Google Quantum AI achieved quantum supremacy in 2019 with the 54-qubit Sycamore processor performing a random circuit sampling task in 200 seconds. IBM Quantum progressed from the 127-qubit Eagle milestone in 2021 to 433-qubit Osprey in 2022, with a plan for a 1,121-qubit Condor and a long-term goal of about one million physical qubits by…
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SpaceX (USA, founded 2002 by Elon Musk) achieved the first private orbital rocket launch in 2008, performed the first booster landing in 2015, and launched the Starlink mega-constellation. Blue Origin (USA, founded 2000 by Jeff Bezos) completed the first vertical landing of a New Shepard booster in 2015, flew the first crewed suborbital flight in…
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On September 19, 1988, Ofek-1 became Israel’s first indigenous satellite, making Israel the eighth nation to orbit its own spacecraft. The Israel Space Agency (ISA) was established in 1983 under physicist Yuval Ne’eman to oversee Israel’s civilian space activities. The Shavit launch vehicle is a 20-meter-tall, three-stage solid-fuel rocket that can loft about 380 kg…
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In late 2022, Apple launched Emergency SOS via satellite on the iPhone 14 series, enabling two-way emergency texting via Globalstar satellites. As of iOS 17 and later, iPhone 14/15 users in supported regions can share their location and send basic non-emergency texts via satellite, with two years of free service after activation before a paid…
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The CORONA (Discoverer) program operated from 1959 to 1972 as the United States’ first photo-reconnaissance satellite program, with Discoverer XIV achieving the first mid-air film recovery in August 1960. KH-11 KENNEN (CRYSTAL), first launched in 1976, introduced electro-optical digital imaging with about 15 cm per-pixel resolution, and a 2019 declassified image from USA-224 reportedly achieved…
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Suno AI generates complete songs with vocals and lyrics from a short text prompt in seconds, using its v4.5 model and offering multi-language vocals plus a Personas feature to remember your preferred style. Udio creates full songs with AI-sung vocals from natural-language prompts in about 30–60 seconds, with editing (extend, remix, inpaint) and stem separation,…
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DeepSeek AI was founded in 2023 as a spin-off from Hangzhou‑based High-Flyer Capital Management, following a March 2023 announcement that the fund would devote resources to AGI research. High-Flyer built two private AI clusters before export restrictions—1,100 NVIDIA A100 GPUs in 2020 and about 10,000 A100 GPUs in 2021, at a cost of ¥1 billion,…
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The four pillars of quantum technology are quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing (metrology), and quantum simulation. In 2016, China’s Micius satellite demonstrated satellite-based quantum key distribution by distributing entangled photons between ground stations over 1,200 km. IBM aims to build a 4,000+ qubit machine by 2025 and demonstrated a 433-qubit processor in 2022. D-Wave’s…
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Syria has conducted annual nationwide internet shutdowns on high school exam days since 2016, with 2020–2025 patterns showing daily outages of roughly 3.5 to 5.5 hours during exam periods. Syria’s shutdowns use an asymmetric model that allows outbound traffic but blocks inbound responses, making the internet effectively unusable. In Syria, the 2023 exam season produced…
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As of mid-2024, 82.2% of fixed broadband households in Vietnam were connected via fiber-optic FTTH, with universal fiber access targeted by 2025 under the Digital Infrastructure Strategy. 4G LTE coverage reaches 99.8% of the territory, with about 168.5 million mobile subscriptions (roughly 170% of the population) and 91.9 mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 people by…
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