Month: February 2026

Doraemon could never beat Goku. Until China invented Seedance 2.0

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Not so many years ago we ridiculed AI for not being able to create hands with five fingers or not getting Will Smith to non-gloomily eat a plate of spaghetti. Today, he is capable of creating animations that would make the best producer in Hollywood uncomfortable. Seedance 2.0. First of all, what are we talking about. Seedance is an AI content generation platform, specifically designed to create dynamic anime-type content, combat, short cinematic scenes and clip stylization. It works with one or more base images and a descriptive prompt. Behind Seedance 2.0 There is Bytedance, the company behind TikTok and one of the five most relevant Chinese companies in AI. Why the world is going crazy. Although it is not perfect, Seedance 2.0 is one of the video generation models that is offering the best results. To the point that X is being filled with replicas of well-known scenes created with this AI that are practically indistinguishable from reality. In some cases, the visual fidelity and animation pace border on a level that until recently seemed reserved for professional studios. Recreation of an animation never published by the Dragon Ball franchise. Goku vs. Doraemon. Will Smith doing the only thing we know how to ask him to do with AI. Jackie Chan vs Jet Li. The big video moment. The world had its moment ChatGPTits moment DeepSeekits moment Nano Banana and, now, we are in the Seedance moment. Giants like OpenAI and Google have been fighting for the best video generation model for some time, with proposals such as Sora 2 and I see 3. But right now, the top scorer is Bytedance with Seedance. Look out for Bytedance. Bytedance is moving into seventh gear to be one of the Chinese giants leading the AI ​​race. It only needed to have its own chips, something that is about to be solved through an alliance with Samsung. The company has strived to be more than the giant behind one of the most important social networks in China and the rest of the world, to become a powerhouse of artificial intelligence. Image | Improved Seedance with ChatGPT In Xataka | How to create videos with artificial intelligence: 13 essential free tools

Johannes Klæbo, the human locomotive that has dynamited cross-country skiing

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The first thing is the message. An electrical current that crosses the brain. And everything is unleashed. The brain sends the signal: more wood for the locomotive. The nervous system executes the order. More fibers and more fast fibers are put into motion. The muscles demand more energy. The heart rate goes up. The heart pumps more blood. With blood comes oxygen. And the quadriceps, the hamstrings, the calves become the coupling rod of the locomotive. Boom. Boom. Boom. Up and down. Johannes Klæbo only needed to steam his head. Its engine already seemed to be running at full capacity when the storm hit. How wrong we were. It remained to be seen how he crushed the ground with his skis with the frequency of someone fleeing from the enemy but the rage of someone who crushes him. With the determination of someone who knows they are making history. Click on the image to go to the original tweet (and see the devastating attack) An overwhelming number Three minutes and 40 seconds to cover a thousand meters. Nothing too special. If we talk about putting on some sneakers and hitting the asphalt. Very different when you put on skis, face a slope and reach peaks of 18 km/h to destroy your rivals. This is how Johannes Klæbo broke the sprint distance cross-country ski race. 3’39″74 Less than 220 seconds to cover a distance of 1,585 meters on skis. Where of course you go down, but where you also have to go up. Klæbo let himself go in the final meters, enjoying his overwhelming superiority as he did before. Usain Bolt in Beijing in 2008. How will you enjoy? Remco Evenepoel with the Eiffel Tower behind him in 2024. Or as Tadej Pogacar repeats over and over again, the athlete with whom he is most compared for his domain. Johannes Klæbo was born in Trondheim (Norway) in 1996. It will be 30 years in October. By then, it is certain, he will be able to display 15 gold medals accumulated in World Cups in his living room. On the other wall his nine Olympic medals will stand out, seven of them gold. Who knows if four more will accompany him as he did at the 2025 World Cup in Trondheim, his home. Because after gold in the speed test and the 10+10 kilometer skiathlon, the Norwegian can become the Winter Olympian with the most gold medals in history. At the moment, the reign is held by two other Norwegians. Marit Bjoergen, distance runner, is the person with the most Olympic medals in a winter games with eight golds, four silvers and three bronzes. He is followed by Ole Einar Bjoerndalen, biathlete, with another eight golds, four silvers and two bronzes. If he wins his six golds in these Olympic Games in Milano Cortina 2026, Klæbo would remain at 13 medals but the weight of 11 golds would elevate him to a new level. So far, it’s already been seven. The Norwegian skier is one of those forces of nature that dominates any distance record and type of race within his sport. Like Pogacar, Armand Duplantis or Kilian Jornet, he is one of the chosen ones. One of those athletes who go down in history. Athletes who not only win, they crush any type of insurrection. And the most meritorious thing, they turn it into a spectacle. Johannes Klæbo is also part of a generation of Norwegian athletes that are breaking with the established. Jakob Ingebrigtsen is the result of a father who worked obsessively with his three children popularizing double threshold training. Karsten Warholm He was the first man to break the 46-second barrier in the 400-meter hurdles. Kristian Blummenfelt He is a triathlon world champion, Olympic champion and Ironman distance world champion. Johannes Thingnes Bø, biathlete, recently retired with five Olympic gold medals, two silver and two bronze. Magnus Carlsen is another of those geniuses whose roof, perhaps, only “El Mundo” can put it. Photo | Olympics In Xataka | The Winter Olympics are facing the most unexpected technological doping: penis punctures

