Mobile Tech & Gadgets

China’s factories are learning to live with Donald Trump and his tariffs

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Donald Trump’s return to the White House on January 20, 2025 and the massive deployment of a very aggressive tariff package put many Chinese companies on the ropes. The US Administration attacked most of the countries with whom it maintains commercial relations, but, as Trump had anticipated, he attacked China. Xi Jinping’s government responded activating export controls very strict on their critical minerals and rare earths, and it worked. Donald Trump and Xi Jinping They met in October and agreed to relax the aggressive exchange of tariffs that they had during the first months of the year, but many Chinese companies had already been forced to react. Some of them chose to develop new plants in countries close to China that were not initially subject to such aggressive tariffs by the US, such as India or Malaysia. However, this solution was partial. It allowed them to avoid tariffs to a certain extent, but it did not solve their structural problems. China’s infrastructure is irreplaceable Agilian Technology is a Chinese company based in Dongguan that specializes in manufacturing products for third parties. Most of its clients are Western companies that need to produce their products in China, but do not have the necessary business volume to support the manufacturing of a huge number of products. Like many other Chinese companies, Agilian suffered a lot due to the tariffs that the US deployed at the beginning of 2025. Agilian Technology has emerged victorious. In fact, it hopes to increase its income by 30% over the next three years. In fact, their problems actually began before Donald Trump returned to the White House. The threats from the current US president put a good part of Agilian’s clients on notice, so the latter chose to anticipate and asked it to send large quantities of products to North America. before the tariffs went into effect. Other Agilian clients suggested that he set up manufacturing and assembly plants in other countries that presumably were not going to be as affected as China by US tariffs. Agilian, like many other Chinese companies, accepted its customers’ conditions, although some of them canceled their orders. After carefully weighing which would be the ideal places to which they could divert part of their production, Agilian managers opted to launch a factory in Dharwad (India) and another in Penang (Malaysia). However, they soon realized that their Dongguan plant would remain indispensable. The slow pace of bureaucracy in India greatly slowed the start-up of the Dharwad plant, and pre-production testing in Penang took months to begin because everything in Malaysia is much slower than in China. Dongguan continues to be the engine of Agilian, but thanks to the expansion of its infrastructure in response to pressure from the US this company is now much better prepared to withstand future clashes that the Chinese and American Administrations may have. Agilian Technology has emerged victorious. In fact, trust increase your income by 30% for the next three years. And its model is identical to the one that many other Chinese companies that are dedicated to manufacturing products have embraced. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Reuters In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

A company wants to sell sunlight on demand using gigantic mirrors in space. We have questions

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A Californian startup wants to sell solar light at night and, although it has not yet started, many scientists are already putting their hands together. They find it difficult to do it correctly for technical reasons, but they consider that it would be even more serious if these difficulties are resolved. The consequences for people’s health, the environment and the work of astronomers can be devastating. The longest day. The goal of Reflect Orbital is to launch into space a swarm of 4,000 satellites loaded with giant mirrors. These would capture sunlight from the illuminated side of the Earth and reflect it in dark areas. Thus, the solar panels could work 24 hours a day, not only when sunlight naturally falls on them. First steps. For now, the objectives of this startup have been developed only on paper. They already have their first satellite ready, which they have named Eärendil-1, in honor of a JRR Tolkien character. However, They are still waiting for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to of the United States gives the green light for its launch. In principle It is scheduled to take place throughout this month of Aprilbut there is no definitive date. Once in low Earth orbit, this satellite will deploy an 18-meter-wide mirror, which would be capable of illuminating a 5-kilometer patch on Earth. If all goes well, a swarm of 4,000 mirrors could be launched by 2030. The background is not good. There was already a project similar to this developed in Russia in the 1990s. The goal of the project, named Znamya, was to illuminate Siberia in the dark winter months. And they got it. However, the resulting light was so dim and the satellite so difficult to control that the mission was never completed. More than technical difficulties. Fionagh Thomson, researcher in spatial ethics at Durham University, explained in statements to Live Science who does not believe that the project is viable today, since the engineering involved is very complex. They already verified it in Russia. But that’s not all. Both this and other experts warn that a large amount of light pollution would be generated, which could affect the circadian rhythms of living beings in the illuminated environment. It could also dazzle aircraft pilots and make the work of astronomers difficult. Even astronomy enthusiasts trying to look at the sky with binoculars or a telescope could suffer vision damage if they encounter the light reflected from these satellites. After all, the population would not be notified before changing the direction of the mirrors. Worse than Starlink. starlink, Elon Musk’s telecommunications companyhas been receiving criticism for many years for the artificial way in which they illuminate the night sky. However, this company’s satellites accidentally illuminate the Earth. In this case it would be something deliberate and, therefore, even more intense and serious. It’s not worth it. All these risks are not worth it when you consider the results. And many other experts assure that the light that would be obtained would be too dim. The solar radiation that would reach the solar panels, for example, would be a minimum fraction of that which arrives during the day. In order to obtain a sufficient amount of light, an exorbitant number of satellites would have to be launched into space and that would be expensive and even more dangerous. Beware of space debris. If the mirror of Eärendil-1 will measure about 18 meters in diameter, the goal of Reflect Orbital is to launch satellites into space with even larger mirrors, up to 54 meters. In general, they would be giant objects; who would therefore be at greater risk of impacting with meteorites or space junk fragments. The more exposed surface, the more risk. This would not only mean the uncontrolled release of fragments resulting from the impact, it would also cause damage to the structure of the mirrors themselves. A leaky mirror would be even more difficult to control and its harmful effects could worsen. Therefore, although the goal of selling sunlight at night seems feasible on paper, in reality it is complicated and dangerous. We’ll see where all this goes. Image | Reflect Orbital In Xataka | Solar thermal plants are in the doldrums, so now they have two jobs: generating energy by day and hunting asteroids by night

