Mobile Tech & Gadgets

The CEO of a technology company has explained to his employees why he will not raise their salary: they will spend it on AI

by

That AI doesn’t take your job It does not free you from suffering the consequences of its implementation. And if not, tell the Teradata employees who have seen how their salaries were frozen this year, not to balance somewhat tight accounts, but because they have decided that every available dollar should go to AI. what has happened. They tell it in Business Insider. In January of this year, Teradata CEO Steve McMillan sent an internal message to the company’s 5,100 employees telling them that they should not expect a salary increase in 2026. Teradata’s goal for this year was to “win in the market with AI,” for which they need to increase investment in AI talent and tools. In Xataka An Atlassian engineer was fired. He then published a video on YouTube explaining how the company works When AI takes your paycheck. According to two employees of the company with more than ten years of service, they normally received an annual raise of between 2 and 4%, but this year they have been left without it, although they were able to receive a performance bonus and shares. This measure affects countries where regulations do not require wage adjustments linked to the market. Teradata is not the only company that has preferred to invest in AI over people. The consultant TTEC also decided to pause its contribution to the retirement plan 401(k) because they are going to focus on AI certifications, tools and automation. A choice, not an inevitability. Speaking to Business Insider, the labor expert Jennifer MossHe affirms that cutting employees’ pockets is not the only way out. It is true that both Teradata and TTEC have recorded revenue declines (5 and 3.2% respectively), but there are options such as resorting to external financing to pay for the investment in AI, cutting non-essential expenses or adjusting senior management compensation. It also mentions alternatives such as staggering investments in AI over time, resorting to strategic acquisitions or accepting lower margins for a limited period, instead of loading the entire cost of the transformation on salaries. AI and augmentations. We recently talked about the logic of salary increases has been broken with the arrival of AI. Previously, raises were granted based on parameters such as experience, seniority and job category. However, in the technology sector this scale has changed and in 2026 many companies have frozen their salaries. Although AI is not directly responsible as in the case of Teradata, it has contributed to creating an elite of highly paid profiles and has amplified the gap: now the company you work for and how central AI is to its business matters more than your simple progression from junior to senior. {“videoId”:”x806n3d”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”TECHNOLOGY and THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE – Insert Coin with Manuel Hidalgo”, “tag”:”employment”, “duration”:”1806″} Firing is expensive. Normally when we talk about the impact of AI on the labor market, we talk about layoffs. So far this year, it is estimated that 92,000 tech employees have lost their jobs with the excuse of compensating investments in AI. However, the reality is that the layoffs are costing them a fortune for compensation and exit packages. Oracle, for example, has reserved 2.1 billion to cover compensation after lay off 30,000 employees. To avoid legal disputes, giants like Microsoft or Google are betting on incentivized “voluntary layoffs”, assuming the enormous risk that their best AI talents will take the money and go to the competition. Image | Jakub ZerdzickiUnsplash In Xataka | These are not your imaginations: your CEO has developed delusions of grandeur with AI and it is part of a pattern (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The CEO of a technology company has explained to his employees why he will not raise their salary: they will spend it on AI was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

Adobe was not born with Photoshop. It started by solving a huge and inconspicuous problem: printing well

