worse

We don’t know if today’s pop music is better or worse than that of 1960, but we do know one thing: it’s much more depressing.

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What does the music you listen to say about you? And what does the music that is published say about us, as a society? A group of scientists from the Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has tried to answer these and other questions by analyzing tens of thousands of songs released between 1960 and 2023. The result is a vast study which has just been published in Nature and leaves a fascinating conclusion: in the last six decades pop has become more depressing. The question is obvious: Why? Much more than music. Anyone who has listened to music while working, playing sports or simply walking down the street will have experienced that songs are much more than an artistic expression: they are also a powerful lever capable of altering our mood. Not only that. Music, from the most sophisticated to the most popular, points directly to our emotions and obsessions. Aware of this, a group of researchers including Vjosa Preniqui, from Queen Mary University, decided some time ago to embark on a peculiar exercise: grab tens of thousands of songs mainstream and analyze their lyrics to find out what they are talking about. Almost 400,000 topics. The team examined more than 380,000 songs published between 1960 and 2030, hours and hours and hours of music composed by artists from several generations who sing about their obsessions. To be more precise, the researchers worked with two large music archives. The first consists of more than 377,000 songs with lyrics in English released between 1960 and 2010 and that have been added to the WASABI database. The second is made up of 5,500 songs extracted from the Billboard charts and that cover a longer period that extends from the beginning of the 60s to 2023. Objective: language. To manage such a musical collection, the researchers They turned to AI and language analysis techniques. They also focused the focus on a very specific aspect of the songs: they were not as interested in the harmony, instrumentation, rhythm or complexity of the compositions, as their lyrics. The focus was on language, emotional language and its relationship with morality. That is, what were the songs about? Of fidelity, decency and friendship or of conflicts, deception and rebellion? The goal, as Preniqi and his colleagues explain in his paperis to examine “the evolution of moral expressions in pop music lyrics” over six decades. It may sound very abstract, but the researchers paid attention to ten great timeless topics: ‘care’, ‘harm’, ‘justice’, ‘cheating’, ‘loyalty’, ‘betrayal’, ‘authority’, ‘subversion’, ‘purity’ and ‘degradation’. They also looked at the artist singing: whether it was a man, a woman or a mixed group. What did they find out? That today’s popular music is much darker than what our grandparents and parents listened to. By comparing the lyrics of the 60s with the most recent ones, Preniqi and her companions found that they have become “increasingly negative”. “Our results reveal an increase in moral vices and a decrease in expressions of virtues, along with an increase in negative feelings, anger and disgust,” they explain in the article of Nature. In short, today it is much easier to listen to songs that are about infidelities, hurts or degradation than in the 60s, when it was more common to sing about purity or mutual care. “This change, which extends until the 2020s and varies depending on the genre of the artists, highlights that expressions oriented to vices and emotional charges have increasingly gained prominence in music lyrics. mainstream“, concludes the study. Can it go further? The research provides some figures that help to better understand this transformation. In WASABI the letters related to degradation shot up by 52%, those associated with damage by 49% and those referring to deception by 48%. References to subversive acts also rose 41%. In the Billboard lists, which extend the ‘photography’ until 2023, the panorama is not very different: references to deception skyrocketed by nearly 71%, to degradation by 62%, to subversion by 50% and to injuries by 36%. less uplifting. If we look at the lyrics that deal with ‘virtuous’ behavior the trend is the opposite: Songs that talk about caring for others decreased by 24%, those dedicated to purity by 12% and those about loyalty by 11%. Again the trend is similar in WASABI and Billboard. The researchers did notice changes depending on gender of the artist (men and mixed groups seem more given to negative lyrics) or musical genresalthough these latter data must be handled carefully because there may be important imbalances in the samples analyzed. And what do the authors say? They claim that their study helps us understand both the evolution of popular music and our own obsessions. “Music is much more than entertainment, it is one of the ways that societies tell stories about themselves. By looking at song lyrics over several decades we can see how emotional expression and moral narratives evolve over time,” reflect Preniqi. “What we discovered was a gradual shift away from language associated with virtues such as care and decency toward themes that reflect conflict, harm, and other moral concerns. These patterns depend on several factors, such as musical genre and impact, but offer a fascinating perspective on the evolution of cultural values ​​and emotional expression.” Images | Spencer Davis (Unsplash), QMUL and Vjosa Preniqi et al. in Nature In Xataka | In 1992, Black Sabbath recorded a song about technology replacing humans. In 2026, it serves as a premonition

Apps that simulate purchases in exchange for dopamine open the door to something worse

