missing

Argentina 6 – Peru 0: the story of the alleged biggest fixing of the World Cups between dictatorships and missing persons

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In the context of a dictatorship that made opponents disappear daily, the 1978 World Cup was held in Argentina, an embarrassing chapter in the history book of football. “I knew what was happening to those who governed, but I could not imagine that cruelty towards the disappeared,” he said. would justify years later César Luis Menotti, Argentine coach from 1974 to 1982. While the Videla regime used the championship as propaganda Facing the outside world, the Albiceleste team, immersed in the competition and oblivious to the country’s political climate, was overcoming rounds supported by an enthusiastic public. In the decisive match against Peru, Argentina needed four goals to reach the final. He scored six and the controversy that that result raised is still alive today. Since the dawn of the World Cup, Argentina had pursued its organization. Finally, at the FIFA Congress on July 6, 1966, the South American country was chosen as the host country for the 1978 edition. At that same meeting, it was agreed that West Germany would host the 1974 World Cup and Spain would host the 1982 World Cup. Argentina had 12 years ahead of it to properly prepare the event. However, two years before the World Cup was held, events were going to take an unexpected turn. Football to whiten infamy On March 24, 1976, Jorge Rafael Videla carried out a coup d’état that overthrew the democratic government of María Estela Martínez de Perón, popularly known as Isabelita. Videla assumed the head of state at the head of a Military Junta, initiating the cynically called National Reorganization Process, which included a systematic plan to remove anyone suspected of dissidence from circulation. Videla swearing in as president of Argentina in 1974. (Eduardo Di Baia/AP) At first, the blow put the celebration of the championship in check. Belgium and Holland offered themselves as alternative venues, but the time margin was limited and FIFA estimated the show had to go on. Like Hitler at the 1936 Olympic Games or Mussolini in the 1934 World CupVidela used the World Cup for propaganda purposes. The tournament was an instrument to convey to the world the image of an open, advanced and plural Argentina, of a thriving football and political nation. No expense was spared for this: it is estimated that the organization of the tournament ultimately cost ten times what was budgeted, although no accounts were ever rendered. However, the situation in the country was far from the happy Arcadia that the military intended to portray. Kidnappings, torture and murders They were common in the development of relentless repression directed at all those suspected of not being sympathetic to the regime. It is estimated that up to 30,000 citizens He made the Military Junta disappear during those years. On June 1, 1978, a speech by Videla inaugurated the championship: “Within the framework of friendship between man and people, and under the sign of peace, he officially declared this eleventh (sic) World Football Championship 78 officially inaugurated.” At the same time that the ball was rolling in the opening match between West Germany and Poland, The Mothers of Plaza de Mayo metlike every Thursday at 3:30 p.m., to cry out for their missing children. While the Argentine people celebrated Kempes’ goals, thousands of people were silently retaliated against. The screams from the River Monumental Stadium reached the Navy’s Higher School of Mechanics, converted into a detention and torture centerwhich was a few blocks from the stadium. There are many detainees They faced a contradiction: His fan heart longed for the victory of his team, but reason dictated that victory would serve to consolidate the dictatorship. Finalists after beating Peru In terms of football alone, the Argentine team passed the first phase without problems and reached the last game of the second tied on points with Brazilwith Kempes becoming progressively more toned as the tournament progressed. According to the strange format of that World Cup, the winners of the two groups of the second phase went directly to the final, without semi-finals. The Netherlands won in group A, reaching the final for the second consecutive World Cup, despite the enigmatic absence of Johan Cruyff. In group B, Brazil and Argentina played everything on one card in the last match, but the locals played with the advantage of playing their match three hours later, and thus knowing the result of Brazil (FIFA had not yet unified the schedules of the first phase, a measure taken after the El Molinón pact). Brazil did its job and won 3-1 against Poland, a result that forced Menotti’s team to win by a margin of four goals against Peru. The Peruvians had had a formidable first phase, achieving first place in their group ahead of the Netherlands, but they had deflated in the second group and reached the last game without anything at stake. The Argentines dominated the match from the beginning, and at half-time they were already winning 2-0. After the restart, the Albiceleste team came out in a rush and 5 minutes into the second half they had already achieved their goal (4-0) against a Peru that seemed knocked out. Two more goals still fell and, midway through the second half, the scoreboard already showed the final 6-0. Objective achieved: Argentina was in the final of his World Cup. The shadow of a fix From the first moment, Argentina’s massive victory against Peru was surrounded by a halo of suspicionwith different and complementary versions, and crossed accusations between some protagonists. The passivity of the Peruvian defense during some goals raised suspicions, as did the signing of Peruvian defender Rodulfo Manzo for the Argentine team Vélez Sarsfield at the end of the World Cup. The first to raise the hare was Ramón Quiroga, the goalkeeper who defended the Peruvian goal that afternoon at the Gigante Stadium in Arroyito. In an interview with the newspaper La Nación in 1998, Quiroga, Argentine by birth but naturalized Peruvian, revealed his misgivings about the referee (“I think he … Read more

