Millions

Millions to protect a war frigate. A Bluetooth tracker worth a few euros has been enough to follow her in real time

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Protecting a warship costs a fortune. We are talking about sensors, protocols, personnel, weapons and a security chain designed to minimize any unnecessary exposure. That is why what has happened with the Zr.Ms. Evertsena frigate of the Netherlands Navy integrated into the battle group of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. According to Omroep Gelderlandtheir position could be tracked in real time for hours with something much more mundane and cheaper: a simple Bluetooth tracker sent via military mail. The story does not begin with a technological gap or with a particularly complex maneuver, but with something much more earthly: a postcard. That was what the aforementioned medium used to introduce the tracker into Evertsen through the military mail service. The sources do not specify what device was used, beyond describing it as a low-cost tracker. It is easy to think of a Apple AirTagbut there is no indication that it was that specific model and the market offers many similar alternatives. How a minor failure left a frigate exposed The case gains another dimension when you look at what Evertsen’s mission was at that time. According to the source, the frigate was part of the group that escorted the Charles de Gaulle and its function was to help protect the aircraft carrier of possible air or missile threats. This task makes its location especially sensitive data within an ongoing military mission. In other words, it was not just about knowing where a ship was, but about being able to keep track of a relevant piece within a real operation. The really delicate thing about this episode is not only that a tracker managed to enter the military postal circuit, but what that suggests about certain procedures that continue to operate with a logic from other times. According to the media itself based on official videos from the ministry, the packages did go through X-rays, but the envelopes did not follow the same control. That combination opened enough of a gap to compromise the discretion of the deployment. We are not facing a spectacular failure, but rather an apparently minor vulnerability, but sufficient to allow the ship to be monitored. Once the initial filter was passed, the case stopped being a hypothesis and became a real follow-up. According to the reconstruction published by the Dutch media, the tracker signal made it possible to follow a path that went from Netherlands to Cretewith steps through Den Helder and Eindhoven airport before reaching the port of Heraklion. There, in addition, images from a camera fit that clue and showed the Evertsen moored at the dock. On March 27, once out of port, the frigate continued broadcasting its position for about 24 more hours: first it skirted the Cretan coast and then headed east, until the device stopped giving a signal near Cyprus. The official reaction came after publication and was, at least in part, corrective. The Dutch Ministry of Defense made changes following this incident and stopped allowing battery-powered greeting cards to be sent to Evertsen, as well as announcing a broader review of military mail guidelines. At the same time, the department held that the tracker was located while the correspondence on board was being sorted, once the frigate had already left the port. And although he admitted that the ship could be followed at sea, he assured that this did not constitute an operational risk. There is a quite obvious reading in closing this story. The frigate was still part of a military mission, protected within a much larger device, and yet a low-cost domestic object managed to open a tracking window for hours. Not because it replaced the big threats, but because it slipped through a minor seam that no one had fully adjusted. That’s what makes this episode especially revealing: remember that, in 2026, security doesn’t just depend on large systems. Images | Ein Dahmer | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | France was moving its aircraft carrier without revealing its location. Until a runner on board uploaded an activity to Strava

Houston, we have a problem with Outlook. Microsoft spends millions on AI, but Artemis II does not escape the failures of its email

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On April 2, we experienced a historic event for humanity: the mission Artemis II It successfully took off towards the moon after more than 50 years without orbiting near the Earth’s satellite. Although the takeoff was a success, the path to get here was not without problems: it already had to delay the first date launch and also the second. Even on the official day there were problems. In the previous hours it was necessary check an anomaly in a temperature sensor of a battery abort system and also appeared another incident in the flight termination system (the safety mechanism that makes it possible to destroy the rocket if it deviates from its trajectory and becomes a threat). When the Orion spacecraft was flying almost 150,000 kilometers from Earth according to FortuneCommander Reid Wiseman encountered a mundane problem faced by any mortal with a computer and Microsoft email: an Outlook crash. The incident. The launch of Artemis II could be followed live and in that live, approximately 13 hours and 15 minutes after the broadcast began there is a fragment where the problem appears: “I see that I have two Microsoft Outlook accounts, and neither one works. If you could connect remotely and check Optimus and those two Outlook accounts, that would be great.” At first, Wiseman had issues related to the Optimus software, but then he pointed out a more trivial concern: There were two instances of Outlook running on his personal computing device. As a curiosity, the live stream to follow the takeoff still available on YouTube. Why it is important. The Artemis II mission is historic and the stream has left for posterity its first hours of flight and this anecdote that constitutes what is probably the first Microsoft technical support ticket generated from space. Beyond the joke, the episode shows that today’s space exploration and its cutting-edge technology coexist with commercial productivity software and its common failures. When an agency standardizes its entire infrastructure on a single technological ecosystem, the problems of that ecosystem also become problems of the mission. Tap to go to the post There is a support ticket from the Moon. As with any standard corporate ticket, the user first reported the incident, the technical team took over remotely, and finally closed the case. Houston accepted the request for remote access to the commander’s device, identified in records as PCD 1, and about an hour later, Outlook was back up and running. After 14 hours and 20 minutes of broadcast, someone from mission control communication said: “We managed to open Outlook. It will appear as “offline”, as expected”, as pick up Tom’s Hardware. Why they use Outlook in space. That there is Microsoft software on board is not something casual or improvised: Microsoft is a strategic partner of NASA that provides everything from productivity software to cloud data infrastructure and artificial intelligence (NASA Earth Copilot), hardware and mixed reality and Minburn Technology Group is your partner for software support and maintenance. In fact and according to NASAthe personal devices of the astronauts on the Orion spacecraft are Microsoft Surface Pro and the software they run is Commercial Off-The-Shelf, That is, standard commercial software for everyday tasks like talking to your family or managing your photos and videos. Another thing is the spacecraft and main flight systems: these are powered by specialized radiation-resistant hardware and specialized software with rigorous maintenance. The bathroom was also broken. The Outlook failure was not the only technical problem in the first hours of the flight, as can be seen in the broadcast. About two hours after launch, a malfunction light came on in the ship’s waste management system: the urine extractor fan had jammed. This component is responsible for sucking urine into a collector, avoiding the uncomfortable and unhygienic effects of microgravity. NASA confirmed shortly after the toilet problem had been solved. In Xataka | NASA had been refusing to allow its astronauts to carry iPhones for decades. For Artemis II you have made a historic decision In Xataka | The Artemis II astronauts will carry out experiments in what will be their own study models Cover | POT and Ed Hardie

