world

The world keeps asking for more F-35 fighters, but China has turned off the tap to build them

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He F-35 Lightning IIthe fighter more expensive and complex never built, is going through a critical point in its history. In September 2025, a report of the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) revealed that all deliveries in 2024 arrived late, accumulating an average of 238 days late. Now, a leak has revealed that delays can multiply, and China plays a fundamental role. The problem of the largest military program. They remembered a few months ago on Insider that the 2024 delays had one main cause: the stagnation of the Technology Refresh 3 technology package (TR-3), an essential hardware and software update on which the block 4 modernizationalready with an extra cost of 6,000 million dollars and five years behind schedule. The paradox was that, despite maintenance failures, deficiencies in availability and costs that already exceed 2 trillion dollars Throughout its service life, the F-35 remains the cornerstone of American and allied air defense. More than 2,500 units remain in the Pentagon’s planning, while the current fleet is barely “operational” half of the time. More money. Lockheed Martin, its prime contractor, continues to receive incentives even for late deliveriesin a program that no longer only faces technical delays, but a much more structural threat: global dependence on its supply chain. A global network. The F-35 is, by definition, a multinational aircraft. Of the more than 1,200 devices manufactured to date, about 42% of its components are produced outside the United States, in an industrial network that involves more than twenty countries. The United Kingdom, the only Tier 1 partner, manufactures in Lancashire the rear fuselages of all the F-35s in the world, as well as their tails, ejection seats and part of the electronic warfare system code. Italy and the Netherlands assemble structures and optical systems, while Australia, Canada, Norway or Denmark provide fuselage sections, wings or specialized electronics. Germany, Japan and Israel also contribute critical parts: from fuel tanks to helmet-mounted visors. This ecosystem, which combines thousands of suppliers under a single oversight, has made the F-35 the largest industrial cooperation project of defense of the planet. The small print. But, despite the geographical dispersion, total control The United States preserves it: the Department of Defense and Lockheed Martin jealously guard it the source codemaintenance keys, stealth algorithms and the ALIS logistics system, without which no country can operate the aircraft independently. Each export includes clauses that maneuvers are prohibited joint with Russian or Chinese systems and allow Washington to supervise every flight, every review and every software update. You hunt like hotcakes. By 2025, Lockheed Martin has opted to reverse the narrative of delays with a figure that reflects both ambition and vulnerability: manufacturing 200 fighters in a single yearone for each working day. In its third quarter earnings call, CEO Jim Taiclet announced that 143 units had already been delivered, with an order book valued at 179 billion dollars, the largest in the company’s history. The boom responds to the global increase in defense spending, with European countries accelerating its rearmament and new buyers (such as Finland or Japan) incorporating the F-35 as the central axis of their fleets. The plane has become a tool deterrence and cohesion between allies, a symbol of interoperability under the umbrella of Washington. But industrial success hides a strategic fragility: the complex network of components of the F-35 depends, directly or indirectly, on materials that almost entirely come from Chinafrom rare earth magnets to elements for critical sensors, servomotors and actuators. Beijing’s silent weapon. Through a Wall Street Journal exclusive We have learned that, while Lockheed Martin celebrated its best year for deliveries, China moved its own parts with surgical precision. Beijing announced the creation of a system of “validated end users” (VEU) to regulate the export of magnets and rare earth metals: essential materials for both F-35 fighters and submarines, drones or electric vehicles. The plan, presented as a measure of trade opening after the tariff truce between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, in reality aims to exclude any company from the flow of exports. linked to the military complex United States. In other words, the companies that supply the F-35 (from engine manufacturers to aerospace subcontractors) will be blocked, while supplies to civilian industries are prioritized. Strategic deterrence. With this system, Beijing can formally fulfill its promise of liberalize tradewhile suffocating the critical chains of the North American defense sector. The VEU architecture, inspired by the United States’ own export control mechanisms, turns industrial policy into a deterrent instrument strategic. The bottleneck. Chinese control over rare earths (70% of the extraction and more than 90% of the world’s processing) places Washington before a structural dilemma: Your most advanced hunting depends on a monopolized resource by its main geopolitical rival. Although the White House seeks to diversify sources through agreements with countries such as Kazakhstan, Greenland or Ukraine, replacing Chinese capacity will take years. In recent months, Chinese magnet exports to the United States fell 29%which has already begun to affect engine and guidance system manufacturers. If Beijing strictly implements its new system, it would not only slow down F-35 production, but could temporarily interrupt the logistics chain for maintaining fleets already deployed. In that scenario, the program that symbolizes Western technological supremacy would be conditioned by dependence on a strategic enemy. The paradox of a fighter. The F-35 was born as an emblem of interoperability and technological masterybut its evolution shows that military superiority is no longer measured only in radars or missiles, but also in access to mineralschips and advanced materials. As the world’s most expensive plane is assembled from parts manufactured on three continents and with magnets processed in China, its story becomes a metaphor for the 21st century: a war of interdependencies where each fighter that takes off carries within it a dose of global vulnerability. Thus, while Lockheed Martin tries to maintain its record pace of production and the Pentagon reinforces its leadership narrative, the real battlefield is being fought in the mines, laboratories … Read more

