empire

Huawei is building a semiconductor empire. And in the middle of the crisis, now it is going for its own DRAM factory

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If Huawei has a message for the United States that tried to ostracize it with the five-year-old vetothat message is “thank you.” It was the same president of the Chinese company who commented a few days ago that, without the pressure from the westChina and Huawei could not have developed their technology at the speed they have. Because Huawei is developing an empire, and the latest reports suggest that they are going for the missing piece: DRAM memory. And they are creating a megafactory so as not to depend on anyone in a market that is far from improving. DRAM factory. It is estimated that SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron have more than 90% of the global DRAM market. With the big three focusing all their production on AI platforms, neither consumers nor companies of consumer products can access components at competitive prices, so they look for alternatives. It is said that Apple would be looking at the Chinese CXMTbut now there are those point that Huawei is creating a DRAM factory with government support. The company Swaysure, from Shenzhen, one of the technological hearts of the country, would be building with Huawei a factory with the capacity to create 12-inch wafers. The planned production would be 140,000 wafers per month and, in charge of all this, would be a former director of TSMC. chip empire. China has one goal: that at least 80% of basic technology that their companies use is supplied by national companies, and Huawei plays a fundamental role there. It is no longer about the huge campuses that they have to promote their own business, but also their presence in all the technological sectors of the country and the importance that they are gaining by becoming one of the pivots of semiconductors in China. With the help of SMIC, they have managed to develop chips with an advanced architecture in record time and, in addition, it is estimated that at least 11 factories throughout the country operate it with the help of allied companies. They create logic chips, have foundry services, and also operate in the DRAM chip segment. With the new company led by Swaysure, they would take another step to achieve greater independence from the big players in the memory and NAND chip sector. In the end, it is about creating an industrial network that allows us to achieve that 80% goal and, above all, be more independent from foreign technology. Images from Planet Labs and Financial Times in which you can see the evolution in the construction of a Huawei and SwaySure plant between 2022 and 2025. parallel reality. To achieve this, Huawei has some of the most impressive technological and R&D campuses on the planet, which has allowed them in a very short time to not only rise from the ashes, but create a parallel reality. In terms of software, HarmonyOS is on more than 1 billion devices, the Huawei Clouyd service is growing outside of China in countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and then there are the chips. They have the Ascend and Kunpeng optimized for both AI and edge computingrecently introduced a supercluster for advanced AI tasks and intend to change the paradigm of the evolution and development of processors with a ‘Tau Law’ under which they will begin to create their new Kirin consumer chips that we can see in devices such as mobile phones and tablets. And that they have the Chinese government support It is a guarantee. Chinese lever. Returning to Huawei’s RAM, this movement is not designed to compete against the big three in the sector, but rather to not depend on them. That is, Huawei should not want to be Samsung in such a short time, but having the capacity to make its DRAM, it could stop depending on Samsung or SK Hynix, for example. Furthermore, these types of movements are part of a more long-term strategy, one in which Huawei has gone from being a large company in China to being one of the lungs of the country’s technological developmentdriving the AI ​​platforms of other companies with its hardware and being the heart of some of the data centers in which China is going to invest 300 billion dollars over the next five years. HE esteemIn fact, Huawei will take over 60% of the Chinese AI chip market in 2026. Now, no matter how much they invest and create new foundries, they still have a hot potato: no one manufactures advanced lithography machines like ASML’s to which Chinese companies have restricted access. They are advancing through alternative techniques and reverse engineeringbut if China wants to be the first technological nation in the short term (an objective that they have marked themselves), at some point they will need those huge, next-generation “printers.” Image | ASML In Xataka | US adds Netherlands to Pax Silica alliance: ASML host nation enters anti-Chinese bloc

Ivar Kreuger, the Swedish millionaire who built a financial empire with matches and ended up burned by his debts

