Mobile Tech & Gadgets

In the middle of the RAM crisis, your cheapest computer was a bargain too good to last

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If there is a product in Apple’s portfolio that was a real candy, it was the Mac Mini. This has been a reality for years, but in these times that are even more so: the Mac Mini M4 It came to the market with the power of the M4 chip, 16 GB of base RAM, a 256 GB SSD (the most stingy, Apple style) and a RRP of 719 euros, which in practice was much less. I bought it myself for less than 600 euros. Well, that bargain has come to an end: in the context of current shortages, the 256GB Mac Mini is no longer an option. We had already seen it with its models with more RAMbut this decision is dramatic for the general public. Goodbye to the 256 GB Mac Mini. Apple has made a decision that directly affects the pockets of those who want to buy the Mac mini in its most basic version. Since yesterday, May 1, 2026, Cupertino has removed that entry model from its catalog, as Joe Rossignol advances for MacRumors. It is not that it appears out of stock, it is that it has directly disappeared, as can be seen on the Spanish website. Of course, there is still stock and offers of the old base model in stores like amazon, at Media Markt either in El Corte Inglés. The entry price of the Apple desktop computer starts at 969 euros and corresponds to the version with M4 chip, 16 GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. In the United States the jump has been from 599 dollars to 799 dollars, in Spain it has gone from 719 euros to 969 euros. The versions with the M4 Pro processor remain as they are. This decision is framed within a structural RAM supply crisis and whose main culprit is the voracity of the AI ​​infrastructure. Prices and delivery for the Mac Mini. Apple Why is it important. Raising the entry price of one of its star products by almost 35% (in the United States it is 33) more is an aggressive move that has implications for both the individual consumer and the technology market in general. It is true that technically speaking Apple has not raised its prices, it has simply eliminated the lower step, leaving orphans those people who considered that base version sufficient, which are quite a few: it is my main computer for mixed tasks, basic editing, office automation and the Internet and the performance is more than good. In short: for many users, students or professionals, with tight budgets, this increase of more than 200 euros is a real chore. The problem is not just the price: the impact is worsened by delivery times. I have tried different Apple Stores and shipping is delayed until the end of May or beginning of June. Context. Tim Cook gave an explanation during the conference results for April 30, 2026 recognizing that the supply of Mac mini and Mac Studio is severely restricted and that normalization could take months. The reason given by the still CEO of Apple is that both devices have become popular platforms for artificial intelligence and agentic tools, which has triggered demand above forecasts. And he anticipated something: Apple will face significantly higher memory costs in the current quarter, according to MacRumors. This places the Mac Mini in a paradox: that the configuration of this compact desktop computer makes it ideal for working with AI locally and that precisely this reality is what has exhausted the stock, forcing Apple to cut its catalog. The AMR crisis continues to claim victims. In March of this year Apple already removed the 512 GB RAM option from the Mac Studio and in April several models of the Mac mini and Mac Studio they directly stopped being able to order in the Apple Store in the United States, with delays of up to five months for versions with more RAM. The memory chip supply crisis is not something exclusive to Apple, but a trend that crosses the entire sector and caused by the demand of the hyperscalers. Apple needs to ensure that every machine sold is capable of fluidly running its new digital agents and AI tools, making lower memory and storage configurations no longer viable or cost-effective under the company’s current standards. The particular thing about Apple’s decision is the timing: just when it launches its best chips for local AI processing, the global RAM market is strained to unsuspected limits precisely because of that fever. The result is paid by the final consumer. In Xataka | Not even Apple is free from the new reality of the technology industry: RAM goes first for hyperscalers In Xataka | The RAM crisis was supposed to make computers and smartphones very expensive. Apple has another opinion Cover | Apple and Alberto García

