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is reinventing its AI chips from scratch

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

Cambricon Technologies is an essential company in China’s plans to challenge the US for its leadership in artificial intelligence (AI). Although it is not as well known as Huawei or Moore Threads, this is one of the companies specialized in the design of accelerators for AI with greater growth potential. Be that as it may, these three companies are China’s clearest alternatives to Nvidia because all three have already managed to place competitive solutions on the market. The priority strategy of the Government led by Xi Jinping seeks to build a self-sufficient ecosystem capable of breaking Nvidia’s dominance in the market. However, as stated SCMPat the center of this rivalry is a fundamental design debate: should China continue betting on GPUs or is it preferable for it to make the leap towards ASIC technology (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit or application-specific integrated circuit)? ASIC chips are designed to perform a single specific task, unlike GPUs and CPUs, which are general purpose. Its main advantage is efficiency. And since they are optimized for a specific function, they consume less energy and are faster in that task. Even so, they have a disadvantage: their rigidity. They cannot be reprogrammed to carry out another function, so the debate we raised a few lines above makes perfect sense. Convergence seems inevitable Large Chinese technology companies that choose ASIC chips for AI gain performance in their specific models, but are tied to an architecture that does not adapt well if the type of workload changes. This is the problem with this approach. a report prepared by Morgan Stanley and published on May 8, makes the market dynamics clear: it predicts that Huawei will capture 62% of the Chinese AI accelerator market in 2026, followed by Cambricon Technologies with 14%. ASIC chip heavyweights increasing relevance and volume in China Among the large technology companies with their own chips, Baidu and Alibaba are around 5% each. In any case, there is no doubt about one thing: the heavyweights of ASIC chips are increasing in relevance and its volume in China. And they are largely succeeding because the performance gap between Chinese chips and Nvidia GPUs allowed for export has narrowed noticeably. Morgan Stanley data reflect that Huawei’s Ascend 950 cards and Cambricon Technologies’ Siyuan 690 cards exceed the performance of Nvidia’s H20 GPU. Zhang Haijun, an expert semiconductor analyst, holds that as AI models become more complex the line between custom ASICs and flexible GPUs becomes increasingly blurred. This scenario suggests that the winning architecture could end up combining elements of both approaches. Su Lian Jye, the chief analyst at consulting firm Omdia, defend That companies with strong AI engineering capabilities and a clear roadmap benefit from ASICs, while those handling mixed workloads continue to lean toward general-purpose GPUs. For now, the market momentum in China clearly favors specialists. To companies that bet on ASIC technology. Partly by choice. Partly because the sanctions have left them no choice. Image | Enflame More information | SCMP In Xataka | The US remains committed to stopping China. Now it has targeted the second largest Chinese chip manufacturer

the taking of a castle

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

When Saladin’s troops laid siege Beaufort Castle In 1190, the lord defending it tried to buy time by promising to surrender while he reinforced the walls and stockpiled supplies. More than eight centuries later, the same fortress continues to appear in the military plans of those fighting in the region. Modern warfare and the medieval castle. Few images better summarize the contradictions of the Middle East than that of soldiers advancing towards a fortress built almost a thousand years ago while drones fly over the battlefield. In the midst of a regional conflict marked by precision missiles, permanent surveillance and unmanned aircraft, one of the most symbolic episodes took place around the beaufort castlea Crusader fortress overlooking southern Lebanon from a strategic hill. The scene seemed taken from another century: the conquest of a medieval castle. However, behind it hid a deeply contemporary reality, marked by the struggle between Israel, Hezbollah, Iran and the United States. The remains of the ancient Beaufort Castle, also known locally as Qal’at Al-Shaqif, in Arnoun, Lebanon (2022) A position that never lost its value. The Beaufort history explains why a construction built in the 12th century continues to appear on military maps of the 21st century. From its walls you can see the Litani Valley, see the Golan Heights and control key routes in southern Lebanon. Crusaders, Saladin, Mamelukes, Palestinian fighters, Israeli troops and Hezbollah militiamen have passed through its stones throughout the centuries. Although military technology has changed radically, geography continues to impose its rules. The analysts match in which the position retains usefulness for land operations, but its current importance is above all symbolic: whoever controls Beaufort projects an image of dominance over a region loaded with historical memory. The psychological battle behind the flag. The entry of Israeli troops on the castle it had an impact that went far beyond any immediate tactical advantage. For many Israelis, it evoked a return to a place associated with decades of confrontations and sacrifices during the occupation of southern Lebanon. For many Lebanese, however, the image of the Israeli flag flying over the walls reopened memories of a military presence that lasted eighteen years. The fortress thus became a communication instrument strategic. The message was not only directed at the military enemy, but also at public opinion on both sides of the border, in a war where perception and narrative are almost as important as the terrain conquered. Drones changed war, but not the problem. The paradox is that this apparent return to medieval settings occurred precisely because modern warfare is complicating Israeli plans. The initial strategy was to create a security zone inside Lebanon to keep Hezbollah away from the border. However, the proliferation of fiber optic-guided FPV drones has considerably reduced the usefulness of that concept. These devices have demonstrated be able to locate and attack Israeli positions even within occupied areas, turning troops and commanders into constant targets. What should have been a rapid campaign to consolidate a security zone has led to a much more complex situation, where maintaining fixed positions implies assuming increasing risks. Trump, Iran and the fear of another endless occupation. While Israel searched increase pressure military on Hezbollah, the United States was trying to avoid an escalation that would jeopardize its talks with Iran. The US Administration pressed to limit certain operations, especially against Beirut, in the hope of facilitating a broader regional agreement. This situation has left Israel trapped between the demands of its internal politics, the persistent threat from Hezbollah and the restrictions imposed by its main ally. Many Israeli strategists also remember the lessons of the occupation started in 1982when an intervention that was supposed to last just a few days ended up lasting eighteen years. Therefore, behind the almost medieval image of a conquered castle hides a much more current concern: that a war born in the era of drones ends up reproducing strategic errors that seemed buried with the last century. Image | IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, ElysianEzryn In Xataka | That Iran shot down a US F-15 was something unusual. The problem is that they have opened the missile… and everything points to China In Xataka | The US has copied its very cheap drone swarms from Iran and Russia. The problem is what Starlink asks for connecting them

