Month: November 2025

That’s why only one Ferrari SC40 will be manufactured

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The Ferrari F40 is one of the most legendary and recognizable models of the Maranello brand, considered by many to be the last “pure” Ferrari, given that it was the last one that Enzo Ferrari approved before his death in 1988. A client of the brand asked Ferrari to make one of his dreams come true: a car that maintained the essence of the F40, but adapted to current trends and technologies. This is how the Ferrari SC40 was born, a unique creationcustom designed and with the guarantee that no more units will be manufactured because, like dreams, each one is exclusive to the person who owns it. A Ferrari F40 version 2.0 Ferrari has launched a new unique supercar called SC40, which is not just another car, but an exclusive creation designed to fulfill a personal dream of a very special client. Instead of mass-producing a model, this one-off represents a tribute to the legendary Ferrari F40, one of the brand’s most iconic supercars presented in July 1987. This initiative shows how Ferrari is dedicated to “fulfilling the dreams of its customers” through of unique projects in its Special Projects Program. The Ferrari SC40 is not a simple reissue of the F40, but a modern reinterpretation influenced by the design and essence of the model approved by Enzo Ferrari, but manufactured with the latest technology and contemporary materials. The closest that Ferrari fans will be able to get to this supercar will be in the model that will be exhibited at the Ferrari Museum in Maranello, since the only real unit that will be manufactured will go directly to the garage of the person who commissioned it. The SC40 project lasted approximately two years, during which the proportions and details were designed together with the Ferrari Design Center. “It does not seek to be a literal replica, but rather a reinterpretation with personality,” they say. from the brand. In its mechanical base, the SC40 shares the chassis, the eight-speed F1 DCT transmission and the hybrid propulsion of the Ferrari 296 GTB. A 3.0-liter biturbo V6 engine has been integrated along with a 122 kW electric motor and a 7.45 kWh battery, adding a total combined power of 830 horsepower and torque close to 740 Nm. These figures make it possible to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in just 2.9 seconds and reach a maximum speed of over 330 km/h, significantly faster than those of the original F40, which had 478 horses that catapulted it to 320 km/h. Reminiscent of the F40, but it is not The design of the SC40 stands out for its long, low nose, a short rear overhang and a raised fixed spoiler, elements that combine style and functionality. The headlights, located at the ends, take us to the peculiar front of the F40, although they dispense with the retractable headlight mechanism of the original model. Like the model from which it is inspired, Ferrari has used carbon fiber and Kevlar. The same materials that allowed the Italian manufacturer to reduce the weight of the F40 to only 1,100 Kg and provide it with sufficient torsional rigidity so that will not disintegrate under its power. The “SC40” lettering embossed on the side of the spoiler is a clear nod to the one sported by Ferrari’s legendary supercar. The brand of The Prancing Horse has designed a specific color for this exclusive collector’s item: Bianco SC40. Direct and at the foot. Ferrari’s commitment to exclusivity creating unique cars for its best clients represents a growing trend in the automotive luxury sector. Other supercar manufacturers, such as Lamborghini with his Opera UnicaRolls-Royce or Bentley offer authentic bespoke works of art, turning each car into an exclusive collector’s item. Dreaming is freebut having a unique and unrepeatable Ferrari piece in your garage doesn’t have to be cheap. In Xataka | A $700,000 Ferrari F40 spent a decade parked in a Munich garage: its owner had forgotten where he had it Image | Ferrari

