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We have found the father of the Roman legion belts in a totally unexpected place: an Asturian cave

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The spectacular expansion of the Roman Empire (at its greatest splendor, Rome It covered three continents) was not based solely and exclusively on its numerical superiority and conquering hunger, but also on its ability to absorb and adapt technology. That is, as the legions advanced, Rome absorbed and perfected those military innovations that it found in the conquered peoples. This process of cultural transfer is what allowed the Roman army to evolve from a citizen militia to a professional, standardized war machine. An example of this assimilation phenomenon is found in the Iberian Peninsula. Within the framework of the Asturian-Cantabrian wars (29-19 BC), the last great conflict of the conquest of Hispania under the mandate of Augustus, is where the military complex found in the La Cerrosa-Lagaña cave (Asturias) acquires critical importance. The study, published in the Spal Magazineevidence that is more than an archaeological remains: it is the material proof of how a belt native to the plateau became the prototype of the iconic cingulum of the imperial legionnaire. The discovery. He found set It includes a dagger sheath with curved edges accompanied by an articulated bronze belt made up of sheets, a bronze omega fibula, a razor, a spear and human remains. There were also 807 animal remains belonging to 36 specimens of bovids, ovicaprines, equids, suids and canids, as if it were a ritual banquet or sacrifice. But let’s go to the star element: an articulated suspension belt made of bronze, composed of a buckle and four openwork plates of great technical complexity. This system of riveted plates allowed greater flexibility than leather straps and was not something random: it was a design designed to support the weight of a sheath (like the one found) and allow quick extraction of the weapon in combat. The sophistication of the plates suggests high-quality manufacturing, linked to workshops with a long tradition in iron and bronze metalwork. Hypothetical reconstruction of the belt and sheath assembly with curved edges found in the La Cerrosa-Lagaña cave. Spal Magazine Why is it important. This belt is something like the missing link in the evolution of military equipment: it demonstrates that pieces that we traditionally consider “purely Roman” actually have a foreign origin. Their discovery allows researchers to precisely trace the process of technological transfer, documenting how the functionality of Hispanic defensive equipment was absorbed, perfected and standardized by the Roman State to equip its legions throughout the Empire. Context. The discovery was not found in a military camp, but in a deep and difficult to access gallery in a cave. The context points to liturgical: the research team proposes that it was possibly a captured enemy who was the object of a sacrifice or ritual (possibly a captured Roman soldier), as an offering to the Cantabrian divinities in the face of the advancing Roman army. The dating places the human remains around the 1st century BC. This type of deposits in natural cavities reflects the religious practices of the people of the north and the Plateau, who considered the caves as thresholds to the underworld. The main hypothesis. The thesis supported by the research team is: Technological hybridization, insofar as the belt was not manufactured in Roman workshops, but in Vaccean and Celtiberian workshops (pre-Roman peoples of the Plateau). It later became the standard belt of the Roman legions, the cingulumto address the need for more flexible and durable equipment. The evolution. There is evidence that the belt plates resemble others found in Roman military camps such as Numancia and Renieblas, what it suggests that local artisans developed prototypes that Rome adopted and standardized. Yes, but. Beyond the doubt of the ethnic identity of the buried soldier, since it is unknown whether he was a Roman soldier who had adopted the local uniform for its greater efficiency or a native warrior who served as an auxiliary to the Roman topas, the key lies in the origin of the cingulum. The main thesis points out that the model was the father of the Roman belt par excellence, but more findings are missing from other parts of Europe to confirm that this evolution occurred exclusively in Hispania and was not a parallel process on other borders of the Empire. In Xataka | A cargo sunk in a Swiss lake 2,000 years ago confirms it: the Roman legions did not deprive themselves of anything In Xataka | We have been arguing for years about the origin of writing. Now an Asturian cave can settle the debate Cover | Jametlene Reskp and Spal (Study of a ritual deposit from the Asturian-Cantabrian wars: the set of the curved-edged dagger from the La Cerrosa-Lagaña cave (Suarias, Asturias, Spain) as a link between the indigenous dagger belts and the Roman cingulum)

Germany has found a source of perovskite for solar panels in an unusual place: bullets from the 17th century

