increasingly

17% more hospitalizations and increasingly overwhelmed emergencies

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He flu virus is reaching its peak with a higher infection rate after seeing practically vertical graphs in communities like Madrid or Catalonia. The positive point that we mentioned is that hospitalizations They weren’t increasing too much.but we can now put this idea aside because they have begun to grow. And that is a problem for the health system. Number of infections. The report of Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System of the ISCIII published this Thursday points to an incidence of 446.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants until last Sunday the 14th. An increase of almost 50% compared to the previous week, something that undoubtedly reminds us of the worst of the covid pandemic. Hospital admissions. One of the most striking points, since it can be clearly seen in hospital emergencies with long waits and a high number of patients waiting for a bed. And it is that revenue has increased by 17% until reaching 9 incomes per 100,000 inhabitants. Something that already is evident in the emergency room with patients waiting for beds, long waiting lines due to the flood of patients and a health system that is already beginning to be strained. Flu evolution in Spain by season. Source: ISCIII If we focus on the ages of the patients, those over 80 years of age have a rate of 56.2 cases per 100,000 people. But in children under one year old this figure drops to 48.8 cases. Unequal impact by communities. Although the trend is upward at the national level, the situation is not homogeneous. In the Community of Madrid, through the Notifiable Diseases system, 22,110 new flu cases during week 50. This is a figure that is quite far from other communities such as Castilla y León, which in the report WATCH reports a global rate of 149 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the case of influenza. Although in the case of acute respiratory infections in general this figure increases to 781 cases. Virus variant. Part of the blame for this great spread of the virus (at least much more than we saw in other years) is due to the variant k of the H3N2 influenza virus for which we were not entirely prepared. This has meant that the vaccine does not work 100%, and even generate certain doubts about the effectiveness of the campaign. What is clear is that it is mitigating part of its effects, minimizing its severity. This means that right now the recommendation to follow is to get vaccinated at the health center to have part of this protection. The holidays begin. The peak of the flu seems to be approaching, but there is still a very important event: Christmas dinners. A moment where there is a large accumulation of people in the same closed area and which can lead to a considerable increase in infections after these important dates. And the most relevant transmitter is undoubtedly the smallest in the house, who a priori may not show many symptoms or may even take much longer to show them. This makes it easy for them to spread it, especially for the older people in their environment who can develop a much more serious flu that may end up in a hospital. right now it’s starting to collapse. The forecast. As we say, the great ‘boom’ of the contagion curve is expected for this Christmas due to this number of contacts. But from here everything will begin to go downwards with the aim of recovering normality already into 2026. It must also be taken into account that this year the epidemic began earlier than expected, so it can also be seen that it will end earlier than what happened in other years. Images | Victory Brittany Colette In Xataka | Centuries later, tuberculosis remains a deadly disease. Now we have a shortcut to detect it: rats

