needed

Someone had the brilliant idea of ​​sorting the IKEA catalog by assembly difficulty: it was just what we needed

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It has happened to all of us at some point: we see a piece of furniture, a lamp or any small home accessory and for a few seconds we imagine the final result, already placed, as if it had appeared there by magic. Then comes the second image, much less pleasant: the box on the floor, the pieces spread out and that doubt as to whether we have the patience, the time and the necessary tools to finish it without regretting it. Buy something to ride It’s not just choosing a product; It is also accepting a small future task. That’s where it comes in IKEA Complexity Indexa website as simple as it is effective that turns that previous suspicion into a sortable table. It is not an official IKEA tool, and the site itself makes it clear by presenting itself as a fan project, but its starting point is very recognizable: gathering more than 21,000 products from the store and classifying them according to the effort that assembly may require. To accomplish its mission, it calculates a score from steps and parts, and adds data such as manuals, estimated time, and ease ratings. This allows us to look at the catalog from a very different question than the usual one: not how much it costs, but how much it will require of us. The price tells how much work remains ahead The page does not try to impress with design. As we can see in the screenshot, we have a table, a search engine, a category selector and a very specific filter to only be left with products that have a single PDF of instructions. From there, we can sort by price, steps, part types, total parts, manual pages, complexity or estimated time. There is an important precision: the prices are in dollars and the items link to the American IKEA store, so not everything has to be available in Spain or other European markets. IKEA Complexity Index has a simple design When we start sorting by complexity, the table leaves some quite curious scenes. At the bottom, products with a score of 1 appear, such as FÄLLSVIK mini glass door for BESTÅ furniture wave NYMÅNE work lamp with wireless chargingtwo articles that the index dispatches as minimal assemblies. At the other end, when consulting the page, a PAX corner wardrobe with 175,348 points and an estimate of 624 minutes. It is a large combination, with several associated manuals and a clear warning on the IKEA sheet: it takes two people to assemble it. The FÄLLSVIK mini glass door has a score of 1 on the IKEA Complexity Index The index also serves to dismantle a fairly convenient intuition: thinking that the most expensive will necessarily be the most difficult. By consulting the table, the JÄTTEBO Sectional six-seater It appears with a price of $5,345, but with a score of 684, very far from the PAX that we just saw. And something similar happens downwards: STRÅLA decorative screen and the UTSÅDD hook shaped like a cat cost $2.99, but they don’t demand the same by this metric. The first scores 40 points; the second, 6. The PAX corner wardrobe reaches 175,348 points in the IKEA Complexity Index The usefulness of this classification is better understood when we look at a job published in 2022. The Journal of Business Research analyzed reviews of IKEA products and found that ease of assembly weighed on satisfaction and subsequent recommendation. That is to say, it is not enough for the furniture to be pretty or cheap: how it treats us during the process also matters. The famous “IKEA effect” adds another angle, because putting something together can make us value it more, as long as we manage to finish it. In Xataka Neither buy nor rent: Navarra launches a housing model that also rescues barracks, mills and convents The best thing about this project is that it allows us to look at the catalog from another perspective. It is enough to organize a column so that a piece of furniture stops being just a pretty photo, a price or some measurements, and also becomes a promise of work. Before falling in love with a purchase, perhaps it is worth knowing how many pieces separate the initial illusion from the final result. And someone has thought about helping us in the process. Images | IKEA | Screenshot | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | The canonical “living room furniture” in Spain in the 80s and 90s is dead. That says more about us than it seems. (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Someone had the brilliant idea of ​​sorting the IKEA catalog by assembly difficulty: it was just what we needed was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

