usatoday24

humanoid company robberies from 15,000 euros

by

UBTech Robotics just presented in Shenzhen its first robot not designed for industrial environments, but to be able use it in home environments. It’s called U1, it has silicone skin, real hair and an “emotional AI” that according to the manufacturer remembers the conversations it has had with you for months. Welcome to companion robots and loneliness as a business. Three versions, three price ranges. The U1 comes in Lite, Pro and Ultra variants, with prices ranging from 15,500 to 127,000 euros for the most advanced model. They exist in a male (183 cm) and female (168 cm) version, and have 88 servo joints and an “emotional artificial intelligence” that runs locally thanks to a Rockchip RK3588 chip that does not depend on the cloud to process user data. Beyond the chatbot with legs. The U1 maintains eye contact, recognizes moods from tone of voice and facial expression, and according to the manufacturer It responds with a latency of just 20 milliseconds. At UBTech they present it as a robot that builds a relationship over time, not as something you chat with occasionally. The robot remembers and learns from previous conversations and adapts its behavior according to the detected mood. The demand is already there. The company has not yet manufactured a single unit, but its managers claim to have already received more than 13,000 reservations for these robots. Deliveries will begin in September, although full-scale production will take time. At UBTech already have arrived to an agreement with Siemens to manufacture 10,000 units per year. Loneliness as a business. The company’s data indicates that in China alone there are 90 million adults who live alone and 118 million seniors whose children no longer live with them. The robot can remind them to take medication, detect signs of fatigue and stress, and offer constant companionship. A UBTech executive highlighted how these robots will never “betray or abandon” their owners. Disturbing customization. If the user pays more, UBTech promises the ability to customize the robot’s face and hair to look like anyone: a partner who has passed away, a child who has left home, or even a fictional character. It is an option that brings us closer to the uncanny valley and that once again poses a important ethical and moral debate. One that in China they seem to have overcome, because for a long time there have been companies that they create deepfakes of loved ones who died. It is inevitable to remember that episode of Black Mirror titled ‘Be Right Back‘ which precisely posed this future that UBTech now promises us. But the limits are there. The U1 robot has important limitations. The battery has a maximum autonomy of four hours, and the robot does not do housework like cooking or cleaning because it is not designed for that. Nor does it do something that many will wonder: no intimate relationships. The company insists that all data from conversations with robots is encrypted and is not used to train its AI models. China continues to tighten the screws on global robotics. This launch once again demonstrates the ambition of the asian giant to dominate this market. According to data from Barclays, last year the country already concentrated 85% of all integrations of humanoid robots in the world. More than 140 Chinese companies have already launched 330 different models, and that this type of robots will reach the home seems inevitable. Promises and realities. In South China Morning Post share a video in which those attending the launch commented on their impressions of these robots. Although they were impressed with the synthetic skin of the robots, they also highlighted that the response times are very long and the conversations lack naturalness. However, we are facing a very premature version of robots that undoubtedly will advance significantly in the short term. Today there are more promises than realities: maybe in one or two years things are very different. But also maybe not. In Xataka | China wants to teach the rest of the world a lesson by turning robots into butlers. The problem is that a house is not a factory

