Month: February 2026

NATO’s notice to shield our electrical grid

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The blackboard hanging behind the bar at Squat 17b, a venue in kyiv, does not list drink offerings, but instead keeps a countdown of the days Ukrainians must endure the harsh winter. Inside, the bar lacks electricity and is illuminated only by candles, while customers shiver on stools drinking beer cooled by the freezing temperatures themselves. This print, described by Financial Timesis the result of an exceptionally harsh winter, with temperatures reaching -20 degrees Celsius. What is emerging in Eastern Europe is a reality that some analysts They already describe how “thermal terror”: the cold turned into a weapon of war. Russia does not merely seek to degrade Ukrainian military capabilities; It deliberately targets substations, power plants and distribution networks to make everyday life physically unfeasible. Heating, electricity and water become strategic objectives. Away from the trenches, the front line has moved to the transformers and electrical substations. In the first weeks of the year, Russian forces They have attacked the Ukrainian energy sector more than 200 times. Russia has launched coordinated waves of up to 40 missiles and 400 drones in a single night, seeking to overwhelm air defense systems. Ukraine lost up to two-thirds of its electricity generation capacity after the first months of bombing. And yet, the infrastructure resists. The new frontier of sabotage Faced with the increase in physical and hybrid threats, the European electricity industry has begun to issue clear warnings. “The last year has shown us that continuing with the current model in Europe is no longer an option,” said Leonhard Birnbaum, president of Eurelectric, in statements collected by Euronews. For the sector, security of electricity supply It has become a strategic issue. At the end of December, Poland’s security systems they detected what his Government described as “the strongest attack against Polish energy infrastructure in years.” The Sandworm group—a unit linked to the Russian GRU—managed to disable remote terminal units (RTUs) at at least 30 energy facilities. These RTUs do not generate electricity, but they allow substations and plants to be monitored and controlled. The attack affected plants cogeneration and systems that connect wind and solar farms with the grid. To achieve this, they used a destructive malicious code known as wiperdesigned exclusively to delete files and permanently render computers unusable. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned thathad it been completely successful, half a million people would have been left without heat in the middle of winter. This use of a wiper marks a qualitative leap: Russia has gone from simple digital espionage to destructive sabotage against critical infrastructure of a NATO member country. Physical espionage is added to the cyber threat under the sea. The Russian spy ship Yantaroperated by the Russian Deep Sea Research Directorate (GUGI), traveled for almost 100 days through the waters of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. Their goal was to map and monitor the undersea cables that Europe and North America depend on for their digital communications and energy. These types of covert operations in the “gray zone” seek to measure NATO’s red lines and open the door to possible power or communications outages to force political negotiations. How did we get here? As the historic American general Omar Bradley recalled: “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals talk logistics.” For any developed nation today, the most critical logistics system is its energy infrastructure. For decades, Europe built a deeply dependent on imported fossil fuels. Dependency became vulnerability. As he remembered Bloombergthe European Union paid almost €22 billion in Russian fossil fuel imports last year, more than it provided in direct financial support to Ukraine. Changing models has ceased to be a climate issue and has become a pure survival instinct. The old continent has proven that filling its territory with renewable sources and electrifying the economy builds a much more solid structural wall than the old addiction to foreign fossils. And the shield is already working. A look at the data collected by the think tank Agora Energiewende In his latest report, Europe’s energy security on the path to climate neutrality, reveals a brutal cushion: the simple deployment of wind and solar technology during the last five years (2019-2024) avoided having to buy and burn 92 billion cubic meters of gas. However, this transformation introduces new risks. Modern power grids are more digital, more interconnected and more decentralized. According to the same report Agora Energiewendethe challenge is no longer just to ensure fuel supply, but to guarantee network stability, cybersecurity and industrial resilience. More nodes mean more potential entry points for attacks. Added to this is the technological dimension. How to collect Euronewsbetween 70% and 80% of the solar inverters installed in Europe come from Chinese manufacturers such as Huawei or Sungrow. In a highly digitalized system, hardware control also potentially implies software control. Energy as defense policy Faced with this vulnerability, Europe is obliged to treat energy security as a defense policy de facto. A coalition of defense experts, including retired military leaders such as British Lieutenant General Richard Nugee and Dutch General Tom Middendorp, has urged European governments to count low-carbon energy spending against NATO’s target of allocating 1.5% of GDP to critical infrastructure and civil resilience. In statements collected by Guardianretired Lt. Gen. Richard Nugee said, “To have a strong military deterrent we need a resilient homeland. And low-carbon energy is a critical component.” According to Bloombergthis vision is gaining ground in the European strategic debate: the energy transition is no longer just climate policy; is security architecture. The tactical key to this new defense is decentralization. Unlike large centralized plants that are easy targets for missiles, wind turbines and solar panels are much more geographically dispersed, making them significantly less vulnerable to large-scale attacks. To sustain this new model, Euroelectric proposes three fundamental pillars: Better planning: Preparedness frameworks should span the entire value chain, include all energy carriers, and anticipate long-term external threats. Massive flexibility: It will be essential to deploy new storage and demand management technologies to complement the variability of renewable energies. … Read more

