engineer

“Lol, I have access”, the message from the engineer who uncovered the scandal

by

This weekend a soap opera has exploded that seriously threatens the first Made in OpenAI hardware, leaving an engineer with a long and successful career as an engineer in a bad light. Tan Tang (24 years at Apple and VP of product design for the iPhone or Apple Watch) and calls into question the security of Cupertino: Apple has led to court OpenAI for alleged theft of hardware trade secrets and breach of contract. what’s happening. Apple sums it up harshly in demand40 pages: “one thing is clear: at every level, from members of its technical staff to its director of hardware, and in coordination with business partners, OpenAI has been stealing trade secrets and confidential information from Apple.” Additionally, Apple alleges that former employees, specifically Chang Liu and Tang Tan, continued to access confidential Apple information after moving to OpenAI. Two former Apple employees, in the target. Striking is the case of Liu, a senior electrical systems engineer who, after eight years at Apple, left for OpenAI in January 2026. Apparently, Chang Liu kept his corporate laptop and discovered a flaw that allowed him to access Apple’s internal servers and download a collection of more than a thousand pages of technical files on unannounced technologies, features and products, including technical specifications and engineering presentations. “LOL, I discovered that I have access to the storage network, how fun”, wrote in an email to a former Apple colleague. For his part, Tang Tan, OpenAI’s current hardware director, is accused of using confidential Apple codenames during OpenAI’s hiring process, asking candidates to bring Apple hardware components to their interviews, and advising those abandoning Apple’s ship on how to evade the company’s security procedures. Why is it important. For OpenAI this is a blow that goes straight to its waterline, as it prepares to go public and launch its first device with AI. Sam Altman’s company will have to do and prove much more than the brief statements of its spokesperson, Drew Pusateri: “We are not interested in the trade secrets of other companies. We remain focused on developing innovative technology that empowers people around the world,” as reported by CNBC. For Apple, this lawsuit is an attempt to stop the incessant drain of talent that Cupertino has been suffering for a long year and that it has a fairly common destiny: OpenAI. Apple figures the disbandment of workers in 400 peoplewho would have abandoned the Cupertino ship bound for the company led by Altman. OpenAI has gone from being the company behind the most mainstream artificial intelligence models to becoming a potential direct competitor in hardware with its future first AI gadget. Context. Veteran Tang Tan had spent almost half his life at Apple and it is not an exaggeration: he spent 24 years there, where he became vice president of product design for iPhone and Apple Watch, with an essential role in their supervision. Then, he left and together with another Apple legend like Jony Ive, he founded io Products in 2024. In 2025, OpenAI bought io Products for 6.5 billion dollars in 2025. This is not the first time that OpenAI has found itself in court, which in fact has a few on intellectual property. The most popular is the one that has been pending with The New York Times since 2023, when the American media sued OpenAI and Microsoft for using their articles without permission to train AI models. In detail. In the lawsuit filed it is stated that Apple sent a letter in February to OpenAI to express his concerns, but received no response. Regarding its legal requests, Apple asks the court to prohibit OpenAI from retaining, exploiting or distributing its trade secrets and to force the return of all intellectual property allegedly stolen. As striking as the names and actions of the two former Apple employees are the absences: despite his leading role in the plot, Jony Ive is not accused of anything. What’s going to happen now. Now the trial enters a phase where Apple and OpenAI will have to share evidence, emails and internal documents between them, before a judge decides the case. Meanwhile, Apple is asking for precautionary measures to prevent OpenAI from continuing to use the information, as well as compensation and the return of all the allegedly stolen material. This request from Apple is critical because it could paralyze and even stop the launch of its AI device to redesign components or modify technical specifications or manufacturing processes if it is proven that they are based on Apple’s intellectual property. In Xataka | Apple and OpenAI repeat the bet that sank Humane and Rabbit: screenless wearables in a world addicted to TikTok In Xataka | OpenAI working on its own AI device: although the leaks are not clarified, this is all we know to date

The new star signing of AI is neither an engineer nor a data scientist, but he masters stoicism: the philosophers

