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Benidorm triples its population in summer and does not run out of water. The secret is a miracle of invisible engineering

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We assume that when we turn on the faucet water comes out. It is an almost automatic, everyday gesture that we rarely stop to think about. However, ensuring that this resource springs up clean and safe in Benidorm, a city that its population triples In the middle of the summer high season, it requires a true miracle of engineering and management. In the Marina Baixa, one of the regions of the Valencian Community with greater water stresscatering to millions of annual visitors is a colossal puzzle. As reported by local mediathe philosophy of those who operate this gear is perfectly summarized by Ciriaco Clemente, manager of Veolia in Benidorm: “In a territory where the pressure on water resources is structural and permanent, guaranteeing that the water reaches the tap in perfect sanitary conditions and that, once used, it returns to the environment without damaging it is not an option, it is an obligation.” The challenge of quantity and quality. The water challenge is not exclusive to the Alicante coast, it is a national problem. According to official data from the Ministry of Health (SINAC)the quality of water in Spain is increasingly threatened. The filtration of nitrates from industrial agricultural activity is saturating the self-cleaning capacity of many aquifers, putting local water treatment plants in hundreds of municipalities in check, especially in inland Spain. While much of inland Spain deals with nitrate pollution, Benidorm faces its own perfect storm: extreme seasonal demand and the threat of shortages. The city not only needs to ensure that there is enough water for everyone, but that its quality is impeccable under all circumstances, regardless of whether it comes from the Guadalest reservoir, the Amadorio reservoir or the Bajo del Algar Canal. To overcome this crisis, the tourist capital has shielded itself around two essential infrastructures managed by Veolia: the Drinking Water Treatment Station (ETAP) and the Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP). Beyond thirst. Water quality is synonymous with public health and economic survival. In fact, consuming water with nitrate levels close to or higher The European legal limit of 50 mg/L carries serious risks, and recent medical studies suggest that even much lower thresholds could be linked to oncological problems. Treating water to the millimeter is, therefore, a matter of life or death. On the economic level, as the newspaper highlights Informationfor the enormous hotel plant in Benidorm, opening the tap and letting water flow with total health guarantees “is not a secondary detail: it is a basic requirement to operate and to maintain the trust of visitors.” In addition, the system must be able to withstand the onslaught of the weather. According to Alicante Plazathe ETAP faces extreme scenarios after episodes of torrential rains, when the water collected arrives with enormous turbidity due to the dragging of sediments. Given this, the plant adjusts its treatments in real time. “Our responsibility does not end with there being water; it ends when that water reaches the tap in perfect condition,” says Noelia Llinares, ETAP plant manager, in these media. Leaving behind traditional management. As detailed by Veoliathe answer is in technology. A digital ecosystem has been deployed in Benidorm that includes network-wide sensors, leak detection algorithms and remote control systems. This has allowed the milestone of reducing water losses in the network to minimum levels of 5%. To support this burden, ETAP itself already received a powerful injection of more than 9 million euros in its last major expansion in 2010. But the cycle does not end at the sink. The WWTP works under a strict circular economy philosophy: used water is not waste, it is a resource. Today, 35% of the water that reaches the treatment plant is already reused, mainly for agricultural irrigation. And there is an extra factor that adds complexity: wastewater treatment plants are electricity devourers. To counteract this, María José Martínez, head of the WWTP, details that the facility uses byproducts such as biogas or sludge to generate its own energy. “The objective is clear: for the plant to become increasingly self-sufficient and for its environmental footprint to be as small as possible,” says Martínez. The next challenge: squeeze regeneration. Behind all this there is an ambitious project underway: the Regenerated Water Master Plan. The short-term objective is to take advantage of up to 2 additional cubic hectometers of regenerated water for purely urban uses, alleviating the suffocation of conventional sources and reinforcing the network against drought. Benidorm has empirically demonstrated that the high numbers of mass tourism and water sustainability are not antagonistic concepts, but rather necessary allies. In a context marked by climate change, the experience of the city of Alicante provides an inescapable journalistic and vital lesson: intelligent water management is no longer a simple competitive advantage or a green slogan. It is, purely and simply, a question of survival. Every drop counts, from the moment it is dammed until, thanks to engineering, it is regenerated to start again. Image | Diego Delso Xataka | The future of 150,000 hectares of crops is decided today. We have been fighting for decades, but the wars over water have only just begun

