broke

Someone with a hairdryer “broke” Polymarket weather forecasts and pocketed $34,000

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On April 5, a Polymarket user with the name “xX25Xx” bet $119 that the temperature in Paris would exceed 18ºC that day. Shortly afterwards the temperature recorded by the Metéo-France network sensor at Charles de Gaulle airport unexpectedly rose several degrees. That caused xX25Xx to cash out $21,398 for profits. Then something even more striking happened: no other sensor in Paris recorded that rise, and the user had already deleted his account. French police are investigating whether someone physically manipulated the sensor to win the bet. As? Easy. The “crime” weapon according to the forums. In Polymarket’s Discord channels, the “traders” themselves began to share theories of all kinds after hearing the news. AI-generated images were also shared on Twitter showing how someone with a hair dryer could have modified the sensor located near Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Multiple users They aimed for the “cordless hair dryer trick”, although it would have also been possible to achieve the same thing with a lighter. There’s the bet: from $119 to more than $21,000. Source:Polymarket The temperature did not rise. The analysis of the French company Bubblemaps revealed that no other meteorological sensor in Paris recorded the temperature rise that the Charles de Gaulle sensor recorded. The anomaly was therefore perfectly located, and the French national meteorological service, Metéo-France, announced that had filed a lawsuit due to manipulation of its data processing sensors. Both the sensor analysis and the data led to a clear conclusion and the French police are now investigating the matter. The Bubblemaps analysis revealed that this temperature peak experienced in a specific sensor was not experienced in the rest of the weather sensors in Paris. Source: Bubblemaps. It was not an isolated incidenteither. What happened on that occasion had actually happened other times. On April 6, the Charles de Gaulle sensor recorded a rise of four degrees Celsius in 12 minutes despite other sensors showing lower figures. A Polymarket user who had bet on higher than normal temperatures on that specific day won almost 30,000 euros. The pattern repeated itself on April 19. Three different Polymarket wallets won more than $280,000 in total by betting that the temperature in Paris would reach 19ºC on April 15. The real problem. The most striking thing about this event is not being able to use a hairdryer to win $20,000, but the fact that Polymarket has a single physical sensor in Paris as a data source for those temperatures. This means that anyone with physical access to said sensor – knowing it is the right one – can manipulate it without problems. There is no verification or redundancy in data sources, and here Polymarket has a notable underlying problem with bets that can be manipulated really easily. A more worrying pattern. The dryer case is a clear example of a new category of crime that these “prediction” markets have created. In recent months we have discovered how there have been investors in Polymarket who have managed to win large sums of money by betting on events in which there was a clear suspicion of insider information. It happened with the pardons that Biden granted before leaving the presidency, with the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and with the moment in which would announce ceasefire in Iran. In all of those moments, someone knew something before the market and took advantage of it. Polymarket as oracle of the financial world. The disturbing thing is that Polymarket is becoming a tool that is being used by financial and investment companies like the prestigious Goldman Sachs. She and several investors use Polymarket data for their own operations, but if the platform’s data is as manipulable as it seems, that information is contaminated from start to finish. Image | Sunny River generated by AI In Xataka | If you think you can beat a betting house in the long term, we have bad news: they have you in from the beginning.

International law was written with humans who decide in mind. AI just broke that chain and no one knows who answers now