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Solar energy is, with the permission of wind energy, the renewable energy that has stood out the most and best in the energy transition on a global scale. There are already solar parks everywhere: from fields that They fill the emptied Spain to deserts passing through the tibetan plateau and also in high seas either in lakes. And although the most common technology is crystalline silicon, perovskite is the great promise. There is a compelling reason to bet on perovskite: a record efficiency certified in a laboratory. up to 26%. However, a large-scale deployment of perovskite solar cells requires a large-scale, sustainable supply of high-purity lead iodide. We have come across lead: a toxic element whose mining is not exactly sustainable. On the not-so-good side, recycling it to the required purity levels is a technical challenge that a German research team at the Helmholtz Institute in Erlangen-Nuremberg has just solved. And in what way: have achieved converting 17th century musket balls into high-performance solar cells. The idea. It consists of a process of upcycling (upcycling) in two stages: first a non-aqueous electrochemical route and then purification through the crystallization of single crystals, quite different from traditional methods based on strong acids and large volumes of water. To demonstrate the robustness of their method, the team used lead bullets from the 16th and 17th centuries as raw material, a truly complicated material in that it contains carbon residues, metallic inclusions and oxidation patina. If the process can clean up this type of historical residue, it can handle virtually anything you throw at it (obviously any lead residue). Recycling bullets into solar cells transforms lead waste into a clean energy source. Why is it important. Perovskite solar cells require extraordinarily pure lead iodide, and achieving that level of purity from contaminated waste was until now a challenge without a practical solution that this research has solved: the team manufactured solar cells with their recycled material and obtained 21% efficiency, practically identical to the 22% of devices manufactured from industrial synthesis. Beyond the technical result, the process solves two problems at the same time: it offers a way to supply the enormous demand for lead iodide that will be generated by the take-off of perovskite solar cells without resorting to new mining and at the same time eliminates a toxic pollutant whose current management is expensive and environmentally problematic. Context. As we mentioned above, lead is an abundant waste: it comes from used car batteries, electronic scrap, construction materials or ammunition, among others. Lead recycling is dominated by car batteries, which have very high recovery rates in developed countries. The problem is in the rest: In 2018, only 48% of the world’s residual lead at the end of its useful life was recovered and in more dispersed flows such as electronics or construction, the recovery is even lower. Conventional recycling returns metallurgical-grade lead, useful for batteries and alloys, but far from what the solar industry requires. In addition, they are slow processes that generate toxic gases such as nitrogen oxides and large quantities of contaminated wastewater, up to 70 liters per kilogram of lead iodide produced. Traditional high-temperature purification methods are expensive and complex. More robust, adaptable and cleaner extraction and purification methods are needed for perovskite technology to truly scale. How they do it. The bullets are cleaned with dilute nitric acid, melted and molded into rods that act as electrodes in an electrochemical cell with acetonitrile and dissolved iodine. When current is applied, lead reacts directly with iodine and precipitates as lead iodide with 94% efficiency. Doing it this way, in a non-aqueous medium, is a deliberate decision to avoid introducing impurities that would accelerate the degradation of the perovskite. The resulting lead iodide still contains metallic impurities, so it is not suitable for solar cells. That is why it is subjected to a second purification stage through crystallization at a controlled temperature for about 70 hours. The process is exceptionally selective: as the crystal grows, it expels contaminating metals such as silver or copper, raising the purity of the material to levels comparable to or even higher than the highest quality commercial standard. Yes, but. The process works and the results are solid, but scale matters: at the laboratory level, productivity is just 0.05 grams per hour and each purification cycle lasts about 70 hours. The leap to an industrial scale requires solving the recovery of organic solvents, controlling the passivation of the electrodes and substantially improving the productivity of the process. The research team does not hide it: the chemistry is proven, but the distance from the laboratory to a real production plant is long and will determine whether we end up seeing perovskite panels made with recycled lead or if this remains like a shiny piece of paper in a drawer. In Xataka | Germany has had a crazy idea to solve one of the problems of renewables: covering a lake with solar panels In Xataka | 800 meters deep in a 175 million year old rock: Germany’s solution to nuclear waste Cover | By Branch and Soren H

Your refrigerator has a compartment designed for eggs in the door. It’s the worst possible place to keep them.