The new arms race is being fought at more than 6,000 km/h. And America is late

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At more than 6,000 km/h there is no room to think twice. The new generation of hypersonic missiles operates in that speed range, a terrain in which the global military balance begins to shift. Russia and China they have already shown systems capable of flying above Mach 5. The United States, accustomed to setting the technological pace, moves forward with more doubts than it would like. The term “hypersonic” is not military marketing, but a clear category: devices that travel faster than five times the speed of sound. The real complexity comes with the trajectory. Unlike ballistic missiles, which ascend and descend in an arc, these systems can stay relatively low and change course in flight. This ability to maneuver, added to the thermal loads and ionization they suffer when passing through the atmosphere at such speed, explains why their development is so challenging. Hypersonic weapons enter the scene Russia was the first to proclaim operational capabilities. Its Avangard system, an intercontinental missile-launched glider vehicle, was announced for service in 2019 and Moscow claims it can carry a nuclear warhead. Experts in kyiv also claim that Russia used the zircon against the ukrainian capital in February 2024. China, for its part, demonstrated the DF-17 and tested the DF-27, which according to reports from 2023 flew about 2,100 kilometers in 12 minutes. In addition, it has shown the YJ-21, integrated into destroyers and bombers, consolidating a more visible deployment. The United States has focused on the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon. Dark Eagle has a range greater than about 1,725 ​​miles, that is, about 2,780 kilometers, and a first system valued at about 2.7 billion dollars, according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The official plan aims to deploy it at the end of 2025, after a sequence of tests with failures in 2023 and 2024 that the GAO collected in June 2025. In August 2024, the CRS reported of the first satisfactory end-to-end flight. In parallel, the Navy is leading a common glider vehicle and the Air Force is working on an air-launched glider and a cruise ship with DARPA. The hypersonic threat tests the most fragile link in modern defense: time. The radar has less useful horizon at low altitude and Trajectory changes break prediction patterns. Furthermore, the dynamics of flight itself generate phenomena that can complicate detection. The forces trying to stop these systems are working on layers of sensors, more advanced tracking algorithms and more agile data links, but it is a challenge that is not yet solved. What sets hypersonic weapons apart is not just their performance, but the effect they have on the logic of deterrence. The impossibility of knowing what type of cargo they are carrying until impact creates fertile ground for misunderstandings. The United States assures that its development focuses on conventional ammunition, but rivals such as Russia and China have shown systems directly linked to their nuclear arsenal, which fuels distrust. Faced with this scenario, the allies are rearming their surveillance and defense architecture. In 2022, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia expanded their cooperation within the framework of AUKUS to include “hypersonics and counter-hypersonics“, with emphasis on distributed sensors, shared intelligence and new interceptors. The objective is not only to have equivalent missiles, but to build a system capable of detecting threats in early phases and coordinating the response between different military nodes. The focus is on the next deployment milestones and on validating that this cooperation translates into real capabilities. Today, the initial advantage is not on the American side, and that realization has already had an effect on its military planning. Russia and China have moved first and have forced Washington to accelerate decisions and prioritize resources in the middle of a year of technological validation. It remains to be seen whether the deployment planned for this year consolidates a balance or confirms the gap. Images | People’s Liberation Army | Russian Aerospace Forces In Xataka | China promised them very happy with the catapult system of its new aircraft carrier. Until the US took a look

It was the rebirth of Moto Guzzi

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Ducati, yamaha or until Aprilia and KTM They may be names that sound familiar to you if I tell you to think of a motorcycle brand. However, if I talk to you about Moto Guzzithe name may not inspire you at all. This is a legendary motorcycle manufacturer that, after going through hell, was reborn from its ashes. And he did it with a model practically created in an almost clandestine workshop: the Moto Guzzi V7 Sport. Ascent. There are legendary brands that start doing one thing and then end up doing something completely different. Nintendo is an example: It started with cards and now it is one of the video game leaders. Moto Guzzi is one of those cases that were born with a single objective: technological excellence and passion for competition. Founded in 1921 in the Italian town of Mandello del Lario, from the beginning they were clear that they wanted to contribute something to the conversation. An example is the 90º V engine that attracts so much attention on motorcycles. naked and even of the american police. The V7 700 was a gem, but in the mid-60s… things started to go wrong. Drop. The founders left, new managers (SEIMM) took over and the catastrophe was total. Not only were they losing sales at full speed, but they were moving further and further away from the competition tracks. They didn’t know which key to press, but they couldn’t sit still because they were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Military and police models helped the company in difficult times Then an idea occurred to them: loosen their wallets and sign someone who could restore the flame and pride to the team, which they saw as increasingly Japanese motorcycles prevailed both in the market and on the slopes. That’s when they turned to Silly Linen. And they couldn’t have hit the nail on the head more. The V7 Sport ‘dachshund’ to the basement. Tonti was an engineer with experience in other now historic brands such as BenelliBianchi or Gilera and, as soon as he arrived at Moto Guzzi, he knew what he had to do: all in with that transverse twin cylinder. The problem is that the new managers were not going to give him much funds either. They were asking for the impossible, but Tonti and his partner Alcide Biotti must have taken it as a challenge and, in their own workshop due to the difficulties of the Mandello factory, they completely redesigned the motorcycle. The chassis changed completely, opting for a removable double cradle, it was more rigid and lower and removing the engine was much easier, key for competition. That transverse engine was maintained at 90º, but the motorcycle had changed its profile, being lower and longer. Breaking records. That earned him the nickname of ‘Dachshund’, our sausage dog, although it officially went down in history as Moto Guzzi V7 Sport. He aim It was to stay at 750 cc with a weight of 200 kg and a speed of over 200 km/h and it looked good, but it had to be tested. It was the pilot Umberto Todero who piloted it at the end of the 60s, and I don’t want to imagine the smile of Tonti and Biotti when their creation set 19 world speed records. The official figures are 748.4 cc, 205 kg and a peak of 208 km/h. They had achieved it, but also, in international tests carried out by magazines, the V7 Sport was chosen to compete against the Japanese that ate the brand’s toast years ago. Specificallyagainst the Kawasaki 750 March IV and against the Honda CB 750 Four. The V7 is still alive, although it is very different from the one 50 years ago Myth. Thus, as a result of that work with few resources, but with the motivation to recover the lost honor for a house brand, the now legendary V7 Sport was born with its red chassis. That chassis was so popular that they even named it ‘Silly frame‘, being used in many models today both by external brands and by Moto Guzzi itself. Today, the V7 lives on, although little remains of that dachshund shape of the 1969 V7 Sport that sits today on the Olympus of classic sports bikes. And the brand? Well, that is a separate story, since they have been passing through hands since SEIMM took over the company, passing through Aprilia itself and, later, through Piaggio when it took over Aprilia. Images | Serge PIOTIN aka Sergio, AVMOTO, Thesupermat, Antramir In Xataka | “With our heads, we would all ride 20 HP motorcycles”: there is a debate brewing about how much power is too much power for a motorcycle

