Mobile Tech & Gadgets

has the green light to deploy 7,500 additional satellites

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Rarely has a technological infrastructure grown so quickly and so out of the everyday radar. While for almost everyone the sky remains as usual, thousands of Starlink satellites are already moving in low Earth orbit, building a network designed to bring connection to almost any point on the planet. In just a few years, SpaceX has gone from a first experimental launch to becoming the world’s largest satellite operator, and that buildup of hardware in space presents opportunities, but also annoyances in parts of the scientific sector. The most recent movement comes in a context of criticism from the astronomical community for the impact of these constellations on sky observation. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) authorized SpaceX to deploy another 7,500 Starlink second-generation satellites, bringing the total authorized Gen2 satellites to 15,000. The organization not only gave the green light to this expansion, but also allowed technical improvements and a more flexible use of frequencies and coverage, in a decision that seeks to facilitate advanced mobile services and connections up to 1 gigabit per second. The authorization, in detail. The FCC has given SpaceX room to redesign and squeeze its constellation. The permit includes the update of the second generation Starlink with new form factors and advanced technology, the joint use of the Ku, Ka, V, E and W bands, and the possibility of providing both fixed and mobile services from space. Added to this is the elimination of limits that blocked beam overlap and the creation of new orbital layers between 340 and 485 kilometers, which the FCC itself presents as a way to optimize coverage and performance. In May 2019, Elon Musk announced the launch of the first batch of Starlink satellites The permit, however, does not cover everything SpaceX had requested. The company requested authorization to deploy nearly 30,000 second-generation satellites, but the regulator has decided to stay at half for now. In its resolution, the FCC emphasizes that part of these Starlink Gen2 has not yet been tested in orbit and that there remain doubts about operations at higher altitudes, above 600 kilometers, which explains why the decision on the remaining 14,988 satellites has been postponed, according to Reuters. The clock starts ticking. The FCC approval is not indefinite. SpaceX will have to prove concrete advances in the coming years, with at least half of the authorized constellation operating in their assigned orbits before December 1, 2028 and the rest before December 2031. In addition, the regulator forces the deployment of the first generation to close before November 2027, while the company prepares a reconfiguration for 2026 that will lower thousands of satellites to a lower orbit to reduce risks. Versions of Starlink satellites Expansion is not justified only by more bandwidth. Part of the constellation is intended to enable direct mobile connectivity in regions outside the United States and also strengthen coverage within the country, which would allow mobile services and data in areas without land towers at high speed. It is the same approach that already supports Starlink’s agreements with T-Mobile and with several international operators aimed at converting the satellite into an extension of the cellular network. The cost of filling the orbit. Now massive satellites are not without criticism. Astronomers They have been warning for years that constellations like Starlink generate trails in optical images and “noise” in radio telescopes, to the point that the International Astronomical Union created a specific center to protect the “dark and silent sky.” Added to this is the fear of orbital saturation and the risk of collisions, a debate that has been revived after recent incidents. Images | Mark Handley | SpaceX In Xataka | China has taken a silent step in the new space race: the world’s first system to measure time on the Moon

The US already knows when it wants to return to the Moon to beat China. The problem is how the ship will return

