Month: March 2026

Someone paid for the bus in England with a strange coin in the 50s. It turned out to be a treasure from Cádiz from 2,000 years ago

by

In the 1950s, public transportation in the English city of Leeds functioned as that of any other large citywith tickets costing a few pence and collectors checking the change. One day, someone took out a strange coin to pay his ticket and the person responsible for collecting the ticket immediately noticed that it was not a legal British currency. And instead of throwing it away, he decided to keep it. The story. What this cashier who kept the coin did not know, and what it would take his relative seven decades to discover, is that that bus ticket It had been paid with a relic from more than 2,000 years ago and of Spanish origin. From a wooden box to the museum. The story of this peculiar discovery has recently come to light thanks to Leeds Museums and Galleriesnoting that for about 70 years, the coin was forgotten in a small wooden box. The important thing here is that, after the death of James Edwards, who was the one who collected this bus ticket, the piece passed into the hands of his grandson, Peter Edwards, who is now 77 years old. Intrigued by the ancient and worn appearance of the object, Peter decided to investigate its provenance with the help of experts from the University of Leeds, and this is where it was discovered that it was not a piece of scrap metal, but a bronze coin from the 1st century BC. Where it came from. Analysis of the coin revealed that it was not minted in the United Kingdom, but that its origin was thousands of miles away. Specifically in Gadir, present-day Cádiz, in one of the oldest and most prosperous Phoenician settlements in the West. The design of the coin is a classic of Carthaginian and Phoenician-Punic influence in the Iberian Peninsula, with an obverse that shows the profile of Melqart, a deity of the Phoenicians and recognizable for wearing the mythical skin of the Nemean Lion. On its reverse, the coin shows two tunas, the indisputable symbol of the ancient Cádiz fishing industry, accompanied by inscriptions in the Phoenician alphabet. How he came to England. There are many doubts that arise when we talk about a coin from the 1st century BC that ended up being a payment method at a bus station in England. The main hypothesis used by the researchers is the result of the recent historical context, since it is believed that the coin was found in the Mediterranean region by a British soldier during or just after World War II. After taking it to the United Kingdom as a souvenir or amulet, the piece must have ended up mixed with everyday change. From there, it was exchanged as legal tender until it ended up in the box of a curious person who knew that this coin had something unique. Your new home. After unraveling the mystery, Peter Edwards has decided to donate his grandfather’s piece to the local authorities and today, the Gadir coin is part of the Leeds Discovery Centre, an institution that houses thousands of historical coins. And, although it is not a great treasure, it is undoubtedly an artifact that perfectly shows the migrations of everyday objects thousands of years ago. Images | Leeds Museums and Galleries In Xataka | North Africa was off the map in the Bronze Age. A metallic waste has put it at the center of History

We already know how much laptop prices are going to rise this year: absolute nonsense

