Month: November 2025

We have discounts of up to 61% and many financing facilities

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Today, November 28, is officially the Black Friday. A few days ago we had a ton of offers and bargains in technology, although, as happens with everything, good things come to an end. If you are one of those who have been wanting to renew a device or appliance and are looking for something from Samsung, we have good news for you: your Black Friday is still going to be available a little longer. The official store of the Korean manufacturer has discounts that, In the case of televisions, they go up to 61%. The prices we found are already quite attractive, but we can reduce them even more if we use some discount coupons, a certain payment method or even enjoying their service. Delivery and Premiere. All without forgetting that, in addition, we will have many facilities to finance our purchases and we can even get headphones as a gift with some devices. It will depend a little on what we are looking for, but it is very easy right now to find bargains inside this store. To make your task a little easier, below we are going to leave you a selection of some that we find very interesting: Galaxy S25 Ultra by 997 eurosthe best Android phone of the year with 512 GB of storage. Galaxy S25 by 664 eurosa high-end option if we prefer compact phones. Smart OLED TV S91F by 1,662 eurosa television with outstanding image quality and 77 inches. Smart TV QLED QEF1 by 389 eurosa great choice if we are looking for a television with great value for money. SpaceMax Washing Machine by 436 eurosa model with a lot of capacity at a very attractive price. Galaxy S25 Ultra We start with the best super high-end phone at the Xataka NordVPN 2025 awards: the Galaxy S25 Ultra. It is a very powerful phone thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Elite and it stands out for offering a 6.9-inch screen with the best anti-reflective treatment there is. Its camera system meets very good marks in each scenario and also has a lot of AI, as well as seven years of guaranteed updates. Now, let’s talk about the offer. This version of the phone, which is the one with 512 GB, arrived in stores at a price of 1,579 euros. Now, this Black Friday we have it available in the official Samsung store for 1,099 euros, but, as we said above, we can take it for 997 euros. And be careful: also with a case, a charger and some Galaxy Buds3 as a gift. These are the steps to do it: Paying with Bizum or Samsung Pay we will receive a direct discount of 50 euros. If we make the purchase from the app with the code ‘APP5’ we will get a 5% discount. To receive the gift case and charger, we just have to go to the experts chat and request the code for it. For the gift Galaxy Buds3, you have to use the code ‘GIFT‘. Small final note. As we mentioned above, we can even lower this price further if we use Delivery and Release. The discount in this case, which can be up to 520 euros, will depend on the device we deliver. Galaxy S25 Ultra (512GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Galaxy S25 A phone that, being high-end, is more compact may suit us better. So we should set our eyes on the Galaxy S25a device just as powerful as its Ultra brother, but in this case it has a 6.2-inch screen. It is the first Galaxy S of its kind to come with 12GB of RAM and, like the rest of its family, it also has seven years of guaranteed updates. This version of the device, which is the one with 256 GB of storage, arrived in stores at a price of 969 euros. As with the previous mobile, we can also significantly reduce the price it has right now to 664 euros with the following steps: 50 euros discount when paying with Bizum or Samsung Pay. 5% discount with the coupon ‘APP5’ from the official store app. As with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, we can also take a charger and case by asking for a code in the expert chat. We can reduce the price even more with Delivery and Release (up to 390 euros) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Smart OLED TV S91F We now move on to televisions with one of the best that Samsung has in its catalog. The S91F is an OLED model, so we will have the best blacks, very vivid colors and good contrasts. In addition, its image processor is one of the most advanced that Samsung has to date. It is also a very interesting option if we want it to play, since we can take its refresh rate up to 144 Hz with Motion Xcelerator. The RRP of its 77-inch version is 3,699, although this Black Friday it is reduced to 1,799 euros. As with mobile phones, we can take a few extra steps to reduce its price and get it for free. 1,662 euros: Using Bizum or Samsung Pay we will receive a 50 euro direct discount A 5% discount when purchasing from the app with the coupon ‘APP5’ We can also get some free Galaxy Buds3 with the code ‘GIFT‘ Smart OLED TV S91F (77 inches) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Smart TV QLED QEF1 Quality-price, we will find few better options than Samsung’s QLED line. Its Quantum Dots will allow us to have an image with vivid colors and very good quality. In addition, as with other Samsung models from 2025, it also includes the artificial intelligence that the company has for TVs: Vision AI. All without forgetting that it has seven years of guaranteed updates, which ensures very good longevity. Its RRP in this case is 799 euros for the 55-inch … Read more

