Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Shepherds have become the great weapon against fires. So Galicia has created a shepherding school

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“We have to put an end to that thought, when you say that you are a pastor, of ‘poorlook what he has to do.’” Speaks María Jesús Crespo, a 58-year-old Galician who has been working for more than a decade caring for a flock of sheep in Aranga, in the Betanzos region. It is not his only occupation. María Jesús also leads the Association of Sheep and Goat Breeders Ovicaone of the entities that has just activated a school for shepherds in Galicia. The objective, as Crespo insists, is to break stigmas, modernize the sector and demonstrate that in 2026, pastoring is still a completely viable profession. career pastor. If there are faculties dedicated to training doctors, pharmacists, engineers or architects, why wouldn’t there be specific classrooms for new pastors? To such a conclusion that they have just reached in Galicia, where the sector has launched a school focused on pastoralism. The initiative has the Galician Government and the sector itself behind it through Ovica and has the support of Fundación La Caixa. Its purpose: to instruct future pastors in the necessary skills to carry out their work in the 21st century, which involves not only knowing how to take care of flocks. To achieve the degree, students also need to assimilate knowledge about management and technology. 570 hours… and a lot of work. To demonstrate how ambitious the initiative is, the Xunta specifies that in total the training will cover 570 hours: 250 of theoretical training, designed above all so that the new pastors adopt an “agrarian business” approach; and 230 hours of eminently practical nature. Upon leaving the classroom, the students will apply their knowledge on farms spread across almost twenty rural towns in the province of Ourense. There they will soak up the knowledge of hard-working shepherds, like María Jesús, who explains that throughout his years of work he has even had to deal with wolf attacks. The idea is that during their weeks of practice the students prepare to know how to act when a cow goes into labor or limps. “There is a cycle of technical-economic management of a farm, issues of traceability and marketing, occupational risk, environmental awareness, agrotechnology, animal health, management, production, forage and feeding…”, explains the president from Ovica in Vigo Lighthouse. “When we talk about shepherds we tend to think of a person with a stick and a flock, but today they are agricultural businessmen. We have to change the chip and transfer that change in profile.” “It is very necessary”. María Jesús defends that the launch of the school is not a whim. On the contrary. With it, they hope to help vocations like theirs emerge and, above all, professionalize a profession that, they insist, cannot be practiced today as in the time of our grandparents. “School was necessary,” underlines. “It’s about preparing people to work in the 21st century.” Is it that important? Yes. And not only because of the economic impact of the sector. Grazing is directly related to some of the great challenges facing the country, such as rural depopulation, the sustainability of “emptied Spain” or even the fight against forest fires. Given that Galicia is one of the regions most affected by fire, the Xunta itself insisted on that idea a few days ago, during the presentation of the shepherding school. “The promotion of this training offer, in addition to encouraging the incorporation of professionals dedicated to grazing, contributes to promoting this type of extensive breeding that creates a natural barrier against forest fires and promotes a managed and productive forest,” claims. Beyond Galicia. The new grazing school in Galicia has generated expectations (a week after its presentation it already had 25 registered), but the truth is that it is not the first of its kind in Spain. In Aragón they have, for example, the shepherding school The Estiva and in Catalonia the School of Pastors and Pastorscreated in 2009 to “guarantee generational change” and promote the creation of sustainable and profitable livestock farms. Not long ago we told you how in the Valencian Community there are also a similar initiative to “empower” pastors. Images | José Antonio Serra (Flickr) and Xavier (Flickr) In Xataka | “Depopulation causes problems, urban overpopulation too”: Kike Collada, the twenty-something mayor and tiktoker of emptied Spain

Databricks is worth 134 billion without ever having gone public thanks to AI. And it’s not an AI company

