data

In 1999, a farmer donated his land for a children’s playground. Now the city council has sold them for millions for a data center

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There are times when a good deed turns against you. Or against an entire town. In 1999, a Texan farmer named Charles Bland decided it was time to give something back to his town, a small town called Taylor. It occurred to him to donate about 35 hectares of his land to the city of 15,000 inhabitants with one condition: The city council had to use those lands to create a public park. To formalize the transaction, the city paid a symbolic amount of $10 to the farmer. 27 years later, the accounts come out in favor of the city council: it has sold part of the property not to create the promised park, but for a data center from the Blueprint company. The operation? one of 10 million dollars. And the neighbors were quick to light the torches. An offer that could not be refused This story is one of the most bizarre that we have seen in this matter of relationship between cities and data centers. The middle 404 has echoed the situation and the anger that is being aroused by both Bland’s initial objective and the fate of the land and, above all, the vague explanations of the city council is logical. The farmer initially donated his land to the Texas Parks Foundation, a nonprofit organization, with the goal of holding it in trust for future use exclusively as a playground. This is what appears in the documents and in the land deed, but there is a problem: in the following years, the property changed hands. The Parks Foundation gave it to a different nonprofit called the Williamson County Parks Foundation in 2003, but a month later, it gave it to the city itself. In 2008, the land changed hands again after a $15,000 sale to the Taylor Economic Development Corporation (TEDC). According to your page government, it is a non-profit corporation funded by the City of Taylor and, although it is a separate entity, it is the city council that appoints the five members of a Board that change terms every three years. Is this important? Well yes, since as 404 points out, it was this TEDC that, last year, sold part of the plot to Blueprinta company that plans to build a data center next to the town for those aforementioned 10 million euros. For a non-profit, the business has been successful. When they found out about both the sale and the plans to build a data center, the neighbors took to the streets to protest. Not only was the intention of that farmer who gave his land to the city with the sole interest of children having a place to play being violated, but an installation was going to be built that heats the air and that increase the electricity bill for the neighbors. Because of this, the TEDC has published a document in which he explains what is going to be done and what the city is going to get out of all this. They state that Blueprint’s data center will be used “for a wide variety of purposes including data storage, website hosting and artificial intelligence processing” in a facility that will have a total investment of 1,000 million dollars both to construct the main buildings as well as an electricity substation, backup generators and a closed-loop heat cooling system. It’s… too close to the city In a very brief way, The document addresses the complaints and concerns of neighbors referring to a report that ensures that the facilities will comply with everything necessary in terms of emissions and impact on air quality, noise pollution, light pollution, fire risk and water consumption. Always, of course, stating that the risk and consumption is minimal and that everything will go in the best possible way. Yes, the project will be connected to the electrical network for power supply. They expose that there is no way to go back and that, basically, that is what it is. Doesn’t anyone think about the children? The City Council does There will be no park, but it will be a great benefit for the city. As we see in Straight to the Palatethe facility will not occupy the 35 hectares donated by the family, but 21 hectares. The other 14 continue to belong to the city and the intention is to build a barrier to limit the impact that this data center may have on the neighbors. In addition, and as detailed in the aforementioned document, “the City expects to receive up to 30 million in total additional income that can be used to reduce property taxes and invest in streets, sidewalks, parks and other services”. With more conditionals on the list, they say that “the school district projects up to $20 million that could be used to improve facilities, increase teacher salaries and provide a better education for our students.” The truth is that the justification could well come from an episode of ‘The Simpsons’, but if we pay attention to that phrase that points out that, no matter what happens, the decision is irrevocable, the options for the neighbors do not seem very hopeful. The United States is currently experiencing two speeds in this artificial intelligence infrastructure. On the one hand, Big Tech raising monumental data centers. On the other hand, the people and political parties (both Republican and Democrat) that are rising in some states against these facilities. Studies are already appearing that leave aside tabout water consumption (minor one that was talked about a few months ago) as energy consumption (this one is tremendous) to point to the havoc on the environment what these “giant computers” cause. But hey, in the end Taylor won’t have a new park, but he will have a few million that could be used to make a park next to a giant radiator. In Xataka | AI has caused the collapse of even a non-AI industry: gas turbines

