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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4G LTE coverage is extensive, reaching about 91% of the population in 2024, while 3G coverage reaches about 95%. In 2023, SIT held spectrum auctions that raised about $176 million in total: 126 MHz in the 2.5 GHz band brought in about $49 million (with Tigo $32 million and Claro $17 million) and a later…
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As of March 2025, approximately 14,900 total satellites were in orbit, with about 11,000–12,000 active and 3,000–4,000 inactive or defunct. SpaceX’s Starlink has about 7,000–7,500 active satellites in orbit as of 2025, accounting for over 60% of all operational satellites and a goal of 42,000 total. OneWeb deployed 648 satellites with roughly 652 operational by…
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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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Midjourney (on Discord) uses the V6 model and offers plans starting around $10/month for Basic, $30/month for Standard, and $60/month for Pro. DALL-E 3 (OpenAI) is integrated with ChatGPT in ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20/month, with image-generation credits priced around $0.02–$0.03 per image. Synthesia offers AI avatars (100+ options) and 120+ languages, with a Personal…
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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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Google introduced the Search Generative Experience (SGE) in 2023–2024, using the Gemini AI model to produce top-of-page AI overviews with citations. After limited trials, Google rolled out AI overviews to all U.S. users in 2024 and aims to reach over a billion people by year’s end, with ads remaining separate and publisher traffic preserved. Gemini’s…
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Kwangmyong is North Korea’s national intranet launched in the early 2000s, a closed network that provides email, websites, and digital resources only within North Korea to isolate citizens from the global Internet. <li North Korea’s first internal email service, Sili Bank, was established in 2001 to enable internal electronic correspondence on Kwangmyong. The first intranet…
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In June 2024, a team led by Japan’s NICT and Aston University achieved 402 Tbps over a single standard optical fiber using six wavelength bands (O, E, S, C, L, and U). In March 2024, the same international team reached 301 Tbps by extending into E-band and S-band with a custom amplifier for those bands.…
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