idea

the idea is reminiscent of how macOS works

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The speed of an operating system is not always noticeable when we export a video or open a demanding game. Many times we perceive it in much smaller gestures: a menu that appears instantly or a window that responds without delay. It’s a hard feeling to sell on a spec sheet, but easy to notice when it fails. Microsoft has been trying to convey for months that it wants to improve Windows 11and one of its next adjustments goes right into that area where fluidity is gained or lost in tenths of a second. Low latency profile. Microsoft is testing what is known as low latency profile. The idea is to ask the processor for an additional boost of speed at specific times, such as when opening the Start menu, an application, or certain context menus. We are not facing a function announced as a great novelty for all users, but rather a setting present in test builds. Secure Windows Central who has already tested this profile and has observed an appreciable improvement in speed and response compared to the current public version of Windows 11 25H2. It’s not magic, it’s latency. The reference to macOS does not point to a specific Apple feature, but to a principle that, according to Scott Hanselman, vice president of Microsoft and GitHub, modern operating systems share. “All modern operating systems do this, including macOS and Linux,” wrote in X. Their argument is that this is not “cheating,” but rather a common way to make applications appear faster: temporarily raising the CPU speed and prioritizing interactive tasks to reduce latency. In other words, Windows 11 would be trying to react better in those seconds in which we most notice if the system is accompanying or lagging behind. Spot power. At first glance it may seem contradictory that asking more from the processor also helps to take care of consumption. But reality goes the other way: many modern chips are designed to exert intense effort for a very short period and then return to a low-power state. Applied to Windows 11, the goal would not be to keep the CPU accelerated, but rather to take advantage of a specific push when the system needs to respond to the user. The key is that this impulse does not last longer than necessary. The test has not convinced everyone. Some users criticized on social networks that Microsoft resorted to this type of CPU boost, understanding that it could increase consumption and reduce autonomy, or that the company was leaning too much on the hardware instead of better optimizing the software. Now, Microsoft does not present this adjustment as the only answer to the fluidity problems of Windows 11, but as one more piece within a broader work. Windows 11 also needs convincing. The interesting thing is that Microsoft isn’t just talking about making an animation go a little faster. The company has begun to publicly organize its progress around a very specific idea, its “commitment to Windows quality”, with posts tracking the status of several changes in testing, including a less loaded Widgets view, lower RAM usage, adjustments to the Windows Insider program, and more leeway to decide when updates are installed. The timing is not coincidental either.. All of this comes as Microsoft tries to push users and businesses towards Windows 11, with Windows 10 still installed on just over a quarter of the world’s Windows PCs, according to StatCounter. When I finish that free year of extended security updatesanyone who wants to remain protected will have to update the system, change equipment if their hardware does not meet the requirements of Windows 11, or pay for more support. For companies there is a little more margin, but not infinite: they will be able to purchase one or two additional years of updates, with a cost that will increase each year. Images | Nicholas Worrell In Xataka | The big bet for the future of Android is not just Android 17: it is Gemini Intelligence and your mobile phone doing things on its own

Sony has launched the most anti-2026 high-end mobile. It’s an idea as good as it is risky.

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Sony continues launching mobile phones. And it has reached a point where the news is not that it has launched a mobile phone, but rather why it has done so and what it wants to tell the market when it does so. Although it may seem like a counter-current idea, launching mobile phones knowing that you are only going to sell them makes some senseand Sony is not alone there. The anti2026. For some reason, manufacturers have been convincing us for years that more than useful technologies should disappear. All in pursuit of a more minimalist design, larger batteries and an evolution close to that of the portless mobile. To this, Sony responds with a blunt “hold my cap.” The Sony Xperia 1 VIII. He Sony Xperia 1 VIII It is a return to the past, maintaining technologies that the vast majority of its rivals discarded years ago. It has a 3.5mm headphone jack It has a slot for microSD cards up to 2 TB Thick, very thick bezels The SIM slot is not removed with the tool, just press it The stereo speakers are front-facing, there is no one below There is no trace of what might look like an iPhone Very good. Sony’s proposal is clear: in the middle of 2026 you can enjoy technologies that one day we banished and that are useful despite the passing of the years. Furthermore, each and every one of these steps does not distance the Xperia 1 VIII from what is required of a modern flagship. The best Qualcomm processor A powerful camera system with ZEISS optics Up to a generous 16 GB of RAM The only unforgivable point is that of a Full HD+ panel. On a 1,499 euro mobile phone this resolution is not acceptable. Because. The short answer is that Sony is not launching the Xperia 1 VIII to compete with Samsung or Apple. He gave up that battle a long time ago. In the last Corporate Strategy MeetingSony president Kenichiro Yoshida made it clear that the smartphone division does not exist to sell volume, it exists to prove something. Sony Xperia is, above all, a technological showcase. In addition, the Xperia division is a fundamental pillar for the company’s R&D. The advances made in these smartphones are later applied to what really matters: the brand’s cameras. In Xataka | At half price the Sony WH-1000XM5, headphones with one of the best noise cancellations we have tested

