building

This engineer found 1,351 loose photos in his grandmother’s house. He ended up building a personal Wikipedia of his entire life

by

It all started with a closet full of old loose photos. Last year an engineer named Jeremy visited his grandmother’s house for the first time since the pandemic and unknowingly came across a treasure. 1,351 on paper, without order, without dates and without context. Some were in black and white, from when his grandparents were 20 years old. Others were from his mother as a baby. The last ones were from him in high school, just before smartphones arrived and everything moved to the cloud. What began as a family organization exercise became a fascinating project over the weeks: a personal encyclopedia. A Wikipedia of his own life. First, the physical photos and the grandmother. The first problem he encountered when starting his project is that physical photos do not have EXIF metadata. There is almost never a capture date (although some cameras superimposed it), there are no GPS coordinates and there is no information that allows them to be easily sorted. What Jeremy did was resort to a much more direct solution: sit down with his grandmother and ask her about the photos. Remembering that it is a gerund. In that conversation she rearranged the photos of their wedding and narrated the details while he took notes. Names, places, who was sitting where, what each ritual meant. With those notes, he set up a local instance of MediaWiki, the same software that Wikipedia uses, and wrote a page about the wedding following the same format that was used on Wikipedia to royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011. Within two afternoons I had a complete article with scanned photos, captions, links to empty pages about each person mentioned, and links to the real Wikipedia to give historical context to the events. Digital photos and Claude Code to get the job done. Jeremy realized that things could get worse and took the opportunity to do tests with digital photos, which do have EXIF data with date and time and even GPS coordinates. With that information he wanted to see how far he could go without interviews, so he took 625 photos from a family trip to Coorg (India) in 2012, put them in a folder and opened Claude Code in that directory with a simple instruction: compose a Wikipedia page by browsing the images. The model used ImageMagick to create contact sheets that allowed him to process multiple photos at once, and the magic of AI did the rest. The result was a detailed draft chronicling the trip organized by time of day. Without location data, just with timestamps and visual content, the AI ​​model was able to identify the places that appeared in the photos, including some that Jeremy himself had forgotten. It even detected the means of transportation used between destinations just with what it saw in the images. When AI starts remembering for you. Then came the most ambitious experiment, when he wanted to go further with a trip he took to Mexico City in 2022. He had 291 photos and 343 videos taken with an iPhone 12 Pro with GPS coordinates in the metadata, but he also exported his Google Maps location history, his Uber trips, his banking transactions and his Shazam history. By including all that data and sources, the model was able to cross-reference banking transactions with location data to identify the restaurants where he had eaten. For example, he found images of a soccer match in the photos but did not remember which teams were playing, but he found out that information by crossing those photos with bank transactions in which he found a Ticketmaster invoice with the name of the tournament and the teams, and incorporated them into the page. He also used Shazam’s history to describe the music playing in each location. From photos and memories to a personal encyclopedia. A wonderful project that now anyone can replicate thanks to the whoami.wiki website. First the trips, then the friendships. What started as a travel documentation project evolved into something more personal. The Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp archives contained some 100,000 messages and several thousand voice notes exchanged with close friends over a decade. The AI ​​model managed to convert all this information into a unique biography, identifying vital episodes of the protagonists, then converted into pages that, according to Jeremy, “read as if they were written by someone who knew us both.” When he shared the pages with those friends, they couldn’t stop reading those stories and wanted more. MediaWiki as a master ingredient. One of the most interesting decisions of the project is the choice of software. MediaWiki, Wikipedia’s engine, turned out to be an extraordinarily suitable tool for that use case. AI models understand this perfectly because they have been trained with millions of Wikipedia pages and know their structure and functioning. Discussion pages serve to control the development of those pages, categories group pages by topic, and revision history monitors the evolution of each page. All of this infrastructure already existed, and it was not necessary to create a new platform to organize the information that Jeremy was providing. Surpriseyes. At the end of his story, Jeremy explains that after the process: “I realized that I was no longer alone working on a family history project. What I had been creating, page by page, was a personal encyclopedia. A structured, navigable, interconnected record of my life compiled thanks to the data I already had around me.” Documenting her grandmother’s life revealed things she didn’t know: her years as a single mother or the decisions she had to make, for example. Going through the history of his friendships allowed him to recover moments that he had almost forgotten and made him call some of them to remember them together. “The encyclopedia not only organized the data, it made me pay more attention to the people in my life,” he explained. you can do it too. The project has been so rewarding for him that he … Read more

