The production of this Disney movie was so chaotic that a documentary detailing how it was made disappeared

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In 1994, the director of ‘The Lion King’ had his next big movie ready: a musical epic about the Inca Empire, with Sting composing the songs and Owen Wilson in the cast. Six years later, what ended up hitting theaters was ‘The Emperor and His Follies’, something radically different: an emperor turned into a llama, a good-natured peasant and meta jokes that broke the fourth wall. Animated on the fly from an unfinished script, all to meet the release deadlines promised to McDonald’s. A real debacle recorded in a completely inaccessible documentary. The successor to ‘The Lion King’. Development of the film began in 1994 under the title ‘Kingdom of the Sun‘ (The Kingdom of the Sun), as an epic and dramatic adventure loosely inspired by ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ by Mark Twain. Its director was Roger Allers, who was coming off the biggest hit in the studio’s recent history, ‘The Lion King’. Allers introduced then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, a story set at the height of the Inca civilization. What was it about? The premise was ambitious: an arrogant emperor swaps places with a peasant who physically resembles him, while the villainous Yzma wants to destroy the sun to obtain eternal youth. For the soundtrack, following the model of Elton John’s success in ‘The Lion King’Allers signed Sting, who had already written several songs linked to the original plot. The team traveled to Machu Picchu in 1996 to learn about Inca architecture and Andean landscapes. It was exactly the type of production that Disney had been making since ‘The Little Mermaid’: epic, musical and very, very expensive. So much for Disney. After the disappointing box office results of ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, two films loaded with dramatic elements, studio executives believed that the project was too ambitious and serious, and that it needed more comedy. The solution was to hire Mark Dindal as co-director, and he was tasked with lightening the tone. Allers continued working on his dramatic epic while Dindal pushed toward the absurd. A test screening in 1998 revealed that schizophrenic tone, in two mutually incompatible directions. One of Disney’s executives threatened producer Randy Fullmer with canceling the project. The McDonald’s problem. Added to all this was an extra problem: the film had to be finished in time to be released in the summer of 2000, since the promotional agreements with McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and other companies had already been signed and depended on that date being met. Allers acknowledged that production was delayed, but asked for between six months and a year of extension to solve the problems. It was denied. The director resigned, leaving Disney with at least $20 or $30 million already spent on animation. And no movie for the summer of 2000. Eisner gave Fullmer two weeks to prove the movie was salvageable. If not, the project was closed. Dindal took control alone. He completed ‘The Emperor and His Follies’ in a year and a half, a record for a Disney production, and with an unusual need in the world of animation: it was produced without a finished script. Also in this process the cast changed: Owen Wilson was replaced by John Goodman, because the character of Pacha stopped being a double of the emperor to become a burly family man from the countryside. The hilarious character of Kronk, one of the film’s great discoveries, did not exist until the end: he was added during emergency rewrites. The documentary that Disney doesn’t want you to see. Sting had agreed to compose the songs on one condition: that his wife, documentary filmmaker Trudie Styler, could film the production process. The resulting documentary‘The Sweatbox’, covers the long and troubled production. The title comes from the screening rooms at Disney studios, known for lacking air conditioning. ‘The Sweatbox’ premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2002 and quickly disappeared from circulation: Disney has never released it on DVD or streaming. The documentary includes, among other moments, the call in which Fullmer tells Sting that his eight songs have been eliminated. Only two Sting songs survived on the final soundtrack. The documentary has been compared to ‘Hearts in Darkness’, the making-of of ‘Apocalypse Now’, for its portrait of the human cost in a decaying creative process. And of course, there is a copy of ‘The Sweatbox’ circulating unofficially on the internet. Poor results. The film ended up grossing $169 million worldwide on a budget of $100 million, a disappointing figure compared to Disney’s other hits during the 1990s. The film found some success in the domestic market and became the best-selling DVD of 2001, which would spawn a television series (‘Kuzco: An Emperor in School’) and a direct-to-video sequel (‘The Emperor’s Crazy 2: Kronk’s Big Adventure’). The footprint. Curiously, the influence of ‘The Emperor and His Follies’ is deeper than it seems. The film’s non-stop parody humor anticipated ‘Shrek’, released just a year later, and other animated films with which DreamWorks Animation would find success in subsequent years. This film is quite a visionary and remains one of the most unclassifiable films of modern Disney. In Xataka | The first cartoons were flat and unappealing, until Walt Disney invented something: the multiplane camera.