by

If you were waiting until 2026 to renew your equipment, trusting that interesting offers would appear, we have bad news. The laptop market prepares for a perfect storm that threatens to burst retail prices. A reasonable budget until now of about 900 euros will very soon become one of 1,300 euros, and it will do so without the product being better than last year’s. damn memories. The first big culprit of all this is the DRAM memory crisis and NAND storage chips. Supply and demand have remained absolutely unbalanced with the rise of AIand that has caused a tragic situation for end users. If previously these components represented 15% of the manufacturing cost, in 2026 they will represent more than 30% of those costs. Making a laptop is simply much more expensive today than it was yesterday. Intel doesn’t help. As if this were not enough, processors are also rising in price. Intel has already made a move by increasing the cost of its entry-level and previous generation CPUs by more than 15%. In fact, it is likely that things will not stop there: it is expected that by the second quarter of 2026, its mid- and high-range processors will also follow the same path, which will further suffocate manufacturers’ margins. And of course that will end up having the same impact: even more expensive equipment. The dictatorship of profit margins. Manufacturers are governed by elementary but unassailable financial mathematics: profit margins. So that both brands and stores continue to earn the same, the increase in costs ends up being passed on entirely to end users. The result is devastating: a 900 euro laptop could see its price increase by 40%. And here it is not that brands want to earn more: it is that manufacturing that laptop costs 58% more just in CPU, memory and storage. Manufacturers and stores therefore assume part of the impact, but of course most of it is received by users. According to TrendForce, the combined price increase of memory, SSDs and CPUs will cause the “bill of materials” for manufacturers to increase by 58% compared to 45% in the first quarter of 2025. Source: TrendForce. Technological eviction. For months we have been talking about how this fever for AI data centers has caused DRAM and NAND chip manufacturers to completely change focus. Before they manufactured for humans, now they do it for machines. This has caused a “technological eviction” effect in which chips for PCs and laptops are left without room in factories. The offer is reduced to the minimum expression because what is really profitable now is Micron, SK Hynix or Samsung is to make memories for AI chips. Small brands in danger. This crisis does not affect everyone equally. Large manufacturers can negotiate better prices and secure inventory thanks to their purchasing volumes, smaller and local brands are suffering especially. They face volatility that could leave them without inventory or with prices so high that they would be out of the game against large manufacturers. AMD is no longer the refuge of yesteryear. Historically, when Intel rose in price or had stock problems, AMD emerged as an even more relevant alternative. Now the situation is so critical that the shortage is also affecting the firm led by Lisa Su. It is true that AMD has gained market share thanks to its competitiveness, but there are already reports of lack of supply in its entry range. The uncertainty continues. The TrendForce study is clear: the coming quarters will be decisive to be clear about how this unique segment will turn out. With weak demand and skyrocketing production costs, the consumer is faced with an unsustainable situation: buy what’s left in stock now, or accept that the “standard” laptop may have risen in price forever? The era of the cheap PC could have come to an end, although there are striking surprises, such as the one Apple has proposed with the MacBook Neowhich goes just against the grain: it is modest, yes, but also an affordable option at a time when users are most stressed. Good play by Cook and his boys. The alternative: used equipment and components. Faced with this situation, users can resort to a plan B that is not ideal, but that offers them a certain escape. This is where refurbished products could make more sense than ever, and where the second-hand market may mean that users may prefer not to go for the latest of the latest – from this year – and opt for the latest of the latest – from last year. If many do it, of course, there is the other danger: that even those reconditioned and second-hand products also rise in price. In Xataka | RAM manufacturers have grown tired of technology companies buying “just in case.” So they got serious

You have NordPass in Xataka Xtra with an exclusive discount

by

I don’t know how many years I’ve been using a password manager, but I do know that since I have, my life is much simpler and all my accounts are much better protected than when I used one password for everything. Or like a friend, who keeps writing down their passwords on a post-it next to the computer. That is why we were clear that we wanted to offer you this advantage: for being a member of our community of Xataka Xtranow you have a Extra 10% discount in 1 and 2 year plans NordPassthe next-generation password manager designed by the experts behind NordVPN. Two years of NordPass (password manager) with 3 months of NordVPN free The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A manager goes far beyond remembering passwords A good password manager is not only useful so that you don’t have to click on the “Have I forgotten my password?” button every now and then. In the case of NordPass, they offer: Passkey Support: Unlike traditional passwords, passkeys work through a pair of cryptographic keys: one ‘public’ that stays on the web and another ‘private’ that never leaves your device and that only you can release with your fingerprint or face, making it impossible to steal through remote hacking. They are much more secure than traditional passwords. Data breach scanner: Its platform monitors the network and if it detects that your email or one of your passwords appears in a database leaked by a hack, NordPass notifies you instantly so you can change it and avoid headaches. Password health: This is more important than it seems because you can have a very good password manager, but if your passwords are a chestnut… turn off and let’s go. With this function, the service warns you if you have a very weak, very old key or if you have reused the same one a lot. Save your cards and other private data: In addition to passwords, you can save your credit cards and personal notes encrypted, filling out purchase forms in a second with complete security. I use it a lot for the typical account recovery codes for WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, etc. Email masking: NordPass includes an email masking option, which is used to create fictitious email addresses so that you can subscribe with them wherever you want and avoid the risk of phishing, spam, etc. You really know your address, but not the smartasses on the internet. Why we like NordPass You may already use the password manager that comes with Chrome or Safari, but NordPass goes a little further. Use the algorithm XChaCha20 encryptionfaster and more resistant than traditional methods. It is also multiplatform, so if you jump a lot between different devices such as your mobile phone, computer (Windows, Mac, Linux) or tablet, with NordPass you have everything synchronized and under a “zero knowledge” architecture: only you can see your datanot even the NordPass developers have access to them. Your advantage for being Xataka Xtra With the Extra 10% discount exclusive for subscribers Xataka Xtraaccess to the Premium version of NordPass is much more affordable. And it joins other discounts such as: In Xataka | Password managers: which ones are the best to protect and remember all the ones you have

