Month: October 2025

No, China has not turned off the tap on batteries for electric cars. The reality is much more complex

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China is, to the electric car, the child who arrives with the ball after having a snack. He is, in fact, the boy who has the ball, a regulation soccer field at home and lets in whoever he wants when he wants the most. Or that’s what we might think if we take into account its leadership in the supply chain, access to rare earths and battery production. The last step is to maintain greater control over lithium and, in the future, solid-state batteries. But to what extent is it true? The latest. A few days ago, China announced important changes when it comes to its exports. Among them, he confirmed that he was going to monitor the licenses that allow the export of vehicleswhich was understood as a way to prevent manufacturers without experience or infrastructure in the destinations from selling cars that they later cannot service. In the same way, has announced restrictions to the export of rare earths. My colleague Javi Márquez explained that “the country will be able to decide what is exported, to whom and for what purposes, under national security criteria. Applications for military purposes will bein principle, denied, while those related to semiconductors or artificial intelligence will be examined on a case-by-case basis. The last movement is related to the exports of batteries for electric cars and the music points to a similar melody. Starting November 8, licenses will be issued to export lithium batteries and graphite anode material compounds. Once again, it points to issues of national security and response to protectionist policies in USA and Europe. No batteries or equipment. With these new licenses, China will control both the finished product that is intended to be exported abroad and the equipment necessary to produce these compounds outside its borders. In summary, the following is controlled: Lithium batteries, cells and battery packs with a density greater than 300 Wh/kg. The equipment and technology to produce the above items. Iron phosphate and lithium needed to produce cathode materials. Also nickel-cobalt-manganese hydroxide and nickel-cobalt-aluminum hydroxide and lithium-rich manganese-based cathode materials. The equipment to produce all these compounds. Graphite anode materials The equipment necessary to produce them. The reaction? Numerous experts They have emphasized that these new licenses have the true objective of reducing and limiting exports to stop the advance of Chinese competitors in the electric car industry. Investors have understood the same and in Reuters They reflected the consequent fall in the stock market of giant battery producers such as CATL but also of vehicle manufacturers such as BYD. In South China Morning Post They also mentioned China’s intention to maintain its leadership in the electric car market. Putting the magnifying glass. But is it true that China is doing everything it can to torpedo its rivals? According to the International Energy AgencyChina manufactures three out of every four batteries for electric cars. However, the limitation of a density greater than 300 Wh/kg is not coincidental. Walter Zhang, senior analyst at Fastmarkets, points out that batteries for electric cars are really not in danger. “The policy ensures that the export and sales of NCM (230-280 Wh per kg) and LFP (160-210 Wh per kg) batteries for electric car application are not affected,” explains in this article. And he points to another point of view: “the measures may be more aimed at restricting smaller companies from entering into technology exchange agreements with Western partners.” Module and pack production equipment is not under this new regulation either, so It won’t impact that much either. in production abroad. So? If the majority of electric car batteries are not affected, what is the point of these restrictions? Everything indicates that there are two ultimate intentions when it comes to lifting this tighter control over the batteries. The first is to increase control over the export of batteries that can be used in military vehicles. In an increasingly tense international context, the State is guaranteed to have greater knowledge of who wants and can export but also in what quantities and for whom. The second thing is that as investments in research bear fruit, the next step should be the production of denser batteries. Batteries that would store more energy in less space. And there, the solid state batteries they are projecting themselves as the great leap in quality in the electric car market. Solid State Batteries. Solid-state batteries promise to be the definitive big leap for the electric car. With them, the manufacturers claim, an electric car will be able to travel more than 1,000 kilometers between recharges. They are also more powerful, safer and will suffer less degradation caused by charging cycles. Nothing sounds bad except that producing them is, at the moment, extremely expensive. Both companies and Toyota has already been lowering its expectations pointing out that it will be a type of compound that can only be included in vehicles with a very high price range. Again, ahead. And although Toyota says it has made progress in these compounds, Nissan has been researching them for years and Mercedes says it already has one (which obviously cannot scale) it seems that Chinese manufacturers once again have the lead. MG assures be very close to mass producing them. BYD too ensures that it can put them on the market in the short term. And beyond the promises, NIO has demonstrated that its semi-solid state battery (a previous step before reaching these energy accumulators) can travel a thousand kilometers without stopping to recharge. China controls the supply chain of the materials to produce these batteries but also the equipment that can produce these compounds. It seems that the measure is aimed at putting obstacles in the way of mass production of an innovation that can change the automobile market. free way. As we have seen, control over exports opens the door to selling current batteries for electric cars outside the country. It makes sense, now that Chinese companies like CATL have reached agreements with giants like … Read more

