Internet Access in Vatican City: History, Infrastructure, Providers, and Modern Challenges

Internet Access in Vatican City: History, Infrastructure, Providers, and Modern Challenges

The Holy See published its first website, www.vatican.va, on December 25, 1995, marking Vatican City’s online debut and the creation of the Vatican Internet Service. By the late 1990s the Vatican established the Internet Office of the Holy See as its ISP, connected Vatican City to the global internet, and secured the .va domain for the state. In 2010 a contract with Telecom Italia deployed a fiber-optic network linking Vatican sites and extraterritorial properties such as Castel Gandolfo and the Vatican Radio transmission center. By 2020 about 5,000 Vatican telephone lines were connected through an IMS digital exchange, with fiber
18 July 2025
AI Revolution: 48 Hours of Breakthroughs, Battles, and Backlash (July 17–18, 2025)

AI Revolution: 48 Hours of Breakthroughs, Battles, and Backlash (July 17–18, 2025)

On July 17, 2025, OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent, introducing an agent mode that can take actions such as booking reservations, shopping, or drafting documents and can connect to apps like Gmail and GitHub, with safeguards that the system will always ask for user confirmation before major actions and can be interrupted. Starting immediately, subscribers to ChatGPT Pro, Plus, and Team plans can activate this agent mode. At the AWS Summit New York on July 17, Amazon announced Bedrock AgentCore, a platform with seven core services to enable autonomous AI agents, plus an AI Agents & Tools marketplace and a $100
18 July 2025
Robotaxis, Rocket Launches, and Record Profits – Tech Highlights (July 17–18, 2025)

Robotaxis, Rocket Launches, and Record Profits – Tech Highlights (July 17–18, 2025)

Uber to deploy 20,000 robotaxis across the United States starting in 2026, with a $300 million investment in Lucid Motors and a partnership with Nuro to use Lucid Gravity SUVs with Nuro’s autonomous driving system. Fortinet FortiWeb faced a critical SQL injection flaw, CVE-2025-25257, compromising at least 49 instances as of July 17. Australian medical tech firm Compumedics disclosed a ransomware breach exposing more than 320,000 patient records across three countries. Google rushed out a patch for the fifth Chrome zero-day vulnerability of 2025. SpaceX launched 24 Amazon Kuiper satellites from Cape Canaveral on July 17, the third Kuiper deployment,
Battle of the Pro Tablets: Apple M2 iPad Pro vs Microsoft Surface Pro 11 – Which Reigns Supreme?

Battle of the Pro Tablets: Apple M2 iPad Pro vs Microsoft Surface Pro 11 – Which Reigns Supreme?

Apple’s iPad Pro 12.9" (M2, 2022) features an 8-core CPU, mini-LED XDR display, Face ID, and starts at $1,099 with 8 GB RAM and 128 GB storage. Microsoft’s Surface Pro 11 (13", 2024) runs Snapdragon X Plus/Elite chips, offers a 13" LCD or OLED, Windows Hello, and starts at $999 with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB storage. Both target around 10 hours battery life.
Drone Laws in Poland (2025): Comprehensive Guide to Regulations & Requirements

Drone Laws in Poland (2025): Comprehensive Guide to Regulations & Requirements

Poland enforces EU drone regulations through its Civil Aviation Authority, requiring operator registration for drones 250 g or heavier or with cameras, with fines up to 10,000 PLN for violations. Open category drones must stay below 120 meters, within visual line of sight, and follow strict distance rules from people and airports. Remote ID is mandatory from January 2024, including retrofits for older drones. No distinction is made between recreational and commercial use.
18 July 2025
Apple Vision Pro vs Meta Quest 3: In-Depth Comparison and Review 2025

Apple Vision Pro vs Meta Quest 3: In-Depth Comparison and Review 2025

Apple Vision Pro began shipping in early 2024 at $3,499 for 256GB, while Meta Quest 3 launched in October 2023 starting at $499 for 128GB. Vision Pro weighs 600–650 g with an external battery and features dual micro-OLED displays at ~4K per eye; Quest 3 weighs 515 g and uses LCD panels at 2064×2208 per eye. Vision Pro includes eye tracking and supports hands-free input, unlike Quest 3.
Apple AirPods Max vs Sony WH-1000XM6: Flagship Headphones Face-off (2025 Comparison)

Apple AirPods Max vs Sony WH-1000XM6: Flagship Headphones Face-off (2025 Comparison)

AirPods Max weighs 385–386 grams with a metal build, while Sony WH-1000XM6 is 250 grams and folds for travel. AirPods Max uses 40 mm drivers, supports spatial audio, and lasts about 20 hours per charge. Sony WH-1000XM6 offers 30 mm drivers, LDAC, up to 30 hours battery with ANC, and multipoint Bluetooth. As of May 2025, AirPods Max costs $549; Sony WH-1000XM6 launched at $449.99.
18 July 2025
Samsung Galaxy Buds 3 Pro vs. AirPods, Sony, Bose: Ultimate Earbud Showdown