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There is already an official date. After years of delays and speculations, NASA has confirmed what was rumored in the halls of Washington: Artemis 2 has the green light for launch on February 6, 2026. And what is its destination? Neither more nor less than the Moon itself. Tuning. With this announcement, NASA is already preparing for the transfer of the gigantic SLS rocket (Space Launch System) to platform 39B this very January 17, starting the final countdown for humans to orbit the Moon again. Something that has not happened since 1972 with Apollo 17. However, this is not a celebration without controversy. The mission, which will take the astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen to a 10-day trip around our satellite, has been brought forward under strong political pressure. And it does so with a worrying technical asterisk: the behavior of the Orion ship’s heat shield. A battle of pressures. On the one hand, Donald Trump has historically shown its impatience with the deadlines that NASA was giving to be able to orbit around the Moon. All this with an eye on China, which threatened to be the ‘first’ and overtake the United States in this fact. What has been the solution? put to Jared Isaacman as NASA Administratora billionaire, private pilot and astronaut (known for his missions in Polaris Dawn and its links with SpaceX) to prioritize speed and calculated risk-taking over the complete risk aversion that “old NASA” had. Because. February 6, 2026 has been set as set in stone for several strategic reasons that outweigh engineering doubts about the heat shield. The first of them It’s the race against Chinasince the Asian country has a very advanced lunar program and aims put taikonauts on the Moon before 2030. If Artemis 2 was delayed to redesign the heat shield (which would have taken years), Artemis 3 would have been gone until 2028-2029 or longer, leaving the door open for China to arrive earlier or very close. But they do not stop here, since for this administration the Moon is a springboard to reach Mars, this mission being a simple way to validate the systems they are using. That is why every delay on the Moon is a delay for the mission to Mars, which promises to be the historical legacy they seek. The Avcoat dilemma. The main point of friction between engineers and the agency’s new management lies at the bottom of the Orion capsule. During the Artemis 1 unmanned mission in 2022the heat shield (made from an ablative material called Avcoat) behaved unexpectedly. And instead of being consumed uniformly, it broke off in pieces, creating craters and cracks due to the gases trapped in the material. during re-entry into the atmosphere. The engineering logic faced with this problem would mark make a new design or material change. But since it is something that would delay everything, NASA has opted for a change in angle during reentry to minimize thermal stress in the most affected areas to maintain the same shield. The doubts. NASA assures that the risk is “acceptable”, but this decision has raised blisters in the aerospace security community. Added to this is that the life support system (ECLSS)provided in part by ESA, has never been fully tested in flight with humans, adding an extra layer of uncertainty to the mission. Charles Camarda, veteran astronaut of the STS-114 mission, the return flight after the Columbia disaster, has been blunt in this regard. In statements, Camarda has compared the current situation with the “dysfunctional culture” that led to the Challenger and Columbia tragedies. But for the NASA administrator, Artemis 2 is a non-negotiable step to ensure American leadership and the future cislunar economy. Operating tension. As if the pressure on Artemis were not enough, NASA also faces a parallel crisis in low orbit. The agency and SpaceX have scheduled January 14 undocking of the Crew-11 mission of the International Space Station (ISS) due to urgent medical evacuation. This is an unprecedented event in the history of the ISS: lowering an astronaut for an unspecified medical problem (although he has been confirmed to be stable). Although Isaacman has assured that this operational incident will not affect the schedule of Artemis 2adds a considerable load of stress to mission control teams in Houston, who must now manage a crisis in real time while preparing for the most important launch of the decade. What can we expect? At the moment, the dates we know are January 17, where the SLS rolls towards its platform, and February 6, when the window for its launch will open. In total, a 10-day flight mission is expected, with a lunar flyby and high-speed return. Specifically, 40,000 km/h. NASA has much more at stake than a mission in February. The validation of its security model is at stake in the new space era, where geopolitical competition and commercial rush collide head-on with the immutable laws of physics and thermodynamics. Images | Pedro Lastra POT In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury

Cloudflare is planted in Italy due to blockades. In Spain, the conflict with LaLiga points to the same underlying problem

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We are witnessing firsthand how what began as an offensive against unauthorized party broadcasts has transformed into something much broader, a dispute over who can decide which parts of the internet are turned off and how. In Italy and Spain, judicial and administrative resolutions that apply current legislation are endorsing or ordering measures that operate at the network level, measures that, as they are now being applied, may not distinguish between an infringing service and legitimate services that share infrastructure. This scenario has brought to the fore cloudflarea company whose name has been sneaking into the technology conversation for some time. Here we must be clear. What unites the cases of Italy and Spain is not the type of content, but the logic that supports them: to stop the unauthorized dissemination of matches, it has been decided to act where the network becomes vulnerable, in the intermediaries that connect the public with the servers. It is not a button in the hands of a government, but rather a fit between laws, judges or regulators, rights holders and different actors who execute the measure. That strategy allows you to block quickly and with massive range, but it also has collateral damage. Behind every block there is a clear sequence. In Spain, LaLiga takes its requests before a judge and it is the courts that authorize the operators to execute the cuts. In Italy, rights holders enter domains and IPs into Piracy Shield and it is AGCOMthe Italian telecommunications and media regulator, who reviews these signs and converts them into administrative orders that providers must apply. When an authority orders a block, it is not simply saying “close this page”, it is choosing at what point in the journey the connection between the user and the server is interrupted, according to the limits established by current legislation. This can be done by preventing the website name from being translated into a technical address, directly blocking that address, or asking an intermediary to stop serving the data. In this invisible journey there is a particularly sensitive piece, the system that translates website names into technical addresses that computers can understand. Every time we type a URL or tap a link, a DNS resolver responds with the correct IP so the connection can be established. If this translation is interrupted, the page is no longer accessible even if the server continues to function. That is why DNS has become a very attractive lever for blocking, because it allows access to be cut off quickly and without directly touching the content. What is 1.1.1.1 and why is it in the center. Among the many DNS services that exist, there are some open to the public that do not belong to any national operator, and the best known is 1.1.1.1, managed by Cloudflare. It serves as a widely used public DNS resolver that users and applications use to translate domain names into IP addresses. That scale is what makes it especially sensitive in this debate, because any intervention on it is not limited to a country or a specific network, but can have much broader effects. A modem with network cables The company explains For years it has been able to comply with court orders that force it to act on specific clients or on its distribution network, because there it is controlling its own service within a jurisdiction. What it rejects is modifying open tools such as its public DNS by administrative decisions of a single country. In his approach, that would mean that a national authority could change how a basic piece of the internet works for users around the world. Italy, the Piracy Shield system and controversies. The Italian model does not just cut individual pages, but entire pieces of the route along which traffic circulates. Through Piracy Shield domains and IPs are ordered to be blocked and, according to the regulator itselfthe framework also expressly includes public DNS services and VPN providers as obligated parties when they are involved in the accessibility of that content. Cloudflare Global Network Map The problem is not only that the system blocks a lot, but how it does it and with what margin for rectification. Its quick reaction logic prioritizes cutting access while the event is happening, and that increases the risk of affecting third parties when acting on shared parts of the network. AGCOM quotes as balance that since February 2024, more than 65,000 FQDNs, that is, fully qualified domain names and about 14,000 IPs, have been disabled. That clash took concrete form at the end of 2025. In a decision taken on December 29 and recently notifiedAGCOM imposed a penalty of more than 14 million euros on Cloudflare for failing to comply with a previous order issued on February 18, 2025. According to the regulator, the company had to deactivate the DNS resolution of certain domains and the routing of traffic to IP addresses indicated through Piracy Shield, or apply equivalent measures to prevent users from accessing that content. Spain, the judicial path. As we mentioned above, in Spain the system is not based on an administrative regulator, but on a resolution from a commercial court obtained by LaLiga. On December 18, 2024, the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona authorized blocking measures against addresses used to broadcast matches without rights. On March 26, 2025, that same court rejected the challenges and left the order in force. That is what allows access operators to execute these blocks during matches under the direct legal coverage of a judge. The way that order is executed in practice explains many of the complaints that have arisen in Spain. Access providers block entire IP addresses, not just specific domains. This mechanism explains why so many legitimate services end up dragged down by these blocks. Instead of deactivating a specific domain, operators sever an entire IP address, which is often shared by hundreds or thousands of websites. It’s a bit like boarding up the entrance to a building … Read more

