industry

Losing weight with Ozempic is emptying the bodies. The beauty industry already knows how to fill them: with corpse fat

by

If you have ever lost weight, you have surely found yourself in this situation: the scale shows fewer kilos and your pants fit looser, but you have lost volume in unexpected (and unwanted) areas while others remain more or less the same. Spoiler: fat loss is not uniform. Whether you are on a diet or not, there is always the option of undergoing cosmetic surgery to remedy it, but of course: we are talking about a surgical intervention with all that it entails. Something has come to cover both gaps: that of avoiding surgery and those that allow you to lose weight: an injectable made from corpse fat. A “miraculous” injection with a peculiar ingredient. CNN account precisely the case of a 43-year-old lawyer from Los Angeles who had been considering breast augmentation for 20 years, but was held back by pain, recovery and the idea of ​​carrying “a strange bag” on her body. Last year he found the solution in AlloClae, which is the name of this injectable manufactured by Tiger Aesthetics. Designed for body contouring and soft tissue correction, the raw material is fat from donated corpses that, after following a treatment approved by the US Drug Agency and which, according to the manufacturer, eliminates the DNA of the deceased, is ready to be applied with an injection. Unlike classic fat grafts, in which healthcare personnel extract fat from the patient with luposuction and return it to another area, AlloClae arrives ready to use. Dead fat? Since May 2025, its manufacturer has reported more than 2,000 patients treated and on Reddit there is several threads with doubts. And be careful, the idea is not new: Renuvafrom the nonprofit MTF Biologics, has been injecting cadaver fat for more than a decade. But there is a substantial difference: size. While Renuva injects a maximum of three cubic centimeters, Alloclae reaches up to 25 cubic centimeters. Why now. Having a less invasive alternative to surgery for cosmetic touch-ups is always an incentive to carry them out, but the driving force behind this trend is GLP-1 drugs. In a society like the United States, where 11% use Ozempic-type medications to lose weight, many people face unwanted volume loss in parts of their body. According to the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Indexabout 11% of Americans currently use medications such as Ozempic or Wegovy to lose weight, and many patients lose unwanted facial or body volume. So after losing weight, these people seek to regain volume in places such as the face, chest or buttocks, says plastic surgeon Luis Macias. How it works. The procedure is applied in consultation, so there is no need to go to a hospital or general anesthesia. In just one hour it has already concluded and as Sandra accountthe instructions for the “postoperative” are “surprisingly simple.” Everything seems so simple that since January of this year it is not even necessary to be a plastic surgeon: nursing professionals and assistants can also apply it, although with certain restrictions. About legality and ethics. Before you die, you can give your consent for organ donation or to give your body to science. In the United States, the former are governed by federal law, but the body and tissues are a separate case whose legislation varies by state. That difference has already cost Tiger Aesthetics dearly: New York blocked distribution of the product, and the company has sued the state seeking at least $500,000 for lost sales, while it looks for new knitting banks in other states to continue growing. The problem is not so much legal as consent: in that form they give you does not appear explicitly if you want to donate your tissues to make Alloclae. It only allows you to check whether the donor authorizes their tissue to be used for research, commercial purposes, or without restrictions. That is to say: there are companies making money with a gesture intended as altruistic, without the donor really knowing what their body will become. In Xataka | Ozempic has radically redefined what we eat and how much we eat. And the ultra-processed ones are taking advantage of it In Xataka | We believed that with Ozempic, people who lost weight exercised more. we believed wrong Cover | Lobacheva Ina and Haberdoedas

ASML sells the most important machines in the chip industry. Now everything indicates that they will be more expensive

