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CEO Toyota believes his extreme perfectionism is a problem

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Japan is an extremely peculiar country. It is for many reasons in the eyes of a European. One of them is the mixture of humility at work and absolute dedication to the company to achieve a common objective that materializes in designing and producing the best possible products. The contrast is more complicated to understand if possible in the automobile industry. Toyota is considered the mother of what we know today as “toyotism”. A formula to work in a chain with a very limited stock. That is, without a safety net that allows unforeseen events to be handled with a warehouse large enough to support production until the problem is solved. This is achieved, of course, by building a chain that is oiled with the precision of a Swiss watch. But also with the certainty that what goes on the market is the best version of what each worker has in hand. Toyota revolutionized automobile assembly line production by giving the workers themselves the power to stop production if any failure was detected. It is a way of working that can only be carried out when, when developing the parts and design of an entire car, you work with the firmness of philosophy Kaizen. This Japanese word defines the pursuit of perfection through continuous improvement. This allows each modified part in the process of producing a new car to have the support of years of experience behind it. This way of working has been a competitive advantage until now has made Toyota the largest car manufacturer of the world. The company was, in 2025, the world’s largest automobile producer, with more than 11 million units manufactured. Volkswagen is second and remained at 9 million units manufactured. It is the result of production measured to the millimeter and reliability earned by hard work. That philosophy kaizen which Mazda or Toyota boast has allowed the latter to always be at the top of the reliability rankings, a value when it comes to putting millions and millions of units on the market. But this way of working has its drawbacks when you have to make agile decisions. China is the train to follow “If things don’t change, we won’t survive.” The phrase is from Koij Sato, CEO of Toyota, and is especially relevant because, as we pointed out, it comes from the head of the world’s leading brand. The message was sent to 489 suppliers with the aim of making them understand the importance of improving competitiveness against Chinese companies, they state in Automotive News. According to AutoblogToyota’s quality standards have been so strict that parts have been returned with small resin wrinkles that had no impact on a vehicle’s dynamics or reliability. The same thing was happening with thousands of wire harnesses that would have been returned because they showed minor signs of discoloration. Small aesthetic defects that buyers did not even notice because they are hidden inside the vehicle itself. Now Sato has asked its suppliers to be more flexible to save money on production and be more agile. The message launched by the company’s CEO is not coincidental. Months ago, a consulting firm specialized in reverse engineering I already alerted Toyota that their electric cars were designed as combustion vehicles and that penalized them when producing them. The problem is that, according to this company, producing an electric car is so different from a combustion car that it is almost equivalent to two different products even though both have four wheels and a steering wheel. They pointed out, for example, that Toyota used steel bars and reinforcements in the steering column or to hold the dashboard, thinking about reducing vibrations. However, Chinese manufacturers and Tesla choose to increased use of plastics because those vibrations are almost non-existent in an electric car. This allows them to produce cheaper and faster. And get lighter cars. “The average customer doesn’t even see these parts,” explained Shoji Nishihara, purchasing manager for Toyota’s vehicle development department, in statements reported by forumelectriccars. The final goal is complicated. The company aims to improve competitiveness by reducing production times and making the final quality of its products more flexible. A complicated balance if we want to continue being the reference in terms of reliability. For now, Toyota believes that its perfectionism was already bordering on healthy. Photo | toyota In Xataka | The legend of the Toyota Supra, one of the legendary Japanese sports cars: the fusion of illegal racing and the Kaizen philosophy

The problem for the US is not that China is mass-producing a new hypersonic missile. It costs the same as a Tesla

