burning

Europe enjoys the cleanest skies in half a century. And that’s one of the reasons why this summer is burning up.

by

This is not another article about heat. It’s July: we all know it’s hot. However, there is a reason behind these high temperatures that we do not usually discuss and, for many people, is very surprising: that the skies over Europe are much cleaner than they have been in the last half century. As the popularizer Jorge Alcalde explained In COPE, the rise in temperatures in Europe is accelerating “at a rate of 0.56 degrees per decade since the 1990s, almost double the global average of 0.27 degrees.” And this is interesting because, “although the climate is warming globally, it is crucial to understand why some regions like Europe are more affected.” In that sense, Mayor pointed out that “sending less pollution into the atmosphere contributes to the increase in temperatures on the continent, there is a greater amount of solar radiation that impacts the ground.” It’s not that the air generates heat, of course. It is that the particles that we release when burning fossil fuels (especially sulfur sulfates) reflect sunlight and make the clouds whiter. That is, they cool. The data is crystal clear: in a series of the northeast of the peninsula, in Gironasolar radiation reaching the ground has increased by about 2.5 W/m² per decade since the late 1980s, especially in summer. And that is largely due. wing improvement of regulation against polluting aerosols. It is not the only thing that cools, it is not even the main cause. Copernicus attributes it to several things at the same time: atmospheric circulation, less snow that reflects light, the proximity to the Arctic, the drop in pollution and, of course, greenhouse gases (which They alone explain half of the increase in European heat waves). However, it is one of the most striking. And it is important to explain it well… because stated like this it may seem that the reduction of pollutants is warming the climate in Europe and that is not the case. What the pollution did was hide that warming. The conditions behind the rise in temperatures were there, it’s just that the sulfur didn’t let us see them. We were cooler, but the cost of that was paid by our lungs. We must not forget that Lowering fine particles to the levels recommended by the WHO would prevent around 182,000 premature deaths per year in the EU alone. Furthermore, while aerosols last a few days in the atmosphere, CO2 lasts for centuries. We were covering up a huge problem that was very difficult to solve. Dirty the world again. I insist on this idea because when the effect was discovered in the Atlanticmany proposed intervene again in the atmosphere to lower the temperature. The problem is that, as we can see, this doesn’t solve anything. Clean air is the first good news and, at the same time, what forces us to look squarely at the second: how much we have already warmed up. Image | Chris LeBoutillier In Xataka: The waters of the oceans are not only rising in temperature. They are also starting to change color

Spain is burning and its nuclear power plants notice it. This is your strategy to endure

by

Spain is sweating again. extreme temperatures At the end of June, alarm bells have gone off in a good part of the country, and the Spanish nuclear park, responsible for about 20% of electricity what we consume, is not alien to this phenomenon. However, it is worth clarifying something from the beginning: whether a plant reduces its power or stops during a heat wave has nothing to do with a security failure. The seven nuclear reactors in operation in Spain (Almaraz I and II, Ascó I and II, Cofrentes, Trillo and Vandellós II) have been dealing with demanding summers for several decades, and their cooling systems were designed precisely with scenarios like this in mind. The Nuclear Safety Council publishes in real time the operational status of each plant, so anyone can check how they are responding. The key is in the external cooling circuitresponsible for evacuating the heat dissipated by the electricity generation process into the environment. In pressurized water plants, such as Almaraz, Ascó and Vandellós II, this circuit is the third in the installation, independent of the primary (which surrounds the core) and the secondary (which moves the turbine). Cofrentes, the only Spanish plant with a boiling water reactor, has a different architecture, a direct cycle, but it also depends on that same external circuit to cool the condenser. And this is where each plant plays its own cards depending on its geographical location. Three ways to beat the heat Ascó I and II, Cofrentes and Trillo are fed by river water, but they do not return it directly to the riverbed after using it. First, it passes by the cooling towers, those structures more than 160 meters high that we have described so many times when explaining the internal workings of a nuclear power plantand that dissipate heat into the air by convection and evaporation before any pouring. This drastically reduces the amount of water they need to extract from the river, up to twenty or thirty times less than if they did not have that tower. The sea has a thermal stability much greater than that of a river Almaraz represents a particular case because it does not depend on the flow of a natural river. It uses the artificial Arrocampo reservoir, conceived as a closed system that acts as a large heat exchanger. This independence of the river regime allows it continue operating normally even when temperatures soar, something especially relevant in a plant that will be the first to shut down: Almaraz I will close in November 2027 according to the current government calendar. Vandellós II draws on another resource: the water of the Mediterranean. The sea has a thermal stability much greater than that of a river, so it absorbs heat without its temperature rising appreciably. And, what’s more, it varies much less during heat waves. It is the same thermodynamic logic that explains why so many power plants in the world, from those that are cooled with seawater to those that use closed circuits like the one in Almaraz, prioritize the thermal stability of the cold source over any other consideration. When safety forces you to stop What can happen, and in fact happens quite frequently during the strictest summers, is that a nuclear power plant reduces its power or stops temporarily. The reason is not to protect the reactor, but the aquatic ecosystem. And the regulations limit the temperature at which water can be returned to a river or the sea, and if these limits are close to being exceeded, the facility prefers to slow down rather than breach them. It is an environmental decision, not a safety emergency. Meanwhile, the clock of the Spanish nuclear blackout continues to tick in parallel to these episodes of extreme heat. The current calendar starts in 2027 with Almaraz I, followed by Almaraz II in 2028. In 2030 it will be the turn of Ascó I and Cofrentes; Ascó II will close in 2032; and The process will be closed in 2035 with Vandellós II and Trillo, the last two plants to go out. Until then, each summer will be another test of resistance for a park that continues to provide a fifth of the national electricity. Image | Nuclear Forum More information | Nuclear Forum In Xataka | SMR reactors are going to make the never seen a reality: the first floating nuclear power plants

