Month: May 2026

a soap opera of dirty laundry in which no one comes out well

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He Elon Musk lawsuit against OpenAI (or rather, against Sam Altman) is being the soap opera of the year in the tech universe. The main accusation is that OpenAI violated its founding agreement to be a non-profit organizationbut the rivalry between its two protagonists goes far beyond business, it’s personal. The trial was intended to be a spectacle in which all kinds of dirty laundry were going to be aired and it is not disappointing. Two versions very different. Or rather, completely opposite. Elon Musk’s version is that OpenAI has betrayed the founding agreement of being a non-profit organization, whose goal was to achieve AGI that would benefit humanity, all because of the greed of Sam Altman. “This lawsuit is very simple: it is wrong to steal from a charity,” he said in his opening statement. The OpenAI version It’s just the opposite: the one who intended to profit was Elon Musk and, when the rest of the founders did not want to follow his plans, he left angry. According to OpenAI’s lawyer, Musk’s anger began when the ChatGPT boom occurred in 2022. “That’s when the resentment arises,” he declared. I didn’t read the fine print. The main reason for the lawsuit is, as we said, that OpenAI changed its founding commitment to achieving AGI to serve humanity. Although there are emails that agree with Musk, in 2017 he signed a document detailing the transition to a for-profit company. When asked why he signed said document if he was against it, Musk said that “I didn’t read the fine print, just the headline,” a statement that doesn’t play in her favor, especially when she has tried to sell the role of deceived victim. Desperate Altman. Both parties have provided evidence to defend their position, among which all types of annotations and private conversations that leave both in a very bad place. One of those conversations is an exchange of messages between Sam Altman and Mira Murati in 2023when Altman was removed from the companyin which he has a desperate attitude, even suggesting that Microsoft buy OpenAI to be able to return. The exchange shows a very non-transparent and chaotic internal climate, closer to a power negotiation than an organization with an altruistic mission. burning man. Part of the defense strategy of OpenAI’s lawyers is to paint Elon Musk as an unstable and unreliable person. Among the questions they asked him, one stood out in which they questioned whether Musk had attended the Burning Man music festival and whether he had consumed ‘rhino ketamine’. The CEO of SpaceX denied it and the judge vetoed further questions about substance use. The informant. One of the key witnesses is Shivon Zilis, who between 2020 and 2023 was part of the OpenAI board. At the same time, Zilis was in a romantic relationship with Musk and had four children with him. The problem, according to OpenAI, is that none of this was communicated and Zilis was actually acting as an informant of Musk, who tried to influence the company’s decisions from outside. Brockman’s Diary. Greg Brockman, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, kept a diary in which he wrote down all kinds of thoughts. Brockman saw the break with Musk as “the only opportunity” to remove OpenAI from its orbit, while he openly considered how to reach $1 billion. For Musk’s team, the diary is gold because they present it as proof of their intention to get rich. For OpenAI, it is simply the internal dialogue of a Brockman concerned about the tension between its mission and economic sustainability. Cover image | Village Global and Gage Skidmorevia Flickr In Xataka | Sam Altman has been searching for a revolutionary device for the AI ​​era for some years. That device is… a cell phone

How a seat change on flight KL592 has shown the cracks in the system

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We’ve been talking about it for two weeks. hantavirus in Europe and the script is getting more complicated. It is no longer just the three dead, the rejection of the president of the Canary Islands, the air evacuations to Nebraska or the French emergency decrees. Now, in the last few hours, the plane thing is added. And the Health Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia investigate a third case: a passenger on flight KL592 who did not appear in the first scan because she had changed seats during the flight. The important thing here is not the virus. It never has been: hantaviruses have been known for decadesthe Andes variant has waging war for years and the WHO itself classifies the population risk as low. The important thing is the x-ray that traces everything about our international epidemiological control system. And what a picture… The way in which this outbreak has been detected (an autopsy in Johannesburg and not through active surveillance protocols), the failures of tracing (about thirty people disembarked before there was an alert) and the heterogeneous response of the different states are drawing the first serious “stress test” for a world that said it was prepared for the post-COVID world. But it wasn’t. Although the response is being good, effective and worthy of praise, there are three big gaps that we cannot ignore: how diseases are tracked in an increasingly complex world, what happens to the international health cooperation network (when there are people actively trying to dismantle it) and how is it possible that a change of seat can be, even today, enough to lose a contact. In the end, what differentiates this outbreak from that of El Bolsón in ’96 or that of Epuyén in 2018 is that, in addition to affecting a considerable group of Westerners, it has generated an enormous trail of cases internationally. We must not forget that the first deceased from the ship died on April 11 and no one identified the cause until three weeks later. In fact, the detection has had a lot to do with chance: if it had not been for the autopsy that was performed on his wife in Johannesburg, no one would have found out until a long time later. That allowed more than thirty people to get off the ship and move around the world. And how is it that we have ‘unlearned’? The best example is the EU cross-border tracking system which, although it has many technical and legal devices, has been hibernating since 2026. But there are many more, no country had updated protocols for a virus that, let us remember, was causing problems in one of the largest (and interconnected) metropolitan areas in the southern hemisphere. And that should lead us to reflect on how we are going to prepare for a world where these types of problems They are going to be more and more common. Image | Ministry of Health In Xataka | It is not so contagious, but it is very lethal: in Argentina the hantavirus went from 17% to 33% in the blink of an eye