by

Before becoming one of those companies that we almost automatically associate with digital creativity, Adobe had a much more specific and less brilliant obsession at first glance: printing. We are not talking about retouching photographs, editing videos or opening PDF documents with the naturalness with which we do it today, but rather about attacking a difficulty that is basic in appearance and enormous in practice. In the early years of personal computing, making what was seen or designed on a computer turned out well on paper It was not something guaranteed. Adobe’s story begins precisely at that point: with PostScripta language intended to describe how a printed page should look. The difficulty was that that chain was much more fragile than we can imagine today. Lemelson-MIT remembers that, at that time, personal computers were beginning to hit the market and the printers available were, in many cases, dot matrix, with very low quality results. For truly professional work, the alternative was composition equipment that could cost more than $150,000 at that time and required laborious processes. Between one extreme and the other there was an obvious gap: there was a lack of a more flexible, reliable and accessible way to bring complex pages to paper. The problem was not creating images, it was getting them to look the same on paper The next piece of history appears in the famous Xerox PARCwhere laser printing was already a laboratory reality, although still full of limits. Those early machines were controlled by Press, a protocol that worked well with simple letters and images, but got bogged down with demanding projects. A member of that team named John Warnock encountered the same message over and over again, “Too complex page“, and that was no small anecdote. His response was to think of an architecture capable of doing just the opposite: printing any page. That idea didn’t come from nowhere. Before coming to Xerox, Warnock had worked at Evans & Sutherland, where he was involved in a highly ambitious project for the New York Maritime Academy: a simulator of New York Harbor with computer-generated buildings, docks, buoys, changing weather and other ships. That system had to be built without yet knowing what specific hardware it would end up running on, so the team opted to create a language not tied to a specific machine. A decisive lesson emerged from this: device-independent software gave much more flexibility. John Warnock, left, and Charles Geschke, right, founders of Adobe With that learning behind him, Warnock once again encountered a similar problem at Xerox, but now fully applied to printing. The company used different schemes depending on the printer, to the point that its Star stations were under increasing load due to having to communicate with each model in a different way. Warnock and a group led by Charles Geschke They then worked at Interpressa standard, device-independent language for Xerox laser printers. The advance existed, but it collided with a business decision: Xerox adopted it internally and did not want to open it to the market. Apple LaserWriter The departure came in 1982, when Warnock and Geschke left Xerox PARC and founded Adobe. Lemelson-MIT says that its first idea was not exactly to become the software company that would end up marking desktop publishing, but rather to set up a printing service for companies and consumers. That plan changed when their financial advisors encouraged them to move toward software development. There PostScript began to take its decisive form: not as a closed solution for a single machine, but as a portable language that manufacturers could integrate into their own devices. One of the decisive pieces for that technology to jump from the laboratory to the market appeared in Apple. IEEE Spectrum explains that Steve Jobs had a very specific problem: The Macintosh was advancing, but without a quality printer it was difficult to enter the business world. Daisy printers didn’t work for Mac graphics and Apple didn’t arrive in time with a high-quality solution of its own. Adobe was building an answer. In late 1983, Adobe signed an agreement with Apple, and in January 1985, PostScript appeared for the first time on the Internet. LaserWriter. Seen from today, the interesting thing is that Adobe did not start with the most recognizable part of its current history, but with a layer that we almost always take for granted. Of course, Illustrator, Acrobat, Photoshop and Premiere are part of a later expansion, but the starting point was different: PostScript and the promise that text, images and graphics could reach paper with fidelity. There was the true initial intuition. Before becoming recognizable for its creative tools, Adobe found its place by solving a discreet but decisive task: that what was created could be printed well. Images | Adobe (1, 2) | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | In 1967, a war veteran believed that moving around a computer could be easier. So he created the first mouse

The hot Jupiters are evaporating, their winds reach 7 km/s and yet something is slowing them down

by

The hot Jupiters They are fascinating planets. They orbit so close to their star that they sometimes have orbits of less than a day. Solar radiation is very high, so much so that sometimes these planets are practically evaporating. And they are usually tidally locked. That is, they have one face always facing the Sun and the other always facing the opposite side. As a result, one side is much hotter than the other and receives more radiation, so the gases in its atmosphere ionize, transforming into plasma and moving at high speeds. Put very briefly, they have the strongest winds of all the known planets. However, recently a team of scientists led from the Côte d’Azur Observatory in France, has discovered something very strange. Seven hot Jupiters in which the winds flow much slower than expected. The only explanation that seems logical for this phenomenon is that they are surrounded by a magnetic field. And it is great news, since, if confirmed, it would be the first detection of magnetic activity beyond our solar system. Totally counterintuitive. The speed of a planet’s winds can be measured by tracking the vaporized iron present in the gases in its atmosphere. The authors of the study that has just been published did so with 7 hot Jupiters thanks to two instruments: MAROON-X, from the Gemini North telescope, and ESPRESSO, from the Very Large Telescope (VLT). When analyzing the results they saw that these planets had very high speeds, between 2 and 7 kilometers per second. The winds of our own Jupiter, the fastest in the solar system, are 0.4 km/s, to give us an idea. What happens is that these winds went slower the hotter the planet was. One of the authors of the study, Vivien Parmentier, has rated it as something “totally counterintuitive”, since the logical thing is that the higher the temperature, the faster the wind flows. The key must be in the presence of a magnetic field. In fact, with all this temperature and speed data, they have even been able to calculate its intensity. The thing is about temperatures. Generally, the higher the temperature, the greater the difference between the dark and light sides of the planet and the more excited the ions in the plasma are, so the wind generally moves faster. The logical and expected thing would be that the higher the temperature of a hot Jupiter, the faster its wind. The speeds are very high, but much slower than expected. Furthermore, they are slower the hotter the planet is. The best explanation for this event is the presence of a magnetic field. Magnetic activity and wind. When a magnetic field acts on a moving charged particle, it is affected by something known as the Lorentz force. Very briefly, what happens is that the speed changes direction. The particle does not stop, but goes from flowing freely to being confined within the magnetic field. Every time he encounters his lines, they make him change direction. If we see this as a whole for the entire plasma, since it cannot move freely, its speed decreases. This would explain why a magnetic field was slowing down the wind. But why does it brake more the higher the temperature? Auroras on Earth The secret is inside. The magnetic field of a planet is directly related to the movement of the liquid metals inside it. For example, in the case of Earththe movement of molten iron and nickel on the outside of its core generates electrical currents, which give rise to a geomagnetic field that extends into space. They are responsible for us having that magnetic field that protects us from the sun’s inclemencies. The higher the temperature of a planet, the more violently the molten metals inside it move and, therefore, within limits, the more intense the magnetic field will be. In turn, the more intense it is, the more it will slow down the winds. Possible auroras. The location of auroras on Earth is related to the magnetic field. Another of the authors of the study, Bibiana Prinoth, points out that she likes to imagine that one of these Jupiters has a sky “covered by curtains of colorful light that dance over a planet that is half in perpetual day and half in endless night.” What is it for?. Now that we know that some exoplanets have a magnetic field, we could also take it into account when selecting habitable planets. Logically, hot Jupiters are not candidates at all. However, other less inhospitable planets may also have this protective shield. We already know that it is not enough to just be in the habitable zone. Other qualities, such as housing a sufficient amount of water either be far from supermassive black holes These are conditions that can help us refine the search much better. Each new discovery brings us a little closer to that great discovery. Image | Gemini International Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/M. Garlick | Magnificent In Xataka | The Zoo Hypothesis: Why Aliens Likely Know About Us and Don’t Want to Contact Us