It has to do with infidelity

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Last Tuesday, the Norwegian Sturla Holm Laegreid won the bronze medal in the 20-kilometer individual biathlon event in Milano-Cortina 2026. What should have been a sporting celebration for his country became a disconcerting moment: before the NRK camerasNorwegian public television, Laegreid burst into tears and He spoke words that would go around the world: “Six months ago I met the love of my life. Three months ago I made the biggest mistake and cheated on her.” We care about drama. The confession, broadcast live, instantly made his medal a secondary issue. As he himself would later admit before the Norwegian newspaper VGthat had been “the worst week of his life” after having revealed his infidelity to his partner just seven days before the Olympic competition. Six months ago he had found someone he considered his definitive partner, three months later he committed infidelity, and just a week before the Games he decided to confess to him. Why did he do it? The biathlete recognized to be carrying out what he called “social suicide”, betting on public exposure as the last opportunity for reconciliation. “I have nothing to lose,” he said. And he added: “I had a gold medal in my life, and there are probably many who now look at me differently, but I only have eyes for her.” His ex also agreed to talk to VTcongratulating the gold winner and thanking the entire country for the solidarity received when going through this unpleasant ordeal. Rain of criticism. Laegreid’s record includes multiple world titles and an Olympic gold achieved in the 4×7.5km relay in Beijing 2022. This was his first medal in the individual category. Precisely due to its relevance, the reactions were immediate. Johannes Thingnes Boe, a biathlon legend with five Olympic gold medals, harshly criticized the live confession: “It was very surprising. The time, place and occasion are totally wrong.” Former skier Therese Johaug, a quadruple Olympic medalist, supported the criticism by pointing out that she had never witnessed such an interview. In Norway, where biathlon is followed with the passion with which other countries follow football, the criticism did not focus so much on the personal confession as on having overshadowed the triumph of the gold medal winner, his compatriot Johan-Olav Botn, who had made a highly praised gesture, dedicating his gold to a recently deceased teammate. As explained a Spanish resident in OsloNorwegian culture is “less given to gossip” than Spanish culture, and the real problem lay in having diverted media attention from the historical moment of its compatriot. Ordinary people. We are facing a long Olympic tradition, where dramatic moments transcend brands: the history of the competition is full of episodes that surpassed the Games themselves in media impact. In 1968, American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their gloved fists on the podium in Mexico, transforming an awards ceremony in a political gesture against racial segregation. Four years later, the Munich Games were marked by the kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes. In 1988, Ben Johnson broke the world record for the 100 meters in Seoul, but a doping scandal made his name synonymous with a cheater. There is no need to go that far in time. At the 2016 Rio Games, swimmer Ryan Lochte invented an armed robbery to cover up an incident of vandalism. And in Paris 2024, the drone espionage of the Canadian women’s soccer team about training in New Zealand generated more headlines than their sport. This need for human narrative was understood decades ago by Roone Arledge, the NBC executive who revolutionized Olympic television coverage: he said that to get the public interested you have to offer them an emotional involvement in what they are seeing. And nothing more emotional than a case of infidelity. Hooked on the imperfect. The Olympic Games sell us the myth of absolute perfection: impeccable bodies and records beyond the reach of mortals. However, the great paradox of Olympic entertainment is that we are hooked by imperfection: we are fascinated by the cracks because that is where empathy is born. The stories that transcend sport are purely human: we saw it when Simone Biles prioritized his mental health in Tokyo 2020, giving up gold; with the resilience of Cindy Ngamba, first medal for the refugee teamand with the archer Yaylagul Ramazanova, competing pregnant. In Xataka | Surya Bonaly, the unattainable skater who ended up being banned from “dancing with death”