End-to-end encryption is a great idea and that’s why it’s almost impossible to understand why Instagram removes it. Almost

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In an era where many users may be concerned about their privacy and looking to ensure their conversations are as secure as possible, Meta has made a curious move. On May 8, as planned, instagram removed end-to-end encryption in direct messages. The big question now is no longer how to communicate safely but something deeper: what interest Meta may have in those conversations. And AI leads the first suspicions. In short. Although it may seem contradictory, Meta is a company that has shown some concern about allowing the user to have secure private conversations. WhatsApp has been using end-to-end encryption for years and, although It took longer to arrive than desiredFaceBook and Instagram also implemented it for direct messages years ago. Simply put, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a technology that ensures that only the sender and receiver can read chats. There are applications that implemented it by default (WhatsApp), but on Instagram it wasn’t like that. It is the user who had to activate it and, if done, automatically and transparently for the user, the device blocks the message using a unique key that prevents anyone other than the recipient from accessing the conversation. It’s over. Download your messages. As we say, it has been on their support blog where Meta has confirmed that end-to-end encrypted messages are no longer available on Instagram. Since last May 8, in fact, and if you have a chat that was protected in this way, a message will appear with instructions to download the messages and keep them safe in case you want to do so. Pressure. The end of this security feature has not been accompanied by a reason why Meta abandons this feature, but it is clear that the company has not done it simply for the sake of it. A few weeks ago, when the company’s plans were announced, a Meta spokesperson told Guardian that “very few people were choosing to send end-to-end encrypted messages.” That was the main reason they cited for stopping service, but you don’t have to scratch the surface too hard to find shadier reasons. For example, different police agencies (Interpol, the United Kingdom National Crime Agency or the FBI) ​​have been pressuring FaceBook to grant them access to encrypted messages. Because of course, this technology is very useful for all of us who value privacy, but it also gives wings to those who want to use it for much darker purposes. There are organizations that have criticized the implementation in apps like Instagram because they point out that, although it is useful, if the company does not implement adequate security measures, it can intensify acts of child sexual exploitationterrorism or giving rise to violent extremism. In fact, the UK government has been searching that Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp or iMessage open or end with that end-to-end encryption. And Apple has had a media battle against the FBI for that very reason. The suspicion. But of course, for a company that has been promoting the discourse since 2019 that encryption in its applications was the way to follow to protect users, this movement seems strange and there are already those who point to more practical reasons for Meta than, simply, to please governments. Those reasons are the ability to train AI. Because if there is no encryption, there is nothing hidden. And, although there is no human reading (although it seems increasingly evident that behind the AI there are humans labeling what our video devices and voice see and hear), having access to the conversations of millions of users allows the algorithms to continue training with the aim of offer advertising more personalized (something that Meta has become very aggressive about in recent months) or chatbots that can continue drinking the Internet. It’s not such a crazy theory.. WhatsApp. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can go to WhatsApp,” is Meta’s own recommendation and something they said both in statements to The Guardian and on their support page. Because for their communication app they do continue to aggressively push that argument of “express yourself freely with end-to-end encryption”, “show yourself as you are, speak freely” and “no one else has access, not even WhatsApp”. Seeing that the company maintains this encryption on WhatsApp, but not on an Instagram that is increasingly a bazaar, makes the opinion that they withdraw end-to-end encryption based solely on government pressure lose some weight. In any case, as Meta itself says, if you want privacy in your conversations… you will have to go to WhatsApp. Or to any other app with end-to-end encryption. In Xataka | Meta will pay $1.4 billion to Texas for violating the privacy of its users. Used facial recognition without permission