There is a Facebook group available 24 hours a day that even doctors attend. Your mission: identify poisonous mushrooms

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“Hello, I have a human patient with late-onset gastrointestinal symptoms after ingesting these mushrooms.” This is how one of the many messages you receive in ‘Poisons Help; Emergency Identification For Mushrooms & Plants‘, a Facebook group formed by experts in the identification of poisonous plants and mushrooms. They are available 24 hours a day and not only receive consultations from individuals, but also doctors and veterinarians. ID. There are more than 100,000 species of fungi, of which more than a hundred are poisonoussome even mortal. And the same thing happens with many plants. If a person or animal ingests one of these by accident, it is crucial to identify the species to see what steps to take. However, distinguishing these species is not an easy task; in-depth knowledge of botany and mycology is required. In 2018, several experts founded a Facebook group to help identify poisonous species in emergencies. And they are extremely effective. For emergencies only. When you enter the group, a message appears with the rules for posting. The first thing they make clear is that it is a group for emergencies, that is, you can only post if a person or animal has ingested the mushrooms. If someone has a question because they are curious to know details about a specific specimen, there are other groups for that. They also have a warning for trolls: “People come here at scary times for immediate life-saving help, please don’t make jokes, judge or criticize. This is not the place to test your sense of humor or correct others.” Strict rules. For the group to be effective, in active cases no one is allowed to comment other than the administrators themselves or the people who have reported an emergency. It is necessary to provide all possible data: location, amount ingested, time since ingestion, photos of the specimen, weight of the person or animal that ingested it, etc. Doctors and veterinarians. Many of the posts are made directly by professionals who have a patient with problems after ingesting an unknown mushroom or plant. Most are veterinarians, but there are also many cases of doctors with human patients in the same situation. Even there have been cases in which the poison center itself has been the one who recommended going to the group for identification. Recognition. In addition to being a source of consultation for professionals, its work has also been recognized by associations such as the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology, which last August invited them to give a talk in one of his conferences. Among the group administrators There are mycologists, botanists and also amateur hobbyists. Cover image | Vladimir Srajber, Pexels In Xataka | Sex is deadly for many males. The octopus has a strategy to survive: inject poison into its partner

The best-selling car in Spain is the Dacia Sandero. It is a completely irrelevant fact to understand Spain

