invented

iRobot invented and dominated the robot vacuum industry. Now it’s bankrupt

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The company that created the Roomba robot vacuum cleaners, iRobot, has declared bankruptcy in the United States. The future of its products seems safe, but only after a move in which the winner is the Chinese technological steamroller. what has happened. The company already r in March, and a potential bankruptcy seemed imminent. The financial results The third quarter certainly didn’t help. This Sunday, those responsible requested entry into the so-called “Chapter 11”, a technical bankruptcy that companies in trouble request. The objective of this process is for a company to reorganize its properties and debts to continue operating instead of liquidating all its assets. Disastrous results. iRobot generated nearly 682 million in revenue in 2024, but its benefits have been fading, mainly due to competition with Chinese manufacturers such as Ecovacas. Although iRobot continues to be a protagonist in markets such as the US and Japan, this competition has forced it to lower prices and see its profit margins reduced. The tariffs. Another cause of the fall according to the documents of that bankruptcy application has been the tariffs. Especially those that apply to imports from Vietnam, where iRobot manufactures its robot vacuum cleaners for the United States, and which are 46%, a figure that is hardly sustainable for the manufacturer. That tax increased costs by $23 million in 2025 and made it more difficult to establish future plans. Amazon has gotten away with a good. amazon announced the purchase of iRobot for 1.7 billion dollars – later the figure was adjusted to 1.4 billion. The operation finally was canceled because as the companies expressed “there was no path to regulatory approval for that agreement.” When that agreement fell apart, iRobot began accumulating debts that Picea, the manufacturer of the Roomba, assumed. iRobot will pass into Chinese hands. The plan to get out of iRobot’s technical bankruptcy consists of something very simple but equally terrible for its creators. Picea will end up taking over 100% of iRobot’s assets and will cancel the $190 million of accumulated debts, in addition to the $74 million of debts that iRobot also owed to Picea under the manufacturing agreement that both had. Users can rest assured. According to iRobot, this process will allow there to be no impact on the functionality and support of its products and applications, its customer programs, its partner relationships or its supply chain. This means that current Roomba users will continue to be able to enjoy them with (theoretically) the same level of support as before. Not only that: Picea will theoretically continue to develop and market new models going forward. In four years they are worth 25 times less. In 2021, iRobot had a valuation of $3.56 billion. The pandemic boosted demand and significantly encouraged sales. Four years later data compiled by LSEG and cited in Reuters They indicate that its value is 140 million dollars, 25 times less than then. Pioneers devastated by the Chinese steamroller. iRobot was created in 1990 by three robotics experts from MIT. Although they initially focused on defense and space projects, in 2002 they launched the first robotic vacuum cleaner Roomba. The product was an absolute success, and today it continues to be the dominant brand in the United States (42% share) and especially in Japan (65%). China takes over the market. In recent years, Chinese manufacturers have managed to innovate faster and end up outselling iRobot models. Roborock, Ecovacs, Dreame and Xiaomi have already managed to outsell iRobot in the first quarter of 2025, and with the current agreement – ​​Picea, a Chinese manufacturer, will be behind the Roomba – China’s effective market share will be almost absolute in this industry. A clean and silent conquest. In Xataka | “Humanoid robberies are a fantasy”: iRobot co-founder believes there is a robotics bubble

There are a lot of people going to libraries to look for books that don’t exist: an AI invented them