Greenland has 1.5 million tons of rare earths. The problem is that there are no roads to get to them.

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The geopolitics of the 21st century has found a new and icy epicenter. After the capture of Nicolás Maduro In Venezuela earlier this month, Donald Trump’s administration has turned its diplomatic aggressiveness northward. The goal It’s an old longingtake control of Greenland, which the White House defines as an “ingot” of strategic resources. However, the physical reality is inescapable since beneath a complex geology lies an absolute lack of basic infrastructure that turns any extraction plan into a logistical chimera. The 93-mile wall of asphalt. Since the Republican Party introduced the Make Greenland Great Again Act In 2025, pressure on Denmark has escalated to even suggesting the use of force. As explained by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)Washington has elevated Greenland to the category of “national security” need. This position, which some analysts already call the “Donroe Doctrine”, seeks to secure the hemisphere as an exclusive sphere of influence against Russian icebreakers and Chinese expansion. But obsession collides with engineering. According to CSIS dataGreenland—a territory three times the size of Texas—only has 93 miles (150 kilometers) of roads in total. There are no railways and the settlements are isolated from each other by land. Diogo Rosa, researcher at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, warns in Fortune that any mining project must create these accessibilities from scratch. This includes ports capable of handling industrial volumes (Narsaq port barely moves 50,000 tons a year) and local power plants, since the current electrical grid is unable to sustain a large scale mine. The enigma of eudialite. Even if roads were built to reach neodymium and terbium, the mineral itself poses an unprecedented technical challenge. Greenland’s rare earth elements are typically encapsulated in a complex type of rock called eudialite. Unlike carbonatites that are mined elsewhere in the world with proven methods, no one has developed a profitable process to extract them from eudialite, as explained by analysts. For this reason, experts like Javier Blas describe the enthusiasm of the Trump administration as a “Optimistic PowerPoint”. Blas maintains that the island is not a Wonderland of raw materials: if after decades of exploration no large mining company has operated successfully, it is because the processing costs—which would exceed 1 billion dollars—devour any profits. Added to this is that deposits as Kvanefjeld They are co-located with radioactive uranium, which has generated massive social rejection and environmental laws that block the projects. The mirage of mining wealth. Currently, Greenland only has two active mines: an anorthosite mine and the Nalunaq gold mine. The latter, operated by the Canadian Amaroq Minerals, managed to produce 6,600 ounces of gold in 2025, exceeding its own forecasts. But as Scott Dunn, CEO of Noveon Magnetics, points out, in Fortunethe success of gold (a high-value, low-volume mineral) is not scalable to rare earths. While Washington makes long-term plans in the Arctic, companies like Dunn’s are already producing magnets in Texas with materials sourced outside China, demonstrating that the solution to technological supply could be closer to home than the Polar Circle. The China factor: the silent owner. The great strategic obstacle to the “Donroe Doctrine” is not only the ice, but that Beijing is already there. China controls near the 90% of global supply of rare earths and has known how to play its cards in the Greenlandic subsoil through litigation. The company Energy Transition Minerals (ETM), with significant Chinese capital, holds an arbitration international against Greenland, demanding historic compensation of $11.5 billion — four times the island’s GDP — following the ban on uranium mining in 2021. This legal dispute places the island in a geopolitical clamp: Washington wants control to expel Beijing, but the latter is already blocking the richest deposits through business actions and prior exploitation rights. The navigable Arctic: an unexpected ally? Paradoxically, the hoax Climate change is what is accelerating the White House’s plans. Greenland is warming much faster than the rest of the planet, and melting ice is transforming the Arctic into a strategic trade corridor. As the New York Times reportsthe Polar Silk Road is no longer a projection: in October 2025, a Chinese ship reached Great Britain from the north in just 20 days, saving 40% of the time compared to the Suez Canal. This new connectivity turns Greenland into an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the middle of new sea routes. However, sea ice melting does not solve the problem on land. In the north of the island, extreme weather continues to force any mining machinery to hibernate for six months a year, maintaining profitability like an “optical illusion.” The treasure behind the ice wall. The attempt to take control of Greenland seems to hit a wall of environmental laws, hostile geology and, above all, a total absence of basic infrastructure. The Trump administration has invested hundreds of millions in mining companies, but the results remain buried under layers of permafrost. As Anthony Marchese summarizes in Fortune: “If you go to Greenland for its minerals, you’re talking about billions of dollars and an extremely long time.” While the White House sells the island as the definitive trophy of the new technological Cold War, the technical reality of 2026 dictates a simpler sentence: the island’s greatest treasure remains protected not by weapons or treaties, but by the lack of a road that reaches it. Image | Unsplash Xataka | The US has decided that Europe is its problem in Greenland. Germany wants to convince him that the problem is Russia