It’s been more than 50 years since we saw the Moon like this. Artemis II has already left new historical images

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Looking at the Moon again as we are seeing it now is not something that happens every day. More than half a century after the Apollo era, Artemis II has completed its lunar flyby and it has already left a visual trail that returns us to that type of trip that we believed almost from the past. At this time, with the mission progressing as planned, NASA points out that the Orion ship would have already left the lunar sphere of influence and would have begun its way back. How we knewthere has been no lunar landing, but what we have seen during these hours, those images captured by the crew, places us again in front of the Moon from a manned perspective that we have not seen for decades. From here, the key is what this overflight has left us. During their passage through the lunar environment, the Artemis II crew has photographed the Moon at different phases of the journey, capturing both surface details and broader scenes of the surrounding space. All this material is already being organized and published by NASA in your multimedia repositorywhere you can consult images, videos and other content of the mission. We are not talking about a specific selection, but rather an archive under construction that will grow over time. The Moon as we had never seen it again Among the material that NASA has already begun to disseminate there are especially powerful scenes, with the Moon dominating the frame and the Earth visible in the background in some shots. The image conveys the scale of the trip very clearly.with our planet reduced to a luminous sphere in the face of the massive presence of the satellite. In the photographs published by the agency, this play of distances is well appreciated, but also the contrast with the surroundings, that completely black background that surrounds the scene. This is where the images gain strength, because they not only show two celestial bodies, but also the relationship between them seen from a position that very few humans have reached. If we look closer, what appears is an enormous level of detail. In photographs taken during During the flyover, large craters, ancient lava flows and structures that run across the surface such as cracks and reliefs can be clearly seen.. The Artemis II crew described these formations as they observed them, also pointing out differences in brightness and texture that help to better understand the composition of the terrain. It is not just an aesthetic issue: each of these details provides information about the geological history of the Moon. The craters on the eastern edge of our satellite Our planet, in the crescent phase, passing behind the Moon Dark spots of ancient lava on the Moon There are moments of the flyover that go beyond the still photography and that help understand the complete sequence of what happened. During the passage through the far side of the Moon, the ship was temporarily without communication with the Earth, a planned section in which one of the most unique moments of the trip also occurred: the so-called “Earthset”, when our planet disappears behind the lunar horizon from the perspective of Orion. Later, when communication was resumed, “Earthrise” arrived, the moment in which the Earth appears again on the other side. These events occurred within a very measured sequence of observations which also included an eclipse seen from the ship. The Moon completely eclipsing the Sun Another image of the total solar eclipse captured by the Artemis II mission Astronauts also use glasses to view eclipses, just like we would on Earth! Here we see the astronauts capturing images through the windows of the Orion spacecraft Not everything we’ve seen happens outside the ship. Part of the disseminated material also allows us to look inside Orion and understand how this section of the journey was experienced from the inside. In the images shared by NASA you can see the crew working in a compact space, surrounded by screens, controls and onboard systems. There are no grand gestures, but a constant sense of activity and coordination, with the astronauts documenting what is happening as they continue with the flight plan. Although the ship has already left the lunar environment behind and is moving towards its return, there is a part of the mission that begins now. All the material collected during the flyby, as we say, will be analyzed in the coming days by the scientific teams, which will seek to extract information from the images, audio and data captured by the crew. As explained by NASA, these observations will be reviewed in detail once the data download from Orion is complete. Meanwhile, the agency has already made part of this content available to the public on its multimedia platform, where the images can be consulted in high quality. Images | POT In Xataka | Artemis II has five different hot sauces on board: the reason is a radical change in what we consider “space food”

