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The Canary Islands have just turned on the first platform that generates electricity by “boiling” the ocean

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They have been promising us for decades that the ocean would be the battery of the future. The difference now is that someone has finally plugged in the cable. The British company Global OTEC has installed in the waters of the Canary Islands the world’s first floating platform capable of extracting energy directly from the heat of the sea. It is not a concept. It is not a simulation. It is there, in the Atlantic, working. The end of intermittency. Unlike wind or solar energy, which are dependent on weather conditions, the ocean offers a constant and reliable source 24 hours a day. It’s what experts call “base load power.” Until now, Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) technology had been tested in terrestrial environments. Until now, the main obstacle to bringing this technology to a full scale was infrastructure. The terrestrial prototypes needed huge pipes to pump cold water from the depths to the coast: kilometers of installation, exorbitant costs. For this reason, Global OTEC’s commitment has been to move the platform directly to the sea, eliminating that route. The result: 80% less pipe. And a model that, for the first time, seems truly scalable. A closed circuit that “recycles” the liquid. The system literally takes advantage of the temperature difference that exists between the surface of the sea and its dark depths. The mechanism is an extremely ingenious closed circuit: Evaporation: The warm water on the surface heats a special liquid that, due to its chemical characteristics, boils quickly. Generation: When boiling, this liquid is transformed into steam, which pushes a turbine that, when rotating, generates electricity. Cycle recycling: For the system to never stop, the vapor needs to return to its liquid state. This is where the newly installed deep pipeline comes into play, sucking in very cold water from the deep sea to cool the vapor and restart the cycle. In addition to generating energy completely free of carbon emissions, the installation takes up little space and is silent. It even offers an invaluable additional benefit to island ecosystems: freshwater desalination. An ecological lifesaver. The project was not born thinking about feeding large continental electrical networks. Its objective is more concrete and, in some ways, more urgent. The European consortium PLOTEC, which finances this development, is targeting Small Island Developing States, the so-called SIDS. These are regions that today depend on polluting and expensive diesel generators, and that also fit squarely in the hurricane belt. That is why the platform has been specifically designed to withstand extreme tropical storms. The Canary Islands, the great laboratory of Europe. That this world milestone has occurred in Spain is no coincidence. The platform has been installed on the Canary Islands Ocean Platform (PLOCAN). As explained by Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universitiesit is an infrastructure managed by a consortium financed in equal parts by the State and the Government of the Canary Islands. This enclave has become a true focus of international technological attraction. According to a statement from PLOCANits waters not only host thermal projects, but at the end of 2026 they will also host the European WHEEL project, led by the Spanish engineering company ESTEYCO. This floating offshore wind energy demonstrator reinforces the role of the Canary Islands as a strategic enclave and positions the region as one of the main European poles for the development and validation of technologies. offshore. Next stop: the commercial jump. With the ocean platform already installed and technical validation underway in the Atlantic, the horizon for this technology seems clear. “This is the moment when OTEC technology moves away from controlled environments and into the real world,” says Dan Grech, founder and CEO of Global OTEC. Its next objective is to install the first commercial energy module in Hawaii, an island market with all the conditions that this technology needs. The company estimates that there are more than 25 GW of diesel capacity on tropical islands that could be candidates for this transition. Although it is important not to lose sight of the fact that going from prototype to commercial scale has historically been the valley of death for many promising energy technologies. The learning curve that Grech compares to that of solar or wind took decades to lower costs to competitive levels. That being said, the platform is in the water. And that, in this sector, is already a lot. Image | Global OTEC Xataka | Every year millions of birds die because of wind turbines. The solution: paint them like poisonous snakes

Gemini Omni wants to do with video what Nano Banana did with images: Google is aiming very high