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Paris, March 1932. The cover of The New York Times pick up the news of a man who has been found dead in his room, shot in the heart. Outside, no one still knows that that body hides the major financial fraud of his time. That man had lent money to governments and personalities across Europe, dined with Greta Garbo, and advised presidents. In Sweden they called him “the second king.” On Wall Street they treated him almost like a god of finance. However, as Frank Partnoy told in his biographical book ‘The Match King’behind that shining empire there was something much darker. That story begins, like so many other great falls, with a product so simple that no one suspected it: a match. An empire born of fire Ivar Kreuger was born in Kalmar, southeastern Sweden in 1880. His family already had a small match making business Therefore, her wealthy position allowed her to study engineering and travel around the United States, where she learned construction systems based on the use of reinforced concrete that were not yet used in Sweden. In 1908, he returned to Sweden and founded the construction company Kreuger & Toll along with Paul Toll with just $2,500 in capital. The main advantage of your company is that, when use concrete armed in their constructions, they managed to shorten construction deadlines without losing quality in the constructions. This allowed them to obtain projects as important as the construction of the Stockholm Olympic Stadiumwhich would be the venue for the 1912 Olympic Games. The founders of Kreuger & Toll: Paul Toll (standing), Henrik Kreuger (left) and Ivar Kreuger In his first business venture, Kreuger discovered something key: knew his way around finances almost as well as with concrete. With that mix of ambition, engineering and business acumen, Kreuger entered the family matchmaking business with the Swedish Match (that still exists) in 1917, uniting different dispersed factories into a single holding company. In a few years, the new company manufactured 75% of the matches on the entire planet. Trade matches for debt However, and despite the buoyant business of his factories, Kreuger’s great move was to exchange matches for debt. After the First World War, half of Europe needed money to rebuild. Kreuger saw the opportunity. It offered huge loans to governments in financial trouble and, in return, asked for match manufacturing monopoly in your country. He lent money to France, Germany, Poland, Greece and other nations, thus managing to monopolize the production of matches in half of Europe. It is estimated that the total loaned to the different countries was around 387 million dollars in 1930. It had factories in 43 countries and almost total control in 25 of them. The business was no longer selling matches, it was now lending money disguised as an industry and its empire extended to other industries. It came to dominate 50% of the iron market and became shareholders in banks, mining companies, railways, lumber, paper, film distribution, real estate and the pulp industry. In 1925, he even gained control of an important package of Ericsson shares and the other three largest companies in Sweden, as well as more than 200 companies and represented 60% of the Swedish stock market. Its 125-room Stockholm office earned the nickname “Match Palace.” To finance so much borrowing, Kreuger needed a constant flow of capital. To achieve this, it issued shares with very high dividends, up to 30% between 1919 and 1928. Investors, especially in the US, entered en masse due to the promise of obtaining a return well above the average. He managed to raise 750 million dollars with this system, according to collected The Economist. The trick he used to offer those succulent dividends was not new, although no one saw it at the time: he paid old investors with the money of new ones. That is, the same pyramid system that I was using Carlo Ponzi on the other side of the pond: a ponzi scheme with the appearance of an industrial multinational. Nobody audited Kreuger’s books and, as how I collected a chronicle of The New York Timeswhen an English executive proposed it to him, Kreuger responded with a phrase that today exudes fine irony: “Do you think I’m a swindler?” The answer is clear: Yes. A house of cards on fire The Wall Street crash of 1929 suddenly cut off the flow of capital that sustained Kreuger’s pyramid scheme, which, in desperation, went so far as to sell the same securities several times. counterfeit Italian bonds for 80 million without actually having that monopoly. In 1931 he requested a loan of 800 million crowns from the Swedish banks, the equivalent of 10% of the country’s GDP. It wasn’t enough. He Swedish Riksbank hesitatedhe government intervenedbut the hole was now impossible to cover. On March 12, 1932, Kreuger took his own life in his Parisian hotel room. A few weeks before, the telephone company ITT (International Telegraph & Telephone) had forced him to return 11 million dollars after discovering that the Swedish millionaire had deceived them making up Ericsson accounts. Subsequent audits uncovered the true extent of the pufo. Their companies accumulated credit debts of more than 1.2 billion dollarsin addition to a personal debt of 265 million dollars, compared to just 18 million dollars in assets that he had in his possession. All of this, we remember, in the 1930s, which represents a debt of unaffordable proportions even by today’s millionaires. Thousands of families lost their savings. Entire factories closed. And the man who one day lent money to half of Europe ended up being, himself, the biggest financial hole of his time. The United States Congress called him the biggest fraudster in history. A year later, the SEC was created to monitor the markets and ensure that Kreuger’s scam It did not repeat itself. In Xataka | The extreme stinginess of the first woman to become a millionaire by investing: she was known as the “Witch of … Read more

We thought it was a bend in the Rhine. In reality it was a huge Roman water channel that survived the fall of the Empire for 300 years.