Mexico wanted to know who is behind each phone number. And Telcel has spread panic along the way

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Since January 9, 2026, the Mexican Telecommunications Regulatory Commission requires that all mobile lines in the country are associated with a verified identity. Until now, SIM cards could be contracted completely anonymously, something that changes with the mandatory registration. A logical measure to avoid the telephone SCAM that, in recent hours, has sparked controversy. The alleged gap. Less than 24 hours after the entry into force of the mandatory registration of mobile lines in Mexico, Telcel, one of the largest operators in the country, suffered an alleged security breach which would have exposed personal information of millions of customers. “The official portal of @Telcel presents a critical security vulnerability that exposes the identity, CURP, RFC and email of millions of users. This occurs only 24 hours after the regulations that require all mobile lines in the country to be registered came into force. When entering any Telcel telephone number in the form, the internal system returns – without the need for passwords or verification codes – a complete information package of the line owner. This is extremely dangerous. Any cybercriminal could use one of Telcel’s number bases and automate the massive extraction of information.” Ignacio Gómez Villaseñor, journalist. The reports They pointed to a massive leak of each and every one of their clients, the sources ensuring that for a few hours it was possible to access the data through the official Telcel portal. Telcel’s response. The spread of the alleged breach was such that Telcel did not take long to call for calm. Of course, he did it with a somewhat ambiguous statement in which it neither affirms nor denies that the security failure occurred. “Your data is secure. Each user receives a unique code by SMS to only access their own information and link their line. We have implemented additional security measures to the registration process. The process is secure and your data is protected.” Telcel. Although Telcel assured that, at the time of its publication, the data was safe, the company acknowledges having implemented additional security measures during the registration process. hours later. Renato Flores, deputy director of communications at Telcel, acknowledged hours later on one of the national radio stations that there was a technical vulnerability. “Telcel acted quickly, responsibly and transparently. We detected a vulnerability, we corrected it immediately, we reinforced security and at all times we protected our customers’ data.” Despite admitting the gap, the company’s position remained firm: it ensured that only one’s own information could be accessed as a user, not that of the rest of the company’s clients. It is something that Gómez Villaseñor was quick to deny. through a video published on Xin which he showed how he was able to access user data. The risks. According to the source, the following data was exposed for hours: Owner identity CURP (Unique Population Registry Key) RFC (Federal Taxpayer Registry) Email A relatively similar case to the recent hack of Endesa suffered in Spain, through which the alleged attackers claim to have obtained more than 1TB of information related to account numbers, identities, addresses, telephone numbers and emails. A bumpy process. In the middle of the debate, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (CRT) clarified that, during the first phase of this national registry, there were certain “intermittencies on various platforms” due to the high volume of users, without giving too many details in this regard. The Commission avoided referring to the specific case, and limited itself to pointing out that it remains in contact with the operators to normalize the service. And now what. At the moment, there is no news about possible exploitation of the supposed vulnerability. If this had occurred, the attackers would have access to customers’ personal information, as happens in any other case of mass hacking. In the face of these leaks, the user’s only response may be to be alert: not to respond to or provide sensitive data through SMS, calls, WhatsApp messages or email communications (or any of our means of contact that may have been leaked) without being very clear about who we are referring to. Image | Xataka In Xataka | A single person in Barcelona and 2.5 million SMS per day: the “mobile farms” that operate in Spain to scam you

