data

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

What is CADR and why is it the only data I would look at when choosing an allergy device?

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Spring brings out many things and some are not pleasant at all. Allergies to pollen and many other particles attack us and can give us a hard time. Of everything we can buy to combat them at home, the most effective and useful is, without a doubt, purchasing a air purifier. But, How to choose the most suitable one for your home? That is the question I have been asking myself in recent days, since all the purifiers I have seen have a gibberish of figures and data that, paradoxically, can confuse more than help us choose. After doing a little research, it is clear to me that, if I have to focus on something, it would be in the CADR. I’ll explain why. Philips 2200 Series Air Purifier, HEPA NanoProtect + Active Carbon Filter, CADR 400m³/h for 104m², Allergy Friendly, Ultra Quiet, Smart and Durable Filter (AC2210/10) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links What is CADR and why does it matter so much? If we enter a store like Amazon and look for any air purifier (like this one from Philipsfor example), right from the start we are going to be inundated with a lot of information. Perhaps what may catch our attention most at first is that it is capable of eliminating 99.97% of the particles in the air, a very high figure. What’s happening? We will find this in most purifiers and it is not the most important thing. That’s where the CADR comes in. The CADR (clean Air Delivery Rate or Clean Air Delivery Rate in Spanish) is a unit of measurement that tells us, in a few words, the amount of filtered air that a purifier can deliver. A purifier that has the best filter on the market is fine, but is it any good if it is not capable of moving air and filtering it fast enough? Because if you don’t, the pollen or dust particles will end up settling on the furniture and will not be filtered. The CADR has a numerical value that is calculated with two aspects: how many particles the filter is capable of trapping and how much air the purifier is able to move through said filter. No matter how good the filter is, it is equally important that the purifier is able to move through it, since otherwise it will not trap dust or pollen particles well and they will continue to swarm around our room. Bad thing for our allergies. Small note that must be taken into account. The CADR is not just a single value, but there are three. This happens because purifiers have a CADR for pollen, but also for dust and smoke. This is important, since what we should focus on is pollen. The others are more secondary. Falling short of CADR is always a bad idea If we go back to the Philips purifier above, we can see how it is, in theory, ideal for rooms up to 44 square meters in less than 17 minutes. Now, you have to read the fine print on the device’s own page on Amazon: It is a theoretical one-time cleaning time calculated by dividing your CADR of 170 cubic meters/hour by the room size of 48 square meters (assuming the room is 20 meters in area and 2.4 meters in height). Why do I say this? Because although the description of a purifier indicates that it is optimal for a room of a certain size, they are always references taken under certain conditions. that may not fit with our home. The ideal is to take the CADR of the purifier and make a simple calculation that will not lead to errors. This calculation is done in three phases that I summarize below: First, we need to know the cubic meters that has the room where you are going to use the purifier. It is calculated by multiplying length, width and height. Second, we need to know how many times you want the purifier to clean the air. The AHAM (Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers) recommends between 5 and 8 per hour. To finish, we multiply the volume of the room in cubic meters and the air changes per hour that we want. Quick example. If you have a room with a volume of 25 cubic meters (because it is 4 meters long, 2.5 meters wide and 2.5 meters high) and you want the purifier to renew the air 5 times per hour, the ideal is that you look for an air purifier with a CADR of at least 125 cubic meters/hour. Be careful here, because many purifiers give you this information in cubic feet per minute (CFM), which is the original AHAM standard. Now, does it make sense to buy a purifier with a much higher CADR than what you need? If you opt for this scenario, you will have a device that filters the air in your room faster and even without the motor running at full speed all the time (which means less consumption and less noise). The issue here is that a higher CADR also usually means, in the vast majority of cases, paying more for the air purifier. The choice here is up to each user, but with one thing clear: never fall short of CADR. The good and the bad of both options, face to face low or medium frame tall frame THE GOOD 🟢 Cheaper and enough for small rooms like a bedroom Ideal for large rooms and for air to filter faster THE BAD 🔴 It may fall short if you move it to a larger location at some point. They are more expensive and it may not be worth spending a lot if your room is small. Ideal for: Tight budgets and small rooms Rooms like a living room or if you are looking for a purifier that does not always work at full capacity In summary: 👉 Choose a low or medium … Read more

