usatoday24, Author at usatoday24

If he wins, the Italians will have to pay

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

One of the first measures that the US and Europe adopted when the war in Ukraine broke out was to confiscate the assets of Russian oligarchs all over the world. This included the blocking of bank accounts and funds, mansions located in European countries and, of course, also all those superyachts that were moored in ports around the world. What at first seemed a succulent booty which was to be used to cover Ukraine’s support and defense costs, soon became a poisoned candy for the countries that had seized them for the enormous expense that it entailed keep them afloat. An example is found in the impressive Sailing Yacht Aby Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko, who has been stranded since March 2022 in the port of Trieste. Italy seized it as a measure of pressure, and four years later, the accumulated bill is close to 47 million dollars. Now, Melnichenko has decided to sue the country who has been paying for yacht maintenance and, if the lawsuit wins, he can take the boat and maintenance for free. That millionaire you told me about He Sailing Yacht A is considered as the largest private sailing boat in the world and, for four years, it has become the most famous in Trieste, where it acts as unintentional tourist attraction for visitors to the small town in northeastern Italy. At 143 meters in length and its avant-garde design, its appearance is closer to that of a futuristic submarine with sails than to a conventional superyacht. Its owner paid some 600 million dollars. The legal problem is that the ship, technically, it’s not Melnichenko’s. As usually happens in these cases, the Sailing Yacht A It is not registered directly to de Melnichenko, but is owned by a Bermuda-based company called Valla Yachts, which in turn owns it within a trust (corporate asset management instrument) managed by a Swiss company. Fishermen in the port of Trieste with Sailing Yacht A in the background In May 2024, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) suspended its own trial and asked the EU Court of Justice to clarify something basic: can an asset be frozen when it is in the hands of a trust, not the one directly sanctioned? The European court said yes: It is compatible with European law to freeze these assets, as long as it is demonstrated that the sanctioned party has real control over them or effective access to their resources. The beneficiary of this trust is Aleksandra Melnichenko, the wife of the Russian tycoon. For Italy and the EU, this corporate network also ends with the Melnichenkos. As and how he published the italian Il GazzettinoFor the Melnichenko family’s lawyers, the yacht belongs to a legitimate and independent corporate structure, so the blockade on it had to be lifted since it was not proven that the sailboat is actually Melnichenko’s property. Maintaining a yacht is not cheap When Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU and its allies immediately reacted by imposing sanctions on the core of millionaires close to Putin. One of the most spectacular maneuvers It was the seizure of yachts, to send a clear message to the Russian power circle: touch their pockets. The problem is that no one stopped to think about the consequences of those confiscations and the expenses that those assets were going to cause them. Keeping a luxury superyacht afloat costs money. Big money. According to the most conservative estimates, the cost of annual maintenance of a yacht It is 10% of its purchase value. That is, if a yacht costs 500 million, the 10% rule It already anticipates that the annual maintenance expense will be about 50 million dollars a year. It is true that this calculation is based on a yacht that is used, but even when the yacht remains immobilized in a port, the expense account does not stop running. They know it well on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where the US authorities ordered the seizure of Alpha Black attributed to Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev. Sailing Yacht A anchored off Trieste During its stay in port, the yacht consumed a whopping $2,000 a day only on fuel necessary to keep the air conditioning running to prevent sea salt from damaging the materials and wood inside the yacht. If they did not sell the yacht, already complicated for legal purposes due to not knowing with certainty the identity of its true owner, it would be almost impossible. And returning it is not an option either because it would be a political defeat against Russia. In the case of Sailing Yacht AItaly appointed the Agenzia del Demanio to manage the ship. According to Reutersthe maintenance costs in these cases are borne by the State, which You can claim them later from the owner or recover them by selling the yacht. But to sell the largest sailboat in the world buyers are needed who are willing to embark on a long judicial process and who have enough assets to buy it…and those are not plentiful. So the mayor of Trieste has been wondering out loud Who is going to pay the 30,000 euros a day that it is costing them to maintain the Sailing Yacht A afloat. According to the specialized portal, Megayacht News The yacht will remain in Trieste and the maintenance costs will continue to be covered by the Italian treasury. The lawsuit may take months, or years, to resolve. If the Italian justice finally decides that the sanctions against the Sailing Yacht Athe Russian millionaire will be able to sail on it again and Italy will have paid him four years of maintenance free. In Xataka | We already knew that superyachts were floating mansions: Roman Abramovich’s is a fortress with an anti-missile shield Image | Flickr (Paul Fenton, adrianovero), Wikimedia Commons (Maximo Marmur)

“We don’t want to reinvent space travel. What we have to do is make it profitable”

