bill

Data centers have made the electricity bill more expensive in the US. And the Government has said enough

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Every time you ask a generative AI to solve a problem for you, a server on the other side of the world needs power to process it and cooling to keep from melting down. The problem is that this electricity meter that spins at full speed is not just that of the large technology companies: it is that of the entire community. The AI ​​revolution has a real physical and economic cost that has already begun to hit the pockets of families, unleashing a crisis that has forced the United States Government itself to hit the table. The US government has said enough. According to federal dataresidential electricity prices will increase a national average of 6% in 2025. Citizens, stifled by the cost of living, have begun to connect the dots and point to the huge data centers that are proliferating in their neighborhoods. As detailed Politicalthere are currently some 680 data centers planned in the country, gigantic infrastructures that will require energy equivalent to that of 186 large nuclear power plants. This brutal demand has provoked strong citizen opposition, how to explain Guardiannumerous communities have begun to reject and block these projects for fear that their bills will skyrocket. The pressure has been so strong that the rebellion has penetrated traditionally conservative fiefdoms. According to Financial TimesRepublican legislators in states such as Missouri, Ohio and Oklahoma have suggested halting the construction of data centers, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pushed laws to regulate them and protect families from price increases. Faced with this scenario, Donald Trump’s administration has been forced to intervene. Washington’s “historical pact.” As reported The New York Timesexecutives from Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI made the pilgrimage to Washington to meet with President Trump and sign the so-called “Taxpayer Protection Pledge” (Ratepayer Protection Pledge). The objective of the agreement is to shield consumers from rising electricity costs. Technology companies have committed to “build, provide or buy” the new electricity generation resources they need, assuming 100% of the costs of infrastructure and improvements to the transmission network. During the meeting, Trump left a phrase that perfectly summarizes the sector’s reputation crisis: “They need help with public relations, because people think that if a data center is installed, the price of electricity will go up.” The president assured that, thanks to the pact, that “will no longer happen.” For their part, managers such as Ruth Porat (Google) or Dina Powell McCormick (Meta) confirmed their commitment to pay for the infrastructure “whether or not they end up using that energy.” according to statements published by the New York media. We cannot understand this move by Washington without looking at the electoral calendar. Politically, as they point out Financial TimesRepublican strategists alerted the White House that energy inflation was an imminent risk ahead of the midterm congressional elections (midterms). The Democrats, like Senator Mark Kellywere already using citizen anger as a political weapon, calling Trump’s pact a simple “handshake agreement” that was insufficient. And the clash with reality: a network to the limit. On paper, the promise sounds perfect. As the specialized media ironically says Engadget“big tech agrees not to ruin your electricity bill.” However, journalism and energy sector experts agree that there is a gigantic distance from words to actions. As he warns Political, The agreement is, in essence, a voluntary “handshake”, without binding legal force. Rob Gramlich, former economic advisor cited by CNBCremember that the White House has no direct jurisdiction over this matter: the rules of the electric grid are decentralized and depend on the public service commissions of the 50 states. It is they, and not the federal government, who approve how costs are distributed. The damage in some areas has already been done. Argus Media reports that on the PJM network —the largest in the US, covering 13 states and including the world’s largest data center cluster in Virginia—capacity costs have skyrocketed by $23 billion, record rates that are locked in until 2028, making it “virtually impossible” to lower prices for consumers in the short term. An independent watchdog came to describe this situation as a “massive transfer of wealth” from citizens to corporations. Competition for resources is fierce. Abe Silverman, researcher at Johns Hopkins University cited by Politicalcompares the situation to “a bidding war for a ticket to a Taylor Swift concert.” There is a five-year waiting list for gas turbines, and their prices have doubled. This technological urgency not only makes the network more expensive, but is stopping the green transition in its tracks. As they explain Argus Mediathe immense demand for servers cannot be covered quickly enough with renewable sources. This is forcing power companies to delay the closure of polluting coal plants and invest heavily in natural gas generation, perpetuating dependence on fossil fuels. The greatest risk, Silverman warnsis what happens if Silicon Valley is wrong in its growth calculations: “You spend 3 billion to improve the network, and then the data center does not materialize (…) Who is left with the problem? Grandma.” Should Europe demand the same? If we cross the pond, the situation is no less worrying, and the regulatory approach is drastically different. According to data from the European Commissiondata centers currently consume 415 Terawatt-hours (TWh) globally (1.5% of the world total), a figure that, driven by AI, will double to 945 TWh in 2030. In the European Union, consumption was around 70 TWh in 2024 and will jump to 115 TWh by the end of the decade. Europe has launched a mandatory monitoring system under the Energy Efficiency Directive to demand transparency about this consumption and its water and carbon footprint. But in Spain, the problem is already a physical jam in the networks. As we have described in Xataka, The Spanish electrical grid is like a saturated highway to which, suddenly, “a convoy of trucks of industrial tonnage” has arrived. The technical regulations of the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) caused a “cascade effect” that blocked connection permits. The … Read more