“Six. Four. Zero. Nine.” A mysterious radio has been repeating numbers in Iran since the start of the war, and no one knows why

by

The short waves They were for decades one of the strangest territories on the radio planet: anyone with a cheap radio could hear metallic voices reciting meaningless numbers, repetitive melodies or absurd phrases that seemed straight out of a spy movie. During the Cold War, thousands of radio amateurs recorded these emissions mysterious things spread all over the world, many of them active for years without anyone officially knowing who was behind them. Some disappeared after the fall of the Soviet bloc. Others, surprisingly, they never left altogether. A voice in the middle of the war. I told the story this morning the financial times and begins shortly after the United States and Israel They will start their attacks against Iran on February 28. Then a sound began to be heard strange transmission on short wave directed at the country: a male voice in Persian that bursts through the static repeating “Tavajjoh” (attention) three times before reciting long sequences of numbers with an almost mechanical cadence. The emissions, detected by radio amateurs and signal trackers, apparently come from somewhere in Western Europe and are repeated twice a day for about an hour and a half. Although its exact origin has not been confirmed, former US intelligence officials consider it very likely that it is a emergency communication system to maintain contact with agents inside Iran at an especially sensitive time, when the war has raised the risks for any informant and the Iranian government has restricted access to the internet and other international communications. What the V32 station really is. The mysterious emission has been identified by observers like V32a call “number station”a type of shortwave transmission historically used by intelligence agencies to send encrypted orders to spies on the ground. The system works in an extremely simple way: the agent only needs a radio and a code book (the so-called one-time pads) to convert the figures heard into understandable messages. The station began broadcasting in Persian exactly coinciding with the start of the war and has already tried to be interfered with through electronic noises which probably come from Iranian jamming systems, but the mysterious voice has been limited to change frequency and continue with his reading of numbers. These types of broadcasts are almost impossible to completely neutralize, because anyone can tune in and because counterintelligence can only act if it detects a spy transcribing the message or if the operators make mistakes. The shadow of the Cold War. The pattern that this station follows is directly reminiscent of one of the most disturbing elements of 20th century espionage: the digital radios that proliferated during the cold war. For decades, services like the CIAthe KGB or the Stasi emitted metallic voices that recited numbers, letters or even melodies followed by coded sequences aimed at agents infiltrating enemy territory. These transmissions could heard around the world and yet its meaning was indecipherable to anyone who did not possess the proper key. Some stations became famous among radio amateurs for its peculiarities (childish voices, strange music or seemingly absurd phrases), but its logic was always the same: to offer an untraceable and extremely secure communication system. The method survived for decades because it was cheap, discreet and resistant even the most sophisticated espionage systems, and although the phenomenon decreased after the end of the Cold War never disappeared full. The Cold War Morse/Voice Generator is a machine that has been used in many well-known number stations Old, but it works. The reason why these stations continue to be useful in the 21st century is precisely their simplicity. If the internet goes down, if phones are tapped, or if digital communications are blocked, a simple shortwave radio still works and allows orders to be transmitted without leaving an electronic trace. For the secret services, it also offers additional benefits: The recipient can listen to the message in seconds, destroy their codebook immediately afterwards, and disappear without leaving any evidence. That simplicity makes even a single person well located can receive instructions capable of causing enormous consequences, from sabotage to more complex intelligence operations. By the way, messages are usually repeated several times to minimize the risk that the agent in question will have to expose himself for too long listening to the transmission. What could the mysterious voice be saying. Although they are all hypotheses and no one outside of their operators knows the real meaning of the sequences, former intelligence officials they point to several plausible possibilities. Emissions could serve to activate agents who remained waiting inside Iran, order evacuations to meeting points or even coordinate operations covered up during the conflict. There is also another more strategic interpretation: that the station is deliberately designed to sow doubts within Iranian counterintelligence, suggesting that there are high-level infiltrators awaiting instructions from the West. In that case, even without transmitting specific orders, the very existence of the station would force Tehran to mobilize cryptographers, researchers and resources to try to decipher a message that may never be understood. Weird, but still alive. Number stations are one of the few times when the normally invisible work of intelligence services becomes audible for anyone with a radio. Although they are much less common today than during the confrontation between blocs of the 20th century, they still there are transmissions regulars associated with countries such as Russia, Poland, Taiwan or North Korea. Some even preserve an almost ceremonial style, such as the Taiwanese station known as New Star Broadcastingwhich begins with a flute melody and ends by wishing “health and happiness” to its listeners before issuing coded numbers intended for agents on extremely sensitive missions. Iran and the difficulty. For the United States, maintaining intelligence networks inside Iran has always been especially complicatedpartly because it does not have an embassy in the country and because the Iranian security apparatus is one of the most vigilant in the world. That forces Western services to retain emergency communication methods capable of working when all else fails. … Read more

