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Europe is looking for a place to put its AI gigafactory. Spain and Portugal are showing all their renewable plumage

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There is a concept that should be familiar with: technological sovereignty. The United States is looking for her in terms of semiconductors so as not to depend on Taiwan. China wants her with the same goal and with the intention of strengthen your industry. And Europe is also pursuing it. Within this search is the idea of ​​strengthening European sovereignty in artificial intelligence by building AI gigafactories. And Spain and Portugal are clear about one thing: they want to be that node of European AI. InvestAI. Within this search for independence, the truth is that Europe has a long way to go. On the world stage, they depend on the Dutch ASML to create cutting-edge chipsbut Taiwan and China are the world’s factory and the United States has been a key partner both in software as in space matter. Seeing the recent course of the United StatesEurope has realized that it cannot depend so much on foreign alliances and that its key systems are not European, and it is going to dig deep into its pockets. 200 billion euros is what the European Commission’s InvestAI initiative has to invest in programs focused on the development of artificial intelligence. Within it, there are another 20,000 million saved to build gigafactories. GigafactorIA. Its name is quite revealing and it is about huge data centers with capacity for hundreds of thousands of chips with the objective of both training and inferring artificial intelligence models. The plan was launched a few months ago with the reconversion of seven European data centers in data centers for AI and with one objective: that European companies stop turning to foreign ones. For example, the French Mistral signed with Microsoft to be able to use its systems to train Le Chat. The idea is that this be done ‘at home’. It is estimated that one of these gigafactories may have more than 100,000 state-of-the-art AI processors and they are expected to be optimized to have low consumption, reuse of resources such as water and be a strategic node close to other companies, universities and serve to attract talent. Strategy. Spain has been for a few months tempting American companies to build their data centers in the national territory. Aragon has become one of those strategic pointsbut also Madrid either Tarragona. Now, there are other municipalities that oppose it (something that not only happens in Spain). Within this strategy of European technological sovereignty, Spain has two aces up your sleeve: Mora la Nova in Tarragona and San Fernando de Henares in Madrid. They are the two municipalities that could host one of these AI gigafactories and that would take advantage of the technological and energy infrastructure in the area to accelerate the projects. The information is not new, but now Portugal joins in. As detail From Moncloa, both countries are going to carry out a series of bilateral efforts to be at the energy and technological head of Europe, doing emphasis on the coordination of artificial intelligence projects. Because Spain wants the European gigafactory and Portugal too. The neighboring country is already developing a data center in Sines, and the two countries are playing their cards. Energy. Portugal plays the card that Sines has a good connection with the Atlantic submarine cables. Spain also has a powerful argument: if Europe wants AI gigafactories to be energy efficient, the country has a renewable infrastructure that can help make AI independent of gas or coal. Through the agreement between the two, the intention to collaborate to take advantage of the complementary capabilities and synergies between both countries is put on the table. Problem. There are several. On the one hand, the energy ones. Although Spain is one of the Europe’s powers in terms of renewable energyartificial intelligence demands a lot, a lot of energy at peak times. So much so that not only Big Tech have private projects to open nuclear power plantsbut it has been shown that it is necessary turn to coal to meet demand. Because AI needs sustained energy, but above all fast and immediately accessible in the most stressful moments. And there renewables only comply if there are huge batteries involved. On the other hand, Europe is now building its infrastructure… and it is the worst time. If you want gigafactories to have the latest generation chips, it means buying NVIDIA’s H200s. The problem is that these chips, which are currently leading the way, will be surpassed in the short term by a new generation. NVIDIA is already working at full capacity on Vera Rubinand it is not a more powerful chip, but a paradigm shift. This game of being at the cutting edge of AI is slow because the infrastructure has to be built. But, above all, it is expensive. In any case, the results on which countries will host the gigafactories are expected to be published this spring, and we will see if the Spain-Portugal candidacy convinces the Commission. Images | Moncloa, chaddavis In Xataka | Spain has a plan to capture more data centers than anyone else: “shield” them from energy costs

A Moroccan sued a real estate agency for not showing him an apartment just because of his origin. Now they will have to pay 10,000 euros