now your face is also needed

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Pokémon card collecting has been untied for a long time. Envelopes sold out in minutes, queues that start days before a launch and resale prices that multiply by ten or twenty the original value of a product. The Pokémon Company has decided that the only way to stop speculators is through something that until now seemed reserved for airports or border control: using facial recognition systems. What the company has announced. The Pokémon Company will implement a facial recognition system in its Pokémon Card Stores in Japan, the smaller establishments focused exclusively on the trading card game, which are distinct from Pokémon Centers. According to collect According to the company’s own official website, the goal is to “provide a safe shopping environment for all customers, prevent crime and ensure compliance with entry and purchasing regulations.” The measure will debut with the Japanese launch of the Storm Emeralda set, dedicated to the Pokémon Rayquaza. How it works in practice. Any customer ages elementary school and older must agree to have their face scanned in order to enter the store and receive a shift number. The system saves this facial record along with the number of visits of each person, so that if it detects that someone has entered more than once on the same day, or has tried to get several tickets, it denies access. Preschool children are exempt from scanning, but cannot enter alone as they always have to be accompanied by an adult. As the company explained, if staff detect repeated attempts to enter, “our staff can speak to you individually” to warn you that you are breaking the rules. Why do they go to this extreme? The problem is not new, but it has exploded in recent years. Scalpers buy boxes and envelopes in large quantities only to resell them later at much higher prices, leaving stores empty for the average fan in a matter of minutes. Some Japanese stores had already tried other formulas before reaching the facial scanner, such as removing the protective plastic from sealed boxes at the time of purchase so that they cannot be resold as a new product, or even ask customers to respond to a questionnaire about Pokémon to show that they buy to collect and not to speculate, according to collect VGC. None of these measures have been sufficient. It is not the only barrier they have put up. This is not the company’s first drastic measure. Earlier this year, The Pokémon Company in Japan began requiring identification with an official government document to purchase certain card products in its stores, according to they count from Polygon. And starting in August, according to collect PokéBeach, some purchases at Pokémon Center Online will also require official ID photo verification. Facial recognition therefore adds to an increasingly tight fence against resale. There is something else behind it: security. Beyond business, the company also talks about “security management.” In March, an employee of the Pokémon Center Mega Tokyo store died on the premises at the hands of an alleged stalker, forcing the establishment to close, which will officially reopen in August, as confirmed by the company itself. Outside its waters, in the United States, the increase in the value of cards has gone hand in hand with an increase in violent robberies. In the last year alone, there have been multiple store robberies, including an armed robbery in New York in which employees and customers were detained, or the case of a man in Florida arrested for stealing letters valued at $12,000 using a chainsaw, according to they shared from IGN. What happens with that data. The Pokémon Company’s privacy policy contemplates the collection of a much wider range of data than merely facial data, whether photographs, audio recordings, email addresses, name of the educational center, occupation, place of work or numbers of official documents such as driver’s license or passport, according to they count from Polygon. The company ensures that the information collected in stores will be kept only as long as necessary and will be deleted afterwards, although it has not specified an exact period. And if you don’t want your face scanned. There is no middle ground, since anyone who does not give their consent to facial recognition will not be able to enter the store or receive their shift ticket. Of course, if a customer needs to leave the premises during their visit, for example to go to the bathroom, they can re-enter as long as they notify the staff first. And now what. At the moment, facial scanners are limited to Japan and there is no indication that it will spread to other countries in the short term. It is also not clear if it will reach the Pokémon Center, or will remain only in the Pokémon Card Store. Nintendo president Shuntaro Furukawa had already announced this month that the company would take “measures” in the face of shortages and resale, without giving many details. Now we know what he meant. In Xataka | Microsoft wants to preserve Xbox games and has chosen an unexpected path: officially emulate them on Windows

We’ve been using sunscreen for thousands of years, even though we didn’t know we needed it at first.