We already know how much water Amazon consumes in its data centers. We have good and bad news

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amazon has made public the data of water consumption in their data centers. It is a remarkable exercise in transparency, especially because its division Amazon Web Services (AWS) It is currently the largest cloud infrastructure on the planet. We have bad news… and also good news. 2.5 billion gallons. The figure that stands out the most in this report is the 2.5 billion gallons (almost 9.5 billion liters) of water consumed by its servers per year. It is approximately 5% of the annual water consumption for the Seattle metropolitan area, so this is a notable figure, but one that must be put in perspective because there have already been previous studies that they misunderstood the situation. Golf courses are worse. The company already stated a few weeks ago that “data centers use significantly less water than golf courses or car washes.” They also gave other examples that consume more water, such as the meat production industry or the textile production industry. The efficiency metric. A metric called water use effectiveness (or WUE) is used to measure the impact of a data center. This magnitude indicates the liters consumed for each kilowatt-hour of energy delivered to the servers. According to Amazon, its WUE is 0.18 liters per kWh, much better than Microsoft’s 0.27 l/kWh and of course the 1.1 l/kWh from Google in some of its facilities. It is clear that not all hyperscalers manage to cool their data centers with the same efficiency. Amazon spends a lot of water in its data centers, yes, but according to current data it consumes significantly less than its rivals. Physics is physics. Data centers generate enormous amounts of waste heat, and Amazon indicates that they use direct evaporative cooling systems. Instead of maintaining huge air conditioning systems, the company uses mechanisms that introduce outside air and pass it through humid panels. This allows water to evaporate, absorb heat and cool those rooms where the servers are. The toll exists, of course: evaporated water is lost to the atmosphere and cannot be immediately reused in local ecosystems, which causes pressure drops in surrounding reserves during heat waves. Geography helps. Amazon’s efficiency advantage also benefits from intelligent geographic location of its data centers, the company says. Many of them are in regions with temperate or cold climates in the northern hemisphere. In these areas, cooling by outside air (free cooling) you can take advantage of more than 80% of the days of the year. In contrast, its competitors have often been forced to create their data centers in very hot desert environments which require injecting pressurized water constantly. Promises on one hand, criticism on the other. To compensate this impact due to your water consumptionAmazon has committed to returning more water than it consumes to local communities by 2030. This policy, dubbed “water positive“groups initiatives ranging from the restoration of watersheds to the creation of wastewater treatment plants. Of course, all this discourse faces strong criticism. For these voices, what Amazon is doing is a facelift, but it does not fix the immediate local shortage of wells from which data centers extract water in the middle of summer. The problem persists. Amazon’s report is welcome because it breaks the silence that usually prevails in Silicon Valley regarding natural resources. Even so, it also shows that the world faces a notable problem if the water (and energy) consumption problems generated by data centers cannot be solved. Taking into account the ambition and multimillion-dollar projects of AI companies In this sense, it would be important for official organizations to be in charge of monitoring and regulating these gigantic consumptions. Image | amazon In Xataka | Data centers do not want to depend on the conventional electrical grid. Solution: build your own plants

The world is running out of data to continue training AI. China has an ace up its sleeve

