believed

We believed that at this point the PS5 and Xbox would be cheaper than ever. The hallucinating thing is that it is happening just the opposite

by

Sony has just announced that all models of their PlayStation 5 consoles will rise $ 50 in the United States. The argument that Sony has used in its statement To explain the decision is that there is a “difficult economic environment.” Or what is the same: they blame tariffs. But that is already a generalized trend … and very unreasonable. PS5 rises around the world. It is the same that happened in April in Europe, Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, when this company He also announced that prices went up for some models. In Europe, for example, the PS5 digital edition cost 499.99 euros. In the US, these increases affect all models, and the new prices will be activated as of Thursday in that country, being like this: PlayStation 5: 549.99 dollars (before $ 499.99) PlayStation 5 Digital Edition: 499.99 dollars (before $ 449.99) PlayStation 5 Pro: $ 749.99 (before $ 699.99) Prices for accessories, yes, remain unchanged. Microsoft already did the same. This movement is the same as Microsoft also with its Xbox Series S/X consoles, which They also rose in price at 50 euros In Europe and the US. Even the controls and some accessories saw their prices increased. And of course, Nintendo. The Japanese company took a long time to end up lowering the price of the original Nintendo Switch, but the Switch 2 has given it the excuse for uprise even more Even in the games. Not only that: the economic situation has caused Nintendo that Prices upload of the original Nintendo Switch, the Lite edition and the accessories. These data have not been met for the latest Sony and Microsoft models. In fact, the thing is totally the other way around. Damn tariffs. Most video game consoles are manufactured in China, and tariffs have especially affected the Asian giant. That certainly makes manufacturers more expensive to manufacture and export them to be able to sell them in the US or Europe. And if they want to keep their profit margins, they end up doing something logical for them and terrible for consumers, because we are the ones who end up paying the duck. But some manufacturing costs have dropped. The amazing thing about the situation is that both the PS5 and the Xbox Series S/X are now cheaper to manufacture (let’s not say the original switch). After five years in the market (nine in the case of the Nintendo console), the components of these consoles have dropped in price: their cost was then very high, but after all this time those components have ended up becoming almost obsolete compared to the new chips that have appeared in all this time. So what is happening? Not everything has come down. In fact, these consoles are based on GDDR6 memory chips and NAND chips for their solid state units, and there the prices They rose strongly in 2025 and 2025 for the relative shortage of this type of chips and the focus that manufacturers are putting in HBM memories for AI accelerators such as those of Nvidia. To this are added other costs not directly related to the material invoice (BOM), such as logistics, manufacturing energy, or marketing. The dollar loses bellows. But it is also the green ticket has lost value in front of the euro and other currencies. After 80 years being the pillar of the world economy, US tariffs They are starting to destroy it And that also translates into the price increases of everything. Including consoles. Less “boxes” are sold. Consoles manufacturers used to lose money with their models in the initial periods. The idea was always to recover those losses of plenty with the sale of physical games, but the rise of the sale of digital editions, the free-to-play games and the subscriptions have made the distribution of value change. For Sony or Microsoft the solution is simple: if we no longer recover so much value with the games, we upload the price of the hardware. But all that already happened before. The truth is that the situation is in many cases analogous to which it was lived with the PS4 and the Xbox One for example. These consoles ended up falling in a remarkable price over the years, but here a perfect storm has been created. One in which inflation, dollar weakness, tariffs and new video game access models have caused the worst result for users: more expensive consoles. In Xataka | 60 euros for a camera, 90 for a game. The worst (and best) of Nintendo prices for switch 2

Duolingo believed that AI was his ally. GPT-5 has just demonstrated that it can be its mortal competition

