Month: March 2026

In 1987 he had a problem displaying images on his Mac, so he created an app. Today it is the most used image editor in history

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Maybe with Nano Banana There are people who have banished Photoshop, but the image editor is the tool that has accompanied photography professionals for decades, almost on par with their camera. In fact, it achieved something only within the reach of very few technological products: becoming a verb and even enter the dictionary. We Photoshop an image and Google it on the internet. Like many other milestones, Photoshop was born by chance: It was the result of a screen that did not know how to show grays. In figures. In these almost 40 years of Photoshop’s life, the editor has been accumulating astronomical data of its progress. Its launch price in 1990 was $895. No joke, it would be equivalent to $2,100 today. It has never been a home software but a professional one. Adobe closed last year with record turnover of 23.77 billion dollars. In 2024 billing was of 21,510 million dollars, of which subscriptions represented 20,521 million dollars. In 2013 Adobe played all its cards on the subscription. Time has proven him right: in twelve years it went from 4,000 million annual billing to almost 24 billion in 2025. How it all started. It’s 1987 and Thomas Knoll was pursuing a doctorate at the University of Michigan in computer vision. Then he had a problem: his Mac Plus had a monochrome screen unable to display grayscale images, only pure black and white. So he wrote a few lines of code to fix it. He called it Display. His little program did the trick, but that was it: he had no intention of commercializing it. The one who did have a nose for the business was his brother John, who at that time worked at Industrial Light & Magic (George Lucas’ company in charge of making Star Wars special effects): convinced him to develop the entire program. Brothers and partners, they sold the license to Adobe Systems Incorporated in 1988. From layers to AI. Photoshop 1.0 would see the light of day in February 1990 as an editor that required only 2MB of RAM and an 8 MHz processor to run, the minimum specifications for a Mac. To put it in context: today Photoshop recommends 16GB of RAM, 8,000 times more. It included tools as iconic to its users as the lasso or the magic wand. But if there was a technical leap that made the difference, those were the very useful capes: they arrived in 1994 with Photoshop 3.0. Before layers, the editor was destructive: each change overwrote the original image. Almost 20 years later, another functional milestone would arrive: the arrival of AI with Generative Fillthat is, being able to add or delete objects with a prompt. Despite the controversy over authorship and the future of retouchingits numbers were incontestable: in April of last year it had already generated more than 22,000 million images since its launch, according to Adobe. The risky move to the subscription model. Before the tricky decision to include AI in its suite, Adobe made another risky move: in 2013 and when we had still succumbed in subscriptionocracyannounced that it would stop selling its Photoshop on a license forever and start renting it. At that time almost 50,000 customers signed a petition against of this decision and its shares fell 12%. Once again, time and pocketbooks seem to have proven them right: they have multiplied their income by six. In Xataka | 16 years ago a student from Barcelona was looking for an easy way to edit PDFs. The website he created is one of the most viewed on the internet In Xataka | 30 years ago he created a player for the university: today his app has more than 6 billion downloads and is still free and without ads Cover | University of Michigan

Neptun Deep, the largest offshore field in the EU

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Europe has spent almost five years desperately searching for gas that does not come from Russia. When the Commission finally succeeded at the beginning of the year and was able to approve the total import ban on Russian gasyou found yourself in another scenario but the same problem: now the uncomfortable partner is the United Stateswhich has become the largest supplier of LNG on the continent. The only real way to achieve gas sovereignty is to produce at home. And one of the answers may be 160 kilometers off the Romanian coast, in the deep waters of the Black Sea: the Neptun Deep deposit. The site. Neptun Deep It is on the Romanian continental shelf of the Black Sea, on an area of ​​7,500 km² and with depths ranging from 100 to 1000 meters. Proven and probable reserves are estimated around 100 bcm (billions of cubic meters). Context. The introduction glimpses a good part of the current situation: Russian supply has fallen from 45% to 19%, as report this roadmap from the European Commission less than a year ago, the end of transit of gas pipelines through Ukraine, the growing dependence on LNG from the US and the EU producing today 30% less than at the beginning of the decade. This drop in production has its reason in forced closure of the giant Groningen, the largest deposit in the EU. And in this pressing context comes confirmation that Romania is already the largest gas producer in the EU, as supports Eurostat. Why is it important. For Romania, whose annual gas consumption round The 10 – 11 bcm implies the real possibility of stopping imports and an important revitalization of the industry. But for Europe its relevance is strategic: A connection to the Black Sea gas corridor. The Western Balkans and Moldova have historically depended of Russian gas, in Neptun Deep they could find a direct substitute. More diversification in supply in the form of domestic sources. Although it is true that globally it is not differential, it is a sovereign gas made in the EU that does not transit through hostile countries. Advance for other European off shore. The future of the Romanian regulatory model can serve as a roadmap for other countries with off shore potential, such as Greece or Cyprus. A soap opera exploitation. The block was first explored in 2008 and in 2012 the first exploratory well, Domino-1, was drilled. ExxonMobil and OMV Petrom were originally involved, but after years of regulatory blockage and prosecutor, ExxonMobil advertisement its withdrawal in 2019. The project was left in limbo until the Romanian state company Romgaz bought ExxonMobil’s participation in 2022. It was the conflict between Russia and Ukraine that unblocked everything: Romania reformed its offshore law and from there, the partners decided to undertake the investment, committing 4,000 million euros. With the Neptun Alpha production platform scheduled to be installed in 2026 and wells in drilling since March 2025, first production is estimated for 2027 and is expected a peak production of between 8 and 10 bcm annually. Yes, but. We have already seen that Neptun Deep has appeared on the map when it is most needed in Europe, but its impact on the old continent is relative: By scale: its production of between 8 and 10 bcm annually represents 2.5% of European consumption (390 bcm, according to the International Energy Agency). In short, it will not change the dependency nor does it have the weight to alter prices. The conditions of the Black Sea have their own challenges, with the absence of oxygen in the deep layers, certain seismicity or the presence of hydrogen sulfide in some formations. Construction logistics will not be easy. By timing. Gas will arrive in 2027 at the earliest, when European demand has already been declining for years due to electrification. The utility window is narrow. On the other hand, it could discourage electrification in Romania and the Balkans. In Xataka | Europe has reached the end of winter with depleted gas reserves. A country has a model to save it: Spain In Xataka | Europe managed to become independent from Russian gas. Now you have another headache: how to become independent of US gas Cover | Romgaz Romania