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Databricks has closed a financing round of more than 7 billion dollars (5,000 million in capital and 2,000 million in debt) that values ​​the company at 134 billion dollars. It’s a dizzying figure for a company that the vast majority of people have never heard of. The San Francisco firm is not, technically, an AI company either. Its business is enterprise-scale data management and analysis. What Databricks does is provide the invisible infrastructure that allows other companies to store, process and extract value from enormous amounts of information. Without that, training AI models would be impossible. Why is it important. Databricks is the cover of the boom of AI. OpenAI, NVIDIA or Google grab the headlines, but it’s companies like this that build the plumbing that makes everything else possible. Its valuation is 134,000 million. Without ever having gone public. That places it even above established technology giants. It is at the level of Qualcomm or Sony. Beats Xiaomi or Adobe. And it does so with a less business model sexy but more profitable: B2B infrastructure than it leaves gross margins greater than 80%. In figures. The Databricks numbers They explain a growth that justifies the enthusiasm of its investors. Annualized revenues exceeding $5.4 billion in the fourth quarter, with 65% year-over-year growth. More than 800 clients that generate more than a million dollars annually. Positive free cash flow over the last year. Its AI product line has surpassed $1.4 billion in revenue with a net retention rate of over 140%. Between the lines. The participation of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Microsoft and sovereign funds like Qatar’s in the latest round says a lot: these large investors are betting on the infrastructure, not the final application. The implicit message is something we’ve been hearing since the first few months after the ChatGPT moment: in the AI ​​race, those who sell picks and shovels can earn more than those who pan for gold. Databricks provides the platform where companies store their proprietary data and train their custom modelssomething that the public APIs of OpenAI or Anthropic cannot offer. Yes, but. Its CEO, Ali Ghodsi, has said that “now is not a good time to go public,” even though his company meets all the financial requirements to do so. The strategy is to accumulate enough cash enough to withstand any market correction like the one in 2022. And seen the vertigo it produces any headlines on capex figuresit makes sense to make a cushion for what may happen. The context. Databricks represents an important change in how the technology sector is structured. For years, traditional SaaS companies dominated the B2B landscape. Now, AI infrastructure and data platforms are achieving similar or higher valuations. The company is also expanding beyond its traditional business with products such as Lakebase, a database designed specifically for AI agents. Or with Geniea conversational assistant that allows employees to query business data using natural language. If Databricks achieves a strong IPO in an environment where technology valuations are more closely monitored than ever, it would demonstrate that markets are willing to pay very large premiums for AI infrastructure, not just flashy models. And that would change the rules of the game for dozens of similar companies operating in the shadows. In Xataka | Spain, on the verge of adding another AI unicorn: Multiverse negotiates a round to exceed 1.5 billion euros Featured image | Databricks and Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

This is C/2026 A1 and its race towards the Sun

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We have just started 2026 and astronomy has already given us the first surprise of the year, since while most were looking towards the usual objectives, a team of astronomers in the Atacama Desert has detected an object. It’s about the comet C/2026 A1and there are possibilities that we can see it from Earth itself. Its relevance. We are not facing just any comet, since its orbit and size suggest that we are facing a “sungrazer“, which translated into Spanish would be something like “Sungrazer.” This means that it is a type of suicidal object that, if it manages to survive its passage through perihelion, could become a visual phenomenon comparable to the legendary Ikeya-Seki comet of 1965. The discovery. The story of this discovery It starts on January 13 at the AMACS1 observatory, located in the privileged geography of San Pedro de Atacama in Chile with a team of French astronomers who detected an unusual movement. The discovery was made as part of the MAPS search programwhich has been active since 2020 and already has the discovery of 8 comets and more than 300 near-Earth asteroids to its credit. In this way, the different organisms initially confirmed this finding as a diffuse spot. It had already been seen. Weeks before this discovery, researchers saw that ‘precoveries’ already existed in the databases. This means that other teams had uploaded previous images where the comet appeared, but it had not been identified since the brightness was even dimmer. But this team has finally not missed it. Your family. What makes the C/2026 A1 special is not only its discovery, but its lineage. Data from the JPL Small-Body Database and expert Seiichi Yoshida confirm that it belongs to the Kreutz familyspecifically to the Pe subgroup. In order to understand all these words, we must put ourselves in context to know that Kreutz comets are fragments of a giant comet that broke up centuries ago. Now this new visitor appears to be directly related to the Great Comet of 1106, a monster that broke into pieces giving rise to some of the brightest comets in history. Your trip. When analyzing the journey you are havingThe truth is that the numbers can be dizzying. Specifically, it has been seen that it has a speed of 3.2 million kilometers per hour and, based on this information, it has been seen when it will pass close to the Sun. Specifically, it will be on April 4, 2026 when it will pass just 0.00547 Astronomical Units from the Sun. In “Christian”, that means that it will pass about 800,000 kilometers from our star, which for an object made of ice and rock, that is basically grazing the solar surface. The April scenario. This is where the scientific community is divided between caution and excitement, as it all depends on one very specific question: ‘Will he survive?’ Right now on the table there is two possible scenarios which can be summarized in the following points: The first is for the comet to disintegrate, which would be a boring ending. What basically happens here is that the immense gravity and solar heat vaporize the comet before it leaves perihelion, being the fate of many sungrazers small. The second scenario is that it survives, and it is not nonsense since current estimates place the comet’s nucleus at about 2.4 kilometers in diameter. This figure is good news because it is large enough to have a chance of survival. If he survives. If it withstands the gravitational and thermal pull, the C/2026 A1 could reach an absurd brightness. Some optimistic projections suggest that it could be brighter than the full Moon or even visible to the naked eye during the day, near the solar disk, something we haven’t seen since Comet Ikeya-Seki in the 1960s. Calendar to view. The calendar that is on the table right now begins at the end of March 2026when astronomy fans will be able to begin to see them with telescopes. From here we will have to wait until April 4 to see if it survives and increases its brightness greatly to later deploy a massive tail. visible to the naked eye in our skies. As always with comets, they are like cats: they have tails and do exactly what they want. But with a core of 2.4 km and a direct trajectory from the Kreutz clan, C/2026 A1 is, without a doubt, one of those events that we must keep in mind in order to make history. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | China has created the largest kite in the world with a very clear objective: to make its energy extremely cheaper.

