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The KF-21 is no longer a project and is one step away from operational service

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South Korea has been trying for a quarter of a century to turn a political ambition into a fighter jet manufactured under its own direction. What we are seeing now is the moment in which this journey begins to materialize: the first production KF-21 has already left the factoryhas flown and It is scheduled for delivery to the Air Force in September. That does not mean that the entire fleet will be fully operational from that day, but it does mean that the Boramae has left the prototypes behind to begin its incorporation into military service. The succession of milestones in recent months explains this change in stage. KAI introduced the first production unit on March 25 and flew it on April 15, before the program passed final combat fitness evaluation on May 7. A little over a month later, June 15the initial type certification arrived, which certifies compliance with government airworthiness and flight safety requirements. The next step will be the formal acceptance of the device and its delivery to the South Korean operator. The project that would end up becoming the KF-21 began to take shape in March 2001when then-President Kim Dae-jung expressed ambitions to develop an advanced fighter of his own. The initiative, however, took years to overcome feasibility studies and debates about its cost. The industrial leap arrived in December 2015when the procurement agency DAPA signed the system development contract with KAI. Indonesia joined as a partner and initially assumed about 20% of the cost, in exchange for technology, industrial participation and local production capacity. That distribution began to break down when Indonesia accumulated delays in its financial contributions. After several renegotiations, both governments agreed in June 2025 to reduce its contribution to about 600 billion won, about a third of the original commitment, and also limit the technology it would receive. The withdrawal of local co-production was made public in April 2026 and confirmed by Indonesian authorities in June. Jakarta is still studying the purchase of a smaller number of aircraft completed in South Korea, although there is no final order yet. Converting the KF-21 into a fleet has required two large pools of investment. The first, of about 8.8 trillion won, equivalent to approximately 5.24 billion euros at the exchange rate on July 24, 2026, corresponds to the development of the plane. The second, estimated at 7.92 trillion won, nearly 4.72 billion euros, includes the initial plan to acquire 40 unitsits weapons and other associated costs until 2028. This item does not offer a clean price per device, because it also includes engines, training, spare parts, documentation and logistical assistance. What the South Korean Air Force will receive is a 4.5-generation twin-engine fighter, not a fifth-generation stealth aircraft comparable to the F-35. The KF-21 can reach approximately Mach 1.8 and transport up to 7.7 tons of weaponsin addition to integrate an AESA radaran IRST infrared sensor and electronic warfare systems. The first units will belong to Block I, a configuration focused mainly on air-to-air missions. Broader air-to-ground and air-to-surface capabilities will come with the further evolution of the program. The industrial leap is best understood when we look at who is actually building the aircraft. The South Korean KAI leads the design, integration and assembly, while its compatriots Hanwha Systems and LIG Nex1 provide, respectively, the AESA radar, part of the avionics, electronic warfare and weapons management. Hanwha Aerospace, also South Korean, Assembles in Korea and produces components under license for the F414-400K engines from the American GE Aerospace. Since the first flight of the prototype on July 19, 2022, the six test aircraft have completed around 1,600 flights and around 13,000 test conditions without accidents. The arrival of the KF-21 does not mean that South Korea will do without foreign fighters either. Seoul has ordered another 20 US F-35Aswhich will begin to arrive from 2027, and a fleet made up of platforms of different origins and functions will continue to operate. The change is elsewhere: the country can now lead the design, production, maintenance and much of the future improvements of its own combat aircraft. When the first installment is completed, the Boramae will not have eliminated external dependence, but it will have tangibly reduced its limits. Images | Government of Korea/Ministry of Defense In Xataka | Airbus has made a revolutionary bet for its business model: manufacturing the hydrogen engines of the future

“VPNs are legitimate technical tools”