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The story sounded so strange, so much like an ‘improvised excuse’, that Hamid Hmata decided to do an experiment. In January 2024after seeing how the umpteenth real estate company closed the door on him after finding out about his Moroccan origin, Hamid asked a co-worker to help him out. His friend (with a Spanish name) called the same agency asking about an apartment in Mataró that Hamid had been interested in shortly before. He had no problem. They confirmed that the home was available, gave him information and scheduled an appointment. Shortly before, Hamid had been told the opposite, that it was already rented. The story could have stopped there, but what the agency probably did not take into account is that Hamid has been battling discrimination in access to housing for some time. Now that episode of 2024 has led to a pioneering sentence by “real estate racism”. a dozen complaints. The statistics They suggest that Hamid is not (far from it) the only immigrant who encounters obstacles or outright racism when looking for housing. His case is different in something: this man of Moroccan origin, father of two minor children and with the necessary income to pay for a rental house, has been denouncing real estate racism for some time. And he has also done so in an active way, calling out against various agencies and presenting a dozen complaints before the Mataró City Council. “For being a migrant”. His case was revealed ago just a month and a half the DESCA Observatory, one of the entities that has accompanied Hamid in his peculiar real estate crusade. At that time, the platform explained that the man had been looking for an apartment for four years, a long period during which he had dealt with “great difficulties.” The reason? Everything indicates that its origin. “Different real estate agencies, allegedly, would have covertly avoided providing him with their services (showing him the apartment, evaluating his candidacy, managing a contract, etc.) due to the fact that he was a migrant,” details DOWNLOAD From office to office. Despite his efforts, most of Hamid’s claims were unsuccessful. Their complaints to the City Council ended up being filed and they undertook a “bureaucratic journey” by different organizations, such as the Housing Agency of Catalonia, the Consumer Agency and finally the Office of Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination. Almost all of Hamid’s complaints ended up being dismissed, but last month DESCA recalled that there were still three live files: two “in the administrative procedure phase” and another “in the preliminary proceedings phase.” And the big surprise came. We have now known the next chapter in Hamid’s real estate odyssey. a few days ago DESCA revealed that the Office of Equal Treatment and Non-Discrimination (OITND) of the Generalitat of Catalonia has imposed a fine of 10,001 euros on a real estate agency in Mataró for, the association claims, “a case of real estate racism in access to rentals.” The reason would have been the episode with which we started this article. Same floor, different answers. In 2024 Hamid was interested in an apartment for rent, so he contacted the real estate agency that owned it to visit it in person. He couldn’t. A day and a half after requesting the interview they told him that it was already leased. The explanation did not convince Hamid, who asked a colleague (in this case with a Spanish name) to call the agency to inquire about the home in question. Same agency, same apartment… different answer. Him, ensures DESCAYes, they made an appointment for him. Click on the image to go to the tweet. “True, but it has nothing to do with it.” Determined not to let the matter go, Hamid attended the visit scheduled by his friend to ask the head of the agency for explanations. Specifically, I wanted to know if the problem was that the owners of the apartment did not want to rent it to a person of Moroccan origin. “The administration admitted it: ‘That, that’s also true, but it has nothing to do with that. It’s reserved,’” reveals DESCA. The phrase is reminiscent of the one he received recently as well. another moroccanin this case from Irún, who was looking for a home. Mosqueado recorded the explanations of the head of an agency that had slammed the door: “The owner doesn’t want anyone from outside.” A figure: 10,001 euros. Hamid’s experience demonstrates several things. To begin with, proving an episode of “real estate racism” is not easy (he has denounced a dozen agencies). The second is that when it is detected it is expensive. DESCA explains that, in this case, the OITND has fined the agency a fine of 10,001 euros, although that is only part of the punishment. For one year you will not be able to receive any public aid or subsidies, nor establish contracts with the Generalitat Administration. “The OITND resolution recognizes that the reported facts consist of a case of discrimination in access to housing for ethnic-racial reasons and/or origin, which according to Law 19/200 on equality and non-discriminatory treatment is a serious infraction,” argues the observatory. The standard to which the platform refers clearly states in its section 14.3 that real estate agencies and their clients “must respect” equality and not discriminate. Why is it important? For several reasons. The first, the pioneering nature of the sanction. At least in Catalonia, where according to the RAC1 chain There is only one similar precedent. In 2022, Barcelona City Council revealed that the court had ratified a fine of 90,001 euros which he had recently imposed on “a real estate agent” for “excluding a group of people from access to housing due to their origin.” On that occasion the trigger was an advertisement for an apartment that only accepted Spanish tenants. The fine that the OITND has just imposed is interesting for another reason. There are studies that suggest that real estate racism is far from being a one-time phenomenon. In … Read more

The world’s rare earth reserves, laid out in this graph showing the brutal dominance of a single country