the ingenious Chinese system so that Martian bases do not run out of power

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Traveling to Mars and establishing human colonies there is a challenge on many levels. The simple fact of arriving is already a problem, but the handicaps do not disappear once there. Without food, water or electricity, Martian colonizers would have to live in an inhospitable place, with a poisonous atmosphere and deadly cosmic radiation. Protective shields could be used and even grow tomatoesaccording to the Chinese. But we continue with the energy problem. Of course, there are already some interesting proposals. And also from the Chinese, by the way. MARS-MONTH. This year, a team of Chinese scientists has made his proposal particular to supply the Martian colonizers with energy. It is a system that uses carbon dioxide (CO2), which accounts for 96% of the composition of the red planet’s atmosphere. On Mars the pressure is very low, so very little energy would be needed to compress CO2 and use it to obtain electricity. This energy would be obtained from a nuclear reactor and the process would be so efficient that there would still be excess heat, so it could be used to catalyze chemical reactions such as obtaining oxygen by breaking down CO2 molecules or obtaining methane from hydrogen and more carbon dioxide. Better than nuclear energy. In reality, nuclear fission has already positioned itself as one of the preferred energy sources for the future of the space race. For example, it could be useful for boost spaceships far away, to places where solar energy is not an option and the fuels loaded on Earth are insufficient. It has also been thought that it could be used to supply energy to the lunar bases and Martians. However, there is a problem. The fuel cells used in this type of reactors They must be changed every 10 years approximately if you work with them at full capacity. Perhaps it would be feasible on the Moon, where the one-way trip lasts just a few days. However, the nine months that are needed today to go to Mars is too long to be able to make adequate replacements. Furthermore, to this we must add that The launch windows to be able to make a launch occur every 26 months. It is very unviable. Better to diversify. In reality, we have already seen that MARS-MES also starts from nuclear energy. However, very little energy is used to compress carbon dioxide and, from there, electricity and other fuels, such as methane, are obtained. The system does not rely solely on fissile fuels, so the stack should last much longer. There is still a long way to go. The scientists who have devised this system themselves recognize that there are still decades to go before having the necessary technologies to carry it out. Even so, when it comes to something so complex, it is always good to start working on the process well in advance. Even when it is still totally impossible to do it. China is flying. The Asian country has become a major contender in the space race. It is hot on NASA’s heels with the Moon and has a lot of interest in Mars. In addition, it has its own space station: Tiangong. Regarding the red planet, China’s next step will be the Tianwen-3 mission, which will travel to Mars in 2028, in order to collect samples from its surface and bring them to Earth in 2031. If everything goes well, it would be the first time something like this has been achieved. With or without MARS-MES, they are well on their way to Mars. Image | Magnificent In Xataka | While NASA faces the cancellation of 41 missions, China is doing real wonders in space

The PS5 has always been a PC at its core. Some models can now run Linux and games

