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OpenAI and Google deny that they are going to put ads in ChatGPT and Gemini. The reality is that accounts do not come only with subscriptions

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What AI has a profitability problem It is something well known. All you have to do is look at the OpenAI accounts, which in the last consolidated quarter lost a whopping $11.5 billion. The subscriptions were presented as a way to monetize chatbotsbut ChatGPT barely has 5% of the total users on one of your payment plans. The numbers do not come out and, although companies deny it, the shadow of advertising hangs over AI. what’s happening. Rumors that some very popular chatbots are integrating ads are intensifying in recent days. First they began to circulate alleged screenshots of an ad on ChatGPT and later a media specialized in advertising claimed that Gemini will have announcements in 2026. Companies deny it. Google has been quick to deny the information, ensuring that Gemini has no ads and “there are currently no plans in place to change it.” What stands out above all is that “currently”, which continues to leave the door open to include advertising in the future. For its part, OpenAI has come out to deny it ensuring that what appeared in that screenshot “was either not real or it was not an advertisement.” What was seen was a suggestion to connect the account of Target, the popular American hypermarket chain. When the river sounds… Despite the forcefulness in denying it, a few days ago we learned that OpenAI is preparing the ground to include advertising in ChatGPT. ChatGPT beta version for Android includes explicit references to an ad feature and tags like “content bazaar” and “ad carousel.” Additionally, the company is hiring experts in advertising platformsso the appearance of ads is not a question of “if”, but of “when.” In the case of Google, we haven’t seen any screenshots or traces in the code, so there isn’t that sense of imminence. However, there are rumors that there will be announcements in AI summaries and taking into account that advertising is the company’s main business, it does not sound crazy that they end up integrating ads into their chatbot. Investment vs return. The imbalance between what technology companies are spending on AI with what they are earning is totally unbalanced. Big tech companies like Google are increasing their revenue, but It is not thanks to AI, but to its cloud services. In the case of OpenAI, without an infrastructure to minimize the impact, the disconnection between expenses and income is brutal. Subscriptions are not enough. AI has managed to penetrate the general public and, according to the consulting firm Menlo Venturesalready has 1.8 billion users around the world. The problem is that only 3% pay any type of subscription. OpenAI currently has 5% paying users and expects that by 2030 the figure will increase to 8.5%. It is still not enough to achieve the desired profitability. According to a study by JP Morgan, For the AI ​​industry to achieve a 10% return on everything they have spent, it would take $650 billion a year, which is the same as saying that 1.4 billion people pay more than $400 each year to use AI. They may succeed, but for now ads seem like a faster way to generate income. Image | Generated with Gemini In Xataka | AI has become the best example that if you don’t pay for the product, you are the product

A quarter of a century ago a student put together 32 GeForce graphics cards to play Quake III. CUDA came from there

