The PSP is more than 20 years old and has no reason to move ‘Counter-Strike’. A developer has decided to try

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Those afternoons began with a simple gesture: turn on the computer and open ‘Counter Strike‘. Sometimes it happened at home and other times in an Internet cafe, still decisive in places where domestic connection was just beginning to spread. Then came the servers, network games and scenarios like de_dust2repeated until each hallway was familiar. For those of us who lived through that stage, “playing a Counter” did not just describe a video game, but a specific way to pass the time. In 2005, the PSP was beginning to make a place for itself among players when ‘Counter-Strike’ had been on the PC for years and its version 1.6 had already become a reference. Sony’s laptop belonged to that same technological culture, but never received an official delivery of the Valve title. They shared a time, an audience and many hours of playing, although their paths did not cross. More than two decades later, a developer has decided to bring them closer through a project that does not go unnoticed. The way chosen to bring Counter-Strike closer to the PSP is called OpenStrikea project that looks familiar on screen, although under that appearance something completely different works. We are not looking at Valve’s commercial game running on the laptop or a direct port of its engine, but rather a new implementation that recovers maps, rounds, shooting and combats against bots. Each user must provide the maps and textures from their own copy, while the movement, rules and rendering depend on a base created expressly for the project. Behind that base is Yifeng Wang, known as doodlewind on GitHub, a developer linked to open software, interfaces and web technologies. Its objective was to test PocketJS and Pocket3D and demonstrate that that architecture could go beyond interfaces to support a 3D game in real time. As he explained when presenting OpenStrike, he chose the PSP because its hardware does not allow it to disguise an inefficient architecture with more memory or power. If that worked there, the demonstration would be much more convincing. The first obstacle was elementary: the PSP cannot directly run a program created for the PC. Your processor uses a MIPS architecturedifferent from the one for which ‘Counter-Strike’ was compiled, and they also change the system, the libraries and the way of communicating with the graphics hardware. Copy the executable to a memory card would be like providing written instructions for another machine. You had to recompile and adapt the original code, emulate its environment or, as Wang did, build a new implementation that spoke the console language from the beginning. Once the barrier of architecture was overcome, an even tighter fight remained: making everything fit and respond in time. The PSP-1000 had 32 MB of memory, of which the programs could use 24 MB, and its processor reached 333 MHz. Everything necessary for the game to work had to coexist within that margin. Maintaining 60 images per second meant doing all that work in about 16.7 milliseconds per frame, with no room for unnecessary calculations. The solution was to prevent the PSP from calculating during the game everything that could be prepared in advance. OpenStrike incorporates the map lighting into the geometry itself, adapts the resources to the console format and takes advantage of the pre-calculated visibility information of the BSP maps to limit rendering to potentially visible areas. According to Wang’s measurements on a physical PSP, the test run on dust2 remains at 60 FPS, also during combat. It is still, however, a proof of concept without multiplayer, purchase phase or all the systems of the original game. As shown in the demo published by the projectthe crossover between ‘Counter-Strike’ and the PSP no longer belongs solely to the realm of the imaginable. OpenStrike is still far from reproducing the full game, but it delivers on the essential promise: recovering a recognizable part of that experience. That is the true scope of Wang’s work. Not to demonstrate that the laptop hid an unknown power, but rather that its limits could still become the starting point for building something new. Images | Yifeng Wang In Xataka | Microsoft wants to preserve Xbox games and has chosen an unexpected path: officially emulate them on Windows