If the question is how the Egyptian pyramids were made, science has an idea: hydraulic systems

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Ancient Egypt is recognized for being one of the first hydraulic civilizations in history: they had control over irrigation canals, dams and transportation that was essential for erect and maintain a centralized kingdom for more than three thousand years in a fertile strip surrounded by desert. In the Old Kingdom period (c. 2700–2200 BC), the Egyptians built seven enormous pyramids representing approximately 25 million tons of rock cut, transported and fitted in less than 150 years. How they did it remains a mystery. In that period the pharaohs they ordered stone blocks to be moved at a rate equivalent to 50 tons per hour sustained for decades. There are several hypothesesbut none are satisfactory enough to explain that performance, especially at the beginning. The origin of everything is in Saqqara: the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser It is the oldest of the great pyramids and the first built entirely of carved stone. This is precisely where a multidisciplinary team proposes for the first time that water was the driving force of its construction. The hydraulic hypothesis. What the research team led by Xavier Landreau proposes is a kind of hydraulic elevator formed by three large structures from the Zoser complex. The Gisr el-Mudir functioned as a retention dam, the southern Dry Trench was the settling tank and the twin shafts (connected by a 200 meter underground tunnel) constituted the lifting mechanism: a huge float that would have raised the blocks from inside the pyramid in cycles of filling and emptying. Water from the desert wadis was channeled and filtered before reaching the vertical wells. When filled, the water buoyantly raised a platform on which the blocks rested, allowing them to be deposited on the upper levels without the need for external ramps and with less labor effort. Why is it important. Firstly, because it provides a coherent functional explanation for three structures at Saqqara whose purpose was not entirely clear. The analysis brings together hydrology, archeology and civil engineering to integrate all these elements into a unified and logical system, possibly making the Saqqara complex the oldest hydraulic infrastructure in history. If the hypothesis is confirmed, it would leave behind the hegemonic belief of ramps and a large amount of labor as a universal solution for building pyramids. A hydraulic lifting system implies efficient management of resources, energy and logistics, by significantly reducing labor. Additionally, it involves even more advanced knowledge of hydraulics. The next question is clear: are there more pyramids in Egypt built like this? Context. Saqqara is on a limestone plateau west of the Nile. How the research team mappedto the west of the complex there was a potential watershed of 400 square kilometers linked to the wadi Taflah, an ancient tributary of the Nile already documented on 18th century maps. This point is important because although today it is a desert plateau, studies of sediments from the complex itself show that during the reign of Djoser the area received intense seasonal runoffwith enough kinetic energy to deposit sediments of water origin inside the structures. In short, there was water available and in quantity. Other historical hypotheses. The most consolidated theories about the construction of the pyramids point to ramps with different geometries combined with levers and sleds. For Giza for example, Jean-Pierre Houdin proposed an interior spiral ramp. For Saqqara, studies collected in the paper itself suggest that the Dry Pit was the main limestone quarry, with short ramps on each side as a supply mechanism. As for the twin wells, the dominant interpretation until now was funerary: the royal tomb of Djoser and the abode of his ka. As for the dry grave, it was considered a quarry or had a ritual function. How have they done it. This research team has not excavated anything: it has combined satellite images of Airbus Pléiadeselevation models from the French IGN and the QGIS GIS to reconstruct the paleohydrology of the environment. From here, they generated 3D models of the complex’s internal architecture with quite popular commercial software such as SolidWorks or SketchUp. Regarding the hydraulic mechanism, they developed their own deliberately simple numerical model to estimate the water consumption and carrying capacity of the system. Yes, but. Using existing data has been both its greatest strength and also its greatest virtue, as the team recognizes. That is, although their study integrates basin topography, hydraulics and internal architecture, they have not accessed the wells or dated the sediments directly. On the other hand, from the perspective of the study of Egypt, stating that the wells are not funerary contradicts decades of consolidated interpretation. On the other hand, it raises a structural question: if those who made the first pyramids in Egypt mastered this hydraulic technology, why are the pyramids after Giza increasingly smaller and poorer? In Xataka | China’s first pipeline network is 4,000 years old and something revolutionary: it was built without the need for kings or nobles In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system Cover | Charles J Sharp

