break

Railway experts explain how and why a rail can break

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Regarding the train accident in Adamuz (Córdoba) and its causes, there are very few things that can be taken for granted at this time. Almost the only certainty is that it will take months to know what caused the derailment of an Iryo train on a straight line and, everything indicates, the subsequent impact of a Renfe Alvia train seconds later. Despite this and despite the fact that Angrois railway accident (Santiago de Compostela) has already made it clear to us that these investigations entail a great effort of time and resources, information that points to one cause or another continues to be published. Among this information that, for the moment, remains conjecture, the idea of ​​a fracture of the road has become relevant following the publication of an image in which three researchers are seen next to a broken rail. in the diary The Country This hypothesis is pointed out as the fact that focuses the investigation. ABC He claims that it is the cause of the derailment. RTVE He points out that investigators want to confirm if it was the cause or consequence of the train leaving the tracks. The image, published by several media, is being used on social networks to defend that this is the real reason for the accident, accompanying video information in which strong vibrations from the trains in motion are observed. The latter, in fact, has been taken into account to lower the maximum speed to 230 km/h in a four points of the line between Madrid and Barcelona by Adif in what is considered the first really drastic measure after the accident in Andalusia. But what causes a fracture in the road and what are the implications? Is it related to the vibrations of the trains we travel on? A fracture in the road The first thing to make clear is that in this article we try to explain how the bill can occur on a track, what its implications are and if it has any relationship with the vibrations we feel on trains. However, until now there are no official sources that confirm that the original cause of the Adamuz accident is this. The investigations continue and probably It will take months to know all the details. The General Council of Industrial Engineers reminds us of the same thing, who emphasizes that “it cannot be stated without data whether the breakage is a cause or consequence. The investigation must be based on records, tests and metallurgical analysis. Not on images after the accident.” With this in mind, they point out that “a stress fracture is a progressive break of the lane that is not produced by a single sudden event, but by the accumulation of tensions over time. Simply put, the rail supports millions of load cycles. If there is a weak area (defect, welding, microcrack), each train passage does not break the rail, but it degrades it. “There comes a time when the resistant section is insufficient and the rail suddenly fractures.” From this entity they clarified to us that the vibrations we feel when we are traveling are not enough to derail a train. For this, one of the following scenarios must occur: Serious lane breakage. Severe loss of track geometry (alignment, grading, width). Structural failures in train elements (axles, bogies). Major obstacles on the road. Very unfavorable combinations of speed, geometry and undetected defects. And they emphasize that “usual vibrations are expected in the design of both the train and the infrastructure. “High-speed rail systems work with very wide safety margins.” “The usual vibrations are foreseen in the design of both the train and the infrastructure. High-speed railway systems work with very wide safety margins” This is confirmed to us from SEMAF (Spanish Union of Railway Machinists), who point out that imperfections in the track multiply when driving on them. “It is steel on steel,” they remember, and emphasize that the vibrations are a consequence of very small perfections in the track or the wheels that generate damage to their opposite. If the damage is on the track, it generates another imperfection in the wheel that multiplies it with each step cycle, generating the discomfort we feel on board. The General Council of Engineers emphasizes that “it is not usually a safety problem. It is usually a comfort or maintenance problem (wheel or rail) and many vibrations are corrected by re-profiling wheels or rails, without touching the structure of the line.” That is, when we feel these vibrations repeatedly and repeatedly It is not that we are passing through broken or fractured paths.. But it is possible that over time they end up being damaged to the point of suffering a stress fracture if appropriate measures are not taken. Maintenance is essential In this case, The road had been renovated last May with an investment that has reached 700 million euros. We cannot yet know if this was the origin of the accident, but the General Council of Industrial Engineers points to three possible causes that could cause the breakage of a track: Rail manufacturing defects: Non-metallic inclusions. Internal microcracks. Steel segregations. They are rare, but possible, and that is why periodic ultrasonic tests are carried out. Defective welds (especially aluminothermal): a poorly executed weld can generate residual stresses, poor alignment and/or internal microcracks. It is not common, but it is a known cause in railway engineering. Fatigue from repeated loads: Each axis introduces vertical, lateral and longitudinal loads. At high speed, dynamic effects multiply those loads. If the rail is already “touched”, fatigue accelerates the breakage. Thermal stresses on track without joints (the usual one today): The lane is “blocked.” Heat generates compression. The cold generates traction. A combination of low temperature, residual stresses and previous defect can promote brittle fracture. It must be taken into account that “the rail is one of the most demanding structural elements that exist. It is not rigid on its own, it is part of a flexible system. The steel … Read more

China aims to break records with the largest ice park in the world. And he has already begun to lift it block by block