Reed Hastings became a millionaire by conquering the couch with Netflix. Now he wants to turn the snow into a gold mine

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Reed Hastings is the co-founder and CEO of Netflix, one of the largest entertainment platforms in the world. If Hastings knows anything it’s how to have fun. The enterprising businessman started a project in 2023 designed for a handful of millionaires looking to have fun skiing on virgin snow through some private tracks that can only be used by a handful of members of a exclusive ski club in the mountains of Utah. ​An exclusive ski club for millionaires. Hastings has become the main investor and architect of an exclusive access ski community for high-net-worth individuals in Powder Mountain, northern Utah (USA). That private community is called Powder Haven and is conceived as a private ski resort reserved for the exclusive enjoyment of approximately 650 families, who ski in a highly controlled environment within a domain that covers approximately 4,860 hectares. high mountain. The private Hastings ski resort is planned as a kind of “VIP space” with access to the ski area that already exists at Powder Mountain and is still open as a public resort. The result is a hybrid model in which the fee of a few very rich people helps finance infrastructure that is also used by skiers who buy a conventional ski pass. Fees and millionaire houses. According to published Forbes, Hastings has already invested more than $100 million in the acquisition and improvement of the Powder Mountain private space, assuming debt equivalent to that of the previous owners. This new capital has been used to renew the lifts and to install new lines to other areas of the resort to expand the ski area. OK to what was published by The Wall Street JournalHastings is reportedly planning to invest $200 million more to improve services for wealthy homeowners. The station’s annual membership fee is $25,000, which is added to an initial contribution and, above all, to the purchase of a home within the community, a necessary condition to be part of the private club. The houses that make up the private ski complex start at 2 million dollars and the first phase, with 39 plots at an average price equivalent to about 2.4 million euros per unit, were sold out in just a few months. Arclodge and a new mountain neighborhood The project is not limited to building luxury villas. In the heart of Powder Haven, Arclodge is being designed, a large Swiss-style social and sports club with futuristic lines that aspires to become the center of the resort’s community life. As seen in the resort pagethe new 6,800 m2 building plans to include all the luxury services to which its millionaire members are accustomed: haute cuisine restaurants, thermal and sports pools, spa and treatment rooms, gym and spaces for cultural and sports activities. New neighborhoods have been planned around this new social nucleus to luxury homes of different sizesranging from large multi-hectare plots to turnkey luxury villas designed by high-profile architecture studios. Of course, all of them with direct access to the private ski slopes. There are only three private stations like this. The Powder Haven model that the Netflix founder is developing is not a pioneering project. In fact, it is the third private ski complex that exists in the US: Yellowstone Club in Montana, and Wasatch Peaks Ranchalso in Utah. In these three enclaves, access to the slopes does not depend on a ski pass open to the general public, but rather requires being a member-owner of a property in their luxury real estate complex. Reed Hastings is the only one that has been able to take advantage of this business model based on the exclusivity of private ski services for millionaires with almost total absence of queues and a certain coexistence with the public domain of Powder Mountain, so that the extension of its slopes is expanded at a very low cost. In Xataka | Ski resorts without snow at the end of the century: the most pessimistic models show what could happen in our high mountains Image | Unsplash (Republic GmbH), Powder Haven