Anthropic already had Claude writing code. Now he has put it in the laboratories

by

Anthropic had already placed Claude in one of the most everyday and valuable tasks in the technology industry: writing code. Now he wants to take it to more delicate terrain and with potentially much greater consequences: scientific work within laboratories. The company has introduced Claude Sciencea product designed to help researchers move between literature, data, specialized tools and computing resources. Claude to science. The key to Claude Science is not only that Anthropic has added more tools to Claudebut in the type of problem it is trying to solve. In science, a huge part of the work involves jumping between databases, files, code, figures, citations, and computing resources that rarely talk to each other comfortably. The company wants to integrate all this into a specific application, available from June 30, 2026 in beta for Pro users, MaxTeam and Enterprise on macOS and Linux. A category jump. Anthropic had already begun to bring Claude closer to scientific work last fall, when it launched connectors and functions under the umbrella of Claude for Life Sciences. This helped the model to relate better to software and scientific databases, but it still had a more limited scope. What is happening now goes one step further. Anthropic seems to want science to stop being just a use case and become a product line. Verifiable work. The promise of Claude Science is not limited to helping you write or summarize. Anthropic claims it can analyze scientific literature, execute multi-step investigations, generate figures and manuscripts, and allow the researcher to refine them iteratively. The most important part is how it leaves a trace: each result includes the code, the environment, and the message history that produced it. In addition, a review agent checks quotes and calculations, and can point out untraceable numbers or figures that do not match the code that generated them. Claude Science’s ambition might sound very broad, but his first steps have a fairly recognizable accent. Anthropic has prepared it with more than 60 capabilities and connectors targeting areas such as genomics, proteomics, structural biology, computational chemistry, and single-cell analysis. The computation, within the flow. Many investigations do not stop at reading articles or generating figures: they also require carrying out heavy work on machines prepared for it. Anthropic says Claude Science can help prepare those processes on the researcher’s laptop, on a Linux machine, on an HPC access node via SSH, or with on-demand computing in Modal. The company clarifies that the system writes a plan and asks permission before accessing new resources, so that the researcher can review or revoke decisions. It also states that large or sensitive data can remain in the lab infrastructure, sending Claude only the context necessary for each step of the analysis. Anthropic accompanies the launch with examples. Manifold Bio, dedicated to the design of drugs aimed at specific tissues, used Claude Science to propose targets in its experiments, evaluating surface expression, cell trafficking and safety according to the company’s own criteria. The Allen Institute used it to build a computational review template with about 20 custom skills, capable of reading thousands of articles and organizing findings into an evidence base. And at UCSF, epidemiologist Stephen Francis says the tool sped up glioma analysis to about one-tenth the time before, with results independently validated by his group. Images | Anthropic In Xataka | South Korea has a plan to dominate in memory chips and robotics. One of a billion dollars