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Some Belgian academics published for free on the Internet the Anne Frank manuscripts. In Belgium these manuscripts were in the public domain, but in the Netherlands they remained under copyright until 2037. To comply with the law, the Belgians They blocked access to Dutch IPsand that made the copyright management entity sue them because with a VPN they could bypass that geoblocking. And here came the EU with a Solomonic decision: “VPNs are legitimate technical tools.” what has happened. The litigation, which started from something as particular as the aforementioned diary of Anne Frank, has led to a sentence that will bring a long tail. The Anne Frank Foundation, owner of these rights in the Netherlands, sued the institutions that published the manuscripts, alleging that any user could bypass the block with a regular VPN. Or what is the same: the academics were distributing the protected work to the Dutch public even though they tried to block the IPs, and that was according to them a violation of copyright. Solomonic sentence. The CJEU answered that Foundation no: as long as a website uses “state-of-the-art” geoblocking technology, the publisher cannot be responsible for copyright infringement just because a user manages to circumvent that barrier with a VPN. The court explicitly states that publishing a work in the public domain in one country but protected in another does not constitute a “communication to the public” in the protected country, provided that an “effective” geoblocking measure is in place. VPNs are legitimate tools. The ruling sets a precedent that shields VPNs from the roots. Rights holders can no longer claim that the mere existence of these tools overrides a website’s security measures, and the court has explicitly qualified VPNs as “legitimate technical tools”, reinforcing their legal status across the EU. The task of managing a technical barrier falls to the publisher, not the VPN provider or the user using it. This is where LaLiga comes in. The entity chaired by Javier Tebas has been fighting a very different judicial battle for more than a year, but with the same background actor: VPNs. In February 2026, a Commercial Court of Córdoba granted LaLiga and Telefónica injunctions against NordVPN and ProtonVPN. They were forced to block specific IP addresses linked to illegal broadcasts of First and Second Division matches, and recognizing these providers as responsible “technological intermediaries” under the European Digital Services Regulation (DSA). The offense had already had problems. NordVPN resisted with technical tests, and on May 19 the same Córdoba court rejected LaLiga’s request to impose fines on the company for (allegedly) failing to comply with the blocking order. NordVPN technicians demonstrated two key things: that the IPs hosting illegal broadcasts change constantly, making any list obsolete in a matter of hours, and that applying a block at the IP level would have left thousands of completely legal websites and services inaccessible inside and outside of Spain, since many share the same CDN (Content Delivery Network) infrastructure. What changes now. Although the Anne Frank diary case is not the same litigation that pits LaLiga against VPN providers, the ruling reinforces precisely the argument that has already worked for NordVPN before the Spanish courts. Furthermore, it complicates any future attempt by LaLiga to shift the responsibility for illicitly distributing content to VPN providers rather than to those who broadcast that content without the right to do so. What hasn’t changed. NordVPN already warned that its May victory was “a preliminary procedural decision, not a definitive ruling on the merits (of the issue).” The IP blocks ordered in February still technically stand. LaLiga, for its part, has not stopped scoring victories through other means, and for now the underlying problem persists: LaLiga will continue to block IPs indiscriminately, and will leave millions of Internet users without access to specific (and legitimate) parts of the Internet. In Xataka | Congress has taken the first step to put a limit on LaLiga blockades: a respite for the affected services