by

A little less than a decade ago, studying philosophy implied a question: “And what are you going to live on?” Like many other races in the Humanities branchthe philosophy registered a low job insertion rate. According to published data in 2023 by EuropaPress, The unemployment rate for Philosophy graduates was 20 times higher than that of Electronic Engineering graduates. However, in the midst of the rise of AI, the companies that are training and evolving it have realized something: they do not need engineers to program, what they need is to hire philosophers who define how a model should think and how an AI that talks to millions of people every day should behave. Demand has reached a level where their salaries rival those of any senior engineer. From Socrates to defining AI. Studying philosophy was a risky bet due to its few professional opportunities (mainly teaching) and precarious salaries. But something has changed in the sector that was least expected: that of cutting-edge technology that was developing the AGI. According to collected In an article published in AtlanticIn 2013, only 1% of the offers published on PhilJobs, the academic job portal, mentioned artificial intelligence in the description of their offers. In 2025, that figure It was already close to 16%. And a good part of those positions were junior positions. That is, they join technology companies even with profiles with little experience. Why an AI company needs a philosopher. The reason for this change is that companies have made AI capable of processing data emulating the operation of a human neural network, but its interactions are with humansso their responses and decisions must be in tune with the ethical and moral values of humanity. Philosophers have been studying precisely that for centuries. Anthropic is perhaps the clearest case. Your philosopher Amanda Askell He leads the team that shapes the character of the model, and in January 2026 he published what the company itself calls the Claude constitutiona document of more than twenty thousand words that establishes the values ​​that the system must follow. As the company itself explains, this text is used directly in the training of the model. Askell counted to the magazine time that his way of approaching this work is as if he were dealing with a highly gifted child: “you have to be honest, because a smart child immediately detects when someone is lying to him.” Google opened the season to sign thinkers. Anthropic is not the only one that has incorporated philosophers into its staff. Google DeepMind took a similar step in April 2026. As and how I collected the university newspaper Varsitythe company announced the incorporation of Henry Shevlin, a philosopher of mind from the University of Cambridge, for a position that the company itself baptized, literally, as “Philosopher.” His work at DeepMind was to focus on issues of artificial consciousness, human-AI relations, and preparation for AGI. OpenAI has also taken note. OpenAI has followed a similar path, although less transparent in the details. Sam Altman has come to affirm that ChatGPT’s current responses “are the result of a consultation with ‘hundreds of experts’”, specifying that they were philosophers who have reflected on the ethics of technology and systems. In fact, even universities have jumped on the bandwagon and the American Philosophical Association (APA) has been delivering since 2024 two annual awards of 10,000 dollars for philosophical investigations on AI. Profession of the future, but a future that is too fast. Not everything is good news for the union. Daniel Fogal, professor of bioethics at New York University, told The Atlantic that this boom has a real distorting effect on the discipline. According to Fogal, there are philosophers who deep down do not want to dedicate themselves to AI, but feel that they have no choice if they want to enter the job market. The risk, he warns, is that a lot of mediocre work is published just to fit into a passing fad. Good philosophy takes time, Fogal summarizes, and rarely emerges as a direct response to the market. AI companies, on the other hand, launch new models every few months. The philosopher may be the star signing of the sector, but he will continue to be the person least comfortable with the rush. And perhaps for that very reason it is the one that is most needed in this development. In Xataka | We thought that leaving university and starting to work “on your own” was impossible: the key is knowing what to study Image | Unsplash (Sarah Sheedy)

It took an engineer 17 years to build the Lamborghini Countach of his dreams from the basement of his house. The problem was getting it out.

by

There are motor fans. And then there’s Ken Imhoff. And this engineer from Wisconsin was not satisfied with having a poster of the Lamborghini Countach on his wall or with saving for years to buy one. He decided to make it himselfby hand, in the basement of his house. It took him 17 years. a movie. It all started in 1990, when Imhoff saw ‘Cannonball Run‘ (1981), directed by Hal Needham and featuring a Lamborghini Countach LP 400 S. Imhoff was amazed enough to make a decision that, seen from the outside, sounds crazy: build his own Lamborghini from scratch. How to build a Lamborghini in a basement. Imhoff began the project by erecting a wooden structure that served as a mold to shape the body panels. To work the aluminum he used an English wheel, a forming tool that allows you to create complex curves in sheet metal. He had to learn the hard way that welding too much at once causes deformations in the metal, so he perfected the technique with short, controlled welding points. The chassis is made of steel tube and the body is entirely made of aluminum. The model he used as a reference was the 1982 Countach LP 5000S. Details. To make the result as faithful as possible to the original, Imhoff incorporated authentic Lamborghini parts, such as the taillights, position lights, windshield and emblems. He even had replicas of the original wheels made from scratch. Where he did have to improvise was in the engine. And without the possibility of fitting an Italian V12, he opted for a Ford 351 Cleveland block, with forged pistons, polished cylinder heads and a more aggressive camshaft. The result was 514 horsepower at 6,800 rpm, according to collect CarBuzz. The transmission is a ZF five-speed and the suspension comes from a C4 Corvette. The whole thing weighs about 1,220 kilos, significantly less than a production Countach. The finish, almost at the level of a professional workshop. The body was painted in pearlescent metallic gray, a finish that has its own because it is usually more sensitive to any imperfection. The painting process was done in a professional paint booth, piece by piece (33 in total) because there was no way to get the booth into the basement. Each panel came out of the basement, was painted and carefully brought back down. Final sanding was done with 1,500 and 2,000 grit sandpaper, followed by three passes of the polisher. Just like point YouTube channel Wonder World, the shine achieved was difficult to distinguish from that of a factory car, according to those who saw it. Getting it out was an issue.. After 17 years working in the basement, Imhoff was faced with the task of removing the completed car from there. And one may wonder… Why wasn’t the project done outside or in the garage of his house? Well, according to Wonder World, Imhoff decided to do it there because the winters in his town are extremely cold, so he preferred to spend time in the basement, which is warmer. To get it out, they dug a dirt ramp outside, removed part of the basement wall and, with the help of a backhoe and some chains, pulled the car out by pulling it up the ramp over an improvised metal structure. It was the first time in 17 years that Imhoff was able to see his work in sunlight. On sale. Years after removing it from the basement, Imhoff noticed that the car was beginning to show signs of corrosion and concluded that he was not taking the proper care of it. “I’m doing you a disservice” and “actually it probably belongs to someone who may appreciate it more than I do,” counted Imhoff in words collected by the channel. So he put it up for sale on eBay with a starting price of $75,000. The bid reached 77,600, but the reserve price was not reached, so it did not end up selling on that occasion. Imhoff had invested around $65,000 in the project over almost two decades, as he confirmed. Ultimately, the car ended up selling to a Florida buyer for approximately $89,000, according to Wonder World. Since then, the car has continued to increase in value, as the Lambocars site public in 2023 that the current owner asked for $229,000 for it. It may seem absurd to have spent so much time building something and for the outcome to have been this. However, Imhoff ended up being honest with himself and decided that the value was not in having it, but in having built it and fulfilling his dream. In Xataka | This Aston Martin DB9 was sold for $57,000, but the craziest thing is not its price: it is the two flamethrowers it hides