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If there is something for which Rome has remained in memory, it is for its impressive road layout throughout their empire, but be careful because in hydraulic engineering they were not far behind either, the aqueducts of Segovia and Tarragona serve as close examples. It is true that aqueducts are striking constructions due to their dimensions, but there is another that rivals them in size and capacity to move water: canals. In fact, a research team just “discovered” that what looked like an old abandoned Rhine channel was actually an ancient Roman canal. They had an unappealable clue on the terrain: it is rare to see such a long and straight line in nature. The discovery. In southwestern Germany, on an agricultural plain next to the Rhine River, an interdisciplinary research team from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and the Hessen Monument Office have found something that has been buried for more than a thousand years: an artificial Roman canal 15 meters wide and 2.5 meters deep that connected the Rhine to a small military fort called the burgus of Trebur-Astheim. Why is it important. Because the Trebur-Astheim Canal is one of the few known navigable canals north of the Alps during the Roman period and the Early Middle Ages, demonstrating that the Roman Empire in Germania modified the landscape more intensely and lastingly than previously believed. The presence of Rome was more than a mere occupation. As explains the research teamthe burgus of Trebur-Astheim probably functioned as a central logistical node for the Landgraben region, where cargo ships of the time could dock and goods were redistributed around the area on other vessels. This demonstrates a global vision of the empire for supplying its troops through infrastructure that goes beyond the roads. Context. The consolidated Roman presence in the Hessische Ried began in the 1st century AD, under the Flavian emperors. The fort of Trebur-Astheim was built between 364 and 375 AD under the command of Emperor Valentinian I as part of his plan for military deployment along the Rhine. with a goal: contain the Alamanni, a group of tribes settled on the right bank of the river. In fact, the Rhineland border is clearly demarcated by watchtowers and forts, as can be seen on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In detail. In short, the town of Trebur-Astheim was practically a protected inland port: its dimensions were similar to those of the Roman navigable canal Fossa Corbulonis (present-day Netherlands) and made it suitable for different types of Roman river vessels, such as military type Mainz-A or the cargo boats found near Xanten, both with drafts of between 0.35 and 0.65 meters, well below the depth of the channel. Carbon 14 has revealed that, from the sediments of the canal, it was in operation from Roman times until the 7th-8th centuries AD, when it became clogged with mud and was abandoned. In fact, the large amount of sediment in the area forced the channel to be dredged frequently for centuries: after the Romans, the team points out that the Merovingian and Carolingian communities exploited it and maintained the infrastructure. Yes, but. The excavation carried out in 2024 did not reach sufficient depth to physically see the walls of the canal due to the high water table and the amount of sediment. That is to say, the dimensions that we know have been estimated indirectly, something that is common in underwater archaeology. In this sense, a complete excavation is pending to obtain direct data on the construction of the canal. In Xataka | Some go to the gym to do legs and others to discover an impressive mansion from the Roman Empire In Xataka | The Romans found a macabre and sophisticated way to use perfume: breaking pigeons’ necks (made of glass) Cover | Wolfgang Pehlemann and An Artificial Canal Connecting the Roman Burgus at Trebur-Astheim (Upper Rhine Graben, Germany) with the River Rhine

Claude Guillemot, the co-founder of Ubisoft who turned a store in Brittany into a video game empire, dies