Your employees pay that bill every morning

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For decades, commuting to work in large Spanish cities had a clear logic: workers lived on the outskirts of large cities and They traveled every morning towards the center to their jobs. It was a fairly stable urban model, reinforced by transportation networks designed to take workers to the large office districts of the urban area. However, in recent years this pattern has been changing as the price of land in the center has skyrocketed and companies have also had to move to the periphery. As and as it portrays The Countrythe problem is that cities are not designed to move from periphery to periphery, and that movement has become in a daily mousetrap for millions of employees. Not even the companies can bear the prices of the center. In recent years, many companies have chosen to move their offices to peripheral areas where land is cheaper and there is space to build. large office complexes. This movement has made it possible to build huge business campuses that would be unviable in the urban centers of large cities with high demand for land such as Madrid or Barcelona. In Madrid, the north of the city has become one of the main destinations for this type of projects. An example is the Telephone Districtlocated in Las Tablas, which occupies about 22 hectares and concentrates more than 12,000 workers in a single business complex. The records of the Residence-Work Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid show that districts such as Fuencarral-El Pardo (where the Telefónica District is located) are already among the areas with the highest concentration of employment in the region. Barcelona experienced a similar process with the development of 22@ technological district in Poblenou, where numerous technology companies and corporate headquarters have been setting up shop in the last two decades. The transformation of this old industrial neighborhood created a new employment center outside the historic center of the city. Employment is moving, but so are prices. The problem with this migration of companies to the periphery of urban centers is that when thousands of workers begin to concentrate in a specific area, the real estate market usually reacts quickly. Proximity to work centers increases the value of nearby neighborhoods, which ends up raising rental and housing prices. This increase, in turn, forces employees to move to municipalities even further away from the city center and the offices where they work. The result is a constant increase in daily trips within the metropolitan area. In Madrid this phenomenon is reflected in the labor mobility figures. According to the recorded data According to the Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid, every day 1.2 million people enter the capital from other municipalities to work, compared to the 790,000 who did so in 2016. Something similar is happening in the city of Barcelona, which after the growth of 22@ has attracted workers from numerous municipalities in the metropolitan area, congesting the northern and southern access roads and the city’s ring roads due to the traffic generated by these employees at peak times, such as and how collect traffic congestion report of Inrix of 2025. Transportation takes you to the center, not to the periphery. All these congestion problems have their origin in the fact that the large transport infrastructures (metros, trams, Cercanías, bus lines, etc.) of the large Spanish cities have been designed for decades with a radial structure. They were planned to connect the peripheral neighborhoods with the city center, which was where most of the employment was concentrated. When new business centers began to grow outside the center, that structure began to show its limitations. Many workers no longer need to go to the urban area, but rather travel between peripheral areas that are not directly connected by public transport. This requires long journeys or several transfers, something that often makes the car faster. Even if it means getting stuck every day on the way to work. Furthermore, public transportation in many cities has become a lottery with constant delays and breakdownswhich generates uncertainty when considering alternatives to the private car. The price: hundreds of hours lost. The increase in long trips to work and dependence on the car is clearly reflected in traffic data. According to the TomTom Traffic IndexMadrid registered an average congestion level of 38% in 2025, which is 3.6 percentage points more than the previous year. That level of traffic means that traveling 10 kilometers during rush hour can take about 34 and a half minutes, with average speeds close to 17.5 km/h. The report also estimates that Madrid drivers lose around 98 hours a year in traffic jams during rush hour. When daily journeys are long, the accumulated time can multiply and reach up to 500 hours per year per person lost in traffic jams. Barcelona faces a similar situationwith a level of congestion in its urban center and access roads of 41.1%, which is one of the highest figures in Europe. In Xataka | The worst traffic jam in history: two weeks, more than 100 kilometers and thousands of cars detained in China Image | Unsplash (Kathy)

