aims

NASA just passed a milestone with the X-59. What comes next aims to change commercial aviation

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Commercial aviation has been pursuing a difficult promise for decades: flying faster than sound without making that progress a problem for those on the ground. The obstacle is not only the speed, but the shock waves that generates a supersonic aircraft and that can be perceived as a sonic boom. He X-59 was born to test an alternative: reaching those speeds with an acoustic signature that NASA hopes will be much more discreet. NASA is not yet talking about commercial routes, but it is about a step designed to address one of the great barriers to this type of flights. The most recent advance came last Friday, when the X-59 exceeded the speed of sound for the first time during a test flight within the Quesst mission. According to NASApilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on an 81-minute mission. The plane reached an approximate maximum speed of Mach 1.1, which the agency places in this flight at about 1,150 km/h, at an altitude of about 13,200 meters. It was an important milestone, but still within a testing phase focused on testing its flight qualities. The test of the most discreet supersonic flight enters its decisive phase The important thing, therefore, will not only be what happens inside the plane, but what is heard from below. Quesst is designed to demonstrate a technology capable of softening this phenomenon until it becomes a lighter sound knock. The next part of the plan involves flying over American communities and collecting the reaction of people exposed to that sound. The agency will then share those results with national and international regulators to inform future data-driven noise standards. That is why the first supersonic flight is not an arrival point, but rather the beginning of a more demanding phase. The next step will come in the following days: a first test in “mission conditions”, with a cruising speed of Mach 1.4, which NASA places around 1,490 km/hand an altitude of about 16,800 meters. The data matters because these are the basic conditions that the agency contemplates for future flights over inhabited areas in the United States. Before asking people what they have heard, the aircraft has to demonstrate that it can operate stably in that regime. Behind the X-59 there is not just a striking shape or an isolated commitment to recover supersonic flight. NASA remembers who has been studying this field for more than seven decades, with special attention to the noise associated with these flights and ways to make it more discreet. The Quesst mission combines advanced simulations, wind tunnel testing, schlieren photography and computational fluid dynamics to anticipate how the air around the aircraft behaves. The current phase has to verify something very specific: whether this entire design works in flight with a full-scale supersonic aircraft. The ultimate goal is not for the X-59 to end up transporting passengers, but for its data to help open a door that has been practically closed for decades. The information collected will be shared with national and international regulators to contribute to news noise standards based on data, not just the historical experience of the large noises associated with supersonic flight. The agency also plans to provide design tools and technology for future quieter supersonic aircraft. If the plan works, manufacturers would have more confidence to explore commercial concepts capable of flying fast without disturbing the ground as much. As we can see, the X-59 has crossed an important line, but the Quesst mission still has its most relevant tests ahead. First you will have to get closer to the conditions planned for these test flights over inhabited areas, and then you will come to the verification that really matters for the future of the program: knowing if that sound shock is acceptable. A good part of the value of NASA data will be played there. Images | POT In Xataka | Airbus has just made the most autonomous commercial aircraft in the world fly. Your goal: 22 hours straight without a stopover

aims to automate almost everything

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For years, when we talked about robots serving people, Japan almost always appeared in the foreground. Now the focus has shifted. The race to bring robotics and artificial intelligence to everyday life has accelerated, and China has just put a striking proposal on the table: a hotel where reception, delivery, cleaning or surveillance are left in the hands of machines. They assure that it will be the first of its kind in the world. The signature. Shenzhen Culture and Tourism and Pudu Robotics, a Chinese company specializing in commercial service robots, announced on May 31 an agreement to build this hotel on the western artificial island of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan link. The two parties present it as an establishment where the machines will not only be there for a specific demonstration, but to cover real day-to-day tasks. The place is not coincidental. The hotel is projected on the western artificial island of the Shenzhen-Zhongshan link, a piece built in the waters of Lingdingyang within an infrastructure of about 24 kilometers. The context helps understand the choice. This city, today converted into a huge technology center, had been just a few decades before a small fishing town north of Hong Kong. The island officially opened to the public on December 29, 2025 after a test phase with almost 10,000 visitors. The promise. The project wants to cover the most visible tasks and also some of the ones that we normally don’t see as much. According to official information, the robots would be in charge of receiving guests, guiding them with luggage, bringing food, serving rooms, cleaning, security patrols and accompanying or interacting with visitors. Pudu completes the picture with more catalog examples: machines capable of transporting heavy loads or coordinating services from automated points. The calendar. The company places the first visible step at the end of this year, with a test that would open some rooms and robotic services to the first guests. Then would come the rollout in phases, with the goal that the hotel can receive visitors at the beginning of 2027. It is an ambitious roadmap, but we are still at that delicate point in which the announced deadlines must become real operations. The difference they want to make. The most relevant technical point is not in the number of robots, but in how they are organized. Pudu maintains that its system allows different types of machines to operate on the same intelligent basis, with PuduFM 1.0 and PuduAgent as proper names for that architecture. The promise is that there are no individual pieces solving isolated problems, but rather a common layer capable of coordinating the service. The Japanese mirror. The idea of ​​a hotel staffed by robots is not born from scratch. Guinness World Records recognizes to the Henn-na Hotel Nagasakiopened on July 17, 2015 inside the Huis Ten Bosch park, as the first hotel staffed by robots, albeit with some human helpers. There were humanoids at the reception, an industrial robot to sort luggage, machines for domestic tasks and even a robotic dinosaur to serve guests in English. The problem came later: Business Insider picked up in 2019 that the hotel reduced more than half of its robotic workforce after not reducing costs or workload. Images | Pudu Robotics In Xataka | Anthropic’s AI already writes 80% of its own code because it was inevitable that AIs would improve themselves