by

ASML, the only company in the world capable of manufacturing lithography equipment extreme ultraviolet (EUV) needed to produce the most advanced chips, is preparing for a rise in costs in its machinery. And the first to stand up has been, precisely, its most important client: TSMC. And according to has revealed The Information, the Taiwanese manufacturer is beginning to resist negotiations. Why is it important. ASML is the bottleneck of the entire semiconductor industry. Without their machines, neither Nvidia, nor Apple, nor TSMC, nor Samsung would be able to manufacture the chips that fuel the artificial intelligence boom. That it decides to raise prices, something The Information says it has rarely done in its history, is a sign of the extent to which demand for AI has given the company bargaining power it didn’t have before. In detail. ASML’s plans affect its two large families of machines. On the one hand, according to has confirmed The company’s own financial director, Roger Dassen, during the presentation of second quarter results, there is a way to increase the price of low numerical aperture (Low-NA) EUV systems, its most in-demand technology. On the other hand, ASML has already told several customers, including Chinese manufacturers, that their DUV (deep ultraviolet, somewhat less advanced but still essential) equipment will cost 10% more, according to share the middle. Some Chinese clients have already agreed to pay that extra cost; TSMC, on the other hand, has not wanted to jump through hoops for the moment. Each new generation of ASML machines processes more wafers per hour and improves etching precision, which means more and higher quality chips for its customers. It is what the company itself calls “value-based pricing”, since the logic that follows is that if its equipment generates more economic benefit for the factories that use it, ASML wants to keep a part of that additional benefit, as Dassen explained in the conference with analysts. Between the lines. TSMC’s anger has its explanation. And the Taiwanese manufacturer has been defending for years that You do not need to jump to the very expensive High-NA equipment (which exceed 350 million euros per unit) and that can continue to squeeze out its cheaper Low-NA machines through design improvements and computational photolithography techniques. In fact, according to they count From Tom’s Hardware, its entire manufacturing roadmap until 2030 is based on that premise. If ASML makes precisely those Low-NA machines more expensive as their performance improves, the cost advantage that TSMC had built with that strategy is reduced. Additionally, TSMC needs to buy dozens of these machines for its new plants in Taiwan, the United States and Japan, so even a moderate increase can add billions of dollars to its investment. It is also worth noting that ASML has practically sold its production capacity until 2027 and a good part of 2028, with prices already agreed in those contracts. That means that, in practice, the company could only apply the new rates to orders delivered from the second half of 2028. TSMC will not notice the blow immediately, but it knows that what is negotiated now will mark the price of hundreds of machines in the coming years. And now what. The pulse comes at a time of historic results for ASML. And on Wednesday the company raised its sales forecast for 2026 to a range of between 43,000 and 45,000 million euros, well above what the market expected, according to collect Bloomberg. Gross margin will also improve to 56%, up from 53% previously forecast. To meet demand, ASML plans to increase its manufacturing capacity of its most important EUV machines by 30% this year, and is studying another similar increase for 2028. Cover image | ASML In Xataka | The war in Iran and the Chinese veto redraw the world map of helium for semiconductors

In 2004, 15 driverless cars competed in the desert for a million dollars. None of them ended, but they changed the industry forever

by

On March 13, 2004, at dawn, fifteen vehicles left Barstow, California, heading for the Mojave Desert. They did not have a driver. Their mission was to travel more than 200 kilometers of hostile terrain to Primm, Nevada, without anyone at the wheel or remote control in between. The first to do it would win a million dollars. No one got it. Objective: operate without a driver. The DARPA Grand Challenge It was a competition organized by the United States Advanced Defense Projects Agency, the same organization that once laid the foundations for the Internet. Congress had set a goal that, by 2015, one-third of military ground vehicles could operate without drivers, thereby reducing the risk to soldiers on resupply and transportation missions in war zones. To accelerate that research, DARPA decided to open the door to anyone, whether they were universities, hobbyists, or independent engineers. It was enough to present a vehicle capable of driving itself. In detail. Twenty-one candidates passed the previous qualifying tests, held at the California Speedway circuit, and fifteen vehicles arrived at the starting line of the desert. There was everything from SUVs, to pickup trucks, and even modified motorcycles with computers, radar, cameras, and GPS receivers to “see” the terrain and decide for themselves how to navigate it. The route, about 228 kilometers, was not revealed until two hours before departure, precisely to check that the systems were capable of interpreting the environment in real time and not memorizing a route in advance. ORAn almost comical disaster. one of the cars it capsized as soon as it started and had to withdraw before the official start. Two others did not even start the test. Three hours into the race, out of a limit of ten, only four vehicles were still running. The rest fell due to mechanical failures, blocked brakes, broken axles or navigation systems that lost direction. According to collect the specialized magazine IEEE Spectrum, the image offered by the exit was “the most diverse collection of vehicles gathered in one place since the filming of Mad Max 2.” Who went further. The vehicle that advanced the most It was Sandstorm.a 1986 Humvee modified by Carnegie Mellon University’s Red Team. It traveled 11.9 kilometers before getting stranded on a slope in the terrain after exiting a horseshoe curve, according to the university itself. The impact broke front axles and burst wheels, and fuel began to spill from the tank. Its manager, robotics professor William “Red” Whittaker, acknowledged that the car arrived “injured” to the test, as it had overturned during a test the previous week and the team barely had time to fully repair it. Shortly after, another of the vehicles, nicknamed DAD (Digital Auto Drive), became immobilized. and it caught fire before those responsible for the event deactivated it remotely. No team exceeded 12 kilometers of a route that was supposed to exceed 200. It wasn’t entirely a failure.. Although the million dollars remained without an owner, DARPA considered that the experiment had fulfilled its real function: to demonstrate that there was a community of engineers, students and programmers willing to solve a problem that until then seemed like something out of science fiction. The day after the disaster in the desert, the agency announced that it would repeat the test a year and a half later, this time with two million dollars. And the revenge arrived. On October 8, 2005, in a new edition on a 212-kilometer route, five vehicles completed the route for the first time in history. The winner was Stanley, a modified Volkswagen Touareg by the Stanford University team led by German engineer Sebastian Thrun, who crossed the finish line in 6 hours and 53 minutes. Sandstorm itself, now repaired, came second. The real impact came later. That race through the desert ended up being the seed of the autonomous car industry as we know it today. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin They came in disguise to witness the 2005 test and, shortly after, Thrun was hired to lead Google X, the company’s experimental projects laboratory. There, along with other DARPA test veterans such as Anthony Levandowski, Chris Urmson and Mike Montemerlo, Thrun launched in 2009 the secret project that would eventually become Waymo, today one of the main autonomous car companies in the world. Stanley itself, the 2005 winning car, is currently preserved in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. And now what. Two decades after that first failed test in the desert, driverless cars They are already circulating through the streets from cities like San Francisco, Phoenix or Shanghai, and companies like Waymo or Tesla are committed to autonomous taxis becoming commonplace. In Spain we will briefly see some doing tests this year in Madrid. Although the really curious thing was that, a test in which most of the cars made fools of themselves, ended up being the real starting point of a technology that today moves billions of dollars. Cover image | Lemonodor In Xataka | China has an amazing 10-kilometer underwater tunnel and 200,000 LED lights with one goal: to keep you from falling asleep