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At the end of November, in Harbin, the image is repeated every winter, with a scale that has not stopped growing in recent editions: cranes, machinery and workers begin to raise structures on a surface that weeks later will become walls, towers and slides made of ice. According to official dataconstruction is advanced this year thanks to the ice stored during the previous season and preserved for more than ten months. This material allows work to begin even before the river freezes completely again, with the aim of preparing an area that this winter will have 1.2 million square meters. Harbin Ice-Snow World It has grown from a local celebration to a seasonal theme park that rises again each winter. It functions as an enclosure with defined entrances, circulation areas, walkable structures and spaces to stay for hours, especially when it gets dark and the lighting changes the perception of the place. It is not just a setting for photographs, but a park designed to be walked, used and visited for a few weeks, while weather conditions allow it. When ice stops being landscape and becomes infrastructure Upon entering the venue, the experience is more similar to that of a theme park than a temporary exhibition. You can walk between buildings, climb platforms, slide down ramps or access areas prepared for snow activities. The architectural elements are not presented as immobile pieces, but as part of the route. For this edition, those responsible have announced spaces intended for ice fishing, cross-country skiing and collective snow gamesas well as an additional stage that will complement the cultural activities of the already usual Dream Stage. The proposal does not focus solely on showing structures, but on facilitating their use within a planned and temporary environment. Before erecting ice structures, Harbin already celebrated winter through local practices. Hand-carved ice lanterns began to be used in the city in the middle of the last century and gave rise to the first Harbin Ice and Snow Festival, held on January 5, 1985. indicate official pages. The jump to the current format came in 1999, when Harbin Ice-Snow World was created as an independent venue, with specific access and design. Since then, the evolution has been constant: more surface area, greater volume of materials, presence of machinery and planned construction processes. The park, under construction in November 2025 Harbin has turned winter into a source of economic activity. According to data released by Xinhuathe city received 90.36 million visitors during the last season, with estimated income of 137.22 billion yuan (almost 17 million euros), an increase of 16.6% compared to the previous year. Ice-Snow World does not explain these figures on its own, but it acts as one of the main focuses of attraction and as an element that concentrates tourist services, accommodation, restaurants and transportation during the weeks in which it remains open. The construction mobilizes technical profiles, operators and specialists in structure and lighting, while the opening requires personnel for visitor service, security, maintenance and tourist support. Many of these roles are temporary, but require prior coordination and planning. When comparing Harbin to other major winter events, such as the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan or Quebec Winter Carnival in Canadathe difference is not only in size, but in structure. Sapporo distributes its sculptures in various urban spaces and Quebec combines culture, parades and outdoor activities, but neither of them functions as a theme park concentrated in a single venue, as occurs in Harbin. Harbin uses hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of ice and snow, according to official data, and builds walkable structures that are part of the route and not just the landscape. It is not so much a festival as a temporary recreational facility. Harbin Ice-Snow World has been integrated into the city’s tourism calendar as a seasonal facility. It is built every year, it opens for a few weeks and It is dismantled when temperatures no longer guarantee stability. This temporary nature does not prevent its planning: the prior storage of ice, the mobilization of workers and the associated services indicate that it is an organized activity and not simply a one-off event. The park functions as a generator of temporary employment, concentrates the winter tourism offer and channels activities that are subsequently complemented by the interior ice and snow enclosure, designed to operate all year round as an extension of the exterior park. There is no pretension of permanence, but of repetition adjusted to the climatic conditions. This repetition has allowed the consolidation of technical, logistical and tourist processes linked to winter as a seasonal economic resource. Images | The Harbin International Ice and Snow festival | Harbin Government In Xataka | Someone wants to build a 144 meter high skyscraper in the middle of the port of Malaga. The reason: luxury tourism

Microsoft had the deal of the century on its hands. A break of a year and a half was given to one of his rivals on a platter