The Chuwi Unibook is the $450 Windows laptop that aims to take down the MacBook Neo. The problem is not the specifications

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The Chinese manufacturer Chuwi has given the surprise with the presentation of its Chuwi Unibook, a mid-range laptop that surprises with its price of $449 and that has undoubtedly been created to compete with the new rival to beat: the MacBook Neo from Apple. The truth is that on paper the proposal seems really attractive, but the problem is precisely that: that this computer, like all those that will soon appear based on Windows with similar specifications, will have to comply with what is important. The user experience will be everything. The MacBook Neo still has no response. The PC industry was used to not having too many concerns in the mid-range. The manufacturers had accommodated themselves and proposed proposals without much ambition, modest but functional. Then came the MacBook Neo from Apple and revolutionized the sector: For the first time it was possible to access the Cupertino laptop ecosystem and its experience for a much more affordable price. There are sacrifices to the MacBook Neo, of course, but the device’s appeal is evident to many users. Apple has the A18 Pro, Intel has Wildcat Lake. The striking thing about the MacBook Neo is that Apple demonstrated that the iPhone chip was more than enough for a mid-range laptop. To compete with it, Intel has launched a new family of low-cost processors called Wildcat Lake. These chips, made with Intel 18A photolithography, are promising, and according to some benchmarks one of their variants It is 21% more powerful than the Apple A18 Pro of the MacBook Neo. The spec sheet rocks. If we look at the pure specifications of the Chuwi Unibook, the difference is notable. The equipment is not only cheaper, but it surpasses the Apple model in almost everything. For example, it has a theoretically more powerful processor, keyboard backlighting, better connectivity and more battery. The sacrifices required by the MacBook Neo are fewer sacrifices in this equipment. On paper, the Chuwi Unibook is really promising. On paper. Source: VideoCardz Project Firefly. Intel’s Chinese division recently announced this initiative. With it, they hope to help manufacturers reduce manufacturing complexity by offering reference designs that reduce production costs. Intel has already done things like this in the past (I’m sure many of you will remember both the Centrino branding and its Ultrabook program), and the idea here is precisely to provide certain tools to manufacturers to develop more competitive models in a market. shaken by the Apple model. Manufacturers wait their turn. The launch of Intel processors from the Wildcat Lake family has caused several manufacturers to begin announcing laptops based on these chips. Lenovo is already preparing some models IdeaPad Slimand so much Asus as HP They also prepare their plays. The Chuwi Unibook seems to be just another variant of those proposals, and in all of them the specifications, although modest, seem to surpass those of the MacBook Neo. Lots of advertising, little real product. Almost all major manufacturers have shown their intention to develop mid-range laptops that compete with the MacBook Neo in that price range. The announcements have been varied, but none of them have communicated the price or availability date of these devices, probably because everyone is waiting to see how the memory crisis evolves. It is reasonable to think that the imminent Computex fair is the perfect occasion to definitively present all these proposals. But. The problem with the Chuwi Unibook, like that of other manufacturers waiting their turn, is not the specifications. The problem will be the benefits and above all the real experience that these teams offer. Windows PC manufacturers have not done well with cutting features in the past, and if that experience is not good we could witness a new phenomenon like netbooks: affordable equipment, but too limited and that ended up condemned to oblivion. In Xataka | “We arrived too soon, but we were right”: The MacBook Neo is everything Microsoft dreamed of with the disastrous Windows 8