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Nowadays We are quite aware of the importance of sunscreen. In the past they were not so clear about it, but they used it anyway. Normally, substances were used to lighten the skin or prevent it from darkening, since dark skin was associated with the lower classes of society. The upper classes did not want to appear from the lower classes and some people from the lower classes did not want to be noticed, so all kinds of concoctions were devised aimed at maintaining their whitish complexion. Over time, and with all the knowledge we have today, some scientists have dedicated themselves to analyzing those formulas and the truth is that, although some were anything but healthy, others were safe and even effective. Does that mean we should use them today? Logically not. We have much better studied options. But for the times in which they were developed, some were not bad at all. When it was worth it with the melanin itself. The first humans they lived in Africaso their skin was prepared to be intensely exposed to solar radiation, thanks to very high levels of melanin. Over time, as he Homo sapiens It was distributed to other parts of the world, so much melanin was no longer necessary, so the skin became lighter. The problem is that less solar radiation does not mean any, so little by little people found themselves having to look for a replacement for the melanin they had lost. They didn’t know why they needed it, but they were looking for it. The Egyptians and their cosmetics manufacturing skills. In ancient Egypt, cosmetics played a very important role. Makeup and creams and oils were used to moisturize the skin, improve physical appearance or as a status symbol. Even some cosmetic products had religious and ritual purposes. For all this, it is not strange that among the Egyptians there were great formulators. Many of their mixtures were useless, but some did have interesting and understandable applications with the science we know today. In this last drawer is found sunscreen based on jasmine, rice and lupine (the plant from which lupins are obtained). The goal of this mixture was to keep the skin as white as possible. They did not know that solar radiation can be harmful. However, they were protecting themselves from them, since today we know that rice bran absorbs ultraviolet light, jasmine helps repair DNA, and lupine lightens the skin. They weren’t just protecting themselves. They also repaired any damage that may have already occurred and kept the skin clearer. From the Greeks to the Romans. The Greeks used olive oil to protect yourself from the sun and, above all, to care for your skin after exposure. Although they were not aware of the magnitude of the problem, they did see that the skin was suffering from sun exposure, so they made their own aftersun. Today we know that olive oil has an SPF of 8. Too low, but better than later options and certainly better than not wearing anything at all. As for the Romans, They were among the first to use zinc oxide to prevent their skin from darkening. This substance is still used today as a physical filter in many sunscreens, so they aimed their shot very well. They were also used in India and China. Beware of lead. In Japan, white skin was a clear symbol of status and female beauty. For this reason, women smeared themselves with lead powder. It was also used by European women in the 16th and 17th centuries, usually mixed with water and vinegar, in a mixture known as venetian ceruse. In both cases, it was used because, being a thick, white powder, it gave them a mask effect that imitated the appearance of a very white complexion. Therefore, there was no protection at all. On the contrary, since lead It is highly toxic. The first sunscreens. In 1801, the chemist Johan Wilhem Ritter discovered UV radiation, although its harmful effects on the skin were not known until 1820, when a doctor named Sir Everard Home determined that these radiations, coming from the Sun, are harmful and that the skin itself defends itself through pigmentation. As a result of this last discovery, an attempt was made to make sunscreen with tannins, such as those of red grapes. However, the dark effect it left on the skin was not very well received. Over time, different options were tested, including zinc oxide from the Romans. Nowadays we know much better about the effects of the sun and sunscreen. In the end, many of these formulas from ancient civilizations were not so wrong. Nowadays we know the effects of this and other physical filters, as well as chemical ones, which do not create a barrier on the skin, but rather absorb radiation. All of them, deep down, are the result of thousands of years of curiosity and research. Because it’s true that the first humans to make sunscreen weren’t even making it for the right reason. But the fact is that, for whatever reason, they did it. We have instinctively protected ourselves forever. That a tanned footballer Don’t make us go back to the past. Images | Magnificent In Xataka | Science warns of the dangerous success of anti-suncream hoaxes on TikTok: “Despite being a minority, this content is influential”

We believed that laboratories and millions were needed to build a GPU. A maker is setting one up at home

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For years we have assumed that build a GPU It was a field reserved for companies with advanced factories, engineering teams and million-dollar budgets. It wasn’t an absurd idea: just look at the complexity of any modern graphics card to understand why it seemed out of reach for a person. But what he has done Matthias Balwierzknown as Bitluni, forces us to qualify that certainty. It has not replicated a GeForce nor does it intend to compete with NVIDIA, but it does is building from home a graphics machine with thousands of RISC-V microcontrollers. The first phase brings together 8,192 of those microcontrollers, each linked directly to an RGB LED. This decision makes the montage difficult to fit into the usual categories: the design brings together in the same structure the graphic processing and the surface on which the result must appear. In technical terms, it is designed to act as both a graphics card and a screen, without depending on a separate monitor. Of course, the project remains a partial prototype, still far from the scale and capabilities planned for the complete system. A GPU made pixel by pixel That architecture was not defined from the beginning. The maker began thinking about building some type of screen, but when studying the cost and difficulty of the project he ruled out resorting to components Addressable RGBwhich would have made the whole set too expensive. The alternative was more direct: solder an LED to each microcontroller and turn each chip into a visible graphics unit on its own. The decision contained part of the budget, although it multiplied the design, assembly and programming work necessary to coordinate thousands of elements. The scale becomes clearer when we look at the complete objective. A resolution of 1920×1080 would have required more than two million microcontrollers, shooting the cost and complexity far beyond what Bitluni had set itself. The maker then lowered the ambition to 320×200 pixels, a resolution associated with video games of the DOS era, but which still requires 64,000 chips. The components installed so far represent just a first stage of a machine that would multiply its size almost eightfold if it is completed. To organize such a large amount of hardware, Bitluni divided the system into 16×32 “pixel” boards, conceived as independent modules within the set. These are distributed in a circular arrangement that reminds of Cray-1the historic supercomputer of the seventies, although the reference is mainly visual. Internal coordination is also hierarchical: each group of 32 microcontrollers is under the control of a more powerful CH32V unit, in charge of organizing the operation of that section and serving as an intermediate level within the machine. The choice of the QingKe CH570 explains part of the economic logic of the project. It is a microcontroller with a 32-bit RISC-V CPU, a limited instruction set and a frequency of up to 100 MHz. It also integrates a USB controller, a 2.4 GHz transceiver and support for Bluetooth 5.0 LE. Bitluni was able to buy each unit for about $0.13, but the advantage is diluted when multiplied by the entire planned matrix: only the chips necessary to reach 320×200 pixels would exceed $8,000. The problem grows when projecting the power supply of the complete system. It speaks of an estimate of 2,161 W, equivalent to about 655 amps at 3.3Vfor the final planned configuration. The media points out that each microcontroller consumes around 10 mA, although it does not offer a breakdown that allows us to separate the expense of the chips, LEDs and auxiliary electronics. To support such a load, Bitluni has turned to a source Corsair WS3000 and own converters capable of transforming the 12 V output into the required 3.3 V. A big part of the project is also making the infrastructure that allows everything else to work. Bitluni designed the PCBs, power circuits, interface boards and breadboards, tackling a six-layer board for the first time. The complexity of the design ended up pushing him to the limits of the manufacturing service he used. In parallel, he studied an immersion cooling solution and came to the size of the acrylic container he would have needed, although he left that option on hold for economic and environmental reasons. Programming posed another problem of scale: it was not enough to manufacture the boards, the code also had to be loaded into each microcontroller. To avoid doing it by hand, Bitluni 3D printed a small tool with three contacts and attached it to the carriage. a 3D printer. A Python script sent G-code commands to move it to the exact position of each chip and complete the process in a repeatable manner. The printer thus stopped manufacturing parts to become an automated programming machine. This machine does not compete in performance, efficiency or size with a modern graphics card, nor has it yet reached the scale that Bitluni projected. Its value lies in exposing, through separate components, tasks that a commercial solution concentrates or distributes among specialized chips and circuits: calculation, control, power, coordination and visualization. By rebuilding them with low-cost microcontrollers, the maker has turned an unusual idea into a system that can be designed, tested and expanded in stages. It is not a conventional home GPU, but an engineering experiment taken to unusual limits. Images | Bitluni In Xataka | Huawei’s He Tingbo: “This is the first time China has proposed a new principle for the chip industry.” Not everyone is convinced