Qwen and open models

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Alibaba’s Qwen family of open AI models is quietly taking the world by storm. Until the current month of January these models have overcome and to 700 million downloads on the Hugging Face platform. The milestone is significant and confirms the supremacy of Chinese companies in this type of models. what has happened. Those responsible for the development of this family of models explain how Hugging Face data They don’t lie: these projects have become the most popular open models worldwide, at least if we look at the number of downloads. Unstoppable. In October 2025 the Qwen model family managed to surpass the previous leader in this segment, the Llama de Meta family of models. Two months later, the Qwen models had been downloaded so much that the total number exceeded the combined figure of the eight AI models next in popularity. That group is made up of the models from Meta, DeepSeek, OpenAI, Mistral, NVIDIA, Zhipu.ai, Moonshot and Minimax. Alibaba is a steamroller. Since Qwen launched in 2023, the advancement of the models in this family has been unstoppable. Although initially accessing them was more uncomfortableAlibaba has taken advantage of its infrastructure and its size to popularize them little by little, but above all its engineers have done something else: not stop launching models. The pace has been frenetic, but the models are also notable and comparable to proprietary models from major US technology companies. Qwen wants to be the Android of AI. The family’s model catalog is enormous. Hugging Face currently includes 300 different models that cover both slightly older versions and various variants of each new major version. For example, we have models specialized in visual data recognition (Qwen VL), in programming (Qwen Coder) or models in image generation (Qwen Image Edit) or “generic” models absolutely gigantic or others like Omni that already compete with Grok 4 or GPT 5 Pro. The intention is obvious: to be the “standard” AI models on the market. Even if it is due to saturation. Surprise: the most popular is not the most powerful. a study Published in October, it did provide surprising information on the growth in popularity of this family of models. One would expect that the most downloaded would be some of the versions of Qwen 3, the most modern and capable version. Actually the most downloaded is Qwen 2.5-1.5B-Instruct, a “light” model that can even run on modest mobile phones and laptops. Tiny but bully. Currently the Hugging Face list indicates that the most popular in downloads is Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct, more modern and somewhat less lightweight, but still “small” by today’s standards. It seems clear that there is notable interest in being able to run this model on mobile phones, tablets and computers with little video memory. Thousands of derived projects. The possibility of obtaining and using these open models in a simple way has made many developers and companies take advantage of them to customize them and adapt them to their own needs. That has made according to Xinhua That family has been used in more than 180,000 derived versions. Flame fades. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley confirms that its vision is different. Goal, what led this area initially thanks to Llama, has given a rudder stroke. The company is still expected to launch new versions of this model, but in the meantime most technology giants focus on their closed and proprietary models. Of course: they keep some models open with a promising future, as we have seen with Gemma (Google) Phi (Microsoft) or gpt-oss (OpenAI). Without forgetting that Mistral is a great European benchmark and also offers open variants. In Xataka | China and the United States have started an antagonistic race in AI through a simple question: whether to be open source or not

We have spent 30 years forgetting how things are made. Now China has the keys to the matter and the West is in panic