Two men thought it was a good idea to lend their houses to a North Korean laptop farm. It went wrong

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Teleworking has accustomed us to a very comfortable idea: if someone delivers work, attends meetings and responds to messages, perhaps it doesn’t matter too much where they do it from. The problem appears when that distance becomes an advantage to hide identities, move money and enter companies that believe they are hiring a legitimate professional. North Korea has been exploiting precisely that rift. And the case of two men convicted of hosting laptops in their homes shows the extent to which the plot could rely on domestic infrastructure. Two men condemned. Matthew Isaac Knoot, of Nashville, Tennessee, and Erick Ntekereze Prince, of New York, have been sentenced in the US to 18 months each in prison for their role in fraudulent schemes involving remote IT workers linked to North Korea. according to the Department of Justice. The house as a piece of the plot. The mechanism was more domestic than one might imagine. Companies shipped corporate laptops to American addresses because they believed the contracted workers were there. Once received, the computers were housed in those homes and configured with remote desktop applications installed without authorization. This allowed the fake workers to operate from abroad while, to the companies, the connection appeared to come from an address within the United States. What did each one do?. Prince, according to official information, facilitated at least three North Korean IT workers to obtain remote employment in US companies between June 2020 and August 2024, and used his company Taggcar Inc. to fraudulently supply “certified” workers, despite knowing that they were outside the US and using false or stolen identities. Knoot, for his part, operated a laptop farm from his Nashville residences between July 2022 and August 2023. Money, companies and damages. The Justice Department maintains that the two schemes together generated more than $1.2 million for North Korea and affected nearly 70 U.S. companies. In the Prince case, the companies paid more than $943,069 in salaries to IT workers linked to the file. In Knoot’s case, the payments exceeded $250,000. More than labor fraud. The US justice system presents the sentences as part of a specific line of action against facilitators located in the US. The note itself highlights that these are the seventh and eighth convictions of “laptop farmers” obtained in the last five months within their efforts to interrupt North Korea’s illicit generation of income. It is an important nuance: the focus is not only on those who connect from abroad, but also on the local network that makes the operation viable. Expansion into Europe. As we have seen in the pastthese cases are also present outside the United States. The Record discovered in April 2025 an investigation by Google Threat Intelligence Group according to which North Korean operatives had increased their activity in Europe following US police actions against laptop farms and financial networks. At the center were job searches linked to the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal, in addition to the use of local facilitators to support the alibi of a work presence in the corresponding country. AI and fake identities. One of the most current layers of this story is not only in the laptops, but in the ease of building increasingly credible profiles. BISI points out that North Korean operations combine stolen identities, manipulated professional profiles and AI tools capable of writing localized CVs and cover letters. In the Old Continent, platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer are usually used, in addition to Telegram. The consequence is obvious: detecting the fake candidate can become much more difficult before the company even ships the equipment. What started with laptops housed in private homes ends up having something much bigger than a criminal conviction. The companies were not attacked from outside in the classic sense, but ended up opening the door to workers they believed to be legitimate. So everything seems to indicate that in these times it is no longer enough to protect servers, credentials or repositories, but rather to review the processes that we consider normal, such as the hiring of personnel. Images | Xataka with Grok In Xataka | The ‘vibe coding’ promised to democratize software. Your first gift is 5,000 apps with open sensitive data

BlackBerry seemed dead and buried. You have no idea how important it still is (but not for your mobile)

