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The fires have already grown by 218% so far this year and summer has not yet arrived

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While announcing “the largest deployment of the State”, the Government of Spain has given a disturbing piece of information: the number of fires has skyrocketed by 218% so far this year. And yes, May isn’t over yet. The fine print, however, is interesting. The data, as I say, refers to the number of reported fires, but does not directly correspond to the burned area. In fact, despite to the enormous ‘boom’ of fire outbreaksthe burned land is still below the average of the last decade. In this sense, what is truly interesting is the paradoxThat with reservoirs at historic highs and no signs predicting an upcoming drought, the risk of fire has not stopped. In fact, it has skyrocketed. Clarifying the data on the fire boom. Indeed, between January 1 and May 15, 2026, 127 fires were reported, compared to 40 in the same period in 2025. That is a growth of 218%. And it’s true that “tripling” the fires sounds like a lot: but of those 127 fires, only three were large forest fires and only six required major intervention. The key fact, as we can see, is none of that. During the quarter, 12,946.66 hectares have burned; that is, 2.2 times more than in the same period of 2025 (5,822.12). But it is still 29.6 less than the average for the decade. The key fact is that we have improved a lot in preparing for and putting out fires, but this year the situation is very complicated. The three ways we have of counting fires (Civil Protection, MITECO and EFFIS/Copernicus) say that the year is getting complicated at a forced pace. Above all, because 2025 was a very bad year: three times as many hectares as average were burned. Where is really the problem? In the concentration of damage. According to Greenpeace, less than 1% of fires They already concentrate 86% of the surface burned and the average size of the large fire has gone from 1,500 hectares to more than 6,000. In this context, having more fires means having a greater chance of one of them becoming a superfire. And the countdown has already begun: the fire season is at the door and, despite the grandiose declarations of the administrations, we are not prepared. Image | Marcus Kauffman In Xataka | The satellite that detects fires before firefighters has a problem: it has to avoid space debris and is leaving blind spots on the map

Blue Origin had a plan of 12 launches for this year. A fireball at Cape Canaveral just changed everything

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Bad news for Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company. And his New Glenn rocket It exploded this morning into a huge fireball while conducting a ground test at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The accident, which fortunately left no injuries, is a good blow for the company in his race to compete with SpaceXjust when this was going to be his definitive breakout year. That has passed. Around 9:00 p.m. local time (3:00 a.m. on Friday on the Spanish peninsula), the New Glenn exploded during a ‘hotfire’, a test in which the rocket engines are turned on while the vehicle remains anchored to the platform, without taking off. The objective of this test is to check the operation of the engines before a launch. Blue Origin itself He spoke on his X account of an “anomaly” and confirmed that all personnel were located and safe. According to collect The Guardian, the fireball destroyed the platform and the orange glow was seen more than 180 kilometers away, while residents of nearby towns noticed tremors in their homes. A year that was going to be the year of takeoff. The blow is especially hard because of the moment it arrives. Blue Origin had marked 2026 as the year to finally gain pace. Its CEO, Dave Limp, even stated in an interview with Ars Technica that the company could reach double digits in launches this year, until matching its production rate of 12 rockets, and even considering reaching 24 if manufacturing continued to improve. They also mentioned the 12 launches in their request to the FAA to operate from Cape Canaveral. The problem is that it was more of an ambitious goal than a realistic forecast, since the New Glenn has started the year without having flown again since November and experiencing several setbacks. The explosion has now turned that goal into a chimera. Bezos’ reaction. The founder of Blue Origin took the drama out of the matter, counting in Elon Musk also reacted to the event briefly: “Very unfortunate. Rockets are difficult.” Why it is important. The New Glenn It is the key piece with which the company wants to confront the dominance of SpaceX, and it is also called to play a central role in NASA’s Artemis programwhich seeks to return astronauts to the Moon. Just a few days before the explosion, the agency had awarded Blue Origin a contract to participate in the construction of a lunar base. The moment could not have been worse. A streak of setbacks. Blue Origin has accumulated a series of catastrophic misfortunes. On its third flight, in April, the rocket managed to land its reusable booster on a barge at sea, but its upper stage failed and failed to place the satellite it was transporting for AST SpaceMobile into orbit, which ended up falling and disintegrating in the atmosphere. That failure sparked an investigation by the FAA, the US air regulator, which just last week had given the rocket the green light to fly again. Thursday’s test was precisely the preparation of its fourth mission, in which it was going to deploy satellites of the network Leo from Amazona direct competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink. Amazon clarified that none of those satellites were on board at the time of the explosion. Damage assessment. Both the FAA and NASA spoke out quickly. The regulator pointed out that the test was outside the activities it licenses and that it did not affect air traffic. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, on the other hand counted that “spaceflight is unforgiving, and developing a new heavy-lift capability is extraordinarily difficult.” The agency promised to support a thorough investigation and, above all, to evaluate how what happened affects its lunar programs. And now what. What we will now see is how Blue Origin rewrites its calendar. NASA was counting on New Glenn to launch the first missions to its lunar base this year, and the agency itself has acknowledged that they still do not know how this accident will affect the mission with Artemis. On the other hand, SpaceX has its own problems with the Starship, also under review by the FAAwhile preparing a historic IPO. The terrain is quite hot. Cover image | NASA Space Flight In Xataka | SpaceX seemed unreachable in its race to the Moon. Blue Origin is proving that anything is possible