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In the year 2000 Ian Buck wanted to do something that seemed impossible: play Quake III in 8K resolution. Young Buck was studying computer science at Stanford, specializing in computer graphics, and then a crazy idea occurred to him: put together 32 GeForce graphics cards and render Quake III on eight strategically placed projectors. “That,” he explained years later, “was beautiful.” Buck told that story in ‘The Thining Machine’, the essay published by Stephen Witt in 2025 that traces the history of NVIDIA. And of course one of the fundamental parts of that story is the origin of CUDA, the architecture that AI developers have turned into a gem and that has allowed the company to boost and become the most important in the world by market capitalization. And it all started with Quake III. The GPU as a home supercomputer That, of course, was just a fun experiment, but for Buck it was a revelation, because there he discovered that perhaps specialized graphics chips (GPUs) could do more than draw triangles and render Quake frames. In 2006 the GeForce 8800 GTS (and its higher version, the GTX) began the CUDA era. To find out, he delved into the technical aspects of NVIDIA graphics processors and began researching their possibilities as part of his Stanford PhD. He gathered a small group of researchers and, with a grant from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), began working on an open source programming language that he called Brook. That language allowed something amazing: making graphics cards become home supercomputers. Buck demonstrated that GPUs, theoretically dedicated to working with graphics, could solve general-purpose problems, and also do so by taking advantage of the parallelism offered by those chips. Thus, while one part of the chip illuminated triangle A, another was already rasterizing triangle B and another writing triangle C in memory. It wasn’t exactly the same as today’s data parallelism, but it still offered amazing computing power, far superior to any CPU of the time. That specialized language ended up becoming a paper called ‘Brook for GPUs: stream computing on graphics hardware‘. Suddenly parallel computing was available to anyone, and although that project barely received public coverage, it became something that one person knew was important. That person was Jensen Huang. Shortly after publishing that study, the founder of NVIDIA met with Buck and signed him on the spot. He realized that this capacity of graphics processors could and should be exploited, and began to dedicate more and more resources to it. CUDA is born When Silicon Graphics collapsed in 2005 – due to NVIDIA that was intractable in workstations – many of its employees ended up working for the company. 1,200 of them in fact went directly to the R&D division, and one of the big projects of that division was precisely to take forward this capacity of these cards. John Nickolls / Ian Buck. As soon as he arrived at NVIDIA, Ian Buck began working with John Nickolswho before working for the firm had tried—unsuccessfully—to get ahead of the future with his commitment to parallel computing. That attempt failed, but together with Buck and some other engineers he launched a project to which NVIDIA preferred to give a somewhat confusing name. He called it Compute Unified Domain Architecture. CUDA was born. Work on CUDA progressed rapidly and NVIDIA released the first version of this technology in November 2006. That software was free, but it was only compatible with NVIDIA hardware. And as often happens with many revolutions, CUDA took a while to gel. In 2007 the software platform was downloaded 13,000 times: the hundreds of millions of NVIDIA graphics users only wanted them for gaming, and it remained that way for a long time. Programming to take advantage of CUDA was difficult, and Those first times were very difficult for this projectwhich consumed a lot of talent and finances at NVIDIA without seeing any real benefits. In fact, the first uses of CUDA had nothing to do with artificial intelligence because artificial intelligence was barely talked about at the time. Those who took advantage of this technology were scientific departments, and only years later would the revolution that this technology could cause take shape. A late (but deserved) success In fact, Buck himself pointed this out in a 2012 interview with Tom’s Hardware in 2012. When the interviewer asked him what future uses he saw for the GPGPU technology offered by CUDA in the future, he gave some examples. He talked about companies that were using CUDA to design next-generation clothes or cars, but he added something important: “In the future, we will continue to see opportunities in personal media, such as sorting and searching photos based on image content, i.e. faces, location, etc., which is a very computationally intensive operation.” Here Buck knew what he was talking about, although he did not imagine that this would be the beginning of the true CUDA revolution. In 2012 two young doctoral students named Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever They developed a project under the guidance of their supervisor, Geoffrey Hinton. The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant (English Edition) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links That project was none other than AlexNetthe software that allowed images to be classified automatically and which until then had been a useless challenge due to the cost of the computing it required. It was then that these academics trained a neural network with NVIDIA graphics cards and CUDA software. Suddenly AI and CUDA were starting to make sense. The rest, as they say, it’s history. In Xataka | We can forget about AI without hallucinations for now. NVIDIA CEO explains why

AI needs 650 billion a year to sustain itself. The problem is who will put them on the table