that of wanting to defend the Earth from an asteroid

by

There are titles that are not earned only with rockets, budgets or scientific missions. They are also built over decades in the collective imagination. The United States has long been the power that we associate with big technology, with NASA, with Hollywood and with that very recognizable idea that, if something threatens the planetsomeone in an American control room will find an answer. What we are seeing now is that China also wants to occupy that place, even in a field as cinematic as defense against asteroids. That leadership was not held only on aircraft carriers, universities, laboratories or companies capable of changing entire industries. It also relied on something more difficult to measure: the ability to convert its progress into a global story. Joseph Nye popularized the idea of soft power for explain that influence that does not depend solely on strength or money, but on cultural, political and technological attraction. For a long time, the United States not only made things that the rest of the world looked at: it also got the rest of the world to imagine them from its own point of view. That is the context in which China’s latest announcement comes. According to Global Timesthe China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that the country will establish a coordinated system of nearby asteroid monitoring to Earth based on both terrestrial and space infrastructures. The objective is to detect possible threats earlier, follow their evolution and provide information for future planetary defense actions. In other words, Beijing wants to develop a permanent capacity to observe, evaluate and react to objects that may represent a risk to our planet. China wants to have its own place in Chinese defense In practice, a planetary defense system begins long before thinking about deflecting an asteroid. Its first mission is to locate near-Earth objects, follow them for years and calculate their orbits as accurately as possible to determine if there is any risk of impact. The sooner a potentially dangerous object is detected, the more options there are for responding. Therefore, continuous surveillance and early warning constitute the basis of any defense strategy against this type of threats. The second part of the plan comes when the most difficult question arises: what to do if one of those objects poses a real threat. In statements to the aforementioned media, expert Song Zhongping mentioned techniques such as kinetic impactwhich consists of crashing a ship into an asteroid to modify its trajectory, and other methods aimed at altering its orbit with sufficient advance notice. Wu Weiren, chief designer of the Chinese lunar exploration program, said that China plans to carry out an impact test against an asteroid located tens of millions of kilometers around 2027 to evaluate whether it can change its course. The Deep Space Exploration Laboratory, in Hefei, is part of the Chinese ecosystem linked to deep space exploration The inevitable mirror is NASA, because the US does not start from an intention, but from an architecture already in place. The agency created in 2016 The Planetary Defense Coordination Office coordinates the search, tracking and characterization of near-Earth objects, and has tools such as Sentry to monitor impact risks. Also proved with DART that a kinetic impact could alter Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos. Added to that NEO Surveyoran infrared space telescope designed specifically to detect potentially dangerous asteroids and comets, scheduled for launch no earlier than September 2027. That American leadership was also built in cinema. For decades, Hollywood accustomed the public to imagining space threats with a very recognizable pattern: an asteroid or comet endangered the Earth and the response came from American scientists, engineers and agencies. Movies like ‘Armageddon‘ either ‘Deep Impact‘ they turned that idea into part of the collective imagination. Although it was fiction and many of its solutions were far from scientific rigor, they helped strengthen the partnership between the United States, space exploration, and the ability to protect the planet from extraordinary threats. The Chinese movement fits with a broader trend. Beijing has been trying for years stop being seen only as a manufacturing power to occupy leadership spaces in sectors where prestige, autonomy and technological power are at stake. We have seen it in electric vehicles, batteries, artificial intelligencetelecommunications, chips and space exploration, with programs like Tiangong, Chang’e or Tianwen. Planetary defense is now added to that list as a particularly visible area: not because it promises immediate benefits, but because it allows us to project the image of a power capable of undertaking missions of global reach. The point is not that China won that race. He hasn’t done it. The point is that you have decided to enter a field that until now It had a very clear technical and cultural owner. The US had already occupied it with NASA, with DART and with decades of stories in which the response to a space threat came from there. China is still in another phase, but its message is beginning to be similar: it also wants to detect, calculate, test and, if necessary, divert. Images | Xataka with Nano Banana | CNSA In Xataka | Ryan MacDonald, astronomer, on the future of the Earth: “The death of the star is not the end, but the beginning of a new chapter”

A much cheaper Samsung Galaxy, the Xiaomi 17 at an all-time low price, offers on TVs and more. Hunting Bargains

by

We return with a new Bargain Hunting loaded with technology offers. After Prime Day, stores have gotten to work launching very striking discounts on devices such as some of the best Samsung and Xiaomi phonesdiscounts on OLED TVs and more. In this article we are going to review the best deals that we have been finding throughout the week. Samsung Galaxy S26 by 711.55 eurosa very tight price after applying several discounts. Samsung S93F by 944.10 eurosa TV with anti-reflective coating. Ugreen FineTrack G Smart Finder by 23.66 eurosa pack with four rechargeable locators for Android. Xiaomi 17 by 799 eurosthe historical minimum price. Beurer BR 60 by 25.42 eurosa device to relieve the itch of insect bites. Ugreen FineTrack G Smart Finder (Android Only) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung Galaxy S26 Through its official store, Samsung has launched one of the best offers we have seen in the Samsung Galaxy S26. The mobile phone has a direct discount, but it also has an additional discount of 50 euros if paid through PayPal or Samsung Pay and using the coupon SAMSUNG5 through the Samsung Shop app the price drops again. The offer is available in its two storage configurations: Samsung Galaxy S26 (256GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung S93F If you are looking for a television with a good price, pay attention to the Samsung S93F. It is a model that, for 944.10 euros Instead of 1,999 euros, it incorporates a panel with OLED technology, anti-reflective treatment, 55-inch diagonal, compatibility with HDR10+ and Dolby Atmos and a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz. It is a perfect television for consuming film and series content, but also video games. Samsung S93F (55 inches) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Ugreen FineTrack G Smart Finder If you want to buy a locator for the summer holidays, here are four for you. 23.66 euros on Amazon. He Ugreen FineTrack G Smart Finder It is a pack that includes four USB-C rechargeable units with autonomy of approximately one year. They have a hole to hang them on a keychain and are only compatible with Android. There is also a very similar pack for iOS that has a price of 24.42 euros. Ugreen FineTrack G Smart Finder (Android Only) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi 17 If you are looking for a good alternative to the Samsung mobile, PcComponentes right now has the Xiaomi 17 for a price of 799 euros instead of 1,099 euros. It is a smartphone in its 512 GB configuration that incorporates an excellent 6.3-inch OLED screen, comes with the processor Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5its silicon-carbon battery is 6,339 mAh and its cameras are signed by Leica. Xiaomi 17 (12GB, 512GB) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Beurer BR 60 Finally, now that we are in very hot seasons, it is good to have a remedy against insect stings and bites on hand. He Beurer BR60 It does not use chemicals, but works through thermotherapy. It incorporates a fast-heating ceramic plate that must be placed directly on the bite. When activated, it applies heat for a few seconds and denatures the proteins in the insect’s saliva to prevent itching and inflammation. Its price is 25.42 euros instead of 35.99 euros. 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 | Samsung, Ugreen, Xiaomi, Beurer In Xataka | Best mobile phones 2026. Which one to buy based on use and six recommended models In Xataka | Best televisions in quality price. Which one to buy and seven recommended 4K smart TVs