While others sell us fireworks, she is rewriting science

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OpenAI does not seek to create an AGI. Make sure we don’t stop talking about her. It is the maximum exponent of the “productization” of AI. It and other rivals focus on offering flashy options that improve our productivity but don’t change the world. Which is precisely what some companies are trying to do, among which one stands out in particular: DeepMind. The AI ​​that helped science. For the past two years the tech industry has resembled a fireworks contest. Every few days or weeks a new model promises to write better emails, generate more realistic videos or have more and more human conversations. The cycle of novelty is often ephemeral —Studio Ghibli style images were a good example—but far from those “wow effects” there is a silent AI that does not seek to impress on social networks, but rather to help solve scientific problems that have been blocking new advances for decades. The Thinking Game. The recent documentary about DeepMind titled ‘The Thinking Game’ and available for free on YouTube precisely shows us that other side of AI. Although the tone is not exempt from that epic that we already experienced with the documentary ‘AlphaGo’, what it tells us serves as a reminder of this dichotomy that the industry experiences. While the AI ​​bubble inflates in search of immediate profitability, DeepMind seems to have maintained its original spirit. One that wants to use AI not to imitate the human being, but to – in this case – decipher the code of biology. From Pong to AlphaFold. This 84-minute documentary tells the story of DeepMind through the career of its co-founder, Demis Hassabis. This journey is fascinating and shows us how the startup began to develop AI models that taught themselves to play retro video games like Pong or Breakout (Arkanoid) to, little by little, evolve towards much more ambitious challenges. Specifically, being able to predict the structure of proteins through deep learning. AI can change science. The challenge DeepMind engineers faced seemed impossible. Predicting the structure of these proteins was often misleading and required enormous computing power, but with AlphaFold 1 (2018) and especially with AlphaFold 2 (2020) DeepMind achieved spectacular results. In 2021 the company published both the source code of the project and a database with the structure of more than 200 million proteins available for any laboratory or researcher. It was an absolute gift for the scientific world. Then AlphaFold 3 would arrivemore oriented towards drug development and with a somewhat more commercial point. A Nobel Prize-winning AI. Two of the 2024 Nobel Prize winners in chemistry work at DeepMind. These are Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper, who received the award for their contributions to the prediction of protein structure. That work with AlphaFold demonstrated that AI could indeed contribute to scientific advancement, and put DeepMind on the throne of that segment more than ever. A radically different approach. It is important to do pedagogy here. While LLMs (large language models like GPT-5) work by predicting the most likely next word in a sentence, “AI for science” predicts physical and chemical behaviors: while LLMs can hallucinate and lie like it’s nothing, scientific AI submits to the laws of physics. From observation to simulation. Traditionally, science advanced through observation, hypothesis and experiment, which was often slow and expensive. With AI, an intermediate phase is introduced, massive simulation, which acts as a catalyst for this process. Thanks to AI, it is possible to rule out millions of dead ends before the scientist sets foot in the laboratory. DeepMind has seen this so clearly that created Isomorphic Labsa business spin-off dedicated exclusively to using this technology to discover new drugs. DeepMind is not alone. Although the company co-founded by Demis Hassabis is the clear reference in this area, there are other examples that follow the same path: Microsoft– Achieved a striking milestone in collaboration with PNNL (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) by AI-screening 32 million potential inorganic materials and finding a new one capable of reducing the use of lithium in batteries by 70%. M.I.T.: The prestigious technical institute used deep learning models to discover halicinean antibiotic capable of eliminating bacteria resistant to all known treatments. NVIDIA: The firm not only imperially dominates the AI ​​chip market, but has built a “digital twin” of the Earth called Earth-2. Its AI models (FourCastNet) predict extreme weather events thousands of times faster and consuming much less than traditional supercomputers. The promise (a little) fulfilled. Almost since ChatGPT appeared, we were promised that AI would change the world. At the moment it has not done much, but what has been achieved by DeepMind and other companies in the field of science does seem to pose real revolutions. I recommend not missing the documentary: it is fantastic. In Xataka | What the AI ​​pioneers awarded today with the Nobel Prize say now about AI and its risks

A year ago, Warner wanted to sink Suno’s AI to generate songs. Today he has decided to ally with her