The emir of Qatar’s superyacht needed some repairs. Just giving it a coat of paint already costs 13 million euros

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The most luxurious yacht in the Persian Gulf has just returned to the water after missing for months. Nobody knew much about where it had been during all that time or what they did to it, even the manufacturer of the Emir of Qatar’s superyacht. he published it on his Instagram profile. It is only known that it left a German shipyard and that, when it reappeared off Gibraltar, it looked like new. As and how I collected Luxury Launchesbehind that “like new” there is a bill that few ordinary owners could assume: more than 35 million dollars. And we’re talking about giving it little more than a lick of paint. Once again, millionaires show us why only they can afford have these superyachts. A tune-up for a 500 million yacht. He Al Lusail belongs to the sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thaniemir of Qatar, and is one of the largest private yachts on the planet. It is 123 meters long and has capacity for 36 guests served by a crew of 56 people, as collected Yacht Bible. The emir ordered it to the manufacturer Lürssen in 2017, so after almost a decade sailing, it was time to give it a coat of paint. That’s why the yacht mysteriously disappeared from the marinas of the Spanish coast by which he used to be seen before summer. now we know that, during the last seven months, the Al Lusail has been at the Lürssen shipyard in Bremen undergoing maintenance, and returned in time for the summer season. What it really costs to take care of an 8,489-ton ship. According to Lürssen in your publicationthe work included technical reviews, hull inspection, propeller and rudder maintenance, and HVAC system upgrades. Nothing very flashy, but essential on a ship that weighs nearly 8,500 tons. The shipyard did not give exact figures, although according to estimates Luxury Launchesthe price of the full service could rise to about $35 million. Of that amount, a good part goes just in paint. Repainting a yacht of this size requires first removing all hardware, steel railings and window seals. According to they explain responsible for specialized shipyards Boat Internationalpreparation (sanding, treating corrosion, leaving the surface perfect) represents 70% of the work. The paint job, itself, is the easy part. 13 million euros in painting. On a medium-sized boat, the job of repainting the hull would cost, at most, a few hundred thousand euros. But he Al Lusail It is not an average ship, it is the height of a six-seven-story building. Its six decks, enormous glass facades and the curvature of its hull complicate the work and that shoots the final price above 15 million dollars (about 13 million euros), just to leave the exterior impeccable. To that figure must be added the rest of the maintenance work, engine and electrical system checks, renewal of fabrics and furniture in the cabins, etc. In summary, the Al Lusailhas complied with the rule that says that the maintenance of a yacht involves an average of 10% of its price of purchase. Taking into account that its price is estimated at around 500 million dollars, the Emir of Qatar even found this revision cheap. An owner for whom this is pocket change. Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, current emir of Qatar, is a descendant of one of the most influential dynasties of the Arab world and presides over one of the sovereign funds largest in the world that manages assets for about 475,000 million dollars. The emir himself donated one of the Boeing 747s that used as private jetsto serve as Temporary Air Force One in the United States. The truth is that now, with the hull shining and the engines ready, the Al Lusail is ready for another summer in the Mediterranean. And its owner probably won’t even have noticed the damage he left in the box. In Xataka | A single millionaire spent the equivalent of 10,000 tourists on his luxury vacation in Mallorca: the Emir of Qatar Image | Wikimedia Commons (Khamenei.ir), YatchCharterFleet

