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China already has a GPU that competes with Nvidia’s RTX 3060. The bad thing is that it arrives five years late and worse

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The china crusade for achieving the complete independence in the field of semiconductors has taken a new step. The problem is that this step has not been as promising as we expected, and in fact it makes it clear that today the Asian giant is still far away of the semiconductor manufacturers that dominate the market. The alternative for gamers that promised. Lisuan Tech (砺算科技), a Chinese company dedicated to manufacturing semiconductors and solutions such as graphics cards for the end-user market, has launched its new GPU for the consumer market, the LX-7G100. The price and expectations. The official starting price is 3,299 yuan (about 420 euros at the exchange rate), and at that price the equivalent graphics card should be at least an RTX5060 Ti, which is usually below 400 euros. What we get in performance is far from that. Performance tests of the LX-7G100 typically fell well short of the RTX 3060.Source: NotebookCheck. Worse than the RTX 3060. The problem is that those who have had access to this graphics card and have evaluated their benefits They have realized that this manufacturer’s GPU is very far from that price/performance estimate. In fact, it usually competes more with the RTX 3060 of 2021, but even with it it loses: it offers approximately 65% of the performance from its rival NVIDIA. Good specifications. On paper, the LX-7G100 should offer more performance. It has a 7G106 GPU, 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and decent bandwidth, for example. However, it does not have truly mature support for DX12 and does not offer an alternative to Nvidia’s DSLL or AMD’s FSR. When used in modern games, performance plummets due to rendering glitches and code translation bottlenecks. Not even for AI. At Lisuan Tech they have also tried to bet on their ability to run local and private AI models. However, most of the development of AI projects is linked to Nvidia’s CUDA architecture. It is true that the Chinese company has its own compatibility layer to translate PyTorch and CUDA code to its native architecture, but the loss of efficiency is notable, which makes inference or local model training tasks become too slow compared to those allowed by Nvidia graphics. difficult to compete. Lisuan Technology announced the first milestones of this launch a year ago. The rumors they indicated that its G100 graphics processor is manufactured by SMIC with a 6nm photolithographic process that complies with US restrictions. An attempt was made to launch in 2023, but Lisuan had financial problems and a capital injection of $27.7 million managed to keep the project going. It remains to be seen if sales ultimately follow through, although certainly its price/performance ratio makes it attractive only to audiences like the Chinese, who may have more difficulties accessing models like the Nvidia RTX. In Xataka | The end of Nvidia in China seems to be very near: its current market share is 0%

In its leap to electric cars, Europe fears total dependence on China. Your solutions arrive (quite) late