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Almost all refrigerators on the market, when purchased, come with an accessory designed specifically for this purpose: an egg cup that goes on the shelves of the appliance door. This has become the place that many of us look at at first to catch the eggs, but the truth is that it is the worst refrigerator place to save the eggs. The thermal trap. The reason lies not in the fragility of the food, but in a microscopic enemy that surrounds us and can be potentially dangerous: the Salmonella. Here the main problem with the refrigerator door is that it is the area most exposed to thermal changes, since every time we open the refrigerator to get milk, water or simply to think about what to eat, the temperature on the door shelves fluctuates drastically. Here are the regulatory bodies of the United States They are quite clear pointing out that these constant rises and falls in temperature are the ideal breeding ground for bacterial growth. Furthermore, as pointed out by the South Korean Ministry of Food, the door is prone to generate condensation, creating a humid environment that facilitates the proliferation of pathogens in the shell that end up in the food when we break the eggs in the same bowl where we beat them (something also not recommended). The ideal temperature. To keep salmonella at bay, the temperature must be stable and below 4°C – 10°C, since under these conditions, the growth of the bacteria is suppressed by more than 99%. But this on the refrigerator shelves is something that is not always achieved. What the studies say. Here the science is quite clear with different studies that have pointed to the survival of strains such as Salmonella Typhimurium and the Salmonella Enteritidis in very specific conditions. A 2021 study demonstrated that at room temperature the bacterial load increases alarmingly in both the white and the yolk. On the contrary, keeping them at 5ºC limits their multiplication and reduces virulence. But if we come more to the present, a study launched in 2024 found that, under alternating temperature conditions, that is, in cycles of 25 ºC to 5 ºC, similar to taking food in and out of the refrigerator, salmonella manages to migrate to the yolk in 64% of cases. How to preserve them. Taking all this into account, the big question is: what should we do when we get home from the supermarket? In this case, the health authorities point to two strategies, the first being to put them directly on the interior shelves, preferably on the lower or middle ones. In this way, the temperature remains stable below 4ºC, and especially if it is at the bottom of the refrigerator. Do not throw away the cardboard. Although we usually take eggs out of their boxes to put them in plastic egg cups for convenience, the truth is that it is a mistake. That is why the second conservation strategy is to keep them in the original packaging, since the cardboard not only protects them from possible knocks, but also acts as a crucial barrier against moisture loss, prevents the shell from absorbing odors from other foods and protects the egg’s natural cuticular barrier. Images | Onur Burak Akın Katie Bernotsky In Xataka | The internet has become obsessed with drinking hot water in the morning. Science is clear about what it does (and what it doesn’t)

Shakira wants to put 300,000 people in a place that does not convince the Government at all

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Live Nation and Shakira have now officially presented Macondo Park, a 40-hectare temporary venue at the Iberdrola Music in Villaverde designed for close the tour ‘Women no longer cry’ with a nine-concert residency in Madrid in September. The problem: the Government delegate in Madrid has been warning for years that the space does not meet security conditions for massive events and has formally asked the City Council not to authorize them. Stadiums make money. What Shakira and Live Nation have presented is not exactly a concert: it is a temporary infrastructure designed ad hoc by the international study BIGknown for projects such as the Danish pavilion at the Shanghai Expo or the expansion of the National Museum of Qatar. According to data from the organization, the so-called Shakira Stadium will occupy four hectares within the Iberdrola Music space, with capacity for 50,000 people per night: 26,688 seats in the stands, 25,000 standing and around 3,000 in the VIP area. Macondism. Macondo Park will be deployed around the stadium, which takes its name from the fictional town created by Gabriel García Márquez in ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’: 40 hectares active for twelve hours each concert day. The cultural program, baptized ‘Es latina’, includes gastronomy, workshops, exhibitions and sales of Latin American crafts, all selected by Shakira herself. There will also be a specific area for children called Macondito, designed (according to the organization) with the participation of the artist’s children, Milan and Sasha. The goal, according to Live Nation, is to “demonstrate what it means to be Latino” and project that cultural imaginary in Europe. Minitour without moving. Some pertinent figures: nine performances in Madrid, scheduled for September 18, 19, 20, 25, 26 and 27, to which have been added October 2, 3 and 4 due to the very high demand and how quickly the pre-sale sold out. The entire project expects more than 300,000 attendees throughout the residency. Ticket prices range between 73.50 and 181.50 euros, with VIP packages exceeding 1,000. And it will take 69 days to build the complete structure of this spectacular theme park around the artist. Problems in Villaverde. This great plan collides with a somewhat complicated background. Iberdrola Music is the same space that has hosted the Mad Cool festival for years. It was also the scene of the Harry Styles concert in 2023, where organizational failures led to monumental traffic jams and part of the audience ended up walking along the M-45. In the letter he wrote to the City CouncilGovernment delegate Francisco Martín recalls that he already warned about the venue in July 2023 on the occasion of the Reggaeton Beach Festival. According to Martín, in an institutional meeting held in 2024 it was found that there continued to be “relevant deficiencies in terms of accessibility, mobility and organization of entry and exit flows, incompatible with the celebration of large events in safe conditions.” The administrator of the Mad Cool festival even faced a request for a two-year prison sentence from the Prosecutor’s Office for violations related to noise pollution. It’s not a festival. Martín also differentiates between the festival model, where the public enters and leaves in stages for hours, and the “fan phenomenon”: a massive concert where 50,000 people try to leave the venue in a very narrow time frame. It is this second scenario that, in his opinion, Iberdrola Music is not prepared to absorb. Crossing of accusations. As it could not be otherwise, this open letter was followed by an exchange of accusations with little or nothing to do with music. Borja Carabante, Urban Planning delegate of the City Council, accused Martin of “trying to boycott, harm and harm the city.” Mayor José Luis Almeida pointed in the same direction: he described it as “extraordinary” that Shakira chose Madrid as the culmination of her tour and even hinted that up to ten dates could be held. Mariano de Paco, Minister of Culture of the Community of Madrid, defined it as “great news.” The preceding Adele. Promoter Pino Sagliocco, president of Live Nation, avoided entering the political fray. He defended that the mobility plan “is already done” and endorsed by engineers, and insisted that Iberdrola Music is “an experienced and well-conditioned space.” He compared Shakira’s plan to Adele’s precedentwho established his residence in a park in Munich, comparable in size to this Macondo. The center of the debate. There is slaps for pre-sale ticketsbut municipal authorization has not been granted, and the Government Delegation has made it clear that it will go “as far as necessary” to ensure that the venue offers guarantees. For now, there is silence from both sides of the Administration. The conclusion of all this is that the debate is not led by Shakira, but by Madrid’s real capacity to manage massive events outside the urban center, with access infrastructure that several reports consider insufficient. After 17 countries, Shakira’s tour culminates in the only place on the planet where organizing a live show means invoking a perfect storm. In Xataka | We Spaniards have stopped watching TV, going to the cinema and reading books: the only thing that interests us is going to concerts