In Spain, insurers and venture capital are discovering what the business of the century really is: pets

by

It’s nothing new. Statistics have long confirmed a reality that anyone can see walking around their city: in Spain there are more pets than small children. many more. And in view of how they evolve the birth rate and the animal census of company, everything indicates that this gap will widen with the passage of time. It is therefore understandable that insurers are increasingly interested in a business that promises a notable growth in the coming years: policies for dogs and cats. It makes sense if we take into account that in Spain there are not only millions of pets. It is increasingly easier to find families who dedicate hundreds of euros in your care. The number: 20 million. It is not easy to specify how many pets are there in Spain. The figures handled by public organizations, veterinarians and the industry dedicated to their care do not completely coincide, but the general image they offer is the same: we Spaniards like the company of dogs, cats, parrots, ferrets, iguanas and other animals capable of adapting to living in our homes. If we trust Anfaac, the association that represents feed manufacturers, in Spain there are more than 20 million of pets, especially dogs (6.9 million). The Spanish Association of Industry and Commerce of the Pet Sector (Aedpac) raises the number of pets to 28 million“present in 40% of the homes” in the country. Other sources point to some 30 millionwhile REIAC (Spanish Network for the Identification of Pet Animals) had registered three years ago 10.1 million of dogs and 968,000 cats. A question of censuses… and euros. Censuses show us that hundreds of thousands of dogs, cats, ferrets, reptiles, birds live in Spanish homes… but that is only part of the ‘photo’ that interests the sector. Another (equally or even more important) is how much we spend on their care. That question was answered in March by EAE Business School, which published a report on ‘pet-money’ which concludes that pets generate a business of 5,770 million euros annually in Spain, drive an economy that grows at 8.3% and support 75,000 direct jobs in 12,300 companies. These are compelling figures, but they are less surprising when you know another key provided by EAE: 49% of households Spaniards live with at least one pet, on whose care we spend on average between 500 and 1,000 euros per year. “In many cases these disbursements are comparable to spending on leisure or communications,” confirms the studywhich has detected a “cultural change” in the relationship with animals that leads a good part of Generation Z and millennials to affirm that they are an essential part of their lives. “Hundreds of millions a year”. The report from AEA Business School also probed the animal-specific insurance business and discovered two things. First, it is in full expansion. Second, that sector data show that it already moves “several hundred million euros a year.” He is not the only one who paints a promising picture for insurers willing to exploit this business niche. Fortune Business Insights calculate that the size of the global pet insurance market amounted to $25.91 billion last year and, if its forecasts are correct, this year it will rise to $30.74 billion. The organization estimates that the sector is growing at a compound annual rate of 18.63%, meaning that in less than a decade it would be in 120,560 millionwith a prominent weight from North America. A business to exploit. Despite all of the above and the fact that veterinary coverage is basically private, the pet insurance business still has a lot of room to grow in Spain. At least that’s what it suggests a study from Guidewire, which points out that only half of pet owners have a specific policy for themselves. Specifically, after interviewing more than 4,000 people from Spain, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, the firm assures that, although 74% have a pet, only 49.6% have insurance to protect them. Other analyzes on the subject considerably reduce that percentage. “This data draws attention when taking into account the regulations in force in Spain, so, since September 29, 2023, the Animal Welfare Law requires all owners of dogs, the most common pet, to take out civil liability insurance, regardless of their breed,” points out the entity. All in all, Spain is one of the countries “”with the greatest acceptance of pet insurance” and the penetration of this type of services has clearly grown in recent years. Waking up appetite. In view of all the above, it is much better understood that large insurance companies and venture capital is entering in the digital veterinary insurance niche. Their hook: to make healthcare for dogs, cats and other pets easier on the wallet. One of the most recent tests comes from Petolo, linked to Getolo GmBH and the Zurich Group. A few days ago the company announced his landing in Spain after acquiring a portfolio of more than 150,000 dogs and cats insured in Germany and France. “The Spanish market has 15.5 million dogs and cats, mostly without veterinary insurance,” says the firm, which offers several plans that allow you to recover part of the bills (between 60 and 100%, depending on the bread) for animal health care. Is it a unique case? Not at all. As explained recently Five Days There are more examples of insurers and private equity firms that seem interested in the veterinary insurance business. Another recent case is that of Reale, which has decided to reinforce its presence in the pet policy sector. entering the shareholding from Canitas. The business has also attracted entrepreneurs such as those who have promoted the startup Barkibuwhich aims at the same objective: the vein that represents private healthcare for pets. Images | Olga Kononenko (Unsplash) and Karsten Winegeart (Unsplash) In Xataka | We have been looking at Noah’s syndrome as a minority and controlled problem for years. we were wrong

