to the development of a flowchart, will take the user to a decision path according to the variables that are added, will arrive at the structure to assemble the pseudocode in high level language and finally be able to generate a program to execute it in a PC or a mathematical formula to obtain a result, as well as a hyper complex algorithm that will require the best and fastest computers in order to execute and obtain results. Ex. Big Data analysis on 10-year trends in Applied Artificial Intelligence.

In everyday life, algorithms are often used to solve problems. Some examples are user manuals, which show algorithms for using a device, or the instructions a worker receives from his employer. Some examples in mathematics are the multiplication algorithm, to calculate the product, the division algorithm to calculate the ratio of two numbers, the Euclidean algorithm to obtain the greatest common divisor of two positive integers, or the Gauss method to solve a system of linear equations.

In terms of programming, an algorithm is a sequence of logical steps that allow solving a problem. Copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to use the work, with some exceptions. When someone creates an original work fixed in a tangible medium, they automatically become the copyright owner of that work.

The Facebook algorithm is a tool used to know what will appear in the first places of the news feed of this social network.

To do this, Facebook takes into account factors such as the behavior and interests of users on the network, and this usually translates into the time spent in a particular post, what are their reactions (likes, comments, shares, etc.) and how is the interaction with other users or friends.

This is done since, after several studies, it has been estimated that any average user has daily access of more than 1500 posts but this person only pays attention to 20%.

The Google Algorithm is the form that the search engine has to position the pages before a search, that is, it is what decides whether you go first, second or on the second page. This algorithm changes about 500 times a year and it is difficult to keep track of it.

Not surprisingly, the algorithms of this search engine are considered as the hearts of the Internet as we know it today.

SOURCE: Google, Wikipedia, Quora