A gigantic tunnel boring machine 16 meters in diameter is devouring the sea floor under Genoa. It is your solution against traffic

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Under the port of Genoa, the largest in Italy, there is a machine that aims to devour the sea floor meter by meter. And it does so from the bowels of the earth, 45 meters deep and without interrupting the traffic that passes above it every day. The key is a 16 meter diameter tunnel boring machine that is drilling into the seabed like butter. This is how Italy is solving one of its most entrenched mobility problems, and in the process building the first underwater tunnel of the history of the country. A problem that has been unsolved for decades. Genoa is a city trapped between the Mediterranean Sea and the foothills of the Apennines. It has no room to grow. Its historic center is a labyrinth of narrow streets, and east-west traffic has always been a headache. The solution adopted in the 1960s was to build a gigantic elevated highway, the Sopraelevata Aldo Moro, which crosses the city like a concrete scar. for her About 80,000 vehicles pass through each daybut at a high price: it blocks the view of the sea, generates constant noise and, for many citizens, is a barrier that separates the city from its own port. Its demolition has been stalled for years because no one knows what to do with that traffic in the meantime. Tragedy. The tunnel project was born from an agreement between Autostrade per l’Italia, the Italian Ministry of Transport and local administrations as compensation to the city after the collapse of the Morandi bridge in 2018. That collapse, which claimed 43 lives, left Genoa without one of its main accesses and put the highway concessionaire company under the spotlight. As part of the repair agreement, signed in October 2021, Autostrade per l’Italia, the Liguria Region, the Western Ligure Sea Port System Authority and the Municipality of Genoa agreed to build this underwater tunnel. It is, in practice, the great work of compensation for a city that suffered a tragedy. What is being built. The total route is 4.2 kilometers, of which 3.4 run under the sea floor. It will consist of two separate galleries, one in each direction, each 16 meters in diameter, and will reach a maximum depth of 45 meters below sea level. When completed, it is expected to be Italy’s first underwater tunnel, the largest in Europe (with pardon is being built between Germany and Denmark) and the fourth largest in the world by diameter. Next to nothing. The key: a Hydroshield TBM. Excavating under an active port without interrupting its activity is a monumental challenge. The solution is a TBM tunnel boring machine (Tunnel Boring Machine) Hydroshield type. Each of the two main galleries will be constructed by mechanized excavation with a Hydroshield type back-pressure armored TBM milling cutter, with an excavation diameter of approximately 16 meters. Why this type and not another? In a Hydroshield TBM, the balance in the excavation chamber is maintained through the pressure of water or bentonite slurrywhich stabilizes the excavation face. The extracted material is mixed with these sludge and transported to the surface through pipes. It is the ideal technology for unstable terrain with the presence of water: it allows you to continue drilling without the sea floor crumbling and without the sea entering the gallery. The port above is still working. The gallery measures 15.4 meters in diameter on the outside, but the useful space for circulation is somewhat less, 14.3 meters, because the walls are considerably thick. These walls are built by assembling prefabricated pieces of concrete, as if they were the staves of a giant barrel, joined together with screws and sealed with rubber gaskets so that water does not enter. As if that were not enough, an additional layer of concrete is added inside that further reinforces the impermeability, especially in the sections that are just below the port. The result is a practically airtight tube capable of withstanding the pressure of the sea on its walls. lto logistics of the work. You can’t just place a tunnel boring machine on the seabed and run it. First you have to prepare the ground. The tunnel boring machine was thrown from an attack pit in the San Benigno areaon the west side of the city. To free up that space, Autostrade first had to move a port railway line that ran through there. The railway route, about 700 meters long, has been moved about 70 meters to the south with respect to its previous position, running parallel to the port sopraelevata until passing under it in its final section. Deadlines. Preparation works started in 2023, and work began in March 2024. However, the full tender for the construction of the two main galleries was not approved until January 2026. The specifications set a period of 75 months to complete the entire work. According to the latest Autostrade documents, the TBM will complete excavation work in October 2030, with full completion of the work planned for 2031. Budget. The project started from a budget of 700 million euros, although the mayor of Genoa, Silvia Salis, confirmed that Autostrade now places the cost at more than 1,129 million euros. An escalation of costs that, according to the original agreement between the parties, is covered by a mechanism linked to national highway tolls. Transformation. When the tunnel is completed, it will allow the creation of new green areas (10 hectares, distributed in three public parks) and pedestrian routes that reconnect the city center with the sea. In the San Benigno area, on the new railway gallery already in use, the Lantern Park will be built, which will connect that sector with the city’s historic lighthouse through a bicycle and pedestrian path. In Xataka | Mexico touches the sky with a new and elegant skyscraper of 484 meters and 99 floors: it will be the tallest in all of Latin America