what it is, how it works, main news, and when it will be available

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Let’s explain to you what is Seedance 2.0the model of artificial intelligence designed by ByteDance. Specifically, it is a multimodal AI model capable of generating video from prompt descriptions, but also using other references such as audio, images and video. Let’s start by reminding you what Seedance is, so you know what exactly we are referring to. Then, we will tell you the main features of its new version, as well as the differences with its predecessor and some other things that you should keep in mind, such as when will it be available for use in Spain. What is Seedance and how it works Seedance is an artificial intelligence model created by ByteDance, the company that created the TikTok social network. This model is used for generate video from textbeing the competition of models such as I see from Google either sora from OpenAI. The truth is that ByteDance is one of the five most relevant Chinese companies in AI. In fact, it has its own family of models called Seedin which we have a Seedream to create images, Seededit to edit images, Seed3D to create three-dimensional models, Seed LiveInterpret to translate voice in real time, Seed-Music to create music and more. As in other similar models, its operation is simple. You simply describe what you want to see through a prompt, uploading a reference image if you want, and Seedance will create a video of several seconds with the scene you have described. To create the video, you will first be able to process and understand what you ask with natural languagesince it has been trained to understand the way we speak and express ourselves. It will then proceed to create the video, including synchronized audio based on the instructions you give it. Seedance tries to stand out from the competition with physical realism, so that objects move naturally and consistent with physics. Also with visual consistency, and duration, since it generates videos up to 10 seconds long. Seedance 2.0 Features As we all know, the race in generative artificial intelligence is frenetic, so every few months a new model comes out, revolutionizing everything. In this aspect, Seedance 2.0 is now the one that is surprising the most, being a multimodal model capable of combining images, video, audio and text to generate content. Think about this. You can add audio of a sound or conversation and generate the video from it, and even include another video or photo to use as a reference. Everything will be able to process simultaneously. The model supports precise reference capabilities, and is capable of exporting results in 2K resolution with 30% faster generation speeds than the previous version 1.5. It has also improved the level of understanding of the physics of sound, This new version of the model also introduces the so-called multi-lens storytellinga term that means you can keep the same character, with the same clothes and features through different camera cuts. Something that will allow the video to be more complex but maintain cohesion between the cuts. When will Seedance 2.0 arrive? ByteDance has not yet included Seedance 2.0 in the website of their modelsthat It is only available in testing phase for a very limited group of people. Even so, it is to be hoped that little by little it will also begin to reach everyone. You have to be careful, because there are also fake pages that use the name Seedance 2.0 as a claim. In Xataka Basics | How to create videos with artificial intelligence: 13 essential free tools

