story

An economic science fiction text has sunk Visa and Mastercard in the stock market. The reason is more disturbing than the story itself

by

Citrini Research, a hedge fund American published this week a text written as if it were a macroeconomic memorandum from June 2028. It is not a prediction, its authors warn. It is a speculative exercise. A feasible scenario. It has achieved 24 million impressions, and counting. It is not an anecdotal tweet. The markets they have responded by sinking. Visa has fallen 4.4%. Mastercard, 6.3%. American Express, almost 8%. And Capital One, 8%. This deserves an explanation. And it’s not what it seems. Between the lines. The market reaction is not explained by the specific content of the Citrini Research report, which includes arguments as debatable as that AI agents will abandon cards to pay with stablecoins in Solana. Antonio Ortiz, technology analysts, has pointed it out precisely: part of the argument “it is from the first of Twitter AI-hype“. The idea that an agent will compare twenty food delivery apps vibecodeadas to find the cheapest one smells like a caricature of the future. But the panic is not irrational. It is precisely the panic of not knowing where the limit is. Why is it importantand. What has moved the market has not been so much the thesis about payments but the thesis about the destruction of value. And that is solid: many billions of dollars of market capitalization have been built on a single foundation: that humans are slow, impatient, forgetful and loyal out of inertia. That we do not compare prices. That we renew subscriptions that we do not use. And that we pay commissions that we do not negotiate. An AI agent has none of those weaknesses. And that changes everything. The backdrop. Citrini’s report comes at a time when the so-called “saaspocalypse“is no longer a metaphor. WSJ states that investors are terrified by the possibility that AI ends up doing the work that large software companies bill for today. ServiceNow, Salesforce, business management platforms… all built on the premise that companies need software for their employees to do their jobs. But… what happens when employees disappear? What if the software itself can be replicated in weeks with agentic coding tools? Citrini’s fiction begins exactly there, in early 2026, when a competent developer can reproduce the core functionality of a mid-market SaaS in a few weeks, and constructs a scenario of systemic collapse. The big question. The report’s most disturbing argument is that in every previous technological cycle, job destruction created new jobs that only humans could do. This time, AI is already occupying those new positions as well. If that’s true—if AI improves faster than workers can reorient themselves—the self-correcting mechanism that has always kept creative destruction from turning into outright destruction wouldn’t work. That is the scenario that the markets have discounted this week, even if only partially and speculatively thanks to a creepypasta financial. Yes, but. The scenario requires assuming a speed of adoption that is not guaranteed, a completely absent political response and a total absence of new economic sectors. None of the three conditions are set in stone. Furthermore, as Antonio points out, there is some collective hysteria in the reaction: each announcement or “scary story catches attention and moves investors.” Markets are trading in panic over the unknown. But there’s an important difference between saying “this scenario won’t happen” and saying “this scenario is impossible.” And that difference is exactly what has the market nervous. The alarm signal. The most striking thing this week is that a speculative text, written in economic science fiction format, has been enough to move billions in market capitalization. That says a lot about the state of certainty in the markets regarding AI: it is practically non-existent. Nobody really knows how much a company whose moat It is human friction in a world where that friction is disappearing. The canary is still alive. But investors have stopped trusting the canary. In Xataka | AI promised to revolutionize all sectors. It has only revolutionized programming while the rest is still waiting Featured image | Avery Evans