The next Mercedes-Benz model aims like a missile to fully enter the war

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In the middle of World War II, while Allied bombing destroyed German factories and consumed resources at an impossible rate, many plants that until then manufactured cars, engines or civil machinery began to transform hurriedly to produce military vehicles, aviation parts and weapons. Some of the most recognizable brands in the European automotive industry they then discovered something that decades later resonates strongly again: in times of geopolitical tension, an assembly line can change purpose much faster than it seems. The unexpected twist, or almost. For decades, the future of the European automobile seemed to come down to a single discussion: electric, hybrid or gasoline. However, the German industrial crisis and the accelerated rearmament of Europe are opening a possibility completely different. Mercedes-Benz, like before Volkswagenhas just made it clear that it is willing to enter the defense industry if the business makes economic sense. This has been confirmed through an interview in the Wall Street Journal of its CEO, Ola Källenius, and it is much more important than it seems because it reflects a profound change within the German automobile industry: the big brands are no longer only looking at the car of the future, they are also beginning to look at war as a new industrial opportunity. In a Europe increasingly obsessed with drones, missiles, air defense and military production, car factories are beginning to be seen not only as car plants, but as possible centers strategic manufacturing. The perfect storm. The context explains why this idea is beginning to seem reasonable even for companies historically far from the military business. The German automobile industry is going through one of its most delicate moments in decades: falling profits, pressure from Chinese manufacturers, high energy costs, lower European demand and tariff threats from the United States. Mercedes-Benz, for example, suffered a strong profit drop in 2025, while practically all major German manufacturers have announced cuts or adjustments labor. At the same time, the defense industry is experiencing exactly the opposite situation. European rearmament after the war in Ukraine has fired orders, investments and military contracts to historic levels. For many German industrial companies, the military sector is beginning to represent something very different from a marginal business: stability, growth and guaranteed public financing for years. From cars to artillery. The case of Mercedes is not isolated and we have been counting. Volkswagen is also exploring possible military collaborations as defense companies such as Rheinmetall study reuse factories of automobiles or absorb part of its industrial infrastructure. The message is clear: Europe is beginning to discover that many capabilities necessary to produce modern cars (advanced metallurgy, electronics, robotics, complex logistics chains or highly skilled workers) are also extremely useful to manufacture systems military. The border between both industries begins to fade little by little. It is no longer just about producing tanks or ammunition, we are talking about radars, drones, autonomous vehicles, electronic systems and air defense platforms that require technologies very similar to those of the modern automobile. The new European war economy. As we said, the ukrainian war It has caused an enormous psychological change within Europe. For years, much of continental industry assumed that globalization and stability made a large military capacity of its own unnecessary. Now the opposite happens: European governments are increasing defense budgets at speeds not seen since the Cold War. This transformation is pushing traditionally civil companies to reconsider their role within the new geopolitical context. The CEO of Mercedes himself insist that any military activity would remain dwarfed by its core business, but at the same time recognizes something revealing: can become a growing and profitable niche. That is to say, the German automobile industry is beginning to assume that part of future European growth could come directly from rearmament. The car of the future may not be a car. If you like, the most striking thing of all is the symbolism of change. For a long time, the automotive debate revolved around batteries, autonomous driving and sustainability. Now, some of Europe’s most iconic companies are beginning to speak openly on anti-drone defensemilitary production or collaboration with weapons manufacturers. The idea that the next big European industrial business could be closer to war than sustainable mobility would have seemed absurd just a few years ago. However, the combination of economic crisis, Chinese competition and continental rearmament is slowly pushing giants like Mercedes-Benz itself into completely new and unexpected terrain. And that reveals the extent to which Europe is entering a stage where the economy, industry and security are beginning to mix more and more. Image | Nara, RawPixel, Julian Herzog In Xataka | Europe wants to make more weapons and faster. Your biggest obstacle is not money: it is finding qualified welders and technicians In Xataka | In the midst of rearmament, Spain has just surprised Europe: 5,000 million for 34 warships and four submarines

“Slaughterbots” are no longer science fiction in Ukraine. Russians wear masks to avoid the drone that aims at their heads