Millions invested in AI graphical improvements so people say it looks like an Instagram beauty filter

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Nvidia presented DLSS 5 at GTC 2026 as the greatest graphical advance that video games have experienced since the ray tracing. The reaction has been almost unanimous: the gaming community and industry professionals themselves have described it as a “slop AI filter.” The rejection has been so frontal and almost unanimous that Nvidia has had to come out to clarify how the technology works and what control developers really have over these visual improvements. What is DLSS 5. DLSS technology was born in 2019 as an intelligent upscaling system: the GPU renders at lower resolution and the AI ​​reconstructs each frame up to 4K with minimal quality penalty. With each iteration (DLSS 3, 3.5, 4, 4.5) the goal remained the same, but DLSS 5 breaks that logic. According to Nvidia’s own announcementwe are looking at a real-time neural rendering model that analyzes the color and motion vectors of each frame and generates lighting and photorealistic-looking materials on them. The system recognizes the semantics of the scene (skin, hair, fabrics, metals) and applies its own interpretation of how those elements should look under real physical lighting. Jensen Huang defined it with a phrase that well summarizes the ambition of this new iteration: “Twenty-five years after Nvidia invented the shader programmable, we are reinventing computer graphics.” Digital Foundrywhich had access to the technology before the announcement (and which has been heavily criticized for its glowing coverage), called it “the most amazing I’ve seen in my time at Digital Foundry” and pointed to genuinely notable improvements in environments from ‘Assassin’s Creed Shadows’ or ‘Oblivion Remastered’. The faces, Juan, the faces. The problem is that the official demo video included sequences from ‘Resident Evil Requiem’, ‘Starfield’, ‘Hogwarts Legacy’ and ‘EA Sports FC’, and in all of them the system visibly altered the characters’ faces. The protagonist of ‘Requiem’, Grace Ashcroft, has been the most widespread example: more pronounced cheekbones, fuller lips and uniform skin tone. According to Kotakuthe effect seems to apply a TikTok beauty filter on characters with an artistic intention other than physical attractiveness, as is the case with Ashcroft. Another example is that of the ‘Starfield’ characters, which are not very detailed in themselves, and which gain facial resolution but lose all aesthetic coherence with the original design. In ‘Hogwarts Legacy‘, an old woman with gently modeled wrinkles begins to show off a deeply cracked face completely alien to what was seen in the game. Therefore, the dreaded term ‘AI slop‘ appeared on social networks in a matter of minutes. He Nvidia GeForce on X announcement post was buried by negative replies, which accumulated favs and RTs in much greater quantity than the original post. Also the comments of the Digital Foundry video They were almost unanimously negative. The answer. Given the volume of criticism, Nvidia published a statement on YouTube clarifying how the system works. According to the companydevelopers have complete artistic control over DLSS 5: they can adjust the intensity of the effect, the color grading and mask specific areas where they do not want the AI ​​to act (the company calls it “controllability”). The company also clarified that the technology is not a filter applied on top of the image, but rather takes the color and motion vectors of the game to generate its output, “anchored to the source 3D content.” Bethesda, one of the most active studios in the initial support (Todd Howard had appeared in the presentation video praising the results in ‘Starfield’) posted hours later a more nuanced response on the studio’s official account. There they stated that “our art teams will adjust the lighting and final effect to look the way we consider best for each game. Everything will be under the control of our artists and will be completely optional for players.” Two ways of looking at it. The disparity in reactions reflects two legitimate ways of evaluating the same technology. What a good part of the community and numerous media outlets have criticized is that the modifications make the characters more realistic but different from how they were designed by the game’s art team. For example, concept artist Jeff Talbot said that: “In each shot the artistic direction was removed to add meaningless ‘details’ (…) This is a garbage AI filter.” Poor optimization. a few weeks ago There began to be talk that the proliferation of tools of upscaling and AI has reduced the pressure on studios to optimize their games: when DLSS or FSR can more than compensate for performance issues, the incentives to polish the native engine disappear. There is already someone he says it bluntly: Some studios design their games from the beginning assuming that the upscaling It will fix what’s broken, rather than using it as a further improvement on an already solid foundation. With DLSS 5 that takes a qualitative leap, and the risk is not only aesthetic: it is work-related and creative. And then there’s an additional detail: the GTC demo required two GeForce RTX 5090s running in parallel (one to render the game, another to run the DLSS 5 neural model). Nvidia claims that the final launch, scheduled for fall 2026, will work with a single card, but the magnitude of the hardware raised questions about the actual requirements. If studios start designing with DLSS 5 as a safety net, what version of the game will the player without that GPU receive? Real video games. There is something that Nvidia seems to have not taken into account: people like video games because they look like video games. Imperfection has a human touch that is part of the product’s identity. Grace Ashcroft works as a character in ‘Requiem’ precisely because her appearance reflects exhaustion and vulnerability. DLSS 5’s AI makes it something that has been described as the result of applying Nvidia’s system to a character whose aesthetic is not designed to be photorealistic. The problem isn’t just that the result is aesthetically questionable: it’s that the entire premise is wrong. Nvidia assumes that “more … Read more