There is a weapon of mass destruction against our ability to remember things: stress

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

One Monday you see your coworker, Laura, leave the office with a striking bright yellow umbrella. The next day, you walk into a coffee shop and see that same unmistakable umbrella resting on a chair. Without thinking twice, your brain does a quick calculation and you deduce that Laura is in there having coffee. This mental agility, which neuroscientists call “memory integration,” is the invisible tool that allows us to weave together loose ends and construct deductions from experiences separated in time. However, when pressure kicks in, this internal compass goes out of calibration. People who suffer an episode of acute stress not only experience emotional distress; your brain loses the ability to connect past memories with new information. Put bluntly: stress not only erases data from your mind, it also shuts down your ability to deduce. To demonstrate this cognitive “short circuit”, a team of specialists from the University of Hamburg, led by cognitive psychologist Lars Schwabe, designed a thorough experiment combining psychological testing and functional MRI to observe the real-time brain activity of 121 adults. The trial was developed in consecutive and carefully structured stages to compare how a relaxed brain reacts to one under extreme pressure. On the first day, participants memorized pairs of images, such as, for example, an animal next to a landscape. The next day, half of the group was subjected to a high-stress situation through a simulated job interview and complex calculations, while the rest performed relaxed tasks. Right after, everyone had to assimilate new information: they had to connect the same animals from the previous day with 3D figures. The final challenge was pure mental agility, as they were asked to deduce the indirect connection between the landscapes of the first day and the 3D figures of the second. The verdict was clear: the stressed group saw their ability to make these deductions drastically reduced compared to the participants who remained relaxed. Why does stress sabotage the ability to deduce? The epicenter of this problem lies in the hippocampus, a brain region essential for integrating information but which, at the same time, contains a very high density of receptors that are extremely vulnerable to stress hormones. According to the research of Science Advancesbrain imaging revealed that acute stress directly interferes with the reactivation of previous memories. In other words, while the stressed participants tried to learn the new information, their brains retrieved the memories stored the previous day much less intensely. Representational similarity analysis shed even more light on the process: instead of integrating memories into a connected network, the stressed brain encourages the separation of memory patterns. Under stress, our mind prioritizes representing each episode as an isolated and distinctive event, sacrificing the formation of connected and flexible knowledge structures. The research has captured the attention of leading scientific communicators due to its serious implications. In statements to the magazine NatureUniversity of Oregon neuroscientist Brice Kuhl (who was not involved in the research), emphasizes the immense value of being able to visually see what’s wrong in the brain thanks to technology. Kuhl points out that, usually, when something new is assimilated, a “small flash” of past experience rises to the mind, and it is precisely that flash that facilitates the integration of information. In people under pressure, the expert points out, that flash is practically absent. For his part, Kai Schüren, first author of the study explained in Wiredwho insists that the effects of acute stress transcend the emotional: they mechanically alter a vital cognitive mechanism, which prevents the construction of knowledge in an agile way. The current epidemic of mental exhaustion The consequences of this cognitive block are not limited to a laboratory environment, but have a profound impact on various critical areas of our society: In legal contexts, a failure to integrate overlapping events can lead to false inferences by witnesses and, consequently, erroneous accusations. In education, this difficulty in weaving together information hinders the creation of solid memory structures, an essential pillar for academic performance. In clinical health, problems integrating related memories are a distinctive feature of severe disorders such as psychosis and anxiety. To this we must add the current climate of tension in which we live immersed, which turns this finding into a major public health problem. According to the Ipsos Mind Health Reportsociety lives in a state of almost constant alert and pressure. The data in the document reflects the daily wear and tear of the population: 77% of people report suffering from multiple factors that negatively impact their mental health. Uncertainty about the future in a changing world affects and worries 57% of those surveyed. Financial instability and job insecurity are positioned as a source of constant stress for 56% of the sample. Continuous exposure to negative news in the media harms 49%. This chronic pressure means that an alarming 56% of people rate their level of stress experienced in the last twelve months with a score higher than 5 out of 10, while 31% admit to currently suffering from a mental health condition. We often consider stress as simply an emotional backpack that exhausts the body and clouds the mood. However, scientific evidence shows us that its impact is much deeper: stress redesigns the way we archive and use our own lives. By blocking neural connections in our hippocampus, the pressure not only makes us forgetful, it robs us of our innate ability to connect the dots. The next step for scientists, who are already preparing tests with rodents, will be to unravel the exact mechanisms to find ways to reverse this effect on memory. Meanwhile, understanding that stress isolates us in a fragmented present is the first strategic move to protect our mind. Image | Unsplash Xataka | Something disturbing is happening with young Spaniards: cases of colon cancer are multiplying