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Who hasn’t finished a stressful day at work and have you decided to order food at home? Without a doubt, it is a good option when we don’t feel like cooking. But it’s not the only reason we tend to have the urge. The order, the same as when We buy clothes or any other product onlinetriggers the release of dopamine in the brain. That is the reason why dopamine apps have become fashionable in South Korea, a series of applications in which you search through a list of products and choose the one you most want, but it never reaches your home. To get the kick of pleasure, it seems to be more than enough. From South Korea, to the world. One of the first dopamine apps to be launched was Food Never Eats. Basically, it delivers what it promises. You can choose food from a wide variety of menus specialized by country. Do you feel like Italian food? Today your body asks for Mexican tacos? Or maybe you prefer a good burger? You have everything. Your brain prepares to savor. It is anticipated. But you never get it. This application is Korean, like most apps of this type. However, there are already some in other countries. This is the case of the American Dopamine Shopwhich presents a very wide range of products. The good thing about not having to spend the money is that even the Moon is on offer, for the modest price of 99 million dollars. These types of applications have recently become fashionable. However, in an article for The ConversationAustralian consumer behavior expert Gary Mortimer predicts that they will likely continue to spread around the world over time. The hooking hormone. dopamine is the central hormone of reward systems. These are brain mechanisms that, broadly speaking, seek to ensure that we repeat certain behaviors that are beneficial to us as a species. For example, sex generates pleasure through the release of dopamine, because it helps us perpetuate the species. The more sex we have, the more likely we are to reproduce. Eating chocolate is also pleasant, because it gives us a lot of energy. The brain does not distinguish between energetic and healthy. All of this is so pleasant that we are left wanting to repeat. Therein lies the evolutionary benefit. Unfortunately, not everything that activates reward systems is positive for us. Drugs, for example, have the same effect. And, in general, everything that engages as well. From gambling to shopping. In both cases, dopamine is released in anticipation of a reward; which, in the case of purchases, is the product that we are going to buy or the dish that we are going to taste. The point is that it has been observed that anticipation occurs even if we never receive the order. That’s why dopamine apps are causing a sensation. In them, almost all the steps of the purchase occur: anticipation, selection and a feeling of confirmation. Nothing ever comes, but we trick our brain anyway. The B side of dopamine apps. In his article, Mortimer warns that anything that generates this release of dopamine can cause the gateway effect. That is, it becomes the gateway to something worse. Much has been studied with games of chance. In 2014a study was published with 409 people playing games of chance without reward. It was seen that, 6 months later, 26% of the participants switched to betting. In 2016 A similar study was carried out with 521 people and the gateway effect was seen in 19%. It is even something that has been seen with electronic cigarettes. They are harmful in themselves, but it has also been observed that they serve as a gateway to conventional tobacco consumption. For all these reasons, we cannot rule out that these types of apps end up giving rise to compulsive purchases in search of a shot of dopamine that makes us feel good. The algorithm hunts you anyway. On the other hand, Mortimer remembers that false elections also feed the algorithm. Even if you don’t buy anything, you are still customizing your preferences through cookies and you will receive the response in the form of personalized advertising. There are people who don’t care about this, but others prefer to avoid it, so it’s good for them to be clear that it is not necessary to buy anything. The search is more than enough. Image | Magnific image, not the app in the article Xataka | When it comes to meat, science knows there’s something better than protein shakes: lean pork

After 40 years in the Galician sea, the radioactive drums are in a critical state of deterioration. The solution may be worse than letting it be