“This is the first time China has proposed a new principle for the chip industry.” Not everyone is convinced

by

Huawei’s path in recent years has been most curious. After being ostracized by the West and being the target of the trade war between the US of Trump’s first term and China, has become the company that thank the United States because of how vetoes have boosted Chinese technology. Because Huawei has become one of the pillars of all the technology companies in the country and they are not satisfied with making chips: they want to lead a new paradigm with a Tau Law that challenges the Moore’s Law. But behind the promises, there are those who can only see one thing: marketing. The Tau Law. My partner Laura exemplified it perfectly. If the chip is a city, the transistors are the buildings, and the cables are the roads, Moore’s Law says: “make buildings smaller to fit more into the same space.” What Huawei proposes, however, goes in another direction: “buildings can no longer be much smaller, so instead let’s make cars travel faster on the roads, and redesign the urban layout so that they travel less distance.” Huawei’s bet is that cars take much less time to go from one building to another, reducing times tremendously so that the chip, without the need to work on smaller lithographs, is much faster. Inside that Tau LawHuawei proposes the LogicFolding architecture, focused on shortening the wiring of the critical paths to increase the density of the transistors. Qionists. And the company is tremendously proud of this to the point that He Tingbo, Huawei’s chip director, affirms that “it is the first time that China proposes a new principle for the global chip industry.” Because, until now, Moore’s Law was the one that prevailed in lithography leaps, but if instead of concentrating on achieving the very complicated objective of making everything smaller, companies focus on shortening the “routes”, the density objective can be achieved in other ways. In fact, Huawei maintains that, before LogicFound, it took three years to go from 126 to 155 million transistors per mm2. In 2026, and with the new architecture, they jumped directly to 238 per mm2. Equivalence, not parity. And if the question is why Huawei is pushing this when there was already another viable way, the answer is that that proven way was not as viable for Chinese companies. Due to the technological veto, they cannot access the most sophisticated machines in Europe ASMLso they can’t “print” chips in advanced lithography as easily as TSMC can, for example. Thus, they have looked for another way to achieve that density, but something important is the terms. Because there is talk that Huawei would reach a transistor density “equivalent” to that of 1.4 nm processes, by 2031, and that is the key. They would be “equivalent” in density and there would be no lithographic parity. With raised eyebrow. In any case, Tingbo is proud of the logo and believes that it can benefit the entire Chinese technology ecosystem, but it makes an appeal. The directive states that “there remain many open questions that no organization can address alone. The tool chain, standards and economic models require contributions from more than one company.” For its part, and as we see in The Registerthere are those who do not see that revolution in the Tau Law. Although they see what the Chinese company is proposing as interesting, they affirm that it is more of a hybrid movement between reality and marketing because “Huawei had to get creative” to overcome the limitations and “they are going in the right direction, but this density is created through packaging and not by making smaller transistors“Indeed, this is what we already had, but they point out that the result will not be equivalent to a true 1.4 nm node from TSMC or Intel in issues such as energy efficiency and temperature. Future. In fact, as our colleagues point out Xataka Mobileit is in thermal management where Huawei is encountering some major problems. But well, the company’s intention is that the results of this Tau Law allow massive AI clusters that they behave as a single chip by 2035 and that the upcoming Kirin chips for consumption also benefit from it. Image | IBM (edited) In Xataka | While the industry obsesses over power, TSMC is clear about where the future of chips lies: in efficiency