It is also one of the largest art collections in the world

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We are used to finding Juan Roig’s fortune in the lists of richest people in Spain. However, it is not so common to find his wife, Hortensia Herrero, on this type of list, who, as a partner and vice president of the main Spanish supermarket chainalso treasures an important heritage, not so much in economic value (that too) but in its artistic value. Specifically, Herrero has been included in the list of 200 biggest collectors internationally according to the prestigious magazine ARTnews. The role of Juan Roig’s wife as a patron of art was not well known despite the fact that she has been investing in works of art of great artistic value for more than a decade. The magazine highlights her status as “a prominent Spanish patron and philanthropist, married to Juan Roig, known for her commitment to the conservation of Valencian cultural heritage.” The beginning of a great passion. Hortensia Herrero has been intensely dedicated to art collecting since 2013. As and how does it count Herrero herself, her interest in art arose after a visit to Dallas to the opening of the exhibition “Sorolla and America” ​​where she met its curator, Javier Molins. It was at that moment when he decided to dedicate time and resources to this hobby, which over the years became a true passion supervised by Molins, who has served as a mentor and expert consultant. Since then, his dedication has been constant, visiting exhibitions and searching for the best works for his collection, which has allowed him to build a high-level selection recognized internationally. Your own art gallery. Since 2023, the co-owner of Mercadona manages the Hortensia Herrero Art Center (CAHH) in Valencia, which is a national reference. The exhibition center is located in the historic Valeriola Palace in Valencia, currently offers 3,500 square meters dedicated to contemporary art and houses more than 100 works by nearly 50 recognized artists, both national and international. “Who was going to tell me that this love of painting, which began at the age of 14, would end up becoming a passion that has led to the construction of this art center, now offered for Valencians and visitors to enjoy,” said the patron. on the web from the center. The project involved an investment of more than 40 million euros and has had the objective of bringing contemporary art closer to Valencians and visitors, stimulating dialogue between historical heritage and modernity. This commitment has allowed him to share a position on the list of the largest collectors of ARTnews alongside world figures such as Bernard Arnault, François Pinault, Jeff Bezos or investors Larry Fink (BlackRock) and Kenneth Griffin. It’s not just “love of art.” Beyond artistic interest, art continues to be one of the most profitable investments for great fortunes. This is confirmed in the report “The Wealth Report” prepared by the consulting firm Knight Frank. During 2023, the price of works of art worldwide increased by 11%, while luxury items such as jewelry rose by 8% and watches by 5%. On the contrary, collector cars fell 6% in their valuation. In the long term, art has experienced a cumulative growth of 105% in the last decade. These data reveal not only the taste and passion of great collectors like Herrero, but also the financial strategy that art represents among the main international investors. In Xataka | Who are the biggest millionaires in Spain: the list of the ten richest people in the country Image | Wikimedia Commons (Jlafuentesanchez)

The two most important weather models in the world are discussing whether Santander is going to freeze next week. And the cold is winning

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Where has all the cold gone? So far this fall (with the sole exception of Siberia), temperatures have been relatively mild on all continents. And it seems that the situation is going to continue like this: it is true that the forecasts speak of a progressive decrease in temperatures in the southeast of Canada, the eastern United States and northern Europe; but no model paints a scenario that is particularly cold (except some very long term prediction). However, all eyes are on the polar vortex. If the models are right, it is very possible that the vortex will experience an unprecedented disturbance in November, leading to an interesting weather period starting in December. “There is no way this is fulfilled.” While November continues with its strange meteorology, the models draw increasingly strange scenarios. At this point in the week, we cannot rule out that on the 18th and 19th we have a more than considerable winter storm with the ‘beast from the east‘looming over Western Europe. In the next few hours we will have a war between models: The American marks a cold entry on Santander, the European said no. Little by little, the two seem to be converging towards a cold scene. It’s too early to say, but in a very few hours the daisy will be shedding its leaves. Anyway, the central issue is that all of this is minute sin. The breaking of the vortex. Except for that event in the middle of next week, autumn will continue to be very warm and mild on almost all continents. However, this could change if sudden stratospheric warming appears. That is, the vortex breaks. Sudden stratospheric warming? To understand it simply, we have to remember that the atmosphere is a kind of “lasagna of air layers” and each of them follows its own logic. That is, they work quite differently and independently. As far as it affects us: the circulation of air in the troposphere (the one closest to the surface) and the circulation in the stratosphere (the layer directly above) are related, yes; But, in general terms, they each do their own thing. During the “sudden stratospheric warming“, a part of the troposphere warms rapidly and, as a consequence, invades the stratosphere, causing a profound alteration of the circulation at high altitude. That is, for a few days, everything turns upside down. And what happens? The most common consequence of this is that the polar vortex weakens and may break down. The polar (arctic) vortex is a current of air that runs from west to east around the north pole and contains cold air at high latitudes. When this current is strong and stable, preventing it from flowing towards places like Spain. If the vortex It destabilizes and its winds lose strength (due to, for example, “sudden warming”), it is relatively common for cold air masses to escape on their way south. What if it doesn’t break? In reality, the vortex does not even need to break. It only needs to move from the Arctic region to lower latitudes. By moving a huge mass of cold air with it, the result is always very similar: an icy cold that can turn any country upside down (even the best prepared ones). And that seems to be what we are going to see. It’s hard to know if it will affect us or not, but there’s no doubt that the late fall weather is getting “interesting.” Image | Meteociel In Xataka | The last hope of winter in Spain is desperate, but increasingly possible: the breaking of the polar vortex