An Atlassian engineer was fired. He then published a video on YouTube explaining how the company works

by

“I was recently affected by layoffs made by Atlassian and wanted to take some time to reflect on the time I spent working there.” This is how it begins the video that Vasilios Syrakis shared on his YouTube channel. The video, titled “I have been fired by Atlassian” seems to be a criticism of the company. It’s something much better. What has happened? On March 11, Atlassian, the company behind software like Jira or Trello, announced that it was going to reduce its workforce by 10%which translates into about 1,600 street workers. The reason, of course, was AI. In the company’s words: “Our approach is not that AI will replace people, but it would be dishonest to pretend that AI does not change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas.” One of those roles was that of Vasilios. The answer. Instead of recording himself criticizing the company’s decision, this engineer opted for something different. What he did was publish a detailed, 38-minute description of everything he built during the eight years he worked at the company. Your video is a masterclass on How the architecture of a company of the stature of Atlassian works and it serves two objectives: it turns your experience into a common good and at the same time it is a letter of introduction for future jobs. what he did. Vasilios did not have a minor role at Atlassian, but for eight years, he worked on the invisible “plumbing” that connects millions of users to Jira and Confluence. In the video he details how Open Service Broker works, the internal platform he built so that Atlassian teams could publish their services on the internet with one click; also the Sovereign system, which acts as the “brain” of the more than a thousand proxies; and how it rebuilt security so that all internal services inherited the same authentication and attack security without having to write it one by one. The context. In the announcement, Atlassian admits that it is achieving very good results. In February 2026 they published their resultsin which they boasted a 23% increase in their total revenues, which reached 1,586 million, and a 26% growth in cloud revenues. Despite the fact that the company is doing very well, 10% of its staff ended up on the streets, including engineers with roles as important as Vasilios’. As mentioned in the Experienced Devs subredditVasilios is careful and in the video he does not seem to mention confidential information about the company, but instead limits himself to talking about the design of its systems, so it does not seem like they could sue him. At the time of writing, Atlassian has not commented on the video, which already has almost a million views. Image | Vasilios Syrakis, YouTube In Xataka | “They blame AI for layoffs they would do anyway”: Sam Altman confirms that AI has been used as an excuse to lay off

In 1808, a Canarian engineer had to flee Spain and go into exile in Russia. And thus shaped modern St. Petersburg

