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Torrejón de Ardoz has a plan to control his geese, parrots, rabbits and pigeons. One of 150,000 euros

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With bird flu and the african swine fever grabbing headlines, the Torrejón de Ardoz City Council wants to protect itself against “possible health risks”. The City Council is looking for a company to help it “control” the populations of certain wild species that live in the municipality. Specifically, it has focused on four: parrots, Nile geesepigeons and rabbits, although the list can be expanded. It offers interested firms a three-year contract (extendable) with a budget of up to 150,000 euros. Its mission: quantify, control and capture. What has happened? That Torrejón de Ardoz (Community of Madrid) wants to control the wildlife that populates its fields and parks, especially parrots, Nile geese, rabbits and pigeons. “It is necessary to maintain the population and avoid possible risks to health, public safety, maintain environmental health and the ecosystem,” the Consistory states in your ad to attract companies interested in providing the service for three years. The deadline for submitting offers ended in November. Now the Contracting Platform reports that it is in the “evaluation” phase. The budget: a maximum of 150,000 eurosVAT included. But what exactly do you want to do? “Control and manage” the populations of certain species and anticipate possible “unhealth risks” or damage to ecosystems. Hence the focus is on three types of animals that stand out precisely for their ability to expand: “invasive exotic birds” (a category in which the City Council includes the Argentine parrot, Kramer parrot and Nile goose), pigeons and turtledoves and the European rabbit. “This includes any other wild animal that could cause a risk to health, safety and/or ecosystem,” they require from the Consistorywhich leaves pest control, disinfestation and deratization tasks outside the contract. The objective is for the company to carry out an annual “diagnosis” on the situation of these species and carry out health controls. If necessary, it will undertake sampling, analysis and veterinary tests to detect diseases. Just that? No. The documentation of the contest clarifies that, if circumstances demand it, the company will have to carry out work to control wildlife populations, which includes removing nests, controlling eggs, work with compressed air rifles and cages or capturing specimens. In the case of rabbits, the contract states that the company may control them with the help of ferrets and capillos, as long as it meets certain conditions. Captured healthy rabbits will be moved to preserves. When this is not possible, the contract contemplates euthanasia (in compliance with the animal welfare law), just as occurs with geese. One of the conditions placed on companies is that they have agreements with captive breeding and recovery centers. But… Is it so urgent? This is considered by the Madrid City Council, which recalls, for example, that parrots and Nile geese are “exotic species that can become invasive if control is not carried out” on the population. “Therefore, it is necessary to develop this service to reduce its distribution area, reduce the number of specimens or stop its spread,” prevents. About the rabbits, technicians remember that it is a wild species “capable of colonizing urban ecosystems” and that is already causing “damage” in green areas of the city, especially in groves, bushes, meadows and even in irrigation systems and land. “That is why it is necessary to control the population to prevent the increase and severity of damage. In addition, they can pose a risk to public safety and health,” duck. As for pigeons, the City Council recognizes that they are “adapted” to urban life, but their proliferation can cause annoyance and health problems. Images | Wikipedia 1 and 2 In Xataka | Torrejón de Ardoz thought it had found a golden opportunity by hosting the Madrid macro festivals. Now he’s canceling them.

At Honor they are convinced that they are going to lead the market for folding devices. This is your plan to get it

