career

John Cazale’s impossibly perfect career

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There was an actor who never starred in a mediocre movie because he simply didn’t have time for it. John Cazale died of cancer in 1978, at the age of 42, leaving behind a filmography of just five titles. All of them were nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. An achievement incomparable to that of any other actor in the history of cinema. The perfect filmography. The scale. There’s a way to measure the quality of a film career that’s more telling than any box office or individual accolade: the percentage of an actor’s films that have been nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. Based on this criterion, the absolute winner is a semi-unknown actor: John Cazale participated in five feature films between 1972 and 1978. All five were nominated for the Oscar for Best Picture. Even more: three of them took home the statuette: ‘The Godfather’ (1972), ‘The Godfather. Part II’ (1974) – in which he played the unforgettable Fredo Corleone – and ‘The Hunter’ (1978). His entire filmography generated a total of forty Oscar nominations. And the culmination: all his feature films were selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the United States Library of Congress. 5 out of 5, 100% of his work, in the most important category of the most influential awards in the industry. Let’s compare. To understand: Meryl Streep, the actress with the most nominations in the history of the Oscars (21 nominations in total) has a filmography that exceeds ninety films in five decades of career. A dozen of his works have touched the category of Best Film, but the proportion with respect to his total filmography does not reach 15%. Jack Nicholson, with around eighty film credits, or Al Pacino, with more than sixty, present similar proportions. The greater the volume of work, the greater the exposure to relative failure: a mediocre director, a box office failure, a slight setback. Cazale didn’t have time to make a mistake. The momentum. Cazale entered the cinema at the height of New Hollywooda trend that transformed the American industry between the late sixties and mid-seventies: directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Sidney Lumet and Michael Cimino broke with the model of the big studios and opted for darker stories, more ambiguous characters and character actors. Like Cazale: without the weight of fame, without the burden of stardom, available to embody weakness, betrayal and fear with ruthless effectiveness. Who was it? Born in 1935 in Revere, Massachusetts, John Cazale studied acting at Boston University with the help of a tutor who pushed his students towards the darkest aspects of each character. Before coming to the movies at the age of 36, he spent a decade in the New York off-Broadway theater, where he won several awards, and worked as a taxi driver and messenger, a job in which he met Al Pacino. a casting director recommended him to Coppola for ‘The Godfather’ and there he aroused glowing praise from colleagues like Pacino himself. He died shortly after turning forty, a victim of bone cancer. The case of the hunter. The admiration that Cazale aroused is perfectly summarized by what happened in ‘The Hunter’, a film that he filmed while he was sick. Michael Cimino hired him knowing the diagnosis, but Universal didn’t know, and when they found out they pushed for him to be replaced. What happened next is one of the most cited episodes of loyalty in Hollywood at the time. To start, De Niro paid the premium out of pocket of Cazale’s insurance because the production company could not cover it. Meryl Streep, then Cazale’s partner, threatened to walk out of filming if he was removed, and Cimino rearranged the production schedule to film all of his scenes first. ‘The Hunter’ was nominated for nine Oscars in 1979 and won five, including Best Picture, Best Director for Cimino and Best Supporting Actor for Christopher Walken. Cazale died nine months before the premiere. He was not able to see the film but his legacy, with an absolutely perfect filmography, will always endure. In Xataka | What would have happened to the 80s (and beyond) if Steven Spielberg had not been born

The US studied what would happen if it enters war with China. Now he has started a career desperate to double missiles

