Mobile Tech & Gadgets

The reality is that we are facing a dead end

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There is a race among major AI companies to build a AGI or artificial general intelligence, that which surpasses humans in all areas of knowledge. Sam Altman has been hyping up about AGI for a long time, and he is not the only one. Mark Zuckerberg has spent a million on a team to create it, Dario Amodei believes it will arrive very soon and Elon Musk says Grok 5 could achieve AGI. What if it’s all a big lie? Language and intelligence. It’s not the same. OpenAI, Meta, Anthropic… all these companies have something in common: their path to AGI is LLM or great language models. They count in The Verge The nuance, and it is not just any nuance, is that language and intelligence are two very different things. Decades of research have shown that language is a tool of communication, not thought. In other words, mastering the language is not equivalent to more intelligence, in the same way that not mastering it does not mean ceasing to be intelligent. Language models. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini… are tools composed of hundreds and even billions of parameters, trained on enormous textual corpora. Their technical complexity is undeniable, but they are still systems that They predict the next word from statistical correlations. Its core is language, not ideas or abstract thought in the human sense. Achieve AGI. Getting to AGI with a language model is a dead end. I said it recently Yann LeCunconsidered one of the godfathers of modern AI and, until recently, head of AI at Meta. According to LeCun, the path to achieving AGI is not the LLM, but the LWM or world models. These models they learn from the environment and they can imagine scenarios, like humans do. He hype. If language models are not the way, why do AI companies keep saying they are on the verge of achieving AGI? Because they need it. Their premise is that with more computing power (more chips and more data centers), their AIs will become smarter, so fueling the hype is their way of justifying that absurd amounts continue to be invested to scale AI. Deceleration. At first the evolutionary leaps in AI chatbots were palpable; the first versions of ChatGPT they blew our minds. The reality right now is that Generative AI has entered a stage of continuity or deceleration. There are improvements, but they are no longer as notable or revolutionary. The solution is to generate expectation: with AI agents and, of course, with the AGI. Does this mean that AGI will never be reached? Not necessarily, but it will take more than language models and above all time. According to Andrej Karpathy, co-founder of OpenAI, AGI will take for at least another decade. Image | Meo, Pexels (edited) In Xataka | Someone has taken a look at the dotcom bubble and compared their data to AI. And it’s not optimistic

Faced with the threat of an “orbital Pearl Harbor”, Europe has made the same decision as the US: shield space

