Month: July 2026

If you live in Madrid and want to see the total eclipse on August 12, write down these 52 towns

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If you are thinking see the solar eclipse on August 12 in the Community of Madrid You will like to know that 52 municipalities have been enabled for this. This was announced by the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Local Administration, Miguel Ángel García Martín, in an informative meeting, as explained from The Economist. There will be observation posts in 51 locations and a festival in another: Buitrago del Lozoya. Of course, it should be noted that not all of the announced municipalities will be able to see the eclipse in its entirety. What is the list of towns to see the solar eclipse in Madrid? The towns announced by the counselor are the following: We are Sierra Prádena del Rincón Braeyes Piñuecar-Gandullas Berzosa del Lozoya The Serna del Monte Gascons Villavieja del Lozoya Old Bridges Gorge of the Mountains Lozoya Canencia Valdepiélagos Cabanillas de la Sierra Navalafuente Coldscraper Talamanca de Jarama Valdeolmos-Alalpardo Torote Ash Soto del Real Meco The Saints of La Humosa Daganzo from Above Pezuela de las Torres Navacerrada Becerril de la Sierra Olmeda de las Fuentes Moralzarzal New Baztan The Mills Ambite Medium Col Manzanares Hole Old Apiary The Molar The Cabrera Saint Augustine of Guadalix San Sebastian de los Reyes Three Songs Villarejo de Salvanés San Lorenzo de El Escorial Robledo de Chavela Villamantilla Chinchon Chapinería Brunete San Martin de Valdeiglesias Navas del Rey Santa María de la Alameda Torrejón de la Calzada Tajuña pear trees Up to Tres Cantos, with this included, are the municipalities within the strip of totality. In the rest, you will only be able to see the solar eclipse partially, since the Moon will not completely cover the Sun and, therefore, the typical night in the middle of the day that characterizes eclipses will not be fully visible. Regarding the festival to be celebrated in Buitrago del Lozoyawill take place in the Riosequillo Swimming Pools Recreational Area and will feature informative, scientific, educational, cultural and family activities. In addition, there will be food trucks, music, children’s games and workshops throughout the day. Is one of the many festivals that will be celebrated throughout Spain on the occasion of this astronomical phenomenon. A map to plan If you want to know how long the totality will last in each of the indicated towns, what the quality of the sky is like or if they are small charming municipalities, you can plan with the help of our interactive map. Furthermore, this is not only useful for observing the solar eclipse in Madrid. You can choose your ideal observation point anywhere in Spain. Start by deciding if you want to see it in the strip of totality or if a partial eclipse closer to home will do. The good part is that next year we will have another total eclipse in Spain and many of the places that have been left out this time will be in its totality strip. Do you want to wait or do you prefer to see it now even if you have to travel? Image | Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | Leo Hernández, eclipse hunter: “I knew that whenever I could or life allowed me, I would try to travel to see more”

This new Lefant robot vacuum cleaner with a self-emptying base is very compact and hardly requires maintenance