We had been searching for the origin of the most massive black holes for years. The answer is a cosmic carom of extreme violence

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All black holes They are the fruit of a very violent activity. However, there are some for which the known processes are insufficient. Now, an international team of scientists has discovered how the most massive black holes in the Universe form. It is a process so violent that it needs a huge star cluster to support it. Two groups of black holes. This team of scientists has analyzed the LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA Gravitational Wave Transient Catalog (GWTC4), which includes 153 detections of black hole mergers through gravitational waves. By analyzing all the available data focusing on the spin of black holes, they have seen that all of them can be divided into two large groups. On the one hand, black holes of lower mass, which arose from an ordinary stellar collapse. On the other hand, very massive black holes, arising from secondary mergers in the environment of dense star clusters. Okay, now that you understand. Generally, black holes are formed when a very massive star that has already run out of fuel collapses. This gives rise to an explosion in which the outer layers of the star are expelled, leaving only a very dense core. It is so dense that it generates a great gravitational pull and nothing can escape from it. On the other hand, there are such massive holes that do not fit with this process. They are believed to be second generation black holes. That is, two black holes they merge and then the result merges with another black hole, becoming much more immense. That would be the second group that has been detected in the GWTC4 catalog. Something doesn’t add up. This black hole merger process is so violent that, as soon as the first merger occurs, the result would fly away like a rocket For it to stay in place and merge with a third black hole, something is needed to retain it. These scientists have discovered that these are densely populated star clusters. There are so many stars in them that the gravitational attraction of all of them keeps the black hole still in place. And what does spin have to do with it? Spin is a parameter that refers to the spin of black holes. When formed in the conventional way, the spin is predictable and perfectly aligned with the star that gave rise to the black hole. On the other hand, when they are formed by a process as violent as these consecutive fusions, the spin takes a random direction, but a value predictable from the sum of the spins of the rest of the black holes. These scientists, therefore, saw that all the data coincided with that hypothesis: consecutive mergers in the environment of a very populated star cluster. A forbidden zone. On the other hand, these scientists found a forbidden strip of stellar size in which black holes could not form. There are small or huge ones, but not medium ones. Although this is something that was intuited, the complete set of data they have obtained gives a twist to what is known about the formation of black holes. Relationship with nuclear physics. As explained by these scientists, this detected mass limit seems to be related to a series of nuclear reactions that take place inside stars. Stellar nuclear reactions are nuclear fusion. Humans have learned to control nuclear fission, but it poses risks that would be solved if we also mastered nuclear fusion. Until now It is being a complicated challengebut perhaps these new findings, obtained thanks to gravitational wave analysis, could shed a little more light on this research. Everything adds up. Image | NASA, ESA, STScI and A. Sarajedini (University of Florida)/NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI) In Xataka | What happens if you fall into a black hole, explained simply in an overwhelming NASA simulation

End-to-end encryption is a great idea and that’s why it’s almost impossible to understand why Instagram removes it. Almost

