Mobile Tech & Gadgets

“China sets the pace in technology, costs and development times. We have to learn from them”

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Company with problems, company that looks to China. Not so much to sell more cars in a very complicated market (that too), much more to see how to learn from them and get greater performance from their products. Survive by achieving wider profit margins by producing cheaper and faster. For Nissan, China holds the key. “We have to learn” “China shows us the future of the industry in terms of technology, cost competitiveness and development times. We have to learn from China and export its technical knowledge” This is what Iván Espinosa, CEO of Nissan, has expressed in statements Nikkei Asia. In an interview with the Japanese media, Espinosa has made it clear that Nissan needs to copy China if it wants to survive. The Japanese automaker is going through a very bad economic time and to get out of the hole it wants to look at its neighbor. https://www.xataka.com/movilidad/nissan-leaf-opiniones-primera-toma-contacto-fotos What’s wrong with Nissan? Nissan is going through one of the worst financial and reputational moments in its history. At the end of 2024, the company accepted that it had entered a stalemate from which it would be difficult to get out. Sales were declining, the US market (with its tariffs on Japanese cars) It got complicated, at home they didn’t get back on their feet and in China they were missing. Solution: lay off 9,000 employees. Those days, after a few days of rumors (and everything indicates that with the Japanese Government putting pressure), Nissan and Honda announced an agreement to unite their paths. The idea, it seemed, was that the second company would take over Nissan and take it under its umbrella. That idea was dissolved just a few months later.. We now know that Honda gave, for the first time in its history, losses in 2025 and that its strategy has focused on canceling its electrical projects. In March of last year, the Mexican Iván Espinosa took control of Nissan and has focused its future proposal on a new launch plan and the objective of recovering part of its prestige. Last year, the company continued to lose sales worldwide but the 13% drop in Japan is especially worrying. Reduce times. For Espinosa, one of Nissan’s big problems is in the development and production times of its models. Right now, he explains, the development of a car from when it is drawn on paper and given the go-ahead until it reaches the street is 55 months. Espinosa wants to reduce this to about 30 months. According to their calculations, these long developments prevent them from getting the economic performance they need from their cars and that is why they have proposed that the next Nissan Skyline, the return of a legendary model of the company, has set a deadline for its development of 26 months, they point out in Nikkei Asia. China has demonstrated an ability to develop, modify and produce in record time. Renault has also gone to China to learn how they work there and they presume that The Renault Twingo was developed in 20 months. From Chery they already made it clear that its high capacity to develop and produce in record time is key when it comes to prevailing over Western competitors. More and more notices. These statements by Espinosa demonstrate that traditional firms are doing everything possible to quickly adapt to China’s way of working. Some consultants have already pointed out Japanese brands that their obsession with perfection hinders them when it comes to producing faster and cheaper, which has been taken advantage of by Tesla and Chinese companies. Toyota also sent a similar message a few weeks ago. The company has detected that it is losing money because products with aesthetic defects are sometimes discarded even though these parts are fully functional and are never seen by vehicle customers. This weighs on their production costs but also on the time it takes to produce the car. More cars, more prestige. Account Nikkei Asia that Espinosa’s project involves launching new cars on the market that update the company’s range of products but, above all, it will be based on the search for its own identity with a clear intention of recovering the lost prestige. In fact, in recent weeks it has been rumored that Nissan could bring the latest Z to Europe (now only sold in Japan and the United States so as not to penalize the company’s emissions count) with the aim of attracting the public to the dealership and positioning it as a halo product. On the horizon is also the new Skyline and a future GT-R that has gone through all possible phases when it comes to defining it and moving it forward, from project it as an electric sports car to launch it again with a combustion engine. “We will provide more details in the future,” Espinosa said on this topic. The CEO of Nissan has even referred to the fact that “some of my predecessors only talked about finances all the time”, in a clear message that not everything can be done to save costs if you want to maintain the attractive image of the product. A move that diluted Nissan’s imagethat Stellantis ballast and an idea that Akio Toyoda, CEO of Toyota, has also rejected. Photo | nissan In Xataka | “We will not survive”: Toyota wants to add the turbo to match the pace of the Chinese brands