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The rope tightens. This time it is Europe that pulls to its side. Or, at least, that is what he wants according to what is stated in Financial Timeswhere we read that the European Union wants to force car manufacturers to reduce their level of dependence on China. Now, forcing them to buy fewer components from their suppliers. A new goal. It is, according to Financial Timeswhat the European Union wants to impose on companies in key sectors such as automobiles, industrial machinery or the chemical sector. In the newspaper’s information we read that European institutions are looking for tools to put pressure on their own companies. In the information, which is attributed to two European officials familiar with this project, the objective is to put a limit on the percentage of components that can be supplied to a single country. That is, if a company wants to manufacture a product in Europe, it could not buy all of its components (or the vast majority) from China. To distribute the purchases. If the project goes ahead as we read in the British media, a company could only buy between 30 and 40% of its components from the same country. It is sought that, at least, the origin of the parts that, in this case, make up a car is from three suppliers and from at least three different countries. This would not be much of a problem if it were not for the fact that the 30-40% barrier could not be overcome. “Gradually dependent”. “In many areas we are gradually becoming dependent on China’s exports,” the words are from a senior European Union official consulted by the newspaper. According to Financial Timesthe organizations are very aware of the extent to which a stoppage of Chinese factories or exports can damage the European economy. In fact, last summer some factories had to stop or saw their production compromised after China put greater impediments to export of products in which rare earths are used such as the magnets in electric car motors. Just a few months later, The Nexperia crisis once again set off the alarms of possible interruptions in the supply chain since a good part of the chips used by the European industry uses components from this company. They are not key products for its operation but without them, a car cannot be sold because They are essential for auxiliary but basic functions How to raise and lower the car window. 1 billion. That is what, according to Financial Timesthey calculate in the European Union that we lose to China. 1,000 million euros of deficit in the trade balance. 1,000 million. Diaries. The figure has been floating for two years now. and the automotive industry is one of those that has suffered the most. According to the European Union, they have achieved this with a doped industry, which has led to the lifting of tariffs on electric cars arriving from China. And the Chinese manufacturers have wanted to land abroad on our continent but also the Europeans have wanted to manufacture in China because it was cheaper. Spain? According to Anfac dataIn Spain we have a deficit in our trade balance of 5,000 million euros annually if we talk about components. As the second largest car producer in Europe, our auxiliary fabric is not enough and we need to buy components worth 16,893 million euros when exports exceed 11,525 million euros. There is no data on the origin of these imported components but we do know that The second country that exports the most cars to Spain is China. Last year, 9.2% of cars purchased in our country from outside our borders arrived from China. Very far, yes, from the German 26%. The problem is that despite importing cars worth almost 2.7 billion euros, China does not appear among the 10 countries to which we export the most cars and we barely place 658 million euros in exports to all of Asia. The game of balance. Yet the European Union is discovering that perhaps it has arrived late to the trade battle. Yes, it has lifted tariffs on electric cars sold from China but the country’s tentacles reach deep into vehicles made in Europe, producing all kinds of cheap components but also producing key technology such as semiconductors or batteries of electric cars. China is aware that it can squeeze European industry but it also needs our trade to export all the cars that are already surplus there. It is no coincidence that Europe has not imposed tariffs on cars arrived with combustion engines and? have negotiated with China the possibility of lifting trade barriers to electric cars. The Band-Aid. Until now, a very important part of the components used in European cars had their origin within the borders of the European Union itself. However, China’s weight has skyrocketed in recent years. In 2024, China has already become the main exporter of cars to Europe and the weight of its components within the cars manufactured here is increasingly greater, which reduces the competitiveness of our exports, according to this report BBVA. This imbalance is doubly worrying because the European Union is trying to reduce Chinese dependence now that it is seeking to make the definitive leap to the electric car, a technology where the Asian country dominates the supply chain. In recent months, Europe has tried to curb dependence promoting mineral mining on our soil or battery production but Chinese dependence remains evident. Photo | Michael Fourset and Sou Jest In Xataka | Japan has been charging a 0% tariff on foreign cars for half a century. It will be very difficult for you to find one on the street.