If you don’t have glasses for the solar eclipse, this homemade box made with cardboard and aluminum foil works just as well.

by

If you plan to see the solar eclipse on August 12, you will surely have already been researching methods to see it safely. To look directly at the Sun, x-rays, photographic negatives or any of the tricks that were recommended in the past are not useful. We can hurt our eyes a lot. Only approved glasses are valid. However, if you do not have or do not want to buy them, you can always resort to indirect methods, such as pinhole camera. It is an ideal method to use with children, since you can see the solar eclipse without risk And, what’s more, they have a good time making the box. Of course, it is a perfect plan to do as a family. We tell you everything you need to do it. Materials The materials to make the pinhole camera are very simple. First of all, you need a cardboard box. It may be worth an empty cereal container or shoe box. You also need a white piece of paper, a piece of aluminum foil, tape, a pencil, scissors and a thumbtack. How is the pinhole camera made? To make the pinhole camera, first we need to draw one of the shortest sides of the cardboard box on the sheet of paper. For example, the base of the cereal box. We place it on the sheet of paper, draw the outline and then cut it out. We must glue the resulting piece of paper inside, on the bottom of the box. Next, at the opposite end of the box, two square-shaped holes should be made. If we have a cereal box, which has that side open, we would have to glue a piece of cardboard in the middle, so that the two square openings on the sides can be seen. In this NASA publication there is a video that shows how it should look.. Then, cover one of the openings with aluminum foil secured with adhesive tape. Also, make a small hole in the center of the aluminum foil with a thumbtack. With this the pinhole camera would be ready. How to use it to view the solar eclipse? To use the pinhole camera we must position ourselves with our backs to the sun and look through the hole that doesn’t have aluminum foil. The sun’s rays enter through the small hole in the aluminum foil, which acts as if it were the lens of a camera, so that the image behind it is projected on the blank paper that we place at the bottom of the box. It should be noted that, logically, this device only works during partial solar eclipse. When totality is reached and the Moon completely covers the Sun, there is hardly any light that can enter through the hole, so there will be no projections to look at. The good thing is that, only during that totality, you can look at the sun directly, without glasses. Of course, you have to be very clear when the totality begins and when it ends, since with very little light we can damage our retinas. In short, this is a good way to indirectly see the partial solar eclipse without the need for approved glasses. If you are in one of the places within the band of totality, once it begins, you can look at the Sun directly, but be careful not to go too far. Unless you are in a town like Lerín, where The bells will ring to warn when totality begins and endsget away from the slightest ray that appears. Image | POT In Xataka | The trio of eclipses that await Spain on the horizon: an unprecedented and historic chain between 2026 and 2028