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When China raised the curtain of your military parade staged much more than arms power which has. It was a clear and direct message that had its reaction a few days later, when the United States moved its new platform from missiles to Japan. It was then discovered that, if missiles, there are 3,500 pointing In the same direction. Since then, the United States has started a desperate race: to double its own missile manufacturing for what may happen. The strategic awakening. I told it in an exclusive The Wall Street Journal. The Pentagon has turned on all alarms in the face of the evidence that its missile arsenals would not reach to sustain a prolonged conflict With China. Russian Ukraine invasion and mass consumption of interceptors In Europe the fragility of the American industrial base had already made clear. However, He counted the medium What was the twelve between Israel and Iran, in which Washington launched Hundreds of high -end missiles to support their ally, which finished emptying the deposits and precipitated a shock plan. The message that circulates in the pentagon’s offices is clear: the current arsenal is not enough to defend Taiwan or the allied bases in the Pacific if a direct confrontation with Beijing explodes. The new creation. To face that reality, the Department of Defense has created an extraordinary body, the Munits Acceleration Councilpersonally directed by Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg, who calls the main executives of the industry every week to demand immediate increases. The strategy seeks to duplicate, and even quadruplethe production of the twelve missiles considered critical: from the Patriot interceptorsto him Standard Missile-6the Long Range Anti-Ship Missilesthe Precision Strike and the Joint Air-Surface Standoff Missiles. The Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegesh, and the Chief of the General Staff, General Dan Caine, They have presided Meetings with giants such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon or Boeing, but also with new actors such as Anduril Industries and with key component suppliers, from solid propellants to batteries. The destroyer of guided missiles USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) of the United States Navy launches an RIM-174 Standard Eram (Standard Missile-6, SM-6) The industrial bottleneck. The challenge is monumental. The complete manufacture of a missile can take up to two years. The production lines have cooled after decades of divestment, secondary suppliers have disappeared and critical pieces such as Boeing front search engines have become true bottlenecks. Expanding shifts, add square meters and form specialized personnel require billions of investment and firm purchase commitments. As Experts remembercompanies do not produce without contract: they need guarantees that the pentagon will not withdraw financing in the middle of the effort. Even so, some suppliers have taken steps in advance. Northrop Grumman, for example, has invested More than 1 billion in expanding its rocket engines capacity, with the expectation of doubling production in four years. Patriot Priority: Patriot. The most urgent case is the Patriot PAC-3whose global demand has shot himself. In September, the army gave Lockheed a contract of almost 10,000 million of dollars to manufacture 2,000 missiles in three years, but the objective of the pentagon is to reach that same figure Every twelve monthswhich means quadruple the current rhythm. To do this, Boeing has been seen forced to expand Thousands of square meters of its plant to assemble more search engines, while Lockheed studies new investments in assembly lines. The spokesmen insist that they can deliver above their declared capacity, but all claim more money and multiannual commitments that give stability to the productive jump. Precision Strike Missile New acquisition model. The pressure is such that The army announces “Massively substantive changes” in the way of buying weapons. Formulas such as licenseing technologies to third parties are explored, attract private capital or guarantee registration programs to give demand visibility to the entire supply chain. Trump administration already It allocated 25,000 million extra in five years through Big, Beautiful Billbut analysts agree that it will be necessary to multiply For several orders that figure to meet the objectives. The effort, in addition, is part of a greater debate: how to maintain an industrial base capable of sustaining high intensity wars in a world where arsenals are consumed in weeks. Background: China. The ultimate reason for this acceleration is the perspective of a War in the Pacific. A confrontation By Taiwan I would demand simultaneously American and Allied Bases, guarantee maritime runners and face a Chinese Navy increasingly equipped with hypersonic missiles and drons swarms. American superiority will depend not only on the quality of its systems, but on their ability to replace them quickly in case of prolonged conflict. Pentagon fears Discover too late that does not have the necessary volume to hold the pulse. Hence the race against clock to turn the industry into a large -scale war arsenal. The risk of the gap. The acceleration effort reveals the structural contradiction of the West: weapons every time more sophisticated and faces which are consumed at an industrial rate, in front of adversaries willing to flood the battlefield with solutions of low cost and mass production. In that sense, Ukraine’s lesson seems clear: millions of millions of dollars They can be exhausted In a matter of months, and rebuild reserves it has been. If the United States wants to maintain its deterrence against China, it must demonstrate that it can sustain not only technological innovation, but also the mass production on which the survival of its network of alliances depends. Image | Lockheed Martin, Mapn, Us Navy In Xataka | Satellite images have revealed that China has turned its oriental coast into a war zone: 3,500 missiles point to Taiwan In Xataka | After the demonstration of China’s force, the US moves a card sending its new missile platform to Japan

In his career for the total domain of the solar panels, a rival has come out: the Spanish Perovskita

