Mobile Tech & Gadgets

In this city in Ukraine, going outside is not an option because of the drones. So they have found a solution: live underground

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For decades war was thought of as a recognizable front line, with more or less secure soldiers, trenches and rearguards. The massive emergence of drones has dynamited that scheme: the sky has become a permanent hunting ground, the distinction between combatant and civilian has been blurred and entire cities now live under the constant threat of cheap and lethal machines that can attack at any moment. In Ukraine they have forced everyday life to hide underground to continue existing. Kherson and the threat behind the windows. The key Ukrainian city has become the most extreme example of how drones have transformed war and civil lifeto the point that going outside has become the closest thing to a “death sport”, with Russian quadcopters operating from the other bank of the Dnieper that they hunt random people in what the Ukrainians themselves describe as a “human safari.” In a city of wide avenues and tsarist architecture, today the sky is the true enemy, responsible for hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries in a single year, in what the United Nations and human rights organizations describe as war crimes and the world’s most intensive use of drones against a civilian population. Live underground. Faced with the impossibility of completely protecting the surface, life in Kherson has declined literally underground. There is no rhetoric, since they literally live underground with hospitals, maternity wards, public offices, theaters and cultural spaces moved to basements and former Soviet shelters, while playgrounds have been replaced. through underground game rooms and all schools in the city operate only online. This forced displacement has created a strange and oppressive routine in which day-to-day life passes between corridors, bunkers and improvised roomsbecause any exposure to the open sky can end in seconds with a guided explosion from a remote camera. It is the real version of any scenario that science fiction cinema or literature ever staged. Improvised defenses. Faced with this omnipresent threat, the authorities have deployed a combination of solutions that illustrate the extent to which the city lives in an almost post-apocalyptic future, with kilometers of anti-drone networks covering entire streets, mesh tunnels over the main access roads, electronic interference walls next to the river and hundreds of concrete capsules spread along the sidewalks to offer immediate shelter. Even so, those responsible themselves admit that nothing is completely effectivebecause drones evolve, dodge defenses, throw grenades or mines and turn any daily journey into a desperate race in which you cannot run faster than the machine you are chasing from the air. Live, not just survive. In this extreme context, the effort is not limited to keeping the population alive, but rather to preserving a minimum feeling of normalityespecially for the little ones, children, who grow up under constant stress and fear of going outside. In fact, there is a whole network of psychologists, educators and volunteers who organize dance, art or biology classes in basements, install sandboxes so that the little ones can touch the ground and even create spaces where choosing, playing and learning is a form of emotional resistance in the face of a war that invades everything. The idea is clear in Kherson: it is not enough to hide, you have to keep livingeven under layers of cement. The laboratory of a disturbing future. If you like, Kherson is not just a devastated city, but an advance which many fear will become the norm in many other conflicts of the future, one where cheap and precise drones democratize the ability to attack civilians with an ease that was unthinkable just a few years ago. Thus, after a Russian occupation, a liberation celebrated and an immediate return of horror from a distance, the city has been trapped a kilometer from the front, with a population reduced to a fraction of the original that, despite everything, refuses to leave. Underground, between networks, shelters and constant alarms, Kherson survives like a brutal warning of how the war of the future can empty the streets and push human life to simply hide to exist. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine In Xataka | A drone takes aim and blows up a Russian penguin in front. It is the result of an increasingly absurd war In Xataka | Three Russians surrender on camera: what was previously a “normal” scene in the war in Ukraine is science fiction