They learned cinema on YouTube, they have raised 300 million with their films and they have achieved something: defeating Star Wars

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

Three horror movies. Budgets ranging from a ridiculous million dollars for one to ten million for another. Directors of 26, 34 and 20 years old trained on YouTube, not in schools for children of. So far in 2026, those three films have grossed more than $300 million in the North American market. Franchise cinema is not dead, of course, and we are going to prove it this year with the premiere of ‘Doomsday‘ (although, for once, surprises are no longer ruled out). But there are issues that seem to be changing in another sense. The ‘Backrooms’ explosion. Last weekend,’Backrooms‘ (directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons) collection 81.4 million dollars in North America and 118 million worldwide in its first weekend (and it does not arrive in countries like Spain until the end of June), with a budget of only ten million. It is the biggest premiere in the history of A24surpassing the previous record held by ‘Civil War‘by Alex Garland. Parsons also becomes the youngest director to top the US domestic box office, taking that record from Josh Trank, who was 27 years old when ‘Chronicle’ topped the charts in 2012. Unstoppable obsession. At the same time, ‘Obsession’ (by Curry Barker, 26 years old) added 26.4 million in its third weekend, 54% more than the previous week, starting from a budget of one million dollars. Its domestic total already exceeds 104 million. Meanwhile, ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu‘, with a budget of 165 million, fell 69% compared to its opening week and was third on the list of box office receipts that week. We will see ‘Obsession’ this weekend in Spain. The precedent. January had already given the first sign. ‘Iron Lung’ (written, directed, starring and self-distributed by Mark Fischbach, Markiplier on YouTube, 34 years old), debuted with 17.8 million domestic dollars and reached 52 million at the global box office from a budget of three. Fischbach didn’t even go through a study: he self-financed and distributed the film himselfpocketing half of the world gross. Young audience. It is obvious where these collections come from: 86% of the opening audience for ‘Backrooms’ was under 35 years old, and 44% under 21. ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’, not to get away from Disney’s setback with a financially similar debut the previous week, had a share of those under 25 years of age of 27%, although on paper, it should have attracted more viewers of that age (which corroborates that at this point ‘Star Wars’ is entirely a franchise for kids over forty.) These directors who came from YouTube did not summon a new audience, but rather the one they already brought from the internet. Warner Bros. Motion Pictures co-head Michael De Luca summed it up in a conference in which said that these directors “They are in dialogue with their audience from the first moment.” By the time movies like these hit theaters, he added, “they’ve already had a billion screenings.” Three directors, a common pattern. In 2022, Kane Parsons uploaded a nine-minute short film to YouTube titled ‘The Backrooms (Found Footage)’shot from his bedroom with the help of the 3D graphics software Blender. Over the next few years, episodes of the series They accumulated more than 197 million views. Curry Barker, on the other hand, came from the sketch comedy channel ‘That’s a Bad Idea’ which currently has over 700 million cumulative views across platforms. In 2024 he filmed ‘Milk & Serial’, a found footage horror with $800 budget, almost all of it spent on the camera. He spent a year trying to get mainstream distribution without success. He uploaded it for free to YouTube and accumulated 1.6 million views. Mark Fischbach, for his part, has been on YouTube since 2012. He had experimented with the film format in two of his own productions for YouTube (‘A Heist with Markiplier’ and ‘In Space with Markiplier’) before adapting ‘Iron Lung’, David Szymanski’s indie horror video game published in 2022. Why the terror. American terror has exceeded 800 million dollars worldwide so far this year, and these three films directed by YouTube creators account for a third of that figure. But… why this devotion to the genre, which goes hand in hand with the good state of health that enjoy in recent years? Horror operates well with low budgets, and the young audience that grew up with creepypasta and found footages on YouTube has a particular relationship with that aesthetic space. Testing ground. The video clips of the nineties were the laboratory where authors such as David Fincher or Michel Gondry developed their visual grammar before jumping into cinema. Now, YouTube serves as a testing ground for the new generation of filmmakers. That’s why studios and agents now scour YouTube for new names. Now what. Barker has already filmed his next film, a horror comedy titled ‘Anything but Ghosts’, and A24 has hired him for a remake of ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’. Parsons wants to expand the ‘Backrooms’ universe, possibly in television format. Fischbach, for his part, has already made it clear that he would like to collaborate with a large studio on future projects, without giving up creative control. It is possibly the one with the most traditional discovery profile in the underground and jump to the big leagues. For now, ‘Backrooms’ could end its box office career between $140 and $160 million in the United States alone, which would make the film one of the biggest hits of the year. Not bad for an idea that started as just another meme on 4chan. In Xataka | Cinema can only survive by competing in the “experience” market. That’s why Madrid already has its 70 mm projector