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Let’s take a little trip back in time. It’s 2014 and we’re in Silicon Valley. An executive named John Wall, president of QNXa division of Blackberry, has just arrived in the world’s technology mecca, fresh from Waterloo, in Ontario (Canada). He goes to a meeting with managers from Audi, one of his company’s best clients. The automotive firm has just announced the arrival of Android Auto to its cars. Meanwhile, Apple he doesn’t stop signing QNX engineers to create their own operating system for cars. Blackerry’s shortcomings continue to grow: after losing in mobile phones, it now also had a really bad time in the infotainment systems business. And then, something happened. A beer. The beer of the resurrection. Audi’s head of engineering went to have a beer with him and confessed that Audi was going to use Google’s infotainment systems. However, he told him, his next generation of cars would still need safety features that didn’t exist yet. So Wall came up with an idea. Instead of trying to control the car’s screen, I would try to conquer the software that is the backbone of that entire experience. “The circumstances that caused us to lose infotainment caused the company to pivot in the right direction, whether we knew it or not at the time,” counted Wall. The truth is that they did not have many alternatives, especially after experiencing one of the most famous boom and bust phenomena in the technology industry. From everything to (almost) nothing. In 2008 BlackBerry I was on top of the world. Its market capitalization at that time reached $83 billion, but from then on it plummeted mainly due to the iPhone. Today its capitalization round the 3,000 million dollars, but the surprise is that its great treasure is an almost mythical software that has turned out to be a success in the automotive world. Its name: QNX. How BlackBerry ended up making car software. In 2010 Research In Motion (RIM)—BlackBerry’s former official name— acquired QNX. This real-time operating system that appeared in the mid-1980s and in the 2000s completely changed its focus to target the automotive industry. When RIM bought it, it tried to take advantage of it for its own operating system, blackberry 10but we already know how that ended. QNX’s other big business. The curious thing is that while the company was sinking in the mobile market, QNX engineers who had not moved to the smartphone team continued working on car software. John Wall, president of QNX, has been with the company since graduating in the early ’90s, and in an interview in The Wall Street Journal he recalled how “no one paid attention to us.” That was precisely what changed the course of the company. A crucial operating system. QNX is the operating system that operates collision alerts, blind spot notifications, adaptive cruise control, pedestrian detection or lane correction systems. Not only in cars, be careful: also on motorcycles. It is invisible to the user, who never sees the QNX logo, but certainly sees that everything works. Wall compared his engineers to plumbers and electricians: “What makes QNX virtually irreplaceable is its reputation for never failing.” In Fortune a user commented years earlier how “the only way to make this software fail is to shoot a bullet at the computer running it.” A flourishing business. For years QNX was an overlooked division within an ailing company, but today it accounts for about half of BlackBerry’s total revenue. The software that failed on mobile phones and tablets has ended up being almost the only business that matters for the company, but it has not been limited to cars. QNX is integrated into surgical robots and dozens of medical devices in hospitals around the world. It is also used in industrial plants and automation systems that depend on the security and reliability that QNX provides. It is not without problemsof course, but its software is still key in many critical systems. Prize for being late. BlackBerry was late to the smartphone revolution and lost. It was also late to try to conquer the infotainment segment in the automobile industry and lost. But upon losing that second battle, it adapted and managed to reconvert its operating system into something for which it was precisely designed: a real-time operating system that does not fail and whose latency and response time was (and is) extraordinary. If QNX had continued trying to compete with CarPlay or Android Auto it would probably have disappeared completely, but now it is an absolute benchmark in a niche where its reliability is much more valuable than the flashy new features that infotainment systems usually sell. Today its systems are installed in more than 275 million vehicles. BlackBerry is doing well. BlackBerry shares are up 50% in the latest financial results, and the company has four consecutive quarters in profits. That has caused BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo to declare that his company “is now a growth story.” These data must be taken with caution, because BlackBerry is very far from where it was almost two decades ago, but the path this company has taken seems the right one. We may not see it compete in the mobility arena anymore, but it has become a fundamental element of an automobile industry that is only doing one thing: growing. In Xataka | There are still those who insist on resurrecting the keyboard and the jack: this is the mobile phone that brings them back with the scent of BlackBerry

Samsung has shown a new device with AI. It is not what we imagined and is reminiscent of an Apple idea