Electric car battery makers are retooling to make batteries… for AI data centers

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In the United States there are a slowdown in the electric vehicle industry, which has caused more and more manufacturers in the sector to convert their business. According to account Financial Times, ten North American factories that produced batteries for electric cars are allocating a good part of their production to energy storage systems for AI data centers. It is the latest industry to readjust around artificial intelligence. The change of course. The media shares data from the consulting firm CRU, which states that these ten plants have canceled enough capacity to produce batteries for 2 million electric vehicles. Of these, seven will focus primarily on the energy storage systems (ESS) market. Among the names involved are Ford, which is converting a factory in Kentucky, and Stellantis along with its partner Samsung SDI, which are converting production lines at its Indiana plant. General Motors is also considering producing its own energy storage batteries, according to declared its head of batteries, Kurt Kelty, to the Financial Times. Why data centers need batteries. Data centers that process AI models require uninterrupted power supply to protect against blackouts or voltage fluctuations. With the construction boom of these centers in the United States, storage batteries have become a critical component of infrastructure. This opens up an alternative revenue stream for automotive companies struggling with electric vehicles. The Tesla example. It is worth taking a look at the numbers of Elon Musk’s company, since in addition to producing vehicles it also manufactures energy storage systems such as Megapack and Powerwall. In this sense, its battery business is turning out to be tremendously profitable, since the company reported income for energy and storage of $12.8 billion in its last quarter, a growth of 27% year-on-year. In 2021, that figure barely reached 2.8 billion. Meanwhile, its revenue from electric vehicle sales has fallen 9% to $64 billion. Political context difficult. Just like account FT, Since the Trump administration eliminated tax incentives for electric vehicle buyers put in place during the Biden era and lowered emissions standards, the electric vehicle market in the United States has seen a slowdown. This has led BloombergNEF to revise its forecast downwards: from expecting electric vehicles to represent 48% of total car sales in 2030, they now project only 27%. Electric vehicles currently account for about 8% of new car sales in the United States. The aid that is maintained. As well as mention In the middle, although these subsidies have been eliminated, the administration retains generous incentives for battery manufacturers: a production credit of $35 per kilowatt-hour and a 30% tax credit for investments in energy storage. In addition, tariffs on Chinese storage batteries are around 60%, allowing manufacturers to produce in the United States at prices close to parity with Asian imports. Between the lines. It is also worth highlighting important nuances. CRU’s Sam Adham counted to FT that battery manufacturers will not necessarily pass on what they save on costs to their customers (they may increase their margins, for what). In addition, according to the FT, the Korean companies that lead the production of storage batteries in the United States have less experience with the lithium iron phosphate technology used by these systems, compared to their Chinese rivals. It is not a total reconversion, for now. Wood Mackenzie’s data suggest that electric vehicles will continue to absorb a greater proportion of battery installations than energy storage until the end of 2030. “If there is a rebound in demand for electric vehicles, companies that have switched to storage systems could be left behind,” said Milan Thakore, an analyst at the consultancy. More sectors than They pivot towards AI. From the Semafor newsletter, also they mention another very interesting sector that is beginning to convert its business towards AI: cryptocurrency miners. And according to Morgan Stanley, facilities dedicated to cryptocurrency mining are seeing a more profitable business in the creation of data centers for AI. The economics of cryptocurrency mining have gotten worse and worse since the reward is lower, and converting these facilities into infrastructure for artificial intelligence is much more profitable. According to the calculations Morgan Stanley, transforming all bitcoin mining facilities in the United States could reduce the electrical capacity deficit for data centers by between 10 and 15 gigawatts. Cover image | CHUTTERSNAP and İsmail Enes Ayhan In Xataka | If AI is the “weapon” of the future, the US is already investing 25% of all world military spending in it

“The greatest obstacle in life is the wait for tomorrow and the loss of today”