Anthropic just surpassed OpenAI as the world’s most valuable AI startup

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Anthropic is no longer the eternal second fiddle. The company that was always in the shadow of OpenAI has become the main protagonist of this segment in recent months. Its growth is so spectacular that in its latest round of financing it has managed to surpass OpenAI’s valuation. It is an extraordinary milestone, especially for one reason: both hope to go public before the end of the year, and here Anthropic has the upper hand (again). Overtaking on the right. The company founded by the Amodei brothers has raised a colossal financing round of 65 billion dollarsand with it Anthropic’s valuation becomes 965,000 million post money. It is a financial achievement that suddenly destroys OpenAI’s valuation, which is currently stuck at $730 billion. This latest round comes just three months after Anthropic will raise 30,000 million of dollars, cccadadasdsas in an agreement that placed its valuation at 350,000 million dollars. The growth is simply amazing. Anthropic is the coolest company. The valuation reflects a compelling reality: Anthropic is (much) more fashionable than OpenAI. The company has taken great advantage of recent controversies to increase its popularity, and its brand image has been greatly reinforced because it is the company that everyone is talking about. What happened to the Pentagon first and what has happened with the encyclical Magnificent Humanitas of the Pope then they show it. And the one with the best models (seems) to have. OpenAI seemed to be ahead in the AI ​​race with models leading the way. That changed with the arrival of Claude Code and Claude Opus 4.5. Since then, Anthropic’s advances have been striking, and although the differences are small, the popular perception is that Claude Opus is now the model that leads in performance. This has just been confirmed in benchmarks with the recent release of Claude Opus 4.8but above all with Claude Mythos Previewthe model that has been put the world of cybersecurity upside down. They already make money. A few days ago, surprising news leaked: Anthropic could close the second quarter of the year with an operating profit of 559 million dollars. He would make money when the rest of his rivals lose a lot. The projected annual turnover has managed to exceed $47 billion this month, five times more than the amount estimated at the beginning of the year. The reason: the overwhelming success of Anthropic models in companies. That’s where the money isand the company has known how to 1) detect and 2) take advantage of it before anyone else. Memory manufacturers enter the round. The financing round is led by venture capital firms such as Greenoaks, Sequoia, Altimeter and Dragoneer, but this time there are other protagonists. These are the semiconductor firms Samsung, Micron and SK Hynixwho have also participated and who have taken advantage of their current privileged position to also bet on the success of Anthropic. It’s a win-win: they bet on the current winning horse, and Anthropic manages to strengthen relationships with the companies that right now they control one of the big bottlenecks of the AI ​​industry: memory chips. The IPO is imminent. This surprise meteoric intensifies the pressure on OpenAI and further encourages (if that was possible) that other race, which is the IPO of both these two companies and SpaceX. We are in a year that will be remembered for three stratospheric IPOs, but these latest achievements by Anthropic have made the company led by Dario Amodei now the main protagonist in the technology segment. Image | Fortune Brainstorm Tech In Xataka | The surprise of the new Claude Opus 4.8 is not that it is (a little) better. The surprise is the “I only know that I know nothing”