A Spanish startup is building the map of the Earth that AI needs: Xoople

by

Xoople has closed a Series B round of 130 million dollars led by Nazca Capital and with the participation of MCH Private Equity, CDTI, Buenavista Equity Partners and Endeavor Catalyst. With the financing accumulated so far, 225 million dollars, the Madrid startup presents its candidacy for unicorn and becomes one of the most peculiar bets in the European space ecosystem. Why is it important. More than a round, this capital injection is the validation of a model that almost no one in the startup ecosystem has the stomach to execute: seven years building technology without going to market, without growth metrics to show to investors and with hardly any noise. Xoople has opted to be infrastructure before product, and that places it in a different category than almost any European space startup. The context. The company, founded in 2019 and based in Tres Cantos (Madrid), has developed its own constellation of satellites combined with an AI data processing platform called EarthAI. The goal is to become what its founders call the “Earth system of record” for the era of agentic AI: scientifically accurate geospatial data, ready to train models and feed autonomous workflows in enterprises. The comparison with Google Earth is superficial because what Xoople builds is data infrastructure, not visualization. In detail. He agreement signed with L3Harris Technologiesone of the largest aerospace defense contractors in the United States, is the piece that elevates the proposal. Its sensors, designed with defensive-grade technology and adapted for commercial use, promise to capture a volume of data two orders of magnitude greater than current monitoring systems. Marketing has started this year with clients in preview private between government agencies and companies of the Fortune 500. Between the lines. The investment pattern of this round says as much as the number. The CDTI has been in the capital of Xoople for some time and has it classified as a Strategic Company, the largest investment of your Innvierte program. That Nazca Capital, the most active fund in the Ibero-American ecosystem, leads the Series B together with MCH Private Equity is a sign that private capital already sees in Xoople something more than a technological promise. The milestone must also be read in terms of ecosystem: just a month ago, PLD Space closed 180 million euros of Series C. The Spanish space sector is no longer anecdotal. The big question. Xoople’s model requires its customers to rely on critical data infrastructure built by a startup. In sectors such as defense, climate management or urban infrastructure, this institutional trust threshold is a bottleneck, even more so than technology. The waiting list in preview private that the problem is being resolved. But climbing from a waiting list to long-term contracts with governments and global corporations is the leap he has yet to prove. Featured image | Javier Miranda In Xataka | We have a problem with the future of GPS: $16 billion later, it’s an absolute disaster

If you think that renovating your house is urgent, think about this building in Ukraine. Its hole is so big that it is a danger for Europe

by

He Chernobyl accident released so much radiation that some areas they remain uninhabitable almost four decades later. In fact, the plant continues to house materials capable of remaining dangerous for thousands of years. Therefore, keeping them under control is one of the greatest engineering challenges ever faced in Europe. A challenge that a drone has put to the test. It was to last a century. The story we tell it a few months ago. The gigantic steel arch built over Chernobyl reactor 4 was conceived as a definitive solution to contain the worst nuclear accident in history for at least a hundred years, a colossal structure designed to isolate the ancient “sarcophagus” and buy humanity time. More than 100 meters high and capable of housing entire monuments inside, this system had to resist extreme conditions and allow the safe decommissioning of the reactor, encapsulating hundreds of tons of radioactive material that remain active decades after the disaster. The impact that changed everything. But everything changed in February 2025when a drone attack in the middle of the night pierced that shell seemingly invulnerable, opening a breach in the structure and exposing a system that was never designed to operate in a war environment. Although there were no immediate leaks or casualties, the damage compromised critical functionsespecially ventilation that controls humidity and prevents corrosion, introducing a silent but growing risk that could degrade the structure in a few years. What is still hidden under the steel. Under the damaged arch remains an environment extremely unstable: remains of the reactor, tons of nuclear fuel and melts of highly radioactive materials that continue to react slowly. The old “sarcophagus,” hastily built in 1986, was never structurally reliableand is actually completely dependent on the new cover to maintain the insulation. In other words, if that balance fails, the risk is not immediate, but potentially devastating, with the possibility of release radioactive dust that the wind could disperse throughout Europe. A “reform” as expensive as it is complex. System restore will not be neither quick nor easysince it involves working in conditions of high radiation, with strict limitations on time and exposure for operators. Temporary solutions barely contain the most urgent damage, while full restoration will require rebuilding highly specialized internal layers within a structure designed as a technical “sandwich”. We are talking about an estimated cost that exceeds 500 million of euros, a figure that reflects both the technical complexity and the hostile environment in which repairs must be carried out. The war enters Europe’s greatest nuclear risk. If you like, the incident it is not isolatedbut part of a context in which nuclear infrastructure have become exposed elements within an active conflict. Paradoxically, the Chernobyl exclusion zone that we had to protect from any danger has been the scene of military operationstroop movements and constant overflights of missiles and drones, which multiplies the risk of new impacts, whether accidental or intentional. In that scenario, even a technical failure or trajectory error could trigger consequences continental in scope. A reminder of what never ended. They remembered in a special from the Financial Times this week that, decades after the accident, Chernobyl remains the same latent threat, one that requires constant vigilance and international cooperation, and the drone impact has revealed the fragility of the systems designed to contain it. The infrastructure that was to definitively close the disastrous episode of 1986 now faces a new type of risk, thus demonstrating that nuclear safety depends not only on engineering, but also of geopolitical stabilitya (and common sense). In that delicate balance, each crack is not just a structural failure, but a warning about the limits of our ability to control the consequences of our own creations. Image | EBRD In Xataka | Drones in Ukraine have mutated into a system reminiscent of the Alien universe: an exoskeleton turns troops into super soldiers In Xataka | Iran is exploiting the US’s weak point: it is not its F-35s or its Patriot missiles, it is the bill every time they take off