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In an era where many users may be concerned about their privacy and looking to ensure their conversations are as secure as possible, Meta has made a curious move. On May 8, as planned, instagram removed end-to-end encryption in direct messages. The big question now is no longer how to communicate safely but something deeper: what interest Meta may have in those conversations. And AI leads the first suspicions. In short. Although it may seem contradictory, Meta is a company that has shown some concern about allowing the user to have secure private conversations. WhatsApp has been using end-to-end encryption for years and, although It took longer to arrive than desiredFaceBook and Instagram also implemented it for direct messages years ago. Simply put, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a technology that ensures that only the sender and receiver can read chats. There are applications that implemented it by default (WhatsApp), but on Instagram it wasn’t like that. It is the user who had to activate it and, if done, automatically and transparently for the user, the device blocks the message using a unique key that prevents anyone other than the recipient from accessing the conversation. It’s over. Download your messages. As we say, it has been on their support blog where Meta has confirmed that end-to-end encrypted messages are no longer available on Instagram. Since last May 8, in fact, and if you have a chat that was protected in this way, a message will appear with instructions to download the messages and keep them safe in case you want to do so. Pressure. The end of this security feature has not been accompanied by a reason why Meta abandons this feature, but it is clear that the company has not done it simply for the sake of it. A few weeks ago, when the company’s plans were announced, a Meta spokesperson told Guardian that “very few people were choosing to send end-to-end encrypted messages.” That was the main reason they cited for stopping service, but you don’t have to scratch the surface too hard to find shadier reasons. For example, different police agencies (Interpol, the United Kingdom National Crime Agency or the FBI) ​​have been pressuring FaceBook to grant them access to encrypted messages. Because of course, this technology is very useful for all of us who value privacy, but it also gives wings to those who want to use it for much darker purposes. There are organizations that have criticized the implementation in apps like Instagram because they point out that, although it is useful, if the company does not implement adequate security measures, it can intensify acts of child sexual exploitationterrorism or giving rise to violent extremism. In fact, the UK government has been searching that Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp or iMessage open or end with that end-to-end encryption. And Apple has had a media battle against the FBI for that very reason. The suspicion. But of course, for a company that has been promoting the discourse since 2019 that encryption in its applications was the way to follow to protect users, this movement seems strange and there are already those who point to more practical reasons for Meta than, simply, to please governments. Those reasons are the ability to train AI. Because if there is no encryption, there is nothing hidden. And, although there is no human reading (although it seems increasingly evident that behind the AI there are humans labeling what our video devices and voice see and hear), having access to the conversations of millions of users allows the algorithms to continue training with the aim of offer advertising more personalized (something that Meta has become very aggressive about in recent months) or chatbots that can continue drinking the Internet. It’s not such a crazy theory.. WhatsApp. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can go to WhatsApp,” is Meta’s own recommendation and something they said both in statements to The Guardian and on their support page. Because for their communication app they do continue to aggressively push that argument of “express yourself freely with end-to-end encryption”, “show yourself as you are, speak freely” and “no one else has access, not even WhatsApp”. Seeing that the company maintains this encryption on WhatsApp, but not on an Instagram that is increasingly a bazaar, makes the opinion that they withdraw end-to-end encryption based solely on government pressure lose some weight. In any case, as Meta itself says, if you want privacy in your conversations… you will have to go to WhatsApp. Or to any other app with end-to-end encryption. In Xataka | Meta will pay $1.4 billion to Texas for violating the privacy of its users. Used facial recognition without permission

There are people who buy plants to purify the air in their home. The reality is that you are wasting your time

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When we want to give a little life to our homes, the first thing we think about is putting in several plants with the idea that, in addition to giving it a more natural touch, they will also clean the air we breathe. And it’s no wonder, because all you have to do is take a look around the internet or through the hallways of any nursery to find us. with the promise that pothos, mother-in-law’s tongue or ribbon are “natural purifiers” that eliminate toxins. But It’s not like that. The origin of the idea. To understand why we blindly believe in the purifying power of the plants that we can have in our home, the responsibility lies with NASA and its classic studies published in the 80s. Here, in their quest to find ways to clean the air on space stations, researchers placed different plants in hermetically sealed chambers and injected volatile organic compounds that were partly removed by the plants. This was very relevant, but the extrapolation to the general population, not so much. And these investigations were carried out in an airtight chamber in a laboratory, and at the moment a home or an office is not hermetically closed, but there is the possibility of air constantly entering and leaving through windows, doors or cracks. But this detail has not resonated so much with the population. A bath of reality. This arrived in 2019, where a study from Drexel University analyzed a dozen previous studies to evaluate actual plant performance using a standard metric: the clean air delivery rate, or CADR. Here the conclusion reached is that potted plants do not improve indoor air quality in a relevant way. And the explanation is purely mechanical, since the normal ventilation of any building eliminates volatile organic compounds at a rate faster than the absorption capacity of an indoor plant. Size matters. With this premise, for the plants to match the purification achieved by the ventilation system of a standard building or the simple act of opening windows, you would need between 10 and 1,000 plants per square meter. I mean, you would have to literally turn your living room into a dense, impassable rainforest to notice the difference. Very controlled exceptions. This does not mean that all pro-plant studies lie, but rather that context is everything, since some studies point to a decrease in CO₂ levels. A notable example is a study conducted in a school in Portugal, where flower pots were introduced into classrooms and an improvement in the air was measured. However, the scientists themselves warn that these are highly specific and controlled environments and their results cannot be mathematically extrapolated to what happens in the living room of a normal apartment or in a standard office. There is no evidence. Given all this that we already know, the authorities are sharp noting that there is no evidence that a reasonable number of indoor plants remove significant amounts of pollutants in homes and offices. What do we have to do? In order to improve air quality inside the home, the important thing here is to reduce the use of chemicals and avoid smoking indoors. In addition, opening the windows every day to renew the air is the key measure, as well as the installation of air purifiers, which are almost mandatory in many cases for people who have significant allergies. Images | freepik In Xataka | The countries that pollute the most in the world, gathered in a detailed graph