Mexico desperately needed Mexicans to care about axolotls. So he put them on the bills

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The cultural phenomenon around Mexican axolotl It began with an apparently modest gesture: its appearance on a bill, part of a design process in which specialists in Xochimilco advised the Bank of Mexico to faithfully represent this unique species and its chinampero ecosystem. The initial intention was pedagogical and symbolic, but it ended up unleashing an unexpected enthusiasm of unknown dimensions. The creature that conquered a country. As we said, the emergence in 2021 of the axolotl on the Mexican 50 peso bill completely transformed the country’s relationship with a species that, until then, was known only by specialists and inhabitants from Xochimilco. From the first day of circulation, the design captivated millions of people, not only for its aesthetics, but for the soft and enigmatic figure of the amphibian that, unintentionally, embodied a mixture of tenderness, identity and cultural pride. Without millions in circulation. The bill became an immediate phenomenon: collectors, families and young people began to keep it as a small treasure, which explains that, in 2025, more than four years later, the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) announced through a report that 9.8 million Mexicans They keep or collect this bill as if it were a treasure and they have decided to remove it from circulation. In fact, the bank has detailed that 68% of those consulted, who responded that they keep or collect this paper money, have one to five units. According to the calculation, if 9.8 million Mexicans keep a 50 bill, it is estimated that around 490 million pesos of this currency, or its approximate equivalent of more than 26 million dollarsare out of circulation. Hallucinatory. Awards. Its success even led to it being internationally awarded as ticket of the yearconsecrating what was already intuited: the image of the axolotl had connected with a collective sensitivity that went far beyond the economic. And behind that image there was a real animal, an axolotl called Gordaselected after a careful process of documentation and photography, which ended up becoming a national figure without anyone planning it. The daily life of la Gorda. Gorda currently lives in Axolotitlán, the National Axolotl Museumwhere she remains in a deep and well-kept fish tank where she is no longer constantly exposed due to her advanced age. Even so, those who visit it can recognize it by small white spots on its head, a feature that ended up becoming its hallmark. Its fame has generated a parallel ecosystem of objects and souvenirs (from stuffed animals to mugs and clothing) that have reinforced its presence in the country’s daily life. But beyond popular culture, specialists have remembered that admiration also implies responsibility: the axolotl is a extremely fragile speciesdependent on a specific environment, and its sudden notoriety only makes sense if it translates into greater awareness about its conservation. Gorda’s story shows that a single specimen can become a bridge between citizens and nature, but also that collective emotion must be accompanied by decisions that guarantee the survival of the species. An extraordinary creature. The qualities axolotl biologicalfrom its ability to regenerate limbs, tissues and even parts of the brain, to its breathing through gills, skin and mouth, or its condition as a salamander that does not complete metamorphosis, have made it a unique animal in the world. However, this singularity coexists with a critical situation: he Ambystoma mexicanum It is classified as extremely endangered and the destruction of its habitat has been constant for decades. Xochimilco, the only place where this species exists naturally, faces a combination of threats: accelerated urbanization, water pollution and the presence of invasive species that have decimated native ones since the 1980s. And more. Added to this are improvised interventionssuch as the release of axolotls without scientific protocols, which end in almost immediate mortality due to thermal shock, poor water quality or competition between specimens. The specialists they insist in which the conservation of the axolotl is not an act of isolated goodwill, but a technical process that requires strict control of the environment, genetic evaluation, slow acclimatization and comprehensive protection of the channels. The fragility of the animal reflects the fragility of the ecosystem that supports it. Restore Xochimilco. Scientists say that the conservation of the axolotl is inseparable from recovery of Xochimilcoand that evidence has led researchers and chinamperos to undertake shelter projects that recover ancestral agricultural techniques. These restored chinampas act as safe microecosystems where axolotls can remain free of contact with invasive species and with adequate water quality. The objective is not to create artificial reserves, but return to the environment its original balance so that the species can survive without eternally depending on human intervention. Xochimilco is not just a historical heritage nor a tourist postcard, it is a living system that regulates floods, stabilizes temperature, supports traditional agriculture and houses a biodiversity that depends on its continuity. The axolotl is only the visible tip of a problem much broader: if your home disappears, ecological functions on which the entire region depends will also disappear. Takeoff and the World Cup. Since May 2026, the government of Mexico City (with the head of government Clara Brugada at the helm) has taken the image of the axolotl to a much larger scale in view of the 2026 World Cup that is being held: the Light Train has been renamed like “The Axolotl” (with an investment of more than 2.3 billion pesos), bridges, pedestrian crossings, buses and street furniture have been painted purple and decorated with axolotls in what the Mexican press has dubbed “axolotization”, and an official city mascot was even presented for the tournament (“Ajolotín”). The phenomenon has generated so much viral memes as reviews for public spending and for using the animal symbol while the real species continues to decline. The hype. Be that as it may, the social phenomenon of the 50 peso bill demonstrated that an image can change public perception of an entire species. Gorda became a symbol recognized by millions of people, capable of arousing curiosity, affection … Read more

