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The nougat promised them happiness in their search for impossible flavors. Until almonds and eggs skyrocketed in price

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If you like to celebrate Christmas with nougat, bad news: this year it will be your turn scratch your pocket more. Quite a bit more, in fact. It doesn’t matter if you prefer soft or hard bars, you love chocolate, you have a favorite manufacturer or you don’t mind trying the white label of your supermarket. You will almost certainly have to pay more. This is concluded by several studies of Facua and the OCUwhich show that Christmas sweets are not immune to the ups and downs of the market. Although it is not the general trend, in their reports they warn of some specific cases in which prices have skyrocketed. above 50%threatening to sour one of the great pleasures of the holidays. The sweet, less sweet. There is no Christmas without nougat, but this year it will be much more expensive to bring it to the table. It reflects it clearly a recent report of the OCU that warns that, on average, the classic almond nougat has become more expensive by 16%. To be more precise, the organization detected an increase of 15.8% in the price of hard tablets and 16.1% in soft tablets. The variants that dispense with added sugars also increased (although to a lesser extent), in which honey or sugar is replaced by sweeteners: in those cases the price has increased, although somewhat less, by 13.6%. One piece of information: €23/kg. The calculations start from an OCU studywhich has dedicated itself to analyzing the prices of more than a hundred nougats. The study focused specifically on the most classic varieties, the almonds, both Alicante (hard) and Jijona (soft). Then their technicians dedicated themselves to purchasing the prices of each tablet with the records they stored from 2024. With the new prices, the average kilo of nougat is in €23/kgalthough if we talk about “brand nougat” that indicator rises to €33/kg. Same photo, different details. Although the report shows a general increase in price, the rise has not been equally intense in all tablets. It influences (a lot) what brand we talk about. The best ones are white label nougat, those sold under the distributor’s labels. In that case the increase has been close to 9.4%. It is a considerable increase, but it pales when compared to the 24.3% increase in the average price of manufacturer brand nougat. Within this category, notable differences are also seen depending on the company and product. Can it go further? Yeah. According to the OCUthe nougats from El Almendro’s “Own Harvest” line cost 37% more than in 2024. The cake, however, goes to El Lobo, which has products in its catalog that cost 57% more today. The organization recognizes in any case that this percentage has an explanation: in its 2024 analysis it appeared as the cheapest, which explains why it has experienced such a pronounced price update. “These increases have turned the price of traditional branded nougat into a luxury item. Manufacturer’s nougat now costs €33/kg on average, compared to €15/kg for supermarket white label nougat,” they explain from the consumer organization. The average value of almond nougat is around €23/kg. Far beyond nougat. The OCU has not been the only one that has taken out the calculator to study how much more we will have to pay for sweets these holidays. FACUA has carried out a similar exercise, which in November I already warned that Christmas desserts had become 15.4% more expensive in large distribution chains. That was at least the average, and the organization was able to detect specific cases with exorbitant “peaks of rise”, of up to 65.3%. The study It analyzed 185 items, including nougat, but also chocolates, mantecados and Polvorones available in several supermarket chains, such as Mercadona, Dia, Hipercor, Alcampo, Eroski and Carrefour. “Only three have gone down”. “Of the total prices analyzed in the months of October 2024 and 2025, only three have decreased compared to last year and eight remain the same. The rest, 174 out of 185, are more expensive,” FACUA warnswhich warns of increases in Hipercor, Alcampo, Carrefour, Eroski, Dia and Mercadona. The clearest case was detected in a Supreme Quality toasted yolk nougat El Corte Inglés Selection from Hipercor: from 2.39 euros in 2024 it went to 3.95 euros, which represents an increase of just over 65%. In general, the organization detected an average increase in the price of sweets of 22.6% since October 2023. Searching for the causes. That nougat is experiencing such a steep price rise is no coincidence. Although there are several factors that come into play, to the OCU and CaixaBank There is one that stands out: the drift in the price of one of its main raw materials, almonds. In fact, the OCU recalls that in higher category tablets it represents more than 60% of the weight, which explains why fluctuations in its price are felt in the rates. Has it risen that much? “Its price has increased significantly: from 90-95 euros per 100 kg of shelled almonds between January and August 2024 to about 120 euros in 2025, with peaks of 138 euros in June,” argues the organizationwhich ensures that varieties such as Marcona, Largueta and Comuna have seen their prices rise from 15 to 25%. It’s not no surprise if we take into account that the almond has reached values ​​not seen since 2019. CaixaBank remember that frosts and droughts have marked the harvest of recent campaigns, affecting prices. If in the 2024-2025 season farmers received an average of 5.6 euros per kilo of communal almonds (the cheapest), in previous seasons that same value hovered around 4.09 or 2.95 euros per kilo. The change in weather conditions has improved the prospects for the campaign that began in September, but this effect has not yet been noticeable in the 2025/26 Christmas nougat campaign. Almonds… and something else. To be fair, almonds are not the only ingredient that has become more expensive in the last year. He has done it too (and not … Read more