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Junk content made with AI is sneaking into every corner of the internet: it is ruining the authenticity of Etsythe Wikipediait confuses us search for an apartment in Idealista and of course plague social networks. He ‘slop’ of AI is reaching the real world, specifically libraries. What is happening. They tell it inScientific American. There are people going to libraries and archives in search of books or scientific articles that do not appear anywhere for one reason: they do not exist. International Red Cross has alerted to the situation and blames AI tools such as Gemini, ChatGPT or Copilot. They assure that “These systems do not conduct research, verify sources or collate information. They generate new content based on statistical patterns and, therefore, may produce invented results.” In Xataka He "AI slop" turned into art. A Chinese creator is copying the absurd aesthetics of generative AI, and it’s hilarious Fed up librarians. The research director of the Virginia library estimates that at least 15% of the queries they receive through mail are about documents and works generated by ChatGPT and similar tools. “For our staff, it is much more difficult to prove that there is no single record,” he says. A Bluesky user recounts a similar experience when a student asked him to find a series of references. After searching for a while without success, he asked the student where he got the list from and he confessed that it came from Google’s AI summaries. Made-up dating isn’t something that started happening the day before yesterday,In 2023 there were already discussions about it. Seattle University found that it is often very difficult to verify these invented quotes. The reason is that AI usually gives titles of magazines or books that exist, but what does not exist is the chapter or issue where the information is found. What it does is mix information to make it seem convincing, when in reality it is a dead end. AI and books. Invented references are not the only problem, there are librarians who also They criticize books created entirely with AI for being “incredibly bad” and we have recently learned of the case of South Korea and the resounding failure of its AI school book program. On the other hand we have the copyright problem. As with works of art, books too have been used to train AI without compensating their authors. A group of authors sued Anthropicfor this reason, but The judge ruled in favor of the company. {“videoId”:”x8jpy2b”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”What’s BEHIND AIs like CHATGPT, DALL-E or MIDJOURNEY? | ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”1173″} Papers on AI, made with AI. In an article by Futurism They said that a consequence of the AI ​​slop is that the papers that investigate AI themselves are made with AI. It is estimated that the number of papers on AI has doubled in recent years and journals such as NeurIPS have had to ask doctoral students to help them review them. There is a specific case of a researcher named Kevin Zhu who has participated in more than 100 papers in one year, an exorbitant figure for experts. To no one’s surprise, many of these papers are a real disaster full of made up quotes, blatant errors and sometimes hidden text to manipulate the review systems themselves. hallucinations. That AI invents things is quite common, they are the In AI jargon it is known as hallucinations and one of the weak points of language models; The advances are enormous, but the reality is that We still can’t trust AI and it is necessary to verify the information. Hallucinations are often the reason why those who use AI in their jobs are caught, such as the consulting firm Deloitte, which delivered a report to the Australian government that contained references to completely fabricated reports. Image | Cottonbro studio, Pexels In Xataka | The birth of an anti-reading movement: more and more people admit to using AI to summarize books (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news There are a lot of people going to libraries to look for books that don’t exist: an AI invented them was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

“someone invented the plow and we all got rich”

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The concept of “bubble” usually makes the heartbeat of those who hear it accelerate, especially if they are an investor, because it is associated with large losses and financial crises. However, Jeff Bezos proposes seeing it from another angle: if the bubble It is “industrial, they are not bad,” said the millionaire. According to Bezos, it will be a source of revolutionary advances that change humanity forever and become the prelude to something much greater and lasting. However, the millionaire warns of a huge real risk for big tech: “When the dust settles and we see who the winners are, society will benefit from those inventions.” Bubbles that leave a legacy. Within the framework of the Italian Tech Week 2025 that has been celebrated In Turin, Bezos clearly defined the situation in which the development of AI finds itself: “There is a bubble, but it is a kind of industrial bubble.” The millionaire assured that investors are so excited about this new technology that it is difficult for them to differentiate the brilliant ideas of those that are not. But this noise and chaos serve to eliminate what is less solid and preserve what has true potential. To give more context to your situation analysisBezos pulled from the newspaper library: “If we go back to the 1990s, when there was a biotech bubble, there were a lot of emerging pharmaceutical companies that were designing drugs and using new techniques, the world got very excited. The investment world got very excited. As a group, everyone lost money. But we got a couple of drugs that saved our lives. We still use those drugs today,” highlighted the founder of Amazon. AI is like a plow. The millionaire did not stop at technicalities, but rather brought the idea down to solid ground using a simple and powerful image. He compared artificial intelligence with the invention of the plow: “10,000 years ago, or whenever, someone invented the plow and we all became richer. And that’s what’s happening,” said the millionaire. This metaphor helps to understand that, in a phase of massive experimentation and risks, advances emerge that radically modify society. Bezos thus points out that AI is not just a business for a fewbut a historical leap comparable to those great inventions from the past. “We build tools and they increase, in terms of the entire civilization, our abundance,” says Bezos. Golden age for technology. The founder of Amazon offers an optimistic vision about the moment that technology is experiencing today. “We have the privilege of living in a time in which multiple golden ages are developing. So you have…Space travel is in the middle of a golden age. AI is living in a golden age. Robotics in the middle of a golden age,” listed an enthusiastic Bezos. Bezos imagines a future where millions of people they will live in space and robots will make regular trips to the Moon: “By 2045 million people will be living in space and there will be robots traveling to and from the Moon.” These space dreams are linked to the technology that is developing nowwith AI as a key piece to develop off-planet infrastructure and accelerate innovation. These visions complement the idea that the AI ​​”industrial bubble”, which today seems a crazy raceis actually the process of building technological foundations that will give new meaning to human life in the coming years. In Xataka | AI data centers are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’ solution: build them in space Image | Flickr (iafastro)