by

Duolingo sinks in the stock market. In early June its action was around $ 525, but now its value It has collapsed Up to 325 dollars, 38%. It is not entirely clear what this debacle has caused, but we have a clear suspect: AI. Be careful what you say. Three months ago Luis Von Ahn, CEO of Duolingo, made very controversial statements and indicated that he would replace part of his network of external (human) collaborators by generative AI systems. Although he stressed that they would continue to be a company that took great care to its employees, it also stressed that IA would take an increasingly notable role in the entire operation of the company, especially to “eliminate bottlenecks so we can do more” with the employees they already had. The value of Duolingo’s action has suffered important ups and downs in what we have been, but the last trend is clearly negative. Source: Google Finance. Boom and drop in actions. These statements were produced at the end of April. The initial impact for shares seemed to be positive, which went from $ 400 to $ 530 (32.5% growth) in a few days. But shortly after that optimism for the role of AI in the company vanished among investors: the action fell even below those initial levels, and now is around year principle levels. It seemed that Duolingo traced. The company presented financial results and corroborated the success of its business model. The feeling of progress when learning a language – gamification is a powerful (and as we will see, dangerous) tool— sold more than learning itself. That allowed to momentarily stop the fall of the actions a few days ago, but then something happened. GPT-5. During the presentation of the new OpenAI model there was a demonstration in which one of the company’s engineers launched a dart poisoned to Duolingo. That demo was to create a custom web application in just three minutes with which the user could learn French. With a simple prompt an app that competed directly with Duolingo, and that of course avoided paying for that application to learn languages. That PROMPT single made GPT-5 capable of creating an interactive website to teach you to speak in French. Source: OpenAi. Be careful with gamifying everything. Although that demo of GPT-5 becoming a personalized teacher is striking, the value of value of Duolingo’s action may also have been motivated by other causes. Especially, for that clear focus on the gamification of the learning process. Converting this process into a game is attractive and encourages many users to take that task in a more fun way, but criticism of excessive focus In Duolingo’s gamification they are frequent. As A user said In Reddit, “for me the reward to learn a language is to learn the language.” Other explained That Duolingo is not a learning application, but that it must be taken as something else: a game. The condemnation of advertising. Other criticisms are aimed at Excessive appearance of ads advertising when one uses duolingo to learn a language. Advertising occurs in the free version, because the premium version has the advantage of not showing it. The model is reasonable – study, after all, is a company and is there to earn money – but as with streaming, the presence of ads is increasing and is increasingly annoying for those users of the free version. Of betting on AI to be threatened by her. The truth is that although all these factors may have influenced that assessment, volatility may have been influenced by those expectations that are constantly lived with AI. The companies that are most committed to this technology are the ones that are going up in the stock market –to tell the “Trinity of the AI”-, although the real impact of this technology is for the very discreet moment. AI as a private teacher. What is unquestionable is that The potential of AI as a teacher of any discipline “Not only about languages,” is undeniable. It is something that GPT-4o already pointed out, whose demonstrations were in the same direction. For example, the boy’s video Learning to solve a mathematical issue —Hahere included – it was especially striking, and hunting a future in which whoever wants to get a lot of these “private teachers” that we can create with a prompt single in chatgpt (and other chatbots, of course). It is early to know, of course, but Duolingo, like many others, seems to be suffering the consequences of that future potential. In Xataka | We do not know if the AI is going to eat your work, but the CEO of some startups are determined to convince you of it

We believed that the “road of yellow tiles” was a private cinema. Until some divers descended to the depths

by

The idea of the yellow tile road was born with the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (1900), where a golden path is described that leads to the Emerald city and symbolizes the trip to personal fulfillment and discovery. In the famous adaptation to the 1939 cinema, that path became a visual icon thanks to the pioneering use of Technicolor: the bright yellow contrasted with the intense green of the city and the blue sky, marking the passage of Dorothy from Kansas’s gray routine to a fantasy world. It turns out that in marine depths we had Another way of tile. A geological finding. History dates back to 2022. During the Luʻuaaahikikekumu expeditiona scientific team aboard E/V Nautilus shipwhile exploring the chain of old submarine volcanoes of Liliʻuokalani Ridge, he ran into Rocking formation that remembered the mythical “road of yellow tiles” of the cinema. The curious structure, located at the top of the submarine nootka, within the National Marino Monument Papahānaumokuākeait turned out to be an example of ancient volcanic geology: rock fragments generated by high -energy eruptions, known as hyaloclastitethat have fractured uniformly due to repeated cycles of heating and cooling by successive eruptions. This pattern, similar to the cracked of the surface of a Brownie, has conferred the rock an appearance of perfectly aligned cobblestone. Origins and characteristics. Hialoclastite is formed when hot magma comes into contact with water, fragmenting into vitreous particles and accumulating in the seabed. Over time, these deposits are compacted and cemented, and, in cases like this, exposed to thermal changes that They produce rectilinear fissures. The found sector showed a stretch of “baked scab” dry to touch, An optical effect that surprised the team and generated jokes on the “road to the Atlantis.” The inspection with the nautilus robotic arm allowed to collect samples from Ferromanganésic scabs (rich in iron and manganese oxides) that covered the background, a resource of scientific and industrial interest. Importance of the mission. That was the First systematic exploration Of these submarine mountains, whose main objective is to understand the mysterious discontinuity that presents its alignment in the ocean bed. The finding of “road” joined other unique observations of the expedition, such as the filming of a strange agency nicknamed Headless Chickn Monsterstrengthening the idea that the area houses poorly documented biological and geological phenomena. Beyond the visual anecdote, the identification and study of these formations provides key information about the Submarine eruptive processes and the tectonic evolution of the region, opening the door to new discoveries in one of the most remote and protected areas of the planet. Scientific context. He find It was also framed in an international effort to map and understand the underwater structures that make up the hidden geography of the oceans. The formation of the “path” in Nootka Seamount Not only illustrates how volcanic activity can generate visually striking patterns, but also offers clues about the systems behavior submarine magmatic and its interaction with water in High energy environments. Plus: These studies are essential to improve underwater volcanism models, evaluate potential mineral resources and understand how these geological habitats influence deep marine biodiversity, a field in which each expedition reveals more unknowns than certainties. Image | E/V Nautilus In Xataka | We know more than Mars than the seabed. An expert helps us to understand why it is still an enigma and what mysteries keep In Xataka | The Atlantic has a ‘lost city’ with the key to life on other planets. Now is in danger