NVIDIA and OpenAI’s relationship is disintegrating

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We have to talk. It’s not you, it’s me. Our love broke. That’s just what seems to be happening between NVIDIA and OpenAI, who just four months ago were living an idyllic moment. The first announced a mammoth investment of 100,000 million dollars in the second and everything indicated that we could have before us a new great technological empire. It was the most ambitious marriage in the history of technology, but now that marriage is failing. a decade of love. It was August 2016 and everyone knew about NVIDIA but almost no one knew about OpenAI. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, saw clearly that the company had potential, so gave Elon Musk a DGX-1 serverits first “desktop supercomputer” for AI. OpenAI was using more and more advanced NVIDIA GPUs to develop its work, and with the explosion of ChatGPT in 2022, OpenAI became one of the largest customers of NVIDIA GPUs, which in turn was buying shares of OpenAI. The quid pro quo began. August 2016. The idyll began. Jensen Huang handed a DGX-1 to the co-founder and still member of the board of directors of OpenAI at the time, Elon Musk. From where I said I say… In September 2025 NVIDIA announced a “strategic investment” of up to $100 billion in OpenAI. Was one more gigantic case of circular financing that apparently made these two companies stronger and the others weaker. For a few days there has been talk that this announcement is being blurred and the agreement according to The Wall Street Journal is frozen. There they indicate that according to Huang, said agreement was not binding and he privately criticized that OpenAI had a lack of discipline in its business strategy. …to where I say Diego. At a meeting with journalists in Taipei on Saturday Indian that NVIDIA will “absolutely be involved” in the new funding round that OpenAI is carrying out. In fact, he assured that “we will invest a large amount of money, probably the largest investment we have ever made,” but when asked that this investment would be over $100 billion, he said “No, no, nothing like that.” Furthermore, as shown in the video of the included tweet, he clarified that the investment “we never said we were going to invest $100 billion in a single round” and highlighted that “there was never a commitment.” “We were invited to invest up to $100 billion and we were honored,” he explained, but added that “we will consider each round of financing separately.” narrative clash. Huang’s statements made Sam Altman quickly want to downplay the matter saying that “we expect to be a gigantic customer (of NVIDIA) for a very long time” and adding that “I don’t know where all this madness is coming from.” However, the statements of both parties suggest that there are differences of opinion and a latent tension in that hypothetical commitment that they had reached and that perhaps was not communicated or clarified adequately in September. OpenAI has its own NVIDIA complaints. In Reuters they point out that OpenAI is “dissatisfied” with some of NVIDIA’s AI chips because while they are great for model training tasks—preparing them before we use them—they are not so great for inference. OpenAI is said to be looking for alternatives to inference chips and is in talks with Cerebras and Groq to provide them with advanced inference chips. Here’s a bonus chapter: NVIDIA reached an agreement with Groq to license (“pseudo-acquire”) the company’s technology for $20 billion, which has blocked OpenAI’s talks with Groq. And look for other girlfriends. Sam Altman doesn’t hesitate when it comes to looking for alternatives to prosper. He did it when the relationship broke down with Microsoft and He looked for other girlfriends like SoftBankOracle or NVIDIA itself. But in reality he plays several sides, because he has become a shareholder in AMD, one of NVIDIA’s biggest rivals. But there is more. A lot more. Polyamory. Not to mention that Amazon is in talks with Sam Atlman to close an investment of up to 50 billion dollars on OpenAI. Or that Altman is also in negotiations with Softbank that could result in a investment of 30,000 million additional payments by the Japanese company, which had already promised a investment of 40,000 million of dollars a year ago. The amounts are dizzying, but OpenAI handles them as if nothing had happened. Dependencies and reverse lock-in. Typically, companies fear being locked into dependence on a vendor like NVIDIA. Here NVIDIA seems to be suffering just the opposite: being trapped by a client (OpenAI). If NVIDIA invests 100 billion, it becomes too dependent on the success of OpenAI. If Altman’s company fails or changes course, the hole in NVIDIA’s balance sheet would be catastrophic. It is “mutual assured destruction.” Image | Hillel Steinberg | Village Global In Xataka | The leaks are shaping OpenAI’s physical device: headphones that sit behind the ears

Elon Musk and Sam Altman predicted that AI will force the establishment of a universal basic income. The United Kingdom is already considering it