The chaos of streaming is causing a phenomenon that we thought was in recession: downloads are increasing

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The market fragmentationhe price increase of subscriptions and a user experience increasingly less friendly are the main factors pointing to an uptick in unauthorized downloads. Since Netflix began raising rates and banning shared accounts, customers have raised the threat of a return to downloading. Now, for the first time in years, the numbers seem to back them up. Temporary drop. The emergence of services streaming like Netflix devoured unauthorized downloads. With the promise of a wide and accessible catalog for a fixed rate, the platforms significantly reduced the consumption of movies and series outside of conventional channels. However, the utopia of that completely legal market subject to companies has faded. Recent reports show an uptick in access to this type of content, reversing the trend of the previous decade. The data. According to the Observatory of Piracy and Consumer Habits of Digital Content of 2024, digital piracy in Spain increased by 9% last year, reaching a record figure of 42,782 million euros in value of content defrauded through 7,330 million illegal accesses. In addition, the study indicates that for the first time access to platforms has been recorded through apps, social networks and decoders, growing the aggregate figure even more (an additional 14% compared to the previous year).​ Because? As we pointed out, this rebound is due to a series of circumstances that have changed the outlook for the streaming: Streaming is no longer convenient. Although perhaps the main reason for the public’s disenchantment with the streaming is that the supply is increasingly dispersed– To access all relevant content, the user must subscribe to multiple services. The exclusivity strategy that studios use to attract and retain subscribers has broken that ideal convenience of accessing content legally thanks to the streaming. To watch a series with multiple seasons, the user may need to subscribe to different platforms or wait months for the service to change. This dynamic clashes head-on with the immediacy that consumers expect from digital content. All of this is made worse by the licensing war: each studio wants its own titles on its platform exclusively, and leads to the need to subscribe to very specific platforms to access such popular franchises as Marvel, Star Wars or Stranger Things, for example. Technically poorer service. In addition to price and fragmentation, the service offered by some platforms has also worsened, further eroding user loyalty. Many services They have reduced the bitrate in their transmissions to save costs, leading to worse image quality. This loss of quality is often a trigger for users to search for an illegal version that offers a better viewing experience, which makes no theoretical sense: an unauthorized copy of a film often looks and sounds much better than the one available online. streaming. lUnauthorized downloads have evolved. But in addition, traditional downloads by torrent consumption on websites is now added streaming built outside of unofficial platforms, unauthorized IPTV services and the distribution of content through social networks like Telegram and WhatsApp. 96% of movie and series consumption in 2023 was done through streaming Unauthorized: you no longer have to download anything, which reduces the risks. It is a very tempting panorama. Gabe already said it. Specifically in 2011, Gabe Newell said that “Piracy is not a price problem, it is a service problem“. Faced with a legal market that is expensive, fragmented and inconvenient, users see unauthorized downloads as a kind of alternative “service” that offers all the content with better quality and for free. It can be said that it is a problem that the industry itself has partly created. In Xataka | Spaniards “torrenteros” around the world: when you go to live in Germany and discover that you can’t download anything

Reddit’s AI has recommended heroin use to treat pain. It’s actually the most Reddit thing that could happen