AI data centers are skyrocketing your electricity bill

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data centers They consume a lot of electricityfrom there arise proposals as crazy as that of take them to space either submerge them in the sea to reduce its consumption. Technology companies face a problem of shortage of electrical energy, but the real problem is something else: data centers are causing the electricity bill to rise for all citizens. Now three US senators want to investigate it thoroughly. A political question. They say in the New York Times that three Democratic senators have announced that they are going to investigate big technology companies for their role in increasing the electricity bill. Senators have sent letters to Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, CoreWeave and other companies asking them to detail exactly what their data centers consume. The bill increases have become a political issue and have played an important role in elections in several states. In the case of Virginia, where the largest number of data centers in the world are concentrated, Governor Abigail Spanberger’s campaign included proposals to require data centers to “pay their fair share.” The problem. For the past 20 years, the US electricity system had been stuck with stable energy demand or very modest increases. Data centers have seen very abrupt growth. In 2023, data centers consumed 4% of all electricity in the United States and this is estimated to increase up to 12% 2028. This abrupt increase in demand has forced electricity companies to modernize the network. The technology companies assume part of the cost, but not all, and the way to recover that investment is through the bill of all network users. The discount trick. The technological ones, such as Amazon ensures that its data centers are not raising the bill and that they assume all the costs, contributing to improving the network for everyone. What they don’t say is that they benefit from enormous discounts, like the one they Amazon itself requested regulatory authorities in Ohio in 2024, where they are building a data center, a discount on the electricity rate. The problem is that the agreement is opaque and we do not know how much that discount was, but it is estimated that it could be 135 million per year, over a period of 10 years. Who really pays? In many cases, technology companies pay for the infrastructure necessary to expand the network, but what about these discounts? According to a paper published by the Harvard Electricity Law Initiative in which they reviewed more than 50 regulatory cases, it is very common for electricity companies to offer subsidies to attract technology companies and the way to compensate for these discounts is to pass them on to all network subscribers, which ends up increasing the bill. Unaffordable increases. According to the United States Energy Information Administrationin September electricity increased 7% compared to the same period of the previous year. Things change if we go to the cities near the data centers, where the increases have reached 267%, unaffordable figures for many citizens. Proposals. There are states that are already legislating to prevent network customers from ending up paying the bill for data centers. This is the case of Michigan, which has put special rules for data centers. Companies must sign a contract of at least 15 years, face fines if they cancel before and pay at least 80% of the contracted power even if they do not use it. In addition, they must pay all the costs of the lines and services that are built to serve them. However, these proposals could encounter difficulties due to the executive order that Trump signed and that prevents states from enacting laws that could stop the advance of AI, all to win the battle against China. Image | Google In Xataka | The United States may win the AI ​​race, but its problem is different: China is winning all the others

Netflix entrusted him with more than 70 million for a series. He came with zero episodes and a luxury mattress bill of $638,000

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Carl Rinsch, director of the semi-unknown Keanu Reeves film ’47 Ronin’ has been convicted of defrauding $11 million to Netflix. For the production of a science fiction series that was never made… nor was it planned to be made. Electronic fraud, money laundering and illegal transactions are the charges for this ingenious scoundrel who dared to tease one of the giants modern audiovisual corporations. What happened. The ‘White Horse’ project, later renamed ‘Conquest’, started in 2018 as an ambitious science fiction series about an artificial humanoid species that rebels against its creators. Netflix beat out Amazon, Apple and HBO in a bidding war for the rights to the series, disbursing more than 61 million dollars and granting Rinsch final creative control. 44 million dollars later and after filming in Uruguay, Brazil and Hungary, there was nothing on Mr. Netflix’s table. Crazy investments. In March 2020, as the pandemic spread, Rinsch requested an additional 11 million to, supposedly, complete the series. For some reason, Netflix agreed: Rinsch transferred the funds directly to personal accounts and speculated with stock options for Gilead Sciences, the pharmaceutical company that wanted to end COVID-19 (and COVID finished with her), losing approximately half of the capital in weeks. He later invested in Dogecointurning 4 million into 27. With the profits he unleashed a consumerist hurricane that resulted in five Rolls-Royces and a Ferrari worth 2.4 million dollars, two Hästens mattresses handcrafted in Sweden valued at 638,000 dollars, Swiss watches worth 387,000 and antique furniture valued at 3.3 million. Netflix canceled the project in 2021 after receiving only some promotional fragments of the hypothetical series. The sentence. In an unusual strategy, Rinsch chose to testify in his own defensemaintaining that the 11 million constituted a legitimate reimbursement for own capital invested in the project, and that the material already shot served as a negotiation tool to secure a second season that Netflix would never formally authorize. The prosecution presented bank statements showing direct transfers from the production budget to Rinsch’s personal accounts. Why did it happen? To understand this series of misfortunes for Netflix’s pocket, we must contextualize when it occurred: between 2018 and 2020, Netflix was at the center of a kind of streaming “gold rush”, with spending on content that reached $17.3 billion in 2020. The platform then accumulated 45% of global spending on streaming content since 2010, doubling the investment of your closest competitorAmazon Prime Video. The war for creative talent intensified with the launch of Disney+ in November 2019, followed by HBO Max, Apple TV+ and Peacock. Those were the times when, seeking to create a consistent catalog, Netflix prioritized quantity over quality. In this context, Netflix gave Rinsch that final cut for fear of losing the project to rivals. Other frauds. Rinsch is not an isolated case in an industry increasingly vulnerable to fraud. David Ozer, producer with credentials at Starz Media and Sony Pictures Television, serves sentence after diverting more than $200,000 from the ‘Safehaven’ budget. More recently, in August 2025, David Raymond Brown was accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme for 12 million dollars: the producer created a fictitious company that issued invoices for non-existent or already paid services and falsified his profile on IMDb to attract more investors. Header | Dima Solomin in Unsplash