In the search for a supersonic train, China tests a Maglev that will reach 4,000 km/h. The problem will be maintaining it

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China’s conquest of the high-speed train field is impressive. In the 2008 Beijing Olympicsthe country had just 120 kilometers of high speed between Beijing and Tianjin. 17 years latermanage more high-speed kilometers than any other countrya very long distance from Spain or Japan. They are not only building kilometers to unite the entire country: they are developing technologies so that the plane is no longer necessary. As? With Maglev trains at speeds of 1,000 km/h. And a specific model, the T-Flight, which dreams of 4,000 km/h. Maglev + Hyperloop. China is one of the countries, along with Japan, that is investing a lot of money in the development of the magnetic levitation trainsor Maglev. This technology allows trains not to rest their wheels on the rails, but rather to float thanks to a series of powerful magnets and an electromagnetic field. This allows us to exceed the 250 km/h that has been set as a standard for high speed and, for example, China has the fastest Maglev in the worldone that reaches 431 km/h. It is already operational between Beijing and Shanghai, but in Japan is testing one that will exceed 600 km/h. It’s a speed that will seem slow compared to what CASIC is preparing. It stands for “China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation,” a state-owned tactical missile company that announced the T-Flight project in August 2017. The idea? Combine magnetic levitation trains with Hyperloop-style vacuum tubes. T-Flight. In short, it is putting a Maglev in a vacuum tube, eliminating air pressure and resistance as much as possible, but there is much more. For example, the idea of CASIC is that magnetic levitation is enhanced thanks to superconductors that will raise the train up to 100 mm above the rail. Conventional Maglevs are raised by about 10 mm, and the idea is that the higher the train is, the more stability it will have at extreme speeds. On the other hand, the tube itself, with a system that extracts air from it to create a low pressure environment, reducing aerodynamic resistance to the maximum. This partial vacuum and levitation that eliminates the physical resistance of the wheel and track is what will allow unprecedented speeds to be achieved. Achievements. In 2024 they already achieved one first validated test as a world record by reaching 623 km/h, but in the summer of this year, in a low pressure environment, The train reached 650 km/h in seven seconds in its laboratory. They were strange tests, since the track was a kilometer long when the usual thing is much longer, but that also gives us a clue of what brutal which is both the acceleration and braking of the train. That is, think that, in seven seconds and in just one kilometer, the train accelerated to 650 km/h and stopped. The team’s idea is to reach 800 km/h as the top speed this year, but the ambition goes much further. Ambition. Currently, the team is in Phase 1, which is the one that aims aim that speed of 1,000 km/h. To do this, and to validate the speed in real conditions, they want to extend the test track to 60 kilometers. However, the thing does not stop there and, when the project was born, it was already said that Phase 2 and Phase 3 would have as aim 2,000 km/h (almost double the cruising speed of a traditional commercial airplane) and 4,000 km/hsupersonic speeds that would compete with the fastest planes in the world. This would allow large urban centers in China to be linked in a few minutes, leaving aside the need to take planes to cover long distances. In fact, this high speed is already showing in Europe that short flights do not make sense if we combine the waiting time at the airport with the flight itself and compare it with the comfort of access to the train. A major challenge. Now, the goal will not be easy. Maglev technology works and is proven, but what they want to achieve with this T-Flight not only complicates things because, in addition to a track, a tube must be built. And, of course, maintain it. Extending this partial vacuum over hundreds of kilometers of tube represents an enormous technical challenge because it implies that the joints must be perfectly sealed, without the cold and heat dilating them so that there are no leaks. It is estimated that a 600 km pipe requires an expansion joint every 100 meters, and each one of them represents a potential point of failure. Furthermore, at 300 km/h appreciate vibrations in the seats. Air system to reduce pressure inside the tubes Furthermore, any decompression would be catastrophic and perhaps most importantly: there is no certification standard or safety protocols for something like this. In any case, T-Flight continues to take steps at a good pace and, although it seems difficult to see it working in the short term, if a country can achieve it right now… it is China. Images | Geely In Xataka | After 20 years, the definitive one arrives: Brazil prepares the first high-speed train in South America