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Find a good robot vacuum cleanerwith a self-emptying base and having a lot of suction power without spending a fortune, is not easy. If you are currently in that search, it may be a great fit for you. one of Lefant’s robotsright now with very juicy discounts. Today we are going to focus on Lefant’s new release, the M210 Omni Robot, which has an introductory offer: from 799 euros it now costs 279.99 euros, but remains only 229.59 euros if we use the discount coupon ‘QSTQTB4O‘. Lefant M210 Omni Robot Vacuum Cleaner and Floor Mop, 20000 Pa, Zero Tangles, 800 ml Dust Tank, 85 mm Ultra-Thin Body, Ideal for Hard Floors and Homes with Pets, Space Gray The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A powerful robot vacuum cleaner that requires very little maintenance We have a huge discount on this Lefant robot that is ideal for homes with pets and for those users looking for a device that requires very little maintenance. This model stands out for being quite compact and for having a low profile, which allows it to fit through narrow gaps and under low furniture. In other words: very few places will be left uncleaned. The M210 Omni has a suction power of 20,000 Pafigures that are not usually present in this price range (and even less so, taking into account that it is a compact model). With this, you will be able to collect the smallest particles from all types of surfaces, as well as human or animal hair. Although of course, having this power also allows us to select a less powerful one so that it makes less noise. Speaking of hair, it should be noted that this robot vacuum cleaner has double brushes and an anti-tangle system. Its structure is easy to explain: it has a straight suction mouth and two side brushes, thus avoiding the need for a central roller. This way, we will not have hair tangles that force us to use scissors or similar to remove them manually. Beyond suction, it is also a model that scrubs. Its roller, which is 20 centimeters, exerts a pressure of 1.5 kg against the ground. In this way, It is capable of removing those embedded stains that are difficult to removesuch as leftover coffee or sauce. Its self-emptying base, as we said above, requires very little maintenance. This same one is in charge of remove dirty water and fill the tank with clean wateras well as washing the roller and air drying it. In addition, since it has an 800 ml dust container, we will only have to empty it once every one or two weeks. Thanks to this tank, the robot does not use disposable dust bags, which will help us save. Two more things to keep in mind about him. Its navigation system is based on 9 sets of sensors that cover a 190-degree field, which means that the robot has almost no blind spots and easily avoids obstacles. In addition, its 3,200 mAh battery makes it have autonomy for up to 130 minuteswhich is enough for medium-sized homes. For all this, taking into account that it remains in 229.59 eurosa very interesting quality-price option. 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 | Lefant In Xataka | Best robot vacuum cleaners in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and six recommended models In Xataka | Best upright vacuum cleaners. Which one to buy based on use and six recommended models

more than 800 million euros for offices in Paris

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A study of the University of Zaragoza has pointed out that when temperatures exceed At 37.8 °C our productivity plummets by 36%. However, this fall does not seem to affect the main real estate investor in Spain, which even marking maximum temperatures in thermometers across half of Europe has surprised the market with a record investment. We are talking, of course, about Amancio Ortega, who has set his investment record on this side of the Atlantic in the purchase price of an office building located at number 32 Rue de Monceau very close to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris: 800 million euros for the property. According to advanced the specialized medium Green Street Newsis a figure that places this operation among the largest of his entire career as an investor. A building with important tenants. The office complex is called Capital 8 and occupies about 45,000 square meters in the heart of the VIII district of Paris. It has a panoramic roof terrace, gardens and almost 3,700 meters of vegetation cover. Firms such as Mitsubishi, Standard Chartered or the shipping company CMA CGM work within. The building’s occupancy is close to 95%, something unusual in an office market that is not going through its best moment. Its previous owner, the management company Invesco, bought it in 2018 from Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield for 789 million of euros. Previously, a renovation had modernized its facilities without touching the Haussmannian façade so characteristic of the French capital. Eight years later, Ortega has increased his price to keep it. Pontegadea’s second largest purchase. There is only one operation that, to date, exceeds the amount of this purchase in Pontegadea’s history. It was the investment that Ortega’s investment arm made in the Royal Bank Plaza in Toronto, closed in 2022 for about 838 million of euros. That skyscraper, headquarters of the largest Canadian bank, continues to be Ortega’s spending ceiling on a single property. Behind are other purchases that also sounded loud at the time. The complex that housed the historic headquarters of Canada’s postal company known as The Vancouver Post, purchased in 2025and The Post Building in London, acquired in 2019were around 700 million each. The Capital 8 complex sneaks in just below, but very close, to the Canadian record. Additionally, this transaction marks the largest single office purchase in Europe since 2022. The driving force behind it: Inditex dividends. Pontegadea is one of the few (very few) real estate agencies that can close this type of operations without having to give explanations to any banking entity. Your gasoline are the dividends which Pontegadea receives each year as Ortega’s representative for 59.29% of the Inditex shares. In 2026, this dividend will mean a capital injection of 3,234 million that will be entirely used to purchase strategic properties with solvent tenants who pay their rent on time and guarantee profitability from the first minute. A diversified business. Thanks to this strategy of multimillion-dollar injections of constant capital and without issuing debt, Pontegadea has turned Amancio Ortega into the biggest real estate tycoon on the planet, ahead of giants like Blackstone in volume of unique assets. And all this without hardly selling assets. Only purchasing strategic properties due to their value or location and renting them to solvent tenants. The purchase of Capital 8 joins a long list of investments in recent months. Pontegadea has also obtained a logistics center in Canada that belonged to the Lactalis dairy group. And with another warehouse in the Netherlands, occupied by brands such as Tommy Hilfiger. The logistics gain weight in Ortega’s investment portfolio compared to traditional offices and commercial premises. His most striking movement in recent months arrived from Australiawhere Pontegadea entered as a minority partner in the purchase of Qube Holdings, the largest port operator in the country. In Xataka | With just three moves, Amancio Ortega has conquered the Ibex35: he is now the most powerful investor in Spain Image | GTRES