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Claude Guillemot, one of the five brothers who founded Ubisoft in 1986 and until now current executive vice president of operations of the company, died yesterday, June 19, 2026 at the age of 69 when his Cessna 421 plane crashed in a field near the La Baule airfield, in the department of Loire-Atlantique, as reported by France 3. The other fatality is a flight instructor from Rennes whose identity has not yet been confirmed. Ubisoft’s silent architect. Although his brother Yves Guillemot is the most visible face of the company as CEO, Claude’s role in the birth of Ubisoft was essential: according to 3DJuegoswas the one who opened Guillemot Informatique in Carentoir in 1984, the original computer store that served as the base for Ubisoft that would be born just a couple of years later. Until his death he was an active member of the Board of Directors and, according to your company filebrought to the board his international experience in Asia and his in-depth knowledge of video game hardware and distribution technologies. He was also CEO of Guillemot Corporation since 1997, a company specialized in video game peripherals under the Thrustmaster and Hercules brands, present in more than 140 countries. At Ubisoft’s worst moment. Guillemot’s death hits a company that is going through a difficult time: Ubisoft has recorded record losses of 1.3 billion euros in the 2025-26 fiscal year, with a drop in income of 17.4%. The crisis has specific causes: has canceled six gamesincluding the remake of ‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time‘, and delayed another seven, assuming as lost the 650 million already spent on development. To achieve liquidity, has transferred 25% of Vantage Studios to Tencent for 1,160 million euros. The company foresees that the next year will also be in the red, with an additional estimated drop in sales of between 8% and 9% and does not expect to return to profitability until the 2027-28 financial year. Yves Guillemot himself advertisement in January 2026 a large-scale “reset”, describing the company’s momentum as an opportunity to return to sustainable growth. The end of an era. In the absence of the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses completing the investigation into the accident, what is already definitive is the loss of one of the five architects of the only major European video game multinational capable of competing with the major North American and Japanese studios for four decades. The Guillemot family controls around 14% of Ubisoft’s capital through Guillemot Brothers SE (according to data from Euronext Paris), and the reorganization of that control structure will be one of the first issues that the market will monitor in the coming weeks. In Xataka | What’s happening with Ubisoft: after canceling six games and adjusting its structure, this is the plan of the great French studio In Xataka | A single programmer, simple mechanics, crappy graphics and Paint interface. And he has earned ten million in a week Cover | Shuichi Aizawa

Between burpees and burpees, some kids have just found a luxurious mansion from the Roman Empire under their gym

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In all the institutes in the world there is gossip, but while in most of them they talk about flirting, at the Liceo Scientifico Cavour in Rome the real talk was archaeology. More specifically, the rumor that had been heard for years The thing is that under the gymnasium there were Roman ruins. When the teachers notified the authorities and they began preparing for the excavations, they found a vein that is just 100 meters from the mythical Roman Colosseum. The discovery. Just by starting to remove rubble, the archeology team of the Special Superintendence of Rome has discovered the remains of a spectacular Roman domus in an exceptional state of conservation. This large luxury house dates back to the 2nd century AD and is still mostly underground, but intact wall paintings and decorative stuccoes have already been seen that have stood on its vaults practically at their original height, which the archaeologists themselves describe as spectacular. Finding walls and floors is relatively common, but finding legible decoration not so much. The size of the domus and the quantity and quality of decorations discovered indicate that we are facing a residence of high-ranking people of the time. Why is it important. The Liceo Scientifico Cavour is located in the Rione Monti, in the area between the Carinae and the Esquilino, one of the most relevant neighborhoods of ancient Rome. Figures such as Cicero, Pompey and Octavian lived there. Despite this, modern constructions have seriously damaged its archaeological record, according to the Special Superintendence of Rome. As part of this domus already appeared in the 19th century along with a lead pipe with the names of the owners, it is potentially possible to link the material remains with their possible owners. Context. More specifically, it was in 1895, with the opening of Via degli Annibaldi, when a aquarian fistula revealed the name of the owners: the Umbria family. That was the usual Roman method to identify ownership of the water supply. The building where the institute is today was built at the end of the 19th century as the headquarters of a Catholic missionary congregation. Paradoxically, it was this modern construction that served to seal and preserve the Roman remains. Yes, but. At the moment, the discovery already has a provisional name: “Domus del Liceo Cavour” and although there are several hypotheses about the size of the house and its owners, nothing is confirmed until the excavations are completed and the remains found are analyzed in their entirety. And it won’t be easy: digging under a functioning institute makes work slow, so the results can take years. In Xataka | The Romans found a macabre and sophisticated way to use perfume: breaking pigeons’ necks (made of glass) In Xataka | Almost 2,000 years ago a Celtiberian soldier visited the most remote frontier of the Roman Empire. Then he returned to Soria with a souvenir Cover | Jorgen Hendriksen and Cantieri Narranti