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The models of artificial intelligence (AI) have a problem that more powerful chips cannot solve: they are running out of data. Epoch AI, a nonprofit research organization specializing in scaling AI models, warns with 80% certainty that the high-quality text available on the Internet will be exhausted sometime between 2026 and 2032. The reason is very simple: AI laboratories have been extracting everything the web has to offer for many years, and current models already train on data sets that approach the theoretical limit of the information available. When that gold mine empties, data volume scaling will stop working. And if this scenario occurs, AI development will most likely slow down. We still do not know what strategy US companies are developing to solve this problem, but we already know what is China preparing. His biggest rival. In fact, Xi Jinping’s government has decided that this shortage is an opportunity. This week the China National Data Administration published a draft outlining its action plan with a clear objective: to build an ecosystem of validated data by 2028 that will fuel the next generation of AI models. China’s bet is already on the table The document prepared by the National Data Administration identifies which specific sectors are priority objectives for information generation and certification. Some of them are scientific research, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, transportation, finance, healthcare, education and e-commerce. However, his plan does not stop at traditional sectors. China has a structural advantage that no Western laboratory can easily replicate And it also plans to cover cutting-edge fields with quality data, such as AI applied to robots, autonomous driving, low-altitude aviation or biomanufacturing. These are, precisely, domains whose data is not on the internet because they come from sensors, actuators and physical environments. Achieving them requires having industrial infrastructure, and in this scenario China has a structural advantage that no Western laboratory can easily replicate. However, this is not all. The document prepared by the National Data Administration explicitly encourages the expansion of the supply of text, code, images, audio and video necessary to train systems capable of complex reasoning, agentic behavior and control of intelligent robots. In fact, it’s an almost exact description of what the industry calls next-generation models. They are not just systems capable of answering questions; They will also be able to plan, act and operate in the physical world. The availability of high-quality multimodal data, especially that coming from real industrial environments, is today one of the least discussed and most determining bottlenecks in the AI ​​career. In a scenario where access to cutting-edge chips is restricted by US export controlsdata becomes a competitive advantage. If China can’t win the hardware race, it can try to win the fuel race that that hardware needs to be truly useful. Image | Daoducquan More information | SCMP In Xataka | The condemnation that afflicts China: after decades of manufacturing a competitive desktop processor, it is six years behind

Space data centers seem crazy. They make a lot more sense than it seems

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“Space, the final frontier” became a classic pop culture phrase thanks to the series Star Trek. Now there are those who complete it with “… data centers”, because that is what Elon Musk certainly wants to achieve, and he has a plan to achieve it. At first glance it seems crazybut it turns out that the idea is not at all crazy. Free cooling, nothing. As explained in a very deep report in Semianalysismany analysts support the idea by defending erroneous premises. The space, for example, does not offer free cooling. Since there is no atmosphere, heat is not dissipated by convection, and huge and expensive thermal radiators are necessary. Solar energy is also interrupted in low orbits (LEO), so satellites must be placed in sun-synchronous orbits, a resource that is beginning to become saturated. The current cost does not compensate. The analysis carried out in this study for the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for a currently standard 30.5 kW cluster (with two servers with 16 Nvidia B300 GPUs) does not add up. Deploy this infrastructure In space it is necessary to invest 4.1 million dollars, when doing the same on Earth costs 1.4 million dollars. Space data centers are currently 260% more expensive than on the planet’s surface. Bad business. Space transportation makes everything more expensive. He biggest problem What affects these costs is the costs of transporting the material to space. In that proposed example, of the $3.1 million total cost of space infrastructure, $1.6 million is due to launch. But there is also the problem of the useful life of this data center: on Earth these facilities pay for themselves in 15 years, but in space wear and radiation in orbit reduce the operational life of the particular satellite to only five years, which multiplies those capital expenses dedicated to the project almost by 20. The first bottleneck is the chips. Even solving these problems, the main obstacle is simply semiconductor manufacturing capacity. The demand for TSMC’s N3 wafers and the supply of HBM memories is much higher than the supply even without this idea of ​​​​space data centers. That would add even more demand to an absolutely saturated system. But there is also the (lack of) energy. The reason why Musk wants to promote this idea as soon as possible is that obtaining power supply for terrestrial data centers is increasingly complicated. Thus, getting a connection to the electrical grid in Virgnia (USA) already takes seven years. Companies are creating their own power generation plants to solve this problem. Even so, according to the study, it will become increasingly more expensive to access this supply: they estimate that the cost of “terrestrial energy” will be above 20 million dollars per MW when this decade ends. That’s why Terafab. To solve this first bottleneck, Elon Musk has launched its colossal Terafab project in Austin. It is a huge chip manufacturing factory that will need 10 GW of electrical power to produce one million semiconductor wafers each month. The plan takes into account that 80% of the chips produced are destined precisely for space data centers. Starship changes the equation. But Starship stands in front of all these problems. SpaceX hopes to be able to reduce launch costs significantly in the coming years, going from the current $1,400-1,800 per kilo for the Falcon 9 to just $250 per kg for the Starship. This, together with the improvement in radiator and solar panel technology, will reduce the cost gap with terrestrial infrastructure. Now it is 260% more expensive, but at the beginning of the next decade it will be only 30% more expensive and will achieve economic parity by 2040. But. The accounts could therefore come out in the medium term, but it is necessary to take into account other factors as the so-called long-term computing cost. On Earth, between 3% and 6% of GPUs in data centers fail each year and require manual replacement by a technician. In space that option disappears, so it is necessary to oversize the satellites with 20% chips to provide redundancy and thus absorb potential radiation failures. In Xataka | Aragón is quietly becoming a data center “powerhouse” – now it has taken a crucial step