decide how and what the world learns

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In recent weeks we have seen Elon Musk rising as champion of the neutrality of knowledgealthough paradoxically he does so by offering his own vision of history through an AI that only he controls: Grokipedia. Just like they stood out in The SixthMusk’s has not been the only case of a millionaire who has wanted to impose his interests on the interpretation of culture or how it is accessed. For more than three centuries, millionaires have sought to influence in the way the world accesses knowledge, leaving traces that range from the Enlightenment to today’s digital world. Forms and formats change, from printed encyclopedias to artificial intelligence algorithms, but the intention to dominate the narrative persists. Chrétien-Guillaume de Malesherbes and the Encyclopédie In the 18th century, the European political and religious context was restrictive and censorious with respect to knowledge that questioned religious dogma. Chrétien-Guillaume de Malesherbeswas a wealthy and influential French official who, in his role as director of the Royal Librairie, took on the challenge to protect a work that challenged that order: the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert. This ambitious project not only compiled human knowledge, but did so from a scientific and rational vision, displacing religious dogma from the center of knowledge. The Encyclopédie became a symbol of the Enlightenment, an ideological statement that sought to liberate the human mind through reason and empiricismgenerating a profound cultural change against the dominant monarchical and ecclesiastical structures. Malesherbes faced censorship and prohibitions, but from his position of influence he defended evidence and science as bases for intellectual emancipation. Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert This approach not only transformed the way knowledge was understood in Europe, but also established a precedent: access to knowledge could be a tool for freedom and social criticism, very aligned (and even advanced) with the air of freedom that ran through France at the end of the 18th century. The Encyclopédie It was the first major initiative that reflected how knowledge could be a political and cultural weapon, shaped by those who had the influence to protect and disseminate it. Andrew Carnegie and public libraries In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Andrew Carnegie brought the democratization of knowledge to a more tangible and accessible concept: free public libraries. As and how do they count at the BBC, Carnegie was born into a working-class family in Scotland and emigrated to the United States where he amassed an immense fortune thanks to steel industry and demand for steel for railway construction. During his youth, Carnegie faced the reality that many private libraries charged fees that prevented access to the poorest, including himself, which motivated him to invest a good part of his fortune in establishing free libraries. Andrew Carnegie in 1878 However, beyond his apparent philanthropy, Carnegie complained that many workers were not sufficiently trained, so his investment sought to bring that knowledge to the greatest number of people to create an educated and capable workforce. Carnegie financed the construction and equipment of between 2,500 and 3,000 libraries leaving the communities responsible for its maintenance and operation, thus ensuring its sustainability. His vision was for the library to be an open-access community center so that everyone could educate themselves, so that foreigners could learn the language and acquire skills to boost industrial productivity. Bill Gates and Encarta: knowledge in the digital age With the computer boom in the early 90s, Bill Gates envisioned a new way to access knowledge: the multimedia encyclopedia. In 1993, Microsoft launched Encartaa CD-ROM encyclopedia that contained thousands of articles, audios, images and interactive maps accessible from a personal computer. This product represented a radical change with respect to printed books and physical libraries, bringing information closer to homes around the world through technology. But Encarta was not an altruistic work to bring knowledge to users, but rather it set a clear commercial strategy: you needed a PC with Windows to use it, which promoted the influence of Microsoft’s operating system on the consumer. Encarta was presented as an educational, useful and visually attractive tool for a diverse audience, reflecting the transition towards digital knowledge in the emerging Internet era. With this new product, Microsoft took a step back in the free access to knowledge for which Carnegie had fought: to learn with Encarta you had to pay a license between $395 and $22.95, depending on the year. Finally, Wikipedia came to break that economic barrier again by offering free and banishing Encarta. Rupert Murdoch and the media narrative While other models relied on encyclopedic or educational knowledge, Rupert Murdoch built a media empire focused on a more current concept: shaping public perception through ideological narratives. Murdoch, the son of an Australian publisher, expanded his influence by controlling newspapers and television networks such as The Times, The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. His project was neither neutral nor purely informative, but rather a business model based on making the business profitable. opinion and ideological bias. During the 1980s and 1990s, Murdoch built a media structure that made him tremendously rich. Instead of keeping informational neutralityshowed the news according to very defined ideological frameworks, with a focus on the interpretation of facts to influence public opinion. After all, it is another way of offering knowledge according to the point of view of whoever finances the medium. Elon Musk and Grokipedia In the 21st century, information flows in abundance through online channels, but even in this hyperconnected scenario, some millionaires continue to feel the need to show knowledge according to their own prism. As part of his personal offensive against Wikipedia, Elon Musk has launched Grokipedia through his company xAI, presenting it as an alternative “without ideological restrictions or cultural biases” to Wikipedia. Musk accused Wikipedia of having a “woke patina”, that is, a progressive cultural bias, and proposed Grokipedia as a project capable of offering “objective facts” generated by AI. However, Grokipedia has been criticized for reproducing specific political biases and by the lack of transparency in its sources … Read more