If you pass it, your bill skyrockets

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This winter comes with news that, after uncertain years, many homes are grateful for: the price of gas, which set records in previous seasons, has been moderated. The megawatt hour has gone from €50–55 last winter to around €30, a relief that invites you to breathe although it does not solve the question that comes back to the table every year: at what temperature should you set the heating to avoid skyrocketing the bill without being cold? The answer seems obvious, but it is not. Thermal comfort depends on the thermostat, yes, but also on insulation, usage habits, the health of those who live in the house and the available technology. That is why experts agree that it is not about heating more, but rather heating better. The rank that decides everything. There is technical, institutional and scientific consensus: between 19 and 21ºC is the optimal temperature for the home during the day. According to the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE)recommends between 20-21ºC with appropriate clothing. Aessia, the Aragonese installers association consulted by Heraldoset the range to 19-21ºC and remember to place the thermostat in a representative area, away from windows, radiators and drafts. While energy companies match In that reference, the who and a study published by Lancet Planetary Health consider 18ºC as the healthy minimum to avoid respiratory and cardiovascular risks. And the eternal question: turn off or leave it at a minimum? Before answering it, it must be made clear that each additional degree above 21ºC represents an increase of 7% in the bill, according to IDAE. If that is the case, the recommendation is to turn off the heating when you are not at home and also at night. According to the institute, what is efficient is to adapt the ignition to the actual occupancy schedule. While we sleep, the body needs less heat and the feeling of comfort decreases. Therefore, 15–17 ºC is sufficient at night. Only in very poorly insulated homes could the system be left on at minimum, but even there it is usually more efficient to turn it off and on for a few minutes when you get up than to keep it running all night. Beyond the thermostat. A key piece that confirms this idea comes from scientific research. a study published in Nature Scientific Reports analyzed twelve homes equipped with sensors and reached a compelling conclusion: adjusting schedules and temperatures based on actual occupancy can reduce heating consumption by up to 38% and up to 14% of the home’s total energy expenditure. The researchers showed that turning off the system at night and during the hours of the day when the home is empty not only does not reduce comfort, but is one of the most efficient scenarios. Furthermore, they detected that even in identical homes, consumption varies enormously depending on the user’s habits: time spent at home, habits, income level or whether the home is owned or rented. The conclusion coincides with the IDAE: Efficiency does not depend only on temperature, but on how we manage that temperature. The problem is not the thermostat, it is the house. Many households believe that “the heater doesn’t heat up enough,” when in reality the home does not retain heat. AFELMA, the association of insulation manufacturers, He warned us in Xataka that poor insulation is responsible for a huge part of winter energy consumption. Old windows, uninsulated walls, thermal bridges and poorly designed shutter boxes are responsible for leaks that cost money. The technical data confirms it, a well-insulated home can reduce heating costs by between 20% and 30%. according to an IDAE document. In other words, two houses at 20ºC can feel very different. While one is comfortable, the other forces you to raise the thermostat three degrees more to obtain the same sensation. And the pocket notices it. The immediate future: insulation and ventilation. Spanish regulations already require that new homes or comprehensive renovations incorporate mechanical ventilation that renews the air without losing heat. In passive houses—the most efficient that exist—thanks to the combination of continuous insulation, airtightness and heat recovery, many are naturally maintained at 20–21 ºC without turning on the heating, as the architect Lourdes Treviño explained in Interior Magazine. It’s not magic: it’s a reduction of up to 90% in energy demand. The cheapest grade is that it does not leak. After reviewing official organizations, experts, scientific studies and real experiences, the answer is unequivocal: the ideal daytime temperature is between 19 and 21 ºC. At night, between 15 and 17 ºC. And the most efficient thing is to turn off the heating when no one is home. But the real savings are not only in the thermostat: it is in the insulation, intelligent use and preventing heat from escaping. This winter will be kinder financially. And yet, the great lesson remains: heating is not about raising degrees, but about preserving them. Image | freepik Xataka | Good news, turning on the heating this winter will be cheaper. Bad news, we don’t know when it will happen again