list of new features of the new version of Anthropic’s Artificial Intelligence model

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Let’s tell you What’s new in Claude 4.8 Opus, the new version of Anthropic’s most advanced and powerful artificial intelligence model. This version has surprised us by arriving just 41 days after Claude Opus 4.7, and it seems that the improvements are minimal, but there is a really important change in its honesty when it comes to telling you if it doesn’t know something. In any case, here you have a complete list with all the new features that come with this new version of Claude 4.8 Opus. We are going to explain each of them briefly so that they are easy to understand. Another thing you should know is that Opus is the most advanced line of Claude models, the one indicated for more complex tasks for programming and the one that uses up your limits the fastest when you use it. There is also the most efficient Sonnet model for day-to-day tasks, which continues in version 4.6 since February 2026, and a Haiku for quick and simple questions that continues in version 4.5 since October 2025. News from Claude 4.8 Opus A more honest AI: The prominence of this new version goes to honesty. He’s significantly more honest about his own work, telling you when he’s unsure about something. It’s also about four times less likely to let bugs in code slip by without flagging them, compared to its predecessor. Performance improvements: The Agentic code score for creating code with agents increases from 64.3% to 69.2%, and multidisciplinary reasoning with tools increases from 54.7% to 57.9%. On other test benchesin the SWE-bench Verified it goes from 87.6% (Opus 4.7) to 88.6%, and in Terminal-Bench 2.1 it rises from 66.1% to 74.6%. GPT-5.5 still falls short in terminal/CLI workflows, although there have been big improvements in Claude, and both models are practically on par in web browsing and graduate-level science topics. Alignment improvements: Alignment assessments show new highs in prosocial traits such as supporting user autonomy and acting in their best interest. Rates of misaligned behavior such as cheating are lower than in Opus 4.7. Fewer hallucinations: As usual, the number of hallucinations is also reduced. Honesty when telling yourself when you don’t know something also helps reduce them. Quick mode: According to AnthropicOpus 4.8’s fast mode is now about 2.5 times faster. The company claims that the improved Quick Mode also costs three times less than before. Effort control– Users can choose between “extra” or “max” levels so that the model spends more tokens and obtains better results. Dynamic Workflows (preview for research): With this new feature, Claude can schedule work and run hundreds of subagents in parallel in a single session, being able to complete codebase-scale migrations of hundreds of thousands of lines. Available for Claude Code on Enterprise, Team and Max plans. No change in base price: The base price of API tokens is unchanged from Opus 4.7. It is 5 dollars per million input tokens, and 25 dollars per million output, with up to 90% savings with prompt caching and 50% with batch processing. In Xataka Basics | How to prevent AI from always being right by default and thus make Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT have fewer hallucinations

No missiles, no rifles, no bombs. Ukrainian drones are carrying a type of cargo unprecedented in war: elderly people