How it works and how to avoid this scam to hack your computer

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Let’s explain to you what is the fake CAPTCHA scamalso called as ClickFix. This is a type of social engineering attack that appeared at the end of 2023, and that is gradually becoming popular, becoming a danger for Internet users. The idea of ​​the scam is simple, use something that we have all automated such as completing a CAPTCHA to convince the user to execute malicious commands on your own computer. We are going to explain how this scam works so that you can identify it, and then we will give you several tips to avoid it. What is the fake CAPTCHA scam? The fake CAPTCHA scam, also known as ClickFix, is a social engineering attack. This means that the attackers are not trying to scam you in a technical way, but rather by manipulating you so that you yourself are the one who opens the door for them through deception. Specifically, the ClickFix technique consists of tricking the user into executing a malicious command on their computer, and affects both Windows and macOS. They do this by taking advantage of their victims’ tendency to solve small technical problems and other seemingly harmless interactions, such as human verification and CAPTCHAs. The way ClickFix works is simple. Use a website as a hook that shows you a scenario technical error, false CAPTCHA or security notices apparently legitimate. You can be taken to these websites with phishing techniques, both by email and by fraudulent links or ads on legitimate pages. On this website where you are shown an error or a false CAPTCHA, you are given instructions to continue. These instructions guide you through manual steps, such as open a run or terminal screen and paste a code or command. One of the complex things is that, sometimes, on the website where ClickFix is ​​made, the malicious code is copied directly to your clipboard using JavaScript. So, the instructions can be as simple as pressing Windows + R and then Control + V, opening the Windows launch window by directly pasting the code. This is malicious code can do many thingsit all depends on the attack campaign in which it is used. It can be used to steal credentials, but also to install remote access Trojans with which the cybercriminal can do whatever they want on your computer. This may seem like a seemingly easy attack to detect, but in the end it follows the rules of social engineering: the weakest link in the chain of online security is always the human. To carry out the manipulation, the page where you are given the instructions may have recognizable visual aspectslike that of some conventional CAPTCHA website, classic error messages from Chrome, Windows or Mac, or whatever. The idea is to manipulate you, make you believe that you are in an environment that you know so that you let your guard down. How to protect yourself against this attack If you want to avoid this attack and not have it affect you, it is best to distrust any website that asks you to open the terminal or the window Execute from your computer. Don’t press Windows + R, this is immediately an alarm that it wants you to do something you shouldn’t on your computer. It is also very important pay close attention to the pages that ask you to do thingseven if they look like pages you see every day, seemingly normal CAPTCHA systems, or error messages you think you’ve seen. Read the instructions for what is asked of you, try not to act automatically. These are two tips that most experienced users know by heart. But here, you must remember that perhaps you or I are not the objective victims of these attacks, but rather many other not so experienced users who browse carelessly and without knowing how some Internet systems work. The ClickFix attack is becoming popular with fake CAPTCHAs, so it is also worth remembering that these verification systems usually ask you to select images of a certain type or solve musical acuity challenges. But they will never ask you to execute commands on the computer or do things outside the browser. Therefore, whenever they ask you for something like this you should automatically distrust. In Xataka Basics | What is PhishingAlert and how to use it to avoid identity theft scams at online casinos