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The most advanced military systems have had something in common: exorbitant prices and limited production, with weapons that can take years to manufacture and cost millions per unit. It happens that there is a less known fact that is beginning to change everything: today it is possible to build technology capable of traveling more than 1,000 kilometers in minutes using components derived from the civil industry. And China is in the lead. What a car costs. It we count in November of last year. China has introduced a quiet but profound change in modern warfare: a hypersonic missile, the YKJ-1000capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 7 and traveling more than 1,000 kilometers for a price around at $99,000that is, equivalent to that of a high-end car like a Tesla Model It is not a trivial fact, although it may seem anecdotal, it is actually the core of the problem you have right now. United States in Iranbecause it completely breaks the traditional logic of military balance: for the first time, an extremely advanced weapon allows to be exclusive and expensive to become something potentially massive, accessible and replicable on a large scale. It’s not the technology, it’s the cost. Because the challenge for the United States is not that China has developed a new hypersonic missile, but that it has done so extremely cheap. While intercepting a threat can cost millions per attempt (with systems like Patriot, SM-6 or THAAD), destroying that missile costs dozens of times more to manufacture it. This creates a brutal asymmetry where the attacker always wins financially, forcing the defender to spend disproportionate amounts just to stay safe. In this scenario, defending yourself is no longer sustainable, especially in the face of massive attacks. Mass production. Unlike traditional programs, this missile is not a limited or experimental piece, but rather a product designed to be manufactured in large quantities. using civil materialscommercial supply chains and components already available on the market. China has not only reduced the cost, but has industrialized productionallowing us to imagine scenarios where hundreds or thousands of these systems can be rapidly deployed, saturating any existing defense without the need for absolute precision. Invisible launchers. The change is not limited to the missile itself, but how it unfolds– Can be launched from platforms hidden in shipping containers, trucks or common industrial facilities, integrating into global civil infrastructures. This virtually eliminates any predictability on the origin of the attack, expanding the scope of the threat to any point within its operational radius. In other words, war no longer has defined fronts and begins to depend more on a diffuse network where the attacker can appear anywhere without prior notice. The swarm effect. Added to this logic is the parallel development of advanced drones like the TM-300capable of flying at high speed, with stealth capacity and also designed for mass production. In that light, the combination of cheap missiles and swarming drones creates a scenario in which even sophisticated defenses can be overcome. simply by volumenot because of technological superiority. It is not necessary for all attacks to be successful: it is enough for some to do so to generate a disproportionate strategic impact. Change of era. If you like, all this points to a structural transformation: one where the advantage is no longer in having the most advanced weapons, but in being able to produce them faster and cheaper that the opponent can defend himself. The central idea, as we saw in Ukraine and now in Iranis clearly imposed: the problem for the United States is not that China is mass manufacturing a new hypersonic missile, but that it is doing so at a ridiculously low costaltering the balance between attack and defense and opening the door to a war where quantity and price can prevail over technology and sophistication. Image | x In Xataka | China is sending drones to an island 100 km from Taiwan. The problem is that Japan and the US are filling it with missiles In Xataka | China has drawn a very clear red line to Japan: being an ally of the United States is good, supporting Taiwan is bad.

AI chatbots are more flattering than humans giving personal advice. And that’s a problem