one with drones, missiles and ships burning

by

In the 1980s, during the conflict between Iran and Iraq, an American oil tanker was sailing through the Persian Gulf when a missile hit against his helmet without warning. For hours, the crew struggled to maintain control of the ship as it burned in the middle of one of the most strategic shipping routes on the planet, leaving a scene that surprised many analysts: even in apparently “protected” corridors, a single unexpected attack was enough to turn commercial transit into an high risk operation. The plan and the beginning of a new phase. It we counted yesterday. The United States launched an operation to free the ships trapped in the Strait of Hormuz, and did so by creating a kind of “safe” corridor without escort but under dense military cover that includes destroyers, aircraft carriers, more than 100 aircraft and thousands of troops, with the intention of reestablishing the commercial flow without resorting to direct escorts. The initiative sought to unblock a situation that keeps tens of thousands of sailors Nearly 1,000 paralyzed ships have already been detained, in a context where Washington is trying to balance military pressure and diplomatic output, while presenting the operation as defensive and coordinated with the maritime industry to encourage gradual transit through the area. The Iranian response. Iran has reacted immediate and calculatedunfolding a combination of drones, cruise missiles and attacks with speedboats that turn each transit attempt into an episode of maximum tension. In this case it is not a classic head-on collision, but rather a strategy designed to wear out, intimidate and complicate the American operation without necessarily crossing the threshold of total war. In this way, every movement in the strait is answered with distributed threats that force defensive systems to be activated continuously, generating a feeling of constant vulnerability even under the most sophisticated military umbrella. A strait turned into a geographical and tactical trap. As since the beginning of the war, the physical environment of Hormuz multiplies the dangerwith reduced distances that shorten the reaction time of anti-missile systems and an extensive coast from which attacks can be launched almost without warning. Hidden positions, drones at different levels, naval mines and light craft create an ecosystem multi-threat which calls into question the ability of any force to completely control the area. In this scenario, even advanced platforms face a critical challenge– Respond in seconds to simultaneous attacks coming from land, sea and air. The United Arab Emirates enters the line of fire. The crisis has ended up spilling directly to the United Arab Emirateswhich have suffered attacks with missiles and drones supposedly launched from Iranian territory against ships and strategic areas close to their ports. Emirati air defenses have reportedly intercepted multiple projectiles, although some incidents have led to boat fires and limited damage, raising the tension in one of the main energy hubs of the region. There is no doubt, this front expands the conflict beyond the strait and confirms that Iranian pressure is not limited to maritime traffic, but also seeks to impact key infrastructure to increase the political and economic cost of the US operation. The key role of helicopters and layered defense. Faced with this form of war, the United States has resorted to flexible tools like attack helicopters Apache and Seahawk, capable of detecting and neutralizing fast threats such as Iranian boats (Washington claims to have sunk six in the last few hours) before they approach commercial vessels. These assets are integrated into a layered defense which includes electronic warfare, aerial surveillance and interception systems, creating a dynamic shield that has already proven effective by shooting down drones and missiles on multiple occasions. That being said, this defense does not eliminate the riskbut manages it, maintaining constant pressure on the deployed forces. Trump between containment and escalation. On the political level, Donald Trump moves in a delicate balance between responding forcefully to Iranian provocations and avoiding an escalation that leads to open conflict. counted the wall street journal that the US president’s strategy at this time combines demonstrations of power with attempts to keep diplomatic channels open, while receiving internal pressure to act more forcefully. This ambiguity reflects the difficulty to manage a crisis in which every decision can tip the balance towards a broader war or an uncertain negotiation. A pulse that redefines the control of global trade. Beyond the immediate confrontationwhat is at stake is the effective control of one of the most important trade routes in the world, where Iran has shown that it can block or make more expensive transit without the need for a conventional fleet, while the United States tries to impose an indirect protection model that depends on the trust of shipping companies and third countries. The result is diametrically opposite to “plan A” ship release, with an unstable balance in which there are now burned and sunken ships, explosions and constant attacks coexist with attempts to normalize traffic, reflecting that new reality in which maritime warfare is no longer decided only by the large fleets of yesteryear, but by the ability to saturate, intimidate and sustain pressure at a critical point on the global map. Image | USN In Xataka | The strangest plan of the war is ready: guide the 1,000 ships trapped in Hormuz hoping that no one will shoot In Xataka | After gasoline, the war in Iran is about to skyrocket the price of something just as painful: your Zara clothes

