problem

We have always believed that London is very rainy and that Barcelona is not. The only problem is that it’s a lie

by

Few towns exist so troubled by the vicissitudes of time like the British. During my stay in Cambridge, one of my first conversations with a native revolved around its climate. “Actually, the weather is nice in Cambridge,” he told me, “the problem is Londonwhich has a microclimate where it is always raining.” According to his testimony, London, the city with the greatest international projection, gave a bad name to the rest of the country. The British weather wasn’t so horrible. The truth is that it is: Most of the United Kingdom is cold, lives under a perennial blanket of gray clouds and enjoys greater rainfall than the rest of the continent (especially in Scotland). His story, in fact, was inversely true. Despite legend, London is one of the most dry of the United Kingdom, and a European capital with comparatively little rainfall. So why do we universally believe the opposite? First, let’s look at the data. According to Met Office figuresAccording to the British weather agency, London receives between just under 600 and almost 700 millimeters of precipitation annually (depending on the season: London is a gigantic city). The standard chosen by Wikipedia is Heathrow, east of the megalopolis, where in 2014 they fell 601.7 millimeters. Without further reference, it is a neutral number. How does it compare to the rest of England? On a map: London, the black spot… Of the low rainfall in the United Kingdom. The bluest areas are the rainiest in Britain (north east scotland plays in another league). In general, the North Sea coast is drier than the Atlantic. And as we approach the south, to the English Channel, rainfall reduces. This is where we can find London: a city in which it rains comparatively little compared to its island neighbors. My confidant was wrong: it rains more in Cambridge than in London. “Ok, ok, but the United Kingdom is a very rainy country per se. Just because it rains less in London than in other parts of the island does not mean that it rains in London.” bit“. The reasoning is logical, but also incorrect. The truth is that there are few points in continental Europe that have annual rainfall below of 600 millimeters. Unlike supposedly rainy London, Europe below the Channel does live underwater. Raining many days does not mean raining a lot Let’s think about, without going any further, Barcelona. The beautiful city of Barcelona has a reputation for being sunny. It receives millions of tourists a year thanks to its wonderful, mild and friendly climate. Well, its rainfall is very similar to that of London, and in 2014 it was slightly higher. AEMET counted 640 millimeters that yeardistributed throughout 72 days. The surprising record places Barcelona as a rainier city than London. The same thing happens with other quite amazing points of European geography. For example, Croatia. The most recent milestone of European tourism has also built a reputation for “good weather”, but the climatic reality of the Adriatic is stubborn: only in Dubrovnik, the famous citadel popularized for Game of Thrones, more than 1,000 millimeters of precipitation fall per year. 65% more than in London, of tormented fame. With some licenses, places in Europe where it rains less than in London (in yellow). The best way to understand how wrong our intuition is about London’s climate is the map above, shared a few months ago by a Reddit user: Areas in blue (almost all of central and western Europe, including Italy) receive more rainfall per year than London. Only the areas in yellow are drier, and they are few: specific points in Poland, almost the entire Iberian Peninsula (from the Ebro down, so to speak) and Sicily. Let’s think about two antagonistic places: Helsinki and Lecceon the Puglia peninsula, southern Italy. The first is one of the northernmost world capitals and spends most of its time buried under snow amid terrifying temperatures. How much does it rain there? Well, not much more than in London: about 655 millimeters annually. The second is a baroque jewel with a very sunny summer nestled in the heart of the Mediterranean. Its rainfall? Depending on the year, about 590 millimeters. Such geographical disparity does not correspond to very different rainfall. Which shouldn’t be strange, but it does manage to properly contextualize the importance of rain in London. The London chirimiri, the source of prejudice Now, if London is dry, why do we all think it’s always raining? A Basque would have an immediate answer (despite the fact that the Basque Country is very humid, especially Bilbao): chirimiri. In other words, the thin layer of rain that always grips certain cities but is actually very gentle. This is where the scarce 72 days of rain in Barcelona come into play, a city where it rains on just a few days on the calendar. If you want to look for really humid places in Europe, head to the Alps or the Atlantic ledges. In London the opposite happens: it rains more or less the same, but the water is spread over many more days (110a little less than a third of the year). Helsinki is another story: its rainy/snow days range from 180 in 2010 and the more than 200 from last year. Like many other northern European cities (Cambridge included: I barely saw the sun during the month of January I lived there), London often dawns cloudy and with a thin layer of rain that never seems to evaporate. The sun comes and goes, the clouds appear and disappear, the rain stops and starts again regularly. It doesn’t rain much, but the feeling of rain and humidity is almost permanently, inevitable. That’s why fame is so raw. Another factor is the dry reality of most of Europe’s capitals. Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Paris, Madrid, Warsaw or even Copenhagen They have less or only slightly more annual rainfall than London (none exceeds 700 millimeters). There are few capitals in Europe where it rains a lot (Amsterdam, … Read more

The internet has decided that 2016 was great and worth remembering. But there’s a problem: it wasn’t at all.

