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the bizarre history of Toyota and its hydrogen trucks

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Toyota relies on hydrogen as a mobility solution. It is not news in itself. However, the agreement reached in the United States is. And the Japanese have partnered with Hyroad Energya mobility solutions company from the United States that will rent 40 trucks to the Japanese company for use in its support activities. That is to say, It is not Toyota that develops trucks. On the contrary, it is Toyota that pays to have these heavy vehicles available. And this North American company will be in charge of supplying the trucks, maintenance and software. Toyota, for its part, will have its own hydrogen charging network. The move is interesting for the company that has to demonstrate that hydrogen is a still alive formula. But it also needs to make profitable an infrastructure that has been dead in the United States practically since its birth. Everything to hydrogen! Toyota’s relationship with hydrogen seems like that of unrequited love. The Japanese have been ensuring for some time that hydrogen is as valid a solution (or even better) than the electric car. Along the way they have developed the Toyota Miraithe first car powered by a fuel cell. In this type of car, a battery inside the car carries out the hydrogen electrolysis process. With this process, electricity is obtained, which is stored in a battery and used by electric motors. The great advantage of the system is that the time spent on “recharge” the car It is the same as filling a gas tank. Furthermore, the car only expels water vapor through its exhaust pipe. Although some polluting substances can also be found in this water vapor, their presence is so low that it is not considered really harmful. The problem is that the use of hydrogen in light transport It is expensive and inefficient. Producing, transporting and storing hydrogen is very expensive given its volatility. For the Toyota Mirai to be able to use this hydrogen, it must have large tanks where it can be kept at a pressure of 600 bars. This leaves the car with almost no storage space because it takes a lot of space to carry a relatively small amount of “fuel.” The other solution they have found is designed for use on the track or with high-performance vehicles, as an alternative to maintain the sensations of a combustion engine but without emitting smoke from the exhaust pipe. This solution goes through burn hydrogen in liquid form but the high cost of storage and the system used continues to be a real problem. A final solution involves heavy transport. Some anticipate that this last option is the most logical since a truck has a lot of space to incorporate huge hydrogen tanks without sacrificing cargo space. Furthermore, if recharging is only carried out in the large industrial centers of the cities, the cost of transportation would be lower because it would not be necessary to distribute it to many small points in the geography of a country. With the aim of demonstrating that the use of hydrogen is reasonable and interesting for heavy transport, the company has reached an agreement with the aforementioned Hyroad Energy. This company is in charge of supplying 40 trucks to the company for its daily tasks. These heavy transport vehicles have a capacity 12 times greater than that of a Toyota Mirai, with a range of more than 800 kilometers. According to the company, refueling this truck only takes between 15 and 20 minutes. Curiously, these trucks with Nikola vehicles, a promising start-up that was betting on electric vehicles for heavy transportation. However, the company went bankrupt last year and was forced to sell its assets. It was at that time when Hyroad Energy acquired a fleet of more than 100 trucks, so those used by Toyota will be electric vehicles converted for use with hydrogen. It is an operation similar to that Stellantis was carrying out in Germany until terminated the project. The story is, if possible, even more bizarre. And it is that Toyota is immersed in a legal dispute with the American owners of some Toyota Mirai who They sued the company for false advertising. They maintain that when they obtained these vehicles, Toyota promised a deployment of its infrastructure that has never occurred. Without that support network, their cars can barely be used. Therefore, even if Toyota uses third-party vehicles, its bet makes some sense. If the company continues to invest in hydrogen, it needs to demonstrate that it is a viable alternative and wants to take advantage of its charging points in the United States to add value to an infrastructure that has been identified as insufficient. The movement also comes when more and more companies are beginning to think about purely electric heavy transport as the ideal solution for the future. Photo | Hyroad Energy In Xataka | Hyundai and Kia want to save combustion by burning hydrogen. And they have a very promising engine in their hands.

DeepSeek wants to raise its first round of financing and copies the last thing that remained to be copied from the US: the economic model