Navarra’s plan to achieve more housing without building

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Housing prices in the state they are out of controlit is estimated that there is a residential deficit of about 700,000 homes and although there are those who believe that the problem would be solved by building more, others they are not so clear. So the Foral Community of Navarra has looked for an alternative “solidarity, sustainable and far from speculation compared to the traditional market”, as explained Begoña Alfarothird vice president and counselor of Housing, Youth and Migration Policies of the regional Government: a residential model of cooperation open to rehabilitating unique buildings. Towards collaborative housing. The Government of Navarra has authorized the sending to the Council of Navarra of the new draft of Regional Law on Collaborative Housingthat is, residential complexes whose ownership falls on a cooperative made up of members with the right to individual and long-term use and enjoyment of the home and its common spaces. That is, an intermediate regime between classic permanent private property and rental. This preliminary project contemplates three types of collaborative housing: affordable, non-profit, scale or need for prior registration in the Census. the one intended for seniors between 50 and 70 years old, with healthcare and socio-health spaces. In architectural heritage, rehabilitating unique buildings such as farmhouses, old mills, convents, railway stations, old barracks. Why is it important. Because your goal is offer a stable, supportive and non-speculative residential model compared to full ownership and traditional rental and the mechanisms that have promoted speculation and prevented or made it difficult for citizens to access housing. How has declared for eldiario.es economist Ignacio Ezquiaga, the Navarrese model of public housing policies should be considered “a model to follow” by other communities, which provides added value to this law as part of a comprehensive strategy and not as an isolated measure. This law is aimed at the segments of the population that need it most: people with few resources and/or the elderly. In the latter case, it constitutes a kind of alternative to the residence business model. In addition, it is a way to take advantage and give a second useful life to unique buildings. Context. In 2025, Navarra declared a stressed residential market area in 21 municipalities where rental prices have already fallen. Furthermore, it is the only autonomous community in which housing became cheaper last April by 3.9%. Of course, in the previous quarter it rose 10.5%, although it was the second community that increased the least. In addition, last year it led the construction of protected housing: builds twice as much per inhabitant as the Community of Madrid. Thus, more than 20% of the homes are protected: of the 870 homes completed in 2025, 449 had some type of protection. According to expertsamong the reasons that explain why Navarra is one of the few places with green shoots in the Spanish state is that the regional community has been committed to promoting public housing policies for some time. This Regional Law on Collaborative Housing does not come from nowhere: it has been going through public participation processes for months. Meanwhile, the regional community has been building a legal housing ecosystem, with a Registry of Large Homeowners or the first state law that regulates the rental of rooms. In detail. Collaborative housing in architectural heritage is understood to be “that which is promoted in unique buildings, whether or not they have some level of protection” and that are not susceptible to segregation into different housing units with the minimum conditions required by regulations on habitability. This rehabilitation will give rise to collaborative housing that guarantees that they have interior spaces of at least 30 useful square meters per living unit, that each of these units has a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom (unless there is a collective kitchen) and common spaces and facilities. Yes, but. At the moment this is a draft bill and the process for it to become law is long: the Council of Navarra needs to give its opinion, the Government must approve the final bill and it must go through Parliament, where it will be debated, voted on and changes will be introduced. On the other hand, the collaborative housing model is still a minority and slow to be deployed, so its impact on the short-term housing access crisis will foreseeably be limited compared to other potential measures such as rent control in stressed areas. In Xataka | If the question is how much does it cost to buy an island in Scotland, the answer is: like a flat in Madrid In Xataka | Spain has a housing deficit and a huge problem to solve it: a land jam that blocks millions of apartments Cover | José Luis Filpo Cabana and Thomas

1,500 ships have been stopped in the Strait of Hormuz for six months. When they set sail, they are going to spread a plague all over the planet