This is how China circumvents 2,000 ASML patents with a laser trick

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The extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) is the tightest bottleneck in the entire semiconductor industry. Only one company in the world, the Dutch ASML, manufactures these machines, essential for producing integrated circuits below 7 nm, and since 2019 is prohibited from selling its most advanced models to China due to US pressure. Each device costs between 200 and 400 million dollars, and so far not a single Chinese client has managed to obtain one. A team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics, has built China’s first laser-plasma EUV light source platform. In front is Lin Nanformer ASML scientist and technical manager of its light sources for metrology, who returned to China in 2021 as part of a state talent attraction program. His team has chosen a path that deliberately avoids ASML’s method, as well as more than 2,000 of its patents. Qiu Yanfang, Chinese columnist specializing in semiconductors, has summed it up unambiguously: This patent rodeo is not just a legal maneuver; It’s genuine engineering. And it is this assessment, published just two weeks ago, that has once again put the focus on how far China has really come in its race for technological independence in lithography. The longest road to mass production The technical trick is this: while ASML generates EUV light by firing powerful carbon dioxide lasers at moving tin droplets (a method known as LPP), Lin Nan’s team uses a 1-micron solid-state laser that hits a solid tin target. In a published article In December 2024, Lin and his team were already arguing that this type of laser could replace carbon dioxide lasers as a next-generation source thanks to its compact size and higher conversion efficiency. However, Qiu Yanfang herself qualifies her initial enthusiasm. In the short term, he maintains, this solid-state source cannot shake ASML’s dominance, since the entire global semiconductor industry has built its supply chains, patents and engineering expertise around the carbon dioxide laser. Although Chinese technology achieves results in the laboratory, it still has a long way to go until achieve large scale production. The real value of Lin’s achievement, in any case, lies in laying the foundation and forging a research team that covers everything from theory to applied engineering. The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology in 2028, although many analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date. This effort also coexists with another parallel and much more hermetic path. As revealed Reuters As of December 2025, China has assembled a working prototype EUV machine inside a high-security laboratory in Shenzhen, although it has not yet manufactured functional integrated circuits. Huawei coordinates this initiative, which involves thousands of engineers: the Harbin Institute of Technology is in charge of the light source, the Changchun Institute of Optics for the optical systems, and SMEE (Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment) of the final integration, with YesCarrier (the Chinese company backed by the Shenzhen Government and linked to Huawei) as another of the key actors. The Chinese Government aims to produce chips with this technology in 2028, although many of the analysts consider 2030 a more realistic date. For now, no Chinese prototype has proven to be capable of manufacturing commercial integrated circuits with its own UVE lithography, and doubts about the real speed of this advance have returned to the front line of information for a very different reason. US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has raised ASML senior managers the possibility that one of its SVU teams has reached China through clandestine channels, something that the Dutch company has denied emphatically: none of its 314 operational EUV machines in the world, nor is any of the 26 already withdrawn located in Chinese territory. China does not have its EUV machine yet. But, thanks to Lin Nan, it now has something that until recently it didn’t have either: its own path to try to build it. Image | ASML More information | Asia Times In Xataka | ASML’s new lithography equipment divides chipmakers. TSMC plans not to use it until 2030

With his next film, Tom Cruise continues to exploit one of Hollywood’s most profitable legacies: his own