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“Spain is an open and very good country for foreign brands, but also very challenging due to competition and focus on low prices.” With those words he responds Laurence Li, new Honorary Country Manager for Spain and Portugalto the answer of how he sees the new market ahead. Until about four months ago, Laurence oversaw Honor’s operations in the Gulf regions from Dubai and previously led Huawei’s Consumer Business Group in Latin America. Today you have a huge challenge ahead of you. Honor has been operating for four years in our borders as an independent brand and the executive is clear about how far he wants to take it. Because Laurence Li is firm in his position: “Honor should be one of the top three consumer brands in Spain, not just a mobile brand.” Competing at the top starting with Spain Honor Magic V5 | Image: Xataka At the beginning of the year We had the opportunity to speak with Tony RanCEO of Honor in Europe, who already told us two things. The first, that Europe is going to be the second most important market for the company. The second, that it is not going to descend into the mud of the entry range and low prices, where there are hardly any margins. The company knows that the juicy segment is the high-endthe premium product, and that is where they are going to focus. All this starts in Spain, “a really good market for all Chinese and foreign brands” due to its openness. All Chinese brands have had a very good acceptance in our countryand if not, tell Xiaomi, Huawei, Omoda, Jaecoo, MG or BYD. These companies destroyed their respective markets by offering low prices and competent products, only to later make the leap to premium products once they had established themselves. The case of Xiaomi is the most obvious. Honor is going to save that step by being fully aware of it. “If you are looking for an entry-level phone with the lowest price, other brands would be a better option, to be honest. Now, if you want to buy something of quality, with innovation, that is, a good product, a product with AI, Honor will be the best alternative,” says Laurence. The firm is aware that right now its market share is what it is. The latest data They claim that Apple (27%), Samsung (26.5%) and Xiaomi (23.7%) lead the Spanish market. The fourth brand is Oppo with 5.7% and the fifth position is occupied by Motorola with 2.2%. Honor, for its part, reaches 1.3%. It would help to achieve a better position by launching cheaper products, attacking the already saturated entry range, but the firm’s strategy does not go there. Honor does not want to be a brand linked to low price, but to quality. Honor Magic V5 | Image: Xataka “Right now, people don’t change their cell phones that often. They do it every three or four years, maybe even every five. If you are going to use your cell phone for five years, you would prefer a better product and you would even pay more,” explains Li, who believes that the financing options offered by companies and retailers can help cover the expense. While the low-end market is being pushed by operators with the aim of increasing the number of 5G devices, Li says, the market for “high-end and premium” products is increasing because more and more people want good quality phones and are willing to pay more because it will last three or four years. The logic is clear. Honor’s logic is evident: the customer will be willing to pay more if they know that the product will last longer One might wonder if Laurence Li, coming from the Dubai offices and managing Honor’s operations in the Gulf; and having previously worked in Latin America, he has noticed some difference in consumer behavior. “I don’t think there’s a big difference,” he explains. Quite the contrary, he believes that there is an important similarity between the three cultures. The executive makes the comparison with cars. “In Dubai, and even here, more and more people are buying Chinese electric cars made in China.” In his own words, “more and more people want to buy innovative products and accept Chinese products (…) People want to try Chinese products, and that is a good trend.” What Laurence Li is telling us between the lines is that The perception of ‘made in China’ is changing. What was once synonymous with a cheap and regular product, today is pivoting to a premium, solvent and capable of standing up to the most established brands from South Korea, Japan or the United States. We are seeing it in all segments: white goods, televisions, sound, automotive, mobile phones and, soon, we will see it in household appliances. Lead the market based on folding and artificial intelligence This is Honor’s humanoid robot, developed entirely by them and visible in their store | Image: Xataka If competing in the low range is getting down in the mud and getting dirty, doing so in the premium range means playing in the same league as devices from Samsung and Apple, two names that are not easy to overshadow. One of Honor’s plans to achieve this is to conquer foldables. “We will be leaders in foldable devices, we will be there, we will be the strongest,” says Laurence while pointing out the Honor Magic V5 which I use as a personal phone. In just four years, Honor has gone from being born to launching the thinnest folding terminal on the market. It is a device that breaks with all the conventions that a novice user of a terminal like this could have: the battery lasts, it feels resistant, it is light, thin, it is comfortable to use, it has a good camera and, when folded, it is attached to a conventional mobile phone. Looking at it with perspective, improving a product like this seems complicated. Folding and … Read more

The plan has always been to destroy the International Space Station in 2030. Someone thinks we can do something else