If the alcohol industry didn’t already have enough problems, it has now encountered one more: Ozempic

by

Drugs from the family of GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1) hormone agonists such as Ozempic or Zepbound have represented a revolution in the global pharmaceutical market. The success of these medications intended for the treatment of diabetes has to do with their slimming effect, but the ramifications of this phenomenon go even further. There is already evidence. One of these ramifications has to do with alcohol consumption: a study from a few months ago found evidence that semaglutide, the active compound used in drugs such as Ozempic or Wegovy, can also help in the treatment of alcohol addiction. New studies confirm it: In 2026 The Lancet published a larger, longer trial with 108 participants, half on semaglutin and half on placebo for 26 weeks. The result was that people who took semaglutide reduced the days of heavy consumption by 41.1% compared to 26.4% of those who took the placebo. Chronicle of a social phenomenon. Ozempic began to gain popularity about two years ago when it was beginning to be used not to keep glycemic levels under control in people with type II diabetes, but as a weight loss treatment for both people with diabetes and those who just wanted to lose weight. In parallel, several clinical trials supported this effect and regulatory bodies approved the use of the drug for this second use. This success led to the appearance of other side effects associated with this compound, some of them positive. It was then that some laboratories got to work to test these effects. Among them an apparent reduction in alcohol consumption among those who were under this treatment. How does it work? The GLP-1 hormone plays several functions in our body, one of them being to tell us that we have satisfied our appetite. That is why drugs that work like their analogues in our body generate the same feeling of satiety, which in turn implies that we will eat less and therefore lose weight. But soon some users began to realize that this not only affected the food, but also the alcohol they consumed. Although the mechanism is not entirely clear, it can be assumed that the same mechanisms are at work. There is another factor to take into account, and that is that among the side effects Of drugs similar to Ozempic we can find stomach symptoms such as nausea and vomiting. This can also lead to making alcoholic beverages, as well as other foods, less palatable. That’s what studies are like. These studies are carried out through a randomized placebo-controlled trial. That is to say, is distributed randomly participants into two groups: one is treated with semaglutide and the other with a placebo. They thus found that the effects of the treatment were greater than those of a simple placebo, that is, the participants drank less alcohol. Although the number of days on which the participants drank was not reduced, they did so in smaller volumes. “These data suggest the potential for semaglutide and similar drugs to fill an existing need for a treatment for alcohol use disorder,” explained in a press release Klara Klein in the first published study on this, member of the team responsible for the study. “Larger studies (…) are necessary to fully understand safety and efficacy in people with (this) disorder, but these initial results are promising.” The team presented the details of the trial in an article in the magazine JAMA Psychiatry. The analyzes continue. The small sample size in this study suggests that there is still much work to do. If we want to better understand the potential of Ozempic to fight addictions and similar disorders, experiments with larger samples and studies will be needed to better understand the underlying biological mechanisms, as well as the potential risks of this use. All this while other teams investigate other potential risks and benefits of this family of drugs. An example of the potential benefits yet to be explored is in heart healtha context in which we have begun to see some potential benefits but which, as in the case of excessive alcohol consumption, we still need to explore further, but the first studies seem to go in the same direction. In Xataka | On Tinder there is a trend that is gaining weight among Generation Z: dating without a single drop of alcohol Image | Andreas M / Chemist4U