late night cafes for crying babies

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Japan may have few babies (of course many fewer than the authorities would like), but that does not mean that caring for them is easy. Especially for families for whom conciliation is difficult. To solve it in some locations in the country, an idea has begun to take shape: the yonakigoya or “cry night cafes”, places where parents (basically mothers) can go when their babies won’t let up and make them spend a sleepless night crying and lonely. In the yonakigoya Not only do they find places to sing lullabies without disturbing other family members who will have to get up early to face exhausting days of work. The idea is that they also serve as support networks and reach places where administrations do not. “Crying coffees”? Exact. They sound like science fiction. And it makes perfect sense that this is the case because the concept came from a manga published in 2023a work that talks about a place called Yonakigoya (‘House of Night Cry’) that serves as a refuge for mothers who are overwhelmed by the crying of their little ones. Straits Times assures that the author was speaking from her own experience and that she shared the idea for the first time online in 2017. The reception there was so good that she decided to reserve a place for it in her work. Something more than fiction. Beyond when, how and where the idea arose, what is undeniable is that the concept of yonakigoya It has penetrated Japanese society enough to make the leap from fiction to reality. It has revealed Kyodo Newsone of the most popular news agencies in the country. A few days ago, its reporter Maki Shinozaki published a report on how the phenomenon of late-night “cry coffees” is expanding throughout the country. The piece has been echoed by media around the world, from newspapers the Sanyo News either Sankei Shimbum to the british The Times. Between toast and books. The yonakigoya They seem to have more of a support network than places that seek to make money from the cries of babies and the anguish of their parents. In fact, in Hokkaido The service is provided in a cafeteria specializing in French toast that has decided to open certain nights a month to help mothers, in Tokushima there is another support center that organizes “coffees for crying children” every month and in Aichi a bookstore has decided to join the bandwagon by organizing evenings for babies. In the first case (the cafeteria) the premises open for free between 9:00 p.m. on Sunday and 6:00 a.m. on Monday and in the latter (the bookstore) the service is provided with the help of volunteers such as teachers or midwives from 8:30 p.m. to 12:00 p.m. Although Kiodo News and the Japanese media report only certain specific cases (which suggests that it is not a mass phenomenon), a quick search on Google shows that the concept generates interest and expands. For babies… and adults. At the French toast cafe in Hokkaido they have installed mats for babies to crawl and (hopefully) sleep, as well as spaces reserved for breastfeeding and diaper changes. However, usually yonakigoya They only look after the children. They also do it for the adults who arrive with them. The idea is that they serve as support for parents, mainly women, who are those who use them the mostespecially during their maternity leaves, while their husbands sleep before facing long days of work. Although the country has taken steps towards a labor model that allow conciliationat the end of 2024 the Government published a report which revealed that 10.1% of men and 4.2% of women work more than 60 hours per week. In the country it has even become sadly popular ‘karoshi’ conceptdeath from overwork. “A refuge”. Madoko Nozawa, owner of the toast cafe that is converted into yonakigoya Sunday mornings, has explained to Kyodo who decided to embark on the project inspired by her own experience. She is also a mother and in her day, she remembers, she spent sleepless nights because her baby wouldn’t stop crying and her husband had to get up early the next day. “I want this to be a refuge where people can feel like they are not alone in their struggles,” share. “While I was trying to put my children to sleep, I couldn’t move and felt totally overwhelmed,” points out another mother to whom the newspaper Chunichi Shimbun interviewed in the bookstore-yonakigoya from Aichi Prefecture. “I still don’t have many people I can talk to naturally about parenting. A place like this is a source of support.” A critical note. Although the yonakigoya They demonstrate Japan’s ability to create support networks, their success also leaves some critical readings. To begin with, the fact that those who use them are mostly women reveals that parenting still falls largely on them. It’s nothing new. In 2022 the Association of Medical Colleges of Japan published a study on childcare among doctors that revealed a significant gender gap: 31.8% of female doctors with children acknowledged that they shouldered 100% of the childcare and 55.2% estimated that they assumed more than 80% of the tasks. Among men, these percentages were respectively 8.4 and 14.5%. In the middle of the crisis. Another critical observation brings it Kaori Ichikawa, professor at the Tokyo University of Information Sciences, who points out the paradox that in the midst of demographic crisis and despite the huge amount of resources that the Government is allocating to promoting births, it must be the private and community initiative that cares for mothers at night. “Government support is often limited at night, weekends and holidays, so the public and private sectors must work together to create places like late-night cafes, where they can seek help when they need it,” claims. Images | Pema G. Lama (Unsplash), Kishor (Unsplash) In Xataka | In 1966, a superstition left a dent in the Japanese population pyramid. 60 years later, history threatens to … Read more

