faces

Samsung faces a very serious problem to surpass TSMC with its 2nm chips: the 60% curse

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When semiconductor manufacturers produce a chip wafer, some of those cores do not function properly. It’s normal. When they start a new lithographic node your performance per wafer usually has a wide room for improvementbut little by little, as engineers refine their integration processes, this parameter improves. A mature lithography can deliver very high performance to IC manufacturers, but a nascent technology can move in the orbit of 50% performance. Importantly, chipmakers need the per-wafer yield to be at least 60% to ensure node profitability and attract more customers. However, this figure is the minimum admissible. And in reality it must be much higher to optimize the competitiveness of photolithography from a commercial point of view. Currently TSMC and Samsung are manufacturing 2nm chipsbut according to the leaks the performance per wafer of its nodes is very different. And the South Korean company needs its 2nm node to be a success. The 1 and 2 nm nodes are crucial in the itinerary that Samsung has planned This reflection that Han Jong-hee, co-CEO of Samsung, made in mid-2025 express clearly At what point were you then? the largest company in South Korea: “First of all, I sincerely apologize that our stock performance has not met your expectations. Over the past year, our company has not responded appropriately to the rapidly evolving AI semiconductor market.” These words were addressed to his investors. Samsung needs to make its current best chip manufacturing technology a success A very important idea emerges from Jong-hee’s words: the competitiveness of your subsidiary specialized in the manufacturing of integrated circuits is essential for Samsung. Even so, problems were arising from several fronts. “Our technological advantage has been compromised in all of our businesses. It is difficult to see that efforts are being made to drive great innovations or take on new challenges. There are only attempts to maintain the status quo instead of generating disruptive changes,” said an internal statement written by Jay Y. Lee, the company’s president. In this scenario, Samsung needs its current best chip manufacturing technology, 2nm lithography, to be a success. And it’s in it. Integrated circuit producers do not typically make the per-wafer yield of their cutting-edge lithographs public, especially if it is relatively low. However, according to DigiTimes Asia Currently the performance of its 2nm nodes oscillates around 55%, so it is below the 60% threshold that we talked about a few lines above. For this company, it is essential to increase the yield per wafer of its 2nm lithography because with a yield of 55% the percentage of usable chips after advanced packaging probably ranges around 40%. To curl the curl, again according to DigiTimes Asiathe per-wafer performance of TSMC’s 2nm nodes ranges between 60 and 70%which places this Taiwanese company, which is Samsung’s biggest competitor and the leader of the chip manufacturing industryin a very favorable position when it comes to attracting new clients. If Samsung manages to raise the performance of its 2nm nodes above 60% during the coming months, it will put up a fight against TSMC. Otherwise you will suffer. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | DigiTimes Asia In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

We were going to turn trash into clean energy. Now the biogas sector faces its biggest challenge: convincing neighbors