a logical evolution in a context where fintech increasingly offers more services

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PayPal has introduced a formal request before the US authorities to establish PayPal Bank, a banking entity that would allow it to expand its financial services beyond digital payments. The idea is that first, the company can offer loans to small businesses and savings accounts with interest to its customers. It would be the first step in a logical evolution in a context in which all fintech companies are committed to offering more and more services. Strategy. PayPal has filed for approval with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions to create a Utah-based industrial lending company. This type of entity can make loans, hold FDIC-insured deposits, and be owned by a non-financial institution. The objective: financial autonomy. According to declared PayPal CEO Alex Chriss, “raising capital remains a significant obstacle for small businesses looking to grow and scale.” The creation of PayPal Bank would reduce its dependence on third parties to provide financing, improving operational efficiency. According to the firm’s account, since 2013, PayPal has facilitated more than $30 billion in loans and capital to more than 420,000 business accounts around the world. A favorable regulatory context. This step by PayPal comes at a time of regulatory opening in this area under the Trump administration. Just like they count From Bloomberg, last week, five cryptocurrency platforms, including Ripple and Circle, received preliminary approval to establish national trust banks. Until a few years ago, approval was perceived as a complicated path. The fintech trend towards banking. PayPal joins a wave of financial technology companies seeking to become regulated banking entities. According to collect the Financial Times, Brazil’s Nubank and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have all applied for banking licenses this year. As a curiosity, other firms that a priori might have nothing to do with this sector, such as Nissan Motor and Sony Group, have also submitted similar requests. Even “buy now, pay later” platforms like Klarna and Affirm have launched debit cards, competing directly with traditional entities. Between the lines. The fintech sector is maturing, with a special ambition to offer financial services of all kinds. PayPal already has a banking license in Luxembourg, and in fact this makes it considered a banking entity throughout the European Union. The direction it wants to take in the United States would be the first step to consolidate its status as a global financial entity. The company also seeks to connect directly with American credit and debit card networks, eliminating intermediaries in its payment operations. Leading PayPal Bank will be Mara McNeill, former CEO of Toyota Financial Savings Bank. Stock market performance. Despite the announcement, which has driven shares up 1.5% in the extended market, according to CNBCPayPal is going through a difficult year on the stock market. The firm accumulates a drop of 29% in 2025, while the S&P 500 has risen almost 16% in the same period. However, in October the company reported quarterly revenue of $8.42 billion, up 7% year-over-year and above analyst expectations. Cover image | Brett Jordan In Xataka | Elon Musk’s fortune has exceeded $600 billion: SpaceX is not only breaking records in space

that building nuclear power plants becomes increasingly cheaper

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While Western countries debated for or against nuclear energy, with the construction of new plants weighed down by decades of delays and cost overruns, China has not only continued building: He has done it against the trend of the sector. For the first time in more than 50 years, a country has made building nuclear reactors increasingly cheaper, faster and scalable. The difference is overwhelming. The only two reactors built in the United States this century (at the Vogtle plant in Georgia) took 11 years to complete and cost a whopping $35 billion, equivalent to about $15 per watt of capacity. According to a analysis published in NatureChina is building its new nuclear power plants for just $2 a watt. It is not an anomaly, but a trend. Construction costs in the United States have increased tenfold since the 1960s, and in France they have almost doubled. In China they halved during the 2000s and have remained stable since then. The big question is how they have achieved it, and whether the rest of the world can imitate them. The Chinese nuclear recipe. Building a nuclear power plant remains one of the most complex engineering projects on the planet. If China has managed to do this in an increasingly efficient way, it is thanks to a mix of standardization and unwavering state support. The three state nuclear giants receive low-interest loans, which greatly reduces the cost of financing. Unlike the West, where each project has been a new experiment with unique designs, China has often focused on building a handful of models, scaling its nuclear capability rapidly. But these are just the last steps of the recipe. To get here, Beijing had to invest in mastering each link in the supply chain. Made in China. As detailed in a extensive New York Times reportthe country has developed a robust national industry capable of forging everything from reactor vessels to the most critical components of each nuclear power plant. Components made in China, such as cargo pumps or ring cranes, cost half as much as their imported equivalents. A perfect example is the American-designed AP1000 reactor. Both the United States and China faced enormous challenges building this model. But as problems led to delays and skyrocketing costs that nearly buried the American industry, China paused, studied every flaw, and ended up developing an improved, nationalized version of the reactor: the CAP1000. It is now building nine reactors of this model within just five years, and at a drastically lower cost. The winning strategy. “China demonstrates that the construction and operation costs of nuclear power do not have to increase unabated,” explains Dan Kammenprofessor at Johns Hopkins University. Breaking the curse of cost overruns requires “more than technology: it requires an intelligent and strategic approach,” says Kammen. The result of this approach is that China is on track to overtake the United States as the largest nuclear power in the world in 2030. Today it has almost as many reactors under construction as the rest of the world combined. It is not a simple bet, but a State policy that does not end at its borders. China has already put two Hualong One reactors into operation in Pakistan, and has plans to continue expanding throughout Asia, Africa and South America. Waiting for the SMR. While China perfects the construction of large already proven reactors, Western countries follow a radically different path: betting on innovation through the private sector. Dozens of startups are working on a new generation of small modular reactors (SMR), theoretically cheaper and faster to build. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft They have invested billions in them to power their energy-hungry data centers. The problem is not only that This technological advance will take years to maturebut China does not live apart from it. The country is already taking giant steps in future technologies, such as fourth-generation gas-cooled reactors or research into thorium reactors. And he could repeat the same strategies that have worked with traditional reactors. Image | CNNC In Xataka | China has turned the energy sector upside down: the first fusion-proof nuclear power plant is already a success