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The race to militarize space has accelerated to an extent unprecedented since the end of the Cold War. The reasons are several, but the main one is driven by the combination of explicit russian threatscovert sabotage and an international architecture incapable of containing the emergence of atomic weapons out of the atmosphere. The last one to join: Europe. The war in orbit. Moscow not only has reactivated its classic nuclear discourse, but has opened a second front in low Earth orbit through the development of anti-satellite systems equipped with nuclear warheads that openly violate the Outer Space Treaty. In this context, European and North American experts match in which the Kremlin is lowering the threshold for the use of tactical nuclear weapons both on Earth like in spacewhile experimenting with platforms capable of camouflaging orbital bombs designed to disable satellites essential for the economy, defense and communication. Thus, the very idea of ​​a “Space Pearl Harbor” (a nuclear explosion that destroyed thousands of satellites, blinded entire continents and turned low orbit into a radioactive dump for generations) has forced Europe to abandon the romantic vision of an exclusively civil space and enter a new strategic reality which combines deterrence, diplomacy and operational preparedness. The bet of the old continent. This turn has crystallized in a historic decision: For the first time, European Space Agency countries have approved funding a program designed explicitly for military functions. He ERS projectconceived as a “system of systems” equipped with surveillance capabilities, secure navigation, encrypted communications and Earth observation, marks Europe’s entry into the club of actors who recognize that their future security depends both on what happens on the ground and what happens hundreds of kilometers above it. The approved financing (1.2 billion euros with more to come) comes accompanied by an unprecedented political mandate that redefines the concept of “peaceful purposes” at a time when China multiplies its space capabilities and Russia turns orbit into a space hybrid pressure. The magnitude of the support, bordering 100% of what was requestedreflects an internal consensus: without its own capabilities, Europe would be a vulnerable spectator in a conflict that would be decided by the speed and resilience of its satellite constellations. The French and German response. On this new board, France and Germany have assumed a central role both for its industrial capacity and for its newly adopted conviction that the wars of the future will begin (or be decided) in space. Paris has invested 10 billion euros in its new Space Command, oriented to military operations in orbit, to shield satellites against kinetic attacks and to promote an interoperable architecture with NATO. Berlin, for its part, has announced an investment of 35 billion until 2030 to reinforce its own Space Command, develop guardian satellites and equip itself with advanced early warning systems. Both countries have publicly assumed that orbital infrastructure is so critical such as energy or digitaland that any Russian aggression could paralyze not only defense, but European civil society as a whole. National security is no longer decided solely on the eastern land border, but in a three-dimensional environment where the loss of a single satellite node can destabilize entire sectors. Nuclear beyond the atmosphere. Analysts agree that the most feared scenario is not a specific attack against specific satellites, but the detonation of a nuclear charge in orbitcapable of generating devastating electromagnetic pulses and cascading space junk that would render low orbit useless for decades. Historical precedents, such as try Starfish Prime that destroyed a third of existing satellites in the 1960s, serve as a warning of what it would mean to repeat a similar experiment today, with more than 10,000 active satellites. Such an explosion would kill astronauts, destroy global navigation infrastructure, fossilize the digital economy and cause a domino effect that could move the war from space to Earth. Although some experts hold While Moscow would only resort to such action in a scenario of terminal collapse, the mere existence of these capabilities forces Europe to prepare for a type of conflict that would break the traditional limits of deterrence. Political pressure and a new order. Fear of an orbital conflict has reactivated debates on nuclear disarmamentboth in the United States and in Europe, where legislators are promoting initiatives to revitalize multilateral negotiations that have been stagnant for decades. At the same time, ESA has achieved a record budget (22.1 billion euros) that not only finances its transition towards space security, but also promotes scientific and commercial programs, such as reusable rockets, Martian exploration or new astrobiological missions. This growth, supported by Germany, France, Italy and Spain, reflects the strategic convergence between defense, research and technological sovereignty. In the new scenario, Europe seeks not to be a secondary actor in the face of spatial duopolization between the United States and China, but to develop real autonomy that reduces dependence on private platforms like starlink or American systems such as the space interceptors of the Golden Dome. Militarize space. If you also want, the intersection between russian threatsAmerican technological advances and the European strategic awakening marks the beginning of a stage in which the Earth’s orbit is consolidated as the new global scenario military competition. What was once a scientific and commercial domain has become a space where the resilience of entire societies is decided. He ERS projectthe expansion of national space commands and the growing funding of dual capabilities make up a defense ecosystem that seeks to avoid a conflict that no one wants to imagine. And in that scenario, Europe seems to have understood that the only way to deter orbital escalation is to demonstrate that it has the same means to resist it, respond to it and recover. Image | RawPixelESA/Mlabspace In Xataka | The US wants to build an unprecedented anti-missile shield called “Golden Dome.” And SpaceX has the ideal technology In Xataka | Space solar never worked. A military escalation in orbit is making it a reality

This is the flu that is already an epidemic in Spain

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The end of the year is undoubtedly the classic time to have a cold or a bad flu due to the drop in temperatures what causes a lowering of defenseswhich is used by viruses to sneak into all citizens. This gives us the feeling that now everyone has a cold, but the reality is that Spain has officially entered an epidemic of flu. There are reasons. And it is not a general feeling, but rather data from the Carlos III Health Institute confirms that the situation is radically different from that experienced last year. The wave of cases has started earlier, hits harder and brings with it a genetic novelty: the K variant. Tripling figures. The most striking thing about the latest report of the Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System (SiVIRA) is not only that cases are increasing, but also the vertical speed at which they do so. In the week of November 17 to 23the incidence in Primary Care reached 112.2 cases per 100,000 inhabitants, strongly breaking the baseline threshold established at 37 cases. To put it in context: in the same period of 2024, the incidence was only 12.8 cases. We are facing a scenario that practically triples the intensity at the beginning of the season compared to the previous year. This is also added to a positivity rate in which the tests carried out are already close to 20%, which indicates that out of every five people who come with symptoms, one has confirmed flu. A biological factor. Unlike previous seasons where the flu virus of the subtype reigned H1N1this year we are seeing a changing of the guard: the virus dominant is H3N2. And although it may seem somewhat minor, the reality is that the population has lower immunity against this subtype, since the body has not come into contact with it as frequently. Added to this is the ECDC alert (European Center for Disease Control): The virus is not exactly the same as we knew. A mutation has been detected that has given rise to a new subclade, called Variant K. What does variant K imply? Viruses mutate quite frequently, which is one of the reasons why a person who has been vaccinated can develop the disease. This is why this K variant can better evade the body’s defenses and nest more frequently. But it does not indicate that it is more or less serious (as when we talked about COVID), but yes it is more contagious due to this immune evasion and that could explain the increase in cases in the general population. Some vaccines… What don’t work? In recent weeks we have seen awareness campaigns for the vaccination of risk groups against the flu. But surely those who have been vaccinated are seeing how they are contagious and this raises many doubts about the usefulness of vaccines. But to do this, you must understand that flu vaccination is done for a very specific type that is expected to be the majority of the season. The problem, like this, is that in the end the virus ‘surprises us’ with a mutation that ruins all our predictions, making the vaccines not as effective as we expected. Although it can also reduce the intensity of the symptoms. The demographic map. The current epidemic that Spain is experiencing offers us a very clear photo of how it is moving. The citizens who are being infected the most right now are the smallest, that is, children from 1 to 4 years. These present a shooting rate of 428.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. A group that is the most affected, although also conditioned because parents go to the pediatrician at the slightest symptom, guaranteeing better case control. But the real problem is in the hospital impact. Although right now we are not in saturation at the national level, in regions like Madrid Hospitalizations of people over 80 years of age have doubled in one week, going from 9.43 to 20.44 cases. A worrying fact in this case is the increase in cases of the most common complication: pneumonia. In this way, the transmission vector is being the smallest, but the most affected are still the older people for whom the flu is a big problem. Even if they have been vaccinated. The forecast. The increase in flu cases It has been advanced between 3 and 4 weeks compared to what we would expect in other years. In this way, if we normally expected the peak of infections at the end of January or beginning of February, this year everything is going to change radically. In the case of Catalonia, the peak of cases is expected to occur between the second and third week of December, while other communities expect it during the Christmas holidays driven by family gatherings. In this way, as a positive point, whoever passes this flu first can avoid suffering its annoying symptoms in the middle of the Christmas holidays. Use of the mask. We already know one of the systems to avoid contagion: the use of a mask. Last year there was great chaos to reach an agreement and impose its use, and this year it seems that a very similar scenario will follow. There are already regions like Galicia and Aragón that have made a move recommending or imposing the use of masks in health centers and anticipating emergency saturation. And it makes a lot of sense that if we go to a health center we avoid infecting the people who are there, since they are probably older or immunocompromised and this can lead to a worsening of the disease. Images | Towfiqu barbhuiya Matteo Fusco In Xataka | H5N1 bird flu unleashes a massacre in Antarctica: half of the female seals have already disappeared

