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Europe’s passenger car industry, in a revealing map that makes it clear who is the real “engine” of the EU

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Even though it is submerged in a deep crisis of competitivenessIt’s no secret that The automobile industry is one of the driving forces of the European Union. Thus, it is responsible for 8% of its GDP (figures collected by CCOO) and employs 13,000 million people, including direct and indirect jobs. Of course, the EU is large and the distribution of its factories presents enormous divergence. Although there are things that don’t change. The European Automobile Manufacturers Association has an interactive map which is quite good to see what the distribution is like quantitatively, insofar as it shows even the few electric battery plants on the old continent, but if you are more interested in the qualitative and only passenger cars, there is a clearer map: that of World Wide Mobility. And beyond a barrage of concentrated icons that are difficult to distinguishshows in general terms the main brands that are produced or assembled there, production volumes and the percentage they represent of the total. Which countries are the engine of Europe in the automobile industry The data on the map dates back to 2024 and shows a figure of 11.4 million passenger cars manufactured in the European Union, which are essentially concentrated in three states in a non-uniform manner: Germany, Spain and the Czech Republic. World Wide Mobility Germany, 12 points. The leading country in the old continent when it comes to motors is, of course, Germany: it is not only the largest producer by volume with more than four million passenger cars and a 35.7% share, but also the one with the densest network of high-tech factories. Own brands stand out such as Volkswagen and its five factories that include the headquarters in Wolfsburg, BMW with four factories, the three of Mercedes – Benz or the two of Audi, Porsche or Opel (Stellantis). But it also has plants from foreign companies, such as Tesla in Grünheide (Berlin) or the North American Ford in Cologne. Much lower but still outstanding silver is Spainwith a share of 16.4% and almost two million cars assembled in the state. With the high efficiency per flag (in the words of the Spanish Minister of IndustryJordi Hereu), has fewer of its own brands but in exchange it is the nerve center for foreign groups. Thus, in addition to Martorell’s own SEAT/Cupra, legendary highlights include the Volkswagen factory in Landaben in Navarra, Stellantis distributed in three plants, both of which are Renault, Ford in Almussafes, and the Mercedes-Benz manufacturing plant in Alava. And be careful because it does not take into account the reactivation of the old Nissan factory for Chery/Ebro EV, already operational. Third place belongs to the Czech Republic with 12.7% and almost 1.5 million passenger cars, which together with Slovakia (fourth with 8.7% and almost a million cars) form “the Detroit of Central Europe“. A bronze achieved thanks to the importance of Škoda and the growing impact of Hyundai and Toyota. In fact, Slovakia It has the highest car production per capita on the planet: over there Large SUVs in the most premium segment are manufactured of the Volkswagen group in its factory in Bratislava, but it also houses manufactures of Kia, Stellantis or Jaguar and Land Rover. Romania and Hungary below demonstrate a reality: the strength of the Central European axis in this industry. France deserves special mentiona country with historically mythical brands that have been relocating production, but which still houses five plants of the Stellantis group and four of Renault, as well as foreign brands such as Fiat. And if we go to luxury, Italy and Sweden appear on the map, with high-end brands such as Ferrari, Lamborghini, Koenigsegg or Volvo, although their figures are lower. In Xataka | There is a Europe that is suffocating to pay for housing and another that lives in peace. And this map shows the differences In Xataka | All the car plants in Europe (including the few battery-electric ones), on a map Cover | World Wide Mobility

We have been telling ourselves since 1945 that we should drink “two liters of water a day.” Science is clear that this is not the case.