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“There is no life down there.” For decades it was almost a legend among activists and oceanographers: a giant landfill, with hundreds of thousands of radioactive drums, abandoned in the abyssal plain of the Atlantic. The problem is that there was life and they were killing it. A little less than 300 nautical miles from Cape Fisterra in Galicia – just over 500 kilometers – the Nodssum Project, which is already on its third expedition, has sounded the alarm. Far from the myth, French scientific missions They located thousands of barrels, went down with manned submarines, photographed leaks and measured radionuclides above what was expected. 220,000 barrels They only found a thousand. The rest, some 100,000 tons of nuclear waste, lay at the bottom and was carried away by the currents, its contents scattered. Now, with just over 3,500 barrels located, it is concluded that they are suffering from an “advanced state of deterioration”, according to researchers from the Center National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). A cemetery under the Atlantic. Where does all this come from? The drama began in 1946. And until the early 1990s, British, Dutch, Belgian, French and other European ships continuously dumped low- and medium-level radioactive waste at the bottom of the Atlantic. They are concentrated in an area of ​​about 10,000 square kilometers, at a depth of 4,000–5,000 meters. It is, without hot cloths, the third largest landfill of canned nuclear waste known on the planet. Inside there are no fuel rods, but rather civil and military nuclear waste: sludge, gloves, laboratory equipment, medical remains, resins, contaminated scrap metal, encapsulated in cement or tar to withstand the pressure of the deep ocean. When the landfill began to be mapped, they did not even document 1% of the total. To date, just over 3,000 barrels have been located, identified with the autonomous robot UlyX and high-resolution sonar. A longliner and a lot coraxe. The They came between two freighters that were dumping garbage to the Atlantic Trench. The press took notice and that practice bounced around in newspapers around the world. The protests had an effect, because the European body in charge of controlling this waste declared a moratorium on discharges. Moratorium that is still in force today. The first NODSSUM-I campaign focused on making the invisible visible. since a decadethe expedition has been expanding the mapped area to about 140 square kilometers, with densities of about 20 drums per square kilometer and more than 3,350 barrels cataloged. The great novelty came with the manned submarine Nautile, which made it possible to directly observe the state of the barrels at more than 4,000 meters deep. It was then that the real state could be noticed. Barrels in the last. Corroded surfaces, colonization of anemones, open cracks in dents and leaks of encapsulating material – with tar and cement overflowing – in some containers, in addition to the detection of radionuclides above what was expected. The sea salt is slowly eating away some brass lacking the necessary security. The expedition has taken 345 samples of sediment, about 5,000 liters of water and specimens of abyssal fauna (fish, amphipods, small crustaceans) to analyze them in the laboratory with precision one hundred times greater than that of the instruments on board. To date, no “anomalies” have been found in the sediments and, although the radionuclides are below legal limitsthey do exceed all previous estimates. Rescue them… or leave them where they are. The current objective is to contain the threat. Can 200,000 drums be removed from the bottom of the Atlantic? Technically, yes; Politically, economically and in terms of risk, things get complicated. The Nuclear Safety Council insists on a clear message: the Galician and Cantabrian coastal waters do not show significant levels of radioactivity, below the limits set by Spanish and European regulations. And Spain does not even have responsibilities, since it did not dump waste into the Atlantic trench. In fact, the problem goes beyond the astronomical cost: many barrels are so degraded that they could disintegrate in the lifting process. If deterioration continues, will there be greater problems resulting from bioaccumulation? How does it affect the abyssal food chain? This is exactly what you are looking to answer. At the same time, we are trying to study this deep habitat full of organisms adapted to a darkness that now coexists with an 80-year-old nuclear legacy. Images | BNG (by Wolcott Henry), Flickr (owned by Tomas Vazquez) and Campagne NODSSUM, CNRS, Flotte oceanographique française. In Xataka | 800 meters deep in a 175 million year old rock: Germany’s solution to nuclear waste In Xataka | The big problem with nuclear energy has always been its waste. Russia can now recycle them up to five times

Europe believed that the Russian ghost fleet moved oil. Report points to something much worse: drone “aircraft carriers”

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During the First World War, the United Kingdom created the called Q-ships: Seemingly harmless merchant ships that hid cannons under their decks to attract German submarines and surprise them when they approached. The idea of ​​turning a commercial ship into a weapon It wasn’t new.. The striking thing is that, more than a century later, it could have evolved much more than we imagined. It all started with some drones. At the end of 2024 they began to register drone raids on several American military bases in England and, shortly after, on other strategic facilities in Germany. The devices appeared and disappeared without a trace, forcing investigations to be opened that they never identified publicly to those responsible. Those flights seemed like another episode in Europe’s growing hybrid war, although a new report maintains that the true origin could have been much further from the coast. Capture of the IISS report The hypothesis. a study from the International Institute for Strategic Studies maintains that it is “highly probable” that Russia used ships linked to its well-known ghost fleet as platforms to launch and recover drones. This network of oil tankers and merchants had been associated until now with crude oil transportation to avoid Western sanctions. If the hypothesis ends up being confirmed, those ships would have also played a military function much more sophisticated covert. A tanker can become an aircraft carrier. They counted TWZ analysts that the great advantage of a merchant ship is precisely that no one expects it to act as a military platform. A ship can remain for days in international waters, discreetly approach the coast, launch a reconnaissance drone and continue its trade route without raising suspicion. Compared to an aircraft carrier, whose presence is impossible to hide, a cargo ship offers perfect cover for operations that are difficult to attribute. The chosen bases. The targets included facilities such as RAF Lakenheathwhich is being prepared for host nuclear weapons American, as well as RAF Mildenhall, RAF Fairford, RAF Feltwell and Ramstein air base in Germany. The researchers collected around of 170 citizen noticesof which approximately half were considered credible after being corroborated by several witnesses or images. They also detected coordinated flight patternsdifferent types of aircraft and trajectories incompatible with recreational use. The sea offers an explanation. The report poses that some drones were able to take off from Russian-related ships located out of visual range of the coast. Among the possibilities is the Orlan-10a military drone with sufficient autonomy to cover these distances and equipped with intelligence sensors, surveillance, reconnaissance and even electronic warfare capabilities. The authors themselves recognize that using an identifiable military model would increase the risk of attribution, so they do not rule out the use of modified commercial drones to make it even more difficult to trace their origin. The boss worries. Plus: the study’s authors admit that their conclusions rest on a combination of cluesknown capabilities and geographical coincidences, not on definitive public evidence. No European government has officially linked a specific ship to a specific incursion, although various policymakers have called for new investigations. For their part, both the British Ministry of Defense and the US Air Force in Europe have confirmed drone flights, but remain silent on any intelligence information related to their possible authorship. The hybrid war. If the hypothesis is correct, the problem would no longer be solely the existence of a ghost fleet dedicated to transporting Russian oil. Europe would also have to assume that some of those same ships can serve as discrete platforms for espionage operationsreconnaissance or electronic warfare hundreds of kilometers from the front. In other words, the biggest threat of the report is not to identify who launched those drones, but to propose that a simple merchant ship could play part of the role that until now was only attributed to an aircraft carrier. Image | Google In Xataka | Europe has encountered a problem bigger than Russia: drones cannot be stored for more than eight weeks In Xataka | Cities such as London or Madrid appear on Russia’s new objective map. The reason: drone production

