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If you think that renovating your house is urgent, think about this building in Ukraine. Its hole is so big that it is a danger for Europe

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He Chernobyl accident released so much radiation that some areas they remain uninhabitable almost four decades later. In fact, the plant continues to house materials capable of remaining dangerous for thousands of years. Therefore, keeping them under control is one of the greatest engineering challenges ever faced in Europe. A challenge that a drone has put to the test. It was to last a century. The story we tell it a few months ago. The gigantic steel arch built over Chernobyl reactor 4 was conceived as a definitive solution to contain the worst nuclear accident in history for at least a hundred years, a colossal structure designed to isolate the ancient “sarcophagus” and buy humanity time. More than 100 meters high and capable of housing entire monuments inside, this system had to resist extreme conditions and allow the safe decommissioning of the reactor, encapsulating hundreds of tons of radioactive material that remain active decades after the disaster. The impact that changed everything. But everything changed in February 2025when a drone attack in the middle of the night pierced that shell seemingly invulnerable, opening a breach in the structure and exposing a system that was never designed to operate in a war environment. Although there were no immediate leaks or casualties, the damage compromised critical functionsespecially ventilation that controls humidity and prevents corrosion, introducing a silent but growing risk that could degrade the structure in a few years. What is still hidden under the steel. Under the damaged arch remains an environment extremely unstable: remains of the reactor, tons of nuclear fuel and melts of highly radioactive materials that continue to react slowly. The old “sarcophagus,” hastily built in 1986, was never structurally reliableand is actually completely dependent on the new cover to maintain the insulation. In other words, if that balance fails, the risk is not immediate, but potentially devastating, with the possibility of release radioactive dust that the wind could disperse throughout Europe. A “reform” as expensive as it is complex. System restore will not be neither quick nor easysince it involves working in conditions of high radiation, with strict limitations on time and exposure for operators. Temporary solutions barely contain the most urgent damage, while full restoration will require rebuilding highly specialized internal layers within a structure designed as a technical “sandwich”. We are talking about an estimated cost that exceeds 500 million of euros, a figure that reflects both the technical complexity and the hostile environment in which repairs must be carried out. The war enters Europe’s greatest nuclear risk. If you like, the incident it is not isolatedbut part of a context in which nuclear infrastructure have become exposed elements within an active conflict. Paradoxically, the Chernobyl exclusion zone that we had to protect from any danger has been the scene of military operationstroop movements and constant overflights of missiles and drones, which multiplies the risk of new impacts, whether accidental or intentional. In that scenario, even a technical failure or trajectory error could trigger consequences continental in scope. A reminder of what never ended. They remembered in a special from the Financial Times this week that, decades after the accident, Chernobyl remains the same latent threat, one that requires constant vigilance and international cooperation, and the drone impact has revealed the fragility of the systems designed to contain it. The infrastructure that was to definitively close the disastrous episode of 1986 now faces a new type of risk, thus demonstrating that nuclear safety depends not only on engineering, but also of geopolitical stabilitya (and common sense). In that delicate balance, each crack is not just a structural failure, but a warning about the limits of our ability to control the consequences of our own creations. Image | EBRD In Xataka | Drones in Ukraine have mutated into a system reminiscent of the Alien universe: an exoskeleton turns troops into super soldiers In Xataka | Iran is exploiting the US’s weak point: it is not its F-35s or its Patriot missiles, it is the bill every time they take off

Does Apple’s computer have real competition?