is building a 2,100 MW mega hydroelectric plant in Tibet

by

China has put the turbo into the energy transition towards renewables and for example, a button: only in 2025 will it install more wind electric capacity that the United States throughout its history. That same milestone but with solar panels He achieved it in 2023. But renewable energies have their problems and one of their critical points is storage: what to do with that surplus on a sunny and/or windy day? The answer normally (if there is no storage system) it’s wasting it. But China is also a specialist in mega-constructions, due to its colossal size, its blazing speed of construction or even for setting up facilities in places as inhospitable as a solar park on the tibetan plateau. If we combine these two ingredients we have the next great Chinese recipe: a mega hydroelectric plant in the middle of the Tibetan plateau. The project. Two years ago, the state-owned Yalong River Hydropower Development Company laid the foundation stone for the future Daofu hydropower plant, in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in Sichuan (southwest China). This plant will have a total installed capacity of 2,100 MW and its infrastructure will consist of two reservoirs, a forced conduction system, an underground plant excavated in the rock and a surface substation. When operational, it will be the highest-altitude pumped hydroelectric power station in the world, surpassing by 700 meters the record-holder, the Yamzho Yumco Lake Pumped Hydroelectric Power Plant in the Xizang Autonomous Region. how to explain Xinhua, China’s official news agency. Why is it important. Fundamentally, because it solves the main bottleneck of renewables. Daofu is integrated into the Yalong River clean energy ecosystem, with a current operational capacity of 21,000 MW between hydro, solar and wind and with plans to reach 78,000 MW in 2035. Without mass storage, a significant part of that energy would be wasted or destabilize the network. On the other hand, it shows that it can be built in extreme conditions and its technical advances will serve to accelerate projects with similar characteristics. Finally, and hand in hand with the global energy transition, China takes a giant step in the global race for storage: it closed 2024 with 58 GW of installed pumping capacity, as the absolute world leader, and plans to overcome 120GW in 2030. Context. The production of renewable energy is becoming increasingly more affordable and simpler thanks to the democratization and evolution of technologies, but the Gordian knot continues to be storage: not wasting energy when more than necessary is produced and, conversely, how to cover demand peaks when there is no wind or sun. Storage is essential for a real energy transition and few countries are interested in it going well like China, which is the largest consumer of energy of the planet and world leader in renewable electricity production. Batteries are a growing solution, but pumped hydroelectric storage remains the technology with the highest cumulative installed capacity in the world and the most convenient to store large volumes of energy for hours. In figures. We have already glimpsed some of the overwhelming data of this mega-construction, but it leaves our jaws open: 2,100 MW of installed power, distributed among six reversible turbine-generators of 350 MW each. A quick comparison: Daofu represents almost 7% of all the wind power installed in the Spanish statebut concentrated in a single installation. 12.6 GWh of daily storage, which according to Xinhua meets the needs of two million households in Sichuan. 3 TWh of electricity generation per year, combining charge and discharge cycles. Between the upper and lower reservoir there is a difference in level of 760.7 meters, according to the construction company PowerChina Chengdu Engineering Corporation. The project investment is 15.1 billion yuan (at current exchange rates, about 1.84 billion euros). What is it like to build at 4,300 meters. At that altitude, the air available to breathe can cause hypoxia (less oxygen available) and temperatures plummet beyond freezing, a challenge for both working personnel and machinery. On the other hand, building in such remote areas represents a logistical challenge in terms of a lack of infrastructure, something to take into account when moving heavy material such as steel or concrete. Or to manufacture it there. As Yu Chuntao, project director of the PowerChina project, explains, to Global Times“The design, construction and manufacturing of electrical equipment for the Daofu project is highly exploratory and challenging” and that the advances made there “will greatly boost the design and manufacturing of pumping station equipment in China.” In Xataka | China needed space to power millions of homes, so it installed 2,934 huge solar panels in the open sea In Xataka | Germany has had a crazy idea to solve one of the problems of renewables: covering a lake with solar panels Cover | CGTN

