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Vibe coding wants to help Open Source. But developers don’t want AI botches

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If you like Open Source software, vibe coding now gives you a fantastic opportunity: to take that code and modify it to your liking with the help of vibe coding and the AI ​​agents that program. Let them tell it to me. You may have good ideas and the AI ​​will solve them with new code generated with these tools, but there is a problem: the quality of that code may not be adequate. what has happened. Steve Ruiz (@steveruizok) is the creator and responsible for TLDrawa nice Open Source application that allows you to turn your browser into a canvas so you can easily draw whatever you want on it. On January 15, Steve posted a message on X in which he announced something very striking: he would stop accepting code contributions (pull requests, PRs) in the TLDraw GitHub repository. We don’t need low quality code. “Due to the influx of pull requests of low quality, we will soon close those requests to external contributors,” said the person responsible for a project in an additional post on the official blog of the project. The message was clear: although people’s intentions are surely good when trying to contribute their ideas to an existing project, this developer soon realized that the code contributed by new programmers, fans of vibe coding, was of low quality. Solution? Ban those contributions made with AI. AI-generated code can serve. In that article I indicated that this was not a measure against vibe coding, but against code (any code, human or AI) of poor quality. Ruiz explained how: “We already accept code written with AI. I write code with AI tools. I hope my team uses those AI tools too. If you know the project’s code base and know what you’re doing, writing great code has never been easier thanks to these tools.” AI Slop, but from code. Although we often talk about “slop created by AI“(AI Slop) in reference to low-quality text, images, music and videos, the term can also be applied to code. Ruiz explained how in September he began to detect many requests for code contributions that seemed correct but that after a deeper analysis, although they worked, could potentially introduce future problems and complexity to the project. I correct here, I correct there. In addition, many of the contributors had profiles in which they could be seen jumping from Open Source project to Open Source project and then disappearing. They simply contributed without following the policies or requirements of the project and moved on to another. This is a plague. In the debates that this decision generated in Hacker News and x Ruiz found himself with a surprise: people not only did not protest, but they valued the measure positively. He commented how “this seems to be the standard experience for all public repository maintainers right now.” He cited the example of Excalidrawanother similar project that “received more than twice as many PRs in the fourth quarter of 2025 than in the third” in your repository. More and more vetoes of low-quality AI code. Other projects are going through that same phase. ghosttya terminal emulator for macOS and Linux, recently published their “AI policy” in the site’s public GitHub repository with important notices. For example, that “PRs created by AI must have been fully verified with human use”, and further that “all use of AI in any way, shape or form must be disclosed.” That’s cheating. Curl, a very popular utility for command line users, had announced the opening of a bounty program to detect bugs and vulnerabilities in its code. What have many people done? Use AI to find them and take the money. Those responsible for the program have announced that They will close it this month in the face of the avalanche of low-quality vulnerability reports clearly generated by AI. Linus already said it. Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel, admitted to using vibe coding tools for some small personal project. While recognizing that these tools can be great, he warned of the danger of all that AI-generated code: “AI will be a tool, and it will make people more productive. I think vibe coding is great for getting people to start programming. I think (the code it generates) is going to be horrible to maintain… so I don’t think programmers will go away. You’ll still want to have people who know how to maintain the output.” AI code works, but it is not usually “quality”. The developer community has been warning and experiencing this for some time. Although AI tools can help program and solve many routine tasks, the generated code must be reviewed by a human programmer to avoid future problems. It is reasonable to think that this code will be increasingly better and of higher quality, but today in many cases the situation is clear: it may work, yes, but that is not enough for many projects in production, especially when they are used by thousands (let alone millions) of people. In Xataka | Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds had been rivals for 30 years. The funny thing is that they just met and took a selfie

AI saves you eight hours of work a week. As long as you’re the boss and you don’t have to use it yourself