Europe has just measured how much wind potential Spain has left. The answer is an overwhelming first place

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If we look at the sky and our plains, the country is an undisputed giant. According to official data from the Wind Business Association (AEE)wind energy is already the first source of electricity generation in our country, covering an impressive 24% of national demand. With more than 31,600 megawatts (MW) of accumulated power distributed in 1,412 wind farms, Spain has consolidated itself as the second country in Europe (only behind Germany) and the sixth in the world in installed power. However, behind this success of “emptied Spain” a broken bridge hides. The wind blows and the blades turn, but we lack the cables to bring that clean energy to the cities and factories where it is actually consumed. And right now, when bureaucracy threatens to suffocate the sector, Europe has just put on the table a report that shows that what we have built to date is just the tip of the iceberg: the margin for growth that Spain has left is not only large, it is overwhelmingly higher than that of the rest of the continent. An overwhelming first place. The confirmation has come directly from Brussels. The Joint Research Center (JRC) of the European Commission has just published the second edition of the report ENPRESSO 2. This scientific document does not make estimates on the fly: it measures the feasible technical potential of onshore wind energy in Europe with a very high geographical resolution of 1 square kilometer. The results position Spain as the leader of the entire EU by a very wide margin. As the expert Joaquín Coronado explains:the figures are stratospheric. In the reference scenario, Spain reaches a technical potential of 183.9 gigawatts (GW) of installable capacity and 415.4 TWh/year of generation. More than double that of Romania and Sweden, the next in the ranking. If we cross this with our current capacity, the conclusion is stunning: the ceiling is very far away. How do we lead with such advantage? The merit of this first place is even greater if we understand how it has been calculated. The European Commission report has applied very strict filters For an area to be considered suitable: the mills cannot be more than 5 kilometers from a road, nor more than 3 kilometers from the electrical grid, and must respect minimum distances from population centers (1 km) and protected areas such as Natura 2000. After passing all these demanding filters, 5.8% of the Spanish territory is available and suitable to house wind turbines. As Coronado explainsour low relative population density in those areas where it is windier gives us a brutal competitive advantage. We are much less sensitive to changes in separation distances (so-called “setbacks”) than densely populated countries such as Germany, France or Poland. Even if Europe forced us to move 2 kilometers away from towns (the most restrictive scenario), Spain would still retain 52.8 GW of potential. It’s not all lights. The energy expert warns of a purely internal problem: “regulatory heterogeneity.” While national regulations establish a separation distance of 500 meters for populations, there are autonomous communities such as the Balearic Islands, Navarra or Valencia that require 1,000 meters, and others such as the Basque Country or the Canary Islands that request 400. This regulatory fragmentation means that the real potential varies drastically depending on which side of the autonomous border the wind blows. The bureaucratic infarction of a “full” network. At this point in the x-ray, it is time to address the elephant in the room. As we have explained in Xatakathe Spanish electrical system suffers a serious administrative “thrombosis”. The network is not physically collapsed, but administratively “full” and underused. Panic broke out when the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) was forced to delay the capacity maps until May because 90% of the nodes appeared in red. Faced with this bottleneckthe CEO of Red Eléctrica, Roberto García Merino, defends himself by remembering that they have 1.5 billion ready to invest, but the paperwork delays works that barely require a year of physical work for up to a decade. As if the internal traffic jam were not enough, we come across France’s external plug, whose pyrrhic interconnection (2.8%) isolates us and forces us to throw away cheap energy to protect its nuclear industry. The risk of dying of success. Spain finds itself at a historical crossroads. We have the climate, the soil, the wind and the endorsement of the EU. If we add to this wind potential the 19 GW of reversible hydraulics already in the pipeline, Spain has in its power to develop the most competitive emissions-free electricity mix in all of Europe. But to achieve that future, heat maps and reports from Brussels are not enough. It is necessary, as experts point out, to homogenize legislation between communities, compensate local populations and, above all, urgently expedite permits to build the network. As a summary from the sector: “The plans are very nice, but they have to be built.” Image | Carlos Teixidor Cadenas Xataka | Macron believes that Spain has “a problem” with renewables. What it really means is that they are “competition”