The human being is the primate that sleeps the least. Science is clear that it is a “radical evolutionary experiment”

by

We spend a third of our lives sleeping, yet the most common complaint in modern society It’s the lack of rest. We tend to blame screens, work stress and artificial light for robbing us of hours of sleep, but here evolutionary anthropology has a much more forceful answer: human beings are genetically designed to sleep less than any other evolutionary relative. It is studied. It is not something that we see from afar as a mere hypothesis, but researcher David R. Samson, professor of Evolutionary Anthropology, recently published a book that includes the results of his research. And the truth is that, after living with hunter-gatherer tribes like the Hadza in Tanzania and the BaYaka in the Congo, their conclusion is resounding: humans are an absolute biological anomaly. We are the great early riser. If we take out the calculator and the meter, a primate more or less of our same average body mass, brain size and diet should sleep about 9.5 hours a day. But this figure is limited to a fairly select few people, since we actually sleep around 2.5 hours less than our evolutionary biology predicts, making us the primates that sleep the least of all. This is a pretty clear conclusion. if we compare ourselves with other species that have very high sleep rates, as can be seen in the following list: Chimpanzee: between 9.5-11.5 hours a day. Gorilla: 10-12 hours. Pig-tailed macaque: 14 hours. Night monkey: 17 hours. Because? How is it possible that with the most complex and energetically demanding brain in the animal kingdom we sleep so little? The answer seems to lie in the “deep sleep” hypothesiswhich suggests that evolution forced us to have a much deeper and more efficient sleep to sleep much less than the rest of the hominids. For example, humans spend approximately 25% of our rest time in the REM phase, which contrasts with species such as African green monkeys, which They only dedicate 5% to this phase. But in addition, human sleep has a lower proportion of light sleep, since in return, it has a higher proportion of deep sleep. A necessity. Having a much shorter rest was not a whim of ours, but rather a matter of survival, since by leaving the safety of the trees, where our ancestors slept safely, and descending to dry land, the risk of predation skyrocketed. Regarding shorter sleep, evolution promoted several mechanisms to guarantee our survival, such as sleeping next to the fire and in large groups for greater security. But in 2017 a study showed that natural variation in chronotype allowed someone to always be awake standing guard during the night. Don’t blame the screens. It is tempting to think that we sleep for about 7 hours because electric lights and smartphones have altered us in this modern life. But this is not the case, because after analyzing the sleep of the Hadza, who are a hunting community in Tanzania without access to electricity or mobile phones, it was shown that their patterns are identical to ours, sleeping 6.25 hours a night and maintaining a sleep efficiency of 68.9%. Images | MediaEcke In Xataka | We’ve been sold melatonin as the ultimate harmless sleep supplement. Science does not think the same