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Pete Hegseth’s threat to Dario Amodei has a subtext that goes far beyond the $200 million contract that the Pentagon can cancel: If the US military deploys AI-controlled autonomous weapons without the safeguards that Anthropic requiresyou will have removed the only firewall that has historically prevented an illegal order from being executed. Why is it importantand. The entire legal and ethical system of the US military rests on a principle that seems obvious but has important consequences: a soldier can and should disobey a manifestly illegal order. It is the mechanism that, in theory, prevents war crimes. A drone AI-controlled autonomous vehicle does not have that mechanism. You can’t refuse. You can’t hesitate. He cannot be tried in a court-martial. Between the lines. Amodei speaks of “autonomous weapons that fire without human intervention” to point out a legal vacuum. If an AI makes the decision to kill, who is responsible criminally? The programmer? The general who activated the system? The president who signed the order? International humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions) was written with human beings making decisions in mind. And now AI dissolves that chain of responsibility. The backdrop. The mass surveillance argument is also a bitter pill to swallow. The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution protects citizens from warrantless searches and interventions. It works, among other reasons, because the State has never had the physical capacity to process everything that happens in public spaces. And in the same way, with AI that operational limit disappears: we move to millions of conversations recorded in real time, transcribed, classified and connected in just seconds. What was previously impossible due to lack of human resources becomes routine with a LLM. Constitutional protection until now has depended, in part, on the inefficiency of the State, its limitations. Yes, but. The Pentagon has an argument that cannot be ruled out: other democracies are also developing these capabilities, and China or Russia are not going to wait for the United States to resolve their ethical dilemmas. The practical question is whether having those unrestricted capabilities makes you safer or simply more dangerous to your own citizens. The big question. OpenAI and Google have accepted the Pentagon’s conditions“all legal uses” without specific exceptions, and xAI has just been cleared to operate on classified systems. Anthropic has been left alone in its position. And what is at stake now is not whether Claude survives as a military supplier or not, it is whether the AI ​​industry is going to set some limit on what it sells to the State, or whether that debate will be settled directly by Congress, the courts or, in the worst case, the first serious incident that no one could have foreseen. It seems like a matter of time. In Xataka | AI is already a battlefield: Anthropic has just accused DeepSeek and other Chinese companies of “distilling” Claude Featured image | Xataka

2025 broke the dream of cheap electricity

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At the beginning of 2025, Spain’s energy story was one of absolute success, coming to work only with renewables. But the “Great Blackout” of April 28 threw a jug of cold water on the country’s climate ambitions: greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.6%breaking a years-long trend. How is it possible to emit more when we have more solar panels than ever? The answer lies in a technical paradox: the Spanish electrical system entered into “reinforced mode”prioritizing the stability of gas over the cleanliness of renewables. Gas as a “bodyguard.” After that incident, Red Eléctrica (REE) adopted a “reinforced operating mode”. This adjustment involves intervening in the market to ensure that there are always “firm” plants (gas, nuclear and hydraulic) operating to give inertia and stability to the network tension. The problem is that this decision has marginalized cheap energy. As detailed by the Sustainability Observatory (OS)gas consumption in combined cycles shot up 26% after the blackout. Spain has been burning gas preventively to prevent the system from collapsing, even at times when the sun was abundant. This has caused the curtailment (clean energy wasted because the grid cannot manage it) will triple, going from 1.8% to 7.2% between May and July. The third “rate” in history. This forced dependence on gas has directly hit the pocketbook. According to a study by Facuathe electricity bill for an average user with a regulated tariff (PVPC) became 15.5% more expensive in 2025. With an average annual bill of 975.88 euros, 2025 is the third most expensive year in history, only behind the years of the energy crisis due to the War in Ukraine. The maintenance of this “anti-blackout insurance” has cost 422 million euros in technical extra costs, which companies like Iberdrola they have already started to have an impact on the renewed contracts of its clients. So why is there more energy but the price goes up? Herein lies the great technical paradox of last year. Spain installed 8,852 MW of new renewable power last year, according to REE data. However, the network is saturated since 83.4% of the electrical nodes no more connections allowed. The root of the problem is unbalanced investment. While Europe invests 70 cents in networks for every euro in renewables, Spain only invest 30. In addition, the country ranks 13th in battery capacity in Europe. Without storage, the system is rigid: if the sun hits suddenly, only the gas can react in time. Even domestic self-consumption failed in the April blackout: only 33% of homes they have batterieswhich left millions of users in the dark despite having their panels at full capacity. It is not the only one responsible for the emissions. The OS report points out that the rebound in emissions It’s not just electric. Spain approached 100 million of visitors in 2025, skyrocketing the consumption of kerosene (+5%) and gasoline (+8%). Added to this is a year of climatic extremes: fires They burned 400,000 hectaresreleasing 19 million tons of CO2, four times more than the average. Horizon 2026. The immediate future is not simple. For this new year, an increase in tolls and charges from the Government of up to 12%. In addition, the system faces a new challenge: the massive installation of data centers. In Aragon, these complexes are expected to consume so much energy that will further strain the network. To avoid collapse, the Government has activated “capacity markets”. Basically, gas plants will be paid simply for “being there” and not closing, an expensive but necessary insurance until the planned 2,600 MW of batteries or the synchronous compensators that promise to provide stability without burning methane are deployed. Europe’s laboratory. At the international level, Spain has assumed the vice presidency of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to lead the global transition in the face of the departure of the US under Trump’s mandate. But political leadership contrasts with internal fragility. Spain has shown that it is possible to expel coal from the system, but also that the abundance of cheap energy is useless if there are no cables to transport it or batteries to store it. As a source in the sector succinctly summarizes:: “The mistake was not putting up panels, but forgetting about the networks.” Without this investment, gas will continue to be the owner of the Spanish night and responsible for the electricity bill continuing to break records that no one wants to boast about. Image | freepik and Anton Osolev Xataka | The “reinforced mode” that prevents a new blackout will cost us 422 million euros. Iberdrola has already begun to collect it