An educational plan asked to transform teaching with AI. The problem is that it brought a dozen invented sources

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The story has some irony: a report of more than 400 pages about education, which took a year and a half to be written in a province of Canada, has been uncovered with a crack difficult to repair. According to CBC Newsthe document contains a variety of false sources, from alleged academic articles to a film that never existed. The contradiction is striking: a text designed to guide schools and universities in times of AI, indicated precisely for an error that reminds of the “hallucinations” of the generative models themselves. What has happened exactly. The document in question is titled ‘A VISION FOR THE FUTURE: TRANS Transforming and Modernizing Education‘. It was presented at the end of August as a ten -year roadmap to transform public and university education into Terranova and Labrador. Its launch was accompanied by great expectations: to serve as a guide for the future of the education system in a province that seeks to adapt to the digital age and the challenges of artificial intelligence. What was not expected is that, after its publication, it would be discovered that at least fifteen of its bibliographic references do not exist. We can find titles impossible to locate in academic databases and that, in some cases, seem copied to fictional examples used in style guides. This finding opened an immediate debate about the reliability of the report and on the supervision of the process that led to its writing. Official reactions contained. The Department of Education recognized the existence of a small number of possible errors in the appointments and assured that they will be corrected in the online version. One of the co -author, Karen Goodnough, just pointed out in an email to the aforementioned medium that “references are being investigated and reviewed, without giving interviews with local media. Today, however, access to the report itself has been complicated: the original link in which it was published He no longer shows it and returns an error 404. Only remains visible in a filed copy. Invented appointments. Among the most striking examples is the mention of an alleged 2008 film produced by the National Film Board, entitled ‘Schoolyard Games’. The agency itself confirmed that this work never existed. The reference, however, appears in the report with all the details of a real bibliographic record, as if it were a verifiable source. The track led to discover something even more disturbing: The appointment matches word by word with an entry included in a university style guide used as a model to write bibliographies. That manual explicitly warns that many of its references are fictitious and are designed only as examples. Despite this, some ended up integrated in the final document as if they were authentic. It is striking because the document not only speaks of AI, but also reserves a specific chapter: use it to customize the teaching, support teachers and simplify administrative processes, while driving competencies in AI, responsible practices and protection of privacy. In its “Calls to Transformion” it proposes to modernize the school system and prepare students for a digital environment where these technologies will be part of the day to day. Was the generative used? The finding of false quotes opened another inevitable question: to what extent did artificial intelligence intervene in the preparation of the report? According to CBC News, some teachers fear that these references have been created with a language model, since these types of systems usually generate plausible titles that do not actually exist, but for now there are no conclusive evidence. Images | Steven Binotto | Screen capture In Xataka | Jensen Huang, Bill Gates and other CEO are clear: the AI ​​has opened the door to the three -day work week

Radiohead has invented a system to hinder entrances. At the expense of buying them is as uncomfortable as ever