Samsung has been gradually shaping its super high-end range for years. And the result is the triumph of the S25 Ultra for another year

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The verdict of the jury of the Xataka NordVPN Awards 2025 has been clear. In a year where competition has been fierce in the premium segment, with Apple renewing its commitment to iPhone 17 and Chinese brands like Alive or Oppo pushing the limits of photography, there has been a traditional winner: The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra has won gold in the most coveted category. Prima facie, may seem like a conservative decision. And the Galaxy S25 Ultra is not a disruptive mobile; It doesn’t make a huge leap in performance or photography. However, his victory responds to a reality that we verified during our analysis: a perfect balance. It is not a victory resulting from chance or a specific success, but the culmination of a strategy that the Korean firm began five years ago. While other manufacturers lurched in search of wow effect every twelve months (and even less), Samsung decided that its ‘Ultra’ surname already had a defined identity: the super high-end customer is not looking for experiments—faster charges, sensors with better numbers, higher capacity batteries—but rather certainties. The Galaxy S25 Ultra has not reinvented the wheel, but has made it roll better than anyone else: these are the technical and experience reasons that make it the king of 2025. Something with which I can’t agree more. When the screen matters (and a lot) If you have used a Galaxy S24 Ultrayou know the pain. Those rectangular corners that dug into the palm of the hand were the price to pay for having the largest and most spectacular screen. With the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung has smoothed over that roughness. It’s not just that the corners have been softened: it’s that the phone has lost a few grams. It may seem like a smaller figure on paper, but in the hand, the difference between one and the other is very noticeable. Maintaining the 6.9-inch screen and 5,000 mAh battery while reducing weight (and a little thickness) is the kind of change that justifies the award. Of course, perhaps after saying goodbye to those corners he has lost one of his identifying marks at first glance: now he looks like the rest of his younger brothers. That does not mean that it is at this point that the maturity of the concept is appreciated: it took Samsung years to correct the course from those curved screens, beautiful, but not entirely comfortable. The S25 Ultra is the recognition that usability must come before pretty aesthetics, even in the premium segment. And if that means sacrificing the visual identity of the extinct ‘Note’ in favor of ergonomics, then too. On the other hand, the anti-reflective treatment of its predecessor already seemed like a game changer. This year, it is maintained, and its screen is also improved with more mature brightness management. They are one of those small details that matter: I don’t need 6,000 nits if I have a panel that eliminates reflections and it offers me very pure blacks in broad daylight. This panel does not seek to win on the technical sheet, but on experience. And there is a technical detail that we often overlook but that makes a difference in everyday life: visual fatigue. Although Samsung remains conservative with PWM Dimming (492 Hz vs. 2,000+ Hz for the Chinese competition), the panel calibration and automatic brightness management in One UI have reached an exquisite point. Let’s not forget that we still have a real Quad HD+ resolutionsomething that many rivals they have sacrificed dropping to 1.5K to save battery or increase the refresh rate. Samsung has not made that sacrifice, and it is appreciated. Power without anxiety and mature chambers It was easy for Samsung to deliver high-end performance: the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 has given way to a Snapdragon 8 Elite who plays in another league. Although in synthetic stress tests the mobile can suffer considerable throttling, in real use – editing video or playing demanding titles like ‘Genshin Impact’ – this drop in theoretical performance is imperceptible. Samsung has prioritized system stability over raw benchmark numbers: I confirm that it is the right decision for a productivity device. My biggest fear was that the power of the new chip would eat up the battery, the reality has been the opposite. Getting to the end of the day with half the battery is possible: Samsung has shown that optimization can improve autonomy. Now, it goes without saying that to continue winning our super high-end award, the South Korean will have to join the new trend in batteries: those of silicon-carbon. This year it has not been, but next 2026 forces Samsung to take the leap that other manufacturers are experiencing. And what if it becomes notable: mobile phones with 7,000 mAh batteries and more are flooding the Android market. In the photographic field, this is where the philosophy of refinement is most noticeable. Do you miss a radical change in camera hardware? Sometimes, although if you value consistency more, not so much. The Galaxy S25 Ultra solved the Achilles heel of its predecessor: the ultra wide angle. By raising the resolution to 50 MP with a new sensor, this camera finally does not clash with the rest. Furthermore, the recording in LOG and AI noise removal are quite useful tools for content creators. An aspect in which it approaches the high level of the iPhone in video recording. No, it is not the most exciting camera of the year, but it is one of the few that does not leave you lying around: whatever photo you want to take, it offers very consistent results. Samsung has got the point of its photography. A software to match Finally, part of the prize is also for the Android software: Gone are the days of Touchwiz as well as the first versions of One UI that did not achieve the promised user experience. One UI 7 has turned AI from a curiosity into a complete tool suite; and in … Read more