You are already testing ads within your search engine’s AI responses

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Since the beginning of this year in the United States and since October in SpainGoogle has deployed AI Mode, its new search system with artificial intelligence. And, although it is still taking its first steps, it is already experimenting with changes that may not please everyone: it has begun to show advertising within generative responses. Advertising in AI Mode. The novelty has been detected by Brodie ClarkSEO consultant, who has shared a screenshot showing cards with sponsored results labeled “Sponsored”. They appear integrated directly at the end of the conversation, within the generative interface, which represents a relevant change compared to the classic search. In the screenshot shared by Clark, two cards with information and their corresponding organic links can be seen at the top. Then a map appears and, to the right, other informative results, also organic. No advertising here. The interesting thing is precisely at the bottom of the interaction, where the results are no longer organic and two cards appear with the label “Sponsored”. That is, advertising integrated into generative search, embedded within the conversational interface and not just in the margins. It should be noted that the generative text appears to have been omitted from the capture. For now, just tests. Google has confirmed to 9to5Google that these are intermittent experiments and that, at the moment, there are no plans to deploy them generally. This means that some users could start seeing ads in AI Mode, although it is not yet clear if these trials are limited to the United States or also affect markets such as Spain, where the service is already available. And in other AI services? Google is not the only company exploring advertising avenues for artificial intelligence tools. The CFO of OpenAI has recognized that ads could reach free users of ChatGPT. Microsoft, for its part, is already showing advertising on Copilot in certain markets. The strategy makes sense (for Google). Alphabet, Google’s parent company, bases much of its business on digital advertising. This is reflected in a Statista reportwhich remembers that a significant part of its income comes precisely from that model. Integrating ads into AI Mode would therefore be a natural extension of your strategy. AI Mode is powered by artificial intelligence models that generate responses from multiple sources. He does not limit himself to showing them: he interprets them and presents them in the form of a conversation. The system tries to understand what the user wants to know, allows cross-questioning, and maintains context. But it is not infallible. Like any generative model, it can make mistakes, omit data, or even make it up. Images | Google | Brodie Clark In Xataka | Satya Nadella made the world love Microsoft again. AI is making people hate it again

an AI-based search engine

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I am one of those who likes to organize vacations from start to finish and every year the search begins in the same place: flights. Skyscanner is my reference website, but now a tough competitor has just emerged. Google just launched its AI flight search engine worldwide and it does so at a striking moment in which the European Union accuses it of abuse of a dominant position, precisely because enhance your travel tools. Google flight deals The truth is that they haven’t put much thought into naming their new tool. Flight offers or Flight Deals live within the already known Google Flights. If you enter, you will see a notice that tells you “Do you have flexibility? Discover the best flight deals with AI”, from there you can access this new search section. You can do searches like this. Instead of having the classic fields of origin, destination and dates, here we only have a text field where we can do searches with natural language. For example, I have asked you to suggest cheap destinations where you can eat well for a few days of vacation that I have at the beginning of the year. We can also fine-tune with various filters such as passengers, the class in which we want to fly or if we do not want to make stopovers. I find it to be a pretty useful tool if, like me, you have a few days off and aren’t sure where to travel. Instead of looking at destination by destination, you can give it the key information and let it search for you. Of course, there is still room for improvement. In my case, he has not clearly understood the dates on which I can travel (I told him between January 1 and 5 and he suggested flights starting on the 5th). Skyscanner gives us the option to select “anywhere” as a destination and then filter by price. The results are very similar to those we obtain with Google’s proposal, but Flight Offers allows us to make a flexible and at the same time more specific search. In Skyscanner it only allows us to enter the exact date or explore an entire month. Google’s tentacles and dominant position Google entering new market niches is not something new. The company’s strategy involves integrating more and more functions into its search engine and offering specific search and comparison tools, even if it means threatening the business of others. We have the most recent and striking case with the AI Overview integration in the search enginewhich is reducing visibility to the media from which this AI draws to give its answers. The result has been traffic drops of up to 50%but Google keeps going and they have even launched the AI Mode. If we look back, there have been many more similar cases. In the early 2000s there were many websites where we went to make currency or unit conversions, but when Google integrated it directly into the search engine, there was no longer a need to enter those websites. There are cases that have ended in fines for Google. This is what happened when they started showing Google Shopping results at the top, burying the results from other websites. The European Union ended up fining the company for 2.4 billion of dollars for abuse of dominant position. Also They had to pay 465 million euros to Idealoone of the platforms affected by these changes. In the spotlight The announcement of Flight Offers comes at a somewhat delicate time. Google is being investigated for a new antitrust case in the European Union, specifically in the online travel sector. He is accused of unfairly favoring services like Google Flights and Google Hotels in the search results. The fine could reach up to 10% of your annual income. Google responded to the accusations and made changes to their services to comply with the Digital Markets Act, also known as DMA. Among these changes was the inclusion of a box at the top with links to specialized platforms, hotels and airlines. However, Google took the opportunity to show its disagreement, ensuring that these requirements harm European consumers because it forces them to use “cumbersome solutions.” Images | Google In Xataka | Microsoft 365 will have cheaper versions around the world. It is the result of antitrust pressure from the European Commission