Sudan hid hundreds of unknown tombs of a lost civilization. They have appeared thanks to satellites

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If there is a known civilization within the African continent, it is Ancient Egypt and figures like Ramses or Cleopatra. However, relatively nearby there was another kingdom studied at length by archaeology: Nubia (although less famous to the general public). And between the two, a desert to pass by, literally and figuratively. Because there is the Atbai desert, a region between the Nile and the Red Sea where an archeology team just discovered hundreds of tombs from more than 5,000 years ago arranged in a monumental way, as you can see on these lines. The discovery. An international archeology team has identified 280 stone funerary monuments scattered throughout the desert, of which only 20 were known to exist. That is, 260 are “new.” The funeral complex has been called Atbai Enclosure Burials and its construction probably dates back to between 4500 and 2500 BC. These structures consist of large circular or ovoid enclosures delimited by large walls made of local stone, whose diameters vary from five meters in the most modest examples to reaching 82 meters. Inside they have found remains of both humans and cattle, sheep and goats. The internal layout of some tombs points to a certain social inequality: in several landmarks there is a central burial that dominates the structure, with other humans and animals arranged around it. In fact, the tomb with the most grave goods contained the remains of about 18 cows. Why is it important. Because these tombs suggest that the region was not a mere passageway between civilizations, but the home where pastoral people lived. The Atbai Desert was not a no man’s land between Egypt and the Red Sea, but had its own identity. As suggests the paperthe monuments are the cultural expression of a society with social strata in which wealth was evidenced with rituals, these stone milestones and livestock, like other neighboring regions. Context. According to previous excavations and the radiocarbon used on them, these monuments were probably built during the decline of the African Humid Period, when that area located in northeastern Africa went from more humid conditions to aridity because at that time the Atbai desert was not such: it contained vegetation and water sources, even if they were seasonal. As the climate became harsher, herding cows also became a more arduous task, so they adapted their herds: sheep, goats and finally camels. How they discovered it. In a word: satellites. The team made up of archaeologists from Macquarie University, France’s HiSoMA research unit and the Polish Academy of Sciences used satellite remote sensing over the eastern Sudan desert to map 1,000 kilometers of desert in search of more clues to its history. Why would an archaeologist want to avoid digging? Basically because in Sudan there is an armed conflict which means that field work can be directly lethal. But in addition to locating the tombs, the satellite images also revealed dense networks of ancestral trails engraved in the landscape by the repeated passage of livestock between grazing areas and water sources, a direct and visible trace of livestock activity linked to the funerary sites. That is, they not only found where they buried their dead, but also the paths they traveled in life. Yes, but. The first “but” is obvious: the majority of this funerary display has only been seen on satellite and has not been excavated, which leaves basic information such as precise dating in the air. On the other hand, this discovery located in the Atbai Desert could be just the tip of the iceberg: others may have been lost due to erosion, floods or even modern mining, which is very active in the area. The authors themselves acknowledge that they do not know with certainty whether these structures are exclusive to the Atbai or if they existed in neighboring regions and simply have not survived. The million-dollar question is: if in a desert as little studied as this one, 260 monuments have just appeared at once, how much history of the pastoralist Sahara will still be hidden under the sand waiting to be discovered? In Xataka | We just discovered that a semi-legendary Nile king really existed thanks to a 17th century document found in trash In Xataka | A Spaniard claims to have solved how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built: the answer was right under our noses Cover | Atbai Enclosure Burials: Monumentalism, Pastoralism and Environmental Change in the Mid-Holocene East Nubian Deserts edited with Gemini

Cases in young people are skyrocketing and science points to our lifestyle

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When we think of patients with colon cancerour mind can automatically go to a middle-aged person with different risk factors behind them. However, epidemiology is documenting a radical change in statisticssince more and more young people are being diagnosed with this type of cancer, which makes us reflect to look for the ‘why’. The experts. Winette van der Graaf, professor of Medical Oncology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute (NKI), points to this new reality and states that “I would never have imagined that I would be seeing patients with colorectal cancer at the age of 19” as collect The Country. With this phrase he gives voice to a global trend that epidemiological studies continue to confirm, since cancer is no longer a disease almost exclusively of old age, and the incidence is growing at a rate four times faster in young people than in older people. An explosion. Data supports the medical concern through multiple international macro studies, such as the one published in 2024 in The Lancet. Here, 50 countries were analyzed and showed that early-onset colorectal cancer (between 25 and 49 years) is increasing in 27 of them. But the most revealing data is in 20 of those 27 territories, where the increase in cases is exclusive to young people or is advancing much faster than in the adult population. The fastest pace is taken by countries such as New Zealand or Chile, growing at 4.0% annually, and Puerto Rico with 3.8%. Furthermore, in 14 countries, including Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom, cases are increasing in young people while remaining stable in those over 50 years of age. Among the youngest. The figures here are scary, since, according to the data From the CDC, data on colorectal cancer among adolescents tripled between 1999 and 2020. If we go into detail, in the 20 to 24 year old group they grew by 185%, while in the 10 to 14 year old age group the growth was 500% as the incidence went from 0.1 to 0.6 cases per 100,000 children. The Spanish case. Here, a study based on real data from the Virgen de la Victoria Hospital published in JCO Global Oncology in 2024 analyzed more than 24,500 patients and found that 22.2% had early-onset cancer, being present before the age of 50. And we can go further, by making a list of the types of cancer that have increased the most in our territory: Sarcoma: increased by 43.4% in young people compared to 28.6% in older people. Kidney: rose 27.8% in young people compared to 20.1% in older people. Testicle: grew by 16.3% in young people, while its incidence fell by 13.1% in older people. Because? Here experts point to a combination of very diverse factors that try to explain it, although none of them is definitive. One of these is an inadequate diet with an increase in the consumption of red meat and calcium-deficient diets that is complemented by a tendency toward a sedentary lifestyle. But in addition, the excessive use of antibiotics could be severely altering our intestinal microbiota, added to the impact of bacterial infections during childhood. And it even goes further by considering the role of the exposure we have since childhood to chemical elements such as pesticides or pollution in general to give it an explanation. Images | brgfx on Magnific Julia Koblitz In Xataka | Neither cure nor die: why the next great revolution against cancer is to make it chronic

