center

wants to be the center of your daily diet

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Mercadona It no longer wants to be the place where you make your purchases. Or not alone at least. What he aspires to now is to become the default place where you eat, where they prepare your food, heat it, devour it and even have your mid-morning or after-dinner coffee. The first step to achieve this was taken already some years with the launch of its section ‘Ready to Eat’ and since then he has not stopped doubling the bet, spreading it to its wide local network. Now he has gone one step further. In addition to cooking you an omelette, a Teriyaki chicken, a sandwich, some stuffed eggplants, a poke salmon or even a Valencian paellaMercadona wants to serve you freshly ground coffee. AND seen the data of the sector makes a lot of sense. To Mercadona to drink coffee That there are people (many) who go to Mercadona in search of coffee is nothing new. In fact some of their articles have become so popular that they have their own followers. What is new is that people do not go to Juan Roig stores looking for packages, bags of grain or capsules for their machines, but to prepare freshly ground coffee and serve it in a glass ready to drink, which is what the company has started to do in Valencia. So confirmed it the company to The Economist in March, when he revealed that he was taking a test in dozens of stores spread throughout the Valencian geography. “In some stores in the province we have incorporated the option that the boss, which is what we call our customers, can take freshly ground coffee. It is a laboratory,” they explained. The idea started in 58 points and four products: black coffee, coffee, with milk and cappuccino. Everything (or almost everything) related to Mercadona generates excitement inside and outside the networks and its coffee service has been no exception. In x, instagram either TikTok It didn’t take long for videos to appear of people showing the new machines in Roig’s stores and even testing the result, as Cafemaxpag did in one piece (with a bittersweet balance) that soon gained thousands of views. You can even see photos that show the same service in Portugal. Expectation is no guarantee of success, but the chain made it clear that I would be attentive to the answer in its stores in the province of Valencia. “We plan to expand this laboratory after the summer and the coffee can be purchased in stores in the Community of Madrid,” advanced in March. Today the service is announced already on their website, where a map confirms that it offers freshly ground coffee in several locations throughout Madrid and the Valencian Community. In Cuenca it has an establishment that also incorporates a machine for consumption. At this point, the question is… Why is Mercadona launched, which in 2024 achieved a net profit of 1,384 millionto the adventure of freshly ground coffee? Three words: ‘Ready to Eat’ Coffee is not an experiment disconnected from Mercadona’s global strategy. On the contrary. The company itself recognize that connects with a much broader initiative, worked on and whose origins can be traced back to at least 2018: ‘Ready to Eat’a branch of the company that aspires to turn Roig’s stores into the food reference for Spanish families. The central idea is what we mentioned at the beginning of this report: that people not only go to the supermarket to buy food to fill the refrigerator at home, but that they leave there with food already prepared. Or even eaten. In summary, the service consists of a section within Mercadona stores in which a series of products are sold. ready-made dishes. And that includes everything from different starters and appetizers to pizzas, burgers, sandwiches and main dishes such as lentils, meatballs, pasta, paella, chicken, sushi assortments or Teriyaki chicken. In 2024 the list was expanded with salmon with vegetables, ribs and seafood salad. Now Mercadona completes it with a freshly ground coffee service. In some stores the idea is not only that the customer finds their food already ready, but that they can taste it right there. Without leaving the premises. “You can heat any dish in one of our microwaves, grab cutlery and, in some of our stores, you can consume right there,” explains the company. The model is not exclusive from Mercadona. Other chains, such as Alcampo, The English Court either Carrefour (to name just a handful of examples) they have also opted for prepared dishes. Sometimes with spaces to taste them. Because at Mercadona they are convinced that, to a large extent, the future of supermarket chains is not so much about marketing food for customers to prepare at home, but rather offering them already prepared and ready dishes. Instead of chicken, potatoes, oil and salt, you are offered the tray with the roasted thighs directly. Instead of coffee packets, they switch to freshly ground coffee. I explained it clearly Roig himself during the last presentation of results. “I said it and I maintain it: in the middle of the century there will be no kitchens.” All to save you time Beyond the rhetoric Mercadona seems to be betting on that conviction in its stores. In his last annual report The company explains that last year the service was incorporated into one hundred and a half new stores, which brings the total network to 1,260 supermarkets, 1,200 in Spain and the existing 60 in Portugal. Taking into account that the chain has a little more 1,600 establishments In Spain, the level of implementation is more than considerable and already exceeds 70%. The company does not publish detailed financial data for its different business areas, but ensures that the ‘Ready to eat’ section, “has not stopped growing”. In 2024 the entire company invoiced 38,835 millionwhich allowed him increase by 37% its net profit to reach 1,384 million. Mercadona’s bet (like that of chains such as Alcampo or … Read more