not one, not two, but six centuries-old shipwrecks

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In 1628, the Swedish warship Vasa It sank on its maiden voyage after just a few minutes of sailing and remained underwater for more than three centuries, until it was rescued in the 20th century in a surprising state of conservation. The discovery made it clear that, under certain conditions, the seabed can act as a time capsule capable of preserving entire fragments of the past for generations. An unexpected meeting under a construction site. What began as an infrastructure project off the coast of Sweden has ended up revealing a scene hard to imagine: In the year 2025 and under the layout of a railway tunnel in Varberg, workers did not come across isolated remains, but rather an accumulation of vessels buried for centuries. The surprise was not finding a shipwreck, something relatively common in old port areas, but discovering even six different structuressuperimposed in time, which turn the place into a kind of maritime archive hidden under the current city. Six ships, several centuries of history. The researchers counted after the fortuitous discovery that the remains located span from the Middle Ages until the 17th centuryreflecting different stages of navigation and trade in northern Europe. Four of the vessels belong to the medieval period, one is located in the midst of the Swedish maritime expansion of the 17th century and another has not been able to be dated precisely, which adds even more unknowns to the set. In fact, this temporal range allows us to reconstruct how the routes evolved trade, the types of ships and the strategic importance of the area, which was once a coastline and port hub. Naval technology buried in the mud. Among the finds, one of the best preserved ships stands out, built in the 1530s with local oak wood and following the overlapping plank technique typical of northern Europe. Not only that. Other remains show variations in constructionsuch as flat-bottomed boats used in medieval trade or a boat with more advanced assembly techniques, linked to Dutch traditions. According to the researchersthis contrast allows us to observe, almost as in a frozen sequence, the transition between different ways of building and operating at sea. Fire trails, commerce and everyday use. But there is much more. The work of archaeologists has confirmed some details that add a component even more intriguinglike the fire marks detected in parts of one of the hulls, which suggest that the boat may have been damaged or even burned before sinking. Other remains, in this case less complete, point to ships that operated regularly in the Baltic, transporting goods between nearby cities. Even the oldest vessels, with their flat design, offer clues to the medieval commercial dynamics and the way they adapted to shallow waters. When the past emerges with each work. The study He also recalled that the discovery is not an isolated case, but part of a trend increasingly frequent in our times: as large urban projects in coastal areas advance, vestiges appear of old ports that today form part of the urban interior. In this way, what was once a sea or dock is now covered by land and buildings, preserving structures under layers of sediment that have survived for centuries. If you will also and in that sense, each excavation that is carried out not only transforms the present, but also aims to reopen complete fragments of the past, demonstrating that, in certain places, history has not gone away, it is simply waiting to be unearthed. Image | Arkeologerna In Xataka | “Codex H” was one of the last missing links of the New Testament: now we have found 42 new pages In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system

the eventful journey of the rover that seeks to make history in 2028

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Rosalind Franklin made one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century. Her colleagues took ownership of her work and received the Nobel Prize and she didn’t even live to see it. When the European Space Agency (ESA) decided to name the ExoMars mission rover with its name, it was not thought that the robot could also drag down the bad luck of his namesake. Unfortunately, it has been dragging on for years with incidents that have delayed its launch. Of course, it seems that at least the Martian Rosalind has finally had a stroke of luck. Everything is ready again for its launch in 2028. There is still time, but there is a lot to do. NASA enters the scene. This April NASA has announced the signing of the Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation (ROSA) project, with which it is committed to supporting ESA during the ExoMars mission. Specifically, the US space agency will provide hardware and services for the mission, including launch service, brake motors for the rover’s landing platform and radioisotope heating units for the robot’s internal systems. The launch system chosen will be through a SpaceX Falcon Heavy, which will depart from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. An unprecedented mission. The ExoMars mission It is made up of two pieces. On the one hand, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), which yes it could be launched successfully and has been in Martian orbit since 2016. On the other hand, the Rosalind Franklin rover; which, if all goes well, will be launched at the end of 2028. The orbiter is responsible for studying the Martian atmosphere, while the rover will land on the red planet to search for signs of present or past life under its surface. It will be the first rover with the ability to drill into the ground. Something similar was done with NASA’s Insight missionbut in this case the instrument used was a lander. It couldn’t move around like rovers, so it couldn’t study the planet as thoroughly as Rosalind Franklin will. Many incidents, but there is hope again. The launch of Rosalind Franklin has gone through many incidents. First, there were technical problems and the COVID-19 pandemic that forced the mission to be postponed to 2022. Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, was going to be in charge of the launch service. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, all commercial relations between ESA and Roscosmos were severed, so the mission had to be postponed. There was no longer any rocket available to travel to Mars and, in addition, some instruments of Russian origin had to be replaced. It has been many years of waiting, but it finally seems that the agreement with NASA has opened the way to continue with the preparations. Donald Trump’s Government was about to ruin the agreementbut finally the support of Congress was stronger. There is much left to do. Before its launch was postponed, the rover underwent multiple tests to verify that it can withstand Martian conditions. For example, In 2018 it was tested in the Tabernas desert, in Almería. This place was chosen among several terrestrial Martian analogues, among other reasons because it contains a mineral called jarosite that has also been found on Mars. Later in 2020, The rover was tested in a laboratory in Toulousein which Martian environmental conditions were emulated. If it worked well then, it should do so now as well. However, the rover may have to undergo new tests to demonstrate that it is still ready to undertake this journey for which it has waited so long. Surely in these two years Rosalind Franklin finally gives us many things to tell. Image | THAT In Xataka | We have been measuring earthquakes on Mars for years to realize something: its core is not like ours