97% of a key mineral for Europe comes from China. Spain has a plan of 197 million to turn it around

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Constant technological development has unleashed a silent but relentless geopolitical war. At the center of the target are rare earths and critical minerals, essential for manufacturing everything from mobile phones to electric cars or wind turbines. Nowadays, how to explain Europa PressEurope is in a situation of extreme vulnerability: 97% of the magnesium we consume comes from China and 98% of the borate we import from Türkiye. However, the solution to this deep dependence could be buried under Spanish soil. A new plan. As detailed in the National Mining Exploration Program 2026-2030 (PNEM), the official document promoted by the Government of Spain20 of the 34 raw materials that the European Union classifies as fundamental have been detected in the Iberian Peninsula. Of them, 17 are considered strategic due to their high technological and defense impact. To map and take advantage of this “treasure”, the Executive has launched an ambitious plan. The financing table of the PNEM itself projects a total investment of 197 million euros for the five-year period 2026-2030, adding public financing, aid and private investment that is expected to be mobilized. A breath for Europe and an opportunity for Spain. The European roadmap, crystallized in the Fundamental Raw Materials Regulation (Critical Raw Materials Act or CRMA), is very clear: guarantee access to a safe and diversified supply. By 2030, the European Union has set a goal of extracting at least 10%, processing 40% and recycling 25% of its domestic demand for these materials. In this context, Spain is not a secondary actor, but is the only producer of strontium in Europe, hosting 15% of the world’s reserves in the Montevives and Escúzar basin in Granada, and holds the position of second largest copper producer on the continent. according to data provided by Europa Press. The main focus of exploration is located in the Variscan or Iberian Massif, an extensive geological strip that crosses the west of the peninsula from Galicia to Andalusia, passing through Cantabria, Asturias, Castilla y León and Extremadura. The official document highlights, within this great massif, the so-called Central Ibérica, Ossa-Morena and South Portuguesa Zones as priority areas for general exploration. The private sector takes positions. On a practical level, intentions are already being translated into business movements on the ground. In Extremadura the Junta has granted a license to explore an area of ​​49,500 hectares in the Cáceres regions of Los Ibores and Campo de Arañuelo. In Andalusia, specifically in Jaén, the Australian company Osmond Resources will promote the Orion projectcovering 228 square kilometers in the former mining region of Linares-La Carolina to search for unusually high concentrations of rutile, zircon and rare earths such as neodymium. For its part, the European Commission has already blessed seven strategic projects in Spanish territory to protect the supply, located in enclaves of Ciudad Real, Orense, Cáceres, Badajoz, Huelva and Seville. Cutting-edge technology versus “pick and shovel”. The National Mining Exploration Program does not contemplate blindly digging holes. The Ministry’s text outlines six great performances interconnected to locate these raw materials. The process will begin with an exhaustive review of historical data and geoscientific reports, followed by the preparation of highly detailed geological-mining cartography. From there, technology will take over. Geochemical soil prospecting campaigns and complex isotopic analyzes will be carried out to find anomalies in the terrain. In addition, cutting-edge geophysical techniques will be deployed, using everything from airborne gravimetry and magnetometry equipment (planes and drones), to remote sensing using high-resolution hyperspectral and satellite images provided by the European Space Agency. All of this will be complemented by carrying out physical surveys to confirm the mining interest of the anomalies. Finally, as the official plan highlights, all this huge amount of data will be processed using algorithms, artificial intelligence and machine learning to generate predictive models of mineralization. The inevitable clash: Mining vs. Biodiversity. However, technology collides head-on with strict environmental reality. The clearest example is in Campo de Montiel (Ciudad Real). There, the company Quantum Minería has been trying to exploit a promising monazite deposit to extract rare earths. But the project has encountered strong neighborhood opposition due to the very high water consumption it requires and an unexpected defender: the iberian lynx. The recovery of this feline’s territories in the area has become a major legal obstacle for the mining company, paralyzing permits due to fear of destroying its habitat. Although before the environmental alarms go off, it is important to make a fundamental point: this National Program serves to know what we have, it is not an authorization to dig it up. The Ministry’s own document clarifies that the plan does not establish “binding or indicative objectives” for exploitation. That is, it is a purely prospective roadmap and data collection that does not compromise or zone the territory to open real mines. The mine is in the “garbage”. Faced with this paralysis and the immense difficulty of opening new mines in natural areas, Spain has an ace up its sleeve: secondary mining and the circular economy. The National Program reserves one of its main transversal lines to respond to article 27 of the European regulations (CRMA), thoroughly investigating the economic potential of mining waste facilities that were closed or abandoned in the past. The Ministry document remember thatalready in the 80s, an inventory was prepared that cataloged 21,673 waste structures (rafts and waste dumps) spread throughout the national territory. Now, the State’s objective is to review this catalog and promote geochemical characterization work to recover those fundamental raw materials that, at the time, were not of interest or could not be extracted and were discarded. As pointed out Europa Press, Research teams from the University of Seville led by professors Joaquín Delgado and Antonio Romero are already working in Río Tinto (Huelva) designing experimental plants to recover valuable metals and rare earths from the acidic waters of abandoned mines. Even beyond the mine. A clear example of this circular bet is the RC-Metals projectled by the National Center for Metallurgical Research (CENIM-CSIC). … Read more