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During the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948, an American pilot began to throw chocolates tied to small cloth parachutes on children watching the planes from Tempelhof airport. That improvised initiative ended up becoming the famous “Operation Little Vittles“, one of the most unexpected images of the Cold War: military aircraft used to carry hope instead of weapons. Decades later, Ukraine is finding equally unusual uses for its war machines. Lifesaving robots. For years, unmanned vehicles were associated with a very specific idea: transporting weapons, ammunition or explosives where the risk for soldiers was too high. The war in Ukraine is expanding that definition with an image that would have seemed unthinkable just a few years ago. In some of the most dangerous sectors of the front, the same ground drones that are part of the war machinery are being used to evacuate elderly people trapped between bombings, mines and artillery fire. In a conflict marked by the automation of combat, one of the most unexpected loads carried by these vehicles are not projectiles or supplies, but old people who no longer have a safe way to leave their homes. Rescue through no man’s land. The last known operation took place near Limánin the Donetsk region. While carrying out a logistics mission, a ground drone unit from the Kraken group was approached by a woman who asked for help to leave the area along with three other people, one of them injured by shrapnel. After coordinating the procedure for days, the operators sent a Zmiy Logistic vehiclea kind of remote-controlled four-wheeled buggy capable of transporting up to about 500 kilos of cargo. The drone traveled about 16 kilometers to the agreed point, rpicked up the four evacuees and began the return journey to a river crossing where Ukrainian soldiers completed the rescue and took the wounded to a hospital. The impossible life in the gray zone. These rescues They show a less visible reality of war. Despite years of fighting, there are still civilians living in the so-called “gray zone”, a strip of land disputed between both armies that can reach between 16 and 20 kilometers wide. There are practically no public services, shops, schools or hospitals left there. Power outages are common and bombings are part of the daily routine. However, many older people continue to resist in those places because they don’t want to leave the houses where they have lived all their lives, because they care for sick relatives or because they hope that the war will end before being forced to leave permanently. Iron soldiers on a new mission. It is not an isolated case. They remembered in Insider that in early April, another 77-year-old Ukrainian woman was evacuated from the same area using a ground drone operated by the 60th Mechanized Brigade. The images They went around the world because the soldiers approached her with a blanket on which a message as simple as it was revealing could be read: “Grandma, get on.” The scene summarizes the extent to which these systems are evolving. Originally designed to transport supplies, plant explosives or even assemble remote weaponry, the so-called “iron soldiers” are beginning to take on rescue tasks that previously would have required exposing soldiers or volunteers to extreme danger. Total automation. Behind these stories there is a much deeper transformation. Ukraine and Russia are accelerating the incorporation of unmanned ground vehicles to carry out missions that They are too risky for people. Some carry ammunition, some carry medical supplies, and some incorporate remote-controlled weapons. The Ukrainian goal is especially ambitious: Minister of Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, has announced the purchase of 25,000 ground drones during the first half of 2026 and aspires for all frontline logistics to one day depend on these systems. During the first quarter of the year alone, unmanned vehicles performed more than 21,500 missions. Unexpected consequences. The usual image of military innovation may be associated with increasingly destructive systems, but the Ukrainian experience is showing an unexpected consequence of that technological revolution. The same robots that were born to keep soldiers away from danger are being used to remove vulnerable civilians from some of the most dangerous places in Europe. As militaries race to automate combat, ground-based drones are proving military technology can play a role, too completely different: become the ultimate escape vehicle for those trapped in the ruins of an endless war. Image | ArmyInform In Xataka | Storks have become the best anti-drone weapon of war. And Russia and Ukraine are taking note In Xataka | Ukraine has been terrorizing Russian soldiers with its heavy drones for years. Now they are literally giving it back.

The much cheaper LG OLED C5, locator packs for iOS and Android, the iPhone 17 at a minimum price and more. Hunting Bargains