up to 144TB of storage at a 20% discount

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Having years of photos and videos saved in digital format is great, but where do we store them? That requires a huge amount of storage. Mobile phones, tablets or computers have good capacity today, but there are many people who choose to centralize everything in a cloud. But of course, That forces us to do two things.: have our data stored on a company’s server and also add a subscription to our portfolio. Or not, because there is also the alternative of riding a NAS server at home. Broadly speaking, it is about creating a private cloud at home so that we can have full control over our data and avoid paying an extra subscription every month. If you are right now in the middle of searching for a NASwe bring you two from Ugreen which, in addition to being very interesting, they have a 20% discount. The first of these NAS is called NASync DXP2800 GT and is the cheaper of the two. It has 2 main bays for us to place 3.5 and 2.5 inch HDDto which we must also add two slots to place M.2 NVMe SSD. In total, this means that It can offer us up to 80 TB of storagemore than enough for us to have photos, videos, backup copies and basically whatever we want stored there. Beyond the capacity, it should be noted that it has two 10 GbE LAN ports, which will offer us very fast data transfer. In addition, it does not lack anything in terms of connectivity with USB-A 3.2, USB-C 3.2 ports and even a 4K HDMI output at 60 Hz. All without forgetting its Ryzen processor and 8 GB of RAM (expandable to 64 GB), which will give us fluid performance. Its RRP is 509.99 euros, but if we use the code ‘XATAKAGT‘, we can take it home for 407.99 euros. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links If you are looking to take a step further, then perhaps its older brother is better suited for you: the NASync DXP4800 GT. This model is similar to the previous one (in fact, it has the same processor), but doubles the main HDD bays. These, which are four, added to the two M.2 NVMe SSD slots, will help us have up to 144TB of storage. Otherwise, we can expect the same performance as the previous Ugreen NAS. This, by offering the possibility of having much more storage, can be ideal for professional users or for people with a small business. Also if, for example, you want to ride a cloud at home for the whole family. As with the previous one, we can get it for 527.99 euros if we use the code ‘XATAKAGT’ (its RRP is 659.99 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 | ugreen In Xataka | How to choose a NAS to set up your own home cloud. recommendations and seven featured models from 100 euros In Xataka | Google Drive alternatives: the best cloud storage services for your files

The world’s leading expert in identifying deepfakes has a big problem. No longer able to identify them

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Is called Hany Farid and is considered one of the world’s leading experts on deepfake videos. This digital forensics expert was capable of uncovering videos manipulated by governments, for example, but now he has decided to leave Silicon Valley for one simple reason: It is no longer able to differentiate the real ones from those that are being generated with AI tools. And we are not surprised. Deepfakes indistinguishable from reality. In the last two decades Farid, 60, has specialized in identifying fake videos. This professor at the University of California at Berkeley has confessed that advances in generative AI have made traditional detection methods are no longer of any use. Their conclusions confirm the feeling that we have had for a long time with this type of content: AI has advanced so much that the problem is no longer just deepfakes: it is that we distrust even real photos. Farid’s reputation precedes him. His father worked for 50 years as a chemist at Eastman Kodak, and Farid grew up visiting the dark room often, watching photos become photos as they passed through the different liquids. He ended up designing a “digital fingerprint” system that made it possible to detect cases of child pornography hidden on the Internet. In fact, its technology has led to 30 million cases of potential abuse being reported each year, as well as leading to hundreds of arrests and several rescues. I surrender. Faced with the avalanche of perfect deepfakes generated with AI, Farid has decided to leave his job to take refuge on a farm in Vermont. His surrender is the latest demonstration of a harsh reality: We can no longer trust what we see on networks. Now he is dedicated to working with wood, and has distanced himself from networks and technology. The missile that changed everything. The turning point that demonstrates this crisis of this digital forensic task occurred after the viral spread of a video showing the alleged impact of a US missile on a school in Iran. Farid spent an entire day breaking down the sequence frame by frame: analyzing the geometry of the shadows, the sound delay rate of the explosion according to the laws of physics, or the pixel length of the projectile. Impossible to decide if it is false or not. He found nothing that could prove that the video was fake, and the same thing happened to other specialists. None could issue a clear verdict of authenticity, and that made it clear that AI video generation is currently so advanced that real content is indistinguishable from a deepfake generated with these latest generation models. Verifying is too complicated. There is another problem here: generating a fake video, whether toxic or not, with cloned voices that are perfectly synchronized with the interlocutor is easy, fast and cheap. Carrying out a forensic investigation to try to detect whether the video is real or not takes hours of computational and direct analysis by specialists. Given that deepfakes manage to go viral in just 20 minutes if they are successful, the methods to contain this spread are useless for a simple reason: they arrive late. The biter bit. The researcher himself was a victim of this reality: cybercriminals cloned his phone number and used AI to generate his voice and thus impersonate his identity. With that clone, they called a close contact who was involved in a court case and managed to extract confidential information. Farid and his wife, a vision researcher at Berkeley, they had to create a secret safe word at the beginning of each family call to certify that each interlocutor was who they said they were. The situation generates a disturbing paranoia and mistrust. “I’m going blind”. In the report of The New York TimesFarid explained that his studies show that most people can no longer differentiate a real photo from a digitally created one. “I feel like I’m going blind,” he indicated, showing his concern about an AI that is managing to obscure the truth and distort reality. Watermarks as a solution. Faced with this avalanche of images and videos generated by AI that are indistinguishable from reality, one of the potential ways to mitigate the problem continues to gain strength. It is, of course, the watermarkstotally invisible and which are part of the metadata of those files. Two promising initiatives. There are several initiatives in this regard, although the most notable It is that of the C2PA coalition which includes, for example, Google and OpenAI. AI tools should add those watermarks identifying those contents (“This video has been generated with this AI application, this image has been generated or edited with this other one”), but at the moment that type of option is not applied by default. Another important project in this sense is SynthIDGoogle’s technology to “mark” these contents as created with AI. Image | Bild (CC0) In Xataka | What happened to Technicolor: evolution and death of the company that changed cinema and was overwhelmed by its ambition