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

Although AI gurus, former prime ministers of Italy and the United Kingdom and CEOs of giant companies are passing through the Vivatech stages, the figure that has attracted the most attention is Jeff Bezos. The main theater of the event was packed as has not happened with any other speaker. Even Yann LeCun, the so-called ‘godfather of AI‘, he had to speak to some empty seats. On that stage, alongside Bezos were David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, and Mike Massiminoformer NASA astronaut and the one who asked the questions. The first was obvious: the feeling behind the explosion of the brand new New Glenn rocket of Bezos. The answer was not so obvious, with the tycoon pointing out that the team ‘celebrated’ it in a rather curious way. And the conversation soon focused on the main point of the talk: build the roads to go to space. Because Blue Origin is in the same race as SpaceXbut also in the same competition as Chinathe race to find a way to reduce launch costs so much that it is viable to constantly put things into orbit. And, apart from infinite money, you only need one thing that Rajoy already said at the time, finding a way to make more of those machines that make the machines that make rockets. And this is where Prometheus, Bezos’s new AI company, has to do. so much controversy is awakening. The Moon as a space gas station “People underestimate (whatever)” was a phrase that was repeated up to three times during the talk. Because Bezos and Limp came to Paris to make it clear that what they are doing is very difficult, but that it is a great leap for humanity. After talking about the New Glenn explosion, Massimino said “everyone wants to go to the Moon”, and there Bezos expanded because the phrase touches on one of the three key points of Blue Origin’s objective in space exploration (and the rest of the countries and companies that are on the same path). “We will go to Mars and do other things, but the Moon is the first step, the first base“he commented. There are several reasons. The first, according to the businessman, is that “it is close and we can go in three and a half days and also return in three and a half days. We do not have to wait for it to align with the Earth as happens with Mars. And the reason why we would want to go (and to stay, no less) is because, although he did not say it explicitly, it was printed in the message: the Moon is a space gas station. We have already said on several occasions that our satellite has a lot of resources that we can use, and the most recent missions have focused, in part, on collecting and studying samples of lunar soil to see what can be done with that material called regolith. “Now that we are going to go to the Moon to stay, not just to visit it, we need to build fuel with materials that are on the Moon. With electrolysis we can create liquid hydrogen and that is the goal: to create fuel from raw materials on the Moon“, commented Bezos. Because that is the first step to, from there, launch missions further away, such as to Mars. The reason is that it is ‘cheaper’ to launch rockets from the Moon than from the Earth due to gravity. The rocket does not need as much fuel to take off or as much force, so it is much easier and costs are greatly reduced. The problem is that loading the tanks with liquid hydrogen to go to Mars has the disadvantage that it is a fuel that takes up a lot of space and it is not feasible to leave so loaded from Earth. “If we want to explore space and make colonies on Mars, the Moon is the first step” That’s where the Moon comes into play again. Because that’s what this is all about: “We don’t want to reinvent space travel. These trips were surpassed 60 years ago. What we want to do is make them profitable. That’s what Blue Origin is focusing on.” Extracting the materials also comes into play. “The Moon’s gravity is much lower, so you can extract those materials using 28 times less energy per kilo than you would need on Earth.” What keeps a billionaire who wants to play with rockets up at night But we must not lose sight of something: this is a business, and Bezos points out that there are many players who want to go to space, but not all of them can make rockets. And there are companies like yours or Musk’s. “Neoconstellations of satellites, resources on the Moon and in low orbit – solar panels, space data centers -, missions on the Moon to stay… there is a lot of demand. I think people greatly underestimate the demand for space travel,” he said. Beyond the Moon and that Martian objective, he is right in pointing out that low orbit is looking like an electric station during Easter. United States and China are launching military and communication satellites, but Europe does not want to be left behind and Russia, India and Japan are in the same competition. The law of “who comes first, gets the spot” prevails here, and everyone wants to get there first. “We are in the golden age to achieve the objective. It already happened years ago with the US getting ahead of the Soviets. Now it is going to happen again” The point is that, as Bezos comments, “if the launches are very expensive, the satellites must have a very long life and remain behind technologically, but if we make upload is cheaperwe can speed up times. Limp went on to say that reusable rockets are the way to create these mega satellite constellations, but beyond the problem of fuel, … Read more