Anthropic is already preparing just the only thing it was missing to reinforce its AI leadership: its own chip

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Tech giants have learned something the hard way: depending on third parties is a weakness. Anthropic seems to have realized the same thing, and has been mulling over an important idea for months: making its own AI chip. As indicated in The Informationthe company is in negotiations with Samsung for a potential collaboration, although at the moment everything is unknown. Surprise, none. Already in April Reuters Indian that Anthropic was considering the idea of ​​developing its own AI chips in order to respond to the chip shortage. It seems that this proposal is really gaining traction, because what was once a possibility has now translated into concrete conversations with one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world. The shadow of OpenAI. The move comes just a week after OpenAI unveiled its own custom inference chip, baptized as “Jalapeño” and developed in collaboration with Broadcom. According to company officials, that chip offers better performance per watt than other inference chips, and that could leave Anthropic behind in this race. The reaction of the firm led by Dario Amodei therefore seems logical. They want to diversify, not replace. The strategy, however, is not to completely eliminate its current partners, but rather to have a more diversified strategy for the future. In statements to TechCrunch Anthropic officials have indicated that its “diversified hardware stack, which includes chips from Google, Amazon and Nvidia, will continue to be crucial to its computing strategy.” Everyone wants their own chip. The announcements and news surrounding OpenAI and Anthropic are not, as we said, any surprise. In the last two years we have seen how more and more technology companies joined the trend of having their own AI chips, when before they delegated that aspect to specialized companies like Nvidia. Thus, we have: Samsung, a perfect partner. The South Korean company has been deeply involved in the AI ​​industry for some time. It is a key partner of Nvidia, as it manufactures some of the chips it needs to train and run AI models with its GPUs. Not only that: Samsung is improving your OPC lithography of chip manufacturing thanks in part to the “AI Factory“of both. In Xataka | Anthropic already had Claude writing code. Now he has put it in the laboratories

Mayoral has been manufacturing children’s clothing for almost a century. It is the missing piece for Digi’s IPO to work