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The AI ​​that was going to change everything and revolutionize our work He doesn’t seem to be doing any of that at the moment. What there is is a great polarization between those who believe in that promise and between those They do not see it at all clearly or they fear it. And if there is a place where this love-hate for AI is palpable, it is in companies, where CEOs see things in one way and employees in a quite different way. what has happened. The consulting company Section has conducted a survey of 5,000 workers and managers in US companies with a fundamental question: How many hours of work per week is AI saving you? Survey results, displayed in The Wall Street Journalsay a lot about the vision of CEOs and employees about the impact of AI tools. Source: WSJ. CEOs love her, employees not too much. According to data from that survey, two out of three employees indicated that AI does not save them time at work or that at most it saves them less than two hours a week. These responses contrast with those of managers and CEOs: one third affirm that it saves them between 4 and 8 hours, another third affirms that it saves them 8 or more hours, and the other third affirms that it saves them 4 hours or less. The big difference is precisely in this negative view: 40% of employees say that they do not save any time, and only 2% of CEOs agree with that opinion. AI screws up more than anything else, some say. A user interface designer named Steve McGarvey indicated in that text how managers “automatically assume that AI is going to be the savior (of the business).” His experience is different, however, and he tells how “I have lost count of the times I have looked for a solution to a problem, asked an LLM, and they gave me a solution to an accessibility problem that was completely wrong.” And it’s not that big of a deal. This professional also indicates that he uses Perplexity as an assistant to research on various projects and that it has saved him time. However, part of their job is to ensure that visually impaired users can access websites, and chatbots have not been of help in that task. The employees are somewhat afraid. There’s another important aspect to the findings: Employees were much more likely to report feeling anxious or overwhelmed by AI than excited by it. That 40% who responded that it did not save them time added that because of them they would never use AI again. Employees are the ones who are most overwhelmed by AI, managers are the ones who are most excited about it. Source: WSJ. For now AI is used like Google. But there is another problem and that is that many of these professionals are using AI as an alternative to the traditional search engine from Google. They do not use it for practical applications of their work—perhaps because they do not know how—and, for example, it was used much less for topics such as code generation or data analysis. It saves me time, but like it doesn’t. Software companies like Workday participated in the survey and pointed out an interesting fact: this technology imposes an “AI tax” in terms of productivity. Although 85% of its 1,600 employees surveyed indicated that they save between one and seven hours a week thanks to AI, that doesn’t help them much: Much of that saved time ends up being used to correct errors made by AI or modify content generated by AI. AI isn’t much use (yet). An additional and also recent survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers focused on 4,500 CEOs. The result: only 30% of them were confident that there would be an increase in revenue thanks to AI, although they admit that having a good AI foundation can help boost that return on investment. The adoption of AI, however, at the moment is not compensating them too much, and only 12% of companies claim to have obtained benefits in revenue or costs, while 56% claim to have “not obtained anything” with that investment. These data are in line with those of the MIT study of August 2025 according to which 95% of pilot projects with generative AI were not paying off to companies. But. The data is negative, but there may be factors that point to a change in trend. The surveys do not indicate how much time users are spending learning how to use AI versus the time it saves them. The benefit may be negative now, but in the long term it will be positive. Furthermore, there are sectors in which AI has clearly become a clear tool to assist workers, as in the field of programming. Although there is, of course, a necessary phase of code review that AI generates, the massive use of these tools indicates that productivity may have gained in whole. Image | Redd F In Xataka | “We will lose social permission”: the CEO of Microsoft knows that either they do something valuable with AI or it will have little progress

Micron has emulated TSMC and is spending $1.8 billion on a RAM factory. Don’t clap yet