Time magazine decided that “the architects of AI” were ‘Person of the Year’. And chaos broke out in the betting houses

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‘Time’ magazine has named ‘Person of the Year’, its traditional editorial recognition of the most relevant people of the year, to the “Architects of AI”. The topic is sensitive and controversial, and has unleashed opinions for and against the election. But it has also unleashed a parallel and unexpected tidal wave: people losing small fortunes at betting houses because of this Time decision. Beings of the year. When ‘Time’ revealed on December 11 that “AI Architects” (and not simply “AI”) would be its “Person of the Year 2025”, betting platforms Polymarket and Kalshi were plunged into absolute chaos. More than $75 million was left hanging over semantic disputes over what exactly constitutes a “person.” We are not going to go into the legitimacy of that decision or the technical quality of the cover assembly, but we can comment on how The cover effect among betting professionals brings to the table some characteristics of unregulated speculative markets that convert cultural events into casino chips. The collapse of betting. The users of Polymarket who invested more than $6 million betting on “AI” as the winner discovered that its interpretation did not match the platform’s rules. The final decision established that the title “Architects of AI” was not equivalent to designating artificial intelligence as such, giving thousands of bets as losers. The distinction was crucial: Naming those who build the technology differs radically from crowning the technology itself. In KalshiHowever, bets on individual executives (Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Dario Amodei, Lisa Su and Demis Hassabis) were winners, while those who bet on corporate entities such as “ChatGPT” or “OpenAI” lost. Polymarket had more restrictive rules: betting specifically on “Jensen Huang” was a losing option, validating only the generic “Other” option. Polymarket cited an illustrative precedent: if ‘Time’ awarded “Donald Trump and the MAGA movement,” bets on Trump would win; but if the title were just “The MAGA Movement,” Trump would be excluded even if he was on the cover. Other Polymarket controversies. This scandal adds to a series of episodes that question the integrity of Polymarket. In November 2024, an unauthorized modification to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) maps temporarily showed a Russian advance on the Ukrainian city of Myrnohrad. The change allowed bettors to earn returns of up to 33,000% before ISW admitted to fraudulent editing and fire the responsible geospatial specialist. weeks latersomeone identified as AlphaRaccoon generated profits of $1.15 million by betting with suspicious accuracy on the results of the 2025 ‘Google Year in Search’. Meta engineer Haeju Jeong documented on social media that the bettor had gotten 22 of 23 predictions right, including that singer d4vd (with just 0.2% probability) would top the searches. the same user had previously won $150,000 predicting the exact launch of Gemini 3.0, which fueled accusations of privileged access to Google information. Semantic controversy. And another one from Polymarket, which got into define whether President Zelensky had worn a suit at the NATO summit in the summer of 2024. Despite more than forty global media describing his outfit as a formal suit, the resolution protocol UMA (a decentralized oracle on Ethereum that verifies real-world data for blockchain applications) ruled “No” in a series of bets that moved $242 million. Numerous media They talked about large holders of UMA tokens manipulating the result through coordinated voting. Person of the Year, or whatever. Time magazine has been deliberately stretching the definition of “person” for decades, setting precedents that preempted this year’s confusion. In 1982 he chose “The Computer” under the title “Machine of the Year”, while 1988 crowned “The Endangered Earth” as “Planet of the Year”. The 2006 edition generated controversy by awarding an indeterminate “You”, referring to all users of digital content. “The Silence Breakers” of the #MeToo movement (2017) and “US Scientists” (1960) are other examples of award-winning collective entities. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion

Building data centers in space was the new hot business. Elon Musk just broke it with a tweet

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The debate over the feasibility of building gigantic data centers in orbit had been heating up for months. It is Silicon Valley’s new big idea to solve the insatiable energy appetite of artificial intelligence. Until, as usual, Elon Musk has entered the conversation with the subtlety of a hammer. Elon Musk has joined the chat. After weeks of debate about the feasibility of building servers in space, Eric Berger, editor of Ars Technica, argued that will end up being a more plausible option when the technology exists to assemble satellites in orbit autonomously. It was the moment chosen by Elon Musk to enter the conversation. “It will be enough to scale the Starlink V3 satellites, which have high-speed laser links,” wrote the CEO of SpaceX. “SpaceX is going to do it,” he said. A phrase that has probably fallen like a blow on startups that are taking advantage of the momentum of AI to go out in search of financing. Why the hell do we want servers in space? The idea of ​​moving computing to Earth orbit responds to a very real crisis: AI is an energy monster, and Demand for data centers continues to grow. Given this panorama, space offers two advantages that are impossible on Earth: Almost unlimited energy: In a sun-synchronous orbit, solar panels receive sunlight almost continuously (more than 95% of the time). Free Cooling: Land-based data centers consume millions of liters of fresh water to cool. With a large enough radiator, the gap can be “an infinite heatsink at -270°C.” The heat would be radiated into the vacuum without wasting a single drop of water. The new titans of space AI. Musk is not the first to see the business. In fact, he arrives at a party where the first contracts are already being distributed. Jeff Bezos predicted during the Italian Tech Week that we will see “giant training clusters” of AI in orbit in the next 10 or 20 years. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, bought rocket company Relativity Space precisely for this purpose. And Nvidia, the undisputed king of AI hardware, has actively backed startup Starcloud, which plans to launch the first NVIDIA H100 GPU into space this November, with the goal of eventually building a monster 5-gigawatt orbital data center. Why Musk would win. The vision of Bezos, Schmidt and Starcloud faces two colossal obstacles: the cost of launch and the construction of the servers themselves. Calculations for a 1 GW data center would require more than 150 launches with current technology. And Starcloud’s plan for a 4 kilometer wide array is a logistical nightmare. Elon Musk has Starship, the giant rocket on which all of his competitors’ business models depend to be profitable. And you don’t need build a new orbital data center. Just adapt and scale the one you already have. 10,000 satellites and counting. SpaceX’s Starlink constellation no longer competes against satellite internet, goes for terrestrial fiber. Musk’s company has already launched 10,000 satellites and is preparing the deployment of the new V3 satellites, designed for Starship with high-speed laser links. According to SpaceX itself, each Starship launch will add 60 terabits per second of capacity to a network that is already, in practice, a global computing and data mesh. While Starcloud needs to hire a rocket and assemble 4km-wide solar and cooling panels, Musk simply needs Starship to finish development to continue launching satellites. In Xataka | Starlink stopped competing with satellite Internet companies a long time ago: now it is going for something much bigger

Cameron’s ‘Titanic’ was going to be a flop. Until a trailer that broke several Hollywood rules changed the narrative