It is not because of disloyalty or salaries, it is to be better professionals

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Generation Z is revolutionizing current work dynamics at a pace that surpasses any other generation. Their arrival in the labor market has not been easy: their first jobs came marked by the pandemic and the isolation of remote work, and their future depends on a technology that, for the moment, is taking away their opportunities of employment. According to data collected According to Randstad, 54% of respondents in this age group say they track the labor market constantly looking for a new opportunity professional and 33% plan to leave their current job in less than a year. To a large extent, this change is not motivated by the promise of better salaries or by disloyalty: they do it to continue improving their skills and become better professionals. A job for life. Until the middle of the last century, it was very common for a person to start a job when they were young and stay in the job. same company throughout your life until retirement. Currently that scenario is very unlikely And, the most common thing is to change jobs from time to time. He Randstad report It indicates that young people from Generation Z only stay an average of 1.1 years in their jobs, compared to the 1.8 years of millennials, 2.8 years of generation X and the 2.9 years on average of boomers. As highlighted a new report of the Bank Of America Institutealthough salaries in the US remain stagnant in 40% of cases, changing jobs continues to be a way to obtain salary improvements. In fact, millennials who changed jobs increased their salaries twice as fast, while Gen Zers quadrupled their salaries. Motivation: move forward and learn. Far from the widespread image of disloyalty, the data collected by Randstad demonstrate that the motivations for this job rotation It is not a lack of commitment, but rather the improvement of your skills and the desire to progress in your professional career. 68% declare that they maintain their commitment to their current jobs, but their values ​​are not aligned with those of the companies that hire them or they do not contribute to your professional growth. Only 56% of young people surveyed affirm that their current job fits your needscompared to 63% of baby boomers. In addition, 40% of Generation Z say they always take their long-term career goals into account when changing jobs, which is the highest percentage among all generations currently coexist in the labor market. A labor market that excludes them. To the usual uncertainty that surrounds all beginnings of a professional career, generation Z must add pressure What AI is exerting on your jobs, forcing them to learn at forced marches so as not to be excluded from a labor market in which they still do not have a place. This is causing many of these young people to change sectors, directing their professional careers towards jobs that do not have such a direct impact from AI, such as in the healthcare sector and even in the so-called professions blue collar. “Economic volatility, declining entry-level opportunities, and the impact of AI on skill profiles have not diminished Gen Z’s appetite to advance in their jobs,” the authors of the Randstad study explain. The key to retaining them: conciliation and training. In the opinion of Reyes SuarezHR Team Leader at Randstad Professionals, “Gen Z live in constant immediacy and are much more daring. It is like the search for dopamine when using social networks and that results in poorly channeled ambition. In that sense, they are much more impatient than previous generations, who, on the other hand, were too cautious.” Suarez assures that the formula to retain them is “to confront this audacity by presenting them with very well parameterized career and development plans that are clearly communicated to them.” According to data from the reportWorkmonitor 2026‘ prepared by Randstad, 39% of young people said they preferred a linear career path with periodic promotions, while 33% preferred to develop their career in different roles and sectors. 83% continue to prioritize salary in a future job, while 78% would change jobs motivated by an improvement in work-life balance. A version of this article was published in September 2025. In Xataka | Generation Z is being a challenge for companies: 95% of young people manage to get away Image | Pexels (fran innocenti)