the Chinese battery giant is becoming more and more giant

by

CATL, the world’s largest manufacturer of batteries for electric vehicles, closed 2025 with a net profit of 10.4 billion euros at the exchange rate, 42% more than the previous year. It controls almost 40% of the global market and there is no rival in sight that can overshadow it. It is also a consequence of the transition we are experiencing. We tell you all the details. Why does it matter? When talking about the transition to electric vehicles, the focus usually falls on car manufacturers, but there is a company that makes money from practically all of them, regardless of who sells the most cars. And CATL It’s something like NVIDIA of the automotive sector. If an electric car has a battery, there is almost a 40% chance that it is yours. And the percentage is increasing. The numbers. The company recently published its annual results. The report showed total revenues of 423.7 billion yuan (about 58 billion euros), 17% more than in 2024. Net profit reached 72.2 billion yuan, nearly 10.4 billion euros, which represents a jump of 42% and the highest annual growth in three years. In the fourth quarter alone, profit increased 57% year-on-year, beating forecasts by a wide margin. The electric car battery business represents 75% of revenue. On the other hand, energy storage, another of its businesses, contributes another 15%. As a consequence, its cash flow grows by 37%, to 133.2 billion yuan. Market share. According to data According to South Korean analysis firm SNE Research, CATL closed 2025 with a 39.2% share of the global electric vehicle battery market, up from 38% the previous year. It is the ninth consecutive year in which it leads the global ranking. In fact, it is the only company in the world with a share greater than 30%. Its sales of lithium ion batteries have reached 661 GWh, 39% more. Power batteries (those in cars) totaled 541 GWh, and stationary storage batteries, 121 GWh. Korea loses ground. The three large South Korean battery manufacturers, LG Energy Solution, SK On and Samsung SDI, have seen their accumulated share fall by 10.4% last January, according to collect Automotive World analysis. There are several reasons for this, but the most notable have to do above all with changes in US trade policy, which have weakened supply chains in its local market, and increasing dependency of global automakers on Chinese suppliers for offering lower-cost products. CATL gains share abroad and on top of that its direct competitors lose it. Your most profitable business is outside China. Precisely, income from abroad represents more than 30% of CATL’s total, and its gross margin in those markets reaches 31.4%, compared to the 24% it obtains in China. In other words, the more you sell abroad, the more you earn for each battery. And that turns its international expansion not only into a volume growth strategy, but also into an engine that offers increasingly greater profitability. Beyond the electric car. “The new energy industry is at a new historic turning point,” counted the company’s president, Zeng Yuqun, at the meeting with investors. Here he points to electric aviation, ships, data centers and large-scale energy storage as new fronts for the company’s expansion. CATL already leads the global market for batteries for stationary storage for the fifth consecutive year. At the end of 2025, it had six large R&D centers and 24 factories around the world, with an installed capacity of 772 GWh and another 321 GWh under construction. Two shadows in the painting. Although it is all good news for the company, there are also nuances. And the gross margins in car batteries and storage were slightly reduced in 2025 due to pressure on raw material costs and the price war in the sector. The company has also recorded asset impairment losses of around 9 billion yuan, linked in part to the suspension of its activity at the Jianxiawo lithium mine, paralyzed since August due to a licensing conflict. Production is expected to resume in June this year. On the other hand, we must not lose sight of its direct competitor in the domestic market: BYD and its new Blade battery second generation, which according to the company, is capable of charging from 10% to 97% in nine minutes, which could put CATL in a bind in the ultra-fast charging segment. Although for now BYD too has its own problems in China, since its share in batteries has fallen slightly and has accumulated six consecutive months of decline in domestic sales. Cover image | CHUTTERSNAP and CATL In Xataka | Finding the cheapest gas station in your area is very simple thanks to this very powerful tool