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With its early deal with OpenAI, Microsoft was leading the AI ​​race in 2023. A year later it froze its expansion. Now Oracle serves OpenAI models and competitors share what Nadella’s company rejected. Why is it important. This isn’t just about lost data centers. Microsoft has assigned contracts with OpenAI valued at $420 billion to Oracle, equivalent to $150 billion in gross profit over five years. That would have increased its annual profitability by 18%. This means that in addition to losing growth, Microsoft also financed the entry of a rival into the most profitable business of the decade, according to analysis by Semianalysis. The facts. In 2023, Microsoft multiplied its investment in OpenAI tenfold to $10 billion and broke ground on the largest data centers ever built. Represented more than 60% of all infrastructure leases cloud among the greats. In 2024 it stopped everything in its tracks. It canceled 3.5 gigawatts of planned capacity — enough to power 2.5 million homes — and projects in a dozen countries. Its share of contracts fell below 25%. Between the lines. The company has used the argument of financial prudence: it did not want OpenAI to represent 50% of Azure’s revenue with lower margins than the traditional business. But the reality is simpler: he couldn’t keep up: OpenAI demanded a speed that Microsoft couldn’t match. Yes, but. The company has returned to the market with some urgency. The problem is that the options have been running out. Now rents capacity to neoclouds —specialized companies that build infrastructure—to resell it to third parties. It is a business with worse margins. The company that refused to build now pays commissions for having miscalculated. The money trail. Oracle is not the only winner. CoreWeave, Google, Amazon, Nscale and SB Energy have signed large contracts with OpenAI. In 2025, the story of OpenAI has been the story of its diversification away from Microsoft, although it is true that What seemed like a bad divorce ended in a separation of assets with forced smiles. The world’s most valuable AI lab had to fragment its infrastructure across multiple vendors because its original partner couldn’t—or wouldn’t—scale. In applications, Microsoft’s historical dominance with GitHub Copilot is also eroding. There are startups that have built more integrated code editors and scaled beyond Copilot. Microsoft has been forced to add the models of its rival Anthropic on GitHub Copilotwith a brutal cost for their margins. The company that had exclusive access to OpenAI now depends on its competitor to keep its code editor relevant. And now what. Microsoft has until 2032 before its agreement with OpenAI expires. It has Copilot with 100 million users. You have Office 365, Azure, and a business ecosystem that no one else can match. But the “great pause” of 2024 will take years to heal. The company has bet that the future of AI will be enterprise – with security and localization requirements – and not centralized in remote megacenters. You may be right. But 18 months of technology advantage is worth billions. And Microsoft just gave them away to its rivals. In Xataka | OpenAI has to pay debts of $400 billion in 2026. Nobody has the slightest idea how it is going to pay them Featured image | Simon Ray in Unsplash

Neobanks break 25% market share in Spain. Traditional banking is losing young customers

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They are no longer an anecdote, they are a main actor. For the first time, neobanks have exceeded 25% of the market share among individuals in Spain. A new report echoed by some media, places the penetration of these entities in 27.2%. It is a significant jump from the 21.8% they registered in 2024. The data confirms a clear trend: traditional banking is losing the battle for the young customer, although it continues to retain the main business. Image: Revolut What is a neobank. Unlike traditional bankingneobanks operate 100% digitally, without physical branches. Their model is based on a very light cost structure that allows them to offer commission-free services all managed from a mobile app. The Bank of Spain itself defines them as entities that offer banking intermediation services in a completely digital way. The assault on the young public. Neobanks entered the Spanish market attacking a very specific niche: young people and travelers. a study from Adyen and OpinionWay reveals that practically all Spaniards (93%) reject paying banking fees abroad. This has caused 59% of millennials and 55% of Gen Z to trust them more than traditional banks when traveling. Part of the “win” in innovation and reputation It’s not just in the product, but in the marketing. They understood that an app was not enough to attract the new generations; You had to be where they are: social networks and platforms like Twitch and YouTube. Revolut has been the most aggressive, renewing for a third year its alliance with Ibai Llanos and sponsoring its “Evening of the Year.” It seems that traditional banking has reacted to this trend, and has used the same weapons: now, Banco Santander has signed the YouTuber Plex. With almost 15 million followers on their networks, He is the protagonist of the last campaign. The Revolut surprise. This growth is not uniform; It is led by the well-known Revolut. A report from the CNMC was devastating: in 2024, Revolut led the acquisition of new accounts in Spain with 19.8% of the total, surpassing giants such as BBVA and Santander. The CNMC was blunt and recognized that “neobanks and fintechs pose a real competitive threat.” Figures. That leadership in recruitment now translates into real money. According to data from Expansion and El Mundo, the total neobank customer base in Spain exceeded five million in 2024. Revolut quadrupled its deposits in a single yeargoing from 739 million euros to 3,127 million. Meanwhile, its competitor N26 (with one million clients) suffered a 9% decline in deposits since December. Image: BBVA Fintech in traditional banks. The reactionary stance of some entities has led them to a strategy: launch their own neobanks to compete in the same field. Imagin stands out, promoted by CaixaBank. Your numbers They do not leave many doubts: they can boast 3.5 million clients and a 48% market share in the 18 to 34 year old segment among the main neobanks. But very few trust them with their payroll.. Despite the good penetration figures, traditional banking continues to dominate the main relationship with the customer. According to a report by Inmark, banks such as CaixaBank, Santander and BBVA account for almost 84% of the business market. Among individuals, only 4.2% use a neobank as their main entity. However, the goal of neobanks is stop being a complement. They are ripening to attack the core business of banking: Revolut has already announced its plans to offer mortgages in Spain and yes it has materialized installment payment services. The official view: necessary competence. The rise of fintech is a trend validated by official organizations. The Bank of Spain, in its 2025 Observatoryconfirms a 50% growth in the number of entities since 2020 and a 249% increase in their total assets since 2018. At the European level, the president of the Single Resolution Board recently warned that the Revolut model reinforces the need for a deposit guarantee fund mutualized in the EU. For its part, the National Commission of Markets and Competition (CNMC) and your report It is important to understand why they succeed: The traditional banking sector is highly concentrated. Spain (HHI of 1,331) has a higher index than Germany (323) or France (567). This lack of competition is one of the reasons why traditional banks do not remunerate deposits. It is the neobanks who break this dynamic. The Spanish banking sector is four times more concentrated than the German one, according to the CNMC. Neobanks have not grown by chance: they have taken advantage of the void that traditional banking left by not competing Now, there are always stones on the road. The CNMC points out that Spaniards have a “relatively high level of distrust” in online banking – only 23% feel “very comfortable” compared to the 41% average in the eurozone – and “below” average financial education. This paints a battlefield for the coming years. The growth of neobanks shows that they have won the usability war: they are easier to use and have masterfully conquered the young public. However, CNMC data reveal that traditional banking still has the most important defensive moat: customer trust and inertia. Cover image | Composition with images of CardMapr.nl and Revolut In Xataka | There are more and more millionaires in the world and that is a problem: luxury products are no longer exclusive