The KF-21 is no longer a project and is one step away from operational service

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South Korea has been trying for a quarter of a century to turn a political ambition into a fighter jet manufactured under its own direction. What we are seeing now is the moment in which this journey begins to materialize: the first production KF-21 has already left the factoryhas flown and It is scheduled for delivery to the Air Force in September. That does not mean that the entire fleet will be fully operational from that day, but it does mean that the Boramae has left the prototypes behind to begin its incorporation into military service. The succession of milestones in recent months explains this change in stage. KAI introduced the first production unit on March 25 and flew it on April 15, before the program passed final combat fitness evaluation on May 7. A little over a month later, June 15the initial type certification arrived, which certifies compliance with government airworthiness and flight safety requirements. The next step will be the formal acceptance of the device and its delivery to the South Korean operator. The project that would end up becoming the KF-21 began to take shape in March 2001when then-President Kim Dae-jung expressed ambitions to develop an advanced fighter of his own. The initiative, however, took years to overcome feasibility studies and debates about its cost. The industrial leap arrived in December 2015when the procurement agency DAPA signed the system development contract with KAI. Indonesia joined as a partner and initially assumed about 20% of the cost, in exchange for technology, industrial participation and local production capacity. That distribution began to break down when Indonesia accumulated delays in its financial contributions. After several renegotiations, both governments agreed in June 2025 to reduce its contribution to about 600 billion won, about a third of the original commitment, and also limit the technology it would receive. The withdrawal of local co-production was made public in April 2026 and confirmed by Indonesian authorities in June. Jakarta is still studying the purchase of a smaller number of aircraft completed in South Korea, although there is no final order yet. Converting the KF-21 into a fleet has required two large pools of investment. The first, of about 8.8 trillion won, equivalent to approximately 5.24 billion euros at the exchange rate on July 24, 2026, corresponds to the development of the plane. The second, estimated at 7.92 trillion won, nearly 4.72 billion euros, includes the initial plan to acquire 40 unitsits weapons and other associated costs until 2028. This item does not offer a clean price per device, because it also includes engines, training, spare parts, documentation and logistical assistance. What the South Korean Air Force will receive is a 4.5-generation twin-engine fighter, not a fifth-generation stealth aircraft comparable to the F-35. The KF-21 can reach approximately Mach 1.8 and transport up to 7.7 tons of weaponsin addition to integrate an AESA radaran IRST infrared sensor and electronic warfare systems. The first units will belong to Block I, a configuration focused mainly on air-to-air missions. Broader air-to-ground and air-to-surface capabilities will come with the further evolution of the program. The industrial leap is best understood when we look at who is actually building the aircraft. The South Korean KAI leads the design, integration and assembly, while its compatriots Hanwha Systems and LIG Nex1 provide, respectively, the AESA radar, part of the avionics, electronic warfare and weapons management. Hanwha Aerospace, also South Korean, Assembles in Korea and produces components under license for the F414-400K engines from the American GE Aerospace. Since the first flight of the prototype on July 19, 2022, the six test aircraft have completed around 1,600 flights and around 13,000 test conditions without accidents. The arrival of the KF-21 does not mean that South Korea will do without foreign fighters either. Seoul has ordered another 20 US F-35Aswhich will begin to arrive from 2027, and a fleet made up of platforms of different origins and functions will continue to operate. The change is elsewhere: the country can now lead the design, production, maintenance and much of the future improvements of its own combat aircraft. When the first installment is completed, the Boramae will not have eliminated external dependence, but it will have tangibly reduced its limits. Images | Government of Korea/Ministry of Defense In Xataka | Airbus has made a revolutionary bet for its business model: manufacturing the hydrogen engines of the future

“VPNs are legitimate technical tools”

