clearer

The world has been wondering for years whether The Line is viable or a megalomaniac fantasy. The answer is becoming clearer

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You will like it more or less, but something cannot be denied to The Linethe ambitious ‘corridor city’ that Saudi Arabia wants to build in the middle of the desert: it does not leave anyone indifferent. After all, it is not every day that a 170 km long, 500 m high and 200 m wide metropolis made up of skyscrapers is built from scratch. Since the country’s crown prince presented the project, back in 2021the world has wondered if it is feasible or an extravagance doomed to failure. The question has continued to rage ever since, despite the start of works. Now it’s starting to become clear. What has happened? That The Line goes through turbulence. Although Saudi Arabia’s flagship megaproject has advanced on the ground, something that its promoters have made clear by sharing aerial imagesin recent days they have jumped several news that suggest that dark clouds appear on the horizon. Recently the Reuters agency informed that the priority now is to complete a first section of 2.4 kilometers, far from the 170 km that the project aspires to (its idea is to accommodate nine million people) or the structure that they wanted to have ready. looking forward to 2030. Meanwhile, other media talk about challenges or change of course. What exactly do we know? This is not the first news that suggest that Saudi Arabia was optimistic when considering the magnitude and schedule of The Line, but now they seem to confirm something important: the project (actually NEOM or the entire Vision 30 plan) is not immune to economic ups and downs and challenges in financing the works. This is how he revealed it a few days ago Reuters, which assures that Saudi Arabia plans to reorient its sovereign fund (PIF) of 925,000 million, a strategic financing lever, away from real estate megaprojects. While NEOM advocates large constructions, such as The Line, a futuristic ‘corridor city’ 170 km long, 500 m high and 200 m wide with the capacity to house nine million people, the new strategy would focus the PIF on investments with more sustainable returns in the short term. This involves logistics, tourism, AI or data centers. As remember The Timesthe Vision 2030 plan was based on a scenario in which a barrel of oil was trading at $100. Now it is around 60 and has not reached triple digits since 2022. What does that mean? “We spent too much. We acted at full speed. Now we have a deficit. We need to redefine our priorities,” he acknowledged. a few days ago a Saudi official at an investment forum held in Riyadh: Other sources speak directly of “course correction” and a scenario that requires being “more conservative” in investments. Even the country’s Minister of Economy, Faisal Alibrahim, has explained that they are “reorienting priorities towards the sectors that need it most.” “And today that sector is technology, AI.” Does that mean that mega structures are shelved? Jerry Inzerillo, an American executive who advises the crown prince, warns that he can’t go that far: “Don’t forget that nothing has been cancelled. It may just take a little longer. The ambition is still intact.” For now, at the end of 2024 the sovereign fund placed its investments in Saudi megaprojects in 56 billiona notable sum, but 12.4% below the previous year. Does it only affect The Line? No. The Line is not the only one that has seen its original plans complicated. The Times keep it up that the Trojena tourist hub may not be in time for the 2029 Asian Winter Games, as expected. The project would not actually be completed until 2032, which would have led South Korea to prepare to serve as headquarters in four years. There are other large developments in the country, such as the island of Sindalah or the district New Murabba of Riyadh, whose completion is expected in 2040, although without ruling out delays. Do you know anything else? Yes. Perhaps the most detailed ‘photo’ of where and what challenges the NEOM megacity faces I gave it on Thursday Financial Timeswhich published an extensive analysis with an illuminating headline: “The end of The Line: how the Saudi dream of NEOM fell apart.” The newspaper points out that, although the promoters insist that the city remains “a strategic priority” and it is possible to see the result of the works in the desert, the authorities have chosen to drastically reduce the first phase. Furthermore, among those who participate or have directly participated in the project there would be misgivings about its viability, as specified by FT. All this between calculations that place the final budget well above what was planned and figures that (at the very least) invite you to raise your eyebrow. For example, the staff interviewed by FT speaks of an enormous need for concrete (just the first 20 modules would need more cement than France produces in a year) and millions of tons of steel. This is without taking into account the logistical, transportation and time challenges or the services that The Line would require to provide for such basic issues as water, mail delivery or waste collection. Is it a surprise? Since the Saudi prince presented the project, years agoThe Line has aroused above all two emotions. Astonishment. And skepticism. The works have started and its promoters have shown that the project will not remain on paper, but another thing is its tempo and if it will reach the ambitious scale that was initially proposed. There are experts who have already warned that, if fulfilled, the vertical megacity will be a kind of hell for its residents. a few months ago transcended In fact, the authorities commissioned several consulting firms to carry out a strategic review of the project to confirm its viability or propose possible changes, a decision that the promoters rejected. Images | NEOM In Xataka | Years ago Alicante opted for an artificial island with a luxurious restaurant and taxi boat. It hasn’t … Read more