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Those responsible for the JPMorgan banking entity they have done numbers. For AI companies to achieve a 10% return on their capital expenditure In 2030, they will need to collectively earn $650 billion. That’s like saying that the 1.4 billion iPhone users will pay $400 a year to use those models. It’s not impossible, but certainly it doesn’t seem simple. Many use it, few pay. Above all, because today the number of paying users is very small. According to the data from the consulting firm Menlo Venturestoday 1.8 billion people use AI around the world, but only 3% of them (54 million) are paying customers of some subscription. ChatGPT as an example. OpenAI esteem that in 2030 that percentage will rise to 8.5% for its user base, which they project will be 2.6 billion a week. That is to say: 220 million people will be subscribed to one of ChatGPT’s payment plans, which will probably have different prices than the current ones in 2030. They do not seem sufficient, at least a priori, to make the firm profitable as promised. Advertisements. It is more than likely that the advertisements they end up being the other great resource to earn revenue from AI models. Although Sam Altman indicated in the past that advertising would be “the last resort” to monetize, recent data reveal that those ads are about to be part of the user experience on ChatGPT. A very risky bet. JPMorgan’s estimate points to a future in which billions of people will pay a lot of money a year to use the best AI. Apple account with 1 billion subscribers to its services, Netflix with 300Spotify with about 280and Google account with 150 million subscribers on Google One alone. It is evident that there are many users willing to pay for services that are useful and entertaining. The question is whether AI will be for so many people. And AI companies, of course, are confident that they do. The non-surprise of the bubble. In The Economist indicate that a potential explosion of the AI bubble already it’s not going to surprise anyone. The curious thing is that there is no excessively notable concern for the consequences. In recent years the economy seems to have recovered surprisingly well from disasters such as the European energy crisis after the start of the Ukrainian War or the tariffs imposed by the US. Recessions, this economic newspaper points out, they are becoming rarer. Everyone has jumped on the bandwagon. Mass vulnerability exists, however. Stocks today represent 21% of Americans’ economic wealth —more than in the dotcom bubble—, and investment in AI companies is responsible for half of the increase in that wealth over the past year. And therein lies the danger. Recession in sight? People have earned more money and saved less: if the bubble bursts in a similar way to what it did with dotcoms, The Economist believes that net worth will fall by 8%. That in turn would cause a notable decrease in consumer spending. It is estimated that the US GDP would decline by 1.6%, enough to push the country into recession. The difference with dotcoms. In this case that global recession It might not be so deep for a clear reason: the root would be in the investment markets, and therefore it could be overcome with a little more room for maneuver. Central banks could cut interest rates to boost consumption, a good thing on that front but dangerous for vulnerable economies. The shock wave of the explosion. If the bubble bursts, what could also occur is a painful reconfiguration of global trade. Lower US demand would reduce its trade deficit, but would worsen the excess China production capacity. By not being able to sell (as much) to the US, it would flood other markets with its products, which would probably cause some protectionism in Europe and Asia. The world is preparing for the stock market crash, but not so much for the economic and geopolitical consequences that will follow. In Xataka | OpenAI has no problem inflating the AI ​​bubble – it has a problem with it bursting too soon

Crucial was the gateway to the world of the PC for millions of users. AI has just put an end to its story

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Many users remember the moment when they decided to build or improve their first computer: the search for a fast SSDa RAM kit and the feeling that the PC world was within anyone’s reach. That vision, extended for almost thirty years, is now going through a turning point. The explosion of artificial intelligence has altered the balance of the memory business and has pushed suppliers like Micron to make decisions that would have seemed unthinkable a short time ago. Micron just announced that it will stop selling consumer products under the Crucial brand. The company announced that it will continue to ship memory modules and storage units until the end of its second fiscal quarter, in February 2026, and that it will maintain warranty service for devices already in the hands of users. In parallel, it will continue to operate its business catalog with Micron products for commercial customers. The announcement came accompanied by a precise explanation: the company wants to prioritize attention to segments where demand is growing more quickly. The message of Sumit Sadana, executive vice president of Micron Technology. “AI-driven growth in data centers has driven a surge in demand for memory and storage. Micron has made the difficult decision to exit Crucial’s consumer business to improve supply and support to our largest strategic customers in higher growth segments.” The brand that grew with the home PC. Since its launch in 1996, Crucial was presented as Micron’s branch dedicated to memory and storage upgrades for the home user. Over the years, the brand entered more categories, such as memory cards and external drives. Its constant presence in physical stores and online distributors helped establish it as a household name in the components market. That 29-year trajectory is what is now behind us with Micron’s decision. The pressure of AI on memory. The rise of AI computing has generated unprecedented demand for memory, especially from HBM, used in accelerators from NVIDIA, AMD and other companies. This type of components requires complex manufacturing processes and absorbs a large part of the manufacturers’ capacity, that concentrate resources on meeting business contracts. Fewer options for mounting and expanding PCs. After years of presence in the consumer channel, Crucial leaves a gap that mainly affects the variety of the available catalog. Although there are still alternatives, the departure of a supplier with such a constant presence means fewer options when choosing memory modules or storage units. The price of RAM memory, increasing. Crucical’s farewell occurs at a time when the price of RAM has skyrocketed 300% since September. And, at least according to data from the consultancy TrendForce, everything seems to indicate that the increase in the cost of computer modules is far from over. Images | Micron | Nathan Anderson In Xataka | The war to dethrone NVIDIA has just begun: Amazon and Google are already armed

NASA needed to get to the Moon and had a problem with an insulating material. So it was put in the hands of the surfers