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The main economic organizations in the world they don’t agree in their forecasts about what the real impact of the arrival of AI will be in the economic and labor sphere. A report The World Economic Forum estimated that AI will create 170 million new jobs. The problem is that until that happens, it will destroy about 92 million jobs. The US Senate consider that some 100 million jobs could be destroyed. Elon Musk and Sam Altman have repeated on several occasions that, to minimize this impact on society, it will be necessary to implement a universal basic income. In the United Kingdom, the government is debating measures to protect workers with the same idea. Millionaires ask for a basic income. Some of the top AI millionaires, such as Elon Musk, have predicted that universal basic income will be a reality in a future dominated by AI. While it is true that Musk’s vision is based on a vision more optimistic about the future in which “work will be optional” and it will not be necessary to save for retirement, the millionaire does not deny that universal income will be a necessary instrument to achieve it. Along the same lines, although with a more realistic vision, the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, has funded studies on the effects of universal basic income in a scenario of job destruction and how this income helps recipients return to work train for new jobs. Companies do not need human labor. In one your blog postDario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warned that AI will have an “unusually painful” impact on the labor market. “AI is not a substitute for specific human jobs, but rather a general job substitute for humans,” the manager wrote. For this reason, this mechanism is increasingly seen as a transition instrument that allows employees laid off due to the arrival of AI to retrain to re-enter the labor market. A systematic review of the Department of Economics of the University of Huelva on more than 50 empirical casespoint out that universal basic income improves spending on basic needs without participants stopping looking for work, so it will be a way for employees to train for new jobs. jobs created by AI. The UK Government is debating it. In an interview for Financial TimesJason Stockwood, UK Investment Minister, has revealed that within the Government “it is definitely being talked about.” The minister noted that “without a doubt, we are going to have to think very carefully about how to smooth the process of disembarking those industries that disappear, through some type of UBI and some type of lifelong learning mechanism so that people can retrain.” According to published BloombergMorgan Stanley declared a net job loss of 8% in the UK in the last 12 months due to AI, the highest among large economies. Which explains the concern of the British executive to begin evaluating formulas that cushion this impact. A lifeline to keep them afloat. Unlike Musk’s “optimistic” vision, British representatives do not see the arrival of AI as a liberating element that makes work optional, but as a problem that will temporarily leave millions of workers who will need help unemployed. So declared it Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, concerned about the high rate of “white collar” unemployment that can cause the arrival of AI in a city like London. Liz Kendall, Secretary of Technology of the United Kingdom, spoke along the same lines, assuring that, although it is true that more jobs will be created than will be lost, there will be a transition period in which AI will be “a weapon of mass destruction of jobs. We will not leave people and communities to fend for themselves,” collected Guardian. The million-dollar question: who finances that income? It is easy to predict that universal basic income would be a solution for those who do not have a job to return to because AI has automated it. However, something more complicated will be determining who will finance that basic income. Bill Gates already gave some clues almost a decade agoensuring that they should be their own companies that use robots in their processes those that pay for that subsidy “if a robot replaces the work of a human, that robot must pay taxes like a human.” Ioana Marinescu, economist and associate professor of public policy at the University of Pennsylvania consider that taxing technology companies could slow down their implementation at the local level, so that this transformation process it would be more progressive increasing that transition period that would give time to the labor market to adapt. In Xataka | AI and its impact on the labor market: how the perception of its arrival varies by country, explained in a graph Image | Unsplash (Alexander Gray, enrico bet)

How euthanasia allowed an “à la carte” face transplant to be planned in 3D in Barcelona