Pokémon Go brought millions of players to the streets. Millions of players who were actually training an AI

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In 2016 it came to the mobile market Pokémon Goa spinoff of the popular entertainment franchise with a very interesting premise: capture Pokémon in your city using your cell phone’s GPS. The game caught on very quickly and became a phenomenon. It’s been almost 10 years since that and Niantic, its developer, has taken advantage of all the data that millions of players have been giving them to guide delivery robots through the cities. Your first client: Coco Robotics. The business that no one saw coming. The amount of information that can be obtained from Pokémon Go is truly impressive, since millions of people have voluntarily traveled the world with their mobile phones in order to capture (digitally) this type of creatures. And each game leaves an invisible trace, since there are millions of photos of buildings, squares and streets labeled with very precise coordinates that would not have been possible without the information provided by its users when playing. Five hundred million people installed the app in its first 60 days, according to Brian McClendonCTO of Niantic Spatial. Eight years later, the game still has more than 100 million players in 2024, according to data from Scopely, the company that acquired Pokémon Go from Niantic that same year. The problem that GPS does not solve. GPS devices become a bit silly when they have to operate on sidewalks and much of the urban fabric that does not correspond to the road. Signals bounce between skyscrapers, tunnels and viaducts and the margin of error can be up to 50 meters, enough to place a robot on the wrong sidewalk or the next street. “The urban canyon is the worst place in the world for GPS,” affirms McClendon. Coco Robotics, a startup that operates nearly 1,000 delivery robots in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Helsinki, knows this well, as its devices operate precisely in those dense areas where the signal is never reliable. This is where Niantic Spatial comes in. In May 2024, Niantic separated its spatial and artificial intelligence division. created Niantic Spatial as an independent company. Its core product is a visual positioning system (VPS) trained with 30 billion urban images, capable of placing a device on the map with a precision of a few centimeters from a handful of photos of the environment. The key is that these images come from millions of points of interest in Pokémon Go and Login (the company’s pre-Pokémon Go AR game, released in 2013). In such popular games, players have for years been directed to photograph the same place from different angles, at different times and in different weather conditions. “We had over a million locations around the world where we can locate you to the nearest centimeter and, more importantly, know where you are looking,” explains McClendon. What this changes for robots. Coco Robotics has been the first partner to adopt this technology. Its robots, equipped with four cameras, will combine conventional GPS with Niantic Spatial’s VPS to position itself more accurately, especially in pickup areas in front of restaurants and in delivery to the customer’s door. According to Zach Rash, CEO of Coco, the goal is meet delivery times promised and not depend on margins of error that in practice mean arriving late or to the wrong place. The model already solves one of the most practical challenges of urban robotics: performing well where conventional systems fall short. Beyond the distribution. John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Spatial, talks about what he calls a living map: a hyper-updated simulation of the real world that updates as robots move through it and provide new data. The idea is not only that the maps are more accurate, but that they are designed for machines, not people. This involves adding descriptions of each element of the environment, its properties, its context. “This era is about building useful descriptions of the world for machines to understand,” says Hanke. In that sense, Niantic Spatial differs from other bets on world models, such as those of Google DeepMind or World Labswhich focus on generating virtual environments. Niantic Spatial wants to replicate the real world as it is. In Xataka | OpenClaw changed the rules of the AI ​​race. Technology companies already have their answer: copy it

China needed space to power millions of homes, so it built a mega solar plant in the open sea