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Now that we are immersed in the space race to reach Mars, it is worth looking back to see one of the most surprising anecdotes of the other race with which the United States achieved taking man to the Moon for the first time. And to achieve this they did not hesitate to use all available resources, from their best scientists to their best… surfers? Although it may seem like a joke, it took surfers to perfect the Saturn Vthe space rocket with which the Apollo missions took off between 1967 and 1973. The POT He had created a honeycomb-shaped insulator for his rocket, and needed specialists in the use of honeycomb-shaped materials… like that of the surfboards of the time. This story It was kept secret for years. But even though it ended up coming to light after a NASA engineer told it in an interview, it remains one of the most curious and unknown anecdotes of the space race. There are also references to it in documentaries such as one of the chapters of ‘Moon Machines’, available at YouTube. Surfers at NASA The second stage of the Saturn V, the S-II, was built by National American Aviation (NAA) in Seal Beach, California. It was composed almost exclusively of two tanks of oxygen and liquid hydrogen that, for logistical reasons, had to be placed almost close together and separated only by a thin layer of aluminum. But there was a problem, that the liquid hydrogen had to be kept at a temperature of about 20º above absolute zero, so They had to create a new insulator to cover your tank. They created one in the shape of a honeycomb, since the hexagonal design is the strongest and lightest in nature and we have been using it for thousands of years, but they could not get the insulating layer to stay stuck to the aluminum. Fortunately for the NAA their facilities were in one of the surfing capitals on the west coast, and their engineers realized that the surfers They also used honeycomb-shaped materials in their boards. They were therefore more experienced experts than any scientist when it came to dealing with these types of insulators, which is why they hired a few to design an effective way to apply it to the tanks. The surfers recommended applying the insulation with sprays with a foam that solidified forming hexagonal cells. The idea worked, the NAA finished the S-II, which was assembled with the rest of the parts of the Saturn V. The rocket took 24 astronauts to the Moon without any loss of useful shell, having only engine problems with Apollo 6 and Apollo 13. Image | POT In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history? In Xataka | The far side of the Moon hid an icy secret. We finally know why it is so different from what we see

put everyone to work

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A recent announcement of the Government of Spain reported on the activation of the gateway that automated the granting of the Minimum Vital Income (IMV) for those unemployed people who have already exhausted both their unemployment benefit and unemployment benefit. This measure contrasts with those being taken by Belgium, which will eliminate subsidies for the long-term unemployed and those suffering from long-term sick leave. He government plan to cut public spending has been one of the main reasons for the call on strike that has paralyzed air communications, transportation and a good part of its industry and services. At an event with students from Ghent University, Prime Minister Bart De Wever I assured them that: “Without policy changes, the welfare state will collapse, not in my lifetime, but in yours.” Either cuts or chaos. Prime Minister Bart De Wever has launched a series of budget reforms aimed at solving serious problems that the country has been facing for decades with the unemployment and long-term sickness benefits that Belgian workers receive. According what was published by The Brussels TimesWith the adjustment plan proposed by the Belgian executive, structural savings of 9.2 billion euros are expected to be obtained by 2029 and the accumulation of debt will be reduced by another 17 billion euros. “This is the only way to safeguard our welfare state for the future,” wrote Prime Minister De Wever in your X profile. Strikes for a harsh adjustment plan. The unions have organized the thirteenth strike since Bart De Wever took office as Prime Minister in February 2025. The call has been three days of protests that have left empty streets and minimal services. On Monday public transport stopped, on Tuesday teachers and doctors joined in, and on Wednesday there was a national strike in the rest of the sectors. Everything comes from government savings planwhich seeks to cut spending on benefits to comply with EU guidelines and lower the deficit. Although the Belgian economy looks good in macroeconomic terms, its government believes that the system of long-term sickness and unemployment benefits is too permissive and discourages re-entry into the labor market. End to unemployment for life. In Spain this figure does not exist, but Belgium was the last country in the EU which granted unemployment benefits without a time limit. That is, unlike what happens in Spain, which is limited to a maximum of 24 months, in Belgium there was no deadline to stop receiving this benefit, so someone who began receiving it at the age of 25 could retire collecting it. Starting in April 2026, that premise will completely change. The Government has sent thousands of letters to these indefinitely unemployed, informing them that those who have been unemployed for more than 20 years will automatically lose aid. Progressively, the measure will be extended to those unemployed who have been out of work for more than two years, except for some supervised exceptions that will be able to maintain it. Who lose this subsidy and do not have financial resources, they will have to ask for help at their local social center, which applies stricter rules and controls to encourage them to reenter the labor market. Control of long-term patients. More than 526,000 people are registered as unemployed on long sick leavein a country that has 11.7 million inhabitants. This represents a cost of 9,000 million euros per year to the State. Far from stopping, since the belgian environment The Brussels Times estimate that the number of long-term patients who receive a benefit go up to 600,000 by 2035. To avoid fraud, the government is going to require periodic medical checkups for those who have been sick for more than a year, sanctions will apply against doctors who issue an abnormally high number of sick leaves and will help to adapt jobs for those who can go back to work. Unemployment is concentrated among migrants. Belgium registers an unemployment figure of 5.9%, well below the 10.5% registered in Spain and even lower than the euro zone average with 6.3%. However, according to Eurostat data 2024, if the unemployment data is segmented by nationality, the percentage of unemployed Belgian nationals stands at 4.7%, shooting up to 16.4% among migrants. That is, a difference of 11.7 percentage points that makes the State endure greater financial pressure with citizens who supposedly came to work, but are unemployed. As and how he published Politicalsix out of ten unemployed people in Belgium are not Belgian. The Government is optimistic. The Belgian Government is optimistic about the adjustment plan given that it involves increasing revenues with more taxes (for example, VAT on some products will be increased) and reducing payments with fewer subsidies. According to sources of The Brussels Timesthe “return to work” plan for long-term sick people alone should generate savings of 1.9 billion euros in subsidies. “I could say that I can solve the problem without the citizens feeling it, but that would be a lie. If you do not dare to take drastic measures, you are not worthy of governing,” said the prime minister, underlining the seriousness of the measures taken. In Xataka | In Belgium the authorities have asked their citizens not to eat the Christmas tree. And they have good reasons Image | Unsplash (aboodi vesakaran, DC)