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In a few weeks the posthumous memoirs of Jon Landau, producer of ‘Titanic‘ and ‘Avatar‘, and frequent collaborator of James Cameron. Media as Variety have been able to access its content, and they tell of a masterful marketing maneuver: how a film that seemed doomed to failure, ‘Titanic’, was saved thanks to an intelligent trailer. It was sinking. Before the release of ‘Titanic’ In 1997, there was a certain pessimism in Hollywood and in the press about the film’s chances of success. With a then-record budget of $200 million, constant delays during filming, and negative rumors about the development of the production, many experts and media assumed that the film would be a financial disaster. Landau says that he was famous an article from ‘Time’ magazine in which the possible future of the film was compared to the real fate of the ship with the onomatopoeia “Glub, Glub, Glub…” Too much noise. But as he says in his memoirs, titled ‘The Bigger Picture’, Landau knew that “perception becomes reality”, even though expectations were not good: the jump from 100 to 200 million dollars brought to mind another major failure (and with a very marked aquatic component as well): ‘Waterworld’ by Kevin Costner. Paramount’s marketing team proposed a conventional trailer. Landau described it as a “John Woo-style trailer”, meaning “quick cuts and booming music, gunshots and screams. It made the movie look like an action movie that just happened to take place on the Titanic.” Cameron and Landau knew this wasn’t their movie. Four minutes or so. The decision they made was seemingly counterintuitive: an exceptionally long trailer, four minutes and two seconds. Before, they had to fight for a long time with Paramount executives, who initially wanted a shorter trailer oriented solely towards action. Landay and Cameron argued that a longer trailer was necessary to convey the magnitude and complex narrative of Titanic. They presented it at the ShoWest event in Las Vegas, a key convention for theater owners. Kurt likes it. The trailer had an immediate and favorable effect among attendees, decisive for the good distribution of the film. It also had a positive impact on stars like Kurt Russell, who helped spread the word that they were watching a great film. The actor, sitting at the Paramount table, stood up and shouted, “I’d pay ten dollars just to see that trailer again.” Since then, even the initially skeptical press began to reconsider the film, marking a turning point in public perception and hopes for commercial success. Change in narrative. The trailer not only showed what no one had seen and how the film worked (the memories, the romance, the action, the gigantic scale), but it also redefined the conversation from rumors of failure to raising the possibility of it being a success. The film was released in December 1997, became the highest-grossing film of all time and won 11 Oscars. Another victory for Cameron, although with this one he didn’t have it with him all the time. In Xataka | The “ghost” category of the Oscars: it exists but it is so demanding that there have never been films that compete for it

It is more likely to reach a ray to touch your lottery. Until an economist broke the game winning 14 times