Are the 200 euros difference worth it or has Apple been left behind?

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Xiaomi has released not one, not two, but three tablets that once again embrace the quality-price ratio that we have seen so many other times within the brand. Therefore, we are going to stop a little to see if they really are as attractive as they seem at first glance, and what better way to do it than by comparing the Xiaomi Pad 8 with the iPad Air M4since Xiaomi usually uses Apple as a reference, mentioning the brand in its presentations. Can it compete head to head with the iPad? Let’s see it. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links iPad Air M4 (128GB, 11-inch) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The differences between Xiaomi and Apple tablets Big differences in screens While it is true that in any case we are talking about tablets that offer good image quality, both Xiaomi and Apple have small peculiarities. All Xiaomi tablets come with an 11.2-inch screen that offers both a 3.2K resolution and a 144 Hz refresh rate, thus achieving greater fluidity when navigating the menus, when we want to play a video game or even if we read an article on a website. The Xiaomi Pad 8 Mate adds a very interesting feature, and that is that this model has anti-reflective treatmentwhich means that if you are going to use it outdoors, the sun will not reflect as much on the screen. Instead, the iPad Air M4 is available in two sizes of 11 and 13 inches respectively. While it is true that it also includes a good Liquid Retina screen, the refresh rate remains at 60 Hz, so it does not offer the same fluidity as the screens of Xiaomi tablets. In short, if you are going to use the tablet at home, you will have a good experience with any of them, even if the Xiaomi screens offer better fluidity. Things change if you are going to use it outdoors: the iPad Air offers a maximum brightness of 500 nits, which is a fairly fair figure. Xiaomi tablets raise that figure to 800 nits, so in these cases it is better to bet on Xiaomi tablets, especially the Pad 8 Pro Mate if we are going to use it a lot outside the home. Processors and operating systems What are you going to use the tablet for? If you want to buy one of these tablets to watch multimedia content, you will have a good experience with any of them. But If you want to play demanding titles, choose the iPad. Because? Basically because it comes with a more powerful processor than Qualcomm, even allowing you to move console games. Not all models of the current generation of Xiaomi come with the same chip: the Xiaomi Pad 8 incorporates the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, while the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro and 8 Pro Mate come with the Snapdragon 8 Eliteone of the most powerful processors in Android devices. Instead, the new iPad Air comes with the M4 chipa processor that is capable of moving many titles, as we have seen many other times in Apple computers. On the other hand, both brands have different operating systems. Xiaomi tablets come with Android under the customization layer HyperOS 3while the iPad Air M4 comes with iPadOS. The choice is very particular, but we can mention two things: HyperOS has better artificial intelligence functions, since Apple Intelligence It’s still a little green. iPadOS has some very interesting productivity apps, such as Final Cut Pro. Depending on the use we are going to give to the tablet, we may be interested in making the jump to one operating system or another. If we want artificial intelligence functions, right now Xiaomi tablets offer better options. On the other hand, if we want to play, study or work with the tablet, we may be more interested in opting for the iPad. All RAM and storage configurations Depending on the model we want to buy, we can find very different RAM configurations. The Xiaomi Pad 8 and Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro are available in two versions of 8 and 12 GB, and the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro Mate and iPad Air M4 are only available in a 12 GB version. Take into account the RAM memory It is important in the era we are living in when it comes to artificial intelligence. The more a device has to process AI locally, the more RAM it will need to avoid being fried. Various storage configurations are also available, although here Apple offers a more interesting option: The Xiaomi Pad 8 is available in two versions of 128 GB and 256 GB. The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro adds a 512 GB version. The Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro Mate is only available in a 512 GB version. The iPad Air M4 can be purchased in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB versions. In this case, the interesting thing about Apple is that it offers a configuration with double the storage than the Xiaomi models. If you are going to save a lot of photos, videos or files, especially if you want to use the iPad as an alternative to a computeryou may be more interested in the 1 TB model. In the case of Xiaomi tablets, with the 512 GB configuration you can get by for a while, but you may fall short in the long term. What your batteries say Although at the moment we do not know too many details about the battery of the iPad Air M4, Apple has mentioned that its theoretical autonomy is up to 10 hours of browsing, which means that it does not vary too much compared to previous generations. The three Xiaomi tablets come with 9,200 mAh batteries, but with different fast charging: 45W for the Xiaomi Pad 8 and 67W for the Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro and Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro Mate. Taking all this into account, The strong point of … Read more