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When they tell us about a new device with artificial intelligencethe normal thing is that we think of a mobile phone, a laptop or, at most, the disappointing Rabbit R1 either Humane AI Pin. That’s why it’s interesting to stop when a company like Samsung teaches something that doesn’t quite fit into any of those boxes. What we have seen this time is not a common gadget, but a rather revealing clue as to how the South Korean giant could imagine a possible home interface of the future. What Samsung has shown in Milan is called Project Luna and, at least for now, it moves in the field of concepts. It is a desktop device with a mobile circular screen that acts as a head and can rotate to face the user. The company’s materials also show that this head not only rotates, but also changes orientation depending on the angle it needs. With that combination, Samsung draws a home device that wants to look less like a conventional speaker and more like an object designed to interact with the user. A concept that points further than a speaker One of the scenes that Samsung has used to show Luna places it on a kitchen table, connected to the user’s smartphone, playing music with an interface reminiscent of a record player and answering questions both by voice and on screen. In that same demonstration he also appears controlling the lighting in the room and suggesting food options for the day. Additionally, there are projectors scattered around the kitchen that display data such as the calories in the recipe or a calendar notice for a dinner party. And that’s where Luna begins to tell us something more interesting than her own design. In an interview with Fast CompanyMauro Porcini, Samsung’s chief design officer, explained that this concept represents more of “a vibe, a feeling of the type of design language we want to use.” The phrase matters because it lowers any immediate commercial reading and forces us to look at it differently. Rather than anticipating a launch, the firm seems to use this project to teach the type of language and relationship with the user that it wants to explore in future AI devices. And at that point it is difficult not to remember Apple. In August 2024, Mark Gurman told Bloomberg that the company was moving forward with the development of a home desktop device that would combine an iPad-like screen with a robotic arm. The proposal, according to that informationwas conceived as a home control center, a tool for video calls and a remote surveillance system, with a screen capable of tilting and rotating 360 degrees using actuators. It has not materialized as a product, but there is some underlying parallel with what Samsung is now teaching. The most interesting reading may not be in looking for an exact equivalence between what Samsung has taught and the rumors about Apple, but in stopping at the underlying trend. What we’ve seen suggests that home AI could end up taking a much more tangible form than the assistants or screens we already know. We are not yet talking about a consolidated category, far from it. But it does provide a fairly serious clue as to where the industry could move in the coming years. At this point, the temptation is to think: okay, that sounds good, but where exactly does something like this fit into our daily lives. Because we can imagine it on the kitchen counter, recommending a mealanswering a quick question or accompanying us while music plays, and the scene is even convincing. The problem is that that same house is already full of devices that already cover a good part of all that. Images | Samsung In Xataka | Meta spent 2 billion on a Chinese AI startup. China is clear that it was a conspiracy

Drink water right before going to sleep? Science has finally clarified whether it is a good idea or a terrible enemy of sleep

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Before going to sleep, some people may have an almost standardized ritual in which they should drink one or two glasses of water, and also have a backup on the bedside table in case they get thirsty in the middle of the night. But there are also many questions about whether it is positive to drink water before sleeping for eight hours or if it is counterproductive by forcing us to get up in the middle of the night. And here science has something to say. It has benefits. What is clearly known is that during the night our body does not go into a total pause, but rather continues with an active metabolism even though it is attenuated. That is why we lose approximately half a liter of water simply due to evaporation when breathing and sweating, and to compensate for this, hydration can be the best ally. It is investigated. A Japanese studio published this same year analyzed a group of middle-aged men to conclude that drinking 280 ml of water just before going to bed significantly reduces morning depressive mood and improves well-being upon waking up. But it is not the only one, because a 2025 crossover trial with 15 healthy adults found a relationship between drinking fluids before sleeping and the duration and quality of sleep. REM phasewhich is what makes us truly rest. And it makes sense, because adequate hydration favors the release of vasopressin, a key hormone for regulating the biological clock and preventing tissue dehydration during deep sleep. And it is essential, because it can translate into less fatigue and headaches in the morning. He has problems. It will not always be beneficial to have this habit, since the main enemy of drinking water at night is nocturiawhich is the need to wake up to urinate during the night. And although the total time we spend awake is not drastically altered, because it is only a few minutes, there is an interruption in sleep. It depends on the quantity. Logically, drinking a glass of water is not the same as drinking a whole bottle before going to sleep. That is why when you go over half a liter of water there is a possibility that some pre-existing problems such as chronic insomnia will worsen or even increase the risk of falls when getting up in the dark. How to do it. There are a series of tips that we can follow to stay hydrated during sleep and they are summarized in the following points: You should limit yourself to drinking around a quarter of a liter of water in the final part of the day to avoid overfilling your bladder. The last glass of water should be drunk two hours before going to sleep. Maintain good hydration throughout the day to avoid reaching the end of the day with a major hydration problem. Images | krakenimages.com on Freepik In Xataka | There are people obsessed with magnesium as a supplement when the best way is to put it directly into your diet