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Digi Spain confirmed this Monday that asks to be listed on the Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Bilbao and Valencia stock exchanges with an offer of up to 25% of its capital. The operation is based on an assessment pre-money of 1.7 billion euros and is supported by a binding commitment of 100 million from the Mayoral Group, the Malaga children’s clothing manufacturer of the Domínguez de la Maza family. It is the second attempt in six weeks. In April, Digi postponed the departure because he did not accept a discount greater than 10% on the 2,000 million that he was then seeking. Today he has accepted a bigger cut. Between the lines. The 300 million less valuation in six weeks is the price that the market places today on the fourth operator with its own network in Spain. 15%. Then there is Mayoral. A Malaga textile company subscribing 100 million in a telco before the stock market debut is not usual. The usual thing is a sovereign fund (case of Orange and Vodafone’s fiberCO), an insurer or a family office specialized in infrastructure. If Digi has had to activate a group whose main business is dressing children, it is because the natural buyers of a European telecommunications IPO were not willing to enter into the terms that the telecom wanted, or at least not without a prior anchor. Mayoral fulfills two functions here at the same time: Provide committed capital before setting a price. And it provides Spanish narrative. Digi wants to stop sounding like a low-cost Romanian operator and start sounding like a company with deep ties in the country. The name Domínguez de la Maza helps with that translation, especially in business environments. The figures. The details of the operation make it clear that the IPO does not resolve the balance. Rather, it accompanies him. 1.7 billion. Assessment pre-money. In May there were 2,000. 136 million. Net funds that will come into cash once the placement costs have been deducted. 1,814 million. Group bank debt as of March 31. 400 million. Capex planned only for 2026. 75%. What Zoltán Teszári retains through Digi Communications. Control intact. The net 136 million that the operation will leave does not cover even four months of this year’s capex. Striking. The context. Digi has grown at 20% annually since 2023 and closed 2025 with 929 million in revenue and 175 million in adjusted EBITDA. It has led net additions in fixed and mobile broadband continuously since the end of 2021. It has 14.2 million homes with its own fiber and 11.4 million active lines. The model is known: low rate, 11,700 direct employees without outsourcing customer service (one of the keys to Digi is its commitment to keeping everything internal) and constant capture of ports. It is the operator that has forced Movistar, Vodafone and Orange to react twice in less than three years. The problem starts at the margin. Adjusted EBITDA today moves around 20%. The plan presented to investors promises to raise it to 30% in the medium term. AND the trend is not upward, but downward. Yes, but. Ten margin points without retouching price is mathematically complicated. Furthermore, raising prices contradicts Digi’s entire commercial DNA. The equation only works if two things happen at the same time: The own network reaches 21 million homes ahead of schedule… …and the weight of the wholesale agreement with Telefónica for 5G access is reduced. Capex today for autonomy tomorrow. That is exactly what the 136 million finances. Meanwhile, the Teszári family retains 75% from Bucharest. Going public does not dilute control. And now what. The final price range and date are pending approval of the prospectus by the CNMV. The company is targeting the end of July. Three questions will mark the operation when the book is opened: If the large European funds enter above the implicit price that Mayoral has set with its commitment, or they settle for it. If Digi holds its rate of portability once subjected to quarterly stock scrutiny, with a margin of 20% that the entire market will now be able to read. If Telefónica, Vodafone España and MásOrange interpret the listing as an additional threat or as the first step to put the consolidation of the sector back on the table. The answer will come with the first day of trading. And with the following results. Featured image | Digi In Xataka | Any teleoperator would be worried about making less money with each client. Digi is exactly what you are looking for

Isar is the European aerospace company that has the money, the partners and even the rockets. The only thing missing is to launch them

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With its Spectrum rocket, the Isar Aerospace company apparently has everything to succeed. Money, public and private support, several available launch sites… However, it basically lacks being able to launch said rocket. He achieved it in March 2025, but it exploded just a minute later. He has tried again up to 4 times in 2026, but in any case the countdown has been paused due to some technical setback. The last of these attempts was this week, on Monday, June 15. The launch window will remain open until the 21st, but so far it has not been announced if there will be another attempt soon. The company has stated that every mistake is a lesson and that it is learning a lot from them, but the point is that it needs to take flight completely so that all those investors see a return benefit. Time passes and it is important to detect what technical problems are making takeoff so difficult. Five attempts. The explosion of 2025 It was due to the opening of a ventilation valve in mid-flight, which later caused the loss of attitude control of the rocket. Later, on January 21, it was a failure in a pressurization valve that prevented the launch. Then, on March 25, a dangerous increase in the temperature of liquid propane fuel was detected. To top it off, an unauthorized vessel entered the danger zone around the launch site. Logically, that was bad luck, but the problems continued. For example, in the April 9 attempt a possible leak was also located in a pressurized tank. Finally, this last attempt, that of June 15, it was not completed due to a failure in the fluid system. The problems have been of various kinds and it is important to solve them in time. ESA investment. Isar Aerospace is supported by ESAwhich has invested 205 million euros in it through the European Launcher Challenge program. In fact, in this last attempt the Spectrum rocket was loaded with 5 cubesats and an experiment from the European agency itself. Other investors. The company also has received 270 million euros of private investmentcoming from investors such as Island Green Capital, Molten Ventures, HV Capital or Lakestar. With all this, it is expected to reach a production level of more than 30 launchers a year. But of course, for that you have to take off with the first one. More launch locations. Currently, Isar Aerospace launches its rockets from the Andøya spaceport in northern Norway. However, it plans to build a new facility in Canada and has already signed a letter of intent with Maritime Launch Services to incorporate the Nova Scotia spaceport as a second operational site. He has even reached agreements to use the ramp of the old Diamant rocketin it French Guiana Spaceport. The fishermen do not support it. The German company has a lot of support, although it lacks that of the Norwegian fishermenthat they complain of the launch attempts that disrupt their work in Andøya. In fact, this place is also used as a military testing ground, so many complaints have also been issued about it. The money is already there, now the technology is missing. In short, this company has the money and, yes, the technology too, but it clearly fails. There is something that must be solved, because the fishermen’s problem is solved by changing the launch site, but the problem of not taking flight can end up with the loss of investors. Isar Aerospace engineers have a lot of work ahead of them. Image | Isar Aerospace In Xataka | An unknown company from Barcelona has become indispensable for ESA: its software controls the Ariane 6 rocket