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Neither war, nor hunger, nor love. Nor hate, friendship or illness. If there is something that has really bothered us humans throughout the centuries, it is the passage of time. We all (from the richest to the most miserable) come into the world with our days scheduled. Sooner or later we run out of rope without anyone being able to prevent it. It’s that simple. In fact (and for cruel ironic as it may sound) that is one of the very few certainties that we can embrace during our existence, be it more or less extensive: there is no life without death. It’s nothing new. Centuries ago philosophers realized that, in a way, as our lives progress so does our death. If time is short must be valuable (just as happens with precious metals or gems) and everything valuable always brings a challenge. How the hell do you manage it? How to get the most out of it? What’s more, why try to get ‘the most out of it’? Are those who insist on making something of their time happier? useful and helpful Who do you see spending your days lying on the beach? Seneca to the rescue A few centuries ago, around the year 55 AD, there was a Latin philosopher (born in Cordubawhat is now Córdoba and then acted as the capital of Hispania Ulterior) who raised these same questions. His name was Lucius Anneeus Seneca and the answers he found were captured in works such as ‘De brevitate vitae’a text dedicated to a certain Paulino (his father-in-law or brother-in-law) in which he outlines a series of advice. One of the most famous can often be seen in the anthologies of aphorisms: “The biggest obstacle in life is the wait for tomorrow and the loss of today“. The phrase connects with the old maxim of tempus fugit (“time flies”), although there is more to it than may seem at first glance. In it, Seneca addresses one of the most complicated challenges for those who have set out to ensure that time does not slip through their fingers: the balance between the present and the future. A present that is our only certain reality and a tomorrow that will in turn be conditioned by what we do today. In other words, do we bet everything on the present or is it wiser to condition it with tomorrow in mind? They were interesting questions in Rome in the first century AD and they remain so today, twenty centuries later, in procrastination times in which the equation becomes even more complicated. At the end of the day, procrastinating is nothing more than setting traps in time management: deferring, postponing, delaying the moment in which we must carry out a task that (usually) will be beneficial for our future. Seneca’s starting point is as suggestive as it is challenging. Our time may be limited, but that doesn’t mean life is necessarily short. If it seems that way, it is because we ourselves favor it by facing it in the wrong way. And that doesn’t just happen by lying on the couch with your cell phone to kill the hours abandoned to the pleasure of the infinite scroll. For Seneca, the outlook is not much better if we obsess over tasks that make us believe that we do not have enough hours in the day, but in reality they are unimportant. “We don’t have a shortage of time, what happens is that we lose a lot. Life is long enough and to do the most important things it has been generously given to us, if all of it is used well.” “But if it is scattered in ostentation and carelessness, where it is not spent on anything good, when at last the inevitable final trance comes upon us, we realize that a life has passed that we did not know was happening.” “It is like this: we do not receive a short life, but rather we make it short“, concludes the Stoic thinker, who died in 65 AD, aged about 70. The complete reflection that Seneca dedicates to Paulinus and from which the phrase we previously cited about “the loss of today” is extracted is more devastating because it warns of how easy it is to give in to the mirage that we are taking advantage of time. Here we reproduce specifically the translation made by Francisco Socas Gavilán for the version of the Virtual Library of Andalusia. “Can there be anything more stupid than the attitude of some, I mean those men who presume to be far-sighted? They are engaged in too many tasks to be able to live better, they equip life by spending life, their thoughts direct them to the distance. But, of course, the greatest waste of life is procrastination: it cancels each day that is presented, it hides the present while promising what lies ahead.” “The greatest hindrance to living is the expectation that depends on tomorrow and loses what is today. You dispose of what is in the hands of luck, you abandon what is in yours. Where do you look? Where do you orient yourself? All future things remain uncertain: live immediately.” Seneca’s work resonates strongly twenty centuries later because, as remember Socasnot only tells us about death and the passage of time, but also about “life as a positive realization within a limited scope.” “Even though men can’t stop complaining about the brevity of lifethey alone are the real culprits of shortening it with their laziness and vices. “We waste time and do not consider it the greatest and only good,” duck. “The solution will be neither hyperactivity nor laziness, because those who are very busy, always thinking about tomorrow, do not take advantage of their time and are soon surprised by old age, while in idleness passions and amusements rob us of our intimate peace,” comments Socas after remembering Seneca’s words. “The idle fear death more. The busy will not be able to … Read more

We have so much water in Spain’s reservoirs right now that it has become a problem for someone: nuclear power.