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In December of last year Reddit announced Reddit Answersa chatbot-type AI tool that draws on all the information shared by Reddit users. Everything was going well until he started giving medical advice and ended up recommending that a user take heroin. Knowing the tone of some users of the platform, this is actually the most Reddit could respond. what has happened. They tell it in 404Medium. The recommendation appeared on the r/FamilyMedicine subreddit in a question about how to manage pain without using opioid substances. First he suggested using kratom, an unregulated substance that is banned in some states. The user who created the thread asked about the use of heroin to manage pain, to which Reddit Answers gave several answers: one warned him of the danger, while another directed him to users who had had good experiences with heroin to treat pain. Angry moderators. The user who reported the responses, who is also a moderator and works in the health sector, published an extensive post warning of the danger of this type of response. He complains that moderators cannot deactivate Reddit Answers in their communities and that this is a problem especially when dealing with sensitive topics such as physical and mental health. Solution. Reddit Answers is still in beta, but has already been launched in many countries and languages. In the case of the mobile app, suggestions appear within the threads and, as we said, they cannot be deleted. After complaints from users, the platform made an important change and now Reddit Answers does not provide answers on sensitive topics. It now displays the following message: “Reddit Answers does not provide answers to some questions, including those that may be potentially unsafe or may violate Reddit policies.” The answers depend on the users. According to Reddit itselfthe replies feature uses artificial intelligence so we can “get answers, insights, and recommendations from all over Reddit.” That means that if a user tells in a thread that heroin saved their life, it can appear on Reddit Answers, which is exactly what happened. On a platform where anonymity is the norm, tone outputs either confessions of crazy stories They are the order of the day. Imagine that an AI responds to us based on the content of Forocoches. Well that. Image | Brett Jordan in Unsplash In Xataka | The price to pay for having AI is the looting of all Internet content. And Perplexity is just the latest example

Our grandparents even poured vinegar on lentils and fried eggs. Science is now legitimizing them

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I don’t know if it’s out of habit or memory, but I’m also one of those people who puts vinegar on lentils. It is an automatic gesture, inherited from my grandmother, who said that “they rested better this way.” For years I thought it was just another hobby from another era, one of those routines that survived more out of nostalgia than science. But it turns out no: vinegar is back, and not just in salads. Networks recover tradition. In both viral videos and cooking shows, vinegar has gone from being a forgotten ingredient to becoming a protagonist. In tiktok either YouTube There are plenty of clips in which users teach the “drip trick” on fried eggs or lentils. Some well-known chefs they have turned it to become fashionable for its ability to balance flavors, just as our grandparents did: to “kill the flavor” of what they didn’t like and enhance what they did. In French cuisine there is a classic dish, oeufs à l’assassin, in which cooks add a splash of vinegar when frying the eggs to intensify the flavor and give creaminess to the yolk. And if we look towards home, in Castilla it was common to add vinegar to both the lentils and the fried egg, a custom that, according to researchers from the Río Hortega Hospital in Valladolidcan even reduce the allergic response to these foods. Acetic acid modifies gastric pH, improves digestion and transforms the allergenicity of certain compounds. So were our grandparents right? What was previously done by intuition — to “kill the flavor” or “settle the stomach” — today has a scientific explanation. Nutritionist Luis Zamora has explained “A splash of vinegar on lentils or having an orange for dessert helps absorb vegetable iron.” The reason is in vitamin C and acidity: both protect non-heme iron—that of plant origin—and facilitate its assimilation. Along the same lines, dietitian Diego Ojeda has assured: “Your grandmother was absolutely right: to help the body understand vegetable iron, you must add vitamin C, like that provided by vinegar or lemon.” In addition, this acidity helps break down antinutrients such as phytic acid, present in legumes and responsible for some of the iron being lost during cooking. In fact, scientific publications match: adding a source of acidity to a meal rich in legumes can multiply up to three the amount of iron absorbed. In studies carried out with cellular and animal modelsvinegar or lemon juice showed similar effects when added to dishes rich in vegetable iron. But nowadays it has become abused. From a minimal splash to a shot. On social networks, thousands of people began to drink “shots of apple cider vinegar” on an empty stomach with the promise of losing weight or “detoxifying” the body. However, the study that popularized that practice It was retracted due to statistical errors, and science has found no solid evidence that vinegar causes weight loss. Experts also warn that excessive consumption of vinegar on an empty stomach can irritate the stomach, damage tooth enamel and cause digestive discomfort. It is not, therefore, about drinking it as if it were a miraculous elixir, but about using it with common sense, as grandparents did: a few drops to enhance flavors, balance dishes and help digestion. The gesture that never left. Perhaps our elders did not talk about antinutrients or bioavailability, but they sensed the essential thing: that vinegar, in addition to giving flavor, helped the body feel better. Today science confirm They weren’t so wrong. That acidic touch that gave character to the lentils or softness to the fried egg has a chemical explanation, a nutritional basis and, above all, an enormous cultural load. Because in the end, between the laboratory and the kitchen, there is the same principle: good traditions do not go out of style, they just needed a good explanation. And every time the vinegar sparkles in the pan or perfumes a stew, we are not only cooking: we are also honoring a way of understanding food, time, and memory. Image | FreePik and FreePik Xataka | Thousands of people have been drinking apple cider vinegar before eating to lose weight for years. An erroneous study is to blame