The best deals on low, medium and high-end mobile phones at the Amazon Spring Offers Festival

by

Do you have to change your mobile phone? Campaigns like the current Spring Sale Festival are especially interesting because we usually find good discounts, so taking advantage of the fact that Amazon gave the starting signal yesterday and that we still have a few days so we can take advantage of the discounts (ends on March 16), in this article we are going to review what the discounts are. best deals on mobile phones. Google Pixel 10 Pro (512 GB + Pixelsnap Charger) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The best offers on mobile phones Before commenting on which are the best cell phone deals, we are going to do a brief review mentioning them: Google Pixel 10 Pro by 999 eurosa high-end version with a lot of internal storage that also comes with a gift. Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 Pro 5G by 339 eurosa mid-range from the brand that stands out for its screen. Google Pixel 10 by 589 eurosthe lowest price Amazon has had to date. Xiaomi POCO M8 5G by 209.99 eurosan interesting proposal if you are looking for a cheaper Xiaomi mobile. Motorola Moto g85 5G by 169 eurosa low-end mobile that has a good technical sheet. Google Pixel 10 Pro He Google Pixel 10 Pro has starred in one of the best offers in the new Amazon campaign, specifically in its version with 512 GB of internal storage that also includes the Pixelsnap Charger by 999 euros (it costs the same with or without it), which is basically a wireless charger. This is currently one of the best Google phones and stands out above all in its photography section. It incorporates an excellent 6.3-inch OLED screen, has 16 GB of RAM and your operating system will be up to date for many years. Google Pixel 10 Pro (512 GB + Pixelsnap Charger) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 Pro 5G Although it is not the best offer we have seen this week, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 Pro 5G has dropped to 339 euros (before 399 euros) on Amazon. It is a mobile phone that stands out for its 6,580 mAh batterybut above all because of its screen: 6.83-inch AMOLED, 1.5K resolution, 120 Hz refresh rate, maximum brightness of 3,200 nits and compatibility with Dolby Vision. Not bad for its price. Xiaomi Redmi Note 15 Pro 5G (256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Pixel 10 If the previous Google mobile is out of your budget, the little brother has also dropped in price. He Google Pixel 10 is available for 589 euros or by 599 euros if we want it with the Pixelsnap Charger. In both cases we are talking about the same mobile configuration with 128 GB that incorporates a excellent screen for viewing multimedia content and a good photographic section. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi POCO M8 5G For approximately 200 euros we find two mobile phones. The first of them is the POCO M8 5G by 209.99 eurosa smartphone with a 5,520 mAh battery that incorporates a 6.77-inch Flow AMOLED screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate. Its processor is the Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 and, although it comes with 256 GB, it can be expand storage via microSD card up to 1TB. Xiaomi POCO M8 5G (256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Motorola Moto g85 5G The second mobile is Motorola Moto g85 5G by 169 eurosa smartphone with a 6.7-inch pOLED screen that offers a 120 Hz refresh rate and Full HD+ resolution. Your processor is Snapdragon 6s Gen 3comes with both 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage and its battery supports 30W fast charging. Motorola Moto g85 5G (256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links 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 | Alejandro Alcolea, Pepu Ricca in Xataka Android, Google, Xiaomi, Motorola In Xataka | The best mobile phones (2026), we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best mobile phones in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models