In the US they throw Molotov cocktails at their creators, in China children dance with robots

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On April 10, A man threw a Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s mansion, CEO of OpenAI. In his pocket he carried an anti-AI manifesto and the names of other tech leaders. Meanwhile, in China, humanoid robots danced with children and received applause from the public at the Spring Festival Gala. Public opinion of AI. When we talk about the AI ​​race between the US and China we usually focus on technology; who has the best modelsthe goings-on with the chips…There is another angle from which to look at this competition, and that is public opinion: how citizens are valuing these innovations. And in this, China is winning. Pessimism vs optimism. In a complete Stanford University report published by Rest of Worlda section is dedicated to public opinion on AI and the data are very different between both countries. To the question “Products and services that use AI excite me,” only 38% of Americans answered yes, while in China they got 84% positive responses. It is not a small difference, we are talking about China getting the highest score and the United States is almost at the bottom of the list Other countries also showing enthusiasm towards AI are Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, all in Asia. In the case of Spain, with 45% we are a little below the global sentiment, which is 53% globally. Trust in regulators. It was another of the points of the report and here the United States received the worst score. Only 31% of respondents trust that the US government regulates AI correctly. Not surprising, since the Trump administration’s strategy to win the AI ​​race It is precisely deregulated. The survey does not collect this data about China, but it does indicate that other Asian countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have high trust in their regulators. Rejection of AI is growing. The Molotov cocktail thrown at Sam Altman’s house is not the only violent act sparked by growing anti-AI sentiment. A few days earlier, an Indianapolis councilman who voted in favor of building a data center woke up in the middle of the night to hearing gunshots. Thirteen shots were found at his door and a message that said “no data centers.” We have also talked about cases of attacks on robotaxis in San Franciscowith passengers inside. The consequences. The study links optimism and confidence with faster adoption of AI. In the United States the adoption rate is 28% while in Singapore it reaches 61%, more than double, and it also has the highest number of AI researchers per capita. Meanwhile, the migration of talent to the United States has plummeted since 2017 and it is at a minimum. Furthermore, opposition to the construction of data centers, motivated by pollution and energy consumption that they produce, is delaying many projects. Image | Xataka In Xataka | There is a new migratory movement among the technological elite: the Chinese talent that succeeded in the US is returning home