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We arrive at last Friday after a week in which we have been finding very interesting technology offers. And like every week, we return with a Bargain Hunting in which we will comment on the best bargains that we have seen and that, of course, are still available. LG OLED C5 by 869 eurosthe television that we recommend most for its quality-price ratio. iPhone 17 by 899 eurosthe best price we have seen on an Apple mobile to date. Asus Rog Xbox Ally by 448.99 eurosa powerful console with a good discount. Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro by 299 eurosone of the best smartwatches of the year (for the moment) along with some free headphones. Ugreen FineTrack Duo by 33.99 eurosa pack of four locators for iOS or Android. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links LG OLED C5 He LG OLED C5 is he television that we recommend most for its quality-price ratioand it is a model that incorporates a screen that looks exceptionally good. Your panel has OLED technology and, in this case, it has a diagonal of 55 inches. It offers a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz (VRR), is compatible with Dolby Vision and its speakers are compatible with Dolby Atmos. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links iPhone 17 He iPhone 17 It is taking much longer to get down time than it did for previous generations. But little by little it is doing it and right now we have it in MediaMarkt for 899 eurosthe lowest price we have seen so far. It is a fairly compact mobile with a 6.3-inch screen, it offers a 120Hz refresh rateits chip is Apple’s A19 and it comes with 256 GB of internal storage. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Asus Rog Xbox Ally Yes now that The Steam Deck has increased in price you want to buy an alternative, the Asus Rog Xbox Ally It has a quite attractive price at Neobyte, which leaves it for 448.99 euros. This is a consolidated PC that has the AMD Ryzen Z2 A processor, comes with 16 GB of RAM (LPDDR5) and has Windows 11 preinstalled. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro Whether you do a lot or a little sport, Huawei Watch Fit 5 Pro It is one of the best smartwatches that have been launched so far this year, and if you buy it on Amazon for 299 euros you get free headphones. The watch stands out for many reasons such as its battery, which lasts up to 10 days of use, or its screen that offers good brightness to be able to see it perfectly outdoors. Besides, allows you to make payments through NFC. Huawei Watch FIT 5 Pro + headphones The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ugreen FineTrack Duo Now that there is less time left until the arrival of summer, if you are looking for a locator to use on any trip, Amazon has an offer for 33.99 euros a pack with four Ugreen FineTrack Duo. This is a set of locators compatible with iOS or Android that stands out above all because they can be recharged through its USB-C port. The autonomy is approximately one year and it has a hole to hang a keychain. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | LG, Apple, Asus, Huawei, Ugreen In Xataka | The best mobile phones, we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | Best smartwatch in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and seven recommended models

This Norwegian valley has rocks on either side of the river that act like a giant pile. Maybe that explains your ghost lights

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The Hessdalen lights are a mysterious phenomenon which has been reported in the valley of the same name, in Norway, since 1811. However, it was in the 1980s when they began to be taken more into account, especially in 1984, when the Hessdalen project was established, aimed at monitoring them and trying to explain them. Unfortunately, despite all the efforts that have been put into this, it is currently not known exactly what this is due to. Although it is true that there are some hypotheses. A very disparate phenomenon. Both witnesses who have seen them and scientists who have recorded or photographed them describe the Hessdalen lights as a very disparate phenomenon. Sometimes they are formed at ground level, other times on roofs or at the height of mountain peaks. Sometimes they move more or less homogeneously, other times they move erratically, changing direction for no apparent reason. They are normally white and yellow, although they have been observed in other colors. Some last only a few seconds, while some can remain in the air for more than an hour. Even the shapes vary from an American football to an upside-down Christmas tree. The only thing that most witnesses seem to agree on is that they are about the size of a car. Hessdalen Project. A multidisciplinary team of scientists from several Norwegian institutions launched a project aimed at monitoring the lights of Hessdalen. Since then, they have been monitored thanks to the installation of radioelectric spectrum analyzers, magnetometers, seismographs, photo cameras, Geiger counters and infrared cameras. That is, earth tremors, magnetism, radioactivity and, ultimately, the emission of energy at different lengths of the electromagnetic spectrum are analyzed. This tracking system began operating in 1984 and is still active today. A peculiar hypothesis. One of the most peculiar hypotheses that have been made about the Hessdalen lights is that they could be the visible result of the formation of a wormhole micrometer that connects two points in space time. In reality, this hypothesis was raised in a magazine with little scientific reputation, very given to conspiracy theory and the supernatural, so it is not the most accepted at all. Hypotheses in the air. Thanks to the monitoring of these lights, there are much more plausible hypotheses. To begin with, it is thought that the Hessdalen lights could be due to the decay of radon, a very abundant gas in the Norwegian atmosphere. This disintegration would produce alpha particles capable of ionizing the molecules present in the air and dust, giving rise to structures capable of emitting light, called Coulomb crystals. Hypotheses on the ground. There are also hypotheses that point to the geology of the valley. For example, it is believed that it could be due to the combustion in the presence of air of dust clouds rich in scandium, an element that is abundant in the soil of this Norwegian region. It could also be a piezoelectric effect. This is the effect by which some materials are capable of emitting electricity when pressed or deformed. Quartz, for example, has great piezoelectricity and turns out to be very abundant under the valley floor. Copper is also abundant, which is a great conductor of electricity. And speaking of electricity, a battery effect could also be occurring. On one side of the river in the valley there are rocks very rich in zinc and iron. On the other side, rocks very rich in copper. The former could act as the anode of a battery and the latter as the cathode. In turn, local mines rich in sulfur could be releasing this element into the river, which would act as the bridge of a battery, allowing electricity to flow. If there is electricity, there is light. All these electricity emissions could be causing the ionization of molecules present in the air, giving rise to a process in which light is emitted. It is something similar to what happens with the northern lights, although the origin of the ionizing particles is totally different. The color of light depends on the molecules in the air. That is why it is not always exactly the same, although white and yellow tend to be abundant. In short, it is still not known where these mysterious lights come from, which can be seen both day and night. But that is precisely why they are so fascinating. Image | Bjørn Gitle HaugeØstfold University College, Fredrikstad, Norway In Xataka | Norway works little but produces a lot and that stresses them out. Generation Z has found the solution: the four-day week