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Chinese AI startups appear to have surrendered to Silicon Valley capitalism. Both DeepSeek such as Moonshot AI (Kimi) have begun to raise investment rounds or are preparing to do so. It is a turning point in a race that is now becoming especially interesting and that also raises a clear question: will these companies continue betting on open models? The valuation is multiplied by two. DeepSeek had always avoided making that decision and it seemed almost a personal project of its founder, billionaire Liang Wenfeng. However, the company is now in talks to raise its first round of external investment, they assure in Financial Times. According to company data, Wenfeng has 89.5% of the stake in the company. There is talk of a round that would increase DeepSeek’s valuation from the current $20 billion to around $45 billion. Who is the “Big Fund”. Behind this investment round is above all the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as the “Big Fund”. This consortium, the most important of its segment in the field of semiconductors, is supported by the Chinese state, and has a “cash” of 47 billion dollars contributed by the Chinese Ministry of Economy, the local government and several state banks thanks to a third round that was carried out in 2024. At the moment the “Big Fund” has not invested in other Chinese AI startups, but it has in companies like SMIC or Yangtze. The war for talent. The reason behind this decision is not only the need for capital to have access to more computing capacity. According to sources close to the operation, Liang Wenfeng has been forced to open that option to stop talent theft and thus be able to keep their best researchers on the payroll. In a market as competitive as this one, DeepSeek needs to offer shares to its employees to compete with the aggressive recruitment of talent by its local and Western rivals. A promising pairing. The relevance of this investment goes beyond the AI model as such. DeepSeek has been significantly optimized for be able to run on Huawei hardwareallowing China to have a platform that works without the need for Nvidia chips. This symbiosis between this efficient AI model and the Chinese hardware giant is quite a bet by the Chinese government to try to win this race despite Washington’s blockades. The forced bet on “national” chips. Seeking that support in Huawei chips is not only a technical choice, but a political necessity for survive NVIDIA GPU crash. The problem is that Chinese hardware is still struggling to close the raw performance gap against architectures like Blackwell’s. If DeepSeek’s software hits a ceiling and chips created in China do not evolve at the necessary pace, the laboratory could find itself trapped: it would not matter to be very efficient when they cannot compete in raw power. Moonshot signs up for the rounds. DeepSeek is not alone in this race to achieve huge valuations. Moonshot AI just got up 2 billion dollars from investors such as Meituan, raising its value above 20 billion. Meanwhile, other rivals such as MiniMax and Zhipu AI (GLM) already surpass the 30,000 million valuation in their stock market debuts. This trend is therefore following what was already experienced (and continues to be experienced) in the US with AI startups, and the capital bubble that exists in the North American country now seems to have its eastern version in China. Moonshot AI and exceeds $200 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The paradox of copying the economic model. It’s ironic that DeepSeek, which became famous for challenging the “brute force” of American spending, ends up adopting its same funding structure. The company has shown that efficiency could offer an alternative to those almost unlimited resources of venture capital accessed by OpenAI or Anthropic. However, market reality dictates that a very solid capital structure is still what is needed to survive in the long term. Either you have it, or you can’t continue training models, reserving computing capacity and, of course, retaining talent. Open models? Until now DeepSeek had been one of the heroes of open weight AI models. Thanks to this, platforms like Hugging Face allow you to download it and allow everyone to take advantage of its achievements in terms of efficiency. The entry of venture capital and state funds could change the rules of the game: investors do not usually inject billions of dollars so that the product ends up being “given away” even for its competitors. The company will probably face the dilemma of closing its next models to protect its valuation and generate exclusive income, or keep its philosophy open at the risk that its investors no longer trust that strategy. In Xataka | If at some point NVIDIA has to choose between giving its best chips to the US or China, its choice is very clear.