chronicle of a collapse announced and recorded almost live by NASA

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Mexico City faces one of the most complex geological challenges that exist and it is not earthquakes: it is subsidence accelerated by human activity. What’s that? The slow and progressive sinking of the soil. One of the causes is the extraction of too much water from the subsoil because that water partly holds the ground from within. If there is no water, the sediments are compacted by gravity and as a result, the surface sinks. Mexico City has been sinking for more than a century for this reason and the recent NISAR satellite mission, a collaboration between NASA and its Indian counterpart ISRO, has launched unprecedented surveillance that is already bearing fruit: the most detailed and recent cartography of this phenomenon in the Mexican capital to monitor its sinking almost in real time. It is more than a map: it is a survival tool for a city inhabited by more than 20 million people. Mexico City sinks. The first time subsidence was reported in Mexico was in 1925. The data from 1898 to 2005 show a constant subsidence throughout the period, with a maximum rate of 40 centimeters per year between 1998 and 2002. It is neither new nor something small and, furthermore, it is a cumulative and mostly irreversible process. So Mexico City is deforming. Sentinel-1 data they showed that the soil surface sinks at a rate of 35 cm per year within the city, while the peripheral areas suffer a slight rise of about two centimeters per year as an elastic response to this loss of water mass. The new NISAR data barely covers three months (from October 2025 to January 2026) and is as easy to read as it is alarming: the dark blue tone marks those areas that sink more than 2 centimeters per month due to subsidence. Map of the subsidence of Mexico City. POT Why is it important. The problem is one of public safety and economics. The Economist echoes from a Water Engineering and Management study that quantifies the structural damage derived from subsidence: about 67,926 million pesos per year (about 3,312 million euros) in pipes, breakdowns, building fractures, among others. It might seem that the fact of sinking itself is the worst, but what is truly destructive is the difference in speed between those areas that go down faster than others, which causes progressive damage to infrastructure while generating structural tensions. criticisms for infrastructure design. In addition to material damage, subsidence alters the seismic response of the soil, increases the risk of serious flooding by modifying the natural drainage of the basin and favors the migration of salts and contaminants into aquifers, which affects water quality. In short, it raises alarm bells about a future water crisis. Context. The origin of the problem is a combination of natural geological factors and historical urban planning decisions. Mexico City was built on the ancient bed of Lake Texcoco, drained by the Spanish conquistadors. When the lake was drained, the city was settled on its old bed, formed by lacustrine clays of volcanic and organic origin. Under natural conditions these clays supported the lake ecosystem without collapsing. However, the development of the city and water extraction has caused the balance to be broken: the silt is compacted and causes the soil to contract and sink. The urban growth of Mexico City prevents rain from recharging the aquifers because more and more soil is covered by impermeable surfaces such as asphalt. It is a vicious circle: there is less natural recharge of the aquifer, which forces more water to be pumped, compaction accelerates and aggravates the subsidence, damaging infrastructure. There is no turning back. When the effort of supporting the city on its shoulders exceeds the pre-consolidation stress (the resistance limit of the clay), the mineral sheets collapse and rearrange themselves definitively. It’s a path of no return: Even if water were stopped being extracted tomorrow, a good part of the accumulated sinking cannot be reversed. The city has literally lost meters of height that it will never recover. What can be controlled is the damage, which involves a change in water management where reducing dependence on aquifers is essential. Of course, it implies looking for other water resources such as transfers or recycling water, in addition to facilitating the penetration of water into the subsoil. These measures will not reverse the damage caused, but at least they would slow down the sinking and offer an alternative access to water for a megacity. The technology behind the map. The satellite NISAR It is the first to carry two synthetic aperture radar instruments at different wavelengths and is capable of monitoring the Earth’s land and ice surfaces twice every 12 days thanks to a huge 12-meter diameter antenna reflector. The technique used is called SAR interferometry (InSAR) and consists of comparing two radar images taken at different times: by measuring the phase changes of the signal, ground displacements of just millimeters can be detected. The great advantage of NISAR over its predecessors is its L band (wavelength of about 24 centimeters), which allows it to work even in terrain with dense vegetation or high humidity where other radars such as the Sentinel-1 lost quality. This tool turns NISAR into a global early warning system for cities facing similar risks. In Xataka | Mexico touches the sky with a new and elegant skyscraper of 484 meters and 99 floors: it will be the tallest in all of Latin America In Xataka | Cancun has a huge bottleneck in its tourist area: Mexico is going to solve it with a megabridge Cover | POT and Alexis Tostado

After gasoline, the war in Iran is about to skyrocket the price of something just as painful: your Zara clothes