After a month of trying it the story is not so simple

by

When someone considers buying the Plaud Note Pro An inevitable question arises almost immediately: why isn’t it just an application? The doubt is not capricious. In recent years we have seen how the concept of “AI device” has surrounded itself with very high expectations and discreet results, with examples such as Humane AI Pin or the Rabbit R1 that did not convince. In this context, any new gadget powered by artificial intelligence has to justify its existence very well. The Plaud Note Pro aspires to do this from a clear focus: it does not want to replace the mobile phone, but rather to solve a specific need, that of recording, transcribing and structuring conversations. On paper its proposal is simple, but when we talk about spending almost 200 euros it is advisable to go beyond the technical sheet. That’s why our partner Ana Boria He has used it for a full month, with real meetings and everyday scenarios, to see if specialization is enough of an argument. The real test starts when you press the record button In the new video from Xataka’s YouTube channelAna shares her experience from the first contact. “It’s much smaller than I thought; “I had not seen it in person and it is very small,” he comments as soon as he takes it out of the box. That compact size is not a minor detail, because it is part of its approach: to always be at hand. Hence, one of the first aspects that stands out is its compatibility with MagSafe to attach it to the iPhone. “If you don’t have MagSafe, it comes with an adapter so you can always carry it attached to your phone,” he explains in those first impressions. The real test comes when you start recording. First, in an impromptu meeting. “I thought he was going to make mistakes and, although there is a little thing wrong with the names, he has captured the concept perfectly,” he says after reviewing the transcript. Then you subject it to a more demanding environment, with noise and several interlocutors speaking at the same time. It is in these types of situations where a recorder with AI demonstrates whether it really adds value compared to a simple app. The video also goes into issues that go beyond precision. The Plaud Note Pro promises to detect and transcribe meetings in 112 languagesbut what is relevant is how it behaves in Spanish and what happens with unusual terms or proper nouns. Added to this is the privacy section, a logical concern when it comes to personal or professional conversations. On that point, Ana points out: “It complies with a lot of measures and legislation to protect that information.” There is also a key element that determines the experience: the minute system. “I got a notice that I have a few minutes of recording left,” explains Ana, introducing one of the practical limits of the device. “The Plaud Note Pro costs 189 euros and includes an initial free plan of 300 minutes per month (about 5 hours). If you record many classes or meetings, they run out quickly,” he details. From there, the video analyzes the different plans available and which may be the most reasonable depending on the usage profile. In the end, the conclusion turns on its own nature. “Its greatest strength is simplicity and specialization“, he summarizes in the final section of the video, just before making some comments about the actual battery life. If you want to know all the nuances, strengths and limitations that he has encountered after a month of real use, You have the complete analysis on the Xataka YouTube channel. In Xataka | The Humane AI Pin debacle is a problem for the industry: who will trust an AI clunker again now

AI saves us time but takes away the story

by

A few days ago I surprised myself doing something that five years ago would have seemed sacrilege. I had in front of me one of those reports that you save to read on Sunday morning. 5,000 words, a prestigious signature and a great design. A text of those who ask for calm. And when I didn’t even have two sentences, I instinctively looked for the ‘summary’ button that now crown my browser. Nine lines. That was the whole summary. It was not for lack of interest, it was rather for that modern urgency that whispers to us that spending twenty minutes on a single idea is an inefficient thing. After a quarter of an hour I remembered almost nothing of those nine lines. I had the information, but I didn’t have the knowledge. We are turning reading into an administrative procedure. What started as a survival tool to deal with the deluge of work emails or some long-winded Reddit threads has colonized our capacity for wonder. In 2026, AI not only helps us write, it also is teaching us not to read. Or even worse: it is convincing us that the path is a hindrance to reaching the destination. It is the definitive victory of the TLDR about curiosity. The problem with outsourcing digestion is that we start from a false premise: that the substance of things is the only thing that matters. But in culture, information or in a simple conversation, substance is sometimes the least important thing. Ask an AI to summarize Don Quixote for you and it will tell you that it’s like a man from La Mancha who has read too much and confuses windmills with giants. You have the information, but you have not heard the conversations with Sancho on the roads. You have not felt the bitterness on the beach in Barcelona nor the lucidity of someone who regains their sanity to realize that the world, without its madness, is a gray place. Technology, in its efforts to eliminate friction (paradoxically, being the one who has blocked our notifications) is taking away the fabric of our experience. Silences and nuances are what fixes memory. The horny thing is What are we using that time for that we supposedly save by not reading?r. It is not to think deeply or to walk around without a cell phone and hit the coconut, but to consume even more summaries. It’s a loop infinity (pun intended) empty efficiency. We optimize the consumption of information to be able to ingest more information, which in turn we summarize in the next scroll. Thus we become archivists of a life that we did not get to witness. We save, synthesize and archive, but we do not inhabit anything. We are reaching a phase in which the true status, the intellectual luxury of our era, is not to be very smart or to be up to date with everything thanks to our AI agent, but in be able to sustain attention. Prestige belongs to those who can afford the extravagance of reading a text from beginning to end, of listening to a podcast without skipping the silences or set it to 1.75x. Or finishing watching a movie without having used your cell phone for two hours. Efficiency is a great metric for an assembly line or an AWS server, but If we let it guide the leisure of a human life, we are making ourselves a little miserable. We start by optimizing each minute to end up leaving everything in a list of three key points. Or in a nine-line summary. But life cannot be summarized. In Xataka | There is a generation working for free as a documentarian of their own life: they are not influencers but they act as if they were Featured image | Xataka