We believed to know what killed Napoleon’s army in Russia. The finding of a tooth has shown us something else

by

In 1812 there is a moment that was going to be registered in the history books. The Russia invasion by Napoleon culminated in one of the greatest military tragedies: The great arméeformed by more than half a million men, was forced to a devastating withdrawal marked by hunger, cold and disease, a combination that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Or we believed. Health catastrophe. In the summer of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte gathered up to 600,000 soldiers for his campaign against Russiathe greatest force he had ever deployed. However, the burned land strategy of Tsar Alejandro iwhich involved Evacuar Moscow and deprive the supplier of supplies, forced the withdrawal of the French army to Poland during a brutal winter. Between October and December of that year, more than 300,000 men perishedvictims of hunger, the extreme cold and a wave of diseases that devastated to an already weakened force. For a long time, the testimonies of survivors and the first scientific analyzes pointed to the TIFUS and the trench fever as the main culprits, reinforcing the idea that the bad hygienic conditions had sealed the fate of the great Armée. The new findings. Now, research carried out In the Pasteur Institute in Paris they have contributed a more precise vision thanks to metagenomic techniques, capable of identifying genetic material of any pathogen present in human remains. Nicolás Rascovan’s team analyzed Thirteen soldiers Buried in Vilna (current Lithuania), epicenter of mortality during the withdrawal. The results did not detect traces of typhus or trenches fever, but they did reveal the presence of Salmonella Entericacause of paratyphoid fever, and Borrelia recurrentis, transmitted by lice and responsible for recurring fever. These diseases, although not always fatal, would have deeply weakened soldiers already exhausted by endless marches, lack of food and glacial temperatures. In that context, even pathologies that in other circumstances could have overcome became mortal. Napoleonic invasion in Russia Lethal combination He New scenario It suggests that defeat is not explained by a single infectious agent, but by a devastating combination: physical exhaustion, starvation, extreme cold and a set of diseases that, together, undermined the resistance of tens of thousands of men. The Parathyphoid fever It would have caused diarrhea and dehydration, while recurring fever progressively weakened with cyclical episodes of high fever. All this, added to the lack of hygiene, to the spread of lice and the impossibility of adequate medical care in the middle of the chaos of the withdrawal, turned the Napoleon army into a paid field For the disease. The magnitude of the health catastrophe even exceeded combat losses, and became one of the decisive factors that precipitated the collapse of the campaign. Historical and scientific implications. Although some experts warn that the amount of recovered DNA is reduced and that the results are not entirely conclusive, The study It marks an important advance in the use of modern tools to reinterpret historical episodes. Demonstrates the Metagenomics potential To trace diseases in ancient human remains and offers new perspectives on how biology, and not only military strategy, it can explain the collapse of whole armies and populations. Researchers They point That these techniques could also be applied to the study of communities in America and Australia after European contact, where the lack of reliable records and historical biases make it difficult to understand the true impact of epidemics. The defeat that sealed the empire. The Tragedy of 1812 It is still one of the most studied inflection points in military history. The collapse of the Great Armée Not only stopped the Napoleonic expansion, but triggered the offensive of his enemies and the beginning of the end of his empire. While the epic of the campaign has traditionally been narrated in the key of battles and strategic decisions, the New evidence They confirm that biology and disease played a central role in the debacle. The withdrawal of Russia was, ultimately, both a military disaster and an epidemiological catastrophe, and the DNA of a few teeth found in Vilna has allowed to illuminate more precisely the executioners invisible and tiny that decimated the soldiers of Napoleon in one of the most lethal winters in history, starting with an unexpected “army” of lice. Image | Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier, Blaue Max In Xataka | “Even if I told you, you would not believe me”: the mystery of what Napoleon saw when he slept in the great pyramid of Egypt In Xataka | ‘Napoleon’ is Ridley Scott’s most controversial film in years. Not among critics: among historians