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During the oil crisis In 1973, several industries that seemed completely unrelated to energy, such as plastics or fertilizers, suddenly discovered that Your costs could skyrocket in a matter of weeks for decisions made thousands of miles away, altering prices and supply chains in sectors where no one looked at the barrel of crude oil. From oil to the closet. I counted the weekend Reuters that the rise in energy prices after the war in Iran is beginning to filter down a lot beyond gasoline or transportation, reaching a less obvious field: the clothes that reach the stores. The link is direct, because a good part of the textile industry depends on petroleum derivatives, and any tension in that market is quickly transmitted to the materials that support global garment production. The key piece. Polyester dominates the global textile industry with a massive presence in almost all types of clothing, from sportswear to everyday dresses. The problem is that its manufacture depends of compounds such as PTA and MEGwhose cost has skyrocketedabout 30% due to the rise in crude oil, the increase in from Asian suppliers and disruptions in the Middle East. This pressure turns the polyester into the entry point of the energy crisis in fashion, transferring the impact from the energy markets to the fabric of the industry itself. The chain that begins to break. Reuters remembered that the blow is being felt with special intensity in India and Bangladeshtwo pillars of global clothing production. Factories that were previously operating at full capacity have drastically reduced their activity, with looms stopped, production cut by less than half and difficulties in fulfilling international orders. Added to this is the labor shortage in some textile centers, caused by basic energy problems such as the lack of gas, which adds another layer of tension to a system already on the limit. Gain time without escape. Big names emerge here, where companies like Inditex or H&M They are not yet immediately transferring the impact to the consumer thanks to advance purchases and inventory planning, which has allowed them to mitigate and cushion the blow in the short term. Even so, suppliers already they are announcing increases of prices and the absorption margin has a very clear limit. Plus: The use of recycled polyester offers some relief, although its weight remains low within the overall total, limiting its ability to offset current pressure. Costs rise, demand trembles. Thus, the price increase starts to move to threads, dyes, transportation and essential components, generating a chain effect that can end up affecting the volume of orders. For their part, manufacturers warn that, if the situation continues, production will fall and consumers will reduce purchases due to higher prices. The phenomenon, known as demand destructionintroduces an added risk: a simultaneous drop in supply and consumption that affects the entire industry. It’s not just the Zara shirt, but also the shoes. Yes, because the impact of oil aims to spread as well to the footwear sectorwhere derived materials such as foams, adhesives or synthetic soles also depend on petrochemical products. In other words, this means that the pressure on costs will not be limited to t-shirts or pants, but will reach a wide range of products, complicating the price planning and market stability. The crisis where no one was looking. In short, what began as a rise in energy prices It is becoming a structural problem for the fashion industry. In essence, the dependence on oil for key materials turns any conflict into a direct variable. about the final price of the garments. And as pressure builds up in the supply chain, the impact is no longer invisible or minimal, but is slowly but inexorably approaching. consumer pocketsignaling a profound change in how geopolitics can end up being reflected in something as everyday as the shirt that until now you bought for 20 euros. Image | POT, Leitonmahillo In Xataka | If the war resumes again, the US runs a risk unprecedented in the history of war: that the only one with missiles will be Iran. In Xataka | If the question is why the US attacked an Iranian ship with a weapon unprecedented in 40 years, we already know the answer: a “gift from China”

Chile has one of the most valuable skies on Earth. Renewables are putting it on the ropes

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Chile has a diamond of 105,000 km². The Atacama Desert is one of the most important in the world due to its extreme aridity. That is why it is key to study the adaptability of fauna and flora to very harsh conditions of drought and salinity, but it is also a gem for space observation and renewable energies. But there are mixtures that do not work, and Atacama is the example of how one of the best natural laboratories for the energy transition and one of the best places to look at the universe They don’t combine well. Spoiler: the astronomers have won. For now. The Atacama battery. It is not the first time that two disciplines collide in the Atacama Desert. Due to its conditions, this desert has become in the country’s renewable battery. Not only solar energy projects are triumphing, but also wind turbine parks. And as important as this: one of its salt flats hides one of the most important lithium reserves in the world. This is vital to build batteries for the energy transition of cars, for example, but the price is being too high: we are destroying biodiversity. In parallel to this battle, another has been fought: that of a huge renewable energy project to create green hydrogen that came into conflict with one of the most important observatories in the world: the Paranal Observatory of the European Astral Observatory. The threat of INNA. The American AES Corporation, together with the Chilean subsidiary AES Andes, was preparing the construction of a photovoltaic park of more than 3,000 hectares, wind turbines and refining facilities to produce green hydrogen and ammonia. He green hydrogen It is one of the pending energy accounts and it is positive, but there was a problem: it would be only 10 kilometers from the observatory. Astronomers shouted in the sky pointing that the microvibrations of the installation, the dust and, above all, the light pollution would disturb the daily work in facilities that are located in a privileged location, precisely because they are in the middle of nowhere. This facility is of global importance because it houses the Very Large Telescope (one of the most powerful in the world) and will have both the Extremely Large Telescope such as the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory. The thing about telescope names is one thing. Scientists working at the observatory They agreed to sign an open letter in which they pointed out that the construction of the facilities would seriously endanger the missions that were carried out there, describing the program as “an imminent threat” to humanity’s ability to investigate the cosmos. Victory. After months of fighting, the astronomers won. It was at the beginning of this year when AES Andes advertisement that he would abandon the project, noting that he would focus on other facilities, but mentioning that INNA was “fully compatible with the activities of the region.” It was no longer a fight just for the Paranal Observatory due because there are about 30 astronomical sites in the area, many of them internationaland its importance is what it is because, apart from zero light pollution, it is estimated that there are more than 300 nights each year without rain or clouds that interfere with scientific work. Yes, but. The problem is that one thing is the interests of astronomers and researchers of the universe and another is the priority of energy companies… and even of the country itself. Researchers point out that there is increasing pressure to convert the Atacama Desert into that aforementioned ‘stack’ of Chile, and INNA has not been the only threat that the observatories have experienced. In 1955, a major solar station operated by the Smithsonian Institution of the United States was forced to close due to mining expansion in the area. Unda-Sanzana, director of the Astronomy Center at the University of Antofagasta, points out that “we have had 70 years to learn from history and avoid repeating those same mistakes,” lamenting how close they have come to reliving the situation. And the problem is that things they haven’t changed too much. This victory has been suffered, but astronomers point out that Chilean sky preservation laws remain lax and outdated, so this should be remedied instead of fighting each battle individually. Image | G. Hüdepohl/ESO In Xataka | The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on the planet. And right there a bunch of “crazies” are trying to get water out of the fog.