In 2026 there are still people throwing messages in a bottle into the sea. A man keeps finding them in the Caribbean

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To give us an idea, more than half a century ago, in 1959, Guinness launched 150,000 bottles to the Atlantic to celebrate its bicentennial. Many decades later, in the era of networks and algorithms, some continue to appear on beaches in places as different as the Caribbean, Canada or the Arctic. People keep sending the messages. History remembered her the New Yorker a few days ago. In the era of WhatsApp, TikTok and instant messages, there are people who continue doing something that seems straight out of a 19th century novel: writing a few lines, putting them in a bottle and throw them into the ocean waiting for someone, somewhere in the world, to find them. The surprising thing is that much more happens than it seems. Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer estimates that millions of bottled messages have been thrown into the sea since the mid-20th century, and some continue to wash up decades later on remote beaches. What’s more, in the Caribbean, a man named Clint Buffington He has been obsessed with finding them for almost twenty years. What started as a coincidence ended up becoming a kind of emotional archeology of the ocean: messages written by strangers, couples who broke up, improvised memorials, jokes, goodbyes and small capsules of humanity carried by impossible sea currents. The bottle hunter. Buffington lives in Utah, far from the sea, but spends much of his life studying ocean mapstides and currents to locate beaches where floating objects may end up accumulating. Walk for miles in brutal heat in the Bahamas or Turks and Caico Islands searching for something extremely unlikely: a bottle with a message still readable. Of course, most of the time he finds nothing. Or worse– Find trash, empty bottles or papers destroyed by salt water. But every now and then something extraordinary appears. Ha recovered sent messages from freighters, love letters, confessions written under the influence of alcohol, vacation memories and even tributes to lost pregnancies. For man, each bottle is a kind of human trail floating between continents. He does not look for material treasures, “I look for stories,” explained in the report. Internet before the Internet. Part of the fascination is that the bottles function as a kind of very slow, analog version of modern social networks. A stranger writes something for someone they don’t know, throws it into the void and waits for a response. The difference is that here the algorithm is ocean currents. For example, a Japanese woman found a bottle sent years before by a french sailor and ended up reconstructing his identity thanks to an absurd human chain that involved tourists, hairdressers and neighbors in different parts of the world. Another bottle thrown from an American lighthouse during the pandemic appeared six years later in the Bahamas, after probably traveling thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic. The ocean thus becomes a kind of chaotic postal network where any object can disappear forever or reappear in the most unlikely place on the planet. The sea as an emotional archive. I remembered the NY The most striking thing is that many of these messages do not contain practical information or real requests for help. They are simply deeply human impulses: to leave a fingerprinttalk to someone unknown, demonstrate that one existed at a specific time. Some authors write philosophical reflections, others leave money, cigarettes or small objects inside the bottle. There are messages written by sailors crossing straits out of superstition, bored tourists, lonely people or couples in crisis. There are even real marriage stories emerged thanks to a bottle found on another coast decades ago. For Buffington, that’s the true meaning of it all: the human need to connect with someone, even if it’s in the most unlikely way imaginable. The ocean continues delivering messages. If you like, the story also has something melancholic. Many bottle hunters They believe that the phenomenon is disappearing because cell phones and social networks have destroyed some of the patience and romanticism necessary for this type of slow communication. However, the bottles keep appearing. Some were launched a few years ago, others have been traveling between currents, storms and reefs for decades. Buffington even has found remains of that distant campaign Guinness promotional from 1959 that still surfaces on remote beaches. The ocean preserves these objects like erratic time capsules, battered by sun and salt for years. And every time someone find a bottle intact and manages to read what is inside, something strangely powerful happens: two people separated by thousands of kilometers and several years away manage to connect thanks to an ocean current and a piece of glass floating in the Atlantic. Image | Snapwire In Xataka | 45 years ago we sent a “message in a bottle” to space in the Pioneer probes, today they are making a replica that you can buy In Xataka | We already know how thirsty artificial intelligence is: a 100-word email consumes a bottle of water

The MacBook Neo has made traditional Windows laptops look ridiculous. This is great news for users.