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One of the most popular rules in popular health culturewithout a doubt it is in the amount of water you have to drink per day. An amount that is located in eight glasses a day or what is the same: the immovable figure of two literss. We see it in fitness applications, in influencers’ advice and we hear it repeated like a mantra, but the reality is that there is quite a myth behind this. We are different people. A very common phrase within medicine is precisely “there are no equal people”, and not only because of the external physique, but because of everything that is inside. This forces the medicine Focus towards a more individualized idea in your medical advice that have to be given, included in nutrition or water consumption. This forces us to have to personalize the amount of water that each person should consume, because a person who is 2 meters tall and weighs 100 kg with a large amount of muscle is not the same as an elderly person who has a much slower metabolism. Logically, the two liters of water mantra cannot be established here. The origin of the error. To understand why we drink (or think we should drink) so much, you have to travel back to 1945. According to key review by Dr. Heinz Valtin in it American Journal of Physiology 2002, the myth of the “8×8” rule, that is, 8 8-ounce glasses to have almost 2 liters of water, probably comes from a misinterpretation of a guide from the Food and Nutrition Board. A guide that indicated that it was always recommended to have an adequate intake of 2.5 liters of fluids per day. But most people ignored the accompanying sentence that said, “most of this amount is in prepared foods.” What the institutions say. So the question is quite clear: how much should we drink per day? In this case there are different official figures, but they have fine print. We have one of the examples in the European Food Safety Authority Panel 2010 established adequate water intake at 2 liters per day for women and 2.5 liters per day for men. But here’s the key: the EFSA specifies that this refers to total water, that is, the sum of drinks plus food. And there are many dishes that have a large amount of water, such as soup, although fruits also have a lot of water inside. Even in the United States. If we move to the recommendations made in the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the USA from 2005, suggests that the total water figures should be 2.7 liters per day for women and 3.7 liters per day for men. But again, it includes all the dietary intake that is made per day and not just glasses of tap water. The latest science. If we come more to the present, we also have scientific studies that have sought to dismantle a universal fixed figure set at two liters per day. One of the most important is the one published in Science in 2022 that used isotopes to measure water exchange in 5,604 people, and that showed that real needs vary enormously between people. One of the conclusions they addressed was that for most people in temperate climates and with sedentary lives, the real water intake needs are between 1.5 and 1.8 liters per day, far from the demands of wellness marketing. And it is reinforced. It is not a study that is isolated, but also in 2022 the magazine Scientific Reports, published research where this idea was reinforced: they predict necessary beverage intakes of about 1.6 L for women and 2.0 L for men, always depending on factors such as age, sex and body composition. Is more water better? One of the most repeated arguments by proponents of hyperhydration is that we should drink “before we are thirsty.” modern physiology, backed by scientific reviews and analysis of urinary osmolarity, refutes this fear that we may have. Specifically, the human body has an extremely sensitive osmoregulation system. When the concentration of solutes in the blood increases by only 2%well below clinical dehydration, the brain already activates the sensation of being thirsty and releases the necessary hormone to begin conserving water so that it does not ‘leave’ in the urine. There are exceptions. Unless you are an elderly person (whose thirst sensation is attenuated) or a high-performance athlete in the midst of intense effort, drinking when thirsty is the most accurate and scientifically validated strategy for maintaining water balance. When you should drink more water. That the “mandatory two liters” are a myth does not mean that water is not logically vital. The most recent systematic reviews and other clinical means confirm that increasing water intake has clear therapeutic benefits in very specific cases that are not universal. These can be the following: Having a kidney stone: here the “more, the better” applies since increasing urinary flow is key to preventing the recurrence of this disease. Urinary infections: a problem that mainly affects women, and that requires ‘overhydration’ to reduce risk of new episodes. Weight loss: Although the evidence is mixed, drinking water may help with satiety and, marginally, energy expenditure. Although it is not a magic solution against obesity. More common sense. The obsession with two liters is a perfect example of how an old and misinterpreted scientific recommendation becomes a cultural dogma. The reality, supported by decades of studies from Valtin to the latest isotopic analyses, is that we are not machines that need a fixed tank filling every 24 hours. In this way, our body’s water needs are dynamic. Water needs are dynamic. If you eat a lot of fruits and vegetables, work in an air-conditioned office, and don’t run marathons every day, forcing yourself to drink 2 liters of extra water will probably only do one thing: interrupting your work to go to the bathroom more times. The situation. In this way we can understand that … Read more

The community has made it clear that they do not want AI in Windows and Microsoft has ignored them. So they have taken the law into their own hands