when speculation becomes the best possible campaign

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A plastic cube in the shape of a green dinosaur (not just any green dinosaur, obviously, but one of the protagonists of the millionaire ‘Super Mario Galaxy’) has generated in one week a secondary market of tens of thousands of euros on Wallapop. The phenomenon, due to saturation, is already subsiding, but it says a lot about how leisure is currently faced… and how there are those who want to take advantage of it. The phenomenon. ‘Super Mario Galaxy: The Movie arrived in Spain on April 1 and, taking advantage of the holiday season in much of the world, it has grossed $372 million in its first weekend, becoming the biggest box office success of 2026 and the fifth best opening in history for an animated film. The reviews are lukewarm (42% approval on Rotten Tomatoes), but it doesn’t matter. Because much of the attention is going to a plastic cube in the shape of Yoshi. What is the popcorn maker like? The green dinosaur that accompanies Mario from ‘Super Mario World’ is being distributed as a promotional product for the premiere. In Spain, chains such as Yelmo and Cinesa put it on sale on April 1: 40 euros at the box office, or integrated into a menu with a drink and popcorn for around 20 euros. A figure the size of a bucket of real popcorn, designed above all to decorate and function as a decorative object. The drama. The problem started when Helm confirmed Through its Instagram account, buyers could purchase as many units as they wanted with their entry. The popcorn box sold out in some theaters in less than an hour on the same day the film premiered. Images of people with plenty of Yoshis under their arms or with the trunk of the car full to bursting with figures. It is resold. Then, the predictable movement: on platforms like Wallapop or eBay, popcorn boxes began to be resold for hundreds of euros a few hours after the premiere, with some reaching prices as exorbitant as this one from 2,400 euros. However, excess supply and the laws of the most basic capitalism have ultimately meant that most popcorn makers are between 80 and 150 euros (which is still between double and almost quadruple the original price, less than a week after it went on sale). On AliExpressMeanwhile, you can find the same design, although in many cases they are replicas that cost around 10-20 euros. The popcorn phenomenon. The phenomenon of these objects has been brewing in the United States for years. AMC launched the first large-scale collectible popcorn in 2019: an R2-D2 for the premiere of ‘Star Wars Episode IX’‘ at 50 dollars a piece It sold out that same night.. The industry even has a name for this: collectible concession vessels or CCVs. The viral turning point was the sandworm-shaped cube from ‘Dune: Part 2’, an object so aesthetically discussed that it became the subject of a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch, and was resold on eBay for around $300. Then came the bucket of ‘Deadpool and Wolverine’, which Ryan Reynolds himself was in charge of promoting before the premiere, and with this, the category was established as part of the marketing of any major premiere. The numbers behind the business are revealing: the AMC cinema chain entered under this concept 54 million dollars in 2023. The profit margin on movie concessions, as some analysts have calculatedexceeds 80% for cinemas. What Nintendo releases. Nintendo, in this scheme, receives licensing royalties for each unit sold in theaters, which also increases expectations by not launching other notable merchandising products at the premiere (no reissues of the original game, no exclusive Amiibos, no special editions of Switch 2). The fandom focuses on the only novelty item available: the green plastic Yoshi. And the rest is Wallapop. Image | QuidVacuo In Xataka | If the question is “how does Nintendo make money” the answer is not video games: it is a much more ambitious emporium