Spotify charts have been filled with AI songs. It is largely a consequence of what Spotify has encouraged

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Songs like ‘I still breathe‘ either ‘I loved myself more‘, performed by Ruby Black, have topped Spotify’s algorithmic charts in Spain for weeks. Ruby Black does not exist: she is a singer generated with artificial intelligence distributed by a label called Silencio Capital, with more than one hundred thousand followers on Instagram and a new single every Thursday. Spotify is now announcing measures that try to quell this wave of synthetic artists, but everything indicates that this new situation is here to stay. And we have asked for it. Who’s that girl. In April 2026Ruby Black topped the first spot on Spotify’s list of The 50 Most Viral in Spain. Soul-type ballads, very soft, with vocal echoes of Rosalía and other fashion trends in pop in Spanish, lyrics of heartbreak and improvement, and covers and video clips generated by artificial intelligence. Google’s own AI, when consulted about the artist, lied when describing her as a “human, not AI, singer, known for ballads like ‘I Still Breathe’.” How are the machines? Its release of weekly singles is unequivocal: chain production applied to entertainment, thanks to a catalog that continually grows, minimal cost, zero emotional ties with real creators… Ruby Black is not the only one of her kind: the same viral top, as different media have commented, includes equally dubious artists such as Nyx Solaris. But Ruby Black is the one who has reached the highest thanks to the undoubted advantage of singing in Spanish. There is AI but… how much AI? According to what he said Deezer this monthreceive around 75,000 completely AI-generated tracks every day, 44% of all new content. In January 2025, just over a year ago, there were only 10,000. Spotify, for its part, removed more than 7.5 million tracks generated by AI in the twelve months prior to September 2025, many of them linked to mass generation tools. Its entire catalog is around 100 million songs. We don’t distinguish it. It is not only an ethical issue, but it is increasingly difficult to identify AI-generated music. A study commissioned by Deezer with 9,000 people in eight countries published in November 2025 concluded that 97% of the participants were not able to distinguish between songs generated by AI and human songs in a blind test. 80% of them believed that 100% artificial music should be clearly labeled. The demand exists but the platforms have not yet reacted. Step forward from Deezer. In fact, Deezer is the only one that, to date, has implemented its own detection system. In June 2025 began flagging albums that included 100% AI-generated tracks and to exclude them from algorithmic recommendations and editorial playlists. In January 2026 put that same technology on sale so that other platforms could take advantage of it. Deezer also found that 85% of streams of AI music are fraudulent, and that is why it excludes them from its distribution of royalties. It is the only one that has taken such an openly anti-AI stance. Apple Music launched in March 2026 Transparency Tagsa metadata system that allows labels and distributors to voluntarily declare whether they have used AI in vocals, songwriting, cover art or video. And Spotify works with DDEXthe music industry standards body, on a metadata system for song credits that indicates how AI has been used, also voluntary. Spotify’s latest move. To all this, the most followed platform has added the verification seal ‘Verified by Spotify‘ to ensure that there are humans behind each artist profile. Artists like Ruby Black are, precisely, proof that the formula limps: with a massive following on networks, a single every week, and number one on the top viral list in Spain, he has everything Spotify needs to award him the “real artist” label. A well-managed synthetic avatar can meet Spotify’s criteria (consistent activity, compliance with platform policies, signs of an artist’s real presence) and be a synthetic creation. The root of the problem. The truth is that all this fuss was not born with generative models. Liz Pelly, author of the book ‘Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist’, has been documenting for years how Spotify has systematically built a listening model based on lean-back listening: mood playlists, algorithmic recommendations that prioritize the most generic song in an artist’s catalog, the content that works best as a background sound. The author also revealed the existence of the internal program called Perfect Fit Content (PFC): since 2017, Spotify has filled its most popular playlists with “ghost artists” musicproduced in series to reduce the cost of royalties. Twenty composers were behind the work of more than five hundred “artists”and its tracks were listened to millions of times. Playlists such as Deep Focus, Cocktail Jazz or Ambient Relaxation were almost entirely composed by Perfect Fit Content. AI has not broken into a healthy ecosystem: platforms have been favoring anonymous, interchangeable and depersonalized content for years. And awarded by the algorithm. The Instagram-core. The phenomenon has an exact reflection on Instagram. In the same way that there is a Instagram-core (that homogeneous aesthetic of Reels with fast transitions, viral music, warm light and motivational text), there is almost the Spotify-core that Ruby Black represents. That is, designed to exceed the thirty-second hearing threshold (quick emotional hook, recognizable or directly cloned voice, lyrics that impact at first) that Spotify counts as a listen. Or put another way: Spotify can delete 75 million tracks and announce anti-spam filters. But as long as it continues to reward with its algorithm the most comfortable, ephemeral and generic song to captivate a listener who listens without paying attention, Ruby Black is just one more profile (a millionaire, of course) in a problem that has been brewing for years. In Xataka | Dear Spotify, it’s about time you had a button that allows you to filter AI-generated music