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He MacBook Neo It has burst in like an elephant in a china shop because many of us have been asking Apple to launch an affordable laptop for years. The question at this point is how it compares to Windows laptops that are around a similar price. We have selected three interesting models for this price and we are going to put them face to face to see how the new Apple equipment looks in front of them. You have the models in question right below. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links HP 15-fd0402ns – 15.6″ FHD laptop (Intel Core 5 120U, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Intel Graphics, Windows 11) Blue – Spanish QWERTY keyboard The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Gen 8 – 15.6″ FHD Laptop (Intel Core i5-13420H, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, Intel UHD Graphics, Wi-Fi 6, Win 11 Home, Office Trial) Spanish QWERTY Keyboard – Arctic Gray The price could vary. We earn commission from these links acer Aspire Go 15 – 15.6″ Laptop (Intel Core i7 13620H, 16 GB DDR5 RAM, 1024 GB SSD, Windows 11 Home, Intel UHD Graphics) Silver Color, Spanish QWERTY Keyboard with Numeric Keyboard The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Differences between the MacBook Neo and similarly priced Windows alternatives Fewer inches, but a higher quality screen The MacBook Neo has a 13 inch screensmaller than the rest of its rivals in this comparison, at 15.6 inches. It is a difference that is noticeable in practice, especially if you are a user who usually works with several windows open at the same time. Now, this smaller size will also be noticeable in the dimensions and weight of the equipment, something we will talk about a little later. If we remove the issue of size from the equation, the MacBook Neo’s screen will win over that of these laptops with Windows operating systems. Not only in color representation (Apple’s True Tone technology does a lot there), but also in the brightness levelwhere he has one higher than that of his opponents. What does this mean? If we work in a room or in a place where there is a lot of light, we will be able to see what we are doing more easily. The operating system is the most important difference A difference that must be addressed and that is not exclusive to this new Neo is the issue of the operating system. Choosing the Apple laptop will introduce us to MacOS, a lightweight and visually very clean operating system. It is true that it is much less customizable than Windows, but in it you will find all the most typical office tools or similar that you need to work or study. Also, if you have an iPhone, you can receive your notifications on your laptop. Or even use an iPad as a second screen. On the other hand, there is Windows. It is a more demanding operating system for the hardware, but in exchange it is also more customizable and usually works better with several windows at the same time. Besides, It is also easier to install applications and gamesalthough these teams are not designed to play. You can also connect your mobile phone to this operating system, although it does not reach Apple’s level of integration. The hardware differences, beyond the numbers Let’s move on to the hardware, which is where the meat of this comparison is. By numbers, if we look at the specifications of the three Windows laptops (you can find them below in a comparison table), they are superior. The MacBook Neo comes with a mobile processor (the A18 Pro that was mounted on the iPhone 16 Pro), but that doesn’t mean it should be underestimated: has more power than a MacBook Air M1. Putting the processors of Windows computers on the table, we have a quite different bouquet. The Acer laptop comes with a 13th generation Intel Core i7, which can offer Better performance in heavy tasks like 4K video editing than the rest. The Lenovo, with its Intel Core i5 of the same generation, is the intermediate option and the HP, with an Intel Core 5 120 U, is the least powerful of all, but with enough for office automation and simple tasks. Important point related to the processor: temperature management. A laptop, due to space issues, has very little room to cool its interior. With very intensive use, it is possible that Windows laptops tend to heat up more and emit noise from the fans. This is something that the MacBook Neo will not suffer at that level, since Apple laptops They are characterized by being very quiet. Processors aside, there is also the issue of memory. The MacBook Neo only has an 8GB RAM configuration, just half of what the three similarly priced Windows options offer. Here we have two things to keep in mind: MacOS is a less demanding operating system, so we will have a more fluid experience than in Windows. However, the 16 GB of RAM is better if you are one of those who has dozens of tabs open in the browser. And finally, there is the issue of storage. This is where the Apple team loses the most, since this configuration It only comes with 256 GB capacity (There is one with 512 GB, but it is more expensive). The HP and Acer laptops win by a landslide, both with 1 TB of storage. The Lenovo falls right in the middle with its 512 GB of storage. If we are going to move a lot with it, the Apple laptop is better The beauty of a laptop is, above all, that it is portable. They are devices designed to work there and there, no matter if it is in the office or on board a train. We may spend part of the day carrying them and, logically, the lighter … Read more

Lisa Ann retired from porn over a decade ago. AI has given him a second career without him having to act again

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In the porn industryfew careers last as long as Lisa Ann’s. He started in adult cinema in the mid-90s and retired in 2014, more than two decades later. However, what seemed like a permanent retirement has turned out not to be because Lisa Ann is back, or rather her AI avatar. Reincorporation. They tell it in Wired. The well-known porn actress Lisa Ann has returned to the adult entertainment industry, and she has done so through OhChat, a platform like OnlyFansbut in which, instead of with real people, users interact with AI avatars. Ann, who confesses to being an AI enthusiast, thought it was a good way to continue monetizing her image without having to return to porn. “It keeps my name alive and it will never get old,” he tells Wired. Lisa Ann is not the only former porn actress on the platform, there are also others like Cherie Deville, Tera Patrick or Brandi Love. The Onlyfans of AI. In OhChat, users pay an amount depending on the interaction they seek with the avatar. For $5 you can have unlimited text conversations, but if you want to have images and audio you have to go up to $10, although with limitations. To get all the unlimited content the cost is $30. Each creator has their own subscription, just like OnlyFans, and the company keeps 20%. There are other apps like Joi AI, SinfulX.AI and My.Club that offer similar content. Not just porn (but almost all porn). OhChat has already reached 400,000 users and has more than 350 creators (almost all women), although only 193 appear to us. Each avatar is marked with an icon indicating whether it offers explicit, topless, or ‘sexy’ content. The latter is what other types of profiles offer, such as the well-known actress Carmen Elektra or even influencers. However, the explicit content far exceeds the more restrained one; Doing a search we only found 35 avatars that offer sexy content and 109 that make explicit sexual content. Consensual deepfakes. The sexual deepfakes They have been making headlines for a long time now, there have been fines and even the government wants to regulate them. We recently witnessed the case of Grok and how filled X with photos of naked womenall without the consent of those affected, of course. Platforms like OhChat are presented as a way to create and monetize these deepfakes, without intermediaries. For creators, it is a way to generate passive income and, in the case of well-known profiles like Lisa Ann, continue exploiting their image without having to get in front of a camera. AI Relationships. This is just one more example of a trend that is increasingly gaining more presence, and that is People are making connections with AI. There are those who engage a friendly relationshipwho is looking for a romantic or, as in this case, simply sexual connection. Which In 2013 it was the plot of that great movietoday it is a reality for many people: AI has become an accompaniment and many companies have seen a business there. Image | Wikipedia, OhChat In Xataka | There are people cheating on their partners. Everything normal except because they are doing it with an AI