If the alcohol industry didn’t already have enough problems, it has now encountered one more: Ozempic

by

Drugs from the family of GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide 1) hormone agonists such as Ozempic or Zepbound have represented a revolution in the global pharmaceutical market. The success of these medications intended for the treatment of diabetes has to do with their slimming effect, but the ramifications of this phenomenon go even further. There is already evidence. One of these ramifications has to do with alcohol consumption: a study from a few months ago found evidence that semaglutide, the active compound used in drugs such as Ozempic or Wegovy, can also help in the treatment of alcohol addiction. New studies confirm it: In 2026 The Lancet published a larger, longer trial with 108 participants, half on semaglutin and half on placebo for 26 weeks. The result was that people who took semaglutide reduced the days of heavy consumption by 41.1% compared to 26.4% of those who took the placebo. Chronicle of a social phenomenon. Ozempic began to gain popularity about two years ago when it was beginning to be used not to keep glycemic levels under control in people with type II diabetes, but as a weight loss treatment for both people with diabetes and those who just wanted to lose weight. In parallel, several clinical trials supported this effect and regulatory bodies approved the use of the drug for this second use. This success led to the appearance of other side effects associated with this compound, some of them positive. It was then that some laboratories got to work to test these effects. Among them an apparent reduction in alcohol consumption among those who were under this treatment. How does it work? The GLP-1 hormone plays several functions in our body, one of them being to tell us that we have satisfied our appetite. That is why drugs that work like their analogues in our body generate the same feeling of satiety, which in turn implies that we will eat less and therefore lose weight. But soon some users began to realize that this not only affected the food, but also the alcohol they consumed. Although the mechanism is not entirely clear, it can be assumed that the same mechanisms are at work. There is another factor to take into account, and that is that among the side effects Of drugs similar to Ozempic we can find stomach symptoms such as nausea and vomiting. This can also lead to making alcoholic beverages, as well as other foods, less palatable. That’s what studies are like. These studies are carried out through a randomized placebo-controlled trial. That is to say, is distributed randomly participants into two groups: one is treated with semaglutide and the other with a placebo. They thus found that the effects of the treatment were greater than those of a simple placebo, that is, the participants drank less alcohol. Although the number of days on which the participants drank was not reduced, they did so in smaller volumes. “These data suggest the potential for semaglutide and similar drugs to fill an existing need for a treatment for alcohol use disorder,” explained in a press release Klara Klein in the first published study on this, member of the team responsible for the study. “Larger studies (…) are necessary to fully understand safety and efficacy in people with (this) disorder, but these initial results are promising.” The team presented the details of the trial in an article in the magazine JAMA Psychiatry. The analyzes continue. The small sample size in this study suggests that there is still much work to do. If we want to better understand the potential of Ozempic to fight addictions and similar disorders, experiments with larger samples and studies will be needed to better understand the underlying biological mechanisms, as well as the potential risks of this use. All this while other teams investigate other potential risks and benefits of this family of drugs. An example of the potential benefits yet to be explored is in heart healtha context in which we have begun to see some potential benefits but which, as in the case of excessive alcohol consumption, we still need to explore further, but the first studies seem to go in the same direction. In Xataka | On Tinder there is a trend that is gaining weight among Generation Z: dating without a single drop of alcohol Image | Andreas M / Chemist4U