allow free hunting in 254 municipalities

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Given its long tradition livestockGalicia has earned the title of ‘cow country’but there is an animal that is on the way to dethroning them: the wild boar. There are many in the community. very many. And that translates into damaged farmland and traffic accidents. The Xunta has decided to provide a solution by pressing a red button thought a priori as a resource “exceptional”although in recent years he has resorted to it half a dozen times: “the temporary hunting emergency”. It sounds very bureaucratic, but it’s easy to understand. In practice, the Xunta has given the green light to the free hunting and no limit of the species in more than 250 municipalities. What has happened? That Galicia wants to stand up to the thousands of wild boars that populate its fields and mountains. And it has decided to do so by bringing out the institutional ‘heavy artillery’, which translates into the declaration of the “temporary hunting emergency” in almost 40 regions spread throughout the region. Medio Rural’s announcement has published today in the Official Gazette of Galicia (DOG) and in practice it means giving carte blanche to hunters so that they can shoot wild pigs without limit until February 2026 in more than 250 municipalities. There is no maximum number of animals that can be shot or captured. What does the measurement say? Open the door to adoption “special control measures” to reduce the population of wild boars in 38 regions of Lugo, A Coruña, Pontevedra and Ourense, which covers a total 254 town councils. In all of them, hunters will be able to shoot or capture wild boars without limits or regardless of the sex of the prey, although the authorities ask that “adult and sub-adult” females be prioritized. Hunting calves and females with offspring is also allowed, although with prior authorization from the General Directorate of Natural Heritage. What hunters should pay attention to is where they are: the DOG distinguishes between “hunting” and “non-hunting” lands. In the former, wild boar may be hunted every day of the week, although adjusting to certain guidelines established in the standard (in hunting-free areas, for example, hunts must have authorization); In the latter it will be necessary to have a permit. Is it a new measure? To measurements. The declaration of “temporary hunting emergency” has just been be published today to come into force tomorrow, but it is not the first time that the Xunta uses this figure to control the populations of wild pigs in the community. The Department of the Environment has already used the same instrument in four other times: in 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2024. In fact, this time it will affect fewer municipalities than last year. The Spanish remember that then the measure also came into force in october and extended until February, covering nearly 85% of the region. The Xunta ruled out extending a figure that has always been presented as “exceptional”, but it did maintain a protocol in spring that contemplated preventive raids. Why do you hunt wild boars? In 2019 Jacobo Feijoo, forestry engineer at Unións Agrarias, published in Galician Field an article in which he tried to clarify how many wild pigs live in Galicia. His conclusion is that there could be at least 180,000. “In other words, taking as a reference the 26,000 square kilometers of agricultural and forestry areas of Galicia, we certainly have at least 6.90 wild boars per km2,” the expert added, adding that with that level of concentration we can now speak of “high densities.” Coexistence between this high volume of animals, crop fields and traffic is not always easy. In the advertisement In which the Xunta declares the hunting emergency, it recognizes that “the effects caused by wild boar populations have been experiencing an increase in Galicia as a whole in recent years”, a phenomenon that the regional government relates “largely to changes in the use of the environment and the ecological characteristics of the species.” “It has been confirmed that it causes multiple damages in agriculture and traffic accidents and its increasingly common presence in peri-urban areas is an additional problem,” insist the Galician Executive. “Likewise, a high population increases the risk of the spread of certain diseases, such as African swine fever, which would make their eradication difficult at any given time, if necessary.” Does it have that much impact? In March The Voice of Galicia revealed that last year alone the Xunta dedicated more than 4.1 million euros to compensate farmers who had seen how their crops (both large farms and self-consumption orchards) were damaged by wild boars. It may seem like a lot of money, but according to Environment data, in one year (from August 2023 to July 2024) these large animals caused damage to 2,800 agricultural hectares. The money invested in prevention is added to the compensation money, which brings the total bill to 4.6 million. The proliferation of wild boars is not only felt in the fields. It also affects roads, increasing the risk of accidents. Again according to The Voice of GaliciaIn 2024, more than 3,700 collisions were recorded. Images | Iván PC (Flickr) and Leopoldo de Castro (Flickr) In Xataka | The ranchers of Asturias have been complaining about the wolf for years and now they have obtained what they longed for: permission to hunt it