An 80-year-old retiree won 2.7 million euros in the lottery and invested it in something unexpected: creating a drug trafficking network

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That a chemistry professor sick with cancer becomes one of the largest manufacturers of methamphetamine is something that gave us hours of entertainment with Breaking Bad. What we didn’t see coming is that a retiree from the United Kingdom could serve as inspiration for a sequel to the popular series. As detailed police sourcesan 80-year-old man won a small fortune in the lottery and, instead of investing it in Nvidia stock either in Hermès bags, He displayed an unexpected entrepreneurial spirit by setting up a fake pill factory that generated hundreds of millions of euros. The stroke of luck that changed everything. John Eric Spiby, from Wigan in Greater Manchester, won €2.77 million in the British Lotto in 2010. With that money he bought a rural property in Astley (west of Manchester) and started his new business venture there: manufacturing pills. The detail is that the pills he was manufacturing were etizolama thienodiazepine six to ten times more powerful than diazepam, and mixed it with other ingredients to make perfect imitations of legal anxiolytics. In Xataka Millions of Spaniards consume benzodiazepines to sleep at night. They don’t know it’s poisoned candy The Retiree’s Band. John’s son, John Colin Spiby, 37, was responsible for managing daily production in a rented container next to the house. A friend, Callum Dorian, was responsible for distributing the pills through encrypted chats on platforms such as EncroChat. For his part, Lee Ryan Drury, 45, helped with logistics. Each member of the band had an assigned role so that the entire production and distribution infrastructure functioned on an industrial scale. They sold the pills to 65 pence each (the equivalent of 75 cents) but the total estimated value reached 332 million euros on the black market. The raid that uncovered him. Spiby’s “pharmaceutical” scheme was uncovered in April 2022. Police stopped a vehicle at a hotel in Manchester and found 2.5 million fake pills valued at 77 million euros. The investigation took them to the Spiby farm, where they found hydraulic presses, automatic packaging machines, firearms, ammunition and enough equipment to produce million pills a month. The etizolam they manufactured reached a magnitude that, in the previous months, 58% of the opioid-related deaths in 2021 in Scotland, they were because of pills like those manufactured by Spiby. Dorian, the distribution manager, boasted in messages comparing Spiby’s business to drug trafficking empires, while the gang armed its distributors to protect the companies. key distribution routes. {“videoId”:”x8px49v”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”ANTIBIOTICS are CEASING TO BE EFFECTIVE and the PROBLEM is SUPERBACTERIA”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”327″} The judge has just sentenced the band. The case came to Bolton court in November 2025. According to published The Timesduring the trial Spiby denied any knowledge of the organization that manufactured etizolam pills, claiming that he only rented his property to make some extra money. However, the chats, bank transfers and machinery pointed to him as the main financier, in addition to having found a Lotus and a Porsche that he had hidden in his garage next to the pill manufacturing machines, and the testimony of some neighbors who claimed to have seen him driving around in a Lamborghini, as he collected the BBC. The judge sentenced Spiby and his henchmen in January 2026. “Despite winning the lottery, he decided to continue a life dedicated to crime, far from what would have been normal years of retirement,” the court noted in its ruling. John Eric Spiby was sentenced to 16 years and one month in prison; his son at 9 years old. Drury, the logistics manager, was sentenced to 9 years in prison and Dorian, who already had a 12-year sentence pending, received more time. In total, 47 years in prison for the retiree’s gang. In Xataka | 13% of Spaniards have tried cocaine once in their lives. If we ask the dogs of Madrid the percentage will be higher Image | AMC, Unsplash (Candace Mathers) (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news An 80-year-old retiree won 2.7 million euros in the lottery and invested it in something unexpected: creating a drug trafficking network was originally published in Xataka by Ruben Andres .