The electric rental car still cannot find its place. Hertz tried it and it cost him 4 billion to discover it

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In October 2021, Hertz announced with great fanfare that bought 100,000 Teslas worth 4.2 billion dollars. It was the biggest bet by a vehicle rental company on electric vehicles. He didn’t know what he had gotten himself into. And four years later, that bet has ended up becoming one of the most expensive lessons in history, because between 2023 and 2025, the company has accumulated losses of more than 4.5 billion dollars, a good part of them directly linked to that decision. What went wrong from the beginning. The business of a car rental company is not just renting, as they also need to sell the vehicles when they are paid for at the best possible price. And that is where the electric became a basic problem. electric cars They depreciate faster than combustion ones in the first three to five years, something that Hertz saw firsthand. When the fleet of Teslas began to lose value, the company was unable to place them on the second-hand market at a profitable price. The final blow came when Elon Musk decided reduce the price of new Teslaswhich automatically dragged down the value of the used cars that Hertz had in its fleet. In detail. Added to that were other problems that were not in the script. Electrical repairs they were more expensive Compared to combustion vehicles, tires wore out faster and many drivers simply did not want to rent an electric car. In addition, it should be noted that the charging network in the United States was (and partly still is) insufficient for travelers who do not fully know the specifics of charging an electric car. According to MarketWatch, electric cars in the United States they are not popular among rental customers precisely due to the scarce network of charging points in the country. And a car stopped in the parking lot does not generate income, but it does generate costs. The numbers of the disaster. In 2024 alone, Hertz registered a net loss of $2.9 billionafter having closed the first nine months of the year with 1,332 million in the red. The company rapidly sold the 30,000 electric vehicles that it planned to liquidate, and in 2025 it closed the year with a net loss of 747 million, although with an improvement of more than 2,000 million compared to the previous year. The results of 2025 We met them precisely a few weeks ago, in their financial report. The numbers are improving, but right now Hertz’s stock is trading near historic lows and the market does not quite believe the recovery. It’s not just Hertz. The company has not been the only one that has gone through this bad experience, in fact it has been a warning sign for the rest of the competitors. Avis Budget Group, the second largest global vehicle rental group, closed 2025 with losses of nearly 1 billion dollarsthe main reason being its electric fleet in the United States. The company had to register more than 500 million in asset impairment by reducing the estimated useful life of its electric cars, which caused them to plummet in the stock market by more than 20% in a single day after presenting results. Avis CEO Brian Choi even publicly acknowledged to investors that the quarter’s results were “unacceptable,” according to picked up SherwoodNews. Between the lines. A McKinsey report from April 2025 pointed out that only one in ten American consumers is considering going electric with their next purchase. If the customer who rents a car does not want an electric one, because he does not know where to charge it, because it generates range anxiety or simply because it is not comfortable, the rental company has an expensive vehicle that depreciates quickly and that spends too much time without generating income. Therefore, the equation does not work. And now what. Hertz has promised that 2026 will be the year of the turning point. The company anticipates revenue growth of between 4% and 6% in the first quarter of this year and has once again placed the depreciation target below $300 per month per vehicle, which was the figure it always indicated as the profitability threshold. Avis is also looking ahead cautiously. Both companies hope to improve results in 2026, relying on younger fleets and managing its electric cars more conservatively, adapting its presence in markets where there is a more mature charging infrastructure, as is the case in California. What is clear is that the great bet of massive electric rental in the United States has failed, at least in its first version. The electric car may have a future in rental fleets, but not at any price, not in any market and, of course, not without the customer being willing to get into it. Cover image | Ernie Journeys In Xataka | No matter what you do: the wheels of your car are revealing your position to anyone who wants to monitor you