Aragón has just activated its second major data center project. The bet goes through a challenge that is difficult to ignore

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Aragón is going through a unique moment: in just a few years it has gone from competing to attract data centers to announce three mega facilities new ones promoted by Forestalia that aim to strengthen their position on the European cloud map. The announcement by the regional government comes in the midst of a race to attract technological investment, but also in a territory where the electrical network works to the limit and every great project depends on decisions that have not yet been made. The result is a scenario as ambitious as it is full of unknowns, which will determine the real impact of this expansion. How these digital complexes work. A data center is, in essence, a technological heart that stores and processes information for millions of users and companies. Every series that is streamed or every operation carried out in the cloud passes through servers that require stable power and constant cooling. That is why the choice of location is so relevant: electrical capacity and operational security are needed. Aragón has been gaining ground on that map and today is seen as a strategic option for new facilities. The project. The Government of Aragon has detailed that the Búfalo Project includes three data centers in Magallón, Botorrita and Alfamén, backed by an investment of 12,048 million euros. The deployment includes DCM Data, DCM Dédalo and DCM Blue, whose works would begin between 2028 and 2029 and will extend for approximately eight years. According to official estimates, the construction will generate about 30,000 temporary jobs. In the operational phase, each facility will add hundreds of workers, with a total that clearly exceeds a thousand stable positions. Aragón on the international board. The accumulated investments in data centers exceed 70,000 million euros and place the community in the same conversation as consolidated European hubs. According to the President of the Government of Aragon, Jorge Azcón, the computing capacity that is being configured rivals that of Dublin and Paris and aspires to approach that of Frankfurt. The regional Executive also states that the data that will be managed will have a European scope, from Germany or France to Italy and the United Kingdom, reinforcing the international dimension of the project. Distributed renewable self-consumption. The Government of Aragon presents self-consumption as a distinctive element of the Búfalo Project, since approximately half of the energy consumption will be associated with wind and photovoltaic parks powered by Forestalia. This volume of generation allows for a renewable supply, although it does not eliminate dependence on the general network, which will provide the rest of the energy. The underlying idea is to combine own generation with existing infrastructure to sustain large-scale facilities. Press to see the message in X The word “self-consumption” may lead one to think that data centers and renewable plants share the same physical space, but this is not the case. Forestalia is setting up parks in various regions of Zaragoza and Teruel, located where the natural resource is most favorable. The data centers, as we say, will be in Magallón, Botorrita and Alfamén, and the connection between both worlds is made entirely through the Red Eléctrica network. It is a distributed scheme that coordinates generation and consumption without a single energy campus. A network to the limit. Aragon produces more electricity than it consumes and exports about 54% of its generation, but that abundance contrasts with a distribution network that functions practically at maximum. A report published in September 2025 sets its occupancy level at 94.3%, well above the national average of 84.3%. This saturation leaves little room to incorporate large consumers such as data centers. The result is a paradox: available energy, but an infrastructure incapable of delivering it to all projects. Projects that have already reached their peak. The bottleneck is not a future hypothesis, but a reality that already affects several operators. According to Heraldothe data centers in the pipeline have requested more than 6,000 MW and only a part has firm access, with cases such as Vantage, which has 90 MW authorized despite aiming for 300. Microsoft also depends on tenders in saturated nodes. The Government itself recognizes that everything will be linked to Red Eléctrica’s planning and the decisions of the central Executive. Water, a debate that is still open? The cooling of data centers has generated concern in Aragon since Amazon asked for late 2024 48% more water for the complexes that already operate in the region. Ecologistas en Acción and the Tu Nube Seca Mi Río platform then warned of the water impact of these facilities in the midst of a structural drought. Azcón maintains that future Forestalia centers will use a closed circuit with “practically imperceptible” consumption and affirms that the debate “is over.” In any case, everything indicates that this matter remains under public scrutiny. To facilitate the path of the Buffalo Project, The Government of Aragon has declared the initiative as of Autonomous General Interest, a figure that allows procedures to be simplified and the different administrations involved better coordinated. This declaration speeds up procedures, but does not resolve the main point of friction: the available electrical capacity. Hence, the regional Executive insists on its willingness to work with the central Government and Red Eléctrica, the only actors that can modify the network planning. Real progress will depend on those decisions. The announcement of the three new data centers, together with the rest of the initiatives in the pipeline, places Aragón at a decisive moment to consolidate its presence on the European cloud map. The investment is notable and so is the promised employment, but much of the result will depend on decisions that are not entirely in the hands of the community. The region has shown intention and movement, although it remains to be seen what the real scope of this bet will be. Images | İsmail Enes Ayhan | Jorge Azcón (X) In Xataka | The European Commission’s pendulum with AI is real: it will sacrifice privacy to … Read more