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That China is building power plants As if there were no secret, it is not a secret. Without going any further, in the last four years it has been able to replicate the power of the United States, the largest electrical grid in the West. And a good part of the blame solar energy has it. In fact, in 2023 it installed more solar panels than the United States in all of history, as reported by Bloomberg. Solar energy requires space, so China is finding the most varied gaps, from the tibetan plateau to the open sea, where from the end of 2025 It is already connected to the electrical network a mega solar plant that breaks records. In China there are solar panels even in the soup. The largest offshore solar plant in the world. We are talking about the solar plant located off the coast of Kenli district in Dongying city, Shandong province. This engineering project is carried out by China Energy Investment Corporation (CHN Energy) and has a nominal capacity of 1 GW. As explains People’s Dailythe official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is China’s first gigawatt-level offshore photovoltaic project and currently the largest offshore solar installation in the world. This is what the Shandong plant looks like. Via: People’s Daily The context: why at sea. Because land space near its large coastal cities is a precious commodity. The Chinese government has a policy of red line to safeguard land used for agriculture and solve the line “Hu Huanyong Line“: while its great solar and wind potential is concentrated in the west, in the Gobi Desert and Inner Mongolia, the megacities and their most powerful industrial fabric are in the east. China is already developing parks of renewables in their deserts, but running Ultra High Voltage lines is very expensive, involves losses along the way and crosses complicated orography. The logical but technically infernal solution is to jump into the water. Until now, floating solar energy was limited to calm waters, such as what Germany is doing with its lakesbut China is another story. The open sea brings salt corrosion, typhoons and waves. Why is it important. Because China’s coastal provinces such as Shandong or Jiangsu constitute large centers of industrial consumption. Generating energy right there avoids those transportation losses of thousands of kilometers from the Gobi desert. If it works within the expected design parameters and the maintenance costs are affordable, it will be a good boost to take advantage of the coasts within the energy transition process from fossil to renewables. The panels are simply colossal. Via: X from People’s Daily A prodigious work of engineering. We are talking about an area of ​​more than 1,200 hectares where 2,934 enormous marine photovoltaic panels are located with standardized dimensions of 60 meters long and 35 meters wide. And they are not drifting panels: it is a large infrastructure designed to withstand extreme conditions ranging from storms to freezing water. In addition, it is hybridized: under the panels the project integrates fish farms, that is, producing electricity above and fish below. This type of combination is not new, as in Guizhou province there is a giant solar plant in whose basement mushrooms are grown. Shandong is aquavoltaic and Guizhou is agrivoltaic. Some numbers that make you dizzy. This installed power of 1 Gigawatt is similar to that of a modern nuclear reactor, so that according to estimates, it will be capable of producing 1,780 million kWh of energy that will be fed into the grid each year and thus supply 2.6 million homes in the region. approximately 60% of your demand. According to the estimates of the engineering company behind it, 1.3 million tons of carbon dioxide will no longer be emitted. In Xataka | Germany has had a crazy idea to solve one of the problems of renewables: covering a lake with solar panels In Xataka | The great myth of solar panels: producing them emits hundreds of times less than coal and gas Cover | People’s Daily