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Taiwan is becoming one of the technological hotspots worldwide. If the country was already at the center of the technology sector because it is the home of TSMCwill now take on more prominence in the new era of AI. Your crown jewel is investing an astronomical sum in the United States and, now, the American Micron ends to close a $1.8 billion deal in Taiwan. And you can guess the goal. Keep feeding the data centers based on RAM memory. Micron. In recent weeks, Micron has been one of the big names in the technology sector. However, Crucial may sound more familiar to you. It is, or was, Micron’s brand for consumer RAM, but also for storage. Their products are very well regarded when it comes to assembling a PC in parts, but They turned off the tap at the end of last year and the last shipments will occur in February 2026. Now, Micron is shifting its focus to something much bigger and more lucrative: artificial intelligence. Specifically, supplying those same components, but to large companies that are setting up gigantic data centers. In the end, a data center It is made up of hundreds of “computers” that need both storage and RAM. The operation. Given the context, we come to the news. As the company itself has confirmedhave just signed an operation worth $1.8 billion to take over the P5 factory of the Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation -PSMC- company in Tongluo, Taiwan. An operation like this must pass several filters, but the company’s intention is for the transaction to be closed by the second quarter of this same 2026. They have stepped on the accelerator, and as soon as they can, they will begin to do one thing: increase the production of DRAM memory. clean room. Micron has confirmed that it is just one of the operations it is contemplating in a global expansion movement “to meet the long-term demand of its customers,” and acquiring a semiconductor factory makes perfect sense. Beyond the fact that the components and machines are different, there is something that factories of this type share: clean rooms. It is an extremely… well, clean facility stripped of any external elements. Suspended particles are kept at extraordinarily low levels, temperature, humidity and pressure are highly controlled parameters and the air is filtered numerous times per hour. Static electricity is reduced as much as possible and, ultimately, it is a clinical space so that no impurities interfere with something as sensitive as the manufacturing of semiconductors. It is, in short, like an operating room (or stricter if possible). Example of a clean room “All in one hour“Creating something like this requires a considerable investment (which is why new companies are entering to compete in the RAM segment, as rumored with Asusit is tremendously complicated), and that is why Micron has taken over existing facilities that they will only have to adapt to their activity. Besides, take the example of TSMC. In Taiwan, all components TSMC needs are “an hour” away. This allows the assembly line to be efficient, minimizing time, maximizing production and saving money. The new Micron factory will be very close to the one they already have in Taichung, being able to emulate that way of working that has led TSMC to excellence. Consumption RAM for when. Micron is expected to begin optimizing the manufacturing process in the new plant by the second half of 2027, but thanks to the context we gave before, we know that these “customers” are not those who want to assemble a PC in parts or even assemblers such as Asus, MSI, Lenovo or Gigabyte: they are the ‘Big Tech’ that are setting up data centers. In a recent interview, Christopher Moore, vice president of marketing for Micron’s client and mobile business, said the problem and the RAM bottleneck is elsewherebut also stated that this growth in data centers has gone from representing 30% of its market to 60%. He also stated that, although Crucial has disappeared, Micron will continue to supply memory to OEM manufacturers, but it is evident that the bottleneck is affecting, that prices are through the roof and that things are not looking good if you had to renew PC.E And, according to Micron’s vice president, it will continue until 2028. At least. Images | Maxence Pira, Hunter Trick In Xataka | Google doesn’t have rockets, but it is going to install data centers in space. SpaceX and Blue Origin rub their hands