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The sun will continue to shine, but the way we take advantage of it is changing at vertigo speed. While China and other countries are focused on improving the efficiency of Perovskita solar panels, Spain has set the point of solving another great challenge: stability. And he does it with a clear message: say goodbye to the silicon. Jubilating the silicon. Until now, talk about solar energy It was talking about silicon. Today, that equation begins to break through the Perovskita. In Madrid, an Imdea Nanocencia team has achieved that a cell reaches 25.2% certified efficiency, almost matching The world record of 26.7%. With this, Spain enters the first line of the race for the solar future. Not only that, they have also manufactured a mini-modulus of 25 cm² that maintains an efficiency of 22.1% and extraordinary stability, something that historically has been the Achilles heel of this technology. “These cells already exceed the commercial silicon, which barely reaches 18% efficiency, and open the door to the next generation of solar panels,” explains Nazario Martín, principal researcher of the project. The jump is not only academic. In research, Published in Advanced Materialsthey explain that Perovskita promises to reduce costs, be flexible, light and recyclable, in front of the silicon, whose production process is expensive and controlled almost exclusively by China. But the essential here is not so much efficiency and durability. The cells developed with the new PTZ-FL material maintain 95% of their performance after 3,600 hours of tests in demanding conditions (ISOS-D-1 protocol). In other words, we do not talk about fragile laboratory prototypes, but of devices capable of resisting the passage of time under sun, humidity and heat. The fund of the project. The advance is based on the design of molecules called Spiro-Fenotiazines, which act as “hollow transporters”, an essential layer in the solar cell. The PTZ-FL compound prevents lithium-ion migration, which is usually one of the main causes of degradation. In the words of the researchers, it is about building a “compact interface” that protects the material and improves its efficiency. In practical terms, it means that Perovskita modules are not only more powerful, but also much more resistant. China takes the lead. As he advanced above, China has focused its efficiency efforts. A study by the Huazhong University and Technology achieved a 28.8% record With a tandem cell totally from Perovskita, without silicon. This type of advance, such as Spanish, confirm that Perovskita can not only compete with silicon, but to overcome it in scenarios where it never shone: facades, windows, offices or even portable devices. There are very specific challenges. Beyond laboratory records, the great challenge is to bring this technology to the market. Today, the European Union depends largely on China to manufacture solar panels, According to an Ember report. Projects such as IMDEA not only seek efficiency, but also reduce this strategic dependence. In addition, the most expensive component of a solar panel is no longer silicon or glass, but aluminum frames, which represent 14% of the total cost. A reminder that the transition to Perovskita will require innovations not only in laboratories, also in factories and supply chains. Forecasts The solar future is no longer written with silicon. Perovskita has gone from being a fragile promise to real candidate for the market. The question is not whether it will come, but how and from where. Spain, with the advancement of IMDEA nanocencia, wants part of that response to have European seal. Image | Freepik Xataka | India needs more crops and solar energy than any other country. So you are installing solar panels in height

The AI ​​career not only to be better. It goes that every second you spend in chatgpt is a second that you are not in Tiktok

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Mark Zuckerberg’s work is not to make the world a better place. Nor is it to connect with our loved ones and recover old friendships. No. Zuckerberg’s work is one and only one. Have us Glued To the. Screen. This is what has been trying with Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp for 20 years. Here it was not about allowing us to share photos, comments and experiences with our contacts, but to keep their applications hooked at any price. When connecting people stopped being enough, the news thread (News Feed) arrived from Facebook, and when that ceased to be enough, the stories and reels and short videos and toxic algorithms and the toxic algorithms and the toxic algorithms and the toxic algorithms and doomscrolling. All that worked very well to the goal, which became with Google in the great Internet winner and who entered (and entered) indecent amounts of money with advertising. But Zuckerberg has realized that Social networks face the greatest existential threat of their history: the AI. Because AI is achieving what no other application or platform had achieved in recent years: it is stealing users to Facebook, Instagram, but also Tiktok, YouTube Oa X. Every second that a user spends in Chatgpt asking or, increasingly, talking, it is a second less that is not on those social networks. And that is terrible to finish, Google, Bytedance or X, because suddenly they begin to see how the economy of attention may no longer in their hands. There are millions of users who begin to Take robotic girlfriends or that they use them as psychologists or like simple virtual friends, loyal and perfect. And it happens that they do not do it on social networks: they go to chatgpt, they subscribe to Replika, or use any of the many available alternatives. The career for the economy of attention And the Big Tech have realized. They know that the economy of attention is escaping, so they are doing everything they can to recover it. That is why all have put them crazy to invest thousands and thousands and billions of dollars in creating their own AI and megainfrastructure that allow everyone to chat with machines without stopping. Because if people do not want to be (so much) on Facebook, X, Tiktok or YouTube, there is no problem: for that they are target AI, Grok, Doubao or Gemini, that they want to convince you that you talk to them instead of doing it with chatgpt or with any other. If social networks are no longer enough, they tell us, do not worry. If you want to chat with them, you will have it to chat with them. Zuckerberg is a clear example of that obsession with AI. After the failure – at least until now – of his metaverso, he has put us Goal AI Even in the soup and is flooding “ai smop” Your social networks. But also seeing that his open model calls I didn’t just sethas changed the step and created A new Galactic Team of Superintelligence to win the career of A ia. Sorry. To win the career of the conquest of our attention. That is exactly the same as Elon Musk and Xai with Grok, a bot that has been successfully infiltrated in X – not as a goal AI. Or with Google and Gemini, which has the advantage that it is the default AI in billions of Android devices. Or with Microsoft, who pursues exactly the same with co -pilot. These IAS certainly help us and help us in many lands, but the Big Tech know that behind all those advantages there is a much more important goal: Whoever wins the AI ​​career will win the career of the economy of attention. And that company, whatever it is, will have absolutely attached to its AI. Image | Airam Dato-on In Xataka | The cover of the AI ​​is a goal. He has been betting on her for more than a decade and has much more than she calls