an algorithm has betrayed it

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We are already used to the fact that price of a flight changes depending on when you search for it, where you search from or how many times you have visited that page. Also than an Uber or Lyft ride change your price depending on if it’s raining or if it’s three in the morning. Companies have been adjusting their prices dynamically for years based on what they know about you. What you may not have known is that some companies are starting to do exactly the same thing with the salary or bonuses they pay you. The phenomenon already has a name: “surveillance salary.” And it is no longer limited to delivery workers or drivers of the so-called gig economyis also beginning to be implemented in human resources systems to condition salary increases, access to incentives, and even the minimum base salary for which you would be willing to work according to your economic needs at that moment. a report of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth warns that it is spreading to such everyday sectors as healthcare, customer service, logistics and retail trade. How the algorithm that sets your salary works. The mechanism is simpler than it seems. Companies use artificial intelligence tools that collect real-time data from public or social media information about each worker: how often they accept shifts, how quickly they respond to offers, what they were paid in previous jobs, or whether they have outstanding loans and credit card debt. With all this, the system calculates what the minimum wage is that that person would accept for work and offers you exactly that. According to Nina DiSalvo, policy director for the labor group Towards Justice“some systems use signals associated with financial vulnerability, such as data on whether a potential employee has applied for a quick loan or has a high credit card balance, to infer the minimum salary a candidate might accept.” The result is that two people doing exactly the same job can charge very different amountswithout either of them knowing or being able to claim anything about it. A model that penalizes those who need to work most. The problem is that the “surveillance salary” does not only affect those seeking employment. Just like reveals the report ‘Prohibition of surveillance prices and wages’ prepared by different US labor organizations, once hired, the worker continues to be monitored, so the system adjusts his remuneration depending on how he reacts to the company’s requests: if he accepts shifts urgently, if he works more hours than usual or if his personal finances deteriorate. The algorithm interprets this as a sign that the employee needs the job, and can take advantage of it to offer less money. How much the more vulnerable the worker isthe more exposed it is. The study of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth analyzed 500 AI companies dedicated to labor management and identified 20 vendors whose products are at high risk of generating algorithmic pay discrimination. 16 of those 20 vendors integrated their products directly with payroll or workforce management platforms, giving them continuous access to each employee’s most sensitive data. Opacity as part of the design. One of the most worrying features of this model is that the worker does not know what data is being used against him or what variants are used to calculate his salary, but they are no longer neither the experience nor the work capacity or productivity. The algorithms that determine remuneration are, for the most part, black boxes: neither the employees themselves nor the unions nor the regulators have access to their internal logic. Joe Hudicka, author of the book ‘The revolution of AI ecosystemsdescribes it this way in statements collected by MarketWatch: “We know the concept of the glass ceiling. But at least in that concept we have some visibility through it. This salary surveillance ceiling is made of iron.” A study from Cornell University’s Worker Institute detected that 42% of digital platform workers in New York declared that they had been paid less than what was agreed, without clear mechanisms to complain, precisely because the control of their activity goes through algorithms that they cannot audit. Researcher Veena Dubal, from the University of California, has been documenting for years how these platforms adjust downward remuneration on an individualized basis. For example, stopping assigning races to a driver who is about to exceed his productivity goal. The legal response that is beginning to take shape. Faced with this situation, legislators are beginning to move to put a stop to this practice. In the US, the state of Colorado is processing the bill HB26-1210one of the first initiatives in the US that seeks to specifically regulate the use of algorithmic tools in salary setting based on personal data surveillance. In Spain, the Rider Law, aimed at regulating labor relations between delivery platforms and self-employed delivery drivers, also included a modification to article 64.4 of the Workers’ Statute with the obligation to provide access to the algorithm that managed working hours and the assignment of orders to avoid this practice. The new European regulations for pay transparency are also oriented in this direction, preventing two people who do the same job from having very different salaries. In Xataka | Against all odds, AI is reactivating employment. Don’t get excited, if you are young it is increasingly difficult to get hired Image | Unsplash (Towfiqu barbhuiya)