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The PlayStation 5 It has never been a conventional computer, but it has never been as far from looking like one as we usually imagine. Under its casing there is an x86 architecture, an AMD Zen 2 CPU and a RDNA 2 GPUingredients very familiar to anyone who closely follows the world of PC. The difference, of course, has always been in control: Sony decides what is executed, how it is executed and how far the hardware can go. That is why what we have seen now is so striking: a PS5 Phat (launch model) booting Linux and behaving, with important nuances, like a desktop machine. The change. Everything arises with the publication of ps5-linux, a project by Andy Nguyenbetter known as TheFlow. We are not talking about a simple demonstration, but about a tool that really works with an image of Ubuntu 24.04. According to the description of the project itself on GitHubps5-linux uses an already patched vulnerability in the hypervisor. The promise is powerful, but as we will see below, it does not work on all consoles and also has several limitations. Not just any PS5 is worth it. So far, everything sounds great, but this doesn’t mean we can take the console in the living room and happily turn it into a Linux PC. First, because we are talking about a process designed for profiles with experience. And second, because compatibility is very limited. The method currently only works on PS5 Phat with firmwares 3.xx and 4.xx, specifically 3.00, 3.10, 3.20, 3.21, 4.00, 4.02, 4.03, 4.50 and 4.51. Additionally, versions 3.xx do not have M.2 support, while 4.xx does. The process is also not similar to inserting an installation pendrive and following the usual steps on a PC. According to Tom’s Hardwareps5-linux needs a separate tool, the umtx2 exploit, to achieve initial code execution, and then send the loader payload to the console. In the flow in question there is a fake DNS server and an HTTPS host on a local computer, which redirect the query for the PS5 manual to activate the exploit. When everything goes well, the console goes into sleep mode, the LED turns solid orange, and when you press the power button, Linux starts. Once inside Linux. The console now behaves like an x86 desktop with plenty of muscle to experiment with. The system can take advantage of the eight CPU cores, 16 threads in total, at 3.5 GHz, and a GPU at 2.23 GHz. It also maintains video and audio output via HDMI, with support for 4K at 60 Hz, and allows the use of all its USB ports. To install and run Linux you need a USB drive of at least 64 GB. What changes the perception of the project the most is not just seeing Ubuntu starting up, but imagining what it can be used for. TheFlow talks about Steam games and emulators running very smoothly, relying on the power left available when running Linux on these PSs. In X we can see running on the improved version of ‘GTA V‘, which helps show the loader’s potential before publication. It’s not all plug and play: The project has very specific limits that should be made clear before imagining a PS5 converted into a perfect substitute for a PC. One disappointing fact is that ps5-linux works as a soft mod, not as a permanent installation, so you have to repeat the process every time you want to enter Linux. Nguyen advises activating the ventilation profile when using boost modes, since the console was not designed for this type of use. The result is one of those modifications that explains very well how far a console can go when someone manages to take part of its hardware out of the intended lane. A PS5 Phat with old firmware can become a surprisingly capable Linux PC, but always within a very specific context. A console that is also a computer. The PS5, like any console, has always had computer ingredients. Now, the inevitable comparison is in the future Valve’s Steam Machinealthough there we talk about another philosophy: a console-PC designed from the beginning around SteamOS, but with the possibility of installing any compatible operating system to our liking. Images | Branden Skeli In Xataka | Project Helix is ​​the new Xbox machine and the warning is clear: its price will be conditioned by the RAM crisis

A Cuban mechanic has converted his car to run on charcoal because gasoline is no longer an option

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Juan Carlos Pino, 56, has left his neighbors speechless after convert your small Fiat Polski 1980 in a vehicle that runs on charcoal to operate. He has done it from his workshop in Aguacate, Cuba, a town of about 5,000 inhabitants 70 kilometers east of Havana, and the news has gone around the world. Shortage. Cuba passes through one of its worst energy crises in decades. Since January, when the Trump administration blocked fuel supplies to the island, gasoline has become a practically inaccessible commodity for most Cubans. On the black market, a liter costs eight dollars (about six times the official price), and power outages are now a constant. Added to this scenario is the closing of Venezuela’s oil tap, which historically had acted as an energy cushion for Havana. As if that were not enough, the global context is also worrying with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and the war conflict in the Middle East. The barrels that Russia has supplied to Cuba has given some relief to the country, but as reported its Minister of Energy and Mining, Vicente de la O Levy, the supply is scheduled for “the end of April”, and at the moment there is no confirmation on when the next shipment could arrive. Hence, some have opted for such creative measures to boost the engines of their vehicles. How the invention works. Pino built the propulsion system entirely from salvaged parts and scrap materials. The charcoal is burned inside a converted propane cylinder, sealed with the lid of an electrical transformer. The hot gases pass through a filter made from a stainless steel milk can filled with old clothes, and from there they reach the carburetor to replace gasoline. The whole set (a 60 liter tank welded to the rear of the car) It took two months to build.. Starting up, however, requires patience, since you have to light the charcoal with alcohol and wait about thirty minutes before you can leave. “It’s not a car for someone who’s in a hurry,” he joked. The inspiration came from the internet. Pino did not start from scratch. According to what he said, he spent hours watching videos of Edmundo Ramos, an Argentine engineer who has been perfecting biomass-powered car technology. According to explained Ramos himself told Reuters, since the crisis in Cuba began, he has received calls from several Cubans asking for help, from an ice manufacturer that could not produce, to an ice cream maker or shopkeepers. Ramos maintains that practically any engine can adapt to this system, as long as hot gas can be introduced into the carburetor instead of gasoline. Atracloc tionto the. Pino started his car for the first time at the beginning of last month. The Polski completed a journey of 85 kilometers and reached a top speed of 70 km/h, according to collected Reuters. In Aguacate, the vehicle has become the newest, as neighbors come to take photos, and some ask out of curiosity if the mechanic can build one for them. “This is Cuba. A salad made of everything,” summed up one of the neighbors in the middle. Distress. This very creative invention is nothing more than the symptom of an economy on the limit. In Cuba, scarcity has generated an entire culture of improvisation that Cubans themselves call “creole inventions”. Blackouts of up to nineteen hours, neighborhoods without water for weeks, families cooking with firewood or collecting rainwater in soda bottles. Just like shared El País, the Cuban Observatory of Conflicts, registered more than 1,200 protests in the last month, mainly due to supply cuts. What comes next. Pino already has the following project in mind: adapt a tractor with the same system. “We need mobility, we need to be able to farm,” he declared to the media. To his neighbors, he has become more than just a handyman. “They tell me I’m a magician,” he says proudly. Images | Reuters, The Country In Xataka | Someone dumped 167,000 tons of rubble and asbestos in Malaga. And now Malaga has a serious problem