with cars prepared to take advantage of them

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The United States has been playing catch-up for some time when it comes to high-power chargers for electric vehicles, many of them capable of delivering 500 kW, 600 kW, and even one megawatt. The problem is that, right now, almost no electric car sold there can swallow such power. In Europe, however, we are starting to see cars that take advantage of this capacity. And although at the moment it is still somewhat testimonial, for the electric promises to be fulfilled, the infrastructure must accompany the innovation of these cars. Why is it important. For years, recharging has been the great brake on electric cars convincing the general public. The promise of charging as fast as you fill a tank of gas has been promised for some time, and now the technology is starting to live up to it. But a one-megawatt pump is of little use if the car you connect only accepts a fraction of that power. More fast charging in the US. According to collect InsideEVs, the company ChargePoint presented last month a 600 kW device that it described as “the fastest independent charger for electric cars in the world”, while the Swiss ABB announced 1.2 megawatt units and Kempower showed a charger with an MCS connector capable of delivering 1.2 MW. The Italian Alpitronic, for its part, is preparing chargers that provide up to 1,000 kW to trucks and 600 kW to passenger cars, and which will begin to arrive on American soil at the beginning of next year. Even Tesla, historically limited to 250 or 325 kW, is slowly rolling out its 500 kW V4 Superchargers. Few take advantage of it. As the same media points out, right now there are no electric cars for sale in the United States that accept more than 500 kW. He Tesla Cybertruck It has been seen charging at 500 kW, but its official specifications still indicate a maximum of 325 kW. The most capable models on the market or about to arrive, such as the Lucid Gravity, the Porsche Cayenne Electric or the BMW iX3reach 400 kW. The reason for such a rush. Loren McDonald, CEO and Chief Analyst at Chargeonomics, explains told InsideEVs that some of the high-powered Chinese cars could arrive in the United States in the next five years, so these chargers “shield” the facilities for when that happens. The idea, furthermore, is to distribute the load intelligently between several points according to what each car can absorb, so that a modest model and a high-end model can be plugged in at the same time without either wasting power. Who is really ahead?. China and Europe are setting the pace in this regard, with systems such as BYD’s 1.5-megawatt “Flash” stationsto which we were able to access first-hand with the presentation in Europe of the Denza Z9GT. More in China than in Europe, the difference is not so much in the raw power of the plugs as in the fact that manufacturers are releasing vehicles prepared to take advantage of it. In Europe we also have a long way to go to be able to take advantage of these capabilities in commercial passenger cars, but little by little we are getting to know more brands that want to join. And Spain, where is it? He latest Barometer of ANFAC Electromobility, corresponding to the first quarter of 2026, makes it clear that the priority here continues to be the basics, that is, having enough points and making them work. Spain closed March with 55,077 public access charging points, after adding 2,005 in the quarter, a growth that the report itself describes as lower than that recorded in the same periods of the previous three years. The quality problem. Beyond the total number, ANFAC data points to two weaknesses. The first, power: only 31% of the infrastructure exceeds 22 kW, far from the 55% objective that the association sets for 2026. The remaining 69% are low power points that require charging times of at least three hours. The second, reliability: ANFAC estimates that 17,073 points are out of service (24% of the total installed) due to breakdown, poor condition or lack of connection to the electrical network. If they worked, Spain would be close to 72,150 points. The high power, still testimonial. Chargers of 250 kW or more, those that truly allow recharging in minutes, There are only 2,469 units in all of Spain.. They grew by 309 during the quarter, and the report indicates that around 75% of high power points respond to projects by the automobile manufacturers themselves. The big obstacle, according to the association, continues to be administrative, since processing difficulties and, above all, access to the electrical distribution network keep many projects paralyzed. Cover image | myenergi In Xataka | The hydrogen fuel cell at 250º C that solves a decades-old problem: the constant need for water