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The Dacia Sandero was, in 2024, the best selling car in Spain. It was, in fact, in a total of five countries around the world. In addition to Spain, the Sandero repeated the throne in Bulgaria, Kosovo, Morocco and Portugal. This year we are on track to repeat it, with a Dacia Sandero that has added 28,765 units. Well above the MG ZS, the second best-selling car with 19,251 euros. The data tells us that among the best selling cars In our country the cheapest vehicles triumph. The Renault Clio is the third option. Despite having announced a new generation, it is still the third best-selling car in our country and can be found for prices starting at just over 16,000 euros. The Seat Ibiza is the fourth best-selling car and its starting price is just below the 15,000 euro border. Among the 10 best-selling cars we also find the Peugeot 208, which starts at 17,000 euros. Are we poor? This is what many responses on social networks affirm to each and every one of the lists of the best-selling cars in the world. The reactions compare us with the Nordic countries or Belgium, where the Tesla Model Y was the best-selling car last year. But… what if the statistics were distorted? Simply looking at which is the best-selling car by country gives rise to some paradoxes. France has a salary average of 44,968 euros, while in our country we move at 31,698 euros, according to data collected by Expansion. Despite this, the best-selling car in France in 2024 was the Renault Clio… followed by the Peugeot 208 and the Dacia Sandero. Photography is not very different from that of our country. Finland has an average salary of 52,893 euros, double the 25,198 euros in Greece. Both, however, share that the best selling car in their countries last year it was the Toyota Yaris Cross. The same car that repeated as the best-selling in Poland. Now, we can understand that the photograph may be somewhat distorted. Bestseller just means “bestseller” “The fact that sales were concentrated on that type of car (the Dacia Sandero) or on its price level, that it was the best-seller did not say anything about our purchasing capacity” Who maintains this is Manuel HidalgoDoctor in Economics from the Pompeu Fabra University and professor at the Pablo de Olavide University (Seville). He did it with a tweet on According to his calculations: 33,251 euros. That is the average price of cars bought in Spain. And the data even has nuances that would raise this figure. We might think that a very expensive car will undoubtedly raise the average price. For example, a Dacia Sandero sells for less than 15,000 euros, so a car worth 150,000 euros is equivalent to the registration of ten of these cars. Source: Manuel Hidalgo But Hidalgo has also crossed the frequency with which these cars are purchased. And in the graph above you can see that, indeed, there is a good number of vehicles sold at the average price of a Dacia Sandero and then there is a spike when the graph approaches 20,000 euros. However, most cars sold In our country they stand at 30,000 euros, very close to the average of 33,251 euros. From here, there is a marked drop. The professor and Doctor in economics explains that to obtain the data he has taken the data of the best-selling cars in our country between January and September 2025 (latest data available) and has crossed them with the RRP of the price at which each and every one of the cars in our country are sold. These data show that six times more cars are sold at the 30,000 euro border than at the 14,000 euro border where the Sandero starts. The leadership of the latter is based on the fact that it is the market reference among the cheapest cars. The options in this price range are also much more limited, so at higher prices sales are diversified and, therefore, it is more difficult for a car to gain points to appear among the 10 best-selling cars in our country. But, as we said, it is very likely that the average price we pay for our car in Spain be taller. We asked Manuel Hidalgo about this possibility and he confirmed it. It must be taken into account that the data shown is obtained with the RRP of the car but not with the expenditure that the private client makes on equipment or superior mechanics. And the basic versions of a car are, in many cases and more so in cheap vehicles like the Dacia Sandero, focused on large fleets. This explains that if the car is segmented between individuals and legal entities, the curve shifts to the right. Source: Manuel Hidalgo According to the data collected by Manuel Hidalgo, the average of the car purchased by an individual is higher than the average of the legal entity. Specifically, an individual spends 33,982 euros per vehicle, while an individual spends 32,376 euros. Looking at the graph above, we see that it is common to buy cars for very low priced fleets. So much so that the graphs between individuals and companies do not equalize until both reach 20,000 euros. Among individuals, the frequency of purchases between 20,000 and 30,000 euros shoots up earlier and it is evident that the final average price is driven by a rebound in purchases between 50,000 and 60,000 euros. Among individuals, it is evident that there is a purchase for fleets and work vehicles where the cheapest cars are sought. Then, the frequency shoots up again at the border of 30,000 euros, showing that it is the segment preferred by companies for cars used by their employees or by self-employed people who can deduct part of the fees. That is, yes, in Spain the most purchased car is the Dacia Sandero but the variables that must be taken into account to analyze the … Read more