put everyone to work

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A recent announcement of the Government of Spain reported on the activation of the gateway that automated the granting of the Minimum Vital Income (IMV) for those unemployed people who have already exhausted both their unemployment benefit and unemployment benefit. This measure contrasts with those being taken by Belgium, which will eliminate subsidies for the long-term unemployed and those suffering from long-term sick leave. He government plan to cut public spending has been one of the main reasons for the call on strike that has paralyzed air communications, transportation and a good part of its industry and services. At an event with students from Ghent University, Prime Minister Bart De Wever I assured them that: “Without policy changes, the welfare state will collapse, not in my lifetime, but in yours.” Either cuts or chaos. Prime Minister Bart De Wever has launched a series of budget reforms aimed at solving serious problems that the country has been facing for decades with the unemployment and long-term sickness benefits that Belgian workers receive. According what was published by The Brussels TimesWith the adjustment plan proposed by the Belgian executive, structural savings of 9.2 billion euros are expected to be obtained by 2029 and the accumulation of debt will be reduced by another 17 billion euros. “This is the only way to safeguard our welfare state for the future,” wrote Prime Minister De Wever in your X profile. Strikes for a harsh adjustment plan. The unions have organized the thirteenth strike since Bart De Wever took office as Prime Minister in February 2025. The call has been three days of protests that have left empty streets and minimal services. On Monday public transport stopped, on Tuesday teachers and doctors joined in, and on Wednesday there was a national strike in the rest of the sectors. Everything comes from government savings planwhich seeks to cut spending on benefits to comply with EU guidelines and lower the deficit. Although the Belgian economy looks good in macroeconomic terms, its government believes that the system of long-term sickness and unemployment benefits is too permissive and discourages re-entry into the labor market. End to unemployment for life. In Spain this figure does not exist, but Belgium was the last country in the EU which granted unemployment benefits without a time limit. That is, unlike what happens in Spain, which is limited to a maximum of 24 months, in Belgium there was no deadline to stop receiving this benefit, so someone who began receiving it at the age of 25 could retire collecting it. Starting in April 2026, that premise will completely change. The Government has sent thousands of letters to these indefinitely unemployed, informing them that those who have been unemployed for more than 20 years will automatically lose aid. Progressively, the measure will be extended to those unemployed who have been out of work for more than two years, except for some supervised exceptions that will be able to maintain it. Who lose this subsidy and do not have financial resources, they will have to ask for help at their local social center, which applies stricter rules and controls to encourage them to reenter the labor market. Control of long-term patients. More than 526,000 people are registered as unemployed on long sick leavein a country that has 11.7 million inhabitants. This represents a cost of 9,000 million euros per year to the State. Far from stopping, since the belgian environment The Brussels Times estimate that the number of long-term patients who receive a benefit go up to 600,000 by 2035. To avoid fraud, the government is going to require periodic medical checkups for those who have been sick for more than a year, sanctions will apply against doctors who issue an abnormally high number of sick leaves and will help to adapt jobs for those who can go back to work. Unemployment is concentrated among migrants. Belgium registers an unemployment figure of 5.9%, well below the 10.5% registered in Spain and even lower than the euro zone average with 6.3%. However, according to Eurostat data 2024, if the unemployment data is segmented by nationality, the percentage of unemployed Belgian nationals stands at 4.7%, shooting up to 16.4% among migrants. That is, a difference of 11.7 percentage points that makes the State endure greater financial pressure with citizens who supposedly came to work, but are unemployed. As and how he published Politicalsix out of ten unemployed people in Belgium are not Belgian. The Government is optimistic. The Belgian Government is optimistic about the adjustment plan given that it involves increasing revenues with more taxes (for example, VAT on some products will be increased) and reducing payments with fewer subsidies. According to sources of The Brussels Timesthe “return to work” plan for long-term sick people alone should generate savings of 1.9 billion euros in subsidies. “I could say that I can solve the problem without the citizens feeling it, but that would be a lie. If you do not dare to take drastic measures, you are not worthy of governing,” said the prime minister, underlining the seriousness of the measures taken. In Xataka | In Belgium the authorities have asked their citizens not to eat the Christmas tree. And they have good reasons Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, DC)