The trackpad on laptops is a real pain. So Logitech has invented the foldable mouse to put an end to it

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I have always thought that technology should be used to solve everyday problems, not to create artificial needs. And one of those small problems that I had in my daily life was not finding a mouse that could truly accompany my laptop without taking up space or being uncomfortable when carrying it. It turns out that Logitech has just solved this problem, knowing that many of us are fed up with trackpads. The pot. I am not from wallet easy, but when a product comes on the market whose purchase I don’t hesitate for a second, it’s usually for a reason. Logitech just released the Mobi Folda foldable and ultra-compact mouse. Specifically, we are talking about a mouse that, when folded, has a height of just over two centimeters and a length of six. Pretty crazy. When unfolded, it doubles its length, all while weighing just 79 grams. The tech. The Mobi Fold has simple specifications, with a sensor resolution of 4,000 DPI. In case it sounds Chinese to you, DPI (Dots per Inch) basically indicates the sensitivity of the mouse and the more the better. In fact, if we compare with high end mice of the brand, such as MX Master 3we have just half the DPI. What is it noticeable in? In that the greater the amount of DPI, the less we have to force our hand. What sets it apart. A mouse is a mouse. Or that’s what you think until programmable buttons are discovered. This is one of the main features of Logitech mice, and despite the ridiculous size of this Mobi Fold, two programmable touch buttons have been incorporated under the sliding surface. For example, as I write these lines I copy and paste links with the two programmable buttons on my mouse. But you could also take screenshots, open applications, or adjust any app or shortcut to these buttons. For what and for whom. In my particular case, I usually take my laptop out of the house a lot. Events, travel, working away from home… And carrying a bulky mouse like the MX Master 3 (or any other high-end mouse) is not a realistic option. This Mobi Fold completely solves this problem: if your office mouse is horrible and you want a small, programmable and quality one, this is an option. How long does this last?. Durability is one of the keys in any folding product. In the case of this mouse, 50,000 folds are promised. According to Logitech, if we folded and unfolded it eight times a day, it would last a whopping 15 years. In addition to this, the device is capable of detecting how much it is raised and when it is not so that, when closing it, we cannot make accidental presses. And yes, when you fold it it turns off by itself, so you don’t even have to keep an eye on the battery (which lasts 32 days according to Logitech). Price and availability. The Logitech Mobi Fold It can be purchased now for 79.99 euros, in the colors Lilac, White and Graphite. Image | Logitech In Xataka | Best gaming mice: which one to buy and 8 recommended models

If the question is how much money is necessary to be happy, we already have the answer for Spain: double