wants to be the “TSMC” of data for robots

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In recent years we have seen how artificial intelligence advanced on a relatively abundant raw material: text, images, videos and code published on the web. With robots, the terrain changes completely. We are not just talking about answering a question well or generating a convincing image, but about acting in the physical world, moving pieces, grabbing objects and doing so without everything being perfectly prepared. That difference explains why part of the next AI race may play out away from the usual focus. The investment. Settings It has not attracted the attention of just any investor, but of some of the large business groups in South Korea. According to Foley Hoagwhich legally advised Config on the operation, the startup, based in Seoul and San José, has closed a seed round of $27 million led by Samsung Venture Investment. ZER01NE Ventures, the investment arm of Hyundai Motor, LG Technology Ventures and SKT America have also participated. The operation values ​​the company at more than 200 million dollars and brings its total financing to 35 million. The “TSMC” of robots. The simile is not about chips, but about position in the value chain. Config aspires to position itself at a point similar to that of TSMC in semiconductors: not competing with its end customers, but rather supplying a part that others need to create their own products. In their case, that piece is not wafers or processors, but rather data for foundational robotics models. That approach is gaining traction as large manufacturers look to develop their own robotic AI without relying entirely on third-party vendors. Key difference. In a language model, the big cost is processing enormous amounts of digital information; in robotics, as Config CEO Minjoon Seo explained to TechCruncheach piece of data must be collected physically. That means having robots, spaces where they can be tested, and human teams that make them work. As companies look for more capable machines, data collection and labeling can quickly become more expensive, because we are no longer talking about information that waits on the web, but rather actions that occur in the real physical world. The key is in the conversion. The signature is based on an idea that is somewhat less obvious than the simple accumulation of data. Many robotics teams train their models with human motion data and then try to adapt them to machine behavior. The startup advocates another path: transforming that data before training begins so that it better fits the way robots move and interact with the environment. They have already started. Config has almost 300 people working on producing that data. The startup claims to have gathered more than 100,000 hours of human movement data, compared to roughly 3,000 hours for AgiBot Worldwhich the source presents as the largest comparable open set. The difference, more than 30 times, helps explain why the company is so insistent on the scale of its data operation. What’s coming. The next step will be to expand this machinery even more. Config wants to scale its operations in Vietnam and Seoul to reach one million hours of data collected, a goal that fits with its idea of ​​becoming an infrastructure provider for third parties. The company also aims to take its enterprise platform to $10 million in annual recurring revenue by the end of 2027. The third front is to launch a Robot-as-a-Service product in the cloud, designed so that companies can use the foundational Config model without depending on hardware integrated into the robot itself. Looking to the future. What this movement leaves is a fairly clear snapshot of where part of robotics may go in the coming years. Not everything will depend on the robot that we see in a factory, in a warehouse or in the field, but on all the previous work that allows human actions to be converted into useful learning for a machine. Config is still a young startup and its great promise has yet to be demonstrated at scale, but interest from Samsung, Hyundai, LG and other big names points to an idea with potential. Images | Config | Igor Omilaev In Xataka | Nvidia’s CEO is in China. And the future of your company is at stake there.