We already know which will be the most expensive data center in the world. If Bill Gates paid it, it would be almost zero

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Already in 2024 we saw that infrastructure spending for AI was being insane. The trend has not relaxed, quite the opposite. Big tech continues to burn money as if there was no tomorrow (literally) and most of that spending is going to most valuable asset in the AI ​​race: data centers. How much do they really cost? Data centers in numbers Epoch AI has published Frontier Data Centersa complete database about data centers being built in the United States. Through satellite images, public documents and permits, they have obtained information about the estimated construction cost, as well as energy consumption and computing power. The award for the most expensive data center goes to Microsoft Fairwater, whose total cost It could reach $106 billion when completed in 2028. To put it in context, Bill Gates’ fortune is estimated to be 107 billion dollars. It would be fair to pay it. The forecast for Microsoft Fairwater even surpasses Meta Hyperion, the data center that It will be as big as the island of Manhattan which would cost 72,000 million. Next on the list is Colossus 2, by xAIwhose estimated cost is 44 billion dollars. It is closely followed by Meta Prometheus with 43 billion and the Amazon and Anthropic data center in New Carlisle with 39 billion. Epoch AI has collected more data, such as how much computing power each facility will have. This data is measured using the NVIDIA H100 GPUs for reference. They have also calculated the energy demand and who will be the main user of each of them. Below we leave you a table with the key information: Estimate DATE ESTIMATED cost ($) computing (EN gpUS H100) energy demand intended primary user microsoft fairwater September 2027 106 billion 5.2 million 3328 MW OpenAI meta hyperion January 2028 72 billion 4.2 million 2262 MW Goal xai Colossus 2 February 2026 44 billion 1.4 million 1379 MW xAI meta prometheus October 2026 43 billion 1.2 million 1360MW Goal amazon new carlisle June 2026 39 billion 770,000 1229 MW Anthropic oracle stargate July 2026 32 billion 1 million 1180MW OpenAI microsoft fayetteville March 2026 29 billion 920,000 1065MW OpenAI/Microsoft amazon ridgeland September 2027 32 billion 630,000 1008MW Anthropic Dizzying climb Looking at the case of Microsoft Fairwater, and always according to Epoch AI’s forecast, in March 2026 the investment will be $18 billion. A year later, in February 2027, it rises to 35,000 million, just four months later it shoots up to 71,000 million, to reach 106 billion in 2028. The price increase is dizzying and responds to several factors. The first is that the computational cost of training models has been increasing. For example, GPT 4 cost OpenAI over 100 million and rumors before the release of GPT-5 pointed to training rounds of 500 million each. Epoch AI also did an analysis on this and they estimated that the cost of training has multiplied by 2.6 year after year. On the other hand, there is the demand for GPUs, necessary for training the models and the most expensive component of all. An NVIDIA H100 GPU costs 25,000 dollars and its successor, the NVIDIA B200 also known as Blackwell, could be between 30,000 and 40,000 dollars. And this is just the GPUs, many are needed more components to get a data center up and running, such as power generators, high-speed networks or refrigeration, among others. The initial bottleneck was the shortage of GPUs, but it has been overcome by a more fundamental constraint: there is not enough power for so many chips. data centers They consume a lot of energy, Seriously, a lot. To put it in context, in 2024, data centers were already the 4% of United States electricity consumption and it is expected that Demand will double in the next five years. Nobody wants to live near a data center for one reason: mass consumption is raising energy prices up to 267% in nearby areas. Power supply has become a new choke point for the industry. Microsoft is already considering producing its own energy by creating nuclear power plants and others like Google and Amazon are considering taking data centers into space. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | AI data centers are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’ solution: build them in space