If Renfe believed that the summer of 2025 was being complicated is because he still did not know the worst: the fires

by

It is not being an easy summer for the bird. The campaign started with issues In one of its main arteries, the Madrid-Andalusia line, and has been challenging challenges such as The soap opera of the Avril trains, The suspension of services in several sections of the network by fire or A fault that a few days ago affected the Andalusian high speed line. Now, with a good part of the holiday country, add a new challenge that puts the tip: The paralysis of the Madrid-Galicia line. And all this with demand in record levels What happened? That fires have forced Renfe to suspend for hours its services between Madrid and Galicia. Yesterday afternoon the operator He already advanced The stoppage of the trains because the flames were close to the tracks between Vilavella and Galicia Porta and the final blockade It was confirmed hours later. The Initial idea It was resume the services today, but it could not be so. At 7.30 h the operators still They kept examining The ways to confirm that traffic will be recovered with guarantees. Shortly before ten Renfe published in X A message Informing the restoration of the service, but the decision lasted little. Hour and a half after He turned back: “For fire reactivation, the rail service between Madrid and Galicia is interrupted again.” Later Renfe went up A new tweet clarifying that he had been forced to interrupt the circulation between Puebla de Sanabria and Ourense by order of the Cecopi of Castilla y León (Civil Protection). “The traying trains will be separated in stations until the circulation is guaranteed,” he concluded. Click on the image to go to Tweet. Is it the only one affected? No. So far this fire has affected other sections in which Renfe operates. The flames have interfered in the service with greater or less reach in Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, Castilla y León either Estremaduraamong other points. In June A fire Between the stations of Valladolid-Campo Grande and Río Duero forced to suspend the high-speed service in the Madrid-Segovia-Valladolid and Madrid-Gijón lines and In July The flames forced to paralyze the line by which the bird that connects Madrid and Andalusia. Is it something exceptional? To a greater or lesser extent, Spain usually looks like forest fires in summer (more than more than 47,700 hectares) and It is not strange that in some cases the fire affects the rail network. In this case, the flames, especially those of Galicia, who have altered the corridor that communicates the community with Madrid for hours, they arrive, however, in a summer in which Renfe has had to deal with other challenges. The campaign began with A considerable chaos in one of the main arteries of the Spanish high speed Redee: the line between Madrid and Andalusia. A fault In a catenary between the Yeles (Toledo) and La Sagra, southwest of the Community of Madrid, affected the services that connected with the South and forced to suspend trains, generated delays and left a notable anger among the affected travelers. “We have been trapped in the middle of a plain, without electricity or bathrooms, with unbearable heat,” He denounced A user in X. Has anything else happened? That episode came shortly after, in May, the operator had to deal with Another chaotic episode in the AVE Madrid-Sevilla that left trains detained for hours and thousands of affected passengers. The reason on that occasion was not a fire, but the theft of copper cable on the tracks, which even led Renfe’s president to publicly lament how difficult it is to control the vast network of the country. “You cannot monitor 24 hours 15,000 km of network, but you will have to put more means,” assumed Álvaro Fernández de Heredia. With that backdrop, in recent weeks Renfe has faced Another controversyalthough of a quite different nature. A few days ago it transcended that Renfe has decided to do without the Avril trains (106 series) in his Madird-Barcelona line and replace them with convoys series 103. The decision comes after the operator detected technical problems in the machinery and forced him to make a ‘sudoku’ to relocate trains of series 103 and 102 to meet the demand. Is it all negative? No. Summer may be more moved than Renfe wanted, but has started with an important level of demand. A few days ago the operator launched A statement To show that Julio closed with his “best monthly historical record of travelers” in AVE and long distance. Throughout the month he counted about 3.5 million travelers, 4.6% more than in June, which held so far the “historical maximum”. The increase is based on high -speed services (AVE and AVLO), which saw how their place offer It increased by 13.9% and the flow of travelers 10.5% compared to 2024. The highest rise were registered between Madrid-Valencia and Zaragoza-Barcelona. Images | Ministry of Defense (X) and John Worth (Flickr) In Xataka | Fire have made a new high -risk activity today in Spain: living near the mountain