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Creating an image with AI is no longer as surprising as before. What begins to make a difference is the ability to modify it, give it continuity and turn an initial idea into something more elaborate without losing the thread along the way. In video, that challenge is much greater: there is movement, time, physics, and characters that must continue to appear coherent. Gemini Omni comes with the promise of addressing this problem and making editing a much easier task. Google DeepMind itself asks to think of Gemini Omni as in Nano Bananabut for video. The reference makes sense because Nano Banana was Google’s image generator that took visual creation with AI to a very striking scale. The first version, released in August 2025, added 13 million users in four days and had generated more than 5 billion images by mid-October. Google now introduces Gemini Omni Flash as the first model in the Gemini Omni family. According to the company, it is designed to create content from any entry. The idea is that the user can combine images, audio, video and text as a starting point to generate high-quality videos supported by Gemini’s real-world knowledge. A video generation model that is committed to coherence The most interesting part is how Google describes the editing process. It is not only proposed as a tool to generate a clip from scratch, but as a system capable of working on a scene using chained instructions. The company talks about changing specific elements or completely transforming a starting video, adjusting aesthetics, action, environment, angle, style or specific details. It also promises to maintain character consistency, preserve scene continuity, and offer more coherent physics. In his note, he shows how Gemini Omni can start from a scene and modify it with direct instruction, whether to change the material of an object, alter an action, or turn a complex idea into a visual explanation. Let’s look at some examples of prompts. “Make the sculpture out of bubbles” “When the person touches the mirror, make the mirror ripple beautifully like liquid, and the person’s arm turns into reflective mirror material” “Claymation explainer of protein folding, everything is made out of clay, no hands, stop motion, accurate” At Xataka we have done orna first test with a recognizable image: Puerta de Alcalá, in Madrid. The starting point was a static photograph and the prompt we used was the following: “Create a video from this image. Cars are moving forward and people are walking.” (Create a video from this image. Cars move forward and people walk.) The idea was to see to what extent Gemini Omni could turn a real scene into a small moving clip. In the video above you can see precisely that attempt to animate the original imagewith cars moving forward, pedestrians walking, and ambient sound that fits the scene. It also appears to retain some visible branding elements on the vehicles, especially the Mercedes-Benz logo, although in other cases, such as Fiat, the result is less clear. Let’s talk about availability. Google ensures that Gemini Omni Flash begins to reach Google AI Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers through Gemini and Google Flow, while its deployment at no cost in YouTube Shorts and YouTube Create App launches this week. In our test with a corporate account, however, we found ourselves with a fairly tight limit: after generating three videos, the system warned us that “we had reached our video generation limit until May 20 at 7:59 p.m.” It is not too surprising if we think about what is happening below: creating video with AI requires a lot of resources, so everything indicates that Google would be dosing access, at least in this first phase. When we talk about video generation with artificial intelligence, it is likely that one of the first names that comes to mind is sora. It arrived like one of the great promises of OpenAI for this terrain. The route, however, ended up being much shorter than that initial ambition suggested. Its website and app were no longer available at the end of April 2026.although the API will continue to work until September 24. Images | Google | Xataka In Xataka | There is a battle to have the AI ​​model that programs best. And a good, pretty and very cheap rival has appeared in it: Cursor