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We have all thought at some point that with a little more salary we would be happier. We wouldn’t have to worry about unforeseen events, vacations would have more “extras” and shopping wouldn’t be a constant search for the best price on meat or eggs. But to what extent is that true? How much money would it take to be happy? That’s precisely what they asked themselves. in a studio from Purdue University. Now, a report from Remitly has crossed the data obtained in that report with the real cost of living data and we can put concrete figures to happiness in Spain. Money doesn’t make you happy, does it? The Purdue University research analyzed data from more than one and a half million people in 164 countries and the conclusion they reached is similar to the one they reached other investigations: that happiness increases proportionally to the level of income. However, it only does so up to a certain income level. From this ceiling of happiness, what the authors of the study call “income satiation” occurs. That is, earning more money from a certain ceiling no longer improves how you evaluate the happiness in your life nor in your day-to-day emotions. However, the most interesting thing, and the part in which the Remitly payment platform has intervened, is that this economic ceiling for happiness is not the same everywhere. It depends on the cost of living, the culture and the purchasing power of each place. The key to understanding the figures: salaries adjusted to purchasing power. Before continuing, there is an important nuance. One of the key data in the study is the average salaries that people receive in different countries. That is why the income figures you are going to read do not correspond to real salaries as someone would see them on their payroll. These are adjusted figures for each country. according to your purchasing power (PPA). This means that a conversion has been made to compare very different economies with each other to more realistically represent each person’s ability to purchase products. A salary of 40,000 euros in Spain don’t buy the same than one of $40,000 in the United States, so these data seek to balance that difference. The Remitly team took the satiety points calculated by Purdue and adjusted them according to local purchasing powerusing International Monetary Fund ratios and updated inflation data. The result is a map that allows you to compare the “price of happiness” between countries in a realistic way. The global data: Iceland up, Ethiopia down. With this methodology, the country where it is most difficult to reach that happiness ceiling is Iceland, with $163,579 per year. However, their high salaries and the quality of life provided by the State position them as the second happiest country in 2025. Slovenia, with adjusted salaries of $42,800 per year, is the only country in the world in which, on average, the salary that its citizens would consider sufficient to be happy ($36,800) would be 16.3% higher. Luxembourg’s salaries ($109,900 per year) would cover 92.8% of that “happiness figure”, followed by Estonia and Singapore, whose salaries come close to covering 92.8% and 90.5% respectively of that happiness threshold. At the opposite extreme is Ecuador, whose adjusted annual salary of $6,500 per year would only cover 32.9% of the $19,700 per year that Ecuadorians consider an adequate figure to be happy. Spain: we need double. If we focus on Spain, the average salary adjusted for purchasing power is around $42,500 annually. However, the price of happiness is set at about $87,900 a year. That is, the salary would only cover 48.4% and it would be necessary to double salaries to reach the desirable threshold for money to bring happiness. Spain remains, once again, in the area where work does not translate into the economic tranquility that many seek and the concern to make ends meet It continues to be a brake on achieving full happiness. Happiness also depends on the zip code. The Remitly report goes a little further and analyzes the impact of salary on happiness even within each country, and has discovered that in Spain there are important differences between cities when establishing the amount of money they would be happy with. Madrid tops the list with a price of happiness of 89,759 euros per year, slightly above the happiness threshold established for the country as a whole. Barcelona (88,562 euros) and Palma de Mallorca (88,263 euros) follow very closely, three cities that also coincide among the cities with the most expensive housing prices in the country. At the opposite extreme we find Granada, with 73,153 euros per year. It is 18.5% less than in Madrid. The climate, architecture and a lower cost of living help lower the economic bar. That doesn’t mean that life is easier in Granada, but less money is needed to reach that ceiling of well-being and happiness that the study indicates. And now what? Beyond the numbers, what this report shows is that, in the majority of the planet, salaries are below what would be needed to feel fully satisfied. However, the authors of the Purdue study themselves warn that even if someone reaches that economic threshold for happiness, that does not mean they will suddenly be much happier. The researchers highlight that there is what they call “hedonic adaptation“, the tendency to always return to a similar level of spirit, readjusting our demand for well-being, no matter what happens and no matter what salary is earned. Money helps, a lot, to a certain point. But from there, it seems that happiness begins to also depend on other things. In Xataka | If the question is whether money brings happiness, a Harvard expert answers: it’s not having money, it’s what you do with it Image | Unsplash (Christian Dubovan), Remitly

Is Apple TV the new HBO?