by

The aesthetics of 2016 comes back strong: filters that They imitate the Instagram of then (according to Wikipedia, more than 200 million videos with filters that imitate visuals), trends that they recover photos from thenrecreations of the summer of ‘Pokémon GO’, tributes and memories to David Bowie. Generation Z users, many of them teenagers at the time, they rebuild 2016 like a golden age (there has been a 450% increase in searches of the term “2016” on TikTok). The contradiction is obvious: That same year, numerous media declared it one of the worst in recent history. What happened. On January 10 he died David Bowie; they followed him Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Carrie Fisher. On June 23, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. On November 8, Donald Trump won the US election. Media like slate either Newsweek They wondered if it was the worst year in history. Less than a decade later, that same year it has become an object of nostalgia. Starting shot. The Bowie’s death January 10 marked the year since its inception. Two days before he had published ‘Blackstar’, an album that today is interpreted as a farewell but that then went unnoticed in its testamentary dimension. The shock was immediate: an artist who had hidden his cancer for 18 months disappeared without warning, and memes filled that void almost immediately. The artists mentioned above followed, and each death reinforced the same idea: 2016 was cursed. In Xataka All the reasons you should listen to David Bowie if you haven’t already Imbalance. Trump and Brexit shattered the expectations of progress and openness that dominated Western political discourse. In‘The future of nostalgia’already in 2001, Svetlana Boym distinguished between “restorative nostalgia” (which seeks to reconstruct a mythical home) and “reflective nostalgia” (which enjoys longing without seeking to recover anything). Nostalgia for 2016 is of the first kind: it invents a year that never existed. Boym noted that restorative nostalgia “does not recognize itself as nostalgia, but as truth and tradition.” Just what happens when TikTok recreates the summer ofPokémon GO as if it had been edenic. This has already been said. There are theorists who have reflected on the phenomenon to remember 2016 just ten years later. David Foster Wallace documented in the 1990s what he called “nostalgia for the present”: the urge to long for something that is not yet over. 2016 fulfills that paradox: it has become an object of nostalgia before being historically processed, while its political consequences remain active. The temporal distance necessary for nostalgia, usually two or three decades, has been compressed to the point of almost disappearing. {“videoId”:”x9785qi”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Prince – Partyman”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”233″} Retromania. It is inevitable to refer to ‘Retromania‘a 2011 essay in which Simon Reynolds argued that since the 2000s, pop culture had reversed its direction: instead of generating the future, it was dedicated to reactivating the past. Reynolds documented band reunions, deluxe reissues, revival festivals, nostalgic samples. Fifteen years later, his thesis has intensified: no society has ever been so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its most recent past. The return to 2016 confirms his diagnosis: a decade is enough to activate nostalgia. Hauntology. Mark Fisher elaborated on this idea in ‘The ghosts of my life’where he developed the concept of “hauntology” that Derrida had coined: we are inhabited by futures that did not materialize. Fisher, who died in 2017, argued that contemporary culture had lost its ability to imagine alternatives to the present. The past cannot be recovered; Their ghosts haunt a present incapable of projecting forward. Nostalgia for 2016 materializes this paralysis: one longs for a year defined by its catastrophic nature because there is a lack of vocabulary to articulate desirable futures. In Xataka A rosy past: why our brains can’t fight nostalgia Nostalgia mode. Finally, Fredric Jameson had anticipated this phenomenon in ‘Postmodernism: or the cultural logic of late capitalism’ in 1991, when describing the “nostalgia mode”: postmodern culture reproduces styles from the past by emptying them of historical reference and reducing them to an aesthetic surface. Instagram and TikTok accelerate this process. What was present yesterday is content today vintage available for consumption. The Spotify playlists of 2016 and the summer of ‘Pokémon GO’ are remembered, but not the bad thing. The algorithm creates a sweetened version of the past that eliminates conflict. It could be worse. 2026, without going any further. The nostalgia of 2016 reveals an escape from much more present horrors: those of 2026. That year has been dwarfed as a “bad year” because a decade later Trump returns to the presidency in a much more virulent way, with attacks on international law and invasion of countries, the war in Ukraine has no signs of ending, Gaza is going through a humanitarian disaster that shames the planet, political and media polarization has become radicalized, housing has become inaccessible… Carrie Fisher, who died in 2016 If in 2016 there were those who considered it exaggerated to talk about authoritarian drift, 2026 materializes that exaggeration: the alarms that seemed like hyperbole turned out to be prophetic. Nostalgia for 2016 is not innocent: it is the implicit recognition that the situation has worsened, that that year, with all its disasters, was preferable to the present. It’s coming. The cycle accelerates. If 2016 is already an object of nostalgia in 2026, what year will be nostalgic in 2030? 2020, the year of the global pandemic? 2024? Culture is caught in a loop where the present devours itself before it has been digested, where the ability to imagine alternatives has atrophied to the point that we can only look back. Even when what we see behind is disaster. In Xataka | People are so fed up with the current Internet that they are returning to MySpace. Not out of nostalgia, but out of rebellion (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news … Read more