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For the past three decades, Western democracies have operated under an intellectual mirage. Elites, blinded by a neoclassical bias, assumed that control of intellectual property, financial instruments, and software code constituted the pinnacle of value creation. In this worldview, physical processes—the “dirty work” of mining, refining, and manufacturing—were considered low-margin commodity services that could be outsourced to low-cost jurisdictions without strategic risk. As Gillian Tett explains in his Financial Times columnthis cognitive bias allowed China to dominate global supply chains with little protest. The material deterioration of the West. The essence of the current problem is defined by investor Craig Tindale in his essay “The return of matter”. In it he argues that the West has suffered “strategic disarmament” by dismantling its national productive economy in favor of quarterly financial efficiency. As Tindale details, he fell into the “raw material paradox”: believing that possessing the raw mineral is equivalent to possessing the usable material. While the West possesses vast geological deposits, China has monopolized the “Midstream,” that is, the heavy industrial capacity to refine, smelt and purify these materials into useful forms. Without this capability, a lithium mine in Australia or a copper mine in Arizona are simply quarries for a Chinese smelter; They are not strategic assets for the West if Beijing has the keys to access them. The data is there. The data of the Chinese industrial domain are, as investor Craig Tindale describesoverwhelming and unprecedented in history, consolidating what he calls “processing sovereignty”: Gallium: China controls approximately 98% of global production, a material that is essential for AESA radars, 5G networks and the semiconductors of the future. Rare earths: The Asian giant dominates 90% of chemical separation capacity – the true technical “separation wall” – and more than 90% of the production of NdFeB magnets, vital for electric vehicle engines and defense systems. Graphite: Control more than 90% of the production of graphite anodes, the indispensable component of virtually all lithium-ion batteries. Magnesium and Polysilicon: Your control extends to 90-95% of magnesium casting (key for aluminum alloys) and 95% polysilicon necessary for solar energy. As Tett points outwhile the West became obsessed with software and services, China was quietly building the physical infrastructure that today gives it a massive competitive advantage in the race for artificial intelligence and the energy transition. This physical reality is what has forced the Trump administration to try to redraw the energy map by taking Venezuelan crude oil, desperately seeking to regain control over the “matter.” The electric wall of AI. This physical reality has revealed that the race for Artificial Intelligence It’s not just a question of code or chips. The digital leadership of the West is now encountering the physical limit of cheap energy. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, and Jensen Huang, director of Nvidia, agree that the biggest current problem is not the excess of chips, but lack of electricity to connect them. On this board, China has gone from being a dependent petrostate to becoming the first “Electrostate” in the world. Beijing now produces 2.5 times more electricity than the US and builds 74% of all current solar and wind projects on the planet. By investing massively in electrification, China is expanding an infrastructure that could give it a definite advantage in the AI ​​race. The Venezuelan trap. Against this backdrop, Donald Trump’s administration has accepted the importance of physical matter, but seems determined to fight with tools from the last century. The taking of Venezuelan crude oil seeks to consolidate the reserves of Venezuela, Guyana and the United States are under US influence, which would represent close to 30% of the world’s oil reserves. according to a JPMorgan report. However, Venezuelan oil alone cannot solve the AI ​​problem. As Gillian Tett warnswhile Washington asks the world to buy 20th century infrastructure (fossil fuels), Beijing offers 21st century infrastructure (renewable energy and high voltage networks). In addition, Venezuelan crude oil is “mortgaged”: The country owes up to $60 billion to China under the oil-for-loans model, and its infrastructure is in ruins. The skills gap and the clash of “clocks.” Rebuilding industrial sovereignty is not just a question of money. The West has closed its heavy industrial capacity for thirty years, causing a “human bottleneck”. Metallurgists and process engineers who know how to adjust an unstable furnace or a chemical separation train are retiring without relief. Tindale further postulates a conflict of time horizons. The “Western Financial Clock,” which requires quarterly profits, has destabilized the “Industrial Clock” (which requires decades of investment) and the “War Clock” (which requires immediate reserves). While China’s clocks are synchronized by the state, the West remains trapped in short-term financial efficiency. Towards a rematerialized sovereignty? The JPMorgan report suggests that the US has won the short-term battle for Venezuelan crude oil. But, as Gillian Tett concludesrisks losing the global strategic war for the energy that will power AI. Tindale’s thesis is blunt: a civilization that financializes everything ends up sacrificing the material base that keeps it independent. If the West does not rebuild its foundries, refineries and factories, it will renounce the material sovereignty that sustains democracy, becoming a simple “quarry” rich in resources but poor in capacity in the face of a rival that already holds the keys to the physical world. Image | freepik Xataka | Venezuela has something much more valuable than oil and the US knows it. The big problem is that he doesn’t know where he is.

Three years of delay later, Valladolid is about to complete what seemed endless: the A-11

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Cross Castilla y León on a highway. From Soria to Zamora, passing through Valladolid, to link the first of them with the A-66 or give access to Portugal without having to go through secondary roads. It is known as the Duero Highway and its end is already visible at its central junction, in Valladolid. It arrives, yes, three years late. The works They have already been extended for more than six years, well beyond December 2022 for which the section between Tudela de Duero and Olivares was expected to be inaugurated. Two populations that should have been united three years after work began in 2019, explain in Valladolid newspaper. When this section is inaugurated and connects with the Quintanilla de Arriba section, it will be open the largest highway link which has been opened to traffic once in our country. 34 kilometers that should arrive in spring. Because first there is a hurdle to overcome. A viaduct to finish Until now, the stretch of highway inaugurated only once in our country is the 27.8 km that separate Solares and Torrelavega in Cantabria by the A-8 and which were opened to traffic in 2015. The record should become obsolete when Quintanilla de Arriba and Tudela de Duero are finally linked by the A-11. This section, as we said, was planned in two segments. Between Tudela de Duero and Olivares de Duero there are 20.2 kilometers in length and between this town and Quintanilla de Arriba there are another 14.5 kilometers. The intention is that this first section will be open to traffic in 2022 after investing 79.1 million euros. The second was to be ready at the end of 2023 after spending 97.9 million euros. It is estimated, however, that this section has gone above 220 million euros. A figure that pales compared to the total work, if we take into account that the last 120 kilometers of the Duero Highway under construction have been awarded some 980 million euros in the sum of all the projects. It remains to be built, for example, the expansion of the Aranda del Duero variant. As far as Valladolid is concerned, residents have yet to see how the 34 kilometer link is completed with the construction of the Duero viaduct. When completed it will be the culmination of works that are expected to be ready by the spring of this year. However, in May of last year Those responsible preferred to remain cautious and make it clear that until the end of 2026 the deadlines projected with the last extension would be met. Whether you arrive in spring or winter, the opening of this section next to Valladolid will be key to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. The connection between Soria and Zamora by highway is a historic demand that should have been completed a long time ago. Especially if we take into account that The first section of the A-11 was opened to cars in 1995. More than 30 years later, there are still fringes to close. Photos | Ministry of Transport In Xataka | Spain has dozens of unique abandoned roads. Now he wants to save them by turning them into “historic roads”

