worlds

70% of the world’s salmon comes from farms and their meat should be gray. The industry has been making sure you don’t notice for decades

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In the heart of Tjuvholmen, a small neighborhood located on an even smaller peninsula that runs from Aker Brygge towards the Oslo Fjord, lies The Salmon. It is a restaurant, yes; but above all, it is an interpretation center for Norwegian salmon. There, just before enjoying two dozen different preparations, facilitators explain in detail “the entire salmon process – from smoking to export” and explain to diners “the historical development of salmon farming.” And it is logical. 70% of the salmon consumed in the world comes from aquaculture. Only in the North Atlantic, farms produced more than three million of metric tons in 2025 and Norway is (by far) the main producer. They explain all this in The Salmon; What they don’t explain is the color. Le Salmon, 1866–1869, by Édouard Manet The color? Salmon, in the cultural imagination of the entire world, has a very specific color: a pinkish-orange which, in short, is what we have been calling salmon color. The curious thing is that, under normal conditions, the meat of farmed salmon would be pale gray or whitish. And the reason is very simple: the characteristic color of wild salmon depends on the diet. They are big fans of krill, shrimp and other crustaceans which, in turn, feed on microalgae that produce astaxanthin. That’s what gives them the color. Instead, farmed salmon are fed feed composed of fishmeal, oil, soy, corn gluten and other poultry by-products. None of them have astaxanthin naturally and, therefore, they could not acquire their iconic color. And that, of course, is a problem. Early farmed salmon producers realized that color was difficult to manage. It is true that there is a wild salmon native to Alaska that does not naturally fix astaxanthin in its meat and is sold as a gourmet product. But that is one thing and trying to convince millions of people that this farmed pale salmon is the same (or better) than the wild one is another. Since the 1980s, researchers and producers got to work, discovered the origin of the problem and introduced chemically synthesized astaxanthin into the food chain of farmed salmon. It’s not cheap: these additives represent between 6 and 20% of the cost total feed. But it is necessary. And, by the way, they “tint” them, like the Astaxanthin is a powerful antioxidantfish improve liver function, immune response, fertility and resistance to oxidative stress. And why should we care about all this? Spain is the second largest consumer of fish and seafood in the EU; Salmon, in fact, is one of the most consumed species. The color of salmon is something well known (and completely safe), but it is not something that is usually advertised: the fear of growing distrust towards farmed fish is always there. One of the great food paradoxes of our time. Producers, in fact, have been saying for years that they would lower the amount of astaxanthin if consumers agreed to buy paler salmon. But that doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen: as we’ve seen time and time again, food depends critically on fashions and trends. this pink is in fashion. Image | Katja Ano In Xataka | We are drugging the salmon with cocaine and anxiolytics. And that’s causing them to behave strangely.

After 10 years in prison for not revealing where 500 gold coins are, the world’s greatest treasure hunter is now free to go after them

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Right off the bat, the name of Tommy Thompson It may not sound familiar to you at all. Besides ocean engineer and inventor, he is one of the greatest treasure hunters in the world, a profession that inevitably evokes Indiana Jones and a life of cinema. And well, Thompson has it: a few days ago he was released from prison after serving 10 years of his sentence. The crime? Do not reveal where 500 gold coins from a famous sunken ship are (among other things). The discovery. In 1988 Tommy Thompson and his team, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, they found the remains of the steamboat SS Central America at a depth of 8,000 feet in the Atlantic, about 200 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina. To achieve this, they used Bayesian search theory and a remotely operated vehicle. The SS Central America was known as the “Gold Ship” for something: how much gold it transported. How much? good question. The gold ship. To give some context, it was the time of the gold rush and the mission of the ship was to transport that valuable metal from the new San Francisco Mint to increase the reserves for the banks of the eastern United States. He never did. On September 3, 1857, while operating on the Panama route, it sank off the coast of South Carolina when it was involved in a category 2 hurricane. The ship carried 477 passengers, 101 crew members and much, much gold. In fact, its sinking was one of the triggers for the panic of 1857. I don’t have the accounts. Gary Kinder spent a decade studying the event to write his “Ship of Gold”, where details which was carrying 3 tons of gold and possibly a similar amount of passengers (undisclosed and therefore unquantifiable) and it was also rumored that there was another 15 tons of gold in a secret army shipment. However, a US Department of Defense document declassified in 1971 reported that the official cargo was 11.2 tons of gold (not including personal or secret gold). The American naval history magazine, the closest source to the discovery, It does not give a figure in weight but a value: The gold consigned to New York banks was equivalent to 40 million dollars at the time. In general, the figure of 30,000 pounds of gold (about 14,000 kg) is also relatively widespread. But what was on the boat is one thing and what they found is another. Or they said find. Bob Evans, chief scientist of the expedition (and another one that followed in 2014). from the hand of Odyssey), account for the Seattle Times that in 1988 they found two tons of gold. The legal conflict. Much of that gold was later sold to a trading company for about $50 million. as reported by Reuters. But according to those 161 investors who financed $12.7 million for the expedition, they never reaped the benefits. So In 2005 they filed a lawsuit for breach of contract and concealment of assets. Thompson first secluded himself in Florida, then disappeared and lived under a false identity. He was finally arrested in 2015. The case reached a dead end: the judge in the case ordered him to reveal the whereabouts of 500 missing gold coins, but the engineer He claimed not to know where they are. He was declared in contempt, which is why he has served a decade in prison. The liberation. Today Tommy Thompson is 73 years old and a few days ago regained his freedom because, according to the judge, keeping him imprisoned does not work. CBS News picks up the opinion of civil law experts who explain that it is very unusual for a sentence for civil contempt to last so long. He has neither revealed where the coins are nor has he settled the debt with his investors. Meanwhile, the treasure of the SS Central America continues to feed the myth: in 2022 was auctioned one of the largest bars on the ship, 866 ounces (almost 27 kg), reaching a price of 2.16 million dollars. In Xataka | I dedicate myself to digging with a metal detector and I have more than 4 million followers on YouTube In Xataka | A man from Osaka left 21 gold bars at the doors of City Hall. I only had one requirement: renew the pipes Cover | Olga ga and Zlaťáky.cz