Shepherds have become the great weapon against fires. So Galicia has created a shepherding school

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“We have to put an end to that thought, when you say that you are a pastor, of ‘poorlook what he has to do.’” Speaks María Jesús Crespo, a 58-year-old Galician who has been working for more than a decade caring for a flock of sheep in Aranga, in the Betanzos region. It is not his only occupation. María Jesús also leads the Association of Sheep and Goat Breeders Ovicaone of the entities that has just activated a school for shepherds in Galicia. The objective, as Crespo insists, is to break stigmas, modernize the sector and demonstrate that in 2026, pastoring is still a completely viable profession. career pastor. If there are faculties dedicated to training doctors, pharmacists, engineers or architects, why wouldn’t there be specific classrooms for new pastors? To such a conclusion that they have just reached in Galicia, where the sector has launched a school focused on pastoralism. The initiative has the Galician Government and the sector itself behind it through Ovica and has the support of Fundación La Caixa. Its purpose: to instruct future pastors in the necessary skills to carry out their work in the 21st century, which involves not only knowing how to take care of flocks. To achieve the degree, students also need to assimilate knowledge about management and technology. 570 hours… and a lot of work. To demonstrate how ambitious the initiative is, the Xunta specifies that in total the training will cover 570 hours: 250 of theoretical training, designed above all so that the new pastors adopt an “agrarian business” approach; and 230 hours of eminently practical nature. Upon leaving the classroom, the students will apply their knowledge on farms spread across almost twenty rural towns in the province of Ourense. There they will soak up the knowledge of hard-working shepherds, like María Jesús, who explains that throughout his years of work he has even had to deal with wolf attacks. The idea is that during their weeks of practice the students prepare to know how to act when a cow goes into labor or limps. “There is a cycle of technical-economic management of a farm, issues of traceability and marketing, occupational risk, environmental awareness, agrotechnology, animal health, management, production, forage and feeding…”, explains the president from Ovica in Vigo Lighthouse. “When we talk about shepherds we tend to think of a person with a stick and a flock, but today they are agricultural businessmen. We have to change the chip and transfer that change in profile.” “It is very necessary”. María Jesús defends that the launch of the school is not a whim. On the contrary. With it, they hope to help vocations like theirs emerge and, above all, professionalize a profession that, they insist, cannot be practiced today as in the time of our grandparents. “School was necessary,” underlines. “It’s about preparing people to work in the 21st century.” Is it that important? Yes. And not only because of the economic impact of the sector. Grazing is directly related to some of the great challenges facing the country, such as rural depopulation, the sustainability of “emptied Spain” or even the fight against forest fires. Given that Galicia is one of the regions most affected by fire, the Xunta itself insisted on that idea a few days ago, during the presentation of the shepherding school. “The promotion of this training offer, in addition to encouraging the incorporation of professionals dedicated to grazing, contributes to promoting this type of extensive breeding that creates a natural barrier against forest fires and promotes a managed and productive forest,” claims. Beyond Galicia. The new grazing school in Galicia has generated expectations (a week after its presentation it already had 25 registered), but the truth is that it is not the first of its kind in Spain. In Aragón they have, for example, the shepherding school The Estiva and in Catalonia the School of Pastors and Pastorscreated in 2009 to “guarantee generational change” and promote the creation of sustainable and profitable livestock farms. Not long ago we told you how in the Valencian Community there are also a similar initiative to “empower” pastors. Images | José Antonio Serra (Flickr) and Xavier (Flickr) In Xataka | “Depopulation causes problems, urban overpopulation too”: Kike Collada, the twenty-something mayor and tiktoker of emptied Spain

Databricks is worth 134 billion without ever having gone public thanks to AI. And it’s not an AI company