that’s why he has a new plan

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

YouTube has announced an important change in its transparency policy. And starting this month, the platform will stop depending solely on the boxes referring to AI that content creators check when uploading their videos and will begin to detect and label the videos generated with this technology itself. In addition, it will make these labels more visible both in the usual videos and in the Shorts. We tell you all the details. What exactly changes. Until now, the responsibility fell on whoever uploaded the video. Starting in 2024, YouTube requires creators to disclose when they use realistic AI that could be mistaken for a real person, place, or event. The problem is that the creators didn’t have much incentive to be honest. From now on, according to explains According to the company itself, if a creator does not indicate that they have used AI but their systems detect “significant use of photorealistic AI”, the label will still be applied automatically. More visible labels. The other big change is where those notices appear. Previously, the information was hidden in the extended description of the video, in a dedicated section, so that only those who specifically went to look for it saw it. For long videos, the label (a symbol with the word “AI” next to an information icon) will now appear just below the player, above the description. In the Shorts it will be shown superimposed over the video itself. YouTube affirms that with this change the viewer gets the context “at a glance.” What the system does not cover. The featured tag is intended only for photorealistic or substantially AI-modified content. Videos that are animated, clearly unrealistic, or have minor tweaks will continue to display the warning only in the extended description. Here YouTube is clearly differentiating between AI that can confuse the user or create disinformation and AI for entertainment purposes. How YouTube detects AI. The truth is that the company has not been too specific about how it will detect AI in videos. Which yes mention There are two cases that activate the label without exception: videos with C2PA metadata indicating that they are completely generated by AI, and those created with Google’s own tools, such as Veo or Dream Screen. On the other hand, if a user believes that their video has been flagged in error, they can correct the status in YouTube Studio, except in the two situations mentioned where the flag is permanent. A reasonable decision. The move comes shortly after Google presented in your I/O conference the model family Gemini Omnicapable of generating video with AI in a realistic and increasingly precise way. Added to this is that YouTube and the rest of the social networks have been dealing with the avalanche of ‘AI Slop‘, especially in the Shorts. The company also claims to have improved its deepfake detection technology, which now allows any adult to search for matches of their face on the platform. No impact on money or referrals. YouTube assures that carrying an AI tag will not affect how a video is recommended or its ability to monetize. The company maintains that the goal is to “balance transparency with creator control,” not to penalize the use of the technology. And now what. It remains to be seen how reliable the automatic detection will be and how many videos will continue to escape the system, since YouTube itself admits that there may be AI content without the new label. The platform has been criticized for the inconsistency of its labeling system to date, so we will have to wait to find out if the system ends up working. Cover image | YouTube In Xataka | Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: “People talk about AI eliminating jobs. It’s complete nonsense”

We’ve been sold melatonin as the ultimate harmless sleep supplement. Science does not think the same