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‘Days of Thunder’ was not a blockbuster in 1990, nor did it please critics much. And still, it’s going to be next let Tom Cruise roll. Before ‘Top Gun 3’ or any other project on his agenda. It is not another whim of the star, it is a new episode in the recovery of a legacy that the actor knows is currently valued very highly in Hollywood: his own. Days of Thunder 2. After months actively and passively confirming that the film is underway, Paramount now has a director for the sequel: it will be Jonathan Levinestill negotiating the terms of his contract. Cruise returns to be Cole Trickle, the NASCAR driver he played 36 years ago, and produces alongside Jerry Bruckheimer, the film’s original producer. The studio is already treating the film as Cruise’s next production, ahead of ‘Top Gun 3’, which Paramount has already announced is in development, and ahead of ‘Broadsword’, the project he is preparing with Christopher McQuarrie. A relative failure. ‘Days of Thunder’ was born in its day as an attempt to repeat the formula of ‘Top Gun’: same director, Tony Scott, same producers, Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, same protagonist, four years after the premiere of that one. And although, as we say, he reunited Cruise with the director of his previous success, it did not work so overwhelmingly: ‘Top Gun’ grossed $357 million worldwide. with a budget of just 15; ‘Days of Thunder’ stood at 157 million compared to a disbursement of 60. Legacy is what matters. But Cruise treats both films the same: as his property, to be reactivated when he decides. When Paramount proposed turning ‘Days of Thunder’ into a series for Paramount+ years ago, it was the actor himself who rejected the idea. I didn’t want a second-rate spin-off. He wanted to repeat with this film the same move that worked with ‘Top Gun: Maverick’, about which we already explained how he turned nostalgia into Hollywood’s most profitable mechanism, compared to the forced recycling of other studios. Comedy on wheels. Levine’s choice is also unusual. Until now he has directed comedies like ‘Memories of a Teenage Zombie’ or modest dramas like ’50/50′, never an action blockbuster on this scale, and Paramount comes to him for an indirect reason. Apparently, test screenings of ‘Mr. Irrelevant: The John Tuggle Story’, a sports drama with David Corenswet that opens next Christmas, have been exceptionally good. That result, and not a previous history with cars or chases, is what has boosted the studio’s confidence in Levine. The definitive boost. The final push came, almost accidentally, from another motorized debut. In June 2025, while promoting ‘F1’, the film with Brad Pitt that Bruckheimer also produced, the producer confirmed that conversations with Cruise were active: “there are always new technologies, new ways of doing things and showing them.” weeks later it was more direct: confirmed that Cruise wants to film the sequel and that the two were still shaping the script. The actor himself confirmed it that same month. 36 years later. Of course, ‘Days of Thunder’ has severe problems recovering its original cast team, and it cannot be solved emotionally, as happened with the absence of Val Kilmer in ‘Maverick’. Thirty-six years later, Tony Scott and Robert Duvall have passed away (the absence, of course, will be regrettable). And Nicole Kidman, whom Cruise met during that filming and with whom he was married for eleven years, has not worked with her ex-husband since the divorce, and her return should be considered impossible. But first. Before Cruise gets back into a race car, ‘Digger’ will hit theaters on October 2: a black comedy by Alejandro González Iñárritu that marks Cruise’s return to Warner Bros., a decade after ‘Edge of Tomorrow’. There Cruise is not an action hero, but the most powerful man in the world, facing a catastrophe that he himself caused. The other side of the strategy: in this way Cruise reactivates his catalog with Bruckheimer, but also tries a different register with Iñárritu. Cruise has something for everyone. In Xataka | Being a close friend of Tom Cruise has a special bonus: exclusive viewing of a six-hour film masterclass

Chinese AI geniuses could be billionaires in the US. The bad thing for the US is that they prefer to return to China

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It is normal for someone to take six years to complete a doctorate at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). A young man named Yang Zhilin got it in four, and immediately what had to happen happened: the big technology companies raffled him off. They wanted to sign him to Apple, Google or Meta, and both MIT and Stanford opened their doors to him. He could have stayed in the US and probably become a billionaire, but no. He returned to China, founded Moonshot AI, created the Kimi family of AI models and became one of the great new AI gurus of the Asian giant. His story is a good example of a big problem they are having in the US. A genius in the making. Yang graduated from the prestigious Chinese university of Tsinghua, and during his years at CMU he ended up collaborating on another of the “iconic papers” that were the seed of ChatGPT, the so-called “Transformer-XL“. That was a turning point in his career, because after that job he considered what he wanted to do with his life. Start up yes, but not in the US. His supervisor at CMU, Russ Salakhutdinov, I remembered in the Financial Times what he discussed with Yang, who made it clear to him that “if he didn’t at least try to create his own company, he would regret it for the rest of his life.” The curious thing is that he did not do it in the US, where he would surely have obtained plenty of financing and economic support, but rather he went to China, where he founded Moonshot AI. There he created the mentioned models of AI, of which the latest version, Kimi K3, has turned the market upside down: an open model that competes with the best of Anthropic and OpenAI and that has made Yang a current protagonist in the sector. Working for others, what’s up?. There is a narrative in Silicon Valley that talks about how immigration regulation in the US is designed to get young talents to join large companies, and not so much to found their own startups. That was much more complicated, so the Chinese talents who had just trained in the US realized that they had a better option: return to their country of origin and create their startups there. Source: Hoover Institution. Chinese talent returns to China. A study by the Hoover Institution at Stanford analyzed the profile of the 356 researchers who worked on DeepSeek and revealed something surprising: 53.5% never studied or worked outside of China. Of those who did have an experience of this type and had studied or worked in the US, 70% ended up returning to their country. The Asian giant is no longer an exporter of brainiacs: it now has a self-sufficient quarry that boosts the country’s AI industry. Less money, better execution. The difference between the US and China is not only financial, but operational. A Chinese entrepreneur in the sector explained in that FT report that although setting up his startup in the US would guarantee a valuation up to 10 times higher, in China he is much more likely to launch real solutions and production in less than five years. It doesn’t matter the sanctions, the risk of censorship or a much more conservative investment market: the density of engineers and the familiarity of the environment compensate. Source: Stanford University. The US does not make it easy. The phenomenon of the “return home” of Chinese engineers not only affects recent graduates, but also veteran professionals who were already installed in the country’s academic and engineering system. a survey conducted by Stanford University in 2024 among 1,304 scientists of Chinese origin who lived and worked in the United States revealed curious data. 73% did not feel safe working as a researcher in the country, and 65% pointed directly to a fear of harassment and racist violence. Political uncertainty and institutional distrust have only accelerated the exits. Silicon Valley has a problem. The trajectory of Moonshot AI, which in just three years and with a team of 300 people has launched a fantastic model, shows that there is life beyond Silicon Valley. With Chinese talent returning en masse to China, the question is whether the US Government will modify its requirements and proposals for obtaining a visa. If they don’t, the “brain drain” can be absolute. Image | Tommao Wang In Xataka | Four decades ago, China decided to invest in training millions of engineers. Today that plan gives it an advantage in the race for AI