Threads already boasts 500 million users. The missing figure remains the most important

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Threads was born at the time when competing with X seemed more possible than ever. The old Twitter was going through a period of profound changes under Elon Musk and Meta decided to enter with its own app in a field that X had dominated for years: brief, immediate public conversation supported by text. What was not clear was whether that window could become sustained use, community and real scale. Almost three years after its launch, the company already has an answer to teach the market. The data comes from the Goal itself, which has announced that Threads It has reached 500 million monthly active users in June 2026. The application would have added about 100 million monthly users since August of last year, when it was already around 400 million. It is a huge figure for such a young network and enough to place it in a very different conversation than in its first months. The company led by Mark Zuckerberg has presented the milestone along with several new features, with special emphasis on reinforcing the role of communities within Threads. In its official announcement, Meta maintains that these groups, organized around conversations on topics such as books, basketball, parenting or musichave helped shape the application. That’s why Communities It is now out of beta and adds functions such as a center to find communities, own icons, progress indicators for topics that are close to becoming a community and more recognition for outstanding users. The figures we have and the figures we are missing Part of the explanation is that Threads didn’t have to convince the user to start from a blank page. It’s no secret that upon its initial launch it benefited from a highly optimized growth strategy: the app was able to build on the connections that millions of people already had on Instagram, and some viral Threads posts even appeared on Instagram and Facebook. This advantage helps to understand why its adoption was so rapid, although it does not solve the underlying question: how many of those users have turned Threads into a commonly used app. This pace places Threads in a striking position if we compare it with other large networks, although with an important caution: not all of them were born in the same conditions nor did they communicate their metrics in the same way. TikTok/Douyin reached 500 million monthly active users in July 2018a little less than two years later of the launch of Douyin in China. Instagram reached that barrier in June 2016some five years and eight months after its premiere. Facebook announced 500 million active users in July 2010a little more than six years after its birth, although that communication did not formulate the metric with the same detail as MAU. Threads did it just before turning three years old. There is the missing figure. Meta has given the global number, but has not published the breakdown by country: we do not know what Threads’ main market is, where the growth is concentrated or how many monthly active users it has in Spain. That gap matters because a social network is not only measured by its aggregate size, but by the weight it achieves in each local conversation. And in Spain, without a public figure that allows it to be measured, Threads does not yet seem to occupy a place comparable to that of X, Instagram or TikTok. Some clues help to read this incomplete map, although none replace the official breakdown that we do not have. In its announcement, the company led by Mark Zuckerberg mentions that local communities will start with native language labels in Japan, Korea and Taiwana clue as to where you are putting the focus. Meta claims to be seeing more traction in Asia, especially in South Korea and Japan, where usage time has increased by 80% and 130%, respectively, compared to the previous year. This is useful data, but it is not equivalent to knowing how many monthly active users there are in each country. Images | Goal In Xataka | “Deepfake” calls have become a top-level security problem: Google believes it has the answer