The world has an insoluble problem with coal. China has found the solution and it does not involve burning it

by

Decades ago, the world embarked on the decarbonization race. Each country has gone at a pace with nuclear, but gas, hydrogen research and the rise of renewables They aimed to be the impetus to close coal plants. That’s when artificial intelligence arrived and turned the plan upside down. The data centers They need a lot of electricity and, at peak computing, the demand is for immediate energy. This is where coal burning comes in, but in China they believe they have found a solution to avoid definitively bury the coal. Extract energy without burning it. ZC-DCFC. That is the not-so-friendly name that a team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shenzhen University has used. baptized what they call as zero carbon direct carbon fuel cell. The group, led by Xie Heping, has been since 2018 developing This concept is not so much a new way of using coal as a primary energy element, but rather a technique to exploit reserves in deep mines. How it works. To achieve this, carbon is pulverized, purified and introduced into the anode chamber of a fuel cell. On the other hand, oxygen is introduced through the cathode, which causes a reaction in the carbon: an electrochemical oxidation. This process generates electricity directly without combustion, without turbines and without emissions. According to those responsible, the efficiency in energy generation is notably greater than that obtained in conventional energy generation with coal and another advantage is that the system is silent, which also solves the problem of noise pollution that comes with the use of coal. Solving the big problem. The ZC-DCFC also works without CO2 emissions because the high-purity carbon dioxide generated at the anode outlet is captured on site and converted by catalysis into chemical feedstocks such as syngas or compounds such as sodium bicarbonate. But the system has not been made thinking about processing coal in a better way. For that we already have the response in the form of renewables and the green hydrogen. What Xie Heping’s team is creating is a solution to the big problem of harnessing coal from deep underground deposits. not so fast. The idea is to create systems that generate electricity, directly, in the depths of these mines. This way there is no need to launch the very expensive industrial network to bring the coal to the surface and then process it. Electricity would be generated two kilometers deep and it is that energy that is directly transmitted to the surface. Now, they have been investigating since 2018 and are already testing it, but although the project is framed within China’s great plan for the Deep Exploration of Earth and Mineral Resources, there is still a long way to go. This is a long-term plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 and it is already point that these carbon cells are unlikely to come into operation on a large scale before 2045. Either way, if it makes sense for anyone to research alternatives to coal using coal, it’s… China. Despite being the power of renewables and be on top of the nuclear raceit is estimated that 60% of the nation’s electricity comes from coal. They have enormous reserves and somehow they have to be used. Image | Ministry of Energy of Chile In Xataka | To survive the end of oil, China has resurrected an old German technology from World War II: turning coal into plastic