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A few years before the start of the war in Ukraine, a Berkeley computer science professor presented at the UN a short called “Slaughterbots”a piece where small drones with facial recognition chased people autonomously. Many saw it then as another technological exaggeration in the style of the Black Mirror series. A few years later the short… has fallen short. Drones that search for tanks, search for people. For much of the Ukrainian war, drones were seen as a support weapon intended to destroy armor, correct artillery fire or monitor enemy movements. That phase has gone disappearing quickly. What is now emerging is something much more disturbing: cheap drones, produced by the millions, designed specifically to hunt down and kill soldiers. individually. They counted in Forbes that the Russian military channels themselves they are warning of Ukrainian FPVs equipped with thermal vision, reconnaissance systems and munitions capable of firing explosive projectiles at a distance directly against a human body. The detail that is generating the most fear is not the weapon itself, but the possibility that these drones are already learning to identify Where to hit to maximize lethality. The idea of ​​small autonomous devices “hunting” specific people no longer belongs to technological dystopias or viral YouTube videos: it is beginning to form part of the front line’s routine. A gigantic aerial hunting area. The most profound consequence of this revolution is that huge parts of the front have been transformed in “kill zones”those corridors where any human movement can be detected and destroyed from the air in a matter of minutes. Ukraine has especially perfected this model around cities like Kostyantynivka or Chasiv Yarwhere small Russian groups are identified long before approaching the defensive lines. The result has been devastating for classical Russian doctrines: large armored columns and mechanized assaults have become too visible and vulnerable. In response, Moscow is trying to create their own “drone racers”infiltrating small teams of operators hiding in basements, destroyed buildings or tree lines to build temporary bubbles of local air dominance. In other words, war is no longer just about controlling the terrain, it is about controlling the sky just a few meters above each soldier’s head. The true technological leap. The most important thing about these new systems is not the size of the explosive charge, but intelligence that begins to guide them. Many Ukrainian FPVs already integrate autonomy modules capable of continuing the attack even when the operator loses signal due to electronic interference. Western companies and civilian developers have created relatively inexpensive kits that turn commercial drones into smart munitions capable of automatically locking on and pursuing targets. Until recently, that autonomy was mainly used against vehicles; now the focus shifts to the infantry. Some models use EFP loadsformed explosive projectiles that do not need to hit directly to penetrate protection and kill the target from a distance. That eliminates many of the defenses improvised measures that had proliferated on the front, from metal nets even the famous Russian “turtle tanks”. The problem for soldiers is that hiding no longer guarantees survival: the drone can continue observing, wait for the exact moment and attack when it detects vulnerability. “Slaughterbots” stopped seeming over the top. We said it at the beginning, in 2017 Professor Stuart Russell launched the short film “Slaughterbots” as a warning about autonomous drones with facial recognition capable of murdering specific people. At the time it seemed like a futuristic hype designed to open ethical debates about military artificial intelligence. Nine years later, the parallels are beginning to be uncomfortable even for those fighting on the ground. Russian soldiers develop countermeasures that seem straight out of a science fiction movie: using masks to confuse recognition systems, throwing helmets as decoys, hiding their heads behind obstacles or remaining completely still to avoid thermal tracking. Obsession reflects a huge psychological change. For centuries, a soldier could attempt to protect himself from enemy fire using cover, armor, or distance. Many fighters now feel that there is a camera constantly watching them from above, capable of deciding when to attack and possibly where to do it to ensure death. The industrial and algorithmic battle. The great Russian fear is that Ukraine will manage to combine mass production, autonomy and precision on an unprecedented scale. kyiv aims to manufacture millions of FPVs a year, and that completely changes the mathematics of combat. Whether a relatively cheap drone can chase soldiers with hit rates close to 80%human wear and tear begins to take on industrial dimensions. That is why Russia is desperately trying to build its own drone racersdeploy interceptors and saturate local airspace before moving larger troops. However, Ukraine maintains an advantage in both quantity and technological sophistication, especially in optics, autonomous navigation and aerial interception. What is being seen in the Donbas is not simply a tactical evolution of drone warfare: it is rather the birth of a new form of combat where thousands of semi-autonomous machines continually compete to detect, pursue and eliminate individual human beings. And the most disturbing thing is that this transformation is just beginning. Image | Defense Ukraine In Xataka | Satellite images reveal how much Russia fears Ukraine’s drones. 7,000 km away they are covering their nuclear missiles In Xataka | Ukraine has resurrected one of the oldest tactics of warfare. And he is isolating Russian cities without the need for soldiers