The origin of the oceans on Earth has always been somewhat mysterious. Now we are clearer how it happened

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A team of scientists, analyzing the tiny and invaluable samples of the asteroid Ryugu brought to Earth by the Hayabusa2 missionhas made a discovery that shakes our understanding of water in the early solar system. The discovery, published in the prestigious magazine Naturereveals that liquid water flowed in Ryugu’s progenitor body more than a billion years after its formation. Something that changes our paradigms. Contradiction. This new discovery contradicts the belief that water activity on asteroids It was a phenomenon exclusive to the first moments of the history of our solar system. And most importantly, it could force us to recalculate how much water these bodies brought to a young Earth. Many doubts. The story of how our planet became an aquatic world still has gaps. One of the most accepted theories is that carbonaceous asteroidsformed from ice and dust in the confines of the Solar Systemacted as a cosmic “water delivery” service for the inner planets. JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission has provided us with a unique opportunity to study this process by bringing back 5.4 grams of pure material from the asteroid Ryugu. And this is very important. While meteorites that fall to Earth are altered by contact with the atmosphere and environment, the Ryugu samples are a near-perfect time capsule. This is because a perfect record of water activity is preserved within it, proof that fluids moved through its rocks sooner than could be expected. This is something fundamental that changes the way we think about where the water in asteroids comes from and ends up on our planets. Isotopic clock. To reach this conclusion, the team turned to a “radiometric dating“based on isotopes: the radioactive decay of Lutetium-176 into Hafnium-176. Something that can be similar to the ‘Carbon-14’ test that is better known. In an object as old as Ryugu’s father, you would expect the proportion of these elements to follow a predictable line, known as isochronewhich dates back to 4,565 million years ago. But Ryugu’s data did not fit these models. The samples deviated from that ‘reference’ line showing an excess of hafnium (or a deficiency of lutetium). In order to understand why, it was first ruled out that it was due to accelerated disintegration or the effects of cosmic radiation. This made the conclusion point differently than that, at some point, a liquid ‘washed’ and took away some of the lutetium from the asteroid’s rocks. The reasons. The event that triggered this late flow of water was, most likely, a violent impact. While the first aqueous activity, which occurred in the first seven million years of the solar system, was driven by heat from the decay of radioactive elements, this second event was different. Specifically, we are talking about an impact on the body of Ryugu’s ‘father’ that would have generated enough heat to melt the ice that had remained frozen inside for eons, and at the same time, would have created fractures in the rock that emerged as channels for liquid water to flow. On the Primitive Earth. If asteroids like Ryugu’s father were able to retain not only hydrated minerals but also large amounts of water ice for more than a billion years, their potential to ‘water’ other planets is much greater than expected. Current models of the formation of terrestrial planets could be underestimating the amount of water contributed by these bodies. According to this study, Ryugu-like planetesimals could have entered two to three times more water into Earth than is commonly estimated. This would have direct implications on our understanding of the origin of the oceans, the atmosphere and in general the conditions that made it possible for us all to be living here. Images | NASA Hubble Space Telescope Carl Wang In Xataka | The last asteroid loaded with precious metals to graze the Earth escaped us. For the next one we already have a plan