now they don’t even move

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For decades, the tank was the indisputable symbol of modern land warfare, a centerpiece in doctrines designed to break fronts and decide campaigns in a matter of hours. However, the massive drone outbreak cheap sensors and precision ammunition has gone eroding that role to turning today’s battlefield into an environment where moving or even shooting involves unprecedented risks, forcing major military powers to rethink how (and if) heavy armor can remain relevant. Russia is clear. Drones and stagnation. Despite the diplomatic contacts and rhetoric about a possible negotiated solution, Russia has maintained an offensive sustained to seize key territory from Ukraine, although yes, from a position of clear operational friction. Over the past year, Russian attacks have come in waves dismounted infantrysupported irregularly by motorcycleslight vehicles and even horsesan image that reflects the extent to which heavy armor has been sidelined by the constant threat of FPV drones and Ukrainian bombers. we have been counting: the attempts to return the tanks to the front using nets, improvised cages and other protections have produced limited results. Without effective armored support, assaults progress more slowly, become more exposed to defensive fire, and rack up high casualties with modest territorial gains, pushing Moscow to seek a tactical solution that allows the reintroduction of the armored weapon without repeating recent failures. The last tactic. And here appears the latest russian responsewhich involves a more fragmented and dynamic use of armor, articulated in pairs of tanks continuously supported by drones. In this scheme, the tanks act from a more rearward position, completely stopped and providing fire, while the drones execute a move towards the line of contactresponsible for detecting targets, correcting shots and offering a situational idea in real time. The roles are then alternated to prevent any tank from remaining static long enough to become a predictable target. The objective: to desynchronize enemy sensors and attack systems, generate brief windows of local superiority and force rapid penetrations before the Ukrainian defense can fully react, partly replacing traditional paper of the artillery for a binomial direct fire and persistent aerial surveillance. The breakdown of Soviet doctrine. This approach contrasts sharply with the doctrine inherited from the Soviet era, based on large concentrations of tanks and artillery advancing after massive bombardments to crush weakened defenses. On the current battlefield, dominated by reconnaissance dronesthese types of movements are detected quickly and punished with precision. Furthermore, in urban or semi-urban environments, bottlenecks abound, where the destruction of a single vehicle can block an entire column and turn the rest of the tanks into easy targets, as observed in failed attacks near Pokrovsk at the beginning of 2025. The new tactic recognizes that reality and tries to adapt, but it also highlights the extent to which the drone has gone from being a prop to becoming in the central axis of modern combat. Sensors, communications and logistics. Despite its innovative nature, the new method does not solve structural problems that continue to burden Russian forces. Even dispersed and moving, the tanks remain vulnerable to drones operated from outside their direct fire range, and each shot reveals their position by increasingly easy-to-detect acoustic and visual signals with advanced sensors. The tactic also depends on reliable communication links between tanks, drones and infantry, a weak point compared to Ukrainian capabilities. electronic warfarecapable of degrading or interrupting those connections and increasing the risk of isolation. Added to this is the already fragile logistics, since tanks consume large amounts of fuel and resupply vehicles are priority objectives for Ukrainian drones, making it difficult to sustain armored operations under constant surveillance. Immediate impact and adaptation. In the short term, this controlled reintroduction The armor can provide Russia with the necessary firepower to support limited advances in critical sectors of the almost thousand kilometer front, where it tries to pressure strategic nodes such as Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, Chasiv Yar or Toretsk. The infantry assaults have achieved punctual penetrationsbut they usually lack the muscle necessary to consolidate them, and tanks could partially cover that deficit. However, conflict experience suggests that Ukraine will react quicklyfitting their drones with better sensors and prioritizing not only the destruction of tanks, but also their supply lines, in addition to reinforcing obstacles, mines and barriers on foreseeable routes of advance. Thus the probable result is a ephemeral tactical advantage which is unlikely to translate into a lasting change in balance. A scenario that redraws a duality that has been repeated before: that of the Russian capacity for adaptation in a battlefield dominated by drones, and the limits of that adaptation in the face of vulnerabilities that remain unresolved. Image | Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, RawPixel In Xataka | “Robots don’t bleed”: the Ukrainian drone that stopped Russia for six weeks with a machine gun and not a single human soldier In Xataka | Russia has reminded the planet that the war in Ukraine is a ticking bomb. And for this he has pressed a nuclear button: Oreshnik

ChatGPT is already our first line doctor (although we don’t want to admit it)

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ChatGPT has become one of the biggest attention grabbers in historyand now ChatGPT Health is going to take that further. Not competing with the GP, but yes occupying that space that we have filled with nightly Google searcheswith visits to forums where a stranger tells you that that mole does not have to worry you, or with the brother-in-law who knows a little about those topics. We’ve been delegating our fears to slightly ridiculous spaces for years, and now OpenAI is going to offer one that’s a little less ridiculous. The interesting thing is not that AI knows medicine. The LLMs They have been passing clinical exams for years and have resolved, better or worse, several doubts. The interesting thing is that we trust it more than real institutions or people. Two hundred and thirty million people asking ChatGPT about their health every week is a fact that says a lot about our psychology. We’d rather ask a chatbot than wait three weeks for an appointment or bother a friend at eleven at night. Everything before admitting out loud that that pain scares us. ChatGPT Health presents itself as a kind of “pocket doctor”, but it functions as a confessor. Because “should I worry about this?” It is never just a medical question. It’s existential. And the app never judges you, never gets tired, never makes you feel like you’re overreacting. He responds instantly, in a reassuring tone, citing studies that you will never read but that make you feel informed. Deep down, we know he can skate and invent things, but that doesn’t matter as much to us as gaining peace of mind for a while.and that feeling does manage to convey it. Even though There have been shady cases that have ended badly. OpenAI says this is not a replacement for the doctor. Of course not. But functionally it is already doing it. Not in a serious diagnosis, which is where we still go to the hospital, but in who decides when something is worth worrying about. Who immediately interprets those blood test numbers, or who tells us if we should change our diet or exercise routine. In the daily practice of managing a body, the doctor has become the second option, ChatGPT is now the first line. It may be uncomfortable, it may displease, but it is what is already happening. That is, in fact, the awkward twist: ChatGPT’s competition is not so much with doctors as with the emotional support network we used to have. We asked our mother, our partner, our friend who studied nursing. Now directly to ChatGPT. And with Health, this will go even further. Because it’s immediate, it’s fast, it doesn’t make you feel vulnerable and you can delete the conversation if the response starts to scare you. ChatGPT Health is the consolidation of the symptom of structural loneliness that we have not even consciously chosen. It’s just that annoying someone has become emotionally costly, while asking a machine that simulates empathy (sometimes Claude calls me ‘brother’) is fluid and simple. OpenAI did not invent this dynamic, it just came naturally when people made ChatGPT a habit and now he has optimized it to better monetize it. In Xataka | ChatGPT has been a tool. If you start remembering all our conversations, it’s going to be something else: a relationship. Featured image | Xataka