We have solved the problem of space junk by burning it. A SpaceX lithium trail just proved to be a terrible idea

by

For decades, the aerospace industry has had a consensus solution to the problem of space junk: burn it. A fairly simple phenomenon that is based on the satellite reentry when it ends its useful life in the atmosphere so that it begins to suffer friction and completely disintegrates. But the reality is that we are facing a huge problemsince physics reminds us that matter is neither created nor destroyed. We have captured him. Science is realizing that we are not removing space junk, we are just vaporizing it into metallic aerosols that are changing the chemistry of our own sky. And the definitive clue to this problem was found on the night of February 19, 2025where a team of German researchers pointed a laser into the sky over Kühlungsborn. What they detected in this case at about 100 kilometers altitude, in the thermosphere, was something that should not be there, since there were large amounts of lithium. And it wasn’t there for no reason, since it just coincided hours before with the re-entry of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket which had disintegrated over the Atlantic between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Something new. The signal measured in this case was not very subtle, since was 10 times bigger to the usual concentration in that region, and this finding was collected in an article because it marks a great milestone: it is the first time that the metallic contamination released from a specific piece of space junk at the exact moment of burning has been observed “live” and from Earth. The metallic iceberg. The incident with this Falcon is not something isolated in our society, but is a symptom of the structural change we are experiencing. In 2023, a team of researchers already used different devices to be able analyze more than 50,000 aerosol particles in the stratospherewhich is the layer where our ozone layer resides, at about 15-30 km altitude. What did they see? Historically, the metals found in the stratosphere came from meteorites that entered our planet. But today it is estimated that 210 tons of aluminum per year in the atmosphere comes from the disintegration of satellites and rockets, compared to the 20 tons per year that vaporize naturally from meteors. But lithium is not the only metal in the atmosphere of our planet, since scientists have detected more than twenty elements, among which aluminum, copper, lead or silver stand out… This is something that does not fit with the normal composition of meteorites, but it does coincide with the materials that different aerospace companies use to create their rockets and satellites. There is no planning. The pace of launches has skyrocketed in recent years, and if today we are close to 10,000 objects orbiting the Earth, we have to know that only Starlink aspires to have more than 40,000 satellites in Earth orbit low. But the problem is that the useful life of these devices is short, so their inevitable fate is to end up vaporized over our heads. Its effects. Science here is quite clear that the effects of filling the stratosphere with these metals are currently unknown. But the projections suggest that we should not be calm because elements such as aluminum and copper are important catabolizers that can affect the delicate ozone layer. In addition to this, metallic particles can act as special condensation nuclei, altering the microphysics of polar stratospheric clouds. And if that were not enough, adding anthropogenic material to sulfuric acid aerosols changes their size and ability to scatter sunlight. Ironically, we are altering the reflectivity of the stratosphere, the same layer that some scientists want to use for climate geoengineering, without knowing what the consequences will be. The planetary limit. The models here suggest that, if the planned megaconstellations materialize, the fraction of stratospheric particles contaminated with aluminum from satellites will rise from the current 10% to around 50%. In other words, the load of metals in the stratosphere could grow by around 40% compared to natural levels. Here for years space agencies have assumed that disintegrating satellites was a completely harmless and clean practice. The example of the Falcon 9, which has validated the warnings of the scientific community, shows us that the Earth’s orbit and our atmosphere make up a connected ecosystem. In this way, launching tens of thousands of objects into space and then burning them on our own roof may be a solution to keep space clean, but we are dirtying the sky in return. In Xataka | Spain and Portugal have joined forces to launch satellites with a mission: to monitor catastrophes in real time