We have discounts of up to 61% and many financing facilities

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Today, November 28, is officially the Black Friday. A few days ago we had a ton of offers and bargains in technology, although, as happens with everything, good things come to an end. If you are one of those who have been wanting to renew a device or appliance and are looking for something from Samsung, we have good news for you: your Black Friday is still going to be available a little longer. The official store of the Korean manufacturer has discounts that, In the case of televisions, they go up to 61%. The prices we found are already quite attractive, but we can reduce them even more if we use some discount coupons, a certain payment method or even enjoying their service. Delivery and Premiere. All without forgetting that, in addition, we will have many facilities to finance our purchases and we can even get headphones as a gift with some devices. It will depend a little on what we are looking for, but it is very easy right now to find bargains inside this store. To make your task a little easier, below we are going to leave you a selection of some that we find very interesting: Galaxy S25 Ultra by 997 eurosthe best Android phone of the year with 512 GB of storage. Galaxy S25 by 664 eurosa high-end option if we prefer compact phones. Smart OLED TV S91F by 1,662 eurosa television with outstanding image quality and 77 inches. Smart TV QLED QEF1 by 389 eurosa great choice if we are looking for a television with great value for money. SpaceMax Washing Machine by 436 eurosa model with a lot of capacity at a very attractive price. Galaxy S25 Ultra We start with the best super high-end phone at the Xataka NordVPN 2025 awards: the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It is a very powerful phone thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite and it stands out for offering a 6.9-inch screen with the best anti-reflective treatment there is. Its camera system meets very good marks in each scenario and also has a lot of AI, as well as seven years of guaranteed updates. Now, let’s talk about the offer. This version of the phone, which is the one with 512 GB, arrived in stores at a price of 1,579 euros. Now, this Black Friday we have it available in the official Samsung store for 1,099 euros, but, as we said above, we can take it for 997 euros. And be careful: also with a case, a charger and some Galaxy Buds3 as a gift. These are the steps to do it: Paying with Bizum or Samsung Pay we will receive a direct discount of 50 euros. If we make the purchase from the app with the code ‘APP5’ we will get a 5% discount. To receive the gift case and charger, we just have to go to the experts chat and request the code for it. For the gift Galaxy Buds3, you have to use the code ‘GIFT‘. Small final note. As we mentioned above, we can even lower this price further if we use Delivery and Release. The discount in this case, which can be up to 520 euros, will depend on the device we deliver. Galaxy S25 Ultra (512GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Galaxy S25 A phone that, being high-end, is more compact may suit us better. So we should set our eyes on the Galaxy S25a device just as powerful as its Ultra brother, but in this case it has a 6.2-inch screen. It is the first Galaxy S of its kind to come with 12GB of RAM and, like the rest of its family, it also has seven years of guaranteed updates. This version of the device, which is the one with 256 GB of storage, arrived in stores at a price of 969 euros. As with the previous mobile, we can also significantly reduce the price it has right now to 664 euros with the following steps: 50 euros discount when paying with Bizum or Samsung Pay. 5% discount with the coupon ‘APP5’ from the official store app. As with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, we can also take a charger and case by asking for a code in the expert chat. We can reduce the price even more with Delivery and Release (up to 390 euros) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Smart OLED TV S91F We now move on to televisions with one of the best that Samsung has in its catalog. The S91F is an OLED model, so we will have the best blacks, very vivid colors and good contrasts. In addition, its image processor is one of the most advanced that Samsung has to date. It is also a very interesting option if we want it to play, since we can take its refresh rate up to 144 Hz with Motion Xcelerator. The RRP of its 77-inch version is 3,699, although this Black Friday it is reduced to 1,799 euros. As with mobile phones, we can take a few extra steps to reduce its price and get it for free. 1,662 euros: Using Bizum or Samsung Pay we will receive a 50 euro direct discount A 5% discount when purchasing from the app with the coupon ‘APP5’ We can also get some free Galaxy Buds3 with the code ‘GIFT‘ Smart OLED TV S91F (77 inches) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Smart TV QLED QEF1 Quality-price, we will find few better options than Samsung’s QLED line. Its Quantum Dots will allow us to have an image with vivid colors and very good quality. In addition, as with other Samsung models from 2025, it also includes the artificial intelligence that the company has for TVs: Vision AI. All without forgetting that it has seven years of guaranteed updates, which ensures very good longevity. Its RRP in this case is 799 euros for the 55-inch … Read more