Iran did to the US what Ukraine did to Russia in Operation Spiderweb

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

In the first weeks of the war, published reports on the damage inflicted by Iran to bases and radars of Washington in the Middle East. For example, attacks on 14 US military sites or air defense facilities were documented, or the bombing of a US base in Kuwaitthe first time in years that an enemy fighter jet hit a US base. However, it has now just become known that, in reality, it has been much worse. The war that the images began to reveal. For years, Western armies assumed that absolute control of the air and satellites was enough to hide damage, movements and weaknesses in the middle of a war… until recent conflicts began to demonstrate just the opposite. In Ukraine, simple commercial photographs Taken from space, they allowed Russian convoys to be followed, bombers to be located, and destroyed facilities to be detected long before governments acknowledged anything. To that mission he called it Spiderweb. It so happens that the same thing is happening now in the Middle East. What began as a campaign presented by Washington as a punishment operation against Iran has ended up leaving an image much more uncomfortable: that satellite photographs are showing a level of destruction on US facilities much higher than publicly admitted. The uncomfortable discovery. Latest Washington Post analysis More than a hundred satellite images have revealed that Iran hit at least 228 military structures or equipment Americans distributed throughout bases in the Middle East, a figure much higher than that officially recognized. The impacts hit hangars, barracks, fuel tanks, Patriot systems, THAAD radarscommunications centers, electrical installations and even strategic aircraft, making it clear that Tehran was not launching symbolic or indiscriminate attacks. The most delicate thing for the United States is that many of these images initially came from Iranian media and were subsequently verified through European systems and other independent commercial sources. In other words, the initial narrative of limited attacks began to collapse when the images began to show something much more serious: that Iran had achieved penetrate advanced defenses and hit critical American infrastructure in numerous countries at the same time. Damage to Camp Arifjan in Kuwait visible on March 4 Iran found the weak point of the bases. Wapo counted that one of the most striking aspects of the attacks is the precision with which they were executed. Military analysts highlighted the absence of random craters and the concentration of impacts on specific targets, a sign that Iran had very detailed prior intelligence on US facilities. The attacks were not limited to military runways or depots traditional facilities, they also hit gymnasiums, lodgings, mess halls, and staff buildings, reflecting a deliberate attempt to increase human casualties and force the United States to empty entire bases (as, in fact, that’s how it happened). Because several facilities ended up being considered too dangerous to operate normally, causing partial evacuations and the transfer of troops beyond Iranian reach. Some bases in Kuwait and Bahrain, used to launch attacks against Iran or deploy HIMARS systems, were especially punishedfueling the feeling that Tehran had managed to quickly identify which platforms were directly participating in the campaign. Nine fuel tanks at the Ali al-Salem air base in Kuwait were damaged Drones changed everything. Much of this battlefield transformation is directly related to a lesson learned in Ukraine: cheap and unidirectional attack drones are eroding the traditional advantage of great powers. American experts recognize that the Pentagon did not adapt its bases quickly enough to this new threat, despite spending years observing how relatively simple drones destroyed armored vehicles, radars or critical infrastructure in other conflicts. Although many Iranian drones carried reduced explosive charges, they were extremely difficult to intercept and they could attack stationary targets with enormous precision. This forced the consumption of gigantic quantities of Patriot and THAAD interceptors, dangerously reducing American and allied reserves in just a few weeks. The result was paradoxical: the most advanced military power in the world began to be forced to play defense around its own bases, while Iran found relatively cheap ways to overwhelm multibillion-dollar anti-aircraft systems. The enormous hidden wear. While Washington publicly insisted that the damage did not significantly alter the military campaign, the images they showed a more complex reality. Some key facilities were damaged considered “extensive” even by American officials, and part of the regional command had to be relocated out of the Middle East. As we said, the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain was one of the most affected areasto the point of moving functions to Florida, while the internal debate grows over whether certain bases will operate as before. Worrying signs also emerged on structural failures: Strategic aircraft repeatedly parked in vulnerable positions, insufficiently protected tactical centers, and a shortage of hardened shelters for critical personnel and equipment. All of this fueled one conclusion: that the United States had underestimated both Iranian resilience and the speed with which modern wars are making transparent facilities that previously seemed untouchable. The true strategic signal that this war leaves. Beyond the specific damage, what really worries strategists and military personnel is the change of perception left by satellite images. For decades, the presence of US bases throughout the Middle East functioned as a symbol of absolute control and immediate response capacity, but now those same facilities appear exposedvulnerable and permanently observed from the air and from space. If you will, the conflict has left a feeling that is difficult to ignore: that Iran may not be able to defeat the United States militarily in a conventional confrontation, but it can. inflict enough damageattrition and political pressure to profoundly alter the US strategic calculation in the region. And that idea that began with Spiderweb operation in Ukrainemultiplied by hundreds of photographs of destroyed hangars, hit radars and partially emptied bases, may end up being one of the most important consequences of the entire war. Image | Iran media, Planet In Xataka | Türkiye has taken a look at the … Read more

Six phones that already have a silicon-carbon battery and promise up to three days of use without being a brick