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Microsoft’s obsession with putting AI in every corner of Windows is logical at the current time (after all, it’s what everyone is doing). The problem is that the community has been very clear about this: they don’t want to. Microsoft has continued with its plan flood Windows 11 with AIbut we already have a way to avoid it. Winslop. The name comes from the play on words between Windows and Slop, which is the term used to refer to ‘AI garbage’, that is, very poor quality content. This is a free tool whose purpose is to eliminate all traces of AI from the system. Its creator makes it clear that he is not anti-Windows, in fact he states that he likes the platform, what he doesn’t like is the direction it is taking. CleanIA Windows. Winslop is totally free and you can download it from Github. The interface looks like old versions of Windows and consists of a list with all the changes that we can apply. There is an option that inspects the system and proposes the changes to be made, or we can check the boxes we want, depending on the level of cleaning we want. The list is quite long and is divided into categories, these are some of the functions we found: System: shows details if there is a blue screen instead of a sad face, optimizes system sensitivity, speeds up shutdown time… Microsoft Edge– makes it not the default browser, disables the Copilot icon, removes the shopping assistant, does not show sponsored links when opening a tab… Interface: Turn off transparency effects, hide taskbar search, turn off Bing search… gaming: Disables DVR recording, power throttling and visual effects. Privacy: disables activity history and location tracking Advertisements– Remove ads system-wide. AI– Hides Copilot from the taskbar and disables Windows Recall. Bloatware. There is more. Winslop is divided into three tabs: Windows 11, applications and extensions. From the apps section we can eliminate pre-installed applications such as Bing News, Bing Weather, WindowsCamera and many more. As in the other section, pressing the ‘Inspect System’ button gives us a list of suggestions to eliminate and we mark the ones we want. It’s not the first. Recently we told you about a tool that was born with the same objective (although with a name with less punch), RemoveWindowsAI. Like Winslop, it also disables all AI functions, but beyond its functions, the important thing is that its simple existence was already a symptom of community fatigue. The fact that another app has come out only confirms it. The PC IA. The obsession with turning Windows into an agentic system has collided head-on with what the community is asking for, to the point that Microsoft is losing favor with users. A year ago PCs with AI promised to be a revolutionbut they have come face to face with reality and even historical brands like Dell are changing their discourse. Microsoft is left alone. Image | Winslop In Xataka | There’s a reason AI PCs aren’t hurting Apple: Nobody asked for AI PCs

Apple promised they would be happy by sweeping the iPhone in China. Until Huawei made things clear

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For years, the iPhone was the best-selling mobile phone in China despite the efforts of Asian manufacturers. Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO and Vivo were fighting to create a product at their level (or even superior in some key aspects, such as the camera), achieving privileged positions in a ranking in which Apple used to dominate. It’s not like that anymore. Again, king. Huawei has been in first place in shipments within its country for more than two years. This past 2025, despite having lost 1.9% in annual growth, it is still slightly above the iPhone company. Specifically, 16.4% market share compared to Apple’s 16.2%. Apple grows 4% year-on-year, an increase motivated by the great commercial reception of the new family iPhone 17. In fact, Apple has already surpassed Samsung and has become the first manufacturer worldwide, despite being the second in China. Yes, but. Although Huawei is reigning with an iron fistthe data is not enough to assert that this will continue to be the case next 2026. There has never been such a fierce fight between the main Chinese manufacturers. Huawei: 16.4% market share. Apple: 16.2% market share. Vivo: 16.2% market share. Xiaomi: 15.4% market share. OPPO: 15.2% market share. Minimal differences in quota that will translate into a constant dance of positions during 2026. There is a clear message here: Huawei has not been able to be stopped in its native country. The Huawei case. Vivo, Xiaomi and OPPO maintain a close relationship with Qualcomm, the giant in charge of providing the best high-end Android devices with the most powerful chips on the market. Meanwhile, Huawei has had to adapt to playing with more restrictions than the rest: has had to develop together with SMIC their own processors He had to create a software ecosystem completely independent of Android Almost completely redesign your supply chain Make an even more ambitious bet on your domestic market, where life without Google is the norm The surprise. For years, we have seen Chinese mobile phones as great high-end proposals, but with some important disadvantages compared to Western rivals (fewer years of support, mediocre video recording, “crazy” specs without any sense of assembly…). This has been changing for a while now.. Today (saving the subjectivity of which software we like more or less), Chinese mobile phones are the most ambitious hardware proposal overall. They have the best batteries on the market, by far. On a photographic level, they are beginning to move dangerously far from Apple, Google and Samsung. The hardware set usually far exceeds what we see in the rest of its rivals. Chinese brands are very focused on their expansion throughout Europe, and it shows. not so fast. The Asian market is a great mirror in which to see how the fight between large technology companies progresses, but its particularities are still there. On a global level, at least currently, Apple and Samsung seem practically unreachable. Only Xiaomi, with a 13% share worldwide (compared to Apple’s 20% and Samsung’s 19%), plays in the double-digit league. Vivo and OPPO, with a share of 8%, have not moved their position since 2023. By 2026, consultancies like Counterpoint expect a year of moderation and a poor growth forecast. The global price crisis in DRAM/NAND memories will force an imminent price increase. Whoever manages to contain the dam will win this year. Image | Xataka In Xataka | Chinese mobile phones conquered the market by dividing into a thousand different brands. Now they are doing just the opposite.