Hundreds of billionaires pledged to donate their fortune. The philanthropic era of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett has come to an end

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In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett teamed up on an unusual project: convincing hundreds of millionaires that They didn’t need half his fortune and they owed billions of dollars to philanthropic projects. Sounds crazy, right? Well they got it. However, the model promoted by these two regular figures in the top 10 with the greatest fortunes in the last four decadesappears to be reaching a tipping point. They are coming tax reforms and moral incentives are not supported by the always convincing fiscal incentives. The golden age of philanthropy among millionaires could be in its final stages. Gates and Buffett’s original plan. The project The Giving Pledgelaunched by Gates and Buffett 15 years ago, invited hundreds of the world’s billionaires to sign a non-binding pledge promising to donate at least half of their fortune to charitable causes during their lifetime or after their death. Since its creation, more than 250 billionaires from 30 countries have signed this commitment, adding a combined fortune close to $600 billion in potential donations. according to calculations of Business Insider. Despite the magnitude of the figures, in recent years the viability of this model of collective philanthropy has been questioned. Warren Buffett himself recognized in his last letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders that its plan to engage and motivate the ultra-wealthy “hasn’t worked,” assuming the idea of ​​a golden age of mass philanthropy may be coming to an end. According to a recent report of the Institute of Political Studies, of the 256 signatories of the commitment to donate half of their fortune, only nine have fulfilled their promise. Open doors to philanthropy. The approval of the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, a fiscal package that imposes a 10% tax to foundations with more than $5 billion in assets, has significantly altered the philanthropic plans of many billionaires. The withdrawal of tax incentives makes donations They are no longer such a priority for great fortunes. According to what he told Fortune Kathleen McCarthy, director of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society“The insidious thing about this is that it will seriously affect the large liberal foundations like Gates, Ford and Soros”, which contributed millions of dollars to social, health and educational projects. “Whereas conservative foundations are much smaller and will pay a much lower rate,” McCarthy stressed. New ways to donate. This new scenario, which alienates large foundations from the front line of giving, is pushing philanthropists to look for alternative ways to give and modify their strategies. “Billionaires will begin to look for alternative mechanisms when they realize that they are being forced to close their foundations,” explains McCarthy. Practices like direct donation practiced by MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, and her Yield Giving foundation are gaining ground. Your strategy: donate the money directly to the organizations that develop the projects. Without intermediaries or segmentation of funds. According to a report of the Center for Effective PhilanthropyScott has already awarded more than $19.25 billion to 2,450 nonprofit organizations. This is how Bella DeVaan, from the Institute for Policy Studies in the article Fortune“I think she sets the trend and is an ethical reference in the way of donating money, as Gates has been.” Buffett’s family legacy. Although the era of massive philanthropy seems to end, Warren Buffett has not stopped giving. With Buffett’s retirement as head of Berkshire Hathaway, the investor has delegated part of his fortune in donations to the charitable foundations of his three children and his late wife. Annually, the veteran investor has been distributing billions in the form of actions to strengthen the family legacy and ensure that its wealth benefits society. However, in his latest donations from the millionaire a striking absence has been noted: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has already does not appear among its beneficiaries. In Xataka | The True Legacy of the Duty Free Founder: How Chuck Feeney Inspired Bill Gates and Warren Buffett Image | Flickr (Fortune Live Media)