China just gave them a much more ambitious mission

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Every time we ask something of an AI, the scene seems almost invisible: we type a sentence, receive a response, and move on. But behind that apparent lightness there are buildings full of servers, cooling systems running tirelessly, and an electricity demand that does not stop growing. The cloud, no matter how much we call it a cloud, has ground, cables, heat and consumption. And precisely for this reason an idea that not so long ago sounded like a strange experiment is beginning to make sense: removing part of that infrastructure from land and taking it to the sea. China is already taking it to the commercial field. MERICS notes that the country has presented the first commercial underwater data center in Hainan and a module powered by offshore wind energy in Shanghai, two movements that point in the same direction: to see if this architecture can stop being a technical oddity and become a usable piece within its digital deployment. The novelty is not only in submerging servers, but in presenting them as a possible response to three tensions that already weigh on the AI ​​infrastructure: energy, cooling and land. Hainan is the first piece of that leap. Pilot testing of the Hainan underwater data center began in 2023, first with storage services for the island’s free trade port and telecom operators, before expanding to cloud and AI companies. The project does not play in the league of large terrestrial data centers, but it does have sufficient scale to stop being a simple model: each cabin is located 35 meters under water, has 24 racks and can house up to 500 servers. Its value is precisely there: demonstrating that China is trying to turn an experimental idea into real commercial infrastructure. Shanghai as an energy showcase. If Hainan represents the commercial leap, Shanghai adds the piece that makes the story more ambitious: direct integration with offshore wind energy. This project is facing Lingang, where CGTN places an underwater platform already operational and directly connected to a nearby offshore wind farm. The total planned investment is 1.6 billion yuan, about 235 million dollars according to that source, and the installation is based on a pilot phase of 2.3 MW, while the complete project is planned to reach 24 MW. Refrigerate without fighting against the environment. That is the technical promise that explains much of the interest in these underwater data centers. The Chinese state media recalls that terrestrial facilities can dedicate up to 40% of their electricity to cooling, a problem that is especially visible when we talk about increasingly dense racks. Under the sea, the idea changes: take advantage of water as a natural heat sink. In Shanghai, for example, the average sea temperature is around 15 degrees Celsius. The other half of the equation is energy. The Shanghai center is connected by a photoelectric composite cable to a 200 MW offshore wind farm, with more than 50 turbines, and more than 95% of its electricity comes from renewable energy. If the project reaches full scale, it is estimated that it could save 61 million kWh per year and significantly reduce its carbon emissions. There are challenges too. MERICS warns that these data centers pose significant challenges: sealing modules, dealing with seawater corrosion, operating in a high-pressure environment, and assuming that maintenance may require bringing entire modules to the surface. This is no secret. Accessing submerged hardware in the event of a failure is one of the most sensitive points. Microsoft had already tried the path. The best known antecedent is Project Natickan initiative with which Microsoft submerged a data center off the Orkney Islands, in Scotland, and recovered it in 2020 after two years of operation underwater. The test served to demonstrate that the idea could work technically.but it did not end up becoming a commercial line. Reading is not a magic solution. As we can see, China is trying another way of dividing up the pieces of the problem. Hainan shows attempt to bring underwater data centers into commercial arena; Shanghai adds a broader ambition, connecting them with offshore wind energy and directing them towards increasingly demanding loads. Undersea data centers seemed like a technological oddity. Now, at least in China, they are beginning to look like an industrial bet with a much more ambitious mission. Images | Shanghai Hailanyun Technology In Xataka | There is a battle to have the AI ​​model that programs best. And a good, pretty and very cheap rival has appeared in it: Cursor

The joint mission between Europe and China is already in space. The really important thing comes now

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Finally, despite the postponement last April, SMILE has been launched successfully. The mission that unites China and Europe To study how the solar winds interact with the Earth’s magnetosphere, it departed from the Kurú Space Port, in French Guiana, at 03:52 GMT (05:52, Spanish peninsular time). He has at least 3 years of work ahead of him, but before starting his work he must take some preliminary steps. Journey to final orbit. During the first 25 days of the mission, SMILE You must start your engines 11 times. This will allow it to gradually lengthen its orbit around the Earth’s poles, until reaching 121,000 km above the North Pole and 5,000 km above the South Pole. Once in its final orbit, around June 13, it will be time to tune up all its instruments. The final deployment. Remotely, from Earth, mission engineers will check that all SMILE instruments are working properly. For that, some must change their conformation. Specifically, it will be necessary to deploy the magnetometer arm and open the X-ray camera shutter and the UV camera cover. Each of these points is essential for the proper development of the mission. The first images. Once the experiments have been verified, SMILE will begin its work. The first images will be sent to Earth for analysis three months later. The mission. SMILE will study the interaction of solar activity with the shield that the Earth uses to protect itself from it. Although other missions have carried out similar tasks, it will be the first time that global images of this interaction have been taken, both in X-rays and ultraviolet. This will give us better knowledge than we currently have about solar storms and how they affect our planet. And not only They draw us beautiful auroras in the sky. They can also affect telecommunications, sometimes worryingly. It is important to understand them and know how to predict, as far as possible, the harmful effects they could cause. At least three years. The nominal duration of the mission will be 3 years. This means that it is designed to achieve your main objectives in this time. The economic investment of the European and Chinese space agencies has focused on guaranteeing this duration. However, that does not mean that within three years the ship will be deorbited or that all its instruments will be turned off. If it continues to function properly, its useful life could be greatly extended. The case of Cluster. Cluster it was a mission ESA whose objective was also to measure the Earth’s magnetic environment. In a way, it could be considered a predecessor of SMILE. It was launched in 2000 and remained active until 2024. However, Its nominal duration was initially 2 years. Once the retirement date arrived, it was found that Cluster was completely fit, so it was decided to invest in it for much longer. Maybe something similar will happen with SMILE. For now, we will have to go step by step. To begin with, it must reach its operational orbit. Once there, the magic begins. Or rather: science. Image | THAT In Xataka | The Webb and Hubble telescopes simultaneously observed Jupiter’s auroras. The problem is that they didn’t see the same thing