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On March 2, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz was officially closed (unofficially, since February 28). You noticed its immediate effect when you went to your trusted gas station. Almost half a year later, there have been glimpses of openness and a measure of the Government of Spain to mitigate the rise in fuel that is gradually withdrawing. Meanwhile, ships are still stationed around that narrow pass and some states are venturing into alternative routes, such as the bypass through the desert of the Arab Emirates. But sooner or later, the Strait of Hormuz will open. And then it will also be a problem. Boats stranded in your area. Currently it is estimated that there are more than 1,500 large merchant vessels idle in the Gulf region. It is normal for a ship of this type to spend between one and three days stopped in a port, but as 24 international researchers have analyzedthese boats have been there 40 times longer, with their hulls motionless as if they were another object thrown into the sea. And the longer a boat is still, the more fauna adheres: algae, mussels, larvae… the growth of the biofouling it shoots from 10 days of immobility. And that is a danger for the ecosystems through which those ships will later pass: the International Maritime Organization explains that prolonged berthing significantly increases the risk of bioinvasion, which is why it recommends immediate actions when a vessel is inactive for between 18 and 30 days. Why it is important. Because at the moment there are more than a thousand ships exceeding that threshold and with a network of routes that travel the entire planet annually. When these vessels resume their journeys, they will carry fuel, goods and stowaways in the form of non-native organisms to ports and seas around the world. He study points out the first ports in danger: Jeddah, Bombay, Colombo and Singapore to the east and Alexandria, Piraeus, Algeciras and Rotterdam to the west. That its environmental conditions are similar to the place of origin is paradoxically a risk: it makes it easier for these invasive species to establish themselves successfully. Its devastating potential is enormous: displacement of native fauna, as reservoirs of pathogens and parasites capable of causing epidemics. In short, we are facing an enormous ecological and economic risk. Context. This is not the first time that geopolitical blockades or wars have led to the spread of invasive species. A previous historical example: the invasion of the Australasian barnacle Austrominius modestus in Western Europe in the Second World War as a result of New Zealand ships detained in English ports. On a much smaller scale, the six-day temporary closure of the Suez Canal in 2021 also carried biosecurity implications. How to avoid disaster. Among the measures proposals by the team There is the underwater cleaning of hulls before setting sail, anticipating and preventing routes to notify destination ports, monitoring in high-risk ports through environmental DNA testing and coordination to establish alerts between authorities and agencies. Paint ugly. The good news is that this environmental tragedy has not yet occurred, but rather this report is a well-founded prediction made without real sampling, but with the precedents that exist. Unfortunately, underwater cleanup that minimizes the risk at the source is unlikely, taking into account the limited capacity to carry it out and other needs, such as the resumption of shipping movement, transportation logistics or the urgency of evacuating crews. In Xataka | The Strait of Hormuz has become a death trap. The Arab Emirates’ solution is a pharaonic oil “bypass” through the desert In Xataka | When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, no one dared to cross it. Nobody except a 300 million Russian superyacht Cover | Goran_tek-es and freepik

A cloud hundreds of kilometers away can ruin this summer’s eclipse and we are already beginning to know what the weather will be like in each place.

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As the time approaches see the solar eclipse on August 12 2026, many of us are asking the same question: Will the weather be good? This is a relevant question whenever we are going to observe one of these astronomical phenomena. Nobody wants rain to ruin their show. However, specifically, it is even more important to look at the sky, since the Moon will obscure the Sun very close to sunset, so clouds can be especially treacherous. Today, we cannot know for sure what will happen. Weather predictions are more accurate the closer the date gets. To be considered reliable, they must be done about 3 days in advance. However, the first trend maps for the week of the eclipse are already beginning to appear. They are relatively optimistic, although they do not paint an ideal scenario either. Drier days than normal. In general, the forecasts they point because the days will be drier than normal for these dates in Extremadura, northern Andalusia and eastern Castilla y La Mancha. At these points the solar eclipse will not be seen in its entirety, but a good part of the Sun will be covered and the spectacle will be worth enjoying. On the other hand, there is a small area with less luck, since more rain than normal is expected at this time. These are the rest of Castilla la Mancha and south-central Aragon. Here we do find some points of the strip of totality. Dry does not mean cloudless. Just because rain is not expected does not mean that the skies will be completely clear or without haze. We cannot predict the haze so far in advance and neither can the clouds. Yes, we know that in inland places like Burgos, Soria either Teruelthe weather in August usually favors clear skies, although there may be afternoon storms that ruin the sunset. In the north, for its part, we will have to pay attention to the Atlantic cloudiness. And what about the heat? The first trend maps indicate that the day of the eclipse will be warmer than normal in practically all of Spain. Surprise for no one, with the summer we have. For this reason, much emphasis is being placed on wearing a hat and cool clothing, as well as carrying bottles of water to avoid the effects of the heat. During the exact moment of the eclipse, temperatures drop for obvious reasons, but it is normal to go to the site well before, so the heat can be a problem if we do not take precautions. The problem of the sunset. At the time the eclipse will take place, the Sun will be very close to the horizon. At that point, it happens that the light has to go a longer way through the atmosphere to reach us. The atmosphere dims sunlight. Therefore, as it travels through more of the atmosphere, the light arrives very weak. If we add to that a few clouds in the west, the eclipse could be ruined. Furthermore, there is the problem that, with the Sun this low, Even clouds hundreds of miles away can be annoyingagain because light must travel a very long path to reach us. Anyway, we will have to be patient. When the date gets much closer, we will be able to know with more certainty if there will be annoying clouds. In fact, even knowing it, we can have some surprises at the last moment. There have even been cases of cloudy and stormy skies that They have opened for a few seconds during the eclipse by pure luck. Even with late-breaking clouds, the solar eclipse should not be considered lost. Image | Magnific/Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | A third of Spain will be completely dark for a minute or two. The astronomical event of the century is approaching