This map of the August solar eclipse is a gem for discovering where and how to see it best

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Those of us who love to look at the sky in search of astronomical landmarks are in luck: the classic summer Perseid shower is joined by the first of the three eclipses planned between 2026 and 2028that of August 12. It will be a historic event in that it will be the first total eclipse visible on the peninsula since 1912. There is still time to find a good place free of light pollution (or at least, not “light pollution dump“) close to where we are. That is, if we are lucky enough that the solar eclipse is full wherever we are. Taking into account that it will be in the middle of August, surely there are those who are preparing a getaway to a potentially ideal location. In addition to finding a place where the eclipse is total and free of buildings and streetlights, if we want to enjoy the solar eclipse in its maximum splendorthere are other aspects to take into account, such as whether the shadows will bother us or how long it will be visible. The National Geographic Institute has a section on your website where to monitor in which parts of the world the solar eclipse will be seen and which areas will be partial and which will be total. Thus, we hope to see it in North America, much of Europe and West Africa. Where to best see the total solar eclipse, on an interactive map But it will only be total in a relatively wide strip, the one you see in the dark that crosses the Arctic Ocean, the northeast of Greenland and the extreme west of Iceland, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to enter the Iberian Peninsula. The time when the eclipse will be at its maximum It will be at 19 hours and 46 minutes (peninsular time) and at that point on the planet (near Iceland) it will last at most two minutes and 18 seconds. Where the solar eclipse will be seen: areas where it will be total and areas where it will be partial. IGN The total eclipse will cross the Iberian Peninsula from west to east from A Coruña to Palma, passing through cities such as Lugo, Oviedo, León, Zamora, Valladolid, Palencia, Segovia, Burgos, Soria, Santander, Bilbao, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Logroño, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Zaragoza, Teruel, Lleida, Tarragona, València and Castelló de la Plana. In Spain, the local maximum will occur around 8:28–32 minutes, and totality will last up to 1 minute and 50 seconds at the point of longest duration (the Asturian coast). Madrid and Barcelona are outside the strip: although they will see a visually impressive 99% partial eclipse, it will not reach the point that will be seen in the strip. This IGN interactive map It has an animation where you can see the progress of the shadow that will form the superimposition of the moon on the sun. The shadow of the solar eclipse, in an animation If you are interested in having more precise information about a specific location, it includes a box where you can enter addresses or cities, which opens the doors to having data such as its visibility profile, duration, when it will start, its peak point or the time you will be able to see it. Eclipse data for Estella – Lizarra. IGN On the right side it has several options such as sharing information, background layers for example the satellite view or a particularly interesting one: layers. Thus, you can activate the duration to know in which areas you can enjoy more viewing time, the degree of obscuration or visibility, because you could go out into nature to see it without being bothered by the lights and discover that the shadows of the terrain disturb your vision. The interactive map, with visibility, darkness and duration layers activated. IGN An important detail for choosing the site: The eclipse will occur at sunset, with the sun low on the horizon, which will require observing it in a place that offers good visibility to the west, without mountains, buildings or trees that obstruct. On the other hand, remember not to look at the sun directly except during that period when the eclipse is total. But it’s better not to risk it and use approved glasses. In Xataka | Solar eclipses visible in Spain: these are the three astronomical events of 2026, 2027 and 2028 In Xataka | Half of Spain waits expectantly for the historic eclipse of August 2026. The authorities are already thinking about the problems Cover | IGN and Kevin Baird

In 1993 Microsoft created Encarta to revolutionize knowledge. Twenty years later it would be devastated by a tsunami