Long before Real Madrid, the Roman Empire had already invented VIP boxes. And they ended in disaster

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In the first century, the emperor Nero ordered that some shows will include giant awnings to protect the most privileged attendees from the sun, while the rest of the public endured the heat in the upper stands. That seemingly trivial difference reflected the extent to which the experience of attending an event was already marked for money and status long before modern stadiums existed. Show business in Ancient Rome. Long before modern stadiums like the Bernabéu turned sport into a crazy revenue machine, the Roman Empire had already understood the economic potential of gathering crowds and charging for access. At that time, amphitheaters were not only leisure spaces, but political and commercial tools where prestige and money mixed openly. In fact, businessmen like Atilio They saw the games as a direct opportunity for profit, betting on filling venues at all costs and maximizing every available seat. In that context, the logic of squeezing capacity (with privileged areas for the elites and crowded stands for the rest) not only existed, but was central part of the model. Raised to make quick money. In this context, it is born the Fidenae project with a clear idea: build a lot, quickly and cheaply to start earning money as soon as possible. Attilius, a freedman with entrepreneurial ambition, decided to build a huge wooden amphitheater on the outskirts of Rome, reducing costs in the most critical elements. The structure was supported on unstable ground and was assembled with poor joints, while more seats than planned were added to increase revenue. The result was a building that appeared grand from the outside, but was actually designed more to maximize profits. that to ensure safety of those who were going to occupy it. Spectacle turned into tragedy. What happened? That the inauguration attracted tens of thousands of people who came with the expectation of witnessing gladiatorial combats after a period in which these spectacles had been rather rare. That amphitheater was filled to the limitthere was no room for a pin, with the public distributed by social classes and areas, replicating a hierarchy that also had its economic reflection. Thus, in a matter of seconds, what seemed like a festive day he happened to enter sadly in the Guinness Book of a total sporting catastrophe when the structure began to give way and collapsed simultaneously inwards and outwards. It was not just an accident, since the magnitude of the collapse trapped both those who were inside and those who were trapped. were in the surroundingsleaving a balance of victims that, according to sources, ranged between tens of thousands of dead and injured. The worst sports disaster in history. From then until now, because of its scalethe collapse or collapse of Fidenae was not only a local tragedy, but the biggest sports disaster that has ever been documented, surpassing even many modern episodes in number of victims. The figures, although imprecise at the time, point to a catastrophe comparable to major battles in terms of human losses (they were counted about 50,000 deadsome lost their lives instantly, while others were buried under the rubble), something totally exceptional for an entertainment event. The speed of the collapse, the absence of evacuation measures and the fragility of the construction made any reaction impossible, turning the amphitheater into a mousetrap, a death trap in a matter of seconds. What should have been a profitable business ended up being the most extreme example of how the search for profit can multiply risk to catastrophic limits. From greed to the first rules. There is no doubt, the impact of that disaster shook the Roman Empire and forced an institutional reaction that marked a before and after in the construction regulation. The Senate persecuted the person responsible, Attilius, and sent him into exile, but, more importantly, established rules that They demanded economic solvency to those who wanted to organize shows and forced them to build on safe land. Those measures can be considered one of the first attempts to regulate structural safety in public spaces, born directly from a tragedy caused by negligence. Ultimately, the episode left a lesson that is still very valid: when business prevails over security, the show not only cannot be guaranteed, it can end up becoming in his own catastrophe. Image | Wikimedia C. In Xataka | In 1995, South Korea suffered one of the great architectural disasters of the century. The culprit: the air conditioning In Xataka | If you’re hot at home, remember that Disney made an auditorium with a huge mistake: turning a neighborhood into an unbearable oven

Before the Incas, a civilization created an impregnable empire in the heights of Peru. His secret: feces