Tomorrow one of the platform’s main action heroes returns to Prime Video, although he does so in an unexpected format

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When Amazon closed ‘Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan’ in July 2023, the fourth and final season left one character with accounts settled. John Krasinski had spent five years playing a CIA analyst perpetually misplaced in a world that surpassed him. Few expected him to return to the character so soon and, above all, to do so in this way: ‘Jack Ryan: Covert Warthe first film derived from the series, arrives this Wednesday, May 20 to Prime Video. When Amazon premiered the series in 2018, the streaming It was still an incipient phenomenon. Amazon needed a high-budget action product, and opted for this well-known CIA analyst who had already had four previous performers: Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine. Krasinski stayed with the character throughout the television run, allowing the character to be developed in greater detail than his previous incarnations. The series was a success: 37% of Prime Video users watched the series during the first month. In 2024, Amazon MGM Studios announced the production of a film that would continue the series. The last time we saw Ryan star in a feature film was in ‘Jack Ryan: Enter Shadow’ in 2014, with Chris Pine. Here, Krasinski is joined by Sienna Miller as an MI6 agent. The plot follows Ryan, removed from the action but dragged back when uncovers a corrupt black ops unit known as Project Starling. The film arrives at a peculiar time for Prime Video. “The platform has built a very solid action ecosystem in recent years, with series like ‘Fallout’, ‘The Boys’ and, above all, ‘Reacher’, the epitome of that subgenre of thrillers and action.”for parents” to which Jack Ryan also belongs. The third season of ‘Reacher’ accumulated 54.6 million global viewers in its first two weeks. It is not surprising that Amazon has already suggested that ‘Covert War’ is not an end, but a new chapter. In Xataka | Today on Prime Video, the conclusion of the best series from the creator of ‘The Sandman’ comes with a radical surprise in its duration

How the Panama Canal is being lined thanks to the war in Iran

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When an international conflict breaks out, there is always someone who manages to take advantage. As the world watches with concern the Third Gulf War, thousands of kilometers from missiles and drones, the Panama Canal has been crowned the unexpected winner of this global chaos. What began as an energy crisis in the Persian Gulf has become, for the small Central American nation, a gold mine of historic dimensions. Since the attacks triggered the virtual closure of the Strait of Hormuz – the world’s main artery for fuel transportation, through which approximately one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas trade transits – maritime trade has entered a phase of genuine desperation. The urgency to move goods has reached such a point that, as confirmed by Ricaurte Vásquez Moralesadministrator of the Panama Canal, a shipping company paid 4 million dollars in an auction just to skip the line and cross the interoceanic waterway as soon as possible. The mechanism of urgency After the Hormuz blockade, traffic through the Panamanian canal has experienced a general increase of close to 11%, registering peaks of up to an additional 20% on the days of greatest demand, as reported by the Panama Canal Authority itself BBC. During the first half of fiscal year 2026 – from October 2025 to March 2026 – the channel registered 6,288 transits, 224 more than in the same period of the previous year, according to data presented by the channel authority to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. In order to absorb this flow, nature has also been complicit. The deputy administrator of the channel, Ilya Espino de Marotta, explained to cnn that unusually intense rains during the dry season have kept Gatún and Alhajuela lakes at maximum levels, which has made it possible to manage between 40 and 41 daily transits compared to the usual average of 36. A notable recovery if one remembers that during the El Niño drought between 2023 and 2024, daily transits fell to 24. “The Panama Canal is open and fully operational,” assured Vásquez Morales. “Amid all the geopolitical complexities of today’s world, the Panama Canal remains open and reliable.” But the true profitability is not only in the volume, but in the price of urgency. The companies they pay a fixed rate between 300,000 and 400,000 dollars to transit with prior reservation. Those who do not have it must compete in a relentless auction system where the highest bidder takes the coveted spot. Víctor Vial, vice president of finance of the channel, detailed in the same presentation to investors that the average auction price before the crisis ranged between 135,000 and 140,000 additional dollars. After the start of the conflict, “that average increased to approximately $385,000 between March and April.” Desperation has pushed some oil companies to pay more than 3 million additional dollars to avoid waits, according to Bloomberg. The absolute record of 4 million is explained by Vásquez himself: “It was a ship that transported fuel to Europe, but they diverted it to Singapore, and it had to get there because Singapore is running out of fuel,” declared. With this extraordinary injection, Vial estimated that the growth of the channel’s income will be between 10% and 15% this year, although he warned that “we are still not doing the math or modifying our projections.” A logistical lifesaver, not a replacement The profitability of the channel is explained by the geography of the panic. More than 80% of the oil that usually transited through Hormuz was destined for the Asian continent, according to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). When that route was blocked, buyers from Japan, South Korea, India and China turned to the United States Gulf Coast. According to data from the maritime intelligence company Kpler cited by BloombergUS crude oil exports through the Panama Canal have exceeded 200,000 barrels per day, approaching their maximum since July 2022. The logic is implacable. A trip from the US Gulf Coast to Japan via the canal takes almost a month, while going around Africa around the Cape of Good Hope would take almost twice as long. “With all the bombings, missiles, drones, companies say it is safer and less expensive to cross through the Panama Canal,” explained Rodrigo Noriegalawyer and analyst in Panama City. “All of this is affecting global supply chains.” Despite the boom, experts are categorical when comparing both routes. The EIA data, updated as of March 2026illustrate it crudely: in the first half of 2025, 20.9 million barrels of oil per day transited the Strait of Hormuz, compared to the 2.3 million that crossed the Panama Canal in its entire fiscal year 2025. A ratio of almost one to nine. Furthermore, VLCC-type supertankers—capable of transporting up to two million barrels in a single trip—are simply too big for the Panamanian locks, as both France 24 and OilPrice point out. Panama is a golden shortcut, but it does not have the muscles to replace the massive flow of the Persian Gulf. Marc Gilbert, global leader of the Geopolitics Center at Boston Consulting Group, summed it up: “What is really happening is that energy from the United States is replacing the volumes that cargoes from the Gulf previously sent to Asia.” And he added that what this crisis shows is that “when a sea lane fails, the entire system must adapt.” From economic bonanza to diplomatic minefield Panama’s sudden strategic prominence has not gone unnoticed by the great powers. As reported by Al JazeeraWashington and its allies accused China at the end of April of applying “selective economic pressure”, retaining dozens of Panamanian-flagged ships in Chinese ports in retaliation for the annulment, by the Panamanian Supreme Court, of a port concession that a company linked to Hong Kong maintained over the ports of Balboa and Cristóbal. Beijing categorically denied the accusations. The spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Lin Jian, described them as statements that “lack foundation and distort reality”, and in turn accused the United … Read more