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Spain has once again shown why remains at the top in terms of organ transplants refers to the new milestone that has occurred at the Vall d’Hebron Hospital in Barcelona. It is neither more nor less than first face transplant in history coming from a donor who had requested the euthanasiadying in a controlled manner in a hospital environment. The programming. Until now, face transplants, of which a few have been performed 54 worldwidedepended on the urgency and availability of a donor who died due to an accident or brain death. However, this case introduces a new variable: transplant scheduling. This is thanks to the fact that the donor had requested to benefit from the Euthanasia Law and jointly expressed their willingness to donate all their organs and tissues, specifically their face. This is something that allowed the medical team timewhich is not common in transplants, to find the most suitable candidate and also plan in detail what the procedure was going to be like. What they did. By knowing in advance the availability of the donor, the medical team was able to begin virtual 3D planning. In this case, digital models of both the donor and the recipient were created to be able to design completely personalized cutting and grafting guides to guarantee the success of the intervention. And it is not at all easy to do this type of transplant, since the bone structure and soft tissues must fit together with millimeter precision, reducing the usual uncertainty of these operations. The surgical challenge. The operation was not easy, since It lasted 24 hours and required the coordination of a team of nearly 100 professionals.including plastic surgeons, microsurgeons, anesthetists, nursing and immunology experts. And it was not a simple aesthetic operation by putting the skin on top and that’s it, but rather a complete reconstruction was sought at all times that included muscles, nose, lips, blood vessels and of course nerves. All of this could not be done without microsurgical equipment that allowed arteries, veins or nerves less than a millimeter in diameter to be ‘connected’ in order to have sensitivity, movement or the ability to eat. The recipient. Her name is Carme, and her life changed radically in 2024 while she was on vacation in the Canary Islands when she suffered a bite that caused a serious infection. The bacteria caused sepsis and death of the facial necrosis, causing him to lose part of his face and severely affecting his jaw. In this case the consequences were devastating, since Carme could barely open her mouth and had serious difficulties breathing and feeding. Not to mention his social life, which had been drastically reduced, with the mental impact that this entailed. According to his own statements, the transplant was “the only solution” to try to regain a normal life. Legal context. All this is not a coincidence, since the Vall d’Hebron was already a pioneer in 2010 in performing the first complete facial transplant in the world. Of the six transplants that have been performed in the history of Spain, half have taken place in this center, demonstrating the great experience they have in this regard. The procedure is also framed within the Euthanasia Law that came into force in Spain in 2021, which contemplates the possibility of donating organs. The generosity of the donor, who explicitly offered her face during the authorization process for her assisted death, has opened a new door for regenerative and transplant medicine, demonstrating that advance planning can be key to success in the most extreme surgeries. Images | Vall d’Hebron In Xataka | Elizabeth Hughes’ 42,000 injections and the miraculous discovery of insulin

Tesla aspired to bring the automobile industry to its knees. Now the auto industry is giving it back