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Today the tickets of the Radiohead concerts In Madrid: on November 4 to 8 they will perform at the Movistar Arena, on their return to the stage after an absence of seven years. It is an event: the British group will only play in five European cities, adding a total of 20 concerts. But if these shows are attracted for something for something, apart from the desired of their return, it is because of their way of raising the events, distancing themselves from the customs that the live presentations of the first -line artists have plague for a few years. No resale. The first of these novelties is that the ads are for two months. No summer of 2026, they quote us by November 2025, in what is the first of the challenges to the rhythms of the industry it raises Radiohead. The second is a system that tries to prevent mass purchase to resale with inflated pricesthat Companies such as Ticketmaster allow with their mass purchase system. To do this, the group has implemented a previous registration system with identity verification, where those interested in the entries must fill in a form with their data. The system also asks which city can attend, suggesting that they will have more chances of obtaining code who choose the city closest to its residence. The limitations. And here the complications begin (beyond that, as Eldiario.es saidoften the user city automatic detection system does not work). After registration, users received a code by mail, indispensable to access the purchase, and limited to a city already up to four tickets per night. Radiohead reserves the right to cancel multiple purchases for different nights. Obtaining the code does not ensure the entrance to the concert, only access today to official sale. The problems. And here a certain chaos has begun, which is precisely what Radiohead wanted to avoid with the system. Output, the group advised the use of different devices so as not to be detected as bots, and the fact that each city managed the sale with a different platform (Ticketmaster, Axs, CTS Eventim, and in Spain inputs.com) already promised some disruptions when the moment of truth came. The complaints began before today: many potential spectators had not received their ticket for mail, since in many cases they were raffled. Other disruptions. A rapid survey of the general sensation In social networks It allows us to detect a few common complaints. For a start, Tickets.com has fallen into some areas For a good part of the morning, with what that implies when losing positions in the tail. On the other hand, the platform uses its waiting room system, which had not previously been explained to buyers, in the same way that the code had to be introduced into a generic window of “discount code”. That is, a specific platform for the peculiar sales system has not been created, and that has generated certain problems when trying to adapt it to an already created platform. Objective completed. In general, spectators have complained about the usability and accessibility of the process, with continuous queues and waiting, expulsions of buyers from the system and other experiences that will bring Vietnam memories to whom they have tried to buy tickets For some recent massive concert through Ticketmaster. But the primary intention of Radiohead (and more knowing how expected these concerts) was to put a brake or, at least, impediments to the resale. Buying Radiohead tickets has been, apparently, as uncomfortable as ever, no matter how much the resellers (which will be: as simple as putting according to different partners buying four tickets each with different identities) have been partially stopped. In the end, how to treat its fans with dignity remains the eternal subject pending of all the large groups, indies or not. Header | Nicolas Lœuillet in Flickr In Xataka | The problem of concerts in Spain is not the lack of public, it is the distribution of money. And Wegow is the best example

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

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

Until a couple of centuries ago, nobody had yet invented them

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It is one of those things that we give so however sitting that we may have never wondered: Why do books have chapters? The answer is, in reality, quite simple, and it has a lot to do with the way we have to tell stories and, above all, with a genuinely human aspiration, and whose origins date back to the beginning of time: make our lives easier. Chapter 1. We must clarify that when we talk about chapters, we are doing it in the broader conception of the term: we talk rather to divide a text into successive and organized points. As we are organizing this article, without going any further: in epigraphs headed by a title that summarizes the content of each section, he adds or clarifies it. But this was not always common currency. Nicholas Dames, author of the Book Scent. It is a legal tablet that dates back to the second century BC. According to Dames to An ABC podcastthe text had a “continuous law, but it was segmented and those segments had short titles.” That is, the first work of the chapters is to organize informative texts, to help the reader locate the information. This use began to spread, and thus we reached a parallel invention, the index: during part of ancient history, the most common support was the roll, sometimes it was accompanied by a list of chapters in a smaller scroll. Separate things. Dames explains That this separation in epigraphs was unheard of: two thousand years ago there was no current conception of writing and, for example, the words that appeared in the rolls were not separated, there were no spaces between them. The authors did not care about those things, the editors were in charge of the texts in the texts when undertaking a task called “capitulation.” It was these editors, sometimes scholars of the time, sometimes medieval monks, who divided the works into chapters to make them more understandable. The Bible, point and apart. What can attract attention, according to what countsIt is that the Bible was never divided into chapters, but that this action was carried out, in very different ways, between the fourth and thirteenth centuries. It was divided with innumerable ways, sometimes in long chapters, sometimes in short sections, which further confused the study and dissemination of a book that has already had a labyrinthine story. It was in the thirteenth century (or that is believed) when the one that would later be Archbishop of Canterbury, set the division into chapters that we know today. This division met critics as distinguished as the philosopher John Locke. And things changed. The Bible was a definitive turning point: for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the novel became an absolutely massive entertainment format, the authors They thought their stories with the division by chapters In mind, with attention placed on the rhythm. Subsequent forms of diffusion, such as deliveries novels or, at present, television series are already meditated from very first stages of the conception of the story with the division of chapters in mind. Header | Chapter VII of ‘Dracula’, Minotaur edition illustrated by Tomás son In Xataka | In Spain a book is published every six minutes. It is the symptom of a bubble that does not stop inflating