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Databricks has closed a financing round of more than 7 billion dollars (5,000 million in capital and 2,000 million in debt) that values ​​the company at 134 billion dollars. It’s a dizzying figure for a company that the vast majority of people have never heard of. The San Francisco firm is not, technically, an AI company either. Its business is enterprise-scale data management and analysis. What Databricks does is provide the invisible infrastructure that allows other companies to store, process and extract value from enormous amounts of information. Without that, training AI models would be impossible. Why is it important. Databricks is the cover of the boom of AI. OpenAI, NVIDIA or Google grab the headlines, but it’s companies like this that build the plumbing that makes everything else possible. Its valuation is 134,000 million. Without ever having gone public. That places it even above established technology giants. It is at the level of Qualcomm or Sony. Beats Xiaomi or Adobe. And it does so with a less business model sexy but more profitable: B2B infrastructure than it leaves gross margins greater than 80%. In figures. The Databricks numbers They explain a growth that justifies the enthusiasm of its investors. Annualized revenues exceeding $5.4 billion in the fourth quarter, with 65% year-over-year growth. More than 800 clients that generate more than a million dollars annually. Positive free cash flow over the last year. Its AI product line has surpassed $1.4 billion in revenue with a net retention rate of over 140%. Between the lines. The participation of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft and sovereign funds like Qatar’s in the latest round says a lot: these large investors are betting on the infrastructure, not the final application. The implicit message is something we’ve been hearing since the first few months after the ChatGPT moment: in the AI ​​race, those who sell picks and shovels can earn more than those who pan for gold. Databricks provides the platform where companies store their proprietary data and train their custom modelssomething that the public APIs of OpenAI or Anthropic cannot offer. Yes, but. Its CEO, Ali Ghodsi, has said that “now is not a good time to go public,” even though his company meets all the financial requirements to do so. The strategy is to accumulate enough cash enough to withstand any market correction like the one in 2022. And seen the vertigo it produces any headlines on capex figuresit makes sense to make a cushion for what may happen. The context. Databricks represents an important change in how the technology sector is structured. For years, traditional SaaS companies dominated the B2B landscape. Now, AI infrastructure and data platforms are achieving similar or higher valuations. The company is also expanding beyond its traditional business with products such as Lakebase, a database designed specifically for AI agents. Or with Geniea conversational assistant that allows employees to query business data using natural language. If Databricks achieves a strong IPO in an environment where technology valuations are more closely monitored than ever, it would demonstrate that markets are willing to pay very large premiums for AI infrastructure, not just flashy models. And that would change the rules of the game for dozens of similar companies operating in the shadows. In Xataka | Spain, on the verge of adding another AI unicorn: Multiverse negotiates a round to exceed 1.5 billion euros Featured image | Databricks and Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