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Some Belgian academics published for free on the Internet the Anne Frank manuscripts. In Belgium these manuscripts were in the public domain, but in the Netherlands they remained under copyright until 2037. To comply with the law, the Belgians They blocked access to Dutch IPsand that made the copyright management entity sue them because with a VPN they could bypass that geoblocking. And here came the EU with a Solomonic decision: “VPNs are legitimate technical tools.” what has happened. The litigation, which started from something as particular as the aforementioned diary of Anne Frank, has led to a sentence that will bring a long tail. The Anne Frank Foundation, owner of these rights in the Netherlands, sued the institutions that published the manuscripts, alleging that any user could bypass the block with a regular VPN. Or what is the same: the academics were distributing the protected work to the Dutch public even though they tried to block the IPs, and that was according to them a violation of copyright. Solomonic sentence. The CJEU answered that Foundation no: as long as a website uses “state-of-the-art” geoblocking technology, the publisher cannot be responsible for copyright infringement just because a user manages to circumvent that barrier with a VPN. The court explicitly states that publishing a work in the public domain in one country but protected in another does not constitute a “communication to the public” in the protected country, provided that an “effective” geoblocking measure is in place. VPNs are legitimate tools. The ruling sets a precedent that shields VPNs from the roots. Rights holders can no longer claim that the mere existence of these tools overrides a website’s security measures, and the court has explicitly qualified VPNs as “legitimate technical tools”, reinforcing their legal status across the EU. The task of managing a technical barrier falls to the publisher, not the VPN provider or the user using it. This is where LaLiga comes in. The entity chaired by Javier Tebas has been fighting a very different judicial battle for more than a year, but with the same background actor: VPNs. In February 2026, a Commercial Court of Córdoba granted LaLiga and Telefónica injunctions against NordVPN and ProtonVPN. They were forced to block specific IP addresses linked to illegal broadcasts of First and Second Division matches, and recognizing these providers as responsible “technological intermediaries” under the European Digital Services Regulation (DSA). The offense had already had problems. NordVPN resisted with technical tests, and on May 19 the same Córdoba court rejected LaLiga’s request to impose fines on the company for (allegedly) failing to comply with the blocking order. NordVPN technicians demonstrated two key things: that the IPs hosting illegal broadcasts change constantly, making any list obsolete in a matter of hours, and that applying a block at the IP level would have left thousands of completely legal websites and services inaccessible inside and outside of Spain, since many share the same CDN (Content Delivery Network) infrastructure. What changes now. Although the Anne Frank diary case is not the same litigation that pits LaLiga against VPN providers, the ruling reinforces precisely the argument that has already worked for NordVPN before the Spanish courts. Furthermore, it complicates any future attempt by LaLiga to shift the responsibility for illicitly distributing content to VPN providers rather than to those who broadcast that content without the right to do so. What hasn’t changed. NordVPN already warned that its May victory was “a preliminary procedural decision, not a definitive ruling on the merits (of the issue).” The IP blocks ordered in February still technically stand. LaLiga, for its part, has not stopped scoring victories through other means, and for now the underlying problem persists: LaLiga will continue to block IPs indiscriminately, and will leave millions of Internet users without access to specific (and legitimate) parts of the Internet. In Xataka | Congress has taken the first step to put a limit on LaLiga blockades: a respite for the affected services

This is how China circumvents 2,000 ASML patents with a laser trick

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The extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) is the tightest bottleneck in the entire semiconductor industry. Only one company in the world, the Dutch ASML, manufactures these machines, essential for producing integrated circuits below 7 nm, and since 2019 is prohibited from selling its most advanced models to China due to US pressure. Each device costs between 200 and 400 million dollars, and so far not a single Chinese client has managed to obtain one. A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, has built China’s first laser-plasma EUV light source platform. In front is Lin Nanformer ASML scientist and technical manager of its light sources for metrology, who returned to China in 2021 as part of a state talent attraction program. His team has chosen a path that deliberately avoids ASML’s method, as well as more than 2,000 of its patents. Qiu Yanfang, Chinese columnist specializing in semiconductors, has summed it up unambiguously: This patent rodeo is not just a legal maneuver; It’s genuine engineering. And it is this assessment, published just two weeks ago, that has once again put the focus on how far China has really come in its race for technological independence in lithography. The longest road to mass production The technical trick is this: while ASML generates EUV light by firing powerful carbon dioxide lasers at moving tin droplets (a method known as LPP), Lin Nan’s team uses a 1-micron solid-state laser that hits a solid tin target. In a published article In December 2024, Lin and his team were already arguing that this type of laser could replace carbon dioxide lasers as a next-generation source thanks to its compact size and higher conversion efficiency. However, Qiu Yanfang herself qualifies her initial enthusiasm. In the short term, he maintains, this solid-state source cannot shake ASML’s dominance, since the entire global semiconductor industry has built its supply chains, patents and engineering expertise around the carbon dioxide laser. Although Chinese technology achieves results in the laboratory, it still has a long way to go until achieve large scale production. The real value of Lin’s achievement, in any case, lies in laying the foundation and forging a research team that covers everything from theory to applied engineering. The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology in 2028, although many analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date. This effort also coexists with another parallel and much more hermetic path. As revealed Reuters As of December 2025, China has assembled a working prototype EUV machine inside a high-security laboratory in Shenzhen, although it has not yet manufactured functional integrated circuits. Huawei coordinates this initiative, which involves thousands of engineers: the Harbin Institute of Technology is in charge of the light source, the Changchun Institute of Optics for the optical systems, and SMEE (Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment) of the final integration, with YesCarrier (the Chinese company backed by the Shenzhen Government and linked to Huawei) as another of the key actors. The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology in 2028, although many of the analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date. For now, no Chinese prototype has proven to be capable of manufacturing commercial integrated circuits with its own UVE lithography, and doubts about the real speed of this advance have returned to the front line of information for a very different reason. US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has raised ASML senior managers the possibility that one of its SVU teams has reached China through clandestine channels, something that the Dutch company has denied emphatically: none of its 314 operational EUV machines in the world, nor is any of the 26 already withdrawn located in Chinese territory. China does not have its EUV machine yet. But, thanks to Lin Nan, it now has something that until recently it didn’t have either: its own path to try to build it. Image | ASML More information | Asia Times In Xataka | ASML’s new lithography equipment divides chipmakers. TSMC plans not to use it until 2030