If the question is which of the great technology is winning the AI career, the answer is: None

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Who is winning the AI race? At this point we should have it more or less clear. We had it when Microsoft and Intel were profiled as the dominators of the PC world or when Apple and Google triumphed with their smartphones. But with AI something curious happens: Things are very even. Of, done, too much. Of course, in the field of Openai popularity, it is the most prominent with chatgpt. Recently the company presumed to be touching The 700 million active weekly users, a really remarkable figure that leaves its competitors behind. However, that metric is not definitive, especially when we have a great unknown to elucidate: what is the best AI model? It is impossible to know today what is the best model of AI No one can give a clear answer to that question. Neither the companies, which continuously breastfeed with their new versions, nor the benchmarks, which They have become a useful but imperfect tool when evaluating the quality of these models. In Polymarket people believed that the best AI model at the end of August was going to be OpenAi. After leaving GPT-5, the perception changed. That the answer to that question is difficult Polymarket demonstrates itthis unique prediction platform in which users bet on a result and also pay it by voting for one or another conclusion. To the question of “What company does the best model of AI have at the end of August? Everything seemed to smile at Openai, but after the launch of GPT-5, the Batacazo: now the clear favorite is Gemini, the Google model, with OpenAI collapsed to 16% of the votes and even more behind Grok (XAI) with 6.3% of votes and Claude (Anthropic) with a very low (in my opinion) 1.5%. It is not that Polymarket is an especially reliable indicator of this (or anything), but it makes it clear that The public perception of these models can be very different of their real behavior in things like their number of users-here OpenAi tombs their competitors-or their performance performance such as Arc-Agi 2 (where Grok 4 wins everyone, including GPT-5). In the Benchmark of abstract thought ARC-AGI 2, Grok 4 is well above its competitors. Included GPT-5, which exceeds Claude Opus 4. Source: ARC-AGI. And that makes us even clearer what are the two great reasons why it is a real problem to know which model of AI is winning this career. The first, that these tests are often very specific and concrete, and focus on evaluating aspects such as the ability to program or solve mathematical problems of these models. And the second, that The models do not stop improving and to overcome what his rivals had achieved a few days, weeks or months before. We do not stop seeing how new versions of the models are (logically) something better programming, generating text or images or solving certain types of problems, but there is no consensual or definitive form of saying “this model is better.” As we have seen, each user also has their own personal perception (Hello, Polymarket) when using them. Some prefer Claude to program, other chatgpt for generic questions, other Gemini to talk about diverse topics and to learn, for example. And none seems to be the final model “for everything.” In a recent scientific study, researcher Steve Hsu concluded that the path followed by the current generative models will not lead to AGI. Neither now, nor ever. That leads us to a reflection: that this general artificial intelligence (AGI) is far from arriving. These systems, which are supposed to be overcome in all areas, are not even remotely close to doing so, and They continue to make mistakes even when for example GPT-5 seems to have significantly mitigate the problem of hallucinations. Analysts like Gary Marcus They reminded us These days that have been saying the same thing about 30 years: that with this type of climbing techniques We are not going to get to an AGI And that the road has to be another. And that leaves us some interesting ideas. David Sacks – Paypal Cocfounder, founder of Yammer, investor— analyzed The situation of this segment and raised striking conclusions. The five main companies that develop foundational models —Openai, Google, Meta, Anthropic or XAI – still do not master the market, but that is (or it can be) good news. And it is because there is neither a monopoly nor a duopoly of AI. What there is is a fierce competition not only among these five North American companies, but between them and all their Chinese competitors, to which a lot of startups are added that have no resources to work on foundational models – careful – and instead they try to solve another great question: what is the Killer app of the AI. That’s where there are great opportunities for these startups, which can solve success cases in which AI can really be a disruption for an industry. It is for example what emerging companies have done such as cursor or Windsurf, which have opted for the vibe coding boom and are capturing a lot of interest among the developer segment. In fact, every time we see how even the greats of AI presume that their new models program especially well or perhaps are more oriented than ever to solve mathematical problems. GPT-5 precisely use those two arguments to declare themselves better than the competition, and although some benchmarks prove them right, the perception of the users will determine whether they meet expectations or not. But there is also that great debate between the proprietary models (such as GPT-5) and the Open Source models. As Sacks says, the fact that Open Source models They can offer 80-90% of the capacity with a cost of 10-20% of foundational models is sensational for certain users. Specifically, for those who prioritize customization, control and cost savings on the use of foundational models. China goes for all with that philosophy, although curiously it was … Read more