put UBTECH’s most advanced humanoid robots to work

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In Fangchenggang, where control windows and cargo trucks outline the routine of a border with Vietnam, an experiment is being prepared that will not take place among laboratory prototypes, but among travelers, agents and logistics workers. China has chosen this place to test humanoids in real situations, with deliveries scheduled from December and very specific functions: guiding movements of people, supporting logistical tasks, participating in certain commercial services and carrying out inspections both at border posts and at industrial facilities. An ambitious contract. The agreement signed between UBTech and a center specialized in robotics in this border city amounts to 264 million yuan, about 34 million euros, and establishes the deployment of the model Walker S2 in different types of scenarios: border crossing, logistics zones and industrial complexes. According to the company, the humanoids will be intended to guide flows of people, organize internal transportation operations and carry out structured inspections in facilities linked to steel, copper and aluminum. From prototypes to 800 million. UBTech arrived at Fangchenggang with a model that is no longer presented as a prototype, but as an industrial product. The Walker Series accumulate valued orders by 800 million yuan by 2025, not including educational and research models. UBTech assures that it has already begun to deliver the first industrial batches of the Walker S2 and that its objective is to accelerate production at scale, with a view to manufacturing thousands of units and reducing costs so that humanoids enter real environments. Robotic administrations. The rollout of UBTech fits into a broader trend within the Chinese public sector. The Zhejiang immigration office already uses robots for daily tasks, such as support in people flows and information services. At Hangzhou airport, one of these systems answers simple questions to passengers, while at the top of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, held in Tianjin, a multilingual robot developed by iBen Intelligence was used for protocol assistance. The Fangchenggang initiative is part of a coordinated strategy from the State to organize the humanoid sector in China. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology created a national committee specific for this type of robots, chaired by the organization itself and made up of companies, innovation centers and relevant technical figures. It includes executives from UBTech, Unitree, AgiBot and representatives of the Shanghai innovation center. The goal is to set standards and accelerate the transition from laboratory to commercial and administrative applications. What is relevant is not only that the humanoids have contracts and assigned functions, but also the place where they are going to test them. A border is a regulated space, with people in transit, goods, controls and tight times. If they work there, it will be easier to propose new applications in other public contexts. The Fangchenggang Pass serves as a laboratory, but also as a stage to observe what sharing tasks between machines and human workers entails. Images | UBTECH In Xataka | NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world because it had no competition. Until Google started making chips

Science wants to put ‘microrobots’ into our bodies to medicate us. They have already given good results