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The lottery is more an act of faith than anything else. I don’t say it, Mathematics say. In fact, there is more likely to be a ray to become a millionaire at night. It is possible that all that of the same, and that even knowing that we will not touch us, let’s continue playing to feel part of something. The problem is that there are legends that They talk about tricks and Formulas To win. And then there is the story of Stefan Mandel. A mathematical mind. In the mid-1990s, while millions of people worldwide continue Murify the rules Not written from the lottery applying, not magic or superstition, but an elementary probability system and a colossal logistics. The “trick.” His formula was as basic as radical: identify those draws in which the accumulated prize It exceeded by far the total cost of acquiring all possible tickets. By converting a problem of chance into a mathematical operation with a positive statistical return, Mandel transformed the game into a profitability equation. After successfully trying his system in his native Romania and then in Australia, Mandel perfected his strategy With a small team, developing algorithms that generated and printed millions of valid combinations for specific lotteries. The jump to Washington. The high point of his odyssey came when he looked at the United States, where he detected that Virginia’s newly established lottery used only 44 numbersgenerating “barely” 7,059,052 possible combinations. With the boat reaching 15.5 million dollars, and after having prepared in advance A network of investorsprinters and points of sale, Mandel activated his machinery. For two frantic days, his team managed to buy 6.4 million tickets. They did not reach the desired total, but among the paper mountain was the winning ticket. Although the feat unleashed an investigation by the FBI and the CIA, no legal violation was detected: its maneuver, although clearly outside the spirit of the game, it did not transgress any norm written in the regulations in force. The boundaries of chance. The key to the mandel method was not in sophisticated numerical tricks, but to detect when the conditions of the game offered A structural advantage. In this way, its formula only worked when the prize I tripled the cost To acquire all combinations and when lottery systems allowed printing tickets directly with chosen combinations, a possibility that was later prohibited in many countries precisely by cases such as yours. Winning horse. In essence, its strategy converted the lottery into A safe betprovided that resources, time and discipline were available to execute a plan of such magnitude. However, the profit margin was not immediate: Mandel had to distribute the profits between dozens of investors and assume considerable operational and legal costs. Even so, the system allowed him Win 14 lotteries over several years and knead a considerable fortune without resorting to traps or privileged contacts, only to applied mathematics with implacable determination. Legacy and sunset. After his last significant victory, Mandel He retired to a paradise in the Vanuatu Islands, where he lives away from media foci. Its history, however, not only challenges the myth of fate in games of chance, but has become A mathematical legend which highlights the design gaps of many lottery systems before digitalization. Today, with stricter regulations, limits in the purchase of tickets and automated systems, replicate its model It would be unfeasible. Thus, its feat remains one of the most forceful demonstrations of how human ingenuity, when it faces in intelligence and rigor, can alter the balance of the improbable. Image | Barcex In Xataka | We all know that the lottery will not touch us. It doesn’t matter: we play for feeling part of something In Xataka | The trick to prevent the Treasury from staying with 20% of the Lottery Award has a trick. And is called the income statement

12 million people delivered their DNA to 23Andme. The company broke and its data are about to change hands

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For years, spitting in a tube was the first step of an irresistible promise: discovering your roots, knowing your genetic predispositions, even finding family members lost by the world. Everything without moving home. The company behind that phenomenon was called 23ndmeand achieved something unusual: to turn genetics into a mass consumption product. That story has just turned. Regeneron Pharmaceuticals has reached an agreement to acquire the main assets of 23Andme for 256 million dollars, According to the official statement published by the pharmacist. It is a transaction that must still be approved by the Banking Court and by US regulators. At stake is a platform that has managed the DNA of millions of people worldwide. An announced end. The 23Andme fall has not been sudden. In recent years, the company went from being valued at more than 6,000 million dollars to fight for its own survival. His commitment to a more ambitious model – based on developing medicines, offering medical consultations by subscription and expanding digital health services – did not set. As details The Wall Street Journalthe company burned more than one billion dollars and ended up offering part of its assets in limit conditions. The sales agreement does not cover the entire business. Regeneron would keep the essential: the direct genomics service to the consumer, its biobanco of genetic samples and the research and total health divisions. The telemedicine subsidiary Lemonaid Health is left out, acquired in its day for 400 million dollars, whose closure will be made in an orderly manner outside this operation. Privacy: The real battlefield. The operation has re -placed privacy in the center of the debate. Regeneron has promised to respect current data use policies and has committed to undergoing independent scrutiny, as established by the judicial framework of the process. Even so, doubts persist on how one of the world’s largest genetic databases will be managed. The suspicion is not new. In 2023, 23Andme was a victim of a massive data filtration which affected 6.9 million people. As TechCrunch revealedthe attackers accessed the profiles of those who had activated the function of “genetic family”, obtaining names, locations and percentages of shared DNA between relatives. The company attributed the incident to the reuse of passwords by users, but the damage was already done. Anne Wojcicki, the face of an era. The 23Andme story cannot be told without mentioning Anne Wojcicki. Co -founder, visible face, visionary of personalized health and, at the same time, responsible for business decisions that led to collapse. His plan was to convert the company to an integral provider of medical services, but this did not prosper. He tried to recover control, but his power vanished with the beginning of the judicial process. According to WSJtheir actions with preferential vote were annulled and their offers rejected by the Board of Directors. Wojcicki opted everything to DNA as strategic assets. And for a while it seemed right. The company that helped to found transformed the way millions of people related to their health. It also showed to what extent a genetic database can become a mined field of legal, ethical and technological risks. A new stage, the same questions. Regeneron aspires to keep a powerful platform, a still recognized brand and an immense volume of genetic information. In its official statement, he affirms that his intention is to maintain service for current users and continue to develop new ways for personalized medicine. Images | 23ndme In Xataka | We have visited the place where the demographic hopes of Spain are literally deposited: the Semen Bank of Granada

