Mobile Tech & Gadgets

Drinking tap water in Asia is almost crazy except in a country where it is a source of pride: Singapore

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Whether for work or vacation, I have traveled to Asia on several occasions and one recommendation has always followed me: “always drink bottled water”, even for tasks like brushing your teeth, it is better not to risk it and rinse your mouth with water that you know is safe. The recommendation spreads to most of East and South Asia, with destinations such as Thailand, Vietnam, China and India. However, a little over a week ago I visited Singapore and there was something that fascinated me: it’s not just forgetting to always carry a bottle of water, it’s that there wasn’t even one in the hotel room. Instead, a message recommended drinking tap water because it was of exceptional quality. That a country has quality water is not something miraculous, but Singapore is an anomaly in itself: it rains a lot, but it barely has land, so it lacks large aquifers or large rivers. In fact, for decades it depended on water imported from Malaysia (still doing it). However, they have managed to build one of the most advanced and reliable water treatment systems in the world thanks to the engineering and public policy behind it. The four national taps. In 2001 the public agency Public Utilities Board (PUB) assumed full control of the water cycle with a unified vision: from rainwater to the water that falls down the drain, achieving a snapshot of the whole, available and necessary resources. Singapore’s maxim with water is divide and conquer. Thus, it has four different water sources, the Four National Taps managed by the PUB: water from local basins, water imported from Malaysia, reused water and desalinated water. Taking into account that Singapore has had its ups and downs with Malaysia, the other three taps have been gaining importance. Marina Barrage, Singapore’s 15th reservoir to store water. Bob Tan Why is it important. In Southeast Asia, water pollution from industrial waste, agrochemicals and a heterogeneous and deficient sewage network means that the norm is to use bottled water. We have already seen that Singapore lacks the land to achieve water self-sufficiency and depending on a third party for something as basic and essential as water is a dangerous alternative. In this scenario, NEWater stands as the most strategic tap: self-generated water without depending on rain, the terrain or the neighbors. Although with quite a bit of small print. The local watershed. Through a network of drains, canals and rivers, rainwater is collected and channeled through its 7,000 kilometers of pipes to its 17 reservoirs before treating it for consumption. This collection takes place in two thirds of Singapore’s territory. From here, the water follows a conventional purification system. It is the least innovative route, but it is solid, functional and growing: the construction of the eighteenth reservoir is already planned on the land that Singapore is reclaiming from the sea, Long Island. Water imported from Malaysia. This is the most vulnerable tap and therefore the most susceptible to being eliminated (for now, minimizing as much as the rest of the taps can). He first agreement between Singapore and Malaysia dates back to 1927 and laid the foundation for water supply and land leasing on Gunung Pulai, but is no longer in force. This was followed by three other agreements signed in 1961, 1962 and 1990. Initially this source provided half of Singapore’s demand, but as explains the National Library and National Archives of Singaporefollowing the expiration of the 1961 agreement in 2011, the government aims to be self-sufficient by 2061, when the 1962 and 1990 agreements end. Sewage. Is called NEWateris capable of covering 40% of the total demand of the country and from wastewater it is capable of achieving drinking water of superior quality to standards of the WHO. They tried it before, in 1974, but the project failed due to costs and technical problems. The current sewer system cost 10 billion dollars and is designed to last 100 years. It all starts underground: the sanitation system DTSS It collects all the urban wastewater through a 206-kilometer network and takes it by gravity (without the need for pumping) to the four recovery plants located in Ulu Padan, Kranki and Changi (there are two there). There they use membrane bioreactor, reverse osmosis and ultraviolet disinfection technologies. They currently have a global recovery rate of 90% and a capacity of 227,300 cubic meters per day. NEWater operation diagram. Data. NEWater with Gemini translation Seawater desalination. Singapore It has five desalination plants and all of them use reverse osmosis as the main treatment, although with different pretreatment combinations. Desalination is a well-known technique in water engineering, but little applied for one reason: costs. So to optimize the energy process, among the PUB’s main R&D objectives is to reduce energy consumption to less than 2 kWh per cubic meter. The first was SingSpring and is capable to produce 136,380 cubic meters of water per day, covering around 7% of the country’s water needs. The Tuas plant won the “Oscar” of salinization plants in 2019 thanks to an advanced pretreatment system that combines dissolved air flotation and ultrafiltration to mitigate membrane fouling. Keppel Marina East has an adapted dual system that works for both seawater and freshwater. Yes, but. From a technical point of view, Singapore’s water infrastructure is brilliant, but it is not without its problems. The first is energy: desalination consume 3.5 kWh per thousand liters of treated water, much more than 0.7 kWh NEWater Faucet. Desalination has a high environmental and economic cost and is highly dependent on electricity. Spoiler: about 95% of Singapore’s electricity is generated from imported natural gas. On the other hand, drinking water that comes from the sewer, despite its quality, generates a certain social rejection, which is why the majority is destined for industry, where such pure water is ideal for the manufacture of semiconductors. On the other hand, faced with a growing demand for water, the challenge for the future is scalability to maintain its reliability based … Read more

24 years ago Oliver Kahn sued EA and won. Then a new goalkeeper appeared in football games: Jens Mustermann