77 are missing their heads

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It is not strange that when archaeologists begin to excavate a site, they take some other surprise. What is exceptional (fortunately) is that these surprises are like the one that Dr. Martin Furholt and his team they have taken in Vráble, western Slovakia. In 2012, researchers began exploring an inhabited Neolithic settlement there. between 5250 and 4950 BC which has turned out to hide a macabre ‘treasure’: a grave with dozens and dozens of corpses whose heads were torn off. The big question is… Why? In a place in Nitra… Vráble is a small town in Slovakia. Just over 8,000 inhabitants, a supported economy in the industrial sector and about 70 minutes by car from the capital, Bratislava. Nothing particularly noteworthy. For a few years, however, this discreet village in the Nitra region has been a headache for archaeologists who are in charge of investigating the first agricultural communities in central Europe. The reason: not far from Vráble they have found a Neolithic site with dozens of buildings and a ditch in which they don’t stop appearing decapitated skeletons. One word: Linearbandkeramik. When they began to investigate the Vráble site, around 2012archaeologists from the University of Kiel and the Slovak Academy in Nitra rubbed their hands. And it is logical. It is believed that the area was populated between 5250 and 4950 BC, an extensive period during which They built more than 300 homes spread throughout three neighborhoods and in which 80 buildings were inhabited simultaneously. Due to its characteristics and age, experts believe that it is one of the most important archaeological sites in the region. Linearbandkeramik (also known as ‘linear ceramic culture’ or LBK), label that identifies the agricultural settlements that inhabited central Europe between 5400 and 4900 BC Hence they were not surprised when in 2017 they unearthed four skeletons headless hidden in a wheat field. The problem is that in 2022 they discovered that those corpses were the first on a long (very long) list. What happened that year? That Dr. Martin Furholt, from the University of Kiel, and the rest of his colleagues verified that in the perimeter strip surrounding the Vrábel site there were not just a handful of skeletons. In the summer of 2022 they recovered the remains of 34 peoplestacked on top of each other. And as they advanced in their excavations, they found more and more corpses: dozens and dozens of ancient bodies buried “in various positions and in no discernible order,” clarify. The most surprising thing, however, was another detail: practically all of them were missing their heads. 78 bodies, one head. To be more precise, Dr. Furholt and his colleagues discovered the remains of 78 bodies. And all but one had been decapitated. The only exception was the corpse of a child. As the researchers analyzed the bones they also came to two conclusions: first, that the skeletons belong to people who were buried shortly after they died; second, that the vertebrae show cut marks, clues that archaeologists are investigating in search of answers. What the hell happened here? That is the question that archaeologists are now asking. Especially since there is no trace of the skulls. What the hell happened in the Vráble settlement? Do those 77 decapitated corpses tell us about an unknown Neolithic massacre? The most curious thing is that, in principle, the hypotheses used at the University of Kiel point in another direction. “The findings show intentional manipulation of the bodies,” explains Katharina Fuchsanthropologist, who confirms that “the analyzes suggest that violent ‘decapitations’ were not carried out, but skillful extractions.” With perspective. “We have evidence that burials were part of social practices that shaped local and regional relations and are only limited indications of conflict and crisis,” Furholt adds.. The expert also recalls that the Vráble beheadings occurred thousands of years ago, in “contexts of meaning totally different from those of modern societies”, which is why he warns of the risk of analyzing it from a current perspective. “The deposits of bodies or fragments could have been part of more complex, significant and recurring practices,” agrees Nils-Müller-Scheeßel, another of the researchers participating in the excavation. Beyond Slovakia. The truth, as remember Scienceis that the Vráble site is not the only one from the LBK period with bone remains that intrigue archaeologists. In the 80s they discovered a tomb from 5000 BC in southern Germany that housed the skeletons of 34 peopleespecially children. In that case, what stood out was not the absence of skulls, but what they showed: fractures that reveal that many of them died from blows. In Kilianstädten, Germany, a pit with 26 victims has also been discovered, many of them with shattered skulls and broken legs. The first… In everything? The question that hovers over these deposits and the Vráble burial site is the same: What happened to the first farmers of Central Europe? Why did linear ceramic culture settlements that had prospered for long periods disappear? These are relevant questions because, as remember Christian Meyer to Science“the LBK were the first farmers, the first great pan-European culture and the first time also that we find these repeated findings of violence.” And now what? For now, Dr. Furholt and his colleagues have collected their first conclusions in a paper which have just been published in ‘Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society’. Now his goal is to continue revealing the mystery. For example, one of the theories the team has on the table is that the missing skulls were removed to be stored separately, a phenomenon documented in other cases but which has not yet been confirmed in Vráble. “Similar interventions involving corpses have been documented in numerous prehistoric societies, also in the LBK period. However, the details of these practices differ. Furthermore, the depositing of corpses or parts in ditches is not an isolated phenomenon,” remember the University of Kiel. “An exceptional site”. At the moment, researchers are classifying the bones recovered in Vráble in search of clues about the age of … Read more