With his next film, Tom Cruise continues to exploit one of Hollywood’s most profitable legacies: his own

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‘Days of Thunder’ was not a blockbuster in 1990, nor did it please critics much. And still, it’s going to be next let Tom Cruise roll. Before ‘Top Gun 3’ or any other project on his agenda. It is not another whim of the star, it is a new episode in the recovery of a legacy that the actor knows is currently valued very highly in Hollywood: his own. Days of Thunder 2. After months actively and passively confirming that the film is underway, Paramount now has a director for the sequel: it will be Jonathan Levinestill negotiating the terms of his contract. Cruise returns to be Cole Trickle, the NASCAR driver he played 36 years ago, and produces alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, the film’s original producer. The studio is already treating the film as Cruise’s next production, ahead of ‘Top Gun 3’, which Paramount has already announced is in development, and ahead of ‘Broadsword’, the project he is preparing with Christopher McQuarrie. A relative failure. ‘Days of Thunder’ was born in its day as an attempt to repeat the formula of ‘Top Gun’: same director, Tony Scott, same producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, same protagonist, four years after the premiere of that one. And although, as we say, he reunited Cruise with the director of his previous success, it did not work so overwhelmingly: ‘Top Gun’ grossed $357 million worldwide. with a budget of just 15; ‘Days of Thunder’ stood at 157 million compared to a disbursement of 60. Legacy is what matters. But Cruise treats both films the same: as his property, to be reactivated when he decides. When Paramount proposed turning ‘Days of Thunder’ into a series for Paramount+ years ago, it was the actor himself who rejected the idea. I didn’t want a second-rate spin-off. He wanted to repeat with this film the same move that worked with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, about which we already explained how he turned nostalgia into Hollywood’s most profitable mechanism, compared to the forced recycling of other studios. Comedy on wheels. Levine’s choice is also unusual. Until now he has directed comedies like ‘Memories of a Teenage Zombie’ or modest dramas like ’50/50′, never an action blockbuster on this scale, and Paramount comes to him for an indirect reason. Apparently, test screenings of ‘Mr. Irrelevant: The John Tuggle Story’, a sports drama with David Corenswet that opens next Christmas, have been exceptionally good. That result, and not a previous history with cars or chases, is what has boosted the studio’s confidence in Levine. The definitive boost. The final push came, almost accidentally, from another motorized debut. In June 2025, while promoting ‘F1’, the film with Brad Pitt that Bruckheimer also produced, the producer confirmed that conversations with Cruise were active: “there are always new technologies, new ways of doing things and showing them.” weeks later it was more direct: confirmed that Cruise wants to film the sequel and that the two were still shaping the script. The actor himself confirmed it that same month. 36 years later. Of course, ‘Days of Thunder’ has severe problems recovering its original cast team, and it cannot be solved emotionally, as happened with the absence of Val Kilmer in ‘Maverick’. Thirty-six years later, Tony Scott and Robert Duvall have passed away (the absence, of course, will be regrettable). And Nicole Kidman, whom Cruise met during that filming and with whom he was married for eleven years, has not worked with her ex-husband since the divorce, and her return should be considered impossible. But first. Before Cruise gets back into a race car, ‘Digger’ will hit theaters on October 2: a black comedy by Alejandro González Iñárritu that marks Cruise’s return to Warner Bros., a decade after ‘Edge of Tomorrow’. There Cruise is not an action hero, but the most powerful man in the world, facing a catastrophe that he himself caused. The other side of the strategy: in this way Cruise reactivates his catalog with Bruckheimer, but also tries a different register with Iñárritu. Cruise has something for everyone. In Xataka | Being a close friend of Tom Cruise has a special bonus: exclusive viewing of a six-hour film masterclass