As Europe builds data centers to achieve independence, its power grid enters the hunger games

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Europe finds itself at a crossroads. If you listen to the CEO of Mistral, you should start investing big to stop being the technological vassal of the United States. That implies investing and part of that investment is in data centers. But American Big Tech is also moving and, if in the US they find frontal opposition to the construction of data centersthey move and there are countries like Spain that are favorite destinations. But there’s a huge problem: it’s not so much about money as it is about energy. And European macroplans are colliding with the reality of the electricity grid. Full speed ahead. The United States has the most brutal data centers on the planetbut Europe has a plan to arm itself and achieve that technological sovereignty. The plan goes through energy thanks to geothermal energy and, above all, renewables. Europe is a power in this and Spain has already shown its plumage to attract European and Big Tech data centers. esteem that there are 5,400 in the US and 3,400 in Europe, and Europe wants to close the gap. There is a very small problem: renewables are not enough to satisfy the voracity of data centers. We are constantly seeing it: data centers need constant power, but when they enter intense computing phases, the expense is so high that they need energy spikes that renewables cannot satisfy. That’s where they come into play. nuclear, gas and even coaland a Europe that cannot play that due to environmental policies is where it has its weak point. Spain. There are several points to analyze. As we say, Spain is one of the countries that is presenting itself as one of the best assets to host data centers. Aragon, specifically, is a community that is pushing hard in this direction and serves as an example. AWS is going to put some gigantic data centers in the community, adding more than 10,800 GWh of energy per year. To contextualize, it is more than all the current electricity consumption of the community. But it is not only happening in Aragon and the fear is that the saturated Spanish electricity grid will now have to deal with those data centers that they can collapse the network. He blackout ghost it’s still there and it’s already been warned in the Official State Gazette that an increase in installations that are not capable of withstanding voltage dips pose a very high risk for the network. the hunger games. Because first the principles of agreement came and, now, the different EU countries are realizing that, perhaps, it is not such a good idea. One of the most recent cases is that of Energinet, the state operator of Denmark’s electricity grid, which, in March, suspended all new large-scale connection agreements by receiving requests that would reach 60 GW, with 14 GW of them being for data centers. As in the case of Aragon, it must be put in context and, according to According to CNBC, the country’s maximum demand is 7 GW, so that total of 60 GW exceeds the country’s consumption almost nine times. It is not about canceling plans, but about an extension until we discuss what to do with that demand, but there are already those who point out that the extension cannot be ruled out because, simply, the country’s network may not be prepared. Estimation of increased energy demand for data centers FLAP-D. But they are not the only ones. Amsterdam, London or Dublin can no longer absorb the brutal energy consumption of artificial intelligence and the technology industry has set his eyes on the northern countries (in which wind energy is the protagonist) and in those in the south (with solar as a guest star). They are three important names because they are part of the FLAP-D, the conglomerate of Flankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin that, historically, have been the dominators of the data center sector. Because these facilities have existed before the arrival of AI, but with the conversion to computing centers for AI is when their consumption has decreased. shot and when these metropolitan areas cannot meet demand. Those needs are so exaggerated It is estimated that data centers accounted for almost 80% of Dublin’s electricity consumption, forcing Ireland to impose a de facto moratorium on new data centers in its capital until 2028. braking. The situation, of course, is not the most promising for those who are building the AI ​​infrastructure at the moment. The boss of SMIC, one of the Chinese companies that is leading the country’s technological transformation, pointed out a few weeks ago that the AI ​​Big Tech companies are building all the infrastructure they will need over the next decade. in just one or two yearswhat is generating that plug in stock components worldwide. But then there is the energy plug which, as we see, is not small. And, obviously, it also generates delays in supply. According to the calculationsa decade to connect the new facilities to the electrical grid. If Microsoft, or whoever, builds a data center by 2027, but can’t pull the plug until 2037, something is clearly wrong. What is clear is that regulators are going to look at these projects with a magnifying glass because there is a physical limit that is that energy and connection requests. In fact, it is already recommended that before coming with a monstrous data center and then looking to see if there is a plug, construction plans take into account consumption and connection planning to national networks from the beginning. But there’s another problem: You can build a data center today that consumes x energy, but when you upgrade to more powerful platforms, those calculations may blow up. Either that… or self-powered data centers, as already stated made in Dublin. In Xataka | Data centers are real “heaters”. And they are settling in regions as hot as Aragón

Microsoft wanted to create a mega data center in Kenya. To function, half the country had to live without electricity