The most advanced Spanish military satellite suffered an impact in space more than a week ago. There are still no clear explanations

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For years, Spain has invested millions of euros in building a space communications system designed for extreme scenarios, from military operations to international emergencies. One of its pillars, the satellite SpainSat NG II, It took off in October with everything as planned and within a program presented as the most ambitious in Spanish space history. However, something happened very soon during its transfer to its orbital position. More than a week after an incident was acknowledged, what surrounds the satellite’s true status is a combination of minimal data and silence that leaves many questions open. An aging statement. The only thing confirmed so far comes from a statement released by Indra January 2, 2026in which it is recognized that the satellite suffered the “impact of a space particle” during its transfer to the final orbit. The incident occurred about 50,000 kilometers from Earth, still an intermediate phase of the journey to its geostationary position. Since then, the technical team is analyzing the available data to determine the extent of the damage, but no assessment of its operational status or the actual consequences of the impact has been made public. The launch of SpainSat NG II took place on the night of October 23 in the United States, already in the early hours of the 24th in Spain, aboard a Falcon 9 bound for a geostationary transfer orbit. From there, the satellite had to complete a journey of several months until reaching its final position about 36,000 kilometers from Earth, a process that, according to the CEO of Hisdesat told Euronews, usually takes between five and six months. The impact recognized by Indra occurred in that intermediate phase of the journey, when the satellite had not yet reached its final operational orbit. The reaction. In that same statement, Indra explained that Hisdesat, operator and owner of the satellite, had activated a contingency plan to guarantee that the committed services are not affected. The formulation fits with the logic of a two-satellite system, which seeks to ensure continuity of service even in the event of unforeseen incidents. However, the specific measures adopted and the current degree of dependence on the affected satellite within the program as a whole have not been detailed, which limits the ability to evaluate the real scope of this response. Twin units. SpainSat NG II is not an isolated satellite, but one of the two central pieces of a system conceived as a long-term strategic infrastructure. Along with his twin, the SpainSat NG Iis part of a program promoted by the Ministry of Defense with an investment of more than 2,000 million eurosintended to provide Spain with its own secure communications. The first satellite has already been operational since the summer, while the second was to complete the system, a context that explains the attention that any anomaly in its deployment has generated. The secrets of the satellite. From a technical point of view, SpainSat NG II represents a notable leap over previous generations of government communications satellites. Built by Airbus on the Eurostar Neo platformthe satellite has dimensions close to seven meters and a mass of around six tons. Its payload incorporates an X-band active antenna system that, according to Airbus, offers the equivalent functionality of 16 traditional antennas and allows coverage to be dynamically adapted up to 1,000 times per second, a capacity designed for changing and demanding operating scenarios. More questions than answers. With the information available, the range of scenarios remains wide. An impact from a space particle can result in minor damage without operational consequences, but also in a more serious impact that forces the functions to be limited or the deployment of the satellite to be reconsidered. Indra has even left open the option of a replacement if necessary, and maintains that, in that case, the satellite would be replaced as soon as possible. The absence of specific technical data makes it impossible to know whether this is a controlled incident or a problem with deeper implications. Given the lack of public updates, from Xataka we have contacted Indra to find out if there was any news about the status of the satellite. The company’s press office has responded to us that, for now, they have no details to share about what happened. That silence prolongs the uncertainty around a strategic system that has not yet entered service and leaves open key questions about the real scope of the impact. Images | Airbus (1, 2) | Thales In Xataka | We already have an official date for the United States’ return to the Moon: it is imminent and mired in a sea of ​​doubts

While half the world looks for an alternative to Taiwan, Jensen Huang is very clear about the harsh reality: there is no