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‘Separation‘was the series most nominated for the 2025 Emmys: 27 nominations, more than any other Netflix, HBO or Amazon title. The platform that hosts it exclusively, Apple TV, does not appear in the top 10 most viewed services according to Nielsen, but at the same time its constant launches of very high quality mean that it is increasingly talked about as the successor to HBO in terms of prestige and image. The figures. Apple TV accumulates some 45 million subscribers worldwidejust a fraction of those that have services like Netflix, with 301 million. In share of television viewing time in the United States, Nielsen data places Apple TV below 1% monthlycompared to 8.2% for Netflix. Apple service doesn’t even appear among the ten most used. And yet, at the 2025 Emmys, Apple TV garnered 79 nominations, with ‘Separation’ leading series and ‘The Studio’ breaking the historical record most nominated comedy first season. Apple walked away from the ceremony with seven awards, only two behind HBO Max. The HBO precedent. HBO built its reputation in the days of cable television on a very simple premise: fewer titles, more budget invested in each title, and creators with real control over their projects. The motto “It’s not TV. It’s HBO”was more than a marketing slogan. It also explained why ‘The Sopranos’ or ‘The Wire’ could only exist on that channel, and not on NBC. There were few real successes, but when there were, they became major cultural events. When HBO stopped being HBO. WarnerMedia merged with Discovery in 2022, and its stated objective was to exit the quality adult television niche and compete in volume with Netflix. The service was renamed Max to signal the expansion into general entertainment content and realities from Discovery. The brand was dilutedand was considered a failure to the point that the company rolled back part of the change. HBO on streaming and not only in cable, it is a key example of how a brand can lose its original spirit due to an ambition that is not very well focused. See less much more. A study by the consulting firm Antenna illustrates the concentration of viewing on Apple TVkey to the image projected by the platform: 32% of the service’s most active users watched ‘Unfiltered Therapy’ in March 2023, and 31% watched ‘Monarch: Legacy of the Monsters’. On Netflix, however, no title reached 25%. The lack of Apple TV’s catalog is always talked about as one of its big problems, but the truth is that when it comes to talking about Netflix figures in macro terms, that viewing is dispersed among hundreds of options. How many titles are there? Apple TV has around 300 titles available, compared to more than 3,300 on Netflix. Precisely for this reason, larger investments can be allowed: the second season of ‘Separation’ cost 20 million dollars per episode, with a total of 200 million for the ten episodes, which makes it a very expensive series compared to most of its competitors. It is a budget that allows for top-notch actors, a very sophisticated technical finish and, of course, that invaluable variable that is time. The result in terms of critical recognition is consistent: a analysis of average scores IMDb by platform showed that Apple TV had an average of 7.08, above Disney+ (6.71), Netflix (6.62) and Prime Video (6.62). It is the second consecutive year that the platform tops the ranking. The basic difference. AppleTV loses around 1 billion dollars annual. For Apple, that figure is practically irrelevant: in the fiscal year ended in September 2024, the company generated 93.7 billion net profit and 391,000 million in total income. The Services segment (i.e. Apple TV, but also the App Store, iCloud and Apple Music) recorded 26.3 billion in revenue in the closing quarter of 2024, a quarterly record with growth of 14%. Furthermore, times change: Apple also works as an aggregator and gateway to Hulu or HBO Max (in a similar way to how Prime Video does), something structurally impossible for HBO and which undoubtedly provides it with considerable benefits. Finally, another difference: Apple TV is the only streaming service streaming massive that does not have advertising rate. All subscribers pay the same monthly fee and view content without ads. This positioning reinforces the perception of a premium service because there is no “cheap option” and focuses attention on the quality of the titles, not on more practical issues. And as long as Apple TV does not decide to change its philosophy, as HBO did, it is getting closer to occupying the throne of queen of prestige television. In Xataka | If the question is “where to watch all sports on a single platform”, one company wants to have the answer: Apple