The first, create a global center that regulates AI. The second, be in Shanghai

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The Chinese president presented at the APEC summit your proposal to establish a World Organization for Cooperation in Artificial Intelligence. It is the first time that Xi speaks publicly about this initiative that Beijing has been working on since the beginning of the year, and the message is clear: China wants to lead the global governance of AI compared to the United States. A proposal in a regulatory vacuum. Xi Jinping defend that this international body should establish AI governance rules and encourage cooperation between countries, turning artificial intelligence into “a public good for the international community,” according to collect the Xinhua agency. The Chinese leader stressed that “artificial intelligence is of great importance for future development and should be done for the benefit of people in all countries and regions.” The United States, for its part, has rejected attempts to regulate AI through international organizations, leaving the door open for other powers to take the initiative. Shanghai as a technological epicenter. Official Chinese sources have confirmed that the organization would be based in Shanghai, the country’s financial and technological center. The election seeks to consolidate the city’s position as a global benchmark in innovation and strengthen the Chinese technological ecosystem at a time when Beijing is promoting what it calls “algorithmic sovereignty”, as they mention from Reuters. A recent example is that of DeepSeekwho launched cheaper AI models as an alternative to Western solutions dominated by advanced Nvidia chips. Additionally, China has a large presence when it comes to open source models, with companies such as Alibaba being the reference through their models qwen. Strategy. The proposal comes at a strategic moment. The APEC summit, which brings together 21 nations that represent half of world trade, approved a joint declaration and pacts on AI and the challenge of population aging. China took advantage of this scenario to position itself as a leader in multilateral cooperation, especially after Trump’s absence at the leaders’ summit held in the South Korean city of Gyeongju. The American president returned directly to Washington after his bilateral meeting with Xia meeting in which a temporary one-year agreement was promised to partially reduce the trade and technological controls that had triggered tension between the two largest economies in the world. Beyond AI: green technologies. Xi too took advantage the forum to urge APEC members to promote the “free circulation” of green technologies, a sector that ranges from batteries to solar panels and in which China largely dominates. This is a complementary strategy, as the country seeks to maintain its competitive advantage while proposing to regulate AI at a global level. Next stop: Shenzhen 2026. China will host the APEC summit in 2026 in Shenzhena city of almost 18 million inhabitants that Xi described as a former fishing village transformed into a technological power after becoming one of the country’s first special economic zones in the 1980s. Today it is a nerve center for advanced manufacturing, from robotics to the production of electric cars. It will be a new opportunity for Beijing to continue pushing its vision of technological and commercial cooperation. Cover image | aboodi vesakaran and Xataka with Mockup Studio In Xataka | Volvo and Pirelli have been in the hands of Chinese groups for years: they are just two examples of how China is buying Europe

Rosalía paralyzed the center of Madrid yesterday by surprise because she is no longer promoting an album: she is selling a great event