It is their asset to overcome Shanghai

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Singapore has a problem that many countries would envy: its port is becoming too small. The city-state, which has become a hub for global trade located in the Strait of Malacca, already handles more than 41 million containers a year and is approaching the limit of its capacity. His government has chosen to build a port from scratch instead of expanding the one they already have. And since Singapore is a land of eccentricities, they want to do it in a big way: with a fully automated megaportdestined to be the largest of its category in the world. Puerto Tuas It has been under construction for a few years now. and below these lines we tell you what is special about it. Behind China. Singapore has been the world’s second largest port by cargo volume for decades, just behind Shanghai. The city’s port reached a record of 41.12 million TEUs (units equivalent to a twenty-foot container) managed in 2024, 5% more than the previous year. Shanghai, for its part, reached 50 million. The idea is that once the new port is completed, it will have an operational capacity of around 65 million TEUs annually, which would make it the largest container terminal in the world. Colossal dimensions. The port was officially opened on September 1, 2022. When completed, sometime in the 2040s, it will occupy some 1,337 hectares (the equivalent of 3,300 football fields) and will have 66 docks along 26 kilometers of coastline, capable of accommodating the world’s largest container ships. The project is being developed in four phases and is being executed by PSA International, Singapore’s public port operator. According to they counted According to Bloomberg, the project would have a total cost of about $14 billion. Automation. What sets Tuas apart from any other port infrastructure under construction is the level of automation. The idea is that operators are in charge of monitoring everything in the port, while automated vehicles (AGVs), sensors and all types of monitoring systems and autonomous technologies take care of the rest. The current fleet of AGVs exceeds 200which communicate with underground transponders using RFID technology to know their position in real time and avoid collisions. The technology that moves it. In addition to container transportation, port automation allows remotely manage your operations through the Tuas Control Center. PSA works with technology partners to develop automation solutions in cranes and AGVs, and will deploy a private 5G network to support all these systems. On top of all this, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore will develop a ship traffic management system with the intention of monitoring traffic in real time. through artificial intelligence and satellites. The goal is that every movement within the port, from the arrival of a ship to the departure of a truck, is controlled and optimized by algorithms. How the work progresses. Tuas Phase 1 currently has twelve operational docks, and PSA plans to add four more throughout this year. Two more will enter service in 2027, which would bring the total to eighteen docks with a capacity of up to 20 million TEUs annually. For its part, Phase 2 has already taken its first steps, with the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore handing over to PSA the first land reclaimed from the sea, where the operator can now begin construction of the facilities. The first dock is scheduled to come into operation in 2028. On the other hand, also the transfer is being managed little by little from the current port. The deadline remains unchanged for 2027, the year in which all of Singapore’s historic terminals will have closed and migrated to Tuas. The Pasir Panjang terminal will do so later, already in the 2040s. In 2024, PSA laid the first stone of the PSA Supply Chain Huba $647.5 million logistics center designed to complement the port. Lawrence Wong, Prime Minister of Singapore pointed out at the opening ceremony that the hub will replace the old Keppel Distripark and will “be Singapore’s gateway to the world”. The problems that are saved. Have all the terminals in a single point has been key to decongesting trafficsince there is no longer a need to have trucks crossing the city center to transport cargo from one terminal to another. Furthermore, in terms of sustainability, PSA aims for Tuas achieve net zero emissions by 2050. Additionally, the port design will incorporate above-ground platforms to add an additional 240 hectares of space, and its operating level is set at 5 meters above mean sea level to accommodate rising ocean levels. Cover image | MPA Singapore In Xataka | There are so many boats plying the Strait of Gibraltar that, underwater, the whales are screaming desperately