True Wireless Earbuds in 2025: Comprehensive Comparison of Top Models, Trends & Features

Over 455 million smart personal audio devices shipped in 2024, including 331.6 million true wireless earbuds. AI-powered adaptive ANC, lossless wireless audio, and spatial audio with head-tracking are now common. Biometric sensors and seamless device switching are expanding, with leading models offering 6–8 hours per charge with ANC. Sony WF-1000XM5 and AirPods Pro 2 remain top sellers, while new designs and features continue to emerge.
iPhone 17 Pro Max vs. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Ultimate Flagship Showdown

iPhone 17 Pro Max vs. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra: Ultimate Flagship Showdown

Galaxy S26 Ultra will feature a 6.89-inch QHD+ AMOLED display, Snapdragon 8 Gen4 chip, 16 GB RAM, 200 MP main camera, and a 5,000 mAh battery with up to 65W charging. iPhone 17 Pro Max is set to use a 6.9-inch 120Hz OLED, A19 Pro chip, 12 GB RAM, triple 48 MP rear cameras, and a 5,000 mAh battery with MagSafe and USB-C charging. Both offer up to 1 TB storage and silicon-carbon battery tech.
OpenAI Unleashes ChatGPT Agent – The AI Assistant That Can Plan, Shop and Make PowerPoints For You

OpenAI Unleashes ChatGPT Agent – The AI Assistant That Can Plan, Shop and Make PowerPoints For You

OpenAI launched ChatGPT Agent on July 17, 2025, turning ChatGPT into a personal AI assistant capable of autonomously handling multi-step tasks. The agent uses a built-in “virtual computer” to browse the web, fill forms, run code, and produce Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations on the user’s behalf. It can manage schedules and plans by checking your calendar and finding free times to reserve tables via OpenTable. It can perform online research and compile concise reports or analyses, including trend summaries. It can shop online, compare options with criteria you specify, and place orders with your permission. It can generate editable
AI Pathology Breakthrough: Roche’s Lung Cancer Diagnostic Makes FDA History

AI Pathology Breakthrough: Roche’s Lung Cancer Diagnostic Makes FDA History

In April 2025, Roche’s Ventana TROP2 (EPR20043) RxDx test became the first AI-powered diagnostic to receive FDA Breakthrough Device Designation. The device pairs an immunohistochemistry stain for TROP2 with a digital pathology AI algorithm that runs in Roche’s Navify system to analyze NSCLC biopsy slides. The AI calculates a Normalized Membrane Ratio (NMR), the ratio of surface TROP2 to internal TROP2, to classify tumors as TROP2-positive or -negative. The Ventana TROP2 RxDx is a full diagnostic system, including Roche’s slide scanners, the Navify image management software, the Ventana TROP2 IHC kit, and the AI algorithm. A positive NMR score thresholds
17 July 2025
Europe’s New AI Code of Conduct: Inside the Plan to Tame Big Tech’s Models by 2025

Europe’s New AI Code of Conduct: Inside the Plan to Tame Big Tech’s Models by 2025

The final General-Purpose AI Code of Practice was delivered to the European Commission on July 10, 2025. The EU AI Act will apply on August 2, 2025, with a one-year grace period for new GPAI models and two years for existing models before penalties. Adhering to the GPAI Code creates a rebuttable presumption of conformity with the AI Act, effectively a safe harbor for signatories. The Code is structured around three chapters: Transparency, Copyright, and Safety & Security. Frontier GPAI models are those exceeding 10^25 FLOPs of compute, and in 2025 there are an estimated 5–15 companies worldwide with models
17 July 2025
AlphaEvolve: DeepMind’s Gemini-Powered AI That Invents Algorithms and Breaks a 56-Year Record

AlphaEvolve: DeepMind’s Gemini-Powered AI That Invents Algorithms and Breaks a 56-Year Record

Google DeepMind’s AlphaEvolve AI agent autonomously designed a 4x4 matrix multiplication method using 48 multiplications, surpassing Strassen’s 1969 record. It created a data-center scheduling algorithm that reclaimed 0.7% of Google’s global compute capacity and rewrote TPU hardware code. AlphaEvolve also improved Gemini’s training speed and advanced solutions to open mathematical problems. The system remains a research prototype.
32B AI Model Trained by a Swarm of Volunteer GPUs – Inside INTELLECT-2’s Decentralized Revolution

32B AI Model Trained by a Swarm of Volunteer GPUs – Inside INTELLECT-2’s Decentralized Revolution

In May 2025, Prime Intellect unveiled INTELLECT-2, a 32B-parameter LLM trained on a globally distributed swarm of volunteer GPUs. INTELLECT-2 is the first model of its scale trained via fully asynchronous reinforcement learning across hundreds of heterogeneous, permissionless machines on chakra.dev. PRIME-RL coordinates the training loop by separating experience generation on inference workers from policy updates on trainer nodes, eliminating traditional synchronization bottlenecks. SHARDCAST distributes the 32B model weights via a tree-based, pipelined transfer to hundreds of volunteer GPUs, accelerating weight propagation. TOPLOC provides a probabilistic verification fingerprint using locality-sensitive hashing to detect tampering or incorrect results from untrusted nodes.
The “HTML of the AI Era”? Microsoft’s NLWeb Aims to Put ChatGPT on Every Website