France has been determined to rob Spain of its position as a data center power in Europe

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The French country has hit the table in its ambition to become a technological benchmark in Europe. He agreement reached between Emmanuel Macron and Masayoshi Son (CEO of SoftBank) aims to deploy up to 5 GW of computing capacity for AI data centers in northern France. This movement competes with all the projects that are underway in Spain, one of the countries that until now had attracted the greatest interest from hyperscalers. The problem is that neither France nor Spain will gain much from these initiatives. Nuclear counterattack. France has taken advantage your energy network —with a clear prominence of its nuclear power plants— to attract AI supercomputing projects. The SoftBank project will start in the Hauts-de-France region with an initial phase of 45 billion euros to build data centers in regions such as Dunkirk. In this first phase we want to achieve that the total capacity rise to 3.1 GW in 2031followed by a second phase that could reach 5 GW. Spain, data center paradise. Faced with this French movement, Spain has been closing agreements in that same area for months. It totals more than 22,000 million euros in recently announced projects. Giants like AWS (15.7 billion in Aragon), Microsoft (more than 7,000 million) and Blackstone have chosen our country to create these data centers. The Spanish advantage is its renewable energy productionwhich has attracted that type of investment. The harsh reality: Europe (probably) loses. Although both this announcement and those made in Spain are very striking, the reality for the Old Continent is quite stark. The data centers in Spain are not Spanish, and those in France are not French either. Europe is becoming the powerhouse for foreign multinationals that invest here because it suits them strategically. Energy resources are great for Microsoft, Amazon, Meta or Softbank, but the real benefit of this computing does not remain in Europe. The accounts. There is a clear difference between the strategies of Spain and France. Spanish soil is filled with hyperscalers like AWS or Microsoft that build, operate their own clouds and then control the flow completely. In the case of France, the initiative depends on a Japanese conglomerate allied with sovereign funds from the Middle East. SoftBank operates here more like a real estate developer– Create the data center and then rent it to third parties. Source: FT. Sovereignty, little. Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sánchez can sell the message that these projects promote this ambition to have sovereign AI. The problem is that these data centers are simply delegations of big technology companies taking advantage of the advantages offered by their European partners. There may be options in the French project for the country to boost its AI companies —Mistral is the clear example—, but the truth is that these movements do little to help this objective of avoiding the independence of foreign technology companies. Rather they make the situation worse. The other European rivals. Europe’s traditional technology markets, grouped under the acronym FLAP-D (Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin) are giving way to projects in other countries like France or Spain. There are also other protagonists in this new map of decentralized infrastructures: the Nordic countries are also interesting for their cold climates, ideal for helping to cool these centers. The real bottleneck. Beyond the billions of euros that are on the table, the big battle in the coming years will be access to hardware components, especially now that the memory crisis has made everything significantly more expensive. Demand far exceeds supply and it does not seem that this imbalance will be resolved soon, so all of these initiatives could suffer delays and changes in their final costs. In Xataka | Mistral does not generate hype, it is a discreet AI, it does not boost the shares of any company, but it already makes more money than Grok

Something strange happened inside the Earth in 2011 and 27 years of data have not solved the mystery