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It became so popular that its logo and the sound of their intros They became two brands just as identifiable as those of Nokia or Windows. If – like the person writing this – you had to go to school or high school between the second half of the 90s and the first half of the 2000s, talk about the Encarta It does not require large presentations. If not, don’t worry; It won’t take us much time. Before Wikipedia offered free online knowledge and even the use of the Internet became popular, Microsoft launched a digital encyclopedia that revolutionized the sector and became a phenomenon between more or less 1993 and 2009. Its name: Encarta. Today, ironies of history, “Encarta” is one more entry in the index of other encyclopedias; but there was a time when it transformed our way of accessing knowledge. From having to spend their eyelashes and fingertips scrolling through pages in search of information, students began to search for information with the click of a button. The Encarta offered an agile, comfortable and above all didactic way to satisfy curiosity. With articles, yes; but also with videos, audios and even virtual visits and games. You could read about Nepalese temples in the Salvat. Or open the Encarta and “tour” one. Its “pull” was so great that it put the old paper encyclopedias in trouble. When the Spanish edition was presented in early 1997, those responsible presumed that the Encarta CD-ROM, a format that you could store in a drawer or even a folder, contained information that It was equivalent to 29 volumes and 1.2 meters of shelving. Not only that. The Encarta cost 24,900 pesetas, four times less than an equivalent printed encyclopedia. To make matters worse, his landing in Spain was protected by Santillanaa publishing house with considerable weight in school classrooms. How to compete with that? The product was liked and published in Spanish and other languages. He did well until, with the same ones with which he had become a phenomenon, ended up succumbing to the competition. In a way, his success is due to his good sense of smell in the 90s; its decline, to the inability to adapt in the 2000s. This is your story. Objective: reinvent the old encyclopedias In the mid-1980s Microsoft He began to think about the idea of ​​creating a digital encyclopedia. The idea was ambitious. Those from Redmond wanted, neither more nor less, to rethink the concept and operation of a product apparently as mature and closed as the volumes that publishers’ commercials were dedicated to selling door to door. To make its debut in a big way, the multinational tried to negotiate a license with the creators of what was probably the most respected publication internationally: the Encyclopædia Britannica. It didn’t go well for them. In the 1980s, paper volumes of Britannica were sold and They left huge profits. As Enrique Dans remembershis books cost about $250 to produce and the selling price ranged between $1,500 and $2,200, depending on the quality. Why would the firm want to digitize content on a CD and risk killing the goose that lays the golden eggs? Microsoft did not give up and looked for ways to move the idea forward. He even had a name for the initiative: Project Gandalf. Some time later he closed a contract with Funk & Wagnalls to use your New Encyclopediaof 29 volumes, in a database that was created at the end of that same decade. To complete its contents, years later two other McMillan encyclopedias would be added, the Collier’s and New Merit Scholar. They were not the Britannica; but it would have to do. However, doubts arose in Redmond about whether or not the project was viable and they decided to park it. It was resumed at the turn of the decade, in 1991, when Microsoft decided to go all out. In 1993, the first edition of the Encarta Encyclopedia was launched, which included the 25,000 Funk & Wagnalls articles and extra material, such as images and some animations. The tool was comfortable, much more agile than the kilometric tomes and even fun, but it started with a huge mistake: the shot was centered wrong. At the beginning of the 90s there were still many houses without a PC and the marketing price was exclusive. When it came out, the Encarta cost about $400, which greatly limited its range. The cost deterred customers and was not too far from that of another competitor that was testing the same niche with a recognizable brand, Compton, which also launched your own multimedia version in 1990, with text and supports such as images and sounds. In Redmond they knew how to react and soon they were deploying a more aggressive strategy. They launched promotions that allowed you to get the Encarta for 99 dollarsthey included their CD with the Windows software package and negotiated with manufacturers to incorporate it into their computers, a tactic not unlike that used with Windows and Office. The promotion of Microsoft itself gave the final push. The new encyclopedia gained fame and began to chain editions, translate into different languages and enrich content with multimedia supports. In 1995, abridged versions of some articles were offered for Microsoft Network ISP subscribers, and starting in ’96, standard and deluxe editions began to be released, an enriched version that could be updated month by month. In 1998, its creators went one step further and acquired the rights to several electronic encyclopedias. The product was growing and, above all, it demonstrated that the sector was experiencing a clear paradigm shift. The best example: in 1996 the once powerful company Britannica ended up underselling for their difficulties. “It allows young and old to explore the world by themes and characters,” their promoters boasted in the Spanish market. And so it was, indeed. Through articles, photos, illustrations, graphs, maps, timelines, recordings, videos and even virtual tours, Encarta won over an entire generation of students. … Read more

For Finland, protecting its roads in World War II was essential, so flying trees were invented