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

By taking a walk through any pharmacy, supermarket or online store, it is easy to find melatonin as the definitive solution to sleep problems and with the great claim of being something totally natural that our body secretes. Pills, drops, infusions or even gummies are some of the presentations in which we find a product that for many should not be available to everyone and that, in their opinion, It should be regulated like any other medicine. The alarm voice. The scientific community and regulatory bodies They are starting to sound the alarm and the central idea is clear: melatonin is not as harmless as it is often promoted and, according to experts, it should be treated with the same rigor as a medication, and not as a simple vitamin supplement. The labels. One of the biggest problems with melatonin, especially in countries like the United States where it is regulated as a dietary supplement, is the lack of strict control over its production. Here a study published in 2017 put a worrying fact on the table when seeing that there are a great variability between what the labels say and what the bottle actually contains. And when analyzing multiple brands, researchers found products that contained from 83% less melatonin than declared, to an alarming 478% more. And if that were not enough, the study detected the presence of serotonin in several of these supplements, which is a neurotransmitter that is regulated. It’s not something magical. Marketing has positioned melatonin as a universal solution for sleep that can be consumed without almost any type of control or limit. But here the different reviews conclude that its benefits are modest, without having a powerful hypnotic effect, but rather that its real usefulness lies in adjusting specific circadian rhythm disorders such as jet lag, so use should be selective and not routine. Furthermore, it is not without risks. One of the most striking is the incompatibility that taking melatonin may have. with anticoagulant medicationswhich requires medical supervision. This is something that a priori is not known to patients as they do not go to the doctor for a prescription and have melatonin available on a supermarket shelf. The silent danger. The rise of melatonin in gummy form has brought with it very serious collateral damage, since children may see it as a candy, which has led to an increase in visits to the emergency room in the United States due to excessive consumption of melatonin. In Spain, The approach taken is more strict, since drug regulatory agencies evaluate the safety of this substance in the key of medicinealthough you can buy it almost without any type of control when going to any supermarket. The positive part here is that the highest concentrations of melatonin can only be prescribed by a doctor in consultation so that the pharmacy can make a master preparation, considering it as just another medication, which is what is requested internationally. Images | James Yarema Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | Someone has said that melatonin damages the heart. The reality, according to science, is that we can be calm

2026 will be a historic year for smartphones. The worst year in history, specifically

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

The smartphone market is touched. That of technology, in general, with the brands themselves warning months ago about what was coming and encouraging us to anticipate technological purchases in the coming years as soon as possible. The rise of artificial intelligence and the Big Tech fever for building data centers has broken the consumer market with increasingly expensive computers, inaccessible components and the disappearance of the “cheap mobile”. Because 2026 is not being a good year to buy technology to the point that there is already talk of the worst year in history for smartphones. Disaster in sight. We already knew that 2026 was going to be bad, but now the analyst firm Counterpoint Research has revised their forecasts to point out something interesting: it will be worse than we expected. If in February they pointed to a drop in the year-on-year volume of smartphone shipments this year of 12.4%, they have now revised those forecasts to go a little further: up to 13.9%. This implies that this year some 1,080 million mobile phones will be shipped, which seems like a lot, but it represents 174 million fewer devices than in 2025. The translation is that it will be the lowest annual volume since 2013, when everything was field, experimentation and the newest smartphones continued to coexist with strange proposals and ‘dumb phones’. No options. The reason is the persistence of the component crisis, mainly storage and RAM memory. The acceleration of Big Tech to build more AI infrastructure is causing himcomponent production lines For the consumer sector (in which mobile phones are found) it does not have components or has to buy them much more expensively. This, evidently, causes the sales price of the device to increase. The impact is there because the memory represented 20% of the manufacturing invoice for an entry mobile. Now that percentage rises to 40% or more and, although everything increases in price or does not improve as it should from one generation to the next to cushion the impact, manufacturers really do not have many more options. The calculations are there and they make the new mobile phones less attractive. In the entry range – increments of 30 dollars per unit. In the mid range – from 60 to 80 dollars per unit. In the premium – 100 and 150 dollars per unit. Strategy. These manufacturers have two options on the table. Or they don’t launch new devices this year, something that some industry giants have already targetedensuring that the situation will cause some companies to fall by the wayside because their business depends directly on the devices… or they launch new models, but without better specifications and more expensive. It is estimated that smartphone prices worldwide increased by 14% during the first quarter of this year, with a shortage hitting the entry and mid-range segment harder than that of more premium mobile phones. The reason is that in the mid-range the margins are tighter and in the premium it is other components that raise the bill (cameras or screens, for example), in addition to having wider margins. In figures. It is affordable mobile phones that are bearing the brunt, with a 46% drop in shipments in this first quarter due to the reduction in the supply of LPDDR4 memory. In fact, Samsung is one of the largest on the market and already pointed out weeks ago that they were going to abandon the LPDDR4 to focus on the LPDDR5 which is better, but also more expensive. An example with first and last names is Galaxy A57a mobile that exemplifies this price increase in the mid-range because one GB of RAM is already worth twice as much as three months ago. To contextualize this, let’s go with some figures: Apple (premium segment) – stable shipments. Samsung (all segments, but strong presence in premium) – 4% drop. Xiaomi (all segments, but more in the mid-range) – 20% drop. Honor (all segments, but more in the mid-range) – 28% drop. Transsion (especially entry range) – 32% drop. No recovery on the horizon. The good news? Really, there is no good news. Coaunterresearch Point is just one source, but a forecast Parallel to IDC, which also contemplates this drop in shipments of 13.9%, points to an additional 1.1% of 1.1%. It is in 2028 when the situation is expected to begin to improve, but without returning to the state we had just two years ago. It will be a slow recovery and the market will suffer more in those areas where there is a greater concentration of mobile phones that move around 200 euros. It is, as we said months ago, the disappearance of the cheap mobile in favor of a more resilient high-end and premium because of what we commented about sales margins. But hey, in the end, it is a situation that we are seeing in all consumer devices. Apple is discontinuing options for its Macs with certain memory combinations, the Steam Deck just went up 300 euros suddenly, The Raspberry Pi has increased tremendously and it is not known when they will come out Steam MachinePS6 or Xbox Project Helix because no one wants to compromise. The only thing we know about the new Xbox is what its new CEO said: It will be expensive due to the component crisis. In Xataka | Samsung is doing so well that its workers threatened to strike if it didn’t distribute benefits. And they have won