ChatGPT has gone from offering you help to insinuating secrets. It is more effective to hook you

by

There is something that has changed in ChatGPT and that is difficult to name precisely. It is not a new feature nor is it in the update notes. It’s more subtle: the model has begun to finish his answers with a kind of whisper. Things like… “If you want, I can tell you something that almost no one explains about this.” “There is a detail of neighborhood psychology that usually works even better.” “Normally the real number is quite surprising” These three examples are literal, they have appeared to me in my last conversations. In them they are not offering you to do something, as was usual. He is hinting to you that he knows something that you don’t know yet.. And that the majority, as it is conveyed, do not know either. For a few months now, ChatGPT’s behavior has been quite marked: he closed his responses like a diligent butler: “shall I turn this into an infographic?”, “do you want me to compose the email?”. He was proactive, sometimes tiresome, but the gesture was one of service. What he does now is something else. He has gone from offering you his time to offering you access to something almost secret. And that activates something different in whoever reads it. I attach several recent examples: Behavioral psychologists have been studying for decades why certain questions are almost impossible to ignore. The answer has to do with the discomfort caused by knowing that there is information that you are missing and that it is right there. It even manages to convey urgency. The best headlines work like this. The first chapters of the best novels too. What ChatGPT has done, consciously or not (I would bet it is), is to put that mechanism at the end of each response. Each closure is now a hook in the shape of a secret about to be revealed. What makes the trick especially effective is that the hooks are not generic. They are calibrated for the conversation you just had. If you asked about sports supplements, the whisper is about pre-workouts. If you were asking for help for a note in your neighborhood community, it’s about neighborhood psychology. If you wanted to know the aid you can choose to receive to have a child, I promise that the real figure will surprise you. The promise always looks like exactly the information that you, specifically you, need next. That makes her almost irrejectable. It is possible that this has arisen from simple training, from simple statistics that explains all the functioning of the LLMs. But it smells like intentional design, and more so in a context of OpenAI in crisis mode in the face of the advance of Anthropic on the one hand and Google on the other. In either case, ChatGPT has learned that The best way to prolong a conversation is not by being more helpful, but by being more intriguing.. The butler who offers services has a natural limit because at some point the errand is done and there is no point in redounding. But the confidant who keeps secrets does not have that limit. There may always be another enigmatic whisper. And you will always want to listen to it. Me too. Featured image | Xataka, Unsplash, OpenAI In Xataka | ChatGPT’s milestone is not being a good AI: it is having become one of the biggest attention grabbers in history

The fault lies with some inhibitors to confuse drones

by

All eyes are on the Strait of Hormuz, through which it passes 20% of the world’s oil. Chaos reigns in this funnel of just 33km and there is something that is contributing to complicating everything much more: the GPS does not work. It is not a specific problem, it is something increasingly common that is having consequences that go beyond the war itself. Chaos in Hormuz (even more). They count on BBC There are hundreds of ships in the Strait of Hormuz area and the location systems place them in positions that make no sense; some are stacked on top of each other, others form impossible circles on the earth… The cause is that their GPS coordinates have been altered by some type of inhibitor. This increases the risk of maritime collisions, especially if visibility is poor. Objective: confuse. In a complete report of Wall Street Journalsay that GPS signal jammers and spoofers have become an essential tool in conflict zones like Ukraine and, now Iranas you can see on this map. What they do is confuse drones and guided munitions so that they fail. Works. The Ukraine conflict has shown that these systems work. According to a report delivered to the US department of defensethe accuracy of Excalibur artillery was 70% when it was first used in Ukraine, but six weeks later it was only 6% thanks to “the Russians adapting their electronic warfare systems to counter it” with GPS jammers. Many of these devices are very affordable and fit in your pocket, making them very easy to use in the field. Consequences. In 2024, An American Airlines flight flew over Pakistan when the alert started to sound “pull up“, which is what it sounds like when the plane is too close to the ground, but the aircraft was at 32,000 feet above sea level. It was a GPS interference. In April of the same year, the airline Finnair suspended its flights to Tartu for a month. The reason: Russia. Airlines depend a lot on GPS and these interferences sometimes cause errors like the one we mentioned at the beginning. Flights have also had to be diverted to other airports for this reason, such as happened with the flight in which Ursula Von Der Leyen was traveling in September of last year. GPS cracks. He Global Positioning System It is a satellite navigation system created by the United States in the 1960s. It was created for military use, but it has ended up being part of the critical infrastructure of the digital economy. There are other similar systems that use satellites such as GLONASS (Russia), BeiDou (China) and Galileo (Europe), but GPS is the most used globally. The fact that we depend so much on GPS means that any degradation has a cascading impact on many essential services, but the signal also has to travel 20,000 kilometers from the satellite, so when it reaches us it is very weak. It is the perfect breeding ground to make it extremely easy to alter them. Solutions. The weaknesses of GPS make it urgent to search for robust alternatives for critical sectors such as aviation. There are the inertial navigation systems which use gyroscopes and accelerometers to calculate position and are already used in the aerospace industry, defense and autonomous vehicles. Also a system is being developed which uses quantum sensors that orient themselves with the Earth’s magnetism and cameras combined with AI algorithms are used to “read” the terrain. However, despite the weaknesses, GPS remains the most powerful system of all due to its ubiquity and accuracy. These systems do not cover the entire range, so the tendency is to use several sources to cover these gaps. In Xataka | Radar warning, detector and inhibitor: what is legal, what is not and why the DGT can fine me this Easter Image | gpsjam.org