build bunkers before it’s too late

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During the Cold War, some air bases in Europe were protected by shelters capable of withstanding nearby nuclear explosions, with hangars buried under meters of concrete and steel. Decades later, many of these infrastructures have disappeared or become obsolete just as more modern threats once again target the same weak point. The awakening underground. Now that the United States has once again put end date of the war, everything indicates that uranium, oil or Tehran’s nuclear bombs have taken a backseat, because Iran has forced the United States to rediscover something much more basic: survival starts underground. After weeks of attacks with missiles and drones who have killed soldiers, destroyed aircraft and forced to disperse troops even to hotels and offices, the Pentagon has assumed that its immediate priority is not offensive, but defensive. The image of an army fighting “remotely” while their bases are hit summarizes the strategic turn: before projecting power, now it is time to resist. Exposed bases. The conflict has revealed a weakness that had been brewing for years: the lack of infrastructure hardened in US bases. Key aircraft parked outdoors, fixed radars and large clearly identifiable facilities have been easy targets for increasingly precise Iranian attacks. The system destruction such as an AWACS and the damage to multiple aircraft have shown that concepts such as dispersion or mobility are not enough when the enemy can hit repeatedly with cheap drones and ballistic missiles. The late turn. They remembered the TWZ analysts which is now when the Pentagon is rushing to do what it has not done for years: build bunkers. From prefabricated shelters that should arrive in a matter of days to underground command and operations complexes that won’t be ready for a decade, the priority is clear. Not only that. Commands on the ground they insist in which the reinforcement of positions and the expansion of refuges is already an urgent need, not a complement. However, this effort comes late for the current conflict and raises an uncomfortable question from the side of whoever started the war: why wasn’t it done sooner, when the threat was known? Warnings ignored. I explained this morning in a piece the wall street journal What is most revealing is that the problem is not new. For years, American commanders they alerted of the vulnerability of the bases in the Gulf and proposed alternatives such as deploying forces further from Iran or create new networks of airfields in safer areas. Those recommendations never materialized. Strategic priorities such as the turn towards the Pacific, diplomatic tensions and the lack of political urgency left a threat in the background that has now materialized in all its intensity. From supremacy to survival. If you will, the conflict has also changed the logic of war for the United States in the region. It is no longer just about dominating the air with fighters, bombers or anti-missile systems, but about ensuring that these assets survive on the ground (or under it). The combination of satellite intelligence, low-cost drones and precision strikes has dramatically reduced the margin of error. Every fixed base becomes a target, every repeated pattern a vulnerability, and every unprotected aircraft a potential loss. A lesson. Beyond the Middle East theater, the lesson for the United States is even more profound. If Iran has been able to impose this pressure levelthe scenario in a major conflict (especially in the Pacific) would be exponentially more complex. The United States is not only late in reinforcing its bases in the Gulf, but also faces a global structural problem: the need to redesign your infrastructure military for an era where hiding, hardening and dispersing can be more decisive than attacking. In other words, the war in Iran has not changed what weapons the United States uses, but it has revealed what its real priority is: build shelters before it’s too late. Image | USAF In Xataka | If the question is why the US has sent dozens of A-10s to Iran, the answer already has a video: to pull the trigger for 9 seconds In Xataka | The US did not make ends meet in Iran by launching thousands of missiles a month. So let’s move on to plan B: humans.

Apple’s problem with AI is not just being very late. The fact is that allying with Google will not be enough

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We still do not have a date for Apple to finally release the new Siri which he has been promising for two years. But the biggest problem with being late is not just being late: it’s arriving at a time when you don’t even all the efforts you have put on the table They are enough. Comet arrived. Perplexityquietly, is beginning to conquer an important piece of mobile territory. Its latest alliance comes from Samsung, natively implementing its artificial intelligence in star models like the Galaxy S26. One of Perplexity’s most powerful tools is its browser Cometwhich just landed on iOS. A browser that, by default, uses Google as a search engine, but whose technology is above what Gemini manages to offer today. Why is it important. Comet is not smoke. It is also not a browser with minor functions that adorns the desktop of our iPhone. The interface is simply outstanding Block ads by default Find information for us Manage tabs Allows voice searches with interactive answers It is capable of playing video for us and summarizing it without us having to see it. Summarize websites Comet stops short of being fully agentic AI, but it replaces the browser with a more reliable solution than chatbots like Gemini or GPT: you’re using AI inside a browser, not AI that accesses the internet to find (or invent) links. And so, with everything. 2026 is being a wild year for AI. In fact, it is exhausting to open the computer every morning and see how practically every day a new model has come out that surpasses the previous one. 2026 is being a year in which AI advances day after day. Nobody knows how Apple will be able to launch something at the level of what may already be obsolete today Although the iterations are minimal, we are seeing spectacular phenomena such as OpenClaw. While Chinese brands like Nubia begin to implement it on their phones, Apple only has the promise that Siri will be smart one day soon. Soon, it is assumed. According to Gurman leaks, we will see the new Siri throughout the first half of this year. The “according to” is important, because the rumors pointed to a February in which we have not yet seen a trace. Apple has been accumulating delays since it promised a Apple Intelligence which disappointed, and beyond the announcement of its alliance with Google, we have no more relevant news. Image | Xataka In Xataka | What have Apple and Google agreed on for the new Siri? Nobody knows because Google doesn’t even want to mention it.