If someone believed that national tourism had entered “crisis” this summer, Aena has something to say: at all

by

If Google and Deloitte give in the nail, in a few years Spain will be the great resort of the world. According to Your calculations In 2040 the country will receive around 110 million foreign visitors, even exceeding France or the US. Until then every summer is a fire test for national tourism. This in particular there are voices that already suggest A slowdown in destinations as relevant as Tenerife wave Costa del Sol. There is still a lot of campaign ahead to know if it will be so, but for now AENA’s data show a quite different photo. What suggests His July balance It is a record summer. What happened? That Aena has just published A balance of passengers that are especially interesting for two reasons. The first, because it offers us the ‘photo’ of July, the first strong month of the summer campaign. The second reason is that these figures point to a considerable increase in displacements, which clashes with The voices that over the last weeks They have detected signals of weakening in Spanish tourism, at least In certain regions. Aena’s report does not differentiate between those who move for vacations or other reasons, such as work, studies or to visit relatives. Nor does it distinguish between national and foreign passengers. In any case, another interesting approach provides to take the temperature to the tourism sector in July. 10 main airports July passengers % with respect to 2024 Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas 6,170,130 +0.6% Barcelona-El Prat Jt 5,540,010 +2.9% Palma de Mallorca 4,594,987 -0.1% Malaga-Costa del Sol 2,866,642 +7.8% Alicante-Elche Miguel Hdez. 2.106,991 +5.9% Ibiza 1,446,589 +0.9% Gran Canaria 1,286,184 +6.4% Valencia 1,132,402 +4.2% Tenerife-Sur 1,094,961 +1.4% Lanzarote-César Manrique 798,998 +7.3% Total Aena’s network in Spain 32,765,284 +2.7% What do the data say? That July 2025 was a month of record. The network of terminals managed by AENA on Spanish soil accounted for 32.76 million of travelers. The number of flights amounted to 268,034. They are, respectively, 2.7% and 3.1% more than during the same period of 2024 and mark a milestone in the historical registry of the group. “Passenger and operations figures represent an absolute monthly record, which makes last July the best month in history at the airports of the Aena network in Spain,” concrete The operator. Is there more data? Yes. In the report AENA does not detail why users, their destinations fly or if they are national or foreign travelers, but it does require how traffic has evolved in their airports. At the head in absolute terms, Barajas is located, in Madrid, with 6.17 million travelers in July. The most interesting thing, however, are not the total figures of users, but how they have evolved compared to July 2024, a record year For Spanish tourism. He passenger flow Barajas for example grew 0.6% and Barcelona-the Prat 2.9%. In general, the airports of the country’s main tourist destinations experienced an increase in activity in July. In that of Malaga-Costa del Sol, the flow of travelers shot 7.8%, in Alicante 5.9%, in Ibiza 0.9%, in Gran Canaria 6.4%, in Tenerife South 1.4%and in Tenerife North 8.6%. Of course not everyone grew. ‘Palma’s airfield, where the passenger transfer fell 0.1%, Santiago, who suffered a 12.4%cut, or Santander and Vigo, which scored setbacks of 0.6%and 6.5%, respectively. Are they high data? Yes. Both in fact that some terminals have pulverized their historical maximums. “During the past month there has been an absolute record of passengers at the airports of Barajas, El Prat, Malaga-Costa del Sol, Alicante, Valencia, Bilbao and Tenerife Norte-Ciudad de la Laguna”, They clarify from Aenawhich also specifies that there are 16 airfields that have registered their best July. Why is it important? For several reasons. The main one because in summer a good part of the displacements are by leisure, which gives us another brushstroke to understand how the tourist season marches. The second reason is that Aena’s figures collide in part with others Shared by the hoteliers that suggest a summer with less activity and income than in 2024. The Association of Hotel Entrepreneurs of the Costa del Sol (AEHCOS) I noticed recently That July occupation levels were very similar to those of 2024 (87.82%, 1.16% above last year) but came accompanied by less income: the gross impact per customer fell according to their calculations from 198.61 to 157.18 euros. Facing August, the group expects the average occupation to be 4.57 percentage points lower than that of 2024, so it would stay at 88.32%. Are there more falls? Yes. The one on the Costa del Sol is not the only message that points to a less generous summer campaign than that of 2024. The Tenerife press It echoed These days that the establishments integrated in Ashotel closed Julio with an average occupancy level of 81.97% in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. It is a high percentage that also improves the forecast of reservations that hoteliers handled in mid -June, but still almost two percentage points below July 2024. In Palma de Mallorca the employer speaks Not so much a fall in the flow of tourists as if of the spending in hospitality. What is the conclusion? Touch wait. Soon the INE will publish another interesting clue to take the temperature of the tourist campaign: its statistics of Hotel situation. At the moment the last available data, of June, reflects a 2.1% increase in overnight stays and an increase in both the occupancy level and, above all, in the rates. Waiting for the tourist balance to be outlined and knowing if Spain will finally reach this year the milestone of the 100 million tourists foreigners, there are some clear trends. The main is that the Spanish sector grows largely thanks to the flow of foreign visitors. Aena’s data does not allow to know if July passengers are Spanish or travelers from other countries, but we know that in 2024 foreign demand played A fundamental role In the balance of hotels. 7.5% grew … Read more