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The International Space Station this that falls. It has been orbiting the Earth since 1998 and was completed in 2011. The plan was to retire it in 2024, but the accounts did not work out and, in 2021, the NASA administrator set a definitive date: 2030. The question is whether it will last that long because a few months ago we already said that members of NASA expressed concern about the accumulation of problems technicians who were accelerating the decline of a seriously aging facility. air leaks, cracks in different modulesabsence of spare parts for critical systems and lack of budget to propose a solution It would be assumed that the Different agencies have been putting patches on for years. NASA has already commissioned SpaceX the development of a ship that would tow it to the space graveyard of the Pacific, but… is there no other solution for the 450-ton, $150 billion station? The answer is yes. At least, that’s what Greg Vialle, founder of a startup called Lunexus Space that is committed to recycling the International Space Station, thinks. Turning the International Space Station into a mine In the middle of last year, NASA had clear that he Point Nemoa remote location in the Pacific, 2,700 kilometers from the nearest pile of dirt, would be the station’s cemetery. There was only one thing I could avoid the dismantling: that ROSCOSMOS, the Russian space agency, refused to abandon the ship. Russia soon changed its mind by commenting that its cosmonauts were passing more time repairing equipment than conducting experiments. Come on, no matter how much they wanted to “annoy” NASA at a geopolitically unstable point, it didn’t work out for them. Everything was aimed at the disappearance of the current ISS, but there are those who have something to say. Lunexus Space is a startup focused on the development of industrial infrastructure in low orbit that reuse structures and space junk to facilitate the construction of goods directly in the lower atmosphere. The goal is to develop a kind of circular economy in low orbit by taking advantage of the tons of material already in space, eliminating the need to re-launch them from Earth. In Space Newsthe CEO of the company has developed an article in which he explains his plan to “avoid wasteful expenses.” Vialle affirms that the ISS has 430 tons of high-quality aluminum, titanium and other materials valuable for future space missions. He estimates the value of the material at $1.5 billion, which would be lost to the ocean floor if NASA’s plan goes ahead. And it also points out the almost 1 billion that NASA will spend on the vehicle that tows the station to its resting point. “It is a fiscally irresponsible plan that loses a strategic resource and a golden opportunity.” What he proposes is “a common sense alternative”: converting old infrastructure into raw materials for new construction. Their calculations highlight that launching a kilogram of material into space costs $3,500, but if they take materials from the ISS, the costs would drop entirely. And, faced with the 1,000 million dollars of the plan to sink it, Vialle suggests that Its recycling process could be carried out for about 300 million dollars to which an equivalent government loan would have to be added to launch the necessary infrastructure, appealing to significant savings for taxpayers while preserving valuable resources. American leadership, of course “How can we wait prospect, mine, refine and transport in deep space if we cannot extract the many tons of cataloged and space-grade materials that are already beginning to manage low Earth orbit?” Vialle appeals. But of course, there is a B side to this plan: Strengthen America’s Space Leadership. By receiving the ISS, the CEO believes that the seeds of “a new industry in space led by the United States will be sown, ensuring our economic and strategic leadership over competitors like China.” China too He has been planning his own station for years. And he compares the move to American manufacturing policy to prepare for the Second World War, japanese strategy in the 1970s that established the country as a technological miracle or Taiwan’s position with TSMC and chip manufacturing. His idea is for the United States to invest in resource management technologies in space, something that is taking its first steps and that, if it reaches a solid program, will make “the nation dominate the future of commerce and defense in orbit.” It is evident that Vialle has known what sticks to play in a moment as sensitive as the current one and, although in his letter he urges Congress to influence NASA’s decision to ‘deorbit’ the International Space Station, the space agency has already detailed that, after a session to evaluate the possibility of reusing the main components of the station, they did not receive any proposals of interest from the industry. On the other hand, the European Space Agency already pointed out that recycling in orbit was “a real challenge” and it was not clear whether the resources used to capture and process waste in space would be profitable. Either way, time is of the essence. We will see what happens with the ‘Recycle the ISS’ movement, but there are four years left and, as more and more voices point out, something must be decided because the installation is on its last legs. In Xataka | Decathlon has just made its way beyond sport: it will reach space with a prototype spacesuit for the ESA

China activated a renewable “Marshall Plan” in 2011. It is achieving more than just decarbonizing the planet