RAM aims to become even more expensive

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For years we have accepted that mobile phones were rising in price in exchange for better cameras, better screens, faster processors and, so to speak, increasingly refined designs. We have also begun to assume that on-device AI does not come free: it usually requires more power, more storage and more memory. The surprise is that one of the next blows may come precisely from there, from mobile RAM, a component that usually goes unnoticed, but is very present in the real cost of each smartphone that hits the market. The clearest signal comes from the LPDDR5Xone of the most relevant mobile memories on the current market and which was already coming from an unusual movement. According to TrendForce datathis type of report registered a quarter-on-quarter increase of between 58% and 63% in the first quarter of 2026. This is the largest quarterly increase in its history. What is striking is that this jump does not seem to have closed the cycle: the forecast for the second quarter points to an even more intense rise. If we focus on the forecast for the second quarter, the scale of the problem changes. A projection attributed to TrendForce, shared Jukan Choipoints out that mobile DRAM contract prices will grow between 93% and 98% in quarter-on-quarter terms during that period. In other words: we are not talking about one more increase in a stressed market, but rather a jump close to doubling the price in just three months. For the smartphone industry, a figure like this is not background noise. It should be noted that TrendForce works with paid reports aimed mainly at institutional investors, analysts and companies in the sector, so the full document is not openly available. The relevant part for this article has emerged through Choi, a semiconductor analyst at Citrini Research. The expert accumulates more than 100,000 followers on X and his comments have been cited by media such as The Economistwhich included them in an article about the impact of AI on consumer electronics. The impact on the price of RAM in mobile phones Here we are not talking about the price that a user sees when looking for memory in a store. Mobile DRAM is negotiated in another area: that of contracts between memory manufacturers, such as Samsung, SK Hynix or Micronand large customers who buy enormous volumes to integrate these chips into their products. This world is made up of mobile brands, server manufacturers and other OEMs. That is why the data matters: it does not describe a specific purchase, but rather the base cost with which the industry begins to manufacture its next devices. The rise doesn’t appear out of nowhere either. SemiAnalysis noted at the beginning of April 2026 that DRAM prices could more than double this year and record another double-digit increase in 2027. The same firm noted that the contract price of LPDDR5 had risen more than 3 times since the first quarter of 2025, and that it was likely to exceed $10/GB on the open market during the first quarter of 2026. That is, the second quarter does not inaugurate the tension: the accelerates. DRAM prices could more than double this year and see another double-digit increase in 2027. The backdrop is AI. HBM memory, key to powering the GPUs that power many artificial intelligence data centers, remains in a situation of structural scarcity and absorbs a good part of the sector’s investment. The consequence is easy to understand: if a good part of the money, productive capacity and attention of manufacturers is directed to that high-bandwidth memory, there is less margin to alleviate strain on other DRAM families. Among them is mobile memory, which now competes in a much more demanding supply chain. Added to this is another important detail: smartphone-class memory no longer lives only within the smartphone. NVIDIA uses LPDDR5X in its Grace and Vera processorsdesigned for AI-linked server systems. The reading for the mobile market is clear: a technology used in phones and compact devices is also part of architectures that compete for resources at the center of the race for artificial intelligence. The difference with the PC world helps to understand it better. If we build a computer, we can choose how much RAM to buy, look for an offer and install the module ourselves. It doesn’t work like that with cell phones: we buy a complete device, with the memory already integrated and no real margin to intervene later. That makes the rise of the LPDDR not seen directlybut it doesn’t mean it disappears. It is incorporated into the cost of manufacturing the phone and, from there, it can end up influencing the price we pay. Counterpoint helps convert that increase in price in a figure that is much easier to visualize. For a high-end configuration, with 16 GB of LPDDR5X HKMG and 512 GB of UFS 4.1 storage, the firm projected an increase in BOM between 100 and 150 dollars for the second quarter of 2026. We are talking about the cost of materials, not the sales price, so it is not advisable to mechanically transfer that figure to the consumer. Even so, it is a sign that does not go unnoticed. The bad news, therefore, is not that all mobile phones are going to increase in price automatically or in the same proportion. That will depend on each manufacturer.their contracts, their margins and how they configure each range. But the factor is there: if mobile memory becomes more expensive with this force, the cost of manufacturing a smartphone inevitably changes. And in a market that was already getting us used to increasingly demanding prices, RAM is emerging as another obstacle for those who expected a price drop in the short term. Images | PR MEDIA | Samsung In Xataka | Apple had been able to maintain prices despite the crazy rise in RAM. That’s over