a new airport for millions of tourists

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It is not easy to get to Machu Picchu. And it makes sense. The Incas wanted the ancient citadel to be a safe, sheltered place, a bastion sheltered by the Eastern mountain range of southern Peru. The problem is that today Machu Picchu is no longer a remote town but one of the most powerful tourist attractions on the planet. Since 2007 it has been considered one of the ‘Seven Wonders of the World’ and every year it receives hundreds of thousands of visitors, many arriving from other countries after connecting flights and traveling for hours by road or trail. For that to change in Peru they are building an airport that could shoot 200% the flow of visitors in the region. There are those who believe, however, that it will not come for free. And not only because of its cost in hard cash. Its detractors warn of the impact that the infrastructure will have on the environment. What has happened? That Peru is building a new and ambitious airport in the department of Cuzco, more specifically on the outskirts of Chinchero. The project is not entirely new. His works started around 2018 and, if they are fulfilled the latest forecasts from the Government, the terminal will begin operating between the end of 2027 and 2028. The key is in its location. The Chinchero-Cusco International Airport (AICC) will be in the vicinity of the Sacred Valley of the Incasto a few dozen kilometers in a straight line from Machu Picchu. Why’s that? The location of the AICC is not coincidental. Not far from there, in Cusco, the Velasco Astete airfieldwhich in 2025 mobilized slightly more five million of passengers. With the new Chinchero infrastructure, however, the Peruvian authorities want to go one step (or several) further. The objective is to serve between 8 and 12 million annual users and consolidate itself as a regional reference. “It’s a hub that has to be developed in the south, in such a way that, after Jorge Chávez (Lima airport), Cusco is the connection center of South America”, claims Paola Marím, head of the General Directorate of Civil Aeronautics of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. How will it affect tourism? A few days ago the BBC dedicated an article to the future airport in which it states that its objective is to attract 200% more visitors to the area, which would help boost the tourism sector, but would also aggravate the pressure that the Sacred Valley already suffers. That percentage (200%) is striking, but it is even more powerful when two pieces of information are remembered. First, in recent years the Alejandro Velasco Astete aerodrome has already seen its demand increase exponentially. Last October, the Peruvian Corporation of Airports and Commercial Aviation (Corpac) actually calculated that the terminal would close in 2025 with a “historical record” of passengers: more than five million of users, 28.4% more than before the pandemic. Is there more? Yes. The second piece of information that helps to understand the importance of the Chinchero airport is found a few dozen kilometers away, in Machu Picchu, a tourist hub that is already suffering the effects of touristification. Despite the Incas’ attempts to turn it into a remote citadel, today it is a tourist icon where hundreds and hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world pass through every year. According to the Andina Agency, only in October did it touch the 150,000 visitorswhich brought the forecast of closing 2025 with more than 1.5 million of tourists, thus exceeding pre-covid levels. That’s good, right? It depends on who you ask. In recent months Machu Picchu has been news precisely because of its saturation, a problem reminiscent of the one suffered by Mount Fuji (Japan), Giza (Egypt) or European tourist centers such as Florence either Amsterdam. Years ago the Inca citadel was close to sneak onto UNESCO’s list of endangered heritage. And that has not been the only wake-up call for the risks facing the site. In 2025, the General Comptroller’s Office warned of the “tourist overload” who suffers from Machu Picchu and just a few months ago New7Wornders warned to Peru that, if it does not correct the situation, the ancient Inca town could lose its label of “New Wonder of the World.” The truth is that the Government has made an effort to protect the citadel, reinforcing its security and the control and sale of tickets. Is it the only problem? No. Right now getting to Machu Picchu is not exactly easy. BBC reporter Alexandra Marvar remember that when he visited the citadel he had to get into a taxi, a train and finally a bus. And that was just the final stretch. Before, foreigners usually take two flights: one international, to Lima, and another national that takes them to Cusco. With the AICC that will change radically, but the project has generated controversy. And not only because of its tourist impact or the delays that has been accumulating. As remember Marvar There are operators, guides and indigenous communities who consider that the new airport is not a good idea. The reason: its probable cultural and environmental impact. In fact, the project is already altering areas such as Urquillos, where there are cornfields that are being sold and developed. Beyond the loss of identity, there is concern about how this increase in pressure will affect infrastructure or even the water supply. These are concerns that come from long ago (before the pandemic, signatures were collected to stop the project), but they are gaining strength as the works progress. Images | Google Earth, Cynthia Winward (Unsplash) and Jackie Hope (Unsplash) In Xataka | Japan has begun canceling festivals designed to attract tourists. The reason: they attract too many tourists

Anthropic wanted to secretly scan and then destroy millions of books to train its AI. It hasn’t been so secret

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A language model for AI needs input if it is to be trained to be more accurate and effective. The issue is how the information is obtained and whether there is an ethical way to do it that is profitable for the technology company in power. There is no doubt that the preferred option for companies has been to use all possible physical and digital content without anyone’s permission. There is also evidence. A judicial leak reveals that Anthropic invested tens of millions of dollars in acquiring and digitizing literary works without permission from the authors. According to account Washington Post, the project, internally called “Panama”, was part of a frenetic race among big technology companies to accumulate massive data to train their artificial intelligence models. How it all started. The Panama Project was launched by Anthropic in early 2024. According to internal documents revealed per the Washington Post, the goal was to “destructively scan every book in the world.” Furthermore, these documents also explicitly state that the company did not want anyone to know that they were working on it. In about a year, the company spent tens of millions of dollars buying millions of books, cutting their spines with hydraulic machines and scanning their pages to feed the AI ​​models that power Claudeits star chatbot. According to the media, the books, once digitized, ended up being recycled. Because has come to light. The details of the project have been revealed in a lawsuit for infringement of rights copyright filed by literary authors against Anthropic. Although the company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to close the case in August 2025, a district judge decided to make more than 4,000 pages of internal documents public last week, exposing the entire operation. They are not the only ones. Court documents reveal that other technology companies such as Meta, Google and OpenAI had also participated in this race to obtain massive information to train their models. According to revealed According to the documents, an Anthropic co-founder theorized in January 2023 that training AI models with books could teach them “how to write well” instead of imitating “low-quality internet slang.” On the other hand, an internal Meta email from 2024 described access to a digital library of books as “essential” to be competitive with rivals in the race to dominate AI. However, the documents revealed by the media also show how Meta employees expressed concern on several occasions about the legality of downloading millions of books without permission. An internal email from December 2023 indicates that the practice had been approved after being “escalated to MZ,” apparently referring to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to court records to which the media has had access, the companies did not consider it “practical” to obtain direct permission from publishers and authors. Instead, they found ways to mass-acquire books without the writers’ knowledge, including downloading unauthorized copies from third-party sites. Chat logs from April 2024 show an employee asking why they were using servers rented from Amazon to download torrents instead of Facebook’s own. The answer: “Avoid the risk of tracing” the activity back to the company. Data torrent. The documents to which the Washington Post has had access also they test that Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, personally downloaded over 11 days in June 2021 a collection of books from LibGen, a gigantic library of copyrighted content. The outlet further revealed that, a year later, in July 2022, Mann celebrated the launch of the ‘Pirate Library Mirror’ website, which boasts a massive database of books and openly claims to violate copyright laws. “Just in time!!!” Mann wrote to other Anthropic employees, according to the outlet. Anthropic stated in legal documents that it never trained a revenue-generating business model using LibGen data nor did it use Pirate Library Mirror to train any full model. Anthropic’s legal solution. According to point the medium in its article, faced with the legal risk, Anthropic changed its strategy. The company hired Tom Turvey, a Silicon Valley veteran who had helped create the project Google Books two decades earlier. Under his direction, Anthropic considered purchasing books from libraries or secondhand bookstores, including New York’s iconic Strand bookstore. The company ultimately ended up buying millions of books and stacking them in a giant warehouse, often in batches of tens of thousands, according to court filings. The Washington Post assures In addition, the company worked with used book sellers in the United Kingdom. A project proposal mentions that Anthropic sought to “convert between 500,000 and two million books in a six-month period.” What the law says. Most legal cases against AI companies are still ongoing, but the media mention two court rulings that have considered that the use of books to train AI models without permission from the author or publisher may be legal under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright. In June 2025, District Judge William Alsup determined that Anthropic had the right to use books to train AI models because they process them in a “transformative” way. He compared the process to teachers “teaching schoolchildren to write well.” That same month, Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in the Meta case that the authors had not shown that the company’s AI models could harm the sales of their books. In the Anthropic case, the physical book scanning project was considered legal, but the judge determined that the company may have infringed copyright by downloading millions of books without authorization before launching Project Panama. The final agreement. Instead of facing a trial, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to publishers and authors without admitting guilt. According to point According to the media, authors whose books were downloaded can claim their share of the settlement, estimated at about $3,000 per title. Cover image | Emil Widlund and Anthropic In Xataka | If AI is going to leave us without jobs, in the United Kingdom they are already seriously discussing the solution: a universal basic income