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In 2011, scientists observed an unexpected change in the flow of molten iron and nickel that makes up the earth core external. While its surface flow normally moves westward, it was detected to be moving just eastward. It was something totally unusual and mysterious. As a result of this observation, a study was launched, the results of which have recently been published. The objective was to know the reasons, but now there are only a few certainties and still many doubts. 27 years of observations. In this study 27 years of behavior of the Earth’s core were retrospectively analyzed, between 1997 and 2025. The core cannot be directly observed. However, its behavior directly influences that of the Earth’s magnetic field. Therefore, fluctuations in one can be detected in the other using satellite observations. It was seen that while the Earth’s outer core moves normally westward, there was a portion of it that went from a weak westward flow in 2010 to a much stronger eastward flow in 2012. It remained that way until 2020 and now appears to be starting to weaken again. Three options. When this change in movement was detected in 2011, it was thought that it could be due to three reasons. On the one hand, it could be a one-off fluctuation. On the other hand, it is possible that it is part of a periodic oscillation. And finally, it could be due to a way of establishing a balance in the circulation of the core. The only thing we see at the moment with the satellite observations is that the change was progressive. The behavioral modification began in 2010 and was already very clear in 2012. In 2011, when it was observed, it was in full transition. Other simultaneous observations. When analyzing the data from that period, it was seen that, coinciding with this change of direction, there were also some seismic signals that agree with the dates. Even geomagnetic shocks have been detected that correspond to a turbulent activity in the earth’s core. It’s not a whirlpool. This change of direction has not occurred throughout the core. For a start, the earth’s core consists of two parts: the internal and the external. The internal one is subjected to so much pressure that the metals are in a solid state despite the high temperatures. On the other hand, on the outside they are in a liquid state and, therefore, in motion. Even so, it wasn’t the entire outer core that changed its movement either. It corresponds to a specific region, located under the Pacific Ocean. It could be seen as a whirlpool, but these scientists have concluded that it is not, since the movement is part of a larger, wavy structure. Something like if an entire section of this part of the core suddenly began to move against expectations. Why is it important. The movement of the molten metal in the core generates electrical currents, which in turn give rise to a geomagnetic field that extends into space. Therefore, thanks to the movement of the Earth’s core we have an entire magnetic shield around the Earth that protects our atmosphere from the erosion caused by particles from the solar winds. For this nucleus to change its movement is not dangerous. We are not going to run out of atmosphere, because the core is still there. However, understanding its fluctuations can help us also understand the fluctuations of the magnetic field. This not only protects the atmosphere from erosion. It also helps us keep away a good part of the particles that could affect our telecommunications systems. Therefore, understanding how this shield works can help us prevent those more extreme events that do cause some technological havoc. That’s why, while this study has given us a lot of interesting data, it’s still not enough. We must continue monitoring the Earth’s core, what caused this anomaly of 2011. Image | THAT In Xataka | The Webb and Hubble telescopes simultaneously observed Jupiter’s auroras. The problem is that they didn’t see the same thing

Spain will have 27,000 new civil servants. The surprise is that experts in AI, cybersecurity and data science are now sought