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From chaos to order: when AI burst onto the music scene it seemed like everything was going to fall apart. And some of the latest news in that field seems to go in that direction: uncontrolled multiplication of false groups created with AI on streaming platforms, accelerated sophistication of AIs that allow the creation of music indistinguishable from that created by humans… however, the majors of the industry have taken action on the matter to turn the situation in their favor. And no, it is not that they have won the multiple lawsuits they filed against the AI ​​companies. It is, perhaps, something much more disturbing: they have reached agreements. What has happened? In just eighteen months, Warner Music Group has completed a radical strategic pivot regarding its relationship with AI. In June 2024the record company sued Suno along with Sony and Universal for massive copyright infringement, accusing the platform of training its models with millions of songs it owned and without authorization. But now he announces an alliance with that same company to license its complete catalog. What is Suno? A music generator through artificial intelligence that has attracted almost 100 million users in two years, and allows complete songs to be created from simple textual descriptions. Users can specify genre, mood, instrumentation and tempo, and the system generates two versions of the requested song in about 15 seconds. To achieve this, Suno combines its own musical model with ChatGPT, and from there come both the music and the lyrics, creating pieces that can include voices and instrumentation or be purely instrumental. What the agreement consists of. The pact establishes that Suno will launch in 2026 new advanced and licensed models that will completely replace your current systems. Artists in Warner’s catalog (Lady Gaga, Coldplay or Ed Sheeran, among many others) will have control over whether or not they allow their names, images, voices and compositions to be used in that AI-generated music. Neither Warner nor Suno disclosed the financial terms of the deal, although Warner CEO Robert Kyncl stated that the goal is to “compensate and protect artists, songwriters and the creative community.” As part of the deal, Suno acquired SongkickWarner’s concert discovery platform. Besides, from now on Song downloads generated by Suno will require a paid account, with download limits and options to purchase additional downloads, a bit like the usage limits established by the level free of other AI models. The original demand. The complaint of 2024 accused Suno and Udio of massive infringement of protected recordings. The record companies they requested damages up to $150,000 per infringed song. Suno admitted that he had trained his model with tens of millions of protected recordings but defended that it was “fair use” (the famous fair use Anglo-Saxon) And what is the reason for the change in Warner and company’s strategy? Suno closed a $250 million financing round at a valuation of $2.45 billion just a week ago, according to The Hollywood Reporter. They are not the first. This is not a desperate deal major allying himself with someone who just a year ago he considered an enemy. It is an industry trend: in June 2024, for example Universal Music reached an agreement with SoundLabs to offer its artists vocal cloning tools through the plugin MicroDrop. In November of this same year, Universal, Sony and Warner themselves closed separate agreements with the brand new startup KLAY to train your “Large Music Model” with licensed music Without a doubt, they are significant agreements, especially because, unlike the cinema wave pressto mention other leisure and communication sectors strongly impacted by AI, majors of music are the first to bury the hatchet. With what it may mean for hostilities to soften in other fields. A doubtful future. For a startSony and Warner maintain active lawsuits against Udio and Suno. And there are multiple doubts about the scope of the contract: supposedly the artists have the right to veto, but As Irving Azoff saysfounder of the Music Artists Coalition, “artists end up on the margins with crumbs.” Other analysts like Frankie Pizá They are even more pessimistic: “What some of us see as a collapse in what we understood as artistry/authorship is quietly becoming a new order regulated by the major record labels themselves” Pizá adds: “The music industry has been perfecting its ability to absorb any technological disruption for decades. It did so with Napster, with YouTube, with the streaming and now with generative AI. The pattern repeats itself: first moral resistance, then demands, then agreement and finally implementation.” Header | Amin Asbaghipour in Unsplash

Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing”

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Prediction markets are no longer a niche of the Internet and datanerds to become the new obsession of Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are receiving multi-billion dollar valuations by repackaging traditional bets as sophisticated financial instruments. The image that defines the moment occurred recently in Manhattan, according to Bloomberg: the patriarch of the New York Stock Exchange (70 years old, impeccable suit) closing a multimillion-dollar deal with the founder of Polymarket (27 years old, t-shirt and plastic bottle). That meeting sealed the fate of the sector: betting is no longer a game, it is finance. Why is it important. We are facing a radical cultural and regulatory change. By redefining bets as “event contracts”, these platforms try to circumvent gambling legislation (which in Spain would control Consumption) to sneak into the traditional financial system, with the support of giants such as the owners of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The panoramic. Kalshi is already worth $10 billion and Polymarket is looking for $12 billion. They are not beach bars, as we said, the owner of the NYSE has invested there. The hockey league (NHL) and Donald Trump’s media company are already signing deals. It is the traditional financial system embracing chance. It is, above all, legitimation. Semantic reengineering. Polymarket’s true success is not technological, it is linguistic. They have eliminated the stigma of the gambler by changing the dictionary: It’s not a bet. It’s an “investment.” It is not a betting house. It’s a “exchange of contracts”. You are not a gambler. you are a trader which analyzes “market sentiment.” An example of the absurdity of some cases: people betting by Elon Musk entering the race to be president of the United States, oblivious to the fact that Musk was born in South Africa and therefore cannot become president, since the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners. That is to say: all those bets are money thrown away from minute one. How it works. Instead of betting 50 euros on Trump winning, you buy a “share” of that result that is worth 1 dollar if you are right. This allows the same person who would win or lose money at roulette to now win or lose it in an app with stock market charts. Although the savings fly the same, the user feels smarter and less guilty: he believes that he is operating in something more similar to the IBEX, not in a casino. What’s coming. There is a civil war brewing. The old guard of the game (the owners of traditional casinos) see this as unfair competition. Jay Snowden, CEO of Penn Entertainment (a casino and sports betting company), has already warned: This is a direct threat to your industry. Prediction markets and games of chance overlap. In conclusion. Polymarket has managed to sophisticate gambling addiction for a generation that believes itself too smart to play games of chance. They have created the perfect casino for those who despise casinos, allowing them to risk savings under the illusion of doing financial analysis. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion Featured image | Hush Naidoo Jade PhotographyMockuuups Studio