Millennials used the term “TL;DR.” Generation Z is replacing it with something more radical: “AI;DR”

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He infinite scrollsocial networks and AI have made our attention be a rare commodity too valuable to happily distribute it in contents without substance. Millennials got used to ask for quick summaries with the term “TL;DR” (Too Long; Didn’t Read). The summary: a lot of text. Generation Z, transgressive and cornered by AIyou have found another way to filter what is and is not worth your attention. If a content looks generated by AIis sent with only five characters: “AI;DR” (AI, didn’t read). This tag is used to mark content that is perceived as “slop”. AI-generated filler that wastes time without providing real value. Behind this label there is satiety, but also a form of defending something as basic as wanting to read people who have taken the trouble to write a text. From “too long” to “too artificial” Tony “Sid” Sundharam, co-founder of the app Sink Ithe defined in his blog the essence of the new term: “For me, writing is the most direct window into how someone thinks, perceives and understands the world.” For a growing portion of young people, delegating that window of humanity in an AI it breaks the pact of honesty between whoever writes and whoever reads. In the background, a much more powerful idea is latent: “Why should I bother reading something that someone else is not interested in writing?” “TL;DR” was born, as internet memes do, as an inside joke on forums and networks. A way to admit that the effort-reward balance had been exceeded. The text it was too long to dedicate time to it. Over time it became a kind of generational nod: there was a lot of information, little time and limited patience for infinite blocks of text. “AI;DR” reuses that same structure, but changes the paradigm. Now the problem is no longer the length (or at least it is not the main reason), now the problem is the origin of the content. The idea is not that the text is long, but that seems generated by an AIwithout its own voice, critical sense or experience behind it. When someone labels a text like this, they are not asking for a summary. You’re saying it’s not even worth starting to read. A few days ago, my colleague Javier Lacort, counted that AI is conditioning us to look for the “summarize” button in all the contents to save time, thus depriving us of the luxury of enjoying a reading in its entirety, with its nuances and its readings between the lines. AI may be more efficient saving reading time, but taking a toll on the essence of the message. Fatigue in the face of AI “slop” In the new paradigm of rapid content consumption, “AI;DR” becomes a kind of advertisement between humans. A quick way to point out that something smells automated and that it might be better to pass by. When someone answers “AI;DR” to a textis doing more than just complaining about AI. As Sid explained on his blog, the fact that someone has had an idea, fought over it in front of a blank page, and spent time putting it in order are “rudimentary work tests from a pre-AI era,” small stress tests that they legitimize the author before the reader. Faced with that, the famous “dead internet theory“. Machines writing for machines. The same generation that lives surrounded by automation and intelligent assistants is valuing what cannot yet be falsified so easily: one’s own style, strange ideas, imperfect phrases that reveal that there is a person behind it. TL;DR:Generation Z has popularized “AI;DR” (AI; ​​didn’t read) as an evolution of the classic millennial “TL;DR”, to quickly discard texts that appear to be generated by AI or artificial filler without an authentic human voice. In Xataka | While companies boast of efficiency due to AI. Generation Z only sees temporary contracts and closed doors Image | Unsplash (Firza Pratama)

Video games have grown a lot this year. But the money goes to China, Roblox and the owners of mobile platforms