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There are two things that I have to eternally thank my love for football simulators: locating places on the map and being familiar with a good part of the new talents that emerge in the quarries. I got off this annual roulette a long time ago, when the textures of the grass or the expressions of the players were not so important, but their faces were already well understood and you could recognize them thanks to the transfer of image rights, a tricky and lucrative topic even at that time. And for example, a button: Oliver Kahn’s. The name of the legendary goalkeeper of Bayern Munich and the German national team in the 90s and early 2000s disappeared from soccer games to return almost a quarter of a century later, it became an icon to close one of the longest and most curious legal disputes. Oliver Kahn’s lawsuit. Coincidentally, while searching for images of the special FIFA game for the 2002 World Cup, I found in the Xataka newspaper archive it is which illustrates the cover of this article and which is great for us. Because it was just then that the German goalkeeper filed a lawsuit against EA for image appropriation, as stated in the Ace article of the time: He believed that they were commercializing his identity without having given his permission or receiving compensation for it. The video game company faced a fine of up to 250,000 euros or up to six months in prison. Why is it important. This trial changed the rules of the game because it showed that video game companies cannot use the image of a famous athlete without their direct permission. In fact, it marked a before and after: from then on companies had to be much more careful with contracts, thus preventing big brands from taking advantage of the fame of footballers for their faces. After all, Kahn was a pioneerbut it could have been the tip of the iceberg of a barrage of similar lawsuits, such as explains the law firm Pinsent Masons. Context. It was the 2000s when football games began to look very real and in that image quality significantly improved compared to that FIFA 94 original Having the real names and faces of the stars was a powerful and attractive selling point. EA had signed agreements with FIFPro to be able to use player identities en masse, so in the hit FIFA series were represented virtually 800 players from 40 countries. The problem? That the union did not have the rights of everyone. It was one of the first train wrecks between the ambitions of a huge American technology company versus European privacy laws. Kahn 1 – EA 0, So titled Der Spiegel the goalkeeper’s victory in the German courts in 2003, ruling that the agreement that EA had with the FIFPro union did not cover the use of Kahn’s image, since the goalkeeper was not part of that organization. But it was more a moral victory than a practical one: Kahn managed to stop the distribution of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, but by the time he won, EA had already launched FIFA 2003. In fact, the goalkeeper tried to make ads featuring a blonde goalkeeper disappear, but the judge dismissed the petition: “Not all blonde goalkeepers are Oliver Kahn.” EA removed Kahn from the national team but kept him as Bayern’s goalkeeper under a separate agreement with the German league. The most striking thing is what happened next: to avoid any problems, the character based on Kahn was simply called “Jens Mustermann”, the equivalent of a completely generic and anonymous name like John Doe. Paradoxically, that name bears quite a similarity to that of Jens Lehmannthe goalkeeper who sent Kahn to the Mannschaft bench in the 2006 World Cup. Yes, but. Kahn won, but did not convince: The director of EA Germany stated that FIFA 2003 would still be on the market and that the new contracts were “even more solid” than before. EA did not change its business model: it continued to use block licenses and continued to operate normally. Kahn was absent from EA video games for years and It was not for legal reasons, but because he did not want to negotiate with them again. It has been now, with nostalgia and the evolution of modern game modes based on micropayments, when it has returned in the form of ICON card in EA Sports FC 26 actively participating in promotions and profiting from it. In Xataka | The most important thing about the ‘FIFA’ games was that they were called ‘FIFA’: EA is proving the hard way the weight of a franchise In Xataka | It’s World Cup time and millions of fans will pay for it with sleep: the graph that shows which countries suffer the most from FIFA’s schedules

We thought that Ozempic was only good for losing weight. Its last side effect is a brake on violent impulsivity

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If there is a family of medications that has made headlines in recent years, it is the GLP-1 receptor agonists, although they will probably be more familiar to you if we say ‘Ozempic‘ either ‘wegovy‘. These drugs began by revolutionizing the treatment of type 2 diabetes, but it was all a very effective way to ‘treat’ obesity. But soon after, scientists began to notice something fascinating when they saw that patients said they also lost the desire to drink. alcoholsmoking or nail biting. After investigating it. A new studyor have taken these first indications of the suppression of impulses one step further, entering the field of crimonology and have seen that it can be a way to reduce violent crimes. To reach this point, the researchers analyzed, through a survey, 821 adults who had used GLP-1 drugs at some point. After this, the study separately analyzed current users of these medications with former users to see exactly the effect the medication can have on points that go beyond food consumption. The results. What they found is not that Ozempic “reduces crime,” but something much more subtle: in current users, the association between impulsivity traits or alcohol consumption and violent behavior was significantly weaker. That is, the drug seems to act as a buffer, since in an unmedicated person, high impulsivity combined with alcohol consumption is usually a cocktail that facilitates aggressive behavior, since something that is well proven is the relationship between alcohol and violence. But in patients under treatment with Ozempic, this transition between “feeling the impulse” and “executing the violent action” seems to be attenuated, which could prevent the transition to committing a crime of intent. Because? To understand why a metabolic drug could have behavioral effects, we have to look at the brain, since GLP-1 agonists act on brain areas involved in the reward system and appetite regulation. The clinical context of this phenomenon is increasingly documented, since a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial published in JAMA Psychiatry demonstrated that semaglutide reduced craving and several drinking metrics in adults with alcoholism disorder. This medical trial has much greater causal weight than the criminological study and provides a solid clinical basis by pointing out that GLP-1 modulates our relationship with substances and immediate gratification. With violence. With all this we can make it clear that, if on the one hand alcohol is reduced and on the other the impulsivity felt when thinking about committing a crime, indirectly two of the main catalysts of violence are being reduced. The small print. With these types of findings, it is easy to fall into sensationalism and think that we are facing the ‘Clockwork Orange’ pill. However, it must be emphasized that the published study is observational and cross-sectional in nature. This means that a kind of ‘still photo’ of the situation has been taken without following up on the participants to see how their impulsivity evolves over time. Images | David Trinks In Xataka | We thought Ozempic was only for weight loss. Science is seeing that it can end alcoholism