Data centers have eaten up the world’s RAM. Now they threaten to eat the batteries

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If the question is “what are data centers hungry for,” the answer is a simple “yes.” We hadn’t talked about the RAM memory crisis not because would have finishedbut because it was nonsense keep repeating it. The summary is that things are still as bad as they were a few weeks ago and, although the machines are at full capacity to create more, everything is going to the same place: the AI ​​platforms of the data centers. But it is no longer that they have broken the market for RAM, SSD, hard drives and everything that has to do with chips: it is that they are now going after batteries. The Panasonic case. The Japanese giant advertisement a few hours ago its plan to triple its lithium-ion cell production capacity. They are going to expand their facilities dedicated to this, but they will also adapt some of their manufacturing plants for elements for the automotive industry to manufacture more batteries. All the extra batteries they can make will be few, to the point that they not only propose the change for Japanese plants: also for foreign ones like the one in Kansas. Because? The short answer is because of AI. The long answer is that AI can’t stop working for even a second, and that’s why computers need backup power sources. That energy comes from batteries that are installed between the racks and which, in the event of any outage or specific peak, they ‘pull’ in order to continue operating. And since the equipment requires an insane amount of energy to operate, many, many backup batteries must be made. They are still modules with hundreds of “stacks” that are embedded in the racks All sold. The forecast is such that the Japanese company estimates that, for the next fiscal year, it can sell batteries worth 800,000 million yen, about 5,000 million dollars. It would quadruple its current sales and that implies something else: everything is sold. Its customers have already bought 80% of Panasonic’s output, leaving non-customers to fight for just a fifth of the volume. That will increase prices, generate shortages and cause the same thing that is happening with RAM and other components: there are no units, prices skyrocket, companies see that there is demand and allocate their production to creating that product and the consumer market suffers the consequences. It’s exactly the same thing we’ve seen with HDDs, with Seagate and Western Digital pointing out that what they were going to produce during the next few months was already sold. And it has also happened with RAM. The situation with them became so desperate that the main manufacturers have begun to ask for payments three years in advance. Because as the boss of SMIC – one of the largest foundries in China – pointed out a few days ago, everyone wants to have the infrastructure of the next decade by… yesterday. Supercapacitors. Aside from the “bad” news, Panasonic is also working on something new. Compared to traditional capacitors, the Japanese company is developing supercapacitors for data centers. These are capacitors that can store more energy, but also deliver it more slowly. They are denser than batteries and are expected to be high-fidelity elements to support data center equipment during outages or peak loads. They wait have them ready by 2027. The renewables. In the end, these Panasonic batteries (and other manufacturers) are simple safety elements to ensure that uninterrupted flow of power in the hyperscalers’ racks. How does it affect us? Well, because the capacitors and equipment manufactured by Panasonic are also found in consumer hardware and if they now focus on data centers, the same thing will happen as with NAND chips and everything that uses a memory chip. And, in the background, there are also the most conventional batteries to store a large amount of energy from renewables. Because we have already mentioned that data centers consume a lot, so much so that even has turned to coal, gas is a common resource and there are companies that are opening its nuclear power plants. But if you opt for renewables, it will be necessary to equip data centers with tens of hundreds of batteries capable of absorbing the energy blow. In fact, there are already car battery manufacturers that they are converting. In short: everything bad… except for companies that manufacture those components. Images | panasonic In Xataka | If you were thinking about setting up a NAS to create your own cloud, we have bad news: AI has other plans