Archaeologists have been fascinated by the largest temple in the Mayan world for years. Now we know that it is a map of the cosmos

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Our knowledge about the first Mesoamericans they just widened. And in a big way. A team led by professors from the University of Arizona has published a study with new revelations about Aguada Phoenixa site located east of the state of Tabasco, Mexico, near the border with Guatemala. Said like that, it may not seem like a big deal, but Aguada Fénix is ​​not just any place. When it was discovered, about five years ago, showed up as “the largest and oldest Mayan monument ever discovered.” Now we know that he also had some surprises in store for us. What is Aguada Fénix? To answer that question we have to go back a few years, to 2017, when with the help of lidar technology A team led by two professors from the University of Arizona (UA), Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, identified an ancient monument that until then had gone unnoticed in the state of Tabasco, very close to Guatemala. The laser beams, capable of passing through tree canopies and revealing three-dimensional shapes, showed nothing more nor less than a monument of more than 1,400 meters long, about 400 wide and between 9 and 15 high. That’s right from the start, because if you go beyond the central platform the set occupies much more spacewith roads and enormous pipelines connected to a nearby lagoon. Why is it important? Because of its reach. And historical relevance. When the archaeologists began to excavate and resorted to radiocarbon dating, they had another surprise: the complex had been built between the years 1000 and 800 BC, which was older than the archaeological site of Ceibalin Guatemala, considered the oldest ceremonial center. Aguada Fénix therefore left a double surprise for the researchers, as confirmed in 2020when announcing the discovery, the University of Arizona itself: not only was previous Ceibal, but stood out in size. In fact, it became the “largest known monument in Mayan history”, far surpassing the pyramids and palaces built during subsequent centuries. And why is it news now? Because researchers have not been content with presenting Aguada Fénix to the world. Over the last few years They have continued investigatingexpanding our knowledge of a complex that actually extends far beyond the central platform and the nine roads initially identified. Thanks to tools such as LIDAR, experts have found out that it extends kilometers further and detected an extensive hydraulic system with channels 35 meters wide and five meters deep with a dam. Have they discovered anything else? Yes. To begin with, Aguada Fénix probably served as a very special ceremonial center, a “cosmogram” that represented the order of the universe as its creators understood it. During the excavations they discovered a cross-shaped well in which they recovered ceremonial artifacts, pieces that offer us “unprecedented information about the first Mayan rituals.” To be more precise, they found jade axes and ornaments showing a crocodile, a bird and a woman giving birth. “It is like a model of the cosmos. They thought that it is ordered according to this cruciform pattern and that this is linked to the order of time,” adds Inomata. Ritual decorations? Not only that. When they reached the bottom of the pit, the researchers located another smaller cruciform structure with a new surprise. There they found mineral pigments, mounds of blue, green and yellow tones that mark cardinal points. “We knew that there are colors linked to directions, and that is important for all Mesoamerican peoples, even the Native American peoples of North America,” comments Inomata. “But we’ve never had pigments arranged this way. This is the first case where we found them associated with each specific direction. It was exciting.” And what were they doing there? Archaeologists believe that the different pigments and other materials were arranged as an offering and then covered with sand and earth. They also verified that radiocarbon dating dates them to around 900-845 BC. With all this data on the table, they do not rule out that people later returned to the monument to perform rituals and deposit objects. Another revealing fact is that the central axis of the Aguada Fénix monument seems to align with the sunrise on two very specific dates: October 17 and February 24, 130 days apart, which suggests to experts that it represented half of the Mesoamerican ritual cycle of 260 days. Inomata remembers that it would not be exceptional. The layout would agree with that of other Mayan sites. Why is it so relevant? Beyond the scope of the site itself, the new findings are relevant for what they tell us about the ancient inhabitants of the region. For a start, remember from the UAdebunks the old theory that Mesoamericans grew gradually and dedicated themselves to building increasingly larger settlements until they reached Tikal in Guatemala or Teotihuacán in central Mexico. Aguada Fénix is ​​long before the heyday of both enclaves, which does not mean that it is “as big or even bigger than them.” “What we are discovering is that there was a ‘big bang’ of construction at the beginning of 1,000 BC that no one really knew about,” reflects Inomata. With the discovery of the state of Tabasco it is confirmed that “from the beginning” there was large-scale planning and construction. Aguada Fénix is ​​so old in fact and anticipates so much of the Mayan apogee (around the 3rd-10th centuries AD) that experts are not sure whether its builders spoke Mayan languages. In any case they do admit “a strong cultural continuity” with later communities. How the hell did they build it? That is another of the most suggestive conclusions of the study that Inmoata and his colleagues have published in Science Advances. In it they slip a curious theory: although it is known that other enclaves, such as Tikal, in Guatemala, were governed by powerful monarchs, in the case of Aguada Fénix there are no indications that speak of powerful rulers with the ability to force their subjects to work. That does not mean … Read more

We already know which will be the most expensive data center in the world. If Bill Gates paid it, it would be almost zero