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Before, to create your echo chamber you could only follow like-minded people on networks, now you can create your own personalized echo chamber with an AI. A Stanford study has thoroughly analyzed the excessive adulation of LLMs and the result is clear: if you want to be told what you want to hear, it is better to talk to the AI ​​​​than with a person. The study. The Researchers analyzed eleven language models, among which were the most popular ones like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or DeepSeek, and they fed them with data sets about personal dilemmas. In addition, they included 2,000 prompts taken from the Reddit community. Approximately one-third of all scenarios included harmful or outright illegal behavior. Then, they compared the LLM responses with human responses to see who tends to agree with the user more. In a second part of the study, they recruited 2,400 participants and had them chat with flattering and non-flattering language models. We like to be proven right. Chatbots tend to be much more flattering than a human when giving personal advice, but not only that, people generally prefer these types of responses. The models endorsed the user’s position 49% more than humans in general dilemmas and endorsed harmful behavior 47% more. In the second experiment, people who chatted with different models considered the sycophantic model more trustworthy and preferable. Furthermore, she came away more convinced that she was right and less willing to apologize or repair the conflict. Why is it a problem. According to the authors, LLMs can reinforce egocentrism and make people more morally dogmatic. According to Myra Cheng, co-author of the study, “By default, AI advice does not tell people that they are wrong or give them a reality check (…) I worry that people will lose the ability to deal with difficult social situations.” In addition, there is another worrying fact and that is that users perceived the models as equally objective, which suggests a lack of critical vision to be able to distinguish a flattering AI from a non-flattering one. AI is not a person. It is obvious, but the reality is that every day we address AI chatbots as if they were one. Thank him and ask him for things please It is a harmless symptom of our mania for anthropoformize everything. However, when We use AI as a substitute for a psychologist or when we establish intimate relationships with a chatbotthat’s where we start to step in swampy terrain. The authors of the study consider it urgent that companies introduce safeguards to reduce the excessive complacency of LLMs and advise avoiding using them as a substitute for a person to deal with personal conflicts. The counterpoint. There are voices that argue that AI is not generating these echo chambers, at least not with as much intensity as we have seen with social networks. According to John Burn-Murdoch in Financial Timeslanguage models tend to raise consensus with experts and generate more moderate opinions than networks. Their argument is that the economic architecture of networks rewards inflammatory and polarizing content, while chatbots compete to offer reliable answers to users who use them to make important decisions. It is not just an opinion, it has also done an experiment in which it has simulated thousands of political conversations between users with extreme positions and several of the main chatbots on the market. Based on electoral surveys and data on the use of these tools, it measures how positions would move if a part of the citizenry used AI to inform themselves. The author concludes that, on average, the models tend to push the most radical ones towards more temperate positions closer to the expert consensus, also validating many fewer conspiracy theories than those that routinely circulate on social networks. In Xataka | AIs have become accompanying tools against loneliness. For some researchers it is “junk food” Image | Zulfugar Karimov in Unsplash

Iran has made energy a problem again. The United Kingdom believes it has found a solution in solar panels

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There are issues that we believe are resolved until reality reminds us that they are not. Energy is one of them. We have been talking about for years solar panelsof self-consumption and of alternatives to fossil fuelsbut in many cases they remained a rather gradual, almost optional decision. That has changed. The rise in energy prices linked to the conflict in Iran has brought the problem back to the forefront and forced several governments to react. The United Kingdom has decided to act. The specific measure. What the British Government has put on the table is not a generic promise, but a plan to try bring so-called plug-in solar panels to stores in “the coming months.” To make it possible, the Government is working with Amazon, Lidl and the manufacturer EcoFlow. There is also an interesting nuance here: we are talking about an American e-commerce giant and a very recognizable supermarket chain in Europe. What makes them different. At this point, it is worth stopping for a moment on what exactly we are talking about. These plug-in solar panels do not work like a traditional photovoltaic installation, which usually requires construction, permits, and the intervention of a professional. The idea here is much simpler: smaller devices that can be placed on balconies, walls or gardens and connected directly to the home electrical network. According to the British Government, this approach would allow them to be used without the need for an electrician, as long as technical and safety standards are adapted. The context. It is no longer a secret that the conflict in Iran has hit one of the most sensitive points of the global energy system, the Strait of Hormuzthrough which a relevant part of the world’s oil circulates. When that flow is threatened, prices react quickly, and that is just what has happened. In a few days, crude oil and gas have risen sharply and that impact ends up reaching Europe in the form of more expensive fuels and higher bills, which has forced several governments to act. The European mirror. If we leave the United Kingdom, what we see is a map of quite diverse responses to the same problem. Rising energy prices have forced action, but each country is doing it in its own way. Spain has opted for a broad package of aid and tax cuts, valued at around 5,000 million euroswhile Germany has focused on regulating the behavior of gas stations and Portugal has applied fiscal adjustments more specific about fuels. Faced with these measures, more focused on cushioning the immediate blow, the British movement introduces another approach, facilitating access to alternatives such as solar energy to reduce dependence in the medium term. Images | Caspar Rae In Xataka | Europe has a million reasons to fear an increase in the price of electricity. Spain has something else: renewables

The IOC has a new method to exclude trans athletes from the Olympic Games. The problem is that biology doesn’t work like that.