We sensed that Russia’s “flying Chernobyl” was a dangerous nuclear missile. MIT just confirmed that it is much worse

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In 1964, the United States canceled the Project Pluto after proving that it worked for a very simple reason: the missile left a radioactive trail in its wake and there was no a “safe” place where to try it. Half a century later, Russia has decided to return to that idea that even Washington considered too extreme. The nickname takes shape. It we count a few months ago. For years the Burevestnik It was almost a technological legend, one of those “super missiles” that Putin presented in 2018 shrouded in mystery and propaganda. It was sensed that it was dangerous for a simple reason: a nuclear reactor inside a missile could never be clean or easy to control. But now the new analysis by MIT scientists puts numbers and logic to that fear, and the conclusion is more disturbing than expected. We are not just talking about a nuclear missile in the classical sense (one that carries a warhead), but rather a missile that converts all your own flight in a form of radioactive contamination. If the popular idea was that of a “flying Chernobyl” (the nickname is used by experts of arms control remembering the physical cost of the concept), the real problem is that it could be something worse: a moving reactor releasing waste throughout its trajectory. The obsession of the Cold War. The concept is not new. In the 1950s, both the United States and the Soviet Union played with reactors on board strategic aircraft such as the Convair B-36 Peacemaker and the Tupolev Tu-95although they never really powered their engines. The big leap was Project Plutoa US program to create a supersonic missile of almost unlimited range that would fly at low altitudes, wreaking nuclear destruction. The project was technically viable, but so brutal and polluting that ended up abandoned. That is the historical key: the West left this idea behind not because it was impossible, but because it understood its implications too well. How the monster really works. The great advance of MIT study is to explain how it really moves the Burevestnik. It doesn’t use Pluto’s old ramjet concept, but something even more compact: a direct cycle turbojet. The system is almost wild in its simplicity. Air enters from the atmosphere, passes directly through the reactor core, is heated by fission, and is expelled to generate thrust. This allows weight and size to be reduced, making it possible to put the entire reactor inside a missile. just 9.5 meters. But this efficiency has a terrible counterpart: the air that comes in clean comes out contaminated. Every second of flight converts the missile in a nuclear chimney that spreads radioactive isotopes over the ground and the atmosphere. The toxic trail that changes everything. Here’s the big twist. A conventional nuclear missile is lethal when it hits. The Burevestnik begins to be dangerous long before it reaches its objective. According to the researchersits exhaust would be loaded with argon, krypton and radioactive carbon, in addition to particles generated by the progressive erosion of the reactor under extreme heat and constant pressure. The longer it stays in the air, more material released. It is a complete inversion of the classic concept of a strategic weapon: it is no longer just the final explosion, but the entire journey. In practice, each mission could leave a contamination corridor behind it, turning the simple transit of the missile into a radiological event. Accidents that already pointed to this. The signs had been there for years. They remembered the TWZ analysts that after the public disclosure of the program, the environmental organization Bellona Foundation detected radiation spikes in the Arctic linked to possible tests. Then came the loss of a prototype at sea and, in 2019, the explosion in the White Sea that killed five Rosatom scientists. The MIT hypothesis It’s devastating: That reactor recovered from the bottom could be reactivated when it was hoisted, causing the explosion. What then seemed like an isolated accident today fits into a logical chain of problems associated with handling a miniaturized and exposed nuclear reactor. Strategic advantage and its limits. The reason for the existence of the Burevestnik is clear: almost unlimited range. It can be launched from the Arctic, remain in flight for hours or even days and attack from impossible vectors, avoiding radars and traditional warning networks. This unpredictability forces rethink air defenseespecially in spatial layers capable of tracking low-level targets. However, this advantage comes with obvious weaknesses. It is subsonic, not very stealthy and, paradoxically, easy to track by its own signature or radioactive signal. Plus: the reactor degrades while it operates, which calls into question the very promise of “infinite range.” More laboratory than weapon for now. All of this leads to an admittedly uncomfortable conclusion: perhaps the Burevestnik matters less as a weapon than as an experiment. Russia may be using this program to validate technologies which would later be applied to nuclear surveillance drones or much more militarily useful space platforms. It is also possible that it is a personal obsession of Putin, fascinated by the idea of ​​a machine that can fly almost without limit. Whatever the reason, the result is the same: Russia has achieved something that no one else had achieved, the first sustained flight of a device truly powered by nuclear energy. The problem is that the price of that achievement may be having resurrected a technology that the Cold War buried precisely because it was too dangerous even for its own creators. Image | x In Xataka | There is something more disturbing than “a Chernobyl”: it is a flying Chernobyl, it is in the hands of Russia and it is already testing it In Xataka | Russia has a missile so powerful and destructive that NATO calls it “Satan II.” And it is already unfolding