The failure of this science fiction film ended the career of a classic director and closed a study in a week

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The arrival of computer animated cinema is not only cemented in great successes such as’Toy Story‘ and The advent of Pixar. They also came into play, at the time, box office failures such as ‘Titan AE’, an ambitious animated science fiction film whose resounding failure ended the race of the great Don Bluth, closed Fox’s animation department forever and meant one of the last nails in the coffin of traditional animation. From actors to drawings. 25 years ago recent Space Opera With real actors. The script had circulated through Hollywood for years without finding financing, until Fox Animation Studios decided to turn it into an animated film in 1997. Don Bluth and Gary Goldman were responsible for the commission, after successes such as ‘In search of the enchanted valley’ or ‘Anastasia’. What was I going. The film combined quite daring concepts of science fiction, especially within the animated cinema of the time, but with a more familiar style: in the year 3028, Drej aliens destroy the earth, forcing humanity to wander through space as refugees. Cale Tucker, separated from his father during evacuation, grows aimlessly until he discovers that he carries the map to find the Titan ship, capable of leading them to a new planet. Cale starts a search pursued by the Drej. Money hole. To start, Fox gave them 55 million dollars, but 30 vanished before startingin preproduction. Fox executives did not want in any case the film to pass 80 million dollars of budget, so they had to make the rest of the film with 50 million (which finally became 60). These budgetary restrictions He prevented them from capturing his initial vision of the film and 300 people from the Fox animation department were stalls on the street. Lower the quality. These mass layoffs forced Bluth and Goldman to take part in the animation to external studies, such as Povde Group, reality studios and Blue Sky. This led to one of the big problems of the film: the own identity fdalta to which they brought the multiple hands and studies involved, the mixture of traditional animation and CGI and the tone of the film, very adult sometimes, very childish on other occasions. The promotion of the film, somewhat erratic, participated in this doubtful tone, and finished certifying the failure. Batacazo at the box office. The film raised only 36.7 million worldwide, and According to an executivelosses 100 million for Fox. The disaster was such that only ten days after the premiere, Fox Animation definitely closed its doors, and the then executive director of Fox, Bill Mechanic, left his position a few weeks later. Goodbye, Don Bluth. Undoubtedly, the great loss for the cinema was the definitive folder to Don Bluth’s career, which as Goldman has not re -directed a film. He tried in the new century, especially, by way of Crowdfundingpretending to stand a movie based on the video game ‘Dragon’s Lair’ that never sets. But above all, ‘Titan AE’ was one of the last failures that condemned the traditional animation: the successes of Pixar and DreamWorks and the progressive collection of the Disney films precipitated a change of paradigm towards the CGI. Time has turned ‘Titan AE’ into a cult film, but in its day it literally supposed the end of an era. In Xataka | The figures suggest that the domain of blockbusters in Hollywood is not over. In fact, it will go worse

China has already won the nuclear energy career to the US and Russia. And he has done it thanks to a avant -garde reactor