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At the end of March, the International Olympic Committee announced undoubtedly one of the most controversial decisions in its recent history: starting with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, no transgender athlete will be able to compete in the women’s category. But beyond the social and political debate that can be generated, we must also focus on the method chosen to determine this exclusion: a simple genetic analysis where a single gene is searched. And this is something highly discussed among science. His discoverer. The gene in question, which will be analyzed in athletes who want to participate in the female category, will be SRYwhich is nothing more than the “Sex Determining Region Y”. A gene that was discovered in 1990 by molecular biologist Andrew Sinclair and who pointed out that its presence is a determining factor in male sexual development. It is, literally, the scientific father of the test that the IOC has chosen to integrate into its Olympic requirements. But the thing is that he himself is against using it for this. Your disagreement. This decision is not a big news, since if we look back, the body that governs world athletics, World Athletics, adopted this same test in September 2025 to participate in their competitions. Here is Sinclair himself He did not hesitate to publish an opinion article where he made it clear that the result is not definitive, since the only thing the analysis can say is whether the gene is present or not. Because. In this way, it must be detailed that being positive in SRY does not give us information about whether it is working to form a testicle, if it stimulates the production of testosterone or even if it expresses the necessary receptors so that testosterone can be used. Put another way: knowing that an athlete has the SRY gene does not tell you anything conclusive about her physiology, her hormonal levels or, by extension, about her supposed competitive advantages from having testosterone. The biology of sexual development is infinitely more complex than the presence or absence of a genetic marker, which will now mark the ‘everything’ before the IOC. There is more evidence. This researcher is not the only one who opposes this decision, since at the beginning of March it was published an article signed by 34 academics to respond to the decision of World Athletics. Here they pointed to the same thing: we are facing a test that reduces everything to a single gene when biology is much more complex. And biological sex is the result of a very complex interaction of human genetics, hormones, receptors, tissues… Furthermore, the IOC’s argument suggests that this test protects against competitive equity, but for academics, they point out that there is no solid scientific evidence to demonstrate that the presence of the SRY gene is directly related to having a greater sporting advantage. It’s not something new. Although we now see a big scandal in the sports world over this decision, the reality is that if we look at the newspaper archive, something similar was already being done in the 90s. 30 years ago The IOC decided to require women to verify their sex through chromosomal testing and also by determining the SRY gene. But finally the tests were withdrawn due to technical limitations, the absence of medical evidence and also because of the legal problems it could have. A Spanish case. Due to these tests, the Spanish athlete María José Martínez Patiño was disqualified in 1985 after testing positive in the chromosome test despite not having any physiological advantage over her peers. In this way, her career was practically doomed, but she was able to recover it thanks to the help of a geneticist who was able to document her case with scientific evidence that showed that it was not giving her an advantage over the rest of her competitors. The debate. If the basis for requiring genetic testing is to protect competitive fairness, we must ask what science says about the real advantages of transgender athletes. And at this point much less is known than the general population believes. One of the most important studies It was made in 2015 by a transgender researcher who analyzed the running times of eight athletes before and after their transition. In this case, the brands slowed down and their relative performance compared to runners of the same sex remained quite stable. An IOC study. Published in 2024 and partially financed by the committee itself, produced results that do not fit with the discourse we keep hearing: transgender women showed worse results than cisgender women in lower body strength and lung function. But logically it does not mean that there cannot be residual advantages in certain sports, which is something that to this day remains a question that needs an answer. And now what? We are undoubtedly facing a dispute about which tools are valid to solve a genuinely complex problem. Right now, science suggests that the SRY gene test is not the best tool, but because it does not give us a complete answer, since the SRY gene may be present and the body may not respond to testosterone. But this is something that today must continue to be investigated to obtain evidence that can guarantee this equity, but always with a scientific basis behind it. Images | Umanoid Erik van Leeuwen In Xataka | We have accepted that sport is “medicine” for the body. Now science is discovering its side effects

The United Kingdom has just detained a Russian oil tanker in Gibraltar. The problem is the possibility that they are armed