The surprise of the new Claude Opus 4.8 is not that it is (a little) better. The surprise is the “I only know that I know nothing”

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We didn’t expect it so soon, but here is Claude Opus 4.8the new version of Anthropic’s frontier model. Only 41 days have passed since release of Claude Opus 4.7which seems to make it clear that the company was not entirely happy with said model, which did not end up getting very good reviews either. With Claude Opus 4.8 the really curious thing is not that it once again sets records in most benchmarks. The surprise is his honesty. It’s better, yes, but it’s not what matters. In the internal results of the benchmarks published by Anthropic it is clear that Opus 4.8 is above Opus 4.7, but also GPT 5.5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro (curious, they do not compare it with the recent Gemini 3.5 Flash. It surpasses all of them in those tests except in TerminalBench 2.1, in which GPT-5.5 is somewhat superior. It is actually expected that each new model surpasses its predecessor, but what is striking here is the approach of the model. Honesty above all. Boris Cherny, head of Claude Code at Anthropic, explained that the model not only programs better: “it is significantly more honest about its own work. It tells you when it is unsure about something and detects its own failures instead of declaring victory too soon.” I only know that I don’t know anything. Another Anthropic engineer, Catherine Wu, influenced in that new “personality” of Claude Opus 4.8, who is capable of admitting that he does not know something instead of answering for the sake of answering and overlooking errors in his answers or in the code he generates. Those who have tried it match in that it is a more “aligned” model, that is, one that adjusts to human values, intentions, ethics and objectives. Less hallucinations, more humanity. For some time we have been seeing how new AI models are better in benchmarks, but there have also been significant jumps in the reduction of hallucinations. Not only do they invent and make fewer mistakes: they begin to recognize that they don’t know everything. That is very important… and very human. The very complete “System Card” It includes numerous metrics that certainly seem to demonstrate that we are facing a much more polished model than its predecessors in this area. Workflows. One of the new features presented along with the model are the dynamic workflows (Dynamic Workflows), which are available in preview and are aimed at one thing: being able to work with more complex tasks in Claude Code. Thanks to this option it is possible to deploy hundreds of parallel agents in a single session, something for example useful for analyzing and migrating code repositories of hundreds of thousands of lines. No Sonnet and Haiku. Claude Sonnet 4.6 was released on February 17, 2026, but Anthropic has not updated this model since. Things are even worse for Claude Haiku, whose latest version is 4.5, released on October 15, 2025. These models were more modest versions in terms of performance but much cheaper (especially Haiku), and so far Anthropic has not updated them. That benefits their interests, because if you want the best, you can only have the best and the most expensive, but not the best in its “affordable” version. Mythos Capability Models Coming Soon. In the official Anthropic announcement they made it clear that “Users will detect that Opus 4.8 is a modest but tangible improvement over its predecessor”, but they also pointed out something important, and that is that in the coming weeks we will have AI models with capabilities similar to Claude Mythos, but publicly available: “We plan to launch a new class of model with even greater intelligence than Opus. As part of Project Glasswing, a small number of organizations are currently using Claude Mythos Preview for cybersecurity work. Models with this level of capability require more robust cybersecurity measures before their general release. We are making rapid progress in developing these measures and look forward to offering Mythos class models to all of our customers in the coming weeks.” In Xataka | Welcome to the AI ​​duopoly: the sector already has a turnover of 80 billion a year, but OpenAI and Anthropic take 89% of the revenue