The wind industry has been dreaming for years of a turbine that can be assembled without concrete or machinery. France has said ‘hold my cubata’

by

When we think about wind energy, the first thing that comes to mind is turbines with huge shovels that we usually see in the distance when driving on some highways in the country or the infographics of Chinese companies with XXL towers for marine plants. In France, a designer has decided to rethink those ideas and become a question: What if we could have a light, modular wind turbine that did not require complex (and very expensive) installations and was also recyclable and scalable, so it would be useful for both self-consumption and industry? The result is Wind to Watt. Wind power without megaprojects. we like them the megastructures. It’s no secret. That is why it is not strange that when we talk about wind (both onshore and offshore) the projects that resonate the most are those that involve huge turbines, gigantic towers and XL shovelslike the model of 153 meters and almost 90 tons devised by the Chinese company Dongfang Electric (DEC). In the sector, however, there are people who work with another approach: new modular wind turbines that make wind power popular at the domestic leveljust as it has been doing (for many years now) photovoltaics. Squaring the circle (wind). A few years ago the French designer Fabien Brun decided to move in that same direction, that of scalable wind power, asking itself some questions: Would it be possible to design a light, modular turbine, easy to transport, economical, recyclable and that also does not require complicated installations, such as concrete platforms capable of supporting large towers? They are not minor questions. Quite the opposite. They address some of the main challenges that wind power faces, such as how to make installations cheaper or what the hell to do with tons and tons of blades that reach the end of their useful life and are made with fiberglass, carbon, resins and other compounds that complicate their recycling. There are those who estimate that in 2030 only in Europe there will be more than 50,000 wind turbines that will have reached their useful life period, which is usually estimated at 20 years. The result: Wind to Watt. The result of those questions is Wind to Wattwhich is presented as “the first 1 kW wind turbine without the need for civil works, designed for mass production and global scalability.” Unlike conventional wind turbines, what Brun proposes is a light structure made of aluminum tubes and plastic canvas, which has two great advantages. First, it simplifies and speeds up assembly. Second, it prevents you from having to prepare concrete bases or alter the terrain before installing it. “Silent and minimal impact”. Those responsible for Wind to Watt also claim that by using tubes and tarpaulins it reduces costs, facilitates transportation and is manufactured with recyclable materials. They also argue that the generator can be adapted to any type of context, both on land and in marine parks, and that it does not generate noise pollution. “Its operation is silent and has minimal visual impact,” ditch from the company. What about power? The team ensures that their turbine is scalable and they offer six different models. The most basic and smallest measures 1×2 m, generates 0.3 kW and is designed primarily for residential use and self-consumption. The largest measures 10×20 m, has a power of 62.4 kW (more than 1,500 kWh/day) and those responsible assure that it serves to supply energy networks. Of course, in your catalog They include smaller models, 10.4 kW or 20.8 kW, theoretically designed for light industry or data centers. As far as prices are concerned, the company assures that the cost per kW installed is around 2,500 euros and its maintenance costs about 50 euros per year. According to the calculations of those responsible, it saves 500 euros per year and the investment is recovered after five years, a fifth of its useful life (25 years). What phase is it in? It still has a way to go to become a widespread solution, but those responsible defend the path they have already taken. “The company, which has been technically and commercially validated at an international level, is entering the industrialization and commercial structuring phase,” points out Brun, who insists that the turbine is designed “for mass production and global deployment without heavy infrastructure.” Their goal is to begin their pilot deployment this year. Images | Wind to Watt In Xataka | Renewable, coal or nuclear: where each country in the world gets its electricity from, in a detailed graph

Every time a rocket ship fails, an industry grows. And China has just decided that it wants to be the owner and mistress