It is the promise of a Chinese startup that aims to revolutionize the sector

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There is a whole world in this synthetic fuels. And it is no wonder, since whoever can develop a renewable fuel, without harming the environment and with elements that we have in abundance, has won heaven. And in this regard, there is a Shanghai startup that promises to have taken a significant step. And if his claims hold up, it could change the rules of the game. We tell you the details. Context. China imports more than 70% of the crude oil it consumes, and a considerable proportion comes from the Middle East. If you have been paying attention to this region of the planet in recent weeks, you will have seen that the thing is not very there. And at a time when conflicts in the Persian Gulf generate volatility in the markets and threaten energy supply chains, Beijing has been looking for alternatives to conventional fossil fuels for years. It is in this scenario where Carbonology emerges. What exactly has he announced. Just like share SCMP, the company, co-founded in 2024 by a former Tesla vice president, claims to have developed a process to convert carbon dioxide (extracted from air and water) into synthetic fuel using solar and wind energy. The products it claims to be able to manufacture include gasoline, diesel, aviation kerosene and naphtha, all of them at competitive prices with those on the market. The company also reportedly announced that it is preparing a deployment to produce its product on a large scale in China. How this technology works. The process the startup describes is based on direct air capture, known in the industry as DAC (Direct Air Capture). This technique consists of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and combining it with hydrogen, in turn obtained through electrolysis of water using renewable energies, to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons. The result is fuels that are practically identical to those derived from petroleum, but whose carbon cycle is closed: the CO₂ they emit when burned is the same as that captured to manufacture them. It is really not a new process, as it has been developed for years in laboratories around the world and There are pilot projects underwaysuch as the Haru Oni ​​plant, in southern Chile, promoted by companies such as Siemens and Porsche. What is still unclear. The bad thing is that Carbonology’s claims lack details. According to the mediuma company spokesperson confirmed the information but declined to offer more information on the matter. As SCMP shares, the company has a registered capital of just over 14 million yuan (about $2 million) and completed a first round of financing last year. In January it opened a 300 million yuan R&D center in Shanghai, along with a synthetic kerosene production line. In any case, the company recognized that its future commercial operations will probably have to be located near large solar and wind energy facilities in western China, since it is a process with high energy demand. A problem that persists. Synthetic fuels produced from renewables remain expensive. The medium refers to paper published in January 2025 in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, where some of the obstacles to its commercialization were identified, including high capital intensity, low energy efficiency in the conversion and absence of infrastructure and regulatory frameworks that allow its large-scale deployment. About Repsol. In Spain, the main company that has promoted renewable fuels in its gas stations has been Repsol, although the concept in this case is different. Repsol comes from a process that reuses used cooking oilremains of agricultural processes and forestry waste to develop its Nexa fuel, which is already sold in hundreds of gas stations in the country. However, the company is also studying the DAC technique to produce synthetic fuels. It does this through a cutting-edge project in the Port of Bilbao (Petronor). At the moment what they have is a demonstration plant, so we will have to wait to see if it has an outlet. for the car. That a Chinese startup barely a year old claims to have solved the cost problem that has blocked the entire industry is, at the very least, interesting, but there is a lack of data to support it. DAC technology exists and is maturing, but most of the CO₂ captured so far is stored underground, not converted into fuel. That the announcement was made under these circumstances is curious, to say the least. So we will have to wait to see if this project ends up materializing and fulfills what it promises. Cover image | ADIGUN AMPA In Xataka | 115 million barrels released and a fear on the horizon: that gasoline in Spain will go to €2/liter

Chips connected by laser instead of cable. It seems like science fiction, but it aims to revolutionize data centers

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If you have ever mounted a PCSurely one of the points on which you have had to pay the most attention is the connections. Because understanding the power of the processor, the GPU or the speed of the RAM is “easy”, but the motherboard is what allows us to interconnect all these components with ‘highways’ in which the data speed can be maximum. In the data centers and serversthis is the same: the better the connections between chips and equipment, the lower latency, higher bandwidth and better performance. These connections are made physically, but there is a French startup that wants to change the rules of the game with NVIDIA. As? Connecting the chips by laser. Chips connected by laser and NVIDIA taking out the wallet Improving interconnection speed is no small feat or a whim. NVIDIA has begun manufacturing its next generation platform, the one named Vera Rubin. It is a system that can be combined with others to multiply benefits. That union, as we say, is physical, but there comes a point at which physics is no longer enough. When that arrives, NVIDIA wants to be ready and, a few days ago, Reuters reported on a $4 billion investment by NVIDIA in two companies that are aggressively researching new technologies to help increase that interconnection speed: Lumentum and Coherent. This is a rack and the nightmare of those of us who hate cables. Specifically, that of the Wikimedia Foundation. Well, imagine that a large part of those cables go outside because the systems are connected by electricity Another of the companies in which they have invested is Scintil Photonics. It is a French startup that this in the testing phase of a technology that, if the industry adopts it, will mark a before and after in this connection on a team scale. The LEAF Light Evaluation Kit is, as detailed, the first dense wavelength division multiplexing single chip to go from theory to practice. It’s like another language, I know, but it’s basically what we were talking about: an optical chip interconnection system instead of copper. And that is the main advantage. With copper reaching physical limits of speed and density, optics are emerging as a solution when connecting clusters of thousands of processors. Each chip has an optical system that is responsible for emitting and receiving light, and in that light goes the data that is currently traveling through cables. The one from the French company it is not the first chip based on photonic communication, but they claim that their technology reduces the energy necessary for them to work by 50%, as well as latency. Results? Well we’ll see. The startup’s CEO, Matt Crowley, has commented that he has “six or seven companies interested in implementing the technology by 2028,” but that due to confidentiality agreements, he cannot name names. The Scintil Photonics prototype The complication in this will be that they get supply of the photonics systems, since the data center racks are built with the idea that they are scalables. That is, it is no longer just power, but how many tens of thousands of units you can interconnect, and a bottleneck in the manufacturing of any of the parties involved in optics would be equivalent to a lack of supply for their customers. At the moment, some prototypes have already been served to select companies for testing, but certainly, using light pulses instead of electrical signals is something that is very interesting in superclusters focused on huge data centers that can scale without the limitations of the physical connection. Images | Victorgrigas, M.I.T., GlobeNewswire In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