The Neanderthals invented it 125,000 years ago with their “fat factory”

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Although demonized for a long time, fat is one of the essential macronutrients for the correct functioning of our body. More recent studies and habits are putting the fats in their place placing some like Allied in healthy dietsbut thousands of years ago, who already knew the role of fat in the body were the Neanderthals. To the point that just discover A giant “Factory” of fat in Germany. Short. Neumark-nord It is an archaeological site that is southwest of Berlin and a few kilometers from Leipzig. It is a place not alien to researchers, since a study in the area a few years ago revealed How the Neanderthals already did what we are doing so well: deeply modify the landscape in which they live. Without leaving the customs of those Neanderthals who inhabited the area 125,000 years ago, we have new details about their customs. Posted in the magazine Science Advancesa new study shows how Our ancestors They had an “industry” around the processing of the bones of large mammals with a single objective: extract bone fat to consume it little by little. Fat factories. A study of more than 2,000 bone fragments and dozens of flint tools It has allowed researchers to observe in many of them signs of having used to crush, have been crushed and have an exposure to intense heat. In some specific areas there was a concentration of bones rich in marrow, as well as anvils and folk that would have been the Tools used by Neanderthals. This concentration reinforces the idea that the site was used as a kind of “factory” to extract fat in a rather laborious way. According to the researchers, to get that bone fat, they broke the bones of 172 mammals such as deer, horses or cattle. Once they reached the marrow, the small fragments in water crushed and warmed it to extract the fat. It was a planned, long and, the researchers affirm in Livescienceorganized to maximize the extraction of nutrients from animal remains. Bones damaged by a hammer Fighting “rabbit starvation”. Why complicate life so much to get fat? The reason is simple and we must return to the diet. Follow one balanced diet To be healthy it means that we must eat a certain amount of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. When one of the tables of the table decomposes, health problems appear. That they put so much effort to get fat in this way may mean that there were times (perhaps the coldest) in which Carbohydrates scarce and could not feed exclusively with proteins. A decompensation thus (which we now do with Diets like Keto) It is dangerous, above all, if it is accompanied by an intense rhythm of life in which energy is needed. Consuming too much protein without sufficient fat can cause something called “starring rabbit”, A potentially deadly condition that is caused by excessive consumption of lean meat without enough fat. And it is not that the rabbit is the animal that suffers it. It was baptized like this because Arctic Explorers They fed almost exclusively with similar rabbits and animals and fell seriously ill because our body cannot metabolize large amounts of proteins without sufficient fat. They only improved when they could hunt animals with more fat. Ahead of the clock. Our body may burn carbohydrates or fat to obtain energy, since Protein is not a good “fuel”and if the carbos were scarce, the Neanderthals turned to fat. Where from? Of what they had closer: the bones of the animals that had hunted to feed. That they realized this implies that perhaps we should stop seeing them as those little sophisticated “hunters” that we can imagine sometimes. It also indicates that They were organized and quite ingenious. And, more important than this consideration, that large fat factory in Germany advances the resource intensification industry clock in almost 100,000 years. Before this analysis, the oldest evidence of a similar industry Databa 28,000 years ago. Images | Athree23 In Xataka | The Neanderthals left a deep genetic footprint in us. The last example: the sense of pain

After the civil war, Franco wanted to colonize empty Spain. So 300 new villages were invented