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The coastal desert of southern Peru is one of the most arid environments on the planet, but this was not an impediment for a civilization that was able to prosper here with more than 100,000 people and before the arrival of the Inca empire. Their secret here was seabird guano, and science has now just demonstrated to what extent bird dung was the real economic and demographic driver. of the Chincha Kingdom. The feeding problem. During the Late Intermediate Period, approximately 1000 to 1400 AD, the Chincha Valley became a pre-Inca superpower. But to sustain its growth and maintain some 30,000 workers, it was logically necessary to produce food on a large scale, and more specifically corn, which was the basis of their diet. The problem is that the Peruvian coast is not exactly the most fertile place in the world, so the population faced a serious food problem. But here the solution was to look at the sea and the islands full of guano birds, and more specifically towards their feces and their ability to fertilize. Something that made them begin to prosper and become very strong in the region. The confirmation. To confirm this theory, a scientific team analyzed stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and sulfur in 35 ancient corn cobs and 11 seabirds found in tombs in the Chincha Valley. Here it was possible to see how clearly plants that absorb nutrients from fertilizers derived from marine animals show a very specific chemical signature with high levels of nitrogen 15. The results. Here the conservative limit to determine the use of guano in the experiments was located at a value of +20%, but in Chincha corn the average values ​​were +19.4%, reaching peaks of up to +27.4%. Thanks to radiocarbon dating, scientists have been able to place the beginning of this large-scale agricultural practice around the year 1250 AD.a date that coincides millimeters with the rise and expansion of the Chincha Kingdom. What we knew. Modern chemistry only confirms what archeology and history already hinted to us, since the iconography of the time is full of references to this agronomic practice. In textiles, friezes and ceramics of the Chincha culture, corn appears constantly represented alongside guano-producing birds, such as the guanay cormorant, the Peruvian booby and the pelican. Even Spanish colonial chroniclers, such as Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, recorded this practice when describing how the indigenous people applied the guano to corn through irrigation systems and they documented the strict taboo laws later imposed by the Incas to protect these birds that for them were the focus of fertilization of their fields. This is why killing a guano bird or disturbing its nests was a crime punishable by death. A great revolution. The mastery of guano technology not only filled the stomachs of the Chincha, but made them a key player in Andean geopolitics. In this way, when the Inca empire began its expansion, they did not conquer the Chincha because of their great strength, and instead they formed a strategic alliance. The Chincha here had control of the precious fertilizer and dominated the maritime trade routes, exchanging the guano for luxury goods such as prized shells. Spondylus. This agricultural base allowed the Chincha Kingdom to negotiate its integration into the Inca empire from a position of power and privilege. Images | Ames Wainscoat In Xataka | Prehistory was also ‘woke’: a woman from 7,000 years ago suggests that gender was not an immovable barrier

Mexico has built a true Latin dubbing empire. And now it’s going to protect you from AI by law