We thought we’d seen ‘Doom’ running on all types of devices. Until someone tried it with a ticket printer

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We’d seen ‘Doom’ run on almost every device imaginable: from a Texas Instruments calculator until a modified pregnancy test, passing through the Touch Bar of a MacBook. The community has been proving for years that if something has a screen and some kind of processor, someone will try to run Doom. We thought the bar couldn’t be raised any higher, until someone decided to do it in an unexpected place even for this challenge: a ticket printer. Beyond the technical, this challenge has something almost philosophical: it is not about seeing if ‘Doom’ works, because we know that the game can run on very limited hardware. The question is whether we can do it on devices that, in theory, were not designed for that. Closed devices, with a very specific function, that suddenly become small gaming platforms. This transformation of the everyday into something unexpected is what keeps alive the question “what if you can also execute it?” A printer with the soul of a computer. The device chosen by the channel Bringus Studios It is not a conventional ticket printer. It is a solution created for small businesses, capable of printing receipts and running typical point-of-sale terminal applications from the same computer. That integration explains why it includes an embedded operating system, USB ports, its own connectivity and even an original Windows 7 Pro Embedded sticker. For those who used it back in the day, it was simply a point of sale terminal. For those who find it today, it is much more than that. When the creator decides to open the machine, the exterior appearance gives way to a metal structure more typical of an industrial computer than a receipt printer. Under the cover appear screws, SATA cables, internal USB ports, a motherboard and even a small integrated speaker. There are hardly any concessions to the design, everything is ready to function for hours in a commercial environment. Instead of a peripheral accessory, what you find is a complete computer, hidden under a functional and robust chassis. Play Doom on a paper screen. Once it was discovered that the machine could behave like a complete computer, the next step was inevitable: running ‘Doom’. The content creator turned to software rendering, adjusted the brightness and contrast to suit thermal printing, and turned the paper into the game’s visual output. Each frame was printed as a monochrome image, creating a sort of roll-up screen at its feet. The result was neither comfortable nor efficient, but it was extraordinarily ingenious. Too hot for a normal game. The system was capable of printing ‘Doom’, but was not prepared to do so for minutes at a time. Many scenes generated a lot of black, causing the thermal head to get hotter than intended. There came a point where the printer would pause printing or output messy and unintelligible sequences. The author used an external fan to prolong the session, while the paper piled up on the floor and the behavior of the game became so unpredictable that one almost had to play by pure intuition. The experiment did not end with Doom. When testing ‘Half-Life,’ the result was different: the game’s visual style seemed to fit better on thermal paper and produced clearer images. The author began to print scenes that did allow hallways, doors or characters to be distinguished with a certain clarity, to the point of wanting to save them. He even replicated one of the classic moments of the game, the microwave in the laboratory, and confirmed on paper that the pot ended up exploding. Despite the lag of several seconds between what was happening in the game and what appeared on paper, the scenes were still legible enough that I wanted to keep them. It was no longer just playing, it was documenting it. What started as a simple printer ended up being a reminder of why this challenge continues to fascinate so many people. It doesn’t matter if the result is impractical, illegible or full of paper: the important thing is that it worked. The game was run, the printer printed the images and it was demonstrated that even a routine device, designed to work silently behind a counter, can end up becoming an experiment worth telling. Images | Bringus Studios In Xataka | The Internet has been filled with videos with the new trailer for ‘GTA VI’. The only problem is they have all been made with AI

NASA invites you to send your name to the Moon for free. Behind it there is something more than a simple symbolic gesture