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Beyond her music, which in these cases always takes a backseat, it is clear that when we talk about Rosalía’s ability to sell her stuff, we are dealing with an artist who is one step ahead of her compatriots. In fact, in a certain sense Rosalía plays in a league of teasers, previews and management of expectations that places her closer to Taylor Swift either bts that together with Van Gogh’s Ear. What happened. Rosalia paralyzed the center of Madrid last night with a presentation as brief as it was chaotic of their new album ‘Lux’, turned into an unexpected act of performance urban: at 8:45 p.m., Rosalía began a live on TikTok in which he announced that something would happen at 10:00 p.m. in the Plaza de Callao. Thousands of fans turned out within minutes, drawn by the promise of a performance. The artist, who was personally driving a white car through Madrid while it was being recorded live, briefly appeared running along Gran Vía before taking refuge in the Capitol Hotel.​ Make yourself Lux. Shortly after, all the screens in Callao and the theaters in the area faded to black to finally show the cover of ‘Lux’: Rosalía dressed in white, with a kind of straitjacket and veil, golden lips and a blue background with the title of the album in the center, and with visual reminiscences (the posture of a certain serenity, the headdress, the title of the album) that clearly recall a nun. The album will be officially released on November 7, it is the artist’s fourth studio after ‘Motomami’ and comes preceded by some visual clues in recent days, such as the artist’s presence in Times Square or the enigmatic presentation a few days ago of a score. Not Kings, but a queen. The launch of Rosalía’s new album, Lux, began with a great promotional action in Times Squarein New York, on October 19, 2025, where his image and the title of the album occupied the iconic light screens of the place.​ There the images that we ended up seeing in Callao were shown for the first time in the chaotic (but very studied) presentation yesterday. About the sheet music. More enigmatic was the publication in your newsletter of some scores apparently titled ‘Berghain’ (which suggested a musical turn towards string arrangements, apparently opposed to the electronic spirit of the Berlin club with the same name as the scores). Thousands of fans began to interpret the score with different instruments and upload their versions to TikTok and X, turning the enigma into a collective experience of musical creation. This phenomenon is reminiscent of the way in which, before the release of ‘Desphá’Rosalía already showed for the first time her ability to play with expectations and not follow the hitherto immovable rules of marketing, all based on leaks and direct and apparently improvised communication with fans. New narratives. Rosalía is a good example of a new way of promoting albums, which have ceased to be isolated musical works and have become a constant call for attention. Taylor Swift is the ultimate example: months before the launch of her ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ we have had promotion on social networks, a wedding announcement and a successful documentary. Rosalía already is giving interviews in which he talks about a personal turn in recent years that will be reflected, of course, in the new album. The personal and the professional blur, with clues that the album could have religious content, anticipating an intimate and profound transformation. And very profitable. In Xataka | Rosalía released a statement to avoid the controversy about Gaza. There are those who think that it has not been clear enough

the center that controls the time

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Few infrastructures are as invisible as time, but its precision underpins much of the modern world. In China, that pulse is marked a scientific center in Xi’an that adjusts everything from bank clocks to defense systems. Now, that same center has become the epicenter of a serious accusation: the Chinese Government claims to have detected evidence of an intrusion by the US National Security Agency (NSA, the body that together with the CIA leads US intelligence operations) into its network, directed against the system that maintains the country’s official time. The center that tells the time of China. The National Time Service Center (NTSC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences is much more than a laboratory: it is the reference that generates, maintains and transmits the official time of the country. From its network of stations and atomic clocks, communication, banking, energy, transportation and even defense systems are synchronized. In addition, it participates in the calculation of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and maintains a deviation of less than five nanoseconds from it, which places it among the four most precise timekeeping centers in the world. A prolonged offensive in three phases. According to information released by CGM (via CGTN)the operation attributed to the US National Security Agency began in March 2022, when a vulnerability in the messaging service of a foreign phone was exploited to access the devices of several NTSC employees. Starting in April 2023, using stolen credentials, attackers penetrated internal systems. Between August 2023 and June 2024, activity intensified with sustained attacks against the organization’s most sensitive networks. According to the researchthe operation was not limited to a specific entry. After violating the messaging application of a foreign smartphone, the attackers would have taken control of the mobile phones of several employees and extracted passwords and authentication data. That information was used to maintain remote access to NTSC servers without being detected. Chinese authorities define the intrusion as “planned, structured and constantly escalating,” a description that points to a sustained campaign rather than an isolated incident. Objective: High precision timing system. The official story focuses on a highly sensitive target: the NTSC precision ground timing system, identified in the communications as “high-precision ground-based timing system.” According to CMG, the intruders attempted not only to gather information, but also to insert offensive capabilities that could render that infrastructure useless, with the possibility of “paralyzing or destroying” its operation. Attributed methods and camouflage. They also point out that the offensive was not limited to rudimentary techniques: they say it deployed a new platform with 42 specialized cyber weapons and advanced camouflage methods. The attackers used VPS located in multiple regions to hide their origin, used fake certificates to gain trust in networks, and bypassed antivirus systems while applying strong encryption to eliminate records of the intrusion. Command and control infrastructure included VPS in EuropeUnited States and Asia. When time becomes a strategic objective. Beijing maintains that the NTSC defenses managed to stop the offensive before the national timekeeping was altered. But the attempt, authorities emphasize, demonstrates that an apparently technical system can become a strategic objective. The possibility of manipulating the measurement of time—even marginally—opens a scenario of unpredictable consequences. The case has revived concern about the security of invisible infrastructures, those that are not seen, but support the functioning of the country. The Ministry of Security claimed to have gathered “conclusive evidence” of the attack, after which he helped the NTSC cut the chains of intrusion and reinforce its systems. According to China Media Group, the intervention made it possible to eliminate potential risks and restore the integrity of the network. The authorities assured that the incident served to update defense mechanisms and strengthen supervision of critical infrastructures. No technical details were provided on the measures adopted or on cooperation with other state agencies. Between the official story and the lack of response. For now, the attack remains in the realm of accusations. China claims to have gathered evidence of an NSA operation, while the United States has not responded. Without external verification, the true magnitude of the incident is difficult to measure. The episode illustrates, in any case, how security and temporal precision have become part of the board where global technological tensions are resolved. Images | National Time Service Center (NTSC) (1, 2) | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 In Xataka | Unitree wants to conquer robotics in China and is making a move: it has just announced its most capable robot. Now the only thing missing is that there is demand