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Spain controls one of the busiest maritime passages on the planet: for the Strait of Gibraltar More than 100,000 ships cross each year, including thousands of oil tankers. Just a few kilometers from its coasts, a good part of the crude oil that feeds Europe circulates, and any alteration in that flow has a direct impact on the Spanish economy, from the price of energy to maritime security. From sanctions to interceptions. What for months was a silent economic war you have just crossed a new visible line. The Royal Navy no longer limits itself to observing Russian maritime traffic, it now follows it, identifies it and makes it easier to approach. The case of the MV Deyna oil tanker in Gibraltar mark that change. It is not an isolated incident, it is the symptom of a strategy that is beginning to materialize at sea. And in this turn there is a key detail: for the first time, the pressure on the shadow fleet stops being just legal or financial and becomes operational. The fleet in the shadows. Russia has built a network of hundreds of opaque tankers to continue selling crude oil despite the sanctions. This includes everything from old ships to constant flag changes or business structures that are difficult to trace. All designed for keep the flow of income that fuels its war economy. This network has been for years difficult to attack because it operates on the margins of international law. But now that margin is narrowing, and every interception at key points like Gibraltar points directly to a critical vulnerability of the Russian system. HMS Cutlass stopped the tanker Gibraltar and the bottleneck. The strait, furthermore, is not just any place. As we said at the beginning, it is one of the most guarded maritime crossings on the planet. and convert it at pressure point against Russian oil has a clear logic: controlling traffic is controlling business. HMS Cutlass operations near France show that NATO is willing to use intelligencesurveillance and naval presence to stop this flow. If you will, each intervention sends a message that goes beyond the specific ship, one that announces that it is no longer safe to operate in the shadows near Europe. The problem. It turns out that this is where the story really changes. Because Russia not only wants to protect its fleet, it is considering doing so with military means. Armed patrols, fire equipment on board and even the possibility of militarizing the tankers themselves. What until now were civil ships with economic functions could be transformed into platforms with defensive capacity. And that turns any approach or follow-up into an operation with a real risk of escalation, where an inspection can turn into an armed incident. From drones to oil tankers. Ukrainian naval drone attacks against Russian ships have been the trigger of this change. They have shown that even large maritime assets are vulnerable, and Russia has responded hardening his stance and preparing an active defense. This connects directly with the current global scenario, where energy transportation has become in strategic objective. The sea, which for decades was a relatively stable highway, is beginning to look more and more like a diffuse war front. The domino effect. The paradox is quite evident. While the West try to cut Russia’s revenues, the war in the Middle East has put Moscow’s crude oil back to the center of the market global, with India and China absorbing shipments that previously found no buyer and prices rising higher and higher. And meanwhile the shadow fleet returns to be indispensable. That makes any try to stop it have global consequences, turning each interception into more than just a naval operation: a piece in a much larger battle for control of the global energy flow. A new red line. If you like, the final scenario is the most uncomfortable and dangerous. A Russian tanker detained in Gibraltar It is no longer just a sanctioned ship, it may be the first link in a chain of tensions that escalate rapidly. Because if those ships start to go armedeach interaction at sea stops being administrative and becomes potentially military. And at that point, the question stops being whether the shadow fleet can continue operating, and becomes what will happen the day someone shoots first. Image | kees torn In Xataka | The Canary Islands and Galicia have set off the Navy’s alarm bells. Russia’s ghost fleet has arrived in Spain with warships In Xataka | A ghost fleet has mapped the entire underwater structure of the EU. The question is what Moscow is going to do with that information.