How the cerebral hemispheres shaped the Western world

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One day, around 1990, someone asked John Cutting to give a seminar at the Maudsley Hospital in London. cutting era a renowned psychiatristwith extensive clinical experience and who gave dozens of talks each year; but I didn’t really know what to talk about. So gathered some notes on the right hemisphere and its relationship with psychiatric disorders. The relevant thing, he said, It was not ‘what’ each hemisphere does, but ‘how’ each one sees the world. No one could imagine it, but for a young resident he had begun the task of his life. Although the story begins a little earlier When Roger Sperry arrived in Pasadena in 1954 was a little frustrated. He was 40 years old and had a wonderful future that was slipping through his fingers. In less than two years he had been a professor at the University of Chicago, head of Neurological Diseases and Blindness at the National Institutes of Health in Maryland, and a key player in the marine science laboratory at the University of Miami. But between delays, budget cuts and power struggles, no one had offered him anything stable. It’s true that Caltech had offered him a position with potential, but how many times had the same thing happened and, in the end, it had come to nothing? Everything changed when he met WJ WJ was a patient at White Memorial Hospital. There, in the early 1960s, a CalTech student, Joseph Bogenhad begun to perform commissurotomies to treat especially complicated epilepsies. The curious thing about this intervention that surgically ‘separated’ the two hemispheres was not that it worked (and improved the clinical symptoms of patients with the disease) but that on a day-to-day basis, the cognitive and functional weaknesses of patients with split brain are not easily distinguishable of those of a normal person. The divided brain Maxim Berg The patients’ deficits only became evident under specialized neuropsychological testing, and investigating the reason for this was a long and complex task that cost Sperry the 1981 Nobel Prize in Medicine. A decade later, John Cutting was giving a talk on the psychiatric implications of all this. In the auditorium, Iain McGilchrist I was stunned. In ’75, this young British man had won the “lottery”: one of the scholarships at All Soul College in Oxford and, a little later, a teaching position in the Oxford Department of Literature; seven years later, McGilchrist left the academy disappointed with the “gritty” approach to literary criticism. And he started studying medicine. First the degree at Southampton and, later, the specialty in psychiatry at Maudsley in London. It was there, it was then, when’The master and his emissary” (that Captain Swing now publishes in Spanish) took shape. It only took 20 more years to carry it out.. A book about the brain… In that colossal essay, McGilchrist explains that the pop view of the cerebral hemispheres (the idea that one is in charge of one thing and another of another) is a reckless simplification. The hemispheres hide something else: two complete and coherent ways of experiencing the world. Two forms that, here is the key, are incompatible with each other. The right hemisphere (on the one hand) has a predilection for the open, the contextual, the embodied: it prioritizes the living, the implicit, irony, ambiguity and the relationships between things. The left hemisphere (for its own) cuts, abstracts and fixes: it is excellent for procedures, for mechanisms; to break down problems, explain them and control them. The interesting (and important) thing is that McGilchrist insists that, actually. Both hemispheres participate in almost everything: what changes is how they relate to reality. They are two people (two styles of attention) whose Conversation gives meaning to civilization as we know it. …but a book about many more things. Because throughout the 1000 pages of ‘The Master and His Emissary’, McGilchrist takes us to an amazing journey through two millennia of art, science and politics as if they were the story of that conversation. There are times in which both ways of thinking coexist in harmony (such as the Renaissance); while there are other periods in which one or another of the styles prevails over the rest. It is a voracious, wild book. A book that wants to capture everything, that wants to account for everything, that wants to capture the ‘zeitgeist’ of each of the eras of humanity. Today, according to the British psychiatrist, we live an era dominated by the left hemisphere. Can a brain theory explain today’s world? The bet is risky, ambitious and very controversial. Since the first version of the book was published in 2009, criticism they haven’t stopped coming. From unwarranted extrapolations of available neuropsychological evidence to some cherry-picking in art, philosophy and politics to make the narrative fit perfectly. However, I think that all these criticisms (despite being accurate), miss the mark. The strength of ‘The Master and His Emissary’ is not in the evidence that supports it, it is in the power of its metaphors. And a metaphor is, we know well, little more than a flashlight. Something that, no matter how many shadow areas it leaves, we still need to see in the dark. And, in this case, its metaphor is more necessary than ever. It’s just what we need to understand something that, as a good literary expert, McGilchrist also knows. That we may be encased in a nutshell and consider ourselves kings of infinite space. Who was going to tell us that when Hamlet said this he was talking about our own brain? Image | notorious v1ruS In Xataka | When Darwin’s children fell victim to their father’s own laws of natural selection