This is an ordinary Thursday in Shenzhen

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It’s hard to believe that just four decades ago Shenzhen was a fishing villageespecially when you look at its enormous avenues riding in an autonomous taxi. It’s even more incredible when you hear the drone of the drone coming to deliver the bubble tea you just ordered. This, which may sound like a futuristic dystopia, is an ordinary Thursday in the technological capital of China. I was in China for the launch of OPPO Find X9 Ultra and my first stop was Shenzhen. A few months ago I wrote an article about what the Chinese government calls the “low-altitude economy”which encompasses different commercial uses of drones in cities, one of them is food delivery. I knew that this service existed in Shenzhen, so the first thing I did upon arriving was to find out how I could place an order. To top off this technological afternoon, I took the opportunity to try an autonomous taxi. This was my experience. An autonomous taxi ride through Shenzhen Drone delivery is available in various parts of the city in a type of kiosk or ‘locker’, so the first thing I had to do was go to one of these points. And what better than to do it in an autonomous taxi. Robotaxis operating in the city of Shenzhen They are from the company Pony.ai and they offer level 4 autonomous driving, that is, they work completely without a driver. The first obstacle I encountered was that I needed a Chinese phone number To be able to request it, thank goodness a person from the travel agency had the PonyPilot+ app and offered to help me. The robotaxi took just five minutes to arrive and had a 30-minute journey ahead of it. So that no one interferes with driving, the driver’s seat is protected by a transparent screen. Of course, the screens cannot be missing, one on the front and one on the back, nor the cameras inside. With the doors closed and the seat belt fastened, I pressed ‘start ride’ and the journey began. I had never been in a self-driving car, so I didn’t know if I would feel uncomfortable or strange. The driving is very smooth, precise and feels completely integrated into the dense traffic of Shenzhen, So shortly after starting the trip any doubts I might have dissipated. The main difference with a human taxi driver, in addition to that precise driving, is speed. Without being excessively slow, the robotaxi moves at a safe speedscrupulously respecting the speed limit and safety distance. The other difference is that if a car suddenly cuts you off (which happened), you don’t hear a horn or an insult towards the offender. He simply slows down, lets him pass, and goes about his business. If we don’t touch anything, we see the detection of the environment on the screen while the car is driving. From here we can also see the general view of the journey and control various aspects of the vehicle, such as the air conditioning, music or even move the passenger seat if we want to go wider. When I arrived at the destination, the car looked for a space in which to stop and a warning appeared on the screen indicating to go down on the right. In addition, there is a button that allows you to move the position of the car if for example has left us next to a puddle and we don’t want to get wet. It usually rains in Shenzhen and in fact it rained that day, so it is an interesting detail. The flying bubble tea As I said, my destination was one of the drone delivery kiosks from Meituan, the most popular delivery app in China. Since it was raining I had doubts about whether the service would be operational, but as soon as I got off the robotaxi I saw a drone flying over the park carrying a yellow box. From what I was told, rain is not a problem, but wind does usually cause service interruptions. Next to the delivery kiosk we had a sign with the QR to place the order and the restaurants associated with this service (because no, you can’t order just anything). A Chinese phone number was also needed here, so I needed help like with the taxi. In this case we manage everything through WeChat, so I didn’t see how he placed the order, but I can tell you that From Meituan you can order literally everythingfrom food to making an appointment with the dentist. The first thing that caught my attention was that there was a queue. I had about five people in front of me waiting for their orders and they all looked like they were curious people who, like me, wanted to put this drone delivery thing to the test. Delivery is made with millimeter precision and there was not a single incident in the orders that arrived. The drone arrives and is positioned just above the kiosk, which opens the top to receive the package, and descends in a perfect straight line to deposit it inside. After a few seconds, the screen asks us for a four-digit pin and the door opens so we can collect our order. All orders arrive in the same packaging; a square yellow and white box made of hard plastic and whose closure is velcro. Once we have removed the order from inside, we must dismantle the box and flatten it to be able to place it in the container next to the kiosk. Orders take 25 minutes to arrive at that location, so between one thing and another, I had a good time there. There were only five people in front of me and it was a rainy day, but they told me that on days with better weather the lines are much longer and, although the time starts counting from the moment you place the order, there was a moment when two deliveries came together … Read more