MrBeast challenged people to live several days in a supermarket: they did not expect to run into ‘Juan the Mexican’

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MrBeast bought an entire supermarket in North Carolina, put dozens of random people inside, and told them that the last one out would get $250,000. What he did not calculate is that among the participants was a 56-year-old father from Hidalgo, Mexico. That is destroying all the success projections of its rivals. The supermarket as a coliseum. Last April 18 MrBeast posted a 42-minute video on his channel, ‘The last one to leave the store wins $250,000‘. The mechanics of this new test by the YouTuber was as simple as it was extreme: he had bought a supermarket in Greenville, North Carolina, filled it with products and invited real customers to participate in an endurance contest. With only one rule: the last one to leave wins the prize. Those who did not want to compete could take their already full cart for free. It’s not the first time that does something like this: MrBeast has been perfecting the “last to leave” scheme for years in different scenarios (circles painted on the floor, islands, closed rooms…) Strategies. Inside the establishment, participants began to build sleeping structures with empty shelves, improvised showers with hoses from the fruit section and organized themselves into factions with their own names (the Dream Team, the Innovators, Fort Freezy near the frozen ones). The rules allowed sabotage and alliances, which turned the competition into something that was very close to psychological warfare. In Xataka MrBeast turned YouTube into a franchise: now all content creators make the same video over and over again Juan García, hero of the people. Among all the contestants, one was gaining ground among MrBeast fans. Juan García, 56 years old, originally from the state of Hidalgo, who had entered the supermarket accompanied by his son Ángel. After 15 days, the young man had to retire to return to school and work. When MrBeast asked Juan if he also had pending obligations, the response was: “I’m going to ask for a vacation and stay a little longer.” From that moment on, Juan advanced practically alone: ​​he was excluded from the initial alliances after his son left, which left him without a support network in the always wild environment of reality competitions. However, he withstood the isolation, the constant noise, the cold at night and the confrontations. The moment that ended up making it go viral was one of the simplest: when another contestant threw his pots and pans outside the establishment, Juan simply told him “Don’t do that, friend.” The other’s response was “I don’t respect you at all.” Five days later, that participant dropped out. Day 67. At the end of the video, we see how four contestants remain inside and refuse to come out. They have made alliances, they get along well, and they can hold out indefinitely. MrBeast decided to offer the four a new mission: become a team and consume the entire supermarket inventory to win a million dollars, with the store refurbished with beds, showers, a gym and a nutritionist. The group accepted. The volume of product available suggests that the confinement could be extended for several additional months, and in fact, MrBeast says goodbye for another year. Vote for Juan. When the video was released, messages of support began to multiply on social networks: “Juan already won”, “All of Latin America with Juan”, “I am not Mexican but I support Juan.” Danay Escanaverino, digital monetization specialist, explained that Hispanic audiences respond with special intensity when they find someone on screen with whom they emotionally identify. The figure of Juan (father, older, calm, without allies) connected with an audience unprepared for his frankness. In Xataka MrBeast has been giving money to his followers in his videos for years: now he wants them to be the ones to give it to him Up Mexico. A comment that is repeated among many Mexicans is, precisely, that Juan may have unknowingly blown up the MrBeast concept: locked up for a year with expenses paid and all you have to do is eat and relax? A vacation and a million in perspective? Is a humble Mexican, finally, the perfect fit for MrBeast? In Xataka | MrBeast has discovered a much more lucrative business than making videos on YouTube: selling chocolate (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 MrBeast challenged people to live several days in a supermarket: they did not expect to run into ‘Juan the Mexican’ was originally published in Xataka by John Tones .