control who sells and where you buy, all in ChatGPT

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A few days ago we talked about how OpenAI is turning ChatGPT into the Windows of AI. It’s not really about whether OpenAI is building an operating system. It’s about what kind of power you’re looking for. And the answer lies in two models that define exactly what OpenAI pursues: Apple’s App Store and WeChat in China. The App Store controls distribution. Decide what apps exist, how they are promoted, what commissions are charged. WeChat centralizes functionality. Within a single app you do absolutely everything: you call, you shop, you order taxis, you pay bills, you reserve restaurants. OpenAI wants both things at the same time. And so far no one has achieved it. The moment. Apple actively blocked superapps on iOS. The documents from the Epic v. Apple trial made it very clear: allowing one app to do everything “would threaten the monopoly” because “adherence to the system would decrease.” Apple called it “letting in the barbarians.” Meta tried it with Facebook. Musk, in his own way, tries with X. They failed because Apple didn’t let them and because they didn’t have the right platform. The play. Ben Thompson, of Stratecheryhe sees it clearly: OpenAI follows Microsoft’s original strategy with Windows. Apple integrates hardware and software, controls everything, but leaves room for competitors because it cannot serve all markets. Microsoft dominated without having to sell hardware. He only controlled the platform. OpenAI does exactly that: Control the interface. Control who users reach. And let others build on top. The difference with 2023-2024 is enormous. So They launched the GPT Store. Failure. Our own GPTs were and are very useful, but those of others were isolated in a store that no one visited. Now the Spotify, Canva, Zillow, Uber or Booking apps are not in a separate store. They are integrated into the core of the experience. They appear when they are relevant. They work within the chat. Who is this good for?: For developers, they receive immediate access to 800 million weekly users without going through Apple or Google. Without building an audience from scratch. But in exchange, they have absolute dependence on an OpenAI that decides which apps are approved, which ones stand out, or how they are monetized. If your app competes with something OpenAI wants to do, you’re out. It is the classic dilemma of platforms. Rapid growth in exchange for zero control. For companies that sell products, the rules of the game change completely. Before you would type “hotels in Valencia” in Google and browse through ten results. Now you have to explicitly say “search on Booking” or “search on Airbnb”. Strong brands in people’s minds will survive. Those that lived off organic traffic from Google will disappear. There are entire businesses that prospered thanks to SEO in the Google era. Those businesses were never really strong because they were optimizations for a specific technological era. The wave of snippets several of those businesses were loaded in the search results. The next wave will sweep away a few more. The problem. Microsoft is OpenAI’s largest investor and infrastructure partner. But now they compete directly. Microsoft launched Copilot Studioits own platform for businesses to create custom agents. And that competes head-on with what OpenAI has just launched. If OpenAI had remained a simple model provider, Microsoft would have turned it into commodity. This app platform is a declaration of independence. It is pure coopetition: partners who must compete for the dominant role. What’s at stake. Sam Altman summed it up this week: “Most people will want to have a single AI service, and that service has to be useful throughout their lives.” Your entire life not understood as “from today until you die”, but rather as “all areas of your life.” Work and pleasure, leisure and business. What OpenAI pursues is not to be one platform among many. It is to be the platform: The place where everything happens. Where users spend their time. Where companies have to be to exist. Apple without the hardware. WeChat without regulatory restrictions. The App Store without the bottleneck of manual approval. Everything at once. Maybe they will get it. Maybe not. But they are executing the perfect play at the perfect time. And that, in technology, is sometimes enough. Another thing is that Excel resists. In Xataka | The more money they lose, the more they are worth: ten AI startups have skyrocketed their valuation by $1 trillion in 12 months Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

Realme seeks to make the mobile phone the best street camera. And it has joined the street camera brand par excellence