AI is replacing one of the most hated jobs in the world: the tailcoat collector

by

Years ago, if you were walking down the street in Spain and saw a man dressed in a tailcoat and top hat following someone, it could only mean one thing: that someone was a defaulter. Although the Frac Collector is still activeToday, the usual thing if you have an unpaid bill is to be bombarded with calls and notifications. Well, the last thing is that those dreaded calls are not made by people, but by AI agents. The AI ​​wants you to pay your debts. In a report in Wired They tell the story of Ben (not his real name), who received a call from ‘Eve, an AI agent for the collection company Pro Collect. In a very kind way, he asked him to pay a debt. The problem is that Ben had already paid her months ago and no matter how much he asked, he couldn’t get Eve to put him through to a human agent, so he decided to troll her a little, after all he has a language model behind him. Ben told him that he felt like “a little guy” facing a debt that was like a giant that wanted to trample him. After a few minutes of fiddling, he was finally able to speak to a person, who confirmed that his debt was indeed settled. Automating defaulters. In the United States delinquency figures are skyrocketing and debt collection companies have more work than ever, so they are starting to turn to technology to automate the task. There are many startups that offer “call center without humans” services, such as the Mexican Altur, Domu or Moveo. This allows them to handle the volume of active cases. These AIs not only send text notifications to debtors, they also make calls and even adapt their tone depending on each case. Female voice and kindness. Most AI agents dedicated to debt collection have a female voice and name such as Eve, Emily or Taylor. Speaking to Wired, the CEO of one of these companies (FloatBoat) states that “female voices are more accepted.” Another thing they have in common is that they are designed to sound calm and show empathy, so that the debtor does not feel attacked. However, the tone is adjusted based on the transcripts of previous calls, so if a customer resists paying, the AI ​​agent shows a harsher tone. The collections industry. Given the rise in defaults, AI agents are sold as the perfect solution to multiply calls and notifications to defaulters at almost zero cost. According to data from the Kaplan agencyby 2034 the AI ​​debt collection market is expected to reach $15.9 billion, quadrupling productivity and cutting costs in half. However, it is not clear that these agents are more effective than a human in getting debts paid. According to Yale researcher James Choi, many people feel less obligated to pay if they talk to an AI than to a human. Even so, for collection agencies it makes up for the fact that a bot is somewhat less convincing than its ability to operate 24/7 and manage thousands of simultaneous conversations. Legal and ethical limits. Consumer advocates warn of risks with the use of this technology. An AI agent is capable of making hundreds of calls simultaneously, at any time, which can turn an already predatory sector into something even more aggressive. On the other hand there is the issue of privacy. We have already seen in Ben’s story that AI agents make mistakes, if the mistake ends up revealing information, it can be a serious problem because they handle sensitive financial data. Image | Monstera Production In Xataka | An experiment with AI agents began to treat them badly. So AI Agents Became Marxists

Nissan has been giving a second life to its car batteries for years. In Melilla they use them as an anti-blackout system

by

Nissan has once again focused its attention on one of its most unique Spanish projects. And it is that in a recent press releasethe company recovered the case of Melilla as an example of how it is promoting the “second life” of its electric car batteries. The installation It has been operating in the city for several years now.but the project remains one of Nissan’s central arguments to defend that a battery that is no longer useful to power a car still has a lot to contribute to the electrical grid. What exactly is it about? The project is called Second Life and was born from an alliance between Nissan, the energy group Enel (through its Spanish subsidiary Endesa) and the Italian company Loccioni, specialized in measurement and control systems. The idea is to take advantage of Nissan LEAF batteries that have finished their time in the car to set up a stationary energy storage system. According to advertisement When the company itself made the project public, the installation combines 48 used LEAF batteries with 30 new ones, for a total of 78 units. Why Melilla and not another city. Melilla is an unusual case within the electrical system in Spain, since it is isolated, is not connected to the national distribution network and depends entirely on a single thermal power plant operated by Endesa. In other words, if that plant falls, the entire city is left without electricity. And precisely that point makes the city the ideal setting to test backup systems like Nissan’s. How it works in practice. The battery pack acts as an emergency generator. It has a power of 4 MW and a capacity of up to 1.7 MWh of stored energy. If the plant is disconnected, the system can inject electricity into the Melilla grid for about 15 minutes. It may not seem like much, but it is the margin that is considered sufficient to reactivate the plant and restore the supply without the population noticing a prolonged outage. Come on, it serves as a cushion to avoid blackouts and keep the network stable (although it is not shockproof. such problematic blackouts like April 2025). An interesting technical detail. The system does not disassemble the batteries cell by cell. According to explains The company, when each pack is removed from a vehicle, is placed directly into the storage system just as it was mounted in the car. It is a way to reuse the assembly without a complex dismantling process, something that makes reuse cheaper and simpler. Strategy. The brand frames Second Life within its concept of the “4Rs”: reuse, remanufacture, resell and recycle. It is a circular economy logic, since a battery that loses performance in a car still retains a good part of its capacity, sufficient for uses where it is not required as much, such as fixed energy storage. Soufiane Elkhomri, Director of Nissan Energy Services for the AMIEO region, counted Furthermore, the collaboration with Enel allowed them to create “a model for the second life of a battery, which can be applied to many other use cases.” A first step. Melilla is just one piece in a broader commitment than Nissan replicate in other placessuch as the LEAF batteries that support the Fiumicino airport in Rome or some of its facilities in Japan. The idea is interesting, especially in terms of reusing a component as critical as a car battery. It remains to be seen, in any case, to what extent this type of solution becomes widespread as millions of electric vehicle batteries reach the end of their first life in the coming years. Cover image | Christelle Hayek and Giovanni Della Checa In Xataka | A ‘shitty plan’ to save the countryside: Europe turns to manure to tackle the fertilizer crisis