In the midst of the cocaine furor, in 1990 they thought that the message should be clearer. So they called the Ninja Turtles

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Who better than a large group of television animation stars to warn the creatures addicted to the cathode tube of the dangers of drugs (those not related to the cathode tube). This happened in 1990, in a clash of animated titans that had international reach: here we saw it on Antena 3 and presented by the famous Reina Sofía. How and why was this firefighter idea born? Be good. There was something that the cartoons of the eighties were very good at, and that was preaching. We all remember the taglines that Mattel added to the ‘He-Man and the Masters of the Universe‘ to cushion accusations of excessive violence and in which the heroes reminded the kids to brush their teeth and listen to their elders, unless that elder was a stranger who told them to get in his car. And while here a generation was duly seasoned by the messages of disturbing anti-capitalist terrorism of the Electroduendes, in the United States they brought together successful cartoon characters of the time so that the kids could say no to drugs. To the rescue. ‘Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue’ is a 1990 half-hour animated special focused on drug prevention, which brought together popular characters from several animated series (ten in total: the Smurfs, ALF, Garfield, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Winnie from Pooh, the Little Ones, Slimer from ‘The Real Ghostbusters’, some Looney Tunes, a Turtle Ninja and Donald’s nephews from ‘DuckTales’). The plot revolves around a teenager who uses marijuana and puts his younger sister at risk due to his addiction. Cartoon characters come to life for emergency intervention. Important financing. The production was financed by McDonald’s and its children’s charity Ronald McDonald Foundation. The White House supported the invention with an introduction by President George HW Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush, something that would be repeated in different countries with different presenters. The four major American television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox) collaborated to broadcast it and the franchise owners gave up the rights for a good cause. It was produced by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and animated in Taiwan (because shit is shit) by the very prolific Wang Film Productions. To end the avalanche of stars, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, at the time on the crest of the wave thanks to their soundtrack for ‘The Little Mermaid’ just a year earlier, composed an original song, ‘Wonderful Ways to Say No‘. In Spain, the queen. The version broadcast in Spanish-speaking countries was called ‘Cartoon stars to the rescue.’ In Spain It was broadcast by all television networks, but at different times: La Primera, the international channel, Antena 3, regional channels with programming in Spanish (Canal Sur, Telemadrid, TVG, ETB-2 and Canal Nou), Tele 5 and Canal+. There were also various presenters: in Mexico, President Carlos Salinas; in Chile, the first lady Marta Larraechea; and in Spain, Queen Sofía, at that time very involved in drug prevention campaigns and protection of the rights of minors. Avoid drugs. Since Nixon got muddied in the early seventies in a interested war on drugsthere have been relentless educational campaigns aimed at removing glamor and providing tools so that the youngest people do not fall into addictions. Often sinning naivety and Manichaeism (and this cartoon special has plenty of both), many of its slogans have remained embedded in pop culture: ‘Just say no‘, ‘This is your brain in drugs‘… and in Spain the legendary “Avoid drugs” (which at the very least generated a great song by Esteban Light) and “Say no to drugs“, with cocaine ray worm spot included. In Xataka | Amphetamine consumption in Spain is concentrated in one autonomous community. And we know it with a “simple” trick

Once again, goal does not have the best AI, but it is clearer than anyone the best business plan to make it profitable