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Shenzhen and Beijing have two things in common: they are endless and both have been the perfect setting for two mobile presentations that have photography in the spotlight. He Vivo X300 Pro hit first, betting on a very long zoom to capture every last detail of the highest roof. The Realme GT8 Pro arrived later with a contrary argument: “Take me out on the street and start taking photos.”. Realme’s new high-end has been an open secret for weeks and I’ve already had it in my hands for a few days. But with one condition: I can’t talk about the phone, only its main camera. The reason? They have not presented the mobilebut an agreement with a striking camera brand: RICOH. And below I’ll tell you my first impressions of the Realme GT8 Pro camera. Technical specifications of the Realme GT8 Pro? Maybe they are the strangest first impressions I have ever made because… I can’t tell you about the cell phone. In fact, any detail is extremely generic: screen that occupies the entire front, an imitation of the Dynamic Island of the iPhone that Realme has been implementing for some time in its models and a design with flat sides. Photo: Xataka There was a rule: you cannot remove the case, you cannot remove the sticker that covers the camera module. Because I can’t, I can’t even tell you what hardware it has because the characteristics in ‘Settings’ are falsified. What I can tell you is that it has a periscopic telephoto, a wide angle and a main camera. And I’m going to get into it now because it is the jewel in the crown (beyond a power and battery that, if they follow in the wake of the Realme GT7 Prowill be rubbing shoulders with the best mobile phones of 2025). Realme GT8 Pro: a mobile phone made for the street “The collaboration with RICOH to create the Realme GT8 Pro goes beyond a union of brands.” Also about specifications: RICOH has overseen all aspects of the camera’s hardware and software. In the presentation of the agreement (because the mobile phone has not yet been officially presented), the Chinese company made it clear that the differentiating point of the new terminal is the main camera. Photo: Xataka It has a wide angle, it has a telephoto, it will surely mount the latest from Qualcomm, but the protagonist is the result of a very close collaboration between the Chinese and Japanese brands. Megapixels? Why do you want to know that (it’s not official). Focal? 23mm. Opening? 1.8. Does that matter? Not the slightest. Let me explain. Entering the Realme GT8 Pro camera app is like doing so in any mobile camera app: a carousel of options that are overwhelming in some cases and processing that feels excessive in some aspects. However, the secret is if we slide our finger down on the shutter button: this way we access the RICOH GR mode very, very quickly. Photo: Xataka To give some context, RICOH is a company that makes very compact cameras, ideal for street photography. They have specialized in fast focus cameras, silent shooting and ‘stealth’ modes to go unnoticed in the urban jungle. Also by 28 mm or 40 mm fixed focal lengths, depending on the model. Entering that GR mode directly activates the 28mmbut it is not a real focal length: it is a small cutout of the sensor to go from the native 23 mm to that RICOH-type focal length. It is not the only one: we also have a 40 mm (which would be a 1.8x crop of the sensor) and if we tap on the 28 mm and 40 mm icons, two more distances are added. That is, in practice the main camera is: 23mm in normal mode 28mm in GR mode 35mm in GR mode 40mm in GR mode 50mm, or 2x, in GR mode I imagine at least the 50mm or 2x will also be available in the regular camera app, but it wasn’t available on my test unit. As soon as you enter GR mode, the shutter changes to mimic that of a RICOH and the 28mm and 40mm crops are activated. Photo: Xataka The use is very intuitive and there are other things that change a lot in this GR mode. To start, the colors. We have several filters typical RICOH tonal variations. As in its day with Apple ringtones, It’s not about filters. In fact, from Realme they commented that “People are tired of filters that make all photos look the same”. What they have done is work with RICOH to apply their color science to photo processing. Auto mode. The defendant wants everything to look “good” in the photo. Photo: Xataka GR mode. More (coughs and fixes his bow tie) cinematic. Photo: Xataka Thus, there are tones that vary slightly, opting for a more bluish tone in elements such as shadows, but in addition the processing does not enhance the shadows to the extreme nor does it apply aggressive HDR (in normal mode, yes). And we have five default color profiles that are based on the technical characteristics that RICOH has set. GR mode profiles. Photo: Xataka Within each “color recipe”, we can create our own, modifying parameters such as tone, contrast, exposure or black level to create a unique profile that adapts to what we like. And they stay stored, something that I loved. Apart from the color profiles and focal lengths, the GR mode allows you to save in the usual JPG, JPG+RAW and RAW, but something else: modify the focus point to leave it fixed. Within each profile, we can customize parameters. Photo: Xataka We have several options here and, basically, it is about making the mobile even faster in its point & shoot function. A practical example: if I am shooting at everything in front of me, be it close-ups or panoramic shots, I can leave the focus on auto so that the phone … Read more