why in moments of fatigue or anxiety we look for certain flavors and textures

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Reaching the end of the work day, closing the computer and having very high anxiety levels are the ideal components for going to the kitchen almost automatically. And we are not looking for a healthy food like a salad or an apple, but the brain seems to be urgently asking for a pizza or a tub of ice cream. And it is not a question of gluttony, but it is pure and simple neurobiology. The evolution. Something we know quite well is that the human relationship with food completely transcends the mere caloric need for survival, but is one of the most important primitive tools. of emotional regulation. But it doesn’t always work in the sense of eating the more calories the better. And it is that, while the chronic stress and fatigue push us towards a carbohydrate binge, deeply negative emotions, such as extreme sadness or grief over losing someone, cause exactly the opposite: the hermetic closure of the stomach. Because? When we talk about stress eating, science is quite clear that this pattern does not seek to satisfy the “physiological hunger” that we all feel in order to survive and that appears gradually and is satisfied with almost anything. Here we talk specifically of an “emotional hunger” that appears suddenly and is satisfied with a very specific, and not at all healthy, food. The blame for this food kidnapping lies with to a large extentthe hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis. This is a very important system that in a situation of acute stress, such as when a car is about to hit us, releases a large amount of adrenaline. In short, it is a system that prepares us to fight or flee, and logically suppresses appetite because in this moment of danger, the last thing the body ‘thinks about’ is digestion, but rather it ‘thinks’ about sending blood to our muscles so that they function at maximum performance. The problem It comes with the chronic stress that work, bills or studies can generate, where the body is constantly releasing cortisol. And this is fundamental, since as demonstrated the classic study According to researcher Elissa Epel, high levels of reactive cortisol alter satiety signals and send a message that warns that the body is in constant danger and needs store energy quickly in case it is necessary in the future. This is where we see that our overall system was developed at a time where food was not always availableand has not yet adapted to ‘modern life’ so as not to have these types of reactions. The carbohydrates. We’re not just looking for calories, we’re looking for neurochemical rescue. This is where the consumption of sugars and fats explosively activates the brain’s reward system, releasing a flood of dopamine which is a form of self-medication, since here food temporarily acts as a buffer from emotional discomfort. In addition, simple carbohydrates play a fundamental role in the synthesis of serotonin, the neurotransmitter associated with well-being and calm. In this way, when eating a plate of pasta or a sweet, we make it easier for tryptophan crosses into the brain and the result is a real, although ephemeral, calming effect that conditions our brain to repeat the action every time we feel very overwhelmed. The case of sadness. If stress pushes us to the refrigerator, acute pain and grief keep us away from it, since in the case of being sad it is quite common to have hardly any appetite, which is also one of the most classic symptoms of some types of depression. Something that we see as quite logical, but the reality is that we have seen that food is comforting; The obligatory question would be: why doesn’t it help with sadness? The reason. Grieving the loss of someone very dear to us establishes in the body a state of biological alarm that is different from the daily stress generated by work or studies. Deep sadness activates the sympathetic nervous system, keeping it in exhausting hypervigilance, and this is a problem. The problem is that digestion is managed by the parasympathetic system and the vagus nerve and in this state of sadness it is completely inhibited, because when the sympathetic system is activated, the parasympathetic is ‘turned off’. The most immediate consequence is that the gastric emptying slows down drasticallycausing nausea, a knotted feeling in the stomach, and a physical inability to swallow or digest solids. Priorities. In this way, the body in its maximum state of sadness prioritizes psychic survival and emotional processing of the trauma that has been experienced over routine metabolic maintenance. From here, the food simply loses its flavor, and the inability to feel pleasure blocks the release of dopamine that would normally give us an appetizing and caloric bite. A cultural question. Since the state of grief causes someone to be unable to eat properly or do everyday tasks such as cooking, all human cultures have developed eating rituals around grief and death. This translates into sharing food in these times of grief or at least making it available to anyone who needs it. But we have also seen how in some cultures food is shared after a funeral to reinforce the social fabric. Here food acts as a tangible reminder that life goes on and that the individual has not been isolated from the group. Images | Drazen Zigic in Magnific Robin Stickel In Xataka | Eating in front of a screen is not a modern mania: it is the new social ritual