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Tesla has been held accountable to investors. His 2025 numbers have been bad. Pretty bad, in fact. So much so that it has confirmed the almost immediate cessation of the Tesla Model S and Model X, the cars that helped popularize the brand but whose sales are already minimal. It will make robots instead. It is confirmation of a much deeper problem. Bye. Elon Musk confirmed it a few days ago. Tesla will stop manufacturing its most expensive vehicles. The Freemont factory, where the company produces the Tesla Model S and Model will start producing humanoid robots Optimus. Without just a very sentimental message, as usually happens in the motor industrythe CEO of Tesla has practically treated these models as mere employees. The farewell is similar to that given to the classic worker who ends up at the exit door with a cardboard box in his hands to carry a photo of his children, three pens and the stapler that the company refused to buy. I can almost see the sleeve of the sweater sticking out and the shirt half removed from the pants. Deeper. Stopping production of its most expensive electric cars, no matter how few they sold, points to Tesla having a deeper problem: it wanted to reconvert the automobile industry. And, over the years, the automobile industry seems to be beating the company. To understand what we are talking about, we must take into account different variables: how Tesla carved out a niche for itself in the market, how it revolutionized automobile production and how that same revolution has put a back on the backpack that is becoming more complicated to handle every day. And, of course, how it is facing the same problems as every other automaker. His emergence. Building a car brand from scratch is complicated. Almost impossible, as many Chinese companies are experiencing firsthand. Tesla was born in 2003 and It wasn’t until 2020 when it was profitable each and every quarter of the same year. It was thanks to the sale of emissions credits and bitcoins. It wouldn’t be until later when it became profitable on its own selling electric cars. In those 17 years, the company was sustained with the help of investors, partnerships with companies like Toyota and aid from the United States Government. And if they managed to keep losing money for almost two decades, it was because they promised a differential technology, something that only they could deliver at that time. A groundbreaking vehicle for what was on the market. Aspirational. Tesla became an aspirational company. He Tesla Roadster (the only one that has existed so far) walked all over Hollywood and later the Tesla Model S and Model X they became neck-turning vehicles of worship. I still remember the first time I saw a Tesla store in Amsterdam and how that huge vertical screen in the sedan It attracted the attention of all of us who were there sightseeing. Both cars were confirmation that a company could put an electric car on the street with an autonomy that allowed travel, with a striking aesthetic at that time and unbridled power compared to combustion cars. It was a desirable brand, a status symbol. Millions of copies. The Tesla Model 3 and Model Y They were the next step. The key to making Tesla a profitable company on its own was to sell millions of copies. To put an “affordable” electric car on the road or, at least, much cheaper than the competition with equal benefits, Tesla showed off its Gigapress. This machine allows you to create huge body parts, much larger than competing machines. This allows Tesla to produce faster and at a lower cost. But it has a problem: it needs millions and millions of copies to make it profitable and take advantage of it. Each profound change in the part to be produced forces very long development times and excessively extended technical stops. Furthermore, it is not easy to create that first original piece. Disadvantages that have forced the design of Tesla cars to remain practically unchanged. Too seen. Being a slave to design is a problem in the automobile industry. Tesla thought it could sell the same car for years or decades, but time is telling it that customers like to see new things. When someone spends tens of thousands of euros on a car, they like it to look fresh and new. The purchase of a car is still marked by irrational and passionate concepts above all logic. A car, no matter how much it is sold like that, is not a mobile phone. It’s not a black turtleneck either. These are products that, with a perfected and standardized design, differ little from each other without being fashionable. But above all, they are products with a rapid renewal rate. The car, if all goes well, will be in our house for more than a decade, which is why we like to buy the latest things within our budget. Millions of copies of the Tesla Model 3, Model Y, Model S and Model with hardly any renovations they have diluted its novel image. Their cars have an aesthetic designed not to go out of style quickly but the customer needs to put new things in their mouths every so often. That is why generations in the automobile industry last between six and eight years, with a more or less profound renewal in the middle of the commercial life to boost sales again. And the competition tightens. Tesla thought he could turn the automobile into another consumer good. Elon Musk even promised sales of 20 million units per year. An outrage if we take into account that it is doubling the production of Toyota, the largest manufacturer in the world. This would be possible (and with many doubts) if its competitive advantage was so overwhelming that it left its cars in a position years ahead of the competition. But if we have seen anything since 2020, … Read more