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In the technological world, the United States AIthe China’s semiconductor breakthroughs and the robotics explosion They were protagonists during the last months. But if there is something essential for these industries to function, it is Taiwan. In semiconductors, Taiwan is the one who splits the cod, and its technological diamond is TSMC. And the CEO of NVIDIA is clear that it is not worth burning money looking for the new TSMC immediately. Because it’s something that will take decades to replicate. Resilience. TSMC is about to turn 40 years old and is the company that manufactures for the elephants of the semiconductor sector such as AMD, Apple, ARM, MediaTek, Qualcomm or NVIDIA itself, among many others. They are the ones that have the most advanced machines of the European ASMLthose that have refined their processes to the extreme and are used even by manufacturers that have their own factories, such as Intel or Texas Instruments. It is something that affects the user directly, proof of this is that a mobile chip manufactured by TSMC is not the same as almost the same one made by Samsung. And to these processes is added a brutal manufacturing capacity that has dominated the industry. And, of course, looking to bite into that pie, different countries have tried to find their own TSMC. However, Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has commented that efforts to diversify production must be made from the angle of resilience, not replacement. You don’t have to burn money like crazy. In recent months, Europe and the United States have begun to add manufacturing capacity in the semiconductor segment. The problem is that you cannot build a competitive industry in a short time: experience is needed and failure is not allowed. That, in an industry that is evolving at a very rapid pace due to the needs for chips for feed the artificial intelligenceis not contemplated. That is why Huang believes that the market is becoming selective and if guarantees are needed to manufacture chips, the one who gives those guarantees is turned to. Huang has been giving interviews for a few days and touching on key topics. For example, pointing out that The breakup between the US and China makes no sense because China is a very powerful trading partner, but also ensuring that Taiwan, as much as certain countries may not like it, will be the axis in the development of advanced computing in the coming years. China and the US investing millions. SIA is the acronym for Semiconductor Industry Association. It is the organization that seeks to advance policies that help the growth of the manufacturing industry in the United States. In your report Last year, they targeted 100 projects in 28 states totaling more than half a trillion dollars of private investment to triple the capacity of American industry by 2032. amd wants to be one of the protagonists of this operationbut also an Intel that seeks to position itself as a key factory on American soil and that has received strong government support. China is not far behind. With the explosion of robotics and AI, companies like SMIC or Huawei are developing alternatives to American technology to fuel their computing needs. They are looking for something else: industrial autonomy, and for that the Government has been releasing a series of funds to become one of the biggest names in the sector. If a subsidy package was launched in 2024 $47.5 billiona few weeks ago, other of up to 70,000 million to support that industry. Rvalidates directly with the US CHIPS of 52,000 million and 43,000 European million. The objective in both cases is the same: allocate obscene amounts of money to areas such as design, equipment, manufacturing and materials, as well as energy solutions that allow chips to be manufactured, but also to feed the companies in each country’s ecosystem. In the case of China, furthermore, there is an urgency to achieve these objectives as it is not able to have the advanced ASML machines and NVIDIA chips, something that the United States, Europe and Taiwan do have. India more of the same. But this is not a question of two great poles. South Korea also seeks become one of the great players of semiconductors, and another country that is designing an ambitious strategy to attract investment in semiconductors is India. Over the last few months they have been approving a series of aid packages (the last in January of this year, of 4.6 billion dollars) to boost the manufacturing of electronic components in the country. Apart from investing in their first state-of-the-art semiconductor factory (an investment of 11 billion dollars is estimated to achieve this), they are launching other aid and tax advantages to attract companies such as Samsung, Foxconn (also Taiwanese) or Apple to their territory. The goal is not to be a country that assembles the final product, but rather to manufacture critical components and move up the industrial value chain. Taiwanese expansion. The “problem” for these countries, and a great advantage for TSMC, is that they all seem to be very far away. India wants to achieve a chip made in 28 nanometer lithography, which is something that TSMC surpassed generations ago. AND China is fighting over 7 and 5 nm. Meanwhile, TSMC has refined its 3nm process and, as we say, TSMC’s great asset is not only that they have the experience and technology, but the ability to manufacture the best chips for customers who need those terribly refined chips. But there’s more: if China, Europe, the United States and India are moving, TSMC itself is diversifying. Yes Europe aspires to manufacture 20% of the planet’s semiconductorsit will be thanks to the TSMC plant planned in Germany. And although the US hates that it is a foreign company the one who has the upper hand in this great technological – and monetary – adventure of AI, TSMC has already settled on US soil. In the end, each territory seeks its … Read more

The alliance with Google and Gemini makes it clear what tactic Apple has chosen for its future: the parasite strategy