The signs that the system is broken are increasingly evident

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On October 17, 2023, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (the professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania) gave an interview in El Mundo with a very simple headline “it shows: (in Spain) everything works badly.” Everyone thought it was exaggerated, sensationalist. But then it came the DANA (and its management), the April blackoutthe Redsys repeated crash and the payment system, fire chaos and, finally, the Andalusian mammography scandal. What began as an (apparently) isolated complaint has become a deep institutional crisis for Andalusian healthcare. But the problem goes much further, the request for data from the Ministry of Health to the rest of the communities has revealed that Spain has a huge problem with all this, that in fact in Spain more and more things are working poorly. The mammography crisis. Although the first complaints surfaced at the beginning of 2024 and the affected associations met with the Board during the summer, until the first cases reached the media, the Ministry of Health did not recognize that more than 2,000 women may not have been informed of a questionable lesion after screening. What came next was chaos: after limiting the problem to a single Hospital, they were forced to recognize a widespread problem and implement a “shock plan” that no one knows very well how it will be implemented. And, in the midst of this commotion, the Ministry of Health asked the communities for data to know how screening was working throughout the country. many of them they have refused (although not all). The prosecution has taken letters in the matter. The underlying problem. Because, honestly, we run the risk of thinking that all this is nothing more than another political battle: a partisan scuffle that, this time, has acquired the format of a health controversy. The clearest example is that the PP Health Ministers they just left en bloc the Interterritorial Health Council; while the Ministry accuses the communities of “hiding” the screening data because it is “bad” and shows their “incompetence.” But not. It is enough to analyze the data of any community to see that the underlying problem is that healthcare is increasingly having problems addressing the care burden it has on it. The case of Madrid is paradigmatic because, even though protocols are well designed On paper, “in most public centers the lists and the average waiting time grow” year after year. Similar problems we can see throughout the country. How deep is this crisis? That is surely the worst of all: that we still cannot know how deep the problem is because the opacity of the Spanish institutional framework is enormous. It is true that this is not exclusively a Spanish problem: we still remember thehe confidence with which public health systems Westerners that they would be able to detect COVID and block it before it arrived to their respective populations. Shortly after, Italy’s outbreak broke out. What we don’t know is costing us our health. Civio has been researching for years as primary care is drowninghow public psychological care is almost a chimera, how dozens of health services depend on where you live and how, little by little, health is falling into the hands of private interests. But even that doesn’t explain the problem we are in. Because the central issue is that we don’t even know how we are. We also don’t know where we are going. And that is the worst of all: it removes the very possibility of us taking the reins and coming up with solutions. Image | Junta of Andalusia | NCI In Xataka | Predicting breast cancer five years before it appears, possible thanks to artificial intelligence

From Europe its “welfare state” was envied. But it is increasingly difficult to pay, and France is the best example