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Spain may be emerging as great power in solar and wind energybut there are other green energies that choke him. The Spanish state is not having a nose for biogas. Or rather: it doesn’t smell good, in the most literal sense of the word. However, the sector has practically gone from zero to one hundred in record time: in just two years there are more than 200 biogas projects on the table in different processing phases. And they bring with them a problem: biogas is the green energy that no one wants close to home. The problem: energy transition vs. social rejection. In the roadmap for Spain’s energy transition (the PNIEC 2030), whose ultimate goal is for the state to achieve emissions neutrality by 2050, biogas has its role. But to make it possible, it is an essential requirement to build and launch plants. And here it collides with a wall of social rejection in the form of citizen platforms, not so much to the technology itself, but to the implementation model. There are no shortage of reasons: from the classic fear of bad smell to the lack of territorial planning, promoter companies that present projects without setting foot on the territory and talking to those who live there, the gigantism of some facilities or the shadow of macro farms as arguments, such as They explain for El País the emeritus professor of Environmental Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia Xavier Flotats and the biologist and researcher at the National Museum of Natural Sciences Fernando Valladares. Why is it important. That biogas appears in Spain’s energy transition strategy implies that, sooner or later, it will materialize; the key now is in the as. It is also a direct path to energy sovereignty that replaces natural gas. Just take a look at the electricity price map in Europe To understand it: countries that depend on imported fossil fuels suffer from price volatility, while those who have opted for their own alternatives They achieve greater independence and stability. But its value goes beyond energy. These plants generate organic fertilizers that replace chemicals derived from petroleum and offer a real solution to waste management. The slurry or agricultural remains will be produced the same, with or without a plant; The difference is that biogas allows them to be turned into a resource instead of leaving them as an environmental problem. Context. A biogas plant is essentially a stomach where bacteria break down organic waste without oxygen, known as anaerobic digestion. From here two products are obtained: a gas rich in methane and a fertilizer. Depending on the gas obtained, the plant is simply biogas or biomethane: biogas is methane combined with carbon dioxide in almost equal parts, so it is a “weak” fuel that is usually burned on site to generate electricity or local heat. However, biomethane plants add a refining step (removing carbon dioxide) to obtain a gas similar to fossil natural gas. In Europe, the biogas sector is a consolidated industry with more than 19,000 plantsof which almost half are in Germany. A picture says a thousand words: this Europe biomethane plants map of Gas Infrastructure Europe shows the density in states like Germany or Denmark compared to the Spanish desert. The ecological dilemma. For engineer Xavier Flotats, the general rejection is a contradiction: “For some activists, it is better that a landfill is emitting methane into the atmosphere than taking the waste to a biogas plant to do something useful with it.” And he goes deeper by explaining that although this outgoing digestate has 95% of the input composition by weight, its composition changes, it is mineralized and converted into fertilizer. Valladares assures that biogas plants are greenwashing in that the process does not make the waste disappear, they only remove 5%. And that “Biogas plants cannot be understood without the macro farms industrial poultry, pigs and cows.” For the biologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, the only viable plants are few, small, safe and expensive. Marina Gros, representative of Ecologistas en Acción recognizes that “There are discrepancies within the organization because there is debate, there are different visions.” And in fact, have published a guide to evaluate case by case. The elephant in the room. Beneath the biogas dilemma inevitably lies the controversy of macro farms: In the event of a possible deployment of plants, the reality would be that part of the biogas produced in the state would depend on its slurry. There are those who see this as taking advantage of an already existing problem, but for other people it represents a facelift to a type of industrial livestock farming designed to maximize productivity at a lower cost compared to animal welfare and the environmental balance of the territory. Separate the wheat from the chaff. Faced with this flood of projects, experts agree on the importance of distinguishing sustainable plans from those that are not. Some signs that indicate that a project is reasonable include choosing a location close to the waste it manages and operating on a regional scale, with a plan to use the digestate as a local fertilizer and a design that guarantees total watertightness. On the contrary, there are signs that are authentic red flag: that the plant is far from the waste but close to gas pipelines, the absence of plans for digestate, the reception of waste in open pits, competition with other plants for raw materials or a logic of an industrial macroplant detached from the territory. In Xataka | A strange source of energy is putting Europe’s energy unity at risk: manure In Xataka | The ace up Spain’s sleeve to grow even more in the renewable energy landscape: biomethane Cover | Spencer DeMera and Eli DeFaria

the symbol of the Spanish electric car boom faces a difficult horizon

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In its day, Wallbox was one of the great hopes for him electric car in Spain. A symbol with unicorn aspirations with Spanish capital, listed in New York and a simple initial purpose: to sell electric chargers. A purpose that gradually escalated to end up focusing on the comprehensive management of domestic energy. The problem? Since last year the company has a value less than that of your debthas laid off a third of its staff and urgently needs a financial boost. One who doesn’t know where to find. The situation. At the beginning of this month, Wallbox activated the pre-bankruptcy process. The company owes nearly 170 million euros to entities such as Banco Santander, BBVA, CaixaBank, or the Official Credit Institute. The pre-bankruptcy status prevents creditors from executing their debts, so this shield is a small temporary ball to negotiate debt and reach agreements. Dates? Evolution of the Wallbox share. Javier Lacort. The hope. Wallbox closed the 2025 fiscal year with losses worth 103.19 million euros, 32% less than in 2024. The company reduced its labor and operating costs by 25%, managing to stop the debacle in its adjusted EBITDA. What happened. In 2021, Wallbox was listed on the New York Stock Exchange with a valuation of more than 1 billion. Four years later, the company was worth 37 million. The company has been adding year-on-year losses that have plummeted its stock. It has reached a price below the dollar The situation led to massive layoffs and cost reduction plans Since 2024, the company has focused the strategy on reduce operating losses and get creditors to sign a new financing plan. According to Wallbox, 85% of them support the plan but HSBC, one of the giants behind the financing, is reticent about the new roadmap. Buying time. Wallbox is buying time with its pre-bankruptcy request, trying to refinance the 170 million debt. Although the situation is critical, all is not lost. The company is managing to cut net losses and affirms that its strategy is aimed at “a more efficient, resilient and future-ready organization.” We have until summer to check it out. Image | Wallbox In Xataka | Install an electric car charger at home: how much does it cost and steps to follow