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Let’s do a little memory. It was the summer of the year 102 BC. C. and Consul Gaius Mariusde facto ruler of Rome, was facing the invasion of the Germanic tribes of the Teutons and the Ambrones, who three years earlier had annihilated several legions of the Republic in the battle of Arausio. Marius, camped and with abundant provisions, saw how the Teutons did not stop provoking him and his soldiers. The Germanic tribes, superior in number, mocked them and tried to force an immediate battle, but Marius flatly refused. He punished soldiers who responded to provocations, let his troops despair, and endured humiliation by simply following and observing the enemy. He made his troops go up to the palisades in turns and observe the Teutons, their weapons, their movements, their shouts. Forced them to get used to them and to make them go from something scary to something familiar. But all Mario was doing was choosing the battle that was really worth fighting. The Teutons tried to cross the Alps and Marius and his legions followed them until Aquae Sextiae. There, in an advantageous position and highly motivated—among other things, by thirst—the Romans ended up annihilating the Ambroni first, and then the Teutons. Mario didn’t care that they laughed at him, that they provoked him and that his own soldiers distrusted him. He achieved a historic victory that prevented a potential invasion by those and other Germanic tribes. And he did it with a simple tactic: choose the battles to fight. Which is, at least on the surface, what Apple seems to be doing. The parasite strategy For years Apple has boasted of controlling every element of its ecosystem, both hardware and software. And if there was something that he didn’t control, he worked to do it, as we are seeing with the iPhone or the Mac, increasingly less dependent on third-party chips and technologies. However, the alliance with Google and Gemini breaks that trend and represents a disturbing implicit recognition: in the generative AI race, Apple is not only not in the lead, but it seems to have decided to stop running. At least it doesn’t do it like its rivals do. While Google, Microsoft, Meta, xAI or Amazon do not stop investing billions in chips, new AI models and above all new data centers, Apple has not wanted to enter into those battles. He didn’t care about the provocations or that the industry and the media distrusted (we distrusted) that strategy. Apple has gone about its business, and has barely launched new features in an absolutely explosive segment. Its Apple Intelligence platform is comparatively much lower than those of rivalsyour Private Cloud Compute It’s an interesting idea but at the moment without a clear impact and Siri delay last year was the definitive sign that Apple I had missed the AI ​​train. And it is better not to talk about economic investment: its competitors are betting everything on AI while Apple’s capex remains almost symbolic compared to that of others. That has made many of us doubt the future of an Apple that seems to “move on from AI.” But be careful, because Tim Cook may just be adopting that same Mario tactic of choosing which battles to fight. They may not believe it makes sense to spend those billions of dollars developing a foundational model right now, and they may not believe in the need to create their own data centers either. In fact, Apple has been applying the parasite strategy: in those segments in which he did not dominate or was not strong, he delegated: Cloud infrastructure: Apple has never been strong in the cloud and has delegated to other platforms to which it has paid large sums of money for years. Searches: We have the clearest example of this strategy in internet searches. The multi-million dollar alliance with Google has been offering both companies a perfect solution in this area for years That agreement with Google in the search segment now has its sequel with the historic agreement to use Gemini as a fundamental pillar of the reinvention of Siri. Apple’s voice assistant will make use of Google’s AI models and will thus become a critical component of the functioning of its ecosystem. It is an alliance with extraordinary implications and that once again confirms that parasite strategy in which the ultimate goal is clear: achieve benefits without taking risks. Apple as a wrapper for AI In fact, here Apple is once again taking advantage of its leading role in the mobility market—especially in the US—once again. While other companies like Google and OpenAI spend fortunes on servers and energy, Apple it is limited to being the elegant packaging. They provide the screen, the local processor and the user’s trust. Google puts the brain that runs in the cloud. It is (theoretically) a win-win. But it is also the recognition of a pragmatic defeat. Giving in to that reality—we don’t have a foundational AI model, we don’t have cloud infrastructure, we don’t have data centers—is also a tactic that can end up winning the game. AI aims to become a commodityin something that will be accessible to everything and everyone and that loses its differentiating characteristics in the eyes of the consumer. It will be something generic, interchangeable and basic, and what may matter then is not the AI, but how it is distributed and provided. And Apple is changing from being a company that invents all its tools to becoming a company that is the largest distributor of services in the world. They certify it the more than 2.35 billion active devices with their different operating systems around the world, which can clearly become – if they are not already – the gateway to AI for millions of people. This parasite strategy allows Apple to turn that theoretical defeat into a potential victory. Apple is the mandatory tollnot only for billions of users, but for companies like Google, which seems to have … Read more