It should be impossible for an iPhone 17 Pro to run a gigantic 400B AI model. Ought

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The iPhone 17 Pro has 12 GB of unified memory. It is a very decent figure for a mobile phone, but in theory absolutely insufficient to run large AI models locally. And therein lies the surprise: a new project has made it possible for this mobile phone to run locally a model with 400,000 million parameters (400B). And that opens the doors to a promising horizon. Giant AI model, dwarf memory. A developer named Daniel Woods (@dandeveloper) has created, thanks to AI, a new inference engine called Flash-MoE whose code has been published as Open Source on GitHub accompanied by a study about his behavior. woods managed to run locally the Qwen 3.5 397B model (the full version, without distillation or quantization) on your MacBook Pro with 48 GB of RAM. Downloaded the model (209 GB on disk) and developed that inference engine to achieve something that seemed almost impossible. Other developers have gone even further and have managed to run models like DeepSeek-V3 (671B) or even Kimi K2.5 (1.026B!!) on their MacBooks. The speed is slow, no doubt, but they work, they work. It’s amazing. iPhone 17 Pro is capable of running a 400B model. Another developer called Anemll wanted to go a little further and try to run this model with almost 400,000 million parameters on his iPhone 17 Pro with 12 GB of RAM… and he succeeded. It is true that the model is very slow in responses (0.6 tokens per second, very unusable), but achieving something like this opens the doors to a future in which video or unified memory is no longer so critical to be able to use huge AI models locally. a few hours ago doubled the speed at 1.1 tokens per second, reducing the number of experts to four (2.5% quality loss in responses). It is still not entirely usable, but the technical demonstration is evident. Another user has preferred to use a somewhat smaller model (Qwen 3.5 35B) but still huge for the iPhone, and has already managed to get it to run locally at about more than acceptable 13.1 tokens per second. Why it matters. The AI ​​models we use in the cloud (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) are gigantic and run in data centers with thousands of chips and enormous amounts of memory and storage. They are the most powerful because they run on the most powerful machines. Although it is possible to use AI models locally, the models that we can run are much smaller and that makes it difficult for them to behave equally well both in quality of responses and in their speed or precision. This method opens the door to a future in which even on “modest” machines it is possible to run giant AI models that give better answers and allow us to avoid using models in the cloud. Apple already warned. Three years ago a group of Apple researchers published the study ‘LLM in a flash‘ which precisely pointed to that: to run AI models locally it would be possible not only to take advantage of the unified memory of Macs, but also their storage units. The speed would be slow, yes, but this would open up the possibility of running gigantic models locally on machines with much smaller amounts of unified memory. Woods used Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.6 and applied the new methodology “autoresearch” by Andrej Karpathy to implement Flash-MoE based on that research. The result is really promising. Video memory was everything. On my Mac mini M4, for example, I have 16 GB of unified memory. This means that with tools like Ollama you can install and run models like Qwen 3.5 4B locally with some fluidity, but 7B models or others like gpt-oss 20B would be much slower in responding (or would get stuck altogether). Video memory (or unified on Apple devices) is the most important parameter when running local models, both in terms of quantity and bandwidth. If you want to use them fluidly, that’s the limiting factor. It is possible to use “regular” RAM, but the speeds when using it are reduced so drastically that it is often better not to use that option at all. If you have a fast SSD, you have a treasure. Now the limiting factor is our SSD drive, since the model uses it as if it were a kind of substitute for video memory. And the faster the SSD drive on our computer, the better. There is good news here, because lately we are seeing how PCIe 5.0 drives they achieve about 15 GB/s without too many problems, and that speed already gives enough room for maneuver to use much larger AI models locally than we could use before. A promising future for local (and more private) AI. This discovery is really striking for everyone who wants to use AI locally, because it allows you to use huge models without having to make a huge investment in the latest generation graphics cards or, for example, in a Mac with a lot of unified memory: a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 512 GB of memory, for example, costs more than 10,000 euros. With this new method we could opt for a much cheaper machine that, with a good SSD unit, would allow us to use giant models in a fairly decent way. Not as fast as those other options, sure, but still very decent. It’s a notable step forward in enjoying the benefits of running local AI models, including the biggest of them all: privacy. With this type of local execution, our conversations and everything we tell the chatbot stays on our machine, it does not end up on the servers of companies like Google, OpenAI, Meta or Anthropic. In Xataka | Jensen Huang believes we have reached the “coming of the AI ​​wolf.” It is perfect for feeding a Tamagotchi