A few years ago, manufacturers fought for the most powerful mobile phone. Now they fight so they don’t go out burning

by

Not too long ago, Samsung and Apple were trying to convince us of something: the titanium It was the best material for a high-end mobile phone. As a user of both the latest Galaxy and the previous iPhone, I have to say that I agreed: we were never looking at mobile phones more resistant to shockschips and all kinds of everyday accidents. With the iPhone 17 ProApple backtracked to return to aluminum. With the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultrathe Korean company follows the same path. What is happening? Aluminum is back, and everything indicates that it is here to stay. One of the main advantages that titanium promised over aluminum was to promise greater resistance, something that is being demonstrated the drama of the new iPhone 17 Pro and its premature wear compared to previous models. Despite this, companies are returning to aluminum. There is something that both the new Galaxy S26 Ultra and the iPhone 17 Pro Max share: they both have the largest dissipation systems ever built in their families. A titanic effort (to the point of completely redesigning the chassis in the case of the iPhone) to prevent mobile phones from burning in the hand. And there is a key point in this party: we want more and more powerful phones, but someone has to cool them down. Producing mobile phones in titanium is also more expensive, and given the current component crisiswith the RAM shot and internal memories the same wayone of the few cuts that can be made without affecting the overall phone experience is changing the material used. The question about whether we need more power or not, a few years ago, was answered with a resounding “yes.” But for some time now we are not so clear. With configurations of 12 and 16 GB of RAM, and processors that are more powerful than some desktop chips, our smartphones have been increasing power for years without determining too much. Why do we need these new limits?. AI requires RAM and not so much raw power (at least, in the use given to a phone), mobile games are already bordering on the quality of triple AAA console games, and improvements in camera come more through the redesign of algorithms and not so much through increasingly powerful IPS (image chips). In Xataka | Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, S26+ and S26, first impressions: a broken heart in an unprecedented commitment to AI Image | Xataka

The FBI thought that burning the methamphetamine they had requisition was a good idea. They sent fourteen people to the hospital

by

If you have ever wondered what the police do with the drugs they requisition, surely the Montana Police method, in the United States, does not leave you indifferent. The last stash they have destroyed has made fourteen people have to be treated emergency and has forced to transfer more than 75 animals. What happened. They tell it in Associated Press. The event occurred in an animal shelter in Billings, Montana. The installation has an incinerator for animal corpses, which the authorities occasionally use to destroy illegal substances. In this case it was almost 1kg of methamphetamine. The problem was that, at the beginning of combustion, instead of leaving the extractor, the smoke began to fill the building. They should have had a fan by hand to avoid it, but nobody found it. It is also believed that they did not use the right temperature since, if he had done it, the toxins would have burned and would not have had major consequences. Consequences. Fourteen workers from Yellowstone Valley Animal Shelter had to be treated at the hospital after inhaling smoke. The director of the refuge assured Associated Press that employees did not know that the incinerator was used for such purposes and did not give importance to smoke. Among the symptoms they presented had headaches, throat pain, cough and dizziness. They were not the only ones affected, the animals that were in the shelter also inhaled the smoke. At least 75 dogs and cats had to be transferred to reception houses. Fortunately there was no regret victims. Other cases. It is not the first time that drug burning has consequences of this type. In April of this year, Lice Police, in Türkiye, burned 20 tons of marijuanacausing dizziness, nausea and even hallucinations in some of the inhabitants. In 2015 Something very similar happened in Palmerah, Indonesia. How is it done in Spain. It is also incinerated, but more controlled through concessions with waste elimination companies. According to the independent, In 2022 Spain spent 300,000 euros a year on the destruction of shells on two floors that were in Asturias and Toledo. The Grande-Marlaska Minister did not see viable the construction of a specific incinerator for this because it would mean an even greater cost. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | A tooth has revealed the beginning of one of the oldest practices of the human being: when we begin to consume drugs

Three years after the Fiasco del Metaverso, Zuckerberg has another burning nail for the goal: digital glasses