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That your name travels around the Moon no longer belongs to the realm of fantasy. NASA has once again opened a door so that anyone can register it and watch it travel aboard Artemis IIthe first manned mission of the Artemis program. It will be stored on a memory card inside the Orion spacecraft, which will circle our satellite and return to Earth. But what is relevant is not just the gesture. The agency has been inviting the public to be part of its missions for years. Now, with Artemis, he is renewing that pact between exploration and participation. NASA does not ask you to register or create an account. Simply enter three basic details on an official website and the system automatically generates a personalized digital pass associated with Artemis II, with the participant’s name. The PIN is the only way to access that pass, and the agency warns that you cannot recover it if it is lost. According to the information available, all the names will be compiled on a digital medium that will travel on the Orion spacecraft during the mission. It has not been confirmed if these names will be consulted or reviewed at some point, but they will be part of the lunar journey in a symbolic way. A tradition that began with a golden record and is still alive in Artemis NASA has been looking for ways to leave a human mark on your missions. One of the best known examples is the Voyager Golden Recorddesigned in 1977 under the scientific direction of Carl Sagan. It was a metal disc covered in gold with sounds, greetings and images that represented life on Earth. Years later, with Cassini, transferred to a CD-ROM with scanned signatures, and in Stardust and OSIRIS-REx microchips with names sent from all over the world were used. Artemis II takes another step: a digital memory card, much more similar to the ones we use today in any device. These initiatives are not understood only as gestures of participation. NASA operates with public funds and needs to justify, year after year, that programs like Artemis make sense beyond scientific interest. Connecting with citizens is a way to keep that support current, especially in missions that take place over decades and require budget continuity. When numerous educational centers, families and fans share their symbolic boarding passes, what they actually do is make visible that space exploration continues to have social, cultural and political relevance. While Apollo was an unprecedented milestone, it also left a lesson for the future of exploration. After the global impact of the first moon landing, public attention began to fallr, and with it, political and budgetary support. The book “Moonport”, published by NASAdescribes how enthusiasm became routine, and how subsequent missions stopped generating interest outside the scientific field. In the early 1970s, Congress reduced funding and thousands of employees were laid off. The program had won the space race, but it lost something just as important: the sustained attention of society. Artemis advances in a very different context than Apollo, but with a clear lesson: space exploration needs both political continuity and social legitimacy. Today the challenges are no longer only technological, but also strategic. The program is accumulating technical delays and Artemis II is now scheduled for launch between February and April 2026. At the same time, China has accelerated its plans and is developing its own manned program with the aim of sending astronauts to the Moon. Everything seems to indicate that we are facing a new competition, this time more open and prolonged, where public support is once again a decisive element. As we can see, signing up does not change the course of a mission, but it is part of something broader. It’s not about seeing your name circle the Moon, but about knowing that space exploration continues to involve society and not only to the control centers. Artemis does not only seek to return to our satellite, but rather to build a shared story about why to go, what to go for, and who is invited to take part. It is a way of remembering that this trip also needed an audience, and that perhaps awakens enthusiasm in those who, from a young age, begin to look upward. Images | POT | THAT | Screenshot In Xataka | The biggest mystery in science today is dark matter. And a Japanese scientist believes he has detected it

We all turn on our emergency lights when we get into a traffic jam. The DGT knows that we are doing it wrong

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It is more than likely that when you got your license They won’t mention it, but get into a traffic jam It is easy to turn on the emergency lights while braking. It is something almost instinctive, a warning for the one that goes 120 km/h behind you realize that you don’t brake for no reason. And if you don’t, you’ve probably seen it. However, the curious thing is that the General Driving Regulations do not contemplate this action. Because we do it to avoid accidents, but with the law in hand, the use of warnings It’s not what we have to do when we get into a traffic jam.. And yet, there are even new cars that activate them automatically if the system notices that we brake repeatedly. The most curious thing is that it is not bad nor is it a fault. Simply put, the law was written for cars from another era. Although current cars have been eliminating more and more buttons, relegating them to the screensthe emergency lights is one that has remained a physical and tactile piece. It is logical because it is a security element and it is one that we have well located in the control panel. When braking in traffic jams, it is almost a reflex for many drivers to use the emergency light button to warn those behind them of the situation. In fact, some new cars activate them automatically if the sensors (the accelerometer or the brake pressure sensor) detect a sudden deceleration or if the ABS comes into play. If the braking is progressive, they are not activated automatically. The use of emergency lights in a traffic jam: yes, but no (and vice versa) But… what does the law say? As our colleagues remember Motorpassionhe section C of article 109 The General Traffic Regulations of 2003 establish that the correct way to notify those behind us about this situation is: “The intention to immobilize the vehicle or to brake its progress considerably, even when such events are imposed by traffic circumstances, must be warned, whenever possible, by repeatedly using the brake lights or by moving the arm alternately up and down with short and quick movements.” The problem is that theory is one thing, but in practice, if we are slamming on the brakes It is difficult to walk by lifting your foot off the brake.. Much less by lowering the window and warning with signs. It is much easier to turn on the emergency lights, and the person in the back will also see them better than if we put our arm out the window. Why does the law say this? Because it is an article written in another era. It is an anachronism resulting from times in which the ABS It was not so present and in which, to avoid the wheels locking and the car skidding, we did have to lift our foot off the brake. In this way, we were automatically alerting the person behind us. Therefore, the law does not say that we put on the emergency lights in a traffic jam, but they are not going to fine us for it because the DGT understands the good intention when it comes to notifying other drivers about an anomaly in traffic. In fact, the fact that the law does not establish it, but the cars do, speaks about the discrepancy between the “strict law” and reality. The DGT itself advertises it: In fact, here comes the technicality of “whenever possible”a legal hole that protects us when turning on the emergency lights. Now, where it is mandatory to give these lights is when we cannot travel at the minimum speed on the road. That is, if we are in a traffic jam on a highway and we do not reach half the speed of the road, we will have to turn on our lights. Section 3 of article 49 says: “When a vehicle cannot reach the minimum required speed and there is a danger of overtaking, direction indicator lights with an emergency signal must be used while driving.” Will the regulations be modified at some point to reflect the current situation in which all cars launched these last 21 years Do they have ABS? It is not known, but since it is a universal code to alert of the situation, I imagine that it will not be one of the Administration’s priorities. Of course, you have probably found someone who has used them excessively, giving you a scare for no reason when you turn them on in a non-critical situation. And that, precisely, is what happened with some models from the 2000s that turned on the emergency lights automatically, even when braking to exit the highway. For example, early models of Citroen C4 either Peugeot 307 who were ahead of the rest with something that wasn’t going entirely well. Images | Kathy, Prithivi Rajan In Xataka | The V-16 beacons are here to stay (whether we like it or not): this is all there is to do in case of a breakdown