use them in a place where they are allowed

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like the waters They are very upset about AI chipsTikTok’s parent company has come up with a strategy to circumvent US export restrictions for NVIDIA chips: instead of importing the chips, it uses them where they are allowed. And that place is Malaysia. chip war. From 2022, US export regulations They prohibit NVIDIA from selling their accelerators of most advanced artificial intelligence directly to China. This puts the large Chinese technology companies at a disadvantage, as they see how their American rivals (Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, etc.) have unrestricted access to the most advanced computing power they obtain from NVIDIA. ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, does not want to be left behind in the global AI race and has found a legal, albeit controversial, path forward. What exactly happened. According to account According to the Wall Street Journal, ByteDance is working with a Southeast Asia-based company called Aolani Cloud to deploy a cluster of about 500 computing systems in Malaysia. NVIDIA Blackwellwhich is equivalent to approximately 36,000 chips B200. The estimated cost of the entire infrastructure exceeds $2.5 billion. Just like account In the middle, the servers are assembled by Aivres, a company specialized in building hardware with NVIDIA chips. Aolani, created at the end of 2023 under a holding structure in the Cayman Islands and with capital from Singapore venture capital firms, had already been renting servers from ByteDance with H100 chips in Malaysia since February. The legal key to the matter. ByteDance is not buying the chips or servers: it rents them. Aolani is the one who physically owns and operates them in Malaysia, a country that does not fall under US export restrictions. Under current rules, what is regulated is the destination of the hardware, not who uses it in the cloud. “By design, export rules allow clouds to be built and operated outside restricted countries,” counted an NVIDIA spokesperson told the WSJ. It also added that all customers who use NVIDIA chips undergo internal compliance reviews before receiving their products. On the other hand, the medium points out That ByteDance is not on any list of restricted companies from the US Department of Commerce, so the fact that they are using this hardware does not trigger any alerts at the moment. Qgeopolitical tension. Just because all this is legal does not mean it is politically convenient. Aolani recognized in an internal presentation to investors that it is working with a US law firm to ensure its regulatory compliance, and that it is already considering future regulatory changes that “would likely be prospective, not retroactive.” A phrase that, read in a political key, leaves some real uncertainty about whether Washington may end up limiting this type of business structures in the future. Last month, from Reuters they shared that the US would be willing to allow ByteDance to buy H200 chips from NVIDIA, although the semiconductor manufacturer would not have yet accepted the proposed conditions. Bytedance and its ambition in AI. ByteDance already operates five of the world’s 50 most popular consumer AI apps by monthly active users, according to data by Andreessen Horowitz. They have their chatbot Dolathe platform to generate video with AI Dreamina and Gauthan educational assistant. In terms of video generation, Bytedance went extremely viral with Seedanceits engine for generating videos with AI that has left half the planet crazy for its realism and precision when constructing pieces of text in video clips. The company has research teams in Singapore, San Jose and Seattle, and seeks to fill more than a hundred AI vacancies in the US. “Our goal is to reach the highest peak,” said its CEO, Liang Rubo. Cover image | Collabstr and NVIDIA In Xataka | At Amazon they have realized something: their developers spend more time fixing AI bugs than anything else

Southeast Spain is the driest place on the peninsula and a DANA has just arrived to “rescue” it. It will give more problems than solutions