Building data centers in the Middle East seemed like a great deal. Until Iran arrived

by

A few days ago we said that Iran had attacked two data centers in the United Arab Emirates and one in Bahrain. It is the first deliberate attack on a data center and proof that it has become critical infrastructure at the level of power plants. The question is who thought it was a good idea to build data centers in one of the most unstable areas on the planet. A plan that comes from afar. In a trip to Saudi Arabia last yearTrump was accompanied by an entourage of technological leaders among whom were Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Sam Altman or Sundar Pichai among others. At this meeting, massive investments were announced in the region with the construction of a massive data center complex. However, although it has been strengthened by this administration, the previous one was the one that started the path. In September 2024, Biden met with the leader of the Emirates to seek a strategic alliance that would allow them to develop their AI ecosystem. The reason. What has led technology companies to build in the Middle East is evident: saving. They count in Financial Times that the Gulf countries offered very interesting incentives, such as subsidies and cheaper energy. Furthermore, in this way all the problems they are having at home with the electrical gridpermits and resistance from many communities. The business seemed good. The map of AI in the Middle East. Emirates and Saudi Arabia are the countries with the most data centers, with 57 and 61 facilities respectively, according to Data Center Map. Of all of them, many are from American companies. Amazon alone has nine in the area, including those in the Emirates, Bahrain and also Saudi Arabia. Microsoft has data centers in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and is building one in Saudi Arabia. Oracle, OpenAI and other partners are building a mega data center in Abu Dhabi which they expect to reach 5GW. The damage. Although the Middle East has gained presence on the map of big tech data centers, the concentration of infrastructure is still ridiculous compared to that of the United States itself, which has more than 4,000 installations. All in all, build a data center It’s not exactly cheap. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, said a few months ago that Each gigawatt costs about $50 billion.. The irony. The same leaders who posed for a photo with Trump on that trip now see how their infrastructure is threatened and suffering the consequences of the conflict caused by the president himself. The idea of ​​investing in so much digital infrastructure in an unstable area was not such a good idea. The war against Iran It looks like it’s going to get longer. and nothing prevents Tehran from continuing to attack energy and technological facilities in the region. They were looking to reduce costs and it may end up being expensive, although seeing the projected capex for this yearthey can afford it. Image | Data Center Map (edited) In Xataka | The US is beginning to realize something worrying: AI data centers are skyrocketing its electricity bill

The ugliest and most hated building in Paris is its only skyscraper. Since they cannot demolish it, they have come up with another solution: make it invisible.