Internxt continues with its active star promo

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Although it sounds a bit like science fiction, quantum computing is close to being a large-scale reality. But, how does that affect us? These types of computers, among many other things, are capable of deciphering the encryption systems that are most used today. For this reason, there are already several companies preparing to face this new scenario and one of them is Internxtcloud storage service which has post-quantum encryption. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A storage service ready for the future The quantum computing It is a challenge for current and future cybersecurity. All cloud services use algorithms and encryption systems to protect your data that current computers are not capable of solving given their complexity. That’s where quantum computers come in, working in a radically different way. and yes they are capable of breaking these current systems. In other words: the security systems that are used right now could no longer be secure in the future. At this point, we may think that since quantum computers are not a reality yet, we don’t have to worry about them. This is not entirely true, since someone can intercept our data and store it for the future. These may not be accessible today by the encryption systems that are being used right now, but they would be accessible with quantum computing. It is not crazy that our data, even protected by secure algorithms, is stored for many years. There are certain types of information that may not be a problem, but others, such as identification documents or photographs, may be. In that sense, it is worth protecting our data from current threats, but also of the future. Precisely for this reason, Internxt has its cloud storage prepared to avoid these risks. This company has incorporated into its service the Kyber-512 and AES-256 algorithmsdesigned specifically to address the future capabilities of quantum computers. This way, even if our data ends up stored somewhere, it cannot be decrypted either. To this, we must add that Internxt uses a zero-knowledge architecture. This means that our data They are encrypted before being uploaded to the cloud and not when they reach it.so even if someone intercepts them along the way, they will already be encrypted. Furthermore, since it is open source, anyone can audit the service to verify that there is no type of backdoor to access our data. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links If you are looking for a new cloud service, Internxt could be a great fit for you, especially if we take into account that, using the ‘XATAKA’ code, Their plans are 90% off. The cheapest plan costs 190 euros and we will have service for life. And not just cloud storage: also antivirus and VPN. 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 | Internxt In Xataka | Best VPNs 2026: guide with the 17 best services to protect your online privacy In Xataka | Google Drive alternatives: the best cloud storage services for your files

China had been chasing “black gold” for years. Now it has started to turn it into something much bigger