by

Between the winters of his native Puerto de la Cruz and those of Saint Petersburg there are a few degrees of difference; but neither that, nor the change in culture, language or landscapes turned back Agustín de Betancourt when in 1808 he decided to pack his bags and move to the Russia of the tsars. He had fallen into disgrace in the eyes of the almighty GodoyIn Spain he had nothing left but family and memories, he had been in Paris for some time and had influential friends, so… What could he lose? Nothing. And so it was. His steppe adventure would bring him significant profits; but above all to Russia itself. So much so that if you walk around Saint Petersburg you will find several statues in his memory. The country of the tsars, that of the Alexanders and Nicolaseswhich today we associate with pageantry and alambic constructions, would probably have been somewhat less brilliant if it had not been for the genius of Agustín de Betancourt, the inventor who during the early part of the 19th century gave shape to his particular “Russia made in the Canary Islands”. Especially in the capital, Saint Petersburg. From Augustine to Agustinovich The one of Agustín de Betancourt y Molina (1758-1824) is one more name in the long list of national geniuses from whom Spain—before and after him, for one reason or another—did not know how to take full advantage. It happened to Isaac Peral, Monica Sanchez, Angela Ruiz, Emilio Herrera…and Betancourt. In his case, yes, in a peculiar way. At the beginning of the 19th century, the situation of the Canarian engineer in Spain was enviable in its own way. He came from a good birth, he had made a career between Madrid, Paris and London, earning the trust of the counts of Floridablanca either Aranda and enjoyed a well-established prestige with his work on steam engines or the optical telegraph that I had designed with Claude Chappe. As, in addition to being a man of action, he was also a man of letters, Betancourt had also encouraged the creation of the School of Roads and Canals, inspired by the École des Ponts et Chaussées in Paris. Despite all this prestige and status, their situation at the dawn of the 19th century was not what one would call comfortable. In 1805 a report with his seal on the Genil River had earned him the distrust of none other than Manuel Godoy himselfstrong man in the kingdom of Charles IV. That circumstance and the scenario that was emerging internationally encouraged Betancourt to liquidate his properties in Spain and move first to Paris —where Napoleon came to tempt him—and then to Russia. There, in Saint Petersburg, he knew how to gain the favor of the best godfather imaginable: Tsar Alexander Iwho probably saw in the canary a more than valid genius for the development of his country. What Spain had missed would be used in the Russian empire. If the future was not tempting for Agustín in Madrid, perhaps it would be in Madrid. 3,000 kilometers from there. So he collected his belongings, settled his pending matters in France and embarked for Saint Petersburg. There they waited with open arms for Agustín “Agustinovich” Betancour. Persuaded perhaps by his prestige or the interviews with Agustín himself, the tsar He soon showed his confidence in the canary. One of his first orders was the modernization of the Tula cannon factory, a strategic cog in the military apparatus of the Russian Empire. Betancourt was not new to the task and he knew how to take advantage of his knowledge of the double-acting steam engine and the operation of the Yndrid factory to give a twist to the ancient Russian system. Happy The result must have convinced the tsar. Only in this way can we understand that throughout the following years Augustine was in charge of tasks of capital importance for Russia and accumulated greater and greater prestige. In a matter of a few years, the formerly feuding engineer Godoy He became a lieutenant general in the Russian army and general director of Communications. In Moscow he took on the task of building a new Equestrian Exercise Room and around the same time he was in charge of what may have been his greatest contribution—and the most profound—to Russian urban planning: projecting a new commercial precinct able to take over the fair that since the 16th century It was celebrated near the Makaevsky Monastery. Its old center had burned in 1816 and the Russian Government wanted to recover it… but with greater packaging and in a better place, more accessible and capable of achieving greater projection. The responsibility of deciding where and how and coming up with the overall design fell on the canary’s shoulders. The venue opened its doors in July 1822 with a huge fair that brought together more than 200,000 merchants and helped for years development of the Volga region and the wealth of the empire. That Betancourt did not do badly in his endeavor is demonstrated by the fact that upon his death the Russian merchants installed a plaque of gratitude on his grave. Two hundred years later the footprint of the Tenerife native in Nizhny Novgorod still deep. Although the Nizhni Novgorod complex is perhaps its greatest urban heritage, the city in which it was used most thoroughly and in which it left the greatest impact is Saint Petersburg. There, in the capital of the empire, he showed his talent in at least half a dozen capital works for the metropolis: the new paper currency factory, the dredging of the port, several bridges and St. Isaac’s Cathedral. As the Orotava Foundation remindsBetancourt assumed in March 1816 the task of setting up a new money paper factory in Goznak, on the banks of the Fontanka canal, and for two years he was in charge of supervising the works. His involvement was not limited to the building: he organized its areas and machinery, … Read more

Silicon-carbon seems to be the holy grail in batteries. I have spoken to an Honor engineer to verify this