Russia has shown on video how to hunt drones with shotguns. And he has also revealed what he did not want us to see

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During the years of Russian invasion of Ukraine we had seen many tactics that copied techniques and weapons from the past. For example, the use of the Davis cannon of the First World War, or the application of anchored shotguns on airplane wings. In fact, the use of shotguns and rifles from the last century has become a normalized scenario over the months due to the lack of modern artillery. Russia has now shown in a video how to hunt drones. Although he has also inadvertently revealed another detail. Shotguns in the front. The silent battle that is fought every day between Russian boats and swarms of FPV drones in the Dnieper has revealed now one of the most unexpected tactical turns of the war: the resurrection of the shotgun as a survival tool on a battlefield dominated by sensors, radio waves and munitions costing just a few hundred dollars. The viral sequence recorded from the helmet of a Russian marine, it offers a deceptively heroic portrait of a crew sailing at full speed through narrow channels while shooting down drone after drone (up to 13), although the meticulous analysis of each fragment shows that the initial epic falls apart as soon as the details are examined and what is behind it is understood: a fragmented combat, recorded on different days, in which the probable casualties are left out of the shot and where the electronics have as much weight as the shots. The mirage of the mission. They counted it analysts at Forbes. What seems like a single continuous episode in reality It’s a montage of multiple confrontations, where the sky changes color between shots and where the marines shoot at both real threats and invisible threats, lost among interference and gusts of wind. The barge sails while three shooters with semi-automatic shotguns, an automatic rifle and a light machine gun try to keep at bay drones that explode at the slightest contact. Thirteen devices fall, but the editing hides both the failures and the side effects. Two explosions centimeters from the hull leave doubts about possible injuries that are never shown, while a revealing detail (a Marine who already has a tourniquet placed preventively on his thigh) speaks of very specific expectations: the probability of being hit is not a hypothesis, but an assumed fact. Elite unit supported by electronic warfare. Forehead to the ‘Mobiks’ sent to slaughter with weeks of instruction and precarious material, this unit stands out for modern equipmentfor the shooting discipline and for the hidden arsenal that really explains part of their survival: a antenna constellation electronic warfare mounted on the boat. These inhibitors, with a range of between 50 and 100 meters, turn many drones into uncontrolled projectiles that fall by pure gravity. The shotgun just finish what electronics has already weakened. In an environment where FPV munitions explode even when the operator loses signal, the difference between living or dying depends not solely on aiming, but on the ability to blind the drone before it gets too close. That is why the shots show drones collapsing far from the effective range of the shooters: they did not fall due to an accurate shot, but due to interference. The limits of the shotgun. That a shotgun can take down an FPV at close range is so true as misleading. The scene has fueled a narrative of false confidence that the soldiers themselves deny off camera. There are testimonies of teams that five drones were shot down followed to fall before the sixth when they ran out of ammunition, or patrols that aimed and fired until the last cartridge before a device entered through the window and destroy the vehicle. If you like, the arms industry has also adapted: Benelli already produces models specific “anti-drone”equipped with tungsten ammunition, and foreign donors have sent hundreds of semi-automatic shotguns to Ukrainian units. But the tactical principle does not change: a shotgun does not compete with the mass production of drones. It is a desperate tool to gain seconds in an environment where each drone costs less than a box of ammunition and where both armies manufacture them by the millions. Desperate defense. He video ends with the boat rescuing another group of marines: one is wounded, others advance with two weapons in their hands, and the scene, far from glorifying the resistance, underlines the true tactical message. The shotgun works, yes, but only when the number of drones is small, when the shooters are trained, or when there are active inhibitors and when luck is on the side. The complete story, the one that never goes viral, remembers that for every boat that returns, another does not. In the Dnieper War, the shotgun is not a weapon of air supremacy: it is the final spark that is fired when all else has failed, a defense of last resort against a swarm cheap and numerous which is redesigning the way armies move, attack and survive. A shotgun may give you time, but in an FPV-saturated front, that time may not be enough. Image | RUSSIAN MOD In Xataka | Ukraine has just reduced what took days to two minutes. And then he began to crush the most feared Russian weapon: his kamikazes In Xataka | The new peace plan in Ukraine has been reduced to 19 aspects. The problem is that the key point measures 900 km