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An almost invisible fiber can end up supporting part of a gigantic wind blade, forming part of the main loading structures of a metro train or protecting several satellites during the ascent of a rocket. That is what we have seen with the carbon fiber: a material that seems modest when we look at it as a simple filament, but that takes on another dimension when thousands of strands become a piece capable of reducing weight without giving up high resistance. Behind these products there is not only advanced chemistry, but a technology that China has been trying to industrialize for decades with its own means. The change is not that the country has now discovered this material, but that it is managing to take it far beyond the laboratory. For years, some of its research centers managed to obtain advanced fibers, but China continued to encounter difficulties to industrialize certain grades with the required stability, uniformity and scale. That barrier began to break with new production lines and today the expansion covers the entire chain, from the precursor to the composite materials and finished parts. That is the real leap: converting a technology pursued for decades into an industry capable of feeding other sectors. To understand why all this matters, it’s worth first looking at what’s inside that black coil. Carbon fiber is not a sheet or a solid piece, but a set of extremely fine filaments grouped in bundles. When we read 3K, 12K or 48K, we talk about of 3,000, 12,000 or 48,000 filaments per bundle. Afterwards, these threads are normally combined with a resin to form a composite: the fiber provides strength and rigidity in the chosen directions, while the matrix holds the whole together, protects it and transmits the forces. From filament to the development of a key industry The advantage appears when we relate its performance to weight. A structure made of a carbon fiber composite can offer high resistance and rigidity using less mass than certain metallic solutions, something that can translate into lower consumption, more autonomy, greater payload or larger components. The Airbus A350 incorporates CFRP in 53% of its structurewhile composite materials represent around 50% of the primary structure of the Boeing 787measured by weight. But it is not a universal solution: the material is still expensive and requires complex processes, while composite structures can suffer internal damage that is difficult to detect and repair. To find the origin of this advance we have to go back several decades. China was researching carbon fiber since the sixties and seventiesbut the obstacle was not only to produce it once, but to repeat the result within a factory. In 2005, the Shanxi Institute of Coal Chemistry received a national mission to industrialize a fiber equivalent to aerospace T300. Three years later, on June 30, 2008, a line in Yangzhou produced the first stable roll of aerospace fiber with performance equivalent to the T300. Since that advance, China has been developing higher performance fibers, first with references equivalent to T700 and T800 and later with T1000. In Datong, a line with about 200 tons per year capacity had completed in November 2025 verification of continuous operation. Numbers, however, can fool us if we read them as a simple ladder. T300, T700, T800 or T1000 come from commercial names developed by Toray and are used as references for certain performances, but they do not form a universal international classification nor do they alone summarize the quality, reliability or final use of the material. The magnitude of the change can also be measured in tons. According to the ATA world reportChina concentrated in 2025 an operational capacity of 171,080 tons annuallys, 52.5% of the 326,080 counted worldwide. The data places the country in the lead by scale, but it does not mean that it produced exactly that percentage or that it dominated all segments. In other words, available capacity does not equate to effective manufacturing, and an industrial fiber intended for wind blades does not require the same controls, intermediate materials and certifications as a product prepared to be incorporated into an airplane. In 2025, China had an operating capacity of 171,080 tons per year, 52.5% of those recorded worldwide. What is truly relevant begins when we stop counting reels and observe everything that happens before and after. To obtain the fiber, the precursor must be prepared, oxidized and carbonized; Then come the fabrics, the prepregs, the compounds and the shaping of the pieces. In Jilin, this sequence already coexists within the same industrial hub. Provincial authorities speak of 190,000 tons of precursor capacity, 70,000 of fiber and 50,000 of composites, in addition to pultrusion, machining and product manufacturing lines. That chain already ends in objects that we can identify. In Jilin, 230 lines make structural plates for wind blades, and the company says its products are used in 95% of the blades on the Chinese market. The CETROVO train entered commercial service in Qingdao in January 2025 with carbon compounds in main load elementswhile the fairings manufactured by Tianjin Aisida had contributed, according to local authorities, to 46 commercial launches that reached orbit until June 2026. On a global scale, the material is also used in hydrogen tanks and systems intended to reinforce bridges. China already leads the way in added capacity, and domestic manufacturers such as Jilin Chemical Fiber and Zhongfu Shenying are expanding their capacity and offering higher-performance fibers. Compared to them, the Japanese company Toray maintains a leading position due to its catalogue, its international presence and its industrial integration; The American Hexcel stands out especially in the aerospace market, while the Japanese Teijin and Mitsubishi Chemical continue to be relevant technological players. What China is building is not just more fiber: it is the ecosystem that allows it to become an industry. Images | Lawless Capture | Vong Vathanak In Xataka | “We chose the wrong technology”: Jensen Huang returns to Japan to acknowledge his debt to Sega 30 years … Read more