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Europa presumed for decades of having found the perfect formula to combine economic prosperity with social justice: hospitals open to all, affordable universities and worthy retirements after a work life. That pact between generations, envied on the other side of the Atlantic, became the identity mark of the continent. And yet They begin to become visible. And one of its banners wobbles: France. A price too high. I told this week The Washington Post. Europe lives a historical crossroads: the social model that guaranteed universal health, accessible education and decent retirements begins to show cracks that can no longer be hidden. France It is the epicenter of that tension. There, the runaled public debt, political paralysis and succession of Fallen prime ministers In just fifteen months they show deep wear. The State Spend more than any other country rich in social protection, but that expense seems unsustainable in a context of low growth and growing polarization. The recent resignation From Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, unable to agre as inalienable. Model under generational pressure. There are more, since, in France, new generations feel that they inherit a system that they cannot sustain. He Post counted Cases of young people such as Anastasia Blay, who depend on intermittent subsidies to survive, convinced that they should not load with the mistakes of the past or give up a decent life. In front of them, retirees like Christine Boucau-Podorski They defend The pensions achieved after decades of hard work and are willing to limited sacrifices, but not losing acquired rights. This struggle between young and old reflects the intergenerational shock that crosses To all of Europe: Who pays the invoice, what benefits should be preserved and to what extent intergenerational solidarity can continue to be the base of the European social contract. Germany and France Wobm up. Fragility is not limited to France. Germany, the other great Historical support of the European Union, faces industrial recessiondeterioration of infrastructure and a government that admits since “the current system is unassumable.” Political tensions are intense, with the social democratic opposition refusing to accept drastic cuts and the extreme right by capitalizing citizen discomfort. Meanwhile, the Ultras games grow On both sides of the rhine fed by social disenchantment and the feeling of stagnation. The paradox is that Italy or Spainonce considered weak links, they exhibit today greater stability macroeconomic than European locomotives. The center, formerly balancing, has become the area of ​​greatest uncertainty, which weakens the European project at a time of growing external threats. The southern paradox. It is quite striking that countries historically seen as fragile, such as Spain and Italy, today appear (either They seem) as relatively more stable. Italy, after decades of political instability, lives its strongest period with a controversial government that has even achieved An improvement of the credit rating. Spain, meanwhile, has reduced by half unemployment in the last decade and maintains growth above the European average, despite spend less on well -being than France or Germany. This roles investment shows to what extent the clichés of the southern Europe have been exceeded: the Mediterranean nations, previously accused of fiscal laxity, seem to have learned to navigate austerity, while “the rich north” It sinks in its own budgetary rigidity. The perfect storm. The challenge is aggravated by external factors that multiply internal pressures. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine pushes to increase the defense expensejust when public coffers They are already exhausted. China Compete fiercely With European industry, from electric cars to nuclear energy, eroding the international position of German and French manufactures. And the United States, far from offering security, Add uncertainty with a president who changes position in a matter of days and threatens tariffs to his own allies. Europe must decide If prioritize shield Your welfare state, to reorient resources towards military security or find a balance that does not sacrifice either global competitiveness or social cohesion. The great unknown. Experts Like Andreas Eisl They argue that the dilemma is first of all politician: it is not if Europe can maintain its social model, but to what extent it wants to do it and what sacrifices is willing to assume. Attempts to apply cuts, such as 44,000 million euros proposed in the budget that demolished Prime Minister François Bayrou, have caused A massive rejection on the street and fed polarization. However, mathematics is relentless: with a aging populationa Birth in Declive and one Increasing resistance To immigration, the fiscal base narrows while the needs increase. Europe may not be on the verge of a Greek collapse, or it does not seem, but the sustainability of its “way of life” indicates that it has ceased to be An unquestionable dogma. And that is, perhaps, the true battle of the future: if the old continent manages to reinvent his social contract without dynamiting him in the process. Image | Pexels, Martin Greslou In Xataka | Spain has a big problem with the generational relief of the labor market: 3.5 million young workers are missing In Xataka | Birth in Poland is a disaster and hotels have had an idea: money for those who conceive in a stay

Chinese astronauts have spent six hours reinforcing tiangong against an increasingly dangerous enemy: space garbage