These are the best technology deals we have found on Amazon today, February 3

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If you have been wanting to renew some of your technological devices or purchase new ones for some time, to expand your assortment of personal technology, today is a good time to get the best devices at the best price. amazon It is one of those stores where you can find good technology offers and these are the best deals we have found today, February 3. Ring Intercom Audio by 44.99 euros: with two-way communication and Alexa. Smart TV Hisense 55E63QT by 296.65 euros: 4K UHD and with Dolby Vision. laser projector XGIMI Horizon 20 by 1,439 euros: 4K and with Google TV. Virtual reality glasses Meta Quest 3S by 299 euros: with 128 GB and up to 2.5 hours of autonomy. sound bar Ultimea Apollo S50 2025 by 99.99 euros: compact and 4.1 channels. Ring Intercom Audio Amazon has a series of technological devices ideal for starting to create your connected home. The Ring Intercom Audio is one of them and now has a available 44% discount on Amazon. You can buy it for 44.99 euros. The Ring Intercom Audio is a device that is used to improve your home’s intercom. It allows you to know (through the app) who is calling the intercom and open it without having to get up. Comes with Alexa integrated and also allows you to create virtual guest keys, so that whoever you want can open the portal at the established time. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Hisense 55E63QT Smart TV If you are looking for a good, pretty and cheap TV, this one from Hisense is a bargain now on Amazon. Its usual price is 419 euros but now it is available for 296.65 eurosthus obtaining a savings of almost 30%. This TV mounts a 55-inch panel with 4K UHD resolution and refresh rate of 60 Hz. It is compatible with Dolby Vision and it comes with a specific mode for games and another for sports. It runs under the VIDAA operating system and supports voice control. Hisense 55E63QT – UHD 4K Smart TV 55 Inch The price could vary. We earn commission from these links XGIMI Horizon 20 Laser Projector If you would like to watch your movies and series in a big way at home, this XGIMI laser projector is a good device to achieve this. It is laser type and has a discount of 230 euros. It has gone from costing 1,699 euros to 1,439 euros. This Horizon 20 from XGIMI is a projector laser with 4K resolution and that comes with Google TV. is able to project up to 300 inches and has a refresh rate of 240 Hz and 3,200 lumens. XGIMI Horizon 20 Laser Projector The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Meta Quest 3S virtual reality glasses The Meta Quest 3S are mixed reality glasses that you can now buy at a discount on Amazon. Before they cost 329.99 euros, but now you can get them with a 9% discountby 299 euros. This Meta Quest 3S On sale they come with 128 GB of storage and have a processor Qualcomm Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2. Its battery offers a range of up to 2.5 hours and allows you to play video games and content from the main streaming platforms. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ultimea Apollo S50 2025 Sound Bar Are you looking to improve the sound of your TV without spending a lot? Now, on Amazon, you can get this 4.1-channel sound bar from Ultimea for less than 100 euros (specifically 99.99 euros). Is the best selling in this store right now and before it cost almost 150 euros. As we have already said, this sound bar 4.1 channel offers 200 W RMS power and features VoiceMX technology. In addition, it incorporates a wired subwoofer and presents a compact size. In the connectivity section, it comes with ARC, optical, AUX, USB ports and also Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity. ULTIMEA Apollo S50 2025 4.1ch TV Sound Bar with Subwoofer The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Freepik, Ring (Amazon), Ultimea, Hisense, Meta and XGIMI In Xataka | Home alone: ​​buying guide for smart devices to take care of your home when you go on vacation In Xataka | Best surveillance cameras: which one to buy and 11 recommended models for indoors, outdoors, babies and pets

the Great Trade Route through the Mongolian Desert

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At the end of the 19th century, as Japan emerged as an imperial power after the Meiji erahis army undertook an ambitious cartographic project to precisely know the territories beyond its borders. Those maps, prepared by the Imperial Japanese Army with methods that combined espionage, foreign sources and field work, were classified as state secrets and for decades remained hidden in military and university archives. Today, those maps have revealed a fascinating route. A forgotten runner. For centuries, the so-called Great Mongolian Route was a key artery of Eurasian tradean east-west route that crossed southern Mongolia connecting northern China with Central Asia and beyond, serving as a northern alternative to the better-known routes of the Silk Road. Despite its historical importance, it had been blurred between travelers’ stories and scattered references, without precise cartography that would allow it to be reconstructed in detail. That gap is what is now filled through a historical work, a published study in the Journal of Historical Geography by Chris McCarthy and his colleagues demonstrating for the first time that the Great Mongolian Route was not a literary abstraction, but a perfectly structured corridor, designed to enable the regular transit of camel caravans through some of the most arid and hostile landscapes on the continent. Military maps as secrets of the past. The researchers behind the discovery say that the key to rediscovering the Great Mongolian Route has been in the gaihōzuthose maps prepared by cartographers of the Imperial Japanese Army between the end of the 19th century and the Second World War, which systematically covered vast regions of Eastern and Inner Asia. Conceived with strategic and classified purposes For decades, many were on the verge of disappearing after the war (there were instructions to destroy them), but some were saved quietly and ended up in university archives that little by little became accessible to the public. Gaihōzu W6N2N map panel: Explaining the maps. The maps were not simple military sketches: they synthesized information from Chinese records, ancient Russian uprisings, and, in some cases, Japanese field work, resulting in a surprisingly accurate representation of routes, wells, monasteries, oases and geographical features key to survival in the Gobi Desert. Owen Lattimore’s map of several Inner Asian caravan routes, including the Great Mongolian Trail, whose name appears next to the location of Gurbun Saikhan Confirm the map on the ground. Recent work has gone beyond the archive, touring more than 1,200 kilometers on the ground to verify to what extent those sheets coincided with current reality. The verification has confirmed about fifty nodes (from water sources to settlements, caves and sacred places) spaced at intervals of about 24 kilometers, a distance that fits exactly with the average day of a camel caravan. Plus: the oral traditions of local shepherds, the physical traces of secular transit and the persistence of toponyms have reinforced the idea that these maps captured a refined logistical system, one in which each stop was essential to making the journey possible. Gaihōzu W9N2N map panel Caravans, tea and benefits. Although the main objective has been to document the infrastructure of the route, everything indicates that was parte of the historic tea trade, with Chinese goods traveling west and steppe products returning east. Inscriptions found in caves and oases speak of journeys of up to 120 days for heavy caravans and faster journeys, of about 90 days, for urgent transports seeking extraordinary benefits. The harshness of the route did not deter the merchants, moved by the promise of “triple benefits,” a reminder that these routes were not only avenues of cultural exchange, but high-risk economic gambles. From stories to cartography. For decades, knowledge of the Great Mongolian Route depended almost exclusively on the descriptions of the explorer and scholar Owen Lattimorewhose diagrams offered a conceptual vision of the corridor. Now, the combination of his stories with the millimeter detail of the gaihōzu transforms that diffuse image into a concrete and verifiable layout, where each lake, well or monastery has a clear function. The result not only recovers a lost route, but shows to what extent these military maps constitute an exceptional file of landscapes, economies and ways of life just before modern transportation erased centuries of mobility caravan in the interior of Asia. Image | McCarthy et al. 2026 In Xataka | The entire history of the Iberian Peninsula year by year, summarized in six minutes of interactive map In Xataka | Our conception of the world has changed a lot during history. This map illustrates all its forms