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One of the great problems of modern medicine in the treatment of different human ailments is the “killing flies with cannon” approach. This means that when we have a headache and we take paracetamol, this medicine is distributed throughout the body and not only where it needs to take effect. But this is something that may end up changing thanks to microrobots. The importance. That the medication ‘walks’ throughout the body seems completely irrelevant as long as it has its analgesic effect, but the reality is that it is the responsible for many side effects that are generated. For example, taking a simple ibuprofen to relieve pain or reduce inflammation seems like a wonderful thing. But the fact that it has a general effect on the body also causes the blocking of mucus production in the stomach, which can lead to one of its most ‘famous’ side effects, such as the generation of stomach ulcers when abused. And when we talk about the much more serious side effects, it can cause many clinical trials of new drugs to have to be stopped because of this. But simply with a system that makes the medication act in a specific place in the body, this problem could be alleviated (in part). A new advance. A team of researchers from ETH Zurich has published in the magazine Science a solution that brings us a little closer to the setting of the movie Amazing Journey: a platform of magnetic microrobots ready for clinical use that are capable of traveling through blood vessels and releasing their cargo into the affected tissue. Bradley J. Nelson, co-author of the study and professor of robotics at ETH Zurich, says this is just the beginning: “We’re just the tip of the iceberg. I think surgeons are going to look at this and I’m sure they’ll have a lot of ideas about how to use it.” A simple grain of sand. In this case we are not talking about a metal robot with gears, but rather a capsule of approximately 1.69 mm in diameter that is designed to dissolve inside the body. We can rest assured that we will not have thousands of grains of metal sand in our bloodstream. But to get here, the engineering behind it is not at all simple. One of the challenges, logically, is that its application would be viable within the human body. To do this, the team had to balance three key factors such as: biocompatibility, drug loading capacity and magnetic control. The result was a spherical gelatin matrix that has three components: Iron oxide nanoparticles to respond to magnetic fields. Tantalum: a dense metal that can be ‘seen’ through radiology techniques in order to follow its path through the body. The medication you want to apply. How it moves. In addition to the capsule, what is important is how it moves until it reaches the target where it must act. For this, an electromagnetic navigation system called Navion is used. To do this, coils are placed around the patient’s head to generate a magnetic field around it that allows the capsule to move. In this way, a surgeon, for example, will be able to control the capsule almost as if it were a remote-controlled car to be able to reach the desired action point. To do this, there are different ways of moving through the vessels: by rolling, by dragging or by navigating the blood flow itself. A suicide mission. Once this microrobot reaches its destination, the doctor will be able to activate the final phase. Using high-frequency alternating magnetic fields, the iron nanoparticles inside will heat up, which will cause the gelatin matrix to melt in a matter of 40 seconds, releasing the drug at once. In their tests, they managed to transport rtPA (a powerful drug to dissolve thrombi) to a clot in a vascular model, managing to restore blood flow in less than 20 minutes. When will it reach the hospitals? Although the system is quite promising, it will take time to reach patients. The researcher himself points out that clinical trials could begin within three to five years. In addition to thrombi, applications are being considered to treat aneurysms, arteriovenous malformations and very aggressive types of brain cancer. It’s not the first time. The medicine every time tends more towards personalization of treatments. In cancer we already see it with use of therapies such as CAR-T which focuses on training the immune system to specifically attack a person’s tumor cells and not healthy cells. A completely targeted therapy like the one proposed in this system, but in this case it is applied in the daily clinic (although it has a very high cost). The same happens with the immunotherapy with the use of antibodies. In this case, science looks for those particles that are unique to tumor cells and that are not present in healthy cells. In this way, drug weapons can be created that directly attack cancer cells. In Xataka | The rarest element on Earth aims to cure cancer. And Europe is already accelerating its production

Asturias has the electrical network so saturated that a simple failure would be enough to put the supply in check this summer