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Right now, as I write, “the world cup is falling” on Alicante. And that, in itself, is news. Not the DANA that is crossing the southeast right now, which has a moderate entity and is going to leave unremarkable accumulations; No. It could be, but no. The news is thatit’s raining in the southeast and that, for some time now, has become almost a miracle. A miracle that leaves something revealed, Almería, Murcia and Alicante live in a climatic (and emotional) ‘new normal’ for which we have no physical (nor psychosocial) infrastructure. Let’s look at it in some detail. What is happening? At a meteorological level, the situation is very simple. In the early hours of March 10, a DANA detached itself from general circulation and positioned itself between eastern Andalusia and the Alboran Sea. In the next few hours, the epicenter It will be located over the province of Alicante and it will also cause enormous instability in Murcia, Albacete, all of eastern Andalusia and some parts of Valencia. AEMET predicts accumulations of between 30 and 50 mm in Murcia and Alicante, with some very specific areas reaching 80 in six hours. We may see snow above 900 meters. However, it must be taken into account that the DANA is very small: any change in trajectory, can move precipitation from one region to another. Is it normal? If we are honest, it is quite normal. This is part of a very unstable first week of March with storms, DANAs, haze and many more problems. The underlying problem. The problem is that, for months, we have seen how the very abundant rains of January They left aside this corner of the Peninsula. Thus, the Segura basin is the worst in the entire country followed by that of Júcar and that of the Andalusian Mediterranean basins. That is, not raining is a problem. But let it rain too. Because throughout that area of ​​the country, although it may not seem like it, although it is very subtle, tension continues every time a DANA appears on the weather forecast maps. The worst part goes to the areas where it hit the DANA of 2024 (with up to 30% of children with sleep problems and thousands of people suffering from eco-anxiety and fear), but the consequences are there whether we like it or not. Above all, with failures around the corner. Rethink everything to adapt to what is coming. A few weeks ago, AEMET and the University of Valladolid They published a very interesting work in which they explained that without climate change the DANA of 2024 It would have been much more unlikely. The January rains over Andalusia they do not help to calm to the experts. Image | ECMWF In Xataka | In California, the funds discovered that there is no investment more profitable than farmland. Now it’s Spain’s turn

Europe is looking for a place to put its AI gigafactory. Spain and Portugal are showing all their renewable plumage

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There is a concept that should be familiar with: technological sovereignty. The United States is looking for her in terms of semiconductors so as not to depend on Taiwan. China wants her with the same goal and with the intention of strengthen your industry. And Europe is also pursuing it. Within this search is the idea of ​​strengthening European sovereignty in artificial intelligence by building AI gigafactories. And Spain and Portugal are clear about one thing: they want to be that node of European AI. InvestAI. Within this search for independence, the truth is that Europe has a long way to go. On the world stage, they depend on the Dutch ASML to create cutting-edge chipsbut Taiwan and China are the world’s factory and the United States has been a key partner both in software as in space matter. Seeing the recent course of the United StatesEurope has realized that it cannot depend so much on foreign alliances and that its key systems are not European, and it is going to dig deep into its pockets. 200 billion euros is what the European Commission’s InvestAI initiative has to invest in programs focused on the development of artificial intelligence. Within it, there are another 20,000 million saved to build gigafactories. GigafactorIA. Its name is quite revealing and it is about huge data centers with capacity for hundreds of thousands of chips with the objective of both training and inferring artificial intelligence models. The plan was launched a few months ago with the reconversion of seven European data centers in data centers for AI and with one objective: that European companies stop turning to foreign ones. For example, the French Mistral signed with Microsoft to be able to use its systems to train Le Chat. The idea is that this be done ‘at home’. It is estimated that one of these gigafactories may have more than 100,000 state-of-the-art AI processors and they are expected to be optimized to have low consumption, reuse of resources such as water and be a strategic node close to other companies, universities and serve to attract talent. Strategy. Spain has been for a few months tempting American companies to build their data centers in the national territory. Aragon has become one of those strategic pointsbut also Madrid either Tarragona. Now, there are other municipalities that oppose it (something that not only happens in Spain). Within this strategy of European technological sovereignty, Spain has two aces up your sleeve: Mora la Nova in Tarragona and San Fernando de Henares in Madrid. They are the two municipalities that could host one of these AI gigafactories and that would take advantage of the technological and energy infrastructure in the area to accelerate the projects. The information is not new, but now Portugal joins in. As detail From Moncloa, both countries are going to carry out a series of bilateral efforts to be at the energy and technological head of Europe, doing emphasis on the coordination of artificial intelligence projects. Because Spain wants the European gigafactory and Portugal too. The neighboring country is already developing a data center in Sines, and the two countries are playing their cards. Energy. Portugal plays the card that Sines has a good connection with the Atlantic submarine cables. Spain also has a powerful argument: if Europe wants AI gigafactories to be energy efficient, the country has a renewable infrastructure that can help make AI independent of gas or coal. Through the agreement between the two, the intention to collaborate to take advantage of the complementary capabilities and synergies between both countries is put on the table. Problem. There are several. On the one hand, the energy ones. Although Spain is one of the Europe’s powers in terms of renewable energyartificial intelligence demands a lot, a lot of energy at peak times. So much so that not only Big Tech have private projects to open nuclear power plantsbut it has been shown that it is necessary turn to coal to meet demand. Because AI needs sustained energy, but above all fast and immediately accessible in the most stressful moments. And there renewables only comply if there are huge batteries involved. On the other hand, Europe is now building its infrastructure… and it is the worst time. If you want gigafactories to have the latest generation chips, it means buying NVIDIA’s H200s. The problem is that these chips, which are currently leading the way, will be surpassed in the short term by a new generation. NVIDIA is already working at full capacity on Vera Rubinand it is not a more powerful chip, but a paradigm shift. This game of being at the cutting edge of AI is slow because the infrastructure has to be built. But, above all, it is expensive. In any case, the results on which countries will host the gigafactories are expected to be published this spring, and we will see if the Spain-Portugal candidacy convinces the Commission. Images | Moncloa, chaddavis In Xataka | Spain has a plan to capture more data centers than anyone else: “shield” them from energy costs