China has just launched its new heavy ion accelerator. He hasn’t built it just to study atoms

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There are machines that are built to observe what we already know and others to push matter to places where we barely know what we are going to find. In Huizhou, China has raised a complex whose beam line runs two kilometers and which is capable of accelerating heavy ions and direct them against atomic nuclei with an intensity that is difficult to achieve in other laboratories. It looks like an infrastructure designed for nuclear physicists. That description, however, falls short. The decisive step came on Tuesday, July 21. The High Intensity Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility, known as HIAF, passed the acceptance reviewn that certifies the fulfillment of its construction objectives and entered into test operation for scientific research. The project, built by Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Scienceshad begun to rise in December 2018 and produced its first beam in October 2025. The work is finished; Now is the time to do science. Now, the HIAF does not function as a single track through which particles enter and exit at full speed. Its architecture distributes the work between three major systems: a superconducting linear accelerator that delivers intense beams in continuous or pulsed mode, a synchrotron that accumulates the ions and takes them to higher energies, and a storage ring that allows them to be preserved while researchers carry out precision measurements. It all starts with ions, atoms from which one or more electrons have been removed and which can be accelerated and guided by electric and magnetic fields. Those in charge of the project claim that it is the first advanced heavy ion research facility that brings together these three technologies. A facility designed to study much more than atoms We still don’t fully understand how many of the heavy elements we find around us formed in the universe. To reconstruct that history, researchers will use the HIAF to produce unstable nuclei, measure how they behave and explore the frontiers at which nuclear matter stops holding together. That work also opens the door to trying to create new superheavy elements. The goal is not only to expand what we know about the periodic table, but to better understand the cosmic processes that ended up forming elements such as uranium. The same beams that are used to investigate nuclei can also be used to subject chips, electronic components and materials to intense radiation. In space, the impact of an energetic particle can corrupt data, crash a circuit, or cause permanent damage to a component; Reproducing part of these effects on land allows them to be studied before incorporating the technology into a satellite or ship. The HIAF was also born with that function: to offer a controlled environment in which to check what resists and what fails when a device must operate under the radiation of space. When these ions reach tissues or materials, the experiment changes scale, but not principle. Its energy can be used in the medical sector and, at the same time, to accelerate the accumulation of radiation damage in materials intended for advanced nuclear systems or to future fusion environments. We are not facing a hospital or a reactor intended to produce electricity. What the HIAF offers is something prior and decisive: a place to verify, under controlled parameters, what works, what degrades and what needs to be redesigned. The start-up phase has already left some figures with which to measure its capacity. According to those responsible for the projectthe team completed beam commissioning along the two-kilometer line in 16 hours, a record among comparable facilities. It also maintains that the pulsed intensities of the oxygen and bismuth beams exceeded previous international references by factors of three and 7.5, respectively. During the tests, work has already been carried out on nuclear masses, production of radioactive beams, nuclear structure and irradiation of materials. These are initial results: the HIAF is still being tested and must now demonstrate to what extent it can transform that capacity into real discoveries and applications. Images | Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences In Xataka | In the 70s, a Nobel Prize winner in physics mathematically solved the tourist’s great dilemma: which restaurant to choose