Taiwan produces 90% of the world’s advanced chips. Its natural gas reserves last exactly 12 days

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In global energy markets, alarm bells do not always ring loudly; Sometimes all you have to do is watch where the boats are sailing. While the West observes the already known Third Gulf War With a mixture of horror and remoteness, Asia is suffering the direct impact. The colossal Ras Laffan facility in Qatar—which processes about a fifth of global liquefied natural gas (LNG)— has suffered damage by 17% of its infrastructure after the Iranian attacks. 12 days. At the exact center of the geopolitical target is Taiwan. The island has a practical monopoly on the world’s most advanced chips, but its “silicon shield” hangs by an extremely fragile logistical thread: an energy supply chain whose legal security threshold requires a minimum of just 11 to 12 days of natural gas reserves. The fatal panorama in Asia. Asia is on the front line of this fuel crisis as it buys more than 80% of the crude oil that transits through the blocked Strait of Hormuz. The nations of the region have had to quickly dust off the survival manuals of the COVID-19 era. Philippines has become the first country in declaring a state of “national energy emergency”, warning of an imminent danger and turning to coal to reduce costs. In South Korea, the government has asked its citizens Take shorter showers, use public transportation, and avoid charging your phones at night. Sri Lanka declared on Wednesdays as a holiday to save fuel, and in Thailand, officials have received the order to take off their suits, use the stairs and telework. china from chill. However, the contrast with China it’s abysmal. While its neighbors panic, the Asian giant observes the chaos coldly. Five years ago, Xi Jinping ordered to secure the country’s “energy rice bowl.” Today, thanks to a massive accumulation of sanctioned crude oil (bought cheaply from Russia or Iran), the shielding of renewables and a vehicle park where electric cars are the majority, China has built an invisible Great Wall that isolates it from fossil volatility. A trade war against the clock. This hydrocarbon drought not only turns off the lights, but paralyzes the industry. According to Commonwealth Magazinethe petrochemical and plastics sector has been the first major victim. The giant Formosa Petrochemical has had to issue force majeure notices after running out of raw materials, and prices of key materials such as ABS (used in car parts) have soared by up to 50%. At a logistical level, a trade war has broken out ruthless battle between Europe and Asia to seize the few available LNG shipments. Spot prices in Asia have doubled, and ships originally sailing to Spain or France are diverting their course to the Pacific in the face of more lucrative offers. In this Darwinian scenario, South Asia is acting as the global “shock absorber”: price-sensitive countries, such as Pakistan or Bangladesh, cannot compete and are forced to destroy demand or paralyze industries, leaving gas available for the giants that can afford it. To mitigate the blow on their own streets, governments like Japan They plan to inject billions in subsidies, while Taiwan has committed to absorb 60% of the increase in crude oil prices. Taiwan’s “Achilles heel” and the check on chips. If there is a critical point in this crisis, It is the island of Taiwan. In 2025, Taiwan relied on imports to meet 95% of its energy needs, including more than 99% of its oil and natural gas demand. Before the war, it received more than 38% of its annual natural gas supply and approximately 70% of its crude oil from the Middle East. The structural problem is time. While nations like South Korea have the capacity to store gas for 52 days and Japan for three weeks, Taiwan is walking on the wire. As pointed out Bloombergis an almost non-existent room for maneuver for an island where electricity generation based on natural gas has expanded to almost 48%. An immediate buffer. To avoid collapse in the short term, the Taiwanese Ministry of Economy has acted quickly with a checkbook. Minister Kung Ming-hsin has confirmed that supply planning is already covered for March, April and May, and they have even secured half of their replacement agreements for the month of June. Away from the imminent blackout, the island’s reserves have managed to remain above the safety threshold of 12 days since the fighting broke out. However, this short-term patch does not turn off the alarms. The real danger lurks in the summer, when high temperatures historically trigger electricity demand. A prolonged blackout: global chaos. The semiconductor sector contributes around 20% of Taiwan’s GDP. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which produces about 90% of the chips most advanced in the world (vital for AI and military technology), alone consumes approximately 9% of all electricity on the island. But gas is not the only missing input; Added to this is the disruption in the supply of secretive but vital raw materials such as bromine and helium (a third of which is processed in Qatar). The experts They warn that if the interruption of helium exceeds 14 days, the chip production lines will go into technical stoppage. With summer just around the corner and electricity demand about to skyrocket, the island operates at its limit. The pressure is so immense that the historically reluctant Taiwanese government is already openly debating the reactivation of nuclear energy, recognizing that the explosive growth in electricity demand linked to the development of Artificial Intelligence is changing all the rules of the energy game. The geopolitical board: opportunism and contradictions. Beijing has not been slow to intervene. Taking advantage of the panic, the Chinese government has thrown a poisoned lifeline. According to Chen Binhua, spokesperson for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, collected in South China Morning Postthe Asian giant offered the island a stable, abundant and cheap energy supply in exchange for accepting “peaceful reunification.” Taipei’s response was blunt: Vice Minister of Economy, Ho Chin-tsang, rejected the offer, calling it “cognitive … Read more