the graph showing which countries suffer the most from FIFA schedules

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

I don’t know about you, but there are sports broadcasts that I have saved in the calendar of my mobile phone, like the Barcelona Masters Finals of paddle tennis or the Tour de France. There is one that is much longer, more variable and also almost obligatory viewing: the World Cup. Although it is essentially always played on these dates, the venues change and that is sometimes a real chore… if you want to see it live. This 2026 edition is played in the United States, Canada and Mexico and that means it takes up my afternoons, but there are places in Asia and the Middle East where it is literally stealing their sleep: if they want to watch the games live, it is better to leave sleeping for another day. Is the “dream fee” to pay if you like football. When FIFA awarded the 2026 World Cup to North America, it implicitly set prime time in the Eastern time zone of the United States. That is equivalent to between 00:00 and 04:00 in the Maghreb, between 01:00 and 05:00 in Saudi Arabia and between 02:00 and 06:00 in Pakistan. As we have already suffered in our flesh, such as in the last finals of the King’s Cup in Spain, the schedule of the host state is taken into account and the rest of the global audience there manages. That the World Cup headquarters is traveling is a way to publicize football throughout the planet, but also to make a profit from a lucrative business in addition to sports tourism: broadcasts (there is another indirect one in the impressive infrastructures that are built). According to the official FIFA financial report For the 2023-2026 cycle, total income from television rights amounts to $4,264 million. And in that scenario there is a clear winner: Europe is the most valuable individual market with nearly 1.4 billion. It is followed by North America, which exceeds 1,000 million. Both regions concentrate more than 60% of the total, according to SVG Europe with data from the consulting firm Caretta Research. So someone on Reddit has decided to calculate that “Sleep Tax” with the 48 teams participating in the World Cup ordered by the cost of sleep that their fans will accumulate during the group stage. From FIFA match schedulethe IANA time zone database, WikipediaPython and little else. The result is what you see below these lines: The sleep rate of the 2026 World Cup. tohigh12 via Reddit How have you calculated it? This sleep rate assigns a weight to each minute of the game based on which time zone it is in, taking into account the start time in the local time of each team’s fans and using a visualization model that takes into account the start of the game + 120 minutes. Thus, the minutes between 22:00 and midnight are worth 1x, between 0:00 and 02:00 they are worth 2x, between 02:00 and 06:00 they are worth 3x and between 06:00 and 08:00, 1.5x. Those periods in which most people sleep are worth more (although it is a simplification, because maybe I go to bed at 11 p.m. and you at 1 a.m.): the more points, the less you sleep. The final score is obtained by dividing the weighted minutes by 60. An example: a match that starts at 23:00 local time accumulates 3 points: 60 minutes at 1x plus 60 minutes at 2x. It is true that this Sleep Tax method has obvious limitations such as assuming that the fans follow the three group stage matches, it does not distinguish between work days and holidays and that fixed window of 120 minutes may fall short between overtime and the pre-match, but it is a clear, transparent and reproducible methodology. Which country is sleeping the least following its team in the 2026 World Cup The longer the bar, the worse the fans sleep: Their matches fall at late night or early morning hours. Algeria leads the ranking with 18 points and seven countries, including Mexico and Canada, have 0.0: they do not lose a minute of sleep. But this is not something new: without going any further, the last World Cups steal those hours of sleep in other latitudes. Thus, in Brazil 2014 those who paid this most expensive fee were the fans from Asian countries. In Qatar 2022, geographical concentration benefited Europe and Africa, which followed the matches in the evening. Sleep deprivation has real and measurable consequences: executive functions deteriorate if there are lack of hours of rest, something that we pay in decision making, impulse control, behavior or memory, which affects our day-to-day tasks such as driving, working or interacting. In fact, according to the study Sleep Duration and Executive Function in Adultscognitive impairment after a single night of poor sleep is equivalent to having a blood alcohol level comparable to the legal limit for driving. Stringing together a couple of weeks of early morning matches is more than a sacrifice: in a football country that is also excelling in the tournament, it can become a public health problem. Who wins and who loses. Thus, the big dream losers of this edition of the 2026 World Cup are the countries of North Africa and the Middle East: Algeria (18.0), Tunisia (14.5), the Czech Republic and Scotland (12.0), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Norway and Iraq (11.0). Spain obtains a 6.0, with a match starting at 02:00 peninsular time. The hosts Mexico and Canada, along with Ecuador, Panama and South Korea, score 0.0: they play at schedules completely aligned with their daily lives. In Xataka | Where you can watch the 2026 World Cup depending on the operator you have In Xataka | The good news is that there is a World Cup this summer. The bad news is that the exams are going to be worse Cover | Data is Beautiful