AI is starting to change that dynamic

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For years, Apple was more than just a mobile phone manufacturer: it was the customer that everyone wanted to keep happy. The company that could negotiate with suppliers and reserve capacity in advance. But that stage is beginning to break down for a very specific reason: the industry has started buying hardware for artificial intelligence on an enormous scale, and that new appetite is reordering priorities. AI companies are willing to pay more and secure supplies up front, a shift that is beginning to put pressure on something Apple has protected like a treasure: its margins. Memory, the bottleneck. The easiest example to understand is in something as everyday as the storage and speed of the iPhone. It’s no secret that memory chips are in short supply due to the explosion of AI, and that is pushing prices up. Tim Cook dropped it in the last earnings call acknowledging limitations in chip supply and that memory prices were rising “significantly.” Not so comfortable terrain. The Wall Street Journal points out that AI giants are willing to close agreements with very attractive conditions for suppliers, including the possibility of securing supply with firm commitments and advance payments. This context gives room for companies like Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to raise prices on certain DRAM chips destined for Apple. Even on the less visible plane there is friction: many engineers who previously worked on improving displays for smartphones now also spend time on specialized glass for packaging advanced AI chips. It’s a silent fight for capacity and attention. Alternative to TSMC. The newspaper says that TSMC is doing more business with NVIDIA and other AI companies. Consequently, according to anonymous sources with knowledge of the plans, Apple would be exploring the option of manufacturing some less advanced processors with another supplier. No name has yet been released, but it would be a fairly important change in the Cupertino company’s supply chain. How it affects us. In the short term, the blow is taken by the income statement: if components rise, margins suffer, even in a company used to working with ease. For the consumer the scenario is more ambiguous. The well-known analyst Ming-chi Kuo estimates that Apple would not expect to raise the price of the next iPhone if they are equipped in a similar way to the iPhone 17. That doesn’t take the pressure off, but it suggests that adjustment could come through other avenues, from configurations to tighter margins. Images | Apple In Xataka | The AI ​​bill for Meta has grown by 400% since 2023: Zuckerberg wants to lead the sector at any cost in 2026