YouTube can end up becoming something more important for Google than your search engine

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The race to dominate the AI It has many legs And, one of them is undoubtedly developing The perfect search engine. There is also a clear intention of several technological giants by Destrone Google in one of your most prolific businesses. However, Google is not passed without doing anything while the AI ​​career advances by leaps and bounds. In fact, it has an ace in the sleeve that perhaps few have seen coming: YouTube. And it is that the video platform could become the most powerful weapon of the company to continue growing in AI. The searches conquer. Google knows that artificial intelligence can be an existential threat to its search engine, the main source of income of the company for decades. That’s why he has been vitaminating Gemini and joining his abilities to Search through summaries with Ai overViews either The full search engine with AI that the company plans to launch soon worldwide. Meanwhile, chatgpt and other language models eat the toast with very useful capabilities for users, such as being able to answer user questions directly While searches are made On the Internet without clicking links or advertising. A perfect shield. However, YouTube works radically differently, since here the AI ​​is not a threat, but A competitive advantage. And while the search engine must deal with chatbots from other companies, YouTube can use AI in its favor to generate more content, improve its recommendations algorithm and, above all, multiply their monetization opportunities. All this knowing that it is a platform without any serious rival to date. Video against text. Analyst Ben Thompson, from the specialized media Stratechery, Point out That video is an inherently more monetizable format than the text, and the recent history of social networks demonstrates it. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram began as text and photos, but they have all ended up focusing on the video because it is what really hooks most users. Tiktok understood from the beginning: The most addictive content does not come from your contact network, but from an algorithm that shows you the most entertaining videos, wherever they come from. And YouTube has been doing exactly for almost two decades. Numbers that speak for themselves. YouTube It is the most watched streaming service on televisionsahead of Netflix. It is the dominant mobile application and computer for video consumption. And, above all, he has paid More than 100,000 million dollars to creators in the last four years. That figure does not even include the income that creators obtain for collaborations with brands, which usually overcome what they earn by advertising. YouTube is no longer just a platform, but an entire economy AI as an accelerator, not as a threat. Google is integrating the technology of its Deepmind division directly on YouTube, and the results are promising. The platform He has just announced tools based on I see 3its video generation model, which allow any user to create clips for YouTube Shorts from the mobile and for free. The result? A content tsunami generated by AI That, although mostly it will be irrelevant, annoying and ends up subtracting authenticity from the platform, it will also generate more videos in less time and, in large part, their tools can be used so that creators use them to generate really good videos. And YouTube already has its own algorithm to separate the grain from the straw. Each element of a video is a business opportunity. But Google’s master play with AI on YouTube has nothing to do with creating videos, but by monetizing them. The company has started trying A system that uses artificial intelligence to automatically identify products that appear in the videos and label them at the exact moment in which they are mentioned or shown. “Each element of each YouTube video is on its way to becoming a monetizable surface,” assures Thompson. Imagine to see a video of home reforms and be able to buy with a single click any tool that appears, even if it is in the background. It is the humid dream of every marketing giant. An invisible giant. Sometimes we forget YouTube. In fact, many analysts, including Thompson, who even He recognizes itThey have underestimated the platform for years. Most people prefer to consume entertainment in video and YouTube format have always been there, growing unstoppable and sometimes even invisible. The finish line, applied by Google. Thompson already He warned months ago about the potential of the AI ​​to convert each content pixel into advertising inventory, but then thought of a goal. The irony is that Google, who arrived late by offering the mass public tools of generative after Bard’s disastrous launchit is now who has arrived first with this technology. As assures Thompson, goal must still develop the necessary models and infrastructure; Google already has them working. Cover image | Google and Collabstr In Xataka | The MIT has studied the impact of AI on companies. Its conclusion: only 5% of the time changes some really