We believed that the heat wave was over. Aemet warns that, in reality, we still have the worst ahead

by

The heat wave that affects the peninsula is leaving shocking data. Yesterday, three of the weather stations of the State Meteorology Agency (AEMET) collected maximums above the 45º Celsius, with 55 registering more than 42º. Two records of record. On August 11 and 12 they beat, According to Aemettwo temperature records. With an average temperature that touched the 29th in peninsular Spain, this month has seen on August 11 and 12 more than at least 1950. In fact, they are among the warmer days registered in August: only three times the 29th Celsius barrier has been overcome. On August 12, it was also the hottest day than is going 2025. If they are fulfilled The agency’s forecaststhe first twenty of August will be the warmest in peninsular Spain since there are records, exceeding a few tenths the previous registry (of 2003), and for more than one degree the next highest record, last year. From Seville to Badajoz. Yes Let’s go to the most extreme caseswe can find the 45.2º of the weather stations of Seville, Tablada and El Granado (in Huelva), or the 45.5º collected in Badajoz. Another striking fact were the high minimum temperatures: 29.7º in Osuna (Seville), the highest in peninsular Spain (in Gran Canaria there were thermometers that did not fall from the 30). A number that does not want to leave. The answer to the question of “what is happening” has to do with atmospheric stagnation a “synoptic configuration continues quite stationary”, In Aemet’s words. A dorsal anchored on the peninsula That allows the entry of warm and dry air from Africa, as well as the high degree of insolation propitiated by summer and stable skies, are main responsible for a heat wave that is not only being intense, also long. The latest update of Aemet’s forecasts indicate that this exceptional situation will last at least until Monday 18. The “more likely” scenario is that the entrance of a fresh air mass from the Atlantic serves to relieve the situation, but there are still a few days left for us to know greater certainty when and how the end of this heat wave will be given. What can we expect. Meanwhile, what can we expect? After a kind of brief respite today, Aemet foresees A new increase in temperatures tomorrow Thursday, a more marked ascent in Galicia, where the thermometers can exceed 38º. On Friday this ascent will be extended throughout the north, where orange notices are already planned due to an important risk derived from high temperatures. In Xataka | Every summer fires ravage to Spain. There is a usual guilty that goes unnoticed: old tractors Image | ECMWF

We believed that the Zbe of Spain were an ambitious idea until we discovered Vietnam’s plan: end their motorcycles