review with features, price and specifications

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

A year ago I had the opportunity to try the Dreame A2a 2,800 euro robotic lawnmower that I loved, but it was too much for the 100 square meters of the garden at home. In a garden like this something smaller, more compact and, above all, cheaper would have been enough. Then Mova, Dreame’s sub-brand, arrived and put its ViAX 500a smaller, more humble lawnmower robot with a price tag of 749 euros. And that’s another movie. ✅ Buy it if… You have a small garden and you want to forget about periodic maintenance. You are looking for a silent robot. You value good obstacle detection. ❌ Don’t buy it if… You have a large garden, greater than 100-150 square meters. It is full of trees or decorative objects. You want to configure absolutely everything from the app. The essentials in 30 seconds The Mova ViAX 500 stands out for delivering what it promises: it is a robotic lawnmower designed for small gardens, with good navigation and programming capabilities. The cut is uniform and adjustable and the battery is enough to cover a garden of 100-120 square meters such as that of a chalet. Its biggest problem is around the edges and in smaller areas. The robot seems to be afraid of getting too close to the edge, especially when the surface is not quite ready, and small areas of grass tend to not go over them completely. In general, it is a good purchase if we are looking for a robot that we can program and forget about it until it is due for maintenance. Now, in a large house with extensive gardens, many nooks, trees and narrow areas, it is quite likely that it will suffer more. MOVA ViAX 500, Robot Lawn Mower, 500㎡ Mapping, AI Automapping without RTK, 360° LiDAR + AI Dual Vision, Intelligent Obstacle Avoidance, U-Shaped Trajectories The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Our experience with the Mova ViAX 500 MOVA ViAX 500 | Image: Xataka Setting it up is very easy (and a tip). Setting up these devices is just as easy as setting up a robot vacuum cleaner: You take it out, put it in the base, connect it to WiFi and map the area. You must do the latter by hand, controlling it as if it were a radio-controlled car. The base must be anchored to the ground with the included plastic screws and, obviously, you must connect it to the power. The cable, luckily, is very, very long, so you can pull it into the house if necessary. The little advice: If you can, put the foundation in the shade. The summer heat plays against these devices, even more so considering that the base does not have a hood. If your garden allows it, place the base in a place where the sun does not shine fully all day. Don’t worry about irrigators or rain, the robot has IPX6 resistance and can withstand them without problem. Cuts the grass pretty well. The robot has a rotating platform with three blades at the bottom. We can adjust this from the robot itself (not from the app) so that the cutting height is between two and six centimeters. My recommendation: three-four centimeters. It can also be configured to cut in a zig-zag pattern, which is recommended to improve uniformity, as well as programming. No complaints in this regard, except that the smallest areas are usually reviewed halfway. It’s as if the robot thinks it’s too big to work in that area. Be careful with edges and trees. Although the navigation via LiDAR and camera is exceptional, I have to give the slap on the wrist at the edges. Although it can be configured to “go in” a little further, the truth is that if the edge is not perfectly flush with the ground you will see that, over time, it will end up being longer than the rest of the garden. And it will be noticed. The same thing happens when approaching trees or decorations. Many times it seems that the robot is afraid to get a little closer, a fear that robot vacuum cleaners overcame a long time ago. MOVA ViAX 500 | Image: Xataka A fair and necessary autonomy. The robot has a battery with enough capacity to, in standard mode, cut 120 square meters in about an hour and a half. Enough for my garden. With efficient mode, the figure reaches 150 square meters. If the battery runs out, the robot returns to the base, charges itself (in about an hour) and picks up where it left off. Zero problems with this. Don’t forget the rest of the garden. Although the obstacle detection works really well, my recommendation is to spend a few minutes cleaning up the garden before starting the robot. If you have fruit trees and the fruit has fallen, pick it up or prepare for an exquisite wheel and blade cleaning session. I speak from experience. If you have left the hose loose, pick it up; And if you have pets, I, personally, would put them inside the house while the robot does its thing for a mental health issue. Mova ViAX 500 technical sheet mova viax 500 Mapping and navigation UltraEyes 2.0 AI-assisted dual vision 360º LiDAR obstacle avoidance UltraEyes 2.0 AI-assisted dual vision 360º LiDAR cutting capacity 500 m² cutting height 2-6 centimeters Cutting efficiency Standard mode: 120m²/load Efficient mode: 150m²/charge Cutting width 20cm Slope performance Up to 22 (40%) traction system front wheel drive 1x universal wheel battery 4 Ah Load: 3A noise level Up to 57 dB water resistance IPX6 others Double map Multi-zone management Cutting modes Remote control Live video tracking Voice alerts AirTag storage Elevation Alerts People detection Link module (optional) price 749 euros Mova ViAX 500, Xataka’s opinion MOVA ViAX 500 | Image: Xataka The Mova VIAX 500 is a robotic lawnmower that I could recommend to any of my neighbors, who have gardens similar … Read more