Opening an R&D center in the city that makes the most sense

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Xiaomi recently announced that The Su7its first electric car, would arrive in Europe in 2027. In this way, the European public will be able to taste first hand one of the electric cars that have caused the most in recent years. In addition, silently, the now also vehicle manufacturer has opened Your first research and development center Out of China. The installation, located in Munich, marks the starting point of the arrival of the Chinese manufacturer to the European market for electric vehicles. The first step. The opening of this center is much more than a simple technical office. Xiaomi, a company known for its mobile phones and other technological gadgets, launched its first car in 2023, and this new expansion is accelerating its transformation into a car manufacturer made and right. Its president, William Lu, He already made it clear In August that the company aspires to become one of the five largest automobile in the world, and Europe is key in that plan. What will the center of Munich do. German facilities will focus on adapting Xiaomi vehicles to the demands of the European market: from the development of technology for electric vehicles and intelligent driving to compliance with strict safety regulations. The teams of engineers, designers and European researchers will collaborate directly with the centers in China to prepare specific models for international markets. The models that will arrive. Although Xiaomi has not officially confirmed which vehicles will bring to Europe, everything points to SU7, a high performance sedan that would compete with the Porsche Taycanand al Yu7a SUV that would be measured with the Tesla Model and. Su7 Ultra has already demonstrated its potential by establishing The fastest back record For an electric production car in the Nürburgring circuit, with a time of 7 minutes and 4 seconds (6 minutes and 22 seconds its prototype version). A success in China. The growth of Xiaomi in the automobile sector has been meteoric. His su7 reached 200,000 units delivered in China In just 119 days, a stellar figure for a brand that opens for the first time in the automobile world. Now, the brand seeks to replicate that success beyond its borders, taking advantage of its experience in technology and software. It is not the only China in Munich. The Bavarian city has become The favorite destination of Chinese manufacturers to establish your design and research centers in Europe. Nio opened his design headquarters in 2015, while Avat and Li Auto have also chosen Munich for their European facilities. The proximity to the German car industry and access to specialized talent are usually the main reasons for this election. Cover image | Xiaomi In Xataka | China’s government is discovering that selling cheap cars is not enough in Europe: spare parts will be insured

A Microsoft Data Center in Mexico collided with the reality of the electricity network. Your solution: use gas generators