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Throughout Spain there are more than 8,100 municipalitieslarge and small villages, coast, mountain, bathed by the waters of the Cantabrian, the Atlantic or of Mediterranean climate. There are also very old, such as Brañoserafounded in the ninth century, and others so recent that their first inhabitants can still tell us about their origins. This is the case of the 300 populations promoted by the Franco dictatorship as part of its colonization policy. The peoples “Invented” By Franco. A figure: 55,000. The idea is so crazy, so huge, that often It is said which motivated one of the population displacements most important of the Spain of the twentieth century. Between 1940 and 1970 The Franco regime founded around 300 locations in 27 provinces (half in Andalusia and Extremadura) that ended up causing the displacement of 55,000 familiespeople who a good day made their bags and left their native municipalities attracted by the promises of these new -wedge settlements. “Peoples of Colonization”. The colossal project was developed under the auspices of the National Institute of Colonization (the Incan entity created After the civil war To carry out the Franco agricultural policy) and their promises were of course suggestive: families willing to move to the new settlements were offered homes and wide irrigation lands in which a future is carved. All this in property. At least in theory. Input, the settlers had to meet certain requirements. The lots were supposedly distributed by raffle, although there are who holds That not all candidates started with the same possibilities: Ideally was that they were part of large families (with children willing to work) and adjusted to the archetype dreamed by Francoism: devout, laborious Catholics and to be possible Without links With reprisals. Nor did everyone start with the same conditions. As remember ABCin 1945 the government approved an order that regulated how the colonists could access the houses, something that depended on their savings. Under the tutelage of the INC. Who could advance part of the value of the land (20%) entered a phase that the INC called “access to property”. Then they had to pay the rest of the amount to become owners of their homes and farms. The thing changed for the humblest settlers. They had to spend five years in “Tutela period”, a stage during which the Institute supervised what they cultivated and remained a portion of the crops as payment. Villalba de Calatrava, a town of colonization of the Calatrava Campo (Ciudad Real) Campo. How long did they spend like this? Depends. ABC appointment A town where that tutelage lasted until almost the end of the 60s, a time to which the families had to add the “access to property” stage. The newspaper also speaks of 25 -year deadlines to finish paying the lands (30 in the case of homes) with more than considerable interests, 3% or even 7%. To complete the picture, the INC had a structure that was in charge of “guardianship” the families of settlers through intermediate charges. In the first place were the agronomists, authors of the plans. Its guidelines passed to the expert and below this was the Mayoral, who supervised the farmers. And what was the goal? With the new settlement the Franco regime pursued several objectives. The program served to boost the Agrarian transformation (With irrigation extensions), expand the cultivable area, repopulate and transform the Spanish field, but also had an ideological background. With the new settlements, many baptized with names that They mentioned to the new regime and its referents (Caudillo Alberche, Villafranco del Guadiana either Águeda del Caudillo), The dictatorship also sought to project a new image and feed its advertising. The expansion of the new villages coincided with The bet of the dictatorship by hydraulic infrastructure. “The political strategy of the new State replaces the redistribution of the land (objective of the Second Republic) with a colonization policy based on the transformation of the rural that allowed to settle in villages of colonization a self -sufficient peasant”, Remember from the Ministry of Agriculture, on which the National Institute depended after its creation, in October 1939. A program with lights … The colonization policy of Francoism had social, economic, agricultural and even “undeniable” repercussions, such as They recognize From the ministry. And not only because the creation of hundreds of villages for Repopulation of the ’emptied Spain’ and postwar. Among the displaced there were those who, upon their arrival at the settlements, found infrastructures and unimaginable services in the villas from which they came. “When we got here it was like dreaming awake,” He recounts The country A retired farmer who arrived in Villalba in Calatrava (Ciudad Real) with his parents in 1964, when he was 12 years old. “There was a bathroom, with its cup and sink. In those years that had no one! He was very small, but having something like that was out of series.” The idea was that in the new settlements the settlers could opt for a house in fertile property and lands, contributing in passing to the economy of postwar Spain and the conversion of fields into irrigation. … And also with shadows. Not everything was positive. Despite the promises of housing and lands, many settlers to reach the property cost them years of sweat delivering part of their crops. “We were slaves,” confesses a The country Another old settler of The Bazanawhere he arrived with just 17 or 18 years. In 2018, already after 85, he remembered: “They paid you what they wanted for the crops, and then there came a point where they stopped buying them because the beans from Badajoz were very expensive.” The cultivation of the new lands was not always simple, just as it was not to follow the guidelines marked by the engineers and major people of the town. Others left their lifelong locations to move to new wedge settlements in which they had no roots, they were surrounded by strangers and (sometimes) they met half -finished works. “When … Read more