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The global video game industry had a turnover of around $185 billion in 2024 and continues to grow. But there is a catch: this growth does not reach the studios or the area that traditional players look at, those of the console wars and the old PC Master Race. Matthew Ball’s usual annual report leaves a less complacent diagnosis: revenue is concentrated in China, on platforms like Roblox and on the owners of mobile operating systems. The rest survive as best they can. The Old Times (2021): There is still talk about how great the year 2021 was for video games. It seems like it was yesterday when the pandemic (insert meme of Grandpa Simpson telling stories to the kids here) confined hundreds of millions of people to their homes, and games (mobile, console, PC, free, subscription) absorbed the benefits of that confinement. As Ball, CEO of Epyllion, analyzes in The State of Video Gaming in 2025the factors that drove that peak were an extraordinary sum of factors: mobile platforms, free-to-play models, games as a service, the cross play and new genres like battle royale and social play. Downhill. The flip side of that was a much bigger recession than expected: global spending on video games fell 3.5% in 2022 and barely recovered a few percentage points towards the end of 2024. According to the consulting firm MIDiA Research, the sector had enjoyed growth of 26.3% in 2020 and 9.8% in 2021, and the rebound was inevitable. According to Ball, the engines that had driven the industry between 2011 and 2021 stopped all at once: the smartphones They were no longer surprising with each interaction, social networks were paralyzed, the free-to-play was normalized. 6.5% of total gaming time in 2023 corresponded to new video games, says Ball, and only four titles shared half of that percentage. Layoffs in full force. He report also speaks how the sector’s layoffs since 2022 illustrate this adjustment: more than 44,000 jobs, 61% of them concentrated in North America. This does not mean that it is the end of the industry or that the same pattern is being repeated. crash 1983, as has been said (the industry is too diversified and globalized to repeat a systemic collapse of that magnitude). What we are paying is the cost of having built a structure designed for an industry in continuous growth during the pandemic. The Chinese monster. Ball puts on the table that global spending on video games grew by approximately $10 billion between 2021 and 2025. But… where did that money go? The report assures that to Beijing: about 4,000 million of that growth is from the Chinese market, and another 1,500 million are from titles developed in China sold in international markets. In total, Chinese publishers have racked up about half of global growth since 2019. And there are more data: Gamer spending in China reached $49.2 billion in 2024, with a base of 722 million active gamers, more than double the total population of the United States. China is already the first market in the world by income. Not foreigners. Very significantlythat market remains almost closed to foreign games. 84% of Chinese gamers’ spending goes on titles produced in China, and that percentage has increased, as unusual as it may seem: 20% of Chinese domestic spending goes on imported titles (a figure that also registered a decrease of 5% between 2023 and 2024). It is comparable to what happens with cinemawith local films devouring foreign ones at the box office. A situation favored by a combination of factors: First, the Chinese regulatory framework favors national titles through a licensing system; second, development costs are substantially lower than in the West; Finally, the work culture of the country’s studios allows for more intensive production cycles. You don’t have to dig far to find examples of great Chinese international successes: ‘Genshin Impact‘, from miHoYo, raised more than $3.5 billion in its first year70% outside China with a character design rooted in anime. ‘Honor of Kings‘, from Tencent, dominated the Chinese mobile market for years before making the international leap with adaptations of character names. AND ‘Black Myth: Wukong‘, developed with support from Tencent, sold ten million copies in its first three days launching in August 2024, betting on the opposite of assimilation: an unequivocally Chinese mythology without thematic concessions to Western taste. Roblox sweeps. The numbers sing: 70% of the growth of the video game market outside of China in 2025 was absorbed by ‘Roblox‘. Which is an infrastructure on which millions of creators build interactive experiences using the platform’s own tools. Players access it for free and spend real money on cosmetic items and access within these worlds, transactions that are carried out in Robux, the ecosystem’s virtual currency. Of every dollar spent,’Roblox’ historically retained around 70% leaving the creator with approximately 25 or 30 cents. In September 2024, ‘Roblox’ announced a new delivery model for paid games that increases the creator’s commission up to 70% on titles that sell for $49.99. What does this translate into? In 2024, ‘Roblox’ paid around $923 million to its creators (an increase of 25% compared to 2023), while its total revenue grew by 29% until reaching 3.6 billion dollars. Its intentions are colossal: CEO David Baszucki stated that the company’s goal is to capture 10% of the global video game content market. Some more questions. Just to finish outlining the portrait: ‘Roblox’ registers sustained net losses (a accumulated deficit of 3.5 billion) with the logic of the platform in the expansion phase, sacrificing immediate profitability. Some observers they point because ‘Roblox’ has become the video game equivalent of YouTube, a platform that extracts value from the work of its creators in the form of data, advertising and infrastructure. And one last thing: two titles on the platform (‘Blox Fruits’ and ‘Brookhaven RP’) each accumulate 60% of the monthly gaming hours of all of Electronic Arts. 30%. If the global video game market reached an all-time high in … Read more

Google is once again leading the AI ​​race and has something that no rival can match