to the south pole of the Moon

by

The moon is an old acquaintance in human space exploration, but there are still parts to discover and step on. Having a permanent space base on the moon will simplify this exploration, but first NASA will have to check a list of requirements and needs among which stands out taking a tour of the south pole of the moon. After all, it is the place with the most votes to settle. But before humanity arrives, a fleet of drones will have to do the dirty work: the mission moonfall. cfour drones and a destination never explored. The Moonfall mission is scheduled for 2028, at which time four robotic drones will fly over and land at the South Pole of the Moon for the first time in history with the aim of identifying safe landing zones for future astronauts of the Artemis program. Each drone will weigh about 250 kg, measure 1.2 high and 2.1 in diameter. Inside they house an imaging system to map the terrain, a neutron spectrometer to detect water below the surface, a radiation spectrometer and a laser retroreflector so that ground control can locate them precisely. Although they will operate for a full lunar day (up to 14 Earth days), their instruments will continue to function several months later, enduring the -130 °C of the cold lunar night. Why is it important. Because the lunar south pole has elements that make it the ideal place to set up the human base. Thus, it concentrates craters that are permanently in shadow where has been confirmed the presence of water ice, the basis for obtaining drinking water, oxygen and fuel for future missions. Without these resources, they would have to be supplied from Earth, which would make human presence on the moon unfeasible in terms of cost. The problem is that that area has never been mapped with enough precision to plan safe landings, something that Moonfall’s drones want to change. Context. Artemis aims to return astronauts to the moon, something that has not happened since Apollo 17 in 1972, and establish a stable human presence there. With Artemis III In its roadmap for mid-2027, NASA is working in parallel on other projects, including this Moonfall, an essential mission for its final objective: its terrain and resource data will be critical data to decide where to build that base. Currently, the US NASA and 66 other states have signed the Artemis Agreementsa high-level framework of principles for the exploration and development of the lunar surface during this century, but it is more of a statement of intent than something binding. China is going on its own and in fact has its own lunar program with the lunar South Pole also between eyebrows. In short: the lunar South Pole has become the new object of desire of the space race insofar as it has first-level geopolitical implications. In detail. The company Firefly Aerospace It is the one chosen to build the ship that will take the drones there. The Texas company is an old acquaintance for NASA: its Blue Ghost lander became the first commercial vehicle to successfully reach the lunar surface in March 2025, delivering 10 NASA scientific instruments and capturing images of a solar eclipse from the surface. Elytra, as the ship is called, will undertake a 45-day journey from the Earth to the Moon, where it will enter orbit and brake so that the four drones land at a distance of about 50 kilometers above the South Pole. Once deployed, each drone will land autonomously in different areas to maximize coverage over the territory. Yes, but. The drones that will explore the moon will face enormous challenges. To begin with, they need rocket propulsion to rise, since there is no atmosphere on the moon and conventional rotors are useless. This translates into skyrocketing fuel consumption, so they are limited in terms of flights. Additionally, those shadowy craters are inhospitable areas where there is no light, so solar panels are not an option. From a legal point of view, the Artemis Agreements offer a framework, but they do not have the force of an international treaty in the event of conflicts or third parties outside of it, such as China itself. In Xataka | NASA’s lunar base begins here and now: an investment of hundreds of millions and a date on the horizon In Xataka | We knew there was water on the Moon, but not why some craters were empty. Finally we have the answer Cover | POT with Gemini