Tarantino choked on this movie that you can recover in streaming

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Quentin Tarantino he admits it without nonsense: “I saw it in the cinema and I barely made it to the credits.” Talk about ‘The bitter tears of Petra von Kant‘, one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s films that he was unable to see in its entirety (along with ‘Lili Marleen’, which he found disappointing). Of all the German’s work, forty-four films between 1969 and his death in 1982, he says he has seen only four. You can recover it in Filmin in a remastered version, and in Movistar Plus. ‘Petra von Kant’ is precisely the most cited chamber piece of all Fassbinder’s films, shot entirely inside the attic of a fashion designer who falls in love with a model much younger than her and loses control over her own feelings. Margit Carstensen plays Petra with a theatricality that earned her several awards of the time, in an oppressive environment and reinforced by avant-garde costumes and spectacular photography by Michael Ballhaus. What distinguishes the film is the distance it imposes between the melodrama and the viewer: dialogues recited with a total absence of naturalism, colors saturated to the point of artifice, and a choreography of bodies that leaves aside all traces of spontaneity. Directors like Olivier Assayas and Abel Ferrara count it among their favorite filmsbut Tarantino got stuck with its eminently European style and the claustrophobic tone that doesn’t leave the attic. In any case, let no one be scared: this is not the first time that Tarantino has choked on an apparently revered film: he already admitted that it took him three tries to get hooked on ‘Dunkirk’, the Christopher Nolan film that ended up becoming the one he defends most passionately. It’s what cinema has that works as an assault on the senses: it doesn’t necessarily have to be easy to enter. Header | penguin k In Xataka | In record time since its release in theaters, one of the most resounding box office failures of the year comes to Prime Video

It connects via Bluetooth and is a trackpad on your palate

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Operating a computer mouse with your tongue may seem eccentric to you. But more than 100 million people with reduced mobility do not find it so easy to use a mouse with their hands, and this is where devices like MouthPad^ come in. Created by the American company ^Augmentalit is an oral touchpad for computers, tablets and smartphones. It is controlled from the palate using the tongue. We are looking at an oral controller that you place on the palate, and that weighs around 10 grams. In fact, it is custom designed to be able to have it in your mouth comfortably. Once there, the controller converts subtle movements of your tongue and your head into cursor movements, clicking, scrolling or dragging elements. Its design is that of a transparent splint that fits over the upper teeth. It has a pressure-sensitive touch panel that is located on the palate, and motion sensors to detect head turns. Its operation is very simple.The tongue moves on the trackpad of the palate, and this movement moves the cursor. It also has a mode in which what moves the cursor are head movements. So, just like the trackpads you use with your hand, a press of the tongue is equivalent to a left click, and a slurp gesture is equivalent to a right click. Everything else is the same as using a conventional trackpad. You can move elements, drag them and do almost the same thing as on a laptop touch panel. Another of its features is that it connects via Bluetooth like a conventional wireless mouse. This allows you to use it on Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux, Android or iOS without additional drivers or strange configurations. You simply connect it and start making the movement with your tongue, it is the device itself that translates your movements so that computers and mobile phones understand it. It’s just like a normal mouse, plug in and start using. It is true that it has official applications for some systems that you can download. But these apps are not necessary, they simply serve to configure control aspects such as sensitivity, cursor speed or click force. Discreet and with good autonomy. Another of the main features of this device is that it is extremely discreet. You put it inside your mouth where it can’t be seen, and it has minimal impact when it comes to speaking. It has a thickness of 1 millimeter, and is made of dental resin. The controller has dimensions of approximately 30 × 50 × 80 mm, and is charged via a USB-C to USB-A cable. The full charge time is 1.5 hours, and it has an autonomy of more than 7 hours of continuous use, which is almost enough for a workday. It is not the only device of this type. In Xataka we have already talked to you about alternatives such as the MouthX controller created in Spainand it also allows you to control cursors using your jaw and tongue. The difference here is that the MouthPad replicates a laptop trackpad with touch controls, while the Spanish alternative replicates two joysticks. For now only for the United States. The bad news is that this device can currently only be purchased in the United States. The company follows American regulations, but has not adapted it to European or any other regulations, so they only ship there. Regarding the price, ^Augmental It costs $1,400, but if you buy two it will be $1,900 for both. The key is that the expensive thing is to make it custom, and after completing the purchase the company will send you instructions to share with your dentist and take a 3D scan of your mouth that they will then use to manufacture your controller. In Xataka | Dulce, six years later: the look that became a voice and guide

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