We believed that the US was facing a major energy shortage problem for AI. The data says the opposite

by

To win the AI ​​race you need several things, but two are very important. The first, have the best technology and the best chips. The second, having enough energy to power those chips. The US has the first, but everything pointed to it having a major energy bottleneck. That is no longer so clear. China has plenty of energy. The China’s strategic visionwhich once again has been investing in the energy field for decades, is bearing fruit and the country has considerable room for maneuver in terms of energy supply. That is a factor that seems to tip the balance in its favor: Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, already warned that China can win the AI ​​race. According to him, China has more flexible regulation and its companies have government subsidies for the energy their data centers need. But the US has another philosophy. A deep study from the startup Epoch AI—responsible for FrontierMath AI benchmark— serves as a counterpoint to these pessimistic theories. In recent months we have seen how the US seems to have a real problem with the energy needed for AI data centers. China has not stopped increasing its energy generation capacity, but the US has not for a simple reason: until now it did not need it. Source: Epoch AI. However, Epoch AI explains that it is not that the US is not capable of creating more energy capacity: it simply has not needed it until now. While China has prepared for the future—even if that future does not come—the US has maintained a more conservative attitude: as long as there was no demand, it would not make any move. The immediate question, of course, is whether you can move it now or is it too late? And no, it doesn’t seem like it is. Forecast of necessary energy capacity for data centers in the US until 2030 according to different scenarios. In the worst of all of them (pink color), almost 80 GW of capacity will be needed. Source: Epoch AI. The demand is going to be huge. There is a reality: those ambitious plans to create more and more data centers throughout the US —with Project Stargate at the forefront—will cause data centers in the country to need between 30 and 80 GW of energy capacity in 2030. For those responsible for the study, it is perfectly possible that the US “gets its act together” – pun intended – and manages to increase its energy capacity. As? Various options. The US has room for maneuver. In order to supply all that energy that all those data centers will theoretically need, there are several clear alternatives according to the Epoch AI study: Natural gas: is relatively cheap and plants can be built quickly. There are three large companies that can cover this demand: GE Verona, Mitsubishi Heavy and Siemens. The plans of all of them point to a production of more than 200 GW in 2030. Even if they are not met, this supply (without being totally dedicated to AI) would already be an important part of the solution. Solar energy: the other big part of the solution, especially because its costs have fallen drastically and because it is very, very scalable. We have already seen how the US has the capacity to install 1,200 GW solar for IA thanks to its deserts, but at the moment Big Tech does not dare to use them. Once again, estimates point to around 200 GW of installed capacity in 2030, but even if these expectations are not met, this infrastructure will also be a clear part of the solution. Energy flexibility. The report also talks about a dynamic supply philosophy. Most of the time the US power grid is oversized for one simple reason: It is built to be able to supply power at peak peaks—like when everyone turns on the air conditioning—but most of the time there is plenty of power even to give to large AI data centers. This future infrastructure must be created with that same idea: oversized, but flexible. And there are other alternatives. The country is turning to energy solutions that it thought were buried to power data centers. Among them are the fossil plants that were theoretically going to close but that are returning to operation due to the astonishing increase in demand. There is also talk of going to military solutions and even more unusual alternatives, such as energy under volcanoes. Not to mention, of course, the nuclear power plants and the small nuclear reactors (SMR) that are already being used by some of the Big Tech for your data centers. Be careful with your electricity bill. The reality is that in the North American country data centers are growing faster than electrical infrastructure, and these facilities They are draining the country’s electricity. The situation is even causing electricity grid operators to ask be able to shut down data centers in times of high demand. And then there’s the other big side effect: AI data centers they are skyrocketing the electricity bill. When starting up an AI data center, power costs a tenth of what chips cost. Source: Epoch AI. There doesn’t seem to be a problem. Even with all those obstacles, Epoch AI’s conclusion is clear: “we doubt these challenges are significant enough to impede the scaling of AI.” In fact, they remember that what is actually expensive are the chips, not the energy, which represents a tenth of the investment in chips. The report concludes that China having an advantage is not necessarily true, and that the hypothetical US energy bottleneck “is much weaker than many people have indicated.” Image | Andrey Metelev In Xataka | Artificial intelligence has already reached nuclear power plants. And it’s going to change them forever

In 1925, procrastination was already a problem and someone found the definitive solution: the isolation helmet.