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In a war it is not only doing and being, but also appearing. We have already seen recently how Iran pretended to have parked fighters so that Israel wastes its missiles, but this trick of playing catch-up is older than gunpowder. In fact, in World War II the United States had until ‘Ghost Army’ who was dedicated to these tasks. Precisely within the framework of the second war on a planetary scale, this curious story of concealment of infrastructurewhich is run by Finland. Finland is a Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula, the easternmost of the triad made up of Norway, Sweden and Finland. That makes it have a border with Russia, only at that time it was the USSR. Its situation on the map made it fight three wars in three different positions: the Winter War where it was attacked by the Soviets, the Continuation War in which the USSR attacked it, taking advantage of the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa and the Lapland Warin which he fought against Germany after signing his armistice with the USSR. The photo that illustrates the cover of this piece and that you can see in full immediately after this paragraph was taken by Osvald Hedenström and is preserved in the photographic archive of the Finnish Defense Forces, along with the legend written by the photographer: “The Finns have camouflaged the 10 km from the border on the Raatteen road with country roads, with fir trees that seem to hang in the air, because right on the border there is an observation tower erected by the Russians. Suomussalmi, Kuivajärvi 1941.06.27” Flying trees on the Raatteen road. Sa-Kuva The cheapest camouflage of World War II That is to say, the legend makes three facts clear: that there was camouflage that covered the 10 kilometers of road from the border, which included rural roads and the main highway, and that the threat was a Soviet observation tower right on the muga. As? With fir trees lying. The Finnish army was noticeably inferior to the Soviet one, so they took advantage of the terrain, explains Colonel Petteri Jouko, a military historian at the Finnish National Defense University. for Atlas Obscura: “The Finns did not have the funds to purchase large quantities of artificial camouflage, such as nets, they did use trees, leaves and foliage to confuse the enemy” Because Finland is also a country with exuberant nature: the density of its forests is around 75% of the territory. according to the FAOso discovering critical infrastructure for the movement of troops and supplies such as roads or railways was a piece of cake for the Soviets. Obviously this resource of camouflaged roads was only effective for sky-level observationbut not for reconnaissance aircraft. Trees laid to hide critical infrastructure. Sa-Kuva This camouflage technique was technically simple but arduous. The Finns cut down the pine trees near the roads and then suspended them with steel cables that they had tied to other trees at the ends, although they also used wooden poles. The result, as can be seen just above, in another photograph from the Finnish archive, is that it seemed that the trees were flying over the roads, which from a bird’s eye view appeared to be just another leafy forest. Currently, none of these tree structures have survived; the passage of time and the abandonment of these rural roads has condemned them to their disappearance. In Xataka | Ukraine has found the antidote to Russian kamikaze drones in World War II: an optical illusion worth 500 euros In Xataka | A secret Nazi bunker in Germany hides the most sought-after treasure on the entire planet: hundreds of tons of rare earths Cover and photographs | SA-kuva (Finnish Defense Forces photo archive)

There are only 20 fateful kilometers left on the Gobi border

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China and Mongolia have been trying to solve one of Asia’s costliest logistics problems for more than a decade: getting coal and metals from Mongolian mines to Chinese steel plants. without using eternal truck caravans. The solution: a railway corridor between the mines of Tavan Tolgoi and the Chinese network capable of transporting up to 50 million tons of cargo, such as declared the Mongolian president. The project carries on the table since 2012 and, after delays and stoppages, the first part was completed. In 2025 the second phase started: a cross-border link of just 19.5 kilometers in length at the Gashuunsukhait-Gantsmod pass whose completion is scheduled for 2027. Let China be capable of remodeling a train station in one night but it takes 22 months to build only eight kilometers, anticipating the technical and orographic challenges it faces. Context. Mongolia owns some of the largest reserves of coal and copper in the world. deserves special mention Tavan Tolgoione of the largest unexploited coking coal deposits on the planet, with an estimate of 6.4 billion tons of this resource. Copper and gold also works well in Oyu Tolgoi. In fact, has a projected production by 2030 of 500,000 tons of copper per year. But Mongolia is landlocked. China is historically the largest importer of Mongolian coal. As? With lines of trucks crossing the desert. From an environmental and economic point of view, the switch to rail makes the most sense but it has fine print: the Mongolian railway network It has 1,815 kilometers of Soviet gauge trackof which the majority are part of the TransMongolia line that connects Russia with China. The network is practically single track, with limited capacity and vulnerable to snowfall in winter and Gobi sand in the southern section. Trans-Mongolian crossing the Gobi Desert. PIERRE ANDRE LECLERCQ Why is it important. Because this fully completed corridor will close a strategic logistics chain for China at a time when there is tension in the supply of critical raw materials. Without going any further, he already faced a Australian coal veto a few years ago, having to seek supply in Russia and Mongolia. Mongolia also gains by improving its coal and metals export infrastructure. As declared the Mongolian governmentthe average export volume will go from 83 million tons to 165 million per year, which represents an increase of 1.5 billion dollars. Of course, it reinforces its dependence on China: It already exports 90% of its raw materials. First phase. The history of the Tavan Tolgoi–Gashuun Sukhait railway is checkered to say the least: it began in 2012, when Mongolian Mining Corporation announced a railway from Ukhaa Khudag to the Gashuun Sukhait border crossing, with completion scheduled for 2015. With the earthworks very advanced, the work became entrenched both due to economic and political problems how to choose what the track width should be. Work resumed in 2018 under new management. Finally, the line will be inaugurated in 2022 233.6 kilometers long crossing the Gobi Desert (258 km with auxiliary infrastructure), with 16 bridges and designed for loads of 25 tons per axle. According to Tavantolgoi Railway LLC and collected by AFPthe price of a ton of coal fell from 32 dollars to 8. The pending critical phase: the border. The Mongolian railway reaches the border from 2022, but the critical thing remained: coal could not cross to China by train. The main reason for being is pure engineering: Mongolia uses the Soviet width of 1,520 mm and China uses 1,435 mm, the international standard width. At the Gashuun Sukhait pass there was a physical gap that required the transshipment of goods, with the delays, costs and inconveniences that it entails. They are going to solve it with a double track widthwhich extends both the Mongolian and Chinese lines, thus allowing trains from both systems to enter the area without transfers. This cross-border link will have a main road 19.5 kilometers and includes bridge structures between 8 and 31 meters high, necessary to bridge the topographic gap between the two sides of the border. The Chinese side is being built by the state-owned company China Energy Investment Corporation and on the Mongolian side, Tavantolgoi Railway LLC. A corridor full of challenges. The delay of the railway corridor project due to financial and political issues is just the tip of the iceberg of other challenges it has faced, ranging from the engineering problem of the track gauge to the extreme climate of the Gobi: the Mongolian section passes through one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, with temperature ranges ranging from -40 °C in winter to more than 40 °C in summer. It is no longer that it is uninhabitable, it is that it affects the structure of the road itself. In Xataka | 125 kilometers of water separate 140 million inhabitants. China is going to solve it with a mega railway tunnel In Xataka | China has built the highest bridge in the world and has done what it must: turn it into a show Cover | Marcin Konsek and KUA YUE