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Between 1948 and 1952, United States destination 13.3 billion dollars at the time to rebuild Western Europe after the Second World War. This strategy was called the ‘Marshall Plan’. China has its own Marshall Plan, one focused on accelerating the development of ‘green’ technologies on a global scale. And it is redrawing the energy map of developing countries. The Green Marshall Plan. It is estimated that, since 2011, China has invested a whopping $227 billion in more than 450 new energy manufacturing projects. Of that amount, around 88% are concentrated from 2022, which shows an impressive acceleration in its roadmap. BRI. One of the centerpieces of the Xi Jinping government’s foreign policy is the Belt and Road Initiative, or “Belt and Road Initiative“The idea was to create a new concept of international relations based on free trade that took the ancient Silk Road as a model (something that China has taken up). Much of this investment in green energy is going to the countries that are part of the BRI, and only in 2024 will China invested 11.8 billion dollars in green energy. In the first six months of 2025, investment was 9.7 billion, which shows another acceleration in the expansion of its green policy beyond its borders. Overproduction as a lever of change. And, if the question is “why,” the answer is “because they can.” Although China continues to extract coal yqwants to become an oil powerhas also strongly supported the renewable energy sector. So much so that they have achieved an overwhelming manufacturing advantage compared to the West. HE esteem that China produces 80% of the world’s solar panels, 75% of lithium batteries and 70% of wind turbines. They have such strong internal competition that their companies have had to create a kind of OPEC to avoid stepping on each other. And, of course, this enormous production has collapsed the market: solar panels have rock-bottom priceshave crushed Western competition and these low prices allow developing countries or countries that want to change their energy model to do so at a lower cost than a few years ago. Proper names. In 2024, China exported technologies related to renewables (panels, turbines, batteries and electric vehicles) worth 177 billion dollars, which is equivalent to 5% of its total exports. Being the factory of the worldit’s outrageous. But of that figure, 72 billion were allocated to developing countries. And not only because those countries are buying from China, but because China is investing, directly, in them. An example is Ethiopia. In 2024, they banned the importation of new gasoline cars with the aim of betting on new energy ones. But at the same time, between 2011 and 2018, China invested 4 billion in the Ethiopian energy sector, with multiple wind farms or the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This year, another 500 million dollars have ended up in solar manufacturing plants: Chinese companies are establishing themselves in those countries. Another example is Moroccowith battery factories from chinese manufacturers to feed electric cars. In general, China is moving through Africa supporting this energy transition of countries traditionally very dependent on fossil fuels, but they are not leaving empty-handed: they are also building infrastructures that allow them to exploit mines of critical materials, a fundamental leg of the Chinese technological business and geopolitics. China’s ‘Great Solar Wall’ in 2017 And in December 2024 Brazil, like China. HE esteem that 90% of the solar panels installed in Africa are Chinese, and they are also expanding throughout Latin America. On the one hand, with influence: they build infrastructure and are becoming a key player in the railway rebirth of South America. On the other hand, they are installing factories in several countries. And there Brazil has moved very intelligently. The country increased tariffs on all automobile imports to force something that China itself did years ago when Western manufacturers wanted to enter the country: to open factories in its territory. BYD or Great Wall Motors are setting up plants in Brazil. Strange bedfellows. And then there is India. Diplomatic relations between both countries are not at their best and, in fact, India is taking advantage of any excuse to remind China that they also have military muscle. However, on the other side of those tensions, we find a country that is experiencing explosive growth in renewable capacitygoing from 190 GW installed to almost 500 GW projected by 2030. And what is making that change possible is the cmassive purchase of renewable technologies to China. India buys 17% of the solar cells that China exports, which creates a brutal technological dependency, as well as a dilemma: they need green energy with immediate availability, but they also want to develop their own industrial capabilities. And this overproduction in China, with such low prices, makes the goal of national manufacturing less attractive. Taking the role of the US. And, precisely, it was during the COP30 held a few days ago in Brazil, where China’s role was highlighted. In a report by The New York Times point out how, in the Paris Agreement, rich countries relied on poorer ones to begin taking measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In some cases, it remained a simple promise while developing countries claimed their right to industrialization, something for which they have been using fossil fuels. China has seen the gap and thanks to cheap renewables, these developing countries can continue their industrialization in a more environmentally friendly way. And we go back to what we did before: China presenting itself as a pillar of global stability in an event in which the United States has not made an appearance. And while Europe and the US analyze what to do, China continues to expand its influence. Images | POT, Korea Aerospace Research Institute In Xataka | China is the largest power in renewables. Now you have a problem: what to do with all those used turbines and plates

We have been talking theoretically about data centers in space for months. A company already has a plan to set it up in 2027

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The Californian startup Aetherflux has announced which will launch its first data center satellite in the first quarter of 2027. It is the initial node of a constellation that the company has named “Galactic Brain”, designed to offer in-orbit computing capacity powered by continuous solar energy. The underlying promise. Aetherflux presents an alternative to the years of construction that terrestrial data centers require. According to Baiju Bhatt, company founder and co-founder of the financial firm Robinhood, “the race toward artificial general intelligence is fundamentally a race for computing power and, by extension, energy.” The company is committed to placing sunlight next to silicon and completely bypassing the electrical grid. How the project works. The Galactic Brain satellites will operate in low Earth orbit, taking advantage of solar radiation 24 hours a day, something impossible on land. Advanced thermal systems would eliminate the limitations faced by terrestrial data centers, which require large amounts of water and electricity for cooling. In addition, the constellation fits within Aetherflux’s initial plans: transmitting energy from space to Earth using infrared lasers. The competition is already underway. Aetherflux is not alone in this bet. Google presented in November your Suncatcher projecta plan to launch AI chips into space on solar-powered satellites. Jeff Bezos too expressed his optimism on large data centers operating in space in the next decade or two, a goal that Blue Origin has been working on for more than a year. SpaceX also works in use Starlink satellites for computing loads of AI. Musk himself wrote in The real obstacles. Although launch costs have decreased considerably, they remain prohibitive. According to recent estimateslaunching a kilogram with SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy costs around $1,400. Google calculate that if these costs drop to about $200 per kilogram by 2030, as projected, the expense of establishing and operating space data centers would be comparable to that of terrestrial facilities. In addition, the chips will have to withstand more intense radiation and avoid collisions in an increasingly congested orbit. The urgency. Big tech is colliding with physical limits on Earth. From 2023, dozens of data center projects have been blocked or delayed in the United States due to local opposition over electricity consumption, water use and associated pollution. According to the consulting firm CBRElimitations in electricity generation have become the main inhibitor of data center growth around the world. The Aetherflux Calendar. The company, founded in 2024 and which has raised $60 million in financing, plans to first demonstrate the feasibility of transmitting space energy through a satellite that will launch in 2026. If all goes according to plan, the first Galactic Brain node will arrive in 2027. The company anticipates launching about 30 satellites at a time on a SpaceX Falcon 9 or equivalent, although if Starship becomes an option, they could orbit more than 100 data center satellites in a single launch. The long term strategy. Aetherflux hasn’t revealed pricing yet, but promise Multi-gigabit bandwidth with near-constant uptime. Their approach is to continually release new hardware and quickly integrate the latest architectures. Older systems would run lower priority tasks until the life of the high-end GPUs were exhausted, which under high utilization and radiation might not last more than a few years. Cover image | İsmail Enes Ayhan and NASA In Xataka | OpenAI launches GPT-5.2 weeks after GPT-5.1: a maneuver that aims to cut ground on Google’s Gemini 3