the trick is in the takeoff angle

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When we talk about drones we automatically think of flying vehicles, but There are also underwater drones. What is not so common is that the same drone is capable of doing both. It’s fair what MIT just achieved: a small robot with wings able to fly and dive into wateras if it were a seabird when it hunts. The robot, which they have baptized with the not at all suggestive name “flipping-wing air-water vehicle” (FAAV), has been developed by a team of engineers from MIT and EPFL and lays the foundations for the creation of a new type of drones capable of moving in various environments. Inspired by nature The design is nothing like that of a typical flying drone since it does not have propellers, but to fly it uses two wings like those of a bird. The wings are attached to a small central fuselage where the battery and motor that move them are located. The wings are made of a thin membrane with a water-repellent coating that repels water, so that it does not add weight or slow down your movements when leaving the water. It also has an adjustable tail that allows you to make turns and adjust the inclination both when entering and leaving the water. In total it weighs only 300 grams. For its creation, engineers analyzed the characteristics of more than 100 species of diving birds, such as puffins, petrels and kingfishers. What they have observed is that smaller birds are capable of flapping their wings about ten times in the air and four times in the water, while the frequency is lower in the case of larger birds such as seagulls. To simulate different types of flight, they created several types of wings of different sizes that can be interchanged. There is a curious nuance and that is that the majority of diving birds use their legs to gain momentum and take off from the water. The robot does not have them and still achieves the same effect, The trick is in the takeoff angle. After several tests they saw that it needs to leave the water at 70 degrees, if it goes too far, instead of taking off, it falls backwards. Remote research and exploration The logical question is what is this for, and there are two answers. The first is that they wanted to study in more depth the flight mechanics of these birds and how they modify it when going from air to water and vice versa. The second is to use this robot as exploration vehicle for remote areas. The idea of ​​Raphael Zufferey, lead author of the study, is that these robots can be launched from a ship or the coast to fly to areas of interest (such as an iceberg, a port, a group of whales), submerge to take a sample or measurement, and fly again to deliver the data. Everything a lot cheaper than with traditional oceanographic meansand with the possibility of repeating the process every hour instead of every week. The team’s next steps include give the wings turning capacity (in addition to flapping) and test the robot in more adverse conditions, such as rough water or wind. Images | M.I.T. In Xataka | China has been perfecting robots that stick to walls for years with one goal: so that no one else dies hanging from a scaffold