The problem is that there are already gas stations that have absorbed them

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The liter of diesel reached 1.96 euros on average last Saturday, its highest since the conflict broke out in Iran, and gasoline was dangerously close to two euros. However, that same weekend, it came into effect the government’s tax reduction. Prices have dropped, but now the question is how long it will last. Why has fuel increased? The conflict in the Persian Gulf has increased diesel prices by 44.8 euro cents per liter, and gasoline by 28.2 euro cents, according to a study published by the OCU. The trigger is the war in Iran, which has strained the crude oil markets through the Strait of Hormuzan artery through which nearly 20% of the world’s oil transits. In just three weeks since the start of the conflict, prices at the pumps ended up skyrocketing to levels not seen since the Ukraine crisis. What has the Government done? The Executive approved on Friday, March 21 a shock package which includes, among its most important measures, lowering the VAT on fuel from 21% to 10% and temporarily eliminating the special tax on hydrocarbons. The estimated savings were around 30 cents per liter, which represents around 20 euros of savings per tank, according to the estimates of the Government itself. The measure published in the BOE on Saturday it came into force immediately, although it will have to be validated in Congress this Thursday. The Government has set the validity of this temporary reduction until June 30, at which time it will review the impact of the measure depending on how the energy markets evolve. How much have prices really dropped? This Monday, March 23, the average price of 95 gasoline in Spain was located at 1,595 euros per liter and diesel at 1,786 euros. The drop is real and significant. And in fact, if you go to almost any gas station, you will see that the prices have nothing to do with those of a few days ago. However, it is worth putting it in perspective. And the average price of a liter of diesel on March 19 was 1,917 euros, and the VAT reduction reduces it by about 17.4 cents. That is still well below the average increase of 45 cents that we were able to verify between March 2 and 19. Likewise, the tax decrease does not fully compensate for what fuel prices have increased in recent weeks. ANDl rocket and feather effect. The fact that VAT drops on paper does not guarantee that the price at the pump will drop just as quickly or completely. Economists call this the rocket and feather effect: When the price of oil rises, fuels immediately reflect that increase, while the declines are much slower. Part of this slowness also has an explanation: the cut in the hydrocarbon tax has not yet been applied to all gas stations because many are depleting the stock they had bought with the previous tax. ANDthe first day of the descent. In about 42% of service stations the VAT reduction from 21% to 10% did not fully materialize the first day, and the situation was even worse in agricultural and transport cooperatives, which in most cases had not yet passed on the discount. Some have attributed this to the lack of time to adapt the computer systems (the announcement came on Friday, the publication in the BOE on Saturday and the reduction was to be effective on Sunday) since many stations had purchased fuel at higher prices just the day before. The director of the Spanish Confederation of Service Station Employers (CEEES), Nacho Rabadán, has indicated that in many cases there have been service station managers who the day before purchased fuel with a price increase greater than the impact of the VAT cut. And a quarter of gas stations took the opportunity to go up. The most striking thing comes from FACUA. And it is that according to the data According to the consumer organization, 1,837 gas stations that communicated new prices to the Ministry on Sunday took advantage of the VAT reduction to apply a new increase. Of them, 177 completely absorbed the tax reduction by maintaining their prices without adjustment, and another 40 even increased it compared to the previous price. In the specific case of diesel, FACUA calculates that, if the tax reduction had been fully transferred, the decrease would have reached 17.8 cents, placing the average price at 1.785 euros; However, the real price was somewhat higher. FACUA concludes that lowering taxes without setting price ceilings is “exactly the measure that speculators have been demanding.” 2022 is not that far away. We have the most recent precedent in the bonus of 20 cents per liter that the Government applied during the Ukraine crisis. This cost us around 4.25 billion euros, according to a study of the economists Juan Luis Jiménez, Jordi Perdiguero and José Manuel Cazorla-Artiles. The effectiveness of the bonus was, to say the least, questionable. And in addition to the study, other independent reports from Esade and Funcas They also concluded that a significant portion of that aid did not reach consumers. The CNMC began an investigation that concluded last February with a fine of 20.5 million euros to Repsol group companies for abusing their dominant position. This history is precisely the reason why the Government has opted this time for a direct tax reduction that acts on taxes instead of repeating the universal bonus. From the CEEES, Rabadán had already qualified the 2022 bonus as “well-intentioned, but poorly designed and worse executed.” What a difference the measurement makes this time. Unlike the 2022 bonus, the VAT reduction acts directly on the tax included in the final price, which theoretically makes it more difficult for gas stations to appropriate the benefit. However, given FACUA’s complaint after the events of the first day of the sale, we see that the fact that it is more difficult for the price to be absorbed does not mean that it is not impossible. Given the … Read more

Elon Musk often promises impossible things like Terafab. The problem is that sometimes he manages to turn them into reality.