Madrid had a plan to put all cars without a DGT label off the road in 2026. It has changed its mind

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In 2024 it was December 12. In 2025 it was December 11. 20 days after all cars without a label were prohibited from entering the city of Madrid, the capital’s City Council has once again confirmed that those who are registered in Madrid will be able to continue driving for another year. That is to say, like last yearwith less than three weeks left before the ban would exclude unlabeled cars registered in Madrid and those registered outside the city, the City Council has extended the extension that will allow them to continue circulating. So, who can and cannot circulate in Madrid? What does the great ZBE that is now Madrid look like? In September 2024, a figure began to move: 1.2 million cars circulating in Madrid were going to be left out if the ban on any car without an environmental label circulating in the capital was activated, as planned, in 2025. This figure was, as we contrast in Xatakafalse. Or inaccurate, at least. In reality, the Madrid City Council estimated that there were 246,000 vehicles that were going to be left out of circulation in the city. This year, The figure that had moved was 300,000 cars which does not seem real because it would imply that the vehicle fleet of gasoline with more than 25 years and diesel with more than 19 years has grown in the city in the last year. In fact, Borja Caravante, delegate of Urban Planning, Environment and Mobility, has assured that prohibiting the circulation of cars without environmental label of registered in Madrid would only affect about 14,000 or 15,000 vehicles, according to words collected by The Country. The Madrid City Council alleges, therefore, that the measure would have a “low impact” and that they therefore prefer to extend the exception to the rule. Whatever the vehicles may be, the truth is that if the ban were applied, no car without a label could circulate in the capital, regardless of whether or not the car is registered in the city. And the thing is, right now, the only cars without a label that can circulate in Madrid are those registered in the city. That is, it is not enough to reside in the capital, it is necessary that the car be registered in the city. If not, there is no possibility of moving with a car without a label except for few exceptions, such as going to a hotel in the city. In summary, right now there are two possibilities for cars without a label and they will remain active next year: If the car is registered in Madrid: it can circulate If the car is not registered in Madrid: it cannot circulate In addition, it must be taken into account that cars without a label (whether or not they are registered in the capital) cannot enter the Central District Special Protection Low Emission Zone (what was previously Central Madrid). Only cars with an environmental label can enter this space. Of these, in addition, the B and C labels have the obligation to park in a parking lot, so only the ECO and Zero emissions vehicles have total freedom of movement. If you want to know more details, in this Guide to know if your car will be able to circulate through the Madrid ZBE in 2026 We clarify all these concepts. Photo | Jordi Moncasi and NuKi Chikhladze In Xataka | The intrigue of cars with the DGT B label: what we know about whether or not they will be able to enter large cities

That the US authorizes Nvidia’s H200 to reach China is not a concession, but a plan. They prefer money to competition