It is the closest thing to Mario Kart that we are going to see

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We are also going to see the eccentricities that Saudi Arabia has accustomed us to in its new Formula 1 circuit, carrying as its flag its architecture of the impossible. a few days ago came to light The latest images of the Qiddiya Speed ​​Park, showing that the construction of its most spectacular curve (an elevated straight that exceeds 70 meters in height) has already begun. The project aims to host its first F1 race in 2028. New F1 circuit. On the outskirts of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, it is taking shape one of the most ambitious circuits never designed. The Qiddiya Speed ​​Park is part of Qiddiya, a new city that is rising in the middle of the desert and is still under construction. The Saudi government finances it as part of its Vision 2030. The latest photographs already show the support structures of its first curve, named The Blade. What’s special about it. This corner will be the first in motorsport history to be built on an elevated platform. According to the project specifications, will reach more than 70 meters high (the equivalent of a 20-story building) and is designed with an inclination of 10 degrees. A concert hall will be located below it. The total gradient that the drivers will face along the route will be about 108 meters, something unprecedented in the F1 calendar. Some they are already comparing the circuit with the Mario Kart Rainbow Trail and everything (no wonder). Who is behind the design? The circuit has been designed by Hermann Tilke, the 71-year-old German civil engineer who designs most of the championship’s modern layouts: Jeddah, Las Vegas, Singapore, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Austin and Shanghai, among others. In this project he also had the collaboration of former F1 driver Alexander Wurz. The result will be a 21-turn circuit that promises to surpass the current Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps as the longest on the Formula 1 calendar. The project. The circuit’s construction budget is around $480 million. The works began in 2024 and the initial objective is for the track to be completed in 2027 to debut in the championship in 2028, although some sources they point that the premiere could be delayed until 2029. It would not be the first time, since the circuit has already accumulated several delays compared to its original date (it was initially set in 2024). Meanwhile, the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix will continue to be held at the Jeddah Street Circuit. What’s around the circuit. Qiddiya is not just a circuit. The complex will include theme parksa soccer stadium that will host 2034 World Cup matches and a Six Flags theme park. A Mercedes “World of Performance” will also be built near the Speed ​​Park. It is, in short, part of Saudi Arabia’s commitment to turning this new city into an international tourism and entertainment hub. “That’s what Saudi Arabia does, so all due respect to them coming up with such crazy things and trying to make it as cool as it looks. There are a lot of places that aren’t nearly as lively or fun. If you want to attract people to the sport, you don’t want it to be just a circuit in the middle of nowhere that no one goes to,” declared Lando Norris, current F1 world champion, told Express. What’s missing for it to be official. Before Qiddiya Speed ​​Park can host an F1 race, the circuit will need to be inspected and homologated by the FIA. If it also aspires to host the MotoGP, it will also need the approval of the FIM. There is still some time left and the actual schedule of the project will depend largely on how the works progress in the next two years, so it seems that we will have to sit and wait. Images | ahmed baokbah In Xataka | Madrid has committed to having an F1 circuit in September: at the moment it has an open field and four streets of a PAU