by

Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution They have turned modern humans into perfect machines in one thing: distracting us. No matter where, when or how you are, if you are accompanied or alone, if you are waiting in line at the butcher shop or have a book in front of you, chances are that your attention ends up dispersing for any nonsense. Maybe the flight of a fly. Maybe that sound you just heard in the next room or a stain on the wall. It happens today and it happened a century ago, when a science fiction-loving inventor designed the ultimate machine to end distractions. His patent dates back to 1925, but it addresses a hot topic: procrastination. The war of wars. Since man has been a man, he has done two things, both wonderfully: he is distracted and he procrastinates. Almost 2,000 years ago Seneca warned us about the risks of wasting our time and we know, for example, that distractions were one of the big concerns of the monks of the Middle Ages. Some even thought that if our minds disperse it is due to the influence of devils. In 2026 things are not very different. A quick Google search comes up to find a wide (very wide) list of guides and videos with tips on how to focus and stop putting off tasks. And it is understandable. After all, cell phones, social networks and other inventions of modern technology make our lives easier, but they have been filing our ability to focus. Even science has confirmed that we are losing the ability to focus among so many stimuli. And how do we solve it? We humans have not only been distracted for centuries and centuries. We have also spent some time looking for ways to avoid that annoying wandering of thoughts. Of all the solutions that have been given to the problem, perhaps the most astonishing (and bizarre) is the one proposed just a century ago by Hugo Gernsbachan imaginative Luxembourgish-American inventor. His name may sound familiar to you because, in addition to register patents of inventions and working in the electronics industry, Gernsback excelled in another field: publishing. Throughout his life he promoted several magazines focused on technology (RadioNews), but he also shone in science fiction. We owe him Amazon Storiesa milestone of the genre. His contribution in the field was so important that he is considered one of the parents of science fiction (with permission from Verne and HG Wells) and every year he is honored through the Hugo Awards. Adding facets. A century ago Gernsback combined this double facet, his technical ingenuity and overflowing imagination, to launch a proposal through the pages of Science and Inventiona magazine specialized in technology. In its July 1925 issue, the inventor, editor and novelist presented a creation which he named ‘The Isolator’. The name is striking in itself, but it pales in comparison to the photographs that illustrate the report. They show Gernsback working in his office with his head in a gigantic diving suit, an elongated helmet with two small openings for the eyes and a tube that connects it to an oxygen cylinder. Its purpose: to immerse the wearer in absolute isolation, an ideal state for centering. When silence does not come. Gernsback came to a conclusion very simple: sometimes it is not enough to lock yourself in a room without noise to concentrate. Even so, we risk our mind getting carried away by the flight of a fly or starting to wander after seeing a stain on the table. The way to avoid it, he concluded, was to eliminate all those influences “in one fell swoop.” As? With a helmet prepared to suppress unnecessary noises and visual stimuli. For the first thing, the noises, Gernsback decided to go for a robust multi-layer helmet. Its first prototype was made of solid wood with an internal and external layer of cork and a felt trim. For the second (view) he added three small pieces of glass. The design was completed with a device at mouth height that allowed the user to breathe without noise creeping in. The result, says the inventorit was a helm with an efficiency of “about 75%”. It isolated from external noises, but not completely. There was room for improvement. And how did you improve it? Perfecting the design. Gernsback rethought the material and added an air chamber so that the efficiency of ‘The Isolator’ rose to 90 or 95%, “eliminating practically all noise.” So that vision was not a problem either, the helmet’s glass peepholes located in front of the eyes were painted black, leaving only a narrow transparent strip. “When the two white lines on the glass open, the field through which the view can move is relatively small,” points out the inventor. “It is almost impossible to see anything but a sheet of paper in front of the user. There is no distraction.” Concentrating… and breathing. It is one thing that ‘Isolator’ lived up to its name by isolating the user in a bubble of responsible concentration and another, very different, that it was comfortable or even bearable. The author explains that after 15 minutes with it on the user “experienced some drowsiness”, so he decided to improve the breathing system, connecting it to a small oxygen tank. This improved breathing and “revitalized the subject.” In his article Gernsback added detailed plans of ‘The Isolator’ and even a sketch of an office with a complete distraction-proof installation, which included a ‘noise-proof’ door and an adequate ventilation system. “With this provision you can contemplate an important task in a short time,” boasted. “Building ‘The Isolator’ will be a huge investment.” The power of paper. If humanity has also learned something (including Gernsback) it is that paper supports ideas that are not supported in reality. His helmet may have been eye-catching, it may have even worked, but it didn’t work. We don’t know to what extent its inventor really expected it … Read more

Japan has a problem with bear attacks in its cities. So they have started eating them