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Artificial intelligence has become daily, but behind each consultation to tools such as Chatgpt either COPILOT There are real buildings that consume a lot of energy and require reliable infrastructure. In that framework, Microsoft announced May 7, 2024 The beginning of operations of its “Central Mexico” data centers region, with several locations in the Querétaro Metropolitan Area. The deployment, however, coexists with very specific tensions: According to the companyat least one of those centers, that of Columbus, cannot benefit from the advantages of the electricity network until mid -2027 and obtained permission to temporarily operate with gas generators. It should be remembered that the proximity of these infrastructure to users is essential: it reduces latency, improves the quality of the service and allows to meet data residence requirements. But that technical advantage depends on something elementary: having an electricity grid capable of sustaining permanent operations and constant cooling. Microsoft stressed the magnitude of its project in the North American country. The new region aims to offer local access to Azure, Microsoft 365Dynamics 365, among other services. The firm also presented the initiative as an “avant -garde” infrastructure aimed at accelerating innovation in the region. The Achilles heel of deployment: energy In a request to the Ministry of Environment delivered in 2023Microsoft acknowledged that, although the data center would connect within the planned deadlines, due to the construction deadlines included in its contract with the Federal Electricity Commission, the energization of the connection would not be ready until the Second quarter of 2027. To save that void, The use of seven generators was approved capable of covering 70% of the demand of the center of Columbus for 12 hours a day, for at least four months. According to Rest of World, Mexico already has about a hundred data centers, with investments that exceed 7,000 million dollars from 2020 by Microsoft, Aws and Google. Querétaro has established itself as the main attraction pole, with 15 facilities that concentrate about 80% of the sector’s energy demand, about 200 MW. The Mexican Institute for Competitiveness projects thatby 2030, the network will face a deficit of 48,000 MWh, more than half of what it produced in 2023. With more than 70 new centers planned in the next five years, the mismatch between installed capacity and electric transmission becomes an obvious threat. The American company has set ambitious environmental goals: Being negative carbon in 2030, eliminating all its historical emissions in 2050 and supplying 100% with renewable energy contracts in 2025. In contrast, in Columbus is the provisional measure of operating with gas generators until it can be fully connected to the network in 2027. What It is not clear is whether these equipment were usedif they remain in operation or what intermediate solution the company will apply in the coming years. Microsoft, for now, has not specified with which energy sources Opera Colón. The launch of the Central Mexico region was presented as a decisive step to accelerate the country’s digital transformation and attract foreign investment. But energy reality introduces a decisive nuance: the infrastructure necessary to sustain that deployment does not advance at the same rate as the technological ambition. The tension between promises of sustainability and limitations of the network is a reminder that the cloud, far from being ethereal, rests on concrete foundations, cables and megawatts that define, in a way, how far artificial intelligence and other services can go. Images | Microsoft (1, 2) In Xataka | This nuclear reactor is different from everyone else. It has been expressly designed for data centers

Girona has managed to decongest its historic center copying a trick of Barcelona: erase from Google Maps

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Girona has made Google and Waze modify the routes that took cars, especially tourists, to cross the old town of their city known as Barri Vell. This historical area has the Restricted circulationwith priority for pedestrians and limited access to residents and businesses. For Avoid excess traffic and preserve the pedestrian character of the center, the City Council asked the managers of those browsers to prioritize alternative tours and clearly mark the restrictions of access to the area. Atasque between 2,000 years of history Before, Google Maps and Waze guided To many drivers inside the Barri Vell to take shortcuts, especially tourists who trusted the GPS to move around the city. The problem is that, like most historical centers, this generated Unduse circulation in narrow and cobbled streets that are not designed for road traffic and hindered the circulation of neighbors. Such and as they highlight in The newspaper, In Barri Vell the circulation is restricted and special authorization is required to access even for distribution and service vehicles that are subjected to an access time control to prioritize the pedestrian use of the monumental center with more than 2,000 years of history. “We have been working to guarantee pacification at Barri Vell and the priority for pedestrians to be the seal of the city,” wrote Lluc Salellas, mayor of Girona In his X profile. Touch the photo to go to the original message The municipal idea for decongestion The Gironés City Council sent letters to Google and Waze to request that Barri Vell be eliminated as a recommended route to avoid the passage of tourist cars in this area. This management took several months, but finally was effective and GPS applications stopped proposing the historic center as a shortcut for the internal displacements of the city. In addition, the municipal team works so that the information shown in the browsers be as accurate as possibleclearly indicating the places where tourists They can park outside the historic center and preventing vehicles from being reserved where the spaces for loading and discharge are reserved. “We have made Google and Waze clearly mark that Barri Vell is an area with restricted circulation; and therefore, do not send tourists’ cars so easily,” explained Mayor Salellas to The newspaper.es. Girona is not the only one that has “erased” Google Girona It is not the only city that has asked Google to modify the information it gives to its users to redirect tourism flows and reorder the traffic of its streets. Barcelona City Council applied a similar measure To decongest the accesses to Park Güell, one of its most visited tourist places, eliminating from Google Maps one of the bus lines that went up to the park. This action sought to avoid the saturation of tourists and prioritize the service for the use of their neighbors, freeing them from the saturation of thousands of tourists who visit Gaudí’s work every day. In Holland, a small town managed to make fun of Google Maps To decongest its streets coordinating their neighbors to send false reports of cut streets. That caused the GPS to redirect traffic to alternative routes by freeing its neighbors from excess traffic. In all cases, this coordinated strategy with GPS applications has managed to reduce mass tourism in the most sensitive areas of cities, demonstrating how technological ones can influence tourist flows. In Xataka | One day, all Germans in Germany appeared closed on Google Maps. The problem is that nobody knows why Image | Unspash (Brandon Gurney, Priscilla du Preez)