The links lived their peak with the Google search engine. Now that same search engine is killing them

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Google’s results page was an ode to web links. It was the ultimate expression of That basic information unit That was the Internet cement. Now that cement is getting rid before our eyes, and the fault is an AI that is transforming everythingincluding the famous search engine. That is bringing many consequences. The funny thing is that Google has been with contradictory speeches that on the one hand they seem to make it clear that everything is going well and that on the other they point to a potential problem. Where I said, I say Diego Liz Reid, the head of the Google search engine, He published an article In early August in Google’s official blog. According to her, the click volume generated from the search engine had remained “relatively stable” Regarding the same period last year. In May Nick Fox, another Google manager, explained In the podcast ai inside that “from our point of view, the web is thriving.” The same then claimed Pichai, CEO of Google, which In an interview In Decoder he indicated that the search engine “is definitely sending traffic to a wide variety of sources and editorial groups.” John Mueller, another of the company’s managers, He stood out that the clicks that generated the summaries of the “AI Overviews” of Google were “of higher quality” despite the fact that the studies confirmed that the average traffic on websites had fallen about 35%. However Some documents Recently obtained thanks to the US antitrust trial against Google they have revealed another reality. In them the company admitted that “The open web is rapid decline” That first statement against Google’s traditional speech that “everything is going well” with the web was seen these days accompanied by another equally worrying. The Penske Media editorial group – magazine editor like Rolling Stone or Variety— has sued to Google precisely for using AI summaries on the results page. These summaries collect information from various media and then present it to users directly as the answer to their question. And in doing so, they allege in demand, users They do not see the need to go to the original source. The creator of the content, therefore, runs out of traffic and unable to monetize it, especially through advertising. In The Wall Street Journal They quoted The words of José Castañeda, spokesman for Google, who responded to the demand stating that «with AI Overviews, users find the most useful search and use it more, which creates new opportunities to discover content. Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to websites from the entire network, and ai overViews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites. We will defend ourselves against these unfounded accusations. “ However, Markham Erickson, one of Google’s managers in legal material, explained that what is happening is that people are changing their way of looking for information: “The 10 blue bonds serve the ecosystem very well, and it was a simple value proposal (…). We are not going to leave that model. We believe that model has its usefulness. It remains an important part of the ecosystem. But user preferences and what they want are also changing. So, instead of answers based on facts and 10 blue links, They want more and more contextual responses and summaries. We want to be able to offer that too, while leading people to valuable content on the Internet. ” Online media, in danger A study by Press Gazette has revealed the evolution of web traffic that the 50 main media between August 2024 and August 2025 have had. Of all those media, Only five managed to grow in traffic From one year to another. The rest has fallen, and in some cases extraordinary: Source: Sherwood News graph with ados by Press Gazette. In that worrying classification you can see how even media such as The New York Times have lost 7%of its traffic, but the thing is much worse for CNN (38%less), The Washington Post (40%), use today (34%) or Forbes (50%). The falls, coming from a statistical analysis of Similar Web, are terrible and show a clear reality: that the traffic that Google previously came thanks to the links is being lost. And it is being lost because of the simple reason that the Google search engine is displacing the links to the background. The traditional results page is no longer full of links, and instead The first thing that one usually see is a summary generated by AI in which Google collects information and then condensate it and give it chew to the user. Of the search engine that gives you links to which he talks with you Things seem clear to Google, which first offered the AI ​​overViews generated with AI and that is gradually expanding the deployment of Ai mode, his “search engine in conversational mode” which is basically a perplexity or a chatgpt Search. Logan Kilpatrick, head of Google Ai Studio and Gemini’s API, indicated how the new AI Mode already has a new URL (Google.com/ai), although said conversational search engine does not work at the moment in all regions. In Spain it is not available, for example, but the simple use of a VPN allows you to use it without problems. A verified x user called Burkov replied saying that this mode of ia should be the default search engine, to which Kilpatrick replied With a simple “soon :)”. Two days later, yes, clarified That answer pointing out that “I was not saying that AI Mode will replace the main search engine.” Another Google manager too He wanted to clarify that Kilpatrick’s response wanted to say that they would soon be available to those who wanted to use it. As they explained In Search Engine Landthat AI Mode becomes the Google default search engine implies great changes in the way the contents were located. Before SEO allowed trying to position these contents, but now we will be at the expense of an AI system that will … Read more