by

For more than half a century, the Paris skyline has remained practically frozen. You may not have realized it, but in the historic center practically no building can exceed seven floors. This norm was born after a controversial construction of the seventies that provoked such public rejection that it changed forever the urban rules of the city. Today, that architectural experiment is once again at the center of the debate. And they have found a solution. The tower that should never have existed. In a city famous for its uniform horizon of six or seven-story stone buildings, the dark silhouette of the Montparnasse Tower It has been breaking the visual harmony of Paris for more than 50 years. Inaugurated in 1973 with 59 plants and nearly 210 meters high, the mass was born as a symbol of progress in a capital that was trying to modernize after the post-war period and transform the deteriorated Montparnasse neighborhood into a business district. The project had the political support of President Georges Pompidou and the Minister of Culture André Malraux, and had to demonstrate that the city could hug “the modernity of electricity”, fast trains and telecommunications. However, the result was an enormous monolith of dark brown steel and glass that stood out brutally above the urban fabric of the 19th century, almost immediately becoming the building most hated in the capital. Aging too quickly. As usually happens in hyperbolic projects that do not end well, the problem started even before that the tower was finished. The plan had been conceived in the fifties, but could not be started until the end of the sixties due to lack of technology, money and experience to build a skyscraper of those dimensions in Europe. When it was finally built, its late modernist aesthetic already seemed dated, and its dark color (compared by some critics to a nicotine stain) contrasted violently with classical Parisian architecture. It almost instantly became a crooked line of the capital. The black sheep. The public reaction was so negative that just four years after its inauguration, the City Council prohibited building buildings of more than seven floors in the city center, pushing out the skyscrapers towards the business district of La Défense. Since then, the tower has remained an urban anomaly or, if you will, a reminder to avoid: the only skyscraper in historic Paris. The most repudiated building in the most photographed city. Over the decades, many controversial buildings in Paris ended up being accepted and even lovedfrom the Eiffel Tower itself to the Louvre pyramid or the Pompidou Center. The Montparnasse Tower, on the other hand, never achieved reconcile with the Parisians. Jokes about its presence became part of popular culture: many say that the best view of Paris is from your viewpoint because it is the only place from which the tower cannot be seen. Others describe it as the box in which the Eiffel Tower arrived packaged. Even local politicians have called the building of “urban catastrophe”and for years proposals arose to tear it down completely. However, despite widespread rejection, the skyscraper has also maintained a curious cultural life. For example, the famous “French Spiderman” Alain Robert climbed the towerand has also appeared in movies and continues to attract tourists who climb to its observation platform to contemplate the city. An impossible demolition. You may be thinking about it. If Paris hates its own creation, why the hell hasn’t it been knocked down? As tempting as the idea of ​​removing the tower from the Paris skyline is for many, tearing it down was never an option. a realistic option. The reason? The building still houses offices, has a huge commercial infrastructure at its base and its demolition would involve a gigantic cost in addition to enormous logistical and environmental problems. Even those who would like to see it disappear acknowledge that it would be financially unviable. The tower is too big, too complex and too integrated into the neighborhood to simply erase it from the map. This reality forced the city and the promoters to look for an alternative solution: If the most hated skyscraper in Paris could not be destroyed, we would have to try to transform it. EITHER directly delete it. The solution: make it disappear. From this paradox was born one of the most ambitious urban renewal projects in the city. Because the strategy is not to demolish the Montparnasse Tower, but to radically alter your appearance so that, in essence, it is not “seen” and stops dominating the Parisian horizon. The plan, promoted by a consortium of French architects and accompanied by the remodeling of the surroundings designed by Renzo Pianoaims to replace the dark façade with a kind transparent crystal leather crossed by garden terraces, balconies and vertical gardens that visually fragment the volume of the building. The idea is quite clear: lighten its presence to the point that the gigantic brown block stop imposing yourself about him skyline. A “trick” worth 700 million. The transformation of the tower and the entire urban complex that surrounds it will exceed 700 million of euros and aims to convert a degraded environment (marked by an almost abandoned shopping center and an unwelcoming concrete platform) into an open space with squares, pedestrian walkways, green areas and new connections with the neighborhood. In this way, the tower will retain its structure original plan to reduce carbon emissions during construction, will incorporate more efficient energy technologies and add high-rise gardens and a rooftop greenhouse. The project has been caught for years between political debates, neighborhood concerns and architectural discussions, but the closure of the building to evict the tenants now opens the door to start of works. The strange fate of the Montparnasse mass. In short, more than fifty years after that giddy inauguration, the Montparnasse Tower is still being an anomaly repudiated in the city that banned skyscrapers after their construction. Paradoxically, that same singularity has also turned it into a species of unintentional icon … Read more