Spain has become the first European country to break the gas. The only problem is that the invoice says something else

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At first glance it seems a contradiction: we produce more solar and wind energy than ever, and yet The invoice continues. Sometimes it seems that everything returns to the same thing: gas. And, in part, it is true. The gas continues to enter every night to sustain the electrical system when the sun falls. But behind that reality there is another less visible: Spain is getting the structural link between electricity and fossil fuels. Reducing the power of gas. According to an Ember analysisthe influence of gas and coal in electric prices has been reduced by 75% since 2019. In the first half of 2025, the gas only determined the price of light 19% of the time, compared to 75% of six years ago. The result is overwhelming: the wholesale price of electricity in Spain was 32 % lower than the European average. While Germany or Italy have barely reduced the influence of gas by 12%and 13%, respectively, Spain has done it in 75%. It is a much faster jump than in any other large European electric market. Spain stopped the power of gas and coal, becoming one of the cheapest markets in Europe This fall reflects a deep transformation of the system. The country has made renewable energy – more cheap and stable – progressively replace gas and coal in pricing. So why don’t you notice the invoice? The answer, as we will see, has to do with the network, the storage and a blackout that changed the rules of the game. An exponential growth. Since 2019, Spain added more than 40 GW Of new wind and solar capacity, which has allowed the renewables to cover 46 % of the electrical demand in the first half of 2025. In that same period, the generation with gas and coal fell to 20 %, compared to more than 40 % that still register Germany and Italy. This transformation has had a direct effect on the market: gas and coal are barely marked the price of light. “Spain has broken the dire bond between electricity and fossil fuels”, summarize Chris RossloweEmber analyst. However, this technical achievement does not mean that the system is free of shadows. The imperceptible success. Here comes the less encouraging part. The problem is not only how much it costs to generate electricity, but how the system remains stable. After the blackout of April 28, 2025, Ree adopted an “reinforced” operational modeactivating more combined gas cycles to stabilize the network. That strategy avoided new cuts, but had a high cost. The use of gas for network services – as voltage control or frequency regulation – doubled in May 2025 compared to the previous year. These services went from representing 14% of the final price before the blackout at 57% that month, According to Ember. In addition, the missing renewable energy (Curtailment) It tripled after the blackout, moving from 1.8% in the two years prior to 7.2% between May and July 2025. In practice, a part of the clean energy generated is lost because the system cannot manage it. A power with bottlenecks. Despite being a renewable power, Spain only invests 30 cents in electrical networks for each euro allocated to renewables, compared to the 70 cents on average in Europe, As the report explains. And although it is the fourth largest electrical market of the continent, it occupies the 13th position in battery capacity, with just 120 MW installed. In some points of the network, Ree has recognized losses of up to 30% of the renewable generation due to lack of infrastructure. This imbalance prevents the clean energy from fully taking advantage of and forces to resort to gas as support. As we have pointed out in Xatakathe system is still vulnerable and rigid: only one in ten new facilities manages to access the network. After the blackout. The blackout marked a before and after. Although European experts have published A factual report, the official report is not expected until the end of the year. Following that episode, the government approved Royal Decree-Law 7/2025with measures to reinforce the network, encourage storage and make access to hybrid facilities. Although the text was rejected by Congress on July 22, part of its measures are being applied by other ways. Among them, As Ember points outthe incorporation of eight synchronous compensators – devices that stabilize the tension without using fossil fuels – and the impulse of 2,600 MW of new batteries, of which 340 MW already have permission. The Executive also plans to launch capacity auctions before 2026 to keep gas plants operational while structural solutions are displayed. But the message of the sector is clear: it will take time, investment and brave political decisions. The European Energy Laboratory. The Spanish case has become a mirror for the rest of the continent. It has shown that growing in solar and wind reduces the wholesale price and gas dependence, but also that without network and storage investment the benefits do not reach the consumer. In Brussels and in neighboring markets, Spain’s example is closely followed as a transition model: a country that has reduced its fossil dependence without sacrificing competitiveness, but still fights to transfer that advantage to the citizen. In Rosslowe’s words: “Spain has shown the way, but to keep it you need to invest in clean flexibility and modern networks.” Electricity is already cheaper to produce. It is also necessary to pay. Image | Freepik Xataka | In his career for the total domain of the solar panels, a rival has come out: the Spanish Perovskita