by

In 2016, a SpaceX’s Falcon 9 exploded at Cape Canaveral destroying Israel’s Amos-6 communications satellite. Luckily, like when you get hit by a car while parking, there was insurance behind it that paid for the mess because the incident cost almost 300 million dollars. Because imagine that your latest and most ambitious project explodes and that as a consequence you end up bankrupt. Insurance is that industry that when everything goes well seems like a superfluous expense and that saves you when there is an accident. Applied to space, they move more than 4 billion dollars a year. Well, space insurance is undergoing a historic transformation: China has decided who no longer wants to be a mere customer, she wants to be the owner of the business. China goes from client to insurer. China had been insuring its satellites for years through the state insurer PICC, but part of the real risk was absorbed by the international market via reinsurance. So when ChinaSat-18 failed in 2019, it was foreign insurers that absorbed part of the hit, according to SpaceNews. China paid the premiums and London and Paris, where space reinsurance business is concentratedthey stayed with the business. Everything changed in March 2025: a consortium from Beijing covered 25 private launches for $1.47 billion in its first year, bringing together domestic insurers so that everything, money and control, stays at home, according to Caixin Global. It is the first consortium dedicated exclusively to the Chinese commercial aerospace sector. Why is it important. Because if there is no insurance, there is no investment and without that financing there are no rockets either. A fact: a geostationary satellite costs between 150 and 400 million dollars to manufacture and launch, according to the Satellite Industry Association. If there is a failure, the economic impact is tremendous and could lead to the bankruptcy of the operator, so having an insurance policy is a condition for any investor to dare to put money into a space project. Controlling space insurance is controlling who can take certain risks and how. The Chinese government is clear: according to the IISSShanghai allocated 300 million yuan in subsidies to the commercial aerospace sector in April 2025, and Beijing has announced targeted insurance premium subsidies for space companies. China replicates the move it has already used in semiconductors or batteries: state push to achieve strategic independence. Context. The space insurance market is growing simply because the commercial space sector is also growing, and because insurance is an essential condition for operating in it: Space Liability Convention of 1972 establishes that states are responsible for damages caused by their space objects. Lloyd’s of London has been insuring satellites since 1965 and for decades, this was a closed market dominated in Europe by companies such as Munich Re, Swiss Re or AXA XL. According to Orbital Radarthis market generates between 500 and 600 million in annual premiums and remains concentrated in London, Paris and Bermuda. SpaceX changed everything: more launches, lower unit cost, new risk profiles… and now new Chinese private launchers such as LandSpace, CAS Space, Space Pioneer bring a new transformation: everything stays at home, China cooks it and China eats it. In detail. As with cars, insurance premiums depend on the history of the rocket and here China has a potential gap to slip through: for new rockets with no history, the premiums are very high. Orbital Radar Explained that launch premiums range between 5% and 15% of the insured value depending on the vehicle and orbit. Therein lies the great advantage of the Chinese consortium: it can take risks where other insurers put their “buts.” A revealing fact: of 10,000 active satellites in orbit, only 300 have insurance, according to Space Insider. In fact, SpaceX does not even externally secure its own Starlink. Yes, but. The market that China wants to enter with everything is in trouble: in 2024 it paid more in claims than it earned in premiums, according to Insurance Business Magazineamong other things due to the loss of Intelsat 33e. And it’s going to get worse: space debris is growing faster than the ability to calculate it and here China is largely to blame. Furthermore, in accordance with the regulations OFAC of the US Department of the Treasury.when a Chinese rocket fails, American and European insurers can’t always pay: Western sanctions legally prohibit them from dealing with certain Chinese assets, so the market is fragmented. In Xataka | SpaceX has always been 10 years ahead of the competition. The problem is that in China that law no longer applies. In Xataka | The race to become “China’s SpaceX”: who’s who in its private space launch sector Cover | Ivan Diaz and zhang kaiyv