In 1995 ‘Toy Story’ forever changed the way animated films are made. He did it with rudimentary computers

by

Seen today, ‘Toy Story’ It remains as fresh, fun and surprising as it was in its day. That the later films of Pixar have drawn, to a greater or lesser extent, from its aesthetics, its plot structure and its characters, demonstrates the extent to which the company’s first film was influential and foundational in many ways. And that is taking into account that, technologically, its creative process has lost all traces of sophistication, and today it is a relic of the past like the first attempts at other techniques such as the rotoscope or the stop motion. As an example, this video that dates back to the time of filming but which had not been seen much until recently, and in which Pete Docter, the film’s animation supervisor, describes the rudimentary techniques with which the characters in the film were brought to life, based on the recording of the original voice. Their explanations and images attest to the way almost intuitive that they had to animate, and how perhaps the image that many people have of computer animation as something completely automated and where there is no human participation is absolutely wrong. We must add to this that Docter, in addition to being an animator in ‘Toy Story’, would write the basic story of almost all Pixar moviesthe script for ‘Delverso’ and ‘Up’ and he would direct those same ones and ‘Monstruos SA’. That is to say, apart from knowledge about the creative procedure in the technical part, he is also a key name in the most primitive section of the genesis of the film, where the ideas, the design of the characters and the very threads of the story emerge. In the video he explains how, based on sound, they sketch a series of movements on paper, a procedure that obviously has much more to do with traditional animation than with nothing programmatic. From there they go to a stand-in of Woody, that is, a character “made only with geometric shapes”, to save time on technical issues. In those days it was unthinkable to animate in real time with finished characters. From there, and with extreme precision, it moves the elbow, wrist, fingers… and finally, separately, all the facial animations. The interesting thing is what Docter adds later and that makes clear his interest not only in the technical section of this type of animation, but also in its creative and expressive twists and turns: “If you can make this model act, function and communicate without any type of facial expressions, then you have done a good job.” It’s a perfect example of why ‘Toy Story’ still works and exciting: because it does not remain a technical exhibition in which it was a pioneer, becoming the first computer-animated feature film, but there is a traditional creative work supporting it all. The rendering that gave life to the toys The key to Toy Story’s animation is RenderMan, Pixar’s proprietary 3D rendering software that it developed since the mid-1980s. In addition to using it in its own films, the company makes it available to third parties, as it did, with the software still in its infancy, in films such as ‘The Abyss’ in 1989 (in the scene of the water tentacle that gave the film an Oscar) or ‘Terminator 2’ in 1991 and its liquid metal effects. What RenderMan does It is managing issues such as lighting and volumes realistically, even on computers as primitive as those available in the early 1990s. The success of ‘Toy Story’ made the tool ubiquitous in productions that played a historic part in the birth of computer special effects in cinema. Even today, ‘Toy Story 4’ has been made with an updated version of RenderMan which, of course, manages aspects such as light and shadow projections in an infinitely more realistic way than in the first film. The importance of RenderMan is essential to understand even the origin of the company, because Pixar was born as a division of Lucasfilm that ended up becoming a software company that made short films to advertise the power of its products. After winning an Oscar with the short ‘Tin Toy‘ -shot with the Menv software, also from Pixar-, the decision made by the co-founder of the company Ed Catmull – the original core along with John Lasseter and the screenwriters Andrew Stanton and the aforementioned Docter -, who always had the ambition to make the leap to the feature film, was to make a half-hour Christmas special. In it, a ventriloquist doll made an unlikely couple with the metal ‘Tin Toy’ doll. ‘Tin Toy’ was not short on ambition (things appeared in it that had literally never been seen on that scale, such as textures of different materials such as wood or fabric, or shadows of different intensity), and part of that ambition would be transferred to ‘Toy Story’. For example, Catmull – like the rest of the animators – would provide a character to the dolls that appear hidden under the sofa. It was an elephant, which he designed by introducing Bézier curves by hand, as coordinates, into the programming language. The primitive concept of the metal dummies and the ventriloquist did not prosper, but Pixar ended up with a contract with Disney for 26 million dollars to make three feature films. They decided to extend the story of the toys that come to life from the short, and once again we can see Pixar’s desire for technology and ingenious concepts to come together in the same way: since visually they could not afford sophisticated and realistic animations with the software they used, they would animate toys, which would intuitively have robotic and rigid gestures and behaviors if they came to life. The ventriloquist dummy became Woody because the CEO of Disney at the time, Michael Eisner, had a bad feeling for puppets. Small calculation errors The first problem that Pixar encountered after starting production in 1993 was the equipment they believed was necessary to complete … Read more