This is C/2026 A1 and its race towards the Sun

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We have just started 2026 and astronomy has already given us the first surprise of the year, since while most were looking towards the usual objectives, a team of astronomers in the Atacama Desert has detected an object. It’s about the comet C/2026 A1and there are possibilities that we can see it from Earth itself. Its relevance. We are not facing just any comet, since its orbit and size suggest that we are facing a “sungrazer“, which translated into Spanish would be something like “Sungrazer.” This means that it is a type of suicidal object that, if it manages to survive its passage through perihelion, could become a visual phenomenon comparable to the legendary Ikeya-Seki comet of 1965. The discovery. The story of this discovery It starts on January 13 at the AMACS1 observatory, located in the privileged geography of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile with a team of French astronomers who detected an unusual movement. The discovery was made as part of the MAPS search programwhich has been active since 2020 and already has the discovery of 8 comets and more than 300 near-Earth asteroids to its credit. In this way, the different organisms initially confirmed this finding as a diffuse spot. It had already been seen. Weeks before this discovery, researchers saw that ‘precoveries’ already existed in the databases. This means that other teams had uploaded previous images where the comet appeared, but it had not been identified since the brightness was even dimmer. But this team has finally not missed it. Your family. What makes the C/2026 A1 special is not only its discovery, but its lineage. Data from the JPL Small-Body Database and expert Seiichi Yoshida confirm that it belongs to the Kreutz familyspecifically to the Pe subgroup. In order to understand all these words, we must put ourselves in context to know that Kreutz comets are fragments of a giant comet that broke up centuries ago. Now this new visitor appears to be directly related to the Great Comet of 1106, a monster that broke into pieces giving rise to some of the brightest comets in history. Your trip. When analyzing the journey you are havingThe truth is that the numbers can be dizzying. Specifically, it has been seen that it has a speed of 3.2 million kilometers per hour and, based on this information, it has been seen when it will pass close to the Sun. Specifically, it will be on April 4, 2026 when it will pass just 0.00547 Astronomical Units from the Sun. In “Christian”, that means that it will pass about 800,000 kilometers from our star, which for an object made of ice and rock, that is basically grazing the solar surface. The April scenario. This is where the scientific community is divided between caution and excitement, as it all depends on one very specific question: ‘Will he survive?’ Right now on the table there is two possible scenarios which can be summarized in the following points: The first is for the comet to disintegrate, which would be a boring ending. What basically happens here is that the immense gravity and solar heat vaporize the comet before it leaves perihelion, being the fate of many sungrazers small. The second scenario is that it survives, and it is not nonsense since current estimates place the comet’s nucleus at about 2.4 kilometers in diameter. This figure is good news because it is large enough to have a chance of survival. If he survives. If it withstands the gravitational and thermal pull, the C/2026 A1 could reach an absurd brightness. Some optimistic projections suggest that it could be brighter than the full Moon or even visible to the naked eye during the day, near the solar disk, something we haven’t seen since Comet Ikeya-Seki in the 1960s. Calendar to view. The calendar that is on the table right now begins at the end of March 2026when astronomy fans will be able to begin to see them with telescopes. From here we will have to wait until April 4 to see if it survives and increases its brightness greatly to later deploy a massive tail. visible to the naked eye in our skies. As always with comets, they are like cats: they have tails and do exactly what they want. But with a core of 2.4 km and a direct trajectory from the Kreutz clan, C/2026 A1 is, without a doubt, one of those events that we must keep in mind in order to make history. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | China has created the largest kite in the world with a very clear objective: to make its energy extremely cheaper.

what it is, how it works, main news, and when it will be available

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Let’s explain to you what is Seedance 2.0the model of artificial intelligence designed by ByteDance. Specifically, it is a multimodal AI model capable of generating video from prompt descriptions, but also using other references such as audio, images and video. Let’s start by reminding you what Seedance is, so you know what exactly we are referring to. Then, we will tell you the main features of its new version, as well as the differences with its predecessor and some other things that you should keep in mind, such as when will it be available for use in Spain. What is Seedance and how it works Seedance is an artificial intelligence model created by ByteDance, the company that created the TikTok social network. This model is used for generate video from textbeing the competition of models such as I see from Google either sora from OpenAI. The truth is that ByteDance is one of the five most relevant Chinese companies in AI. In fact, it has its own family of models called Seedin which we have a Seedream to create images, Seededit to edit images, Seed3D to create three-dimensional models, Seed LiveInterpret to translate voice in real time, Seed-Music to create music and more. As in other similar models, its operation is simple. You simply describe what you want to see through a prompt, uploading a reference image if you want, and Seedance will create a video of several seconds with the scene you have described. To create the video, you will first be able to process and understand what you ask with natural languagesince it has been trained to understand the way we speak and express ourselves. It will then proceed to create the video, including synchronized audio based on the instructions you give it. Seedance tries to stand out from the competition with physical realism, so that objects move naturally and consistent with physics. Also with visual consistency, and duration, since it generates videos up to 10 seconds long. Seedance 2.0 Features As we all know, the race in generative artificial intelligence is frenetic, so every few months a new model comes out, revolutionizing everything. In this aspect, Seedance 2.0 is now the one that is surprising the most, being a multimodal model capable of combining images, video, audio and text to generate content. Think about this. You can add audio of a sound or conversation and generate the video from it, and even include another video or photo to use as a reference. Everything will be able to process simultaneously. The model supports precise reference capabilities, and is capable of exporting results in 2K resolution with 30% faster generation speeds than the previous version 1.5. It has also improved the level of understanding of the physics of sound, This new version of the model also introduces the so-called multi-lens storytellinga term that means you can keep the same character, with the same clothes and features through different camera cuts. Something that will allow the video to be more complex but maintain cohesion between the cuts. When will Seedance 2.0 arrive? ByteDance has not yet included Seedance 2.0 in the website of their modelsthat It is only available in testing phase for a very limited group of people. Even so, it is to be hoped that little by little it will also begin to reach everyone. You have to be careful, because there are also fake pages that use the name Seedance 2.0 as a claim. In Xataka Basics | How to create videos with artificial intelligence: 13 essential free tools