There’s a reason Vigo is advertising its Kawasaki Christmas. One that has nothing to do with Japanese tourists

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If you walk around Kawasaki these days (lucky you) you will probably come across an image that will catch your attention, one that has little to do with Japanese traditions and landscapes or with the avalanche of tourists that the country of the rising sun suffers. What will probably make you jump is finding a sign in the middle of Kanagawa announcing Christmas in Vigo, a mupi with a photo of XXL luminous tree of the Galician city and a message that invites you to travel the 11,000 kilometers that separate both towns. It could be an anecdote (one more related to the Vigo festivals), but that image tells us a lot about the fever for decoration Christmas that Spain experiences. Vigo Christmas in Japan? That’s how it is. It was the mayor of Vigo himself, Abel Caballero, who was in charge of showing it on networks. On Tuesday he hung up a photo in which a promotional poster for the Olympic Christmas is seen in what looks like the street of some Japanese city. The advertisement shows garlands, the XXL luminous tree erected in the heart of Vigo and a message in Japanese. “Christmas in Vigo is already in Japan,” Caballero wrote in his tweetwhich is already on its way to 220,000 views and 650 likes. Is it a surprise? Not really. In October Knight has already advanced that this year Christmas in Vigo would be announced with 820 posters distributed throughout (almost) the entire world. Most of those mupis (629) would be distributed across thirty Spanish cities, especially Madrid, Malaga, Bilbao and Seville, and another 142 were reserved for neighboring Portugal. The rest would travel the world. The Council boasted that it would take 15 to Paris, 10 to Rome, the same number to New York and 14 to Kawasaki. “This time Christmas will be in Japan for the first time.” Is it the first time? More or less. The jump to Asia is a novelty, but in 2024 Vigo already surprised to some tourists with promotional posters distributed in cities such as London, Paris, Rome or even the Big Apple. “I thought it was a mirage. I was seeing this in the distance and I couldn’t believe it,” joked in X Héctora reporter who encountered a mupi in the middle of Manhattan that read, in large golden letters, “The World’s best Christmas is in Vigo.” How much do these posters cost? In October, when he announced the new campaign, Caballero assured that at least this year’s is “free” and “costs nothing” to the City Council. Last year the Vigo newspaper Metropilitango.gal pointed that the mupis had been installed after reaching an agreement with JCDecaux. But… Who visits Vigo? If we base ourselves on studies on hotel occupancy by the INE, basically Spaniards and visitors from other areas of the EU, especially Portugal. Of the 537,500 travelers counted throughout 2024, 62.7% resided in Spain and 23.9% in one of the remaining EU countries. Of these, Portugal was the most popular market, with almost 77,000 tourists. Among the countries analyzed by the INE, the United States (14,800), Germany (11,800) and Italy (11,200) followed, far behind. From Japan, the market on which the City Council has now set its eyes, only 700 visitors who ended up staying in hotel establishments in the city. And at Christmas? The photo is not very different from the rest of the year. According to the data provided By the Vigo City Council, during Christmas 2022-2023 tourism was mostly national. That campaign was still marked by the shadow of the pandemic, but the data is conclusive: the City Council assures that some 5.3 million visitors arrived in Vigo and that the main foreign nationality was Portuguese, with 140,118 people, 2.6% of the total. French, British, Italians and Americans totaled 68,400. The hotel occupancy data from the INE show a somewhat different picture. In December the institute counted only 62,900 touristsof which 62% were Spanish and 30.5% Portuguese. The sum of French, Italians, British and Americans in fact barely exceeded 1,100. It is not surprising if one takes into account the limited supply of connections that Peinador, Vigo airport, has (right now Aena reports only five routes). Is there Japanese tourism? If we base ourselves on the INE, no. In December 2024, the INE did not count not a single Japanese visitor in the hotels of Vigo. In addition to how complicated and expensive it is to fly between Japan and the Galician city, this absence is largely explained by the behavior of Japanese tourists. Although the country is recording a record arrival of foreign tourists, the number of Japanese traveling abroad still quite below from pre-pandemic data. In fact in June Turespaña I trusted in which the influx of Japanese to Spain recovers its “pre-COVID” levels this year. Why advertise there then? In view of these data, why has Vigo distributed 14 mupis by Kawasaki and 10 in New York? Does Caballero aspire to attract tourists who live on other continents, thousands of kilometers away? The Consistory speaks to show Galician Christmas to potential tourists from other countries, but the measure is probably explained with another word: virality. Caballero’s tweet is a good example. In just a few days his photo of mupi has achieved several hundreds of thousands of views on X and has made headlines on media from Spain. Just as their estimates do about what Christmas means for Vigo: between 800 and 1 billion euros of economic return with a deployment of 6.3 million “visitors” in just two months, which is more than the total number of tourists who stay in hotels in Galicia in a year. The 14 mupis of Kawasaki may see them only a small portion of the 1.5 million people who reside in that Japanese city, but of course they have reached, via networks and media, thousands of people who live in the market that really interests Vigo: the rest of Spain and (especially) Galicia. Does virality … Read more