China has just launched its first undersea data center with total energy autonomy. The idea makes more sense than it seems

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In the AI ​​race, having a robust data center infrastructure to power it is essential, but first you need energy to power it all. The United States may lead the chip industry (at least, the strategic ones), but China follows closely at an unstoppable pace and furthermore, has the energy. And he is already beginning to connect the dots, showing off his technical power and ingenuity: already It has the largest data center in the worldis also a pioneer to submerge them under the sea. Now it has taken a twist with the first underwater data center that ‘drinks’ directly from the wind that just opened. This project represents the perfect union of two of China’s strategic priorities: digital sovereignty and carbon neutrality. By placing computing infrastructure on the seabed and powering it directly with clean energy on siteChina is solving one of the great current technological problems: the insatiable energy consumption of AI and Big Data. The project. About 10 kilometers off the coast of Shanghai, at the bottom of the East China Sea, a steel cylinder receives electricity directly from wind turbines and is cooled with sea water. It is the Lingang Subsea Data Centeran ambitious project promoted by Shanghai Hailan Cloud Technology (HiCloud) and built by CCCC Third Harbor Engineering. It consists of a series of data storage and processing modules encapsulated in watertight and submerged containers, which are connected via two 35 kV submarine cables to offshore wind turbines operating off the coast of Shanghai. With a planned capacity of 24 MW in two phases, the first is already operational: it has a capacity of 2.3 megawatts and includes a ground control center, a vertical data module installed under the sea and two main 35 kilovolt submarine cables. Why it is important. In addition to the fact that it does not occupy land, in cities as crowded as Shanghai it represents a valuable saving in land and that it can be installed close to where it is needed (if there is a coast, obviously), because it solves at the same time three structural problems of the sector: Refrigeration. Seawater acts as a constant and free heat sink, eliminating the need for industrial air conditioning systems that consume 40 to 50% of electricity. The metric that measures the energy efficiency of a data center by comparing the total energy consumed versus that used purely by the servers is the PUE, which for a standard data center on land is an average slightly higher than 1.5. The project promises to lower it to a figure not greater than 1.15. Without consumption of fresh water. Traditional data centers evaporate millions of liters of water to cool their servers, but this uses thermal exchange with the ocean, so it does not consume water resources. Take advantage of the surplus from wind power. One of the handicaps of wind energy is that generation depends on the wind and not on demand, so if you do not have a battery, the energy that is not consumed is wasted. Thanks to this direct connection, the data center absorbs wind production in real time, functioning as a constant consumer that reduces the waste of renewable energy due to lack of destination, In figures. The magnitude of the project, with some official numbers: The budget is 1.6 billion yuan, about 200 million euros. Total planned operational capacity of 24 MW (2.3 MW in the first phase). The design PUE is less than 1.15. More than 95 percent of electricity comes from renewable sources. Context. The name of HiCloud is not new because in fact it is an old acquaintance: it is the person behind the underwater prototype in front of Hainan which began to install in 2021. However, the international reference is the Natick project from Microsoft (2013–2024), which demonstrated the potential of underwater centers: only 8 of the 864 servers failed, a much lower mortality rate than that of any conventional data center in the same period and also got a very low PUE of only 1.07. Despite this, Microsoft shelved the matter: viability in terms of costs and maintenance is another story. However, the Lingang project has top-level institutional support: is present on the List of Green and Low Carbon Technology Demonstration Projects of the NDRC, China’s top economic planning body. How they have done it. Servers are placed in pressurized steel cabins filled with inert gases to prevent corrosion and fire with a design that maximizes interior space and minimizes the impact of waves. Heat is dissipated by pumping seawater through radiators located behind the racks. The most complicated operation was raising the cabin in the open sea: the separation between the legs of the support structure and the steel piles on the seabed was only 0.18 meters and the maximum allowable deviation was 10 centimeters, so GPS and the Sanhang Fengfan crane vessel were helped. Roadmap. The project follows a staggered progression that leaves certain unknowns. First was the prototype in Hainan (2021-2024). In 2025 the project began in Shanghai, whose phase 1 concluded in October of that year and it has just been launched a few weeks ago. The key phase that will take capacity up to 24 MW has no official public date. Of course, the consortium of companies made up of HiCloud, Shenergy Group, China Telecom Shanghai, INESA and CCCC Third Harbor Engineering signed a cooperation agreement in October 2025 to scale to 500 MW linked to offshore wind, although where and when is unknown. Yes, but. That 2.3 MW of phase 1 is practically a demonstration, not commercial infrastructure as a large conventional data center operates between 50 and 500 MW. And in addition, it has to resolve the issues that Microsoft’s Project Natick left unresolved, such as underwater maintenance: HiCloud has not published protocols or long-term repair costs. And scalability to 500 MW is at the moment more of an intention than a project In Xataka | Where you see a mountain, China sees a … Read more