by

If it is true that every crisis hides an opportunity, in Japan they have taken it to a new dimension. For some time now, the country of the rising sun has been dealing with a serious problem of bear attacks on humans, which has left more than a dozen victims since last spring. The authorities have been searching for some time the way to solve itbut there are those who have already found a way to benefit from it: the psychosis due to encounters with plantigrades is coming accompanied by what seems to be a growing interest in their meat. In Japan the (gastronomic) taste for these animals it’s not newbut there are hoteliers who they assure that demand is growing so much that they are unable to satisfy it. And they are clear about the reason: the news about attacks. Beware of the bears. Japan has long grappled with a serious problem birth rate, a trend that comes accompanied by the abandonment of rural areas and farmlands. That’s nothing new. Nor anything that Spain (and many other countries) has experienced firsthand. What is curious is the effect that this population decline is causing, combined with other factors, such as climate change, fluctuations in harvests and the increase in the populations of certain wild animals: an ‘epidemic’ of human bear attacks. One figure: 13 dead. With more bears prowling through the mountains, when acorns are scarce, the animals choose to approach towns and cities… with the risk that this implies. Sometimes his encounters with humans remain just that, scares, like what happened in october when a 1.4 m specimen sneaked into a supermarket in Numata. Other times the outcome is more tragic. According to the Government, between April and November 13 people died by claws and bites from these animals. To them are added 230 injured. It is the worst balance since the country began studying the phenomenon in 2006. Is the problem that serious? Yes. The figures are eloquent. And not only those of attacks, injuries and deaths. The japanese press (even the international) has been echoing the increase in sightings of bears, the increase in captured specimens and the problem that these animals are beginning to represent, which has led companies to look for ways to protect their employees and administrations to consider strategies to address the problem. Proof of how desperate the Government is is that it has approved emergency hunts and even has turned to the army. 13 deaths may not be a high number in a country of almost 123 million of inhabitants, but it is high enough to set off alarms, especially in certain regions. There are basically two species in the country: Asian black bears and brown bears, which can be found in Hokkaido and whose population has skyrocketed in the last three decades, reaching 11,500 individuals. according to The Japan Times. A delicious threat. All of the above was more or less known. In recent weeks local media such as The Mainichi, The Asashi Shimbun, NHK World Japan However, they have published articles that suggest something else: that in the midst of a wave of attacks, the Japanese seem to be rediscovering the pleasure of a good slice of grilled bear. a few days ago The Japan Times He even spoke with the owners of a restaurant located in a mountainous area of ​​Saitama who say they are having difficulty meeting the growing demand for meat. “With the increase in news about bears, the number of customers who want to eat their meat has increased,” explains to the newspaper the head of the business, Koji Suzuki. His wife confirms that they have even been forced to turn away clients. Another Sapporo restaurant presume also of the success of their “bear soup” and in Aomori there is a population that is promoting wild bear meat as a local gastronomic specialty. Those who promote the use of bear meat from the sector claim that it is a local and they insist in the usefulness of using the meat of slaughtered animals. Is it something new? Yes. And no. As Suzuki and Katsushiko Kakuta, a restaurant manager in Aomori, explain, bear meat seems to be arousing special interest among the Japanese, but for them it is not a new product. Does five years in Nishimeya (Aomori) they even opened a center to process meat from wild bears captured in the Shirakami-Sanchi mountains. And in 2023 in Akita they installed neither more nor less than a vending machine which sells 250 g of fresh meat from bears caught by hunters in the region for 2,200 yen. “Most say it’s delicious”. Kiyoshi Fujimoto, Sapporo chef, confesses that, in your opinion“now there are more people” interested in his bear meat-based recipe. What’s more, he assures that “most people who try it say it’s delicious.” The truth is that in Japan not only attacks and victims have increased. The captures of animals have also done so, which has forced the authorities to face the challenge of what to do with their corpses. Chosun remember that, although there are restaurants in the country that serve their meat, the law is restrictive on the consumption of slaughtered bears, so many end up incinerated. Images |Lucas Law (Unsplash), Adam Kolmacka (Unsplash) and Suzi Kim (Unsplash) In Xataka | A Japanese restaurant has taken its obsession with fresh fish to the extreme: it lets you catch it yourself

The last barrier against AI is good taste. The problem is that an entire generation is growing up without developing it

by

The new normal in three acts: You open X and find a clearly AI-generated image trying to look legitimate. But it’s not bad, it complies. You go to LinkedIn and find a piece that reeks of ChatGPT, but you get the idea that its author wanted to convey. In GitHub You find code that works, but that no sensible programmer would write like that. You let it go. welcome to the era of “good enough”. Generative AI has made it easy, fast, and free to produce “acceptable” things, and that has moved the collective bar for quality. Not upward but towards “functional”. The worrying thing is not that AI produces mediocrity, but that it is accustoming us to accepting it. Before, if we needed an image for the article, we had to look for it or – for those who had ID – order it. There was friction or there was cost. Now we generate it in fifteen seconds (wink), and since it “serves”, it stays there (wink, wink, nudge). Even if it is generic or has that artificial veneer that we all recognize but no one talks about anymore. The problem is that when something acceptable costs nothing to produce, we stop asking ourselves if it is worth doing. We’re just wondering if it meets the minimum. AND meeting the minimum is not the same as doing something good. In development this is also very noticeable. An experienced and talented programmer instantly recognizes whether a code has been written by an AI. Even if it works (we already take that for granted), you can tell by the verbiage, because it is redundant, because it is not very elegant. It does what it has to do, but no senior He would be proud to have it bearing his signature. What is going to happen to a generation that is going to learn to program using AI from day one? If you’ve never written bad code and then understood what makes it good, how are you going to develop judgment? Good taste does not come standard. It is built by seeing many bad things, many good things, making mistakes. AI saves you that path by giving you something that works from the first try. But without going down that path, you never develop the eye to distinguish. Therein lies the risk. AI has raised the floor (anyone can produce something decent), but the ceiling is still just as high. At least for the majority. Creating something exceptional requires the same things as always: talent, effort, judgment. Only now it is buried under tons of slop and mediocre but functional content. And since creating it is free, we produce it non-stop. Human value remains in taste. Knowing how to look at something and say “okay, it’s good, but it’s not good”. But that criterion is only formed with practice. If an entire generation grows up consuming and producing what “just delivers,” how are they going to learn what is excellent? If you have never seen the difference, that difference does not exist for you. We are heading towards a world where it will be normalized that “good enough” is the only standard because we forget how to recognize when something will be done well. In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were. Featured image | Xataka with Nano Banana