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

The silicon-carbon batteries They are no longer theoretical or a thing of the future: they are here to stay. At the moment, it is the Chinese manufacturers that are betting on this technology, but it is normal that we will soon see mobile phones of all types with these batteries. And the most striking thing is that this technology is not reserved only for the high-end: There are options for less than 400 euros. Let’s first see what this technology consists of and what differences there are with lithium-ion batteries. Oppo Find X9 5G 16GB/512GB Black The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Carbon-silicon as one more detail to look at when choosing a mobile Although many aspects come into play, as a general rule, the greater the battery capacity, the greater the autonomy of a device. The “problem” is that the batteries that cell phones (and other devices) have been using until now, lithium ion onesuse graphite anodes, which has already reached its energy density ceiling. In other words: for one of these batteries to have more capacity, it has to be bigger. And that causes the device that uses it to become a hulk. This is why silicon-carbon is so important. These batteries, which use this material in the anode instead of graphite, can store much more energy without the need to increase the size of the battery. This means that we can have telephones with a thickness less than 8 millimeters with batteries that exceed 6,000 mAh. Just a year ago it was unthinkable; Today it is beginning to be an accessible reality. Small note here to keep in mind. If you start searching on the Internet for a mobile phone with silicon-carbon, you may find versions with different capacities. Example: the Vivo X300 Pro has an international version with a 6,510 mAh battery, while in Spain it has arrived with 5,440 mAh. Because? As our colleague explains Ivan Linaresit all boils down to saving costs, but not manufacturing costs, but transportation. For safety reasons, if batteries exceed a certain nominal capacity (UN3481 regulations speaks of 20 Wh for each cell), transporting the device becomes much more expensive. Three mobile phones with silicon-carbon batteries for less than 500 euros As we mentioned above, despite being a relatively new technology, silicon-carbon is not limited to very expensive mobile phones. It is true that manufacturers like Samsung, Google or Apple still do not use these batteries, but we have several Chinese manufacturers that do. Below, we leave you three examples that cost less than 500 euros right now. Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 Pro+ The cheapest option on this list is Xiaomi’s Redmi Note 15 Pro+ 5Ga device that is currently coming out 300.29 euros with the coupon ‘ESCD18’. It has a 6,500 mAh battery with a thickness of 8.47 millimeters, with enough autonomy for more than two days. It is not the most powerful option nor the one with the best camera, but it does have good fast charging (100 W), a 6.83-inch screen compatible with Dolby Vision and a speaker system that works well. XIAOMI REDMI Note 15 Pro+ 5G – 8+256GB Smartphone, 6.83″ 1.5K AMOLED Screen, Snapdragon 7s Gen 4, 200 MP Camera, 100W Hypercharge, Charger Not Included, Mocha Coffee (ES Version) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links POCO X8 Pro Max There are batteries with a lot of capacity on this list, but not as much as the one included in the POCO X8 Pro Max. It is impressive that a mobile phone that is 8.2 millimeters and weighs 218 grams has an 8,500 mAh battery, figures more typical of a tablet than a mobile phone. As we always say, it depends on the use we give it, but it is a capacity that will easily give you between two and three days of autonomy. In addition, it performs remarkably and has a good 6.83-inch screen. Costs 412.79 euros with the coupon ‘ESCD18’. Xiaomi POCO X8 Pro Max (12+256 GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Realme 16 Pro+ 7,000 mAh battery in a thickness of 8.1 millimeters. That’s what this one has Realme 16 Pro+a device that has a telephoto sensor that is not present in the two previous options. Beyond this, it also offers good performance and a 6.8-inch screen that stands out for having a sustained brightness level of 1,800 nits. Translation: we will be able to see it perfectly even on those very sunny days. comes out for 361.24 euros with the coupon ‘ESCD18’. realme 16 Pro+ 5G Smartphone 8+256GB, 6.8 Inch Screen, Master Grey, 144Hz, 80W Ultra Charge, 7000mAh Battery, 300MP Camera, Snapdragon 7 Gen 4, IP69 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Do you have a larger budget? So there are mobile phones with greater power, better cameras and premium finishes. Three mobile phones with silicon-carbon batteries for more than 500 euros If you are looking for mid-range or high-end mobile phones with silicon-carbon, you have a choice. There are very outstanding options that have just come out, such as the Vivo X300 Ultra either the Oppo Find X9 Ultrabut we are going to give you three options that are very interesting and that, since they have been available for a little longer, we can find something cheaper. Vivo X200 FE He Vivo X200 FE It is the mobile phone on this list that has been available the longest, hence we can find it at a very attractive price (582.79 euros with the coupon ‘ESCD18’). In this case, we have a device with a 6,500 mAh battery and 90 W fast charging, which is not bad at all. This device is highly recommended if you like compact mobile phones, since it is less than 8 millimeters thick (7.99 specifically) and has a 6.31-inch screen. Mobile – vivo The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Oppo Find X9 Although he has two … Read more

emotional surveillance by AI

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Companies have been monitoring their employees for a long time. First was the signing. Then the logging of keystrokes and mouse activity. And now a new generation of emotional monitoring software Analyze if the expression on your face while you work is positive enough. Is called “emotion AI” or affective computing. And it’s no longer science fiction. Why is it important. Time control and of activity on screen They were the first battles between companies and workers in the digital era and in the stage of remote work that triggered the pandemic. This is the nextand it goes much deeper: it is no longer about measuring how much you work, but rather quantifying how you feel while you do it. The context. Tools like MorphCast, HireVue or Slack integration called Aware They have been perfecting this type of analysis for years. Some scan video conferences in real time to detect levels of attention, emotion or positivity. Others process chat transcripts to infer the collective mood of a team. There are those that analyze the tone of voice of customer service agents call by call. MetLife, Burger King and McDonald’s They already use them or have at least tried them. The global market of emotion AI It has reached 3 billion dollars and forecasts suggest that it will triple before 2030. Yes, but. The scientific premise on which this entire industry is based has a problem: it is debatable. A good part of these systems are built on the theory of basic emotions of psychologist Paul Ekman, who postulates six universal emotions recognizable in the face of any person. This theory has been questioned by the academic community for some time. Neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett defend that facial gestures do not have an intrinsic emotional meaning, but rather a relational one. They depend on the context, the culture, the physiology of each person. Someone who frowns because they are concentrating may be labeled as angry. An employee who expresses sadness when talking to a patient may receive a penalty for lack of warmth. The LLM and visual recognition systems replicate the biases of the data with which they are trained: a 2018 study found that an emotional recognition AI consistently rated black NBA players as angrier than their white teammates, even when they smiled. Between the lines. There is a clear market logic behind all this. Writer Cory Doctorow theorized it: the most extractive technologies reach the most vulnerable workers first, become normalized, and then move up. Truck drivers first, police officers call center later… and office workers, now. The EU banned emotion AI in the workplace in your AI Lawexcept for medical or security purposes. It was the exception, not the rule. In the United States, The legislation gives employers a very wide margin to monitor virtually anything a worker does on company time, property or devices. And now what. The companies that sell these tools argue that humans are biased too, that a boss’s subjective impressions are just as fallible as an algorithm. It’s a good argument, but something changes when emotional monitoring is automated: it’s no longer a boss who senses that you’re low on Monday. It is a system that analyzes 100% of your interactions and records everything. In Xataka | The real impact of AI on the labor market in Spain already has its first figures: it is not good news Featured image | Xataka