France leaves Zoom and Teams behind in its administration and aims for something greater

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For years, digital services from American companies have enjoyed a clearly dominant position in Europe. A mix of consolidated trust and lack of regional alternatives competitive on many fronts, it has been constantly expanding its user base, both individuals and companies, while fueling a shower of million-dollar contracts also coming from governments and public administrations. The footprint of large American technology companies in the Old Continent is impossible to ignore. Gmail, Instagram, Spotify and YouTube are part of the daily lives of millions of Europeans. Likewise, it is common to find public organization computers running Windows, Office or Microsoft 365, a scene so normalized that it is rarely questioned. To this visible layer is added another much less obvious, but perhaps even more strategic: cloud computing. Providers such as Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s AWS, or Google Cloud host everything from everyday services to critical infrastructure. In parallel, in the field of cybersecurity, platforms such as CrowdStrike Falcon They are integrated into the core of sensitive systems used by airports, airlines or financial entities. When technological dependence becomes a strategic risk However, this balance is beginning to show cracks. The question is no longer just who provides the service, but what would happen if that partner considered reliable suddenly stopped being so. How would Europe respond to such a scenario? And, above all, are you preparing to face it? For some this is an extreme hypothesis; for others, a risk that can no longer be ruled out. The truth is that the debate is no longer marginal and has reached the offices of Brussels and several European capitals. As The Wall Street Journal reports, Since the re-election of Donald Trump, those responsible for strategic sectors in Europe are putting pressure on the large American cloud service providers to facilitate quick exit mechanisms. The objective is clear: to be able to transfer systems and data to local centers or to European suppliers if necessary. And what is considered an emergency situation? The possibility, remote but not impossible, that the United States limits or even suspends access to services and data centers operated by its own companies. It would be an unprecedented move, with profound consequences for the European economy and public services. Finding an argument to justify it is as difficult as it is simple: everything can end up revolving around a concept that is increasingly present these days: “national security.” Despite the existing tensions between Europe and Washington, everything indicates that such a scenario remains unlikely in the short term. Even so, there is one incontestable fact: The concern is real. In Brussels and in several European capitals, discrete but constant steps are already being taken to reduce dependencies and gain room for maneuver. Visio, the alternative to Zoom and Teams promoted by France France has become one of the most illustrative cases. The Government is promoting the progressive withdrawal of extra-European videoconferencing solutions in the public sector to replace them with Visioa “sovereign” and open source alternative. The State’s own digital strategy portal admits that, until now, the different departments have operated with a mosaic of tools and expressly mentions Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Webex. According to the official statement, this fragmentation “weakens data security, creates strategic dependencies of external infrastructures, generates additional financial costs and makes cooperation between ministries difficult.” The answer lies in a unified solution, developed by the Interministerial Directorate for Digital, under government control and based on French technology. Visio already has about 40,000 regular users and its deployment is planned to reach 200,000 public employees. Among the first organizations to adopt it widely during the first quarter of 2026 are the CNRS, the National Health Insurance Fund, the General Directorate of Public Finances and the Ministry of the Armed Forces. Zoom, the video conferencing platform that became popular during the pandemic The scope of the movement is better understood with a specific piece of information: the CNRS will replace your Zoom licenses with Visio at the end of March for its 34,000 employees and the 120,000 researchers associated with its research units. American solutions are thus beginning to lose ground in France, as has already happened in other countries. Denmark moves towards LibreOffice and Munich opted for Linux for years, although in this last case the path was not linear and ended with a partial return to Microsoft due to compatibility problems. These types of strategies, extrapolated to other attempts to promote sovereign alternatives, are not without obstacles either. It is worth remembering that open source does not automatically guarantee quality or pace of evolution. When maintenance, auditing, and development fall to a limited number of actors, product progress can slow down. Pointing out these tensions does not invalidate the approach, but it does help to understand its real complexity. Furthermore, the debate is not limited to public services. In a hypothetical decoupling of American platforms, ordinary users could also be affected. Some people, like our colleague Jose Garcíahave chosen to start a process of technological emancipation with respect to the United Statesa path that is not without friction. After years of moving in an ecosystem dominated by North American Big Tech, getting out of it requires time, sacrifices and assuming new limitations. Images | Government of France | Mika Baumeister | Yoyus sugiharto In Xataka | France and Germany have created a “European Notion” with a very simple objective: depend less on the United States