Electric car battery makers are retooling to make batteries… for AI data centers

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In the United States there are a slowdown in the electric vehicle industry, which has caused more and more manufacturers in the sector to convert their business. According to account Financial Times, ten North American factories that produced batteries for electric cars are allocating a good part of their production to energy storage systems for AI data centers. It is the latest industry to readjust around artificial intelligence. The change of course. The media shares data from the consulting firm CRU, which states that these ten plants have canceled enough capacity to produce batteries for 2 million electric vehicles. Of these, seven will focus primarily on the energy storage systems (ESS) market. Among the names involved are Ford, which is converting a factory in Kentucky, and Stellantis along with its partner Samsung SDI, which are converting production lines at its Indiana plant. General Motors is also considering producing its own energy storage batteries, according to declared its head of batteries, Kurt Kelty, to the Financial Times. Why data centers need batteries. Data centers that process AI models require uninterrupted power supply to protect against blackouts or voltage fluctuations. With the construction boom of these centers in the United States, storage batteries have become a critical component of infrastructure. This opens up an alternative revenue stream for automotive companies struggling with electric vehicles. The Tesla example. It is worth taking a look at the numbers of Elon Musk’s company, since in addition to producing vehicles it also manufactures energy storage systems such as Megapack and Powerwall. In this sense, its battery business is turning out to be tremendously profitable, since the company reported income for energy and storage of $12.8 billion in its last quarter, a growth of 27% year-on-year. In 2021, that figure barely reached 2.8 billion. Meanwhile, its revenue from electric vehicle sales has fallen 9% to $64 billion. Political context difficult. Just like account FT, Since the Trump administration eliminated tax incentives for electric vehicle buyers put in place during the Biden era and lowered emissions standards, the electric vehicle market in the United States has seen a slowdown. This has led BloombergNEF to revise its forecast downwards: from expecting electric vehicles to represent 48% of total car sales in 2030, they now project only 27%. Electric vehicles currently account for about 8% of new car sales in the United States. The aid that is maintained. As well as mention In the middle, although these subsidies have been eliminated, the administration retains generous incentives for battery manufacturers: a production credit of $35 per kilowatt-hour and a 30% tax credit for investments in energy storage. In addition, tariffs on Chinese storage batteries are around 60%, allowing manufacturers to produce in the United States at prices close to parity with Asian imports. Between the lines. It is also worth highlighting important nuances. CRU’s Sam Adham counted to FT that battery manufacturers will not necessarily pass on what they save on costs to their customers (they may increase their margins, for what). In addition, according to the FT, the Korean companies that lead the production of storage batteries in the United States have less experience with the lithium iron phosphate technology used by these systems, compared to their Chinese rivals. It is not a total reconversion, for now. Wood Mackenzie’s data suggest that electric vehicles will continue to absorb a greater proportion of battery installations than energy storage until the end of 2030. “If there is a rebound in demand for electric vehicles, companies that have switched to storage systems could be left behind,” said Milan Thakore, an analyst at the consultancy. More sectors than They pivot towards AI. From the Semafor newsletter, also they mention another very interesting sector that is beginning to convert its business towards AI: cryptocurrency miners. And according to Morgan Stanley, facilities dedicated to cryptocurrency mining are seeing a more profitable business in the creation of data centers for AI. The economics of cryptocurrency mining have gotten worse and worse since the reward is lower, and converting these facilities into infrastructure for artificial intelligence is much more profitable. According to the calculations Morgan Stanley, transforming all bitcoin mining facilities in the United States could reduce the electrical capacity deficit for data centers by between 10 and 15 gigawatts. Cover image | CHUTTERSNAP and İsmail Enes Ayhan In Xataka | If AI is the “weapon” of the future, the US is already investing 25% of all world military spending in it

“The greatest obstacle in life is the wait for tomorrow and the loss of today”