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In May 2024 Microsoft announced what seemed like a historic agreement for Kenya’s technological development. The goal: create a gigantic data center that would be powered by geothermal energy. This center was going to be created in the Olkaria region, but the Kenyan president, William Ruto, has been blunt with Microsoft’s energy claims: to power the total requested 1 GW capacity, the country “would have to shut down half the nation.” too fair. Kenya has an electrical capacity installed capacity of between 3 and 3.2 GW, with peak demand that already reaches 2.44 GW. Microsoft’s project would consume approximately a third of the country’s total capacity. Even the first phase, which requires a capacity of 100 MW, would take a huge bite out of the production of the Olkaria geothermal complex, which generates about 950 GW in total. Kenya seems to be clear that sacrificing domestic consumption was not worth it when most of the project’s profitability will end up in the hands of a large foreign technology company. Financial disagreement. In addition to the energy problems, the negotiations have ended up getting stuck in the economic field. According to sources close to the process cited in BloombergMicrosoft and the investment firm G42 have reportedly asked the Kenyan government for a financial commitment. Specifically, payment for a certain amount of capacity each year, something with which the Kenyan leaders did not fully agree. The project has not been canceled. John Tanui, head of Kenya’s Ministry of Information, explained that his country is still in negotiations with Microsoft and G42, and that the agreement “has not failed or been abandoned. The scale of the data center they needed requires some structuring,” and that includes solving both the energy and economic problems. A project with a lot of geopolitics behind it. This project was not only a technological milestone for Microsoft and Africa, but also a diplomatic one. It is part of a $1.5 billion deal between Microsoft and Abu Dhabi-based G42, which was designed to counter potential deals on this continent with China. In fact, as a condition for the G42 agreement had to divest its Chinese assets and remove Huawei equipment from their systems. While the project is on hold, however, the Chinese company continues to expand in this region and has recently launched new broadband services over fiber with the largest Kenyan operator, Safaricom. Bottlenecks everywhere. The case of Kenya is not the only one that is stopping Microsoft’s plans. The company has announced a capex of 190 billion dollars by 2026 that will be invested in data centers, and the company is adding approximately 1 GW of computing capacity each quarter globally. However, about half of the data centers planned in the US this year have been canceled or delayed due to the shortage of electrical infrastructure. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | In 2024, Big Tech spent absurd amounts of money on AI. In 2025, they managed to spend 77% more

Europe has been depending on Amazon, Google and Microsoft for its most critical data for years. You are about to cut off their access