Sony and Honda have canceled Afeela, their first electric car. One more example of China’s triumph where others fail

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Honda has encountered a wall called the electric car. One that has carried out the development of three of its own electric cars, another that was underway with Sony and that will have an impact on its accounts of about 22.5 billion dollars. The situation, it seems, is not the best. Honda’s jump to the electric car It seemed like an immutable reality just seven years ago. Seven years may seem like a long time but in automotive industry terms it is just the usual jump between two generations of cars. Perhaps that is why the plans, in addition to being immovable, seemed risky. In October 2019, the company announced that From 2022 it would only sell electric cars in Europe. Our continent seemed to be moving towards the electric car under pressure from regulations. Tesla was booming and the companies thought that this was the best path for our market. Today, Honda’s catalog for our country does not have a single electric car. In these years, the Honda e has obtained a very discreet result, victim of a very high price. He e:Ny1, a sort of electric HR-V, is also no longer available after selling an almost negligible number of cars in our country. Along the way, they announced the development of three new electric cars for the US market, all with a groundbreaking and futuristic aesthetic. Also a car that would arrive together with a collaboration with Sony. All of this has been cancelled. The Chinese surprise Much has changed in recent years so that Honda has gone from targeting only the electric market in Europe, developing three new cars with this technology for the United States and another with Sony, to canceling everything. And the company confirmed a few days ago that he reversed his electrical project. First with the cancellation of cars designed only for the American public. The move almost seems logical. The country still does not clearly embrace the electric car and Donald Trump is giving wings to keep every combustion car alive and without any effort. With a country of enormous distances and a charging network that remains insufficientthe electric car continues to have significant pitfalls. This cancellation has had two clear consequences. The first is an impact on Honda’s accounts of more than 20,000 million dollars. How we have the case of Stellantisthis money is not a direct loss, it is the sum of the investments already made, the fines to be paid to suppliers for unfulfilled agreements and the money that is not received from the sales that had been estimated, among other items. The second impact is that Afeela 1 has also been cancelled. This car was born from a collaboration between Sony and Honda. At CES 2023 It was already announced that it would arrive in 2026. Last year, at the same fair, the car was priced for the US market: $89,900 for the “cheap” version and more than $100,000 for the “face.” This year, at CES, we had no news. Less than three months later we know that the project has been canceled because, among other things, it rode the same platform as Honda’s other three electric cars. Once this was cancelled, producing a single car with a single platform was economically unviable. Sony’s car was sold as a leap forward for Hondaa preview of where the market was going to go. The intention was that Honda would provide the hardware and its knowledge making cars, Sony would provide the software and its experience getting the most out of elements such as cameras or sensors. Qualcomm and Epic Games were also supporting the project, the latter company creating an on-demand mobility service for the vehicle. The evolution of the automobile industry has attracted various technology companies. First it was Dyson the company that surprised us by announcing its own electric car. We know that Apple has tried to bring its own car forward and along the way he has left 10,000 million dollars. Microsoft was an investor in Cruise before its closure. Google is making efforts with autonomous cars. This company also wants Android Automotive be an essential part of the future of the electric car. Of all these companies that have been involved in the development of electric cars, all of them have failed. Only Google with Android Automotive seems to be building a long-term ecosystem, which Apple doesn’t seem to be getting it with CarPlay either. We are not talking about companies that supply hardware to automotive companies like Qualcomm or Nvidia, we are talking about companies that also they get involved in the development of a car through their software services or their knowledge to take advantage of that hardware. And, here, China is leading the market. What Sony and Honda intended was to demonstrate that two leading Japanese companies still had enough muscle and knowledge to produce a ground-breaking and competitive electric car. At that time, Xiaomi has built it itself. And Huawei is giving a lesson in China on how to take advantage of these collaborations. Right now, this last company collaborates with Toyota on the latest electric vehicles they have launched for the Chinese market. Its cars have their own ecosystem developed by Huawei that relies on, among other things, the electric motors that Huawei also develops. That is, the Chinese company is in charge of providing its parts and its software knowledge for the ultimate control of them. Huawei and Xiaomi are taking over the operating systems of Chinese electric cars with HarmonyOS and HyperOS. Both companies have extensive experience designing interfaces and digital experiences for the user, an essential service in China to sell electric cars and where Europe, Japan and the United States are still in their infancy, if we compare ourselves to what we see there. Specifically, Huawei has spread its tentacles in the industry until getting its hands on Toyota developments and having cars on the street that will rival Porsche, like the Aistaland GT7sedans that … Read more