break the computer market

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Apple has done very well The transition to Apple Silicon. Your products, widely well valued for their power and efficiencythey have managed to sell very well, which has made the company go from 5.8% world market share to 8.7% of the first quarter of 2025, according to IDC figures. In Cupertino they want more, and the last plan to enhance sales goes through A cheaper macbook. Filtration. Ming-Chi Kuo is one of the analysts who has the best history of successes in terms of rumors of upcoming Apple launches, And predicted that the company prepares a cheaper “macbook” and colors. There are no surprises on the screen: it would be “approximately 13 inches.” However, it points to something they had not yet done from Cupertino, using an iPhone processor in a Mac. And Apple would choose the A18 PRO with which the iPhone 16 Pro and 16 pro max. The price. Digitimes, another medium with very good sources with regard to Apple, has gone further that Kuo and already offers a tentative price for this launch: $ 599. It is the same price chosen by Apple to market the cheapest MAC in history by adjusting for inflation, the Mac Mini M4. And also the same as iPhone 16E. In both products, the Spanish price without discounts is 709 euros. And that price would be groundbreaking for the global PCs market, such as It has been for smartphones. To put the figures in perspective. Apple’s “cheap” macbook, antonomasia, was launched at $ 1,099 in 2006, which implies a price of about $ 1,700 of 2025 updating inflation. Adjusting the price of that model to euros of 2025, the “blanquito” stays at 1,569 euros (and it must be remembered that VAT was 16% until its rise in 2009). Apple’s cheapest laptop sold in Spain was the 2009 variant, marketed for 879 euros (1,215 euros of 2025). Why it is important. Apple has managed to hit a bite to the PC market with very competitive laptops in its segment like the MacBook Air, especially Now that they are already base equipped with 16 GB of RAM. And he has achieved it without teams considered economical, but with the lowest prices in its history. Rancing an economic macbook at Mini prices, Apple would sell between 5 and 7 million units in 2026, according to Kuo. The Macbook Air M4 starts from $ 999, the same as the M1 departed and previous models with Intel. But adjusting inflation, its price is lower than those. The MAC Mini M4 is now 599 dollars, compared to $ 825 by adjusting the inflation of the original MAC Mini, which reached the market in January 2005 by 499. That just is the price at which they sell the Mini M4 for the educational market, where this new team would have a huge asset given the capabilities of the team. “A nightmare for Microsoft“In Windows Central They have it clear. The $ 599 are bad news for a Microsoft that in October faces one of the critical moments of the decade: The end of Windows 10 supportthat still has more users than Windows 11 in countries like Spain, and hundreds of millions of users in the world. Given this situation, Microsoft Clara: Buy a new PC. In the market there is no PC that offers the lightness, power and efficiency that Apple aims to have in its economic MAC, and Similar proposals with Snapdragonthe chip that rivalize with mthey are in a few more euros. At the peak of the 400 euros netbooksApple presented its own alternative, the iPad. Steve Jobs said there was no place in the company’s family for economic laptops. When launching the iPad, Jobs explained why they did not launch a cheap laptop (netbooks, at the time) for being slow and having poor quality. In 2025 there is not so much sacrifice. Iphone brain, more than capable for a Mac. The fear of reading “iPhone chip” is that it is not powerful enough to move macos (and their needs) with ease. The reality is different, if we attend to the numbers. Currently, an M1 chip remains more than enough to perform even heavy tasks in the system. And the A18 pro is more powerful in any CPU metric: A18 PRO M1 Difference in favor of the A18 Pro Geekbench 6 (single core) 3429 2345 +46.23% Geekbench 6 (Multi Core) 8790 8348 +5.29 % Geekbench 6 metal (GPU) 32686 33073 −1.17% 3DMark Steel Nomad Light Unlimited (GPU) 1541 1892 −18.55% In GPU, as we see, using metal, it is somewhat less powerful. And in a gaming test executed in equal resolution, such as Steel Nomad Light Unlimited, the A18 Pro is left more than 18%. In Single Core, the A18 Pro is also more powerful than the M2 and M3. And that is the most relevant section to move an operating system with ease, as well as what we do most today with the PCs, navigate the web. Prepared for AI. Although the A18 Pro and the M1 have a 16 -core neural Engine, the advances in architecture and in lithography of the iPhone chip allow obtaining From 50% more yield until the triple of the M1 offers the same processes. Clearly, except for Gaming, we are facing a more suitable chip for the needs of computer science in 2025. Huge autonomy potential. M1 is a legendary chip for The autonomy that brought the Macbook Air and Pro They arrived equipped with him. If Apple does not cut in the old air watts, the gain in autonomy can be immense, as the A18 PRO is manufactured by TSMC in the second generation 3 NM node (N3P), compared to the 5 NM first generation of the M1. Yes, but. A Macbook with an A18 Pro sounds very good, until we remember that it would be launched with an economic approach, and that in Apple usually comes accompanied by cuts, sometimes irrelevant, and sometimes painful. A first aspect … Read more