the endless story of Algarrobico

by

There will come a day when they knock down the ugliest building, in the broadest sense of the word, ever perpetrated on the coast of Spain. In the Algarrobico beachin Carboneras, in the heart of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, has been standing for more than twenty years a mass of concrete that never opened its doors and ended up becoming the most recognizable symbol of the Spanish urban disaster. The impossible monument. The hotel with twenty floors and more than four hundred rooms was born in the years of the real estate boomwhen the construction fever seemed to recognize no legal or environmental limits, and ended up literally wedged on the sand of one of the most valuable virgin beaches in the Mediterranean. Today, rusted, cracked and abandoned, it is still there as a physical and moral anomaly: a building declared illegal by the courts, rejected by society and yet extraordinarily resistant to disappearing. An irreconcilable aberration. The contrast alone explains the scandal. Cabo de Gata-Níjar is one of the most unique natural spaces on the Iberian Peninsula: Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO, Ramsar spaceNatura 2000 Network and recurring candidate for national park due to the exceptional nature of its volcanic landscapes, its terrestrial and marine biodiversity and its Posidonia meadows, among the best preserved in the Mediterranean. In this setting of coves, dunes, cliffs and protected fauna, the Algarrobico bursts in like a foreign bodyvisible from kilometers away, causing disbelief in visitors and shame of others among those who know the story. What should have been a natural paradise ended up hosting one of the biggest environmental attacks on the Spanish coast. Licenses, false plans and nonsense. The origin of the problem dates back to the late nineties and early two thousand, when the promoter Azata del Sol got a license of works by the Carboneras City Council with the initial endorsement of the Junta de Andalucía. That authorization was based on an irregular modification of the Natural Resources Management Plan of Cabo de Gata, in which a plan was replaced without following the legal procedure or being published in the BOJA, de facto reclassifying it as developable. a protected soil. Years later, the Prosecutor’s Office would point out that, if there had been technical errors, the only legal route would have been a formal modification approved by the Andalusian Government Council. That administrative shortcut opened the door to a construction that should never have started. A judicial labyrinth. Since in 2006 a court ordered stop the works When the hotel was almost finished, the Algarrobico became a case endless judicial. More than a dozen rulings of the Supreme Court, resolutions of the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia and repeated pronouncements have concluded that the hotel was built on protected land and must be demolished. However, each failure opened a new blocking path. The Supreme Court went so far as to point out that before demolishing it was necessary to formally cancel the municipal license, an obligation that the Carboneras City Council has failed to comply with for years despite judicial requirements. The result has been a dead end in which no one seemed to have the definitive key. Responsibilities. in this mess they have lived together for years the municipal inaction, the changing positions of the Junta de Andalucía and the repeated announcements of the central Government. Signed protocols, public commitments and political promises followed one another without the mass disappearing. Meanwhile, organizations like GreenpeaceEcologistas en Acción and WWF kept alive social and legal pressureeven taking the case to European bodies and denouncing that El Algarrobico was not an isolated anomaly, but rather the emblem of a model that left similar scars on many other Spanish coasts. The route of expropriation. The most relevant change came when the Government decided to activate the path of expropriation of the lands that invade the maritime-terrestrial public domain. In February 2025 it was declared public utility of those plots and the procedure to occupy them and proceed with the demolition began. The promoter Azata del Sol tried to stop the process with an appeal, but in August 2025 the Ministry for the Ecological Transition he rejected itclosing the administrative route and accelerating deadlines. The Administration maintains that there is no defenselessness, that the expropriation cause is clearly motivated and that the general interest of restoring a protected space justifies the action. With this decision, the Executive is getting closer to fulfilling its commitment to demolish at least the part of the hotel located in the first hundred meters of the coast. The never ending story. Although the rejection of the appeal brings the demolition closer, the procedure continues being complex. The determination of the fair price, the possibility of judicial appeals and the coexistence of two different avenues (state expropriation and the annulment of the municipal license, defended by the Board) keep the risk of new delays open. The Government can occupy the land for social interest, allocate an amount and continue, but the promoter still could come to the courts. At the same time, the Carboneras City Council, under pressure from the TSJA, has finally begun the review of the license, a process that, according to environmentalistscould run aground if there is no real political will. A symbol that transcends the building itself. Beyond deadlines and technicalities, El Algarrobico has become something more than an illegal hotel. It is the permanent reminder of a time when ethe implicit motto was “build it, something remains”, and how the lack of effective controls allowed to violate the law even in natural spaces of maximum value. Its demolition is not only an aesthetic or environmental issue, but a gesture of reparation institutional and credibility of the rule of law. As long as the building remains standing, it will continue to project the idea that illegality can endure indefinitely. Twenty years later, the outcome seems closer than ever, although the history of Algarrobico invites caution. If it finally falls, it will … Read more