While others sell us fireworks, she is rewriting science

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OpenAI does not seek to create an AGI. Make sure we don’t stop talking about her. It is the maximum exponent of the “productization” of AI. It and other rivals focus on offering flashy options that improve our productivity but don’t change the world. Which is precisely what some companies are trying to do, among which one stands out in particular: DeepMind. The AI ​​that helped science. For the past two years the tech industry has resembled a fireworks contest. Every few days or weeks a new model promises to write better emails, generate more realistic videos or have more and more human conversations. The cycle of novelty is often ephemeral —Studio Ghibli style images were a good example—but far from those “wow effects” there is a silent AI that does not seek to impress on social networks, but rather to help solve scientific problems that have been blocking new advances for decades. The Thinking Game. The recent documentary about DeepMind titled ‘The Thinking Game’ and available for free on YouTube precisely shows us that other side of AI. Although the tone is not exempt from that epic that we already experienced with the documentary ‘AlphaGo’, what it tells us serves as a reminder of this dichotomy that the industry experiences. While the AI ​​bubble inflates in search of immediate profitability, DeepMind seems to have maintained its original spirit. One that wants to use AI not to imitate the human being, but to – in this case – decipher the code of biology. From Pong to AlphaFold. This 84-minute documentary tells the story of DeepMind through the career of its co-founder, Demis Hassabis. This journey is fascinating and shows us how the startup began to develop AI models that taught themselves to play retro video games like Pong or Breakout (Arkanoid) to, little by little, evolve towards much more ambitious challenges. Specifically, being able to predict the structure of proteins through deep learning. AI can change science. The challenge DeepMind engineers faced seemed impossible. Predicting the structure of these proteins was often misleading and required enormous computing power, but with AlphaFold 1 (2018) and especially with AlphaFold 2 (2020) DeepMind achieved spectacular results. In 2021 the company published both the source code of the project and a database with the structure of more than 200 million proteins available for any laboratory or researcher. It was an absolute gift for the scientific world. Then AlphaFold 3 would arrivemore oriented towards drug development and with a somewhat more commercial point. A Nobel Prize-winning AI. Two of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry work at DeepMind. These are Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, who received the award for their contributions to the prediction of protein structure. That work with AlphaFold demonstrated that AI could indeed contribute to scientific advancement, and put DeepMind on the throne of that segment more than ever. A radically different approach. It is important to do pedagogy here. While LLMs (large language models like GPT-5) work by predicting the most likely next word in a sentence, “AI for science” predicts physical and chemical behaviors: while LLMs can hallucinate and lie like it’s nothing, scientific AI submits to the laws of physics. From observation to simulation. Traditionally, science advanced through observation, hypothesis and experiment, which was often slow and expensive. With AI, an intermediate phase is introduced, massive simulation, which acts as a catalyst for this process. Thanks to AI, it is possible to rule out millions of dead ends before the scientist sets foot in the laboratory. DeepMind has seen this so clearly that created Isomorphic Labsa business spin-off dedicated exclusively to using this technology to discover new drugs. DeepMind is not alone. Although the company co-founded by Demis Hassabis is the clear reference in this area, there are other examples that follow the same path: Microsoft– Achieved a striking milestone in collaboration with PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) by AI-screening 32 million potential inorganic materials and finding a new one capable of reducing the use of lithium in batteries by 70%. M.I.T.: The prestigious technical institute used deep learning models to discover halicinean antibiotic capable of eliminating bacteria resistant to all known treatments. NVIDIA: The firm not only imperially dominates the AI ​​chip market, but has built a “digital twin” of the Earth called Earth-2. Its AI models (FourCastNet) predict extreme weather events thousands of times faster and consuming much less than traditional supercomputers. The promise (a little) fulfilled. Almost since ChatGPT appeared, we were promised that AI would change the world. At the moment it has not done much, but what has been achieved by DeepMind and other companies in the field of science does seem to pose real revolutions. I recommend not missing the documentary: it is fantastic. In Xataka | What the AI ​​pioneers awarded today with the Nobel Prize say now about AI and its risks