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The chip war between China and the US has mutated from a blockade to a commercial transaction. Donald Trump has announced that he will allow Nvidia export its high-performance H200 chips to China. The authorization carries an unprecedented condition: the US government will receive a 25% commission about these sales. This “reverse tariff” transforms China containment into a source of income, breaking with the strategy of total suffocation and offering a lifeline to Nvidia in its most critical market. End of free blocking. The decision is a direct result of a meeting last week between Trump and Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. The White House’s logic has changed: it argues that this measure is carried out under strict national security conditions, extending the model to competitors such as Intel and AMD. It is a movement that formalizes what was already intuited a few months ago, when Nvidia managed, after a first meeting with Trump, lift veto on bottom H20 chip. At that time, a precedent was already established of transferring 15% of income to the country, a figure that now scales to 25% for the most powerful hardware. Tap on the image to go to the original post A dose for China. That they chose this chip is no coincidence: the H200 is significantly more powerful than the H20—the trimmed model that China had started to boycott— but it is still behind the cutting-edge Blackwell architecturewhich is still banned. According to advisors such as David Sacks, the North American country seeks to keep China addicted to its technology: if they are denied all access, they are forced to look for alternatives of their own. In fact, Huawei has already admitted that it will take two years to match the performance of the H200, making this chip the perfect tool to slow down Chinese development while monetizing its need. Cracks and black market. The reality is that the total blockade was failing. Recent investigations showed how Chinese companies used shortcuts through Indonesia to access the power of banned chips. Furthermore, the second-hand market had become the main avenue for China get H100 and A100 GPUs off the radar. By allowing the sale of the H200, the US is trying to regain control over a flow that already existed, but in the shadows. At the same time, the Department of Justice announced “Operation Gatekeeper” to dismantle smuggling networks in countries like Hong Kong. China’s response. The great unknown is precisely this, the reception of the news in Beijing. Although Trump claims that Xi responded “positively,” the reality on the ground seems different. China has been for months banning your local businesses buy Nvidia chips to promote its domestic industry. The CAC (Cyberspace Administration of China) came to investigate the H20 looking for rear doorssomething that generated a climate of mistrust that not even the previous July agreement managed to completely dissipate. Jensen Huang, who warned about the danger of an “AI silk road” If the US continued to block sales, with this pact it gets a golden opportunity to not lose a market that represents 13% of its income, although its Chinese clients must now pay the price of American geopolitics. Cover image | Composition with images from Nvidia and RawPixel In Xataka | China has just redrawn the map of strategic minerals: its new rules on rare earths target the United States

a years-long plan to bring Steam to all devices

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Valve is executing one of the most ambitious strategies in recent software history. While Microsoft tries to convince the world that Windows on ARM is ready and Qualcomm promises raw powerGabe Newell’s company has taken a shortcut: Instead of waiting for developers to port its games, it’s funding the technology that makes that unnecessary. You want your Steam library to work on any device without anyone having to lift a finger. The precedent: Proton. To understand the magnitude of the movement, we must look back. A decade ago, playing on Linux was almost utopian. Few developers ported their titles to the Penguin OS, Microsoft has been cornering the PC gaming market for a long time. However, Valve changed this forever from the software side. It was thanks to Proton, a compatibility layer derived from the old Wine that translates Windows instructions so that Linux understands them. This was the cornerstone of the success of the Steam Deck– Proved that you don’t need Windows to run titles of all types, including many AAA. Now, Valve wants to repeat the move, but changing the objective: from desktop PCs to mobile chips. The architect in the shadows. It was Pierre-Loup Griffais, leader of SteamOS, who confirmed to The Verge in an interview that Valve has been “secretly” financing several projects since 2016. The most important currently is «FEX-Emu». What is it? FEX is an emulator which translates the instructions of the x86 processor (the language of traditional Intel and AMD chips for PCs) to ARM64 (that of current mobile phones). The combination: Valve is integrating it into a specific version of Proton for ARM. The goal, according to Steam’s Linux OS boss, is to “remove barriers so users don’t have to worry about which games work.” Obsession with efficiency. Obviously, these investments are not philanthropy, but pure industrial necessity. The company prepares hardware that needs this technology to exist, such as the future Steam Frame viewer. But there’s more: Griffais explains that ARM chips are superior in efficiency for low-power devices, something that has opened the door to speculations of all kinds. An ultraportable with Steam smaller than the Deck? Who knows. Without the compatibility layer of FEX and Proton, these devices would be born without a catalog. With it, they could run thousands of PC games from day one, also adding Android games through another protagonist of recent days: “Lepton”. Yes, multiplayer titles with anti-cheats deep, like ‘Fortnite’. The democratization of gaming. The revolutionary thing about these emulators is that, as they are open source tools, the benefit is universal. It already allows run recent games like ‘Hollow Knight: Silksong’ on an Android mobile without an official version existing. Even manufacturers like Xiaomi have gone ahead with initiatives like “WinPlay” that allows Play Steam titles on your HyperOS devices. Valve is paving the way so that any powerful device, whether tablet, mobile phone or ARM laptop, can be a potential Steam Machine. This contrasts with the efforts of companies like Microsoft, whose emulation layer, Prism on Windowscontinues fighting with the game compatibility. The master plan. It is none other than running SteamOS everywhere. Valve wants SteamOS to be the default operating system for gaming, regardless of the silicon underneath. We have already seen the first steps with the arrival of SteamOS to third-party consoles and the announcement of the Steam Machine desktop By eliminating the barrier of chip architecture (x86 vs ARM) and operating system (Windows vs Linux/Android), the firm ensures that its store is the only constant in a fragmented hardware future. And that only implies one thing: that users spend money on it. A win-win in every rule. Cover image | Valve In Xataka | The video game industry seems to be clear about where its next boom is: in games “for couples”