It is the key step in the “rebirth” of a company on the tightrope

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The United States is immersed in the war for technological independence. They aim to be sovereign and produce most of the key components of their technology, but they remain so dependent on the rare earth from china like from Taiwan for advanced chips. At the same time, the strongest Taiwanese company, is planting its flag on North American lands with TSMC. In this scenario, Intel has become the great hope of the American foundry. And they just announced that their Intel 18A plan is ready for action. Self-imposed goal. Intel has been going through the deepest crisis in its history for years. Unlike NVIDIA, Qualcomm or AMD, which design chips but are manufactured by others –TSMC mostly-, Intel designs and manufactures semiconductors (although it also outsources part of its production). It is, as it is known in the industry, a foundry, and after being devastated in the mid-2000s, they have seen how his rivals ate his toast. Both in semiconductor production and in their design and in the market. For this reason, in 2021 they set a goal: to develop five nodes in four years. This strategy, baptized as 5N4Ywas a move to restore the company’s position at the forefront of semiconductor manufacturing. In between, they have acquired ASML’s latest generation machines, they have positioned themselves as the local foundry for the US to achieve technological sovereignty… and they have needed an unprecedented injection of money from the US government. Intel 18A. But well, the plans seem to be coming out and, if in September 2024 Ben Sell, vice president of technology development at Intel, commented that Large-scale production of node 18A would begin in 2025now it is the company that has declared that they are ready to start mass manufacturing products based on that technology. The result is two processors with a very different approach. Panther Lake – It is the architecture of the Intel Core Ultra Series 3the first System on Chip from the American company created with this photolithography. They are chips created in a smaller size, which allows for greater density (30% according to Intel) and 15% greater performance per watt. It is focused on mobile devices and integrates both CPU and GPU. Clearwater Forest – It is the other current leg of Intel 18A, a processor for data centers hyperscale, cloud computing and AI training. It will be the heart of the Xeon 6+ processors and shares those characteristics of higher density, more performance and lower consumption. Technological avant-garde. Things seem to be starting to go well at Intel and the interesting thing is not that they are already preparing for large-scale manufacturing of these processors, but rather the technologies which, for the first time in a long time, will allow Intel to be at the forefront in its sector. RibbonFET – It is Intel’s first new architecture in more than a decade and is what allows improved performance per watt compared to the previous node used by Intel. It is an improvement over the Classic FinFETs. PowerVia – It is the true revolution: it is an architecture that separates the power supply from the processor lines to deliver it through the rear. Power flow is improved and delivery is optimized, allowing better power flow that increases the processor clock frequency while consuming less power. American foundry. This last technology is a pioneer in the sector and, in fact, it is expected that its main competitor, TSMC, will not have a response until the end of 2026 and Samsung its GAA in 2027. And that is precisely what is positioning Intel as a good option for the big technology whales. Because there is no point in having technology if you don’t attract attention, and here Intel has an advantage. Fab 52, the Intel plant in Arizona where these new chips are manufactured On the one hand, and obviously, technology. But on the other hand, and just as important, being an American manufacturing in the United States, with what this implies when it comes to get government favors. I know point that NVIDIA and Apple are in conversations with Intel to have a certain range of their GPUs and SoCs manufactured by them instead of TSMC. Because that commercial success is the last frontier and attracting whales is what will mark Intel’s destiny in a war that is no longer just about having the best technology, but also about where you manufacture it. Images | Intel In Xataka | The world’s technology industry practically depends on a single road: the one that leads to the Spruce Prine mine

SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, has just announced the purchase of xAI, founded by Elon Musk

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Until very recently, this was just a rumor. Today, SpaceX just told it as a fact. The aerospace company has published an official statement in which it states that it has acquired xAI, the artificial intelligence company founded by Elon Musk. The text does not go into details of the operation, but it does set the tone: it talks about integrating AI, rockets and space connectivity as part of the same strategy. And, although the announcement is forceful, it leaves many important questions in the air that still have no answers. SpaceX frames the operation as part of a vertical integration. The official statement is signed by Musk and has a more ideological than corporate tone, with references to “freedom of expression” and an almost existential mission. But, beyond the story, the document leaves out some elements that are important to understand this movement: there are no figures or details of how the agreement materializes. In development. In Xataka | Genie 3 is awesome at creating worlds for video games. But the problem with video games was never creating worlds

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