The world will run out of memory for AI chips until 2027. And cell phones and cars are already paying the price

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The big bottleneck in the artificial intelligence industry has nothing to do with AI models, GPUs, or data centers. It has to do with memory, and for months we are immersed in a crisis of which now the manufacturers give us more information. Three companies—Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron—control 90% of global production, but current estimates indicate that between the three They can only cover about 60% of expected demand through 2027. That’s terrible news not only for AI, but also for everything non-AI. The era of memory scarcity. These three manufacturers have prioritized HBM production for AI accelerators because these memories leave better margins. The direct consequence is the shortage of DRAM memories, which are used in PCs and mobile phones, and since October 2025 we have seen how this market has skyrocketed in price. Betting everything on one segment has left the other dangerously neglected. Samsung will have new factories. According to indicate In Nikkei, Samsung plans to launch its fourth memory manufacturing plant in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, in 2026, although mass production will not begin until 2027 or later. Furthermore, not only memories will be manufactured in that plant. There is a fifth plant under construction on that same technology campus, but it will be dedicated to HBM chips and will not begin operating until at least 2028. The South Korean giant has another ace up its sleeve: the United States. HBM to power. SK Hynix is ​​the only one of the three that has a concrete supply improvement for 2026, because it has already started manufacturing HBM chips at its Cheongju plant in February. It is also accelerating construction of a plant in Yongin, near Seoul, with the goal of completing it by February 2027. Micron also asks for patience. Meanwhile, Micron, the American company, has the goal of starting production of HBM chips in Idaho and Singapore in 2027, and will build a factory in Hiroshima that will theoretically come into operation in 2028. It has also just purchased a plant in Taiwan from Powechip, but the chips that come out of it will not be available before the second half of 2027. This is not enough. The consulting firm Counterpoint Reserach estimates that in order to resolve the current DRAM crisis, an industry-wide production increase of 12% annually until 2027 would be required. However, current plans add up to a growth of 7.5%, which makes it clear that these expansions by these three manufacturers are not enough. For Counterpoint analysts, the consequence is clear: the balance between supply and demand will not be normalized until 2028. SK Hynix is ​​already talking about supply limitations for AI chips could last until 2030, and the truth is that all the forecasts only confirm that this problem will still last for years. We consumers pay the price. Memory is an absolutely transversal product that is everywhere. 80-90% of current memory chips go to computers, mobile phones and servers, and the rest to cars and industrial equipment. The most direct impact is already in the mobile market entry-level: memory already represented 20% of the manufacturing bill for one of these smartphones, but that figure is expected to reach 40% by mid-2026. That gives manufacturers few (or no) options, which will impact that cost on the price of these devices. And so with everything. IDC esteem that mobile sales will fall by 13% in 2026 due to this circumstance. The danger of cycles. The memory industry has a history of cycles in which the rise and fall of memory prices is traditional. In 2023 there was a collapse in prices after post-pandemic demand for PCs faded. Several manufacturers recorded historic losses, and learned the lesson of overproducing to meet demand. Now that we need more production, manufacturers are being much more cautious when it comes to increasing their production or investing in new factories. For them, by the way, the crisis is going great: Samsung has earned in three months of 2026 what it earned in all of 2025. China to the rescue. Although South Korea and the United States dominate global memory production, there are several Chinese manufacturers that are gradually gaining relevance. YMTC and CXMT They have been growing significantly in production for some time and that is making now have a golden opportunity to gain market share over competitors that they seemed unattainable. Image | Liam Briese In Xataka | The situation with RAM prices is so desperate that there are already those who build their own memory at home

has run out of gasoline and diesel

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12% of French gas stations is running out of fuel. It’s a headline that’s taking over some of the news this week. Although we may think that it is due to a national shortage problem, the cause is quite different, and has to do with discounts. what has happened. 12% of French gas stations has run out of some type of fuel. The figure, however, has not stopped growing: according to the French government, on Wednesday it was already 18% of the total of stations in the country — almost one in five — that reported a shortage of at least one type of fuel. Specifically, 66% of the stations belonging to TotalEnergies announced yesterday Tuesday that their service stations were running out of fuel, highlighting that they were mobilizing to resupply the affected gas stations. Why has it happened. Fuel prices in France have skyrocketed above two euros, so TotalEnergies decided to apply as a ceiling measure a maximum price of 1.99 liters for gasoline and 2.09 euros in the case of diesel. These rates, notably lower than those of the rest of the distributors, triggered demand with an “infrequent influx” according to the French executive. The result was predictable: queues accumulated at Total stations while the rest of the gas stations operated normally. Translation? There is no fuel shortage in France: there is a logistics problem concentrated in a single network that could not absorb an extraordinary volume of demand. Given the situation, TotalEnergies has decided to extend the measure until the end of April, although adjusting the diesel cap to 2.25 euros per liter. Why is fuel so expensive in France?. Below the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, where climate taxes are especially high, we find France. A country with quite aggressive taxation with fuel, and in which the increase due to the war in Iran is especially affecting. On top of that already high fiscal base, the conflict in the Middle East has acted as an accelerator. The tensions around the Strait of Hormuz have pushed the price of a barrel up, and France, which does not produce significant crude oil of its own, absorbs it entirely. What’s coming The French industry expects a rapid drop in fuel prices if the ceasefire in Iran is consolidated — this was anticipated this Tuesday by sources in the sector. But until that happens, the French face a scenario of record prices, gas stations with queues and a summer that looks expensive for those who depend on the car. TotalEnergies has bought some time with its price cap, but the underlying solution is not in the hands of any oil company. In Xataka | As soon as the war in Iran began, Spanish gas stations had already done something: start raising prices