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

by

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

The crazy story of the Galician woman who registered El Sol before a notary, sold plots online and then took eBay to court

by

To the French monarch Louis XIV he was known as the sun kingthus, with a capital letter and all its absolutist pomp. Strictly speaking, that title, however, belongs to another person, and it is not even the priest king. Cuahtemocgreat governor of the Aztecs, nor the Egyptian emperor Amenhotep III. If there is a lady and sovereign of the Star King—or at least that is what she maintains—that is Angeles Durana Galician who one fine day in 2010 decided to do something that no one else had done in thousands of years of human history: she left her house in Salvaterra do Miño, in the Vigo region, and stood in the office of a notary to draw up an official record that she, and no one else but her, declared herself the legitimate and authentic owner of the sun. When the good notary heard her, he couldn’t help but laugh, but he had no choice but to consult with his professional association and, in fact, sign a record of what that lady said. Since then, the story of Ángeles Durán has taken on delirious overtones, worthy of a good astro-legal thriller.I solicited. I, owner of the Sun This is how Ángeles Durán has proclaimed herself, a Galician who in 2010 surprised the world by proclaiming herself the owner of the Sun. And no, we are not speaking figuratively. The news advanced it in its day The Voice of Galiciawhich recounted how Durán went to a notary in a neighboring town, in the Vigo region, to draw up a record that she was the legitimate owner of the axis of the Solar System. If that became news—and it did, so much so in fact that it jumped to foreign media— it was not so much because of the occurrence itself as because of the result. Durán left the office with a document that he later did not hesitate to use. pose for the cameras. “I am the owner of the Sun, a star of spectral type G2, which is located in the center of the solar system, located at an average distance from the Earth of approximately 149,600,000 kilometers…”, proclaims the minutes of statements with the notary’s seal. The Galician newspaper explains that the official made him laugh upon hearing Durán’s claims, but he still consulted with his school and ended up attesting that the woman in front of him declared herself the legitimate possessor of the Sun. Since then many things have been said about Durán: that he is lawyer and psychologistwho at that time served as judicial expert and even, as published The Voice in 2022, who lives in Italy and is focused on preparing a book about the British royal family. One of the latest news that is known about her is that she is dedicated to composing “spicy and erotic songs” and who has released an album. What there is no doubt is that Durán dedicated time and effort to planning her strategy to proclaim herself the owner of the Sun. Whether more or less correct, the undeniable thing is that her request was based on a legal argument that she raised at the time and still maintained in 2019. before the cameras of Cuatro. Going back to Roman law The Galician law basically rested on two legs: a legal vacuum and a legal figure that dates back to Roman law. The first is related to the international agreement that establishes that no country can appropriate the planets. The key for Durán is in that nuance: that it affects the states would not imply, he maintains, that it extends to individuals. The second key is the usucapionwhich allows you to gain real rights to those elements that have been enjoyed for a certain time. And Durán had decades benefiting daily from the Sun’s rays. Like the other almost 8,000 million people who reside on this wide planet, true, but no one else had thought to raise it like this in a notary office. The law is made, the trap is made. At least that’s what Durán thought. “I have not bought the Sun because no one has sold it to me. What I have done is a deed for what is called usucapion,” I insisted in 2019 during an interview in which he assured that this figure can be used “by electromagnetic apprehension.” The truth is that Durán has not been the first to do something similar. Decades ago an American businessman, Dennis Hopeclaimed that he had found a legal loophole that allowed him to claim sovereignty of the Moon. His argument was very similar to that of the Galician: Hope was based on an old law from the 19th century, of the American pioneers, and that the Outer Space Treaty It does not affect individuals. The most curious thing is that the Sun is not the only property that Durán has claimed, although it is certainly the one that takes the cake in size, implications and impact. The Galician has made other equally curious visits to the General Registry of Intellectual Property. The World and The Country They have echoed how he came to record Tarzan’s cry or “the longest score in the world”, 24,000 million measures and related to telephony. “Every time you dial a number, notes are ringing and no one has recorded them,” explained in 2010: “If you mark 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, you are making a few measures and all the possible combinations, all of them, I have registered in my name.” A little plot in the sun… Durán was not satisfied with proclaiming herself the owner of the Astro Rey. He decided to go one step further, cutting up the vast expanse of the star and selling plots on eBay. On the first day he managed to market nearly a hundred stellar plots. According to explained in his day10,000 solar portions were offered, each accompanied by its respective certificate. For one euro, anyone could get a piece of star. … Read more