All that was needed was a subsidiary in Malaysia

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The US Government has suspected for several years that Chinese companies and research centers dedicated to artificial intelligence (IA) acquire Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs through Singapore and Malaysia intermediary companies. In 2022 it decided to ban the sale to China of the most powerful AI GPUs designed by Nvidia, AMD and other American companies in an attempt to stop the use of this technology by the Chinese military. Since then, the US and Chinese Administrations have maintained a constant pulse that not only affects the integrated circuit industry; It permeates everything to the extent that AI chips support a critical technology for both nations. Be that as it may, the biggest obstacle that the US faces in this scenario is parallel import routes. The Commerce Department is trying to make it harder for cutting-edge American chips to reach China, but surprisingly, the Trump Administration hasn’t made it easy. In May 2025 the Government led by Donald Trump decided to freeze the AI ​​Diffusion rulean AI GPU export control regulation that the Biden Administration approved in its final days in office, in January 2025. This regulation established a three-tier system for global access to advanced AI chips. In this way, US allies could obtain them without limitations, but China, Russia or Iran had access completely blocked. Malaysia: the biggest legal loophole in the chip war between the US and China AI chip designers led by Nvidia reacted strongly against the AI Diffusion rule. Their argument maintained that this regulation was essentially bureaucratic and penalized sales to allied or neutral countries. Donald Trump’s government responded. In May 2025 it announced that it would develop its own regulations, and that it would be “bolder and more inclusive”, so it left the AI Diffusion rule not applied. The Trump Administration unintentionally created a legal loophole that has been taken advantage of by many Chinese companies Here comes the unexpected turn of events. By suspending its application, the Trump Administration unintentionally created a legal loophole that has been taken advantage of by many Chinese companies. The AI Diffusion rule required the granting of a license by the US Department of Commerce to be able to sell chips to foreign subsidiaries of Chinese companies. Since this regulation did not prosper, according to SCMPDuring the last year, many Chinese companies have freely purchased Nvidia’s Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, and AMD’s MI350x, from their subsidiaries in Malaysia. Just 48 hours ago the Office of Industry and Security of the US Department of Commerce public a guideline that seeks to close that legal loophole. What it does is simply require compliance with licensing requirements for advanced chips destined for entities based in China, even when those entities are physically located outside the country. However, this new guideline does not require data centers to stop using chips already purchased, so according to Chris McGuirea technology expert and former State Department official, “closes one loophole, but leaves another open.” McGuire does not specify what that second loophole is, but experts point out to the path that remains open through TSMC: Chinese subsidiaries can also access the manufacturing capacity of the Taiwanese semiconductor giant without the new guideline explicitly regulating it. Image | Nvidia More information | SCMP In Xataka | We can forget about AI without hallucinations for now. Nvidia CEO explains why