We have been telling ourselves for decades that we have the Internet thanks to military research. The problem is that it is false

by

It is difficult to imagine that something as impressive as the Internet could be summarized just over 40 years ago in a single page. The map of germ of the internet, ARPANETtook up no more than a DIN A4 sheet of paper and reflected the less than 50 computers that at the beginning of the Internet were connected to each other. But even more curious is the story of how ARPANET was born, which may not be as you have been told. It all happened almost midnight on October 29, 1969, in a small room at the University of California (UCLA), and with a message that only said “it“. The true origin Search the Internet about its history (from the Internet itself), and you will find that the most common thing is to talk about its military origin. Technically it is correct since ARPANET was developed by the ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency), an institution that depended on the US Department of Defense. But the reasons were not military even though One of the minds behind some of the ideas that helped create ARPANET, Paul Baran, worked precisely with the motivation that cold war between the US and the USSR would not end with a blockade and destruction of the communications and control structures of the US army in the event of a nuclear attack. You will indeed find many references to this idea, which results in a story that makes for an entertaining movie. hollywood but in reality it was not exactly with that motivation that ARPANET was born. In the 1960s, within ARPA there was the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO), at that time focused on taking full advantage of computers within the administration. Robert Taylor, one of the fathers of the Internet, began his career as director of the IPTO in 1966, and proposed to the then director of ARPA the possibility of connecting computers together to optimize their use. With this structure of networked computers (an idea that he took from the previous works of JCR Lickliderpioneer in 1962 by proposing the possibility of interconnecting equipment with each other) the ARPA could better manage your budget for computers and not distribute efforts uselessly but concentrate them on a few but very powerful computers connected to each other which would allow resources and results to be shared between researchers and centers. “lo”, first message between computers on the network Taylor was not limited to the resource of sharing computers and results between centers as an advantage of his ARPANET. If the idea worked, the agency was ensuring that it could use more computer models of different types without the compatibility or use of terminals to access them being a nightmare, while at the same time allowing the creation of protection against failures, so that with the non-centralized network structure proposed, if one computer failed, the others could continue working. Taylor’s initial proposal consisted of a test network with four nodes that they could expand if the results proved them right. ARPANET was born. The Internet was on the way. If you are passing through California, a recommended visit is in room 3420 Boelter Hall at the University (UCLA). Do not look for it as such because after being forgotten and until its use as a common room, it was recently restored and became part of the Kleinrock Center for Internet Studies (KCIS). Much of the history and documents are concentrated there (there is no waste of original presentation of ARPANET) and equipment that allowed the first node to be established between computers. But it’s actually a fantastic tribute to Leonard Kleinrocka professor who in 1969, right from that small room at the university, sent the first message on ARPANET. It was 10:30 at night on October 29, 1969 when, from the SDS Sigma 7 computer in said room, Professor Kleinrock sent the LOGIN message to the SDS 940 computer at the Stanford Research Institute, the computer with which he was connected in a basic way. The message remained a curious “lo” since there was a transmission failureand it was not until an hour later that the initial transmission could be completed. The first connection had occurred between the first two computers within the ARPANET. Two weeks later there were 4 interconnected teams, and in two years, almost seventy. And no one could stop this revolution. In Xataka | In 1995 ‘Toy Story’ forever changed the way animated films are made. He did it with rudimentary computers In Xataka | In 1969, humans set foot on the Moon for the first time. He did it thanks to a computer less powerful than your cell phone

China is filling up with “quadricycles” that do not require a driving license. And they are a problem for road safety

by

The two times I have been to China, two things about its automobile fleet have caught my attention: the furor for electric cars in terms of brands, models and dealerships, because you can almost find one on every corner of any central street in the big cities. And on the other side of the coin, I was also struck by the enormous amount of motorbikes (scooter is saying a lot) and cars without licenses parked in any side and circulating any manner. Don’t call it a light quadricycle, rather say laotoule. There they are known as “laotoule”, something like that like the joy of the old man. Because if in Spain the light quadricycles you see are usually driven by older people, in China too. They began to be seen back in the 90s from tuk-tuk modifications three wheels in rural areas, although today they have capacity for up to five people and a very diverse aesthetic. From occasional mobility to a vehicle for everything. Although the older ones are the star group, they are not the only ones: they are vehicles with very clear profiles of occasional use and short and (relatively) simple trajectories. As collects China Dailythese vehicles are the main means of transportation for running errands or picking up elderly grandchildren, but in recent years they have expanded their range to younger people: they offer a closed space and solve the problem of having to travel at a low cost. According to the China Electric Vehicle Associationannual sales of these lightweight non-highway quadricycles increased from 1.1 million in 2017 to 2.1 million in 2023, of which 1.4 million went to seniors. According to an investigation According to Banyuetan, the magazine linked to the official Chinese news agency Xinhua, these cars are flooding rural roads and urban peripheries. And its proliferation has aroused the suspicion of the authorities. The legal vacuum of laotoule. Because unlike Spain, where any motor vehicle requires a technical sheet and a license plate, in China they have been marketed as if they were devices for personal mobility, something like a scooter or an electric wheelchair. Thus, the bulk of laotoule are sold without registration or approval or the need to pass your MOT. In fact, they are increasingly sold online. like low cost imitations of luxury cars. There is even a Porsche Cayenne without a license. Because there are brands and models of Chinese electric cars to bore, in a light quadricycle version, too. In fact, There are even Maseratis and Porsche Cayenne modelsor rather, Maserati style and Porsche style, because they are not official from the respective houses. And because the Maserati costs about 3,200 euros in exchange. Is take a look at the Alibaba website and find models for all tastes, such as this Mini. Also There is a version without a license of Xiaomi’s second electric car, the ambitious Xiaomi YU7as you can see below these lines. From afar they hit the mark, up close already such. Under that attractive bodywork they hide electric motors of low or medium power and a top speed of up to 70 km/h. Tap to go to the post. The card-free version of the Xiaomi YU7 The real problem is road safety. Leaving aside industrial property issues, laotoules look like miniature cars but they are not: they lack basic elements that are found in passenger cars, such as steel frames or airbags. The Banyuetan report echoes of a fatal hit by a 59-year-old driver in a laotule in Hebei, northern China. From prohibition to regulation. Some local administrations have already made a move: since January 1, 2024, cities such as Luoyang or Beijing banned circulation on public roads to low-speed three- and four-wheel electric vehicles. However, there is a middle way: China issued a regulation of technical specifications and safety requirements for electric vehicles, finally classifying laoutoule as motor vehicles. From here and as explained by Lu Yong, researcher in the low-speed electric vehicle sector for Sixth Tone: “We must recognize the real demand for low-speed vehicles and strengthen the design at national level, both for industry development and traffic management. Clear and enforceable rules must be quickly introduced for both product and driving standards, as well as for road access.” In Xataka | China has so many electric cars running on its streets that it is going to use them to generate energy for homes In Xataka | China is the only country in the world where car prices are falling. So much so that the Government is taking measures