The official story says that Hitler committed suicide in his bunker. Conspiracy theory says he escaped through Galicia

by

There is nothing simpler, more fruitful and irreversible than lighting the fuse of conspiracy theories. This is demonstrated wonderfully by the fact that perhaps, and with the permission of the Neil Armstrong moon walkbe the mother of them all: the death of Adolf Hitler. Although there are recent research which show that the Fuehrer He passed away in 1945 with the help of a sip of cyanide and a bullet. Throughout the last three quarters of a century, stories have circulated, each one more outlandish than the other, placing him after May 1945 as—watch the list—a hermit in a remote italian cave, pastor in the Swiss Alps, croupier in a french casino, family man in Argentina or wandering around Ireland or Colombia. One of these theories, however, is much closer to us. And it aims for an escape worthy of Hollywood with a stop in Galicia. A well studied death. In 2018 the coroner Philippe Charlier published in European Journal of Internal Medicine a study which aroused almost as much interest among historians and conspiracy theorists as among his own pathological colleagues. The reason: corroborated that Adolf Hitler died in 1945. The conclusion is valuable because between March and July 2017 Charlier and his colleagues achieved a milestone: the Russian secret services allowed them to analyze the supposed remains of the Fuehrer which are preserved in Moscow for independent examination. Their study concludes, first, that the teeth are real because they could be identified thanks to complicated dental history of Hitler. Second, the remains show blue stains that indicate that their owner may have ingested cyanide to end his life. The researchers did not find traces of gunpowder, but they did analyze a skull fragment attributed to the Fuehrer with a hole in the left side, probably made by a bullet. Both data confirm the most accepted version about the death of the Nazi leader: Hitler died on April 30, 1945 in his bunker with Eva Braun after consuming cyanide and shooting himself. End of the speculations, then? This is certainly true for Professor Charlier, who he even guaranteed to the AFP agency that he has no doubts about the authenticity of the teeth and that his study puts an end to any conspiracy theory. “Now we can stop them all. Hitler did not go to Argentina on a submarine, he is not hiding in a base in Antarctica or on the dark side of the Moon,” the coroner insisted: “Our study proves that he died in 1945.” Of course, not everyone shares his conviction. Over the decades, theories have circulated that the Nazi leader managed to escape the bunker and the Soviet siege and started a new life in places as remote as northern Italy, the Swiss Alps, eastern France and of course Argentina, perhaps the version that has achieved the most popularity among conspiracy theorists. Why’s that? Such conspiratorial fecundity is largely explained by the circumstances in which Hitler died and date back to 1945, practically the same day of his death. On May 1, 1945, Hamburg radio broadcast without going any further a version which is quite far from what is considered official today: the chain claimed that Hitler had fallen “fighting until his last breath” and with “the death of a hero.” Little to do with a suicide with cyanide and a gun. It didn’t take long for stories to spread about an alleged murder, a brain hemorrhage, euthanasia and of course a successful escape. The end of Fuehrer did not help extinguish those stories. As the BBC remindshistory tells us that Hitler’s body was burned and ended up in a ditch in the Chancellery garden opened by a bomb. Soviet counter-surveillance agents found his body there shortly after, on May 5. The state of Fuehrer It was such at that time that, to identify him clearly, they decided to use his jaw. During the process they had the help Käthe Heusermannwho had served as Hitler’s dentist’s assistant. The remains were moved from one point to another until in 1970 it was decided to cremate them and throw their ashes. Hitler on a walk through Galicia? At the root of the conspiracy theories surrounding the end of Hitler there is a lot of geostrategy and politics, such as explains to the BBC Luke Daly-Groves, a historian at the University of Leeds, who remembers that Stalin weakened his opponents every time he claimed that Hitler could have escaped to Spain or Argentina. “Their strategy was to associate the West with Nazism and make it appear that the British or Americans must be hiding it,” agrees Anthony Beevorauthor of ‘Berlin: the fall of 1945’. With that backdrop, one of the versions that is closest to us emerged: that the Fuehrer ended up in Galicia. What it tells us such a theory is that after simulating his suicide Hitler managed to escape from the bunker, get on board a plane in the templehof airport and fly to Barcelona, ​​from where he went to Galicia. Once in Vigo he managed to board a submarine and flee to Argentina, where he lived until 1960 and started a new life with Eva Braun. another version talks about how shortly after the episode of FührerbunkerIn May 1945, a German plane arrived in Lugo with Hitler on board. There are those who even goes further and places it in the monastery of Samos. Worthy of Hollywood… and History Channel. True, the story may seem like something out of a book Dan Brown or the script of a Hollywood thriller with uchronic overtones, but Vigo’s theory has more preaching than it may seem a priori. Good proof is that a few years ago he starred in a History Channel documentary that was based, in turn, on 700 documents declassified by the FBI shortly before. There are variants about the supposed stay of the Fuehrer in Galician lands, but it is usually pointed out that he ended up getting on a submarine with which he … Read more