The future of energy lies in fusion, and China aims to light the first light bulb with the power of the Sun in 2030

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When we think of the future energyit is easy for us to think about renewables. Much of Europe has a while running with renewables, China is an expanding power and even some states in the United States They are seeing its benefits. However, the future lies in nuclear power. But not because of fission, but for the fusion. And China has just taken a giant step in the forecasts of its BEST program with a single objective. Replicate the process that powers the Sun. China and the ultimate energy. Fusion and fission are nuclear reactions that release energy from the nucleus of the atom, and That’s where their similarities end.. Briefly, fission consists of breaking the nuclei of heavy atoms such as uranium to release energy. It is the process that we use in current nuclear power plantsand decades ago we managed to make it something stable. Fusion is the reverse process: it joins light atoms to generate energy. It is tremendously unstable and the heat generated is enormous, but the process generates a much higher amount of energy. Imitate that star power It is extremely complex, but we have been trying to replicate it for years for a very simple reason: it is estimated that it will offer almost unlimited energy and long-lasting waste-freesomething against which nuclear fission can’t compete. China is one of the countries that is pushing the development of nuclear fusion plants the most, so much so that it intends to put the first plant into operation a decade before its competitors. EAST. It stands for ‘Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak’, an experimental program that China has been developing since 2006 to test the viability of commercial fusion energy. After setting some records for temperature and operating time, in 2021 achieved continuous plasma operation for 17 minutes in which the core operated at 70 million degrees Celsius. They are five times the sun temperature and, although temperatures of up to 160 million degrees were previously achieved for 20 seconds, the ideal is to maintain a very high temperature for as long as possible. Steps have continued to be taken and researchers recently discovered that the reactor could work at 165% of its maximum theoretical capacity without suffering disruptions. To contextualize, it is as if we have an engine designed to go at 200 km/h, but we discover that we can drive at 330 km/h constantly without it overheating. In short: China is taking steps to control the enormous challenge represented by the magnetic confinement of plasma. BEST. The ‘Burning Plasma Experimental Superconducting Tokamak’, for its part, is the spearhead of its nuclear fusion program. If EAST is the proof of concept, BEST is the demonstration of feasibility. The EAST steps are those that will be replicated in BEST, a reactor built on a larger scale that will operate for a shorter period of time in a sustained manner, but under conditions of greater energy gain. Goal: 2030. China began construction of the BEST in 2023 and hopes to complete it by 2027 to begin testing with plasma. If it goes well, the CFETR reactor will be the one that pours fusion energy into the grid. In a statement published by the state media Xinhuawe see that the intention is to generate electricity by 2030 and start do it commercially by 2035. If the goal is reached, China will be the first country that will be able to commercially emulate the power of the Sun to light the “first nuclear fusion light bulb” in history. Although, of course, the United States and Massachusetts They also say that they will be the first. They are not the only ones. If they reach the goal, it will be a fundamental step in achieving new generation energy, and they want to reach that future a decade before the rest of the countries, or so China suggests. In this race for nuclear fusion, the BEST is expected to begin operating commercially between 2030 and 2035. Meanwhile, in France there is the ITER. With 24,000 million euros in budgetis the most expensive international program in history, only surpassed by the Apollo Programthe International Space Stationhe Manhattan Project or the GPS system. It aims to be very powerful, but has constant delaysa budget that has overflowed and an operational date that has not been fulfilled. In the United States, a private startup is building SPARCmuch smaller than ITER, but more profitable. United Kingdom has the STEPJapan JT-60SA and Russia the T-15MD Hybrid. Talking about dates is complicated, since there were tests that were expected to be obtained in 2025 and were not achieved… and there is talk of between 2040 and 2060 for the commercial viability of this energy “from the stars”, although the calendars have been readjusted. China has turned new generation energy in a matter of stateand we will see if they meet their goal of starting production in 2030. And, although it seems that we have to put the artificial intelligence even in the soup, the enormous energy needs of this technology are encouraging advances in nuclear fusion. The joke that nuclear fusion energy always has 30 years to go may have come to an end. Images | Oak Ridge National LaboratoryNASA In Xataka | Europe is looking for where to put its first nuclear fusion reactor. And Spain is one of the best candidates

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