Campo de Montiel has rare earths to cover 33% of European demand, according to a mining company. The Board has said “no, thank you”

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Oil may be the resource that makes most of the headlines today, but the rare earthare “the cover” of the technology industry: they are decisive practically in any sector and also set the geopolitical agenda at a time of tariffs and vetoes. And if there is a country that cuts cod into rare earths (spoiler: They are neither earth nor are they rarebut 17 metals) that is China: there is no one to cough or in reserves neither in production. There was a time when The United States dominated this sectorbut that time passed away. And Europe? Well, at the moment rare earths are not produced, but we are working on it: has stepped on the accelerator at the Per Geijer superminein Kiruna (Sweden), where you could get 18% of what you need. Meanwhile, in a place in La Mancha whose name I don’t want to remember, there is who points that could obtain 2,100 tons per year of lanthanides, enough to cover 33% of European needs. There is only one little problem: the Junta de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha has said that they are not interested. And they are not alone. Campo de Montiel is a (potential) mine. Back in 2013 the Spanish company Quantum Mining put under his magnifying glass the region of Campo de Montiel, in Ciudad Real. Next to Torrenueva is that promising site that is the object of your desires: Matamulas. According to their analysis, it is full of monazite (along with bastnasite, the main rare earth ore) gray. But really loaded: the company assures that in Campo de Montiel more than 2,100 tons could be produced per year. Is that a lot or a little? According to the company, it is approximately a third of European consumption needs, although Eurostat figure in 12,900 annual tons imported by 2024, which would leave the percentage around 16% (the company does not publicly detail with what reference it calculates that third). The firm lands it with applications such as the construction of 350,000 electric cars or 10,000 wind turbines. Quantum Mining Production Estimates “We’re not interested.” A month ago Quantum Minería tried again and you already have an answer of the autonomous government: Mercedes Gómez, the Minister of Sustainable Development, explains that they are not interested in holding a competition so that tastings can be carried out at the Matamulas site. Not again: in 2013 the Board granted the mining company (and two other companies) exploitation permits, which was rejected in 2017. In 2024 came back to request permits, this time framed within the Neodimio project, again encountering a no. The EU also left them outside of their strategic projects. What Quantum wants to do. The mining plan It involves temporarily removing a half-meter layer of vegetation (mainly cereal) so that, once the process is finished, it can be reused in the restoration. Afterwards, backhoes extract two meters deep to reach the gray monazite. That material is taken to a concentration plant to be screened using physical processes, without chemical additives, so that the soil can be returned to its site later. Then the land is leveled and the crop is replaced. These works are carried out hectare by hectare, so that it does not interrupt the agricultural processes in the surroundings. According to the company, when the land is restored it can be cultivated “even in better conditions than the original ones.” Why not. Given the insistent interest of Quantum, the citizen platform ‘Yes to the Living Land‘ and other citizen activism movements once again opposed, in addition to one of the wineries in the region. A decade ago Ecologists in Action detailed that the environmental impact of this operation on the 27,500 hectares included in the project would be severe. One of the bottlenecks is water: for this operation they estimate that between 310,000 and 500,000 cubic meters of water would be needed annually during the estimated ten years of exploitation (washing and processing are two processes that consume a lot of water). In that area the water pressure is high, with droughts, reservoirs in states of emergency, overexploited aquifers and intense grassroots agricultural activity as icing on the cake. In addition, in the region there are two Special Protection Areas for Birds and it is the habitat of the lynx. In Xataka | The world’s rare earth reserves, laid out in this graph showing the brutal dominance of a single country In Xataka | Europe seeks its sovereignty in rare earths and knows how to achieve it the fast way: with a supermine in Sweden Cover | ダモリ and Karen Paredes Carabantes