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The rare earths They are neither earth nor are they rare. It is a set of 17 chemical elements that have become the lever that moves both geopolitics like practically any technology and energy sector today. As important as knowing how to produce it is knowing where the reserves are, and in both things there is a name that dominates the international scene: China. And in this graph we can see which countries have the upper hand. Or “the country”, rather. China, prominent name. Prepared by Visual Capitalist from the data of the United States Geological Survey -USGS-, the graph is very clear when it comes to visualizing the estimated rare earth reserves. China has more than twice as much as the next on the list, which in turn has three times as much as the third. The Asian giant would have reserves of 44 million metric tons, Brazil with 21 million and India with 6.9 million. Far on the list are countries like Australia (5.7 million), Russia (3.8 million), Vietnam (3.5 million), the United States (1.9 million) and Greenland (1.5 million) if we take into account those that exceed one million. The crazy thing is that the world total is estimated at about 92 million metric tons, so China has approximately 50% of the reserves. Importance. Rare earth elements are present in practically anything we can imagine. From the most subtle things such as smartphone elements or the magnets in the headphones that we use every day to the most complex things such as space telescopes, aerospace technology or guidance systems for military radars and advanced weaponry. They are also crucial to manufacturing the elements of energy change: batteries both of electric cars as accumulators for renewable energy and the internal systems themselves of both solar panels like wind turbines. And there’s something important here: you can have reservations, but if you don’t process them, those reservations are worthless. Rare earths as a weapon. The problem is that these rare earth elements do not appear isolated in nature, but rather attached to other minerals. It is necessary to separate them, something that is done through an extremely expensive and, above all, polluting refining process. Due to Western environmental policies, for years we relegate that task to a China with a more lax regulation (although it has been changing recently), and with the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump To the Asian country we have seen how China has taken advantage of his position. Same as with Soy. They have the technology and knowledge for processing rare earths, and they have been responding to the new tariffs, cutting off the supply of metals and elements that the west needs to create weapons or to make that technological paradigm shift through renewables. The West, for years, financed its own strategic and technological vulnerability. Even the western mines, such as Mountain Pass in the United Statessent his material to China to refine it there. Examples of affected productions? Suzuki had to stop production of the Swift due to a shortage of components, the European automobile industry has also shouted to the sky and Elon Musk does not have the money to manufacture his robots. making friends. As China has turned rare earths into its most powerful lever of power, the West has had to move and different countries have undertaken missions to search for new rare earth deposits. It is a strategy that is bearing fruit, finding promising deposits in Spain, Norway, Greenland either Japan. It is also being studied how to restart the rare earth producing arm in the West, although the difficulties are there both due to the technique and, above all, due to the restrictions on emissions. Searching under the stones. And that is a big problem that In Spain we are experiencing first-hand. There are several deposits found in our country, but due to this problematic and polluting extraction, mining projects have encountered opposition from neighborhood platforms and city councils. An example is Torrenueva, in an important site found in Campo de Montiel. And that is why there are several projects and research underway that are not favoring the refining of rare earths, but the recycling of these elements to, as far as possible, stop depending so much on a country that has a monopoly both for reserves and production capacity and for contracts with the most powerful mines on the other side of the world. For example, that of Serra Verde that sells exclusively to China until 2027. In Xataka | Sweden believes it has the largest reserve of rare earths in Europe: one more step towards our independence from China

How to create a trip animation with a plane going from one point to another and showing photos at each destination

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Let’s tell you how to create a video with a travel animationin which you can jump from one point to another, and showing at each destination a photo of that place. This is an animation that you may have seen on social networks, and that you can easily do with an online service. For this, you will be able to use a website called Mult. You can do it all with a free accountalthough as always happens, the website will suggest you become a paying user to be able to export the final video with higher quality or to be able to add more than 10 photos. Create the animation of your trip The first thing you have to do is enter the website of mult.dev. In it, you have to create an account or log in in one of them, something that is totally essential to be able to use the service. You can use your Google, GitHub or Apple accounts, or create an account with an email. Now, go to the option to create a new trip. In it, you will have to add each destination point on the timeline. To do this you can search for the name or coordinates of the point, or directly upload a photo to use the coordinates of its metadata. In the free account the animation will only be shown with a plane to take you from one place to another. However, if you use a paid account you can choose other means of transportation so that the animation is done with them, and also change the route to get from one point to another taking this means into account. The paid Pro version starts at $5.99. When you have added your locations, to the right of each one you have a three-dot button, which displays several options. You can add photosbut also edit the name or change the location. By choosing to upload photos, you can upload them from your computerbut also from files, or even search them on Google Maps or generate them by AI. The free plan allows you to upload up to 10 photos. Once you upload one for a location, select it to add it. As you add photos, they will appear in each location. You can make all the adjustments you want, although you will not be able to see a preview here. And when you have it to your liking press the button Export which you have at the top right. In the export options, you can choose whether you want the video to be square or horizontal and vertical. You can also choose the frames per minute. Here, you can click on the button Preview to see the result and be able to make some changes before. Then, just click on the button Export to download the video and then be able to use it wherever you want. In Xataka Basics | Google Travel: what it is, what you can do with it and how to install it on your mobile