life should not exist

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It is the fundamental question: how did it all begin? How, on a young, chaotic, geologically active planet, does a handful of inert chemistry became the first living cell? What we know is that the protocell, called LUCAstarted life and Darwinian evolution did the rest, taking us to the present day. But there are still many questions about why all this arose. The mystery. We really know little about our origins. But we are not referring to whether we come from a monkey or another species, but from why did life begin on this planet. Something that wanted to solve the study by Robert G. Endres, of Imperial College London, but which has only given us many more questions and even a bad taste in our mouths, because according to their results, life should not have arisen. And by applying mathematics, that branch of science that many people hate, a very clear conclusion has been reached: the barriers for life to arise spontaneously are “formidable.” So formidable, in fact, that the odds of it occurring by pure chance within the window of time available on the early Earth are astonishingly low, meaning that it would have been logical that life would never have arisen. Software of life. Endres’s approach leaves out test tubes and focuses on information. A cell is not just a “bag of molecules”; It is a highly structured and orchestrated system over time and related to each other. The question is: how much information is needed to “write” the first protocell that gave rise to life? To estimate it, the study uses modern computational models and AI tools that we already use today, such as AlphaFold (for protein folding) and full “whole cell” models. The result in this case was divided into three different parts: The genetic information for a very simple cell like Mycoplasma genitalium occupies 10⁶ bits, which is quite little. Structural information, that is, how proteins fold and the cell is organized, is also estimated in a range of 10⁶ to 10⁸ bits. Finally, dynamic information, which focuses on metabolic pathways, signaling or DNA replication mechanisms, which is undoubtedly a giant. In this case a value of 140 MB has been given in this world that has been generated. Adding all this together, the complexity of a simple protocell has been estimated at 1 billion bits in software simile. And that is the wall that prebiotic chemistry had to end up climbing. The mathematics. Once you have all the theoretical information, this is where the mathematics becomes very interesting, especially considering that the Earth had a ‘window’ of time available to accumulate all this information. 500 million years until the first protocell was given. In a very simple account, if you divide the necessary information (10000000000 bits) by the available time, you get the minimum information accumulation rate of 2 bits of useful information per year. Seen like this, it seems very easy! The study estimates that the prebiotic “soup”, full of complex molecules, had the potential to generate information of about 100 bits/s, billions of times more than necessary, according to mathematical estimates. So… Where is the problem if there was plenty of time? The problem is that these ‘2 bits per year’ are assumed to be a unidirectional and progressive process. That is, when that piece of useful information is created, it is saved and used for the next step. But chemistry is a chaotic soup that does not work like that, but rather works like a ‘random walk’: you take one step forward and then another step back. That is, when creating something it is accompanied by a loss. This is where the concept of ‘persistence’ comes in, which in short is the time during which the system “remembers” the information it has gained, even if it has been lost. In this way, without immense persistence, the emergence of life would be literally impossible to occur according to this study. The push. But looking at mathematics, in a soup as chaotic as this one, the reality is that leaving everything to chance would have meant that we would never have been able to appear on this planet. And this is the real mystery. For us to be here, there had to be some physical principle, a chemical bias or some ‘memory’ or ‘retention’ mechanism that gave directionality to the process. The study does not say that life is impossible, but that the mechanism Purely random is insufficient. We need “unknown physical principles” or, as the author points out, “some form of prebiotic informational structure.” And it is something that is raised in other studies, such as that of Chrostoph Adami who focused in trying to understand living beings as self-sufficient chains of information to search for the probability that life emerges in a statistical manner. And it is also found with a very low probability. The aliens. It is at this point of mystery that the article cautiously mentions the alternative hypothesis: directed panspermia. Originally proposed by Francis Crick (the discoverer of DNA) and Leslie Orgel, it suggests that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization intentionally “seeded” life on Earth. Although this idea violates the Ockham’s razor (the simplest explanation is usually the correct one), the author admits that it remains a “logically open” alternative. Artificial intelligence. AI has had a lot to say, since thanks to its capabilities it has been possible to estimate the algorithmic complexity of the cell that gave rise to life, giving us the scale of the problem. And the author points out that AI could also be the key to the solution, since he proposes tools that could ‘help reverse engineer candidate pathways’. That is, it could be the one that finally finds that ‘push’ that we don’t know about at the moment. Images | Laura Seaman In Xataka | These Spaniards have just realized that almost everything we know about the origin of life is due to an enormous coincidence

In Oregon there is a forest with a tattoo that appears every fall: a giant emoji

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Imagine that you are walking down a road and, out of nowhere, the mountain begins to smile at you. Stop imagining it because that is precisely what happens on Highway 18 in Oregon. Between two towns, those who drive along that road in the autumn season, find a gigantic emoji made up of hundreds of trees. And more than a nod to drivers, it is a demonstration that, when we want, we can reforest sustainably. A tattoo in the forest. The pattern has been repeating itself for a few years. When the temperatures drop and the days get shorter, a huge smiling emoji appears on the side of Mt. This is neither a curiosity nor a coincidence: it is something premeditated and measured to the millimeter by David Hampton and Dennis Creel. David is co-owner of a logging company called Hampton Lumber and Dennis, its forestry manager. In 2011when the company was preparing to reforest an area of ​​the forestthey wondered if they could have a little fun and create something that would bring joy to anyone passing by on the highway. After a meticulous planningthey started planting conifers, but not just any conifers. The science behind reforestation. The process was complex. The team that was going to carry out the plantation drew a circle of about 90 meters in diameter using a rope and, starting from the center, triangulated the positions of the eyes and mouth. They spent a week taking measurements and, when they finished, they began to plant. The chosen trees They are two species of conifers: the Pseudotsuga menziesii and the Larix occidentaliyes. Conifers are evergreen, which means they do not lose their leaves in autumn, but Larix occidentalis It has a peculiarity: they lose all their needles during the fall. When the weather changes, the chlorophyll responsible for giving that green color breaks down, so the leaves retract and golden pigments are revealed. There is a reason behind this pattern: by losing its needles, this species reduces the weight load on its branches, which allows them to withstand winter snowfall better and, in addition, they are also more aerodynamic. In short, they are more resistant to structural damage and, in spring, when it absorbs nutrients, the leaves turn green and the emoji disappears until the following fall. Message. Reforestation is not planting trees without rhyme or reason. Although in some areas fields are being replanted with suitable trees, in many others non-endemic or non-endemic species are being planted. They will not withstand extreme conditions like those caused by climate change. Beyond the positive message to drivers, Hampton Lumber created this as reminder that forest areas that are “harvested” can grow back strong and regenerate in a healthy and sustainable way. During the growth of conifers, the forest is free access for visitors who engage in outdoor activities, and their intention is for the emoji to be an example of sustainable growth and… artistic expression? Emoji for a while. Currently, the company plant a million trees a year, but no area is as iconic as that segment between Willamina and Grand Ronde on Highway 18. The estimate of the company is that the smiling face will be visible for another 30 or 50 years. It will be the point at which the trees in that area reach maturity and are processed. Now, they also comment that, as time goes by, the emoji will lose “definition.” The leaves of conifers can lose some of their vitality over the years and strange things can happen to that friendly smiling face in the bush. Image | Tedder In Xataaka | China is carrying out the most ambitious reforestation project in the world: a “wall” of 4,500 kilometers of trees