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The European Commission is taking action. This organization is expected to present its “Technological Sovereignty Package” on May 27. This directive will include a series of measures aimed at boosting the EU’s strategic autonomy in sensitive areas, and that means something unique: stopping depending as much as possible on US hyperscalers to store critical data. The fear of the off button. The measures are being applied due to growing political instability and some recent cases that have demonstrated the power that the US has over the European technological infrastructure. In May Microsoft “cancelled” the email of Karim Khan, a prosecutor who had been directly cited in an executive order from Donald Trump. Microsoft he denied itbut the damage had already been done, and these problems have raised fears that Trump could use a kind of “off button” against European institutions that depend on the hardware and software infrastructure provided by companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon. Legal espionage. The CLOUD Act (Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act) is a 2018 US law that allows law enforcement to force US-based technology companies (such as Google, Microsoft or Amazon) to provide data, regardless of where it is stored, whether inside or outside the United States. This law updates the Stored Communications Act to prioritize data control over its location. Or what is the same: if you use the services of US hyperscalers, the US may end up accessing your data. And since you’ve accepted their terms of use, you agree to let them legally spy on you if they “need to.” If you want my critical data, you’ll have to protect it. The new regulations require service providers who want to work with critical European data to demonstrate that they are not subject to requests from non-EU governments. This automatically excludes Microsoft, Google or Amazon, because all three are subject to the CLOUD Act. Europe is thus looking for providers that guarantee that critical data will not be in the possession of companies that then have to transfer it to foreign powers. Europe depends on the American cloud. The reality is that today Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure) and Google (Google Cloud) currently control more than 70% of the Cloud Computing market in the old continent. Losing these institutional contracts would mean a significant financial blow, but it also sends a powerful signal to European private companies: if Brussels does not trust the US with its secrets, why should European corporations? The domino effect could be huge. Europe has its own clouds. This directive would give an important opportunity to initiatives that seemed stalled like GAIA-Xbut there are also companies with their own infrastructure such as OVH (France) or T-Systems (Germany). There are significant technical challenges in that area, because US hyperscalers have been refining their offering over the past two decades. However, Brussels seems willing to accept a somewhat less efficient or complete service in exchange for greater autonomy. The options existno doubt, but the challenge is enormous. Migrating is going to be expensive. It is one thing to make the decision and quite another to complete that migration that will require moving decades of data and systems to a different infrastructure. Current data centers would have to be expanded to meet demand, they say some analysisand that would mean a cost of between 14,000 and 24,000 million euros. Consulting companies like Forrester they don’t see anything clear that the EU can achieve cloud sovereignty, and other experts also make it clear that Europe will not abandon the hyperscalers. Traceability. In addition to changing suppliers, the board also wants to impose strict requirements regarding transparency. AI systems that have access to that data must be auditable by the newly created EU AI Office. The Commission wants to know who has access to the code, who maintains the servers and who has the technical capacity to manage and even intercept such data transfers. Data too sensitive. In comments to CNBCEU officials explained that there are active debates demanding that financial, judicial or health data used at the government level and in the public sector have a sovereign cloud infrastructure. That’s also true for military data, of course, and There are already movements in that direction. Fragmented Internet. The move confirms that the world appears to be heading toward a future with a fragmented internet and one that will have important geopolitical boundaries. While the US tries to defend its technology against China, Europe and the entire world are trying to avoid or at least mitigate their excessive dependence on American technological solutions. Image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and François Genon In Xataka | Europe no longer trusts Google. That is why several start-ups are designing an independent payment system on Android

The C919 was born to stand up to Boeing and Airbus. Data shows how close (or far) you are from achieving it

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If you have made a medium-haul flight in recent years, it is most likely that you have traveled on an Airbus A320 family or Boeing 737 family aircraft. It is the unwritten rule of many of these journeys: two industrial giants and a market that for decades has seemed almost closed to any applicant. China has been trying for years to gain a foothold in that segment with the C919, its single-aisle aircraft developed by COMAC. And the latest data suggests that the project is beginning to leave behind the phase in which it could only be read as a promise. This jump can be seen in the operational data collected by Flight Master and citated by China Dailand. In April, the C919 completed 3,190 flights, 117.9% more than in the same month of the previous year, and some aircraft recorded up to 10.7 flight hours per day. The accumulated figure also helps measure progress: as of April 30, 2026, the aircraft had exceeded 42,000 commercial flights since its entry into service. While the data does not make the C919 an immediate global rival to Airbus and Boeing, it does show that the program is moving forward. Let’s look back for a moment. The C919 made its first flight test on May 5, 2017, was delivered for the first time in December 2022 and officially entered commercial service in May 2023, with a route between Shanghai and Beijing. Since then, its network has gradually expanded until connecting 29 airports: 28 in mainland China and one in Hong Kong. As we can see, this is a domestic expansion, but it clearly no longer plays the experimental role. C919 flies more and more, but still depends on key parts Okay, but how many airplanes really sustain that growth? According to China Daily, at the end of April China Eastern Airlines operated 15 units of the C919, Air China had 11 and China Southern Airlines had 10. The distribution between the three large Chinese airlines reinforces the presence of the model in the local market. However, the figure forces us to put the progress in perspective: the fleet is still small compared to the usual volumes of Western competitors. That is why the key is not only in how many C919s there are, but in what performance they are giving in operation. According to Flight Master, since the beginning of 2026, 88.5% of C919 activity has corresponded to operations with at least four daily sectors. Zhu Keli maintains that the use of the plane is already close to that of comparable models more common single aisle, which translates into a sign of greater maturity in maintenance, crew scheduling and ground services. The limit appears when you look beyond the daily operation. IBA Group pointed out in August 2025 that international certification continues to advance slowly and keeps the C919 largely focused on the Chinese market. The consulting firm recalled that the European Aviation Safety Agency had confirmed in April 2025 that the validation of the plane would require at least three to six years from the technical familiarization phase. This schedule does not prevent the program from gaining volume within China, but it does help to understand why its international leap is more complicated. LEAP -1C, the Western engine used by the Chinese Comac C919 The most delicate vulnerability is in the engine. The C919 that flies today uses the engine LEAP-1C of CFM International, a joint venture of GE Aerospace and Safran, and that dependence has already proven to be more than a technical issue. Last year, let us remember, the geopolitical and commercial tensions they altered the production of the program, with a temporary suspension of the supply of that engine. IBA Group also identifies the dependence on imported engines and avionics as a relevant limitation. China is trying to close that gap with political support, planned production and more control over critical parts. According to SCMPthe national plan for 2026-2030 places among its priorities the increase in production, the stability of the supply chain and the advancement of the CJ-1000A engine, called to reduce foreign dependence on the C919. IBA Group adds that even if that engine enters service later this decade, matching the performance and reliability of Western engines will be a multi-year process. That’s the real measure of the program: the plane is already flying more regularly, but its industrial maturity is still being built. Images | Comac In Xataka | The Comac C919 symbolizes China’s aerial dream: the trade war threatens to clip its wings in mid-takeoff