There is a battle to have the AI ​​model that programs best. And a good, pretty and very cheap rival has appeared in it: Cursor

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Cursor has introduced Composer 2.5a generative AI model specifically intended for one thing: programming well. How good? Well, according to this startup, it does it as well as the best models of the moment, Claude Opus 4.7 and GPT 5.5, but it also does it for a lower cost. The challenge is striking not only because of what it means for Cursor, but because of how they have created that model: it turns out that it is based on a Chinese AI model. AI models specialized in one thing. While OpenAI and Anthropic try to develop general-purpose models—they do a lot of things really well— Cursor you have decided to focus on a specific task. The AI ​​startup has created an AI model specialized in programming, and has done so by arguing that a billion parameters are not necessary to compete with the best. Devoting yourself to a single thing allows you to not only gain efficiency, but also costs. This is not a decathlete, but a specialist in the 200 m event, so to speak. As good as GPT-5.5 or Claude Opus 4.7? That’s what they say in Cursor, because according to their tests with several specific programming benchmarks, the performance is on par with those two models that today are the great references both in programming and in other areas. And much cheaper. These results are also especially interesting when we add the cost factor. The average cost per task in the CursorBench 3.1 benchmark showed that Composer 2.5 managed to solve almost 65% of all tests for a cost of just $0.3. Opus 4.7 max and GPT-5.5 xhigh managed to reach that 65%, but at much higher costs: just over 4 dollars in the case of GPT, and 11 dollars in the case of Opus. The difference is abysmal. He API access price demonstrates the differences: 0.5 dollars per million input tokens 2.5 dollars per million output tokens, when Claude Opus 4.7 is 5/25 and that of GPT-5.5 is 5/30 respectively. Textual feedback. Unlike models that only learn from the final result, Composer 2.5 has been trained with a reinforcement learning technique (Reinforcement Learning) that allows us to offer clues about what is happening if errors are being made. This allows the model to recalibrate and act as a transparent teacher. One that also corrects word by word as it solves the exercise, not just when seeing the final result. 85% of the training budget has been dedicated exclusively to reinforcement learning, calibrating the model not for chat, but to execute code refactorings or fix bugs in real time. A model “born” in China. Those responsible for Cursor themselves have explained that Composer 2.5—like its predecessor, Composer 2launched at the end of March—is a model derived from Kimi K2.5, the AI ​​model of the Chinese startup Moonshot. Although that is the basis, already in Composer 2 the training and post-training tasks manage to improve the behavior in a very notable way in programming benchmarks and also in others such as Terminal Bench that evaluate the agentic behavior of these models. Cursor gets older. This startup became famous for creating a programming AI agent that was a pioneer in that fever we live for vibecoding. The user experience is no longer that of programming, as in traditional IDEs (Integrated Development Environments), but rather that of directing the machine to program it for you. Composer 2.5 doesn’t just program: it understands the structure and relationships between files, and turns Cursor into a much more competitive AI company, because it no longer depends on being able to work with Anthropic or OpenAI models, for example. Having both the AI ​​agent and the model processing everything makes it a much more competitive solution. Elon Musk has Cursor in his sights. Cursor’s good performance has led to growing interest in buying this company even before it becomes too big. Elon Musk knows this well and Grok, xAI’s model, is not so popular in the programming field. In April we learned that SpaceX had reached an agreement that gives you the option to buy Cursor for 60,000 million dollars. It would be a promising deal for both, because Composer 2.5 has already used Colossus’ infrastructure to train, and xAI could thus try to gain market share in the juicy enterprise sector. In Xataka | Elon Musk knows that TSMC is overwhelmed: Terafab is his idea to completely change the global chip industry