The “HTML of the AI Era”? Microsoft’s NLWeb Aims to Put ChatGPT on Every Website

NLWeb is an open protocol unveiled by Microsoft at Build 2025 to put ChatGPT-like conversational interfaces on websites. NLWeb works by indexing a site’s content using HTML, RSS feeds, and Schema.org metadata and exposing it to AI models via a standard JSON over REST API with a core ask method. The system is model-agnostic and can run with any LLM, including open-source models, with Guha demonstrating an open small-scale model called GPT-4o Mini. Demonstrations on Serious Eats showed an example query for spicy and crunchy appetizers, and another for vegetarian Diwali dishes, while a jacket query on an outdoor retailer
17 July 2025
Mixture-of-Memories (MoM): The “Linear Attention” Breakthrough That Doesn’t Forget Long Contexts

Mixture-of-Memories (MoM): The “Linear Attention” Breakthrough That Doesn’t Forget Long Contexts

MoM was released in May 2025 as a linear-attention sequence model that preserves long-term context without forgetting. MoM breaks the single-memory bottleneck by maintaining multiple independent memory states and using a token router to assign information to memory slots. A trained router assigns each token to the top-k most relevant memory modules, with typical settings like top-k=2. Activated memories are updated by adding the token’s key and value outer-product to the memory, while a shared global memory is updated concurrently. MoM achieves linear time complexity per token and linear scaling with sequence length, unlike Transformers which are quadratic. In benchmarks,
Comprehensive Guide to Drone Laws in Ireland (2025 Update)

Comprehensive Guide to Drone Laws in Ireland (2025 Update)

Ireland enforces EU drone rules through the Irish Aviation Authority. Registration is mandatory for drones 250 g or heavier or with cameras, costing €40 for five years. Remote ID is required for most drones as of 2024. Violations can lead to drone seizure, fines, or up to seven years in prison for endangering aircraft or people.
17 July 2025
Astronomers Spot a 7-Billion-Year-Old Interstellar Comet – Could It Be the Oldest Ever Seen?

Astronomers Spot a 7-Billion-Year-Old Interstellar Comet – Could It Be the Oldest Ever Seen?

On July 1, 2025, the ATLAS telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile, detected 3I/ATLAS near Jupiter’s orbit with a hyperbolic, interstellar trajectory. 3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object identified, following 1I/ʻOumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. Estimates place 3I/ATLAS at 7–10 billion years old if formed in the Milky Way’s thick disk, making it possibly the oldest comet we’ve seen. Backward-orbit modeling using Gaia data and the Ōtautahi–Oxford model suggests an origin in the Milky Way’s thick disk. The nucleus is estimated to be 6–15 miles (10–24 km) across, larger than 1I/ʻOumuamua (~0.25 mile) and 2I/Borisov (~0.67 mile). It travels
17 July 2025
From Submarine Cables to Starlink: Marshall Islands Internet Connectivity in 2025

From Submarine Cables to Starlink: Marshall Islands Internet Connectivity in 2025

The Marshall Islands’ HANTRU-1 cable links Majuro and Kwajalein/Ebeye to Guam via Pohnpei, but a 2017 fault caused a 3-week nationwide outage. The East Micronesia Cable and Central Pacific Cable projects are expected to add redundancy by 2026 and 2028. Starlink launched nationwide by June 2025, and a 2G GSM network now covers all inhabited islands. As of January 2025, 65.7% of residents use the internet.
17 July 2025

Stock Market Today

Coca-Cola stock price near $79: options price a 3% swing ahead of Tuesday earnings

Coca-Cola stock price near $79: options price a 3% swing ahead of Tuesday earnings

8 February 2026
Coca-Cola shares closed at $79.03 Friday, up 0.66%, ahead of its earnings report due Tuesday morning. Options pricing signals traders expect a move of about 3% by week’s end. Analysts estimate quarterly revenue near $12 billion and adjusted EPS at $0.57. The S&P 500 rose 1.97% and the Dow gained 2.47% Friday, with PepsiCo and Keurig Dr Pepper outpacing Coca-Cola.
Netflix stock price in focus as DOJ digs into Warner deal ahead of Monday trade

Netflix stock price in focus as DOJ digs into Warner deal ahead of Monday trade

8 February 2026
Netflix shares closed up 1.6% at $82.20 Friday, then slipped to $82.06 after hours as the Justice Department examined possible anti-competitive conduct in its $82.7 billion Warner Bros Discovery bid. A civil subpoena sought information on exclusionary practices, but Netflix said it was unaware of any probe beyond standard merger review. Warner shareholders are set to vote on the deal in March.
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