Asia is hoarding all the world’s LNG due to Hormuz panic

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In global energy markets, alarm bells do not always ring loudly; Sometimes all you have to do is watch where the boats are sailing. Right now, the canary in the mine of the looming crisis is the frenzy of Asian liquefied natural gas (LNG) buyers. As the conflict in the Middle East escalates, Asia’s major powers are preparing for supply disruptions that could last months. The prolonged paralysis at the world’s largest export plant is stifling global supply and skyrocketing prices. As Dai Jiaquan explainschief economist at the CNPC Economics and Technology Research Institute, companies should prepare “contingency plans” for a two- to four-month disruption. Far from expecting a quick resolution to the attacks between the United States, Israel and Iran, Asia is sweeping up all available gas. The Qatar blackout and the buying fever. The origin of this panic has exact coordinates: the Strait of Hormuz. The trigger was an attack with Iranian drones that hit the strategic facilities of Ras Laffan and Mesaieed, forcing the state company QatarEnergy to cease production. The impact is massive: Qatar supplies 20% of the world’s LNG and, without Hormuz, there is no alternative route. According to the consulting firm AMEthis stoppage removes 1.5 million tons of gas from the global market every week. Added to this is an unprecedented logistical blockade with some 150 ships paralyzed in the area. Faced with this abyss, purchases have skyrocketed. According to BloombergTaiwan has already fully secured its supply for March and April, and is now actively purchasing to cover the month of May. Bangladesh managed to secure shipments for April and is already evaluating purchases from May onwards. For their part, Thailand and South Korea seek to ensure immediate deliveries, while in India, the company Gail India Ltd. barely managed to reserve a shipment in March after several failed attempts. Europe vs. Asia. What is coming is a direct trade war: Europe and Asia fighting for the same gas. According to Financial Timesthe contest is a chilling reminder of the crisis of 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. To this battle, Europe arrives with its defenses low: its gas storages are barely 30% because companies did not fill them due to high future prices, a phenomenon known as backwardation. Furthermore, Spain, despite having regasification plants, cannot act as a total lifeline for the continent due to its lack of interconnections through the Pyrenees. Historically, Asia consumes more gas in summer due to air conditioners, creating a desperate urgency that is already reflected in prices. As explained BloombergLNG spot prices in Asia are around $18 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). This represents an 80% increase in price compared to pre-conflict levels, despite having fallen from a recent peak of $25. The Asian benchmark JKM index doubled to $24.80. In Europe, the reaction was one of panic: the TTF benchmark index jumped sharply from below 40 euros to almost 47.5 euros, marking an increase of 55% in recent days. In fact, it is projected that a 90-day closure in Hormuz would raise the TTF to €92/MWh. And this is where the alarms go off for the real economy, As the report explains Kpler, The profitability threshold for intensive European industry (chemicals, fertilizers or ceramics) is usually between €50 and €60/MWh. If prices stagnate there, we could see a new wave of factory closures and a resurgence of inflation. Change of course at sea. According to monitoring data collected by Bloombergat least nine shipments bound for Europe have been redirected to Asia since the fighting began. Atlantic ships like the Clean Mistraloriginally destined for Spain, or the BW Brusselswhich was going to France, have redirected their compasses towards the Pacific in the face of lucrative Asian offers. This maritime chaos is not exclusive to gas. In the oil sector, about 30 giant supertankers They crowd off the Saudi coast of Yanbu in the Red Sea to collect crude oil transported by land, in a desperate attempt to avoid the Iranian blockade. Vulnerabilities and “buffers”. Not all countries face this crisis with the same weapons. According to an analysis of A.M.E.Taiwan is the most exposed and vulnerable player: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates provided it with 35% of its imports in 2025, and after the closure of its nuclear park, it has almost no options to use other fuels. South Asia is also on the line. The report of Kpler highlights that Qatar and the Emirates account for 99% of Pakistan’s LNG imports, 72% of Bangladesh’s and 53% of India’s. However, powers such as China and Japan breathe a little easier. According to Vortexa analyst Ken Lee cited by oil priceBeijing and Tokyo’s exposure to Qatari LNG is just 6% and 5% of their gas mix, respectively. Furthermore, Japan has a good reserve inventory and the restart of its nuclear plants gives it a strategic “cushion.” Asia as a global buffer. In the end, the market will rebalance, but the pain will be uneven. Faced with the impossibility of paying stratospheric prices, very price-sensitive countries such as Pakistan or Bangladesh will have to resort to demand destruction, industrial cuts or return to burning coal. According to AMEJapan and South Korea will seek to replace between 70% and 90% of Qatar’s lost volumes in the spot market, while China, confident in its inventories, will only seek to cover 50%. As pointed out KplerSouth Asia and its industry will operate as the “buffer” (shock absorb) of this crisis. By cutting their own consumption due to not being able to pay, they will leave gas available for the Asian and European giants, but at the cost of maintaining relentless upward pressure that will make the entire world’s energy bill more expensive in the coming months. Image | Photo by Chris Pagan on Unsplash Xataka | The $200 per barrel scenario: when geography suffocates the world economy