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The night in orbit just leaves truce. In low orbit, the Tiangong Space Station It becomes the scene of a constant activity that requires millimeter precision. In the last extravehicular exitChinese astronauts had to face a challenge that does not come from technical failures or scientific experiments, but from a silent enemy that multiplies the risks of each mission: the Space garbage which accumulates in the low terrestrial orbit and threatens to hit the structure of the complex. The schedule of China’s manned flight agency places the start of extravehicular activity on September 25 at 19:45 (Beijing time), with Wang Jie as the first astronaut to leave the Wentian module. It was followed shortly after Chen Zhongrui, in charge of attending the installation of the equipment. Chen Dong, from inside Tiangong, managed communications with the control center and supported his teammates throughout the maneuver. The walk concluded at dawn, at 1:35 of September 26, when the two crew closed the hatch after completing the planned agenda. The maneuver was carried out with support from the robotic arm of the station and the team on land. Sludes against fragments: Tiangong’s strategy to resist in space During the walk, the main objective was to install a protection device against Orbital fragmentsdesigned to reinforce the most exposed areas of the station. The operation also included the review of the state of external equipment and structures, with special attention to the systems that suffer greater wear due to continuous exposure to the spatial environment. According to those responsible for the programthis combination of installation and maintenance seeks to ensure that Tiangong maintains its operational capacity in the middle of an increasingly saturated environment of remains. The increase in spatial garbage in the low orbit is one of the factors that most worries agencies in recent years. Each launch adds fragments that, although small, reach speeds that multiply their damage. For China, reinforcing Tiangong does not respond to a specific incident, but to the need to get ahead of an increasingly complex scenario. China is not the only one that has had to reinforce its station in the face of the threat of orbital fragments. The International Space Station Specific armor systems for years have beenknown as anti-mmod shields, which protect their habitable modules from impacts from Micrometeoritos and space garbage. The difference is in the context: it is an infrastructure with more than two decades of service, which has needed to adapt continuously to an increasingly congested environment. In the ISS, this philosophy materializes in shields in Whipple and Stupfed Whipple layers, with several hundred shields distributed in critical areas. The comparison between Tiangong and the International Space Station helps to understand the scope of its protection systems. The Chinese station completed its construction in 2022 with a T configuration formed by the Tianhe, Wentian and Mengtian modules. The ISS, on the other hand, began to assemble in 1998 and ended its main segment in 2011, with a much broader and more complex structure. This difference in dimensions and seniority explains why its shields follow different logics: ISS combines protections included from its design with reinforcements added over the years, while Tiangong integrates solutions designed from the beginning for a more congested environment. The closure of this extravehicular activity does not imply a break, but the beginning of a new stage for the Shenzhou-20 mission. The three astronauts They will continue with numerous scientific experiments and technological tests, in addition to participating in on -board celebrations linked to the Chinese calendar. The installation of additional shields has a clear objective: to hold over time the crew safety and the integrity of Tiangong, which aspires to consolidate as a stable basis for space research in the midst of a more demanding orbital environment. Images | Xinhua In Xataka | 24 years ago, the earth was symmetrical. Now the northern hemisphere is “unequivocally” darker than the southern hemisphere

Levante’s floods point out that we are not prepared before an increasingly dangerous Atlantic

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Corted roads, trains delays, canceled flights rescue in three provinces. “The neighbors are panic“, said the mayor of Aldaia.” A few weeks after one year after the Dana tragedy, it seems that the phenomenon will be repeated, ” We could read In social networks. Gabrielle has been more than the remains of a hurricane, has been a reminder of all the pain of recent months and a promise: it will not be the last time. But are we prepared? A fact that seems curious, but it is something else. The 2025 hurricanes season has been very quiet, but something that has not happened for 90 years has happened. As Philip Klotzbach explainedwith “Humberto (…) the Atlantic would have a record of 3 of 3 hurricanes that became important in 2025 (Erin and Gabrielle were the others). The last time the first 3 hurricanes of a hurricane season in the Atlantic were important was in 1935”. But, in addition, none has touched earth (Gabrielle has already done it in the form of a postropical storm). That is, are the great Atlantic hurricane factory changing? Martín León has a good summary of the situation. The three cyclones “(1) have been formed from tropical waves of the east coming from Africa, (2) have moved through warm open waters, (3) have quickly intensified over very warm waters in the western Atlantic, (4) have recurred, or resort to the east to experience an extroatropical transition and (5) they will reach or reach the European coasts (transformed into the European coast postropical). It is true that it is early to draw conclusions. Until now (and despite the forecasts that it was going to be much stronger) “the 2025 hurricane station It is still close of the normal. “This was commented on by Martín León is curious, but is far from becoming a trend. And none of that changes the real problem. What problem? The current situation has taught us three things: the first one, a year ago, we were not prepared to support a blow like that of the Dana; The second, during this year, is that our institutional system does not seem capable of preparing quickly; And the third, these days, is that Valencia was not an isolated event, but a systemic risk in dozens of points of the country. Whether or not the change in tendency in the Atlantic, the situation is clear: climate change It exposes us to increasingly extreme meteorological phenomena. And our approach is the same as that of the last decades: nothing. But is this really new? Yes and no. As Emilio Rey explained to us“This type of phenomena has a period of recurrence of a certain time. Some occur every 20 years, another 50 or 100 years. But we know that it will happen again. It has always passed and will continue to happen in the future because our situation on the planet and the circumstances of this time of the year allow it. It will not pass every year but it will happen.” In any case, with climate change the frequency with which the strongest phenomena affects us will be modified. What the infrastructure of Castellón, TarragonaValencia or Saragossa There is much to do. Image | Via Stormyalert In Xataka | Google has demonstrated with its AI that the prediction of storms and hurricanes is outdated. This is how your new model works