It should be impossible for an iPhone 17 Pro to run a gigantic 400B AI model. Ought

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The iPhone 17 Pro has 12 GB of unified memory. It is a very decent figure for a mobile phone, but in theory absolutely insufficient to run large AI models locally. And therein lies the surprise: a new project has made it possible for this mobile phone to run locally a model with 400,000 million parameters (400B). And that opens the doors to a promising horizon. Giant AI model, dwarf memory. A developer named Daniel Woods (@dandeveloper) has created, thanks to AI, a new inference engine called Flash-MoE whose code has been published as Open Source on GitHub accompanied by a study about his behavior. woods managed to run locally the Qwen 3.5 397B model (the full version, without distillation or quantization) on your MacBook Pro with 48 GB of RAM. Downloaded the model (209 GB on disk) and developed that inference engine to achieve something that seemed almost impossible. Other developers have gone even further and have managed to run models like DeepSeek-V3 (671B) or even Kimi K2.5 (1.026B!!) on their MacBooks. The speed is slow, no doubt, but they work, they work. It’s amazing. iPhone 17 Pro is capable of running a 400B model. Another developer called Anemll wanted to go a little further and try to run this model with almost 400,000 million parameters on his iPhone 17 Pro with 12 GB of RAM… and he succeeded. It is true that the model is very slow in responses (0.6 tokens per second, very unusable), but achieving something like this opens the doors to a future in which video or unified memory is no longer so critical to be able to use huge AI models locally. a few hours ago doubled the speed at 1.1 tokens per second, reducing the number of experts to four (2.5% quality loss in responses). It is still not entirely usable, but the technical demonstration is evident. Another user has preferred to use a somewhat smaller model (Qwen 3.5 35B) but still huge for the iPhone, and has already managed to get it to run locally at about more than acceptable 13.1 tokens per second. Why it matters. The AI ​​models we use in the cloud (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) are gigantic and run in data centers with thousands of chips and enormous amounts of memory and storage. They are the most powerful because they run on the most powerful machines. Although it is possible to use AI models locally, the models that we can run are much smaller and that makes it difficult for them to behave equally well both in quality of responses and in their speed or precision. This method opens the door to a future in which even on “modest” machines it is possible to run giant AI models that give better answers and allow us to avoid using models in the cloud. Apple already warned. Three years ago a group of Apple researchers published the study ‘LLM in a flash‘ which precisely pointed to that: to run AI models locally it would be possible not only to take advantage of the unified memory of Macs, but also their storage units. The speed would be slow, yes, but this would open up the possibility of running gigantic models locally on machines with much smaller amounts of unified memory. Woods used Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.6 and applied the new methodology “autoresearch” by Andrej Karpathy to implement Flash-MoE based on that research. The result is really promising. Video memory was everything. On my Mac mini M4, for example, I have 16 GB of unified memory. This means that with tools like Ollama you can install and run models like Qwen 3.5 4B locally with some fluidity, but 7B models or others like gpt-oss 20B would be much slower in responding (or would get stuck altogether). Video memory (or unified on Apple devices) is the most important parameter when running local models, both in terms of quantity and bandwidth. If you want to use them fluidly, that’s the limiting factor. It is possible to use “regular” RAM, but the speeds when using it are reduced so drastically that it is often better not to use that option at all. If you have a fast SSD, you have a treasure. Now the limiting factor is our SSD drive, since the model uses it as if it were a kind of substitute for video memory. And the faster the SSD drive on our computer, the better. There is good news here, because lately we are seeing how PCIe 5.0 drives they achieve about 15 GB/s without too many problems, and that speed already gives enough room for maneuver to use much larger AI models locally than we could use before. A promising future for local (and more private) AI. This discovery is really striking for everyone who wants to use AI locally, because it allows you to use huge models without having to make a huge investment in the latest generation graphics cards or, for example, in a Mac with a lot of unified memory: a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 512 GB of memory, for example, costs more than 10,000 euros. With this new method we could opt for a much cheaper machine that, with a good SSD unit, would allow us to use giant models in a fairly decent way. Not as fast as those other options, sure, but still very decent. It’s a notable step forward in enjoying the benefits of running local AI models, including the biggest of them all: privacy. With this type of local execution, our conversations and everything we tell the chatbot stays on our machine, it does not end up on the servers of companies like Google, OpenAI, Meta or Anthropic. In Xataka | Jensen Huang believes we have reached the “coming of the AI ​​wolf.” It is perfect for feeding a Tamagotchi