We have been failing with New Year’s resolutions for decades. Science says it’s because we don’t know how to “cheat”

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January starts with a predictable ritual: paying gym membership, fill the fridge with kale or buy paintbrushes for a new hobby. It is the “clean slate effect” that defines Professor Katy Milkman. Human beings do not perceive time linearly, but rather like chapters of a novel. The New Year is the “Black Friday” of new beginnings; a symbolic border that makes us believe that the “me” of last year—the one who didn’t know how to draw a line without looking like a preschooler—has finally died. In fact, 4,000 years ago the Babylonians they already made promises at the Akitu festival to appease their gods. The difference is that they sought to avoid divine wrath and we simply sought to avoid the guilt in the mirror. The autopsy of a failure foretold. Despite our enthusiasm, the statistics are devastating. According to the media Selphonly one in five people manages to stick to their long-term resolutions. Most of us throw in the towel before the month is over, because we always make the same mistake: wanting to be a different person overnight. We want to eat healthy, meditate, travel and be experts in some subject, all at the same time. The problem is that we focus obsessively on the result (losing 10 kilos) and not on the process (enjoying the taste of a new recipe). Added to this is what psychologist Kimberley Wilson describes how the danger of “forbidden words”. Using terms like “always” or “never” puts us in an “all or nothing” trap. If work gets complicated on a Wednesday and you can’t go to paint or eat a pizza, you feel like the entire year is a failure. It’s tunnel vision that ignores that life is, by definition, unpredictable. Furthermore, today we have a new enemy: metrics. As behavioral experts saywe have gone “from enjoyment to performance.” We no longer read for pleasure, but to update the counter. goodreads; We do not run for health, but to not break the streak of Strava. This culture of productivity applied to leisure turns our hobbies into a second working day. If the app says we haven’t complied, guilt appears. The science of “traps”: The method of temptation. What if the key to compliance was not military discipline, but rather being a little “cheatful”? Katy Milkman, behavior change expert, confesses her own trick in an interview with the Washington Post: he “temptation bundling” (temptation pairing). When he was a student, he hated exercising but loved Harry Potter. His solution was to allow himself to listen to the audiobooks of the saga only while he was at the gym. “It made me want to go to work out,” he explains. It’s basically using a guilty pleasure to “bribe” our brain into a healthy habit. This idea is complemented by the “Habit Stacking” (habit stacking). Instead of reaching for willpower you don’t have, “glue” your new purpose to something you already do automatically. Want to learn that paint stroke? Do a five-minute sketch right after your morning coffee. Want to finish that Pinterest scarf? Do ten rows while watching your favorite Netflix series. You don’t add effort, you just take advantage of the architecture of your current routine. Less “goals”, more “values”. From Harvard University, Dr. Aisha Usmani suggests that we see change as “shaping a sculpture”: It is done by removing pieces of stone little by little, not all at once. Cognitive science tells us that if you want to paint, don’t set out to do one canvas a day; Start with one a week. And above all, align your goals with your personal values, not with external pressure. If crochet stresses you, perhaps it does not respond to your value of “creativity”, but rather to an aesthetic imposition. According to Usmani, We must ask ourselves every day: “Is this still important to me?” If the answer is no, adjusting course is not failure, it is being flexible. Self-compassion as a strategy. We cannot forget the weight of the treatment we give to ourselves. As the psychologist Ángel Rull explains in his columnmany resolutions are born from “being fed up with oneself” and not from self-care. If you join the gym because you hate your body, there is a good chance you will quit. If you do it to feel more energetic, the commitment changes. Another interesting note is how we talk about our setbacks. A recent study highlights the difference between saying that we didn’t “have time” and that we didn’t “make time.” While the first sounds like an external excuse, the second implies active control over our agenda: if we didn’t do it today, we can decide to do it tomorrow. According to this research, focusing the cause of failure on external factors and not on our lack of will is the best lifesaver for our confidence. A more human 2026. In short, we are not computers that restart on January 1st. The real change is not about saturating our to-do list, but about transforming initial fatigue into real self-care. If this year you want to start lifting some weights or for your painting stroke to gain firmness, science gives you permission to be a strategist: combine effort with pleasure through temptation bundlingopt for small things—because a page read will always be better than an abandoned book—and accept that perseverance necessarily includes days of hiatus. In the end, perhaps the best resolution for this year is not to become an “optimized” version of ourselves, but to stop treating ourselves as a defective project that must be fixed by decree. The key to success this year lies not in military discipline, but in the ability to begin to see ourselves as someone who is simply trying to live with a little more presence, realistic tools and, above all, a little less guilt. Image | freepik Xataka | Neither board games nor karaoke: ‘Word on Beat’ is the new king of the living room and proof that we prefer rhythmic chaos