More than 40,000 people were left in MOVES III limbo when the Auto+ Plan was presented. It has just been resolved

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The presentation of the Auto+ Planthe Government’s new direct aid program to encourage the purchase of electric vehicles, has come with more than just announcements of millionaire investments and promises for the sector. It has also raised doubts. Specifically, it has generated expectations about what will happen with the thousands of people who have been increasing the waiting list for the plan that is about to retire, the MOVES III. Logical. After all, it is calculated that there are tens of thousands of people who still They are waiting for your help. The Ministry of Industry already has confirmed that the Auto+ Plan will not cover the loose ends left by its predecessor. Their solution would be another: inject more funds into MOVES so that the autonomies attend to all the “pending requests”. In fact, it has already committed to mobilizing 400 million thinking about the users who were left in administrative limbo with the change of plan. What has happened? That the announcement of the new Auto+ Plan has generated expectation… and doubts, unknowns that can be explained for three reasons. The first is that the Auto+ Plan will arrive in 2026 to retire MOVES IIIapproved retroactively last spring to support electric purchases made between January 2 and December 31, 2025. The second reason is that, due to the design of MOVES III, its funds They didn’t take long to run out in several communities, generating a considerable waiting list. The third reason is that the Government itself has made clear since Auto+ will not cover the pool of pending payments that MOVES III applicants have made up. What is the difference between MOVES III and Auto+? Basically, they are two different plans, with notable differences in their approach and application. In spring the Government provided MOVES III with 400 million euros designed to support purchases made throughout 2025, an injection of funds that was managed with a peculiarity: although the plan comes from the central government and is carried out through the Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (IDAE), its funds are distributed among the autonomous communities to process the applications. This bet allowed the system to be decentralized, but it was also focus of criticism due to delays and blockages. The Government seems to have taken note and on Wednesday announced “a new line of help” endowed with another 400 million euros by 2026, the Auto+ Plan, which will be carried out directly by the ministry. “This aid will be managed by the central government, not the Autonomous Communities, to guarantee greater speed and homogeneity in management,” confirm from La Moncloa. The new plan also differs from its predecessor, MOVES III, in other details, such as that it will not cover personal charging points and the aid will be delivered at the time of purchase. Although the program generated some doubts, there was one in particular that clouded its presentation… What the hell happens with the pending issues that MOVES III has pending once it retires? Is that important? Yes. And it is because of a revealed piece of information a few days ago by Europa Press: MOVES has 40,000 clients on a waiting list pending receipt of aid. Not only that. The agency assures, citing sector estimates, that the amount pending payment would be around 300 million euros. Such a figure is partly explained by how the plan was designed, with a distribution of resources based on the population and not on where the demand for electric vehicles is actually registered. This caused Madrid and Catalonia to exhaust their funds after just a few months, in July and September, respectively. And what is the situation now? At the end of November Europa Press assured that there were 10 autonomous communities that had already exhausted their funds. However, as MOVES III did not expire until December 31, 2025, it continued to add applicants who piled up on a waiting list. The same one that was surrounded by doubts after the presentation of the new plan. If Auto+ centralizes management and creates a single fund for the entire country, this will prevent buyers who request aid from depending on whether or not their regions have exhausted the allocated amounts in the future. The problem is the past: the approximately 40,000 clients who, according to the news agency, are keeping an eye on the MOVES piggy bank and see how the plan is about to expire. Has the Government said anything? Yes. The waiting list has generated so much expectation that the Ministry of Industry and Tourism has had to come out to clarify some keys. Yesterday, during a visit to Valencia, Jordi Hereu confirmed that the new Pan Auto+ direct aid plan will focus “on present and future demand”, which will not cover the pool of users carried by MOVES III. Does that mean that the Government will leave lying to those thousands of buyers waiting for your help? On Thursday Hereu did not go into details, but he did say that the Executive will look for a way to shorten the waiting list of the previous plan. “(Everything that) has been done and managed in 2025 with MOVES III, which has been a success, is an element that we will surely address in due course,” guaranteed. And how will he do it? The answer has arrived today. Just 48 hours after announcing its new program, the Government has committed to mobilizing an extra 400 million euros in 2025 to meet pending MOVES III requests. The news is spread by economic media, such as The Economist and Expansionthat assures that the IDEA contacted the CCAA yesterday to confirm that the funds have been expanded so that they can cover the users who were left in limbo. The injection is added to that of Auto+. Images | Precious Madubuike (Unsplash) and Pool Moncloa/José Manuel Álvarez In Xataka | The European Union decided that our future involved the electric car no matter what. Until Germany realized something