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It was up to Elon Musk to revolutionize the automotive industry with Tesla and the electric car. Probably no one believed he could do it. Then he did the same with the aerospace industry with SpaceX, and that was more of the same: it seemed impossible. It may be many things, but the truth is that although Elon Musk promises many things and does not always fulfill them when he says (hello autonomous car), has achieved unimaginable things. That’s why when you talk about Terafab, maybe we should give it a chance. Because this seems almost as impossible as his other feats. Terafab and Musk’s master plan. On Saturday night, from a power plant that has not been used for a long time, Elon Musk advertisement the last of the components of its master plan: Terafab. The objective is to create a chip factory in which Tesla, SpaceX and xAI will collaborate. According to Musk, this plant will be capable of manufacturing between 100 and 200 GW of computing capacity per year on earth, but it will reach 1 TW in space. The problem, as always with Musk, is distinguishing what part of the plan is engineering and what part is theater and fireworks. He doesn’t do it just because. At that event, the magnate explained that semiconductor manufacturers do not produce enough chips for their AI and robotics needs. And since TSMC and the rest of the manufacturers cannot meet Musk’s demand, he has proposed manufacturing them directly. You need them for your robotaxis and your humanoid robots, Optimuswhich he hopes will end up multiplying by 10 or 100 the production rate of his cars. But it also needs chips so that xAI can compete in the field of AI, and SpaceX needs them for its satellites. That is, it actually needs a lot of chips. Many. Chips from space. At Terafab they intend to create two types of chips. On the one hand, there will be those intended for autonomous vehicles or Optimus robots. On the other, the chips that already have their own name, D3, and that will be designed specifically for space, with products that use them that work in low Earth orbit and are powered by solar energy. For Musk, the idea “becomes an obvious decision”: there will come a point where putting payload into orbit is so cheap that host data centers in space It is cheaper than doing it on land because solar energy is practically unlimited there. Too many unknowns. Everything was very nice and promising, but once the speech and promises were over, the questions began. Building a state-of-the-art semiconductor factory is a colossal challenge. It’s not just a matter of money: it’s that advanced chip manufacturing is in the hands of three companies around the world (TSMC, Samsung and Intel), and requires photolithography with UVE technology which is only manufactured by the well-known Dutch company ASML. And here’s the thing, that Musk: Did not announce any agreement with ASML It has not shown orders that demonstrate that it will have these equipment He has not named a technological partner for the project No estimated dates or calendar have been given. And he hasn’t talked about the budget either. It’s all a gigantic unknown. The most ambitious vertical integration in tech history. On several occasions Musk repeated how at Terafab they intend to cover the entire development, manufacturing, packagingtesting and improvement in the same facilities. If we fulfill that promise, we would be facing another unprecedented achievement, because the semiconductor industry has been doing just the opposite for decades: hyperspecialization by different suppliers: some design, others manufacture, others package… Musk wants to do it all, and if he succeeds he will become a direct rival for Samsung or TSMC, which a priori he would no longer need. Promises and realities. This project seems especially diffuse, but with Musk anything is possible, as we have said. In recent years, yes, we have seen how several of his ideas or they have failedor they have been delayed, or they have been left in no man’s land. The robotaxis still haven’t arrived, the Cybertruck arrived late and it’s not settingand companies like The Boring Company or products like Solar Roof have had less reach than they promised, at least for now. Terafab seems like another impossible project from Musk. We’ll see if it ends up not being so. Image | tesla In Xataka | 8 years ago Elon Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into space: it continues to orbit and was mistaken for an asteroid

Nuclear waste is a problem, so Germany is looking for the solution in a Jurassic rock in Switzerland