The AI ​​industry fell in love with OpenAI, but doesn’t trust its CEO one bit

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At OpenAI they see a future in which the work week should have four days. Not only that: every citizen should receive a share of the economic growth generated by AI. These are some of the proposals that the company has published yesterday with the aim of preparing us for the “age of intelligence.” And just the day they published that proposal full of good and reassuring intentions, a blow arrived for the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman. An investigation published in The New Yorker once again called into question his way of acting, highly criticized by experts and engineers who worked with him. The conclusion of all of them: better not trust Sam Altman. The arrival of the age of intelligence. What they call the “age of intelligence” will undoubtedly have a negative impact in some areas, but OpenAI proposes with their document to make changes that mitigate these problems. Among the most striking measures is the creation of a “public wealth fund” that will distribute dividends from AI directly among citizens, regardless of their employment status. Let the machines work (and pay us for it). They also suggest taxes on automated labor to finance social security, and also pilot projects of four-day work weeks without salary reduction. The proposal is striking and seeks, of course, to reassure citizens in the face of threats such as job loss that can be caused by the mass adoption of AI. The problem is that this proposal comes at a delicate moment for an OpenAI in the midst of a reputational crisis. Smokescreen? This optimistic proposal contrasts with the report published in The New Yorker and in which the authors interviewed more than 100 people “with first-hand knowledge of how Altman behaves in business.” And among them, rivals like Ilya Sutskever or above all Dario Amodei who founded their own startups. Both harshly criticized Altman. Sutskever accumulated internal documents and messages showing deception and manipulation. Amodei stated that the obstacle to AI security is Altman himself, who leaves that area in the background compared to the company’s ambition for personal power and excessive growth. For his former partners, Altman is not a visionary, but an actor with a calculated pose. Says one thing, does another. The scandal of dismissal and later return of Altman was due precisely to that attitude in which the council accused him of having “not been consistently frank in his communications.” It’s the same thing we’ve read on other occasions: Altman has a dual personality. In him, the pathological desire to be liked and accepted is mixed with a total lack of concern for the long-term consequences of his misdeeds. He tells his interlocutors what they want to hear, and then does what he really wanted from the beginning. It is something that, for example, Karen Hao narrates over and over again. in his book ‘Empire of AI’in which, it must be said, it erred in calculating the water consumption of data centers mentioned in its studies. In the report they mention how the well-known programmer Aaron Swartz met him before die in 2013 and commented about him even then that “he is a sociopath.” Public image is everything. The publication of the OpenAI document occurs at a particularly critical time for the company, which is involved in a reputational and strategic crisis. Anthropic has managed to become the darling of the AI ​​industry —without being much less perfect— and OpenAI has realized that it was experimenting with too many AI applications that were not profitable and now wants to refocus on what makes it profitable. The good intentions shown in the document try to get public opinion on their side just when the company plans its IPO. Learning from the past. Altman’s critics reveal that he is an expert at designing control mechanisms that go up in smoke. Support AI regulations (at least those that favor you) and publicly promotes ethics committees and alignment and security of the AI ​​that in reality later knocks down internally, at least according to those who work with it. It happened when he promised to allocate 20% of the computing capacity to the super-alignment team, and then actually gave up only between 1 and 2% of that capacity. Jan Leike, who was named co-leader of that team along with Sutskever, resigned in May 2024 indicating that “safety culture and processes have been relegated to the background compared to flashy products,” he explained in a thread in X. He ended up signing for Anthropic. Interested reviews. Although Altman’s career at the head of OpenAI –with what happened to the Pentagon as a recent example—reinforces the comments of those who criticize him, it must be remembered that competition in this industry is currently fierce. Many of those who participate in the report are direct rivals and therefore their criticism, veiled or not, is partly self-serving because it harms their competitor. In Xataka | There is a new generation of AI models at the doors and Anthropic has to sell them: “The biggest and smartest”

Samsung is tired of being second in the chip race. Now they are preparing to dethrone the titan of Taiwan