Meta wants to warn us before it’s too late

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Social networks and messaging applications have become one of the favorite places for scammers to look for victims. It’s not a coincidence. They are platforms that we trust, where we interact with known people and where many decisions are made quickly, almost without thinking. In that scenario, a seemingly normal message, link, or request may be the first step in a scam. Goal has decided reinforce their alert systems with new tools that seek to detect suspicious signals and warn the user before it is too late. When someone tries to link your WhatsApp without you knowing. One of the novelties announced by Meta affects a fraud technique with which scammers try to link the victim’s WhatsApp account to another device. According to the company, they can try to convince the user to share their phone number and then the pairing code that appears on WhatsApp, or even ask them to scan a QR code under a false pretext. With the new alerts, the application will display warnings when it detects signs of suspicious behavior in these types of requests and will indicate where the request comes from so that the user can stop and reconsider the action before accepting it. Suspicious friend requests. Another of the functions that Meta is testing focuses on Facebook and such an everyday gesture as accepting a friend request. The platform tests warnings when it detects signs that may point to suspicious activity on an account. These signs include, for example, profiles with very few friends in common with the user or accounts that indicate a location in another country in their profile. The goal of these alerts is not to decide for the user, but rather to provide them with additional context before accepting the request, blocking it, or simply ignoring it. Messenger also receives news. Meta will expand its advanced scam detection system within this application to more countries this month. In this case, the focus is on the content of the conversation itself: when a chat with a new contact presents patterns associated with common fraud, the platform can show a warning to the user. The company mentions as an example messages that include suspicious job offers. At that point, the system can ask the user if they want to share recent messages for an AI-based tool to analyze and, if it detects signs of deception, offer additional information and suggest actions such as blocking or reporting the account. Beyond the visible notices. The firm led by Mark Zuckerberg explains that these in-app alerts are only part of its strategy against scams. In parallel, the company is strengthening its automatic detection systems with tools based on artificial intelligence capable of analyzing multiple signals at the same time, such as the text of a publication, the images used or the context in which the content appears. These systems seek to identify more complex patterns, such as accounts that impersonate celebrities, public figures or well-known brands, as well as links that redirect to pages designed to imitate legitimate sites. The figures. According to the company, during 2025 it removed more than 159 million scam-related ads worldwide for violating its policies. Of that total, around 92% were removed before any users reported them, suggesting that automatic detection systems were already acting before the fraud spread. Meta also points out that it took down 10.9 million accounts on Facebook and Instagram linked to scam centers and participated in an international operation that allowed the deactivation of more than 150,000 accounts associated with criminal networks in Southeast Asia. Images | Aman Pal | Goal In Xataka | China has turned OpenClaw into a viral phenomenon. And then it has prohibited its officials from using it

“The more times you are late for work, the harder it will be for the company to fire you”