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Google has launched Gemini 3.1 Proan incremental update of its flagship model that comes loaded with surprises. And according to its benchmarks, the model has much more to say than it seems. In abstract reasoning, Google wants to start setting the pace on Anthropic and OpenAI. But their ace in the hole is not just that, because they have something that other startups cannot replicate: their entire ecosystem and how they are integrating AI into it. What just happened. Just three months after launching Gemini 3 ProGoogle has published Gemini 3.1 Pro. The curious thing is that the jump is much more impressive than it may seem if we only looked at that “.1” in front of it. According to the company, the new model significantly improves the reasoning of the previous one and represents the intelligence base that already fed the Gemini 3 Deep Think update, presented last week. It is available today in the Gemini app, in NotebookLM (for Pro and Ultra subscribers), in the API through AI Studio, and in enterprise environments through Vertex AI. Data. In the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark, designed to evaluate the ability to solve completely new logical patterns, without the possibility of having seen them during training, Gemini 3.1 Pro has achieved 77.1%. To put it in context: Gemini 3 Pro stayed at 31.1%, while Claude Sonnet 4.6 marked 58.3% and Opus 4.6 68.8%. That is, Google has not only closed the gap, but has gone over it. It should be noted that never before has a mid-term review of its models recorded such a pronounced advance in reasoning. What the numbers say in the rest of the benchmarks. In the comparative table that accompanies the advertisementGemini 3.1 Pro tops the majority of categories evaluated: it obtains the best result in Humanity’s Last Exam without tools (44.4%), it leads in GPQA Diamond with 94.3% in scientific knowledge, and it doubles the previous model in APEX-Agents, the benchmark for long-term tasks. It also excels in MCP Atlas (multistep workflows), BrowseComp (agent search) and MMMLU (multilingual question and answer). It should be noted that, according to these benchmarks, it is not better in everything: in GDPval-AA Elo, which evaluates tasks in real-world work environments, Claude Sonnet 4.6 surpasses Gemini 3.1 Pro with 1,633 points compared to 1,317. And in SWE-Bench Verified, the programming test with agents, Opus 4.6 scores 80.8% compared to Google’s 80.6%. However, in the global calculation, the balance clearly favors Google’s new model. In Arena Leaderboard (the classification based on user votes) still places Claude Opus 4.6 ahead in text and code, although here “the sensations” of each user take more prominence when it comes to rating, than anything else. A clear competitive advantage. The strongest argument in favor of Google does not even have to do with the power of its latest model. The company doesn’t need to convince you to use its AI: it’s already where you are. Search, Gmail, YouTube, Android, Docs, Drive, Google Photos, Maps… Its AI does not depend on you opening a specific application, but is integrated into the ecosystem that millions of people already use daily. For the rest of the startups (OpenAI, Anthropic…), they need you to use their models in specific environments (ChatGPT, Claude). Google is simply already there. It’s a moat that perhaps not even the best model in the world could sweep right now. And then there’s the price. Gemini 3.1 Pro comes to users with a subscription to Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra, although you can also try it on a limited basis in the free plan. It should be noted that it is currently in a preliminary version. The narrative that Google wants us to have in our heads is that, for a modest price, you have access to that model, plus everything the company offers in its ecosystem, including storage. That, right now, is very difficult to overcome. Additionally, for developers, the API is also offered at a very competitive price. So, from a practical point of view and from the pocket, Google is giving everything so that all its users continue using its ecosystem, with or without the best AI. The “.1”. The AI ​​race has been at a frenetic pace for months. And the most interesting of all is that Google, which arrived late for the racehas had a hell of a year in which he has structured all the mess he had with his AI. The jump from Gemini 3 to 3.1 in reasoning is greater than what many rivals have achieved between full versions. And it has done so while maintaining the advantage of being the company that controls the most relevant entry points to the Internet. It remains to be seen how they solve monetizing your artificial intelligencebut they have certainly put in the work. Cover image | Alex Dudar and Google In Xataka | The scientist who made the AI ​​we know today possible has just raised 1 billion. His new goal is to teach him to see space