The Bugatti Veyron broke with everything thanks to a brutal engine. One that was born with some scribbles painted at 320 km/h

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Year 2005. Spain sings unleashed “El Nano” De Melendi. No doubt luked by Fernando Alonso, The Renault Mégane was the best selling car That year. It entered into force Euro 4 That, we did not know yet, but it would be the border that now marks what diesel cars can receive the DGT’s sticker. But while Renault lives a golden era chaining two pilot titles in Formula 1, in Europe they are to other things. Those things represents them well Volkswagen, who will present 20 years ago a unique car that marked a before and after in the history of the car: the Bugatti Veyron. A car that was born before, drawn on a 320 km/h paper. Because the origin of Bugatti Veyron must be looked for in a Japanese Shinkansen. Almost a decade before. Paper and Boli at 320 km/h Year 1997. Ferdinand Piëchgrandson of Ferdinand Porsche, directs the Volkswagen Group. His career supports him. He has played a fundamental role in the victories of Porsche in Le Mans, in the six -cylinder boxer engine for the Porsche 911 and in the Quattro de Audi traction. Piëch travels in the wagon of a shinkansen, The Japanese bullet train that reaches 320 km/h. At that time, Japanese high -speed railway lines seem to arrive from the future. Next to him is Karl-Heinz Neumann, head of motor development of the Volkswagen Group, which shows a completely crazy idea to which he has been trying to shape in his head. To explain the ideas on paper, an engine with 18 cylinders. What would happen if you take three VR6 motors from Volkswagen and put it online? Piëch is clear, would transform an engine that is already one of the jewels of the market and the group into a masterpiece. A engine of more than 600 hp. Enough to get its great ambition to put on the street a car that exceeds 400 km/h. The problem is that it would be a development and a product so expensive that there is no way to fit it in one of the group’s brands. That is why the company is behind a new brand to turn its flag. Its impossible engine must arrive from the hand of a brand that represents the most extreme luxury. Rolls-Royce It is the chosen one. But at the auction for acquiring the company, BMW advances to its buyatiots. In an exploitation license game, Volkswagen reaches an agreement with Vickers but it is a wrong decision because this group has the right of exploitation but the company is owned by Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC, the Motor Manufacturer for Aircraft. It is with them with whom BMW reaches an agreement. Aware that they cannot do anything, Volkswagen ends up selling the rights of the spirit of ecstasy, The mythical figure that Rolls-Royce cars look on the front. They count on Motorpasion that fate seems to have changed because on a visit to Mallorca, Piëch’s son asks his father to buy him a reply of a Bugatti Type 57 SC Atlantic. The mandamás is clear, it is time to buy Bugatti, a brand that had fallen in bankruptcy after a first attempt to return his former French aura. With the purchase in 1998, Giorgetto Giugiaro is incorporated, who had directed the design of the Bugatti EB112 in command of Italdesign. In a few months, Bugatti already presents prototypes with the famous W18 devised by Piëch. But it is in September of the year 2000 when the first sketch of the Veyron is finally seen. We talked about the Bugatti EB 16.4 Veyron that left aside the W18 to unite two V8 and thus give life to the very well known W16. The engine, unlike the version with 18 cylinders that was atmospheric, uses four turbocompressors. A few months later, Bugatti confirms a decision that seemed out of science fiction: he would manufacture the car in a limited roll. The figures were unthinkable for the time. The W16 8.0 engine generated 1,001 hp of power, reached 401 km/h peak speed and delivered a 1.250 nm motor torque. To understand the challenge facing Volkswagen in his idea of ​​breaking the barrier of the 400 km/h, the McLaren F1 It had stayed at 386 km/h of peak speed but that record was in force since 1994. We would have to wait until 2005 to see on the street the first Bugatti Veyron that broke, as anticipated, the US speed record Sale in S7 Twin Turbo that record 399 km/h only one year earlier. In the end, A few km/h went above. Ferdinand Piëch managed to fulfill the dream of breaking two barriers. Bugatti Veyron was the first car in Overcome 1,000 hp and the 400 km/h standing speed. It was the beast that the group needed, a car at the height of a brand like Bugatti, hyperluvian, unique and extremely fast. Photos | Bugatti In Xataka | Bugatti Veyron was a jewel that cost 1.7 million dollars: Volkswagen lost 6.7 million with each one that sold