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Nuclear energy is capable of generating clean electricity, continuously and in large quantities. A marvel except for two small details: the risk of a possible leak and what to do with its waste. The most widespread solution is bury them in a nuclear cemetery and wait. How much? Well, it depends, but it could be hundreds of thousands of years, until they are no longer dangerous. The million dollar question is where. An international research team led by Germany has started to drill a hole in a Swiss mountain to try to answer it. The project. Her name is DEBORAH (Deep borehole to resolve the Mont Terri Anticline Hydrogeology), stands for deep drilling to understand the hydrogeology of the Mont Terri anticline and is exactly what it does. Your goal? Document in great detail the layers that exist and their properties. There is some especially interesting material: Opalinus Clay. This deep experiment involves the German Geosciences Research Center GFZ and the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR), the Nuclear Waste Service (NWS) of the United Kingdom and Swiss researchers from the University of Bern. Why is it important. Because it can be the ideal rock to build a radioactive waste deposit. As details GFZSwitzerland has already made the decision, but Germany and the United Kingdom (the other parties to the project) have not yet. The key is what the analysis of the drilling says: details such as how much water it allows to filter, at what speed or where it will be key to making the decision. It is not trivial: a leak, no matter how slow and small, can contaminate aquifers. What’s special about it. The Opalinus is a clay rock dating back to the Middle Jurassic, with an estimated age of approximately 175 million years. Simply put, it is clay that has been compacted into rock. And it has a property that makes it a good candidate for nuclear storage: its very low permeability. Context. The study of Opalinus is not new by any means: GFZ’s on your radar for 30 years because, in addition to its very low permeability, it has properties such as its plasticity (under pressure, warps instead of breakingsomething convenient if it works as a radioactive deposit) or its ability to retain certain radionuclides. Switzerland has already chosen it, but it remains to be known how it behaves under the conditions that exist in much deeper areas, where, for example, temperature or pressure change noticeably. How they do it. In the Swiss canton of Jura, near the municipality of Saint-Ursanne, there is that Mont Terri. In its bowels there is an underground laboratory that is accessed through the security gallery of a highway tunnel, about 150 – 200 meters underground. A drilling platform works continuously there, advancing meter by meter, until reaching a depth of 800 meters. The drill uses a hollow crown that allows extracting intact rock columns, the sample that is later analyzed in the laboratory. Each advance works as a witness insofar as it reveals the age, the composition, the fractures and the differential quality: how it behaves with water. In addition, they use seismic and gravimetry techniques to obtain a complete x-ray of what is hundreds of meters deep. In Xataka | Ships have been damaging the oceans with noise for centuries. Germany is working on silent propellers to solve it In Xataka | 700 tons of nuclear waste have arrived in Germany from England. The Germans are not entirely happy Cover | Ilja Nedilko and Evangelos Mpikakis

The rain has transformed the driest desert on the planet into a sea of ​​flowers. It’s a sight to behold and a problem for experts

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The Atacama Desert bloomed again in spring. After the August rains, more than 200 species from the Chilean region were activated and provoked the first major flowering since 2017. The Internet was filled with impressive photos, but (beyond the hype) there is a central problem: increasingly clear signs of a destabilized climate system. What has happened? In August 2025, a storm left accumulated between 40 and 60 mm in the Chilean Atacama Region. Specifically in the south: in Huasco, Freirina, Vallenar and the Llanos de Challe National Park. As a consequence, flowering started in the third week of September and reached its peak between the end of September and mid-October. He show was amazing: a mantle of red and yellow añañucas, of sighs, of huilles, of guanaco legs and lion’s claws. And why are we talking about this now? It’s a good question. Historically desert blooms occurred between 5 and 7 years. Typically linked to El Niño phenomena. In the last 40 years, Chile has recorded about 15 superblooms. The striking thing about this case (as happened in 2022 and 2025) is that it is linked to La Niña conditions. And, indeed, one may be a coincidence, but three so close together mark a trend. And the problem is that more blooms are not always good news. And so? As explained Maria Fernanda Pérezan ecologist at the PUC of Chile, out-of-season blooms generate a gap between flowering and pollinators. What’s the point of having pollen if we don’t have bees to do their job? Indeed: absolutely nothing. What’s more, if climate change causes this type of blooms on a regular basis, this deregulation could cause very serious problems. After all, just think that a guanaco paw seed can spend fifteen years on the desert floor until its time comes; If it germinates and there is no one to pollinate it, there will not be another seed. Climate change is going to cause us more problems than we are able to imagine. Because the serious thing is not the sea level, the melting of the glaciers or the rise in temperatures (that too). The most important thing is these little things that change everything. Things so small that we haven’t thought about them. Image | In Xataka | The Atacama Desert is one of the driest places on the planet. And right there a bunch of “crazies” are trying to get water out of the fog.

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