the Atlas robot will go directly to a car factory

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

Hyundai has finally taken full control of Boston Dynamics, as advances the South Korean newspaper Maeil Business Newspaper. The movement is a clear warning to surfers: robots are no longer for recording fun videos on the internet doing parkour or turning into pets, they are now preparing to work for real in car factories. The large companies in the sector are already moving chips to see who dominates this new industrial revolution in a practical way, that is, putting useful robots into their assembly lines as soon as possible to achieve competitive advantage and in this scenario the Korean automobile company has just hit the table. The purchase. As the South Korean media exclusively reports, Hyundai Motor Group has bought 9.65% of the missing shares of Boston Dynamics for 325 million dollars (about 283 million euros). The person who gets rid of these shares is the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. and does so by taking advantage of an agreement signed in 2021 to activate the sale just before the deadline expired, today, June 20. To fully close the deal, Hyundai would have transferred the RAI institute, a scientific artificial intelligence research center worth $100 million, to SoftBank. Why is it important. The acquisition is critical because it eliminates the usual frictions of shared management in one fell swoop: Hyundai is the sole owner of 100% of the company, so it can make decisions more quickly and without waiting for anyone. In other words, you can gear up to vertically integrate Boston Dynamics systems into your plants without reaching agreements or sharing roadmaps with outside investors. In addition, having complete control will allow Hyundai to much better prepare Boston Dynamics for its big goal: to start listing and selling shares on the Nasdaq. Gaining autonomy and agility is essential in the face of aggressive competition from Tesla or Figure AI and of course, China. The Chinese government is investing a lot of public money to encourage its own robotics companies, such as Unitree, to produce units en masse and at low cost, a strategy that in fact it has already applied recently with electric cars or solar panels. With this coup d’état, Hyundai ensures that it safeguards the valuable technology of the American Boston Dynamics in the hands of an allied country. Context. Boston Dynamics is probably the most famous robotics company in the world and its ownership history has been curious to say the least: it went from being an academic division of MIT to belong to Google in 2013, then he came to Softbank. In 2021, Hyundai was made with the majority of the company. Simultaneously, SoftBank is changing its eggs in the basket: from robotics hardware to AI in several aspects that go to infrastructure with data centers to software. In detail. Hyundai has been “lucky”: according to Maeil Business Newspaper has closed the agreement to get that last package of shares very cheap thanks to the fact that the cost was already signed and frozen five years ago, before robots became fashionable. In fact, the market value of Boston Dynamics has reached almost 30 trillion won (about 19.8 billion euros) last year. Internally, the shareholding would be divided as follows: president Euisun Chung retains his 22.6%, while the subsidiaries distribute the rest of the parent company, namely: Hyundai Motor with 28%, Kia with 17.2%, Hyundai Mobis with 11.3% and Hyundai Glovis with 11.25%. Yes, but. To begin with, this is an exclusive leak: neither Hyundai nor Softbank has officially communicated the transaction. In addition, the automobile company has had to pay a toll: getting rid of the RAI institute, for which Hyundai had invested $424 million in 2022. Hyundai keeps the factories and the body of the robots, but loses control of the brains of the machines. In Xataka | It assembles 1,500,000 cars a year and does so at a rate of one every 10 seconds: the keys to the fastest factory in the world In Xataka | A Chinese firm has just presented a quadruped that defies limits. Boston Dynamics no longer has a clear path Cover | hyundai