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China’s nuclear program was born in the 50s of the last century. The cold war held by the US and the Soviet Union had incited these two countries to Develop your nuclear arsenal With a shocking speed, and Mao Zedong, the co -founder and leader of the Communist Party of China, decided to ask the Soviet Union for help for launch your own nuclear plan. In 1955 this cooperation allowed China to build its first floor of Uranium-235 and Plutonium productionand also supported the foundation of the National Nuclear Corporation of China (CNC). Only four years later, in 1959, the Soviet Union ended the collaboration with China in nuclear technology. This decision was a very hard setback for the country led by Mao Zedong, who embarked on A career towards self -sufficient in the development of nuclear energy. However, China’s plan prospered very slowly during the next three decades. The first nuclear power plant designed and built entirely by China, the Qinshan plant, was successfully connected to the electricity network on December 15, 1991. At that time China could not rival at all with The development of nuclear technology that had reached the US and the almost extinct Soviet Union. In 2002 China only had two nuclear centrals in operation. Today has no less than 58 nuclear reactors in activity. Only US has more (94). During the last two decades China’s civil and military nuclear program It has advanced with a vertiginous speed, but the most important thing is not the number of reactors that it currently has in operation: the really differential thing is that it has been placed At the forefront in nuclear technology. China leads thanks to its nuclear reactor of molten salts and Torio The TMSR-LF1 reactor officially entered into operation on October 11, 2023. A few months later, on June 17, 2024, he began working at full power. And on October 8 of last year the technicians who operate it detected protacinium-233 (PA-233), a radioactive isotope intermediate derived from the transformation of the thorium into Uranium-233 as part of the fuel cycle of the thorium. This nuclear reactor is in the Minqin industrial complex of the province of Gansu, in northern China. It has a power of 2 thermal megawatts (MWT), and, although it will not be the first Fourth Generation Nuclear Reactor in activity, and neither the first one that Torio will use as fuel, yes It will be the first of molten salts that will use this chemical element. However, the ambition of this Asian country does not end here; It is already planning to build a molten salts and torium reactor of more capacity for 2030, although China is not the only country that bets on this technology. China plans to build a molten salts and torio reactor of more capacity for 2030 The US, France or India are some of those who have also invested in research programs that pursue the development of nuclear reactors capable of generating electricity from the thorium. India’s in particular is interesting because it aims to demonstrate the viability of fuel cycles based on thorium in the context of its advanced heavy water reactor project. This technology is still far from being adopted in a generalized way, but its advantages closely link it to the future of nuclear energy. Our planet brings together approximately 12 million tons of thorium, so this chemical element is three times more abundant In the earth’s cortex that Uranium used as fuel in the current nuclear centrals. The largest deposits reside in China, Brazil, Canada, Australia, USA, Greenland, Russia, Norway, South Africa and Venezuela, although prospects reflect that the country that Torio has is precisely one of the ones that is investing most in the development of reactors capable of using it: India. Another point in your favor is that it is as easy to extract as uranium, but it has the inconvenience that it is not directly physable. It is necessary to introduce it into a reactor that manufactures uranium from Torio, and what it produces is not uranium-235, it is Uranium-233, but the important thing is that it is physable. Once this uranium has occurred, it can be introduced into a conventional reactor like those we have in Spain, which could not work with Torio, but with a derivative of that element. In addition, experts say that molten salts nuclear reactors are safer than reactors installed in the nuclear power plants that are currently in operation. Experts say that molten salts nuclear reactors are safer than reactors installed in the nuclear power plants that are currently in operation Two of the reasons are that they use as a refrigerant lithium fluoride and beryllium at a very low pressure, and the fuel remains dissolved in the form of salt, so it is very unlikely that an accident could trigger the fusion of the reactor’s core. Another quality of these reactors that are worth not overlooking is that Its architecture allows them to be installed undergroundwhich, again, increases your safety. But this is not all. Another peculiar and positive feature of these reactors is that they allow to recharge the fuel while remaining in operation. And, in addition, the fact that they do not need water to maintain the refrigerated nucleus allows them to be installed in regions in which water is scarce, or, simply, in areas where there is no river and are not close to the sea. This is one of the reasons why China is investing in the development of this technology as a means to build fourth generation nuclear power plants in the most remote and arid regions of the country. It is also worth not overlooking that Radioactive waste They generate have a much shorter semi -grid period than that of the residues of the reactors that use uranium, which logically facilitates their management. And, in addition, the folk salts reactors They use less fuel Because the efficiency of the thorium is much higher than … Read more

In his career against the United States, China is betting on something different: an artificial intelligence “personified”