The “pop” Catholicism of Hakuna and Llamados is filling pavilions with thousands of young people. The problem: they seem evangelical

by

Two Catholic events in Madrid in just 48 hours, making a couple of undeniable circumstances very clear. First, the Catholic faith has taken root among the youngest people speaking in their same language: with mega concerts and massive events. Second, behind this apparent en bloc following lie different trends that threaten to break up the crowded world of Spanish faith, overflowing with interests that pull in opposite directions. The events. On Monday, January 13, the Movistar Arena welcomed 6,000 people in ‘Llamados’, a prayer meeting organized by the Parish of Santo Domingo de la Calzada (Algete) and Alpha España (Spanish branch of Alpha International, a method of evangelization born in the 70s within Anglicanism and that explores faith in an informal environment). The next day, the Vistalegre Palace gathered 12,000 attendees at the Hakuna Group Music concertthe Catholic group fashionable in Spain. The debate. What has ignited the debate is the group’s presence in ‘Llamados’ hillsong as opening act This Australian evangelical group, a Protestant icon, is a clear example of some “evangelical ways” that radically depart from historical Catholic practices and discourses. Contemporary music with rock instruments, giant screens, an abundance of emotional personal testimonies, moments of worship with raised hands… and all in spaces more associated with concerts than with traditional liturgical celebrations. His actions are controversial among the most traditional sectors of Catholicismbut the discussion now reaches Spain. The context. Hakuna Group Musicthe Catholic youth movement founded in 2013 by Father José Pedro Manglano has become the emblem of this new trend of transforming faith into a mega-conceit. Their song ‘Huracán’ surpassed two million views on social networks after the September 2022 concert in Vistalegre, which brought together 8,000 people, figures within the reach of successful traditional pop groups. The precedent. This Spanish phenomenon has its clearest precedent in the United States. In July 2024, more than 50,000 Catholics gathered at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for the National Eucharistic Congressan event that marked a turning point and where catholic bishops sang ‘How Great Is Our God’, the characteristic hymn of Elevation Churchone of the most influential evangelical megachurches in the world. For many faithful, this phenomenon represents “a new ecumenical liturgical movement“which is not based on the harsher and more inaccessible Catholic tradition, but on shared music and common experience. And the truth is that this drift towards pop is normal: after all, traditional sacred music is not designed for crowds of tens of thousands of people. In other words, it does not have choruses or lololós. The CWM. The music that plays in ‘Llamados’ and in Hakuna’s concerts falls within a specific genre: Contemporary Worship Music (CWM), born in American Pentecostal and charismatic churches since the 1960s. It is now a global industry that moves millions of dollars. Among its characteristics are lyrics focused on direct praise to God and written in the first person, simple and repetitive melodic structures designed to be chanted, and instrumentation typical of pop-rock bands. The goal: an immediate emotional experience. The criticisms. Some critics draw parallels of this movement with the prosperity gospel or prosperity theology, an evangelical current that teaches that God rewards faith with material success and health. Magazines like the Jesuit La Civiltà Cattolicaapproved by the Vatican, warned in 2022 that elements of this theology had penetrated Catholic communities, especially through the charismatic movement, transforming the traditional understanding of redemptive suffering. That is to say, the loss of the traditional penitential component of Catholicism, to which the Latin faction is so closely related, is perceived. In Spain, the Church has welcomed with open arms the avalanche of young faithful brought by these concerts and events. But there are dissident voices: the Catholic School of Apologetics speaks of ‘12 Reasons why it is not good to listen to Protestant music‘, and warns about the “tyranny of feeling” that prioritizes “feeling” over “believing”, as these songs often enunciate. At Catholic.net they talk that this type of music can inject Protestant beliefs into the Catholic faith, and there are numerous isolated voices that warn of the danger of these mass events. All with Calls. However, the advancement of phenomena like Llamados is important. Organizers have explicitly positioned it as a model of mass evangelization ahead of the Jubilee of Redemption in 2033, which will commemorate the 2,000th anniversary of the death and resurrection of Christ. With the religious practice in free fallevents like these are one of the few phenomena capable of massively mobilizing young people towards explicitly Christian experiences. But is it a renewal or just a youth fever, in line with the cycles of action and reaction (now that more conservative winds are blowing) that we have always experienced? In Xataka | A blessing that drives likes and sales: “x-ray of chic Catholicism”