Why Weekend Nap Binges Don’t Undo the Holiday Damage

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We are in full dinner timereunions and late nights with a lot of partying involved. The logic of the average ‘party animal’ in these cases is infallible: “I sleep four hours today, but I’ll have a sleep marathon on Sunday to compensate”, but although it seems like a perfect plan on paper, science has a very different opinion on the matter. Our habits. Luis de Leceaneuroscientist at Stanford University and one of the world’s leading authorities in the study of sleep, has just thrown a bucket of cold water on this custom in El País: he metabolic stress of Sleeping poorly is not cured with a long nap. In fact, with our modern habits, we are taking away the most pleasant phase of rest. The myth of accumulating sleep. There is a belief that sleep works like a real bank account: if you take out hours during the week, you can make a massive deposit on Saturday to balance the balance. However, science has been pointing out for years that our brain is not an accountant that understands the amounts and income of hours of sleep. And this is something that makes a lot of sense, because lack of sleep generates metabolic stress in our neurons. It is not just tiredness, it is an alteration in the consolidation of memory and in the neuronal repair. In this way, when we try to compensate on the weekend, we can alleviate drowsiness, but the biological markers of inflammation and cognitive performance do not recover in the same way. The nest protocol. One of the most fascinating points of De Lecea’s recent research is the importance of the pre-sleep phase. In the animal world, there is what is called the “nest preparation protocol”, which is a series of instinctive behaviors that prepare the brain for disconnection. In humans, this process depends on a delicate chemical balance: the dopamine inhibition. A necessary process to enter a deep and restful sleep, causing dopamine levels to drop so that we are not constantly on alert. The problem. It is quite common to hear that our habits cause alterations in the sleep-wake cycle. In this case, exposure to screens with blue light and the infinite flow of information keeps dopamine high, such as constantly watching TikTok. But the number one enemy is stress. The stressed brain interprets that there is danger lurking, which blocks the natural transitions between wakefulness and sleep. The science of delta waves. Not all dreams are the same, something that De Lecea himself has been revealed in different studies which analyze how the brain uses delta waves even during the REM phase, which is when we are dreaming. These slow waves, typical of deep sleep, are essential for the clearance of metabolic waste and synaptic plasticity. That is why if we sleep little and poorly (even if it is for a good cause, like a New Year’s Eve party), we break this spatiotemporal dynamic of the brain. 2023 research on vigilance states suggests that the brain needs a continuity that “weekend binge eating” cannot provide. It’s not just tiredness. The immune system also has a lot to say with this. In these days of cold and respiratory viruses, skimping on sleep to party is, literally, disarming our defenses. In this way, we must remember that sleep is not a passive state, but rather an active process of maintaining the body. Images | Dmitry Ganin Michael Discenza In Xataka | We thought insomnia was just not being able to sleep. Now we know that there are five different disorders

We still don’t know if humanoid robots will be the next great technological revolution. Yes we know that China will lead it