China manufactures 90% of the world’s humanoid robots and the reason is not its industrial policy: it is crossing the street

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On Chinese New Year, 16 Unitree humanoid robots danced a folk dance before almost a billion viewers. The West reacted as always: some with panic, others with disdain, others with an undisguised admiration that sometimes tends to concoct theories with more clichés regarding China than real analysis. None of those answers is entirely true and that blindness has a cost. The context. China manufactures about 90% of the humanoid robots sold in the world. In 2025, about 13,000 units were shipped, with Chinese companies (AgiBot, Unitree, UBTech…) dominating the ranking by volume, according to Omdia data collected by Bloomberg. Tesla, with all its brand reputation and all its industrial apparatus, internally deployed around 800 units of the Optimus that same year. The figure. He Unitree G1 It costs $13,500. He Tesla Optimus will exceed 20,000. That gap is the difference between being able to iterate ten times with the same budget or staying at one. Between the lines. The story circulating in the West has two versions, equally lazy: The first: all this is the five-year plan, the hand of the State, industrial policy made robot. The second, reserved for the most condescending: it is because they copy. Neither of them explains what is really happening. China’s advantage in robotics does not come from the Communist Party. It comes from the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze Delta: the two densest manufacturing ecosystems on the planet. Motors, actuators, sensors, custom PCBs… everything is available within walking distance. Is what it describes Rui Xuan engineer who has worked in robotics startups in China and Silicon Valley. When Unitree wants to test a new joint design, it crosses the street and comes back with the right component. A team in San Francisco has to wait weeks to receive the same component from China. The background. That difference in iteration speed changes everything in hardware engineering. It stops being a problem of talent, because Chinese and American engineers are equally capable, and becomes a problem of infrastructure. Breaking a robot, learning, replacing it, and trying again: that’s what builds cumulative technical advantage. If breaking a robot costs three weeks of logistics, learning stops and times become longer. Yes, but. China does have state support, and it is completely legitimate to point this out. The government has injected a lot of money into that sector and has set production targets. But it’s not that Silicon Valley is an impoverished region: it has more capital, investors with more experience and resources, and more decades of experience financing high-risk bets. If this were a war to see who has the fattest checkbook, the United States would win handily. But it is not. Furthermore, Chinese state money comes with strings attached: it is classified as “state asset” and founders assume personal liability if the company fails. That pushes capital toward politically safe bets, not necessarily toward the most innovative ones. The question. Can the West make up ground in robotics? Yes, but not like he’s trying. Attracting foreign talent helps on the margin, but does not solve the underlying problem. The equalization involves building local supply chains capable of delivering a spare part in two days, not two weeks. And that is not an immigration or R&D problem. It is an industrial-based problem, and solving it takes many years of work. And of thankless work, from which those who arrive later may reap the fruits. Until then we are going to see many more viral videos of Chinese robots doing pirouettes with increasing naturalness. And it’s because they’ve built the best environment in the world to break things and try again. In engineering, that explains almost everything. Featured image | CCTV In Xataka | Folding clothes or taking apart LEGOs has always been a tedious task. Xiaomi’s new AI for robots has put an end to it

Europe wants to manufacture 20% of the world’s semiconductors by 2030. It has just taken the first step

