I just got hit by the boomerang I threw a year ago... Yesterday, I suddenly received a bill for over 260 SGD (~1500 CNY). Took a closer look, turns out Chatbox AI auto-renewed my annual membership fee. Why did I even sign up for this membership back then? It was February last year when DeepSeek R1 blew up, and the servers were crashing like crazy. To bypass the front-end issues, I found a third-party tool, Chatbox, which probably uses DS's API, so it wasn’t lagging. Today, I’m feeling a bit dazed—has it really only been a year since DeepSeek R1 launched?!? Why does it feel like a century has passed? GPT went from o3 to 4.5 to 5, Gemini from 2 to 3, plus Nano Banana 2, Claude from 3.7 to 4.6, Grok 4 and Llama 4 launched, and then Yuanbao started handing out red envelopes, and Qianwen started delivering takeout. PS: DeepSeek R1 got updated again today, now supporting ultra-long 1M context. Not to mention Manus got acquired for $1 billion, and OpenClaw sold out all the Mac Minis. Wait, all of this happened in just one year??? I still vaguely remember last year, when everyone was hyped because DeepSeek could roast people; Now James is directly challenging Guo Degang on Douyin, getting dunked on by a 7-year-old girl, and no one even bats an eye. AI acceleration is just way, way, way, way too terrifying.