the price of storage batteries has reached its minimum

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For years, detractors of the energy transition have clung to a seemingly immovable argument: the sun and the wind are intermittent, and saving that energy for when it is not blowing or it is night is economically unviable. This mismatch between supply and demand generates the phenomenon known as “duck curve”where solar energy is abundant during the day but drops drastically just when nighttime consumption skyrockets. To balance this balance, battery storage stands as the definitive solution. Today, that last bastion against the total viability of clean energy has just collapsed. The last piece of the renewable puzzle now fits, but its lowering price has uncovered a much more complex problem: a fierce geopolitical race to control the materials that make this technological miracle possible. The economic barrier has fallen. If we take a look at the data, the graph of the cost of batteries shows a historic plummet. According to the report Levelized Cost of Electricity 2026 of BloombergNEFstoring energy in four-hour projects is today 27% cheaper than a year ago, bottoming out at $78 per megawatt-hour (MWh). Never since records began in 2009 has saving electricity been so accessible. And this positive anomaly is supported by three very clear pillars: The reduction in prices of battery packs. Increased competition between different manufacturers. Excess manufacturing capacity coming from the electric vehicle market. Fuels pay the price. While clean technologies become cheaper, fossil fuels suffer the opposite effect. Driven by the voracious electrical demand of new data centers, new gas plants have seen their equipment become more expensive. In fact, the report of bloombergNEF highlights that the global cost of electricity for combined cycle gas turbines has risen by 16%, reaching a record of 102 dollars/MWh. The market has already ruled: in the United States and Canada, wind energy has displaced gas as the cheapest source for new generation, while renewables already exceed the operating costs of existing fossil fuel plants in key Asia-Pacific markets. The elephant in the room. If global costs have plunged, it is largely because China has flooded the market with massive overproduction. This overwhelming figure, however, was born of a systemic dysfunction. As the analyzes from two years ago warnedChinese provincial regulations forced solar parks to install batteries by law, which led to the accumulation of systems that were barely used due to the lack of incentives in the electricity market. Beijing achieved its goal: scaling production to a level unattainable by the rest of the world. Today, in 2026, that inertia has mutated into an industrial tsunami. According to the recent report of BloombergNEFthe current price collapse has been accelerated by a new factor: excess manufacturing capacity coming from the electric vehicle market. The fierce competition between Chinese manufacturers and the overproduction of car batteries has ended up drastically making large-scale systems cheaper, forever transforming the economics of the global electrical grid. The “brain” of the network and the gallium trap. Having millions of cheap batteries is useless without a system that manages them. Storing energy is only the first step; To feed it into the grid in a stable manner, immense power inverters are needed. These devices function as the electronic “brain” of the facility, composed of logic modules and high-performance chips that decide in milliseconds when to absorb surpluses and when to release them. And it is here, in semiconductors capable of withstanding these extreme voltages without melting, where the real battle is fought. For decades, the West operated under a mirage. As analyst Gillian Tett points outWestern elites assumed that making things was low-margin “dirty work” that could be outsourced. They became obsessed with software as China quietly built the physical infrastructure of the 21st century. Today, Beijing has what investor Craig Tindale calls “processing sovereignty”: controls 90% of rare earths and an overwhelming 98% of gallium. The latter is that irreplaceable strategic metal for advanced semiconductors that manage energy. After flooding the market for years to suffocate Western mining, China imposed export controls, causing its price to triple to reach historical records above $1,500 per kilo. From “red mud” to chips: the Western counterattack. For the United States, this is already a matter of national survival. The response of Washington and its allies has been to design an ambitious plan to become independent from Beijing by extracting gallium directly from industrial waste, known as “red mud”. The strategy It is an intercontinental triangle: In Australia, the Wagerup refinery has teamed up with the US and Japan to filter gallium from bauxite processing, aiming to cover 10% of global demand without opening new mines. In Louisiana, the Gramercy plant has received $150 million from the Pentagon to process its own aluminum waste to meet total U.S. demand. But the economic risk is enormous. Experts warn that the gallium market is dangerously small, and if Western production increases too quickly, prices could collapse. To protect these investments against dumping Chinese, the White House has deployed the Project Vaulta strategic reserve of 12 billion dollars. The human bottleneck. Even with all the money on the table, the West facing a problem that cannot be solved by printing banknotes: the “human bottleneck”. After decades of deindustrialization, Western engineers and workers who knew how to operate complex chemical plants and foundries have retired. Reconstructing that physical sovereignty requires expert hands that, today, are scarce on this side of the world. However, in this interdependent world, China It also has a critical vulnerability. Despite its monopoly on materials, its industry is still forced to import almost all of the advanced logic modules that control turbines and networks in real time. Beijing has the factories and the minerals, but the West still has the “brains” and the fine chemistry that makes complex systems work. A future with many edges. The economic viability of a world powered 100% by renewables is already an irrefutable reality. Batteries are no longer the economic brake on the transition. However, we have escaped the geological tyranny of oil only to discover … Read more

They have bought their first Porsche

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In 1956, Antonio Molina and Joselito were playing on Spanish radio stations. But life was very different outside our borders. Then, Elvis Presley launched Heartbreak Hotel and the newspapers of the time reported that in London they had to stop traffic because “dozens of boys, parked in the middle of the street, began to dance to the rhythm of the rock and roll“. It is very likely that that rock and roll will be danced at the wedding Derek Evans and Audrey Evanstwo young people who said yes to each other 70 years ago. Since then, the Evans couple has remained together for seven decades together. And for their platinum weddings, the Evans couple have said another “I do.” This time to get his first Porsche. An electric Porsche “Neither of us are running people but we like the feeling of power and comfort.” The one who expresses herself in these terms is Audrey Evans, who at 94 years old, of which 70 have been by her husband’s side, explains why they have chosen a Porsche as a wedding gift for these seven decades together. “I have always thought that Porsche was unique, so reliable and different from any other brand. We had always fantasized about oneand then we thought: ‘why not now?”, says Mr. Evans in an article that the company itself has published. The Evans couple receiving their first Porsche And from their words, they don’t seem to regret it. “It’s a great feeling when you have a Porsche. It feels like you’re part of an incredible club,” he reaffirms. And with a laugh he tells what happened when a delivery man saw him arrive home with a Porsche 911 that they had borrowed from the dealership: “his mouth almost fell to the floor.” But the brand new Porsche they have bought has been a Macanthe company’s electric SUV, in Cray color. The company has shared photos of the day they picked up the car in Bournemouth, in the south of the United Kingdom. Are they happy? “It’s wonderful fun,” explains Mr. Evans, who drove a Ford 8. His wife took the first wheel with a austin 7. Unlike that delivery man, his children were not in the least surprised that a man and a woman over 90 years old opened the doors of a Porsche dealership and ordered a Macan. “There isn’t a 19-year-old in Dorset (next to Bournemouth) that Dad hasn’t left behind at the traffic lights. They’ve never lived a conventional life, so When they told us they were going to buy a Porsche, we just smiled“explains one of his children. And that passion for leaving behind everything in his path has not died within Derek Evans. If you ask him, he’s clear which Porsche will be next: “a Taycan. It takes me a while to get out of it but… you know, it’s amazing!” What more can be said? Simply, I hope Mr. and Mrs. Evans enjoy their new Porsche Macan very much and intensely. Because here we will always defend buying a car that you simply like. Without further reasons. Photo | porsche In Xataka | Porsche Macan, analysis: there was a day when this car had a gasoline V6, and that’s what Porsche wants you to forget