Thousands of people have fallen in love with seven dogs abandoned and on the run in the middle of China. It was just another AI video

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The image was undeniably powerful, almost cinematic. In the freezing darkness of the night, with temperatures below zero, a pack of seven dogs walked in formation on the shoulder of a highway. The video of just 11 seconds, published in chinese platform Douyinshowed a motley crew: a German shepherd, a golden retriever, a Labrador, a small corgi, and several mixed breed dogs. The clip went viral, quickly racking up more than 230 million views. The audience, saturated with news about wars and disastersfound an emotional balm in these animals. But what the network hailed as a miracle of loyalty and survival, the real version of the Disney movie Homeward Bound or the children’s series Paw Patrolturned out to be a completely prefabricated story. The birth of a viral myth. It didn’t take long for the internet machinery to build an epic narrative. From there, speculation became “truth.” Rumor spread that the seven dogs had escaped from a traffickers’ truck that was taking them to a dog meat slaughterhouse, and it was even claimed that they had walked 17 kilometers together. The anthropomorphization of the pack reached extraordinary levels. As illustrated by the comments of Internet userssocial networks assigned a role to each dog in this pack: the injured German shepherd was the “General” whom everyone protected; the golden retriever was the “guard” that was placed near traffic to shield them; Chinese rural dogs were the “guides” with a sense of direction; and the little corgi was the brave leader and “nurse” who walked 50,000 steps—twice as many as the rest—retracing his steps to make sure no one was left behind. The truth behind this story. The event, however, was much less romantic and lacked villains. Extensive field research carried out by reporters City Evening News dismantled the theory of the great escape. There were no meat traffickers, no kidnapping trucks, nor a 17-kilometer trip. Reporters located the village in Shuangyang district where the animals came from. Three of the most famous dogs belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Zhang: the corgi, affectionately called “Big Fatty” (Dapang); the German Shepherd, “Four Treasures” (Sibao); and the golden retriever, “Long Hair.” As the family explained, around March 13, the German shepherd simply went into heat. Since the dogs in the village usually roam freely, the males in the area were attracted to her and began to follow her, going just 4 or 5 kilometers away until they reached the highway. The rescue was not out of a movie either. Although volunteers from rescue bases such as Tong Tong or Bitter Coffee (led by Professor Liu) used drones to search for the herd, the resolution was purely customary. As detailed City Evening NewsMr. Zhang had a dream in which he was feeding his dogs. Convinced that they were alive, he went out to look for them in neighboring towns and found them safe and sound in the walled patio of a house where they had entered to take refuge. The other dogs in the video turned out to be pets of other neighbors in the area, such as Messrs. Guo and Jing, who returned home on their own. The engine of deception. If the story was so simple, how did it become a global phenomenon full of false details? The answer is in technology. According to an in-depth analysis of cnnalthough the original clip of the dogs walking on the highway was authentic, the story was hijacked and inflated using Artificial Intelligence. After the video went viral, AI-generated “spin-offs” proliferated: cinematic posters of the seven dogs, fake trailers showing their “exciting escape” and hyper-realistic images of the animals tearfully reunited with their supposed owners. The reason is purely economic, since “attention is money on the Internet”, as TJ Thomson explainsassociate professor of digital media at RMIT University. Content creators saw a golden opportunity to capitalize on a trend. As Tama Leaver, a professor at Curtin University, adds, inventing or embellishing these stories using AI is “a very effective way to increase an account’s numbers quickly.” The implications beyond. Although it may seem like an endearing and harmless anecdote, this viral hoax has tangible consequences. On the one hand, it perpetuates stigmas. Although since SCMP contextualizeciting the Dalian Animal Protection Association, that pet theft for meat is a real problem in some areas of northern China (which prompted genuine concern from many), in this specific case the false narrative fueled the fires of racism. As pointed out cnnthe invention of the “meat factory” fueled negative stereotypes against Chinese citizens, something especially dangerous in a climate of growing xenophobia. On the other hand, there is the damage to our information ecosystem. Chinese state media and the Jilin tourist office had to intervene to deny the rumor. as quote Guardianauthorities warned that this incident “reflects deficiencies in the dissemination of information online, where subjective speculation is easily taken as fact.” Professor Tama Leaver warns about danger of complacency: If we let our guard down and accept AI-generated images without questioning them because they are “cute dogs”, our critical skills will be atrophied when faced with false images about serious topics, such as war conflicts. @cnn A viral video showed a group of dogs in China who were purportedly captured to be eaten, escaped, and made the long journey home. The problem? The story’s not real. CNN’s Jessie Yeung explains how this kind of misinformation can spread. #cnn #news ♬ original sound – CNN The fragility of our eyes. The ending of “The Adventures of the Seven Dogs” in Changchun did not require an epic soundtrack, but a leash. Owners now leash their dogs during the mating season. However, the trail they leave on the network is deep. In an era dominated by AI and the desperate search for clicks, our need to consume happy endings it makes us deeply vulnerable to manipulation. The true story of the German shepherd or the corgi teaches us a hard journalistic and social lesson about the contemporary internet: as Professor Thomson … Read more