“It is totally unnatural and we rest worse”

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In 1902, engineer Willis Carrier invented air conditioning modern, but not so that we could sleep better or to combat heat waves: he created it to prevent paper from will be deformed by humidity at a Brooklyn print shop. More than a century later, that machine designed to save ink and paper has ended up regulating something much more delicate: our own sleep. Sleep with air conditioning. Every summer comes back the same question: Is it a good idea to sleep with air conditioning? And the answer is not as simple as it seems. The cardiologist José Abellán posed an idea that connects with something basic in our physiology: the human body is designed to sleep in an environment where the temperature drops naturally at night, not in one that is artificially frozen for hours. That’s the key. It is not that air conditioning is “bad” in itself, but that breaking that natural thermal pattern (going from daytime heat to constant and intense cold) can disturb rest more than we think. What the body asks for while we sleep. Sleep science has been confirming for years something very specific: To initiate and maintain deep sleep, your core body temperature has to drop slightly. This decrease is a biological signal to enter rest. That’s where air conditioning plays an ambiguous role. Used well, it helps facilitate that process. Misused, it exaggerates and distorts it. The difference is in moderation. Medical organizations and societies in Spain such as the Spanish Society of Pulmonology and Thoracic Surgery recommend temperatures between 22 and 24 degreesprecisely to accompany this physiological descent without forcing it. The problem is not getting cold, it’s overdoing it. Here is the most common mistake. Many people set the air to 18 or 19 degrees and keep it there all night. This can generate an immediate feeling of relief, but also dry mucous membranes, irritates the throat, congests the nose and can cause micro-awakenings that fragment sleep. This is what many people describe when they wake up with a dry mouth or a cold feeling. From SEPAR they insist Furthermore, air conditioning greatly dehumidifies the environment, and if the humidity falls too low, the natural defenses of the nose and throat become less effective against particles and microorganisms. What the organizations say. The health consensus in Spain does not say “do not sleep with air”, but rather “use it with common sense.” Moderate temperature between those 22 and 24 °Cavoid the direct jet to the body, maintain humidity between 35% and 60%, clean filters frequently and do not create extreme differences with the outside temperature. It is also recommended to use night mode or timer, so that the device slightly raises the temperature in the early morning. This fits with physiological logic: help the body fall asleep, but then let it follow its own thermal rhythm. The fan is your friend. The alternative that proposes Abellán makes sense within that logic: using air conditioning only to lower the initial temperature of the room and then switching to the fan. This cools the environment without continuing to dry it or artificially cool it all night. “Our body has evolved in a natural environment, and in nature it is normal for the temperature to drop a little at night, so what is totally unnatural, and makes us rest worse, is spending all day with the air conditioning on full blast and the temperature not dropping at night,” clarified. Other tricks he mentions, such as cooling wrists with cold water or lightly moistening sheets, work because they act on the body’s natural heat dissipation, not against it. They are small physiological shortcuts, not miracle substitutes. Conclusion: yes, but as a tool. Ultimately, the question should not be whether sleeping with air conditioning is good or bad, but rather how to use. If it is used to create a reasonable environment and then accompany the natural drop in temperature, can improve clearly the rest. On the contrary, if it becomes a kind of permanent night refrigerator, we are forcing an ecosystem that the body does not recognize as natural. And there it appears the modern paradox: We have the technology to sleep cooler, but sometimes we use it in just the way that makes us sleep (much) worse. Image | Wikimedia In Xataka | These days I’m having a hard time falling asleep because of the heat. But put this device on and sleep soundly In Xataka | Sleeping at more than 30 degrees is now “normal” in almost all of Spain. And Vigo is the canary in the mine

China already has a GPU that competes with Nvidia’s RTX 3060. The bad thing is that it arrives five years late and worse