Mexico was supposed to be giving oil to Cuba out of “humanity.” Now we know that he was charging millions

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On the coast of Veracruz, Mexico’s diplomatic and energy machinery has applied the handbrake. The image of the ship Ocean Marinerdocking in Havana on January 9 with 85,000 barrels of crude oil, seems to be the last postcard of an era that is abruptly closing. As confirmed France 24that was the last successful shipment before geopolitics cut off the flow. His replacement, Swift Galaxywas scheduled to sail in mid-January, but his trip was quietly canceled and he disappeared from the logistical calendar of Mexican Petroleum, how they have advanced in The Country. What happens in Mexican ports is the reflection of a tension that goes beyond commercial matters. After the American intervention in Venezuela on January 3 and the fall of Nicolás Maduro, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, was blunt: “No more money or oil will reach Cuba. Zero.” The threat was accompanied by an executive order that promises tariffs on any nation that supplies crude oil to the island, which Trump has described as a “failed nation.” Caught in this crossfire, Claudia Sheinbaum’s government navigates between two waters. On the one hand, it defends the “sovereignty” of helping a sister nation; On the other hand, in the Washington offices, their own accounting books tell another story: formal businesses and punctual payments that refute the purely humanitarian narrative. Solidarity after the storm From the National Palace, the speech has tried to avoid direct confrontation appealing to history. President Sheinbaum has reiterated that Mexico, faithful to its diplomatic tradition of voting against the blockade from day one, has the sovereign power to decide whether to “sell or give” oil to Cuba. This rhetoric gained strength at the end of 2024. After the collapse of the Cuban electrical system and the devastating passage of Hurricane Rafael in November, the Mexican government started labeling their shipments under the umbrella of “humanitarian aid.” However, here the enigma arises. Although the president assures that there is a humanitarian donation channel other than the commercial one, her administration has not offered specific figures on how many barrels are given away and how many are charged. Everything is opacity in the help, while the business has lights and stenographers, as highlighted The Country. While the political discourse focuses on solidarity, the financial documents are cold and exact. Pemex, which is listed on international markets, cannot afford ambiguities before the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). According to the information delivered to this regulatory body, the Mexican oil company maintains a current contract with the Cuban government since July 2023 through its subsidiary Wellbeing Gasoline. Far from being a hidden charity, the figures revealed by the director of Pemex, Víctor Rodríguez Padilla, show an active and lucrative commercial relationship. In 2025, Mexico sold oil to Cuba worth 496 million dollars. If we add what has been invoiced since the start of the contract in 2023, the total figure amounts to about 1.4 billion dollars. Rodríguez Padilla was emphatic in denying that Cuba does not pay its debts, a common perception given the island’s crisis. “Of course they pay us! We have a business relationship too. They are very formal in their payments,” the manager assuredclarifying that there are no overdue invoices. To try to minimize the impact of these revelations before the scrutinizing eyes of Washington, Pemex has argued thatAlthough the figures sound high, they are marginal for the company: they represent less than 1% of its crude oil production and just 0.1% of its oil sales. It is an “open” contract that depends on Mexico’s availability, and not an unbreakable commitment. The domino effect: why the tap was turned off The current crisis is not explained only by Mexico’s decisions, but by the collapse of Havana’s historical suppliers. For years, Venezuela was the island’s lifeline, shipping up to 100,000 barrels a day during the time of Hugo Chávez. However, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro and the US intervention in Caracas, these shipments ceased completely in January. as detailed BBC. Mexico then became the last lifeline, sending approximately 20,000 barrels a day, a figure that, although far from the island’s total needs, was essential. to maintain minimum services. The pressure escalated when Republican congressmen, such as Carlos Giménez, put the Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada (T-MEC) on the table. The threat it was clear: If Mexico continues to oxygenate the Cuban regime, the review of the trade agreement in 2026 could become a nightmare for the Mexican economy. Faced with the risk of tariffs that would damage its own economy, Mexico chose to suspend hydrocarbon shipments. The consequences of this supply cut are immediate and alarming. A graph made with data from Kpler and published by the Financial Times illustrates the seriousness of the moment: Cuba’s crude oil imports have plummeted and, according to the estimates displayed in the report, the island only has oil reserves left for between 15 and 20 days. The situation has raised alarm bells at the United Nations. The Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, he warned through his spokesperson that Cuba is at risk of imminent “humanitarian collapse” if its energy needs are not met. Without fuel, not only do the lights go out; The pumping of drinking water, the transportation of food and the operation of hospitals are stopped. Faced with the impossibility of shipping oil without suffering commercial reprisals, the Sheinbaum government has modified its relief strategy. The president confirmed that, while the Foreign Ministry seeks “diplomatic ways” to resolve the oil issue, Mexico will ship this week shipments of food and basic products managed by the Secretary of the Navy. It is a palliative for a crisis that is, above all, energy. In this maximum pressure scenario, an unexpected edge arises. As Trump closes the oil fence, he has also dropped comments that suggest the door is not completely closed. The American president recently stated that “we are negotiating with Cuban leaders right now,” hinting at conversations about immigration issues and the … Read more