China is producing fighter jets beyond its capabilities

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Washington is facing two dilemmas right now. The first: during the Cold War it produced hundreds of planes of combat per year, with factories capable of maintaining industrial rhythms typical of a war economy. Today, those production levels are the exception rather than the norm. The second dilemma It’s called China. A structural problem. The United States faces a growing challenge in its combat aviation. The reason: its fighter fleet has been reduced more than 60% since the end of the Cold War and many of its aircraft have decades of accumulated service. There is no doubt, although it remains a dominant air power, the combination of aging, operational wear and global demand is leaving to the system to the limitin the red and with a force that no longer has enough margin to respond to multiple simultaneous conflicts. China and another scale. But the real problem is not only internal, but comparative: because Beijing is producing fighters at a rhythm that clearly exceeds current American capability. With massive industrial expansion and projections of up to 300 planes a year Before the decade is out, Beijing is not only closing the gap, it is threatening with overcoming it both in volume and modernization, altering the global balance of air power for the first time in decades. The F-35, insufficient pillar. The F-35 is the centerpiece of American air strategy, and not only as a fighter, but also as an information node capable of coordinating complex operations in real time. However, its importance also exposes the core problem: there are too much dependency of a platform that is not being produced in sufficient quantities, which limits its strategic impact despite its technological superiority. He can’t keep up. Under this scenario, while China doesn’t stop acceleratingthe United States maintains a rather irregular and insufficientwell below the minimum necessary to maintain the size of its fleet. Annual purchases do not compensate for retirements of older aircraft, which progressively reduces operational capacity and generates gaps in key strategic areas, showing that the problem is not technological, but industrial and budgetary. Modern warfare requires more than technology. Recent conflicts have demonstrated that air superiority does not depend solely on having better aircraft, but on have enough. The ability to sustain operations, cover multiple theaters and absorb losses is as important as the quality of the system, and in this area the United States is beginning to fall behind a rival that is betting by the scale. The strategic decision for 10 years. In short, the global air balance is entering a different and critical phase in which the historical advantage of the United States is no longer guaranteed. In fact, if production is not accelerated, the industry stabilized and the fleet reinforced with more F-35s and other systems on the way, the country risks losing its deterrence capacity. against China. In other words, the question is no longer whether the F-35 is sufficient as a platform, but whether there will be enough F-35s to sustain that superiority. Image | US Air Force, LG Images In Xataka | The US has just achieved the “holy grail” of air combat: an F-35 not only detects the enemy, but also gets rid of it on its own. In Xataka | Europe has asked its military experts how to become independent from the US for the next war. The answer is déjà vu: the F-35

How to ask for European aid that almost no one takes advantage of and ends in June 2026

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There are still a few months left for the stifling heat, but to insulate ourselves from both the cold of winter and the high temperatures of summer, it is vital to have efficient windows. We know it is not a small investment. However, there is a lifeline: an EU-funded Next Generation EU grant program that pays you up to 40% of the bill for changing your old windows. The problem is that perhaps you had not heard about this and the general deadline to execute the works sets a non-negotiable limit of June 30, 2026. What are the conditions? At the state level, aid is framed in the Aid program for actions to improve energy efficiency in homes. As explained by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Agendathe objective is to reactivate rehabilitation in a country where more than 81% of buildings have a poor energy rating (letters E, F or G). The program’s numbers are resounding and go straight to your pocket: The subsidy covers 40% of the cost of the action, with a maximum limit of 3,000 euros per home. The minimum investment must be equal to or greater than 1,000 euros. The requirement is that the home must be the habitual and permanent domicile of the applicant (owner, usufructuary or tenant), which is accredited through the registry. The technical objective is to achieve a reduction of at least 7% in the energy demand for heating and cooling, reduce the consumption of non-renewable primary energy by 30%, or replace elements of the façade in compliance with the Technical Building Code (CTE). The good news is that simply replacing old windows with PVC or aluminum models with thermal break and low-emissivity glass is usually enough to comply with the CTE route without having to undergo a comprehensive renovation. But is it as simple as it seems? Here come the problems. The main obstacle to this aid is purely bureaucratic. The most common and tragic mistake that users make is starting the work blindly. The usual process is usually: the owner calls the installer, changes the windows and, with the work already finished, calls a technician to do the energy certificate, thinking that that is enough. Big mistake. The guidelines are non-negotiable: to justify the subsidy it is mandatory to have an energy efficiency certificate prior to the work and another one afterwards. Both must be signed by a competent technician and carried out with the same official program. Without this documentary demonstration of the “before and after”, help is lost suddenly. The aid map in 2026. The distribution of this program works under the “simple competition” model: whoever arrives first and meets the requirements gets it, until the funds are exhausted. Being managed by the Autonomous Communities, the map is a puzzle. According to the data collected by the regional resolutions, this is the scenario of the main windows that remain open: Aragon: Keep your call active until June 29, 2026but with a specific provision aimed at municipalities of up to 5,000 inhabitants and for buildings prior to the year 2000. Canary Islands: They keep direct aid and tax deductions in force, remembering that the action must be completed before June 30, 2026. Estremadura: They have a specific regional program for rural areas (municipalities with up to 10,000 inhabitants) open from March 1 to June 1, 2026. They cover 50% (extendable to 70% due to vulnerability or young/large families) with limits of up to 14,000 euros for single-family homes. Rioja: Its call opened on February 17 and will last until June 29 2026. Pay attention to the information: here the actions must already be completed at the time of requesting help. The Basque Country: Play in another league. It has its own aid for particular works unrelated to the Next Generation framework, with deadline open until December 31, 2030. For their part, the communities of Andalusia, BalearicsCastilla-La Mancha, Valencian Community, Galicia, Madrid, Murcia and Navarrethe windows are already closed. The perfect move: how to combine aid with personal income tax. For those who arrive on time, the operation is round. According to the Royal Decree-Law Approved by the Government, these direct subsidies are fully compatible with tax deductions in the income tax return (IRPF), valid until December 31, 2026. How does this double advantage work? Imagine that changing the windows costs you 8,000 euros and you receive the maximum subsidy of 3,000 euros. When filing your income tax return, you can apply a deduction (20% or 40%, depending on the energy savings achieved) on the remaining 5,000 euros that you have paid out of pocket. The only legal limit is logical: you cannot deduct from the Treasury the money that Europe has already financed you. From insulation to forced ventilation. Taking advantage of this injection of funds is a golden opportunity, but isolating as much as possible has consequences. By installing ultra-efficient windows, the home becomes so airtight that The regulations already require mechanical ventilation systems to renew the air without losing the accumulated heat. In short, the bureaucracy is clear and the clock is ticking. Changing your windows before the funds run out is not just spending 3,000 euros, it is the definitive step to turn your house into a thermal shelter Image | freepik Xataka | The US has resurrected a part of the Manhattan Project that had been abandoned for decades: purified enriched uranium