If the solution to the housing crisis in Spain is “building taller buildings”, Alcalá de Henares has taken it seriously

by

If you want to solve your residential deficit and stop the upward spiral of prices, Madrid needs housing. tens of thousands of housing, if we trust the calculations carried out by the real estate sector. With that backdrop in the capital (as in other points of the country) has opened a debate: Should we look up? That is to say, if houses are needed and the buildable land is what it is, has the time come? replant the height of buildings, both in established neighborhoods and in new real estate developments? In Alcalá there are those who believe so. In fact, the birthplace of Cervantes has started the countdown to provide one of the tallest skyscrapers in the community, a tower of almost 30 levels. What has happened? That Alcalá de Henares seems to have unblocked an ambitious real estate project that it had been years on the table: a tower that, once completed, will become one of the tallest residential buildings in the Community of Madrid. The news has revealed it the company Ten Brinke, which has partnered with Invesco Real Estate to carry out the operation. Although not many details of the project have been revealed, it is known that the building will be around 30 floors and will exceed the 300 homeswhich will redefine the skyline of the city and will surpass La Garena, an office tower 17 floors and 71.7 m which now dominates the town’s skyline. There are those who now slide that the new construction will be the first residential skyscraper in Alcalá de Henares and one of the few in the Community of Madrid that exceeds 25 heights. What do we know about the project? In the statement In which he announces the “closing of the operation”, Ten Brinke slips a couple of clues about the future property: it will be residential, it will exceed 300 homes and will have 28 levels in total, a sum of 25 floors in height, the ground floor and two underground levels. Furthermore, Ten Brike clarifies that the developers will bet on a “product mix” formula, including family housing, premium apartments and “spaces aimed at modern living.” Regarding deadlines, he states that the works will start “in the coming weeks”, without outlining a delivery schedule. Has anything else transpired? In recent days the Madrid press has pointed out various details to adults, such as that the objective is for the homes to be used for rental marketthat the tower will be around the 80 meters high and that will be located in the Francisco Anton streetnext to the new GAL neighborhood. The SER chain assures that the project has actually been licensed since 2021. A few years ago was announced an ambitious residential development, the Tower (or garden) Cervantes, with buildings 25 stories high. The Idealista portal even reached advertise The apartments, which were offered from 256,000 euros and also stood out for their common areas, with more than 15,000 m2 of gardens and recreational areas that included an outdoor pool. At that time (2024) the idea was to deliver the first keys towards the summer of 2027. Why is it important? Beyond the relevance of the project and its impact on the Complutense skyline, the tower is important because it will inject 300 new homes in a town that has seen how rents and the price per m2 have become more expensive in recent years, in line with the rest of Madrid. According to the Idealista portal, in February the m2 It cost €2,74419.3% more than in the same month last year. Regarding the rent, the m2 It was rented for €13.7which represents an annual increase (February 2025) of about 12%. The municipality has also seen its registry grow in recent years, going from 193,751 registered in 2018 to more than 203,200 residents, according to the tables of the INE. Images | Ten Brinke In Xataka | Madrid is discovering that there is something more controversial than the ‘tazo’ of garbage: where the hell to put a canton of garbage

While everyone looks at Iran, China is building a nuclear “Great Wall”