Beyond prices and vacation rentals, housing in Madrid faces a huge problem: irregular houses

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Beyond price escalation, the pressure of the vacation rental or the decoupling Between the speed at which homes are created and new buildings built, in Madrid the real estate market faces a tricky challenge: irregular developments. The latest data of the Community of Madrid reveal that in the region there are dozens of settlements of illegal origin that bring together thousands of homes that start from an irregular situation. all one hot potato for administration. What has happened? The data has revealed it The Newspaper. The Community of Madrid has registered almost 200 developments built without the necessary permits, settlements of illegal origin that add up to thousands of homes. The calculation is based on an update of the inventory from the 1980s, when 136 irregular settlements were identified. The figure has changed since then for two reasons. The first, because there were nuclei that have managed to regularize themselves. The second, because the technicians have added to the list others that (for one reason or another) did not appear in the catalog that accompanied the 1985 regulations. What do the figures say? If you walk around Madrid you can find dozens of housing units built without respecting the regulations. Some very populous. Specifically, The Newspaper talks about 184 urbanizations or settlements of illegal origin and some 10,500 homes. The figure is partly explained because the 1980s census incorporated almost a hundred new consolidated residential areas. The Ministry of the Environment clarifies that in most cases they are the result of “urbanization processes outside the law” and “lacking planning”, which explains why they often do not offer “minimum conditions for urbanization.” Are all cases the same? Not at all. Not all urbanizations identified by the Community of Madrid are the same nor do they have the same dimensions. Particularly noteworthy is the settlement of La Vega del Tajuñawhich brings together a large part of the residences in an irregular situation detected by regional technicians. Specifically, there are 5,513 distributed over more than 2,700 hectares. With those dimensions it would be the largest settlement of its kind in the community, although not the only one where hundreds of people live. In Camino Viejo de Madrid and Vega Baja del Guadarrama there are also more than 1,400 buildings and there are others, such as El Rondelo, Pico Valsarón or Dehesa Nueva, with hundreds of homes. The Community has also noted constructions located in locations very close to the capital, such as Improved Field. How is that possible? The circumstances and context are not always the same, but a few days ago EPE visited a nucleus of Mejorada del Campo that helps to understand how settlements like this can be formed in the heart of Madrid. Specifically, the newspaper visited a nucleus that began to form in the 1980s, driven by developers who parceled out rural land and sold the land at affordable prices, offering it as an ideal space for “urban gardens” with access to water. Time, use and the increasing pressure that affect housing prices in Madrid did the rest. What were initially huts designed for tools gave way to more ambitious installations. Is it something new? Not at all. And not only because the history of these settlements can go back a long time. At the end of 2025, the Community of Madrid has already issued a statement in which he recalled that in just four years he had inspected 1,906 “irregular constructions” on protected land. To be precise, the regional government spoke of 5,334.3 hectares “affected by this type of settlements”, also identified in 56 municipalities. “Of them, about 80% are concentrated in the plains of the main Madrid rivers, the majority in the areas of the Tajuña River (2,712.5 hectares), followed by the Jarama (1,019.5), Guadarrama (363.2) and Tajo (150.2)”, explains the Madrid Executive, which warns of the “risk” it represents “both for people and the environment.” Hence, this type of construction appears among the objectives of the Urban Inspection and Discipline Plan. Does it only happen in Madrid? No. Settlements of this type are also common in other parts of Spain, such as Catalonia. “There are many urbanizations that were built in the 60s, 70s and early 80s of the 20th century, which were marketed without the necessary planning, urban management or basic public services,” recognize from the Catalan Generalitat. “Of the 1,433 identified in the 2015 catalogue, there are 730 with urban deficits. Many are concentrated in small municipalities and the tendency to convert housing estates into primary residences aggravates their situation,” acknowledges the regional government. The topic is complex because, as remember EPE When talking about the Madrid case, the legal framework varies over time: if a home built on non-developable land remains long enough outside the ‘radar’ of the authorities, the crime expires and can no longer be demolished. Images | Community of Madrid Via | The Newspaper In Xataka | Madrid believed itself immune to the TukTuk plague in the most tourist cities in the world. Now someone wants to ban them