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Mark Zuckerberg He was not happy with the advances in his companyso spent the whole summer signing the best talents for millionaire figures with the aim of creating a superintelligence. We do not know if you will get it, what we do know is that, although the goal is lagging in the AI ​​career, it is advanced in something more important: How to make it profitable. Zuckerberg’s last play is that all chats and interactions with goal AI will use to offer us personalized ads. December 16. It is the date on which Meta will start using the conversations that its users have with goal AI to customize ads and the content that will appear on its different platforms. This includes, not only conversations with your chatbot inside apps such as Instagram or WhatsApp, if you have a target Ray-Ban, all the interactions you have with the voice assistant will also be used. If, for example, we ask Meta AI a question about how to take care of a plant, it will show us advertisements of related items and suggest plants publications. Mandatory. In This article on your blogMeta states that the user still has control and that he can adjust the content and ads that he sees from the ‘advertisement preferences’ section. What they do not say is that there will be no way to prevent chats from being used to customize the ads and content that we will see in the feed. The only way to avoid it is not to use the finish line. Of course, the company states that it will not use sensitive information such as religious beliefs, sexual orientation, political, health or racial issues. Another approach. While other chatbots like chatgpt, claude or gemini They use conversations as training data For their AI, in the finish line they bet on an approach aimed at business. The great technology, They are dilapidating billions in AI. Google, Amazon and Microsoft are amortizing investment with their cloud services, while Meta relies on their strongest business: advertising. In the second quarter of the year Your income increased by 22%largely thanks to its advertising services. Risks. In statements a FortuneEmily Bender, co -author of I study the dangers of “stochastic parrots” On language models, he affirms that Meta is crossing a dangerous line: “It is customization disguise (…) The following obvious concern is whether Chatbot himself will begin to incite us to reveal information.” In addition, alert about the illusion of privacy that we feel when talking to a chatbot and that can lead us to reveal sensitive information that we would never say in public. Image | Goal In Xataka | Zuckerberg is willing to lose “hundreds of billions” of dollars in AI: not investing them would be worse for finishing

Smart glasses do not have to be an armed one. Google has it clearer than ever

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Goal is marking the way to the market on how smart glasses should be with their collaboration with Ray-Ban. And Google, which has been developing projects from some years and years cardboard VR glasses to a device to Vision Pro (Your project with Samsung and Android XR), it seems to have realized what the winning format is. In the Google I/or 2025 he has shown us the news in Android XR. Far from helmets, far from devices that we can only use at home for a few hours due to its weight and dimensions. His words make it clear: “We know that glasses can only be really useful if you want to wear them all day.” That was the key. The small format. The glasses, glasses are. And everything else is helmets or devices of augmented/mixed reality for a more complex use scenario: games, video projection or, why not, the complete replace It is not working. Goal has done it well this year with its Ray-Ban Metaglasses that with the naked eye seem completely normal. Only when we approach them, the cameras system, the LED and the thickness of the Patillas Chivan that we are facing an electronic device. Gemini see everything. The focus of this I/or has been clear: Gemini wants to be able to see everything. In both Google and iOS, you will be able to see both the content shown by the camera and the content shared through our screen. The only thing you need are “eyes and ears” so … nothing prevents this concept from taking intelligent glasses. Not only helmets. Until now, the mixed reality helmets They looked like the only devices capable of showing capabilities beyond the simple: calls and video/photos recording. Google has just demonstrated in the I/O. Google wants to integrate Gemini into traditional format glasses, so that the wizard is right in our view. The goal? Free ourselves from the mobile and that we can interact with the environment in a much more natural way. Ten years of work. According to Google, the company has been working for more than a decade on this type of concept for smart glasses. It has only been possible now, with Android XR. Camera, microphone, speakers and telephone connection. It is all that is needed for Android XR to work together with our smartphone and have access to its applications. Similarly, the most advanced devices will equip a screen on the lens to offer information to the user privately. What can be done. Batched with the phone, the glasses can already work with Gemini. The idea is clear and Google does not hide it: “Come and hear the same as you.” With Android XR in glasses you can send messages, ask for indications of Google Maps, take photos that will be stored in Google Photos, and even translate a conversation in real time. With who. The success of Android XR in glasses will depend on Google’s ability to convince its partners. As of today, the company announces collaboration with Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to create Style glasses with Android XR. In “a future”, they hope to collaborate with more partners. Similarly, they claim that collaboration with Samsung will go beyond viewers: the goal is to bring Android XR to traditional format glasses. Image | Xataka In Xataka | Xiaomi glasses are being a brutal success in China. And that they have not yet went on sale

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