The Xiaomi CEO came out in a video showing a new product and sold out in minutes. It was a cat carrier

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To exhaust products in minutes is something that Xiaomi has enough experience. More than a decade ago already They got it with their mobiles And currently your star product are cars; They recently sold 200,000 units of Xiaomi Yu7 in three minutes. The last product that have exhausted just put it on sale has not been technological, but something much simpler: a cat carrier. Exhausted. They tell it in Following The Yuan. After the publication of A video in which we see Lei Jun showing the cat bagThe brand had to hang the exhausted poster in just a few minutes. The bag-transport cost only 199 yuan, which to the current exchange is about 23 euros, and was put on sale as an accessory for the company’s SUV, the company, the Xiaomi Yu7. Designed by cat owners. In the video, Lei Jun tells that the transport has been designed in collaboration with brand employees who have cats. It emphasizes that it has a spacious interior, ventilation grilles on both sides and a transparent window at the top. It also has a pocket on the side. The truth is that, although the design seems very careful, it has nothing super -revolutionary, it is a fairly normal cloth transport. It doesn’t matter, that has not prevented them from running out. For the car. As we said, Xiaomi has promoted this new cat bag as an accessory for Xiaomi Yu7. The car has the possibility of activating a “pet mode” which consists in the installation of a camera in the rearview mirror that allows us to control pets and also has a speaker so that we can talk to them. In addition, by activating this mode the air conditioning continues to work so that they do not pass heat (or cold, it depends). It is not the only brand that offers something like that, others like Tesla either Mercedes They also have it. Pets like target. We have more and more pets and also They occupy a more privileged position in families. China does not get rid. To the current rhythm, it is expected that by the end of the decade Pets exceed children under 4 years. Given this, more and more technological companies that enter the growing segment of pets. Xiaomi launched The connected feeder and source that we already analyzed in Xataka And we have seen other connected products such as this curious Cat quantifying bracelet. Image | Douyin / Amparo Babyloni In Xataka | Communicating with our cats has always been a complex task. A study has discovered the key: flashing

They are showing us how they think

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When Chatgpt appeared, that seemed magical, but also scared a little, especially because we didn’t know how he did what he was doing. Not even Openai himself knew it, and in fact created a tool to discover it In May 2023, a few months after its launch. In spite of everything, the situation did not change too much, but in 2025 we have discovered something important: we love to know what the machines are thinking. Tell me what do you think and I will tell you what model of AI you are. Deepseek R1 Not only did he impress us to be a free, capable and open source reasoning model: he also showed at all times what he was thinking. Although it takes longer to generate the answers, you can see “what is machine at all times” and that has been a peculiar advance. Human crutches. They point it out In The Washington Postwhere they indicate how this staler model indicates how the question or problem to end up giving the final rspiente. In fact, the language used by showing this thought process is close, because the chatbot introduces crutches such as “wait”, “hmmm” or “ajá”. Chatbots a little closer. Reasoning models such as Deepseek R1, O1 either Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking They also have the advantage that they review their answers, which makes them mistake less than traditional chatbots. When “reasoning” also shows a communication that simulates what a human being could use and that makes us look less … distant. Empathy. The result is that showing us how they think, these models get us to feel some empathy towards them, say experts such as Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Others, such as Subbarao Kambhampati, professor of Arizona State University, warned: it is not known if those “chains of thought” that these models show when reasoning really reflect how the information processs the models. Nothing happens if they wander. This expert also points out that this reasoning chain seems to be too precise, without wandering or erratic moments. Companies that develop these models are noticed that the answer is correct that in the fact that the reasoning process is consistent. For Kambhampati, this anthromorphization “of reasoning should be dispensed with, which is not especially useful. Chatbots with personality. This curious characteristic of reasoning models seems to show that the tone with which chatbots answers clearly influences our way of perceiving them. When Elon Musk and Xai launched their first version of Grok, it was clear that They were looking for a sarcastic tone That was less “robotic.” The problem is that chatbot was not especially precise in its answers, but that has improved in Grok 2which is now accessible to all users. The Virtual Avatars of Replika They try to analyze the tone and context of users to answer them in a close way. Chatbots of the future may precisely try to take advantage of all these tools and techniques so that empathy towards machines grow, and Deepseek R1/O1 are a first interesting step in that direction. Image | Beata_73601 With Midjourney In Xataka | The EU regulatory obsession raises a world in which AI will have two speeds. And Europe will lose

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