It is possible to grow to beast and be about to break at the same time

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Last week the news jumped: the Asterion Investment Fund, through its Olin Group division, reached a principle of agreement To acquire Finetwork for about 200 million eurosto which another 100 million are added to deal with their main problem. Escaping from the wolf. The acquisition is a movement that will allow OMV to face Your debt Of more than 100 million with Vodafone, thus preventing your service provider from converting the debt into shares and ends up taking control of the company. The Finetwork case is paradoxical: it is the best example of how it is possible to grow and be about to break at the same time. The context. Finetwork has in Pre -conclusion of creditors Since May 2025. The Alicante operator signed in 2019 an agreement with Vodafone to function as a virtual mobile operator (OMV) using its network. A key alliance To expand through Spanish territory, be competitive in rates and try to stand up to unstoppables such as Digi. The debt. In 2021, Finetwork starts to breach payments for the use of Vodafone network: months without paying, partial payments and out of time. At the same time, Finetwork did more than visible an aggressive marketing investment. Sponsorships to the Spanish National Team and LaLiga teams. Sports figures such as Fernando Alonso either Pedro Acosta. Musical events with stars such as Alejandro Sanz or Manuel Carrasco. In 2022, Finetwork spent about 10% of its annual turnover in sponsorships. Óscar Vilda, CEO of the operator, aimed after knowing these data that the objective of the company was to cut its exposure to sponsors in 60%. The rocket. While a debt was cooked that would end up being unassumable, Finetwork exceeded the 1.2 million lines in 2024with an expected turnover of 165 million euros (year -on -year growth of more than 30%). A company that returned to benefits in 2023, continued to expand in 2024 and faces a 2025 key. Asterion will assume the debt of more than 100 million and close the purchase for about 200. The challenges. Finetwork has been maneuvering for months to ensure the service despite the conflictsomething that has not prevented him from offering aggressive and competitive rates, With fiber and mobile from € 14.90 direct hunting of competitors fighting in the lowest prices. The acquisition comes in full reconfiguration of the Spanish telecos market. Masorange is stronger than ever, Vodafone in the hands of Zegona, and Telefónica in full race to lead in Spain. Beyond the three big names, Finetwork will be as a player to stand up to the earthquake in Spain: a digi that does not stop growing and aspires to become In third Spanish operator in the short term. In Xataka | Guide to change your phone and internet operator: tips and things to take into account