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He MacBook Neo showed the way. Mid-range laptops seemed stuck in the past, with an unattractive price/performance ratio. The feeling was that once you were buying a laptop, it was better to invest 1,000 euros or more to be able to work and play comfortably. That seems to be finally changing, because we are seeing a lot of movement in the world of Windows laptops. Asleep on our laurels. Apple’s new model showed that there could be alternatives and caught manufacturers on the wrong foot. Everyone seemed comfortable with it. status quobut he MacBook Neo woke them up from slumberand soon we will see a deployment of modest but functional equipment. Above all, because three of the semiconductor majors already have their SoCs ready or almost ready to compete with the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neo. Qualcomm Snapdragon C. The first alternative is this chip with ARM architecture that just announced by Qualcomm and according to the firm, it will allow equipment to be offered with starting prices of $300. It is very likely that these proposals are too limited (and have no more than 4 GB of RAM), but also that there are versions with higher configurations. The Snapdragon C promises remarkable efficiency, and Qualcomm is an old acquaintance of Windows for ARM equipment. Intel Wildcat Lake. In April we saw how Intel showed its great commitment to conquer this new era of mid-range laptops. I did it with his family Wildcat Lake in which, for example, the new Intel Core 3 304 are integrated. The fundamental advantage of these chips is that of using the traditional x86-64 architecture, which until now has proven to be the best option for Windows computers due to its completely native support for the OS and its applications. Nvidia waits its turn. A lot has been spoken how the duopoly of Intel and AMD on Windows computers could have an expiration date. Qualcomm has not managed to erode that reality, but who may have an important asset is Nvidia, which is preparing the launch of its Arm chips. There has been talk for months that there will be not one, but two based on the GP10 chip which Nvidia jointly developed with MediaTek. The names that are mentioned in the leaks are N1 and N1X, and although the details are unknown, the expectations are notable and already start to leak also Lenovo models that will integrate the N1X. But Windows on ARM has never caught on. The doubts with Qualcomm and Nvidia’s proposals are not due to them, but rather to Microsoft and its Windows operating system. Its version for ARM chips has been available for years, but the teams that have taken advantage of these chips were limited by some software conflicts. I’d better stay with Intel and AMD. There are hardly any problems in that sense anymore, but the promise of the efficiency of ARM chips was not so striking when the prices of such equipment were high. In the end, it was more worthwhile for most users to bet on “traditional” chips from Intel and AMD, and Qualcomm’s proposals—the only ones that appeared on the market—never quite conquered the general public, not even when Copilot+ PCs appeared. Windows 11, by the way, He didn’t make it easy either. with your list of requirements. Specs don’t matter (that much). We already saw yesterday how the specifications of the Wilcat Lake chips are superior to those of the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neobut that doesn’t mean much. Above all, because the MacBook Neo have proven to be laptops that offer a fantastic user experience, but at the moment computers with Intel chips have not been analyzed and their performance is unknown. These same doubts affect future devices with Qualcomm or Nvidia chips: they will have to demonstrate that the user experience is as good (or better) than that of the MacBook Neo, or else these manufacturers (and Microsoft) will have a serious problem. It’s good news. Whatever happens, Apple’s move has caused manufacturers to finally move and develop solutions to try to compete with the surprising team from Cupertino. If the MacBook Neo had not been launched, we would probably still be stuck in the mid-range Windows laptop segment, but this is going to liven things up and revive competition between manufacturers. We all win. In Xataka | “We arrived too soon, but we were right”: The MacBook Neo is everything Microsoft dreamed of with the disastrous Windows 8