by

For years, smartphones have been asked for something that didn’t seem so complicated: that their battery last more than two days. It turns out that it was complicated, and that manufacturers have had to wait for the only technology that, for the moment, makes this possible to mature. This technology is the silicon-carbonand companies like Honor were pioneers in its implementation in commercial phones. He Honor Magic5 Prolaunched in 2023, was the first high-end smartphone to incorporate it. Three years later, the industry trend leaves no room for doubt: –this is the way– that is the way. After the launch of Honor 600at Xataka we have had the opportunity to speak with Lun Lu, one of the engineers in Honor’s battery department. And yes, he told us little things. Just because One of the greatest limitations of the human being has to do with the “what ifs”, followed by a negative consequence. In the case of silicon-carbon batteries, no manufacturer dared to implement them commercially. Until Honor decided to accompany her “what if…” with a positive consequence. I ask Lu when it was clear to them, when they knew it was the right time to make the jump to silicon-carbon. He tells me that a year before, in 2021, they felt that they were ready and were clear that the technology was mature. They began to allocate resources to design the architecture and start talking to their partners for mass production. This is precisely one of the keys that makes the process so slow. The chemistry of these batteriesthe changes that need to be made at the design level, the security measures that its implementation requires… it is a slow and delicate engineering process. And this answers my question why do you think that some of the Western manufacturers (Apple, Google) They are not yet on the boat. But… what exactly are we talking about? We are clear that Honor was the pioneer in introducing silicon-carbon but… what exactly are we talking about? How could we explain to someone who has no idea about technology what these types of batteries are and what they provide? Lu explains it without any complications: we are facing a great advance through which we can introduce batteries with much more energy in the same size. In other words, where certain mAh used to fit, now many more fit. Much more lithium per gram can be stored in silicon-carbon batteries than in traditional batteries, up to ten times more on a theoretical level. In the new Honor 600, without going any further, they have introduced a 6,400mAh battery in a body of only 7.8mm. It is much thinner than most of its direct rivals with 5,000mAh batteries, and in our analysis it has reached three days of use. Yes, but If the path to silicon-carbon was only surrounded by flowers, there would be no doubts about its implementation. But everything has fine print. We asked about the biggest challenges when implementing this technology. And the answer is clear: your safety, without room for discussion. Introducing silicon greatly complicates the internal stability of the cell, since its volumetric expansion when absorbing lithium ions is considerable and The fear of possible fans is present in the industry. Zhua says that designing this type of battery is a challenge, but that the department takes into account each of the limitations and possible problems of this technology with a view to the long term, since Honor knows that the trend in the industry is towards maintaining the same mobile phone for a few years. Another fairly recurring doubt with these batteries has to do with the cycles they support. In recent years, one of the obsessions has been to ensure that traditional batteries do not degrade excessively. after 1,000 cycles (about what we would do in a couple of years of heavy use). Although he does not reveal all his secrets, Lu says that Honor has been researching for years how to alleviate the early degradation of silicon-carbon, optimizing manufacturing processes to keep them to a minimum. The E1 and E2 chips, implemented in the Magic family and responsible for energy management (co-processors that accompany the main CPU), are responsible for controlling charging and discharging in real time, adjusting consumption according to temperature, voltage and use, and trying to improve cold performance. The last big limitation has to do with what Lu considers “a big problem,” and answers my question of how a manufacturer like Honor deals with having to make a device with one battery destined for China and another destined for Europe. The European Union has strict controls and restrictions with battery imports, and this is slowing down the advances that China is developing. “We would like to provide batteries with the most advanced technology and the highest energy density all over the world, but regulations cannot be discussed. What we can do right now is somewhat limited, because regulations are a red line that we cannot cross.” From the bar counter The phone battery is one of the components most subject to bar counter conversations. “Fast charging is bad.” “It is better to charge up to 80%.” “Silicon carbon batteries have almost no silicon.” Claims that are sometimes made without knowing the scientific support that supports them (or not). So I take the opportunity to ask Lu about some recurring myths and the direction in which these batteries are going. To the first question, it makes it quite clear to me that today there is no difference between charge quickly and charge slowly. There is some truth to the myth: uncontrolled fast charging is harmful, but current battery and charger design takes this issue into account. Regarding the famous 80-20% ruleit is something totally proven. There is no problem in charging to 100%, but keeping the battery in this range helps to extend its useful life. It is risky to give specific information on how many cycles we can gain, since it will depend on … Read more

This engineer found 1,351 loose photos in his grandmother’s house. He ended up building a personal Wikipedia of his entire life