an army of combat drones

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For decades, the Rust Belt was the map of industrial failure American: abandoned factories, cities bled by unemployment and entire generations that saw the American dream rust along the assembly lines. In those gray landscapes, where silence replaced the roar of metal, no one expected a second life. And yet, something unexpected is happening among the old hangars and empty ships: a new noise has filled the air again, but this time it is not coming from the engines. It comes from the echoes of Europe, and from the war that pound in Ukraine. The industrial rebirth. I was telling it on the weekend the new york times. In the heart of America’s former automobile empire, where shuttered factories and for-lease signs had become part of the landscape, a new industry is breathing life back into the factory towns of the Midwest and Northeast. Where engines and bodies were once assembled, today drones are builtautonomous systems and smart weapons. Companies as Swarm Defense Technologieswhich occupies a former plant in Auburn Hills, Michigan, produces thousands of drones a month for the Army and other agencies, reviving an industrial environment that seemed doomed to decline. What was once the symbol of manufacturing decline has been transformed into a laboratory of the military future. The new industrial map. The expansion is not limited to an isolated case. Startups like Andurilbacked by artificial intelligence, are investing billions in factories of drones and autonomous weapons in Ohio, Rhode Island and Mississippi, while Regent builds electric marine gliders for the Marines off the New England coast and UXV Technologiesof Danish origin, installs a plant in Pennsylvania. They have all been found in the old industrial centers a fertile ground: skilled labor, cheap land and state governments willing to offer incentives in exchange for employment. Politics and industry are intertwined: for the White House, promoting “made in USA” defense It is as much a question of national security as it is of electoral strategy. Swarm Defense Technologies factory in Mich The political calculation. President Trump has turned this military reindustrialization into a political flagimposing tariffs, restricting purchases from abroad and proclaiming the end of dependence on Chinese technologies. The Rust Belt states, once bastions of the displaced working class, are now theaters of a rebirth defense driven. Politicians such as Ohio Senator Jon Husted, son of a General Motors worker, celebrate the arrival of these factories as a historical reparation: after decades of closures, jobs and hope return. Investors as Christian Garrettfrom 137 Ventures, recognize that producing in these regions is not only profitable, but strategic: “the end customer is the Pentagon,” and each position created consolidates a political link between the industry and the State. The factory of the future. However, this rebirth does not represent a return to the industrial past. The new plants will not employ hundreds of thousands of workers, but rather specialized technicians and programmers of autonomous systems. Anduril, for example, builds in Ohio a modular installation of hundreds of thousands of square meters, capable of adapting its production to different war platforms and that will employ some four thousand people. Automation and artificial intelligence redefine the notion of a factory: less muscle and more codeless assembly and more calibration. But the symbolic and economic effect is enormous: cities like Warren, North Kingstown or Auburn Hills once again appear on the innovation maps, replacing steel and oil with silicon and sensors. Between tradition and the avant-garde. The new manufacturers are rediscovering the value of inherited trades. Regent chose Rhode Island for its naval legacy and its community of boatbuilders, Swarm, for the technical knowledge passed down through generations of automotive workers, and Atomic Industries, in Michigan, for a network of welders and assemblers that still exists. mechanical skill that the 21st century seemed to have displaced. This combination of artisanal experience and cutting-edge technology embodies a new type of industrial patriotism, in which defense becomes an economic engine and the reconstruction of factories, a symbol of technological sovereignty. The manufacturing spirit. The resurgence of the factory towns It is not just a story of drones and military contracts, but a cultural metamorphosis. For workers re-entering a plant that their parents helped liftassembling a drone is a way of reconciliation with history. The same infrastructure that once supported Detroit or Flint is now adapting to the challenges of a new era: national defense, automation and industrial independence. What was the decline of the American motor is becoming the dawn of its technological muscle, one that unites the nostalgia of assembly lines with the promise of a future controlled by algorithms and electric drives. Image | Swarm Defense Technologies In Xataka | Russia has set up the largest drone factory in the world using a well-kept secret: teenagers In Xataka | The paradox of Ukraine’s huge drone industry: an advantage against Russia, a problem for its pilots

It is an invaluable source for generative AI and at the same time it is what is killing it