solar panels that do not compete with the earth, but rather protect it

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In the vast regions of northern Mexico, where the sun beats down with relentless intensity and water is an increasingly scarce and coveted resource, a quiet revolution is brewing. The growing demand for food, the scarcity of water and the urgency of moving towards clean energies force us to rethink how we manage our resources. In this scenario, a technology emerges that seems to challenge the traditional logic of competition for land: agrivoltaics. Far from choosing between growing food or harvesting light, agrivoltaics strategically combines agricultural production and solar energy generation on the same surface. By installing solar panels elevated above the crops, space is dually used without interrupting agricultural activities. A concept that comes from Germany. This idea, which began to germinate in Germany in the eightiesmanaged to land as a real option in Mexico thanks to the historic collapse in the prices of solar panels during the last decade, which transformed this vision into a financially viable alternative for countries with our climatic characteristics. In the year 2023, The Mexican Agrovoltaic Network (RAMe) is bornan initiative that, according to its own mission statement, seeks to analyze, disseminate and promote these projects by integrating specialists from multiple disciplines. Today, RAMe brings together more than 70 organizations—including universities, companies and rural communities—with a presence in at least 14 states in the country. The urgency to optimize the territory. According to data revealed in Intersolar Mexico 2026For this year alone, conventional photovoltaic developments have been authorized that will devour around 5,000 hectares of land. This shows a voracious need for space for electricity generation that, if not managed properly, could displace primary activities. “Agrivoltaics comprehensively addresses three critical challenges for the country: energy security, water security and food security,” explained Valeria Amezcuapresident of the RAMe. Water is crucial. In Mexico, the agricultural sector consumes about 76% of the available fresh water. This is where solar panels they do their magic: they act as technological umbrellas that moderate high temperatures and protect crops from intense solar radiation. This drastically reduces plant evapotranspiration, helps conserve soil moisture and reduces water demand. The potential for the country is massive. If we look to the southeast, in the Yucatan Peninsula —where electricity consumption is growing above the national average— the data is revealing: Using just between 1% and 2% of the region’s livestock territory would allow for the installation of up to 12,000 MW of solar capacity. Current energy needs would be covered without the need to cut down a single hectare of forest or sacrifice the livestock vocation of the land. lThe challenges from the field to the law. However, bringing the theory to the field involves technical and economic challenges. photovoltaic structures must be modified and installed at a higher height (up to two meters) to allow the passage of tractors and the natural growth of plants. This adaptation increases installation costs between 50% and 100%. Despite the cost barrier, the evidence in the field is promising, since there are successful tests with lettuce, tomato, carrot and chiltepin pepper crops. In addition, RAMe is leading projects with high social impact, such as collaboration with Otomi communities in the State of Mexico, installing panels on greenhouses to generate clean energy that powers drip irrigation systems, saving up to 80% of water. The academic effort in Mexico City with the Sustainable and Educational Agrovoltaic Plot (PASE) also stands out. promoted by UNAM. However, the biggest current brake is bureaucratic. In Mexico, agrivoltaics lacks its own legal figure. Producers and developers face a regulatory labyrinth where they are required to process the same permits as a large-scale power plant, even though the land maintains its original agricultural vocation. This contrasts with countries like Italy, that have already been adapted its legislation to facilitate this dual model. htowards the circular economy. For the model to be truly revolutionary, it is not enough to generate shade and electricity; We must also look towards the earth. The magazine of the National Solar Energy Association (ANES) puts an innovative proposal on the table: integrate solar pyrolysis to manage agricultural waste (stems, stubble, leaves) left after harvest. Solar pyrolysis is a process where biomass decomposes at high temperatures (between 400 and 800 °C) limiting oxygen. Unlike conventional methods, this uses a solar oven (composed of a heliostat and a parabolic concentrator) as a source of pure heat, eliminating the use of fossil fuels. With this you obtain biochar (biochar), a highly stable and porous material that remains in the soil for decades. This biochar is an excellent improver that increases soil fertility, optimizes water retention and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, becoming the perfect ally against climate change and replacing chemical fertilizers. A call to action. The circular agrovoltaic model, anchored in the vital nexus of Water-Energy-Food, is much more than an engineering curiosity. But as the RAMe warnsthere is a latent risk: that the energy transition is purely technological and forgets the people. Changing the origin of electrons from fossil to solar is of little use if it does not improve the quality of life and the economy of peasant families. The development of this sector will inevitably require effective public policies, strategic investment and genuine collaboration between the agricultural, energy and academic sectors. Agrivoltaics is not only a technical alternative to meet clean generation quotas; is an imperative call to action to build a more resilient and equitable future. Mexico has the sun, it has the land and it has the urgency; Now all that is missing is the will to awaken this sleeping giant. Image | EnelGreenPower Xataka | Chile has one of the most valuable skies on Earth. Renewables are putting it on the ropes