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Arriving late to work every day, leaving before your time or committing various irregularities in your day can cause your company to give you a warning, sanction you or, in the most serious cases, even apply a disciplinary dismissal for breaching the conditions you accepted in your employment contract. However, as labor lawyer Juanma Lorente highlights in one of his recent videosif you do it repetitively and the company does not warn you for it, that violation can become your best ally to protect you from disciplinary dismissal. Being late is bad, but it can protect you. The labor expert explains in his video a legal paradox in which the company’s inaction can turn an infraction into the best defense for a worker against a legal claim for disciplinary dismissal. The lawyer explains the situation with a very simple example: “Imagine that you have been late to work for 2 years. 5, 10 or 15 minutes and the company does not tell you anything. You arrive and sign in with the real time at which you are arriving and the company tolerates it. From one moment to the next, after two years of arriving late, you find a dismissal letter in which they fire you for arriving late.” According to Lorente, this dismissal would be unfair because the company allowed the “habit” of being late for two years, without reacting in all that time. The expert assures that this inaction represents a tacit permissiveness of that conduct, which is why it could not be used as a reason for dismissal before a judge. Silence gives consent. Although it may be incongruous, since the employee’s violation is effectively proven, the repetition of this behavior without a response from the company is known as corporate tolerance. As and how do they count From the Lex-it law firm, this case occurs when a company is aware of the worker’s repeated infraction, such as repeated delays, but does not sanction it for a long time. This means that a subsequent dismissal for the same reason is seen as unfair by the judges, since the company seemed to accept it and “tolerate” the infraction. As the labor lawyer points out, “If he has not previously sanctioned you for the same thing, has allowed it and has tolerated it, he will not be able to use it to fire you.” ​This principle forces companies to follow a scale of sanctions that is applied from the first infraction of employees: from a simple specific warning to suspensions, before reaching disciplinary dismissal. Ignoring this scale of warnings means that the company cannot allege it as a “direct” reason for dismissal because, according to the court, the company tolerated this behavior. The Supreme Court has already applied it. The Supreme Court has confirmed this doctrine in several rulings in which disciplinary dismissals have been rejected because companies have cited infractions as reasons for dismissal that they have tolerated for years without any warning. The result in all cases has been to reject the disciplinary dismissals and declare them unfair dismissals with compensation of 33 days per year worked, despite it being proven that, in fact, the employee had been committing a violation of the conditions for a long time. In one of those sentencesthe Supreme Court states: “Sanctioning with the greatest severity (disciplinary dismissal) conduct that had previously been tolerated, without any prior warning to the employee that such tolerance was going to end, would be contrary to the employer’s good faith.” ​A practical example: he was late 176 times. A very clear example of this legal paradox is found in the case of the employee of an optician in Asturias who arrived late to her job up to 176 times without the company reprimanding her for it. When the company informed him of his disciplinary dismissal, the Superior Court of Justice of Asturias considered it “irrational, disproportionate and incongruous.” The reason was that the company had demonstrated business tolerance by allowing 176 delays without warning or sanctioning the employee, and resorting directly to disciplinary dismissal. In Xataka | Going to the bathroom is not work: a Swiss court allows a company to force its employees to clock in when they go to the bathroom Image | Unsplash (Campaign Creators)

With the “late” eating into the Christmas holidays, a new phenomenon gains weight in Spain: the Australian New Year’s Eve