Marlon Brando rejected an Oscar in 1973. His authentic story is worthy of the best thriller film

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On March 27, 1973, Marlon Brando rejected the Oscar for Best Actor for ‘The Godfather’ as a protest against the treatment of Native Americans. What no one knew then is that the statuette would not disappear, but would tour through some very famous hands in Hollywood, among others Roger Moore and Charlie Chaplin. This is the story of a prize that never existed and, even so, was doubled The rejection. On March 27, 1973, before an audience of 85 million viewers, Sacheen Littlefeather took the stage at the 45th Oscars ceremony and rejected the Best Actor award for ‘The Godfather’ on behalf of Marlon Brando. The gesture was historic: it was the first live political speech at the gala, although not the first time that someone rejected the statuette (Brando was preceded by screenwriter Dudley Nichols in 1936 – out of solidarity with the Writers Guild – and actor George C. Scott in 1971 – who called the ceremony “a two-hour meat parade” -). But what happened to the statuette after that night was a mystery that lasted decades. What no one saw. Sacheen Littlefeather never touched the statuette. Roger Moore (a few months away from debuting as James Bond, but already famous for his television role as The Saint) supported her throughout the speech. When Littlefeather left the stage, Moore followed her with the trophy in her hand and verified that no one had devised any protocol for collecting a rejected Oscar. So he took it with him. The 1616. As reconstructed by Bruce Davis, former executive director of the Academy, the statuette (serial number 1616, not 1601 as was believed for years, a failure whose explanation we will now see and which still contaminates multiple chronicles of the journey of this award) accompanied Moore to several parties after the gala. In this way, he presided over tables full of food and drink and received “almost Bondian attention from a good number of women” before stopping for two weeks at the mansion of producer Albert Broccoli. Eventually, Moore’s publicist, Jerry Pam, returned her to the Academy. Jump to 1995. The story seemed closed until, in 1995, the actor turned agent Marty Ingels called a press conference with an explosive statement: a client of his owned the Oscar rejected by Brando and was willing to auction it to benefit a charitable cause. The Academy responded bluntly: that Oscar did not exist. And technically, the Academy was right. Or not at all. Two 1601s. Ingels revealed the trophy’s serial number: 1601. Academy records indicated that number corresponded to a statuette on loan at an exhibition in New York, and a phone call confirmed that it was still there. But then Ingels sent a photograph of the trophy in his possession and indeed, it could be seen that the engraved number was 1601: there were two statuettes with the same number. Something that had never happened since the Academy began recording serials on the trophies in 1950. The explanation for the mess appeared in a record book prior to the computerization of the archives. Above the entry indicating the loan of the 1601 statuette was another line erased with white concealer. Viewed against the light, the page revealed the original text: “1601 — missing during the 45th Oscar ceremony.” The most likely hypothesis, according to Davis, is that the person responsible for the inventory of figurines that night had a duplicate made of the number 1601 and quietly returned it to the archives. But… why? What else happened in that ceremony that led to a duplicate being made? First robbery. The 1601 that Ingels had was not Brando’s Oscar. It was the duplicate of another trophy stolen that same night: video images of the ceremony show that one of the statuettes for the best documentary award, ‘Marjoe’, was left forgotten on the podium when the lights went out for an advertising break. It is, according to Academy records, the only theft of an Oscar directly from the stage in its entire history. Now, Chaplin. While the riddle of the 1601 was being solved, the fate of Brando’s authentic Oscar (the 1616 returned by Moore) took another turn. Charlie Chaplin had won his first Oscar that same year for the soundtrack of ‘Footlights’, a 1952 film that, due to a regulatory loophole already resolved the following year, was eligible twenty years after it was filmed. The Chaplin figurine was mailed to Europe and arrived damaged. Chaplin’s family returned it to the Academy asking for a replacement, and the Academy engraved Chaplin’s name on Brando’s Oscar and sent it to London. Fifty years later. In August 2022, Academy President David Rubin issued a formal apology to Littlefeather in which he called the treatment received for his statements on Brando’s behalf (boos and stamping from the Academy’s leading men) “disproportionate and unjustified” and acknowledged that the damage to his career was “irreparable.” Littlefeather replied wryly.: “It’s only been 50 years. We have to keep our sense of humor; it’s our survival method.” He died on October 2 of that same year, a few weeks after the tribute ceremony that the Academy held in his honor. The trophy marked 1601(A), the duplicate manufactured to cover the theft, never appeared in public again. In Xataka | The 30 best gangster movies: gangsters, triads, camorra and yakuza show the guts of organized crime