Cantabria has always been one of the largest milk producers in Spain. Now their ranchers are going extinct

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The Cantabrian livestock sector is in full transformation. Especially if we talk about milk production. In recent years the region has seen the disappearance hundreds of farms of beef. The phenomenon can be explained (in part) by a tendency towards concentration, but that has not in any case prevented the decline in production. The result is that, although Cantabria continues to have a relevant weight in it national sectorfinds itself with a complex panorama: its dairy farmers are on the verge of extinction. What do the figures say? The phenomenon is complex and to understand it, several keys must be used. The most relevant is probably the contribution last summer the Cantabrian Government itself, when disclosing a balance sheet that shows that the region lost almost 400 dairy farms in just six years. From the 1,167 registered in March 2019, it rose to 770 during the same month of 2025. A few days ago The Confidential public an information on the sector that shows an even lower figure, with 749 milking farms. CCAA cow’s milk production on farms (2024 – data in thousands of Tms) Galicia 3,095,539 Asturias 535,863 Cantabria 404,850 the Basque Country 163,395 Navarre 280,273 Rioja 22,832 Aragon 176,416 Catalonia 770,981 Balearics 60,851 Castile and León 925,809 Madrid 55,427 Castile-La Mancha 296,292 Valencian Community 86,356 Murcia 68,684 Estremadura 18,618 Andalusia 557,998 Canary Islands 55,881 Spain 7,576,063 Is there more data? Yes. The balance sheet provided by the Cantabrian Executive is interesting because it shows that this loss of farms is not the result of a one-off restructuring, but rather a sustained trend over time. If 2019 ended with 1,113 farms, in 2020 there were already 1,050, 976 in 2021, 905 in 2022, 847 in 2023 and 784 at the end of 2024. In the first quarter of 2025 the census was at 770. The values do not coincide with those of the yearbook published in 2024 by Agriculture, but The trend is basically the same. Is it just the number of farms going down? No. The loss of farms can be explained in part by a trend towards the concentration. That is to say, perhaps in the community there are fewer farms but those that exist accumulate more cattle. The rest of the sector’s indicators, however, show that it is far from strengthening. The census of milking cows has experienced a fluctuating trend in recent years, with ups and downs. Its trend has been less clear and pronounced than that of farms, but the final balance is not good. Why’s that? In 2019 there were registered in the community 49,486 cattle bred for milk production. In 2024 there were already 48,186, about 1,300 less. In between, the sector has experienced some important ups and downs. In 2022, for example, the census reached 64,633 cows after growing by around 7% in one year, but in 2023 it again experienced a considerable decline. Production data is also not buoyant. Both those collected by Agriculture and the impressions conveyed by the sector. Recently admitted to The Confidential which has encountered a decrease in the collection volume, something unusual not so long ago. “Production in Cantabria has fallen by 15% in the last five years,” the national federation FENIL states. How does that affect the region? The key I gave it in December The Montañés Diary. The loss of dairy farms has meant that in the community there are now several dozen municipalities without farms of this type. To be precise, there are 26 towns without a trace of the industry, a list that includes towns with an urban profile, such as Castro Urdiales, but also others that have been more linked to the agricultural and livestock sector, such as Anievas or Cabuérniga. At the end of last year there were almost a dozen and a half nuclei in which only one livestock farm dedicated to dairy survived. What is the change due to? There are several factors at play. Beyond the general tendency of the bovine sector towards concentration that occurs in Spain, with the transition from many small farms to a few larger ones, the drift of the Cantabrian industry is explained by social and economic issues. They close farms because there is no generational change. Neither more nor less. “The first factor that explains this is the advanced age of the region’s ranchers. The average is between 58 and 60 years old,” explains to The Confidential Luis Pérez, from Ugam-Coag. “They reach retirement and close the farm, no one continues.” And why does that happen? Again, due to a combination of factors. Taking care of farms requires intense and constant work (“You have to milk twice a day, every day”) that is not always rewarded when selling the product in a volatile market with fluctuating prices. “You can be very well and in two months go down and be very bad. There is no type of stability,” Perez adds.. Against this backdrop, there are more tempting niches within livestock farming, such as breeding for the meat sector. While Cantabria has seen the number of farms dedicated to milking decrease, professionals in the meat sector have increased. What is happening with that sector? “The majority of those who enter are children of ranchers. And they almost always join with beef cows,” comments Pérez in The Montañés Diary. “In both cases you have to attend to the animals every day, but with milk you have to milk, yes or yes, every 12 hours.” Before the pandemic, there were 7,827 livestock farms of this type. In 2023 there were already more than 8,100, although since then that record also seems to have been reduced. Images | Nicolas Vigier (Flickr) and Department of agriculture In Xataka | We have tried to find out if science prefers whole, semi or skimmed milk and we have stayed as we were