by

It all started with a closet full of old loose photos. Last year an engineer named Jeremy visited his grandmother’s house for the first time since the pandemic and unknowingly came across a treasure. 1,351 on paper, without order, without dates and without context. Some were in black and white, from when his grandparents were 20 years old. Others were from his mother as a baby. The last ones were from him in high school, just before smartphones arrived and everything moved to the cloud. What began as a family organization exercise became a fascinating project over the weeks: a personal encyclopedia. A Wikipedia of his own life. First, the physical photos and the grandmother. The first problem he encountered when starting his project is that physical photos do not have EXIF metadata. There is almost never a capture date (although some cameras superimposed it), there are no GPS coordinates and there is no information that allows them to be easily sorted. What Jeremy did was resort to a much more direct solution: sit down with his grandmother and ask her about the photos. Remembering that it is a gerund. In that conversation she rearranged the photos of their wedding and narrated the details while he took notes. Names, places, who was sitting where, what each ritual meant. With those notes, he set up a local instance of MediaWiki, the same software that Wikipedia uses, and wrote a page about the wedding following the same format that was used on Wikipedia to royal wedding between Prince William and Kate Middleton in 2011. Within two afternoons I had a complete article with scanned photos, captions, links to empty pages about each person mentioned, and links to the real Wikipedia to give historical context to the events. Digital photos and Claude Code to get the job done. Jeremy realized that things could get worse and took the opportunity to do tests with digital photos, which do have EXIF data with date and time and even GPS coordinates. With that information he wanted to see how far he could go without interviews, so he took 625 photos from a family trip to Coorg (India) in 2012, put them in a folder and opened Claude Code in that directory with a simple instruction: compose a Wikipedia page by browsing the images. The model used ImageMagick to create contact sheets that allowed him to process multiple photos at once, and the magic of AI did the rest. The result was a detailed draft chronicling the trip organized by time of day. Without location data, just with timestamps and visual content, the AI ​​model was able to identify the places that appeared in the photos, including some that Jeremy himself had forgotten. It even detected the means of transportation used between destinations just with what it saw in the images. When AI starts remembering for you. Then came the most ambitious experiment, when he wanted to go further with a trip he took to Mexico City in 2022. He had 291 photos and 343 videos taken with an iPhone 12 Pro with GPS coordinates in the metadata, but he also exported his Google Maps location history, his Uber trips, his banking transactions and his Shazam history. By including all that data and sources, the model was able to cross-reference banking transactions with location data to identify the restaurants where he had eaten. For example, he found images of a soccer match in the photos but did not remember which teams were playing, but he found out that information by crossing those photos with bank transactions in which he found a Ticketmaster invoice with the name of the tournament and the teams, and incorporated them into the page. He also used Shazam’s history to describe the music playing in each location. From photos and memories to a personal encyclopedia. A wonderful project that now anyone can replicate thanks to the whoami.wiki website. First the trips, then the friendships. What started as a travel documentation project evolved into something more personal. The Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp archives contained some 100,000 messages and several thousand voice notes exchanged with close friends over a decade. The AI ​​model managed to convert all this information into a unique biography, identifying vital episodes of the protagonists, then converted into pages that, according to Jeremy, “read as if they were written by someone who knew us both.” When he shared the pages with those friends, they couldn’t stop reading those stories and wanted more. MediaWiki as a master ingredient. One of the most interesting decisions of the project is the choice of software. MediaWiki, Wikipedia’s engine, turned out to be an extraordinarily suitable tool for that use case. AI models understand this perfectly because they have been trained with millions of Wikipedia pages and know their structure and functioning. Discussion pages serve to control the development of those pages, categories group pages by topic, and revision history monitors the evolution of each page. All of this infrastructure already existed, and it was not necessary to create a new platform to organize the information that Jeremy was providing. Surpriseyes. At the end of his story, Jeremy explains that after the process: “I realized that I was no longer alone working on a family history project. What I had been creating, page by page, was a personal encyclopedia. A structured, navigable, interconnected record of my life compiled thanks to the data I already had around me.” Documenting her grandmother’s life revealed things she didn’t know: her years as a single mother or the decisions she had to make, for example. Going through the history of his friendships allowed him to recover moments that he had almost forgotten and made him call some of them to remember them together. “The encyclopedia not only organized the data, it made me pay more attention to the people in my life,” he explained. you can do it too. The project has been so rewarding for him that he … Read more

The big problem with putting robots everywhere is that they get lost. An engineer from Elche believes she has the solution