Science is clear that being a good person gives happiness. The problem is the hidden cost of “overdoing it”

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Since we were little, society has bombarded us with a very clear message: you have to be good people. It’s a moral imperative, yes, but over the past few decades science has attempted to answer a much more pragmatic question: does being kind to others have a real impact on our happiness? This is where A group of researchers wanted to give an answer. What we know. The answer to this question is ‘yes’ according to the latest articles that have been published on the matter. But we must keep in mind that taking kindness to the extreme, leaving our ‘skin’ for others without attending to our own needs, has a real impact that translates into burnout and also in a great emotional exhaustion. And surely, some people can see themselves very reflected in these concepts of literally being very ‘burned out’ for being very kind to others and attending to all the favors they ask of you without thinking about oneself. The positive part. The idea that “good people are happier” is not a simple phrase of Mr. Wonderfulbut it is a conclusion with solid empirical support, especially in the field of positive psychology. Here the researchers were able to see, for example, in a Japanese sample that happier people performed more daily acts of kindness. What’s more, they found that forcing people to simply “count” their own kind acts for a week measurably increased their happiness. There are more studies. Beyond this case, which is very classic, the bibliography leaves us with a great meta-analysis that reviewed decades of research to conclude that help, donate or support others is consistently associated with persistently higher well-being, even if modest in some cases. Something that was also demonstrated in the experimental works of Sonja Lyubomirskywhich made it clear that assigning a group of people the task of “performing acts of kindness” significantly increases their well-being compared to control groups. The negative part. If being good is so positive… Should we give ourselves to others without limit? The answer here is a resounding ‘no’. As has always been heard, the middle ground is where virtue lies, since reaching absolute altruism causes compassion fatigue and burnout. And it is no wonder, because altruism taken to the extreme, especially in highly demanding contexts, is dangerous. The studies on health professionals and caregivers clearly show that high exposure to the suffering of others, combined with a strong compassionate orientation but without clear limits, triggers the risk of psychological collapse and, therefore, serious problems such as anxiety. Its consequences. An empirical study on altruism that exists among co-workers revealed that, although constantly helping colleagues encourages cooperation, in the long term it is associated with great emotional exhaustion and depersonalization of the relationship. That is, the system collapses if aid becomes chronic and absorbs own resources. And the problem is that when people are very compassionate with the rest of the world, they are usually incapable of being very compassionate with themselves and have much greater wear and tear. Here empathy needs a protective shield that is nothing more nor less than a series of limits regarding interpersonal relationships. Although logically there are cases that are difficult to mark because we tend to be too kind. The society. To fully understand the picture of human goodness, one must do zoom out since it is not about what we do individually, but about the ecosystem where we are living. Here the World Happiness Report 2025 dedicate an entire chapter to analyze on a global level how kindness and happiness interact. And their conclusions are revealing, since they point out that the greatest predictor of individual happiness is not the frequency with which we do good acts, but the expectation that others will do good things too. In this case, the report gives a very illustrative example: the expectation that, if you lose your wallet, a stranger will return it to you. Here, believing in the goodness of others has a brutal impact on reducing inequality of happiness within a country, and as the SDSN network points out In their adaptation of the data for Spain, “believing in the goodness of others is much more related to happiness than previously thought.” Images | Brooke Cagle In Xataka | If the question is “where is the secret to happiness,” an expert believes it is hidden in these 15 statements