Neighbors in Chile tried to stop an Amazon data center. Justice has left a clear message with its decision

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Artificial intelligence has been part of our lives for a long time, often almost without us stopping to think about what is behind it. We use it as if everything were happening in an invisible layer: models, algorithms and, perhaps, servers in some remote location. But we can also look at it from another perspective. The infrastructure that supports that world is very real: it has a location, consumes resources, requires permits, involves enormous investments, and can also alter the environment of those who live nearby. That is one of the great debates that is beginning to accompany the rise of AI: the cloud also has neighbors. They lost the case. A specific case leads us to Huechurabanorth of Santiago de Chile, where Amazon plans to build a data center. The initiative had received a favorable Environmental Qualification Resolution in July 2024, but not everyone was convinced that the project had been evaluated accordingly. That concern reached the judicial route through a claim presented by Patricio Hernández Valenzuelaa resident of the area, and the Second Environmental Court resolved on April 9, 2026 to reject ita decision that leaves the data center in a position to move forward. A very specific concern. Hernández questioned whether the environmental evaluation of the project had not adequately taken into account a possible high voltage line that, according to his approach, would be necessary to power the data center. The criticism was not minor: if both infrastructures were linked, they had to be analyzed together. For residents, not doing so meant leaving relevant impacts on the environment out of the analysis. The key to the failure. The court’s reasoning involves clearly separating both pieces. The ruling concludes that the data center and the eventual high-voltage line cannot be considered to form a single initiative, among other things because the Amazon project does not include that infrastructure as part of its design. Furthermore, the planned electricity supply does not depend on its own installation, but on the network managed by third parties, which reinforces the idea that these are different projects. Without joint evaluation. Once the existence of a project unit has been ruled out, the court concludes that an integrated environmental assessment is not appropriate. The sentence explicitly states it: “it has been proven that between both initiatives there is no relationship of functional interdependence that conditions their execution.” This nuance is key, because it implies that the data center can operate using the available electrical infrastructure, without the need to subject its viability to a future high voltage line which, in any case, would have to be evaluated separately if it were to be considered. Beyond the legal debate. The Amazon project has very specific dimensions on paper. The data storage center in Huechuraba is designed to operate for 30 years, with an estimated investment of 205 million dollars. It would be built on an area of ​​10.9 hectares, with a construction of 21,350.07 square meters, in the street of Américo Vespucio 1055. From the company, collects Reutershave pointed out that the design of the infrastructure focuses on minimizing energy and water consumption, and maintains that the plan met environmental requirements. Chile as a hub. The Huechuraba project is not an isolated initiative within Amazon’s strategy. Amazon Web Services has proposed an investment of more than 4,000 million dollars in Chile over 15 years to build, operate and maintain its infrastructure in the country. The idea is to turn Santiago into its third major center in Latin America, after São Paulo and the central region of Mexico. Factors such as connectivity through fiber optic cables are added to this context. The concern of those who live nearby. Beyond the investment and digital infrastructure they promise, data centers are often accompanied by very specific concerns: high electricity consumption, use of water for cooling, heat or noise generation, and their fit into environments that, in many cases, have environmental or community value. Google did not have the same path. The case of Amazon is not the only one that has gone through this type of debate in Chile. Google had obtained initial approval in 2020 to build a $200 million data center in Cerrillos, southwest of Santiago. However, the project’s journey was different. In February 2024, the Second Environmental Court decided to partially reverse that permissionand months later the company announced that it would not continue with the initiative as it had originally been proposed, opting to start a new process from scratch for a project in the same location, but with a redesign based on air cooling. Electricity enters the scene. If we broaden the focus, the debate is not limited to a specific project, but to the system’s capacity to absorb this type of infrastructure. A Systep reportpublished on September 23, 2025 with data from the National Electrical Coordinator, indicated that, taking 2025 as a starting point, the electrical demand of data centers in Chile could increase by 270% in five years. The same projection places this consumption at around 1,207 MW in 2030. These figures help to understand why the energy issue has become one of the central axes when talking about the expansion of the cloud and AI. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | In 2024, Big Tech spent absurd amounts of money on AI. In 2025, they managed to spend 77% more