The mechanics of Spain are increasingly trusting Asian cars. And maintenance data are right

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“If you want a car that does not fail, buy a Toyota or a Honda.” This phrase is a classic when it touches Buy a carwe want one that passes as little as possible through the workshop and we start asking acquaintances. It has an obvious problem: it is a bias limited affirmation and experience, but there are more and more voices that point that, perhaps, it does not go so disenchanted. Because there are countless brands, each with its reputation, but beyond the film that each company wants to tell us to close the embers to its flame, there are two elements of help when buying a car that does not fail: Reliability surveys and experience of mechanics. The mechanics. “I think the Asian market has eaten the European, when it was the other way around.” This is the opinion that the mechanic Kike Ferrer shared A few months ago, pointing out that “the best cars you can buy are Asians, they are the ones that are least repaired in the workshops” That is an important point because when they are under guarantee, it does not bother to have to visit the workshop, but the problems come when the Reliability outside that guarantee framework It begins to be compromised. There may be minor arrangements, but also many who bite in their pocket. The mechanic Carlos Pérez has also commented Recently that “Honda, Mazda, Toyota … are very reliable cars, well manufactured and that endure many kilometers without giving problems. Nor must we forget Kia and Hyundai, Korean and a quality guarantee.” The statistics. Kike’s is not an isolated opinion, and to check it, you have to go to statistics. This type of surveys and lists They are always controversial Because reliability is measured for both software and mechanics and, above all, because it is segmented to the North American market. Two of the most important are that of Consumer Reports and that of JD Power. Consumer Report Analyze 20 problematic areas of the car (ranging from the brakes to the engine, through broken beautifiers, potential problems outside battery, transmission and problems that affect the electric and hybrids as the battery and load) and compares with the historic since 2000, giving a score from 1 to 100 to each car. JD Power also handles reports sent by thousands of consumers. They are not simple surveys, but a thermometer that the automobile industry takes very seriously (so much that some of its findings They have forced brands to take action (such as the failure in the rotary engines of Mazda in 1973). That said, Asians such as Toyota, Lexus, Subaru, Honda, Hyundai or Mazda usually occupy the top positions. OCU table The OCU. Within each brand, obviously, there are better or worse models. For example, within Toyota, the BZ4Xlowered the score of the brand in one of the surveys. Interestingly, it is the basis of Subaru’s single, and also lowers the average of this company. But of course, when we say that it is a biased list, we mean that, although there are models that we share between markets, the European and the American are not the same. There the OCU comes into play and Whatar. Let’s go with the seconds. It is a British media that conducted a survey of almost 30,000 drivers to find the most reliable models of Great Britain. The same as before: the ones that have gone through the workshop. The result is that Lexus and Toyota (same group) led the list with the Lexus NX and the Toyota Aygo X. The following were the Mini Countryman, the Audi Q3 and the Kia Picanto. Regarding the OCU, with other almost 30,000 people surveyed in Europe and information of 276 models, In the 2024 table We see that the Top 10 is occupied by eight Asian brands and the only non -Japanese/South Korean are Cupra and Smart. And the Chinese? In the different surveysthere are names that usually exchange positions, but there are three elements that do not vary. The first thing is that Lexus is usually the first. The second is that the Japanese and South Korean are the ones who take the top positions and the third is that those brands that we see more and more through the streets are missing: the Chinese. In Kike Ferrer’s interview to Adrian.gmartin, the mechanic mentions To the Chinese cars among those reliable Asians, but with an asterisk: the spare parts logistics that, in their opinion, is not yet up to it, sharing an opinion with Pérez. Brands like mg (of the best selling in Spain) or byd are the ones that we begin to see the most in the streets and, although it will have to spend time for official guarantees to be exhausted and we start having data on how much they pass through the workshop, there are already authorized voices that approve Chinese cars. For example, Enroncap, the body responsible for granting security scores in the European territory that is clear that they are even better than others of more settled brands in the region. But of course, in the end, although a very valid opinion has nothing to do with seeing them more or less in the workshop. For that, as we say, we will have to wait a few more years. Images | OCU, Magic Booster In Xataka | The German ITV has analyzed the reliability of the Tesla and has reached a conclusion: Dacia is above