by

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, a city where eight million people live. Almost everyone has a motorcycle. It is not an exaggeration: estimate It is between 6 and 7 million motorcycles in the city. The use of motorcycles represents Between 85% and 90% of filmed traffic in the country and the government has had an idea to erase all combustion motorcycles in the center of the capital by 2026. And manufacturers of electric motorcycles They rub their hands. Short. The contamination in the big cities Asian is a problem. That only in Hanoi there are about seven million motorcycles, not counting other vehicles such as cars, roads and motor tricycles, it is a barbarity that implies high levels of pollution. In the middle of the adventure that faces half the world To achieve the decarbonization, Combustion vehicles have become a problem and the Vietnamese government has decided to start taking action. The measure began to be raised in 2017, but We already have date Definitive: As of July 1, 2026, motorcycles with combustion engines will not be able to circulate through the center of Hanoi. The measure is part of a much more ambitious national plan: totally eliminate combustion motorcycles by 2045 with a double objective: that of the air pollution And also, the noise pollution. Brutal market. Although the plan will come into force on that date, it will be extended little by little to cover more districts and, as they point out in Electreklater these measures will also apply to other thermal vehicles. Hanoi, in addition, is not alone in this, since Saigón and Da Nang, with nine and 1.2 million inhabitants respectively, are also considering adopting these measures. It will be a brutal blow for a market in which estimates They point to the existence of 770 motorcycles per 1,000 people. In September alone, there were 77 million motorcycles registered in the country, an absolute barbarity that leaves out those that are not registered for various reasons. Manufacturers. The market also does not stop. The annual sales They are over three million units annually with sales only during the first quarter of this 2025 of more than 670,000 units, which represents 11.5% more than the same period of the previous year. And this market is led, above all, by foreign brands. Honda has a market share of more than 80% this year, with 200,000 units sold only in March. Yamaha, Piaggio, Suzuki and Sym are other favorites, but there is a company that is growing by leaps and bounds and will become the top winner of this measure: VINFAST. Hands rub. After Honda and Yamaha, it is the brand that is selling the most this year and what is special is that it is an electric motorcycle company. The market share of this type of propulsion increased from an estimate of 5.4% in 2019 to 12% in 2022. It was a great jump, especially if we take into account that there were no measures as radical as those that the Government raises at the moment and, currently, currently, Vinfast leads The electric motorcycle segment with 43% of the cake. In addition, it is local. During the first five months of this year, sales in this segment have increased and the company has sold 488% more. With the big cities of the country limiting thermal motorcycles, the figure from here to two years can be stratospheric. Who pays it. As usual, families with lower income. There are about 100 motorcycle models in Vietnam with low displacement models dominating the market, but also with larger and more powerful. The Price fork It is wide enough (Honda models by less than 800 dollars) So that almost everyone has a motorcycle within their economic possibilities, but with this transition, a problem also comes. Several families that depend on motorcycles for their livelihood have already expressed in media such as Vietnam Express either Al Jazeera His concern for change. Those with lower income will have difficulty facing the change to an electric motorcycle and, in addition, there are complaints about the speed at which the change decision will have to be made because it is only a year for the prohibition. Aid. One way to face the situation is through a aid program. As we read in Electrivethere are two measures that can be made from the government to facilitate the transition. The first is a series of subsidies to consumers that allow residents to replace almost half a million thermal motorcycles with electric equivalents. On the other hand, An improvement in infrastructure and load network. Because, obviously, if you want to achieve such an aggressive transition, it cannot be pretended that everything falls to the consumer because there will be many who cannot take the motorcycle home with a private charge port. In parallel, and to attend public transport, the city plans to expand the fleet of electric microbuses. Last month, Saigon already It started to expand its urban fleet of electric motorcycles. Industry. It only remains to expect how the market adapts with this forced change towards electric motorcycles, but you will also have to see how manufacturers such as Honda or Yamaha will be adapted. Because these brands not only sell in Vietnam: they manufacture in the country and, apart from covering national demand, are a Strong export point For Southeast Asia. Not to mention that it is an industry that use To millions of people already who this change will not leave indifferent. Images | An huy, Steffen Schmitz In Xataka | “They impose things that we do not want”: the most spectacular electric car is not sold and its manufacturer is clear why

We believed that Chatgpt was just a very capable chatbot. Openai has just turned it into something very different: a real agent

by

We have been talking about artificial intelligence agents for a long time, but Openai has just converted that conversation into something much more tangible. The company has presented Chatgpt Agent, a function that turns its popular assistant into something more autonomous: now it is able to execute complex tasks using a virtual computer, with tools that allow you to navigate, program or even make decisions. From Agent Operator. At the beginning of the year it presented Operator, a tool that allowed ChatgPT to interact with web pages. Then Deep Research arrived, focused on writing long reports from multiple sources. The background idea was clear: go beyond the conversation and approach real tasks. What has been presented today is something like a tool that unifies all these previous advances. During the demonstration, those responsible for the project raised a daily situation: organizing a trip to attend a wedding. The agent was able to understand the context, find hotels, propose gifts, take into account the weather, the clothing code and even remember that a suit had to be bought. He did it by analyzing the message, accessing the web and acting step by step, as a person would. The difference is that everything happened within Chatgpt, without the need to alternate tabs or give instructions one to one. A virtual computer for AI. The key is that the agent is not limited to responding to text: it operates within a kind of virtual computer that Openai has given access. You can use a text browser to read pages quickly, a visual browser to interact with buttons and forms, and even a terminal to run commands, generate code and manipulate files. You can also work with spreadsheets, presentations, and access services such as Google Drive, Calendar or Github if the user authorizes it. What is under the hood? The model that drives chatgpt agent (specifically developed for this function, although without official name) was trained with complex tasks that required to combine multiple tools. Openai used reinforcement learning, the same approach that you already use in its reasoning models, to teach you to choose when to use the browser, the terminal or an API. The idea was to develop a solution capable of accurately deciding how to act based on each objective. In development. Images | OpenAI In Xataka | Goal is in a hurry to lead the AI that has done something unusual: it is building a data center in tents