More and more people are looking at invasive species as the new big culinary goldmine. Science has something to say

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Honolulu, Hawaii, is famous for its beaches and the kind of paradise landscapes you dream of when planning your vacation. A few weeks ago, however, one of its most picturesque beaches hosted a contest that sounded like anything but paradise: “Eat the Invaders” (“Eat the invaders”). Although the title may be shocking macabre, in reality it was a fishing tournament in which participants had to capture three invasive species. Then a chef was in charge of preparing them to demonstrate that, in addition to being a huge environmental problem, fish ta’ape, to‘ouch either roi They can be a delicacy. It seems like an anecdote, but that Honolulu tournament is just part of a much bigger problem: the ‘invasivorism‘. What the hell is ‘invasiveness’? The word is confusing, but it refers to a very easy concept to understand: the ‘invasiveness’ It consists of neither more nor less than consuming invasive species. Exactly what encouraged to do a few weeks ago in Honolulu: stop seeing ta’ape or roi as simple invasive species and understand them as something more, an ingredient for delicious dishes. In theory, this does not mean that we give up eradicating them or ignore the damage they cause to local ecosystems. It is simply encouraged to go further and turn the problem into an opportunity. Does it only happen in Hawaii? Not at all. Honolulu residents haven’t invented anything new. Not even the slogan of “Eat the Invaders”, which is actually the title of a series from the ABC network that explores precisely the culinary potential of Australia’s invasive species. In 2025 even the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) used that same hook (“Eat the invaders”) to launch a campaign that encouraged taking advantage of species introduced by man and that now threaten native diversity. “Consumption of invasive species can help protect native fauna and flora. By trapping, trapping and consuming them we can reduce their population and the damage they cause,” claims an article signed by Erin Huggins, from the FWS communications area, which details half a dozen species that represent a problem in the US and “should be considered”: Myocastor coypus, Channa argus, iguana iguanasilver carp and Sus scrofacreatures from other areas of America, Asia or Europe. Sounds good, right? That’s the crux of the matter. At first glance it seems like squaring the circle: an invasive species is combated and in the process a benefit is easily transferred to the entire population. The idea is so powerful that in 2013 even the FAO encouraged fighting jellyfish plagues with a similar slogan: “If you can’t fight them, eat them.” The problem is that there are experts who believe that invasiveness is actually a trap that is tantalizingly easy to fall into. At first it seems like the perfect solution, but it often ends up aggravating the invasions. The issue is of sufficient concern that a group of scientists from several countries, led by the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station, has published an article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in which he questions the basic argument of invasiveness: that the consumption of invasive species is an intelligent strategy, especially if it ends up turning the capture and exploitation of those same species into a lucrative business. “Encouraging commercialization can create incentives to maintain them instead of eradicating them.” What do they say exactly? That what at first seems like a solution can end up becoming a problem. “Invasivorism is usually presented as a strategy win-win (mutual benefit) based on the idea that the consumption of an invasive species generates wealth while minimizing its impacts”, recognize Fran Officialdegui, researcher at the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station and main author of the article. “But the reality is much more complex, and in many situations, when the problem becomes a business, a resistance to ending it arises.” “What is not often said is that the objectives of commercial exploitation and management of invasive species are, in most cases, opposite,” affects the researcher before warning of the greatest risk: that a market will be generated around foreign species. When this happens to the interest in eradicating them, another that pulls in the opposite direction can be added: the interest in conserving them. Can that really happen? It has already happened, in fact. In their article, the researchers recall the case of the Kamchatka crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus). Although it is a species native to the North Pacific, about 60 years ago the USSR decided to introduce it to the Barents Sea, in the Arctic. There these crustaceans found a place where they could easily expand and ended up becoming a pest. Also in something else: the engine of a prosperous business that over time led to overexploitation. What did the authorities do when fishing threatened to eliminate the theoretically invasive species? Catch limits were set to guarantee the business that had been created. Why are they issuing the warning now? Because, as they remember from the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station, the discourse of invasiveness seems to be settling little by little. And in part this expansion is due to campaigns promoted by companies, administrations and even conservation organizations that are carried away by the motto of “If you can’t beat them, eat them!” that already used years ago the FAO. Officialdegui also warns that what happened in his day with the Kamchatka crab could be replicated in Spain with the Callinectes sapidusor blue crab, a invasive species whose goodness culinary now they start promoting themselves. In fact it is easy to find recipes that explain how to prepare it with rice. “It is very likely that scenarios similar to that of the Kamchatka crab will occur on the peninsula when, once the commercial exploitation of the blue crab is established (Callinectes sapidus), there are declines in its population”, keep it up Officialdegui. In his opinion, invasiveness can help raise social awareness about the risk of exotic species, but that cannot mislead us. “Addressing biological invasions requires long-term commitment, scientific knowledge and coordinated … Read more