Your classic search engine is blurred to give way to searches for AI

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The transformation is underway. Millions of people around the world are seeing how a New button on Google’s home pagethat same that has marked the internet pulse for decades. It is not a secondary addition or a tab that goes unnoticed. It is the new Ai mode. With this movement, artificial intelligence becomes the protagonist of the search experience, displacing the classic formula which has defined the search engine since its origins. And with this there are changes that not only affect users: they also challenge the information industry and Google’s own business model. From the links to the answers: a jump that changes the rules Ai mode is available, for the moment, only in English, Although its global deployment has already begun. For those who press the aforementioned button, the search engine will stop functioning as until now: the consultations no longer show the lifelong links, but in responses prepared directly by the AI. The land had already prepared with the Google ai overViewsgenerated summaries that occupy the most visible part of the results page. If a couple of years ago you were looking for something like “Cafeterias in Paris with good wifi and quiet corners to work”, Google showed well positioned pagesRecommendations in blogs or forums, and some Google Maps block. Example of results with Google Ai Overviews With the Overviews the dynamics changed: before reaching the links, the user was a summary created by AI as the following: “To enjoy a modern Parisian experience with good wifi and quiet workplaces, consider X place. For its modern environment. X place It also offers a cozy atmosphere. ” Thus the tool responded, linking to the sources he had used to elaborate the generative summary. That jump placed the information processed and summarized in the foreground, but also opened a debate: AI can be wrong. His “hallucinations” They have already left uncomfortable holders, from non -existent presidents to poorly cited years. On the other hand, the impact was immediate: less traffic for content creators, less advertising impressions. And this also reaches Google, that still controls much of the advertising that is inserted in third -party sites. With that context, the launch of AI Mode is another step in this direction. Press the new button, The list of life results disappears. If we repeat the search for Parisian coffee shops, the answer is no longer limited to a contained recommendation. Now a more elaborate compendium is shown: coworking spaces, specialty coffees, interactive maps, quiet areas to work and even practical advice on how to find the best options. Example of results with Google AI Mode In the desktop version some links continue to appear in a reduced module to the right, but the message is unequivocal: Google wants you to solve everything without leaving its ecosystem. The experience is conversational. You can ask for a specific place, ask for comparatives or add nuances, and The system keeps the thread of conversationfeeding on the web to give you the answer. Google summarizes it on its official page: “Are you trying to understand a new topic? Are you looking for specific recommendations? Do you need help to decide between two products? Just ask us.” All this works with Gemini 2.5 In its standard version, although users can access Gemini 2.5 Pro Reasoning capabilities. With AI Mode and AI Overviews, Google takes a radical turn: the search ceases to be a catalog of links to become a response system. And that transition not only redefines how we find information, but opens a new chapter in The balance between the open webthe creators of content and the giant who, to a large extent, controls the entrance door to the Internet. Images | Google | Screenshots In Xataka | Tiktok stole the searches, Depseek beat them in Ia: Baidu discovers that being “the Chinese google” is no longer enough

‘Louie Louie’ looked like a harmless song. Until the FBI examined her two and a half years in search of obscenities