A year ago, Warner wanted to sink Suno’s AI to generate songs. Today he has decided to ally with her

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From chaos to order: when AI burst onto the music scene it seemed like everything was going to fall apart. And some of the latest news in that field seems to go in that direction: uncontrolled multiplication of false groups created with AI on streaming platforms, accelerated sophistication of AIs that allow the creation of music indistinguishable from that created by humans… however, the majors of the industry have taken action on the matter to turn the situation in their favor. And no, it is not that they have won the multiple lawsuits they filed against the AI ​​companies. It is, perhaps, something much more disturbing: they have reached agreements. What has happened? In just eighteen months, Warner Music Group has completed a radical strategic pivot regarding its relationship with AI. In June 2024the record company sued Suno along with Sony and Universal for massive copyright infringement, accusing the platform of training its models with millions of songs it owned and without authorization. But now he announces an alliance with that same company to license its complete catalog. What is Suno? A music generator through artificial intelligence that has attracted almost 100 million users in two years, and allows complete songs to be created from simple textual descriptions. Users can specify genre, mood, instrumentation and tempo, and the system generates two versions of the requested song in about 15 seconds. To achieve this, Suno combines its own musical model with ChatGPT, and from there come both the music and the lyrics, creating pieces that can include voices and instrumentation or be purely instrumental. What the agreement consists of. The pact establishes that Suno will launch in 2026 new advanced and licensed models that will completely replace your current systems. Artists in Warner’s catalog (Lady Gaga, Coldplay or Ed Sheeran, among many others) will have control over whether or not they allow their names, images, voices and compositions to be used in that AI-generated music. Neither Warner nor Suno disclosed the financial terms of the deal, although Warner CEO Robert Kyncl stated that the goal is to “compensate and protect artists, songwriters and the creative community.” As part of the deal, Suno acquired SongkickWarner’s concert discovery platform. Besides, from now on Song downloads generated by Suno will require a paid account, with download limits and options to purchase additional downloads, a bit like the usage limits established by the level free of other AI models. The original demand. The complaint of 2024 accused Suno and Udio of massive infringement of protected recordings. The record companies they requested damages up to $150,000 per infringed song. Suno admitted that he had trained his model with tens of millions of protected recordings but defended that it was “fair use” (the famous fair use Anglo-Saxon) And what is the reason for the change in Warner and company’s strategy? Suno closed a $250 million financing round at a valuation of $2.45 billion just a week ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter. They are not the first. This is not a desperate deal major allying himself with someone who just a year ago he considered an enemy. It is an industry trend: in June 2024, for example Universal Music reached an agreement with SoundLabs to offer its artists vocal cloning tools through the plugin MicroDrop. In November of this same year, Universal, Sony and Warner themselves closed separate agreements with the brand new startup KLAY to train your “Large Music Model” with licensed music Without a doubt, they are significant agreements, especially because, unlike the cinema wave pressto mention other leisure and communication sectors strongly impacted by AI, majors of music are the first to bury the hatchet. With what it may mean for hostilities to soften in other fields. A doubtful future. For a startSony and Warner maintain active lawsuits against Udio and Suno. And there are multiple doubts about the scope of the contract: supposedly the artists have the right to veto, but As Irving Azoff saysfounder of the Music Artists Coalition, “artists end up on the margins with crumbs.” Other analysts like Frankie Pizá They are even more pessimistic: “What some of us see as a collapse in what we understood as artistry/authorship is quietly becoming a new order regulated by the major record labels themselves” Pizá adds: “The music industry has been perfecting its ability to absorb any technological disruption for decades. It did so with Napster, with YouTube, with the streaming and now with generative AI. The pattern repeats itself: first moral resistance, then demands, then agreement and finally implementation.” Header | Amin Asbaghipour in Unsplash

Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing”