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Already in 2024 we saw that infrastructure spending for AI was being insane. The trend has not relaxed, quite the opposite. Big tech continues to burn money as if there was no tomorrow (literally) and most of that spending is going to most valuable asset in the AI ​​race: data centers. How much do they really cost? Data centers in numbers Epoch AI has published Frontier Data Centersa complete database about data centers being built in the United States. Through satellite images, public documents and permits, they have obtained information about the estimated construction cost, as well as energy consumption and computing power. The award for the most expensive data center goes to Microsoft Fairwater, whose total cost It could reach $106 billion when completed in 2028. To put it in context, Bill Gates’ fortune is estimated to be 107 billion dollars. It would be fair to pay it. The forecast for Microsoft Fairwater even surpasses Meta Hyperion, the data center that It will be as big as the island of Manhattan which would cost 72,000 million. Next on the list is Colossus 2, by xAIwhose estimated cost is 44 billion dollars. It is closely followed by Meta Prometheus with 43 billion and the Amazon and Anthropic data center in New Carlisle with 39 billion. Epoch AI has collected more data, such as how much computing power each facility will have. This data is measured using the NVIDIA H100 GPUs for reference. They have also calculated the energy demand and who will be the main user of each of them. Below we leave you a table with the key information: Estimate DATE ESTIMATED cost ($) computing (EN gpUS H100) energy demand intended primary user microsoft fairwater September 2027 106 billion 5.2 million 3328 MW OpenAI meta hyperion January 2028 72 billion 4.2 million 2262 MW Goal xai Colossus 2 February 2026 44 billion 1.4 million 1379 MW xAI meta prometheus October 2026 43 billion 1.2 million 1360MW Goal amazon new carlisle June 2026 39 billion 770,000 1229 MW Anthropic oracle stargate July 2026 32 billion 1 million 1180MW OpenAI microsoft fayetteville March 2026 29 billion 920,000 1065MW OpenAI/Microsoft amazon ridgeland September 2027 32 billion 630,000 1008MW Anthropic Dizzying climb Looking at the case of Microsoft Fairwater, and always according to Epoch AI’s forecast, in March 2026 the investment will be $18 billion. A year later, in February 2027, it rises to 35,000 million, just four months later it shoots up to 71,000 million, to reach 106 billion in 2028. The price increase is dizzying and responds to several factors. The first is that the computational cost of training models has been increasing. For example, GPT 4 cost OpenAI over 100 million and rumors before the release of GPT-5 pointed to training rounds of 500 million each. Epoch AI also did an analysis on this and they estimated that the cost of training has multiplied by 2.6 year after year. On the other hand, there is the demand for GPUs, necessary for training the models and the most expensive component of all. An NVIDIA H100 GPU costs 25,000 dollars and its successor, the NVIDIA B200 also known as Blackwell, could be between 30,000 and 40,000 dollars. And this is just the GPUs, many are needed more components to get a data center up and running, such as power generators, high-speed networks or refrigeration, among others. The initial bottleneck was the shortage of GPUs, but it has been overcome by a more fundamental constraint: there is not enough power for so many chips. data centers They consume a lot of energy, Seriously, a lot. To put it in context, in 2024, data centers were already the 4% of United States electricity consumption and it is expected that Demand will double in the next five years. Nobody wants to live near a data center for one reason: mass consumption is raising energy prices up to 267% in nearby areas. Power supply has become a new choke point for the industry. Microsoft is already considering producing its own energy by creating nuclear power plants and others like Google and Amazon are considering taking data centers into space. Image | Microsoft In Xataka | AI data centers are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’ solution: build them in space

The world has been wondering for years whether The Line is viable or a megalomaniac fantasy. The answer is becoming clearer