Wi-Fi 8 will arrive in 2028

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TP-Link needs few presentations to sell its routers: it is one of the largest manufacturers in the world and also one of the best known. Well, the Chinese brand has just announce that its new Archer 8 router will be launched in October this year with the next generation of Wi-Fi, the Wi-Fi 8 (802.11bn). That it arrives with the latest technology is very good, the point is that Wi-Fi as an official standard does not yet exist: at the very least will be ready at the beginning of 2028. TP-Link seems to be clear that whoever hits first, hits twice, but getting so far ahead has fine print. TP-Link lives in the future. In reality, the TP-Link Archer 8 will be the first of a batch of routers with Wi-Fi 8 that the company plans to deploy in the coming months: mesh systems, travel routers and adapters, all of them with this future connectivity standard and all scheduled throughout 2027, that is, before the official deployment of Wi-Fi 8. Bottom line: The Archer 8 will hit the market about a year and a half before a complete, certified standard exists. The explanation that gives its president is that “innovation in Wi-Fi has been measured by maximum theoretical speeds (…). But what really matters to users is consistency. Archer 8 is designed to offer precisely that: lower latency, better performance against interference and more stable connectivity in real environments” and well, yes but no. Why is it important. As usual as we see new standards, Wi-Fi 8 will offer more speed. However, its great novelty is that the nodes of a network can coordinate with each other to better manage the signal, the multi-AP. In practice, it makes the nodes of a mesh network cooperate to reduce interference in the network so that there are fewer outages when you have many devices connected (or your neighbor does). Internal company tests show improvements of up to 33% in performance and better sensitivity in the 5 and 6 GHz bands. Of course, these are data from the manufacturer itself in the laboratory, that is, from the interested party. The problem is that buying hardware based on an unfinished standard usually ends badly, you just have to look back. With 802.11g, the IEEE’s own files documented incompatibilities between pre-standard routers from different manufacturers because each one implemented a different draft. With Wi-Fi 6E, several models presented at CES 2022 They arrived on the market without Wi-Fi Alliance certification and without having passed interoperability tests. With Wi-Fi 8 there is even more room for disaster: if the draft changes before 2028, flagship features such as multi-AP may not be compatible with devices from other manufacturers. Context. We are talking about Wi-Fi 8 when Wi-Fi 7 is not even close to being universal and for example, a button: although it is true that the MacBook Pro M5 Pro They are compatible with Wi-Fi 7, the popular MacBook Neo presented by Apple just a couple of months ago, it arrived with Wi-Fi 6. The same with the advanced Apple Vision Pro with M5. The reality of wireless standards adoption is that it is painfully slow. Furthermore, although the claim of offering Wi-Fi 8 is attractive, if you have a mobile phone or tablet with Wi-Fi 5 and you connect them to a router with Wi-Fi 8 it will not work a miracle: they will connect using only the older protocol. Your joy in a well. Yes, but. Since the Wi-Fi 8 standard won’t be ready until 2028, it’s almost certain that the Archer 8 won’t have all the features of the final standard implemented when it’s available in stores. What does this mean? That whoever buys it in October 2026 will pay for an incomplete product that could be improved by software in the future… or not. And even if it arrived with the complete standard (this is not the case), it will take years for there to be devices with which to take advantage of it. But there is another serious problem for TP-Link: The United States banned the import of routers from outside its borders facing potential use for espionage. If the FCC does not approve the product, the Archer 8 will not be sold in the US. In Europe there is no veto, but with Wi-Fi 7 it’s already blocked half of the 6 GHz band by regulation and with Wi-Fi 8 the same is likely to happen. In Xataka | Best gaming router, streaming and teleworking from home. Which one to buy and recommendations from 60 euros In Xataka | Wi-Fi 8 is already in development. The surprise is that it will not be faster: the advantage will come from another side Cover | TP-Link and Gemini

The United States promised to be very happy manufacturing its own chips. Nvidia just spent 150 billion in Taiwan

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Houston, we have a problem. A couple of days ago the CEO of Nvidia stood on the stage at Computex in Taipei and said an inconvenient truth for the United States: “Taiwan is the epicenter of the AI ​​revolution. This is where chips and packaging are made. This is where systems are created. This is where AI supercomputers were created.” The setting was Computex 2026, Asia’s biggest tech event, and it wasn’t a compliment to the host, it’s a real depiction of how the industry works. It may sound paradoxical for an American company and at a time when The United States wants to reindustrialize with chipsbut he needs it. It is a structural issue. The harsh reality of profitability. Nvidia plans spend 150,000 million dollars a year in Taiwan, much more than the 100,000 million they spend now and with an abysmal difference compared to the 10,000 and 15,000 million five years ago. If it sounds silly, it’s because it is, but so is its billing: in the first fiscal quarter of 2026 billed 81.6 billion dollars, 85% more than the previous year in that same period. Also its benefit it’s already going off the charts: 58.3 billion, more than triple compared to the same period last year. That this money goes to Taiwan and not to the United States is due to technical and objective issues: Taiwan produces 90% of the most advanced chips in the world, according to a study by the Stimson Center. Of that Taiwanese production, TSMC controls 70% and is going to invest between 52,000 and 56,000 million this year. Bottom line: If Nvidia wants cutting-edge manufacturing capability, it has to be there. Why is it important. The best way to see it is to put Vera Rubin on the table, who In Huang’s words it is “probably the biggest product launch in Taiwan’s history.” Each system contains about two million parts and is assembled with 150 suppliers, almost all Taiwanese. This mechanism is not assembled by decree or in a legislature: it requires years and putting billions of dollars on the table. There is no factory in Arizona that can do something like this at least until 2030. Constellation will be Nvidia’s new headquarters in Taipei and will come to stay permanently: 4,000 engineering professionals will work in that center that according to Huang It will be operational by 2030. It is no longer that it buys in Taiwan, it is that the most valuable semiconductor company in the world is building the heart of its R&D in that core, an island 10,000 kilometers from the United States. A splash of cold water on Trump’s aspirations. Context. In January 2026, Taiwanese companies they committed to invest $250 billion in semiconductors and AI in the United States, as part of a trade agreement with Washington. Because Taiwan and the US are a symbiosis: each needs the other to maintain its position in the race for AI. The investment of a private company like Nvidia is another expression of this pact. In fact, Nvidia is not the only one: AMD is doing exactly the same: associate with Taiwanese manufacturers such as ASE, SPIL and Wiwynn with their Helios AI platform on the horizon (expected for the second half of 2026). That the two largest AI chip designers in the world strengthen ties with Taiwan is confirmation that the island’s industry is strategically necessary for the entire industry, not a particular bet by one firm. The elephant in the room: China. China’s role in this story is twofold: it is a threat and also a client. According to Reutersin 2026 Chinese companies have placed orders for more than two million units of the H200. Trade restrictions have made the operation difficult, but they have not been able to prevent it. One of the last cases point upon the arrival of a shipment of Nvidia AI chips to China via Japan. Nvidia lives in a contradiction from which it cannot escape: Its supply chain is on an island that China considers its own. China, which is its largest potential market, is blocked. Washington prohibits him from selling to Beijing while asking for independence from Taipei. And judging by his statements, Jensen Huang has bet everything on continuing to walk that wire. Yes, but. The Nvidia CEO forgot one problem in his speech: Taiwan makes the overwhelming majority of the world’s most advanced chips, but TSMC’s diversification into Arizona, Japan and Germany will not be ready before 2028 at best. That is to say, there are almost four years ahead in which Nvidia depends totally on Taiwan, a country that matters 97% of your energy. Furthermore, the atmosphere in the Strait of the same name is increasingly heated. Concentrating the production of its most critical component in a geographically hot spot is dangerous to say the least: if something explodes, there is no plan B. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has reminded us of this the hard way. In Xataka | Huawei has found a way to counteract US sanctions: overcoming Moore’s Law In Xataka | US companies have always had a hard time making a lot of money in China. One industry is the exception: chips Cover | freepik and Jimmy Liao