how to build an atomic bomb at home

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

Almost half a century ago, when there was obviously no Internet and geopolitics revolved around the cold waran event occurred that set off alarm bells in society. In reality, that was the preamble to what would later be enhanced by the networks: using public material and information available to anyone to develop weapons. With one exception: it was in contention to build an atomic bomb in the storage room at home. How to become a legend. Year 1977. An undistinguished student at Princeton University surprised the world entire (and the FBI) with an academic project that, under the revealing title of “How to Build Your Own Atomic Bomb,” detailed with chilling precision the steps necessary to make a functional nuclear weapon. Its author, John Aristotle Phillipsa 21-year-old young man born in Connecticut, was the son of Greek immigrants and studied physics without standing out at all: he had repeated courses, almost failed, and was best known for your mascot costume football than for his academic achievements. His transformation into an internationally famous figure came hand in hand with an unexpected combination of obsession, stubbornness, the ability to seek out information, and the challenge of impressing a legendary professor. The academic challenge. Phillips was faced with a final task proposed by the famous physicist Freeman Dysonwho taught at Princeton after having worked with figures such as Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe in some of the most complex projects of the 20th century, including the development of the atomic bomb within of the Manhattan Project. Dyson had suggested that his students do a project on nuclear proliferation, and Phillips, aware of his lack of academic brilliance, wanted to stand out with a provocative proposal: recreate the design of a bomb similar to that of Nagasakiusing only public sources. Dyson, surprised by the audacity, humorously accepted the challenge, promising an outstanding grade if he achieved it, but also that he would burn the work after reading it. An obsession. For weeks, Phillips worked tirelessly between the Princeton library and his room, collecting information from declassified documents from the National Technical Information Service, physics textbooks, government communications, and consultations with the Du Pont company on implosion principles. Without using a single classified source, he managed to assemble a 40 page document where he explained step by step how to make a nuclear bomb. He handed in the work, got the highest grade and, far from being destroyed as Dyson had suggested, his project began to circulate by word of mouth until it reached the ears of professional physicists and the media. A national celebrity. The dissemination of the work attracted the attention of experts such as Frank Chilton, a physicist specializing in nuclear engineering, who stated that Phillips’ design was technically feasibleexcept for access to plutonium, the only obstacle to its materialization. The news broke out in the media: the boy with no academic future became forever in “The A-Bomb Kid”a media figure who symbolized both unexpected brilliance and the dangers of uncontrolled disclosure in the nuclear age. The fame reached a tipping point when several so-called Pakistani scientists approached Phillips offering money in exchange for the document. The FBI intervened immediately: confiscated the job and a model that the student had built, and classified the material as sensitive information. The contradictory inheritance. Far from taking advantage of his sudden fame to continue in the academic or scientific world, Phillips published in 1979 with David Michaelis the book Mushroom: The True Story of the A-Bomb Kidwhere he narrated his experience and the journey of his unusual rise to fame. Over time, his awareness of the risks of nuclear proliferation led him to become an anti-nuclear activist, spending years warning about the ease with which certain knowledge could fall into the wrong hands. In fact, and in a turn of events that no one expected, his career finally led to in politics: He ran as a Democratic candidate for the United States House of Representatives in 1980 and 1982, although without electoral success. The truth is that didn’t come back to media fame, but he did build a business career long and successful in the political technology sector. Died in 2020. A warning in the middle of the “era”. The Philips story couldn’t be more relevant now that the world seems more convulsive than ever. In fact, the case of Aristotle set a precedent disturbing: a student without access to classified materials managed to design, using only public sources, a functional nuclear device. In a global context where technological proliferation has only increased, its story continues to be used as an example in debates about information security, scientific education and the ethical limits of knowledge. Although he never physically built the bomb, his work demonstrated that danger does not always come from professional spies or enemy governments, but also from curious minds with plenty of time, access to libraries… and a typewriter. Ironically, today none of the three keys are possibly needed. A version of this article was published in April 2025 Image | RawPixel In Xataka | Iran always thought it would need a nuclear bomb to defend itself against the US: it has discovered something more powerful in Hormuz In Xataka | The US’s stick to Europe has been to withdraw soldiers near Russia. The carrot is going to be the nuclear bombs

which cars can circulate and which rest on June 20

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

This Saturday, once again, the limitations of the Hoy No Circula Saturday program are reactivated, a mechanism coordinated by the Environment Secretariat of Mexico City (SEDEMA) to mitigate air pollution rates in the region of the Metropolitan Zone of the Valley of Mexico. For this reason, anyone who intends to use their car this weekend must check the numerical ending of their license plate and the verification sticker before entering the roads. It should be noted that this regulation is not limited only to the 16 districts of CDMX, but directly influences multiple neighboring municipalities belonging to the State of Mexico. The operation is fully valid in: Atizapan of Zaragoza Coacalco de Berriozábal Cuautitlan Cuautitlán Izcalli Chalco Chicoloapan Chimalhuacan Ecatepec de Morelos Huixquilucan Ixtapaluca Peace Naucalpan de Juárez Nezahualcoyotl Nicolas Romero Tecámac Tlalnepantla de Baz Tultitlan Chalco Valley Of course, keep in mind that if your route includes passing through any of these towns, the Saturday restrictions will be mandatory. What cars and license plates does Hoy No Circula Saturday affect? The objective of this restrictive scheme is to reduce the number of vehicles in circulation to cut gas emissions, applying a set of particular rules on Saturdays that complement the restrictions that operate from Monday to Friday. These restrictions do not affect all drivers in the same way each week and that is why you must be especially attentive. Likewise, it is essential to remember that the Saturday Hoy No Circula does not last twenty-four hours. Your application period is from 05:00 to 22:00beyond this schedule there are no prohibitions on mobility, unless the environmental authorities activate a contingency or issue an extraordinary ruling that modifies the common regulations. June 20, 2026 corresponds to an “odd week” since we are facing the third Saturday of the month of June. Thus, units that carry hologram 1 and whose license plate ends in an odd number will be prohibited from circulating during the scheduled hours. Vehicles with holograms 0 and 00 retain their exemption to travel freely under the Saturday scheme. On the contrary, units with hologram 2 are completely denied circulation on any Saturday of the month. Of course, these restrictions do not apply to the following exceptions: Electric, natural gas or hybrid technology vehicles Units registered with plates for people with disabilities All those intended for urban public transport services (including funeral services) Those dedicated to school or passenger transportation Those assigned to public security and/or civil protection Failure to comply with the Hoy No Circula will be punished with a fine that ranges between 20 and 30 times the value of the Measurement and Update Unit (UMA), a figure that represents approximately 1,924.40 pesos at its lowest level until reaching 2,886.60 pesos at the highest limit. In addition, the driver risks having the car taken to the vehicle depot. Photo | Jan Baborak In Xataka | The countries that pollute the most in the world, gathered in a detailed graph