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What just a few months ago seemed like a chimera—seeing overflowing reservoirs in the middle of winter—has become an overwhelming reality after the passage of successive Atlantic fronts. But the water that has fallen on the peninsula has not only alleviated the drought; has generated such an excess of energy supply that the electrical system has had to do without its traditional “base load”: nuclear energy. The data confirms that, faced with the push of water and wind, the atom has lost its place in the market. A change of scenery. According to data from the Peninsular Hydrological Bulletinthe water reserve in Spain has skyrocketed to 77.3% of its total capacity, storing 43,341 hm³ of water. This represents an increase of 10.1% in a single week, a figure that illustrates the volume of rainfall. To understand the magnitude of this data, just look back: in this same week in 2025, the reserve was at 58.13%. Even more impressive is the comparison with the average of the last 10 years, which stands at 53.6%. That is, today we have 13,000 cubic hectometers more water than the historical average for the decade. The situation is such that the focus has shifted from scarcity to security. In Andalusia, where red notices have been activated, reservoirs are functioning as the last line of defense. The system has been doing “flood lamination” work (water retention to avoid floods), especially in the Guadalquivir and Genil basin, where dams such as Iznájar or El Tranco are crucial to contain the flow before it reaches cities like Seville. The great battery of Spain is full. The impact goes far beyond the visible. Reservoirs are not just liquid stores, they are giant batteries, and right now they are more charged than ever. As detailed in the Hydrological Bulletin in your energy sectionSpain currently stores 16,184 GWh of hydroelectric energy, the largest amount ever recorded at this time. If we compare this figure with the same week of the previous year (13,825 GWh), the jump is notable: today we have 117.1% of the energy we had a year ago. This massive injection of cheap electricity has saturated the seams of the Iberian market. The supply of renewable energy has been so high that interconnections have not been able to cope. According to expert Joaquín Coronado on your LinkedIn profilethe combination of rain and high wind production in Portugal caused the saturation of the interconnection between both countries. With electricity unable to flow freely, the market disengaged: while in Spain prices were sinking due to the sun and water, in Portugal they skyrocketed during peak hours due to technical restrictions. The physical network is suffering to manage such an avalanche of green electrons. The nuclear “no home”. The direct consequence of this renewable surplus is that nuclear energy is no longer competitive in this scenario. The thesis is clear: there is plenty of installed power when the weather is favorable. According to market datathe pressure from renewables has expelled 1.5 GW of nuclear power. On the one hand, Almaraz unit II had to reduce load. On the other hand, the Trillo Nuclear Power Plant was completely disconnected from the grid on Sunday, February 8. The confirmation comes from the headquarters itself. In his informative noteTrillo managers acknowledge that the plant stopped on a scheduled basis because “it was not compatible with the electricity market nor was it required by the System Operator.” Although they assure that the plant is technically perfect, they point to an economic reason: with prices sunk by storms and “high taxation”, operating the nuclear plant costs them. The underlying debate: why keep what is left over? This episode of “nuclear blackout” comes in the middle of the debate over the extension of the Almaraz plant, whose owners are requesting to extend its useful life beyond 2027. A new report from Greenpeaceprepared by the Rey Juan Carlos University and the UPC, warns that artificially keeping nuclear operational is a stopper for the ecological transition. What happened this week in Trillo reinforces his conclusions: Technical feasibility: The study ensures that in the period 2028-2029, Almaraz’s energy could be replaced by 96.4% by renewables. Economic cost: According to The Jumpextending Almaraz would cost consumers an additional 3,831 million euros and would stop green investments worth 26,129 million. Emissions: The report indicates that the extension would generate millions of tons of extra CO2 by discouraging the installation of new clean power. The market ruling. This episode is not a meteorological anecdote, it is confirmation of a change in structural cycle. The February storm has functioned as a stress test for the electrical system and the result is clear: in a marginalist market, water and wind physically displace nuclear power. The data supports that this is already a trend, not an exception. According to closing figures for 2025 published by Five Daysin Iberdrola’s generation mix in Spain, hydroelectric energy (33.3%) already surpassed nuclear energy (33.2%) in total production last year. What happened this week in Trillo is the real-time demonstration of that statistic. With Spain’s “battery” charged to 77% and the wind turbines spinning, the rigidity of the nuclear park becomes an economic barrier. The market’s conclusion is, today, unappealable: we have so much water that nuclear power is no longer essential. Image | freepik and freepik Xataka | When Spain embraced wind energy, it did not have a problem: it would be too windy.

China had never had anything to do with the RAM conversation. Until the crisis came