NASA has a plan to solve one of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos and only one thing is missing: money

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Since the first confirmed discovery of an exoplanet in 1992, there have already been discovered more than 6,000 planets beyond the Solar System. Although there are many of them, and they have very specific characteristics, there is something that unites them all. Which can have a radius smaller or larger than 1.8 times the radius of the Earth, but never that. It is like a border that can be crossed or not, but that is never stepped on. The exoplanets that are below that limit are the super earths and those who are above subneptunes. It is not known what causes this gap, but there are two hypotheses. To confirm which of them is the good one, NASA has designed a mission. The problem is that he still hasn’t gotten funding for it. In search of young planets. The two hypotheses that exist about the origin of this gap are related to the origin of exoplanets. Therefore, the best way to unravel the mystery is to analyze young planets. The problem is that this is not easy. Of the 6,000 exoplanets that have been discovered to date, only 20 were younger than 50 million years. The objective of the Early eVolution Explorer (EVE) mission is to launch a ship loaded with probes specialized in detecting exoplanets around young stars. If the star is young, the planets around it must be young too, since the planet always forms after its star. Very different exoplanets. Super-Earths are rocky planets, with a radius less than 1.8 times that of Earth. They are closer to their star than the sub-Neptunes, which are also larger, with dimensions above the prohibited radius. On the other hand, sub-Neptunes have a less rocky, more spongy appearance. The first hypothesis. As we have anticipated, there are two hypotheses about the forbidden radius of exoplanets. The first points to the same origin. Supposedly, all exoplanets were born with a rocky core that dragged clouds of hydrogen and helium around it for millions of years. The difference between them would be that the super-Earths, being closer to their star, would receive more radiation, so the gas layer would end up being destroyed. The sub-Neptunes could preserve it, hence that spongy appearance. The second. As for the second hypothesis, it points to the possibility of planets clinging to water during their formation or not. Super-Earths are located between their star and what is known as the snow line. This is a line above which water can freeze. In this case, not only does it not freeze, but the water receives so much heat from its star that it ends up evaporating. If water is in the form of vapor, it cannot join the “pieces of the nascent planet.” That leaves them only made of dry rock. On the other hand, the sub-Neptunes are further from the snow line. Water can freeze, so it becomes bricks that can be incorporated into the planet in formation. It is bigger, because it not only has rock, it also has water. Furthermore, that water condensed around it gives it the cottony appearance that makes it different from a rocky planet. Artist’s concept of an aquatic world The handicap of young stars. We have already seen that to unravel the mystery of the forbidden radium we must study young planets. We have also understood that the best way to do this is to look around at young stars. The problem is that these have such intense activity that fluctuations in their brightness can occur. associated with flaresnot an exoplanet orbiting it. In short, many false positives can occur. Three sensors. To solve this problem, EVE would be equipped with three sensors. The first analyzes light in the near ultraviolet, the second in the visible light range and the third in the near infrared. The first is used to detect bursts from the star itself, since these emit great radiation at that frequency of the spectrum. Regarding the second, it is the type of light that is normally used to detect transiting planets, the most used tool for the detection of exoplanets. Finally, young stars emit a lot of light in the near infrared. For all this, if a peak is detected in the near ultraviolet we will know that it is due to the activity of the star itself. If we see fluctuations in visible light we will understand that there may be a planet orbiting the star; But, to be sure, we must compare the data with the light emitted at all times by the star itself. That’s what near infrared is for. The forbidden radio. By studying young exoplanets, we can know how their formation was and understand which of the two hypotheses is the good one. With this, in passing, we will understand why the radius of 1.8 radii of the Earth is prohibited. 30 star cluster fields, 30 days. The EVE project has been planned to analyze 30 fields of young star clusters for 30 days each. Thus, more than 20,000 young stars could be analyzed and, with them, possible exoplanets of recent formation could be found. At the moment, it cannot be done, because the project does not have financing, much less a launch date. But NASA has everything tied up. You just need that little push to unravel the mystery. Image| Superearth on the cover and aquatic world in the text. Credit: NASA In Xataka | Hubble made us believe that this exoplanet was impossible. James Webb just explained why we were wrong

The last link that Huawei was missing to do without the West in chip design has appeared