by

Under the surface of the oceans one of the technological competitions is taking place quieter and more decisive of the planet. The nuclear submarines They can remain submerged for months, travel halfway around the world undetected and launch missiles from thousands of kilometers away. Therefore, each new advance under the sea usually anticipates much bigger changes in the global strategic balance. Washington’s alarm. While much of international attention is focused on the immediate conflicts in the Middle Eastanother much deeper strategic concern is beginning to take shape in Washington. Apparently, the US Navy commanders have warned before Congress that the military balance under the sea is changing rapidly and that China is accelerating a transformation process that could alter the global nuclear deterrent in the coming decades. The underwater race. we have been counting in recent months. China already owns one of the largest submarine fleets in the world and is expanding it at high speed thanks to massive investments in its military shipyards. Production has gone from less than one nuclear submarine a year to significantly higher rateswith forecasts that the fleet will reach around 70 units by the end of this decade and close to 80 by 2035. Although the United States still maintains a technological and operational advantage in submarine warfare, the rapid growth of Chinese industrial capacity is reducing that distance and forcing Washington to rethink the strategic balance in the Pacific. The transition to a nuclear fleet. One of the most important changes is structural. For decades, the Chinese submarine fleet has been based on diesel-electric vessels, which are cheaper, but have less autonomy and must surface frequently. Now Beijing is promoting a strategic shift towards more and more construction focused on nuclear submarinescapable of remaining submerged for long periods and operating at great distances from their bases. This change will allow the Chinese navy to project a presence beyond its immediate environment and complicate US naval operations. in the Pacific and other oceans. The new submarines. The technological leap will come with new generations of submarines that will begin to enter service between the end of this decade and the 1930s. Among them stand out the Type 095 models and, above all, the Type 096designed to transport nuclear ballistic missiles long range. We are talking about equipped boats with JL-4 missilessubmarines that will be able to attack large areas of US territory even operating from waters near China, much more protected by its naval and air defenses. Such a capability would significantly bolster the credibility of China’s nuclear deterrent and reduce the need to patrol more exposed areas of the Pacific. A network to protect the nuclear deterrent. Plus: the Chinese project is not limited to building more submarines. American commanders said that Beijing is developing an extensive sensor network on the seabed, surveillance cables, satellite-connected buoys and unmanned underwater vehicles capable of detecting movements in nearby oceans. This system, described by many analysts as an “underwater Great Wall,” would allow China monitor strategic routestrack foreign submarines, and protect its own nuclear fleet while patrolling in relatively safe waters. The strategic horizon of 2025 and 2040. The result of this transformation should be seen clearly in the next decade. As the number of nuclear submarines grows and this undersea sensor network is deployed, China could greatly expand its underwater presence. beyond the first chain of western Pacific islands. US forecasts suggest that, around 2040Chinese submarines could operate more frequently in the Indian Ocean, the Arctic and even the Atlantic. If this evolution is confirmed, the global naval balance could enter a new phase marked by a fearsome underwater competition between the two greatest powers on the planet. Image | Google Earth, SteKrueBe In Xataka | The US has always been the largest nuclear power on the planet. China has already surpassed it in something: submarines In Xataka | The new fear of Western fleets is not nuclear. They are conventional submarines armed with surprise and a flag: China

Sam Altman says he’s terrified of a world where AI companies believe themselves to be more powerful than the government. It’s just what you’re building

by

Sam Altman sat down over the weekend before his audience at X to answer questions about the agreement that OpenAI has just signed with the United States War Department. What came out of that session was a beautiful involuntary x-ray of the biggest contradiction in the sector at the moment. Why is it important. The CEO of OpenAI said he is terrified of “a world where AI companies act as if they have more power than the government.” The phrase sounds good, it is marketinian and seeks to elevate OpenAI’s position as a powerful but very responsible and honest group. The problem is the context in which he pronounces it: hours before OpenAI signed that agreement, The US government labeled Anthropic, its direct rival, a “supply chain risk” for refusing to sign under those same conditions. Altman went to put out the fire just as someone accused him of setting it. Between the lines. Altman’s speech rests on a premise that must be monitored: that a democratically elected government must always prevail over unelected private companies. It is a philosophically reasonable position, but he applies it selectively. Altman acknowledged that the deal “was rushed and the picture is not good,” and that OpenAI moved quickly to “de-escalate” tension between the Pentagon and industry. In other words, your company made a unilateral strategic decision about how the entire AI industry should relate to the military establishment. That doesn’t exactly sound like institutional deference. The contrast. Anthropic opted for something different: requiring explicit safeguards against the use of its AI for mass surveillance or autonomous weapons. But the government penalized her. OpenAI accepted a more ambiguous formula (“for all legal uses”) and won the contract. Various OpenAI employees signed a letter supporting Anthropic’s position. Claude became the most downloaded free application in the App Store that weekend from Apple, precisely surpassing ChatGPT. The market also has opinions. Yes, but. It’s fair to admit that Altman’s position has some internal logic: If AI is going to be integrated into military systems anyway, it may be preferable that it do so under negotiated conditions rather than under coercion. And he’s right about one thing: The labeling of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, a tool intended for hostile foreign suppliers, applied to an American AI security company is, in his own words, “an extremely frightening precedent.” The big question. Who really decides how AI is used in military contexts? The companies that build it, the governments that hire it, or the engineers who design it and who are increasingly organized to influence those decisions? Altman says he believes in the democratic process. But OpenAI negotiated privately, signed privately, and made only a fraction of the contract public. Democratic transparency starts there. In Xataka | Anthropic has become the Apple of our era and OpenAI our Microsoft: a story of love and hate Featured image | Xataka