The ‘vibe coding’ promised to democratize software. Your first gift is 5,000 apps with open sensitive data

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An investigation by the firm RedAccess has found more than 5,000 applications created with tools vibe coding which practically lack authentication. Anyone who stumbles upon its URL can enter. Of those 5,000, 2,000 appeared to contain private data upon inspection. The finding covers apps generated with Lovable, Replit, Base44 and Netlify, four of the platforms that have most popularized describing a program with words and letting a LLM write it. Why is it important. The promise of vibe coding is that anyone, without knowing how to program, can build software. The catch is that this same “anyone” also doesn’t know what questions to ask an application before releasing it on the Internet. The result is a new category of breaches caused not by careless employees or advanced attackers, but by people who have thrown together an internal tool in an afternoon without going through anyone on the security team. In detail. Researchers have located these applications by doing normal searches on Google and Bing, combining the domains of each platform with generic terms. Nothing of hacking: It’s more like reverse engineering a search engine. What appeared behind those URLs included hospital quadrants with doctor data, company strategy presentations, complete records of chatbot conversations with customers (with names and telephone numbers), and freight books from transport companies. In some cases, access even allowed them to gain administrator privileges and expel others. Between the lines. The platforms involved have responded with the predictable argument: it is the user’s fault. Replit remembers that its apps can be marked as private with one click. Base44 maintains that its access controls are robust and that disabling them is a conscious decision. Lovable points out that its role is to provide tools, not configure them for anyone. It is a valid argument and, above all, comfortable. It is also the same one that Amazon used with the buckets Misconfigured S3 leaking Verizon data or from WWE: the setting was there, but the user didn’t find it. The context. He vibe coding takes an old problem to a new level. Every time a layer of abstraction has democratized a craft (like spreadsheets, the wrappers of AI or web templates), the newly arrived group has arrived without the baggage of good practices that the previous one had. What changes now is the speed. Someone from a non-technical department can create a tool in two minutes and upload it to production without it going through IT. Yes, but. The AI ​​models that generate the code are not neutral agents. They do what is asked of them, no more, no less. If no one tells them “protect this in X way and implement Y,” they won’t do it. Security by default is still not a learned behavior in most of these tools, and that is a design decision of the platforms, not the end user. The consequence is foreseeable. There are going to be many more leaks like the ones RedAccess has caught before the industry internalizes that a “publish” button should not coexist with a privacy setting hidden three menus below. In Xataka | I have lived the “miracle” of vibe coding: this is how I programmed an Android TV app without having any idea about programming Featured image | Xataka