Now you have an omnipotent model that reads, sees and listens. Everything at once

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Eight years ago, when Nvidia was still a company that made graphics for video games, the company pointed out to something that is starting to enter the conversation: physical robotics. They are the robots with artificial intelligence integrated to behave autonomously. Like a ChatGPT with arms, ears and eyes. It has rained a lot since then and It’s now when we’re starting to enter that future. However, Nvidia has continued to experiment with that way of making the physical and digital worlds converge, and its latest product is the Nemotron 3 Nano Omni. An AI model that sees, hears and reads the physical world. Omni Models. These models are multimodalbut in a much stricter sense. While the models we use every day require separate channels to process and generate audio, text, image and video, an omni model is designed to be inherently multimodal. This implies that they use a unique neural network architecture trained end-to-end so that the interaction between models and stimuli is more natural, faster and capable of recognizing more nuances. An example is an AI that can “see” what a camera captures, analyze the entire situation and give feedback to the user more quickly than one that can do the same, but whose text model has to ask the video model what it has seen and then generate the content. In even fewer words: it better imitates the way humans perceive and respond to the stimuli of the world. Integration. And that’s what Nvidia affirms What Nemotron 3 Nano Omni can do. In the same architecture, it is a model that integrates vision, audio and language capabilities to eliminate the fragmented workflow of current AI agents. According to the company, it is built on a hybrid architecture of mixing experts (AIs trained in various subjects) with 30 billion parameters, of which 3 billion are for inference. It has been designed as a model that is nine times faster than separate models and has three times the performance of other open omni models, consuming 2.75 times less computing power in tasks such as reasoning from a video. Okay, but why?. That is the key question, beyond the numbers and the raw capabilities of this technology. The use cases detailed by the company are the following: Agents: power those agents that navigate graphical user interfaces, reasoning based on the content on the screen and understanding what they are seeing in real time and persistently. The native input resolution is 1920 x 1080 for that HD visual understanding. Documents– Interprets graphs, tables, documents, screenshots, and mixed media inputs. Comprehension audio and video: is able to understand what he sees and hears to maintain consistency in his interpretation instead of reasoning based on disconnected models. For professionals. What is clear is that Nemotron 3 Nano Omni is not something that is launched with the goal of being something for the masses like other AI models that we see every day. Nvidia focuses it on something business, a tool that can be accessed through platforms like Hugging Face and to be deployed on local systems such as DGX Spack or Jetson. That is, it is not something available to everyone. The interesting thing is that it is a technology that is strongly pushing the narrative of agents as omnipotent entities, and it fits with the speech latest from Jensen Huang, CEO of the company, that AI will not come to take away our jobs, but to ‘micromanage’ us. Image | Nvidia In Xataka | There is a company that has grown 3,000% in the stock market, even beating the performance of Nvidia: Sandisk

California wants to preserve mountain lion DNA, so it spent $100 million on a highway bridge