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There is an indispensable component to the semiconductor industry that often goes unnoticed: the software used to Design cutting-edge integrated circuitsknown as EDA by its English name (Electronic Design Automation or automation of electronic design). It is currently in the hands almost exclusively of US controlled companies and its allies, so China needs to have its own software tools specialized in chip design. And little by little he is having them. One of the Chinese companies that are already working in this area is SEIDAand, curiously, its leader knows the American idiosyncrasy very well. Liguo “Recoo” Zhang is Chinese, but he has lived in the US for several decades and has worked at Siemens EDA, the US subsidiary of this German company that dominates the chip design software market in China. SEIDA promised to have its OPC software ready (Optical Proximity Correction or optical proximity correction) by early 2024, but has since disappeared from the news radar. OPC software is very important because it corrects in advance the optical distortions that occur during the photolithography process. When ultraviolet light is shined onto a silicon wafer to “print” the chip design, the light diffracts and the resulting shapes are not exactly as designed. Edges are rounded, corners are deformed and fine lines are narrowed. OPC software anticipates and compensates for these distortions by modifying the original design before it reaches the lithography machine. In this way, the final result on the wafer conforms to the intended design. The EDA that changes the rules In October 2025 Qiyunfang, a subsidiary company of YesCarrier and Huawei, advertisement that your EDA tools They were already being used by more than 20,000 engineers in China. This data has not been independently verified, so it is most prudent to collect it with some reservations. In any case, SEIDA and Qiyunfang are not the only assets that China has in the field of integrated circuit design software. LogicFolding architecture folds transistor-level logic within a single chip into multiple vertical layers And a group of researchers from Peking University has presented a prototype of an EDA tool that is compatible with Huawei’s LogicFolding architecture. The goal of the latter company is to produce chips by 2031 capable of matching the performance of 1.4nm integration technology from TSMC, Intel or Samsung, but without depending at any time on Western chip manufacturing tools subject to US export restrictions. The LogicFolding architecture folds transistor-level logic within a single chip into multiple vertical layers. This optimization requires the use of location and routing tools capable of working on the entire vertical structure simultaneously, instead of working on separate layers. Peking University addresses this problem precisely because its prototype treats the multi-layer structure as a unified design space from the beginning, as opposed to conventional designs, in which each layer is optimized separately and then stacked. During initial testing with industrial-grade open source integrated circuits, this EDA tool has achieved, according to its designersreduce the total length of internal wiring by 30%. Besides, has introduced performance improvements and thermal management versus conventional EDA workflows. It doesn’t look bad, but we will have to wait until Huawei places its first commercial chips with LogicFolding architecture on the market to assess whether this technology is really up to the task. This company has anticipated that its next generation of Kirin chips, arriving this fall, will be the first to incorporate these innovations. Image | YesCarrier More information | SCMP In Xataka | The condemnation that afflicts China: after decades of manufacturing a competitive desktop processor, it is six years behind

Russia is the great missing person in the AI ​​race. He has neither chips nor talent, and his great ally only gives him the leftovers