the story of how AMD was born by shamelessly copying Intel

by

Today AMD is an absolute giant in the semiconductor segment, and its chips are among the most advanced in the world. Their history of innovation is undeniable, but the company’s origins began in a unique way: they ruthlessly copied an Intel chip. Leave me that microscope. In the summer of 1973 Ashawna Hailey, Kim Kailey and Jay Kumar left their jobs at Xerox. But before doing so they wanted to say goodbye in style, and on their last day of work they took an Intel 8080they stripped him and then they used a microscope to take 400 photos of the die of that microprocessor. Reverse engineering. These images allowed the design and architecture of that revolutionary processor to be “deciphered” by reverse engineering, and thanks to them, these three engineers were able to sketch the schematics and logical diagrams that they then offered to Silicon Valley companies to see if any were interested. The origin: Am9080. AMD was the one that ended up taking advantage of that information. The company had just developed a process called “N-channel MOS” for chip manufacturing. The company was taking its first steps at that time, and had hardly any achievements to its credit. What AMD did was combine this advance in its manufacturing technologies with those schemes and launched its Am9080, which some sources suggest began to be sold in 1974 but which in reality did not begin mass production and sale until 1975, 50 years ago. They cloned it and improved it. In an interview with Shawn and Kim Hailey conducted in 1997, these engineers explained how that AMD chip was a resounding success because it managed to be 10 times more efficient in production than Intel: the company managed to obtain 100 dies per wafer, but the chip was also four times more powerful than the original 8080. They made them for 50 cents, they sold them for 700 dollars. That success allowed AMD to begin mass production of a chip that suddenly suffered notable demand, especially in the military and defense industry. In fact, it is estimated that the manufacturing cost of each Am9080 was 50 cents, when the selling price of each one was 700 dollars according to said engineers. The profit margin was absolutely extraordinary. Intel ended up making a deal. That managed to turn AMD into a reference company in the market, and that gave it an advantageous position. One with which he avoided endless legal disputes and which allowed him to sign a cross-licensing agreement with Intel. That made AMD a “second source” for manufacturing its processors. Why did Intel allow something like this? It wasn’t for the love of art. At that time, obtaining lucrative contracts with defense agencies required precisely having a “second source” that could manufacture chips if the original supplier had a problem. Here peace and then glory. That led AMD and Intel to sign an agreement in which AMD paid Intel $25,000 to sign and $75,000 a year for licenses — ridiculous amounts — and that also freed both parties from liability for potential past violations. Everything was forgotten. And finally, x86. That initial agreement was important in achieving the true agreement that sealed AMD’s future. In 1982 Intel allowed AMD to manufacture its own x86 chips. This meant that the firm could begin producing its own versions of chips that used that architecture, the first of which crystallized with the Am286 in 1982, a chip that was a licensed version of the Intel 80286. The rest, as they say, is history. That agreement managed to turn AMD into the great alternative to Intel. Although for years it remained in the shadow of its great competitor, AMD managed to expand its business to the graphics card segment and in recent years this has served to raise it well above Intel in market capitalization: today AMD is the 25th company in the world with a capitalization of 410,000 million dollars. Intel, meanwhile, is going through a notable crisis and is currently the 96th company in the world by capitalization: 182 billion dollars. And it all started (practically) with some microscope photos. In Xataka | The engineer who does not need spotlights: Lisa Su took an AMD on the verge of bankruptcy and ten years later she has made it an empire