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In recent years, Spain has promoted the public employment calls. This has managed to beat historical figures in the number of places and, although the OEP (Public Employment Offer) of 2025 took its foot off the accelerator, the Council of Ministers has just approved the OEP corresponding to 2026 with figures somewhat higher than those of the previous period. What draws attention is something else: the 1,700 positions for information technology specialists to achieve a ambitious goal. Transform Administration thanks to AI. 27,000 for the AGE. How has published The Government through the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service, the OEP 2026 includes 27,232 places for the General Administration of the State. It represents a small increase compared to the 26,889 places last yearalthough it continues to show that there is a personnel problem. The breakdown is 26,886 ordinary places and 346 corresponding to an extraordinary offer linked to the climate emergency. The Government points out that this offer will generate 6,200 net jobs and ensures that, since 2021, the different public employment offers have met the objective of rejuvenating the public workforce, with an average age now at 49 years. New specialists. Now, the big news is that the Administration wants profiles that are much more specialized in technology. Of these positions, 1,700 will be for information technology specialists. It is estimated that it is 42% more than those called in the previous offer and it is not only the increase in places, but also the profiles they are looking for. Because what they are looking for are “specialists in Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Data Science” with the aim of, according to Minister Óscar López, “transforming the Administration.” López points out that we have to see what the administration’s priorities are, the needs of citizens and, thus, “have a more effective and efficient administration with the use of AI and the creation of quality public employment.” More digitization. This increase in digital profiles is supported by Government figures that indicate that the percentage of citizens who use official websites or applications is 83% while the European average is 75%. Furthermore, they point out that Spain is seven points above the average in digitalization of the Public Administration. The objective they aspire to is to increase digital administrative procedures by 25%, digitizing public administration. If this is going to be accompanied by the destruction of jobs, López affirms no and that what they are going to do is transform those jobs, not destroy them. They do not detail much else, other than that a series of digital training courses will be carried out with AI modules and “data tools” to strengthen the digital skills of all public employees. Exceeding 37,000. In total, counting the beaches already announced for the National Police, Civil Guard and Armed Forces, the OEP 2026 will exceed 37,000 places, slightly above the 36,588 last year. And, beyond the striking nature of these digital offers in AI and “data”, the Government intends to reinforce strategic areas such as the energy transition, the prevention of climate emergencies and the fight against climate change. The problem is that, according to the OECD, Spanish public employment remains below the international average. In the 2025 report, the OECD pointed out that Spanish public employment represented 15.25% of the total active population in 2023, with the average for all OECD countries being 18.41%. We will have to wait for more recent reports to see if the record rally of 2023 and 2024 has reversed the situation. Image | Treball Generalitat (edited) In Xataka | The easiest oppositions to pass in Spain following three criteria: by syllabus, by places and by requirements

If the question is whether AI data centers end up increasing temperatures in a region, the answer is: 2.2ºC

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A group of researchers from Arizona State University have published a study striking. They wanted to estimate the impact of AI data centers on the average temperatures of the region in which they are installed. Their conclusion is disturbing, because this increase can be up to 2.2 ºC. The massive use of AI raises another problem. There is already a clear debate about the water and energy consumption of AI data centers, but this study has focused on an equally important problem: thermal pollution. It’s hot. The researchers focused on the Phoenix metropolitan area, the hottest in the entire US. There, their analyzes indicated that data centers expel air from their cooling systems at temperatures that are between 14 and 25 degrees Fahrenheit above ambient temperature, creating thermals that can affect nearby neighborhoods. The air says it all. This is the first known research to use high-precision vehicle-mounted sensors to compare air temperature before and after passing through the facility. The data was clear: Downwind areas of a data center had average temperatures 1.6ºF higher, with peaks of 4ºF (2.2ºC) compared to the reference areas. Heat island effect. The impact of this increase in temperature is also notable in terms of the distance affected: these increases were detected even 500 meters away from the source, which is equivalent to about five “blocks” of homes in the city of Phoenix. Vicious circle. The very design of data centers causes this problem to feed into itself. A single data center can generate as much waste heat as a small city of 40,000 homes, and the vicious cycle is clear: The data center blows very hot air to cool its servers The air warms the surrounding neighborhood Neighbors use their air conditioners more Air conditioners expel even more waste heat Location is the key. David Sailor, who led the study, indicated that what they seek with their conclusions is not to prohibit data centers, but to rethink their integration with urban centers. To avoid or mitigate problems, solutions are proposed such as reorienting air outlets or creating parks that cushion these increases in temperature. The key, these researchers say, is urban planning: these facilities must be treated as sources of industrial thermal emissions, because that is what they are. Prevent before cure. The projected computing capacity for data centers to be built in the US will double in 2030, which according to this study makes it necessary to take action. The challenge, they say, is to apply these solutions before the waste heat generated by data centers becomes a public health problem. Spain may also have that problem. Projects that affect our country should also take this circumstance into account. In recent months we have seen how the Autonomous Community of Aragón has focused part of the protagonism of agreements with large technology companies, and both Amazon and Microsoft have data centers planned in the metropolitan area of ​​the city of Zaragoza. The towns of Villamayor de Gállego and Villanueva de Gállego are less than 20 km from Zaragoza, and both already have data centers planned. These initiatives promise to boost the region’s economy, but they also bring doubts. Not everyone is in favor of such centers, of course, and there are even judicial processes trying to stop its construction. Image | David Vives and AWS In Xataka | The great paradox of Madrid: the region with the largest energy deficit in Spain is losing the data centers