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43,000 million euros. That is the figure that the European Commission set to achieve something that is currently out of reach: technological sovereignty regarding semiconductors. With the ‘Chips Act‘, Europe seeks to position itself as a power in a semiconductor production segment dominated by Asia with Taiwan at the head. Now, and after years of dreaming, Europe inaugurates the first installation: the FAMES Pilot Line. The objective is not conservative. By 2030, the Old Continent wants produce 20% of integrated circuits of the world. We have an ace up our sleeve called ASMLthe global spearhead in terms of manufacturing of advanced photolithography equipment refers. The Dutch are the ones who produce the machines that buy foundries like TSMC o Intel to manufacture the most advanced chips on the market. But there is a problem: we have the machine that makes the chips, but we don’t have someone to make chips. That is what the project wants to change, and with FAMESthe European Union Chip Law lays the first brick to be more relevant. It’s not going to be easy at all. FAMES, the spearhead of Europe’s Chips Law Unlike a private company, FAMES is something much more European: a collaboration between countries and institutions. It represents a new example of public-private collaboration like the one we are seeing in parallel in the european space race. And the pilot program is located at the CEA-Leti facilities in the French town of Grenoble. With an initiative of 830 million euros contributed by both the European Commission and the participating states, FAMES brings together 11 organizations belonging to eight countries and, after two years of preparation, has presented favorable technical results to begin developing advanced semiconductor technologies. The organizations and countries of the FAMES Consortium FAMES, with 830 million in financing, is the first of the five pilot lines that will be inaugurated under this Chips Law initiative, and the CEA-Leti plant has been expanded with about 2,000 new square meters destined to clean room. It is an extremely clean area isolated from the outside, with strictly controlled temperature and humidity conditions and optimal conditions for manufacturing semiconductors. CEA-Leti already had 12,000 square meters of clean room, so the expansion under the Chips Law is considerable. And the big question: what will they do in this pilot program? Well, something known as Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator, or FD-SOI. This is a manufacturing process in which a thin insulating layer (less than 10 nanometers) is placed under the transistors so that the chips operate at lower voltages. And the goal is to create 10 and 7 nanometer processors. FD-SOI Thus, they consume between 30 and 40% less energy without losing performance, making them more efficient. That efficiency and delivery of energy to the chips is something that everyone is trying to improve, from an Intel that already has its most cutting-edge technologies ready in this sense to a TSMC that is preparing its response by the end of 2026. That Europe is developing its solution now seems demoralizing, but it must be taken into account that, for decades, the technology of the Old Continent has depended on external manufacturing, so advancing this manufacturing process at this time is not bad news. But well, in the end, FAMES represents the first platform in which some advanced technologies for the manufacture of semiconductors will begin to mature and, together with the rest of the pilot lines, the objective is to transfer these advances and knowledge to the industry and, obviously, to a final product. We will see if the 2030 goal is reached, but Europe itself is not very optimistic about the matter. Europe thinks that Europe will fail in its objective At the beginning of last year, we already said that the European Court of Auditors itself believed that the European Chip Law would be a failurepointing out unlikely which would be if they achieved the goal of building 20% ​​of the planet’s semiconductors by 2030. And… they are not misguided. Europe is seeking its technological independence while inviting entities like TSMC to its soil, but the two main technological centers are also moving. The United States is attracting talent to its territory, with TSMC buying more land to open a megafactory and Intel as a banner in the American foundry. China is not standing idly by and, following a Western veto, its semiconductor industry has made unthinkable advances with old ASML machines while companies like SMIC either Huawei develop your own solutions to create advanced chips and be able to shield itself from American technology. And beyond countries, private companies such as Intel itself, TSMC, Samsung, GlobalFoundries or Texas Instruments are also moving, installing new cutting-edge plants both inside and outside the United States, a country that is determined to invest what is necessary to achieve leadership. In the end, getting 20% ​​of the world’s chips is a tremendously ambitious goal and Europe is very far away in this industrybut you have to start somewhere and FAMES represents that first stone on the path of the European semiconductor initiative. Images | Intel (edited), FAMES In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

Tesla has revolutionized the industry with a 9,000-ton Giga Press. China has responded with the world’s largest