Lava rises hundreds of meters in Hawaii. Under it, a much bigger plan: reactivate geothermal energy

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The heat from the depths of the Earth is in the news again. And not only because of the almost unreal images of Kilauea launching jets of lava hundreds of meters high on the Big Island of Hawaii. Also because, while the volcano chains increasingly spectacular eruptive episodes, the United States is rediscovering the energy that those same volcanoes hide beneath the surface. Geothermal energy had been in the background for years. Suddenly, it matters again. Quite a spectacle. First of all, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) has warned that Kilauea is preparing for another high-energy eruptive episode. However, these are not isolated episodes. According to ABC Newsthe volcano has already had 36 and 37 eruptive episodes since December of last year. In some phases, the fountains have reached 300 meters and in others they reached 457 meters, a height comparable to a 100-story skyscraper. Even so, the entire phenomenon remains contained. All activity remains within the crater, away from homes or structures. That does not detract from the power of the figures: according to the USGSepisode 37 expelled 6.3 million cubic meters of lava in just nine hours, at a rate of around 190 m³ per second. But behind the show, another debate is beginning to make its way. Hawaii’s untold potential. In fact, as the Hawaii Tribune-Herald recallsSince 1993, the state has had a commercial geothermal plant, Puna Geothermal Venture, located precisely in the East Rift Zone of Kilauea. The University of Hawaii estimates that this facility produces five times more electricity than one of the state’s leading solar parks using 80% less land. The problem is that Hawaii has never tapped into that potential. The reasons combine real volcanic risksexploration costs and cultural resistance of communities for which drilling is a form of desecration of Pele, the volcano goddess. However, the context has changed. Kilauea’s continued activity brings back to the table a question that seemed shelved: should Hawaii use the heat that fuels its volcanoes to power its electrical grid? A door that begins to open. The University of Hawaii has been insisting on it for years. According to their analysis, all major islands could have usable geothermal resources, although knowledge outside Kilauea remains limited. Your Play Fairway project, funded by the Department of Energyhas already drawn the first deep heat maps beyond Puna. The pressure is now political. According to the Hawaiian mediathere are three state agencies competing for funding to re-explore the island in search of new deposits. 80 million public dollars are requested to map resources, drill test wells and reopen the way to a geothermal expansion that has been stalled for decades. The plan includes drilling outside of Puna, on the Big Island, but also in Maui and Oahu, where the resources would be deeper. As the volcano flares up and spills lava in nine-hour episodes, Hawaii looks under its feet: not at the magma, but at the heat that drives it. America’s geothermal renaissance. This local turn coincides with a national renaissance. According to a report by WoodMackenziegeothermal investment in North America soared 85% by 2025 in the first quarter alone, with $1.7 billion in public funds. The reason is not in the volcanoes, but in technology. The analysis points out three innovations that are transforming the sector: According to that analysisthe United States could have 500 gigawatts of geothermal capacity, a figure capable of reconfiguring the country’s energy matrix. However, there is still more. The hidden engine: data centers and AI. As TechCrunch detailedthis underground energy could cover two-thirds of the electrical consumption of the new data centers that will be built in the United States between now and 2030. And the technology giants are already taking positions. In fact, the cases are beginning to multiply as is Meta has signed an agreement with Californian startup XGS Energy to generate 150 MW of geothermal electricity by 2030 using a closed-loop system that prevents water leaks. Also Google has done the same partnering with Fervo Energy. Geothermal energy is no longer a marginal experiment: it is an energy outlet for the infrastructure that supports artificial intelligence. The question left by the volcano. As Kilauea continues its choreography—inflating, roaring, and shooting lava to heights not seen since the 1980s—Hawaii and the rest of the country look downward toward the primeval heat pulsing beneath the crust. Where nature shows its wildest power, technology sees promise: a forgotten energy resurfacing as the United States the more you need electricity continuous, abundant and clean. Image | Pexels and Rjglewis Xataka | Tenerife seeks to turn on its lights with the heat from the subsoil: this is its great commitment to geothermal energy

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