With GPT-5, Openai wants to place it at the center of all things

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Microsoft and Apple defined the PC segment and They made him a Commodity. The computer became in something standardcommon and easily interchangeable, Without too much differentiation. Those who ended up winning that battle, however, were Microsoft and Intel, who took a good part of the benefits. Then the mobile would arrive. It is clear that those who have won this segment have been Apple (with iOS) and Google (with Android), but be careful, because those who defined it were two companies. The first, the aforementioned Apple, which also triumphed with the APP Store paradigm And it has ended up taking about half of the income. The second, a company where perhaps not many would have thought: Amazon. The electronic commerce giant would end up promoting the cloud with its Amazon Web Services, and It also ended up turning that cloud into another Commodity. And as happened with Microsoft and the PC or Apple and the mobile, Amazon ended up monopolizing a good part of the benefits of the cloud. A cloud we considerably access (for example, through the iPhone), but to which we don’t even pay too much attention: It is there and works, as before the PC and now the mobile. As explained by analyst Ben Thompson In StratecheryThey are everything Commodities. Well, there are those who expect AI to end up becoming another Commodity. That this segment for which now They compete a multitude of companies It ends up becoming (perhaps) a duopoly like the one created by Microsoft and Intel in the PC or Apple and Google on the mobile. Foundational models are the new PC/mobile, and although there are strong candidates to end up winning that race, everything is yet to be defined. AI like Commodity And that is where GPT-5 comes into play, which wants to be something like Apple’s App Store or Amazon AWS: that platform that Turn it in the company that defines the AI race and manages to win it. And that over time also influence that conversion of AI in a Commodity. With this OpenAi launch you play a lot. Sam Altman has been living in two things for years. On the one hand, of the success of Chatgpt, a remarkable product, but for the moment not revolutionary. On the other, Above all, of Hype. Of promises and moments wow like the one they gave us With GPT-4O or with them Studio Ghibli Style Images. Because we insist, Chatgpt is a good product that has proven useful as an assistant in all types of tasks, but especially in programming. Has unusual an unusual fever for the generative AI and data centersand has caused many companies to trust their future –or rather they bet– To this technology. But revolutions, for the moment, few. Comparisons with phenomena such as PC, Internet or mobile are inevitable. And in all of them discourse and evolution were similar. There were doubts and skepticism at the beginning, exaggerated bets later –Hi, bubble Puntocom– And, indeed, revolution. And it is expected that something like this passes with the pass, although in fact the most devout of this technology claim that this will go further. Others, much more skeptical, believe that This is a bubble that will end exploding … although it can end it deriving the true revolutionas happened with the Internet. Whether there is bubble and explodes as if not, GPT-5 is for Openai a key model for your future. And the paradox of this model is that the company needs the greatest jump in the history of AI Just when it seems most impossible. It is about to see how good the model is really, but the company cannot suffer Another fiasco like GPT-4.5 or your reputation will be very damaged. Will Openai achieve with GPT-5 and the AI what Microsoft, Apple or Amazon already achieved in their respective segments? That is the big question. And we will have to wait a bit to answer it. In Xataka | There are too many AI models. That raises a true death sentence for Anthropic and Claude

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