The US has just added a new Boeing 747 to its presidential fleet. Behind there is a controversial gift from Qatar

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

A presidential plane It’s never just a plane. It is an office, a symbol of power and, in the case of the United States, a flying extension of the White House. This Friday, in a huge hangar of the Joint Base Andrews, The United States showed a new member of its executive fleet. But we are not looking at a device that has just left the factory or an aircraft purchased directly from Boeing to be modified from scratch. What we have seen is something else: an already existing 747, adapted at full speed and surrounded by questions that go far beyond aviation. Sometimes a picture says more than a thousand words. Others, however, need context so as not to lead us to a hasty conclusion. The photograph of the 747 in the hangar, with the American flag on the fuselage and the new red, white and blue livery already applied, conveys the feeling that the process is practically closed. But the official statement introduces an important nuance: the plane has just arrived at the group in charge of presidential transportation and must now begin its commissioning flights, the final phase in which the modification is validated before becoming available for presidential missions. To understand the movement it is necessary to clarify a concept. “Air Force One“is not the name of the plane, but the callsign that any Air Force aircraft receives when the president travels on board. Therefore, if for some reason Donald Trump were to fly on a C-32a military version of the Boeing 757-200 typically used to transport the vice president, that plane would operate as Air Force One during that journey. A bridge plane for a fleet that shows the passage of time The surname “Bridge” appears on the scene and is part of the official designation VC-25B Bridge and means “bridge.” In this case, the translation fits almost literally, because the plane is designed to fill the gap between the current VC-25 and the two final VC-25s that Boeing must deliver later. The Air Force speaks of an operational need to reduce pressure on the in-service fleet, especially as its heavy maintenance periods lengthen. Reuters, for its part, has reported that the main program is accumulating delays and that delivery is now expected around mid-2028. The difference with the current fleet begins with age and platform. The VC-25A that we have associated with Air Force One for decades are Boeing 747-200B specially modified, in service since 1990while the Bridge is based on a Boeing 747-8 that is about 13 years old. It is not a new plane, but it does belong to a much more recent generation of the Jumbo. That’s where the most delicate part of the story begins. As we say, the plane comes from Qatar and was accepted by the United States Department of Defense as a gift for government use with the aim of adapting it to presidential transportation during the Trump Administration. The controversy arises not only from its value, estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, but from who delivers it and for what mission it ends up entering the US system. In Washington, the operation has provoked criticism and legal, ethical and security questions — from rules on gifts from foreign governments to potential foreign influence and the real cost of turning it into a presidential platform. The Air Force maintains that the plane is safe, that it incorporates the technologies necessary for the presidential mission and that no risks were assumed in safety, security or mission communications. He also states that A group of interagency experts developed protocols to detect and, if necessary, neutralize possible technical risks on an aircraft previously used by another owner. What has not been publicly detailed is the scope of sensitive capabilities such as hardening against electromagnetic impulses, self-protection systems or their real equivalence with the definitive VC-25. That balance sums up the case well. The new 747 does not arrive to suddenly close the presidential transition, but to buy time while the final planes are still pending. From an operational point of view, the logic is understandable: current models are aging and the continuity of presidential transportation cannot depend on schedules that are delayed. From a political point of view, however, the path chosen has an obvious cost. The Bridge was born as a bridge aircraft, but also involved in controversies. Images | United States Air Force (1, 2,) In Xataka | The European fighter has died, but Europe still has one last bullet to avoid the F-35: the alliance of Spain and Sweden

The retail SSD market has all but disappeared. And it is not because users have stopped buying them