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You will like it more or less, but something cannot be denied to The Linethe ambitious ‘corridor city’ that Saudi Arabia wants to build in the middle of the desert: it does not leave anyone indifferent. After all, it is not every day that a 170 km long, 500 m high and 200 m wide metropolis made up of skyscrapers is built from scratch. Since the country’s crown prince presented the project, back in 2021the world has wondered if it is feasible or an extravagance doomed to failure. The question has continued to rage ever since, despite the start of works. Now it’s starting to become clear. What has happened? That The Line goes through turbulence. Although Saudi Arabia’s flagship megaproject has advanced on the ground, something that its promoters have made clear by sharing aerial imagesin recent days they have jumped several news that suggest that dark clouds appear on the horizon. Recently the Reuters agency informed that the priority now is to complete a first section of 2.4 kilometers, far from the 170 km that the project aspires to (its idea is to accommodate nine million people) or the structure that they wanted to have ready. looking forward to 2030. Meanwhile, other media talk about challenges or change of course. What exactly do we know? This is not the first news that suggest that Saudi Arabia was optimistic when considering the magnitude and schedule of The Line, but now they seem to confirm something important: the project (actually NEOM or the entire Vision 30 plan) is not immune to economic ups and downs and challenges in financing the works. This is how he revealed it a few days ago Reuters, which assures that Saudi Arabia plans to reorient its sovereign fund (PIF) of 925,000 million, a strategic financing lever, away from real estate megaprojects. While NEOM advocates large constructions, such as The Line, a futuristic ‘corridor city’ 170 km long, 500 m high and 200 m wide with the capacity to house nine million people, the new strategy would focus the PIF on investments with more sustainable returns in the short term. This involves logistics, tourism, AI or data centers. As remember The Timesthe Vision 2030 plan was based on a scenario in which a barrel of oil was trading at $100. Now it is around 60 and has not reached triple digits since 2022. What does that mean? “We spent too much. We acted at full speed. Now we have a deficit. We need to redefine our priorities,” he acknowledged. a few days ago a Saudi official at an investment forum held in Riyadh: Other sources speak directly of “course correction” and a scenario that requires being “more conservative” in investments. Even the country’s Minister of Economy, Faisal Alibrahim, has explained that they are “reorienting priorities towards the sectors that need it most.” “And today that sector is technology, AI.” Does that mean that mega structures are shelved? Jerry Inzerillo, an American executive who advises the crown prince, warns that he can’t go that far: “Don’t forget that nothing has been cancelled. It may just take a little longer. The ambition is still intact.” For now, at the end of 2024 the sovereign fund placed its investments in Saudi megaprojects in 56 billiona notable sum, but 12.4% below the previous year. Does it only affect The Line? No. The Line is not the only one that has seen its original plans complicated. The Times keep it up that the Trojena tourist hub may not be in time for the 2029 Asian Winter Games, as expected. The project would not actually be completed until 2032, which would have led South Korea to prepare to serve as headquarters in four years. There are other large developments in the country, such as the island of Sindalah or the district New Murabba of Riyadh, whose completion is expected in 2040, although without ruling out delays. Do you know anything else? Yes. Perhaps the most detailed ‘photo’ of where and what challenges the NEOM megacity faces I gave it on Thursday Financial Timeswhich published an extensive analysis with an illuminating headline: “The end of The Line: how the Saudi dream of NEOM fell apart.” The newspaper points out that, although the promoters insist that the city remains “a strategic priority” and it is possible to see the result of the works in the desert, the authorities have chosen to drastically reduce the first phase. Furthermore, among those who participate or have directly participated in the project there would be misgivings about its viability, as specified by FT. All this between calculations that place the final budget well above what was planned and figures that (at the very least) invite you to raise your eyebrow. For example, the staff interviewed by FT speaks of an enormous need for concrete (just the first 20 modules would need more cement than France produces in a year) and millions of tons of steel. This is without taking into account the logistical, transportation and time challenges or the services that The Line would require to provide for such basic issues as water, mail delivery or waste collection. Is it a surprise? Since the Saudi prince presented the project, years agoThe Line has aroused above all two emotions. Astonishment. And skepticism. The works have started and its promoters have shown that the project will not remain on paper, but another thing is its tempo and if it will reach the ambitious scale that was initially proposed. There are experts who have already warned that, if fulfilled, the vertical megacity will be a kind of hell for its residents. a few months ago transcended In fact, the authorities commissioned several consulting firms to carry out a strategic review of the project to confirm its viability or propose possible changes, a decision that the promoters rejected. Images | NEOM In Xataka | Years ago Alicante opted for an artificial island with a luxurious restaurant and taxi boat. It hasn’t … Read more