his worst enemy had become family

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2,600 years ago, in a tomb in central China, someone made a baffling decision: to dismantle a spectacular set of 21 bronze bells and scatter their pieces around. He then sealed the burial chamber forever. When finding those bells, it would be normal to think that this arrangement was due to looting or an accident, but a recent study archaeologist Chinglong Tse of University College London has discovered that no: it was a premeditated and deliberate act. The discovery. The tomb is in the Zaoshulin cemetery, in Suizhou (Hubei, China) and corresponds to someone identified as Lord Qiu of Zeng, an aristocrat who ruled approximately between 675-650 or 650-625 BC. Those 21 bronze bells are called Zeng Gong Qiu bianzhong and the usual thing (if nothing strange has happened) is to find them in order, but here they appeared scattered and with their wooden support disassembled. But not. He sediment analysis rules out that the cause of the disorder was looting, since the land was compact and intact, which reflects that this arrangement was the original. It happened in a turbulent time. This point is essential to understand the decision to dismantle and scatter the bells: the burial takes place in the Chunqiu period (771-453 BC), a time of political fragmentation after the decline of the Zhou dynasty in which several states competed for territory. More specifically, Zeng was located in the so-called “Suisse corridor”, a strategic position between the central plains and the Yangtze River valley. This territory was of interest to its neighbor, the powerful state of Chu, and therefore constituted a military threat. In this scenario, Lord Qiu had his funeral bells made with an inscription invoking his ancestors to ask for help. Spoiler: in the end it was not necessary because at some point during his reign, the king of Chu gave his sister Mi Yu in marriage to Qiu, which sealed peace. What do the bells mean?. As Chinglong Tse maintains in his paper, in Chinese archeology bells were not mere musical instruments, but ritual objects that functioned as a kind of communication channels between the living and dead members of a lineage. When the political situation that had made them necessary disappeared, they no longer had a purpose. So dismantling the support of those bells so that they would not ring is equivalent to canceling that request for help. Or what is the same: that disorder in his funerary trousseau is an intentional act and loaded with meaning. The help of his ancestors was no longer needed. Don’t miss the bells. In addition to these scattered and “deactivated” remains of bells, what they did find in the funeral chamber was a second, more modest set of 13 bells that were placed in an orderly manner. As the archaeologist explains, Qiu commissioned a smaller and simpler set with the aim of maintaining his ritual link with the ancestors in the afterlife. In Xataka | We have found tools from 300,000 years ago in China. And they turn what we believed about the paleo diet upside down In Xataka | China’s first pipeline network is 4,000 years old and something revolutionary: it was built without the need for kings or nobles Cover | The Bells Are Harmonious and Resonant’: Numinous Ancestors, Resonant Bells and the Personhood of Lord Qiu of Zeng in Tomb M190 at Zaoshulin, Hubei

The AI ​​microdrama industry is going so fast that the platforms themselves let you create (and monetize) your own series