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A year ago everything indicated that Asturias was going to become the new Spanish energy storage hub. But these plans, which were going to help integrate renewables, alleviate the grid and attract industry, collided with reality. Today, the panorama is very different. Not only has the region paralyzed new storage facilities, but an official report has just confirmed a more worrying diagnosis: Asturias is saturated with energy, but does not know where to put it. In short, the central area’s electrical grid is at its limit. The CNMC uncovers the problem. The trigger It is an apparently technical conflict between EDP (Hidrocantábrico Distribución) and Red Eléctrica de España for access to the Carrió substation. As local media have reportedthe distributor requested to replace two transformers to increase its capacity from 513 MW to 665 MW, but REE rejected it, arguing that the network could not supply so much simultaneous demand. This rejection took the case to the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), which issued a resolution with a forceful message: the transport network in the central zone is saturated, it cannot grant new permits, there is “relevant overcapacity” and there is a “risk to the security of supply in the event of a simple failure, in the summer season.” Furthermore, the commission itself recognizes that the case dates back to 2007, when the separation between distribution and transportation occurred and assets were transferred to REE without documenting the guaranteed access capacities. As the official report explains, for years REE and EDP operated “as always”, but with opposite interpretations about how much capacity was really assured for the Asturian network. What does it mean to be saturated? Although it may seem like a technical concept, the CNMC has detailed in its report a more precise image of what is happening. To begin with, saturation means that the network cannot grant even one more access. The regulator detects a “total saturation of capacity, without the possibility of granting new access or connection permissions.” This means that no new industries, no renewable parks and no storage projects can connect: the grid is literally full. Added to this blockage is another underlying problem. The central Asturias network does not meet the minimum legal criterion known as N-1, which requires guaranteeing supply even if a key component fails. However, the CNMC itself confirms that this requirement is not met: If a transformer or main line falls, there is no alternative path capable of absorbing the energy, making any incident a potential risk. The situation is even more delicate according to the data. The regulator’s report indicates that two large electro-intensive consumers already absorb 686 MW, to which we must add the 200 MW that EDP needs to feed the distribution network. In total, more than 800 MW connected. The problem is that the safe capacity in summer – when the lines perform worse due to high temperatures – is 754 MW. In other words: there is more connected power than the network can safely support. And the room for maneuver is practically non-existent. According to the CNMC, if Cardoso’s 400/220 kV transformer failed, the entire area would be supplied only by a 220 kV line that does not support current consumption in summer. In practical terms, this means that any simple failure could trigger a real supply problem in the middle of the summer season. The point is that there is energy, but it cannot be moved. The paradox is evident: Asturias wants more renewables, it wants batteries, it wants to electrify its industry and it wants to attract new strategic projects. But all this growth requires a robust electrical grid with margin. And right now, that margin does not exist. Carrió’s transformers could handle more power, yes, but that is unimportant if the lines that connect them are already at their limit. Even the future conversion to gas of the Aboño thermal power plant —designated by the Principality as future relief— does not solve the current problem, because the bottleneck is in transportation, not in generation. How did we get here? In addition to the historical conflict between REE and EDP, a chain of factors have aggravated the situation. One of the most decisive is the increase in power assigned to some large industrial consumers. In 2022, Red Eléctrica granted an electro-intensive customer an increase of 132 MW, reaching 450 MW of power between Carrió and Tabiella. The regulator clarifies that this decision did not violate the regulations, but it does highlight the lack of coordination with EDP, which was not informed and saw how the capacity margin of the area was exhausted practically at once. Added to this problem is another longer-term problem. As El Comercio remembersthe necessary reinforcements for the central network have been planned for more than 20 years, but were never executed. The result is that Asturias faces industrial electrification and the growth expected for the coming years with a network that has not been updated at the pace of demand. The evolution of the local generation. The situation is complicated as cogeneration, a key technology for producing electricity and heat near industrial centers, has collapsed. According to figures published by El ComercioAsturias has lost 82% of cogeneration production in six years. This implies less energy generated at source and, therefore, more need to bring electricity from outside through a network that is already saturated. The economic and environmental impact is also notable: 60 million euros less industrial turnover and 230,000 additional tons of CO₂. And now what? The Asturian Government insists that the problem will be resolved with the 400 kV central ringa gigantic infrastructure included in the energy planning for 2030. This ring will double the electric transportation capacity in the metropolitan area and will allow it to absorb the planned industrial growth. For its part, Red Eléctrica you already have authorization for the new Cardoso substation, key to that ring, with an investment of 26.5 million euros. However, the CNMC warns that the problem is … Read more