It is called Anthropic and it is going to pay you 200,000 million, according to The Information

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Anthropic has agreed to pay Google about $200 billion over five years for more computing power, according to has published The Information. The figure would thus place the AI startup as Google Cloud’s largest individual client, representing more than 40% of the backlog of earnings that Alphabet communicated to its investors last week. From commitment to commitment. A revenue backlog reflects contractual commitments already signed by a cloud provider’s customers. That Anthropic occupies more than 40% of Google Cloud says a lot about the extent to which the startup has become a structural piece of Alphabet’s business. There is also another nuance to highlight: that large AI companies like Anthropic or OpenAI still need the hyperscalers to continue growing, so in this sense, both Microsoft and Google can afford not to have the best AI models as long as they receive such an amount of income from offering such computing capacity. What the agreement consists of. According to they count In The Information, the pact, signed in April, includes massive capacity of TPUs (Google’s own AI chips), supplied in collaboration with Broadcom. However, this infrastructure will not be ready after 2027. Anthropic, for its part, not only works with Google hardware, since also uses Trainium chips from Amazon and Nvidia GPUs, playing its cards well to diversify suppliers and not depend on a single company that supplies computing capacity. The now classic circular financing. Alphabet has been investing in Anthropic for years: first it was $300 million in 2023, then another 2 billionafter 1 billion more in 2025. A few days ago we also discovered an investment of up to 40,000 million additional payments by Google, of which 10 billion would be disbursed immediately and the rest would be conditional on objectives met. In exchange, Google Cloud will provide an additional 5 gigawatts of computing capacity. This way, Google invests in Anthropic and Anthropic spends that money in Google. Is called circular financingand it is the key to how the foundations of AI are made of promises. According to account In the middle, the contracts signed between large cloud providers (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) and startups like Anthropic and OpenAI already add up to more than two billion dollars in committed backlogs. Hyperscalers invest in AI startups and AI startups spend that money on the infrastructure of those same hyperscalers. Anthropic can’t afford it… and yet they do it. Estimates suggest that Anthropic’s server costs could reach 20 billion dollars only in 2026. The company is not yet profitable, but demand for its model family Claude continues to grow strongly in the business segment, which forces it to secure long-term computing capacity before infrastructure shortages prevent it from doing so. The agreement with Google adds to another recent one with CoreWeave and the forecast of securing almost a gigawatt of additional capacity through Amazon chips before the end of the year. Almost symbiotic relationship. Alphabet is at a time of maximum competitive pressure in AI. Your cloud business grew by 36% last year, and Anthropic is one of its most intensive clients. Losing that relationship, or seeing it migrate to other providers like AWS, would be a significant blow. Furthermore, with an Anthropic valuation that Bloomberg situates around 800,000 million dollars, and with a possible IPO Before the year is out, Google’s accumulated stake in the company could become one of its most valuable financial assets. It is not just infrastructure: it is also a capital bet. Cover image | Wikimedia and Fortune Brainstorm Tech In Xataka | If at some point NVIDIA has to choose between giving its best chips to the US or China, its choice is very clear.