Saudi Arabia and its megacity of theme parks

by

To the southwest of Riyadh there is a city. It is called Qiddiyah and its name, translated into Spanish, comes from a concept that could be defined as “the gardens.” It is surprising, if we take into account that looking at the satellite images of Google Maps there is not much more than desert. That reference to gardens is not coincidental, as you can imagine. Traditionally, In Islamic culture the garden is a space for meditation: paradise on earth. But outside of the religious seams, the gardens in this part of the world are also spaces of enjoyment, small oases among all the sand. That is why it is easy to associate Qiddiyah and its reference to gardens with their ultimate purpose. And the city aims to be a theme park megaproject which is part of what is known as Saudi Vision 2030, the project to position the country as more than a petrostate and attract new investments, workers and tourism. Although satellite images barely show desert in much of this new city, Qiddiyah already has the first Six Flags outside of North America. The well-known chain of theme parks has already risen in the heart of this artificial city the longest, tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world. This theme park alone has cost 1 billion dollars, which, of course, has been funded by the Public Investment Fund (PIF), the kingdom’s sovereign investment fund. This theme park is the first step for a project that, forecasts say, should attract 17 million tourists from 2030. The potential is enormous and Spanish companies have not wanted to be left behind. For this reason, they have already taken positions: public transportation. We will have to move all these people That’s what They will have thought about Alsa company in charge, together with the Saudi Hafil, of launching the public transport service of the megacity of theme parks. And the Asturian company, through the Alsa-Hafil consortium, will be in charge of putting into motion 156 buses (of which 126 vehicles will be completely electric). The contract has a duration of eight years and is valued at 500 million euros. To offer the service, Alsa has also partnered with Indra. The latter will be the company in charge of monitoring bus traffic in real time. This will be possible because the buses will have 5G communications service, video surveillance and counting the number of travelers traveling in each vehicle. They assure in Indra that all this data will allow them to better manage bus traffic, reducing the congestion they may face in a city that aims to have 600,000 people inside, including workers and visitors to theme parks. And they even want to build a Formula 1 circuit to put the cherry on top of the megacity of theme parks. Getting the contract is another example of the expansion that Spanish companies that are experts in mobility are having outside our borders and, especially, in the Middle East. And there Renfe has also done business with what is known as AVE to Meccaa service that works with Talgo trains. For its part, Indra already manages other services related to public transportation in Saudi Arabia. And it is the company in charge of maintaining the service of ticketing of the Riyadh Metro. Moventis, integrated within the consortium North West Busalso operates in 60 Saudi cities. Photo | Qiddiya on Twitter In Xataka | If building a 170 km long building seemed dystopian, NEOM ups the ante: a huge water park in the desert

The new star signing of AI is neither an engineer nor a data scientist, but he masters stoicism: the philosophers

by

A little less than a decade ago, studying philosophy implied a question: “And what are you going to live on?” Like many other races in the Humanities branchthe philosophy registered a low job insertion rate. According to published data in 2023 by EuropaPress, The unemployment rate for Philosophy graduates was 20 times higher than that of Electronic Engineering graduates. However, in the midst of the rise of AI, the companies that are training and evolving it have realized something: they do not need engineers to program, what they need is to hire philosophers who define how a model should think and how an AI that talks to millions of people every day should behave. Demand has reached a level where their salaries rival those of any senior engineer. From Socrates to defining AI. Studying philosophy was a risky bet due to its few professional opportunities (mainly teaching) and precarious salaries. But something has changed in the sector that was least expected: that of cutting-edge technology that was developing the AGI. According to collected In an article published in AtlanticIn 2013, only 1% of the offers published on PhilJobs, the academic job portal, mentioned artificial intelligence in the description of their offers. In 2025, that figure It was already close to 16%. And a good part of those positions were junior positions. That is, they join technology companies even with profiles with little experience. Why an AI company needs a philosopher. The reason for this change is that companies have made AI capable of processing data emulating the operation of a human neural network, but its interactions are with humansso their responses and decisions must be in tune with the ethical and moral values of humanity. Philosophers have been studying precisely that for centuries. Anthropic is perhaps the clearest case. Your philosopher Amanda Askell He leads the team that shapes the character of the model, and in January 2026 he published what the company itself calls the Claude constitutiona document of more than twenty thousand words that establishes the values ​​that the system must follow. As the company itself explains, this text is used directly in the training of the model. Askell counted to the magazine time that his way of approaching this work is as if he were dealing with a highly gifted child: “you have to be honest, because a smart child immediately detects when someone is lying to him.” Google opened the season to sign thinkers. Anthropic is not the only one that has incorporated philosophers into its staff. Google DeepMind took a similar step in April 2026. As and how I collected the university newspaper Varsitythe company announced the incorporation of Henry Shevlin, a philosopher of mind from the University of Cambridge, for a position that the company itself baptized, literally, as “Philosopher.” His work at DeepMind was to focus on issues of artificial consciousness, human-AI relations, and preparation for AGI. OpenAI has also taken note. OpenAI has followed a similar path, although less transparent in the details. Sam Altman has come to affirm that ChatGPT’s current responses “are the result of a consultation with ‘hundreds of experts’”, specifying that they were philosophers who have reflected on the ethics of technology and systems. In fact, even universities have jumped on the bandwagon and the American Philosophical Association (APA) has been delivering since 2024 two annual awards of 10,000 dollars for philosophical investigations on AI. Profession of the future, but a future that is too fast. Not everything is good news for the union. Daniel Fogal, professor of bioethics at New York University, told The Atlantic that this boom has a real distorting effect on the discipline. According to Fogal, there are philosophers who deep down do not want to dedicate themselves to AI, but feel that they have no choice if they want to enter the job market. The risk, he warns, is that a lot of mediocre work is published just to fit into a passing fad. Good philosophy takes time, Fogal summarizes, and rarely emerges as a direct response to the market. AI companies, on the other hand, launch new models every few months. The philosopher may be the star signing of the sector, but he will continue to be the person least comfortable with the rush. And perhaps for that very reason it is the one that is most needed in this development. In Xataka | We thought that leaving university and starting to work “on your own” was impossible: the key is knowing what to study Image | Unsplash (Sarah Sheedy)