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It is very possible that there have been numerous songs in the history of pop that have deserved a exhaustive monitoring by the FBI. When rock’n’roll was considered a poison that destabilized youth, The songs abounded qualified by parents and educators as obsceneeven many that today sound harmless. But none reached the extreme of being investigated for two and a half years by an incomprehensible letter … In case the flies. In 1963, ‘Louie Louie’, a modest song performed by The Kingsmen Group and that was a previous version of Richard Berry in 1955 It became one of the greatest successes in the history of pop music. Sold millions of copies, forming such a notorious phenomenon that He caught the attention of FBI himself. The reason? The lyrics were so confusing that it suggested that it could include pernicious hidden messages. And that the original trail of the song came by long. Berry, in fact, had inspired a Cuban bole The title ‘El Loco Cha-Cha’. The lyrics of Berry’s version He talked about A sailor who sails back to Jamaicawhere his girl awaits him. Its simplicity (a single riff throughout the song) made Berry himself value it too much and sold the rights to the Flip Records record. In this way the song would circulate as a repertoire song, with groups like The Wailers versioning it before The Kingsmen. Interestingly, the singer of these, Jack Ely, had only heard the song once previously in a Jukebox And the melody caught badly, with what The Kingsmen song is slightly different from all the abovereceiving a special air, as a counterpoint touched. When his manager saw that the band spent an hour and a half concert playing only that song, he decided that he had to record it urgently. For that same reason, it was decided that they would try to recreate the sound of a live interpretation, hang the micros from the ceiling and with all the instruments sounding at the same time. The recording was full of problems: Ely wore orthodontics and was barely understood. And the instrumentalists did not listen to their voice, so each one goes to their air: hence the famous mistake in the 1:57 minute, when Ely advances to his entrance after the single and the battery filled his mistake with a redouble while the rest of the musicians continue. They believed that it could be correct, but there was no time to record more shots. To positive. The FBI arrives The success, which led the song to sell a million copies in its first year of life, of course, caught the attention of different associations of parents and leagues of decency that they wanted to ban it for its indecent content. Although no one was very clear about what exactly the indecency consisted. Because The singer was not even remotely understood. Although imagination could distinguish a slight Fuck Murmured half -song. The Governor of Indiana ended up prohibiting its dissemination in 1964 for its “obscene content”, which redoubled its attraction for youth. The politician came to say that his ears “buzzed” when he listened to the song, which undoubtedly turned the film into a demonic object. This triggered moral panic and led the song to get the attention of the government. The inquiries They ended up to the FBI: Cryptographers were hired by analyzing each sound And, of course, the singer was interrogated on numerous occasions. Officially, the FBI declared that the song was “incomprehensible at any speed.” But to heal in health, the seal that had edited the song published in the magazine ‘Broadcasting Magazine’, oriented to professionals and the industry, the full lyrics. So that there would be no trace of doubt. But the thing would not be there: a letter from an enraged father because of a letter “so obscene that he could not replicate it” caught the attention of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and the director of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover. The investigation reopened, interviewed Richard Berry, the Kingsmen (curiously, there was no talk with Ely, who had left the band) and the record staff. Two and a half years later, the FBI concluded that the letter was so cryptic that it did not admit interpretations, and therefore, it was not obscene. In 2005, when ‘Louie Louie’ had become an impeccable monument in rock history, the controversy fled: the superintendent of a University of Michigan prevented the orchestra from playing ‘Louie Louie’ in a local march. There will always be paranoid delusions among high educational positionsIt is seen. Today the song is considered an icon whose influence on current rock is impossible to quantify: 4,000 versions of the theme have been counted and figure without possible discussion, again and again, in the periodic lists of the best songs of all time. Nothing bad to have been forbidden by the FBI.

In the search to eliminate the lithium of the batteries, we have found the best candidate: multivent ion batteries