The hantavirus outbreak has sparked a search to find its origin. Ushuaia fears that this will cost it its tourism

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Until a few days ago, the vast majority of Spaniards had never heard of hantavirus. Probably not Ushuaiathe capital of the province of Tierra del Fuego. The crisis unleashed by the MV Hondius cruise ship, however, has united both names in one of the most worrying episodes so far in the turbulent 2026, at least in health terms. And so worries in Ushuaia. A lot. Although there are still unknowns about how, where and when the viral outbreak broke out, in the southern region they fear that what happened affects one of the pillars of their economy: tourism. They even talk about a “smear campaign”. And the hantavirus arrived. Although there are still many months ahead until December, 2026 seemed basically doomed to be the year of the iran waroil through the clouds, Maduro’s arrest or (in another order of things) the North American World Cup. Now that list is expanded with one more item: the hantavirus. Since on May 2 A viral outbreak was confirmed on board the MV Hondius, the world is waiting for what happens to the ship, its passengers and the chain of possible people infected by a virus that until almost two weeks ago was almost completely unknown in Europe. In a place in Patagonia… In Ushuaia, capital of the province of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina), one of the southernmost cities of the planet, the evolution of the outbreak is also being followed with interest. Although there what really generates debate is not the last hour about the outbreak or what may happen from now on, but what has happened in recent weeks. The reason is very simple: the fateful voyage of the MV Hondius left its port April 1. When the ship set sail, there were about 140 passengers on board, including the septuagenarian Dutchman who only a few days later (on the 6th) began to show symptoms of infection. More than a month has passed since then, four long weeks during which events have happened at breakneck speed. That first patient died on April 11, days later his wife did and since then at least one more dead and half a dozen infected. As for the MV Hondius, after the evacuation of the last hours on board the ship there are only a few dozen of people who will continue heading to the Netherlands. What has not changed is the question that authorities have been asking for days: Where is the origin of the outbreak? Where the hell did the Dutch couple get infected? A remote landfill. Taking into account the incubation period of hantavirus, which ranges between one and six weeks, authorities are working with the hypothesis that the epicenter of the outbreak is not on the ship. That is, the most plausible theory (at least in appearance) is that the virus they took him to the MV Hondius one or more travelers who were already carrying it before navigation began. That made all eyes turn first to the couple of Dutch retirees and second to Ushuaia, the place where they embarked. In recent days the conversation has revolved around a very specific point in the town: a garbage dump located about seven kilometers from the center of Ushuaia, a place where, assures The Countryepidemiologists are looking for traces of infected rodents. Hantavirus infection, let us remember, is contracted mainly by coming into contact with the urine, feces or saliva of certain rodents. The most common thing is that contagion occurs by inhaling remains of this waste in poorly ventilated spaces, but it could also be contracted in a large landfill. The unknowns begin. That a Dutch couple (he 70 years old, she 69) stop by a mega urban garbage dump before embarking on a luxury cruise through the South Atlantic may sound strange, but it makes a lot of sense. The MV Hondius trip was not just any trip. It was planned as an expedition cruise to contemplate Atlantic fauna. And the Ushuaia landfill is not just any garbage dump either. Lovers of birds and natural photography usually go there to enjoy the species that fly over it, including scavenger birds such as the white matamico. In recent days it has been published that some of the travelers who boarded the MV Hondius visited the dump. The Country even interviewed to a guide who was in the area with some of the tourists from the cruise, although the Dutch couple was not among them. Did they get infected there? Is that the epicenter and genesis of the outbreak? Hard to know. First because the marriage (unfortunately) has died. Second, because before boarding the cruise the couple had made a long road trip that took them to different parts of South America. In fact, it is believed that they were four months visiting several countries on the continent, including Chile and Uruguay. “We have no evidence”. This fact (that the first deaths were in other parts of South America) has been strongly emphasized by the authorities of Ushuaia, who do not quite understand that the couple was infected in their territory. The reason? The main one, insists Juan Facundo Petrina, general director of Epidemiology and Environmental Health of the province, is that the hantavirus is not a problem in the area. “In Tierra del Fuego we have no record of cases in our history,” clarifies to the BBC. “Specifically, since 1996, when the National Surveillance System included it among the notifiable diseases, we have not had a single case in Tierra del Fuego.” More than 1,000 km north. As if that were not enough, Petrina details a few more facts. To begin with, the hantavirus endemic area is more than 1,500 km to the north. Also remember that there are no records confirming that the mouse subspecies that transmits the disease lives in the area. “And if rodents begin to move, since they do not respect borders, it is important to remember that we are an island,” duck. Another key that … Read more