build it himself at home

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

Getting a yacht is usually a common whim among billionaires. Entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg have not hesitated to spend part of their fortune to navigate different parts of the world with comforts, style and, above all, luxury. The first commissioned the construction of ‘koru‘ to the Dutch firm Oceanco, the second decided to skip this step and bought ‘Launchpad’ from a Russian oligarch. An American named Clyde Stires followed a completely different path to get the yacht he wanted, a catamaran 27.86 meters in length and 12.41 meters in width, equipped to receive a dozen guests. Stires tells in a video published on YouTube who was not a millionaire, but who decided to channel all the resources at his disposal, combined with great determination, to build the yacht of his dreams. From building custom vehicles to building your own yacht Stires was born in Missouri, although at the age of 12 he moved with his family to California. Since he was little, he spent a lot of time with his father, who taught him to use different cutting tools. With this knowledge as a basis, he began to learn on his own how to fix and build everyday objects such as toys. Much later, in the 1970s, he found inspiration in the vehicle manufacturer Ed “Big Daddy” Roth. After that, he began building motorcycle tricycles whose designs won over stars like Elvis Presley and Johnny Graham. His passion for what he did only increased. Years later he found himself transforming a double-decker bus into a caravan. He had previously bought his first boat in Taiwan, and decided that “he wanted to get back on the water,” so he got rid of almost everything he owned to start the project of his life, building a yacht. The vehicles that Clyde Stires manufactured Stires realize that analyzed every part of the project before starting. Since he did not have sufficient financial resources, he could not afford to build the ship in a shipyard. The costs of doing so would simply be unaffordable. Nor could I do it anywhere in the United States, since the climatic conditions could accelerate the deterioration of the ship under construction. So he decided to move to an ideal place to start the project. The caravan project He was in California, so he looked for a house in Perris, an old railroad town characterized by its dry, sunny climate. After making several sketches, calculations and reduced-scale versions, he got to work in 1987. In the video we can see how the boat is gaining size over time. This undoubtedly caught the attention of the locals, as someone points out in the YouTube comment below. The “skeleton” of the yacht “I lived in Canyon Lake and I drove past this every day on my way to work, it was very close to Highway 74. Suddenly, this huge ship started appearing, getting bigger every day. It was amazing to see. I had to stop and ask what was going on with that boat. He was always alone working in construction. He was very kind and told me that he was building a boat to sail around the world. So what you were wondering was: how is this ship going to get to the ocean?” The construction of the ship forced Stires to perfect all his techniques. This included everything from welding for the rolling process to installing the wiring, hydraulics and motors. It took Stires years to complete the deck lining, install all the equipment and paint the boat. Once it was finished, he was faced with the difficult task of taking it to the sea, and the only alternative was to cut it up and move it in pieces. The ship, called Kaleidoscope, was reassembled and launched in 1994. That milestone for the project was just the beginning of a series of surprising episodes that would come years later. The American says that his ship was “stolen by a cartel” when he was in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Although after much effort, the authorities managed to recover the ship, the process of returning it to the United States was so complex that he decided to sell it. The years have passed and the yacht that once belonged to Stires is sailing again. Since its sale, it has been part of the fleet of a boat rental company. Kaleidoscope is presented as a yacht with “all the comforts for the most luxurious sailing experience.” Its new owners also call it a “limousine of the sea” and use it for private excursions or event celebrations. Images | Clyde Stires In Xataka | Yachts are now a product for the rich: a Chinese millionaire wants you to be able to buy them for $14,000 In Xataka | Roman Abramovich’s superyacht is a ruin even moored in port: 1,000 liters of diesel a day just for the air conditioning

If the question is how much an employee would have to work to earn the same as a manager, we have the answer: a century

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

The wealth gap between the richest and the poorest is skyrocketing around the world. There are people whose salary in a single year far exceeds what any other average job could earn by working their entire life. It’s not an exaggeration: it’s what the numbers show. A report of Oxfam Intermón and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), analyzes the salary data of 1,500 large companies in 33 countries and quantifies the difference between what an average worker earns and what he earns a senior manager in Spain: That gap is no longer measured in years of salary, it is measured in centuries. A century of work to earn the same. According to data from the Oxfam report, in Spain, the general directors of the 12 largest companies in the country earned an equivalent average remuneration in 2025 98 times the national average salary. That means that an employee in Spain with an average gross salary in Spain of between 27,300 and 31,600 euros would have to work almost an entire century to accumulate what one of those senior managers earns in a single year. The data in the report is in line with what was included in the fourteenth edition of the remuneration report that published The Countrywhich stated that the annual salary received by the managers of Ibex 35 companies was 103 times higher than that of their employees. A gap that has become an abyss. The problem is that the gap is not only enormous, but it is widening every year and risks becoming an unbridgeable abyss. The average compensation of CEOs grew by 16% in the last year, while the average salary of workers in Spain it only increased 3.6% in 2025. At a global level the figure is not much better, since the real salary of workers globally fell by 12% between 2019 and 2025 due to inflation and wage stagnation. What happens in the rest of the world. The data from the report shows that, on a global scale, the situation is not very different, and the 1,500 highest-paid CEOs in the world earned an average of 8.4 million dollars in 2025, compared to 7.6 million the previous year. That represents an increase of 11% in real terms. For an average worker to accumulate that same salary, they would need to work 490 years non-stop. Meanwhile, the real salary what the worker receives average taking inflation into account, barely rose 0.5% between 2024 and 2025. That means that the highest paid executives improved their income 20 times faster than your employees. Real salaries, in free fall since 2019. The data on workers is worrying in itself, regardless of any comparison. Since 2019, workers’ real salaries have fallen by 12% worldwide, which is equivalent to having worked 108 days without pay between 2019 and 2025, 31 of them in the last year alone. Although the study shows that productivity per worker has grown by 51% since 2004, the part of GDP that goes to salaries has been reduced by 2 percentage points in that same period. Miguel Alba, head of Inequality and the Private Sector at Oxfam Intermón, pointed out that: “The remuneration of senior managers in large companies reaches exorbitant dimensions, very far from what ordinary people earn to cover living expenses.” Extreme wealth and a demand for change. The report also points to the growth of large fortunes as part of the same phenomenon. In Spain, the billionaire wealth It increased by 29.5% in the last year, representing 13.8% of GDP, distributed among 44 billionaires. In contrast, the average net wealth of Spanish households only grew by 3% between the end of 2022 and the end of 2024, according to data from the Bank of Spain collected in the report. On a global scale, among the largest beneficiaries of dividends in 2025 are Bernard Arnault, owner of LVMH, with $3.8 billion, and Amancio Ortega with 3.7 billion dollars (3,234 million euros). Faced with this scenario of extreme differences, Oxfam Intermón and the ITUC call on governments to limit the remuneration of senior managers, to tax the richest more fairly and to guarantee that minimum salaries are updated in line with inflation to ensure that employees do not lose purchasing power. In Xataka | Low salaries have ruined the job satisfaction of Spaniards: only 28.7% are satisfied with their job Image | Unsplash (Muhammad Sultan Ali, Ruthson Zimmerman)