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Tesla has revolutionized car production. He has done it with the help of his Giga Press, a huge assembler capable of producing huge parts of the chassis to save time and money. In their race to lower costs, numerous brands have ordered their own. And a Chinese manufacturer has the largest in the world. What is a Giga Press? A Giga Press It is a machine capable of producing huge parts of a car chassis in a single process. Until now, those huge pieces have been (and continue to be for most manufacturers) assembled separately, slowly taking shape like a 10,000-piece puzzle. What is achieved with a Giga Press is to reduce the number of those pieces that have to be assembled. That is to say, simplify the puzzle. This is achieved with a huge press into which the material is injected to produce the part and the mold is pressed with great force to obtain the desired final part. Why is it so important? With the Giga Press, Tesla has managed to save time and money in the production of their vehicles. By simplifying the process, you can produce much more in less time and, therefore, amortize the investment more quickly. In fact, one’s own Tesla trusts in new evolutions to be able to reduce hypotheticals but also there are not a few companies that have ordered theirs with a view to achieving these same results. The largest in the world, of course, is in China. 16,000 tons. This is the figure that the Giga Press that Dongfeng has in its facilities in Wuhan (China) manages to apply, as reported in Car News China. This company has been working since last January with a new machine capable of casting parts with a pressure never before seen in the industry. The machine, they explain in the middle, has been designed, developed and produced entirely in China by LK Machinery which also provides these machines to other companies like XPeng. To give us an idea, Tesla’s Giga Press are capable of assembling parts with 9,000 tons of pressure. In this case, Dongfeng will dedicate the pressing to parts of battery casings of their electric cars. They assure that the machine will improve the rigidity of the assembly and the protection of the energy accumulator. Each piece moves forward every 135 seconds. And it’s not the only one. In parallel, Dongfeng will also have another press, this one capable of applying 10,000 tons of pressure. In this case it has a moving part and a stationary mold. The latter is filled with molten steel at a temperature of 720ºC and the moving part is placed on it. From there, pressure is applied until the new piece is shaped. The objective between both presses is to produce up to 600,000 pieces annually to incorporate into your cars. For now, in the first phase, up to 200,000 pieces will be counted and the objective is to gradually scale production until reaching the desired cruising speed. Both machines are the result of a clear commitment to this type of machines in China in recent years. Already in 2021, InsideEVs It stated that local manufacturers were looking for their own and, above all, that Tesla had managed to locate the supply of its suppliers in China so the materials used in the Shanghai machine did not have to be imported from third countries. It has its problems. Although the mass pressing of parts has revolutionized the industry and many manufacturers have sought their own machines, the truth is that this type of production It also has its negative side. And millions of copies are needed to amortize the set and get economic return on a very important investment. This also requires maintaining a design for a long time because any variation in the part forces the production line to stop for too long until the desired original mold is found. That “slave” design of the brand itself is one of the problems that Tesla has encountered, which is that it cannot launch cars on the market with new variations beyond small aesthetic touches. Photo | LK Machinery In Xataka | Tesla was supposed to be a company that sold cars. And the problem is that it is stopping selling them at full speed

Genie 3 is awesome at creating worlds for video games. But the problem with video games was never creating worlds

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Genie 3 has been with us since August and its previous versions since long beforebut this weekend its fame has exploded because Google has taught us how to generate interactive 3D environments simply by writing a phrase. And in seconds, Genie 3 materializes a forest, or a city, or a cave, or whatever you want. And there you can move, or jump, or fly. Technically it is brilliant. However, There is nothing there that makes us think that it is going to bring down video game development.. It will make it easier, in any case, but it does not pose a threat to him. Because The bottleneck of video games has never been generating polygons. The difficult part of creating a good game is not creating a world in which a character can walk or fly. The hard part is creating a world where you, I, and all the other players want to keep walking or flying. That difference between space and experience is what separates a demo like the ones we have seen of Genie 3 – a video to be amazed by for a few seconds – from a video game that we are going to dedicate hours to. Or at least a few minutes. Several video game companies fell around 10% after this announcement of Genie 3, but none as much as Unity, which has fallen 20%. It is a sign that There are Unity investors who don’t understand what makes a company like Unity valuable.. Unity is not Unity because it renders polygons but because of the invisible infrastructure it sells: making the physics the same on all the devices on which its games are played, creating collision systems that do not fail, maintaining debugging that explain why your game crashes in frame 47,293. Genie 3 generates impressive landscapes, but it can’t explain why your character is traversing the ground in that particular corner of the map. From the outside, what is visible seems to be the great work to be done with a game. The graphics, the models, the environments… But any developer knows that create assets is the, quote-heavy, “easy” part. The bad thing is what takes years of accumulated effort: Design clashes with enemies that are complex but fair, calibrate progression curves, write dialogue that serves much more than conveying an idea (such as revealing a character) without stopping the action for it. That is, build complex systems that consolidate the narrative and engage the player, interacting in emergent ways. Genie 3 doesn’t touch any of that. There is one limitation that perfectly sums up the distance between what Genie 3 does and what a video game demands: spatial memory. The generated worlds they tend to forget themselvesand that is why a ladder that you saw a while ago is no longer there, and not because someone has taken it. If you go back, possibly the model regenerates it, perhaps in another place, perhaps with another geometry. In a video game, just the opposite is needed: a persistent state where each action has consequences. A tree you cut down has to stay down. Spatial consistency is the basis of a digital world. And that is not solved by updating the model to make it a little more capable. It is something inherent to generative systems: they live in an eternal present, without real memory of frames previous. This doesn’t mean that Genie 3 is useless. We insist: it is beastly. But for something else. For rapid prototyping, to elevate conceptual art to something interactive. Those types of scenarios. Maybe even for a indie Show the investor what your game will be like without settling for a PowerPoint. And that is valuable. It will change dynamics and lower costs. But It is one more tool in the entire process, not a replacement for any process.. Google is going to solve a problem in the world of video games, but it has the most difficult ones left: making those worlds matter something and making the mechanics satisfactory. May we remember the stories they tell and may the players progress. Ultimately, the soul of a game. That is hardly designed with a prompt. That is designed, iterated, and polished for a long time by people who know about intentionality. Now AI can create the canvas, but that has never been the hardest thing about painting. Featured image | Google In Xataka | What’s happening with Ubisoft: after canceling six games and adjusting its structure, this is the plan of the great French studio