whether donating millions of euros is beneficial or not

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Amancio Ortega is the eleventh greatest fortune in the world and, unquestionably, the richest man in Spain thanks to its two lucrative empires: Inditex and Pontegadea. However, in addition to his millionaire business profits, Amancio Ortega has also become popular for your donations. The millionaire injected 765.4 million into the foundation that bears his nameand donations valued at hundreds of millions of euros were channeled from it. This philanthropy was the center of a debate in which the enormous contribution to the well-being of the beneficiaries was put on the table, but also the fiscal compensations and an exercise of public image washing. A big jump in contributions. Amancio Ortega made an exceptional contribution to the Amancio Ortega Foundation. According to collected Digital Economythe businessman injected 765.4 million euros in 2025 to finance the entity’s activities until 2028. It is an amount much higher than that contributed in recent years, and marks a turning point in the size of the economic “cushion” with which the foundation works, which in your figures declared an investment in projects of 207.6 million euros in 2024. This money does not automatically translate into spending in a single year, but it does allow for the foundation’s involvement in larger programs and for a longer period of time. On its website, the foundation itself explains which has 541.8 million euros committed for the period 2025-2029. Where have those donations gone? An important part of these donations has been channeled towards healthcare, especially in the form of high-tech medical equipment and investments linked to public hospitals. A clear example is the National Hospital for Paraplegics of Toledo, which has received a donation of 11.24 million euros from the Leonese businessman’s foundation to execute up to ten projects related to facilities and works within the center itself. Without a doubt, the most ambitious project of Amancio Ortega’s foundation is the financing of ten proton therapy devices with a tender of 271 million euros started in 2021 and which will have valid until 2029. This latest technology equipment will be implemented in seven autonomous communities and allows for less invasive treatment of certain types of cancer, especially in cases of childhood cancer and difficult to access. In addition, the millionaire’s foundation financed the construction of seven new nursing homes in Galicia. For the moment they have built and delivered five of them to the Xunta de Galicia, and the objective is to complete the remaining ones in 2026. Direct aid in disasters. In 2025, one of the most notable donations was the one linked to the municipalities affected by DANA. It was an aid of 100 million euros, managed through 40 town councils, with the aim of supporting affected families and businesses. Here the mechanism was different from that used in the medical and socio-health projects. The urgency of the situation meant that, instead of signing an investment agreement with the administrations, the foundation delivered the funds to the different affected municipalities so that they could manage it by purchasing machinery for cleaning or to cover the most urgent needs of its population. Tax benefits, the darkest side. The other side of the debate focuses on the elephant in the room: donations to foundations have tax incentives, and this case is no exception. No matter how noble the motives behind these donations are, the shadow of interest in reducing your tax bill is evident, although also legal. In simple terms: whoever makes a donation can deduct part of that contribution from their taxes, with differences depending on whether they are an individual (IRPF) or a company (Corporate Tax). More than 97% of the capital of the Amancio Ortega Foundation comes from the contributions of its founder who, in turn, receives his income from the Inditex dividends and the benefits of Pontegadea. According to estimates of Publiconly with the financing of the proton therapy equipment, its benefactor obtained a tax benefit of between 108 and 123 million euros, since the legislation allows for tax relief between 35% and 40% of contributions. As Carlos Cruzado, president of the Gestha union of Treasury technicians, pointed out, “the tax benefit is still a public expense.” The real debate: philanthropy or paying taxes. In some ways, making such a significant donation means forcing the State to spend public money (in the form of uncollected taxes) on the investment. let an individual decide and that may not be strategic. On the one hand, there is the direct impact: hundreds of millions are put on the table available for social and health projects that might otherwise take longer to arrive. On the other hand, there is the fact that the project where the money is invested It is decided by a private donor, with his or her priorities and interests, not based on criteria of common interest. For society as a whole, was it more necessary to invest in this latest technology equipment or to hire more medical personnel for primary care? Should large donations be regulated differently to suit the general good, or should the donor’s discretion prevail? These are questions to which Spanish legislation has not yet provided an answer. In Xataka | Warren Buffett and Bill Gates recovered the philanthropy of Henry Ford and Rockefeller. A Trump law has put an end to it Image | GTRES, Unsplash (National Cancer Institute)