The good news is that AI models are becoming more powerful. The bad thing is that everyone ends up saying the same thing.

by

We have artificial intelligence. What we don’t have is artificial diversity. That is the conclusion reached by a group of researchers who did a relatively simple test: they asked 25 different AI models a bunch of questions to see what they answered. And that’s the bad thing: who answered things that were too similar. “Artificial hive mind”. Scientists from the University of Washington, Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University, among other institutions, have published an interesting joint study. In it they reveal how after various tests it seems clear that although AI models are becoming more and more advanced, the problem is that they all seem to have developed a kind of “artificial hive mind”: no matter what you ask them, they answer in a suspiciously similar way. When asking all these models “what time was”, many responded with the phrase “time is like a river”, while another group of models answered that “it is like a weaver”. time is a river. One of the questions asked of these models is “What is time?”and although that question leaves clear room for very different answers, the worrying thing is that they were not. Several models responded with the phrase “time is a river” and then developed it a little, while others responded with “time is a weaver (of moments).” That similarity when it came to responding turned out to be a constant. The illusion of abundance. We believe that when we consult something with an AI we access a whole world of conversational possibilities, but the study reveals that in reality we are facing a system that proposes very similar outputs. Although language models promise limitless creativity, they tend to converge on that hive mind where diversity is sacrificed for statistical consistency. It is reasonable, especially considering that large language models They are based on the concept of transformera probabilistic system that tries to find the next “best” word as it answers us. Same script. The researchers created a large-scale data set with 26,000 queries from real users that theoretically allowed the models to generate multiple valid and creative responses. They called that data set “Infinity-Chat” and divided the questions into six main categories and 17 subcategories. IA, you repeat yourself more than a broken record. During the tests it was observed that the same model tends to repeat itself, generating very similar responses. In fact, even when special parameters were used for questions designed to encourage diversity, the same effect was produced. This is what researchers call “inter-model collapse.” Too similar. These tests made it clear that the semantic similarity, how similar the responses of the different models were, was worrying. According to the study, this similarity ranged between 71% and 82%, and in some cases certain models managed to generate identical paragraphs word for word. The training problem. It is not only that they all generate text in a similar way due to their design, but there is also a training problem. The authors suggest that this homogeneity of responses could be due to several reasons: Training data sources end up being shared: models They are trained with similar “datasets” and for example they are based on similar texts and knowledge that come, for example, from Wikipedia or a very similar set of books. Contamination effect due to synthetic data generated by other AIs: they also use synthetic texts generated by other AI models. Rewards: The models used to reward these models are calibrated to reward some notion of “consensus” quality. Thus, creative and individual diversity is punished. AIs are “educated” to be precisely very similar to each other. Problem in sight. All of this makes researchers explicitly warn about two clear risks when using these AI models. We will think the same: if we users do not stop using AI models that answer basically the same thing, our own ways of thinking on those topics and problems will be “homogenized”and it will also make our responses more uniform. Point of view reduction: The other danger follows from the first: if the AI ​​ends up converging and answering the same thing, points of view are eliminated. Here the biases for example from the western world will be evident in Western models (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude), and the same will happen with the oriental ones, for example. This would cause the potential suppression of alternative worldviews, of perspectives and “looks” that are different from our reality. Image | Solen Feyissa In Xataka | The scientist who made the AI ​​we know today possible has just raised 1 billion. His new goal is to teach him to see space