It is increasingly cheap, and we are increasingly paying more than ever to use it

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Every time Chatgpt generates a word, that costs money. But the price of that word generated has not stopped falling since the launch of that model, and the same goes for its rivals. Today we have AI models that are not only more powerful, but also They are cheaper than everand the funny thing is that we are paying more and more to use them. What is happening? Tokens. OpenAI define Tokens as “common character sequences found in a text set.” That “basic unit” of information It is what these models use to understand what we are saying and then process those texts to answer. Every time we use ChatgPT we have on the one hand the request with the text we introduce (input tokens) and on the other the text generated by the chatbot (output tokens). Price per million tokens (dollars) Entrance Exit GPT-5 1.10 10 GPT-4O 2.5 10 O1 15 60 Gemini 2.5 Pro ( 200ktokens) 2.5 15 Claude Opus 4.1 15 75 Claude sonnet 4 ( 200k Tokens) 6 22.5 Price per million tokens. And when we use an AI model, the price of using it is precisely measured how much it costs every million input tokens and every million output tokens. The more powerful a model is, the higher the price of those tokens, and to get an idea these are the prices of some current models. The prices of the output tokens (those generated by the machines) are remarkably higher than those of entry: it costs much more to generate text than “to receive and understand it.” AI models are getting better and getting cheaper. At least, in terms of cost per million tokens. Source: Epoch AI. But prices have not stopped down. Those prices per million input or output tokens, however, have fallen remarkably since ChatgPT (at that time based on GPT-3.5) appeared on the scene. An Epoch AI study March 2025 revealed how the price of inference – generating text, as they do chatgpt, gemini or Claude – has not stopped falling. In some cases the models are smaller and efficient, and also the hardware is also now more profitable, which favors that price drop. And we still pay more and more for using the AI. However, developers who use these AI models to program are realizing that their invoices are increasingly high. These types of professionals have been the ones who have taken advantage of the advantages of this technology, but in doing so they have realized that contradiction. Actually the explanation is simple. Reason spends many tokens. The problem is that reasoning models consume many tokens. This type of technology improves the precision of the answers, but to achieve it the models do not stop “thinking” and generating different theories and then analyzing them and keeping the solution they consider more likely or better. The models that “do not think” and generate text “only once” consume few tokens, but those who “reason” multiply that cost remarkably. The Vibe Coding comes out expensive. The most expensive example of those high costs of AI have it in the “Vibe Coding” platforms. With them it is possible to program almost without knowing how to program, but these tools make an extensive use of the AI ​​models, and there the consumption of tokens (especially those of exit, which are the most expensive) shoot. Several companies in this segment, such as Windsurf or Cursorthey have realized how difficult it is to make money with AIand there are also various users They are warning of those Shot costs In Reddit, for example. And AI agents promise to be very expensive. IA agents are expected to be able to do many things for usbut these systems will be expensive because they will also consume many tokens to understand, “reason” and reach the desired solution. Solution: Use you that do not think so much. Faced with those IAS that “reason” and consume many costs, the alternative is clear: not to resort to the reasoning models and instead opt for models that “do not reason” to reduce costs. These models are much cheaper to use and can be useful for many scenarios. Fortunately, models of efficient and increasingly cheap that reason are also appeared: Deepseek R1 is a good proof of this. The famous router may not be a bad idea. When OpenAI GPT-5 launched He did it with his famous “router” or “router” that analyzed the request and decided on its own what variant of the model (more or less powerful) had to answer the question. As we saw, That router tends to choose to use the “cheap” modelbut that is not a bad idea. Neither for OpenAI (who costs much less processing the answer) nor for users (who also consume less resources and have more free fee for other questions that perhaps need “reasoning”). Image | Levart Photography | IGAL Ness In Xataka | AI agents are promising. But as in Tesla’s FSD, you better not take your hands from the steering wheel