We already know which will be the most expensive data center in the world. If Bill Gates paid it, it would be almost zero

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Already in 2024 we saw that infrastructure spending for AI was being insane. The trend has not relaxed, quite the opposite. Big tech continues to burn money as if there was no tomorrow (literally) and most of that spending is going to most valuable asset in the AI ​​race: data centers. How much do they really cost? Data centers in numbers Epoch AI has published Frontier Data Centersa complete database about data centers being built in the United States. Through satellite images, public documents and permits, they have obtained information about the estimated construction cost, as well as energy consumption and computing power. The award for the most expensive data center goes to Microsoft Fairwater, whose total cost It could reach $106 billion when completed in 2028. To put it in context, Bill Gates’ fortune is estimated to be 107 billion dollars. It would be fair to pay it. The forecast for Microsoft Fairwater even surpasses Meta Hyperion, the data center that It will be as big as the island of Manhattan which would cost 72,000 million. Next on the list is Colossus 2, by xAIwhose estimated cost is 44 billion dollars. It is closely followed by Meta Prometheus with 43 billion and the Amazon and Anthropic data center in New Carlisle with 39 billion. Epoch AI has collected more data, such as how much computing power each facility will have. This data is measured using the NVIDIA H100 GPUs for reference. They have also calculated the energy demand and who will be the main user of each of them. Below we leave you a table with the key information: Estimate DATE ESTIMATED cost ($) computing (EN gpUS H100) energy demand intended primary user microsoft fairwater September 2027 106 billion 5.2 million 3328 MW OpenAI meta hyperion January 2028 72 billion 4.2 million 2262 MW Goal xai Colossus 2 February 2026 44 billion 1.4 million 1379 MW xAI meta prometheus October 2026 43 billion 1.2 million 1360MW Goal amazon new carlisle June 2026 39 billion 770,000 1229 MW Anthropic oracle stargate July 2026 32 billion 1 million 1180MW OpenAI microsoft fayetteville March 2026 29 billion 920,000 1065MW OpenAI/Microsoft amazon ridgeland September 2027 32 billion 630,000 1008MW Anthropic Dizzying climb Looking at the case of Microsoft Fairwater, and always according to Epoch AI’s forecast, in March 2026 the investment will be $18 billion. A year later, in February 2027, it rises to 35,000 million, just four months later it shoots up to 71,000 million, to reach 106 billion in 2028. The price increase is dizzying and responds to several factors. The first is that the computational cost of training models has been increasing. For example, GPT 4 cost OpenAI over 100 million and rumors before the release of GPT-5 pointed to training rounds of 500 million each. Epoch AI also did an analysis on this and they estimated that the cost of training has multiplied by 2.6 year after year. On the other hand, there is the demand for GPUs, necessary for training the models and the most expensive component of all. An NVIDIA H100 GPU costs 25,000 dollars and its successor, the NVIDIA B200 also known as Blackwell, could be between 30,000 and 40,000 dollars. And this is just the GPUs, many are needed more components to get a data center up and running, such as power generators, high-speed networks or refrigeration, among others. The initial bottleneck was the shortage of GPUs, but it has been overcome by a more fundamental constraint: there is not enough power for so many chips. data centers They consume a lot of energy, Seriously, a lot. To put it in context, in 2024, data centers were already the 4% of United States electricity consumption and it is expected that Demand will double in the next five years. Nobody wants to live near a data center for one reason: mass consumption is raising energy prices up to 267% in nearby areas. Power supply has become a new choke point for the industry. Microsoft is already considering producing its own energy by creating nuclear power plants and others like Google and Amazon are considering taking data centers into space. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | AI data centers are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’ solution: build them in space

Bill Gates was obsessed with knowing how long his Microsoft employees worked. So I looked at the parking lot