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The china crusade for achieving the complete independence in the field of semiconductors has taken a new step. The problem is that this step has not been as promising as we expected, and in fact it makes it clear that today the Asian giant is still far away of the semiconductor manufacturers that dominate the market. The alternative for gamers that promised. Lisuan Tech (砺算科技), a Chinese company dedicated to manufacturing semiconductors and solutions such as graphics cards for the end-user market, has launched its new GPU for the consumer market, the LX-7G100. The price and expectations. The official starting price is 3,299 yuan (about 420 euros at the exchange rate), and at that price the equivalent graphics card should be at least an RTX5060 Ti, which is usually below 400 euros. What we get in performance is far from that. Performance tests of the LX-7G100 typically fell well short of the RTX 3060.Source: NotebookCheck. Worse than the RTX 3060. The problem is that those who have had access to this graphics card and have evaluated their benefits They have realized that this manufacturer’s GPU is very far from that price/performance estimate. In fact, it usually competes more with the RTX 3060 of 2021, but even with it it loses: it offers approximately 65% of the performance from its rival NVIDIA. Good specifications. On paper, the LX-7G100 should offer more performance. It has a 7G106 GPU, 12 GB of GDDR6 memory and decent bandwidth, for example. However, it does not have truly mature support for DX12 and does not offer an alternative to Nvidia’s DSLL or AMD’s FSR. When used in modern games, performance plummets due to rendering glitches and code translation bottlenecks. Not even for AI. At Lisuan Tech they have also tried to bet on their ability to run local and private AI models. However, most of the development of AI projects is linked to Nvidia’s CUDA architecture. It is true that the Chinese company has its own compatibility layer to translate PyTorch and CUDA code to its native architecture, but the loss of efficiency is notable, which makes inference or local model training tasks become too slow compared to those allowed by Nvidia graphics. difficult to compete. Lisuan Technology announced the first milestones of this launch a year ago. The rumors they indicated that its G100 graphics processor is manufactured by SMIC with a 6nm photolithographic process that complies with US restrictions. An attempt was made to launch in 2023, but Lisuan had financial problems and a capital injection of $27.7 million managed to keep the project going. It remains to be seen if sales ultimately follow through, although certainly its price/performance ratio makes it attractive only to audiences like the Chinese, who may have more difficulties accessing models like the Nvidia RTX. In Xataka | The end of Nvidia in China seems to be very near: its current market share is 0%

In Spain we could do worse

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If you are one of those who At the end of the salary they still have a month leftyou have probably wondered at some point in which corner of the world your monthly salary would be enough to cover your basic needs. For that to happen, salaries They must be proportional to the cost of living in that country. This proportion is what defines whether employees in those countries have better or worse purchasing power. That is, if they can buy more or less things with their salaries. To facilitate the visualization of these salary data, the portal VisualCapitalist has created an illustrative graph that represents the salary data of different countries in the world collected by the International Labor Organization. In this way, at a glance we can get an idea of ​​which countries in the world earn more wages and in which of them the purchasing power of their employees is lower. Data adjusted for purchasing power parity Before beginning to explain these data, it is worth emphasizing that the data it provides In its report the ILO is data purchasing power adjusted (PPP). That means that do not directly reflect the real average salary in the local currency of each country that workers receive, but rather a corrected figure to be able to compare how much that money really means in different economies. This adjustment is necessary because the cost of living varies greatly between countries. A salary of 2,000 euros does not offer the same standard of living in Spain as in Switzerland, Luxembourg or the United States, where housing, food or transportation are usually much more expensive. The purchasing power parity try to correct that difference. Instead of just comparing how much a person earns, compare how many goods and services they can afford on that salary in each country. A simple example: if one person earns 2,000 euros in Spain and another the equivalent of 3,500 euros in Switzerland, on paper the Swiss salary seems much higher. However, since prices are also much higher in Switzerland, the real difference in purchasing power It can be quite minor. The PPP adjustment serves precisely to put both salaries on a comparable scale. Therefore, when the report shows PPP-adjusted salaries, what you are comparing is not so much the amount of salary you earn, but rather the real purchasing power between countries. That is to say, there is no point in having an apparently very high salary if the cost of living in that country is terribly expensive. In that case, the salary adjusted for purchasing power will be represented with a lower amount. In which countries the salary increases the most The graph leaves no room for doubt and Luxembourg leads the ranking where the salary yields the most with 9,307 dollars per month adjusted by PPP. Furthermore, it is the case that the Grand Duchy also has the highest minimum wage of Europe. Luxembourg surpasses Belgium in second place with $8,297 per month, and the Netherlands in third place with $7,234 as a parity-adjusted salary. Fourth place on the list corresponds to Austria with 6,832 dollars per month, followed by the United States and Finland, which are in fifth and sixth position respectively with salaries of just under 6,300 dollars per month each. Four of the top five positions are European, which shows that the old continent has economies that offer monthly salaries proportional to the cost of living. The countries where the salary yields less The surprise of the ranking is Switzerland with adjusted salaries of $4,683 per month adjusted by PPP. Although the Alpine country has some of the highest real wages in the worldis placed behind Canada or Italy after adjustment for local costs. That is to say, Swiss salaries are among the highest on the continent, but so are the prices of products, so purchasing capacity is reduced of its citizens. The high price of housing, services and consumer goods significantly reduces the real value of the Swiss salary. There is a large gap between the top positions on the list and the countries that are below the Top 10. For example, France is in twenty-fifth position with an adjusted salary of $3,064, which is a salary three times lower than its neighbor Luxembourg. The real average salary in France is around 3,650 euros per month, which leaves the PPP-adjusted salary slightly below. This indicates that the cost of living is slightly higher than the purchasing power of their salaries, so, overall, living in France is somewhat more expensive than living in Luxembourg. The same happens with Poland and Greece, which with adjusted salaries of 3,082 and 3,546 dollars respectively, close the list of countries in which it is most expensive to live for their workers. Spain’s wage stagnation With 5,166 dollars per month adjusted by PPP, Spain is located in the upper-middle zone of the table with just 56% of the purchasing power of the world leader. The case of Spain is the opposite of that presented in France and, on a smaller scale, follows in the footsteps of Luxembourg. The adjusted salary doubles the real average salary which, according to data from the Adecco Salary Monitor 2025is around 2,048 euros. This indicates that the salary in Spain allows the reference shopping basket to be assumed without major problems. That is, the purchasing power of employees in Spain allows them to make ends meet and leaves a certain margin for savings. However, the price of housing in Spain continues to be the main drag on purchasing power of the Spanish. For this reason, salaries in Spain have not climbed positions, despite the latest increases in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage that has moved the average salary upwards of the country. In Xataka | Although salaries have risen 8% in Spain, an upward trend emerges: poor workers Image | VisualCapitalist