that OpenAI does not run out of funding

by

OpenAI’s strategy until now had been to shoot into the air to see if, with luck, a bullet would hit the target. They have finally realized that it was not the way to go and for a few days there have been signs that the company is beginning to define its priorities once and for all. They plan duplicate your template before the end of the year, they want to launch a super app to simplify your catalog and even They have closed Sora 2. The changes are being profound and also affect their own CEO. What is Sam Altman’s role in this new OpenAI? Raise money. They count in The Information that Sam Altman has changed his role within the company. Until now, the CEO directly supervised the safety and security teams, but from now on he will focus on securing more investments, managing supply chains and building data centers “on an unprecedented scale.” Why it is important. This change suggests two things: on the one hand, that Altman would have distanced himself from strategic issues to become more involved in technical or secondary aspects; and on the other, that the situation within OpenAI is serious enough to move it to a role more focused on fundraising. As a consequence of the closure of Sora, OpenAI has lost the agreement it signed with Disney worth 1 billion dollars. Added to this is that recently NVIDIA itself got off the wagon with its 100,000 million. The situation is, to say the least, delicate. Saving mode. OpenAI’s strategic pivot seeks to save both money and computing resources. The closure of Sora has a lot to do with the latter since the app consumed a lot of resources, and it had only been launched in the United States. The team that was dedicated to its development will now dedicate itself to robotics-oriented world simulation. Additionally, the applications division led by Fidgi Simo is now called “AGI deployment” and will primarily focus on commercialization and real-world usage. Spud. That’s what the company’s next big AI model is called internally. According to The Information, the pre-training phase has already concluded and it is expected to be launched in the coming weeks. It’s unclear what capabilities this model will have, but Sam Altman has told employees that it “can really boost the economy.” Once again, it confirms that the strategic shift points in the direction of the desired profitability. AI as a consumer product. Throughout 2025, Open AI launched many very different products that added to those they already had, which were not few. With Sora 2 They wanted to be a social network, with ChatGPT Atlas a browser, there are plans for a sex mode on ChatGPT… Until now, OpenAI’s bet has been to turn AI into a mass consumer product, but they have discovered that going viral is not the same as making money and that having so many eggs in so many baskets is not profitable. AI as a business product. While OpenAI was searching for its identity without a fixed direction, there was another company that was very clear: Anthropic. The startup focused primarily on business clients, those who do not have so many qualms about paying subscriptions of hundreds of dollars a month, and little by little it has been taking over OpenAI. The figures They are not lying: two years ago OpenAI had a 50% enterprise market share and today it has 25%, while Anthropic already has 32%. Image | Xataka with Freepik In Xataka | Sora’s closure is a sign: OpenAI takes a step back in the AI ​​race to completely recalibrate

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