the technology needed to spy and make military decisions from the sky

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) carries many benefits, but also many risks. Therefore, eliminating human supervision can be a very bad idea. It is a fairly recurring topic that has been put back on the table after China announced that it is testing the use of AI to advance its satellite-based surveillance systems. Many experts have expressed concern about the possibility of these systems being used for military purposes. Other countries, such as the United States and Israel, have set a worrying precedent, so there is some fear that these technologies could be misused and end up being lethal. The steps of China. China has long stressed the importance of AI always having human supervision. However, the announcement that have collected media such as Interesting Engineering follows a different premise. The Asian country intends for its satellite AI systems to be capable of breaking down complex tasks, coordinating workflows and recovering independently from possible failures. In short, they would use algorithms capable of analyzing information, making decisions and acting without the need for humans. Satellite observation can have many uses, from analyzing animal behavior to aiding weather forecasts. However, this emphasis on AI being able to act on its own is inevitably reminiscent of what we are already seeing in the United States for military purposes. The case of the United States. The US military is suspected of having several AI-based targeting systems, although there is a lot of classified information about them. Broadly speaking, these would use data obtained through optical cameras, infrared, radar, LIDAR and other sensors to locate military targets and subsequently shoot if deemed necessary. Last February, the attack on a school classified as erroneous opened the debate on this issue. In it 175 people diedmostly girls. As it was recognized as a misguided attack, suspicions grew that AI was behind it. As this is classified information, it cannot be known for sure, but it is a more than tangible risk. USA has hired currently to SpaceX to improve the connectivity of the shooters so that they receive the information as soon as possible whether to shoot or not. It is clear that they want to continue advancing in this aspect and it is something that, logically, is of great concern to experts. The case of Israel. It is not exactly the same, but Israel has also left war decisions in the hands of AI, with worrying results. For example, they have a system that uses data from phone calls, social networks, metadata, visual information or contacts, among other sources, to determine who may be targets. According to an investigation by +972 Magazinein the first weeks of the war against Palestine detected 37,000 targets as Hamas members. The army itself recognized that the algorithm has a 90% probability of being right. This gives us clues about how catastrophic it can be. More transparency? China has assured that it will have more transparency than other countries by introducing AI in the management of its satellites. However, this does not minimize the concerns of experts. For now, it seems that the algorithms have managed to avoid obstacles independently in the testing phase. For them to be able to shoot, if they are used for that purpose, there is still a long way to go. But it is viable. Therefore, it is urgent that measures be taken to regulate the use of AI without human supervision as much as possible. There are too many human beings with few scruples, but even those may have some more qualms than machines. An AI cannot show concern, conscience or ethics. He also does not ask before shooting if he is not told to do so. Therefore, if we want it to operate satellites capable of observing and controlling what we do on the planet, it would be advisable for us to ensure that someone with scruples remains in charge. Although in some contexts that is difficult to find. Image | Kevin Stadnyk (Unsplash)/Magnific In Xataka | There are planes dropping food into Gaza from the air. It is a worse idea than it seems to fight hunger

To move the cutting head of the ‘Monica’ tunnel boring machine, a 152-wheel truck was needed. It’s the key to Australia’s ‘water battery’

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Transporting a gigantic tunnel boring machine to the work point is no small feat, and Madrid has a few things to say about this. However, in Cooma, a small town in the Australian state of New South Wales, they seem to have gotten the hang of it. And the colossal piece of steel crossed its streets at a snail’s pace on a 152 wheel truck. The cargo was part of Snowy 2.0one of the largest energy storage projects in the world. What is it about?. The piece was the central block of the cutting head of the tunnel boring machine named Monica. According to Snowy Hydro, the public company behind the project, this component weighs more than 137 tons and measures seven meters wide. The head is the part that really matters in a tunnel boring machine, since it is the rotating disc that faces the rock and crushes it as it moves. Media deployment. Monica’s head is too big to transport in one piece, so it had to be divided into five parts. Still, just moving the center block required months of preparation. The entire transport reached 73 meters in length, and was moved at night facing the last stretch along the Snowy Mountains Highway, heading to the Marica site, north of Kiandra, where the machine would be assembled. A colossal engineering project. This move was just one piece of a much larger puzzle. The company indicates that in the previous weeks more than 140 large loads were delivered to Marica from the port of Port Kembla, south of Sydney. The tunnel boring machines do not arrive assembled, as they are transported in sections (head, drive system, shields, support platforms) and are assembled on site. In fact, last October, the transport of Monica’s motor system (a component about 207 tons and eight meters wide) brought more than 1,500 people to Cooma, in what Snowy Hydro called one of the largest loads ever transported by road in New South Wales. What is all this for? Snowy 2.0 is, in essence, a gigantic water battery. The project will connect the Tantangara and Talbingo reservoirs through some 27 kilometers of tunnels and an underground power station. The idea is to generate electricity by turbineing water when demand is high and, in times of surplus solar and wind energy, pump it back uphill for reuse. The company assures that it will have a capacity of 2,200 megawatts and enough stored energy to supply about three million homes for a week. Start-up. Last February, Snowy Hydro announced that Monica had been commissioned and would be responsible for excavating the section of the tunnel that crosses the Long Plain fault zone, a geologically complicated area. Designed by the German firm Herrenknecht, the machine advances at one end of the tunnel while another tunnel boring machine, Florence, does so at the opposite. The idea is that both are underground before being dismantled. For those dates the project exceeded 70% execution. Snowy 2.0 has not been without controversy with news of cost overruns and delays, and completion is now scheduled for December 2028. Images | Snowy Hydro In Xataka | Canada is going to debut the residential skyscraper with the most floors in all of North America: it has 12 sides and 351 meters high