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Wikipedia wants to be the last human bastion against AI-generated content. The Wikimedia Foundation removed AI-generated summaries after several cases of hallucinations and the complaint of their editors. It’s not Wikipedia’s only problem with AI, it’s also wreaking havoc on its traffic. What is happening. In a article published on the foundation’s blogproduct manager Marshall Miller details the current situation in Wikipedia traffic. The foundation estimates that there has been an 8% drop in human traffic between May and August 2025. They attribute this to the use of generative AI as a source of information, such as the chatbots themselves or initiatives such as the Google AI Overview that respond to the user without having to click on a link. Why is it important. It poses a risk to the continuity of Wikipedia because people are obtaining the information that its volunteers produce, but without going through the web and without adding visits. It is the same as What’s happening in the media with Google’s AI briefingsalthough the main difference is that the media lives off advertising and Wikipedia lives off donations from individuals. Miller sees it clearly: “With fewer visits to Wikipedia, fewer volunteers will be able to develop and enrich the content, and fewer individual donors will be able to support this work.” A crisis that comes from afar. Wikipedia losing traffic has been in the news for a long time. In 2020 they had a massive drop: They lost 3 billion organic traffic visits and the culprit was Google. The appearance of direct response modules that displayed information directly on the results page, causing many people to not click. Correction. In May of this year, Wikipedia detected an unusual increase in traffic from Brazil. At first they classified the traffic as human, but later they verified that they were bots designed to imitate human behavior. This led them to update their bot detection mechanism and, with the new updated data, they saw that there had been an 8% drop in human traffic. The irony. In the era of generative AI, sites like Wikipedia are an invaluable source of information. It is where the chatbots and Google’s own search draw from to give us those answers, but at the same time they are harming it and not only because of the drop in traffic, the bots and scrapers also have an impact on the operation and represent a noticeable load on the servers. Solutions. The Wikipedia Foundation proposes responsible use by users to seek original sources and highlight the importance of human-created content. It sounds almost like a plea and the truth is that the outlook does not look too good. In the case of AI Overview, the media have warned about the consequences and there are even groups that They have sued Google. There are clues that Google could be raising licensing agreements with large media groupsbut for the moment it has not materialized and its results with AI continue to work as the first day (they have even launched the AI mode). Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | A Wikipedia editor spent years pretending to be Russian Red. He was actually an Indian scammer

what it is and how to configure it

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Let’s explain to you what it is and how to configure a recovery contact from your Google account. This is an alternative system with which you will have more versatility when recovering your account in case you have forgotten the password you have in it. We are going to start by briefly explaining what exactly recovery contacts are and how they work. Then, we will tell you step by step how to configure it. We will do this on the web, but you will also be able to take the same steps in mobile applications. What are recovery contacts Horror. You have forgotten your Google account password, and now you can no longer access your photos, emails or YouTube videos. You can’t even use your account on an Android phone if you have it linked. Google is a gigantic ecosystem, so losing access to your account for whatever reason can be quite disruptive. A classic solution to this problem has always been to set up a recovery email. In this way, you can request that a link to recover your account be sent to this email that you have previously verified as yours. Recovery Contacts They are an alternative solution to regain access without having to use a secondary email, or if you have had problems accessing the one you configured previously. This system allows you designate trusted contacts to help you recover your account. You can add friends or family so that, if you cannot access your account, they can help you verify your identity and log back into it. About this system you must be clear about two things. This contact will have a method to access your account using recovery, so it is vital that it is someone you trust completely. It’s like giving him the keys to your house. It can help you enter when you forget, but also at any other time. Also, these are not reciprocal permissions, just because you designate a person as a recovery contact does not make you a recovery contact for them. You can revoke this permission at any time.in case something suspicious happens with this person. How to set up your recovery contact The first thing you have to do is enter a Google service, such as Gmail. In it, click on the icon with your profile image so that a menu of options appears, and within it click on Manage your Google accountan option that if you are doing it on your mobile could be called Google account. This will take you to a settings page for your Google account. Inside, Click on the section Security to access the options related to this field. There, under the options for how you sign in, press the button Recovery Contacts that will appear below. This will take you to a page where how this function works is explained. In it, press the button Add recovery contacts that will appear below. Now you will go to a screen where you will have to write the contact email that you want to add to the recovery contact list. When you do it and click on Continue, This person will receive a confirmation email with a process that you will have to complete. Once the contact is confirmed, you will have the keys to your Google account. You can add several recovery contacts, but I recommend keeping them as few as possible to maintain your privacy as much as possible. Remember that these contacts must have access to their Google accounts, and if they lost it they would have to tell you to delete them for your safety. In Xataka Basics | Applications linked to your Google account: what they are, how they work, why it is dangerous to have many and how to unlink them

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