A company has filled a neighborhood with sidewalk outlets to charge electric cars. Their results are contradictory

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In 2022, a German company called Rheinmetall proposed a new charging solution: put outlets on the sidewalks. Trying to find solutions for those who wanted to jump to an electric or plug-in hybrid car but did not have a garage, the company proposed a system to charge on the same street, without having to go to an electric station. Three years later: we have the results. A pilot test. After receiving approval from the authorities, the company began a pilot in 2024 in central Cologne and Lindenthala residential neighborhood of the city characterized by its low and individual houses. Neighborhood where, by the way, you will find the status of the local soccer team. The idea is simple, you park on the sidewalk and on the ground, on the curb, you find a plug hidden in a cover. You scan a code printed on it and connect the car with your own charging cable for AC use. As if it were any other charging point, both ends are joined and when the payment is completed, it is passed through the use of a mobile application. The results. In general terms, the results have been good. According to the company, a total of 2,800 charging cycles were carried out in the pilot test in one year. On average, the cars recharged 18 kWh, which in the city means more than 100 kilometers of autonomy for an electric car and between 80 and 100 kilometers on the highway (depending on its efficiency). They point out that each day the plug has been used an average of twice a day and that its availability has been 99%, so there have hardly been any breakdowns. The figure is good if we compare it with the European and Spanish average. In our country, public outlets They are only used 1.5 times a day and, on average, each charger is only busy between 30 and 120 minutes a day in Europe. Customer opinion. The company has conducted a survey of users who have offered their point of view to the system. It included the score given by the drivers (five points maximum) and some notes, complaints or recommendations made by customers. In total, the system has obtained 4.38 points out of five. But, above all, they have received very positive evaluations among customers over 60 years old, who value the simplicity of the system. In addition, they highlight that the plugs have not been damaged by water and that vandalism or uncivil acts (such as not picking up pet excrement) have not been found to have been a problem when recharging. A curious solution is that the cover that hides the plug has been designed to open with a small push of the charging cable, allowing the customer to lift said cover without having to touch it with their hand. Good idea, with some cracks. They point out in forumelectriccars that one of the main problems with this type of charging points is the cost of the plug. Each one of them, which has refrigeration and air conditioning to improve charging, costs 5,000 euros, so it is a bad idea compared to a traditional home charger. Furthermore, if you want to get the most out of the system, it would be necessary to reserve space for these charging points on the street, so there is no difference with any other public charging point unless the street is filled with plugs. That is, as happens with public outlets that are not located at a gas station, the parking space is reduced to reserve spaces that are not always occupied. Other proposals. Public charging is one of the great challenges that the electric car represents. One of its advantages is to leave the house with a charged car or, at least, take advantage of its parking lot to fill its batteries since alternating current is slow and most of the time a car is stopped. The most obvious proposal is the electric stations, with a huge number of high-power plugs available. another is fill shopping and leisure centers with chargerssince a visit to fully recharge the battery can take days or weeks (depending on daily trips) without plugging in our car. With an average of 50 kilometers per day, a car that drives 500 kilometers of autonomy in the city has 10 days to go without plugging the car back in, just three days a month. But if we want to bring public charging to the city streets, Portugal, United Kingdom either Netherlands have been experimenting with public outlets on streetlights. The system is as simple as including sockets on the curbs but with the difference that the socket comes from a street lamp and does not require installation on the ground. The paradox of slow recharging. The problem with this type of recharge is that slow charging takes hours and hours with the car plugged in. If a socket charges our car at 7.4 kW of power, it will be necessary to spend about 10 hours to completely fill the battery of a 60 kWh vehicle, a small size that is on the border between those who want the car for an urban environment and those who want to dare to travel with him. Those refills They are interesting if the price is low But they require that, to get the most out of it, we have to leave the car parked there for an entire working day or an entire night. The system, therefore, is certainly inefficient in terms of servicing more than one car. To charge at this power, the data says that most electric car drivers charge at home. Outside of it, the customer usually chooses to recharge at higher powers. For example, a 50 kW plug can now fully charge a car in less than three hours, which is the time we spend watching a movie at the cinema. And on a trip, the most practical thing is usually to look for … Read more