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Mexico produces 65% of the dubbing in Latin America. And until now, no rule prevented an AI from copying the voice of its actors without paying or asking for permission. The government of Claudia Sheinbaum has presented this past February 13, 2026, an initiative to legally recognize the human voice as an artistic tool that cannot be cloned. If it prospers in CongressMexico would become something more than a government that looks after the interests of the actors: it would also be a world pioneer in regulation of voice cloning in a cultural setting. Korea is to blame. The trigger for this reaction was not a native series, but some korean dramas. In May 2024, social media users shared fragments of Korean Prime Video series (‘My Boy is Cupid’, ‘The Beat of My Heart’ and ‘Field to Love’) denouncing an unusual feature: the dubbing into Latin Spanish sounded mechanical, robotic and without nuances. And there was also something very suspicious: there were no credits for voice actors anywhere. Without giving explanations, Amazon removed those dubbed versions and did not confirm the origin of the voices. The straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a turning point: the voice actors guild had been denouncing for months how voice actors from all over the continent were losing jobs in favor of AI tools trained, in addition, with their own voices. Some actors, in fact, denounced the Kafkaesque situation that his voice was the one who had replaced him on a YouTube channel for which he worked. Point of no return. In March 2025, Prime Video announced its AI dubbing pilot program in English and Latin Spanish. According to Amazonare twelve series that would not have been dubbed if it had not been for AI, presenting it as an opportunity for series to be seen that would otherwise remain unpublished. The suspicion of Latin professionals, as we have seen, went in a diametrically opposite direction. To calm things down, Amazon assured that localization professionals would monitor and correct the dubbed episodes with AI. The protest. Mexico produces around 65% of the Latin Spanish dubbing destined for Latin America, according to data from the Mexican Association of Commercial Broadcasters (AMELOC), and has some thirty-five active studios with approximately 1,500 actors working. This human force was manifested last July in Mexico under the slogan “AI does not replace.” Among other requests, it was demanded that the voice be recognized as biometric data, at the level of a fingerprint. The purpose is to prevent its use without consent. The proposal. According to the specialized media CO/AISince the summer of 2025, the National Copyright Institute (INDAUTOR) and the Legal Department of the Presidency have worked with more than 128 organizations to build a legal framework always in touch with the union. The resulting text reforms two existing laws: the Federal Labor Law incorporates dubbing actors and announcers as formal workers in the cultural sector, equating them to singers; and the Federal Copyright Law recognizes the human voice as a “unique and unrepeatable” artistic tool That is, any use of it through AI requires express authorization from the owner, plus financial compensation. None of this prohibits dubbing with AI, it only protects the voices that train or replicate the model with mandatory contracts. Missing. The initiative must pass the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate before becoming law, and it will take a while: the Mexican Congress accumulates proposals since 2020. There are more than sixty initiatives related to AI that have not yet received the corresponding legal response. Of course, this one seems to go faster: in November 2025, the Congress of Mexico City had already approved a similar opinionwhich reformed five federal laws. Mexico, spearhead. This beginning of regulation in Mexico is an advance of what other countries are trying to regulate since 2023. For example, in 2024 in Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act to explicitly add voice among the attributes protected against unauthorized use with AI, something new in the US. The standard also holds responsible platforms that distribute tools whose main purpose is to generate voice replicas without authorization. California and New York have tried to regulate not the technology, but the contracts signed around these activities. However, the limitations of these laws were soon demonstrated: in July last year, a New York judge did not rule in favor of two voice actors who discovered that their voices had been marketed as AI products. As it had not been made with a fixed recording, but with attributes such as tone, timbre or cadence, the court dismissed the claims. That ruling is the type of thing that the new Mexican legislation will try to avoid, and provide more robust protection to artists. Header | Amin Asbaghipour in Unsplash

The sun never set in the Spanish empire. AI is achieving that in some companies neither

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There was a time when the Spanish empire did not set the sun. Their domains ranged from the colonies in America, to Europe and Southeast Asia. In the 21st century, global technology startups are recovering that model to develop your AI-based products 24 hours a day. When a team in San Francisco is finishing its work shift, its work continues in Europe, and then moves on to Asia, ensuring that development does not stop. The “follow the sun” model is not new, but the combination of distributed remote work and the development of AI has turned it into a formula to stay ahead of the competition, without exhausting the workforce. The IBM empire in the 90s. In the 90s, IBM was an empire on which the sun did not set either. He IBM giant was one of the first to try the “follow the sun” model (Follow The Sun or FTS) with a team of five offices spread over different time slots to chain days and shorten software development times. This model is based on the concatenation of days. Each group works during its normal day. When this ends in an office, the day begins in the next time slot that collects the witness of the work of his colleagues. The process is repeated throughout the day, synchronizing the journey of the star through the sky with the different work days throughout the planet. Although in principle this model ran into some difficulties due to the poor performance of the connection networks of the time, IBM refined the process and managed to reduce projects by up to 67% by coordinating three offices in the United States, Australia and India. A model that makes sense with AI. Today, Silicon Valley has stepped on the accelerator pedal of AI and new startup founders technologies have embraced days “996” in which all hours of the day that are dedicated to product development they are few. As and as I pointed out analyst and software engineering expert Gergely Orosz, in the context of high competitiveness in the development of AI models experienced by the startup ecosystem on the west coast of the United States, more and more companies are choosing the “follow the sun” model to add normal days for teams in different countries. Thus, a model designed in Europe is tested on equipment in Asia at night and reviewed in California the next morning. The development machinery does not stop. Global clients, local attention. Likewise, the clients of these technology companies are spread all over the world, so offering a technical support service is complicated if it has to be done from a single location. According to data From Zendesk, 73% of customers switch to competitors due to bad experiences with support servicesso the distributed remote system allows the change of time slot so that the service adapts to the languages ​​and local culture of each region. The user who needs help always speaks to someone during their normal hours, no matter where they live. ​The push for AI and remote work. The rise of AI has improved the efficiency of the system at its most critical moment: shift change. This was one of the points that was most difficult for IBM managers to polish in the 90s. AI tools have helped unite shifts with chatbots that resolve doubts to employees, agents who summarize conversations with customers, prepare error reports or give solution ideas based on the context of the information that has been collected throughout the shifts, so as not to lose details when changing teams. Companies that have opted for this model in which the sun does not set highlight that products are developed faster, there are fewer unresolved cases by the support service and customers see the company as always available. Companies, especially technology companies, opted for elimination of teleworking and back to the office. However, no one said that this office should be on the same continent as that of their colleagues. A new evolution of remote work. In Xataka | Three Spanish companies tell us how they fared after implementing a work utopia: the four-day week Image | Unsplash (James Harrison)