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The year changes with the twelve bells midnight on December 31st. That has no discussion. What is questionable is that the New Year has to be celebrated at night. If you are more of a daytime person than a night person, if you don’t want to go to bed in the wee hours of the morning, hungover and resigned to spending the first morning of 2026 tossing and turning in bed… Why not bring the party forward a few hours? What if instead of gathering our family and friends for dinner we meet at noon? What if we ring in 2026 (or any other New Year) when they do it in Sydney, where the 12 bells ring when we are having lunch? What has happened? Bells, grapes, firecrackers, the first advertisement of the year, the trappings of the star presenter on duty, whether the layer of Ramonchu either the dress of the Pedroche… In Spain, New Year’s Eve has its traditions (apparently immutable), but that does not mean that more and more people choose to rethink how and especially when they celebrate the change of year. In fact, for a long time there has been a way to celebrate it that has gained followers: “Australian New Year’s Eve”. And what does it mean? It sounds exotic, but it’s actually very simple. The “Australian New Year’s Eve” consists of nothing more nor less than bringing forward the celebration of the New Year by a few hours. There is a 10-hour lag between Madrid and Sydney, which means that while in mainland Spain we sit at the table to eat in the most populated city in Oceania, there are in full transition of year. It is a simple geographical curiosity, but there are those who have seen in it a perfect hook to rethink when we celebrate the New Year in this corner of the planet. Instead of doing it at midnight, after an extensive dinner, they join the “Australian New Year’s Eve” and uncork the cava when the residents of Sydney or other regions of Australia, where they govern, do so. multiple time zones. One celebration does not have to exclude the other (a Spaniard can celebrate the New Year at 2:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m.), but it does help to shift the focus away from the night. It is similar to the “pre-grapes” that have been celebrated for years, but in a somewhat different way: with food, parties and using Australian time as a pretext. But… Is it successful? Yes. At least in certain regions of Spain, where the concept of “Australian New Year’s Eve” seems to have caught on. A quick search shows chronicles about early celebrations in Teruel, Castellon, Valencia, The Palm…but if there is a place where the ‘Australian-style’ party has found fertile ground, it is Alicante. It has been organized there for a long time a few years and has expanded to several municipalities. The celebration has become so profound, in fact, that it moves so many people in restaurants and at night parties. So many people? The newspaper recently Information asked that same question to hoteliers and found a surprising response. According to the president of the Alicante Restaurant Association (ARA) reservations for lunch and dinner on December 31 are already practically equal in number, which shows that more and more people are bringing forward the celebration of the New Year. What’s more, part of the nighttime demand appears to be shifting to midday, when customers find more diversity in exchange for cheaper rates. “In the evening pack, the normal thing is set menus, which are somewhat more expensive,” says the hotelier. Prices are around 100 or 110 euros, practically double that of lunch, which is also usually served without a set menu and includes a drink. At first glance it may seem that restaurants are losing, but the reality is that if the daily clientele and the dinner clientele are added, businesses gain demand. Furthermore, New Year’s Eve menus may be more expensive, but they also entail more expenses for the establishments, which reduces their final profitability. From another association of hoteliers in the province of Alicante, Apeha, confirm There are starting to be more reservations at midday than at night. Is it just business? No. The phenomenon is not only seen in bars and restaurants. Daytime celebrations, including symbolic grapes, music and “chimes” are also celebrated with institutional support of the town councils. In Senija they present them for example as “Bells in the Sun” and in Crevillent the City Council advertises both the “Australian Chimes” as the “New Year’s Eve Party”. They are not unique or isolated cases. In Alicante you can find other towns that have taken their festivals beyond nighttime hours. Why this success? The big question. Costs aside, Apeha provides a key piece of information: the regular customer who books a restaurant on the 31st at noon is usually, clarifypeople of a certain age or with small children. “It’s not so much young people who go to clubs as people who prefer to go out at noon to get home at a productive time.” The truth is that the “Australian New Year’s Eve” is not an isolated phenomenon. It coincides with two others that are going in the same direction. The first is the afternoon boom. As the supply (and demand) of leisure diversifies and is no longer monopolized at night, more and more people choose to visit bars and clubs earlier. Instead of going out at night he does it in the afternoon, which is felt at Christmas itself. “Australian New Year’s Eve” may be expanding, but so is the “Good Afternoon” and “New Year’s Afternoon”advanced versions of Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. More partying, less cooking. The other trend has to do with how we organize our Christmases and our habits in the kitchen. We start enjoying before December 24 or 31 because we are less willing to spend hours in the kitchen to prepare … Read more

A Chinese startup claims to have created its own TPU to compete with NVIDIA. The only problem is that it is three years late