why understanding these acronyms is the difference between buying an air purifier or an expensive fan

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At first glance buy a purifier air can be a simple task, but as soon as we start reading the specifications… we can easily get involved, especially with some of them such as the type of filter. Here we must be especially careful because it is possible that we find HEPA filters or HEPA type filters, and they are not the same. In fact, with each of them we will have a totally different experience. How a HEPA filter works HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Airor air with high efficiency particles) is a quality standard for filters, so if we see it in a purifier we can know that it meets rigorous tests to guarantee efficiency in retaining particles such as dust, pollen, mold and even bacteria or viruses. If we get a little more technical, bacteria measure between 0.5 and 5 microns while viruses measure between 0.02 and 0.3 microns. HEPA filters must be capable of retain at least 99.97% of particles having a size of 0.3 microns (particle size most difficult to physically filter). If it is not capable of this, it is not a HEPA filter. However, you have to be careful because this is where HEPA type filters come into play. What is a HEPA type filter If we see that a purifier has a HEPA type filter, we may think that it meets the standard we have discussed. But this is not the case, and they can be much less efficient. The expression “HEPA type filter” is usually used as a claim for some purifiers, generally inexpensive, although it is more normal to see them in other devices such as robot vacuum cleaner. These filters They are not as effective because they have not been tested with the tests that HEPA filters are subjected to, and it is possible that they do not even comply with the European standard that defines the different kinds of HEPA filters that we can find. Can they retain bacteria? Yes, but they do not have certified efficiency. How purifiers work The purifiers have a fairly simple structure: Inside there is a motor, a fan and a box where the filter is located.. Its operation is summarized in that the motor makes the fan move to attract particles and deposit them in the filter. However, it is worth mentioning that the filtering process is more complex. Inertial impact: affects large, heavy particles that travel at high speed. The particles cannot change direction quickly, so they continue straight until they collide with the fibers until they become stuck. Direct interception: some medium particles that follow the air flow pass very close to the fibers until they come into contact with them and remain adhered, which is known as direct interception. Brownian diffusion: on the contrary, small particles do not follow the air current in a straight line, so they continually collide with the gas molecules in the air. This movement increases the probability that the particle ends up hitting a fiber and becoming stuck. HEPA-type filters can retain certain particles, but they do not have certified efficiency. It’s not that they are useless, but they simply may not be as effective as HEPA filters. The good and the bad of both options, face to face hepa filters hepa type filters THE GOOD 🟢 They are capable of better filtering dust particles, bacteria or viruses. They are usually found in cheap purifiers, being interesting for devices whose purification function is secondary. THE BAD 🔴 They are found in more expensive purifiers, so they are aimed at devices whose purification function is the main one. They are less efficient than HEPA filters. Ideal for: People looking to improve the air quality in their home. Economical devices whose purification function is secondary. What purifier should I buy then? At this point you may have wondered whether or not it is worth buying a purifier with a HEPA type filter, and the truth is that it is, although it depends on what we are looking for. 👉 Choose a purifier with a HEPA filter if: You want to retain large and small particles for a cleaner home, from dust to viruses and bacteria. 👉 Choose a purifier with a HEPA type filter if: You only want to retain large particles such as pet hair, dust or lint. Recommended models Philips 2200 Series He Philips 2200 Series It is an air purifier with a HEPA filter that has a fairly small format. It incorporates a three-layer system composed of a prefilter, a HEPA NanoProtect and active carbon to capture 99.97% of particles up to 0.003 microns (3 nanometers) through NanoProtect technology, a technology that allows even smaller particles to be captured thanks to electrocharging. It can be controlled from your mobile phone to program routines and is capable of capturing odors, bacteria, viruses and larger particles. Philips 2200 Series Air Purifier The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool HP1 Dyson purifiers are quite well known for the format that many of their models have, such as the Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool HP1. This purifier with a HEPA filter is capable of capturing particles down to 0.1 microns thanks to its H13 filter and can also be controlled from a smartphone. In addition, it also has a function to heat the air in winter or cool it in summer. Dyson Purifier Hot+Cool HP1 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links If neither of these two models convinces you and you want to explore other options, you can take a look at our air purifier guide. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Philips, Dyson In Xataka | The best way to heat the house: we analyze the expense and energy efficiency of heat pumps and heaters In Xataka | Which heater to buy: the best models based on power, use cases … Read more