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Lithium ion batteries move the world and, in the era of electrification, every time They are more important. They have a series of limitations and Lithium is a finite resource With a high environmental impact, which is a problem if we want to electrify mobility. There the future solid state batteriesbut meanwhile, a group of NJIT researchers He has had an idea to give more life to the current technology: squeeze the maximum current batteries. As? With multivent ion batteries. Multivalent ions. A team of researchers from the New Jersey Institute -Njit- had an idea. If lithium is key to current batteries, but also scarce, We could use more abundant elements such as magnesium, calcium, aluminum or zinc as a replacement or to ‘dopar’ current batteries. The objective was to maintain, at least, the properties of current batteries and, if possible, improve storage benefits without depending on lithium. There the multive ion batteries come into play. If Ion-Litio have only one load, multiveous ion batteries that use the aforementioned elements allow two or even three positive charges. This property, in theory, allows you to store more energy by ion. Not everything is perfect. This property, as exposed in the studyit allows to store more energy by ion, but if they are not used it is because they present an important technical challenge. Multivalent ions are larger than lithium and have a greater load, which makes their movement difficult within current materials. To make it easy, imagine that the interior of the cells of a lithium -ion battery is a sponge with a certain number of recesses that catch particles. In a multivete ion battery, it has more holes and each one catches more particles, but the sponge is also greater. Accelerated by AI. That was the great limitation of the technological industry, but what NJIT researchers have done is to put the artificial intelligence To work. In this context, the use of AI is ideal because it allows simulating a large range of possibilities, of which the most convincing to test them. The end of the AI was to find new viable compounds to create multive ion batteries and, for this, they used a dual approach. On the one hand, a model called CDVAE (Variational Crystal Dissemination Self -coach) that was trained with known crystalline structures to generate new materials. On the other, a model of LLM LLM LANGUAGE Aphinated to select only the most thermodynamically stable structures. When they finished the work, they discovered five new porous metal oxides that are shown as ideal for transporting multivalent ions quickly and safely. “One of the greatest obstacles was not the lack of promising chemicals for batteries, but the practical impossibility of trying millions of material combinations,” said Dibakar Datta, leader of the research team. “We resort to generative artificial intelligence as a rapid and systematic way to explore that vast panorama and detect the few structures that multivalent batteries could really do practices.” Structures isolated by AI models. Section A is that of the CDVAE. The B is that of LLM Beyond the batteries. The team states that it validated the structures generated by AI using mechanical-chanting simulations and stability tests, confirming that these isolated materials could be synthesized with great potential for applications in the real world. Currently, and with those results, from the NJIT they are collaborating with other laboratories to synthesize and test those materials designed by AI. And something that Datta highlights is that, as a collateral effect on research, they have demonstrated once again that AI can be “a quick and scalable method to explore any advanced material, from electronics to clean energy solutions, without relying on extensive tests by test and error.” Once the best results are isolated, of course, it is time to try them in the real world, but much of the previous work It accelerates considerably. A mere patch? Now, although changing the ‘formula’ of lithium -ion batteries can be a good patch, the objective of the industry is still put in the implementation of solid state batteries. The catalyst in them is not a liquid, but a solid that allows us to solve many of the problems of current batteries, while offering a Greater energy density and faster load times. They are batteries that are already developed and that are being driven by Much of the automotive industrybut the problem is that it is a more expensive technology and is not settled. Bringing it to the real world, for example, Mercedes is already in itwhile other brands like BMW say that, for the moment, they are not in their plans due to precisely the price. Images | NJIT, Cell Reports Physical Science, Kumpan Electric In Xataka | An extraordinarily promising substitute has come out of the batteries. And yes, it has everything

Reddit wants to be a search engine driven by AI. It has all the meaning of the world

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Reddit has released its last figures, closing The most profitable quarter in its history with income that has grown by 78% year -on -year up to 500 million dollars. But beyond the figures, the platform has also shown interest in turning its business with an idea that could well function as an alternative to a google focused on the search for personal experiences. And Steve Huffman, CEO of the company, wants to convert Reddit in a search engine reference. The commitment to the human in the era of AI. While the rest of the Internet is filled with artificially generated content, Reddit has done exactly the opposite. His CEO, Steve Huffman, summarize it Perfectly: “AI does not invent knowledge, learn from us, from real people sharing real perspectives.” And for many users, Reddit has become a kind of refuge of those who seek human experiences and opinions. Numbers that show it. Reddit’s native search already has 70 million unique weekly users, while Reddit Answersits search tool with the launched in December, has gone from 1 million to 6 million weekly users in just a few months. Its proposal integrates generative artificial intelligence to navigate among the experiences, advice and tutorials that the portal houses, an alternative that at the moment seems to be convinced to users. Google: “blah blah bla reddit”. All We have ever done it: Write our consultation on Google followed by the word “Reddit”. And it is that over the years we have seen how Google has become a space loaded with content generated with AI, sponsored articles, and, ultimately, results that do not effectively solve the user’s consultation. With The summaries generated by Google More of the same. Many users value the experiences of other users, and that is why the fact of finding a solution to a technical problem from Reddit is so effective. And there will always be someone who happened to you. An integrated search engine. Reddit is not formed to be the final destination of Google searches. Huffman wants That users think directly on Reddit as a search engine. The plan is to integrate Reddit Answers with the traditional search for the platform and convert the search into a central feature. “We are going to unify the search experience and we will put it on the front line of the application,” explains the CEO. Reddit’s transformation. The platform has seen how traffic from Google “varies week by week” and Huffman Recognize which was “an obstacle” during the last quarter. With Google more and more determined to give direct answers with AI instead of links, Reddit needs to ensure its future reducing that dependence. Paradoxically, while signing Millionaire agreements To license your data to Google and Openai, you are building your own competitor. And now what. Reddit is already 20 years old, but his IPOUBO In 2024 he has given him a second youth. The platform has shown that it can monetize both its traditional advertising business (which is 93% of its income) and its human data treasure. And in the future in which it seems that the artificial on the Internet will predominate, to have a portal where ‘the authentic and the human is a very lucrative business. Cover image | Reddit In Xataka | In 2011 someone published in Reddit “A858”. Fourteen years and thousands of messages later, the mystery is still disound

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