A comprehensive interactive map to explore all the blood circuses of the Empire

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If you are one of those (non-generic masculine) those who are fascinated by the Roman Empire, taking a little getaway to continue discovering ruins and fortifications probably seems like a good idea. Yes, there are classics within the state like Tarragona or Mérida, but if you fancy a more exotic and distant trip, Ephesus or Split are good candidates. The old continent is full of jewels (and even beyond, as long as Rome It covered three continents) Although “all roads lead you to Rome”, surely this Google Maps of the Roman Empire It would be useful for you to plan a route (and the Romans of the time, I won’t even tell you about it) and even better, this evolution. But let’s not fool ourselves, there are cities and cities and remains and remains. If you are going to prepare an excursion and your objective is visit a city of status within the Roman Empirethere is an unmistakable sign: the amphitheatres. Having an amphitheater was a luxury. May it remain in good condition today, even more Amphitheaters were a medal of prestige to a city. They did not build it just anywhere: those provincial capitals had it, such as the previously mentioned Tarraco and Emerita Augusta, as well as those cities founded for the retirement of their veterans (this is the case of Itálica). However, there were also cities that decided to build it as a thank you to the emperor or for the local elites to show off. And pragmatically, to carry out the maxim of “bread and circuses”. The amphitheaters of the Roman Empire. Via:Tataryn. Wikimedia It is estimated that in the Roman Empire there were about 230 amphitheatersof which only about 30 are moderately well preserved. The figure drops to 10 if they also maintain their full structural functionality, among them the Arenas of Nimes and Arles in France, the one in Verona, the one in Pula, The Djem in Tunisia and of course, Pompeii. The map above, courtesy of Wikipedia, is great to take a look at. but there is another interactive map of the Roman Amphitheaters much better. It uses the data of Sebastian Heath, PhD in Classical Art and Archeology from the University of Michigan, a key figure in the modern study of Roman amphitheaters, among other things for his approach to digitization through open data. Thus, it has its Roman Amphitheater dataset which serves as a base, combined in turn with the map of the Roman Empire from the Gothenburg Digital Humanities area. The result is a three in one map published on RAMADDA’s wiki-based open source data and content platform: Interactive map of the Amphitheaters of the Roman Empire. Ramadda The first and largest allows you to view the terrain, roads and main cities of the Roman Empire as you move or play with the zoom. When you tap on a city, you can see details on all three maps. For example, when you click on Segóbriga in Cuenca, information appears such as its name in Latin, when it was built, the capacity, the region… and on the left, its integration into the roads and a satellite view. Given the number of municipalities and places with Amphitheater, it is convenient to use the filters that appear in the upper area. Thus, we can sift based on the region of the time, its capacity or even easier, what state it currently belongs to. When selecting Morocco, several cities appear and one of them marked in blue: “Lixus”, next to Larache. In Xataka | The death of one empire is the birth of another: the graph that reviews the history of civilizations from 4,000 years ago In Xataka | The Google Maps of the Roman Empire: the map that allows you to plan a route at that time

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