The story of such an unusable approach that years passed by being the laughing of chemistry

by

Being a student, Susumu Kitagawa read a book that spoke of an old Chinese philosopher, Zhuangzi, who defended that we must question everything we believe useless. Even if you do not contribute an immediate benefit (or we cannot see it), that does not mean that it is not valuable. Kitagawa was able to devote himself to that idea in any field of human activity. But, as the book was from the Japanese physicist (and Nobel) Hideki Yudaka, he decided to devote himself to basic science. The most useless among the useless. What is the point of working on something like that? In 92, when he presented his first molecular construction, the truth is that his work honored that uselessness: “A two -dimensional material with cavities where acetone molecules could be hidden.” The curious thing, however, is that “he used copper ions united together by larger molecules” such as pieces of a puzzle. The curious thing for us now, of course. In the first half of the 90s, no one made the slightest case. Kitagawa I wanted to continue working With this type of materials, but the answer (again and again) was always the same: No. in the following years, each and every one of the aid he asked for were denied. He, of course, did not give up. Not even when in 97 he created a stable material (capable of absorbing and releasing methane, nitrogen and oxygen without changing shape) luck smiled at him: nobody saw his appeal. Not that they were wrong, but there were already better things. What sense did it have to continue working on something like that? The desire not to need ‘luck’ The answer to that I had Omar Yaghi. In that same year 1992, Yaghi achieved his great research project under the premise that “the traditional way to build new molecules was too unpredictable.” Until that time, chemicals were dedicated to putting things in a bowl, heat them and see what happened. Yaghi aspired to find more controlled ways of creating materials. Jordano’s team began to obtain good results when he began combining metal ions with organic molecules. They had found, so to speak, their Lego pieces: the elements that kept together and stable the most diverse molecules. Are you familiar? It was just the same approach that, independently, had launched Kitagawa. And yes, indeed, nobody thought it was something very useful. At least, it did not generate very useful things. Back to the origins Then, both Kitagawa and Yaghi were traced background for this new way of chemistry. There they met A speculative article Published in 89 by the journal of the American Chemical Society. The author, Richard Robson, worked in Australia and had been spinning all this since 1974. In those years, Robson He was in charge of converting wood balls into “atomic models” with which students could create molecular structures and familiarize themselves with the world of chemistry. To do this, he asked the university workshop to pierce holes in the balls. In this way, thanks to wooden rods (chemical bonds) atoms could be built. Immediately, Robson realized that the holes could not be placed at random. Each atom, forms chemical links in a specific way and, if I wanted to do the realistic model, needed to mark where the holes should be drilled. That is what gave him the track: in the position of the links there was an incredible amount of information. Moreover, those links hid the key to building new molecular structures easily and easily. Three ways to reach the same way of building the world Johan Jarnestad/Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Metalorganic structures (which are called this type of structures) They serve almost everything: Capture carbon dioxide, separate water PFAS, administer drugs to the body or manage extremely toxic gases. Some may catch the ethylene gas from the fruit (to mature more slowly); Others may encapsulate enzymes that break down the remains of antibiotics in the environment. That is, we talk about one of the most versatile technologies of today and, for years, they were something completely useless. What he said before: pure basic science. An uselessness so enormous that the world can change. Image | Boasap (modified) In Xataka | The “Curse of the Nobel” not only affects the authors: also the publishers who publish them suffer their effects

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.