Festivals turned food trucks into a money-printing machine. Now they have a problem: Ozempic

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During the marathon days of the past Coachellaone of the most important music festivals in the world where, paradoxically, music is the least important thing, an image caused a certain sensation on social networks: the total absence of lines at the food stalls. To the plethora of content generated by the festival, a showcase for social networks where only the show by Niece Carpenter and the revival by Justin Bieber caught some attention strictly musically, we had to add the “get ready with me” on Instagram and the usual parade of looks themed, generally quite unsuitable for the Californian desert. In the background a silent revolution was brewing. Because within this hyperaesthetic ecosystem there was a shadow. In the videos of many influencers and tiktokers We were able to observe a scene repeated day after day: non-existent queues to get food (even when it’s free), facing crowded lines to buy sunglasses or other accessories. For many, the reason was obvious: Ozempic. We can interpret it from irony or, on the contrary, as a clear cultural symptom that is deeper and difficult to ignore. Because, if something seems evident, it is that, in a festival where consuming aesthetics is much more important than consuming food, the Ozempic era has found its best showcase. Less hunger = less business Anyone who’s been to a festival, especially in recent times, knows what it’s like. Until recently we went with our eyes closed and our wallets open, assuming that, in addition to the increasing price of admission, we had to pay absurd amounts for a cold burger or a pad thai stale at Michelin star price. We got into the game and no one was surprised by the exorbitant prices, those 20 euros on average per plate were part of the ritual of the festival experience; but something has started to change at Coachella. To get an idea of ​​the importance of this change: the economic volume of its gastronomic industry covers more than 100 positions. Ozempic and derivatives are completely redefining the cultural codes of the last decade. Starting from the basis that each person does with their body what they consider, it is true that we were already noticing in red carpets and derivatives that curves are beginning to go out of fashion; with bloody examples because they are carried out by former standard-bearers of the movement curvy. Actresses and artists like Rebel Wilson, Barbie Ferreira either Meghan Trainor show a change in their figure that advances from photocall in photocall. Little by little this permeates society; and also leaves a side effect that someone may consider unexpected. It is not only transforming bodies but also habits and, among them, our relationship with food in spaces of mass leisure. This change in the psychological relationship that we establish with food and the hunger-suppressing effect means that this character is eliminated from the equation. hedonist and impulsive. If the desire for food ceases to exist, the key turn occurs. For years festivals were governed by a simple rule: the economic margin is not so much in the entrance, but rather in everything that happens inside. In this mechanism, food is a key element with these inflated prices, encouraging impulsive decisions in marathon days that invite consumption. This is where Ozempic has broken the model at Coachella, fully attacking that impulse. In this showcase where it seems that eating is “annoying,” a drug that controls hunger is not useful, but rather more than consistent with the environment. And yes, Coachella may not be the Cruilla or the Arenal Soundbut on a large scale what is at stake is not only what the companies can bill food trucks. What is relevant is something deeper: in an environment where excess was part of the festival attraction, a model is now beginning to prevail where control, especially of the body and image, redefines spaces designed for the opposite. Ozempic and the end of hunger The impact of this medication is such that we are no longer talking about a health phenomenon, but rather a cultural phenomenon. What began as a diabetes medication, later converted into a weight loss solution, is no longer the beauty secret of the celebrities. The pharmacological equivalent of “drinking a lot of water and sleeping eight hours” has spread with universal consumption, and with this it not only transforms bodies with their corresponding physical consequencesalso behaviors. What began as a resource for the elite is now heading towards a more affordable distribution and on a large scale. Because we are not talking about a diet, but about something much more radical, deactivating one of the most basic impulses of human behavior on a large scale, and the data begins to reflect that change. At a global level, about 46 million of people already use these medications. In the United States, the number of people without diabetes who start treatment with these drugs has grown more than 700% in just four years. Today, around 12% of adults use them, with annual growth close to 30%. This impact does not remain only in the body and, if we transfer it to the context at hand, we see that it is directly reflected in consumption; These users spend 31% less on food and drink, especially on everything associated with whim and impulse (snacks, chocolate, etc.). In Spain the trend points in the same direction, approximately 6% of households are already consumers of these treatments, thus representing an expense of 5.4 billion euros annually in food and beverages. And, again, the most relevant thing is not what you spend, but on what: this hedonistic consumption falls and basic and functional products increase. With these numbers it is logical that the conversation of “surely he has lost weight thanks to Ozempic” does not die, but it is no longer limited to celebrities like Oprah, Kelly Clarkson or the native Ibai Llanos. The same statement now slips and extends to much closer environments such as the office, the … Read more