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

Buying an SSD seemed, until not so long ago, one of those fairly simple decisions in the PC world: choose capacity, look at speeds, compare prices and little else. But the market behind this daily gesture has changed significantly. What we have seen in recent months is not a disappearance of the need for storage, but a much deeper strain on the supply chain. SSDs are still necessary, but an increasing share of drives that could previously end up in the channel retail seems to be finding other destinations before reaching the retail window. what’s happening. The clearest signal was put on the table by Nelson Duann, vice president of Silicon Motion, one of the major manufacturers of SSD controllers. In an interview with Tom’s Hardware during Computex 2026the executive summarized his reading of the market like this: “The retail SSD market has practically disappeared.” He was not talking about a specific drop or a minor adjustment, but rather about what happened during the first half of 2026, a period in which retail sales of SSDs fell significantly. The chain has moved. The key point is who is buying those units now. Duann explained that the controllers sold by silicon motion to module assemblers, that is, companies that integrate memory, controllers and other components to sell complete SSDs, largely end up in units destined for PC manufacturers. It’s not a minor detail: according to that reading, manufacturers like Acer, Asus, Dell or HP can’t get enough NAND or SSD supply directly from the big memory manufacturers, so they are turning to a channel that previously looked much more towards the end user. The pressure of AI. The background appears clearly in TrendForce data. According to the consulting firm, cloud service providers increased demand for enterprise SSDs in the first quarter of 2026 due to the need to build infrastructure for AI servers, with high-speed data transmission and enormous storage capacities. Added to that was another factor: the structural shortage of traditional hard drives pushed a significant portion of orders toward QLC enterprise SSDs. There are figures. TrendForce says the combined revenue of the world’s five largest NAND Flash vendors grew 83.7% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2026 to exceed $38.9 billion. The increase came in a scenario of strong demand and limited supply, with average sales prices above expectations. The distribution also shows the scale of the phenomenon: Samsung closed the quarter with 13.51 billion dollars, SK hynix Group reached about 7.53 billion and Kioxia reached 5.96 billion. The indirect winnerss. The hit to the retail storefront does not mean that the entire chain is losing at the same rate. Duann added that, in the past, most of these companies were focused on selling to the end user, but since the end of last year and through 2026 that dynamic has changed. Demand from PC manufacturers has strengthened and those suppliers are directing a significant portion of their production directly to them. For companies like Silicon Motion, which sell SSD controllers to these assemblers, the market continues to move, although it does so through another door. What the buyer notices. This industrial readjustment ends up reaching the user in a fairly direct way. As we have seen, the prices of consumer SSDs have increased significantly in recent quarters due to the priority that memory manufacturers are giving to the AI sector. That is to say, the pressure does not stay in the data centers, it also filters down to the shop window and the computer that we end up buying. everything remains the same. TrendForce indicates that large NAND Flash suppliers will add virtually no new capacity during the year and that, due to AI-related demand, supply shortages will remain. Production will also continue to be heavily focused on server storage applications, with high-capacity QLC enterprise SSDs gaining penetration. In this context, the retail market is conditioned by an industrial priority that does not aim to change immediately. In summary. The retail SSD market has weakened not because the user no longer needs fast storage, but because the industry has changed its order of priorities. Available NAND is being disputed between data centers, large buyers in the PC industry and companies trying to respond to increasingly server-oriented demand. What once came more naturally to the showcase is now more likely to end up integrated into a new team or AI infrastructure. The SSD is still there, but the usual buyer is no longer first in line. Images | Western Digital + Photoshop In Xataka | SSD prices are so crazy that a 2TB drive for the PS5 costs more than the PS5 itself