by

Mark Zuckerberg believes that in 2030 we will not get the smartphone out of his pocket because We will do almost everything from the glasses. That is his particular new obsession, and he has all the meaning of the world because Meta is in a delicate position. And if one It is cornered In the future that does not control, better create one that can control. Glasses, glasses and more glasses. The presentation this week of the promising Goal Ray-Ban Display and his small sisters (Ray-Ban Meta (Gen 2) and Oakley Meta Vanguard) It is a clear message to the world. Zuckerberg He sees us all Taking glasses in the future, and the new options of their connected glasses are precisely aimed not only to make them more with them, but to get more and more forget about the device that has governed our life for two decades: the smartphone. An event to redraw the target of Meta. In the presentation event of the Zuckerberg glasses, he also confirmed that new silent transformation of his company, which first focused on social networks and then bet on everything to the Metaverso. Now the proposal is different and Zuckerberg made it clear in the event saying the following: “Our goal is to create glasses with an attractive design that offer personal superintelligence and a sense of presence through realistic holograms. The combination of these ideas is what we call” metaverso. “ Metaverso V2.0. Suddenly the metaverse now is different from that before. In that metaverso that seemed A bad copy of Wii Sports We have moved to another in which virtual reality is totally displaced. Four years ago, when Facebook changed its name by goal, there was not even talk of artificial intelligence as part of that platform. Now it is a fundamental part, logically. Metaverso 1.0 – who is careful, is still alive and Also losing money– It has remained In the background. Killing smartphone is going to be (very) difficult. Of course, we will need a device in which to be able to do all those things that Zuckerberg proposes, now the candidate is in many cases the mobile. If not as the center of experience, yes as an important element. Will the smartphone give prominence to the glasses or other hardware products? It seems difficultbut of course both goal and others – Hello, OpenAI+Jony Ive– They are willing to achieve that goal. It is normal: if they achieve it, they can control something they have ever managed to control: the hardware. But. If something has characterized Mark Zuckerberg it is his ease to change focus. After the success of Facebook later seemed to focus much more on WhatsApp Supervitaminar –Do you remember Libra?– Or Instagram. Then, of course, his obsession with metoverso would arrive, and more recently With superintelligence and AI glasses. If there is a new technological fever, the Facebook founder usually goes for it. What will be next? And it will have a lot of competition. It is not that Zuckeberg achieves that we use the glasses more than the phone: no one is going to let it do it alone. Google works tirelessly on Android XR and has already shown us that you will have products in this segment, and Apple also seems convinced that the shots will go here. Not to mention Amazon or – major words – of Chinese manufacturers. All of them are going to put it very difficult at the finish line, but one thing is true: if they manage to move the mobile focus on the glasses, there at least they will predictably have part of the cake. Image | Goal In Xataka | The new finish lines will allow to cross a line: seem present while you are completely absent

The US has bought 10% of Intel to save it from burning, and that plans a huge problem. One called favoritism

by

Intel has agreed to sell 10% of your company to the United States for a value of 8,900 million dollars. An interventionist measure is thus confirmed that has huge implications not only for Intel, but for the entire semiconductor industry. Above all, the American. Historical crisis. The Historical crisis that Intel is going without resolving. And his new CEO, Lip-bu Tanalready I recognized A few weeks ago, “twenty or thirty years ago we were leaders. Now the world has changed. We are not among the ten main semiconductor companies.” The mass layoffs and the decision of Bet everything to lithography 18a –No 20th node– They raised a complicated future for the company, which needs maneuvering margin. He has just obtained it, but we don’t know at what price. Or maybe yes. The agreement. According to indicate in IntelUnited States will invest 8,900 million dollars in company shares, and that adds to the 2.2 billion dollars that the US government paid to the company as part of the Chips and Science Acta federal program that was approved in 2022 and is intended to invest billions of dollars to relive the country’s semiconductor industry. Intel was too big to fall. He Moment of weakness It is still worrying, but there have been two recent “bailouts.” The first, by the Investment of 2 billion dollars of softbank In the company. The second, much more important, the one that has just signed the US government with the purchase of 10% of Intel for 8,900 million dollars. This measure is especially striking for several reasons. For a start, is the first time that the US government intervenes a company since the rescue of the car industry was produced during the 2008 crisis. But there are more implications. Potential loss of autonomy. The agreement is only economic and there will be no official representation of the US government in the Board of Directors of Intel. However, political pressure will now be seen without a doubt increased, and each business decision of Lip-Bu Tan and its team will be seen through a different prism: there is public money at stake. Desperate times, desperate measures? Another perspectives from which this agreement can be contemplated is that of despair. Accepting this governmental “rescue” can be seen as a clear indication that Intel was against the ropes and there was no escape without any movement of this type. For Lip-Bu this can represent a problem for confidence in his leadership now that he has just taken command, and in fact the American senator Tom Cotton He accused him to invest in 600 Chinese companies. President Trump He came to ask for his resignation In Truth Social and then end up meeting him and congratulating him for its management. A logical agreement for Trump’s roadmap. The US president began his mandate with the clear intention of centralize semiconductor production to the maximum and electronics products. This protectionism is closely linked to this decision, and allows to protect Intel in addition to mitigating the dependence of Taiwan and the Chips import and technology From China. The Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, Indian That the agreement is especially beneficial for the US government, pointing out that they were basically giving money to companies through subsidies, but here what the US achieves is to raise that subsidy as an investment. It is not “lost” money. It is not clear that since the money comes from the ACT chips, the US government is allowed to end up obtaining benefits of such “investment.” Favoritism. This politicization of the semiconductor business could end up causing uncomfortable alliances and distorting competition. Now that all kinds of government agencies may have much more inclination to buy Intel chips in the future, while direct competitors such as Apple, AMD, NVIDIA or Qualcomm are harmed before a landscape of government favoritism. Intel, we insist, perhaps it was too big and iconic to drop it, but this intervention raises a change in the rules of the game that affects both Intel and its national competitors and, of course, foreigners. Image | Intel | Gage Skidmore In Xataka | Intel’s plan in front of an unattainable TSMC: beat Samsung and consolidate as the second largest chips manufacturer