This is how it ruins our rest according to science

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On the most suffocating nights of summer, leaving the air conditioning on until dawn seems like the only way to get some sleep. However, what begins as relief often turns into a sore throat, congestion, dry eyes, and a strange feeling of tiredness the next morning. And this is simply something that our elders already repeated to us: Continuous air conditioning is not good for your health. The alteration of rest. During the natural sleep cycle, core body temperature decreases physiologically, but subjecting the body to a continuous flow of cold air comes into direct conflict with this mechanism, so our rest is not entirely efficient. Here, a study published in Extreme Physiology & Medicine analyzed how air flow impacts the quality of rest, and they saw that people who slept with the air jet impacting their body had a greater number of micro-awakenings, which prevented them from achieving a deep and restful sleep. And there is more. Furthermore, this continuous air causes an increase in heart rate and body movements, especially affecting light sleep. The conclusion here is that the flow of cold air should never be directed directly towards a sleeping person, since they will wake up much more tired than they should. Added to this is also the mechanical effect on the musculoskeletal system that, by enduring constant cold, causes the contraction of blood vessels, which results in muscle hardening and the classic neck or back contractures as soon as you wake up. A paradise for viruses. One of the great mysteries of summer is why we get colds if it’s not cold. Here the Spanish Society of Otorhinolaryngology It is estimated that 20% of summer colds They are the fault of air conditioning, which lowers the temperature of our mucous membranes and makes them more susceptible to microorganisms. It is studied. In this case, pioneering research from Yale University demonstrated the thermal dependence of our antiviral response. It was clearly seen that when we breathe cold air, the temperature inside the nose drops from the usual 37-36 °C to about 33 °C. At this lower temperature, the local immune system collapses and the secretion of extracellular vesicles, which is our first line of defense, drops by 42%, losing up to 77% of the receptors that act as “decoys” to trap pathogens and destroy them before they cause disease. Given that approximately 20% of people carry asymptomatic rhinovirus in their nasal passages, this cooling allows the virus to find its way, doubling its replication capacity in infected cells and, therefore, becoming much more pathogenic. The humidity. The other great invisible enemy of air conditioning is extreme dehumidification, since for our respiratory system to function correctly, the relative humidity of the environment must be between 40% and 60%. The problem is that air conditioning equipment extracts that humidity and makes the environment much drier until this percentage plummets below 40%. Here we have studies that observed that in environments with humidity around 24%, there is a severe decrease in nasal permeability and an increase in mucosal inflammation. The explanation is that, as the humidity drops, the respiratory cilia lose their mobility, and this is essential because these cilia are small ‘hairs’ that move to prevent a virus or bacteria from settling on our mucosa. Its effects. Breathing this dry air all the time not only causes rhinitis or pharyngitis, but it can trigger attacks in patients with asthma or COPD. But in addition, it also affects the eyes, causing irritation, the skin and also makes us much more sensitive to allergens. How to use it. To avoid these unwanted effects, the correct thing to do would be to turn on the air conditioning 30 minutes before going to sleep to cool the room, and turn it off when the function is shortened or programmed. Sleep which modulates the temperature and ends up turning off the equipment. The temperature is also essential, and the correct thing would be to never drop below 22 ºC, staying between 23 and 25 ºC. And if we go further, a humidifier can be used to maintain that 40-60% humidity in the room, which is essential to keep our barriers in their optimal state. Images | Magnificent Slaapwijsheid.nl In Xataka | An expert clarifies the main mistake of sleeping with air conditioning: “It is totally unnatural and we rest worse”

Ukraine has found Russia’s weak point in Crimea. And now there is a line of Russian trucks that cannot move forward

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During World War II, General George S. Patton It stopped its advance not because of a lack of tanks or ammunition, but because of something much more basic: gasoline. Their armored columns consumed so much fuel that logistics could not keep up. Since then, armies learned a brutally simple lesson: sometimes war is decided not by who fires the most, but by who keeps the tank full. The real Achilles heel. For months, the war in Crimea had been told in terms of missiles, air bases and attacks on the Black Sea Fleet. But Ukraine seems to have identified something much more vulnerable, the same thing we just saw with the US agreement with Iran to end the war: the fuel. It is not just about destroying military objectives, but about attacking the “blood” that makes the entire Russian machine work. Without gasoline, trucks do not move, projectiles do not arrive, drones do not fly, nor an offensive is sustained. And that’s exactly what kyiv is cutting. Hit the artery. I was counting this morning the financial times that the Ukrainian campaign has concentrated on the land corridor connecting continental Russia with Crimea, especially the “Novorossiya” highwaythe great logistics work inaugurated in 2023 and presented by Vladimir Putin as one of the great strategic successes of the war. It we counted recently. That road connects Rostov with the peninsula through occupied Mariupol and Melitopol, and has now become a shooting gallery: more than 375 documented attacks against trucks and vehicles since May, many of them precisely on that road. The message is clear: there is no need to destroy Crimea, enough is enough with disconnecting it. A peninsula that lives off what it enters. The problem for Moscow It is structural. Crimea neither produces oil nor has enough refining capacity to sustain itself. It has always depended on external supplies, before from Ukraine and now from Russia. This dependency turns each destroyed convoy into an immediate problem. The images of kilometric queuesdigital coupons and rationing at gas stations in Sevastopol show how the logistical impact translates almost instantly into social pressure. What at the front is a supply interruption, in the rear already seems like a siege. The Kerch bridge is no longer enough. For a long time, the bridge was the great russian lifeguard. But since the 2022 attack that damaged its stretches and set a fuel train on fire, Moscow has greatly reduced its use for sensitive shipments. Transporting fuel by road is much less efficient than by train, because a single rail convoy is equivalent to dozens and dozens of tanker trucks. And therein lies the problem: Ukraine is hitting both systems at the same time, forcing Russia to improvise floating bridges and much slower and more vulnerable secondary routes. The intermediate drone war. The most interesting thing is that this campaign is not being led by either small front-line drones or large strategic drones, but rather a new intermediate category that we have been explaining. We talk about systems like the FP-2, Behemoth or the Hornet that allow you to attack at distances of up to 200 kilometers with enough charge to destroy trucks, warehouses and bridges. They are cheap devices, difficult to intercept and operate with networks like Starlink that complicate Russian electronic warfare. It’s a major change, as Ukraine is turning logistics into its own front. Crimea is an island again. If you like, the great effect of this strategy It is psychological and military both. Crimea was conquered by Russia as a platform to project power, and now it is beginning to look an isolated enclave which needs to be fed daily to survive. If Ukraine keeps up the pace through the summer, the pressure will not only be on the southern front, but at full capacity Russian to sustain operations in the region. And there is the central idea: Moscow still has missiles, bases and soldiers in Crimea, but Ukraine has understood that the weak point was not so much in destroying them directly, it was in simply leaving them without gasoline. Image | Britannia In Xataka | We have to start thinking about the Ukrainian war in terms greater than those of the First World War. In Xataka | The drone war has left a clear lesson for Ukraine: you can’t leave home without a 100-year-old machine gun