While half the world looks for an alternative to Taiwan, Jensen Huang is very clear about the harsh reality: there is no

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In the technological world, the United States AIthe China’s semiconductor breakthroughs and the robotics explosion They were protagonists during the last months. But if there is something essential for these industries to function, it is Taiwan. In semiconductors, Taiwan is the one who splits the cod, and its technological diamond is TSMC. And the CEO of NVIDIA is clear that it is not worth burning money looking for the new TSMC immediately. Because it’s something that will take decades to replicate. Resilience. TSMC is about to turn 40 years old and is the company that manufactures for the elephants of the semiconductor sector such as AMD, Apple, ARM, MediaTek, Qualcomm or NVIDIA itself, among many others. They are the ones that have the most advanced machines of the European ASMLthose that have refined their processes to the extreme and are used even by manufacturers that have their own factories, such as Intel or Texas Instruments. It is something that affects the user directly, proof of this is that a mobile chip manufactured by TSMC is not the same as almost the same one made by Samsung. And to these processes is added a brutal manufacturing capacity that has dominated the industry. And, of course, looking to bite into that pie, different countries have tried to find their own TSMC. However, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has commented that efforts to diversify production must be made from the angle of resilience, not replacement. You don’t have to burn money like crazy. In recent months, Europe and the United States have begun to add manufacturing capacity in the semiconductor segment. The problem is that you cannot build a competitive industry in a short time: experience is needed and failure is not allowed. That, in an industry that is evolving at a very rapid pace due to the needs for chips for feed the artificial intelligenceis not contemplated. That is why Huang believes that the market is becoming selective and if guarantees are needed to manufacture chips, the one who gives those guarantees is turned to. Huang has been giving interviews for a few days and touching on key topics. For example, pointing out that The breakup between the US and China makes no sense because China is a very powerful trading partner, but also ensuring that Taiwan, as much as certain countries may not like it, will be the axis in the development of advanced computing in the coming years. China and the US investing millions. SIA is the acronym for Semiconductor Industry Association. It is the organization that seeks to advance policies that help the growth of the manufacturing industry in the United States. In your report Last year, they targeted 100 projects in 28 states totaling more than half a trillion dollars of private investment to triple the capacity of American industry by 2032. amd wants to be one of the protagonists of this operationbut also an Intel that seeks to position itself as a key factory on American soil and that has received strong government support. China is not far behind. With the explosion of robotics and AI, companies like SMIC or Huawei are developing alternatives to American technology to fuel their computing needs. They are looking for something else: industrial autonomy, and for that the Government has been releasing a series of funds to become one of the biggest names in the sector. If a subsidy package was launched in 2024 $47.5 billiona few weeks ago, other of up to 70,000 million to support that industry. Rvalidates directly with the US CHIPS of 52,000 million and 43,000 European million. The objective in both cases is the same: allocate obscene amounts of money to areas such as design, equipment, manufacturing and materials, as well as energy solutions that allow chips to be manufactured, but also to feed the companies in each country’s ecosystem. In the case of China, furthermore, there is an urgency to achieve these objectives as it is not able to have the advanced ASML machines and NVIDIA chips, something that the United States, Europe and Taiwan do have. India more of the same. But this is not a question of two great poles. South Korea also seeks become one of the great players of semiconductors, and another country that is designing an ambitious strategy to attract investment in semiconductors is India. Over the last few months they have been approving a series of aid packages (the last in January of this year, of 4.6 billion dollars) to boost the manufacturing of electronic components in the country. Apart from investing in their first state-of-the-art semiconductor factory (an investment of 11 billion dollars is estimated to achieve this), they are launching other aid and tax advantages to attract companies such as Samsung, Foxconn (also Taiwanese) or Apple to their territory. The goal is not to be a country that assembles the final product, but rather to manufacture critical components and move up the industrial value chain. Taiwanese expansion. The “problem” for these countries, and a great advantage for TSMC, is that they all seem to be very far away. India wants to achieve a chip made in 28 nanometer lithography, which is something that TSMC surpassed generations ago. AND China is fighting over 7 and 5 nm. Meanwhile, TSMC has refined its 3nm process and, as we say, TSMC’s great asset is not only that they have the experience and technology, but the ability to manufacture the best chips for customers who need those terribly refined chips. But there’s more: if China, Europe, the United States and India are moving, TSMC itself is diversifying. Yes Europe aspires to manufacture 20% of the planet’s semiconductorsit will be thanks to the TSMC plant planned in Germany. And although the US hates that it is a foreign company the one who has the upper hand in this great technological – and monetary – adventure of AI, TSMC has already settled on US soil. In the end, each territory seeks its … Read more

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