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All the millionaires who have triumphed in the field of technology They tend to be people of remarkable intelligence, who over time have developed skills that, to the rest of humanity, They seem curious to us at the very least. Jeff Bezos developed an almost unhealthy obsession with optimize time in meetings and Elon Musk He can’t stand anyone opposing him when he has made a decision. Bill Gates, for his part, is known for being especially inquisitive with his employees, developing his own techniques that bordered on toxic to control whether his employees were in the office or already they had gone home. If the boss doesn’t leave, neither will the employees.. In 2016, the founder of Microsoft made some surprising statements on the BBC about how it controlled which employees worked the most hours. One of the things Gates valued most when he ran Microsoft was the commitment and dedication of his employees. “At that time I was quite extreme with work. I worked on weekends. I didn’t really believe in vacations,” he told the British network. The millionaire has an excellent memory for data, which is why he was able to memorize the license plates of his employees’ cars and relate them to their owners to know who was in the offices when he arrived and who had left before him. His partner Paul Allen corroborated Gates’ confession in an interview with Vanity Fair. “Microsoft was a high-stress environment because Bill drove others as hard as he drove himself. He was becoming the foreman who hung around the parking lot on weekends to see who had arrived.” In-person presence is not enough. In addition to being a somewhat toxic attitude towards their employeesGates soon realized that this was not the most effective system to monitor your staff. Verifying the unreliability of this system helped Gates to recognize that presence is not the best indicator for measure employee performance. An approach that, perhaps, the current managers of some companies should review when it comes to design return to office policies. “The Fireproof” Gates. Paul Allen tells in his interview with Vanity Fair a Gates anecdote with an employee who had worked 81 hours in four days to get a project done: “Toward the end of the work week, Gates asked Greenberg what he would be working on the next day. Greenberg notified Gates that he planned to take the next day off, to which Gates responded, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ Gates couldn’t understand it. “He never seemed to need to recharge his batteries.” However, as Gates himself acknowledged when analyzing his own behavior, Working long hours has nothing to do with being more productive. Burnout takes a toll on productivity and can end up being counterproductive to your company’s interests. Furthermore, the company grew so much that it was increasingly difficult to learn all the car license plates. ”In the end, I had to relax when the company reached a reasonable size.” Burned worker syndrome. Overloading employees in this way with eternal hours is one of the main causes of sick leave and resignation among employees. The World Health Organization (WHO) includes the Burnout worker syndrome in your International Classification of Diseases This syndrome affects 10% of workers and in its most severe forms can cause more serious disorders in between 2% and 5% of workers, leading to depression and anxiety. The 2022 Labor Market Guide prepared by Hays detected that more than 30% of the workers surveyed stated that, after the pandemic, the feeling of burnout among employees had increased, being one of the main reasons for many of them to join the company. silent resignation. Take care of employees to improve productivity. Work culture has evolved significantly since the days when Gates was at the helm of Microsoft. Companies increasingly value work-life balanceand they recognize that employees need time to rest and recharge. Even Gates himself has changed his stance on vacations, recognizing the importance of rest for mental and physical health, as he stated in a talk about Alzheimer’s in your YouTube channel. In Xataka | Bill Gates has been a famous “workaholic” but he knew who to hire to solve problems: the lazy ones In Xataka | Bill Gates liked to step on him: his Porsche 911 discovered him on a 2,000 kilometer trip and the police also discovered him Image | Commons

“I told Musk not to donate his money, it would end up in organizations chosen by Bill Gates”