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A Chinese startup called Zhonghao Xinying (known internationally as CL Tech) has come to the fore with a bold promise. The company claims to have developed an AI chip that not only circumvents Western intellectual property restrictions, but also outperforms NVIDIA’s A100 chip. Which is very good, but also a little bad. Chana arrives. The chip in question has been named “Chana”, and according to SCMP we are dealing with a GPTPU (General Purpose Tensor Processing Unit). Unlike NVIDIA GPUs, aimed at accelerating AI workloads, this is an ASIC, that is, an application-specific integrated circuit designed from the ground up for neural network workloads. promise. According to Zhonghao Xinying Chana, it offers up to 1.5 times the performance of the NVIDIA A100 based on the Ampere architecture. Not only that: it achieves that performance with 30% lower consumption. The startup highlights that the computational cost per unit would therefore be less than half of that offered by the A100 chips. A little history of the company. Behind Zhonghao Xinying is Yanggong Yifan, an engineer formed at Stanford and the University of Michigan. He worked on the development of several generations of Google TPUs and also on the development of Oracle chips, and in 2018 founded this startup in Hangzhou together with Hanxun Zhengan engineer who worked at Samsung for several years. They were joined by other engineers from Microsoft, Oracle, NVIDIA, Amazon and Facebook, they indicate. on Baidu. We are therefore faced with several of those cases of “boomerang talent” with Chinese engineers who are forged in the US and then return to China to create solutions for their own industry. Solutions that do not depend on the West. Yanggong affirms that its chip features “fully self-controlled IP cores, a custom instruction set, and a fully in-house computing platform. Our chips do not rely on foreign technology licenses, ensuring long-term security and sustainability from an architectural perspective.” But. Although the achievement is striking, it is necessary to put it in perspective. The NVIDIA A100 is a 2020 AI GPU, and even with the improvements that this Chinese startup promises, its performance is, for example, far from H100 chips with Hopper architecture that appeared in 2022. Not to mention of the latest Blackwell Ultra chipswhich are currently NVIDIA’s greatest exponent in terms of AI chips. There are also no details about who makes the chip, and one of the candidates it would be SMICwhich has 7nm technology. They are very far away, and they have another problem. The technical achievement of these engineers is certainly notable, but everything indicates that they are still far from what NVIDIA and its competitors are achieving. like AMD or Google with its recent TPU Ironwood. There is another element that works against them: Chinese manufacturers continue without having direct access to the most advanced photolithography on the market, and although it also there is progress from Chinese manufacturers in that sense, competing is certainly complicated without access to the most advanced technologies. Pressure. In 2024 the company achievement revenues of 598 million yuan (73 million euros) with a net profit of 85.9 million yuan, but in the first half of the year the income was only 102 million yuan and had losses of 144 million yuan. The firm has reached an agreement with its investors by which it will have to go public at the end of 2026, or else it will be forced to buy back shares. The financial pressure is therefore notable for the company, which must demonstrate in the coming months that its roadmap is truly competitive. In Xataka | China was no longer supposed to be able to get its hands on NVIDIA’s most advanced chips. Until he found a shortcut in Indonesia

Spain wants its own public Hugging Face. The problem is that he is late to a battle that already has winners.

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The Spanish Government has announced the creation of the Open Source AI Community, a platform that aspires to become the meeting point of the Spanish AI ecosystem. The initiative, presented by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and AI, María González Veracruz, is supported by ALIA and promises to democratize access to AI through open models, datasets and integration tools. Yes, but. He timing It is everything in technology, and Spain arrives when the game is already played: Hugging Face centralizes the development of open models at a global level. GitHub hosts the most important repositories. Flame Meta has become the de facto standard for many developers. Creating a national alternative now is like launching a social network in 2025: technically possible, strategically debatable. Between the lines. The official rhetoric speaks of technological sovereignty and preventing “the digital future from being in the hands of a few.” It is a legitimate argument that works in China, where the State has resources to build parallel ecosystems and close digital borders. But Spain, for good and bad, is not China. Open source AI is, by definition, global and collaborative. Fragmenting it into national initiatives contradicts its very nature. The contrast. The press release sent by the Ministry lists three objectives: Promote practical solutions. Channel Spanish leadership. And create a talent pool. The remaining question is simpler: who is going to choose ALIA when Call 4, Mistral either qwen Are they already integrated into thousands of projects? Not only is the community late, it must compete against models that already have traction, complete documentation, and active communities of millions of developers. What is also missing are concrete resources. The announcement is full of conditional promises: “putting public computing capabilities will be explored,” “there will be” hackathons“sessions will be promoted” networking. What is conspicuous by their absence are specific budget commitments, operational infrastructure from day one, or use cases that demonstrate advantages over what already exists. The big question. If Spain does not have the muscle to create viable alternatives to the American or Chinese technology giants, does it make sense to spend resources pretending that it does? Technological sovereignty is a desirable strategic objective, but it requires sustained investment over decades, not announcements with future tense verbs. The history of European technology is full of failed attempts to replicate other people’s successes without the necessary scale or capital. In Xataka | In Europe we have a problem: we are becoming the Japan of the 21st century Featured image | Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence

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