a legal battle for control of Nexperia

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A company can be many things at the same time: a factory, a subsidiary, a patent portfolio, a piece within a supply chain. But, in the technological war we are seeing between China and Europe, it can also become a battlefield. Nexperia fits right in there. We are not just talking about who owns a semiconductor company based in the Netherlands and owned by the Chinese Wingtech, but about who can decide on it when courts, governments and the fear that certain industrial capabilities end up under another center of power come into play. The new demand. The latest movement comes from China. According to ReutersWingtech Technology and a subsidiary have filed a lawsuit against Nexperia BV and five other entities before a court in Guangdong, which has already accepted the case. The company provisionally claims 8 billion yuan, about $1.18 billion, for the economic losses it attributes to the conflict. SCMP adds another relevant element: Wingtech is not only asking for compensation, it is also demanding to regain full control over Nexperia, a point that once again places the case in the field of corporate governance. The origin of the crash. To understand why the demand does not come from nowhere, you have to go back to September 2025. So, The Dutch Government intervened Nexperia and removed Wingtech from effective control of the company, citing fears about a possible transfer of operations and intellectual property to China. The administrative decision was later revoked, but the problem did not go away. Wingtech maintains that its scope of control remained limited by a parallel Dutch court ruling, still relevant to the dispute. Nexperia’s response. The Netherlands-based firm has responded by downgrading the immediate scope of the judicial move. In statements reported by the aforementioned news agency, Nexperia stated that it “has taken note of Wingtech’s announcement” and that it understands that the corresponding court “has not opened the case to trial.” He also regretted the strategy of its Chinese owner and maintained that Wingtech does not seem interested in reaching a solution beneficial to all parties, including its own shareholders. The Chinese legal route. The lawsuit is not only based on a business claim, but on a politically charged legal framework. Wingtech invokes China’s Foreign Sanctions Law to seek compensation for damages it attributes to restrictions on Nexperia. The company maintains that Nexperia and its executives applied “discriminatory restrictive measures” within the meaning of that law. The financial blow. The financial blow. The push for Nexperia is also leaving its mark on Wingtech’s accounts. Reuters notes that the company closed 2025 with a net loss of 8.7 billion yuan, compared to 2.8 billion the previous year. The deterioration continued in the first quarter of 2026: income plummeted by 94%, after the foreign business stopped consolidating its results. A conflict still open. The lawsuit does not close the battle for Nexperia, rather it prolongs it in another area. SCMP points out that Beijing and The Hague have defended that the case should be resolved “between the two companies without government interference,” as explained on April 17 by the Dutch Minister of Economy, Heleen Herbert, after meeting with the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Shen Bo. The message seeks to limit the conflict, but the evolution of the case itself shows how difficult it is to separate business, courts and industrial policy when a semiconductor company is caught in the middle of the fight between China and Europe. Images | Nexperia In Xataka | Brussels has just fined Temu the largest fine in its history with the Digital Services Law: 200 million euros

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