A solar energy company has sued Google for the AI ​​of its search engine: it was invented that they were scammers

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Google’s search engine is not just a search engine. Since Google began to integrate the “ai overViews” function, it is also A chatbot with artificial intelligence that answers the questions of the users without clicking on any link. The problem is that the underlying technology, the great language models, work probabilisticly, so they tend to invent the answer when they are not clear how to answer. A credible lie. This time, an invented response from AI Overviews can end up sitting Google on the bench. The plaintiff is Wolf River Electric, a Minnesota solar energy company. And the origin of the lawsuit is, the redundancy is worth, a demand that never existed. In Xataka Chatgpt is taking some people to the edge of madness. Reality is less alarmist and much more complex According to the lawyers of the energy company, the search for the terms “demands against Wolf River Electric” in Google made it AI responded with defamations. They cite a case in which AI Overviews replied that Wolf River Electric had been sued by Minnesota attorney for “deceptive sales practices”, such as lying to customers about how much they will save and deceive the owners to sign contracts with hidden rates. The AI ​​presented the case with total confidence involving four of the company’s managers by name: Justin Nielsen, Vladimir Marchenko, Luka Bozek and Jonathan Latcham, coming to show a photo of Nielsen next to the false accusations. To support his statements, the AI ​​cited four links: three news articles and a statement from the attorney general. However, none of the links mentioned a lawsuit against Wolf River Electric. It is not the first time. This type of error It is known as “hallucination”and it is very common in language models for how their response are weaving through the prediction of the following words, sometimes dragging the initial error until it becomes a credible lie with all kinds of invented ramifications, as in the play of the pickled phone. When Google began to integrate Ai Overview in the search engine, he had to withdraw it from some searches, especially recipes and nutrition, because he recommended Add glue to pizza Or eat a stone a day to stay healthy. An answer per question. Wolf River Electric states that, due to what they read in the AI ​​Overviews, several clients canceled their contracts, valued at up to $ 150,000. The problem is that Ai overViews responses are personalized: they are inferred at the time, so it can vary from one consultation to another That to Wolf River Electric’s lawyers are not worried because they know it can happen again. “This demand is not just about defending the reputation of our company; it will defend equity, truth and responsibility in the era of artificial intelligence,” Nicholas Kasprowicz sayslegal advisor of the company. {“Videid”: “X7ZW3C2”, “Autoplay”: False, “Title”: “I cheated an artificial intelligence | Captcha 2×02”, “Tag”: “Artificial Intelligence”, “Duration”: “2958”} David against Goliath. The case was filed in March in a state court and has just been elevated to a Federal Court of the United States. Perhaps it ends up creating jurisprudence on whether a technology company must take responsibility for its generation and disinformation. The answer to this question could mark a turning point for AI companies, which for a long time have tried to avoid responsibility for the results of their language models. Google, in its defense, described the incident as a harmless mishap. “The vast majority of our AI overViews are precise and useful, but as with any new technology, errors can occur,” A company spokesman says. Google says he had quickly acted to solve the problem as soon as they had knowledge of him, in line with his Recent efforts for allowing users to correct the mistakes of the AI. Image | Google In Xataka | Google’s AI advises using pizza cheese glue. The source is a Reddit comment 11 years ago (Function () {Window._js_modules = Window._js_modules || {}; var headelement = document.getelegsbytagname (‘head’) (0); if (_js_modules.instagram) {var instagramscript = Document.Createlement (‘script’); }}) (); – The news A solar energy company has sued Google for the AI ​​of its search engine: it was invented that they were scammers It was originally posted in Xataka by Matías S. Zavia .

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