Humanity has been wondering for years how to adapt to climate change. The Mayans already achieved it centuries ago

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Beyond its architecture, urban planning and art, there is an aspect of the Mayan civilization that fascinates archaeologists: its decline. Over time, historians have understood that the decline was not sudden nor did it respond to a single factor, rather there was a sum that included changes in trade routes, wars and, above all, adverse weather, with droughts. severe and prolonged. Now we know something more. Even during the stages of Classic Terminal (800-1000 AD) and Postclassic (1000-1500 AD), while large urban centers succumbed, there were settlements that adapted to climate changes. What has happened? Which a group of archaeologists has just published an article in which they capture their years of research in a Mayan settlement located in ‘Birds of Paradise’, some wetlands located in the north of Belize. The site itself is not new. Scientists identified it long ago a few years with the help of lidara tool that is revolutionizing archaeology. What is new are the conclusions that its analysis has left. He study is published in the magazine PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science) and, among other issues, concludes that the wetland offers valuable information about how the Mayans responded to the social and environmental changes they dealt with during two crucial stages of their history: the Classic Terminal and Postclassic, a period that goes from the 9th to the 16th centuries. What have they found out? As they explain from New York University (NYU), to which the main author of the study belongs, one of the most interesting readings that the site leaves is the extent to which the Mayans adapted to the vagaries of the climate. Basically, researchers have proven that at a time when large urban centers were abandoned, pressured in part by intense droughtsthere were Mayan settlements that managed to survive in the wetlands. As? For its ability to adapt to the environment. And how did they do it? Taking advantage of the means they had at hand. “Wetlands provided resources for hunting and fishing to ancient populations, in addition to serving as refuge in periods of drought and social upheavals,” they explain from NYU. The environment supplied them with something else, equally or even more valuable for their settlements: construction materials. The site in question that they have analyzed in Belize in fact includes eight mounds of earth that could have served as a base for building buildings and a large elevated limestone platform. The experts also rescued wooden posts, animal remains and ceramic artifacts, clues that tell us about how life continued while other nearby urban centers declined. What do the experts say? “Together these findings reveal a highly adaptable community with diverse tools, food and construction materials. It shows us that Mayan communities could change habitats and survive extreme climates,” explains Timothy Beachprofessor at the University of Texas at Austin, who nevertheless recognizes that “we still do not know the size of this wetland population and its functioning.” Now archaeologists aim to go one step further. “Our next moves include expanding the excavations to understand how the Mayans built with unconventional wood, how they ate, and how this settlement fit into a region that was suffering from widespread abandonment.” Why is it important? Because of the historical era we are talking about. In their article, the researchers assure that the Belize site demonstrates the ability of the ancient Mayans to adapt to “the profound challenges” that they had to live through from the 9th century AD. For reference, a team led by the University of Cambridge discovered not long ago that between 871 and 1021 they happened eight persistent droughtsof at least three years, in the Yucatán Peninsula. The worst of all actually lasted more than a decade. The scientists arrived at that conclusion after analyzing a stalagmite from a Yucatan cave. And, beyond how spectacular it may be, the data is interesting because it tells us about the challenges that the Mayans faced during the Terminal Classic (800-1000 AD), when the limestone cities of the south they were abandonedthe dynasties declined and civilization moved north, losing part of its political and economic power in the area. Are there more conclusions? “As the large urban centers of the Mayan regions succumbed to interconnected socio-environmental factors, the communities of the Birds of Paradise complex persisted through that transition by constructing a series of elevated structures of earth, stone and wood with direct access to the abundant resources and connectivity offered by the riparian wetland system,” reads the article published in PNAS. “It provides evidence for persistent populations between the Elevated Interior Region and coastal regions during the Terminal Classic to Postclassic. While nearby highland urban centers were abandoned, this population continued to emphasize wetland agriculture and provides our best evidence for other subsistence strategies, such as fishing and gathering other proteins, reflected in the faunal assemblage,” they add the researchers. What did they dig? That is another of the surprises that the study leaves behind. Archaeologists discovered what NYU describes as “the largest collection of architectural wood” located inland, as well as artifacts that help historians understand everyday life in the wetlands. It may seem like a minor issue, but it is not common to find remains of wood in Mayan sites. On the contrary. Their very nature causes them to degrade in tropical environments. In Belize, experts have discovered “a unique opportunity” which allows them to better understand how the ancient Mayans built, what types of wood they used and how they used each one. Is it so uncommon? The majority of preserved Mayan wooden remains are figurines, spears and boxes that were recovered mainly in caves in Belize at the beginning of the 20th century. Remains have also been found in mountainous and saline areas in the south of the country. The new findings go further. “It challenges long-held beliefs that sites like this could not survive in the American tropics and suggests we might be overlooking similar sites,” admits Lara Sánchez-Morales, professor of anthropology … Read more

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