NASA has managed to make a satellite “understand” what it sees, without sending a single photo to Earth

by

The role of satellites is simple. They take data, send it to Earth and, once here, it is analyzed. So far, that is being viable. However, the process is getting complicated. There are more and more satellites (Hello, Elon Musk), which means more information flowing to Earth. There are not enough people, energy or time to analyze so much information. For this reason, NASA and the startup LoftOrbital have developed NAVI-Orbital, software for satellite observation that is capable of describing what it sees and even searching for what it is ordered to do. A model of vision and language. NAVI-Orbital works with Gemma 3a series of vision and language models belonging to Google DeepMind. As their name suggests, they are capable of processing both images and text, so that, with proper training, they can describe images and respond to simple text commands. Before, a multitude of complex computer commands had to be used for a satellite to follow orders and even then the results had to be analyzed by humans. Now, all you have to do is ask him to obey and analyze the results. Find what you ask for. A clear example of what NAVI-Orbital can do is search for objects, buildings or geographical features. If you know what a river is, you can search and display all the rivers in a given area. You can also locate all bridges or roads. But, in turn, it can identify anomalies in those places. For example, you may find rivers about to overflow or roads where there has been an accident. much faster. Most artificial intelligence algorithms send information to data centerswhere the result is processed and returned. In this case, however, what is known as edge AI is used. That is to say, the entire model runs directly on the same device that captures the data. The satellite in this case. Civil or military applications. In April, the first tests were carried out with the YAM-9 satellite, which already has the new software incorporated, with very good results. It was the first time that a satellite managed to describe what it “sees.” That’s why NASA and LoftOrbital are already excited about their applications. They consider that satellite constellations with NAVI-Orbital could be used to monitor the planet for civil or defense applications. They can search for oil spills, for example, but also study possible military attacks. The difference with what we have so far with any of these purposes is that nothing has to be analyzed. That is, you don’t put a satellite to take photos of the sea and then here on Earth a team of people or a computer algorithm analyzes them for oil spills. It is the satellite itself that saves sending thousands of photos without spills and directly analyzes what it sees. The result is much faster, cheaper and more efficient. It may even be the future of satellite observation, although it is still too early. We will have to see how these models that have already begun to undergo the first tests evolve. Image | LoftOrbital In Xataka | Ukraine’s military has a problem almost as important as Russia: Starlink belongs to Elon Musk