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Neither war, nor hunger, nor love. Nor hate, friendship or illness. If there is something that has really bothered us humans throughout the centuries, it is the passage of time. We all (from the richest to the most miserable) come into the world with our days scheduled. Sooner or later we run out of rope without anyone being able to prevent it. It’s that simple. In fact (and for cruel ironic as it may sound) that is one of the very few certainties that we can embrace during our existence, be it more or less extensive: there is no life without death. It’s nothing new. Centuries ago philosophers realized that, in a way, as our lives progress so does our death. If time is short must be valuable (just as happens with precious metals or gems) and everything valuable always brings a challenge. How the hell do you manage it? How to get the most out of it? What’s more, why try to get ‘the most out of it’? Are those who insist on making something of their time happier? useful and helpful Who do you see spending your days lying on the beach? Seneca to the rescue A few centuries ago, around the year 55 AD, there was a Latin philosopher (born in Cordubawhat is now Córdoba and then acted as the capital of Hispania Ulterior) who raised these same questions. His name was Lucius Anneeus Seneca and the answers he found were captured in works such as ‘De brevitate vitae’a text dedicated to a certain Paulino (his father-in-law or brother-in-law) in which he outlines a series of advice. One of the most famous can often be seen in the anthologies of aphorisms: “The biggest obstacle in life is the wait for tomorrow and the loss of today“. The phrase connects with the old maxim of tempus fugit (“time flies”), although there is more to it than may seem at first glance. In it, Seneca addresses one of the most complicated challenges for those who have set out to ensure that time does not slip through their fingers: the balance between the present and the future. A present that is our only certain reality and a tomorrow that will in turn be conditioned by what we do today. In other words, do we bet everything on the present or is it wiser to condition it with tomorrow in mind? They were interesting questions in Rome in the first century AD and they remain so today, twenty centuries later, in procrastination times in which the equation becomes even more complicated. At the end of the day, procrastinating is nothing more than setting traps in time management: deferring, postponing, delaying the moment in which we must carry out a task that (usually) will be beneficial for our future. Seneca’s starting point is as suggestive as it is challenging. Our time may be limited, but that doesn’t mean life is necessarily short. If it seems that way, it is because we ourselves favor it by facing it in the wrong way. And that doesn’t just happen by lying on the couch with your cell phone to kill the hours abandoned to the pleasure of the infinite scroll. For Seneca, the outlook is not much better if we obsess over tasks that make us believe that we do not have enough hours in the day, but in reality they are unimportant. “We don’t have a shortage of time, what happens is that we lose a lot. Life is long enough and to do the most important things it has been generously given to us, if all of it is used well.” “But if it is scattered in ostentation and carelessness, where it is not spent on anything good, when at last the inevitable final trance comes upon us, we realize that a life has passed that we did not know was happening.” “It is like this: we do not receive a short life, but rather we make it short“, concludes the Stoic thinker, who died in 65 AD, aged about 70. The complete reflection that Seneca dedicates to Paulinus and from which the phrase we previously cited about “the loss of today” is extracted is more devastating because it warns of how easy it is to give in to the mirage that we are taking advantage of time. Here we reproduce specifically the translation made by Francisco Socas Gavilán for the version of the Virtual Library of Andalusia. “Can there be anything more stupid than the attitude of some, I mean those men who presume to be far-sighted? They are engaged in too many tasks to be able to live better, they equip life by spending life, their thoughts direct them to the distance. But, of course, the greatest waste of life is procrastination: it cancels each day that is presented, it hides the present while promising what lies ahead.” “The greatest hindrance to living is the expectation that depends on tomorrow and loses what is today. You dispose of what is in the hands of luck, you abandon what is in yours. Where do you look? Where do you orient yourself? All future things remain uncertain: live immediately.” Seneca’s work resonates strongly twenty centuries later because, as remember Socasnot only tells us about death and the passage of time, but also about “life as a positive realization within a limited scope.” “Even though men can’t stop complaining about the brevity of lifethey alone are the real culprits of shortening it with their laziness and vices. “We waste time and do not consider it the greatest and only good,” duck. “The solution will be neither hyperactivity nor laziness, because those who are very busy, always thinking about tomorrow, do not take advantage of their time and are soon surprised by old age, while in idleness passions and amusements rob us of our intimate peace,” comments Socas after remembering Seneca’s words. “The idle fear death more. The busy will not be able to … Read more

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