“The wound is the place where the light enters”

by

Can suffering transform us? Is it true, as Rumi, the great Persian poet of the 13th century, said, that “a wound is a place where light enters”? From the pre-Hislamic myth of Siyavash to the Sufi mysticism of the annihilation of the self or the Shiite obsession with martyrdom, Persian and Iranian thinkers have been thinking about suffering as a transformative force for thousands of years. It is a rich, lyrical, wild and sometimes very dangerous tradition. Therefore, it is curious that thousands of years of such a rich relationship with pain comes to us filtered and converted into Instagram stories. What Rumi didn’t say. Let’s start at the beginning: most likely, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi never wrote those words. And, in this case, it should not surprise us either. In 1995, the recently deceased Coleman Bryan Barks published a book titled ‘The Essential Rumi‘ and, without anyone yet being able to explain it, it sold more than half a million copies. The only real problem with this is that Barks didn’t know Persian. He wasn’t even a really specialized translator. He took previous translations, he cleaned them of references to Islam and He adapted the verses to Western taste. It was a huge success that advanced something we are used to today: the probability that a date we see on the internet be false it is getting higher and higher. And yet, the quote has some truth. Because, in effect, today’s Iran is the repository of an ancient tradition that sacralizes transformative suffering. When Yazid I’s army ambushed and murdered Husain ibn Ali and his 72 companions near KarbalaThey had no idea what they were about to do. They thought they were resolving once and for all the thorny issue of Muhammad’s succession, but the martyrdom of the third imam of the Shiites would germinate in a strange cultural substrate: the idea that suffering is not an accident, it is a battlefield. Thus spoke Zarathustra. That’s where you can best see the ‘Zoroastrian substrate‘: in this religion, Ahura Mazda creates the world as a battle in which humans have to take sides. For old Persian philosophy, evil is not something inherent to the world: it is an army that must be defeated. Therefore, suffering, sacrifice and pain are part of the process that, if we are successful, will lead us to good. It is not the absence of love (as it might seem in the Judeo-Christian mentality), it is a definitive ethical filter. That is the archetype, then came its incarnations. When Islam takes hold in Persia, that substrate is there and takes many forms. While for the Shiites, martyrdom is redemptive and intercedes for us before Allah; For Sufi mysticism, suffering becomes a vehicle towards God, towards the annihilation of the ego and its arrival at divinity. To us, today, all these details don’t matter a little to us, honestly. What is relevant is how hundreds of philosophers resolved the “problem of evil“in a completely different way than what we are used to. Evil is not an error that must be explained by appealing to the unfathomability of God, Evil is the path by which the universe is renewed. No self-help. And in this context, Rumi’s dubious quote (“a wound is a place where light enters”) would be much more radical than any self-help manual would be willing to go. Suffering does not make us wiser, stronger, or smarter. It is simply the price to pay: there is no point in trying to justify it. Today, even knowing how dangerous this line of thought is, it is impossible not to look at those thinkers thinking how much of them really remains in our way of living. Image | If you’ve ever thought about “leaving everything and going to the mountains,” these thinkers have a lot to tell you

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