Chinese AI geniuses could be billionaires in the US. The bad thing for the US is that they prefer to return to China

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It is normal for someone to take six years to complete a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). A young man named Yang Zhilin got it in four, and immediately what had to happen happened: the big technology companies raffled him off. They wanted to sign him to Apple, Google or Meta, and both MIT and Stanford opened their doors to him. He could have stayed in the US and probably become a billionaire, but no. He returned to China, founded Moonshot AI, created the Kimi family of AI models and became one of the great new AI gurus of the Asian giant. His story is a good example of a big problem they are having in the US. A genius in the making. Yang graduated from the prestigious Chinese university of Tsinghua, and during his years at CMU he ended up collaborating on another of the “iconic papers” that were the seed of ChatGPT, the so-called “Transformer-XL“. That was a turning point in his career, because after that job he considered what he wanted to do with his life. Start up yes, but not in the US. His supervisor at CMU, Russ Salakhutdinov, I remembered in the Financial Times what he discussed with Yang, who made it clear to him that “if he didn’t at least try to create his own company, he would regret it for the rest of his life.” The curious thing is that he did not do it in the US, where he would surely have obtained plenty of financing and economic support, but rather he went to China, where he founded Moonshot AI. There he created the mentioned models of AI, of which the latest version, Kimi K3, has turned the market upside down: an open model that competes with the best of Anthropic and OpenAI and that has made Yang a current protagonist in the sector. Working for others, what’s up?. There is a narrative in Silicon Valley that talks about how immigration regulation in the US is designed to get young talents to join large companies, and not so much to found their own startups. That was much more complicated, so the Chinese talents who had just trained in the US realized that they had a better option: return to their country of origin and create their startups there. Source: Hoover Institution. Chinese talent returns to China. A study by the Hoover Institution at Stanford analyzed the profile of the 356 researchers who worked on DeepSeek and revealed something surprising: 53.5% never studied or worked outside of China. Of those who did have an experience of this type and had studied or worked in the US, 70% ended up returning to their country. The Asian giant is no longer an exporter of brainiacs: it now has a self-sufficient quarry that boosts the country’s AI industry. Less money, better execution. The difference between the US and China is not only financial, but operational. A Chinese entrepreneur in the sector explained in that FT report that although setting up his startup in the US would guarantee a valuation up to 10 times higher, in China he is much more likely to launch real solutions and production in less than five years. It doesn’t matter the sanctions, the risk of censorship or a much more conservative investment market: the density of engineers and the familiarity of the environment compensate. Source: Stanford University. The US does not make it easy. The phenomenon of the “return home” of Chinese engineers not only affects recent graduates, but also veteran professionals who were already installed in the country’s academic and engineering system. a survey conducted by Stanford University in 2024 among 1,304 scientists of Chinese origin who lived and worked in the United States revealed curious data. 73% did not feel safe working as a researcher in the country, and 65% pointed directly to a fear of harassment and racist violence. Political uncertainty and institutional distrust have only accelerated the exits. Silicon Valley has a problem. The trajectory of Moonshot AI, which in just three years and with a team of 300 people has launched a fantastic model, shows that there is life beyond Silicon Valley. With Chinese talent returning en masse to China, the question is whether the US Government will modify its requirements and proposals for obtaining a visa. If they don’t, the “brain drain” can be absolute. Image | Tommao Wang In Xataka | Four decades ago, China decided to invest in training millions of engineers. Today that plan gives it an advantage in the race for AI

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