A YouTube video that lasts 140 years has gone viral. Nobody is clear why

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A YouTube video which, on paper, would not end for more than a century is the type of oddity that the internet knows how to turn into a phenomenon. It is enough to see an impossible figure in duration and verify that that same clip exceeds 2.3 million views to understand why half the world has stopped to watch it. Not because someone intends to reproduce it in its entirety, but because something like this challenges what we think we know about how the platform works. Even more so when it comes from a strange channel, with only three published videos and 137,000 subscribers. The longest video on YouTube? What has triggered the confusion is not only that exorbitant figure, but the way in which YouTube shows it depending on where you look. A counter appears in the channel view and in the video thumbnail that, translated into real time, is equivalent to about 140 years of continuous playback, as we can see in the screenshots. However, when you press play and load the player, the duration changes and is around 12 hours, with variations of minutes and seconds. The length of the video when embedded in a web page The limits of the platform. On your own help pagesGoogle explains that the maximum upload is 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever comes first, and remembers that these limits have varied over the years, leaving longer videos from previous times on the platform. This framework is essential to not get carried away by the impact of the number that appears on the screen. If the player shows something close to 12 hours, it’s within what YouTube considers normal, while a duration of decades simply doesn’t fit with the service’s known rules. The only direct source of this entire case is the file of the channel that hosts the video. On YouTube he appears as @shinywrand in your profile YouTube indicates as location “North Korea”. It also shows minimal but striking activity: three videos published, 137,000 subscribers and 2,551,606 accumulated views, with the channel’s registration date on July 31, 2023. There is no additional information or descriptions that clarify what it is or where it comes from, beyond what the platform itself shows. A metadata failure. The hypothesis that best fits what we see is that we are not dealing with a real duration, but rather a number that is poorly recorded or poorly read within the YouTube infrastructure. Each video has several time measurements associated with it, the one declared by the original file, the one calculated by the system when processing it and the one used by the different interface modules. If one of them fails, inconsistencies could appear as striking as a preview that points to decades of playback and a player that moves in a normal range. The threshold of direct. Google explains that Live shows of less than 12 hours are automatically archived, but if they exceed that time they may be lost, a detail that helps to understand why that number appears again and again as a border. Although there is no confirmation that this video comes from a glitch in a live broadcast, that technical framework adds context to the duration displayed by the player. The result is a phenomenon that lives on the border between what the platform teaches and what really happens in its internal functioning. There is a video with an impossible length, a player that tells another story and a channel that provides no clues other than its own figures. And while the reasons remain unclear, the video continues to gain views and more than 30,000 comments. Images | BoliviaIntelligent | Screenshot In Xataka | Before, advertising was to monetize. Now it is to punish you and YouTube has taken it to the extreme

There is someone who is clear that China has a very difficult time overtaking the US in the AI ​​race: the Chinese themselves.

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China or the US, who will win? the AI ​​race? The US seemed unattainable, but after the launch of DeepSeek a year ago, China became almost at par. Since then, the possibility of China winning the race became very real. Great figures of American AI Several Chinese AI companies have already warned about this situation they are doing very well on the stock market. Despite everything, there are those in China who do not see it at all clearly. Low chances. They count in Bloomberg that Chinese companies have less than 20% probability of being able to advance the OpenAI or Anthropic models in the next 3 or 5 years. Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen modelsduring Justin Lin, technology manager of the Qwen models from Alibaba. To the limit. The event was also attended by Tang Jie, founder of Ziphu AI, one of China’s ‘AI tigers’ that last week it had a spectacular IPOincreasing the value of its shares by 36%. Its founder pointed out a somewhat uncomfortable fact for the Chinese AI ecosystem: while companies like OpenAI dedicate “a large part of their computational capacity to next-generation research, we are at the limit of our possibilities. Just meeting delivery demand consumes most of our resources.” In other words: the restrictions on the latest technology are working. The gap is widening. As we said, the launch of DeepSeek R1 a year ago unleashed a wave of optimism among Chinese companies. Since then, a few have launched new LLMs such as Alibaba with Qwen, Ziphu AI or Minimax. However, Tang notes that “some may feel excited, thinking that Chinese models have overtaken American ones, but the real answer is that the gap may be widening.” Restrictions. Speakers blamed the situation on a lack of resources caused by US blockades, especially AI chips and lithography machines. Their chips are not that powerful, so, as Tang says, all their computing power goes into serving their customers. This greatly limits them when it comes to continuing to scale their models. Shunyu Yao, former OpenAI and current chief scientist at Tencentis committed to focusing on solving bottlenecks such as long-term memory and promoting self-learning of future models. Independence. From the government is promoting technological self-sufficiencyprioritizing the use of national chips over American alternatives. The reality is that without access to the most advanced lithography machines, China is lagging far behind. One fact: Huawei and SMIC are ‘tuning’ old ASML machines and making authentic viguerías that have allowed them to obtain chips of 7 and up to 5nm. It’s a technical feat, but its chips are still several years behind the competition. The aces of China. It is clear that China is lagging behind in chips, but there are other areas in which it has an advantage that can be decisive, one of them being electricity. While The Chinese government subsidizes and bets heavily on renewablesin the US electricity has become a bottleneck for its increasingly numerous data centers. Another critical point is that The US has cut funding for academic researchwhile China has done so national priority. And that’s not to mention that they might lose the AI ​​race, but China is winning almost everything else: batteries, robotics, electric cars and especially renewables. Image | Gemini In Xataka | The US believed it had dealt a mortal blow to China when it deprived it of NVIDIA. He only accelerated one plan: ‘Delete America’