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When we talk about artificial intelligence, there are several proper names that star in the conversation. NVIDIA has become the foundation and cement of AI thanks both to their products as, above all, your money. But it’s impossible to leave Samsung out of the equation. Your HBM4 memories They are the ones that will allow NVIDIA and AMD manufacture their platforms new generation, but South Koreans do not want to stop there. They seek to be the largest advanced factory in the world and have launched a plan to wipe TSMC where it hurts the most. In the expansion throughout the United States. An x8 thanks to AI. 2025 was a transition year for Samsung. While its great rival in the memoir segment –SK Hynix– dominated the HBM chip marketSamsung is preparing to make the leap with HBM4 chips. This is the new generation of high-bandwidth memory designed to power the new AI platforms from both NVIDIA and Samsung. The effort paid off by overtaking SK and becoming the supplier of the two giants, and it is something that is already materializing. At least in estimates profit, of course. Now the company forecast profits of about 38 billion dollars for the first quarter of the year, something that destroys the profits of the same period last year, being eight times more. Texas. The company does not stop manufacturing the new HBM4 memory, but even so it cannot satisfy the enormous demand of its customers and there are already those who expect that the prices of these chips will increase by more than 50%. To meet demand, Samsung is moving, and The United States is key in its ambitious expansion. The South Korean company seeks to invest 37,000 million dollars in US soil, and 17,000 million of them they will stop to the Taylor, Texas plant. According to Korea Heraldthe company is finalizing hiring for this semiconductor plant where they hope to produce cutting-edge 2-nanometer chips. It is estimated that 1,500 people will be directly employed and the idea is to produce transistors with gate-all-around architecture. TSMC in the spotlight. Recent reports indicate that Samsung has already begun producing test units of chips in that lithography with the aim of beginning mass production by 2027. But this expansion is not only occurring in the United States. At the Pyeongtaek Campus, Samsung’s operations center, building a new factory for which Samsung has just ordered 20 EUV lithography machines valued at almost $8 billion. As it could not be otherwise, they are from ASML and it is estimated that the plant will have 70 units in total to support the production of HBM4 memory chips. And these two movements have one goal in mind: to dethrone the queen of semiconductors. Currently, TSMC takes the lead with NVIDIA and Apple as its best clientsbut Samsung is another industry giant that may not take the global throne, but is aiming for something more concrete: to be the one who leads the way in the United States. Both Samsung and TSMC are in full expansion throughout the United States, but if Samsung manages to start mass manufacturing of 2nm chips by 2027, it would overtake TSMC -focused on 2/3nm chips– in that development of advanced chips in the United States. It is still a vital race, since Tesla, Apple, NVIDIA or AMD are trying to get chips manufactured in the US and thus meet the demands of Donald Trump’s government. Trojan horse. In the end, it’s a move that Samsung can only win from. On the one hand, expand its HBM4 chip capacity to power AI platforms that do not seem to stop increasing in the short term. On the other hand, continuing to settle on American soil where it maintains a battle with the Taiwanese giant. But, also, Samsung is one of the founding members of the EPIC program of Applied Materials together with SK Hynix. They are positioning themselves to be the big player in semiconductors both as a factory and when it comes to designing machines and processes that allow for shorter development times for cutting-edge chips. and all this foreign companies are doing it on US soil when what the current government wanted was for were American companies those who will take the lead. In fact, Samsung’s plans are so ambitious that they are already looking for master 1nm chip production by 2030. In Xataka | ASML has discovered a way to further improve its SVU machines. This is terrible news for China and the US.

DeepSeek promised them happiness as the great Chinese AI. I didn’t count on a small detail: Kimi

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Just a year ago, DeepSeek was one of the biggest scares that Silicon Valley had received dwarves. A Chinese model trained with a fraction of OpenAI’s budget equal to GPT-4 in benchmarks. Upon its arrival the message seemed clear: Western dominance of AI had its days numbered. Today, the story stands, but not thanks to DeepSeek. The DeepSeek case. DeepSeek carries months late for its V4 and, to date, has already lost three of the authors of R1, the model that catapulted them to success. The monthly downloads fell 72% in the second quarter of the year, seeing how Doubao (ByteDanec) snatched the lead. With missed dates, usage errors due to cyber attacksand the difficulty of split from NVIDIA To bet almost entirely on Huawei’s Ascend chips, Chinese alternatives like Kimi have been gaining ground. Meanwhile, on the other side of China. Moonshot AI was not born surrounded by noise like DeepSeek. It was founded in March 2023 by three former colleagues from Tsinghua University: Yang Zhilin—PhD from Carnegie Mellon, former Google Brain and Meta AI—, along with Zhou Xinyu and Wu Yuxin. There were no visible or media faces behind it, only product. That product is Kimi, and in early January 2026 the company launched it in its K2.5 version. In code and video benchmarks managed to surpass GPT-5 and Gemini Pro 3with the key to Chinese AI: its API costs between 4 and 17 times less than OpenAI’s. Those responsible for Moonshot explained how Kimi was almost at Claude’s level in software development testing, encouraging the race for open models. The money arrived. The commercial results are what really attract attention. In less than 20 days Following the launch of K2.5, Kimi’s cumulative revenue exceeded everything billed during 2025. API’s international revenue increased fourfold since November of the previous year. The consequence in valuation has been dizzying: 4.3 billion dollars in December 2025, 10 billion in February 2026, 18 billion in March. Three months, valuation multiplied by four. Kimi has thus become the fastest decacorn in Chinese business history. The Chinese maelstrom. DeepSeek was born a year ago as the great revolution that questioned the closed model of Silicon Valley. It only took a few months for Moonshot to steal the limelight and manage to be on par with – or even above – giants like Google and OpenAI in the most used models in the world. In favor of DeepSeek, it should be noted that its objective is different: it does not follow the typical startup pattern with pressure for immediate monetization and it is a gigantic AI laboratory that can afford not to win in the short term. In Xataka | DeepSeek API: what it is, what it is for, prices and how you can get one to use in your projects

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