Japan has had enough of tourists littering the streets. So he has started to control them with police and fines

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

No matter which guide you use, surely if you are looking for the iconic places in Japan, Shibuya, one of the districts, will be among them. more dynamic from Tokyo. The neighborhood is known for its neon lights, its skyline and (above all) its famous intersection. Shibuya sukuranburu kōsatenthrough which thousands of tourists pass every day. If you search on TikTok for #sibuyacrossing you will find more than 70,000 videosthe majority of foreigners. Local authorities have grown tired of these crowds leaving their streets. full of garbage and has decided cut to the chase. As? With special patrols and sanctions. What has happened? That the government of the Shibuya district, in Tokyo, wants to get rid of people who throw garbage in its streets. And he has decided to do it the most effective way (and emphatically) possible: using the police and with sanctions that will be imposed on the spot and offenders must pay either in cash, with a credit card or by means of a QR code. It is not a more or less diffuse idea or a political proposal that still needs to be debated and processed. The measure has already been introduced as an amendment in the ordinance for the ‘Joint Creation of a Clean Shibuya’, a rule from 1997. Now, and after a grace period that began in April, the authorities have begun to issue fines. They have even promoted a campaign with a name that leaves little room for interpretation: “If you throw garbage, you lose money”. Proof of how seriously the police take it is that only on their first day did they process a dozen of sanctions. What fines and how are they applied? The fines amount to 2,000 yenabout 10.7 euros, and will be applied immediately so that offenders can pay them in cash or by pulling a card. As if the threat of sanctions were not enough, the district has decided to mobilize a patrol of several dozen agents (up to 50) who will be in charge of exploring the area in search of offenders. As the objective is to eliminate dirt, the focus has not only been placed on pedestrians. The same rule contemplates fines of 50,000 yen (270 euros) for positions takeaway or vending machines that do not install trash cans nearby. Is the problem so serious? No data has been released on the amount of garbage that is collected every day on the streets of Shibuya, but there are several characteristics in the area that explain why the government has decided to resort to fines. The first is that public containers are not plentiful. In 2013 the authorities they withdrew bins and encouraged people to manage their waste responsibly. The idea was not only to avoid collapsed bins, but, as remember the BBCimprove security. In general, in the country it is not strange to find areas in which containers are scarce for fear that they will be used in terrorist attacks. This lack of buckets has not gone unnoticed by the millions of tourists who visit the country each year. In 2025 the issue appeared in a government survey on the problems faced by foreign tourists. He was cited by 20% of the respondents. Is it the only explanation? No. Shibuya is an important (and above all busy) tourist hub. According to the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), during peak hours between 1,000 and 2,500 People cross its famous intersection every two minutes. “It is one of the most emblematic places in Tokyo,” the agency points out before remembering that just with the number of people who accumulate there, including residents and visitors, a stadium could be filled in a short time. Although slightly less than 250,000 peoplethis avalanche of passers-by is much better understood if we take into account that Japan has been experiencing an authentic tourist boom. It is estimated that only last year they visited the country 42.7 million of foreigners, a relevant figure for three reasons: it represents a year-on-year increase of almost 16%, it is the first time that the figure exceeds 40 million and, above all, it marks a historical record. Fines only for tourists? No. Fines for littering the ground apply to both visitors and local people, although it is not unreasonable to think that the measure has been adopted largely with foreigners in mind. And not only because it is centered on a tourist hub. The sanctions are immediate, they can be paid with a card or a QR and the agents in charge of enforcing the rule will speak several languagesincluding English, Chinese and Korean. “Shibuya is an international area visited by many Japanese and people from all over the world. We ask all visitors, regardless of nationality, to respect the city’s rules,” underlines Ken Hasebe, district leader. The authorities conduct a survey, carried out last year, which shows that 52% of the people hunted for littering were foreigners. Does it only happen there? No. Shibuya is not the only point in Japan where the tourist avalanche has generated tensions with the local population. In fact, you don’t have to go back very far in time to find two other towns that also decided to adopt measures to avoid the overcrowding, dirt and traffic problems generated by tourism. One is Fujikawaguchiko, which in 2024 installed a barrier to cover your views of Mount Fuji. The reason? The hordes of tourists seeking selfie perfect. The other is Fujiyoshida, who recently canceled their festival of the cherry blossom to save the neighbors the inconvenience caused by the thousands of foreigners that the event attracts. The country even has decided to charge for the ascent of Fuji to prevent it from becoming a huge public landfill. Images |Timo Volz (Unsplash) and Jezael Melgoza (Unsplash) In Xataka | Antarctica was practically the last corner of the Earth immune to touristification. That’s ending