the industry is not ready for TikTok

by

In April 2024, several technicians from the statistical service of the US Department of Agriculture raised their eyebrows at the same time: sales of cottage cheese had skyrocketed so enormously that, evidently, it could only be a mistake. So, as protocol dictates in these cases, they picked up the phone and They started calling, one by one, all the producers. It wasn’t a mistake. Two years later, that same “wave” reaches a factory in Vilalba, in Lugo. There, Entrepinares (the largest cheese manufacturer in Spain) is about to spend more than 20 million euros to also become the Spanish king of cottage cheese. What is happening? How is it possible that in the land of Cabrales, Manchego and Maó that flat, dull and amorphous thing called a cottage is triumphing? But let’s start with the Mercadona line… because there we find many of the answers. As I say, Entrepinares will allocate more than 20 million to produce, in its Vilalba plant, about seven million kilos of this product. The change for the company is greater than it seems because, despite being the largest cheese factory in Spain, it does not produce fresh cheese. Spain has never been a place very fond of fresh cheese. It’s not that there isn’t any (from cottage cheese to mata or ‘Burgos cheese’), but the storage conditions complicated its popularity. Such is the situation that, during all these years, Mercadona has not been able to find a national supplier for its cheese. This has meant that there have been several changes of supplier and that the product is sold out with quite a striking frequency. It wasn’t a big problem as long as the demand was small and controllable; but now the situation has changed. What happened to cottage cheese? For the confused: we are talking about a grainy, unpressed curd that contains about 12 grams of protein per 100 and just 4% fat. In reality, if we want to fully understand what happened, we have to think of it more than as a cheese… as a “protein supplement” that is made with milk. That’s why it didn’t have any success: the “cultural gap” didn’t exist until the protein rush created it. And what if he made it: cottage consumption in Spain grew by 61% in 2025seven times more than fresh cheese, according to NIQ. 61%? It sounds like a lot (a lot) and it is, but there is something of a trick to it. After all, the cottage cheese started almost from scratch. Cottage cheese remains almost anecdotal in the Spanish cheese market as a whole. However, the growth pattern is global and even in much more mature markets (such as the US or the United Kingdom) growth is around 20% and the +41.9%. The question that everyone has is the same: fashion or fixed category? And there the opinions are varied. While analysts such as John Crawford maintain that It’s not something temporary (two years of double-digit growth in value and volume is not a fad) others like Mike McCully are more cautious (and “believe that the boom comes after two decades of decline because of TikTok”, which suggests that it may go away as quickly as it came). Be that as it may, what is clear is that this story goes beyond cheese. It is about how our food systems are suffering (and will suffer) pressures from extremely volatile ‘states of opinion’. It is, above all, that we are not prepared for it (and being prepared will cost us a lot of money). Image | Caroline Roose In Xataka | There is a brand devouring the cheese industry in Spain thanks to Mercadona: Entrepinares

“stop copying what the industry develops”

by

In 1969, the first message in the history of the Internet was as ambitious as it was brief: it was supposed to be “LOGIN”, but the system crashed after transmitting just “LO”. That failure was born inside DARPAthe great military laboratory of the United States that would end up lighting the network that moves the world today. Half a century later, the Navy seems to want to repeat the play: let the market do its thing and reserve truly disruptive innovation for what only war needs. The great course correction. The United States Navy has just assumed something that had been hanging in the air for years: its innovation system had become too slow, cumbersome and, above all, redundant. Rachel Rileyhead of naval research, has put on the table in the Defense media an almost brutal idea for its simplicity: stop spending public money on copying what private industry is already developing on its own. His message has been direct: if there are possible benefits, private capital will eventually arrive. The military mission, therefore, should not compete with that, but rather focus on what no one else wants or can finance. “Stop copying.” That’s the core of doctrinal change. For decades, the Office of Naval Research functioned as a large parallel laboratory that often followed paths similar to those of the private sector. Now the order is different: reduce bureaucracy, simplify processes and assume that speed matters more than ever. Riley summed it up with a phrase that sets the tone for this new stage: “speed is the word of the year in our business. Stop copying what the industry builds.” Ultimately, it is a strategic admission: in a technological war, time is already worth as much as technology itself. What only the State can build. The new frontier according to Rileyis in those capacities that do not have a civil market. His example was devastating because it was simple: “there is no commercial need for very quiet tubes that move underwater for a long time.” He was talking, of course, about submarines. That phrase sums up the new investment criterion: if the market will never do it, the Pentagon must do it. And that weighs especially heavily in 2026, with the AUKUS agreement underway and submarine warfare recovering centrality in the Indo-Pacific against China. From experiment to real war. The best example of this transition It’s the Sea Hunter. What began as an experiment in 2017 to hunt submarines and clear mines has taken almost a decade to become a real operating asset. That period is precisely what the Navy wants to reduce. The problem is no longer proving that something works, but integrating it before it gets old. The logic is clear: fewer eternal laboratories, more prototypes that reach the fleet quickly. The rescue that changed the conversation. The proof that this model is beginning to work came just weeks ago: a Saronic Corsair autonomous naval drone rescued for the first time to two downed pilots of a Boeing AH-64 Apache off the coast of Oman. The most revealing data was not only the rescue, but time: four months from the first test to a successful real mission. For the Defense Innovation Unitthat is exactly what they are looking for: rapid iteration, immediate adaptation and practical usefulness, even for functions that the system had not even been designed to fulfill. The war of autonomous masses. Be that as it may, the real bottleneck is not in building one drone, but a hundred. Both Riley and Jarred Conley agreed on the same obsession: Go from a human controlling a drone to a human controlling entire swarms. Riley ridiculed many of the current approaches as “little kids playing football,” all running after the same goal without coordination. That’s why the Navy is studying how insects and birds are organized to convert that biological logic into military doctrine. Because the next revolution will not be the individual drone, it will be something more like the intelligent mass. Bureaucracy as an internal enemy. If you like, the most important thing about all this is that the Navy seems to have understood something that the war in Ukraine has been proving for years: Innovating fast matters more than perfecting slowly. For decades, the Pentagon believed it could control every phase of development. Now he begins to accept that his role must be another: detect gaps, finance them and let the industry do the rest. The warning is clear and powerful: the military future no longer seems to be won by inventing everything, but by knowing what is worth inventing. Image | Jasmin Aquino, US Army In Xataka | 230 years ago, the Navy made something that is still useful today: an extremely accurate map of the Bay of Cádiz In Xataka | The US moved its aircraft carriers away from Asia to protect them: China has just published a manual to hunt them from 3,000 km