How the cerebral hemispheres shaped the Western world

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One day, around 1990, someone asked John Cutting to give a seminar at the Maudsley Hospital in London. cutting era a renowned psychiatristwith extensive clinical experience and who gave dozens of talks each year; but I didn’t really know what to talk about. So gathered some notes on the right hemisphere and its relationship with psychiatric disorders. The relevant thing, he said, It was not ‘what’ each hemisphere does, but ‘how’ each one sees the world. No one could imagine it, but for a young resident he had begun the task of his life. Although the story begins a little earlier When Roger Sperry arrived in Pasadena in 1954 was a little frustrated. He was 40 years old and had a wonderful future that was slipping through his fingers. In less than two years he had been a professor at the University of Chicago, head of Neurological Diseases and Blindness at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, and a key player in the marine science laboratory at the University of Miami. But between delays, budget cuts and power struggles, no one had offered him anything stable. It’s true that Caltech had offered him a position with potential, but how many times had the same thing happened and, in the end, it had come to nothing? Everything changed when he met WJ WJ was a patient at White Memorial Hospital. There, in the early 1960s, a CalTech student, Joseph Bogenhad begun to perform commissurotomies to treat especially complicated epilepsies. The curious thing about this intervention that surgically ‘separated’ the two hemispheres was not that it worked (and improved the clinical symptoms of patients with the disease) but that on a day-to-day basis, the cognitive and functional weaknesses of patients with split brain are not easily distinguishable of those of a normal person. The divided brain Maxim Berg The patients’ deficits only became evident under specialized neuropsychological testing, and investigating the reason for this was a long and complex task that cost Sperry the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine. A decade later, John Cutting was giving a talk on the psychiatric implications of all this. In the auditorium, Iain McGilchrist I was stunned. In ’75, this young British man had won the “lottery”: one of the scholarships at All Soul College in Oxford and, a little later, a teaching position in the Oxford Department of Literature; seven years later, McGilchrist left the academy disappointed with the “gritty” approach to literary criticism. And he started studying medicine. First the degree at Southampton and, later, the specialty in psychiatry at Maudsley in London. It was there, it was then, when’The master and his emissary” (that Captain Swing now publishes in Spanish) took shape. It only took 20 more years to carry it out.. A book about the brain… In that colossal essay, McGilchrist explains that the pop view of the cerebral hemispheres (the idea that one is in charge of one thing and another of another) is a reckless simplification. The hemispheres hide something else: two complete and coherent ways of experiencing the world. Two forms that, here is the key, are incompatible with each other. The right hemisphere (on the one hand) has a predilection for the open, the contextual, the embodied: it prioritizes the living, the implicit, irony, ambiguity and the relationships between things. The left hemisphere (for its own) cuts, abstracts and fixes: it is excellent for procedures, for mechanisms; to break down problems, explain them and control them. The interesting (and important) thing is that McGilchrist insists that, actually. Both hemispheres participate in almost everything: what changes is how they relate to reality. They are two people (two styles of attention) whose Conversation gives meaning to civilization as we know it. …but a book about many more things. Because throughout the 1000 pages of ‘The Master and His Emissary’, McGilchrist takes us to an amazing journey through two millennia of art, science and politics as if they were the story of that conversation. There are times in which both ways of thinking coexist in harmony (such as the Renaissance); while there are other periods in which one or another of the styles prevails over the rest. It is a voracious, wild book. A book that wants to capture everything, that wants to account for everything, that wants to capture the ‘zeitgeist’ of each of the eras of humanity. Today, according to the British psychiatrist, we live an era dominated by the left hemisphere. Can a brain theory explain today’s world? The bet is risky, ambitious and very controversial. Since the first version of the book was published in 2009, criticism they haven’t stopped coming. From unwarranted extrapolations of available neuropsychological evidence to some cherry-picking in art, philosophy and politics to make the narrative fit perfectly. However, I think that all these criticisms (despite being accurate), miss the mark. The strength of ‘The Master and His Emissary’ is not in the evidence that supports it, it is in the power of its metaphors. And a metaphor is, we know well, little more than a flashlight. Something that, no matter how many shadow areas it leaves, we still need to see in the dark. And, in this case, its metaphor is more necessary than ever. It’s just what we need to understand something that, as a good literary expert, McGilchrist also knows. That we may be encased in a nutshell and consider ourselves kings of infinite space. Who was going to tell us that when Hamlet said this he was talking about our own brain? Image | notorious v1ruS In Xataka | When Darwin’s children fell victim to their father’s own laws of natural selection

The Japanese Shinkansen was the fastest train in the world until China defeated it. The reason: the “piston effect”

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In a very summary way, the piston in a four stroke engine It is responsible for moving the air inside to compress it and facilitate the burning or explosion of the fuel or to push it out of the combustion chamber. That is, it is dedicated to pushing the air up or down. Now imagine a train arriving in a tunnel at more than 300 km/h. Suddenly, the train goes from being outside to moving the air inside the tunnel. To push it to the bottom. Your movement It would be very similar to that of a piston. The train moves in a straight line and around it the tunnel would behave like a combustion chamber. That doesn’t seem like a problem. It doesn’t seem like it if we think that the air is simply pushed to the outlet where it is released without further problem. It’s also not a problem if your high-speed lines run over a bridge more than 100 kilometers long. But if you are a mountainous country and you have made the railway your star medium to move millions of people hundreds of kilometers an hour. Yes, you have a problem. Because the piston effect is pure physics and solving it to gain speed is not being easy. When they were the best In 1964, while Spain began to open up to the world, Abebe Bikila won his second Olympic Marathon in the streets of Tokyo. He did it wearing Puma Osaka shoes.nothing to do with the famous 42,195 meters that he covered barefoot in Rome to win four years before. We do not know if Bikila took that first Shinkansen that linked the cities Tokyo and, precisely, Osaka. The bullet train had begun to operate in Japan that same year, promoted by the Olympic Games in the Japanese capital. Then, the two cities were linked by a train that reached peaks of 210km/hbecoming the first high-speed line in the world. More than 60 years later, Japan is no longer the country with the highest number of high-speed kilometers of the world. Today it is China. It makes sense, taking into account that the country is huge, so if this means of transportation were promoted, sooner or later they would surpass their neighbors. Spain, by the way, also surpassed Japan in this area years ago. But it is very likely that something else has hurt Japan more. China is making the bullet train its flag. Its latest advances with the maglev, which levitates thanks to very powerful magnets to avoid friction with the track, has reached a combined speed of 896 km/h at the intersection of two CR450 trains. The problem for Japan is that China has a lot of money. And if it is necessary to build eight of the 10 longest bridges in the world to solve geographical accidents, they get to work. Japan has to deal with a lot of mountains and a more traditional system: tunnels. And that when you want to make a train pass at very high speed is quite a problem. When a train fully crosses the threshold of a tunnel, what is known as piston effecta problem that prevents increasing the walking speed further. The consequences are as simple as they are serious: loud explosions, breakage of equipment… and the eardrums of passengers. Upon entering the tunnel, the air is compressed and the movement of the train moves it towards the exit. However, some of that air rebounds and generates pressure changes that can be especially painful for passengers, even affecting their middle ear. When moving outside, a pressure wave is created that moves at the speed of sound and when the train leaves the tunnel, a shock wave and a sound explosion are created that, it is calculated, can be heard 400 meters away. It is known as tunnel boom. Japan is now experiencing a problem carried over from the past. Their trains are wider than the European ones but their tunnels are narrower. This was to reduce infrastructure costs but also to run less risk of landslides in the event of an earthquake. At first this was not a problem but when the speed of the trains increased they realized that they could not continue moving. In China, trains also use wide tracks like their neighbors but since they do not preserve inherited structuresthe new tunnels built are wider. This reduces the void effect produced with the entry of the train into the tunnel and, therefore, mitigates the problems for passengers. Furthermore, as less resistance is generated when the train passes, energy expenditure is also reduced. The solution for the Japanese is not simple. On the Tokaido Shinkansen, the first high-speed line (the one that connects Tokyo with Osaka), 13% of total kilometers They run inside tunnels. But the Sanyo Shinkansen line runs through tunnels half of the time. and he Hokkaido Shinkansen which is under construction (this line is only partially open) contemplates the roofing of 80% of the layout. The most effective solution that has been found to the problem is to produce trains with a very long and sharp nose. The aerodynamics tries to imitate the beak of the Kingfisher that can dive into the water generating minimal splashes. Following the same concept, the longer and sharper the nose of the train, the less resistance the train encounters at the entrance and the more gradually the pressure wave is generated. The other solution has been expand the section of the tunnel at its entrance. The “door” is wider and also has side openings that allow part of the air to escape. air moved by the train. This escape route generates a lower pressure wave, allowing the train not to cause unwanted discomfort to passengers and to travel faster. It has even been thought of hermetic trains with controlled pressure. During its tests, Japan continues to search for trains that can reach a top speed of 400 km/h. However, the structures inherited from … Read more