A user has been powering his house with 1,000 laptop batteries and solar panels for 10 years. Others are already trying to copy the idea

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Second Life Storage is one of those places that seems to belong to another era. In the era of Reddit and Discord, this is a forum, one dedicated to a single topic: batteries. One of its users is Glubux, and it has been sharing progress on a most curious DIY project for years: a house powered by more than 1,000 batteries. The key is that they are recycled laptop batteries. And he has created a school. Glubux Powerwall. On November 9, 2019, Glubux opened a forum entry in which he shared some photos and detailed his project: he had started collecting laptop batteries years ago, he had collected about 650 and was doing tests to check stability, performance and possibilities. Little by little he was sharing news such as the packs – cells – that he was creating with dozens of interconnected batteries with a great objective: to power the house with standard lithium batteries. These cells are not created by chance: after dissecting each laptop battery, it classifies the units by capacity and rebuilds them into stable modules. This is how it started in 2017 | Photo: Glubux The idea was to create a large system that would work together like a conventional battery, but using those recycled ‘batteries’. He tried it and ended up connecting several packs to the home power. Less than a month later, Glubux commented that it had even successfully connected a vacuum cleaner for a total of 1,200 W of power and that there were no symptoms of heating. It was time to move on. This is how it was in 2024 | Photo: Glubux The shed. But of course, if batteries have taught us anything, it is that handling them is complicated and dangerous if something goes wrong. No matter how much care we take, something so homemade is likely to fail at some point, which could start a major fire. Having something like this inside the house is crazy, so Glubux created a very small shed on his plot, but enough to house the growing collection of more than 1,000 batteries. Last year we already commented that the latest of their reports was that none had shown signs of deterioration (such as swelling) and, after eight years, they had not had to change any cells. Now, his house was running on solar panels that sent power to homemade recycled battery cells. Photo: Glubux Feeding… everything. After expanding the solar installation (24 panels with 440 W), the storage capacity increased to 56 kWh and the system, which operates at 24 volts to feed A 3 kVA converter can power the house with its lights and appliances without problem. But it is not the only thing, since it also charges both a Tesla and an electric Nissan. Creating school. Glubux hasn’t participated in his thread for a while, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead. Other users have been sharing their adventures when creating similar systems. Some were even more veteran and had more batteries, and the most interesting thing is that they have created a space in which advice is given about the cells, the capacity of each of the cells or how to join batteries so that the systems are stable. Other similar projects | Photo: Daniel88 Not so homemade. These projects are almost as exciting as finding yourself in 2026 a furo so rudimentary that it still has an active community, but it must be said that powering the house with a wall of conventional batteries is not so exotic. In fact, Panasonic recently said it was reaching the limit of its capacity to produce battery cells for data centers. These are cells very similar to those of the Glubux project although, obviously, initially created to power systems such as data center racks. They are still systems made up of packs made up of hundreds of ‘batteries’. And now I can only wonder if Glubux’s silence is because it is building its own data center next to the shed. Images | Glubux, Daniel88

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