If the question is what is the worst job in history, the answer is in 18th century England: the “sin eaters”

by

Have you had a sinful life, full of vices and excesses, but you don’t want that to condemn you to eternal fire? No problem. You just have to make sure that, once you die, your family hires a ‘sin-eater’, a freelance that a small feast will be given on your coffin on the day of your funeral. A term will take with it all the faults you committed in life, no matter how serious or reprehensible they may have been. The ‘sin-eater’ charged for his services, of course, but… How much would you (or your family) pay for eternal life? It sounds strange, but the job of sin-eater It existed centuries ago in some regions of Great Britain. In fact, the newspaper archive allows follow his trail until the 19th. Sin Eaters? Exact. And it’s not a metaphor. Natalie Zarrelli, from Atlas Obscura, calls him “worst freelance job ever” and you’re probably right. The no eater (‘comesins’ or sin-eaters) were just what the word indicates: people who fed on the faults of other people who had died suddenly, without time to expire their guilt. They did not do it out of hobby or because they followed an elaborate (and dismal) medieval diet based on sacrilege, but because that was their job. He no eater He arrived at the wakes, participated in a ritual to free the deceased from his sins, and then left silently with a few coins in his pocket. Where did it exist? There is not much information about them, although references can be found in works such as ‘Brand’s Faiths and Folklore’ either ‘Hill and Valley’an essay published by Catherine Sinclair in the 19th century. In recent years, media articles such as Atlas Obscurathe platform specialized in religion Aleteia or (more recently) the magazine National Geographic. The writer and teacher Megan Campisi He also researched it for his novel The Sin Eater. Thanks to them we can obtain some glimpses of this ancient craft, which took shape centuries ago in Great Britain. And when did they exist? The ‘sin eaters’ worked mainly in certain regions of England, Scotland or Wales and their trade continued with ups and downs since at least the 17th century (some they go back even furtherassociating it with a heritage from the Middle Ages) until the end of the 19th century. In fact there is some reference to a no eater who died already at the beginning of the 20th century and his grave can still be visited today. His figure was based on a mixture of superstitions, paganism and Christianity, all against the backdrop of the religious changes that England experienced starting in the 16th century. In fact there is who slides that its role may have arisen in an attempt to recover popular traditions after the Anglican Reformation. What exactly were they doing? The ‘sin-eaters’ were the central figure of a relatively simple ritual that sought to erase the guilt of the deceased. The family of the deceased placed a piece of bread and a bowl of beer or milk on the chest of the corpse and then called the no eaterwho only had to do one thing: sit before the corpse and eat and drink the food that was supposed to have absorbed the sins of the deceased. A simple gesture with which they made other people’s stains their own. How did they do it? “He would sit facing the door. They would give him a fourpence piece, which he would put in his pocket; a crust of bread, which he would eat; and a bowl full of beer, which he would drink in one gulp. After this, rising from his stool, he would pronounce, with a serene gesture: ‘the peace and rest of the departed soul’, for which he would pawn his own soul.” relates a work published in the 19th century. After the mediation of the ‘sin-eater’, the deceased was supposed to be free of reproaches that could condemn him to hell. Of course, the opposite happened to him: those faults of others ended up weighing on his spiritual record. Was it bad business? It is assumed that the majority of the sin-eaters were humble people, with few resources, for whom a new day of hunger represented a much worse prospect than a supposed eternity of damnation in the flames. Although they only received a few coins in exchange for their work, the job was quite painful. And not only for religious reasons. Some versions They maintain that, by ‘devouring’ the sins of others, the no eater went on to become an outcastsomeone who blurred his soul. Was it that serious? Yes. A ‘sin-eater’ who is not very religious, atheist or even ‘infidel’ might not care too much about participating in the ritual in exchange for a couple of coins, a loaf of bread and a bowl of beer, but he knew that his work would entail an extra sacrifice: the “manifest contempt” from his neighbors, for whom he became a kind of pest, someone to avoid. The families requested his services, invited him to their homes, paid for his service and sometimes the no eater He even listened to the confessions of mourning relatives, but once the ritual was over, no one wanted to have him around. What was its origin? Difficult to specify. In her article, Natalie Zarelli remember that some theories relate the figure of the no eater with pagan traditions, others connect it with the medieval custom of nobles paying the poor to pray for their dead and the salvation of their souls. In a way, the ‘sin eaters’ are also related to other deep-rooted traditionssuch as the belief that living relatives can intercede for their dead, the figure of purgatory or the symbolic value of food. When did they disappear? In the 19th century, when Sinclair wrote his book, ‘sin-eaters’ were already on the decline in England, but that does not mean that they had disappeared. His trail can be followed until … Read more