In Japan there is no doubt that they live worse than 30 years ago. Houses are literally getting smaller.

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The demographic crisis that drags Japan comes long. In 2024 we say that it is the great challenge of the nation, the same one that we could summarize with one fact: if we continue like this, By 2531 all its inhabitants will have the same last name. That’s why we have seen all kinds of ideas and proposalssome with more common sense than othersbut all with the idea of ​​raising birth rates and combating aging. Now there is another fact that aggravates the situation even more: the houses are smaller. The house shrinks. The data is official and comes from a study that is carried out every five years in the nation. The average housing space in Japan has reached its lowest level in 30 years, with an average of 90 square meters at the end of 2024three square meters less than the 2003 peak, according to the government study. The change reflects a trend towards reduction in the size of homes, evident in the last five years. Additionally, in both single-family homes and multi-family units, including rentals and condominiums. Multifamily, in particular, average only 50 square metersfive less than what the government considers adequate for two adults in urban areas. It’s the economy, friend. They counted on a report in Nikkei that the increase in construction costs, which has shot up 30% since 2015 in the country, is the main driver of this reduction of space in homes. To keep prices affordable and protect their profit margins, builders are downsizing homes, a practice known as “hidden price gouging.” Not only that. In addition, land prices in popular residential areas are also on the rise, which further aggravates the situation. This increase in prices has reduced the demand for larger, more expensive, personalized homes in favor of smaller, cheaper units. Impact on quality of life. It is another of the legs that slips from the problem. The reduction in living space creates discomfort, especially in small homes. For many people, like a 50-year-old woman who lives in a 30-square-meter apartment with her husband, the situation is described as suffocating. Even single-person homes, which They represent 38% of households according to the national censusare often considered too small for a comfortable lifestyle. And then there are young people, who face greater barriers to accessing larger homes, with prohibitive prices even on the second-hand market. Young people and birth rates. All this leads to what we indicated at the beginning. The reduced living space and the impossibility of purchasing larger homes discourage young couples from, for example, starting families, exacerbating the already worrying drop in the birth rate. Housing policies alone do not seem sufficient to reverse this trend, and experts such as Masayuki Takahashi emphasize that The key is to increase salaries in a sustained manner. During the period of high economic growth in Japan, rising wages allowed more people to access spacious housing, something that is not the case today. The elderly and housing. The housing problem goes much further. In fact, every time More seniors in Japan face difficulties renting housingeven if they have financial means. Cases like that of an 88-year-old man in Tokyo, who, with more than 100 million yen in savings after planning to sell his apartment, experienced multiple rejections for not being able to provide an emergency contact under 70 years of agea common requirement among homeowners in the nation. After four months of searching, he managed to find an apartment, but the case reflects a broader problem. Rent and the veto for older adults. According to 2020 census data, Japan had 6.7 million single-person households with residents aged 65 or older, accounting for 12% of the total. By 2030, it is estimated that this number will reach 8 million. Again, even though there are approximately 9.3 million of vacant homes, landlords’ reluctance to rent to seniors is a significant obstacle. In August 2025, the Ministry of Infrastructure published a survey specific about owners of the akiya which revealed that approximately 60% of these properties were inherited, with more than 70% built before 1980, and that more than 70% show signs of deterioration or damage. Reasons? 66% of landlords expressed reluctance to accept older tenants, in a ministry survey. The main fear: the risk of death of the tenant alone of which we have talked beforewhich can require costly cleanups and require reporting to future tenants for three years. This situation is worsened by the increasing loneliness of older people and the lack of close family members throughout the nation. Ultimately, and with official figures and data In hand, it does not seem that the housing problem in Japan has improved for three decades. In reality, and sticking to those numbers, houses are literally smaller and more expensive, both to buy and to rent. a problem that we see in many other nationswhere the practice of downsizing in homes to maintain competitive prices ends up affecting the stability of the real estate market and the residents’ own quality of lifewith special emphasis on the case of young people and the elderly. A version of this article was published in January 2025 Image | Ted McGrath In Xataka | Japan has known for many years the secret to cleaning dust less frequently at home In Xataka | If you thought that living in Japan was already a luxury, wait until you see the latest house signed by Aston Martin