Apple, Google and Samsung promised them happily with 5,000mAh batteries. Until China came to rub their hands on their faces

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The person writing these lines has an American mobile phone—made in China—with a little more 5,000mAh. A figure in which giants like Apple, Samsung or Google have been comfortably installed for years. Meanwhile, in China, Honor has just made official a phone with a 10,000 mAh battery. The launch is not surprising just because it has managed to literally introduce a powerbank inside a smartphone. It is surprising because it breaks a barrier that until now no one had dared to cross. Not due to lack of possibilities, but due to industrial inertia. The aforementioned. Honor has made the Honor Win and Honor Win RT. Two phones that, in addition to having the best Qualcomm processorshave a 10,000mAh battery made of silicon-carbon technology. The message is clear: this is not a typical high-end, it is proof that China is the leading benchmark in batteries for smartphones. thickness. For years there has been an unwritten but unquestionable rule: more battery means more thickness. The 10,000 mAh were reserved for rugged, bulky mobile phones designed for very specific uses. These Honor Win break that logic. They are thinner than a iPhone 17 Pro Maxbut with double the energy capacity. There are no gimmicks, fine print or marketing exercises: it’s a real leap in energy density. How did they achieve it?. Honor has not specified how they have managed to take the capacity to such an extreme but the person responsible is clear: silicon-carbon. This technology has been demonstrating for years that it is possible to introduce much denser batteries in the sizes in which lithium has already reached its ceiling. Chinese mobile phones have been standardizing for more than a year batteries over 7,000mAhand Honor’s move to reach five figures marks what aspires to be a new standard. The cons. Silicon-carbon poses certain challenges, and the first is degradation. These batteries, especially in their first generations, They seemed not to be at the same level as classic lithium batteries. Over time, the promised charge cycles are virtually identical to those of traditional lithium batteries (more than 1,500). The second is the cost: producing this type of cells is more expensivewhich partially explains why, for the moment, these figures reach China first and not global markets. In fact, a common practice is to find models whose Chinese version has more battery than the global version, reserved for the rest of the markets. A third key point is related to security and regulation. Denser batteries require stricter controls, and Western regulatory frameworks are not always prepared to adopt these types of advances so quickly. None of this invalidates progress. It simply explains why Apple, Samsung or Google have not yet made the leap. It’s not that they can’t: it’s that they haven’t wanted to take the risk… yet. China is going to force a move. The 10,000mAh batteries are, without much room for doubt, one of the biggest technological leaps in the world of smartphones after the arrival of AI. A figure that will allow us to normalize the three days of average use without going through the charger. The leap is so relevant that, whether they like it or not, “traditional” manufacturers will have to start making a move, as they had to start doing with fast charging systems. Samsung has already started implementing the 7,000mAh in phones like the Galaxy M51but its high-end is still at the 5,000mAh barrier. Google also moves in the 5,200mAh and Apple… is Apple. With a greater or lesser pace of implementation, these manufacturers are forced to keep pace with China in these advances. And that translates into admitting that we were wrong about lithium. Image | Honor In Xataka | The Android phones with the best battery of 2025: which one to buy and recommended models

Public transport faces 2026 with extended aid and the approved Single Pass: there is still one step ahead