One-minute episodes, crazy plots and millions of views: welcome to the age of l

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It was clear that with the inability to maintain attention for too long in a single point, a phenomenon like that of the microdramasfictions in ultra-brief pills with continuous twists and suspense situations, would end up triumphing. Now, after sweeping Asia, they reach the United States and Europe. And they are willing to turn the durations of fictions upside down in streaming. What are they? An audiovisual format that consists of mini-soap operas or short series designed for consumption on mobile devices. Generally, each episode lasts between 60 and 90 seconds, although it can reach up to ten, and the series have between 20 and 100 episodes, accumulating a total duration similar to a feature film. This accelerated narrative is filmed in vertical format, and structured to hook the viewer with shocking hooks in the first seconds, conflicts that evolve quickly and cliffhangers that invite you to watch the next episode without interruptions. Hurry, hurry. Production is ultra-fast and low-cost, with seasons that can be recorded in less than two weeks, allowing for great proliferation of titles. Narratively, microdramas rely on highly addictive stories, inherited from soap operas, with recurring themes such as secret romances with billionaires, revenge, marriages of convenience, even forays into romance and delirious vampire romances… and all condensed with frequent emotional rewards and very little expenditure on sets, editing, soundtrack and technical displays. In Xataka The new fever in China is mobile series with one-minute episodes. And they prepare their landing outside Asia Where was he born? This format originated in China, where they are known as wei duan ju either duanjudriven by the massive emergence into the market of smartphones and the rise of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishouespecially during the pandemic. Since then, the format has expanded globally, adapting to the audiovisual consumption habits of generation Z and millennials, who prefer short, vertical content for quick consumption on social networks. Where to see them. The main platforms to watch microdramas are YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. According to a study by Ampere Analysis, YouTube It is the leading platform, with 44% of microdrama viewers consuming this content there, where creators monetize directly. TikTok and Instagram are often used to promote them with teasers and teasers that direct users to paid apps like DramaBox, ReelShort either CandyJarTVwhere they can watch the complete series, often under a freemium model (free initial episodes and payment to continue). In these there is already an abundance of non-Asian series: a look at ReelShort allows us to understand the appeal of these products, openly oriented towards the female audience, and with categories that do not hide an exploitative point, almost an emotional fetish: ‘Hidden Identity’, ‘Taboo Relationship’, ‘Babies and Pregnancies’, ‘Love at First Sight’, ‘Vampires and Werewolves’, and of course an immense remnant of products from Asia. And now, in the United States. Alan Mruvka, founder of E! Entertainment Television, plans to launch Verza TVthe first American platform dedicated exclusively to microdramas, which is expected to arrive in mid-November 2025. This pioneering initiative will follow a financing model similar to that common in China: users can watch up to five free episodes of any title, and to access the rest they must pay $4.99. Verza TV’s catalog will include dramas inspired by TikTok trends, reality shows in micro format, interviews and information about celebrities (something Mruvka knows a lot about thanks to his experience with E! Entertainment) and new microdramas based on those that have been successful in Asia. The figures. The global microdrama market is estimated to reach 2025 a projected value of $11 billiona figure that almost doubles the income of FAST channels (free, linear and with ads), which shows the rapid growth of the format. China dominates this market overwhelmingly, contributing close to 83% of global income thanks to its massive domestic production and consumption. A juicy business, quick and easy to produce, and which may soon find a new audience eager for strong and, above all, fast emotions. Photo of Becca Tapert in Unsplash In Xataka | The great Chinese revolution of recent decades is not technological or economic: it is that of Christianity (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news One-minute episodes, crazy plots and millions of views: welcome to the age of l was originally published in Xataka by John Tones .