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There are a lot of companies determined to sell us the idea that, in the not too distant future, everyone we will have a humanoid robot at home. We have many doubts that they will be the revolution that they promise (and there are reasons for this), but in China they have it very clear. Patents. They count in South China Morning Post that Morgan Stanley has published volume 3 of its series ‘Robot Almanac‘, which details some key data on the state of the humanoid robot industry. China is far ahead when it comes to patents, having registered 7,705 patents in the last five years, while in the United States they have registered 1,561, almost five times less than its technological rival par excellence. Dependence. It’s not just about patents, China has another key advantage and that is that its production lines are much more efficient from a cost point of view. This causes the rest of the companies that manufacture humanoids to depend on them if they do not want their production costs to skyrocket. The cost of building a supply chain in which China was left out would raise prices exponentially. The report estimates that manufacturing the Tesla Optimus Gen 2 without China’s participation would raise the cost from about $46,000 to $131,000. Obsession with robots. Humanoid robots from companies like Unitree or Deep Robotics have been in the public eye for a long time. We have seen them participate in the first robotic olympics, fight, play soccer and how dance corps in macro concerts. They are appearances clearly focused on going viral, showing their capabilities to the world and, ultimately, making people see them as something cool and want to buy one. However, although humanoids take all the spotlight, they are only the tip of the iceberg of a strategy that goes much further. Personified AI. In English it would be ’embodied AI’ and it is the approach that China has taken in his particular AI career. The government included the term in his job report this year, which highlights its strategic importance. More than large language and software models, China wants AI that is present, whether in the form of humanoid robots, drones, autonomous vehicles or industrial robots. Speaking of industry, guess who has 51% of all industrial robots in the world. Exactly: China. Industrial robots. According to data from Financial TimesChina installs 280,000 robots a year in its factories with a clear objective: automate to achieve greater efficiency and power continue being the factory of the world. Now that workers’ salaries are higherthe way they have found to remain competitive against markets like India or Bangladesh is automation. Image | Andy Kelly in Unsplash In Xataka | I have asked for water from the first humanoid robot working in Beijing. It’s a weird vending machine.

Spanish banks have no problem letting you buy cryptocurrencies. What they don’t want to do is advise you on them.

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In March 2025 BBVA he stuck out his chest. It was the first large traditional bank in Spain that allowed its clients to operate in cryptocurrencies. Then other entities such as CaixaBank and OpenBank followed. In all of these cases there is a crucial detail: one thing is that they let you operate with cryptos. It’s quite another to advise you on how to do it. You cook it, you eat it. That traditional banking has made this move is definitive proof that cryptocurrencies have managed to convince even this very conservative sector. But these institutions are not willing to risk too much, so although they allow their clients to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, they leave all responsibility to the client: they do not advise or advise. And it’s not likely that they will. Nobody wants to advise. A report published by the ESMA and the EBA reveals that the vast majority of entities follow the same pattern: they allow trading with cryptocurrencies, but do not advise clients about them. Of the 110 entities that have achieved authorization of the MiCA regulation in Europe, only 20 have requested to provide crypto advice. 11 provide recommendations (like eToro) and another nine offer portfolio management. There is a clear reason why these entities leave the ball in the clients’ court. Too much risk. Caution is absolute not only on the part of traditional banking, but also of traditional exchanges or trading markets. These entities, which have traditionally been the only resource for users to operate with cryptocurrencies, have never offered advisory services, and one was clear when investing that they assumed full responsibility for their actions. The surprise is that exactly the same thing happens with traditional banking. They ignore it, and they do so because they have no interest in advising: the reputational risk is too high, and the volatility of these assets makes it especially difficult to make reliable recommendations. Crypto analyzes guarantee (almost) nothing. As explained in five days Gliroia Hernández Aler, co-founder and partner of finReg360, “Crypto assets have the value that the market assigns to them. By not having an underlying that can be analyzed, such as an income statement, for example, it is difficult to base advice on objective data. Although there is more and more news that can impact bitcoin, it is difficult to do a quantitative analysis with traditional methods.” MiCA opened the market. Europe wanted to try to regularize that “wild west” that the crypto market had become. To this end, in mid-2023 it approved the MiCA (Markets in Crypto Assets) regulation, a European regulation to regularize this activity. Among other things, it offers consumer and investor protection and establishes measures to prevent market abuses. Banks as the new exchanges. We had to wait two years to see how the first banks took advantage of this regulation, but little by little more and more entities joined in. The message was clear: you no longer have to resort to “mysterious” cryptocurrency trading markets (exchanges). You can buy at your usual bank. Image | BBVA | André Francois McKenzie In Xataka | A British man was not allowed to look for his bitcoin disk in the trash for years: now he is considering buying the landfill