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Public transport enters 2026 with two decisions already made and an important nuance still pending to be resolved. The Council of Ministers has approved the extension of current aid throughout next year and has given the green light to the Single Passa new flat rate that will begin operating in January and that seeks to simplify access to state-run trains and buses. The announcement consolidates a policy that the Government has been implementing since 2018, but also leaves the final procedure pending. The key date is January 1, but not for the arrival of a new system, but for the continuity of the current one. From that day on, the bonuses remain in force. The Single Pass, which does introduce a different model, will have a later start and will not be available until the second half of January. The entire plan has planned financing of more than 1,371 million euros by 2026. Extension with changes. Although the aid is extended, the scheme does not remain intact. The main novelty for 2026 is in the way of financing them in regional and local transport: the Ministry of Transport will cover the 20% general bonus for the rest of the subscriptions without conditioning that contribution on the competent administrations adding another 20%. {“videoId”:”x8d81cm”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Free Renfe passes”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”30″} In practice, users will find in 2026 a scheme very similar to the current one, with nuances depending on the territory and the operator. State-owned buses will maintain free child tickets and the main subsidized passes, including reinforced discounts for young people. Renfe: continuity and new incentives. Bonuses on Renfe services will continue to be one of the central pieces of the system in 2026. Commuter passes with reduced rates, free children’s tickets and discounts on Media Distancia and Avant are maintained, in line with what has been applied until now, while new features are introduced for recurring travelers. The Ministry emphasizes that these measures have had a notable impact on the use of the railway: more than 14 million tickets sold since their implementation and an estimated saving of around 1.5 billion euros for travelers. Pass Via enters the scene. Renfe will introduce some changes in 2026 aimed at recurring travelers. The main novelty is the new quarterly “Pase Vía” subscription for Avant services, which will apply progressive discounts (from 45% to 72%) depending on the number of trips made and will allow you to pay for each ticket without an initial outlay. Added to this is the Cronos Cercanías system, which will offer a 40% discount from the fifth trip when access is made by paying with the bank card directly at the turnstiles. The new Single Pass. The new state flat rate adds to the mosaic of existing aid with a different logic. The Single Pass will allow unlimited travel for 30 days on Renfe Cercanías, Rodalies and Media Distancia and on state-owned interregional buses for 60 euros, or 30 euros in the case of those under 26 years of age. It will be available from the second half of January and will require prior user registration. In Xataka The single public transport ticket promises to change the mobility of our country for 60 euros. We have many doubts Although the measures have already been approved by the Council of Ministers, the institutional path is not completely closed. The extension of the aid is articulated through a royal decree-law, a figure that allows its immediate entry into force but that requires subsequent validation by Congress within the constitutional period. On this occasion, the text is processed independently and is not included in a broader decree, a decision that would facilitate its parliamentary validation. Images | RENFE | Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility In Xataka | There will be no insurance or registration for electric scooters on January 2, 2026: the DGT has confirmed it (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Public transport faces 2026 with extended aid and the approved Single Pass: there is still one step ahead was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

Funko literally produced more dolls than it could afford. And now it faces the biggest crisis in its history

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It seemed that this moment would never come, but it did: the Funko Pop They are in crisis. In popular culture everything is cycles, and if now it is an inevitable topic in the conversation the “superhero fatigue“, after having lived through years in which it seemed that there was going to be nothing but superheroes in the cinema, now it is the turn of the Funko Pop. All after an overwhelming success, which has turned these dolls cut from the same pattern into inevitable passengers in any conversation about the pop panorama. The data. The company recognized in its last quarterly report that there are “substantial doubts” about its ability to continue operating for the next twelve months. Funko carries $241 million in total debt while maintaining just $39.2 million in cash reserves, a ratio that puts the company on the brink of the financial abyss. In the second quarter of 2025, Funko lost $41 million, and although the third quarter showed an improvement with losses of less than one million, these contrast with the $8.9 million profit in the same period just a year earlier, in 2024. The reasons. Sales fell from 292.8 million to 250.9 million year-on-year, a 14% drop that originated mainly in the US market. In 2023, the company destroyed between 30 and 36 million dollars in excess inventory, literally sending millions of figures to landfills because it was cheaper to eliminate them than to pay for storage. The crisis has multiple culprits: the Trump administration’s trade tariffs have hit toys with the nature of Funko hard: cheap items made abroad. But the fundamental problem is structural: overproduction. Funko has systematically and for years produced more than the market has been able to absorb, believing that demand would be infinite. This has led to the company’s debt growing from 182.8 million at the end of 2024 to the current 241 million, an increase of 32% in less than a year. The signs told us. There were different crises that made it clear that problems could come for Funko Pop. In 2021, the pandemic led to a boom and the company achieved record sales of one billion dollars, an increase of 58% over 2020. But like the entire economy that emerged during the pandemic, it was temporary. The post-pandemic drop (losses in the fourth quarter of 2022 of $47 million) should have served as a warning. Then, in 2023, the massive destruction of inventory confirmed that Funko Pop was generating material beyond its capabilities. 40 different Grogu dollsIf nothing woke us up before, it should have been a warning to sailors. And what about collectors? The company crisis is not just a problem of corporate mirage: it is the collapse of a dangerous aspect of collectingwhich is done by mere accumulation of assets that it is believed that it is going to revalue in the future. We have seen exclusive figures for the San Diego Comic-Con that They were resold for 200 or 500% above their original price (and the same phenomenon repeated at the recent Comic-Con in Malaga). And we have seen sets reach impossible prices (especially mythical isWilly Wonka quele in 2022 which reached $100,000). Now, second-hand sales platforms show Funkos that sold for $200 languish at $10. Even discontinued figures can be found at bargain prices, all due to overproduction, which made the “exclusive” or “limited release” label lose its value. There are those who compare what is happening with the phenomenon of Beanie Babies, highly coveted a couple of decades ago by collectors in the United States, and whose bubble ended up exploding. Plastic mountains. AND eye on environmental impactwhich goes beyond a few (many) collectors with shelves full of products that have lost their value. The aforementioned between 1.4 and 3 million vinyl figures that were sent to landfill They were only the first phase of mass destruction. The material Funkos are made of, PVC, can remain in landfills for centuries because it is not biodegradable. And hundreds of millions of units are produced every year, which in the United States are deposited in landfills perfectly legally (in countries like France, companies were prohibited from destroying unsold non-food merchandise, forcing them to donate or recycle). Header | Photo of Z Graphica in Unsplash