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The microdrama industry is growing steadily. And of course, those generated by AI grow much faster. So much so that the demand is already leading to the creation of tools that allow the viewer to generate their own programs. The StoReel platform has built a tool designed exactly for that, and it already pays whoever uses it. The results are not yet perfect, but it is inevitable to wonder what will happen when anyone (in theory) can be showrunner. Choose your own microdrama. At the end of June, StoReel presented Canvasa tool that turns a microdrama script into a complete series: characters, settings, voices and editing generated by artificial intelligence from start to finish. The web TheWrap tried it firsthand with a parody of the Prime Video series ‘Off Campus’: four episodes, four days of work and 288 credits ($150) just to generate the characters, with additional payments every time one did not fit the desired look. How things turned out. The result was half convincing, it seemed. There are very competent shots and others with that artificial point that reveals the synthetic actor: strange pauses between phrases, glances that are held too long, some jumps raccord where a character changes position without the camera justifying it… And even with those flaws, StoReel does not sell it as a mere experiment: it has just closed a financing round of 34 million dollars and builds its business model around what it calls PUGC, that is, professional user-generated content. Anyone can produce a series and charge for it if StoReel decides to distribute it. The first successes. The numbers used by the company itself help to understand the bet. Its ‘OMG! My Snowwhite Is a Man’, produced entirely with AI, reached a cost per installation (what the company pays in advertising, crossed with each new download) of $4.63 compared to the usual $8-10 for its live-action series. And its catalog of more than 80 series generated with AI retains 22% more audience after a week than its traditional productions. These are figures from StoReel itself, so you have to take them with a grain of salt, but they perfectly explain why the company prefers to pay its audience rather than expand its staff of scriptwriters. Origins of the micro. Microdrama, one- to two-minute episodes designed to be watched in one go on a mobile phone, is a type of digital content that was born in China under the name duanju and now has been conquering markets outside of Asia for more than a year. Sector figures vary greatly depending on who calculates them. Phylicia Koh, partner at Play Ventures and investor in StoReel, estimates the global market at $14 billion and compares it to the disruption that ‘Roblox’ caused in video games. Axios, on the other hand, calculated that the business outside of China had a turnover of $3 billion in 2025, almost triple that of the previous year. This appetite also explains movements of much larger platforms: Disney+ is going to start experimenting with its own vertical videos to retain an audience that no longer wants to sit for two hours in front of a screen. StoReel, however, goes further: it wants to turn its own audience into a staff of scriptwriters. It’s not the first. StoReel is not the only company that has brought artificial intelligence into the writers’ room. Holywater, the Ukrainian company behind My Drama, launched its own tool more than a year ago: My Muse turns stories from its book catalog into series with the help of models like Midjourney or Runway, but the process is in the hands of filmmakers specialized in AI selected by the company itself. StoReel’s tool boasts even greater openness, although with nuances: the tool refused to generate characters with the exact faces of the ‘Off Campus’ actors when TheWrap asked it to, a limit that StoReel presents as a safeguard against lawsuits over image rights. The system, however, did not raise any objection when the script generated for the experiment reproduced Elle Kennedy’s novel ‘Immune to You’ (third in the saga on which Prime Video is based) almost scene by scene.’ At some point in the process the last name of the author mentioned on screen changed, from Steinbeck to Steinberg, without TheWrap being able to explain whether it was a model error or an attempt to avoid rights problems. In Xataka | One-minute episodes, crazy plots and millions of views: welcome to the era of microdramas

Today this tree is one of the trees that breaks the most pipes and sidewalks in Spain