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The AI ​​race has two main actors: the United States and China. Although at first it seemed unattainable, China already steps on Americans as far as quality is concerned and advanced by leaps and bounds in areas necessary for its development such as energy. China has another ace in the sleeve: the personified. Two ways of seeing the AI. Although they compete in the same land, the strategies of both countries have obvious differences. A clear example is in the business model itself: United States bets on a premium and China for a free AI. The differences would go much further. As writes As Andrew Stockols writesMIT researcher specializing in digital infrastructure in China, the United States focuses on the abstract, leading the great language models with Chatgpt, Gemini or Claude. For its part, China is betting very strong for an IA integrated into physical systems and infrastructure, with a clear leadership in areas such as industry and robotics. The “personified”. In English it is called “Embodied ai”, which can be translated by personified, embodied or integrated. It is an AI with physical presence, applied to systems that interact with the environment through sensors and actuators. It is the artificial intelligence applied to autonomous cars, personal mobility vehicles, models of “urban brain” and of course robotics. This idea is Chinese government priorityalready include the term in your work report This year. Robots for everything. Robots running marathons, Making Kick-Boxing, Playing football and even Robots-pump. China likes robots, it is clear to us, but this obsession goes far beyond these nice examples. Leading the robotics sector is part of the Plan “Made in China 2025” already today have achieved a competitive position, so much that in the United States already The alarms jumped. If we focus only on the industry, China is the undisputed leader with a 51% of the total stock of industrial robots. A few months ago, He appeared at BeiSi Kaiwu“The first integrated AI platform” with support for different “bodies.” This platform allows robots to perceive, interact and learn from the environment dynamically. In addition to humanoid robots, it is also intended for other products such as autonomous driving or even wearable devices. Autonomous vehicles. In 2020, China published its “Innovation and Smart Vehicle Development Strategy” where the idea of ​​”person-carretera-nube” is included. The key to this proposal is that not only cars carry sensors and cameras, they must also be present on roads, especially intersections. In addition, cars would communicate with each other to avoid collisions. Although with advantages from the point of view of security, there is a disadvantage and it is the cost of creating and maintaining that infrastructure. But not all self -employed vehicles have to be cars, other personal mobility vehicles are also developing with autonomous driving such as Autonomous wheelchair that the Freego company presented in March this year. Urban brains. There is even more. Another of the key applications of this integrated AI is in the cities. China has been working on the idea of ​​the smart city for a long time. Already in 2016, they developed a solution for the city of Hangzhou that helped Manage traffic using AI. Since then, they have not stopped appearing similar projects And there are currently many Chinese cities that have “brains”. However, behind this intelligent city idea there is an interest in improving the governance of cities or, in other words, that works as a surveillance system. We see it in This ambitious plan to integrate AI in the city of Wuhan: “Integrating algorithms of AI in real environments. Imbued with the predefined values ​​by the Chinese Communist Party, the AI ​​interacts with its natural environment, learning as it progresses.” Image | Alex Knight in Pexels In Xataka | There is a new battle between China and Elon Musk: its protagonists are humanoid robots and goes for long

There is a career to achieve the cheapest and most powerful model. And against all prognosis, China is winning it

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On May 20 Google launched Gemini 2.5 Pro and Gemini 2.5 Flash in preliminary version. These new AI models were better than ever, and to demonstrate the company included in its announcement several graphs and comparative tables. They looked at how both surpassed their rivals both in the field of reasoning and in the traditional performance (Benchmarks of Mathematics or Programming), but there was also another fact that Google presumed: Google: The cost of Gemini 2.5 Flash. Source: Google. That table published by Google made it clear that Gemini 2.5 Flash It was clearly the winner of that comparison in the important price/benefits ratio. What Google did not say is that this success of this model was the exception to the rule, because in that race for having cheap and powerful models, China seems to take the lead. He does it at least if we attend to the cost of using these models. In Xataka we have analyzed that cost based not on the price of subscriptions for end users, but on the cost of access to the API, which is the one that allows developers to integrate these models into their own chatbots and their services. The API prices of each model clearly differentiate two uses from artificial intelligence. On the one hand, how much does it cost to write something for the model to then process it (the so -called input tokens). On the other, how much does the text generated by the model once processed the answer (the so -called output tokens). The entrance tokens They are usually five times cheaper than exitbecause processing the request and generating text is much more expensive than receiving it, analyzing and “understanding it.” We wanted to compare the cost of the main models of the AI ​​developed in China and those of the US, and although as always are not all that are, if they are all. The resulting table is as follows: These prices are public and very easy to find in the case of US AI models (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google) but not so much in the case of Chinese models (Deepseek, Qwen (Alibaba), Doubao (Bytedance), GLM-4 (Zhipu), Ernie (Baidu)). Be that as it may, the table, ordered from the cheapest to the most expensive, demonstrates that today Chinese models are especially cheap. Only Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview manages to compete – and does it exceptionally. In the rest of the cases, the AI ​​models in China win the battle for cost. It must be noted that, Like all comparisons, this is unfair. And it is because that table does not take into account the benefits of each model. Openai O3 and Anthropic Claude Opus 4, the last and most powerful models of those companies, are especially precise in their answers, but each consultation consumes much more resources (computation, energy) and that makes it logical that they are much more expensive than their competitors. But these models are also designed for very special cases and for specialized, detailed and deep consultations. In the vast majority of cases it is not necessary to use these models, and that is where they are competing for example Deepseek R1 or Gemini 2.5 Flash Preview: in the price/benefits ratio. Models with variable prices That price battle has made us see in recent times two techniques that some companies are applying to the prices of use of their APIs. The first one is to differentiate normal entries and outputs of inputs (and even exits) cache. Deepseek API prices. Attentive to the lower left: according to the time you use them, they can leave cheaper. Source: Deepseek. The explanation is simple: a “normal” entry is a request or question that the model has never processed and therefore has to process completely. If the entrance has been caught (Cache hit) is because that request has been processed in the past, so the system can obtain the response of its cache, which significantly reduces the computational costs. Deepseek, Google, Anthropic and Openai offer this type of option, as can be seen in the table. The second technique is to use variable prices according to (at the moment) the time slot in which we use these models. This is what Deepseek has done, which has “day” and “night” prices according to UTC schedule. If you use the Depseek API from 18:30 to 2:30 (Peninsular schedule in Spain), it will be half price. Good news: AI is every time (much) cheaper While China and the US fight who has the most powerful model or who has the cheapest model, what is constantly happening is that the AI ​​price is falling remarkably. It is an observation that several experts such as Ethan Mollick, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who recently analyzed how That price/benefits ratio does nothing but improve. The models are getting better and cheaper. Other experts such as Raveesh Bhalla – explained by Netflix and LinkedIn – also reflected this evolution at the beginning of the year. Then he showed how the cost of an O1 level model had dropped 27 times in the last three months. Moreover, at this rhythm the GPT4 level models – which a year ago were absolute referents – will be reduced 1,000 times in just 18 months. We are living it in price reduction. Dane Bahey, from Openai, said at a conference in September last year how the cost per million tokens had fallen from 36 dollars At just 0.25 dollars In the last 18 months. And that price drop is still clear and fantastic for users. Thus, we are facing a career that at the moment has a lot of stretch: China’s models carry the lead if we attend only to their cost, but careful, because we must also take into account the benefits. It is true that these Chinese models have already shown in the benchmarks that have been showing that they compete from you to you with the best US models, and now it remains to … Read more