The super Niño of 1877 wiped out 4% of the world’s population. The one that is already beginning to form promises to be worse, but what does that mean in 2027?

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In the last week, El Niño has become suddenly real. Media like Washington Post, BBC or countless media in Spanish have begun to compare what is coming to us with El superNiño of 1877, the event that “wiped out 4% of the world’s population.” And, stated this way, it is no wonder; The story is simple: “a Child Godzilla is coming and no one knows if we are ready.” That is why it is important to know what exactly we are talking about and if, in short, “we are all going to die.” How serious is the matter? As we said a few days ago, between March and May the reliability of ENSO forecasts is usually worse than normal (because the equatorial Pacific anomalies go through their transition phase). That makes everyone go with “lead feet”; but the data is worrying. Ben Noll of the Washington Post broadcast on May 8 that the North American Multi-Model Ensemble projected “the strongest El Niño on record” between October 2026 and January 2027, with a peak of +3.1 °C in November. They are big words. Above all, because the ECMWF is along the same lines. In the words of Diego Restrepo, “El Niño is rapidly intensifying, and now 8 out of 10 models point to a super event and four project the strongest one on record.” And this looks like 1877? That is Noll’s thesis and it has been repeated a lot in recent days. However, the comparison is misleading. First, because, although the models are pointing to a historical ENSO, they are still models. That is, we still have no idea what is going to happen. And, to be strict, until the models recover their full potential in June, we will not know well. Second because, as argued by Kimberley Reid, from the University of Melbournethe intensity measured in the central Pacific does not translate linearly into impacts. Taking into account everything that has changed in this century and a half at a climate level, the impacts may be completely different. And thirdly because El Niño of 1877 was not the cause of that catastrophe. Yes, it is true that he set the conditions for it to occur but, as noted Mike Davis in “Late Victorian Holocausts”what killed throughout that quarter of a century were colonial policies. And what happened in 1877? A strange combination between a superNiño, the Indian Dipole and a tremendously warm North Atlantic between the years 1876–78 caused a global drought. The problem is that, in a world governed by imperialism, grain exports did not stop and, as local resilience mechanisms had been dismantled, a famine occurred that killed some 50 million people. But the consensus is clear: no matter how intense El Niño was, it caused the problem of its management. And that, although it may not seem like it, is good news. A few years ago the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) published a report with a clear warning: “climate-related disasters” have increased since the 1970s. Specifically, they have multiplied by five over the last five decades. According to their calculations, in the 1980s, 1,400 incidents were recorded – their tables include extreme weather, climate and water phenomena – and in the 1990s, just over 2,200. In the first decade of the 21st century, 3,500 were reached and during the last decade, which spans from 2010 to 2019, it was close to 3,200. Curiously, this increase in the number of disasters has coincided with a decrease in the number of victims. The WMO data is clearalso: from more than 50,000 deaths in the 1970s (incidents basically related to climate and water are taken into account) it went to less than 20,000 in 2010. From an average of 170 a day in the 70s and 80s, it dropped in the 90s to less than a hundred a day and to 40 at the beginning of the 21st century. What will happen? As Restrepo also points out“despite having more information and knowledge, today we have warmer oceans, much more vulnerable ecosystems and collapsing biodiversity. This could generate impacts on health and risks for food, water and energy security.” However, we are more prepared and more importantly we have time to prepare. The ball is in our court. Image | Ben Noll In Xataka | There are more and more extreme weather events. In return, they are leaving fewer victims than ever

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