Spotify has had to remove 75 million songs made with AI. Bandcamp has decided not to have that problem

by

The Bandcamp music streaming and sales platform has announced that will completely ban music generated “in whole or in substantial part” by artificial intelligence, becoming the first major music distribution service to establish such a restrictive barrier against synthetic content. Bandcamp thus draws a very clear red line in the debate about where the use of creative tools ends and where total automation that dispenses with human authorship begins. What does the statement say? Bandcamp’s statement presents two fundamental prohibitions. On the one hand, any musical content generated entirely or substantially through artificial intelligence, a formulation that avoids defining exact percentages but establishes that there is a threshold regarding the weight of AI in the creative process. On the other hand, it extends the prohibition to the use of algorithmic tools to replicate styles or voices of real artists, connecting this restriction with the platform’s pre-existing policies against identity theft and intellectual property infringement. Citizen collaboration. The advertisement includes a complaint mechanism For users: users can report suspicious material using the platform’s reporting tools, which will be reviewed by a moderation team. The company explicitly reserves the right to remove music suspected of having synthetic origin, without the need for conclusive evidence, a clause that gives wide freedom to moderators but could also generate false positives. The company acknowledged that the policy may require updates as the generative AI landscape evolves, referring to how quickly these technologies are being developed. The conceptual debate. This decision is part of the debate about AI and creativity that is going through the world of culture: using algorithms as instruments as opposed to delegating the creative act to them. The United States Copyright Office established in January 2025 that work generated by AI can be registered when it “incorporates significant human authorship,” but that content produced solely through promptswithout additional creative intervention, falls into the public domain for lack of a recognizable author. Nuances and tools. And it is difficult to determine the limits. The spectrum ranges from musicians who use AI to clean up audio or get inspired by melodies to those who simply write text instructions and let the model generate entire tracks. There are conceptual artists who go to the opposite extreme of artificial intervention: composer Holly Herndon turned her voice into the project Holly+ into a “digital instrument” that is publicly accessible and that other musicians can play. The debate is endless: MIT Technology Review raised in April that tools like Suno and Udio produce “creators” who are not conventional musicians but “prompters“. The result is works that cannot be attributed to a composer or singer, dissolving the usual definitions of authorship. The flood. The figures reveal an exponential escalation in the appearance of music created with AI on platforms. Deezer spoke in November 2025 of more than 50,000 tracks completely generated by AI each day, 34% of its daily volume, and an increase of 400% compared to January, when the figure was 10,000 songs per day. A study by Deezer itself said that 97% of listeners do not know how to distinguish between human and synthetic music after a blind test for the participants in the study in which they were shown two tracks, one with AI and one real. The Spotify drama. While, Spotify revealed in September 2025 which had removed 75 million “spam tracks” in the previous twelve months, an amount that rivals the platform’s entire catalog of 100 million songs. The emblematic case of the fictional indie band The Velvet Sundown illustrates the dimension of the phenomenon: this group completely generated by AI It reached 1.5 million monthly listeners on Spotify during the summer of 2025 before its creators admitted its synthetic nature, under pressure from listeners. Follow the money. The case of Xania Monet is another side of the problem. This fully synthetic R&B artist generated over $42,800 in less than two months with over 17 million streams totals, which led to the signing of a multimillion-dollar record contract after a bidding war where a record company allegedly offered $3 million. At the same time, country was the first genre to be marked as a big loser in this war between real and synthetic artists: in December 2025, the number of country songs generated by AI outsold completely human jobs. There is a clear motive for these maneuvers: money. Tools like Suno and Udio produce for free and a user can generate hundreds of short tracks that can generate profits. Let’s multiply it exponentially: massive uploads to platforms, bot farms that generate songs and upload songs without rest, automation of payments… We are not looking for isolated successes, but to add millions of reproductions, against which a real artist cannot compete. Percentages. And that’s why Bandcamp and Spotify are so different. Bandcamp is a marketplace straight where artists charge an average of 82% of each sale, with the platform keeping 15% on digital items and 10% on physical items, with additional payment processing commissions of 4-7%. bandcamp has paid more than 1,640,000 million dollars directly to artists and labels since its founding in 2008, with 19 million transferred in 2025 alone thanks to “Bandcamp Fridays”, days in which the company completely waives its commission. This structure makes AI-generated music counterproductive for the platform: no one buys synthetic albums produced by AI. prompts. Spotify, meanwhile, operates on a subscription basis, distributing roughly two-thirds of its total revenue in royalties. The platform paid 10 billion dollars to the music industry in 2024but the average payment for stream ranges between 0.003 and 0.005 dollars. Besides,Spotify implemented a threshold of 1,000 annual streams in 2024 for a track to generate royalties. This structure creates perverse incentives to “cheat”: virtually free AI production, mass uploading of tracks, use of bot farms to inflate the number of views… The pay-per-play system stream It allows tiny fractions of a cent to turn into million-dollar amounts if there is enough volume. The reaction. The Bandcamp movement has some protection of its image, … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.