Spain has been without an essential weapon for war for years. Airbus has found the solution in Seville, and fires torpedoes and sonobuoys

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One of the most outlandish ideas of World War II was to convert old B-17 bombers into giant loaded drones. with almost ten tons of explosives. The pilots would take off, activate the remote control system and parachute before the plane continued toward its target without a crew. The project it was a failurebut it left a curious lesson: finding submarines and destroying hidden targets has always required the development of some of the strangest and most advanced technologies of each era. The capacity that Spain lost. Modern warfare still relies on highly sophisticated technologies, but some capabilities remain as essential as they were decades ago. One of them is the surveillance and pursuit of submarines. Spain lost that tool in December 2022 with the withdrawal of veterans P-3 Orionleaving a void that was especially striking for a country with thousands of kilometers of coastline, a strategic position between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean and intense naval activity in its waters. Since then, the Armed Forces have lacked an aircraft capable of locating, tracking and attacking enemy submarines, a situation that is now beginning to be resolved. thanks to a program developed entirely in Seville. Cockpit of the new maritime patrol C295 The answer comes from Andalusia. Airbus advances in the construction of the new C295 MPAa version specifically designed to return to the Air and Space Army a capability that had been missing for years. The program has already passed several important industrial milestones, including powering up systems and commissioning the engines of the first aircraft. The company ensures that the deadlines remain as planned and that flight tests will last for more than a year before the delivery of the first unit in 2028. Beyond a simple replacement, Airbus considers this development the most ambitious project carried out on the C295 platform and aspires to turn it into an international reference within maritime patrol. View of the interior of the warehouse from the airplane ramp The return of the submarine chaser. The characteristic that distinguishes this aircraft from the rest of the C295 versions is its ability to combat underwater threats. The device will be able to carry between two and four Mk46 or Mk54 torpedoes and deploy up to sixty sonobuoys, small floating sensors that listen to sounds underwater and allow hidden submarines to be located. The combination of both systems returns to Spain a fundamental tool for contemporary naval warfare. For years, the country has lacked a platform capable of searching for submarines at great distances, classifying them, tracking their movements and, if necessary, attacking them. The new plane recovers precisely that function, one of the more complex and strategic within any modern air force. An arsenal of sensors. Anti-submarine warfare depends on both sensors and weapons. Precisely for this reason, the C295 MPA will incorporate a very extensive set of specialized equipment. Among them are synthetic aperture radarselectro-optical systems, magnetic anomaly detectors capable of perceiving the presence of large metallic masses underwater, automatic vessel identification systems and an advanced acoustic system to process information collected by sonobuoys. Added to this are self-protection equipment against missiles, encrypted satellite communications and tactical data links that will allow information to be shared in real time with other naval and air units. An industrial project. Although Airbus leads the program, development has also become in a shop window of the Spanish defense industry. Companies such as Indra, SAES and Tecnobit participate by providing self-protection systems, acoustic sensors and encryption equipment. The contract also includes simulators, infrastructure, training and logistical support, consolidating a technological ecosystem that goes far beyond the manufacture of the aircraft itself and reinforces Seville’s role as one of the main military aeronautical centers in Europe. Much more than a new plane. The acquisition of eight devices of maritime surveillance and eight of maritime patrol is part of an investment greater than the 1.7 billion eurosto which other contracts for new versions of the C295 have been added. The program reflects the extent to which Spain is rebuilding capabilities considered essential in an international context where submarines once again play a leading role. In essence, the history of new C295 MPA It is not just about a plane that has just come off a Sevillian assembly line, but rather about how a country that had lost one of the most important tools to control its seas is recovering the ability to find invisible threats underwater and respond to them with its own means. Image | Airbus In Xataka | The S-82 is Spain’s second new generation submarine: it has just completed a critical test before delivery In Xataka | Spain is selling military technology for scrap: the latest was a Navy submarine for 130,000 euros

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