A free program was the snitch I needed on my PC to see what was stealing my storage

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Windows can be fine for many things (although it is understandable that more and more users have your doubts taking into account the state of the operating system), but its waste management is questionable. Mac (and now Linux) are my main computers, but I have a laptop to play and edit video with Windows 11 and it is torture to see that the disk fills up more and more… and I don’t install as much either. You go to the uninstall applications section and you don’t want to remove any because you use them, but what you see doesn’t add up and you start searching through folders seeing, manually (by clicking on ‘Properties’) how much the suspicious folders weigh. After a long while, you find something: a game you uninstalled two years ago keep taking a good bite out of your SSD and you wonder why the files weren’t deleted when you uninstalled it and why you hadn’t seen it until now. And searching I have found a couple of tools to free up space ghost on your PC in a very visual way that is so useful… that it does not surprise me that current Windows does not include it as standard. Your PC’s trash tree The applications are WizTree and TreeSize Freealthough there is also another one called WinDirStat. They both do the same thing: analyze very quickly the space occupied by everything you have in your PC storage. Both show it in various ways and both have something special: the “tree” view. To clean the PC I have used both although the screenshots are from TreeSize, but in fact I recommend WizTree because while TreeSize is an app with trial periods, WizTree is free and you decide if you donate to the creators. There I see that I have large folders like Twitter history or Nintendo Satellaview files. I don’t want to delete them, but I have already missed some GoG games that I haven’t deleted and I am interested in deleting them That said, what makes these tools special and more useful than a list with weights is that they actually show the size that files and folders are taking up on your PC. For example, if you have a PC with a 512 GB SSD and you install ‘Forza Horizon 6‘ and its almost 120 GB, that folder will appear taking up a quarter of the screen. In that case, you can easily identify which folder is eating up the PC storage and you can act accordingly, but what I was most interested in was seeing where did those GB come from? that they were slowly colonizing the SSD without my being aware. After the first pass, which takes no time at all, TreeSize identified and classified all the folders and files on the PC. By default it does not do so in that tree view, but in a more traditional list of folders ordered by weight, but in the options at the top you can choose to show the tree view and indicate how many files it has, the percentage it occupies in your storage or what I prefer: GB. And yes, I saw known evils (the Windows folder takes up a lot), but I also saw what I wanted to see: what was eating up my storage. There were a couple of residual folders of games with several MB and even some silly GB, but the rest of the ‘garbage’ I have to admit was my fault. Almost 16 GB of Steam clips folder on laptop Before delete TwitterI downloaded my file with photos and it turns out that I left it there, taking up a whopping 12 GB. I had completely forgotten about it and it was eating up the space of a couple of good indie games. On the other hand, there was a Steam folder of almost 60 GB on a PC and about 16 GB in another that did not correspond to installed games: they were captures and recordings. How to do screenshots with Steam It is the app itself that manages them in internal folders within its directory (and each video file is divided into several files because they use a peculiar format), I had not realized that, little by little, that folder was filling up. I also had there the files of a prototype game that I downloaded years ago and they were taking up 5 GB and something that bothered me: the PC hibernation file. On the laptop it took up about 6 GB, but on the desktop it was almost 10. The laptop was good, but I almost never left it idle on the desktop, so I deleted it and deactivated hibernation (because if you delete the file and don’t deactivate hibernation, it creates it again). The first impression is that of a somewhat dense app, but as soon as you have been using it for a while you begin to know how to “read” the interface So… well, the space freed up on the two PCs is not bad. a way that Windows natively does not offer me. And I can’t complain because in the end a lot of the garbage that was on my PC was my fault, but looking for information about these applications I came across this article by MeinMMO where they had uninstalled a game years ago, but it was still taking up 62GB on the SSD. The game is ‘Wild Hearts‘ and they say that they played it the way you can play Electronic Arts games (unfortunately): through the EA application. He uninstalled it in 2023, but although it no longer appeared as installed in Windows space management, it seems that the entire game was still on his hard drive. He details that it was not just the profile configuration or data like that (which would still be stupid), but the entire game. It is not the only game that left residue: 20 GB of modsArk: Survival Evolved‘ … Read more

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