Meta was building its AI chips to not be dependent on NVIDIA. Has ended up surrendering to the evidence

by

Meta faces a crucial year. While its competitors were laying the foundations for AI, Meta was burning money in the metaverse. That, along with a totally different approach to what Google or OpenAI were doing with AI, caused Zuckerberg’s company to pass a few years in the gutter. After reorganizing the house and sign the AI ​​A-TeamMeta was preparing so much a great model as new own chips for training. The thing… hasn’t turned out as expected. MTIA. Within the different Meta teams focused on artificial intelligence, there is one known as MTIA. It comes from ‘Meta Training and Inference Accelerator’ and its objective was research and design own chips training for artificial intelligence. Having your own chip makes all the sense in the world, since it is designed based on the needs you have. They have another advantage: you are not dependent on anyone else. If NVIDIA doesn’t have enough chips, it doesn’t matter because you have yours and can continue scaling data center systems (and those of Meta are immense) to continue the training and inference tasks. Meta was not going to be in charge of manufacturing, something that the highly reputable TSMCbut the program got off to a bad start. This is very difficult. Reuters He already mentioned it last year. After testing his first in-house developed training chip, Meta realized that things were not going well. It was underperforming what they expected, and it was also worse than the competition. They did not throw away the chips, but instead referred them to other systems (such as those for recommending Facebook and Instagram based on algorithms). The problem is that the performance of the training chip, the one really important for the AI ​​career, was not enough. Strategy change. In The Information They echo a statement from Meta stating that the company remains committed “to investing in different silicon options to meet our needs, which includes the advancement of our MTIA division” and they urge us to remain attentive to news that will be shared throughout this year. However, in the same medium it is noted that Meta has greatly lowered its expectations with its chips. The idea was to have two chips. On the one hand, Iris, a single instruction training chip that is easy to design, but from which it is difficult to extract all the juice in these training tasks. artificial intelligence training. On the other hand, Olympus, a chip that would be completed towards the end of this year and that would be the central part of Meta’s training clusters. According to The Information, there were many internal doubts about the stability of Olympus, its intricate design and profitability, so they have left it in the drawer to focus on more “simpler” chips. The evidence. In the end, if you can’t beat your “enemy”, join him. The sources consulted by The Information point out that, in addition to other complications, the training software was not as stable as what alternatives such as those from NVIDIA offer. And all of this has ended up causing two multimillion-dollar agreements. In a period of just a few days, Meta signed agreements with both AMD and NVIDIA so that both can supply them with chips to train the AI. It’s a win-win for everyone because Meta receives what he needs, NVIDIA has another client on a list it dominates and AMD continues to make a name for itself in the sector thanks to agreements like this one or the one they signed last year with OpenAI. In addition, Meta secures several sources so as not to depend only on one company. In fact, it is also estimated that they have signed an agreement to rent TPU units from Google. The competition. Meta’s objective, therefore, is to diversify its portfolio of AI chip suppliers as much as possible while continuing to investigate its own chips of which, supposedly, we will learn details later. They may continue investigating Olympus or a variant or decide on another approach. Because what is clear is that they must develop something ‘own’. NVIDIA and AMD are suppliers, not competitors as such. The real competition is OpenAI, X and Google, and the last two have their factories at full capacity. Google with its TPUsprocessors designed exclusively for AI, and xAI with its own chips that they abandoned and picked up more recently. Objective: dethrone NVIDIA. And all this occurs in a world in which everyone is ‘friends’, but enemies at the same time. I already say that NVIDIA is a hardware supplier, but they practically control the AI ​​​​computing market and are moving both in hardware and software. It is logical that other companies are investigating alternatives to boost their own AI. Added to the list is an Amazon that is also manufacturing some chips called Trainium3 UltraServer and OpenAI with its agreement with Broadcom to manufacture chips. It is, as I say, a curious scenario: everyone needs each other, and there is the “circular economy” of AI, but at the same time everyone wants to be independent. The problem is that NVIDIA has a huge advantage in this and has both the technology and the contracts with memory companies… and the contacts with which it ends up manufacturing the best chips: TSMC. In Xataka | Trump ordered the Pentagon to stop using Claude for being a “Woke AI.” Right after he bombed Iran using Claude

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

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

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

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