In 1871 a farmer abandoned five cows to their fate on a remote island. Against all odds, they colonized the island

by

A Frenchman goes and releases five cows on a small island where Christ lost his lighter. It sounds like a joke, but it’s true: it happened in 1871, the Frenchman was a farmer on the island of Réunion and the destination island is called Amsterdam, it is only 55 square kilometers and is in the southern Indian Ocean. What happened next will surprise you because, well, it also left the scientific community in awe, as demonstrated by the quintet’s different studies. Introducing an exotic species into new habitats is a box of surprises that usually ends up regular: ask the crabs that were native when the American crab arrived, the fish that were in the Ebro before the catfish or the mythical Pitiusas lizard, which has found in the invasive snakes that you may encounter swimming a new and ferocious predator in the waters of the Balearic Islands. But hey, there are only five cows and the island is very small, right? Well yes: biology maintains that for a foreign population to establish itself successfully it is necessary that there be a sufficient number of initial individuals to guarantee genetic diversity and avoid extinction due to inbreeding. But there are also exceptions: genetic invasion paradoxwhere tiny populations manage to prosper in a surprising way. This is the case of our beef quintet. Once upon a time there were five cows abandoned to their fate.. In reality, the farmer came to the island with other people with the idea of ​​staying, but in the end it didn’t work out and five cows is not the lightest carry-on luggage in the world, so they stayed there. The subantarctic conditions were harsh and genetically there was a bottleneck, but the animals not only survived but reproduced successfully and happily. In fact, the population grew exponentially over the decades, reaching historical peaks of up to 2,000 individuals: yes, Amsterdam Island became the island of cows and is also one of the few cases recorded worldwide of completely feral cows. Why is it important. Because it challenges one of the central principles of conservation biology: the minimum viable population sizewhich establishes that below a threshold a population has a high probability of becoming extinct due to genetic drift, inbreeding and accumulation of mutations (the figure depends on the species and the model, but classical models point to hundreds or even thousands of individuals). Understanding these processes provides theoretical tools to better manage invasive species and the conservation of genetic reservoirs. That five cows founded a viable population for more than a century is, in that context, an anomaly that science could not ignore. In addition, it offers a valuable perspective on the speed at which evolutionary and behavioral changes can occur in a mammal when the bond of domestication is broken. Context. Amsterdam Island is part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands. We are talking about an isolated island ecosystem where there were neither large predators nor other large competing herbivores, so what is a bit of cold and wind. This initial condition made it possible for livestock to spread, although in the long run overpopulation ended up causing serious damage to the native flora and threatening endemic birds. Under the microscope, the samples analyzed revealed that there was a mixed ancestry: a combination of mainly European bullfighting cattle, but also Indian Ocean zebu. After analyzing the climate, they found that the conditions were not too different from other known scenarios in old Europe, such as Brittany, so the cows were not starting from scratch: your preadaptation to the climate cushioned the impact to the new habitat. What really happened. Some initial research they pointed to the fact that the cattle suffered from accelerated “island dwarfism” to adapt to the scarcity of resources, although genomic analyzes ruled it out: if these island cows were small it was simply due to direct inheritance from their ancestors, the also relatively small zebus of Madagascar and Jersey breed. The real change occurred in his behavior: the study identified that the genes that evolved the fastest were related to the nervous system, which the authors interpret as the genomic signature of feralization: the ability to organize in herds, reactivate alert responses and survive without human intervention. Yes, but. What this quintet of cows achieved was a feat of survival, but at what price: the genetic analysis showed a moderate reduction in their genetic diversity and a slight accumulation of potentially harmful variants, something to be expected after such a severe bottleneck, although without reaching the critical levels associated with populations at risk of extinction. Furthermore, the story had a sad and controversial ending: considering the damage they caused to the island’s environment, the authorities decided to sacrifice all the cows in 2010 and this unique experiment and its extraordinary and particular genetic lineage came to an end. In Xataka | In 1788 the English took five cows to Australia. Unknowingly, they activated a “time bomb” that exploded 200 years later In Xataka | That time the Australian army took out the tanks against the emus… And lost Cover | Copernicus Sentinel 2021 via Wikimedia and Iga Palacz

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.