China has invented the coldest helium-free alloy in the world. The American DARPA is not going to like it

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In addition to having an extremely high voice, filling balloons or scuba diving, the most widespread use of helium is in refrigeration, a crucial task in countless tasks ranging from magnets for magnetic resonance imaging to particle accelerators (with conventional helium or Helium-4) to cryogenic cooling for quantum computing or neutron detectors (Helium -3). Critical industries. Because yes, everything is helium, but the circumstances change depending on the isotope. Thus, while Helium-4 is abundant in the atmosphere but difficult to retain (it escapes into the atmosphere due to its lightness), Helium-3 is scarce on Earth and is also difficult to obtain: it is a byproduct of the aging of tritium nuclear warheads. Simply put: the helium needed to cool quantum computers and cutting-edge physics acts as a bottleneck to research. A Chinese research team has published in Nature a solution: a metal alloy that cools almost to absolute zero without needing helium. The invention. It is a metallic alloy, EuCo₂Al₉ (ECA), a rare earth intermetallic compound capable of reaching 106 millikelvin (–273.05 °C), thus establishing a record: it is the lowest temperature achieved by a metallic magnetocaloric material without using helium-3. Another peculiarity is that it combines two seemingly antagonistic properties: it acts like a sponge that absorbs heat from the environment and its thermal conduction is between 50 and 100 times greater than other similar materials. A combination that postulates it to be the definitive supercoolant. The network structure, its interactions and the resulting supersolid spin state. Chinese Academy of Sciences Why is it important. We have already seen that helium-3 is a rare commodity and its usefulness in advanced physics and quantum computing. Finding an alternative opens the door to alleviating that bottleneck, although it is still in an early stage. Historically the largest global suppliers of helium-3 They have been the United States and Russiaas a byproduct of its nuclear programs. With this invention, China is one step closer to achieving independence of this strategic resource because it currently imports almost all of the helium-3 it consumes (95%, according to this paper 2024). But the United States is also interested: at the end of January, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched a call to develop a modular helium-3-free cooling system for quantum and defense technologies. In less than two weeks I had the solution, yes, from China. Context. The superconducting quantum computers They require working below 1 Kelvin and in that scenario the standard for decades has been dilution refrigeration technology. In a few words and in a simplified way: expensive refrigeration contraptions that occupy cubic meters and need helium-3 continuously. This limits its scalability, practically limiting it to specialized laboratories. Adiabatic demagnetization cooling on which the ECA is based is not new, in fact the concept is a century oldbut its features have never been up to par. As explains the CASthe endemic problem was its poor thermal conductivity. According to the South China Morning PostPeking University already built two refrigerators using this principle in 2024, which have been operational for several months. How have they done it. The cooling technique is called adiabatic demagnetization (ADR): a magnetic field is applied to the cold material, so that the internal “magnets” of the material align and release heat to the outside. When the magnetic field is removed, they return to their natural disordered state, absorbing heat from the surroundings, thereby lowering the temperature. To solve the historical problem of low conductivity, ECA enters an unusual “metallic spin supersolid” physical state, which combines high heat absorption capacity with thermal conductivity similar to a conventional metal. Yes, but. Being able to drop the temperature to 106 mK is remarkable, but the reality is that classic dilution systems in their most advanced version are capable of reaching 10 mK or less. And this is where much of quantum computing operates. In short: there is still a thermal gap to overcome. On the other hand, it is a first step: going from laboratory material and even a prototype to the industrial or military environment is a long road. Scalability and costs will be decisive. Finally, it should be noted that the composition of the ECA includes Europium (in addition to cobalt and aluminum), a rare earth that makes the operation difficult and expensive. Nevertheless, China starts from a privileged positionas long as it is the absolute leader in this industry. In Xataka | Spiderman’s web is no longer science fiction: China has just created something very similar after years of vetoes In Xataka | Japan has a rare earth megadeposit: 700 years of consumption to challenge China Cover | VALGO, ASML