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The tree that appears above these lines surely sounds familiar to you because you have come across it many times, either because it is in your city or because while walking on vacation through any municipality on the Mediterranean coast it was there, in its most stately gardens. A clue in case you don’t recognize it at first: its seeds have a kind of wings, which helps them spread further and better. It is no coincidence: the ailanthus (Ailanthus altissima) arrive from Southeast Asia two centuries ago for its size and presence, but also because it grew quickly in practically any soil. Today is prohibited by law: It is an invasive species that kills other plants and loads the sewage. Ailanto the colonizer. It can measure up to 30 meters, has gray bark and the leaves are made up of many elongated leaves placed in a row. Its fruits are like seeds with wings, hanging in clusters. One way to recognize it is the (bad) smell: if you tear off a leaf and rub it, it stinks. Since its arrival, ailanthus has spread throughout much of the peninsula, with special intensity in Catalonia and the Valencian Community. This tree colonizes ditches, slopes, degraded banks and abandoned gardens, wherever there is a free piece of land, there is the ailanthus: a single adult specimen It is capable of producing up to 350,000 seeds winged per year and thanks to their wings and the wind, the ailanthus continues to expand. The environmental impact of ailanthus. According to the official MITECO fileailanthus alters the functioning of the forest ecosystem and modifies the chemistry of the soil where it settles, making life difficult for other species. Thanks to its rapid growth and dispersed shape, it competes for space and light in areas close to rivers (rich in vegetation), releasing toxic substances that prevent other plants from growing around it. This environmental study by the Junta de Andalucía It confirms that where there is ailanthus, there is up to 35-40% less vegetation than in areas without it. The impact is not limited to vegetation: the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge points out which can also cause damage to urban infrastructure for one reason: its long and reticulated roots, capable of extending up to 15 meters from the foot. These roots look for cracks and gaps to spread, cracking pipes, sewers, foundations, buildings, and other structures. Context. The ailanthus comes from China, and although there is evidence that it was cultivated as an ornamental tree since the 18th century, the Ministry of Agriculture of Spain gives it as naturalized at the beginning of the 19th century. In the middle of that century, Marcelino Sáez de Sautuola, discoverer of the Altamira caves, wrote a letter to the French Acclimatization Society in which he commented on the success of planting ailanthus, at that time highly appreciated for its ornamental and medicinal qualities. Ailanthus is not only “a fugitive” in Spain, wherever it goes, it has problems. It is present and is classified as an invasive species in almost all the world. In the EU it appears in the list of invasive alien specieswhich forces member states to take coordinated control measures and is common in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the Danube basin and practically all Mediterranean countries. The ban and fines. That is included within the Spanish Catalog of Invasive Exotic Species regulated by Royal Decree 630/2013 means that possession, transport, trafficking and trade are prohibited by law throughout Spanish territory. The fines are quite large: from 100 to 3,000 euros for minor infractions, from 3,001 to 200,000 euros for serious ones and up to 2 million euros in the most serious cases. That is state regulation, because each community may have its own additional regulations. What happens then with the ailanthus that there are? This Royal Decree contemplates an exception: those specimens that were already planted in private gardens, urban parks or botanical gardens before the entry into force of the rule. As for those planted in public gardens, administrations must progressively eliminate them. How to keep them at bay. Eradicating them is difficult and expensive. The MITECO report explains Cutting the tree is useless, as it stimulates the appearance of new shoots: the most effective way is to combine the mechanical removal of young seedlings with specific chemical treatments applied to the leaves or stumps. It is what is being done in the Montes de Málaga and the Sierra de Cazorla. Looking to the future, research points to biological control as a more sustainable alternative: the mite Aculus taihangensis has shown be an effective specific agent. In the United States, USDA investigates a soil fungusVerticillium nonalfalfae) that is offering promising results. In Xataka | Spain planted millions of eucalyptus trees to have cheap wood. 90 years later, we have confirmed that they are a green desert In Xataka | The Iberian Peninsula is being invaded: more than 1,200 exotic species have come to stay Cover | Marina Torres

rural Spain is turning blue at night

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In 2023, data from the Chinese SDGSAT-1 satellite made it possible for the RALAN-Map EU project, of the Complutense University of Madrid and the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals, to develop the first high resolution calibrated map of the Iberian Peninsula and the archipelagos of the Canary Islands, the Balearic Islands and Madeira. Thanks to the level of detail of this cartographyyou can see how the artificial brightness changes and what type of light predominates in each region at night. And observing the color temperature of light sources has revealed something unexpected: hundreds of small towns have changed the warm tone of their traditional lighting for a bluish light. I have seen a light. The map reaches an unprecedented resolution in this type of study, 40 meters, which has made it possible to verify that while large cities maintain warm tones, municipalities with less than 5,000 inhabitants present colder and bluish lighting. The reason? A change in infrastructure: many municipalities in rural Spain have left behind the old lighting with LED streetlights to save energy, and this update translates into a different color, noticeable even from space. The RALAN-MAP 0 map of light pollution Why it is important. Both the UCM and the SINC Agency They agree that the map represents, in the words of the university itself, “a significant advance” to more accurately evaluate the environmental and health impact of light pollution, and opens new avenues for the management of lighting and the protection of the night sky. The reason is that blue light, in addition to looking different, has a wavelength that spreads further into the atmospherewhich increases nighttime glow and worsens sky visibility for astronomical observations, including summer classics like the Perseids. Besides, There are studies that support that this type of light interferes with the biological rhythms of species such as pollinating insects or migratory birdswhich orient themselves at night. Context. The SDGSAT-1 was launched in 2021 by the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a satellite designed to monitor the progress of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which gives it a nighttime detail capacity unprecedented until now. The RALAN-Map EU project is also part of a broader line of research on light pollution that astrophysicist Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel and his team have been developing for more than a decade, including Previous studies on the energy consumption of public lighting in Spain using satellite data. In detail. The map is publicly accessible and can be consulted online, allowing anyone, whether a city council, research or urban planning, to precisely identify where blue light predominates and prioritize changing streetlights there. The geographical pattern is clear: it is precisely small municipalities, many of them surrounded by protected natural spaces, that have renewed their lighting the most in recent years, prioritizing energy savings over the ecological or astronomical impact of the chosen color temperature. Thus, warm sodium lights have given way to white lights rich in blue components. In Xataka | NASA has looked at Torrevieja from space and has seen a huge mass of pink water essential to finding life on Mars In Xataka | Europe has been watching Colombia for a decade from space and what it has seen is a tragedy: the death of a glacier Cover | KEVIN CLYDE BERBANO