Japan has attempted to power up the world’s largest nuclear power plant. It only lasted a few hours

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The nuclear debate, which Japan thought closed, returns to the scene. The recent authorization to reactivate Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, the largest atomic plant in the world, has set off alarms: citizen distrust, the shadow of Fukushima and doubts have surfaced about whether TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) is the right company to lead the country’s new energy stage. Fifteen years of waiting for a reboot that didn’t even last a day. In Niigata, reactor number 6 went from complete silence to emergency shutdown in less than 24 hours. The failure, located in critical safety systems, has turned the great revival energetic of Japan in a lesson in technical fragility. A slow giant. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa had not produced a single kilowatt since 2012. That closure was not an isolated event, but the shock wave of Fukushima in 2011, which put all reactors of similar design in the spotlight. But for TEPCO, this complex of seven units and more than 8,000 MW is much more than energy: it is its financial lifeline. According to Japan Forward estimatesthe electricity company needs these reactors to inject some 100,000 million yen annually into its coffers, essential oxygen to pay the endless bill for the dismantling of Fukushima Daiichi. The Japanese Government, under the command of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, has positioned this reopening as a strategic pillar. The objective is ambitious, in saying that nuclear energy represent 20% of the energy mix by 2040. This energy is needed to power new AI data centers and semiconductor factories, thus reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels, made more expensive by the fall of the yen and current geopolitics. Chronicle of a fleeting reboot. The reactivation process of reactor No. 6 was marked by setbacks even before it began. The restart, initially scheduled for Tuesday, January 20, had to be postponed one day after it was detected that an alarm designed to warn of the accidental removal of control rods did not work during the tests, as reported by The Japan Times. After correcting this error, operations formally began on Wednesday at 7:02 pm. At 8:28 pm, the reactor reached the “critical state” (sustained nuclear fission). However, the celebration in TEPCO’s control rooms – where staff tensely monitored screens – was short-lived. At 12:28 a.m. Thursday, just 16 hours after the start, an alarm sounded again. This time it indicated a failure in the engine control panel that operates one of the reactor control rods (the devices that regulate or stop the nuclear reaction). TEPCO attempted to replace electrical components and inverters, but the anomaly persisted. Given the uncertainty, the company announced a “planned temporary shutdown” to reinsert the control rods and stop the fission, a process that concluded Friday morning. “We do not assume that the investigation will be resolved in one or two days; at this time we cannot say how many days it will take,” admitted Takeyuki Inagaki, director of the plant, at a press conference. Security under suspicion. Although TEPCO maintains that the reactor remains under control and without leaks to the outside, the incident has served to poke into a wound that was never closed. It is not just the present that is worrying, but a tarnished record: just five years ago, the Financial Times I already put the focus on the plant after a security scandal where an employee circumvented access controls using a foreign identification, revealing the fragility of its surveillance systems. However, distrust does not only fall on TEPCO. The Japanese nuclear sector is experiencing a systemic credibility crisis. Earlier this month, Chubu Electric admitted to manipulating seismic data to minimize the impact of potential earthquakes at its Hamaoka plant, leading the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) to describe the act as “scandalous” and to suspend its security review after a decade of paperwork. A divided society in Niigata. Outside the plant and at TEPCO headquarters, protesters like Yumiko Abe, 73, express their indignation: “Electricity is for Tokyo, but we in Kashiwazaki run the risk. It doesn’t make sense.” The figures support this discomfort. According to surveys cited by South China Morning Postabout 60% of Niigata residents oppose the restart. Furthermore, 70% of citizens fear that TEPCO will not be able to manage an emergency based on its history. On the other hand, prominent seismologists warn in the Financial Times that the plant is located near an area of ​​very high seismic risk where a large earthquake could cause billions of dollars in damage. The future of the atom in Japan. The path to full operation of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is once again up in the air. While TEPCO makes cost cuts of 3.1 trillion yen To fund the decommissioning of Fukushima, the NRA has promised strict on-site inspections to verify corrective actions following this latest failure. Experts like Dr. Florentine Koppenborg suggest that this “nuclear renaissance” It could be just a “drop in the ocean” as security costs have skyrocketed and public trust remains at rock bottom. Japan is at an energy crossroads: the urgency to decarbonize and feed its technology industry collides head-on with the memory of a disaster that, 15 years later, is still very present. The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa giant has shown that, in nuclear energy, the distance between strategic success and technical failure is measured in the sound of a single alarm. Image | IAEA Imagebank Xataka | Here is news that will surely reassure you: Europe’s largest nuclear power plant is running on diesel generators

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