China is strangling critical materials that the US needs for its technology industry. It’s a two speed war

by

In early May, Trump went to China on an official trip and took an entourage of CEOs on Air Force One. They were all from the technology (Cristiano Amon, Tim Cook, Elon Musk or Jensen Huang, for example), but also others energy, the space industry or semiconductors. One of them was Jim Anderson of Coherent, who was very interested in something very specific: why China is taking more than necessary in issue export licenses of indium phosphide. Anderson is blown away by indium phosphide for a very specific reason: It’s an essential material for high-speed optical chips. And, although it may seem very specific, it turns out that it is the key piece that the data centers new generation of the United States. And China, as with other strategic materials and metals, is in control. Optical chips. Data centers house miles and miles of visible cables that connect servers to the network and power, but they are not the only ones. Within each device, the chips are linked by cable and it is a functional technology, but with a limit that is beginning to be reached. If you want to improve latency and bandwidth (and, therefore, the performance of artificial intelligence platforms), you must rethink the internal connection to communicate the chips. That’s where optics come into play. By connecting chips by laser, the performance of the equipment is multiplied and Nvidia is so convinced of this that, a few months ago, invested 4 billion dollars in two companies: Lumentum and Coherent. They estimate that, with copper that is at its limit, connecting clusters of thousands of processors by laser is the solution to the physical problem that they are beginning to encounter. They are components with a very high degree of specialization and a series of materials from the rare earth which, as we have said on numerous occasions, are under the control of China. Indium phosphide is not a rare earth derivative, but it is a strategic material. Strangling the market . And therein lies the problem. The United States wants to promote its technological independence (because they have Big Tech, but practically everything is manufactured outside the United States) and, to achieve this, they need a series of materials that are not in their possession. China has that dominancebut with each restriction and veto that is applied to them from the US, they respond with the same currency, but vetoing what American technology companies need so much: rare earth metals. That is why they are classified as minerals, metals and strategic components, and indium phosphide is among them. China produces approximately 70% of the world’s indium and started to apply restrictions to the supply chain in February 2025. This has caused not only prices to skyrocket by 250%, but also American technology companies to pressure to reverse the situation. The main complaint is that, instead of directly blocking the finished products, it slows down the entire process because They are capable of conditioning the export of the materials used to create those products. Therefore, the optical module ecosystem cannot scale as quickly as hyperscalers need. Domino. Taking this situation into account, what is happening with these security systems advanced photonics It is exactly the same as with NAND chips: all the fish are sold for the next few years. In this sense, as consumers we absolutely don’t care because it is something that only affects AI companies, but it is estimated that Lumentum will have everything sold out in 2026, 2027 and… 2028, despite having quadrupled its production. It not only affects American companies, since the Taiwanese VPEC and LandMark Optoelectronics are also suffering interruptions in the supply of the material. And it doesn’t matter if Lumentum or Coherent are multiplying their capacity by opening new plants because the raw materials continue to leave China and, if those export controls are in place, It is an insurmountable funnel. The other side of the coin. On the other hand we have the Chinese industry. In recent years, its technologies have taken a giant leap, expanding its capacity and beginning to make waves in the international conversation with both user level components (RAM memory and computers) and in the high technological spheres (photonics and semiconductors). Because China has detailed the plan to become the world’s leading technological power by 2030 and it is clear that they have both a very defined roadmap and, above all, the materials necessary to achieve that goal and which companies are the ones that will define that future. Huawei or SMIC are two proper namesbut there are others like Yuanjie that have skyrocketed in the stock market. The reason? They are the ones who are creating photonics components for data centers. In Xataka | Huawei no longer competes: it is building its own parallel reality

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

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

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

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