if you can leave your bike parked on the landing

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If you live in a building and share a landing or doorway, you have probably come across the scene. When you get home you find that the tenant across the street has left his bike parked in the hallway, right next to his door. Maybe it’s not a bicycle, but an electric scooter, a baby stroller, a shopping cart or any other armatroste useful that (for whatever reason) the person you share the landing with decides not to store inside their own home. And then the question arises: Can he do it? Nothing new under the sun. Since the existence of neighborhood communities, there has been friction over the use of common areas. It is nothing new, although it is true that in recent years, as extended The use of bicycles in cities, the doubt about whether or not they can be parked in doorways (hallways, corridors, halls and other shared spaces) seems to arouse special interest. If you live in a building you may have seen it in person. If not, just Google to find a good number of guides, articles and even some other news on the subject, such as the scuffle that aired For this same reason, a few months ago the ‘Neighbor Troubles’ account was published in Click on the image to go to the tweet. LPH Word. When the spark flies, as in that case, the usual thing is to ask what the law says. And in terms of neighborhood coexistence and buildings, the reference standard is Horizontal Property Law (LPH), designed precisely to facilitate coexistence in the blocks. Specifically, throughout its vast articles there is a particularly interesting section for cases such as the one disclosed in X. Which? He article 9.1which indicates the obligations of the owners. The first, “respect the general facilities of the community and other common elements, whether for general use or for the exclusive use of any of the owners (…), making appropriate use of them and avoiding at all times causing damage or damage.” And in case there were any doubts about what exactly the “common elements of the building” are, the Civil code makes it clear that the facades, portal, patios, goals… and (exactly) stairs and corridors can be understood as such. “Proper use”. The LPH is important because it conveys a fundamental message: neighbors must not damage the facilities they share with the rest of the owners and are also obliged to make “appropriate use” of them, which leaves doubt as to whether or not it is appropriate to park a bicycle in a space that (in the case of a landing, corridor or stairs) is designed for the passage of people and that must remain clear both for comfort and for emergencies. It is not the only reflection that arises Horizontal Property Law. Another is whether occupying a hallway with particular goods (a cart, a bicycle, a scooter) implies ‘appropriating’ of him, even if only temporarily. The rule also states that common spaces cannot be “altered” without permission. Click on the image to go to the tweet. That’s all? No. Leaving things on landings (especially bikes) is so common that on the Internet you can find property management that they explain how should you respond the community. Not all guides are the same, but they do tend to agree on one key aspect: what the statutes of each block say is essential. After all, there may be communities that expressly prohibit it in their regulations while others accept it or even assign special areas. “In many cases the community bylaws may establish specific rules on the use of common spaces, including the possibility of temporarily leaving objects in certain areas, as long as they do not hinder passage or pose a risk,” explains Group 91, which insists on the importance of knowing the regulations of each block. Similar message Atico07 transfers by pointing out that they must establish rules for coexistence and the use of shared areas. Better to get healthy. This last administrator points out another fundamental idea: to avoid misunderstandings, headaches or arguments that can end in the courts or with sanctionsit is best to play it safe. “If the statutes do not explicitly prohibit leaving bikes in common areas, the next step would be to request permission from the community of owners. This is generally done in a meeting where a proposal can be presented,” points out the signature before advising that the permission be recorded in the minutes. Is it that common? A quick Google search reveals that the topic generates interest, something that coincides with the increase in urban bicycle use, especially during the pandemic and his hangover. Although its boom seems to be losing steamhe Bicycle Barometer 2024 shows that almost 23% of the population uses the bike weekly. Of course, not everyone takes it home (Madrid either Barcelona They have shared services) and not everyone parks it in the hallways. Nor is it something that only Spain deals with. In other countriessuch as the Netherlands, Denmark, Berlin or Germany, where urban bicycle use is widespread. Mietrecht remember For example, in the latter country (Germany) it is not unusual for people to park in stairwells to avoid theft or protect them from the elements, although the rest of the owners are not always obliged to accept it and they can capture it in the internal regulations or rental contract. Images | Ayman Bondoki (Unsplash) and Katerina Plakhova (Unsplash) In Xataka | “Garage squatters”: there are people parking their cars every day in parking spaces that are not theirs

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