Google, Amazon and Microsoft have been burning absurd amounts of money in Ia for years. Finally they begin to see green sprouts

by

The AI boom made Big Tech will increase their capital spending to limits that had never been seen. The fear that The bubble will explode Rondaba, investors They started to get nervous and the profitability of AI remains in doubt. The last results are a green outbreak, the first in a long time, although with many buts. The cloud reaches capex. They tell it in The Information. Capital or Capex expenses of the Big Tech in recent years have climbed unstoppable, much faster than their income, but in the results of the last quarter the gap is finally closing, but not because chatbots and other products are being profitable, but thanks to revenue from cloud services. The crazy one is committed to AI is beginning to show a slight green outbreak, even if it is not directly because of AI products. Income from cloud services are approaching capital spending. Source: The Information (click on the image to access X) The four riders. There are two clear winners of the departure, one that already brought the duties done and one that goes free. Let’s see who is who: Microsoft: The clear winner with a Income increase of 25% In the last quarter, mainly thanks to the growth of Microsoft Azure. Google: Record a 20% increase In your income thanks to Google Cloud and advertising. Amazon: falls 7%but it is the only one that was in positive numbers. Amazon Web Services is the largest provider of cloud services and was already profitable, although its growth is beginning to slow down. Goal: Your income grows 22%but they basically come from advertising. Goal does not sell cloud services, so it does not generate income directly. Indirectly, yes: AI has allowed them Improve the efficiency of your advertising business. Burning money. The increase in capex by AI has reached madness figures that had never been seen in other technological booms. By the end of 2024 we talked about investing a real barbarity In data centers: Microsoft 30,000 million, Goal 35,000 million, Google 25,000 million… The dizziness figures, and have not stopped increasing. Amazon said at the beginning of the year that He wanted to spend 100,000 million in data centers for AI and goal is building several data centers whose combined cost could rise to 200,000 million dollars. Skepticism. This excessive spending frenzy soon unleashed a wave of skepticism. AND If AI is another bubble And is it about to explode? Milmillionaire investments are not translating in income. Even Satya Nadella himself, one of the protagonists of this revolution, was skeptical because At the moment no one is making gold with AI. It is not that they are not making gold, it is that nobody is earning money. In their newsletter, Ed Zitron had accounts And the difference between what is expected to spend in 2025 and the return that is giving them the AI is not that it is a reason to doubt, it is directly no sense: Capex planned in 2025 BENEFITS IN IA IN 2025 Microsoft 80,000 million 13,000 million Google 75,000 million 7.7 billion Amazon 105,000 million 5,000 million goal 72,000 million 3,000 million Green outbreak Yes, in singular. The latest results are hopeful, but we are very far from being able to say that AI is a profitable business, especially As far as generative AI is concerned. Good results are thanks to cloud services, chatbots or audio or video generators are not profitable. Subscriptions to these tools are a way to monetize, but The income they generate is child compared to spending. Despite doubts, unbridled expense has not stopped and this green outbreak can be more than enough for investors to continue throwing banknotes to the AI well. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | The AI industry has become a kind of ‘game of thrones’. And that reveals a worrying truth for your future

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.