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Prediction markets are no longer a niche of the Internet and datanerds to become the new obsession of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are receiving multi-billion dollar valuations by repackaging traditional bets as sophisticated financial instruments. The image that defines the moment occurred recently in Manhattan, according to Bloomberg: the patriarch of the New York Stock Exchange (70 years old, impeccable suit) closing a multimillion-dollar deal with the founder of Polymarket (27 years old, t-shirt and plastic bottle). That meeting sealed the fate of the sector: betting is no longer a game, it is finance. Why is it important. We are facing a radical cultural and regulatory change. By redefining bets as “event contracts”, these platforms try to circumvent gambling legislation (which in Spain would control Consumption) to sneak into the traditional financial system, with the support of giants such as the owners of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The panoramic. Kalshi is already worth $10 billion and Polymarket is looking for $12 billion. They are not beach bars, as we said, the owner of the NYSE has invested there. The hockey league (NHL) and Donald Trump’s media company are already signing deals. It is the traditional financial system embracing chance. It is, above all, legitimation. Semantic reengineering. Polymarket’s true success is not technological, it is linguistic. They have eliminated the stigma of the gambler by changing the dictionary: It’s not a bet. It’s an “investment.” It is not a betting house. It’s a “exchange of contracts”. You are not a gambler. you are a trader which analyzes “market sentiment.” An example of the absurdity of some cases: people betting by Elon Musk entering the race to be president of the United States, oblivious to the fact that Musk was born in South Africa and therefore cannot become president, since the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners. That is to say: all those bets are money thrown away from minute one. How it works. Instead of betting 50 euros on Trump winning, you buy a “share” of that result that is worth 1 dollar if you are right. This allows the same person who would win or lose money at roulette to now win or lose it in an app with stock market charts. Although the savings fly the same, the user feels smarter and less guilty: he believes that he is operating in something more similar to the IBEX, not in a casino. What’s coming. There is a civil war brewing. The old guard of the game (the owners of traditional casinos) see this as unfair competition. Jay Snowden, CEO of Penn Entertainment (a casino and sports betting company), has already warned: This is a direct threat to your industry. Prediction markets and games of chance overlap. In conclusion. Polymarket has managed to sophisticate gambling addiction for a generation that believes itself too smart to play games of chance. They have created the perfect casino for those who despise casinos, allowing them to risk savings under the illusion of doing financial analysis. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion Featured image | Hush Naidoo Jade PhotographyMockuuups Studio

We thought we’d seen ‘Doom’ running on all types of devices. Until someone tried it with a ticket printer

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We’d seen ‘Doom’ run on almost every device imaginable: from a Texas Instruments calculator until a modified pregnancy test, passing through the Touch Bar of a MacBook. The community has been proving for years that if something has a screen and some kind of processor, someone will try to run Doom. We thought the bar couldn’t be raised any higher, until someone decided to do it in an unexpected place even for this challenge: a ticket printer. Beyond the technical, this challenge has something almost philosophical: it is not about seeing if ‘Doom’ works, because we know that the game can run on very limited hardware. The question is whether we can do it on devices that, in theory, were not designed for that. Closed devices, with a very specific function, that suddenly become small gaming platforms. This transformation of the everyday into something unexpected is what keeps alive the question “what if you can also execute it?” A printer with the soul of a computer. The device chosen by the channel Bringus Studios It is not a conventional ticket printer. It is a solution created for small businesses, capable of printing receipts and running typical point-of-sale terminal applications from the same computer. That integration explains why it includes an embedded operating system, USB ports, its own connectivity and even an original Windows 7 Pro Embedded sticker. For those who used it back in the day, it was simply a point of sale terminal. For those who find it today, it is much more than that. When the creator decides to open the machine, the exterior appearance gives way to a metal structure more typical of an industrial computer than a receipt printer. Under the cover appear screws, SATA cables, internal USB ports, a motherboard and even a small integrated speaker. There are hardly any concessions to the design, everything is ready to function for hours in a commercial environment. Instead of a peripheral accessory, what you find is a complete computer, hidden under a functional and robust chassis. Play Doom on a paper screen. Once it was discovered that the machine could behave like a complete computer, the next step was inevitable: running ‘Doom’. The content creator turned to software rendering, adjusted the brightness and contrast to suit thermal printing, and turned the paper into the game’s visual output. Each frame was printed as a monochrome image, creating a sort of roll-up screen at its feet. The result was neither comfortable nor efficient, but it was extraordinarily ingenious. Too hot for a normal game. The system was capable of printing ‘Doom’, but was not prepared to do so for minutes at a time. Many scenes generated a lot of black, causing the thermal head to get hotter than intended. There came a point where the printer would pause printing or output messy and unintelligible sequences. The author used an external fan to prolong the session, while the paper piled up on the floor and the behavior of the game became so unpredictable that one almost had to play by pure intuition. The experiment did not end with Doom. When testing ‘Half-Life,’ the result was different: the game’s visual style seemed to fit better on thermal paper and produced clearer images. The author began to print scenes that did allow hallways, doors or characters to be distinguished with a certain clarity, to the point of wanting to save them. He even replicated one of the classic moments of the game, the microwave in the laboratory, and confirmed on paper that the pot ended up exploding. Despite the lag of several seconds between what was happening in the game and what appeared on paper, the scenes were still legible enough that I wanted to keep them. It was no longer just playing, it was documenting it. What started as a simple printer ended up being a reminder of why this challenge continues to fascinate so many people. It doesn’t matter if the result is impractical, illegible or full of paper: the important thing is that it worked. The game was run, the printer printed the images and it was demonstrated that even a routine device, designed to work silently behind a counter, can end up becoming an experiment worth telling. Images | Bringus Studios In Xataka | The Internet has been filled with videos with the new trailer for ‘GTA VI’. The only problem is they have all been made with AI

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