break the brutal leadership of Nvidia and TSMC

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TSMC, The largest semiconductor manufacturer on the planetproduces the GPUs for artificial intelligence (AI) that are placing in the Nvidia, AMD market and many other manufacturers of this type of chips. In fact, 90% of integrated circuits for AI available in the world market TSMC has manufactured them. In addition, in its client portfolio Apple, Nvidia, AMD, Qualcomm, MediaTak, and even Intel, among many other companies that are dedicated to the design of integrated circuits. We are now with Nvidia. The company led by Jensen Huang currently monopolizes about 90% of the market of the GPUs for Ia. It is likely that in the medium term its quota will be reduced against the presumable growth of competitors such as Huawei or AMD, but right now Nvidia has no reason to worry. And it does not have them because the semiconductor market to grow a lot over the next few years. According to the AMR consultant (Allied Market Research) In 2031 it will have a billing volume of more than More than 263,000 million dollars. SMIC and HUAWEI are China’s spearhead in the chips and AI industries Jensen Huang, the general director of Nvidia, has declared A few days ago, China is not behind in front of the US in AI. And the solvency of Deepseek, Ernie, Qwen, Pangu, Hunyuan or Sensenova endorses its analysis. Right now it is very difficult to determine in an objective way which country leads in AI. It is reasonable to conclude that the US is ahead of China if we stick to the joint capacity and performance of its AI models, but the really relevant thing is to determine if that capacity entails a real value. This is The line of thought that defends experts As Arthur Lai, Chief of Research for Asia of the Macquarie Financial conglomerate, or Jason Corso, professor of AI at the University of Michigan (USA). In addition, it is important that we do not overlook that the metrics that are currently used to evaluate the abilities and performance of the most advanced AI models They are less and less clarifying. And as the models improve and develop their global competitiveness, it matches. Nvidia continues to dominate the Chinese hardware market for IA despite the sanctions of the US government In any case, as we are seeing, it is evident that China is competing from you to you in the development of large language models for the US. The greatest challenges facing this Asian country do not reside in this field; They last in the field of hardware. Nvidia continues to dominate the Chinese market of the hardware for the The sanctions of the US government that prevent you from selling your best GPU for your Chinese clients. And TSMC manufactures 90% of semiconductors for this scenario of use because it has in production some of the most advanced integration technologies that exist, and, what is also crucial, the performance per candy of its avant -garde nodes is very competitive. China needs to have companies capable of Compete from you with Nvidia and TSMCand their best candidates are currently SMIC (Semiconductor manufacturing international corp) and Huawei. SMIC is the largest Chinese manufacturer of semiconductors with a fee in the world market of about 5%and currently has the ability to manufacture integrated circuits of 6 and 7 nm. However, according to Dr. Kim, an expert in chips manufacturing who has worked in Samsung and currently investigating TSMC in the US, is about to start 5 Nm chip production and plan to start Its first 3 nod nodes equipped with gaa transistors (Gate-alall-around) in 2026. Huawei, meanwhile, is determined to absorb Little by little the market share that Nvidia maintains in China. Your most ambitious hardware is now the chip Ascend 910dthat pursues overcome performance of the GPU NVIDIA H100. However, this Chinese company has also recently presented its chip Ascend 920a solution that is clearly destined to occupy in the Chinese market the gaps that it will leave The H20 GPU of Nvidia. This proposal will enter large -scale production during the second half of 2025 using 6 Nm integration technology that have presumably developed side with Huawei and SMIC side. Image | Nvidia In Xataka | Nvidia has to deal with the absolute distrust of several US legislators. His plan in China is in danger In Xataka | The US wants to end the chips for the Chinese that are sold abroad. And China knows how to defend oneself

The immediate cost for Musk to break with Trump

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Tesla collapses 14% after The open war between the president of the United States and the richest man in the world. The actions of the electric car manufacturer lost 34,000 million dollars of value in a single day, marking the second largest daily fall in the fortune of Elon Musk. Why is it important. Investors immediately translated presidential threats at real risk for the Musk empire. Trump promised to cancel “billions” in government contracts in allusion to a Spacex that depends on NASA. And Tesla needs federal regulators for its autonomous cars. In figures. The loss of 34,000 million marks the second largest daily fall in Musk’s fortune, only surpassed by the collapse of November 2021. Its assets fell to 335,000 million dollars, far from the peak of almost 500,000 million that it reached after Trump’s electoral victory. The background. The war began when Musk described Trump’s fiscal project as “disgusting abomination.” The president, visibly irritated in the Oval Office, replied: “Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will have it more.” Social networks became the battlefield. Musk said: “Without me, Trump would have lost the elections.” Trump replied threatening to eliminate subsidies: “The easiest way to save money is to end Elon’s subsidies.” Musk culminated accusing the president of appearing in the archives of Jeffrey Epstein. At stake. Spacex has contracts worth $ 3,000 million, according to The New York Times. Tesla benefits from tax credits that Trump plans to eliminate, which could cost 1.2 billion annually according to JPMorgan. Both companies depend on federal regulatory decisions. Only a few hours after the confrontation, the White House scheduled a call for Friday. Trump tried to calm the spirits: “It’s fine, it’s going very well.” And Musk reculled on His threat of dismantling the Dragon ship. Reconciliation seems more tactical than definitive. As Musk said: “Trump will be three and a half years as president, but I will be here for more than 40 years.” In Xataka | Elon Musk and the US government have broken their relationship in the worst way: putting the international space station at risk Outstanding image | Wikimedia Commons, White House