NVIDIA and OpenAI know that the AI ​​bubble can burst in their faces. His solution: let dad pay for the state

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Too big to fail or, in English, “too big to fail.” It is a theory of economics and finance which argues that certain corporations, especially banks, are so large and so interconnected that their failure would have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and therefore must be rescued by governments. The speech gained traction in the 2008 financial crisis and is beginning to sound again from the mouths of NVIDIA and OpenAI, no less. Government support. At an event of WSJSarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, stated that the company will not go public in the short term (she says until at least 2027) and that its priority is growth and investment in R&D, above profitability. The most striking part of his speech was when he said that they hope that the government will support the financing of future agreements related to data centers. That OpenAI is burning astronomical amounts of money to lead the AI ​​race is something we have been discussing for a long timebut it is the first time that they directly appeal to the state to guarantee it. Shortly after, Friar collected cable in a post on LinkedIn: “OpenAI does not seek government support for our infrastructure commitments. I used the word ‘support’ and that confused the message,” but the seed was already planted. Depreciation. OpenAI is closing deals to secure computing capacity. We have seen it with his alliance with NVIDIAwith amdwith Broadcom and more recently with amazon. The complexity of the situation is that the depreciation rates of AI chips remain uncertain. As it says Washington Post’s Gerrit de Vynck in XOpenAI is going to need the best chips to be at the forefront of the AI ​​market, but financing this demand is not the same if the life cycle of the chips is seven years, as if it is only two years. The money is flowing, the question is for how long. In this uncertain scenario, government support would act as a safety net so that banks and private equity firms would feel more comfortable and continue releasing billions for OpenAI. China will win. NVIDIA is also appealing for government involvement in subtle ways. In a Financial Times event in London, Its CEO Jenshen Huang has warned that “China is going to win the AI ​​race.” Their arguments are that China has more flexible regulation and government subsidies for the energy your data centers needthat It is not little. This energy advantage allows China to compete even if they cannot buy NVIDIA’s most powerful chips. Huang doesn’t say it directly, but it is a clear wake-up call: either you subsidize the energy our data centers need or China will win. The fear. The question has been hanging over the air for a long time: Are we witnessing a new bubble? The investor Michael Burry thinks soand he is not just any investor, he was the one who made gold when the real estate bubble burst in 2008 (the movie ‘The Big Short’ is based on his story). The thing is, Burry just bet short against NVIDIA, which recently It was valued at 5 billion dollars. Fear of the bubble continues to grow, according to a Coatue report and the number of fund managers who believe we are in a bubble increased to 54% in October, up from 37% in July this year. 48% of the S&P 500 index corresponds to AI-related stocks. Fountain: Bianco Research Numbers. The fear is not at all unfounded and all you have to do is take a look at the numbers. Account Tomás Pueyo in Uncharted Territories that the economy should be in recession, but the numbers show the opposite and AI is behind this growth. The S&P 500 index is through the roof and 48% of this growth corresponds to AI-related stocks. The share price is far above what it was in the dotcom bustall with ridiculous benefits. And that’s not all, the economic growth of the United States in 2025 is due almost entirely to the construction of data centers for AI. According to the Economist Jason Furmanwithout taking data centers into account, the GDP of the United States would have grown only 0.1% in 2025. The creator of the newsletter Today in Tabs He gave a very graphic example: “Our economy could be reduced to three AI data centers in trench coats.” Tightrope. Returning to OpenAI, its financial director assured the Financial Times that it could be profitable simply by stopping investing too aggressively since it has a “very healthy” margin structure. The thing is, they can’t do it. OpenAI needs to achieve AGI, its great promise and the only thing that could justify this insane investment. If it fails, will cause a shock wave that can impact NVIDIA, AMD, Oracle… and end up dragging down the global economy. The competition tightens, Anthropic is eating the business market’s toast and Google is not only winning every time more users with Geminireached record revenue in the last quarterwhile OpenAI lost $11.5 billion in the same period. It doesn’t look good. Images | Wikipedia In Xataka | NVIDIA will invest 100 billion in OpenAI so that OpenAI buys chips from NVIDIA. And it’s a disturbing sign