The biggest mistake you can make the night before the Selectivity exam is not leaving a topic unlooked at: it is not sleeping

June 2, 2026 by usatoday24

When we think of a student during exam time or of a candidate who is preparing very intensely for an exam that will offer him job stability, we automatically think of the classic image of being up early in the morning studying hundreds of underlined pages. Here it seems that sleeping becomes a minor issue due to the fact of studying and cramming hundreds of pages. But the reality is that study without sleeping It’s like wasting time, even though it may seem otherwise. The science. Here the science has a lot to sayand a robust body of evidence suggests that putting aside studying and getting into bed for 7 or 8 hours of sleep is by far the smartest decision you can make before an exam or during preparation. And something they don’t teach us is that studying is only half of the learning and memorization process that occurs in our brain, since the other half occurs while we are asleep in order to ingrain knowledge. In the brain. To understand why sleep is non-negotiable for students, we have to look at what happens inside our heads when we sleep. At these moments we may think that the brain is in a state of lethargy or shutdown, but the truth is that it is a period of frenetic activity at the neuronal level. We found one of the proofs in a published article in Neuron which suggests that the sleeping brain is biologically optimized for memory consolidation. Something very important, because during the day the brain acts like a true sponge, capturing a large amount of information quickly but volatile, which far exceeds the limit of its capacity to retain it. Transferring it to the hard drive. All this knowledge that we try to acquire in one afternoon has to be consolidated so that we can later remember it in the exam. This is where sleep comes in, which is where a hippocampal-cortical transferwhich allows the information acquired during wakefulness to be reactivated and transferred to the cerebral cortex, which is where the information is stored long-term. In Nature We found a fascinating article that detailed how neurons repeat at full speed the information learned during the first phase of sleep. This phase prepares the ground so that, during REM sleep, in the second half of sleep, synaptic connections are stabilized and strengthened to integrate all the information. But if we skip hours of sleep, or reduce it to 3-4 hours to be more efficient, this process is interrupted. The disaster of sleep deprivation. The penalty for not sleeping is severe, since if you decide to spend the night sleepless to review “a couple more topics”, you should know that the price you have to pay is a 40% reduction in learning capacity, in addition to an increase in memory losses and a plummet in concentration. And what these losses ultimately generate are temporary memory gaps, which is the typical situation in which we remain “blank” looking at the exam sheet without knowing what to write, although you remember having read it hours before. This is why a student with few hours of sleep shows much slower response times, is confused when making decisions, and suffers a radical worsening of attention. In surveys. In 2023, a study carried out with 640 students of the Autonomous University of Madrid during their exam period pointed out that 61.3% of those surveyed already sensed that their performance would improve if they slept more. From here, the researchers confirmed a direct and positive association between sleep quality and academic performance. Furthermore, they discovered that the “sleep debt” accumulated during the week took a very high toll, being associated with worse performance perceived by the students themselves. The perfect dose. Here the recommendation that we must keep in mind is that of the WHO or the National Sleep Foundation, which suggests that young adults should sleep between 7 and 8 hours a day, and even increase to 9 hours for students with great cognitive stress, such as opponents. Images | Ministry of Health In Xataka | If you wake up tired on a regular basis, your rest is fragmented. The good news is that science knows how to fix it

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