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Peter Thiel is one of the most influential and controversial names in the technology world, known both for his business success with projects such as PayPal or Palantir, and for his unconventional ideas. about education either religion. Recently, Thiel has generated a lot of debate after Reuters had access to recordings of a series of private conferences in which he warned Elon Musk about where his fortune could end up if he donated it to the wrong people. Peter Thiel and his influence in Silicon Valley. Peter Thiel is a key figure in Silicon Valley, being one of the founding members of the so-called “PayPal mafia“, a group of businessmen who revolutionized technology and currently accumulate great economic and political power. Their role as mentor and investment partner of other majors in the sector, like Mark Zuckerberghas allowed him to control venture capital funds that drive many decisive companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. One of the figures with whom Thiel has had a particularly complex relationship is Elon Musk, with whom he founded the company PayPal. In transcripts seen by Reuters of Thiel’s private talks, he explained how he warned Musk against donating his fortune to Bill Gates through The Giving Pledgean agreement by which millionaires agree to donate a large part of their assets to social causes. Thiel told his audience: “I told (Elon Musk) that his money would end up in the hands of organizations selected by Bill Gates.” In response to this message, the millionaire said that Musk responded: “What am I supposed to do, give it to my children? It would be worse to give it to Bill Gates,” is recorded in the leaked transcripts. Then Musk ruled out Gates. A few years ago, Bill Gates and Elon Musk held a series of meetings in which Gates proposed a series of impact investments in which the founder of Space X could be interested in investing philanthropically through the Gates Foundation. Within the framework of this approach, the founder and his son Rory They even visited the Tesla factory in Austin. However, when Musk’s donation commitment seemed to come to fruition, the South African millionaire suddenly changed his mind and he sent Gates away in bad waysblaming him for how incoherent that someone who claims to fight against climate change would have short positions (at losses) of a company like Tesla, which worked to reduce fossil fuels. From that moment, the relationship between Musk and Gates they have been like water and oil. Thiel’s story in which he advised Musk to distance himself from Gates, and the abrupt breakdown of philanthropic talks with the Microsoft founder could be related. The fear of global power and the figure of the “Antichrist”. According what was published by Guardianthe transcripts also revealed other concerns of Thiel, who in his workshops warned about the risk of the emergence of a figure of global power, which he figuratively called “Antichrist”, who could emerge from the dominance growing of artificial intelligence. According to Thiel, this entity, which represents a form of power, could be presented as a solution to face global crises such as the climate change or nuclear threatsbut in reality it would end up limiting individual freedoms and promoting a uniformity of thought. As and as pointed out Fortunethis concern is based on his personal interpretation of the biblical text and what he considers the danger of developing science without a solid ethical basiswhich could generate a global system that demands obedience in exchange for order and security. Technology will set you free. Peter Thiel argues that large technological fortunes should not be donated to charitable causes, but rather, in his words, “large technological fortunes should be used to protect human freedom” from the risk of a centralized global system that controls the flow of capital and innovation. The millionaire warns that, if governments and international institutions control investments and innovation, could curb creativity and human potential under the pretext of global security. The Twitter purchase on the part of Elon Musk, his involvement in the Trump campaign and his subsequent role in DOGEshow that Thiel’s words have influenced Musk to reconsider his commitments and think about how to protect the legacy of his fortune in the face of these concerns. In Xataka | Some millionaires didn’t like the ideology of universities, so they created their own university: an “Anti-Woke” Image | Flickr (Gage Skidmore, Statsministerens kontor)

Bill Gates has been a famous “workaholic” but he knew who to hire to solve problems: the lazy ones

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Bill Gates is one of the most decisive figures in the evolution of technology of the last 40 years. Found one of the most innovative companies of his time can only be achieved through a lot of work. However, Bill Gates himself has stated that he can be a little lazy at times. The technology magnate has been away from the first line of command at Microsoft for some time, and he dedicates all his time and fortune to the philanthropic work carried out since foundation he created with his ex-wife Melinda Gates. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation invests in projects that encourage development, education and well-being of people in developing countries and at risk of social exclusion. One of his recent hobbies related to raising awareness about these socially conscious investments has been to create the Unconfused Me podcast in which he chats with personalities related to the scientific, teaching or business fields. In one of his last talks with San Khan (founder of Khan Academy) the magnate confessed that In his school days he was quite lazy. With an intelligence quotient (IQ) of 160, Bill Gates He has always had a knack for mathematics.. However, the millionaire himself confessed in his autobiographical book ‘Source code: My beginnings’he always tried to do as little as possible in class to pass the law of least effort. In eighth grade, his teacher reproached him for his attitude: “How can you be so lazy? You could be very good at this,” the teacher told him. “But we’re not doing anything interesting. I had this idea that the less effort you put in, the cooler you are.” Bill Gates states that, that teacher was crucial in his life since thanks to him his attitude towards learning changed since the teacher provided him with books and resources that encouraged his interest to continue moving forward and achieve a goal. Put a lazy person to solve a problem Bill Gates took his attitude towards effort to the extreme in the early years of Microsoft, when was able to remember car license plates that were parked in front of the Microsoft offices and relate them to their employees to know, at a glance through the window, which employees were still in the office and which had already gone home. In a so competitive scene As is the case with technological innovation, it is surprising to come across a phrase attributed to Bill Gates: “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” However, in it we can see represented the Bill Gates lazy and unmotivated in his school years. In reality, it’s not that Bill Gates is excited about being surrounded by sloths, but rather the meaning of his statement aligns with what he learned from his eighth grade teacher: the important thing is to have a clear objective. If your goal is not to overwork, then you will find a way to get the job done as easily as possible. The motivation to do something has been so important in Bill Gates’ career that even people around him have used it as a tool to prevent the technology magnate from neglecting his duties at the helm of Microsoft. In Xataka | Bill Gates was so obsessed with driving a Porsche 959 that he managed to change the laws that prevented him from doing so Image | Flickr

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