Many video AIs are learning to imitate the world. And everything points to an unprecedented “looting” of YouTube

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A square, tourists, a waiter moving between tables, a bike passing by in the background or a journalist on a set. Video AIs can now generate scenes in a flash. The result is surprising, but it also opens up a question that until recently was barely posed: where did all those images that have come from come from? allowed to learn to imitate the world? According to The Atlanticpart of the answer points to millions of videos pulled from platforms like YouTube without clear consent. The euphoria over generative AI has moved so quickly that many questions have been left behind. In just two years we have gone from curious little experiments to models that produce videos almost indistinguishable from the real thing. And while the focus was on the demonstrations, another issue was gaining weight: transparency. OpenAI, for example, has explained that Sora is trained with “publicly available” data, but has not detailed which one. A massive workout that points to YouTube The Atlantic piece gives a clear clue as to what was happening behind the scenes. We are talking about more than 15 million videos collected to train AI models, with a huge amount coming from YouTube without formal authorization. Among the initiatives cited are data sets associated with several companies, designed to improve the performance of video generators. According to the media, this process was carried out without notifying the creators who originally published that content. One of the most striking aspects of the discovery is the profile of the affected material. These were not just anonymous videos or home recordings, but informative content and professional productions. The media found that thousands of pieces came from channels belonging to publications such as The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post or Al Jazeera. Taken together, we are talking about a huge volume of journalism that would have ended up feeding AI systems without prior agreement with their owners. runwayone of the companies that has given the most impetus to generative video, is highlighted in the reviewed data sets. According to the documents cited, their models would have learned with clips organized by type of scene and context: interviews, explanatory, pieces with graphics, kitchen plans, resource plans. The idea is clear: if AI must reproduce human situations and audiovisual narratives, it needs real references that cover everything from gestures to editing rhythms. Fragments of a video generated with the Runway tool In addition to Runway, the research mentions data sets used in laboratories of large technology platforms such as Meta or ByteDance in research and development of their models. The dynamic was similar: huge volumes of videos collected on the Internet and shared between research teams to improve audiovisual capabilities. YouTube’s official stance doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. Its regulations prohibit downloading videos to train modelsand its CEO, Neal Mohan, has reiterated it in public. The expectations of the creators, he stressed, involve their content being used within the rules of the service. The appearance of millions of videos in AI databases has brought that legal framework to the fore and has intensified pressure on platforms involved in the development of generative models. The reaction of the media sector has followed two paths. On the one hand, companies like Vox Media o Prisa have closed agreements to license their content to artificial intelligence platforms, looking for a clear framework and economic compensation. On the other hand, some media outlets have chosen to stand up: The New York Times has taken OpenAI and Microsoft to court for the unauthorized use of their materials, stressing that it will also protect the video content it distributes. The legal terrain remains unclear. Current legislation was not intended for models that process millions of videos in parallel, and courts are still beginning to draw the lines. For some experts, publishing openly is not equivalent to transferring training rightswhile AI companies defend that indexing and the use of public material are part of technological advancement. This tension, still unresolved, keeps media and developers in a constant game of balance. What we have before us is the start of a conversation that goes far beyond technology. Training AI models with material available on the internet has been a widespread practice for years, and now comes the time to decide where the limits are. Companies promise agreements and transparency, the media ask for guarantees and creators demand control. The next stage will be as technological as it is political: how artificial intelligence is fed will define who benefits from it. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 In Xataka | All the big AIs have ignored copyright laws. The amazing thing is that there are still no consequences

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