Data centers are so important that Meta has spent millions on advertising to change our perception of them

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Meta has spent 6.4 million dollars on an advertising campaign between November and December of last year to convince the American public of the benefits of its data centers, according to the New York Times. The ads, aired in eight state capitals and Washington, DC, featured idealized images of American towns revitalized by these facilities. exists an increasingly significant social rejection on the installation of data centers dedicated to AI, especially due to the impact they have on the excessive consumption of basic resources like light and water. And of course, first we have to convince that they are key so that Meta and the rest of the big technology companies can continue with their operations. The Goal campaign. According to the media, the ads featured emotional stories about Altoona (Iowa) and Los Lunas (New Mexico), two locations where Meta operates data centers. With guitar music and shots of farms and football fields, the videos promised jobs and prosperity. “We are bringing jobs here, for ourselves and for our next generation,” the voiceover said. According to Michael Beach, CEO of Cross Screen Media, Meta “could have purchased these ads with the goal of influencing political decisions and reaching legislators.” Ryan Daniels, spokesperson for Meta, limited himself to say to the NYT that the company pays the full costs of the energy used by its data centers, without commenting on the advertising campaign. Meta is not alone. Just like account NYT, Amazon is funding a similar campaign in Virginia through Virginia Connects, a nonprofit created by the Data Center Coalition. From the Financial Times they point In addition, other operators such as Digital Realty, QTS and NTT Data are also acting more intensely to defend the construction of new facilities. Endurance. In the United States, social rejection has caused the cancellation of multimillion-dollar projects in Oregon, Arizona, Missouri, Indiana and Virginia. Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen explained He told the NYT that the issue has become “a priority on Capitol Hill” when his voters began to complain en masse about electricity bills. Just like share The media, this month, Van Hollen presented a law to regulate the energy consumption of data centers. Even President Donald Trump spoke out on the matter: “The big tech companies that build them must pay their own way,” wrote a few weeks ago on Truth Social. electricity bill. Data centers have become critical infrastructures for the development of artificial intelligence, but there is increasing social tension over their installation. In October, Bloomberg counted that in the last five years the wholesale price of electricity in areas near large concentrations of data centers in the United States had increased by up to 267%. In Baltimore, residents paid $17 per megawatt-hour in 2020; In 2025 that figure reaches $38. On the other hand, the medium demonstrated In their research, 70% of the points where electricity price increases were recorded were less than 80 kilometers from data centers with significant activity. From Bloomberg they estimate that the energy demand of these facilities in the United States will double by 2035, becoming the largest increase since the 1960s. The situation in Spain. Our country is also experiencing a boom in the construction of data centers. The Community of Madrid, paradoxically the region with the greatest energy deficit in Spainconcentrates a good part of these projects and is expected to reach a power of 1.7 gigawatts in 2030. The consulting firm CBRE pointed out in a report that “there is no investor, operator or large technology company that does not have in its strategic plans to establish its data center project in the Iberian market.” Madrid, together with Barcelona, ​​already competes with cities such as Milan, Zurich or Berlin, although still far from the leading European group in terms of power capacity formed by Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin. What awaits us. According to Bloomberg, the forecasts they point because data centers will consume more than 4% of the world’s electricity in 2035. If these facilities were a country, they would be fourth in energy consumption, only behind China, the United States and India. Meanwhile, big technology companies are already exploring solutions such as modular nuclear reactors (SMR) to power your facilities, or send data centers to space. Cover image | Mark ZuckerbergGoal In Xataka | “The assemblies are not going to be done by AI”: we talk to the kids who have become carpenters, truck drivers and tinkerers

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