Light and gas have become luxury items. Europe’s plan is to intervene in prices no matter what the cost

by

Turning on the heating, running a washing machine or keeping a factory blind up has become, overnight, a luxury. Faced with the economic asphyxiation that threatens citizens and companies, the European Union has crossed the Rubicon: the free energy market, as we knew it, cannot sustain this crisis, and Brussels is preparing a drastic intervention to lower the bill at any cost. ORn global market on fire. The epicenter of this new financial earthquake is in the Middle East, as we have been counting these days in Xataka. The price of oil in international markets continues to suffer shocks; as the firm points out Sparta Commodities to EUobserverit is the “largest daily movement since 1988.” Investors assume that the blockage in the region will cause real cuts in the global supply of crude oil, leaving behind the idea of ​​​​a simple logistical delay in ships. Gas has not been left behind. As detailed BloombergEuropean natural gas futures—the Dutch benchmark—soared 30% in a single day, reaching €64/MWh. Europe emerges from the winter with its reserves depleted and is now facing an all-out war with Asia to obtain the scarce shipments of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) available for the summer. The daily roller coaster of the bill. To understand why this crisis punishes the consumer so much, we must look at how the price of electricity is formed hour by hour. An analysis of Finance Times shows how prices in Europe now suffer wild volatility. The example of last March 4 is devastating: at the height of the solar peak (2:00 p.m.), a megawatt hour in Denmark cost just 26 euros; Just three hours later, after the sun set and the gas plants came into play, the price catapulted to 430 euros. This “roller coaster”, with jumps of up to 1,700% in one afternoon, has been replicated with the same harshness in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. Gas thus imposes a “law of luxury” every time the sun disappears, preventing the industry from planning its production. Intervene “whatever the cost.” With a heavy industry (steel, chemicals, aluminum) on the brink of the abyss – it is worth remembering that, according to a document from the European Commission cited by Euronewsindustrial electricity in the EU was already twice as expensive as in the US and China before this crisis—Europe has decided to act. According to the documents discussed by the European leaders to whom has had access Euronewsthe emergency plan seeks quick relief by putting the scissors directly into the bill in three ways: National tax cuts: Which currently vary enormously and can amount to up to 22% of the electricity bill. Cap on tolls and network charges: Which represent 18% of the bill for large industrial consumers. Review of carbon emission costs: Which add 11% to the cost of electricity generation. The intervention beyond of tax cuts. The Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgia Meloni, has toughened her tone towards companies. In statements cited by Euronewswarned: “We will do everything possible to stop speculation. I am ready to react, if necessary, including by increasing taxes on companies that speculate on prices through energy bills.” Furthermore, the panic button for strategic reserves has been activated. As explained Reutersthe finance ministers of the G7 and the EU are negotiating to release part of the 1.4 billion barrels of strategic reserves that Europe keeps to flood the market and artificially sink prices. The impact of not intervening in time. Bloomberg details the case of Domo Chemicalsa plant in the German industrial city of Leuna, which has had to declare insolvency consumed by energy costs. This erosion of the industrial fabric also coincides with a delicate political moment in Germany, where the conservative party (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz has just suffered an electoral setback against the Greens in the regional elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg. The Spanish shield. Despite the urgency, the overall European response is being fragmented. EUobserver points out that Ursula von der Leyen has proposed as a patch to expand the Caspian Sea oil and gas corridor. Ironically, the only royal coat of arms right now is Spain. As highlighted by this same medium, the Spanish market has registered the lowest and most stable prices this week thanks to its gigantic previous investment in renewable energies, partly isolating its system from fossil volatility. Finally, the markets have experienced a slight respite thanks to geopolitics. According to the latest update of BloombergEuropean bonds rebounded and gas fell 17% on Tuesday after US President Donald Trump predicted the conflict with Iran would be resolved “very soon.” However, investors assume that if the war drags on, prices will remain high for a long time. Waking up to reality. With 67% of its consumption still tied to imported fossil fuels, the bloc is aware that depending on Middle Eastern trade routes is a huge risk for its economy. Until now, the European Union trusted that the free market would solve consumer problems and guarantee the best prices. This energy crisis has shown that this is not always the case. The authorities now assume that, in extreme situations, intervening in bills, capping profits and emptying state reserves is the only viable solution. Whatever the cost, Europe has decided to take control to ensure that turning on the lights is not a privilege reserved for times of peace. Image | freepik and Haydn on Unsplash Xataka | Neither oil nor gas: if a total war breaks out between the US and Iran, the definitive weapon will be desalination plants

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.