burial mounds from 5,000 years ago

May 7, 2026 by usatoday24

In 1991, an exceptional drought in the United Kingdom caused them to suddenly appear from the air strange patterns in crop fields that until then seemed completely normal. The archaeologists discovered which were the traces of settlements and structures buried for centuries, revealed only because the plants grew differently on what was underground. An ordinary field that was not so field. From the road, the bohemian farm fieldsCzech Republic, seem completely normal. For decades it was assumed that intensive agriculture had erased any trace of the past. However, beneath that seemingly uniform surface hid a much more complex reality. What seemed like a land without history has turned out to be a intact archaeological map on a massive scale. The discovery: 5,000-year-old burial mounds under the plow. Now, the use of advanced technologies has allowed us to discover dozens of burial mounds Neolithic, some with 5,000 years old. These structures, known as long barrowswere some of the first large-scale funerary monuments in central Europe. Not only that. The most striking thing is that they are not visible to the naked eye and have remained hidden for centuries under cultivated fields. His recent identification changes the perception of these landscapes, which go from being agricultural spaces to authentic historical sites. See without digging: the technology that has made it possible. The researchers counted from the Institute of Archeology of the University of Wrocław that the discovery has not occurred through traditional excavations, but thanks to the combination of various detection techniques remote. Aerial photographs, crop growth analysis, magnetometry and laser scanning have allowed detect invisible patterns from the ground. Each method provides a different layer of information, revealing everything from minimal changes in topography to buried structures. Together, these tools have rebuilt a prehistoric landscape complete without the need to remove the soil. A landscape organized between the living and the dead. Beyond the mounds, researchers have identified thousands of associated structuresincluding settlement areas. The data shows a clear separation between inhabited spaces and funerary spaces. Apparently, Neolithic communities deliberately located their cemeteries on the margins, hundreds of meters away from their homes. This organization reveals a conception of the territory where daily life and death occupied differentiated spaces. Rituals that have been repeated for centuries. Plus: the mounds were not isolated places or for occasional use. Evidence suggests these areas were reused for generations as ritual points. Communities returned to them again and again, thus maintaining their meaning over time. In other words, this turns these monuments into symbolic nuclei within the landscape, more than simple burials. Thousands of footprints under the same field. The study has identified about 3,000 archaeological elements in a relatively limited area, indicating a much higher density of prehistoric activity than previously thought. These are not, therefore, isolated finds, but rather a complete system that includes homes, structures and ritual spaces. In this way, the current agricultural landscape hides a complex network of human occupation. Of punctual discovery of a new way of looking. Beyond the discovery itself, possibly the most relevant thing is what it implies for archeology and science, because even in lands exploited for centuries, the past is still readable if the right tools are used. In fact, the approach allows us to reconstruct not only objects or tombs, but the entire organization of ancient societiessuggesting along the way that many other seemingly “empty” landscapes could also be hiding similar stories. Image | MOs810 In Xataka | About to close, this remote mine in the Polar Circle has found a 2 billion-year-old yellow diamond that weighs 158 carats In Xataka | While building a tunnel, workers came across something unusual in Sweden: not one, not two, but six centuries-old shipwrecks.

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