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While for humanity roads are essential means of communication, for animals it is the opposite: a barrier that can be lethal. In fact, every year millions of animals die trying to cross roads that cut their habitats in half: we see the same thing in Iran with the Asiatic cheetah that in the India, where elephants are run over (although yes, with trains) is one of the big problems of its railway system. One of the solutions proposed by conservation biology are wildlife steps: an infrastructure, whether a bridge, tunnel or walkway, that allows animals to move safely through their domain by crossing roads or railway tracks. California just took this idea to another level with the largest structure of its kind ever built. The megastep for California pumas. It is about the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossinga colossal plant bridge about 64 meters wide that crosses the US-101 highway as it passes through Agoura Hills, in Los Angeles. The structure has more than 11.8 million kilos of concrete, 82 bridge beams and more than 6,000 cubic meters of living soil to house more than 50 species of plants native to the region. The idea is to faithfully recreate the coastal sage scrub or coastal sage scrub, aromatic shrubs that are abundant in the area, but on one of the busiest highways. The project is a public-private collaboration that started formally on Earth Day 2022 and has cost $114 million. Its inauguration is scheduled for autumn of this year, thus becoming the largest wildlife crossing in the world. California Government Why is it important. The United States National Park Service has spent decades documenting that mountain lions in the Santa Monica Mountains are genetically isolated by roads and urbanization. And an isolated population is doomed: it does not have genetic exchange with other groups, there is endogamy, genetic variability is lost and the species loses its capacity to adapt. That is to say, the passage of US-101 not only kills animals by being run over, but it is also an evolutionary trap. That said, the bridge is not an infrastructure that will benefit exclusively the puma: it is also designed for red lynxes, foxes, coyotes, reptiles and a long chain of species whose mobility is essential for the ecosystem. Finally, the structure is framed within the California 30×30 objectivewhich aims to conserve 30% of the state’s coastal lands and waters before 2030, in this case connecting the protected spaces of the Santa Monica Mountains with the environment. Context. Wildlife passages are not something new: the first were built in the 50s of the 20th century, in France. In fact, Europe has been developing this technology for more than 70 years and has a long list of structures of this type. What is unique about this project is not so much the structure itself, but its scale and location: it is in a huge city and crosses a 10-lane highway where More than 300,000 vehicles pass through each daynot on a secondary road in deep America. However, there are already promising precedents such as the recently inaugurated Colorado’s Greenland Wildlife Overpass on I-25, connecting approximately 15,800 hectares (39,000 acres) of habitat for deer, elk, mountain lions and bears. Scientific literature also supports the bet: after analyzing 89 fauna passages in Europe, North America and Australia, this study published in Biological Conservation concluded that they are highly effective and that they reduce animal mortality due to roadkill by up to 90% compared to unprotected stretches. Other wildlife passes. Although the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing will be the largest in the world, there are other wildlife crossings (mainly in Europe) equally ambitious: Natuurbrug Zanderij Crailooin the Netherlands. At 800 meters long and 50 meters wide, it is the longest ecoduct in the world. Doñana National Park It has a network of wildlife crossings and ecoducts built specifically for the Iberian lynx, whose 80% of deaths occur due to being run over. On the A4 highway in the Lower Silesian Forest in Poland there are 15 ecoducts and wildlife crossings. It has been monitored for three years its use by wolves, ungulates and other carnivores. Veluwe ecoduct network in the Netherlands. Nine ecoducts in a natural area of ​​1,000 square kilometers, with almost 5,000 deer and wild boar crossings documented in a single year. Ecoduct on the Türkiye – Central Europe highway. It was built after multiple attacks by brown bears, achieving reduce collisions to zero. Yes, but. Despite its potential ecological value, the project has faced criticism for its high cost: It started with a budget of 92 million and in addition to being delayed, it will end up costing approximately $114 million. In addition, there are those who wonder whether a single structure is enough to save an entire population, suggesting that it is more necessary to implement smaller-scale but more numerous interventions rather than a single megaproject. From a strictly scientific point of view, the effectiveness of these steps is neither automatic nor guaranteed. A paper published in the Journal of Applied Ecology cautions that most available studies measure the number of crossings but not the actual impact on population viability, and that population-level effects remain difficult to quantify. Furthermore, design matters: those structures less than 20 meters wide are used noticeably less by animals. And if it has a bad location it can end up being useless. We will have to wait years of monitoring the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing to determine its effect. In Xataka | There are only 27 left in the wild and the war in Iran is their sentence: the drama of the rarest and rarest feline on the planet In Xataka | We have a serious problem with the extinction of bees. The United Kingdom wants to solve it with bricks Cover | California Government and Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦

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