break the hegemony of the US

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China no longer chases Silicon Valley in Ia. In certain aspects it has advanced it and the earthquake that Deepseek caused at the beginning of the year was The beginning of the consolidation of a Big 5. After years of dispersion, these five companies have separated from the rest of the Chinese ecosystem to compete directly with American giants developing foundational models. Why is it important. Five Chinese companies have emerged as serious competitors from OpenAi, Google, Anthropic and company. Its strategy combines large investments, international talent and approaches that prevail the open source. The context. Two years ago, China lived a scattered battle, with dozens and hundreds of models and companies experiencing without clear leadership, without important differentiation. Today, the panorama is another: A quintet has developed technologies that rival great Americans. They symbolize the transition from China as a technological imitator to innovative that marks the rhythm. However, their models are not freed from government censorship. In addition, they do not compete internationally at the same level as Americans for a mixture of political, demographic and business model motifs. The five champions. Alibaba, Bytedonce, Stepfun, Deepseek and Zhipu are the new power of the Chinese power. Each has found its own niche: from open source domain to pure research. Alibaba: The King of Open Source Alibaba became one of the great world leaders of open development in AI together with Meta. His QWEN models series Master the open source ecosystem: The ten most popular Hugging Face models are based on secondary developments of Qwen technology. Alibaba’s strategy combines massive investment with radical opening. It will allocate 380,000 million yuan (about 52,000 million dollars) to research in AI and cloud infrastructure over the next three years, a budget at the height of great Americans. This commitment to open source It is not altruistic. By releasing its advances, it alibba accelerates world innovation while positioning itself as the premium infrastructure and services provider. Developers adopt free qwen … … But companies pay for cloud services, support and specific optimizations. The model demonstrated its effectiveness: while Openai and Anthropic maintain their closed systems, Alibaba builds an ecosystem where thousands of developers continually improve their base models. This distributed collaboration network can exceed the speed of innovation of closed laboratories, however well financed they are. Bytedance: giant and massive Bytedance brings to the group something other Chinese competitor possesses: Proven experience in global mass consumption products. The company behind Tiktok moved its knowledge of viral algorithms and user experience to the IA creating Doubaoa conversational platform that exceeds 100 million monthly active users according to the figures released by the company itself. This adoption scale provides Bytedance A unique advantage: large -scale real interaction data. While other laboratories train with static data sets, Bytedance optimizes their models with feedback constant of millions of real conversations, continually refining the behavior and usefulness of their systems. The company complemented its experience in consumer products with technical talent such as Wu Yonghui, who directs its research team in large models. Yonghui was a senior researcher at Deepmindso it brings direct knowledge of Silicon Valley developments. Your programming tool Bring It is oriented to business markets. Use OpenAI and Anthropic models (GPT / Sonnet) as a base, so it follows A pragmatic approach similar to perplexity: Use the best available technology while developing their own abilities. Stepfun: the discrete national team Stepfun is The most enigmatic member of the Big 5 Chinese. His low profile is deliberate. Based in Shanghai and backed by Shanghai State-Wned Capital Investment Co., it represents the most strategic facet of the Chinese national bet in Ia. He won the nickname of “King of Involution” In multimodal models, a recognition of their ability to overcome rivals in Benchmarks technicians Achieved outstanding positions both In Chatbot Arena International like first place In OpenCompassthe most reputed evaluation platform in China. His competitive advantage lies in a technical team led by Xiangyu Zhang, one of the four co -authors of the Paper Resnet. This work, which marked a turning point in the study of deep neural networksholds the record as the most cited article of any field published in the 21st century, something that provides immediate scientific credibility to Stepfun’s developments. State support allows Stepfun long -term research approaches without immediate commercial pressuressimilar to the model that followed laboratories such as Deepmind or Openai in its initial phases. Or Deepseek’s, but we talk about them later. ZHIPU: Pioneer in Smart Agents Zhipu represents the most direct connection between the Chinese elite academy and the commercialization of advanced AI. Incubated in the Tsinghua University, the most prestigious technical institution in Chinacombines academic rigor with business ambition. He wants to become the first Chinese startup of LLMS to go over. It is a pioneer in the development of AI agents. Your concept Phone Use And the launch of agents based on US laboratories demonstrates independent innovation capacity, not only to monitor western tendencies. Your most advanced product, Autogglm Ruminationrepresents what the company classifies as the first L3 level intelligent agent in the world. L3 is in any case an internal categorization of Zhipu, not a standard metric internationally recognized. The Immine Before the end of the year a milestone for the sector is: it will be the first public validation of the market value of the Chinese companies of AI. From there, the market will say. Deepseek: pure research as an advantage Deepseek showed that fundamental research approaches can compete directly with hyperfinanced commercial products. Your model R1 was an earthquake at the beginning of the year. And was achieved by a team of engineers released from immediate financial pressures and focused exclusively on technical efficiency and innovation. The company’s philosophy contrasts with the environment of Silicon Valley: Your engineers are encouraged to improve efficiency from a purely investigative perspectivewithout that financial pressure to generate short -term benefits. This environment is fertile land for risky experimentation and the exploration of unconventional approaches. The success of Deepseek … Read more

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