Viber Media, Israel (Later acquired by Rakuten) Monthly Active Users:

260 million

SHROUD

Protects the warhead from melting in the 7000°C launch temperatures

WARHEAD

The tip of the missile containing a miniaturised nuclear bomb

DECOYS

Small aluminum shavings or electronic noise-making devices designed to thwart missile defence systems

NAVIGATION AIDS

Guides the missile’s flight path using GPS

symbols and cultural identity, and the cloth is used in many rituals like births, coming-of-age ceremonies, marriage, and death.

Traditionally, batik cloth is dyed using natural compounds extracted from minerals, animals, and plants, such as the leaves, bark, stem and roots of the trees Indigofera tinctoria L., Ceriops candolleana Arn. and Morinda citrifolia. These are soaked in an extraction solution until the water is coloured. Finally, the dyed cloth is laid out in the sun to dry, where the UV radiation activates the dye compounds. Not all dyes require sunning, but most do.

Today, dye vats are set up in manufacturing plants that condense the extraction solution continuously. Scientists can adjust the ph, add natural dye fixing agents (such as limestone paste and alum), and transform extracts into convenient powder or paste form. An alternative is synthetic dye, which treats the cloth with chemicals, but produces toxic waste, which has led to a rise in demand for ecofriendly batik in recent years. ag

CHINA

China has a powerful system that allows it to maintain censorship of its Internet space. The so-called Great Firewall selectively censors politically sensitive information from foreign networks into the country, and blocks its citizens from accessing those same sites. Internet service providers in China are mostly government-owned.

China first joined the Internet in 1994. The Communist Party passed laws in 1998 ordering the regulation of the Internet, and began active online surveillance of Chinese citizens in 2003. Besides censorship of foreign criticism of its policies, the government blocks foreign content like advertisements and social media. The key decision to ban Facebook and Google allowed local search engines Weibo and Baidu to thrive, giving the government more power to vet content to its satisfaction.

Apart from the firewall, China also has its Golden Shield Project, which monitors a database of information about every citizen – including their computer activity – and conducts surveillance by using facial recognition software and camera networks.

The firewall can only be circumvented by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which changes the user’s destination address to a country outside of China. However, the authorities are increasingly coming down hard on VPN sellers, slapping them with tough penalties – five-year jail terms – for conducting business that the government considers illegal. Several VPN sellers have already closed, and the remaining ones are no longer targeted at the average user, but at entrepreneurs. Experts speculate that even tougher curbs may soon be imposed to tighten China’s Internet control.

Will VPNS Vanish From China? The authorities are increasingly coming down hard on VPN sellers, slapping them with tough penalties – five-year jail terms

CHINA

Apart from firing rockets, pollinating flowers and taking beautiful photographs, drones are now replacing Chinese postmen for customers of local e-commerce sites like Jd.com and Alibaba. While the idea was pioneered by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2013, US regulations have greatly stifled the development of drone delivery there.

Fortunately for Chinese companies, the Chinese government is far more accommodating. In 2017, Jd.com became the first company to trial the service on a large scale in Beijing, Sichuan, Shanxi, and Jiangsu, and announced its plans to have a fully functional service by 2020. Drones are flown to pick-up points where a delivery man retrieves them and delivers them to customers.

The greatest advantage of such a service in a large country like China is the ability to offer cheap and fast deliveries to rural areas, where hand deliveries are costly and slow. In addition to typical deliveries, the company hopes to connect rural suppliers, such as farmers, to larger markets. Even large goods can be delivered with this system, as China’s largest private courier service, SF Express, is developing a heavy-load drone that can transport items weighing 1,200 kilograms over a distance of 3,000 kilometres, compared to the maximum 2 kilograms over 50 kilometres that current drones can manage. However, current prototypes still use fossil fuels, and changing to an environmentallyfriendly power source is proving difficult for researchers who are held back by the limitations of battery technology. ag

Delivery Drones Are the New Postmen The greatest advantage of such a service in a large country like China is the ability to offer cheap and fast deliveries to rural areas