the “secret” heat shield of the Ariane 6 parts that Airbus manufactures in Spain

June 20, 2026 by usatoday24

We are used to “aerospace” sounding like almost futuristic materials. Titanium, high-strength aluminum, carbon fiber, alloys designed to withstand extreme conditions. The technology industry itself has turned that idea into a sales argument: just remember how some laptops and cell phones They boast of using “aerospace grade” materials.“to convey lightness, resistance and precision. That is why what happened this week during a visit to the Airbus facilities in Getafe caught my attention. In front of one of the pieces, Veronica Villanuevaresponsible for Manufacturing, Assembly, Integration and Testing at Airbus Space Systems in Spain, pointed to a yellowish surface and said it bluntly: “What you see here is yellowish, this is corkit is the thermal insulator that is put on, it is super curious, right?” The phrase had some revelation, but it was not an anecdote for visitors. The cork was there for a very specific reason: a launcher must not only be able to take off, it also has to protect its structures in a very demanding physical environment. In this case, Villanueva was talking about pieces linked to the Ariane 6. We are not talking about an “Airbus rocket”, but rather a European launcher in which ArianeGroup occupies the central role and Airbus participates by manufacturing several structures and key elements. The cork we saw in Getafe shows that space engineering also has very everyday surprises To understand why this detail was so striking, it is worth taking a step back in manufacturing. Before reaching the cork, many of these structures go through a process based on composite materials, especially carbon fiber and fiberglass. Villanueva explained during the tour that the carbon fiber used in the plant arrives as a prepreg material, that is, already mixed with resin. From there, the machines place layers on a mold until the desired geometry is built. Then will come the curing, the inspection and everything necessary to turn that stack into a piece capable of being part of a launcher. The underlying reason is easy to understand: in a launch, every kilo counts long before reaching orbit. A launcher must lift its own structure, its systems and the load it carries, so any weight savings can have significant consequences. The manufacturing manager defended during the tour that composite materials are especially interesting due to their low mass, their tensile strength and their ability to adapt to changes in temperature. The downside is that they are not as simple or as cheap to manufacture as metal. View of the Airbus production area in Getafe, where some structures linked to Ariane 6 incorporate cork as part of their thermal protection That complexity appears as soon as the structure begins to take shape. After taping, the pieces go through an autoclavea type of large pressurized oven where temperature and pressure are controlled so that the resin solidifies and the whole is compacted. Villanueva explained that the process includes a vacuum bag to extract any air that may have remained between the layers, an important detail because possible defects are not always visible from the outside. In a composite structure, what happens on the inside can be as relevant as the exterior geometry. Verónica Villanueva, responsible for Manufacturing, Assembly, Integration and Testing at Airbus Space Systems in Spain And then, after all that chain of carbon fiber, resin, pressure, vacuum and inspection, the least expected material appears again. Cork is applied to certain areas of the structure as a layer of protection against heat, but not in any way. Raúl Medina, head of launchers at Airbus Space Systems Spain, pointed out the pieces during the visit and gave a very specific measurement: “We can go from 2 millimeters to 5 millimeters thick.” On the indicated pieces, that layer moved within a very specific margin. Detail of an Ariane 6 part manufactured by Airbus in Spain. The light areas show the cork applied as thermal protection; the dark ones, areas without that coating The decision is not made by eye either. Medina summed it up with a very graphic phrase: “This in the end is an art. There are thermal engineers who analyze that you will be exposed to more heat and then, depending on that, more thickness, less thickness or areas without cork“On the surface of the piece, this thermal reading translates into areas with more protection, others with less and others where the material from the cork oak is not directly applied. Raúl Medina, head of launchers at Airbus Space Systems Spain. The idea may sound strange, but it does not appear isolated in the European space industry. In another application, ESA explained it with the Qarman CubeSatdesigned to study atmospheric reentry: its nose was made of cork, although not the kind we find in a champagne bottle, but of an adapted aerospace variety. The difference is in the behavior of the material when heated. First it swells, then chars, and finally flakes off, taking some of the unwanted heat with it. Detail of an Ariane 6 part manufactured by Airbus in Spain. The light areas show the cork applied as thermal protection; the dark ones, areas without that coating The supplier’s lead pointed in the same direction. Villanueva pointed out during the visit that that cork came from Portugal, and Medina added that whoever supplies it to the aerospace industry belongs to the same industrial universe that we associate with the wine and champagne corks. In open sources, that description fits Amorim Cork Solutionspart of the Portuguese group Corticeira Amorim, one of the world’s greatest names in cork. The ESA, in fact, identified Amorim as a supplier of the aerospace variety used in Qarman, although Airbus did not detail there the specific supplier of the parts before us. One of the fascinating things about the space industry is that it always holds some surprises. We can imagine it as a territory dominated by advanced materials, highly controlled processes and pieces designed to the limit, and to a large extent it is. But it … Read more

Today on Prime Video, a disaster movie that lost 45 million in theaters but is sweeping streaming

June 19, 2026 by usatoday24

In January 2026, ‘Greenland 2‘ premiered at number six at the US box office and closed its run in theaters with 44.8 million dollars collected against a budget of 90. The numbers are incontestable: a tremendous failure. Five months later, the sequel starring Gerard Butler tops the most watched lists on HBO Max in the United States, and now lands in Spain in Prime Video. The story of this saga begins with a pandemic and a comet. The first ‘Greenland’ never reached American theaters: COVID-19 forced it to be transferred directly to video on demand in December of that year. In international cinemas it did have a theatrical release, and it worked very well, since the reviews were good despite it being a genre not very popular with specialists. But it was the perfect time for a film of this type. The sequel tried to ride that same wave, but it didn’t turn out so well, although it ended up finding its audience. The family protagonist of the first installment has been in an underground bunker in Greenland for five years after the impact of a comet, but a series of earthquakes destroys the shelter and forces them to evacuate. They will head towards the south of France, where a crater has generated a habitable microclimate, free of electromagnetic storms and radiation. A true epic in which they will have to test their courage, their resistance and their trust in the family unit. The trajectory of ‘Greenland 2’ has parallels with that of ‘Tomorrow’s War’, the science fiction thriller with Chris Pratt that Paramount gave to Prime Video during the pandemic. It passed without pain or glory in theaters, with barely 19 million dollars collected against a budget of 200 million, but it became one of the most viewed films of the year. streaming at that time and one of the first massive successes of the Amazon platform. New dynamics of exploitation, new unexpected successes, and yes, a common point: the destruction of the planet, better to see it comfortably at home. In Xataka | Premiere: Harlan Coben is the real King Midas of Netflix, and he has a new series to confirm it

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