Google has become (even) more demanding with captchas. The Open Source community has not been amused at all

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One of the conversations of the weekend was carried out by important developers, such as those from GrapheneOS. Google’s new security measures related to website access are beginning to be implemented in 2026 and, as a result, both custom ROMs and operating systems without Google presence have it tough. Google Cloud Fraud. If someone is okay with traffic light captchas as a security measure, I would tell you that they are not trustworthy. Google was also clear that they were not always ideal, so it developed an alternative solution, the evolution of reCAPTCHA. When the system detects suspicious traffic, it does not use the captcha system, it asks the user to scan a QR code with their smartphone. According to Googleis the best way to fight against bots and unwanted agents, protecting against attacks and possible fraud. But everything has a B side. The problem. The problem is that, for this security measure to work on Android, it is mandatory that the device has Google Play Services installed in a recent version. One of the key points of custom ROMs like GrapheneOS It is precisely that they are systems based on Open Source Android, but without Google services. Google Play Services is Google’s proprietary software layer that runs on certified Androids and provides, among other things, the APIs that verify that a device is approved by Google. Without them, it is not possible to satisfy the requests of the Play Integrity API, which is responsible for approving web access. The GrapheneOS case. GrapheneOS is one of the most secure ROMs in the world, one that has earned its reputation thanks to additional layers built on AOSP and, above all, by not having Google services or needing them for its operation. The GrapheneOS team argues that this has nothing to do with security. They claim that Play Integrity API rejects GrapheneOS and other systems even though it is technically more secure than most devices that do pass verification. Google’s Play Integrity API allows devices without security patches for years but updated to Play Services, but blocks the use of GrapheneOS even though it is much more technically secure. Mega’s entrance. After the complaint not only from Graphene, but from Cyber ​​DigestMega has come in to criticize the measure. Remember that in 2023 an attempt was made to do something similar with Web Environment Integrity (WEI). This was a proposal that Google had to abandon after criticism. That year, Google tried to put in place a mechanism that would allow websites to check whether the software and hardware on a user’s device was verified by Google. The logic was the same as now: if your settings did not conform to what Google considered acceptable, access was blocked. The proposal generated such widespread rejection among developers, web standards organizations and users that Google had to withdraw it. And now what. The relevant question is not whether or not Google is entitled to do this, because it is. The question is what happens when the de facto standard for online verification is controlled by the same company that sells the hardware and software necessary to surpass it. In Xataka | There is a race to get the first phone with 100% free software: so far there has only been failure

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