Mercedes broke out for uncovering the anti -petitive pact

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The European Commission has imposed A sanction of 458 million euros to 15 car manufacturers for its involvement in an illegal pact on recycling. Paradoxically, the scandal was uncovered thanks to Mercedes-Benz, who participated in the framework, but when exposing him to European regulators he obtained total immunity. A pact not to compete. According to the commissionthe manufacturers involved agreed two key practices. On the one hand, not paying vehicle dismantlers, starting from the idea that recycling was a profitable enough business to not have to remunerate it. They did it under a strategy that they baptized as “zero treatment cost.” On the other, they agreed not to make public data on the percentage of recyclability of their vehicles or on the amount of recycled materials used in the manufacture of new cars. The objective was to prevent this information from generating competitive pressure between brands or expectations among consumers. The infraction. These practices went against the Directive 2000/53/CE On vehicles out of use, which establishes that the last owner must be able to deliver his car to a drain without any cost. If necessary, it is the manufacturers themselves who must assume that expense, in addition to adequately informing the recycling and reuse data. The detail of the fines imposed by the EU. The highest sanction has been for Volkswagen, with 127.7 million euros. They are followed by Renault/Nissan with 81 million, and Stellantis with almost 75 million. Toyota, BMW, Ford, Hyundai, GM, Suzuki, Mazda and Volvo also appear on the list, with amounts ranging between 1 and 25 million euros. The ACEA (European Association of Automobile Manufacturers) has also been sanctioned, in this case with a fine of 500,000 euros. The investigation concluded that it acted as a facilitator of the Pact, having organized numerous meetings and coordinated contacts between the manufacturers involved. Mercedes-Benz is fought from fines. Although he participated in the illegal agreement, Mercedes-Benz has not been fined. It was the company that went to the commission in 2019 and activated the clemency program, revealing the existence of the cartel and providing key evidence. If he had not done it, he would have faced a penalty of 35 million euros. Stellantis, Mitsubishi and Ford also subsequently collaborated, which allowed them to obtain reductions in their fines under the same procedure. A pact that crossed borders. The European Commission did not act alone. The investigation was coordinated with the United Kingdom competence authority (CMA), which announced additional sanctions for more than 77 million pounds (about 92 million euros). Among those fined by the British competence authority are Ford and Volkswagen. Challenging times. The news does not arrive at the best time for the sector. The European car industry is under pressure, partly because of the accelerated growth of the sector in China, which threatens to change the global balance. To that are added commercial tensions with the United States, which recently announced new vehicle import tariffs. In the words of Teresa Ribera. The Spanish Commissioner who leads the competition efforts in the European Commission has left a forceful statement: “Today we have taken energetic measures against the companies that were conspired to prevent competition in recycling.” Along these lines, he pointed out that they will not tolerate this type of practices. Images | Yunus Yildiz | Sara Kurfeß | Olga Nayda In Xataka | The extension of the MOVES III Plan is bittersweet: 400 million euros for the electric car and the same problems always

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