After deploying its data centers in Aragon, Amazon wants to protect Zaragoza from floods

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On July 6, 2023, a torrential storm collapsed the Barranco de la Muerte in Zaragoza, leaving the Z-30 under two meters of water and causing damage valued at 125 million euros, as collects The Herald. Among the affected structures, the high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona and the capital’s main ring road. This natural disaster made it clear that Zaragoza lacked hydraulic infrastructure capable of absorbing extreme weather events, increasingly frequent with climate change, such as explains AEMET. In response, the City Council made a plan structured in three phases and began conversations with Amazon Web Services, the hyperscaler that Aragón has chosen for its data centers in Spain: the result is a public-private alliance that combines hydraulic infrastructure and real-time monitoring technology with the aim of turning Zaragoza into a European benchmark for urban resilience. Zaragoza, flood-proof. The Zaragoza City Council and AWS with the collaboration of the Government of Aragon and the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation have agreed implement a global technological and hydraulic strategy for environmental risk management. Amazon will contribute 13.8 million euros, distributed in three annual installments. The collaboration has two legs: a physical one, with the construction of hydraulic infrastructure in the Barranco de la Muerte; and another technological, with the deployment of an intelligent early warning platform based on the AWS cloud. Why is it important. This system will benefit more than 700,000 people who live in the Aragonese capital, in addition to protecting critical infrastructure for the city such as the Z-30, the train and entire neighborhoods such as Parque Venecia, today exposed to intense storms. Beyond the scope of the work, this is one of the few cases in Spain where a large technology company directly finances public civil protection infrastructure as a condition of its installation in the territory, which puts a question on the table: what the companies that consume the most resources can and should contribute to the cities that host them. Context. AWS maintains one of the largest investment plans in digital infrastructure in Spain: in 2024 announced an investment of 15.7 billion euros in Aragon over the next decade to expand its cloud infrastructure and new data center campuses in Villanueva de Gállego, El Burgo de Ebro and Huesca. This expansion has a B side: enormous pressure on the territory’s electrical, water and transportation networks. The Barranco de la Muerte is not an isolated case: the Valencia DANA of October 2024 left more than 220 dead and politically accelerated the demand for drainage infrastructure in vulnerable urban areas. Zaragoza, with active ravines and a climate prone to intense convective storms, is one of them. How are they going to do it?. From the point of view of hydraulic works, it is a lamination of avenues combined with sustainable urban drainage enhanced with real-time monitoring. The plan is divided into three technical phases. The first, financed by the council and already underway, consists of a perimeter canal and a retaining wall around the Barranco de la Muerte. The second, financed by AWS, adds a storm tank next to the Torrero Cemetery with a capacity for 20,000 cubic meters, five lamination dams and the improvement of the existing ones upstream of Z-40. The third would bury the ravine as it passes through Z-30 with a collector that would double the current drainage capacity. Added to this is a cloud platform that will combine sensors, artificial intelligence and real-time analysis to monitor flows and launch early warnings. That is to say: the physical infrastructure retains and laminates the water, and the technological infrastructure anticipates when and how much will arrive. AWS support is not only financial: it provides digitalization and predictive hydraulics that multiply the effectiveness of physical infrastructure. Yes, but. The collaboration is a real advance for the city, but it raises uncomfortable questions. The first is obvious: Amazon does not pay for these works out of altruism: its data centers in Aragon are voracious consumers of water and energy, so building water infrastructure in the city is a win-win: it minimizes the risk of supply failures in the event of potential natural disasters and improves its image while strengthening ties with the authorities. Water management is one of the thorny points of data centers and with its proliferation increases scrutiny and protests over the consumption of a scarce good, such as Amazon has already suffered itself in Aragon. On the other hand, for the alert technological platform to be useful, it will be an essential requirement that it be accompanied by proven evacuation and response protocols, which turns an alert into a real solution. How they plan to do it is something that has not been publicly disclosed at the moment. In Xataka | Zaragoza is so full of data centers that Amazon has decided to take one to… a town in Teruel with 900 inhabitants In Xataka | Quietly, Aragón is becoming a data center “powerhouse”: now it has taken a crucial step Cover | David Vives and AWS