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

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The cultural phenomenon around Mexican axolotl It began with an apparently modest gesture: its appearance on a bill, part of a design process in which specialists in Xochimilco advised the Bank of Mexico to faithfully represent this unique species and its chinampero ecosystem. The initial intention was pedagogical and symbolic, but it ended up unleashing an unexpected enthusiasm of unknown dimensions. The creature that conquered a country. As we said, the emergence in 2021 of the axolotl on the Mexican 50 peso bill completely transformed the country’s relationship with a species that, until then, was known only by specialists and inhabitants from Xochimilco. From the first day of circulation, the design captivated millions of people, not only for its aesthetics, but for the soft and enigmatic figure of the amphibian that, unintentionally, embodied a mixture of tenderness, identity and cultural pride. Without millions in circulation. The bill became an immediate phenomenon: collectors, families and young people began to keep it as a small treasure, which explains why, more than four years later, the Bank of Mexico (Banxico) has announced through a report that 9.8 million Mexicans They keep or collect this bill as if it were a treasure and they have decided to remove it from circulation. In fact, the bank has detailed that 68% of those consulted, who responded that they keep or collect this paper currency, have one to five units. According to the calculation, if 9.8 million Mexicans keep a 50 bill, it is estimated that around 490 million pesos of this currency, or its approximate equivalent of more than 26 million dollarsare out of circulation. Hallucinatory. Awards. Its success even led to it being internationally awarded as ticket of the yearconsecrating what was already intuited: the image of the axolotl had connected with a collective sensitivity that went far beyond the economic. And behind that image there was a real animal, an axolotl called Gordaselected after a careful process of documentation and photography, which ended up becoming a national figure without anyone planning it. The daily life of la Gorda. Gorda currently lives in Axolotitlán, the National Axolotl Museumwhere she remains in a deep and well-kept fish tank where she is no longer constantly exposed due to her advanced age. Even so, those who visit it can recognize it by small white spots on its head, a feature that ended up becoming its hallmark. Its fame has generated a parallel ecosystem of objects and souvenirs (from stuffed animals to mugs and clothing) that have reinforced its presence in the country’s daily life. But beyond popular culture, specialists have remembered that admiration also implies responsibility: the axolotl is a extremely fragile speciesdependent on a specific environment, and its sudden notoriety only makes sense if it translates into greater awareness about its conservation. Gorda’s story shows that a single specimen can become a bridge between citizens and nature, but also that collective emotion must be accompanied by decisions that guarantee the survival of the species. An extraordinary creature. The qualities axolotl biologicalfrom its ability to regenerate limbs, tissues and even parts of the brain, to its breathing through gills, skin and mouth, or its condition as a salamander that does not complete metamorphosis, have made it a unique animal in the world. However, this singularity coexists with a critical situation: he Ambystoma mexicanum It is classified as extremely endangered and the destruction of its habitat has been constant for decades. Xochimilco, the only place where this species exists naturally, faces a combination of threats: accelerated urbanization, water pollution and the presence of invasive species that have decimated native ones since the 1980s. And more. Added to this are improvised interventionssuch as the release of axolotls without scientific protocols, which end in almost immediate mortality due to thermal shock, poor water quality or competition between specimens. The specialists they insist in which the conservation of the axolotl is not an act of isolated goodwill, but a technical process that requires strict control of the environment, genetic evaluation, slow acclimatization and comprehensive protection of the channels. The fragility of the animal reflects the fragility of the ecosystem that supports it. Restore Xochimilco. Scientists say that the conservation of the axolotl is inseparable from recovery of Xochimilcoand that evidence has led researchers and chinamperos to undertake shelter projects that recover ancestral agricultural techniques. These restored chinampas act as safe microecosystems where axolotls can remain free of contact with invasive species and with adequate water quality. The objective is not to create artificial reserves, but return to the environment its original balance so that the species can survive without eternally depending on human intervention. Xochimilco is not just a historical heritage nor a tourist postcard, it is a living system that regulates floods, stabilizes temperature, supports traditional agriculture and houses a biodiversity that depends on its continuity. The axolotl is only the visible tip of a problem much broader: if your home disappears, ecological functions on which the entire region depends will also disappear. The hype. Be that as it may, the social phenomenon of the 50 peso bill demonstrated that an image can change public perception of an entire species. Gorda became a symbol recognized by millions of people, capable of arousing curiosity, affection and an unexpected sense of identity. But the real impact is not in the collection of banknotes or in the objects inspired by the axolotl, but in the opportunity it opened to understand that conservation is a deeply cultural act: Only what is known is protected, and only that with which a bond is generated is cared for. The challenge in Mexico now is to convert that emotion into a sustained commitment. The bill gave visibility, and the restoration of Xochimilco will decide if that visibility has a future. The axolotl, meanwhile, has already occupied a place in everyday life, and now it is the country that must decide if it will also occupy a place in its future. Image | Dgzvs2012 In Xataka | We … Read more

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