Sony has been aiming for the best noise cancellation in headphones for years. Now he wants to aim for something else: luxury

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One of the companies that is most committed to sound is Sony. It makes all the sense in the world considering the company’s history and they have just presented their new model of over-ear headphones. These are the Sony 1000X The Collexion, headphones apart from the WH-1000XM6 For a few months now, they have been betting on sound quality, comfort and something as palpable as it is, at the same time, intangible: luxury. Are expensive headphones always better than cheap ones? Hand finished with noble materials It seems unbelievable, but ten years have passed since the Japanese company launched the MDR-1000X. They were the first generation of what would later be renamed the WH-1000 that have given the company so much success (especially the XM3 and XM4) and, to celebrate the event, Sony wanted to look back to create your 1000X The Collexion. In terms of design, they are very similar to the WH-1000XM6, but with finishes that are reminiscent of those MDR-1000X with synthetic leather wrapping the headphones (and not just the pads). Speaking of the pads, Sony assures that they have redesigned both the part that covers the ears and the headband with a highly padded material designed so that we can wear them for hours and hours without them bothering us. But where the Japanese want to show that luxury is in the finishes. To start, the materials. All we see is faux fur and metal. Plastic is far from the rest of the family to opt for this metal that has brushed parts and others polished with a mirror effect. Furthermore, it is not just any polish, since something that they wanted to make clear during the presentation is that they are all hand finished and with several layers so that the Sony logo and the connectors between the headband and the headphones themselves have a shiny finish. At a design level, it is evident that this attempt to call for luxury that the Japanese are looking for is fulfilled, with a telescopic system to adapt the headphones to more head sizes that does not reveal their moving parts or rails. Apart from this, there is also a redesign inside the capsules to eliminate dead spaces. With this, they have managed to pass from a width of 45.4 mm on the XM6 to 40.1 mm on these The Collexion. The main idea in the design of this model is that they “resonate” with you, that they are a functional accessory, but an almost fashionable accessory with that exterior of synthetic leather, metal and with a much more premium finish. Regarding the weight, it remains at 320 grams. Sound with old acquaintances and new technologies Headphones do not live on design alone and you need a sound to accompany them. During the presentation, Sony wanted to clarify something: the XM6 series continues to be the spearhead in terms of noise cancellation. The 1000X The Collexion has 12 earcups to capture ambient sound, and the Japanese company is aiming for active cancellation comparable to its main line of headphones. In the sound part, things change. The interior redesign has also been used for a new custom diaphragm unit with which they aim to achieve greater separation between instruments and voices, as well as richer high frequencies to, in general, offer a richer sound. It supports Hi-Res Audio Wireless LDAC, a 10-band equalizer and is the first headphones with DSEE Ultimate technology that uses AI to “decompress” digital music signals. It’s something they do in real time to, according to Sony, restore the lost details and dynamic range of the songs. To round out the software section, the 360 ​​Upmix function has three modes (game, music and cinema) to create spatial audio. And regarding autonomy, Sony says up to 24 hours on a charge. Launch and price of the Sony 1000X The Collexion Given the features, it’s time to talk about the price. As we say, Sony aims at a different segment than the one they already have covered with the WH-1000XM6 that move around 350 euros and these 1000X The Collexion will arrive for 630 euros. They will be available this May and, in addition to the redesign of the headphones, the box now looks like a bag with a magnetic closure that accompanies that premium “package”. In Xataka | The best quality-price Bluetooth headphones: which one to buy for your mobile in 2026

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