After 10 years in prison for not revealing where 500 gold coins are, the world’s greatest treasure hunter is now free to go after them

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Right off the bat, the name of Tommy Thompson It may not sound familiar to you at all. Besides ocean engineer and inventor, he is one of the greatest treasure hunters in the world, a profession that inevitably evokes Indiana Jones and a life of cinema. And well, Thompson has it: a few days ago he was released from prison after serving 10 years of his sentence. The crime? Do not reveal where 500 gold coins from a famous sunken ship are (among other things). The discovery. In 1988 Tommy Thompson and his team, the Columbus-America Discovery Group, they found the remains of the steamboat SS Central America at a depth of 8,000 feet in the Atlantic, about 200 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina. To achieve this, they used Bayesian search theory and a remotely operated vehicle. The SS Central America was known as the “Gold Ship” for something: how much gold it transported. How much? good question. The gold ship. To give some context, it was the time of the gold rush and the mission of the ship was to transport that valuable metal from the new San Francisco Mint to increase the reserves for the banks of the eastern United States. He never did. On September 3, 1857, while operating on the Panama route, it sank off the coast of South Carolina when it was involved in a category 2 hurricane. The ship carried 477 passengers, 101 crew members and much, much gold. In fact, its sinking was one of the triggers for the panic of 1857. I don’t have the accounts. Gary Kinder spent a decade studying the event to write his “Ship of Gold”, where details which was carrying 3 tons of gold and possibly a similar amount of passengers (undisclosed and therefore unquantifiable) and it was also rumored that there was another 15 tons of gold in a secret army shipment. However, a US Department of Defense document declassified in 1971 reported that the official cargo was 11.2 tons of gold (not including personal or secret gold). The American naval history magazine, the closest source to the discovery, It does not give a figure in weight but a value: The gold consigned to New York banks was equivalent to 40 million dollars at the time. In general, the figure of 30,000 pounds of gold (about 14,000 kg) is also relatively widespread. But what was on the boat is one thing and what they found is another. Or they said find. Bob Evans, chief scientist of the expedition (and another one that followed in 2014). from the hand of Odyssey), account for the Seattle Times that in 1988 they found two tons of gold. The legal conflict. Much of that gold was later sold to a trading company for about $50 million. as reported by Reuters. But according to those 161 investors who financed $12.7 million for the expedition, they never reaped the benefits. So In 2005 they filed a lawsuit for breach of contract and concealment of assets. Thompson first secluded himself in Florida, then disappeared and lived under a false identity. He was finally arrested in 2015. The case reached a dead end: the judge in the case ordered him to reveal the whereabouts of 500 missing gold coins, but the engineer He claimed not to know where they are. He was declared in contempt, which is why he has served a decade in prison. The liberation. Today Tommy Thompson is 73 years old and a few days ago regained his freedom because, according to the judge, keeping him imprisoned does not work. CBS News picks up the opinion of civil law experts who explain that it is very unusual for a sentence for civil contempt to last so long. He has neither revealed where the coins are nor has he settled the debt with his investors. Meanwhile, the treasure of the SS Central America continues to feed the myth: in 2022 was auctioned one of the largest bars on the ship, 866 ounces (almost 27 kg), reaching a price of 2.16 million dollars. In Xataka | I dedicate myself to digging with a metal detector and I have more than 4 million followers on YouTube In Xataka | A man from Osaka left 21 gold bars at the doors of City Hall. I only had one requirement: renew the pipes Cover | Olga ga and Zlaťáky.cz

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