He is criticizing a ship that does not exist

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One of the most important media outlets in China, the South China Morning Post, has been echoed from a peer-reviewed study that was published last March in the journal Chinese Space Science and Technology. In it, a team of Chinese researchers criticized the propulsion system of NASA’s Artemis lander and praised the one designed by their own engineers. With what is said in this study, of course, it seems that NASA is taking a gamble ahead of its next landing on the Moon. However, there is a detail that is not discussed in this article and that makes it clear that, in reality, it is a criticism with little foundation. Doesn’t anyone think about the HLS? Broadly speaking, the Chinese article criticism that NASA’s lander uses only one engine for the two critical maneuvers of the moon landing: descent and subsequent ascent. If this fails, there is no backup to bring the Orion ship to port. This is true. It would be a big problem to use a single engine, as they already did in the Apollo missions. However, with Artemis, NASA is not going to resort to the traditional two-stage system used in previous moon landings. On this occasion the Orion spacecraft will dock in lunar orbit with the Human Landing System (HLS) of SpaceX either Blue Origin. None of them have only one engine, so the problem that China points out does not really exist. The background of the Apollo missions. On the Apollo missions The ship used consisted of two stages. One remained orbiting the Moon, with one person on board, and the other separated to embark on the moon landing with the rest of the crew inside. This lander heading to the Moon effectively had a single engine for each critical phase. That is, there was an ascent engine and a descent engine. For Artemis, it was decided that this system could be risky, so the Orion spacecraft has a single stage, which never lands on the moon. In exchange, it docks with an external lander that should be waiting for it when it reaches lunar orbit. SpaceX or Blue Origin. NASA has contracted the services of SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop its HLS. If everything goes well, both must show their viability in Artemis IIIalthough SpaceX’s HLS will be the first to land on Artemis IV, introducing Blue Origin to later missions. Of course, if there were incidents with SpaceX and Blue Origin if it arrived on time, there would be no problem with reversing the order. Be that as it may, the key here is the propulsion used by the HLS of these companies. SpaceX’s HLS-Starshipfor example, has six engines: three sea-level and three vacuum, all fueled by subcooled liquid methane and liquid oxygen in a full-flow, staged combustion cycle. This enables high thrust-to-weight ratios and efficiency in vacuum conditions essential for lunar descent and ascent. For its part, Blue Moon Mark 2, Blue Origin’s HLShas three engines to descend to the Moon from lunar orbit. Of course, although the data may vary, at the moment it is only known that for the ascent it has a single separate stage, with a hypergolic propulsion system. If this fails, there could be a problem like those pointed out by China. SpaceX engine in a test prior to Starship Flight 12 The China option. Of course, the lander proposed by China is also a great option. On the one hand, it has a primary system that includes four variable thrust engines, so that if one fails, the other three continue to generate thrust comparable to that of the classic NASA engine. In addition, it has an additional layer with six smaller orbital control thrusters, which could be ignited on the lunar surface for an emergency ascent in case the main ones fail. The weight problem. Seen this way, the more engines, the better. But of course, it is not something that simple. More engines mean more weight, which reduces the ship’s efficiency and payload capacity. All the extra weight that the engines represent can be less materials to build lunar bases or supplies for astronauts, for example. This is why NASA’s traditional design included a single engine. China solves this problem by using a tank in which the fuel and the oxidizer used to start the combustion reaction are separated by a wall. Traditionally two tanks are used, instead of just one with a wall. Therefore, each extra tank meant much more weight. This type of tank results in a saving of hundreds of kilograms in the weight of the ship, which can be used to introduce more engines. China has good tools to go to the Moonbut NASA too. For now, China has tested its proposal in a hot ignition test, in which the engines are tested in real conditions, but without taking off. Everything has worked correctly, although the importance of very precisely controlling the tank pressure has been proven. It is a country that is preparing very well in its own race to the Moon. But that does not invalidate the steps that NASA is taking. Artemis is not Apollo. This time the single-engine moon landing will not be at stake, so the chances of success are greater than in the past. Image | Patricia Moore (Wikimedia Commons) | SpaceX In Xataka | China’s most ambitious space project: an advanced hyperspectral satellite to make a “CT” of the Earth