this changes just before paying

by

Probably, like us until a few hours ago, you have also wondered what was really going to change with the new rate that the European Union began to apply from July 1 from 2026 to certain shipments of up to 150 euros coming from outside its borders. In recent days there has been a lot of talk about the measure, its objectives and its impact on different e-commerce platforms. However, there was a much simpler and, at the same time, much more important question: when would we end up paying. To find out, I went through exactly the same path that any user would follow, searching for products on Temu, AliExpress, Amazon and SHEIN that were most likely to arrive from outside the community market. Very soon I discovered that the first clue was not in the price or the cart, but in the labels of the platforms themselves. In Temu, for example, finding a product marked as “Sent from Spain” does not mean the same as another identified as “Local warehouse”, a difference that may affect what comes next. Temu marks some products as “Local warehouse”, although that label does not necessarily guarantee that the shipment leaves from Spain. The difference between both labels is much more important than it seems. When consulting the explanation offered by Temu herself, I verified that “Sent from Spain” means that, according to the platform’s historical data, that article has been sent exclusively from Spain during the previous three months. “Local warehouse”, however, does not guarantee that. Temu explains that these products are more likely to arrive sooner because they are sent from your country or region, or from nearby countries or regions, an important nuance because it leaves open the possibility that the order comes from another point in Europe and not necessarily from Spain. Temu differentiates between “Local warehouse” and “Sent from Spain”: this second label does point to a recent history of shipments from Spain The first warning appeared even before adding the product to the basket, directly on the item sheet, where the platform warns that “additional customs-related fees will apply.” However, it has not yet indicated how much they will cost. When accessing the cart, the amount remains the same and only invites you to consult the final payment. It is in the last step, just before clicking “Process order”, when the complete breakdown appears with a new line called “Customs clearance service fee”, which in my tests amounted to 3 euros plus the applicable VAT. Temu already warns in the product sheet that additional fees may apply The cost of the fee does not appear in the cart: Temu incorporates it in the step prior to processing the order, when it already shows the final total to pay AliExpress also ended up adding an additional cost during my testing, but the way it was presented was different. Instead of incorporating a “Customs Clearance Service Fee”, the platform displayed a “Estimation of customs charges” for a total of 3.63 euros. When clicking on that concept, AliExpress explained that it was an estimate of taxes and duties calculated before completing the purchase, also adding that there would be no additional charges at the time of delivery. Although the amount matched exactly what it had seen on Temu, the information was presented in a different way. On AliExpress, the charge appears within the final summary of the order: 3.63 euros under the concept of “Estimate taxes” Amazon was the only case where my tests did not reproduce the same behavior I had seen on Temu and AliExpress. For several hours I tried to locate products shipped from outside the EU to see if the new charge also appeared during the purchase process, but I couldn’t find any examples that showed it. That experience, however, did not necessarily mean that the platform had chosen not to apply the new measure, so I decided to directly address the question to the company. A spokesperson responded with the following statement. “The vast majority of customer orders in our stores within the European Union are shipped from the EU and are not affected by this new customs fee. For the small number of items that are shipped cross-border to the EU, the €3 import fee is a requirement set by European law and is submitted directly to customs authorities. It is not an Amazon fee. Customers will clearly see the import fee before completing their purchase.” After what I saw in Temu and AliExpress I expected to find similar behavior in SHEIN, but the experience was different. I chose a product sold by SHENZHENJIAYU, a Chinese seller, and went through the exact same process until the last step before payment. On this occasion the amount remained unchanged from the item sheet to the checkout. In addition, the platform itself displayed a message indicating that the final price includes applicable import taxes, without incorporating an independent line that would break down any additional costs during the purchase. At SHEIN, the total remained unchanged until the last step – a separate line for the new rate did not appear during the purchase process At this point, the question was no longer which platform showed an additional charge and which did not, but who actually ends up bearing that new cost. The answer is not as simple as it seems. The regulations create a new right applicable to certain low-value shipments, but do not require that it is always the consumer who assumes it financially. From there, each company’s strategy comes into play. During my tests, Temu and AliExpress ended up increasing the amount I had to pay to complete the purchase, while at SHEIN I did not see that change. This does not mean that some platforms apply the measure and others do not, but rather that they may decide to transfer that cost in different ways or even integrate it into the final price. When I carried out these tests, the new measure had … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.