Archaeologists believed to know the history of the Maya. Until they found the tomb of the first King of Caracol

by

Forty years are nothing. Not at least if we talk about the archaeological research of Snailan ancient and impressive Mayan city located in what is Belize today. Although the teachers Diane and Arlen Chasefrom the University of Houston (UH), they have been excavating the deposit for more than four decades had not yet found one of their Great treasures Occults: a grave of almost 1,700 years in which the remains of Te K’ab Chaak, the first ruling of Caracol and founder of a powerful dynasty that lasted for almost five centuries rest. The finding is key for what he reveals to Te K’ab Chaak, but also about his context. “They rewrite the Mayan history”, They claim From the UH. In a remote place by Belize … The Chiquibul Forest Reserve He hosts one of Belize’s most important (and impressive) Mayan deposits: the ancient city of Caracol. It is believed that at its peak came to occupy an area of almost 100 km2, with agricultural fields and careful urban planning, and welcomed 100,000 inhabitants. That without counting its geopolitical weight in the Mayan civilization and its participation in wars with neighboring towns, such as Tikal either UCANAL. One of the most fascinating constructions that has been preserved in Caracol is Caanaa majestic royal palace and ceremonies center raised around 600 or 700 AD (during the period Late classic of the Mayan civilization) and that reaches 43.5 meters high, which led its discoverers to give it the name with which we know it now: Caana, which means “place of the sky” in Maya. Ancient city, new surprises. Although the researchers have been studying the snail site for decades, they had not yet found one of their greatest treasures. At least until now. The couple of archaeologists formed by Diane and Arlen Chase, of the UH, has just discovered A surprising finding Under the canopy of an acropolis located to the right of the Palacio de Cana: a tomb of ago 1,700 years. A real grave, to be more precise. And not anyone. His dweller is You k´ab chaakwho amounted to the throne towards The 331 AD His figure is crucial in the history of Caracol for several reasons. He is considered the first ruler of the city and founded a real dynasty that would last 460 years. “We knew we had something”. A few days ago Arlen Chase He reported to The New York Times (Tnyt) The exact moment of the finding and how the archaeologists intuited that they had found something great just to take a look at the grave, the color of the cinnabar, its ceramics and the mask located on the side. “As soon as we saw the camera we knew we had something,” recalls Arlenwho still remembers what his first impression was: “My God, this is much more important than he believed.” Logical. A Te K´ab Chaak had buried him at the foot of a real family sanctuary with 11 vessels, carved bone tubes, jewelry made with jadeíta, a funeral mask made with accounts of the same material and shells of Spondylus (a genus of bivalve) of the Pacific. Among gods. “The vessels. The finding brings new clues about Te K´ab Chaak, who amounted to the throne in the year 331 of our era and whose grave is the first of three important burials dated Maya of the merchants, surrounded by offerings. Four of the vessel rulers of Caracol as part of their names “, Point out The University. Knowing Te K´ab Chaak. The finding provides information about Te K´ab Chaak, who amounted to the throne in 331 AD and whose grave is the first of three burials dated Towards 350 AD The sovereign was the first ruler of the Mayan city and set a real dynasty that would last for four and a half centuries, covering much of its history. The UH remember that the metropolis played a relevant role in Mayan history and dominated part of the southern Yucatan between 560 and 680 AD ended up abandoned around 900 DC Thanks to the remains located in the grave, the Chase have concluded that at the time of their funeral you k´ab chaak was a sovereign major, who had already lost his teeth and measured around 1.7 meters. “The early classical period is the time when the rulers claim that they supervise everything, completely away from the rest of the population. That changes at the end of the period, especially in Caracol, when after the success of the war against Tikal, they begin to share wealth with the general population. Not this person,” Comment. Does it reveal anything else? Yes. Light. And that is one of the reasons why the finding of the Chase has generated so much expectation. For a start, Remember The researchers, is the first grave of an identifiable ruler after more than 40 years of work in Caracol. It also provides valuable information to better understand its context, the connections of the Mayan world and its contact with Teotihuacánone of Mesoamerica’s greatest archaeological complexes and that in 300 AD had already become a city that marketed with all of Central America. “The Mayan monuments of carved stone, the dates, the iconography and the archaeological data suggest that the generalized Panmeso American connections occurred after an event in the 378 DC called ‘input’”, remember Diane Chase. In Caracol tombs archaeologists have found however artifacts that leads them to look at central Mexico and Teotihuacán. Problem? The burials located in Caracol date from 350 AD, “at least one generation before the recognized theotihuacan presence.” But … What does that mean? “Both central Mexico and the Mayan area knew the ritual practices of the other party, as reflected in the Caracol cremation,” Reflect Arlen Chase. The clues included in the Belize necropolis point out therefore that the first Mayan rulers maintained contacts “at the Mesoamerican level” before even the “entrance” of Teotihuacán that was recorded in their sizes. “The connections between the two regions were … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.