ban them from social networks. Now it is a mirror for Spain

by

After a not so long deliberation, the United Kingdom has just announce which prohibits minors under 16 years of age from accessing social networks. TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat are some of the networks that are banned for minors in a measure to tighten children’s online safety and make young people “happier.” according to Keir Starmer, British Prime Minister. This is a radical change that goes beyond child safety itself: it is a gesture of rejection of the power of large technology companies. And it is also a mirror in which France and Spain they have one eye on. “Designed to bedictative“. Last Monday, Starmer already advanced who would soon announce a ban so that younger people cannot access “harmful” social networks. In March, the Government launched a national consultation on the matter to see if they would join countries like Australia, which on December 10, 2025 became the first country to prohibit access to minors under 16 years of age to networks, which also included YouTube. “It will make our children safer, happier, and have more time and freedom to grow” – Keir Starmer A week after the notice, Starmer has reappeared to announce the measure and put forward a series of arguments that justify it. “Is there a situation in the world outside the networks where you would simply let your child pair up with a stranger, an adult stranger that you know nothing about? No, then we must take action on it,” commented the prime minister, who went on to affirm that the right choice is a complete ban on the networks. Not only networks. Thus, those under 16 will not be able to access the most well-known social networks, but they are not the only measures that Starmer has advanced. Although we will have all the details in a statement in July, the boss warns that there will be limits on the hours of use and another series of restrictions (which, again, we will learn about later). Networks like WhatsApp are left out of the list of prohibitions, where video games are not found either, but they will announce a series of measures and restrictions such as blocking conversations with strangers and live streaming. Regarding artificial intelligence, anyone under 18 years of age will not be able to legally access sexual conversations with chatbots. 90% support. As we say, after the application in Australia, other countries have been moving to see how they can limit the use of social networks among minors, with Great Britain being one of the most active. In March, a consultation began between teachers, parents and young people with a series of measures to adopt to restrict apps that, according to the Government, are designed with addictive characteristics. Reuters states that the survey received More than 116,000 responses from both parents, industry and youth and more than 83% of parents who responded stated that the risks of networking outweighed the benefits. But not only that: 90% supported the minimum age of 16 to access social networks. “This is about fighting for what we believe is right” – Keir Starmer What if Trump gets angry? In his speech, Starmer stated that the technology giants have had the opportunity to take measures to protect young people and help parents, but they have failed and that is why governments must come in to regulate. It is a direct blow to the big American technology companies and, as they point out in The Diarya journalist asked what she thinks about possible anger from Donald Trump, who has already been very vocal when a European country did something against American technology companies. Starmer’s response is that this “is about fighting for what we believe is right. I’m not going to accept that you can’t be in favor of artificial intelligence and technology and say that you want to protect our children.” The mirror of Spain. As we say, there are still details to know, such as seeing those time restrictions for other applications that have not been prohibited for minors and, also, seeing how they manage to apply the measures. But what is clear is that, if the world was already watching closely the measures taken by Australia, they will soon have the British example. Spain, France, Denmark and Poland are in that boat and Greece announced in April that it will prohibit access to networks for minors under 15 years of age starting in January 2027. A few months ago, Pedro Sánchez already detailed a package of measures that were going in this direction, drawing the ire of people like the CEO of Telegram, who broke into the mobile phones of all its users saying that Spain’s was a measure against privacy. Business for VPNs. In the background there is a very interesting conversation: whether prohibitions are useful for anything. It has happened with porn and with Australia and the United Kingdom itself with a previous measure seeing a VPN boom to bypass restrictions. Because it is difficult to put doors into the field and, although it is true that these applications have been designed with algorithms carefully controlled to retain the user, that underlying conversation is about whether what is really useful is awareness and education about the use of networks… and whether a ban will not encourage, precisely, the opposite: a greater desire to enter. But of course, there is also the fact that sexual predators They roam freely through some video gamessexualization on social networks with platforms like X and Grok giving wings to the almost unlimited creation of images and the use of images of young people by these sexual predators, who now they have more tools thanks to AI. In any case, there are many countries looking at this carefully, and if that 90% support that Starmer points out from parents corresponds to reality, it is evident that there is a desire there. Those who are not going to be so happy are the children. Image | Pexels (edited) In Xataka … Read more

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