Nvidia is the ball in the AI ​​game. The US wants to share it with China, but it is not clear that China wants to play

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The CES held in Las Vegas is the great showcase of technology, and if there has been a protagonist (apart from the chinese humanoid robots), that has been Jensen Huang. The CEO of Nvidia has become a key figure in the technology landscape. artificial intelligence because it is their chips that are shaping the data centersand the H200 It is the great proper name. It is the favorite for ‘assembling’ data centers and has become a throwing weapon in the commercial and technological warwith the United States vetoing the sale of the chip to China. But the situation seems to have relaxed and there are already those who point out that Nvidia will soon have access to a critical market. In short. We already mentioned it in December: Nvidia planned to increase production of the H200 chip for 2026. It was not something that responded only to the rise of artificial intelligence this year (which so many problems it is going to give us consumers), but to something much more important for the company: the reopening of the Chinese market. It all came after the announcement that the United States would allow exports, specifically, of the H200 to certain Chinese customers. They had to have a series of characteristics, such as being validated by the Department of Commerce, in addition to having a 25% rate on each sale. It’s outrageous, but while it was being debated whether China would now want to buy the H200s for its data centers (the country is developing its own solutions), from Reuters point to one piece of information: two million orders. Two million H200. After opening the door, it was reported that two Chinese giants such as Alibaba (e-commerce, cloud services and the model qwen) or ByteDance (TikTok, Douyin and AI chatbots) would be asking the Chinese Government to They will let them buy Nvidia chips to boost business. More recently, since Reuters A specific figure is pointed out: two million H200 chips (with ByteDance and Alibaba asking for 200,000 H200 each). It is the order that the Chinese companies would have already made, at the expense of receiving the green light to be able to formalize the purchase. Strict payment plan. The H200 is not the most cutting-edge chip that Nvidia has to offer, but it is one of the most used in data centers and the one that is allowed to export to China. Other more powerful ones remain restricted for national security reasons. And, although there is nothing official yet, Nvidia has set certain purchase conditions. Basically, transfer financial risk to customers: if imports are approved, they will have to make full payment in advance. Deposits were previously allowed to some companies, but this lack of regulatory clarity, market instability and a stock of H200 that may be insufficient if the market reopens require these measures. 50 billion dollars. With this operation, Nvidia must be crazy about music. In the middle of last year, Huang himself pointed out that the Chinese AI market had headed toward $50 billion, stating that “it would be a tremendous loss not to be able to address it as an American company.” That someone else says it may not have as much weight, but Nvidia is now in the focus of all the big technology companies. You don’t have to be naive. Messages like “the world is hungry for AI, let’s put American AI at the forefront” surely contributed to the relaxation of trade conditions approved by the Trump Administration a few weeks ago. In fact, if we say that Huang has been one of the great protagonists of the CES, it is not so much because of the technology presentation, but because of continuing to push that commercial narrative. The CEO pointed out in the ‘No Priors’ podcast that “the idea of ​​decoupling from China for philosophical or national security reasons is not based on common sense”, also stating that he was optimistic about the relaunched relationship with China thanks to the new measures imposed by the United States. Because “China is an adversary, but also a partner. And the idea of ​​decoupling is naive,” he said. What if I don’t want to now? But although Nvidia has increased production of its H200s in Taiwan in anticipation of an avalanche of orders from China, the ball is not in its court: it is in that of its potentially large new customer. Although everything boils down to “business,” in this case there is something else at stake: technological sovereignty. Huang believes that there will be no official announcement from China about the “openness” of its hand when it comes to letting its companies buy American technology and assumes that if orders are being placed it is because they can. Now, with the intensification of trade bans by the United States, China responded. Banned Apple devices in official centers, also purchasing from companies like Micron (which have also focused on AI, abandoning the RAM segment for users) and restricted the purchase of Nvidia chips Manufactured expressly for the Chinese market. At that time, Local companies such as Huawei or Cambricon have advanced with their solutionsachieving very high yields that are allowing China’s robotics and AI industry flourishes. Friction. However, the H200 remains the “standard” for many data centers, and there may be a desire to buy as much as possible in advance of possible future bans while they continue to develop their own chips. We will see if the wish of the American giant and some Chinese companies that see CUDA as the optimal system for AI. China is very clear that its “dragons” are enough to stand up to Western technology, the ‘Delete America’ plan is still going and accepting the H200 could perpetuate a situation of dependence on foreign technologysomething that the Government wants to avoid at all costs. In whatever way, depending on BloombergNvidia will start shipping H200 en masse in the short term. Images | Nvidia, Karola G, Pexels In Xataka | … Read more

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