Solar storms are increasingly threatening for the earth. NASA wants to prepare with a “digital twin” of the sun

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The sun, that star that gives us life, also has an unpredictable character and potentially destructive. So much so that A large solar storm It could return to us technologically to the stone age in the blink of an eye. To avoid this, NASA and IBM They have joined forces To create a model that simulates the behavior of the sun. And how could it be otherwise, it has been generated with artificial intelligence. A authentic twin of the sun to understand it better. The union of forces of these two institutions has resulted in the creation of Surya, an artificial intelligence Designed to act as a digital twin of the sun and anticipate their violent outbursts with precision that with the models that are currently used cannot be achieved. Training an AI with the heart of a star. The challenge of predicting the space climate is undoubtedly a great challenge For scientists. To build Surya, the engineers turned to an inexhaustible data source: the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) NASA Hala. For nine years, this probe has State watching the sun without restcapturing images of very high resolution every 12 seconds in different wavelengths and measuring its complex magnetic field. Once you have all this information is where artificial intelligence comes into action to be able to organize and interpret them for experts. That is why the first thing Surya did is standardize all data formats to be able to process them together. Intelligent filtering of all this information. Once the data was unified, the next step was to use a long -range vision transformer, an architecture capable of analyzing gigantic images to identify patterns and relationships between points of solar activity, regardless of how far they are from each other. But he did not stay here, because thanks to a mechanism known as ‘spectral door’, the system was able to filter the ‘noise’ of the data to reduce memory use and improve the quality of the information with which it worked. Therefore, researchers were removed a lot of work to have to label all the images, causing it to adapt rapidly. More precision and twice as much time to react. The results of the initial tests are very promising. Until now, Traditional models barely gave us an hour in advance before a solar eruption. With Surya it has been shown to be able to launch a reliable warning two hours in advance, doubleing the humanity preparation window. But it is not only faster, but also accurate. The IBM and NASA team recorded a 16% improvement in precision when classifying solar rashes compared to the models used right now. Something that is also thanks to the ability to integrate information from other missions such as Parker solar probe or the Soho Observatory. An open tool for the science of the future. Far from saving this powerful tool in a key drawer, IBM and NASA have made it available to the entire scientific community. Surya is now available on platforms such as Hugging Face, GITHUB or even the Terratorch library. Kevin Murphy, NASA scientific data director, is clear: “We facilitate the analysis of the complexity of our star’s behavior with unprecedented speed and precision. This opens the door to a better understanding of the impact of solar activity on the systems on which our daily life depends.” The goal is for the Earth to be prepared. Although we see the central star of our system as harmless, the reality is that at any time this sensation can change. In this way, preparation and anticipation is fundamental and for the moment all hopes are put in this model of where it is possible to learn from the processes behind the evolution of the sun with the aim of having a greater amount of information. Images | Javier Miranda In Xataka | How the Solar System was formed: So that the Earth was born, a star had to die

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