Aragón unlocks the construction of new Amazon data centers after months of previous work

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Aragon is one of the renewable batteries from Spain. That ability to generate energy has put it in the sights of Big Tech that want to establish themselves in Europe with a clear objective: create more data centers. The shark here is an Amazon that has been operating in the region for a few years, but for which the panorama has just opened to achieve what it has been pursuing for some time. Turn Aragon into the “Spanish Virginia”. In short. This is not a simple comparison, since the US state is one of those with the largest concentration of data centers in the world. In Aragon we are about to see something similar. Amazon, via AWShas been operating since November 2022 in the region with data centers in Zaragoza and Huesca. However, the fever for data centers is more recent and the American giant has been behind permits for some time to be able to build more. As they point from El Periódico de Aragón, after the authorizations that the project has been obtaining in the last two years, Amazon will be able to start building. This is an operation that, until now, had been limited to preparing the ground, but with the unblocking of the operation carried out this past Monday by the Government Council, Amazon will be able to begin building the facilities. Extension. This falls into the PIGAthe General Interest Plan of Aragon, will not be limited to the data centers planned in Villanueva de Gállego and Huesca. The idea is that AWS occupies about 800 hectares with around thirty data centers, 10 electrical substations and 12 buildings, and it is something that is being developed in parallel to the plan to deploy data centers in Walqa, San Mateo de Gállego and La Puebla de Híjar. Jobs and money. Landing these plans, during this year’s Mobile World Congress, the American giant advertisement that their plan is to invest 33.7 billion euros in Spain (at the MWC they stated that they were going to double their initial investment) to expand their data center infrastructure in Aragon between 2026 and 2035. The total investment will contribute 31.7 billion euros to Spain’s total GDP until 2035 and will be esteem that the employment impact will be 29,900 full-time employees. Focusing on Aragon, this operation is expected to contribute 18.5 billion to the region’s GDP and provide employment to 13,400 people. These employment calculations include those of local companies, direct, indirect and induced. It’s not that Amazon is going to create 30,000 jobs out of nowhere and long lasting. Energy. Here comes one of the most important questions: whether Aragon, no matter how much renewable energy it has, will be able to face the gluttony of data centers. Because these data centers, in different parts of the computing process, need energy spikes that we are already seeing how they are covered in other countries: gas, nuclear and… coal. In fact, just scaling AWS will add more than 10,800 GWh per year, more than all current electricity consumption of the community. There has been a lot of debate about the water consumed by data centers and, although the figure is not negligible, the energy cost is much higher. And that is where there is some confrontation between the local industry and Amazon’s plans, because there are those who they claim that the concentration of electrical consumption of AWS and green hydrogen macroplants will brake the development of more traditional renewables. Reviews. And then there is the rejection on environmental issues. More and more we see that there are municipalities that They don’t want to live next door of data centers and it is noted that one of the giant’s projects will be based on protected land. The speed at which permissions have been given to Amazon is also criticized. And, then, there are other issues such as the studies that are appearing little by little and that highlight both the acoustic and thermal pollution of these data centers. It is something that is being measured in various parts of the world and, precisely, in some Aragonese towns near centers of data an increase has been observed of 2°C in surface temperature. Not just Amazon. AWS is an example of the ambitious plans in the region, but they are not the only ones. The community is consolidating as one of the ‘lungs’ of hyperclimbers in Europeas well as one of the key regions of Spain for the expansion of data centers and European technological sovereignty Images | amazon In Xataka | The great paradox of Madrid: the region with the largest energy deficit in Spain is losing the data centers

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