by

It is no surprise that we see more and more robots in our daily lives: in a restaurant bringing orders to the table, in the field as a seasonal workermaking him courier delivery competition…and that’s not to mention its applications in automation on an industrial scale. Robots don’t need to rest, they don’t have labor rights, and they don’t complain. But they get lost. And that is a real, very common problem for which a research team from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche has found solution. The context. Autonomous robots need to know where they are to function and that does not always happen: when the location reference is lost, either because someone moves it, it is turned off or the environment changes without warning, the robot is unable to recover its position. Something as normal as running out of battery can be a technical drama. This phenomenon is not something isolated, in fact it even has a name in robotics: the “kidnapped robot problem“. Although we see more and more robots everywhere, this incident is a pending issue that has not been resolved in a robust way for decades. Without going any further, because resorting to GPS is something that can fail in settings such as indoors or near tall buildings. As deepens Míriam Máximolead author of the article: “It is a classic problem and very difficult to solve, especially in large environments.” The solution. What the team from the University of Elche has implemented is MCL-DLF, the acronym for Monte Carlo Localization – Deep Local Feature, a system that combines two technologies: on the one hand, a 3D LiDAR that emits laser pulses to draw a three-dimensional map of the environment similar to that of robot vacuum cleaners. On the other hand, an artificial intelligence that learns which elements of the environment are most useful for orientation. Why is it important. Because having a reliable location system is essential for any robotic deployment in real life: autonomous vehicles, delivery and logistics, assistance… its presence may be increasingly common, but it is still tremendously dependent on supervision: knowing where it is is essential for it to operate safely. The implemented method also introduces an important change: it is independent, in that it does not require external infrastructure to function like GPS, so its base is more robust and versatile in the face of different use scenarios in the real world. How it works. Its approach is hierarchical, so it first recognizes large structures and then fine details, similar to how people do. When you arrive at an unknown place, first you keep the essentials: what neighborhood you are in, for example. Then you look for more specific references to refine further. Furthermore, the system does not play everything on one card: it maintains several position hypotheses simultaneously and discards or refines them as the sensor captures more information. Tests carried out for months on the university campus with different lighting conditions, vegetation or simply the weather have shown more consistency than conventional methods. A good start with pending subjects. Beyond its promising results, the most striking thing about this research is its commitment to sensory autonomy: it does not depend on networks of beacons or GPS, but on its own sensors. This makes it a potentially more versatile system. However, it faces the great historical challenge of robot placement: how fragile it is in the face of changing environments. It is true that they have tested it in different conditions, but it has been within the campus: making the leap to more complex and constantly changing environments is their litmus test, in addition to additional validation in extreme conditions. Finally, before an eventual real commercial deployment, we will have to see how it integrates with other navigation systems and its computational cost. In Xataka | Tesla has been building the Optimus for years. China has just presented itself with fifteen companies and factories already set up In Xataka | We already have so many “humanoid” robots that it is difficult to differentiate one from the other. This graph fixes it Cover | Enchanted Tools

A Google engineer moved to a truck parked on the company’s campus. The rent was saved and 90% of its salary

by

The price of housing, whether rent or purchase through a mortgage, represents the main disbursement For anyone. However, it is an expense that we assume because it is not to anyone anyone sleeping outdoors. However, not everyone faces the issue of housing in the same way. Better a van. Business Insider History collected last year From Brandon, a 23 -year -old software engineer, who moved to San Francisco in 2015 to do summer practices at a Google branch. However, he met A Rent market for clouds. Instead of renting an apartment, Brandon opted for an unusual solution: living in a truck to save and pay their student loans Before buying a house. 2,000 dollars for sharing room. When Brandon moved to San Francisco, he agreed to one of the corporate flats that Google has in the city. There I had to share a two -bedroom floor with four people, for which I paid about $ 65 per night. That was about 2,000 dollars a month. “I realized that I was paying an exorbitant amount of money for the apartment in which I was staying, and I was almost never at home,” Brandon declared Business Insider. At that time, the young man began to gestate how his home would be for the future. Housing plan on wheels. The following year, Brandon He returned to work in Google Full time, but the young man was not willing to burn his savings. So He drew a planfacing the following year. Before starting his new adventure in San Francisco, Brandon bought a 2006 Ford truck with more than 252,000 for $ 10,000, using the advance they had given in Google for the signing of their contract. That would be his new home and had parked him in the parking lot of the office, so the young engineer says he never is late for work. With everything you need to live, but cheaper. His only fixed expenses were $ 121 per month for truck insurance, since he has no electricity costs and Google pays his mobile telephone line. The truck box provided a space of 12 square meters, more than enough space To sleep and save your personal belongings. The young man says that he only needs a battery lamp to illuminate the interior of the truck, and a portable battery of 15,000 mAh in case the mobile drums or headphones are spent, and that recharges at work. The interior of the truck was furnished in a simple way, with a bed, a dresser and a coat rack to hang clothes. Actually, that truck already offered him more space than he had on Google’s floor paying $ 2,000 per month. Live in Google. Brandon has created a blogin which he tells how his day to day living in a truck. The engineer tells that, as in his first year of practices, he spends all day In Google facilities. The young engineer says he makes all meals in the canteen for Google campus employees, where he also has showers in the campus gym. That allows you to minimize your daily expenses. Thanks to this strategy, Brandon can save approximately 90% of your net salary, allocating these funds to the payment of their student loans and investments. As the vast majority of US students, Brandon has to pay a student debt of $ 22,434, of which a good part has already covered. As a conservative estimate (and taking into account the bonuses), I hope to finish paying it in the next six months, saving thousands of dollars compared to the standard amortization plans of 10 and even 20 years, “Brandon declared the North American environment. Another way of living San Francisco. Brandon says that living parked just a few minutes from your office has many advantages, and allows many of San Francisco’s bad things to be skipped. One of them is the rush hour In the morning, turning his daily journey to work on a simple walk. Not having to drag the economic burden of a monthly rent has allowed him to go to dinner at different restaurants and enjoy the city atmosphere much more. It is not the first time that happens, and Google’s security knows. As Brando himself account on your personal blogIt is not the first time that a Google employee chooses to live in his parking lot. Brandon did not have to see them with Google security staff until the third month of “residence” in its parking lot when, in the middle of the night, it was approached by Google security personnel. However, the situation was resolved without problems after showing its corporate accreditation and confirming that there was an error in the vehicle registration. Clarified the misunderstanding, the safety of the Google campus apologized for waking him and never bother him again. At least, Google will not have to demand Brandon go to the office against your will. It is as at home. In Xataka | A 17 -year -old is the digital nomad par excellence: he lives in trains (and does not get expensive) In Xataka | Help the waiter collect the table seems like a kind gesture: psychologists see something much deeper *An earlier version of this article was published in August 2024