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The current component crisis brings back memories of Vietnam. Specifically, of the semiconductor crisis of 2020. If at that time there were no chips due to COVID, the incipient trade war between China and the United States and natural disasters, now it is the exorbitant investment in artificial intelligence the one that is leaving us without SSD and, above all, without RAM. The three major memory manufacturers (Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron) have dedicated themselves to creating chips for GPUs in data centers, so much so that Micron has exited the consumer segment for dedicate all your production to meet the demand for AI. own NVIDIA will not launch the RTX 6000 this year Because of this, and apart from PC users, there are others affected by this crisis: RAM assemblers. To the point that there are already reports that the main PC manufacturers are thinking about buying RAM from Chinese manufacturers. To CXMT, specifically. Bad for many, support for Chinese RAM? If there is no RAM, there is no RAM. The problem is that, as we say, there are many brands that sell memory ‘pills’but not all of them manufacture that component. If you buy an SSD or RAM from Samsung, they have manufactured it, but if you buy a module from Corsair, what they have done is assemble the chips that have been purchased from one of the major RAM manufacturers. And then there are the PC vendors. HP, Asus or Dell do not manufacture the key components of their computers already assembled: they buy them from Intel, AMD, NVIDIA and RAM and SSD manufacturers. That is to say: this shortage of components that affects us as users, It is also impacting the main PC manufacturers. The perfect example is the Steam Machinewhich seemed like it would arrive at an attractive price and not only has it been delayed, but there are already signs that this crisis will cause it to be much more expensive than it should. Also the case of manufacturers selling PC… without memory. A few weeks ago we told you that, in such a situation, Asus was considering looking at the Chinese RAM industrybut now there are more reports pointing in that direction. Nikkei Asia point that Asus, Acer, Dell and HP are evaluating sourcing memory chips from China. It would be the first time, and one of the options is CXMT (which has ‘messes‘of course industrial espionage to Samsung). With Samsung turning to HBM memory and SK Hynix pointing out that its capacity is exhausted by 2026, the price of RAM has skyrocketed between 90 and 95% this first quarter of 2026. That’s where companies like ChangXin Memory Technologies They can take a bite out of the RAM market. “There is real potential for Chinese companies to aggressively expand in memory chips and flash memory” – Tae Kim A few weeks ago they presented DDR5 chips at 8,000 MHz for desktops and LPDDR5X at 10,667 MHz for portable devices and they have already started to supply to another Chinese company: Lenovo. Aside from the Nikkei Asia report, technology analyst Tae Kim – author of the book ‘The NVIDIA Way‘- also points out that HP is analyzing Chinese suppliers for products destined for the Asian and European markets. Kim points out that, while memory chips for GPU and AI have very specific characteristics, RAM memory chips are more ‘basic’, and this crisis of the large manufacturers can mean a golden opportunity for Chinese companies to “expand aggressively in the memory chip and flash memory space.” It certainly seems like the perfect opportunity for a company like CXMT that hopes reach 300,000 units manufactured per month in 2026 and that seeks to go public to raise 4.2 billion dollars that will allow them to expand their production. And they are not the only ones, since there are other heavyweights of Chinese RAM such as Yangtze Memory Technologies Co. -YMTC- that aspires to the same as its neighbor: to bite a piece of the pie that is the international RAM market. The production of Chinese companies is quite lower to that of Samsung, for example, but with a RAM market that will not ease until 2027 according to some2028 according to Intel and to whom It has seven or eight years of aggressive expansion leftAccording to NVIDIA, it is clear that companies like YMTC or CXMT have an opportunity that they should not miss. We will see if this alleviates the market somewhat, since right now it is impossible to consider building a PC…and the one we already have better not break. Image | Blake Patterson (edited) In Xataka | The RAM crisis is so extreme that it has achieved what seemed unthinkable: Apple’s memories are “cheap”

useful tech gifts that seem to cost twice as much

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There are very few days left until the arrival of Valentine’s Day, so it is time to make your purchases online so that they arrive on time. If you still don’t know very well what to give to a technology lover, in this article we are going to give you five ideas that cost less than 50 eurosbut they seem to cost twice as much. Honor Choice Watch 2i by 30.95 eurosan excellent smartwatch that has a beautiful design. Xiaomi Redmi Buds 5 Pro by 34.99 eurosBluetooth headphones with good battery and active noise cancellation. Game & Watch by 49.99 eurosa retro console from The Legend of Zelda saga. Philips OneBlade by 47.99 eurosa razor for face and body. Cecotec Cecofry Bombastik by 45.90 eurosan air fryer with a six-liter capacity. Honor Choice Watch 2i You don’t have to spend a fortune to give a good smartwatch, and the Honor Choice Watch 2i It is the best example of this. Its price at PcComponentes is 30.95 euroshas a very elegant design that is quite close to what is seen in the Huawei Watch Fit 3 (and even on Apple Watch), its battery lasts approximately 14 days, comes with 109 types of sports records and incorporates both a side button and a rotating crown. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi Redmi Buds 5 Pro The same goes for Bluetooth headphones. Nowadays we can find very economical proposals such as those of the Xiaomi Redmi Buds 5 Prowhich can be found on Amazon for a price of 34.99 euros. They have active noise cancellation of up to 52 dB (a high figure for their price) and their battery lasts about 38 hours with the charging case. In addition, they are compatible with the LDAC audio codec and connect to the mobile phone through its own app. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Game & Watch If the person you want to give a gift to also loves video games, especially the classic ones, Xtralife has 49.99 euros the The Legend of Zelda Game & Watch. It has a design based on the popular Nintendo saga and includes a total of three video games: ‘The Legend of Zelda’. ‘Zelda II: The Adventure of Link’. ‘The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening’. Game & Watch The Legend of Zelda The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Philips OneBlade The Philips OneBlade 360 It is a clipper that became quite popular some time ago, and it is not surprising. By 47.99 euroswe are faced with the model that incorporates many accessories, so it can be used both on the beard and on the body to avoid cuts. Its blades have a round tip and last a long time, approximately three or four months. Philips OneBlade 360 ​​(with accessories) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Cecotec Cecofry Bombastik On the other hand, if what you want to give is more related to food, an air fryer can be a great idea, especially if it is at a good price. By 45.90 euros We have at MediaMarkt the Cecotec Cecofry Bombastika air fryer with a capacity of six liters that cooks at a maximum temperature of 200 ºC. It includes 12 cooking modes and a front panel for comfortable use. Cecotec Cecofry Bombastik The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | rawpixel and Xadartstudio in freepikHonor, Xiaomi, Nintendo, Philips, Cecotec In Xataka | The best smartwatches (2026): their analyzes and videos are here In Xataka | Best air fryers. Which one to buy and 10 recommended air fryers from 51 euros