Artemis 2 passes its life test and clears the path to the Moon

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The mission Artemis IIwhich aims fly over the Moon againdid not have the best of luck in its rehearsals before launch due to the fuel and a hydrogen leak. But now NASA can breathe easy, since the second general test with fuel of the gigantic SLS rocket It has been a resounding success. and opens the way for humanity to return to the Moon half a century later. Without a doubt. Between February 19 and 20, 2026, engineers from the US space agency managed to complete the loading sequence of propellants without serious incidents, stopping the countdown exactly at the expected moment: T-29 seconds. The doubts about the engineering team are left behind and an imminent launch window opens that could start as early as March 6. Master hydrogen. Filling a 98-meter-high rocket with more than 2.6 million liters of superfrozen fuel is no easy task in practice. That is why in the previous test, carried out on February 3, we saw how it had to be aborted when the clock read T-5:15. And the culprit was none other than NASA’s old enemy: liquid hydrogen leaks. It must be taken into account here that liquid hydrogen is an exceptionally efficient propellant, but tremendously elusive, since it requires cryogenic temperatures of -253 °C. This extreme temperature causes the materials shrink in the rocketfacilitating escapes and increasing safety risks for the crew. Although this is what NASA found during the Artemis 1 mission in 2022. The repair. For this second attempt, NASA technicians meticulously replaced the defective seals and filters and the truth is that the move went perfectly. And during this last test, the filling was completed normally and the exhaust controls worked wonderfully. One step closer. The success of this trial is essential so that the Artemis program is not further delayed and neither is everything that will come after it. If we put ourselves in context, the Artemis mission was scheduled for September 2025, but was delayed until spring 2026 due to technical problems in the heat shield, batteries or control system of the Orion capsule. A big blot on paper that NASA needed to make up for with some success like this. When will it be released? In this way, the space agency already has its sights set on the launch window that opens from March 6 to 30the most optimal being to do it between March 6 and 11. That is why if everything follows the planned plan, the Orion capsule will be launched on a free return trajectory on a trip of approximately 10 days around the Moon, without landing on the moon. The objective. On board will be four pioneers who will take over the Apollo missions: Americans Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen. Its mission is not only historic because it is the first manned flight of the program, but because it will serve to validate all life support systems before the main course: Artemis III. A project that has its sights set on carrying out the first manned landing on the south pole of the Moon since 1972 and, above all, overtaking competing countries such as, for example, China, which makes very significant progress in the space race. Images | POT Pedro Lastra In Xataka | NASA has managed to grow lettuce in space. What he discovered next was not part of the plan

Data centers in space promise to save the planet. And also ruin the earth’s orbit

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Wikipedia should update its page dedicated to the word “ambition” to include Elon Musk’s photo. The tycoon has announced a megaproject according to which his two companies SpaceX and xAI will work together to launch a constellation of one million satellites that will function as data centers in orbit. The problem is that although the idea It has its advantages, it also has an impact potentially terrible for the future of our planet. Energy efficiency. That is the great advantage of the space data centers that Musk proposes. In space, solar panels can perform optimally without the obstacles posed by Earth’s atmosphere and climate. According to SpaceX, the reduction in the cost of launching its rockets makes space a perfect alternative for AI data centers. The plan. He project that has been presented to the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) consists of placing these satellites in sun-synchronous orbits between 500 and 2,000 km high. That would allow the satellites to act as interconnected nodes among themselves and also with the satellites of the Starlink network through optical laser links. The plan, of course, will have to overcome important challenges like refrigeration. Dissipating the heat generated by millions of chips in the vacuum of space is complex, since satellites act as “natural thermoses.” And radiation, what? The problem of cosmic radiation will also have to be solved. Advanced chips are very vulnerable to processing errors caused by energetic particles. It seems that AI processors are surprisingly resistant to this type of problembut the deployment of such chips on a massive scale in space could introduce new conflicts. On-site repair, nothing. In today’s data centers, if a problem arises, a technician can physically travel if necessary to solve it. In space, physical repair is not feasible, which would force a strategy of assuming that those chips that become functionally damaged will be completely lost. SpaceX would have to continuously launch substitutes to compensate for this “mortality” of components, which complicates logistics and costs. There are optimistic perspectives in this regard, and for some the bills do work out. Kessler syndrome. But above all there is a latent concern in the field of space security. Launching a million new satellites into already congested orbits multiplies the probability of chain collisions, validating the theory proposal in Kessler syndrome. A single major collision could generate a cloud of debris that would take decades to clear, further threatening climate monitoring missions or even global communications. There are already ideas to “regulate orbital traffic” by coordinating it, and SpaceX has its own “situational awareness” system, Stargazeto avoid problems, but of course, no system is completely perfect. air pollution. Without forgetting that the atmospheric impact is equally worrying. Some are estimated 25,000 Starship flightsand the re-entry of satellites that end their life cycle or die prematurely would cause metals and particles to be released into the upper atmosphere. According to experts, these chemical residues could damage the ozone layer and cause uncertain climate consequences. You can’t see anything. The astronomers, who They had already protested about Starlinkthey will have an even bigger problem with this new idea. The threat to astronomy is clear, because given the altitude and size of these satellites, it is likely that they form a bright band visible even to the naked eye, making scientific observation difficult and even changing the way we see the sunset. Orbital computing may have advantages, but before launching it we should remember that space—especially the space we see—is a shared and finite resource. In Xataka | Starlink’s dominance in space begins to move: another company already has permission for a constellation of 4,000 satellites

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