The case of mathematics shows that the hype threatens to explode in their faces

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A group of OpenAI researchers claimed to have “found solutions to 10 previously unsolved Erdös problems, and progress has been made on 11 others.” The statement seemed to indicate that GPT-5 had made an important qualitative leap in the field of mathematics, but the reality was very different. In fact, it all turned out to be an exaggeration that may harm OpenAI’s reputation going forward. what has happened. The OpenAI engineers’ claim was promising, but exaggerated. The original message from Mark Selke, one of them, was added to those of other researchers such as Boris Power—who he apologized after realizing that they had screwed up—or Sebastian Bubeck—who also ended up modifying the tweet and acknowledged the error—. The original tweet seemed to make it clear that GPT-5 had managed to solve several of the famous Erdös mathematical problems. I hadn’t really solved them. GPT-5 served to find solutions. The mathematician Thomas Bloom, who is precisely in charge of managing the website where all these open problems are managed, quickly clarified the situation. As explained on X/TwitterOpenAI’s claims were “a dramatically misinterpretation.” When he talks about “open” problems on the website, what he means is that he doesn’t know the solution, not that the problem has not been resolved. The only thing GPT-5 did was find recent research and studies that Bloom had not found. Here we must say that AI has managed to make striking mathematical advances recently: Meta AI, for example, managed to generalize the Lyapunov function. Demis Hassabis and Yann LeCun criticize OpenAI. Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, indicated in X that this event had been “shameful”, while Yann LeCun, one of the top AI managers at Meta, highlighted how OpenAI had believed its own hype sales message with the message “Hoisted by their own GPTards”, which plays on GPT and “tards” (a suffix derived from “retards”), in reference to the gullible expectations that OpenAI usually sells. Expectations are everything. Although OpenAI researchers and engineers admitted their mistake, what we see here is a dangerous pattern: one in which even the company’s own employees—or the enthusiasts who follow it—can end up falling victim to those expectations. It is very likely that internally the pressure to achieve great advances with their models is enormous, but that can lead to oversights and exaggerations like this that can cost the company’s reputation dearly. GPT-5 didn’t do badly at all. Although the role of GPT-5 in this process was exaggerated, what must be recognized is that this model demonstrated its ability to become a very valuable assistant for researchers. Thus, this AI model can search the Internet and scientific study libraries in a very powerful way, and can “find solutions” already published where academics had not yet seen them when trying to solve related problems. Research assistant. For mathematician Terence Tao, this is precisely a very striking element of these AI models: they may not solve the most complex mathematical problems, but can speed up tedious tasks such as those of the search for academic literature that helps solve them. For this expert, AI can help “industrialize” mathematics and act as a catalyst or “lubricant” for mathematicians’ hypotheses and theories. But this is important. OpenAI is a machine for creating expectations, and its CEO, Sam Altman, does not hesitate to make vague and impossible to verify promises to attract more interest in his generative artificial intelligence models. A year ago promised that the AGI would arrive “in a few thousand days”something that sounds like one of those “Musk’s promises”. risky bet. In recent weeks we have seen how OpenAI has reached unique circular financing agreements with NVIDIA, amd either Broadcom to create data centers, but the reality is that all these projects focus on one promise: that AI will be a fundamental part of our lives sooner rather than later. That can happen, of course, but if it doesn’t, the domino effect can be an absolute catastrophe given the tens of billions of dollars invested in such projects. Image | Vitaly Gariev In Xataka | If the question is whether there is an AI bubble, Sam Altman has just given the answer. One with which he wins