Europe is the world leader in heat pump manufacturing. The only problem is that Europeans don’t use them

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Not to get grandiose, but Europe has never had so many renewables underwayhad never made so much clean technology and never had talked so much about energy independence. And yet, winter has arrived again and the ritual is always the same: turning on the heating still means burning imported gas. Although if we reach this point it is not for lack of alternatives, because they are there. The problem is much more mundane: in much of the continent, heating with electricity it’s still more expensive than doing it with gas. The energy shock that changed everything. A recent EMBER report has detailed how Europe abruptly lost access to cheap Russian gas and had to replace it with much more expensive liquefied natural gas in a highly volatile global market. The result was an unprecedented price shock: an accumulated extra cost of 930 billion euros during the energy crisis. More on fossils. Far from being a problem caused by the green transition, the document indicates that the impact was concentrated precisely in the sectors most dependent on imported fossil fuels. Energy-intensive industries reduced production and, in many cases, never returned to pre-Ukraine war levels. This reading coincides with that presented by researcher Jan Rosenowwho rejects the idea that dismantling climate policies would make energy cheaper. The problem, he maintains, was not going too fast, but rather having delayed electrification for decades and having kept gas as the pillar of the system. Here the central contradiction emerges. According to EMBERheat pumps are a mature, efficient and strategic technology: they produce between two and three times more heat than a gas boiler for each unit of energy consumed. Even if that electricity came entirely from a gas plant, the net fuel savings would still exist. However, in practice, the technological advantage is diluted in the bill. In most EU countries, electricity costs 2 to 4 times more than gas for the end consumer. The average electricity-gas ratio in the EU is 2.85, and in some member states it exceeds 4. The problem: the pricing structure. As pointed out in the consultancynon-energy costs —taxes, tolls and public policy surcharges— can represent up to three quarters of the final price of electricity, while gas maintains a much lower tax burden. The result is an obvious distortion: the most efficient technology appears expensive and the most polluting technology appears affordable. You save but not. For an average home, this anomaly has a direct effect, since changing systems reduces energy consumption, but it does not always reduce the bill. And when that happens, adoption slows down. Furthermore, the data confirm that this is not a cultural or climatic issue, but rather an economic one. In countries like the Netherlands, where electricity is only slightly more expensive than gas, heat pump sales are soaring. On the other hand, in Germany, Poland or Hungary —where electricity can cost more than three times as much as gas—, adoption is much lower. The lever that remains to be activated. Solutions exist and many are immediately applicable: transferring the costs of electricity policies to public budgets, reducing electricity VAT, taxing fossil gas more coherently or implementing specific rates for heat pumps. From there, technological deployment is no longer a promise, but a reality. In fact, Europe leads the global heat pump industrywith manufacturers such as Bosch, Vaillant, NIBE or Danfoss, and with industrial projects that already operate on a large scale. These are not prototypes or pilots, but rather functioning infrastructure. Real limits and tensions. None of this eliminates obstacles. Europe still need gas to stabilize its electrical grid. The infrastructures are stressed, the flexibility of the system is insufficient and any cold winter can send prices skyrocketing again. Added to this are the physical frictions of the transition. The massive expansion of offshore wind in the North Sea is generating unprecedented conflicts between countries due to the so-called “wake effect”, which reduces the production of neighboring parks. Electrification is not only a matter of political will, but also of technical coordination and supranational planning. The anomaly that Europe has not yet corrected. Europe already has the technology, the industry and the climate goals. What it has not yet corrected is a basic anomaly: fiscally penalizing electricity while de facto subsidizing fossil gas. As long as that distortion persists, heat pumps will continue to advance more slowly than data, engineering, and economic common sense would allow. As the EMBER report concludeselectrifying heating is not a green whim, but a strategy for energy security, industrial competitiveness and price stability. The transition is not about inventing new machines, but about deciding which energy is made cheaper and which is left behind. And today, in Europe, that decision continues to be reflected—very clearly—in the invoice. Image | freepik Xataka | While the US and China dominate different sectors, Europe leads an unexpected leadership: heat pumps

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