Today we know how to solve crimes with scientific precision. And we owe it all to a lady with a dollhouse

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You imagine the scene and smile. It is perfect to become the seed of a script that ends up winning an Oscar. You, along with dozens of other male criminology students in the room, are greeted by a woman in her 50s who looks like an endearing grandmother. You go to the next room and in it you find a doll house which, they order you, you have 90 minutes to examine. “They sent me here because they told me it would be a training visit,” you protest internally. When you look at the recreation you begin to perceive the macabre aura of the event. The mental image of what a toy house must be is broken inside you when you see that the cloth and porcelain romper is a headless prostitute thrown on the bathroom of a room to which over the years, you notice, the same squalor that has characterized the life of its guest has been attached. There’s more: one thing catches your attention, just one of hundreds. Some lines drawn in chalk on the miniature ironing board in the corner of the room. They mark the price that the utensil must have had when they bought it several years ago. You look at the whole and the level of detail The entire room is such that you start to get dizzy from the puzzle you have to solve. But there is no room to be stunned. The strange grandmother at the beginning had already warned you: you have 90 minutes and there is not a single one to lose. Frances Glessner Lee, dollhouses and the true origin of CSI Frances Glessner Lee, whom we know today as “the mother of forensic science,” he didn’t have it easy to get to where he did. If it were not for a concatenation of circumstances, it is likely that this police branch would have lost one of its most valuable and, of course, curious pedagogical milestones that we have known. Born in Chicago in 1878, Lee was the daughter of John Jacob Glessner, owner of the successful International Harvester company. Motivated by her childhood and teenage readings of Sherlock Holmes, she longed to dedicate herself to the exciting world of homicide investigation. At the end of the 19th century, the typical thing for society ladies was not to go to Harvard and then dedicate themselves to solving crimes, but get married and start a family. They forced this on him when he was 20 years old. He divorced and waited for his father and brother to die so he could inherit the family fortune and finally be able to make his own decisions. In all that time his concerns never went away. He studied criminology in Boston, He donated part of his inheritance to Harvard to open a brand new forensic medicine department there and he got to work. At 52 years old. Throughout her life, Lee founded the Harvard Medical School and served as an advocate for absolute rationalization in police investigation. among many other thingsbut the great work of his life was another: his Limited studies of unexplained deathsa series of 19 dioramas or small miniature doll houses that represented complex crime scenarios that would be analyzed by future students of Criminology or Forensic Investigation. As a socialite, Lee used her money and social skills to make your way into the world of men and convince them to participate in your proposal. The cottage seminar by day, opulent parties at the Ritz Carlton by night. Fourteenth State Police Homicide Investigation Seminar, November 17-22, 1952, at the Department of Forensic Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Read to the right. Harvard Medical Library and Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. Complete photograph of your death: every object around you counts If something stands out all the biographies of Lee It is his unhealthy passion for detail. The passages about his works are an endless collection of nouns and adjectives. The cans of food in the cupboards, the fogged-up mirrors, the half-peeled potatoes, the overflowing ashtrays, the unmade beds, the open oven faucets, the pieces of wood under the nails, the violet stains observable on the subject’s face. The backyards and fire escapes hidden from view of investigators and that Mrs. Lee ordered from specialized carpenters just so that no element of the room imagined in her mind escaped her control. Only one thing escaped him: it is not possible to distinguish rigor mortis in a doll. For all this only Lee can know how many months or years was able to dedicate to each of the jewels in his gloomy collection, which cost as a result of 3,000 or 4,000 dollars of those of that time piece by piece and that involved both work and love: all the textile elements that we see in the dioramas were made by her herself. The Bounded Studies are not only a pedagogical tool, but also a theoretical proposal on the tangible, material aspect that surrounds the reality of human death. As if each object, each frayed blanket and each photograph on the front page of the newspaper that has the figure of a murdered man at its feet, also became part of the same concatenation of events that led to his death. Pure chaos theory applied to forensic architecture. As we have learned later, the houses became so complicated that many students were not able to find the appropriate solution as to how the hypothetical crime had occurred, but rather that they were simply left unable to give a single answer. A pedagogical legacy still to be resolved Of the 18 dioramas that Mrs. Lee made, we only know the answer to 13 of them. Over the years, no one has been able to solve five of these simulations that are still considered some of the most arduous homicide scenes in history. Its creator took the secret of those five rooms to the grave: she agreed if the participant proposed the correct … Read more

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