one that leads you to create your own AI chip

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ByteDance is developing its own artificial intelligence chip and is already negotiating with Samsung Electronics to manufacture it. It is at least what they point out two sources close to the project, which would make the Chinese company an even fiercer competitor in the segment that wants to revolutionize our world. TikTok doesn’t matter anymore (that much). TikTok has turned ByteDance into an empire within the social media segment, but the Chinese company has not stopped there. In fact, it has completely immersed itself in the world of generative AI and already has truly exceptional models like Doubao (GPT-5 or Gemini competitor) or Seedream. The only thing it was missing is its own AI chip, but pay attention, because that may have a solution in the short term. what has happened. Sources close to the company’s plans have indicated that ByteDance is working on the design and development of its own new AI chip, which they have named Seedchip, in line with its Seedream generative image and video AI models. Said chip could be manufactured by Samsung Electronics, with which the Chinese company is holding talks. A spokesperson for ByteDance assures that these plans for its own chip are imprecise, but it does not detail why. They go at full speed. The project appears to be moving forward at high speed and ByteDance aims to receive the first samples of that chip by the end of March. The company intends to manufacture at least 100,000 units of the chip, which would also be especially focused on the inference of its AI models and not on training. One of the sources consulted indicates that ByteDance hopes to later increase production to 350,000 units, but the time frame for that objective is not specified. Inference is increasingly important. Focusing on inference chips makes a lot of economic sense. Training models like Doubao requires the brute force of NVIDIA chips and that part is well covered. However, making its AI work for millions of simultaneous users is one area where ByteDance can save billions by having its own chip optimized for its code. Why partner with Samsung. Taking into account that China tries to avoid dependencies on foreign companies, this alliance with Samsung is striking. However, there may be a compelling reason for making that decision: negotiations with Samsung apparently include access to the supply of memory chips that are currently practically out of stock. And above all, to some very special chips: the HBM. A delicate alliance. The clear alternative to this association with Samsung would be to manufacture, for example with SMIC or even opt for Huawei, which is becoming the “Chinese NVIDIA” and it already has truly remarkable AI chips. Choosing Samsung seems to send a compromising message: that Chinese-made technology continues to lag behind that of manufacturers like Samsung. ByteDance already tried it. In June 2024, data already appeared suggesting that ByteDance had allied with Broadcom to develop an advanced AI chip. At that time, the partner chosen to manufacture these chips was TSMC, but it seems that this project has ended up fading. Everyone wants to have their own chip. ByteDance’s ambition follows the general market trend: almost all major technology companies have decided to create their own advanced AI chips. Google has your TPUsMicrosoft their Maiaand Amazon their Trainium to reduce your dependence on NVIDIA. And of course ByteDance’s main Chinese rivals, Alibaba (with his Zhenwu) and Baidu —which has its Kunlunxin division working on it—they have their own designs. But they continue to bet on NVIDIA. This effort aims to transform its short video businesses and cloud infrastructure services, but even if confirmed and successful, it will take time to make it a true reference. ByteDance plans to invest $22 billion in the AI ​​space, with the majority of that budget going toward purchasing NVIDA chips including the H200. Image | Xataka with FreePik

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