When an engineer wanted to cross Africa by car, he invented a wooden. It would be the beginning of its end

by

In one of his picturesque life, Tony Howarth had a revolutionary vision: Create a perfect car for Africa. A cheap, resistant, easy to repair and that could be made locally with sustainable materials. His project, baptized as ‘Africar’, promised to change transportation in the African continent forever. However, what began as an altruistic dream It ended up becoming a legal nightmare which led its creator directly to prison. From a filmmaker to engineer with a mission: to manufacture the perfect car for Africa Image: Silodrome Howarth was not any businessman. Graduated in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, had developed since childhood A passion for mechanics which led him to build his own fuel injection system for his motorcycle when he was barely ten years old. However, it was his recognized career as a photographer and filmmaker that led him to devote himself to this peculiar project. And is that Howarth has traveled more than 130 countries, experiencing in the first person the difficulties of African land roads. During his trips through Africa in the 70s, Howarth realized that Western vehicles were not designed for the extreme conditions of the continent. Earth tracks, deep potholes and the lack of specialized workshops turned any breakdown into a capital problem. In addition, the programmed obsolescence of the Western car industry made the spare parts more and more difficult to achieve. An inspiration of the Ford Model T Image: Silodrome The concept of Africar was inspired by the legendary Ford Model T, a vehicle that had been designed precisely for the roads without asphalting from Rural America of the early twentieth century. Howarth understood that what Africa needed was something similar: A simple, durable and that could be repaired by local mechanics No need for sophisticated equipment. Its design was revolutionary for its simplicity. The chassis was built with stainless steel tubes to avoid corrosion, while body panels could be manufactured with local materials such as laminated wood impregnated in resin, aluminum or even plastic. The chosen engine was the Citroën GSA Boxer Propulor Refrigated by air that offered reliability and ease of maintenance. An expedition that changed everything Image: Lancslive In 1984, Howarth built three prototypes of Africar for an ambitious expedition that would be documented by Channel 4: A journey from the Arctic Circle to the African Ecuador. The three vehicles-a ranchera, a pick-up and a six-wheel model-demonstrated their worth crossing thousands of kilometers of extreme land. During the journey, Africar exceeded evidence that left a Land Rover Series III that accompanied them. Their long -running independent suspension and their high distance to the ground allowed them to overcome obstacles that stuck more conventional vehicles. The fatal error Image: Lancslive The success of the expedition opened the doors to investment. In 1986, Howarth founded Africar International Limited in LancasterEngland, and began to capture capital of private investors. However, He made a mistake that would end his project and, later, in prison. Concerned about the dependence of the Citroën engines, which could be obsolete at any time, Howarth decided to invest the money of investors in developing their own engine. It was a logical decision from the technical point of view, but catastrophic since the financial. The funds were exhausted before completing the development, and the clients who had paid in advance did not receive their vehicles. The situation became unsustainable when investors discovered that the prototype shown in a Christmas presentation of 1987 was actually an empty shell: without engine, with the doors stuck and still wet paint. A bitter ending and a legacy that endures Image: Silodrome In July 1988, the Police intervened and Africar International Limited ceased its operations. Howarth fled to the United States in a desperate attempt to get the financing that saved the project, but it was useless. In 1994 he returned to the United Kingdom, where He was arrested immediately. Tony Howarth declared himself guilty of a fraudulent crime and five to obtain goods through deception. Was sentenced to 15 months in prison. In his own words, the prison experience “was like being in a British boarding school.” Although Africar never manufactured in series (it is estimated that only one and six specimens of production were built), Howarth’s idea did not die with him. His concept has inspired other African entrepreneurs, such as the creators of the Mobius in Kenyathat resumed the vision of a car designed for the region, despite Its economic difficulties. Cover image | Silodrome In Xataka | The list of 2025 most reliable cars has left us the most unexpected surprise: the best car does not have Toyota or Honda

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.