The real challenge will be to choose a career with a future job when they approve it

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Next June 3 gives the exit gun in several autonomous communities to the University Access Test (PAU). Beyond testing the acquired knowledge, the test is a decisive step in the orientation and five -year professional view of the young people who present them today. Its result will mark the decision of university careers those who can access. On the other hand, 75% of companies ensure Not find qualified personnel For vacancies due to lack of specialized training, which denotes a mismatch between preferences in university studies that are taken and real needs of companies. For this reason, taking into account the labor insertion of each career can be very useful to say for a specialty with labor guarantees. More and more university students, but less specialists. According to data from the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of 2024, 341,831 students enrolled in the access test, of which 95.8% was presented and approved 90.2% of those who completed the test. In contrast, the report Labor market in Spain 2024prepared by Infojobs and ESADE, points out that only 31% of the candidates who responded to a job offer on that platform had a university degree, while only 11% of the published offers demanded that training. On the other hand, 27% of job seekers had a specialization of professional training, and 22% of vacancies required that degree. These data show the mismatch between training of employment plaintiffs and what companies are really looking for, especially in relation to university training. Studies with greater job insertion. According to the study The employability of young people in Spain 2024 Prepared by the CYD Foundation on the work outputs of the different university careers, engineering (electrical, industrial electronics, software development, telecommunications, etc.) are the ones that offer better working conditions to their graduates in terms of Stability in contractssalaries and affiliation rates. It is closely followed by those careers related to the health and care sphere, mainly driven by a high demand generated by the aging of the population. The First data of 2025 facilitated by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities point to an analysis along the same lines, placing the different engineering such as the branch with greater stability and insertion rates, followed by health sciences. What companies demand. On the other side of the labor market is the demand of companies, which is aligned with the data that reflects the careers with better labor insertion. The aforementioned report Labor market in Spain 2024 It reflects that many of the offers published in 2024 in Infojobs responded to an engineering profile, with very little competition for each of the offers and with good remuneration in counterpart. In this sense, the Emerging jobs and sectors report 2024 It puts special emphasis on the demand for professionals related to the implementation and development of AI, such as data engineering and Machine Learning, whose demand has grown by 625% since 2019, or artificial intelligence engineering that grows at the rate of 83% per year, with a very low candidate competition for each job offer. On the other hand, the report prepared by Infojobs and ESADE, highlights that in 2024 97,500 vacancies related to health care and care on that platform were counted. Of them 98% and 97% corresponded to vacancies requested nurses and physiotherapists respectively. Both with university studies. The red lanterns. The races related to the branch of arts and humanities have been marking years A downward trend in terms of labor insertion. On average, only 63.5% of the graduates in these branches find a job four years after finishing their training. Only 34.2% do so during the following year to finish them. This data contrasts with the 77.8% computer science that finds a job the first year. In Xataka | Construction and hospitality do not hire the same pace as before. Health and education cut cod in job creation Image | Unspash (Brett Jordan)

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