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What’s happening with AI in Russia? The artificial intelligence race has as absolute protagonists to the US and China, and it’s surprising that a power like Russia does not seem to be advancing in this type of field. The truth is that he is doing it, but his situation in this area is worrying. Russia does have AI models. Although they are hardly talked about, there are several AI models that are developed by Russian companies and that, above all, are totally oriented towards their citizens. The country does not have access to Western models such as ChatGPT or Claude, but it does have access to these alternatives: GigaChat: is probably the most advanced Russian model. It is developed by the financial institution Sberbank, and It is available via web although to use it it is necessary to have an account in said entity. Yandex Alice: the company that has already offered a search engine in the image and likeness of Google for years also has its own artificial intelligence model, called Alice AI. It is possible to use from its official website in both English and Russian (Spanish is not supported) like a traditional chatbot. MTS AI – one of the largest telecom operators in Russia also has its own model, MTS AImore aimed at companies and developers with its Cotype models that recently support the ability to create agents for enterprise applications. behind. The veto of chips and advanced technology from the US has been one of the factors that has caused these models to be clearly behind the latest frontier models from companies such as OpenAI or Anthropic. He proves it launched three months ago from GigaChat-3.1-Ultra-702B, an open weights model derived from DeepSeek 702B A36B. In the published benchmarks, the performance of this model is at the level of DeepSeek v3 (launched in December 2024) or Qwen3-235B (launched in April 2025). This model is for example available at Hugging Face. China is your natural ally. China and Russia have long maintained a geopolitical alliance that has an impact in various areas. The curious thing is that in this case that impact is being felt less than one would expect. Russian AI models are based on Chinese open models, but at the moment it seems that These are somewhat old versions which they later adapt to Russian. And as happens with Chinese models, which censor certain topics, Russian models apply that same filtering to avoid sensitive issues. Without chips there is no AI. The big problem Russia faces is the same one China faces, but amplified. They don’t have access to advanced Nvidia chips to train their models, so they have looked Shortcuts to bypass trade restrictions and be able to develop those models. Russia, get in line. Sberbank, for example, is trying to get access to Chinese AI chips like the Huawei Ascend 950 for your projects, but there are two problems here. The first is that these chips are aimed at model inference, not their training. The second, that at the moment those who have priority access to these chips are the Chinese companies themselves, which are reserving large quantities for their future projects. ByteDance, Tencent or Alibaba have placed important orders that leave Russia in a complicated situation. Russian chips in the (distant) future. These problems of access to specialized chips could be solved if Russia manages to boost its semiconductor industry. Baikal Electronics has been working on alternatives to x86 chips from Intel and AMD for some time, but also promise develop AI chips in 2029 or 2030. Once again, commercial and technological vetoes mean that in both scenarios the company’s proposals cannot compete with the latest advances of its Western competitors, at least for now. Industrial and military use. Russian LLM developments not only try to present an option for Russian citizens, but also for military applications. The war with Ukraine has actually revealed how Russia is using the well-known AI miniPCs Nvidia Jetson for its Shahed missiles. Russia has it very difficult. The current situation in Russia makes it difficult for the country to present notable alternatives to the most advanced AI models of the US or China (or even Europe). The war with Ukraine also caused an exodus of talent and Russian engineers, although companies like Sber have tried to boost campaigns to attract talent in the university environment. All of this adds to Russia’s difficult access to the most advanced hardware and software and its dependence on an ally like China that is prioritizing its own AI companies. In Xataka | Russia already has its own multi-core CPUs for AI. What it doesn’t have yet is the most important thing: its GPU

Apple develops the anti-theft function that was missing from the iPhone

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Unfortunately, having your cell phone stolen It is a situation that many people have had to suffer. If, in addition, the theft has literally taken your phone out of your hand, not only will you be scared, but the thief will also get your phone unlocked and can access all your apps. Apple is working on a feature to prevent precisely this Theft detection. The information comes from the internal iOS code to which 9to5mac has had access. It details a function that will detect when an iPhone has been taken from its owner’s hands, automatically blocking it. It doesn’t prevent it from being stolen, but at least it makes it inaccessible, something that may deter some thieves. How it works. This function takes advantage of mobile sensors such as the accelerometer to identify the typical “pull” in this type of quick theft, causing the mobile to lock immediately. To determine that it has been a theft, take into account other factors such as the distance to a paired Apple Watch or whether the device is in an unknown location. Android already had it. Surely many of you are thinking about it since you read the headline and indeed it is: Apple has not invented anything. Google presented this feature at Google I/O in May 2024 and implemented it at the end of that same year. It does exactly the same thing: it detects when the phone is “torn” from our hand and blocks it. Why is it important. That Apple is going to arrive later does not mean that this function is not important, especially considering that iPhones are the favorite target of thieves. There are no statistics broken down by type of mobile phone or by type of theft, but In 2024 the OCU mentioned that in Spain around 250,000 mobile phones were stolen a year, so a function of this type will be very useful for many victims. Protection in case of theft. Apple already has this feature in case of theft that applies measures such as requiring Face ID authentication to perform certain actions and applying a security delay when making critical changes such as changing the Apple ID password or changing the passcode. It lacked extra protection in case our cell phone was taken away while it was unlocked. It’s unclear if it will arrive with the next iOS 26 update, but the fact that it’s in the code indicates that it shouldn’t take too long to arrive. Image | Xataka with Gemini In Xataka | Up to three years in prison for stealing a cell phone: the new law that wants to punish thieves who steal again and again

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