China is launching giant buoys into the sea that are real “small” fortified data centers. Korea won’t like it

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Ocean observation is an essential activity to monitor climate change, navigation and the security of the planet, however 95% of internet data travels therethe sighting of ghost ships is the order of the day and we continue found new islands. Until now, the quintessential element for monitoring the sea has been floating sensors that everyone knows: buoys, a legacy of the analog world. In that calm calm China has invaded with its Sea Dragon (Hailong) series, a new generation of enormous buoys that mark a before and after in scale, design and functionality. Of course, they have nothing to do with that mooring that has reigned in naval engineering since the Second World War. The new Chinese buoy. The Hailong series are literally small disk-shaped fortified data stations. Although small is relative: its diameter is around six meters in diameter and as a structure it looks more like a small unmanned oil platform than conventional buoys. After completing the relevant tests at sea, it has already been integrated into the Yellow Sea observation network to continuously and real-time monitor the entire water column, according to the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. When deploying the new buoy, technicians simultaneously removed an older buoy after 16 years of service. A deliberate symbolic gesture insofar as it is not a mere change of buoy: according to the Institute it is “the world’s first system with a single disc side anchor structure”, leaving behind the classic central mooring point that has dominated Western marine engineering since World War II. Why is it important. The problem with the design of classic buoys is mechanical and well known: when a buoy with a central mooring rotates due to currents and wind, the cables coil and generate structural and instrumentation failures. This new lateral disc anchorage solves the root problem because it uses another geometry, thus minimizing these errors, operating with more stability. That is, the importance lies in the continuity of the data. The second reason is strategic. The Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences I had already tried other synchronized observation systems capable of covering from 10 kilometers of atmosphere to 1 kilometer of depth underwater, withstanding winds of 60 m/s and waves of up to 20 meters, powered by various energy sources (wave, solar, wind, hybrid). This new buoy transfers these capabilities to especially sensitive waters. It is, in short, a buoy designed to be operational for the long term. Context. Since the 1940s, the world standard for buoys has been defined by US Navy designs, such as the NOMAD (Navy Oceanographic Meteorological Automatic Device) type. For the time, these devices complied thanks to their simplicity and ease of deployment, although due to their physics they are vulnerable to excessive swinging. If there is serious surf, precision measurements get dirty. Over the years this standard has met precisely because it complied, its maintenance is low and other alternatives present challenges to its deployment. But China, driven by its need to control the South China Sea and the Western Pacific, has chosen to redesign the platform from scratch. In fact, China and Korea have a fishing agreement in the Yellow Sea dating back to 2001 where permanent installations are expressly prohibited. So China has fulfilled it in its own way: since then it has deployed 13 buoys, two large aquaculture cages and a maintenance platform. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) qualify this strategy of “progressive sovereignty”. How they have done it. The development is led by the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, which has been testing real-time transmission mooring systems since 2016. The new buoy is, therefore, the result of a decade of development, not a technological leap that arrives overnight. The secret of its design is the topology: moving the anchor point from the geometric center of the disc to the side eliminates the twisting moment produced by the entanglement of cables in the classic design. Instead of a wave-riding hull, the body is designed with a narrow cross-section at the waterline and deep ballast, which noticeably reduces hydrodynamic forces. For energy management, photographs published by the South Korean navy last year show models with solar panels that, assisted by artificial intelligence for data management and instrument optimization. The result is a platform that shines for its autonomy and resilience, since it can operate continuously in adverse sea conditions without human intervention. Yes, but. From a technical and geopolitical point of view, this deployment has a double reading: China’s official description presents these buoys as tools for the study of climate change and tsunami warning, but inherently this infrastructure is dual: if it integrates sonar and can process data in real time, it can also function as a war and control tool. On the other hand, the deployment of these intelligent platforms in disputed waters has its drawback from the point of view of international maritime law since they are complex and almost permanent structures. In other words, it is like putting a pike there. In Xataka | The United States is launching giant spheres into the sea with one goal: to take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy In Xataka | A buoy from Mallorca has revealed the meteorological problem that Spain faces: the Mediterranean Sea is on fire

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