In full birth crisis, Japan faces an extra challenge in 2026: a superstition

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Japan is a country with several calendars. The Western, or Gregorian, is common in the Asian country, which also has its own calendar, based on the “Eras”, the reign periods of its emperors. But in the culture of the country there is still the embers of another calendar, the one based on the traditional Chinese calendar. In 2026 we can verify to what extent this embers is still alive in the Japanese archipelago. To understand why we have to go a complete cycle behind, the year 1966. That year Japan experienced A significant phenomenon: a Fall marked in birthan abrupt contrast with the historical series. If in 1965 around 1.82 million children were born, in 1966 the figure was 1.36 million, 25% less, according to Explain Japan Times. The births were immediately recovered: in 1967 they rolled 1.94 million. The collapse in birth can also be seen in the Japanese health ministry data. As explained by the international agency, the fertility rate went from 2.14 in 1965 to 1.58 in 1966, to “bounce” up to 2.23 the following year. The data was not the result of a statistical anomaly or a disaster, neither natural nor created by the human being. We can see this reflected in an increase in induced abortions in the country, which was recorded A study Posted in 1974 in the magazine Annals of Human Biology. It was the fault of a superstition. The year 1966 corresponded (approximately) to the year of the horse of fire in the cycle on which the traditional Chinese calendar is based. The calendar based on the sexagesimal cycle used in some Asian countries relates each of the 60 years of its cycle with one of Twelve animals (which includes the rat, the tiger, the dragon and also the horse), and one of five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water). And what is special for the year Hinoeuma? According to Japanese superstition, women born during the Fire horse year They will kill their husbands or, according to translations, will be at least the cause of the death of their spouses. This would have taken many couples of childbearing age to avoid pregnancy (or even interrupt), at a time when, as Emi Suzuki and Haruna Kashiwase explain in An article For him Data Blog of the World Bank, there was no possibility of a selective abortion depending on sex. Another important detail mentioned in its article is that the phenomenon occurred more marked in rural Japan and not so much in the urban context, which reflects the greatest follow -up that this type of superstitions used to have in the rural world. 60 years of change 60 years is a long time and Japanese society is no longer the one. Will something be repeated again similar in 2026? There are two reasons why it can be suspected that, if the fall in birth rate occurs, this will be of a minor magnitude of experienced in 66. The first reason is in the slightest weight that today has the superstitious in society. Japan lived an abrupt transition series between the end of the EDO era and the present. One of the most vertiginous progress is the one that led a country ravaged by war to become a worldwide technological innovation pole. 1966 It can be seen as a year of transition in this context, 2026 not so much. In any case, the peculiar relationship between Japanese tradition and modernity is often difficult to understand from the western point of view, so it is not convenient to venture into this direction. However, there is another fact that takes us away from that year 1966: 1.15. We said at the beginning that between 1965 and 1966 the Japanese fertility rate went from 2.1 to 1.6. The fall associated with the year Hinoeuma It was punctual and was reversed the following year, but if we looked at the set of the Historical data we see that it is a small detour in a curve with A marked trend: Japan He runs out of birth progressively. According to data from the Japanese Ministry of Health cited by Suzuki and Kashiwasethe Japanese fertility rate was descending throughout the second half of the twentieth century, first quickly and then slower. In 1989 the birth rate would be located again in 1.58 and has not been recovered or expected to do so. It was known as he “shock of 1.57 “ When the rate fell below the year Hinoeuma. Today the rate It is already 1.15. A few years before, in 1987, Japan celebrated a kind of “Fiesta de Quintos”, a celebration in honor of the generation that had turned 20 in the previous months, those born in Hinoeuma. The newspaper The New York Times It echoed of that celebration and superstition that had diminished the generation held that year. Then it seemed clear that the “fifths” of 86 would be the smallest promotion in history, but they would only be for a short time. In Xataka | While the population of Japan sinks irremediably, Tokyo grows. There is an explanation: Ikkyoku Shūchū Image | Evgeny Tchebotarev

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