Samsung presents a new SSD with PCIe 4.0 interface that arrives in the middle of the memory price crisis

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It is not the best time to buy an SSD because of their very high pricesbut that has not prevented Samsung from releasing a new model. This is the SSD 990, a proposal that is aimed at users looking for high performance (especially in video games), but without aiming for the highest models range. We tell you more about him. A fast SSD that comes with better energy efficiency This new SSD is a model that, as we say, is one step below the SSD 990 Pro, one of the best on the market. Despite this, as we will see below, it does not lack performance. It is an NVMe 2.0 model that uses PCIe 4.0 interfacewhich makes it suitable for most computers, although also for PlayStation 5 (although we would have to purchase a heatsink separately). Additionally, it has improved energy efficiency. And how is its performance? Samsung promises that it is capable of reaching up to 7,250 MB/s reading speed for the 2 TB version of the sameleaving this figure at 7,150 MB/s for the one with 1 TB capacity. For both versions, the writing speed is 6,450 MB/s. These, in practice, will help us have reduced loading times in video games or make applications load faster, for example. Two things to keep in mind about it. As we have already mentioned above, it is not a good time for this type of components, something that we can see in its price. We don’t know yet what it will cost in Spain, but We can get an idea with its price in Australia: 385 dollars (236.34 euros at the exchange rate) and 759 dollars (465.89 euros) for the 1 and 2 TB models, respectively. In addition, this model has only three years of warranty, less than other models from Samsung itself (which have five years). ⚡ IN SUMMARY: Samsung SSD 990 ✅ THE BEST Outstanding performance: It is an SSD with very high writing and reading speeds, ideal for increasing the performance of a PC. Compatible with most devices: The fact that it is PCIe 4.0 means that we can use it on many computers. Even on a PS5. ❌ THE WORST Three years warranty: It is a component designed to last, but it is true that it has less warranty than other Samsung models. High price: Although it is not something exclusive to this SSD, it has a high price in both versions. 💡 BUY IT IF… You are looking for a PCIe 4.0 SSD with very good performance, whether for gaming or because you simply want your apps to run faster. ⛔ DON’T BUY IT IF… Do you prefer to aim for a cheaper model or do you directly want it to come with a heatsink as standard for use on a PlayStation 5. You may also be interested We do not have an official price in Spain or a release date yet, so we will have to wait. Meanwhile, we leave you below two similar alternatives that we can buy on Amazon. Crucial P310 SSD 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 2280, Internal Drive, up to 7,100 MB/s, Compatible with Laptop and Desktop Computers & Portable Game Consoles – CT2000P310SSD801 The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Lexar EQ790 1TB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4x4 NVMe 1.4 Internal SSD, Speed ​​up to 7000 MB/s, for Intensive Workloads and PC Gaming PS5, High Performance Internal Solid State Drive The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Samsung In Xataka | Paying more for a very fast NVMe SSD is wasting money if you only save PDFs, but it is the only option if you are also going to work from it In Xataka | The mega-guide to SSD hard drives: types, technology and how to choose the best one for our PC

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