AI is generating a labor market at two speeds: those who win and those who are left behind

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We have been hearing for years that AI is going to reconfigure the labor market and we have more and more data on how that change is going. PwC has just made public its new barometer global analysis of AI in the labor market in which, after analyzing more than 1 billion job offers in 27 countries, they reach several very interesting conclusions. Two speeds. One of the findings of the study is that AI is helping to create two categories in the labor market. On the one hand there are the so-called “professionalized roles” which are professions that can use AI as support, but require that the human be the one who does the fine work, such as specialist doctors, architects or recruiters. On the other hand, there are “democratized roles” that are positions that AI has facilitated, that is, that a non-expert can do it or that AI can directly do much of the work. This is the case of customer service, first-level technical support or administrative positions. According to the report, professionalized positions are growing much faster than democratized ones, with twice as many positions offered and 42% more salary growth. In Xataka OpenAI assures that AI has not had that much impact on employment. Anthropic believes just the opposite and therein lies the problem Productivity boom. There is a growing gap between companies that know how to make the most of AI and those that don’t. Between 2018 and 2025, productivity growth among companies in sectors less exposed to AI has increased by 24%, while those most exposed reach 34%. Within this group, they have detected that companies that use AI most intensively have managed to boost their productivity by up to 163%, five times more than the average for the rest. In addition to being more productive, these companies are also increasing their workforce, up to 52% compared to 36% for less pro-AI companies. Knowing about AI pays better. The barometer has detected that the pull of AI also affects salaries. The pay gap between those with specific AI skills and those without has increased to 62%, up from 57% last year. In addition, jobs in specific areas such as machine learning or prompt engineering are growing eight times faster than the general labor market (69% compared to 9%). The number of offers for jobs related to AI is already double what was seen in 2024, especially in sectors such as technology, media, telecommunications and professional services. {“videoId”:”x806n3d”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”TECHNOLOGY and THE JOBS OF THE FUTURE – Insert Coin with Manuel Hidalgo”, “tag”:”employment”, “duration”:”1806″} Junior who look senior. Another finding of the study is that entry-level or junior positions now have higher requirements. The offers analyzed tend to require typically senior skills such as judgment, leadership and creativity. Specifically, PwC says that the jobs most exposed to AI are seven times more likely to require these skills in entry-level roles, and that vacancies for these junior-senior positions have grown by 35% since 2019, while the rest of the junior roles have decreased by 10%. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Spain has just put numbers to the impact of AI on the labor market: 2.3 million jobs will change forever (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 AI is generating a labor market at two speeds: those who win and those who are left behind was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

“We probably have more than one double somewhere on the planet”

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The idea that we all have a “double“Exactly walking down some street on another continent has fueled literature, cinema and urban legends for centuries. we call doppelganger and, although you may think that it is the result of science fiction, the reality is that there is a solid biological explanation for this idea. It’s proven. Top-level Spanish researchers, such as geneticist Carles Lalueza-Fox from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Manel Esteller, director of the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute, demonstrated that this phenomenon is not magic, but is pure genetic statistics. In order to understand this phenomenon, the researchers analyzed 32 couples of “doubles” who were not related to each other and compared their DNA, epigenetics and also the microbiome. What they saw. The team not only relied on the visual perception that two people looked too similar, but used facial recognition algorithms to measure the objectivity of the real resemblance. In this way, of the sixteen couples that the algorithms classified as ‘extremely similar’, nine of them shared multiple genetic variations that are known as ‘single nucleotide polymorphisms‘. But these similarities were not distributed at random, but were concentrated in the genes responsible for sculpting the forehead, eyes, nose, mouth and chin. That is, these sixteen couples gave results comparable to those of real biological twins. There is a nuance. If their DNA is so similar, why aren’t they identical in everything? The study resolved that the subtle differences between these doubles are due to epigenetics, which is basically how DNA is expressed depending on the lifestyle or environment in which we develop, and their microbiome, which are the bacteria that live in your body. A genetic puzzle. This study is not an isolated case, but the scientific community has been mapping the architecture of the human face for years, discovering that the combination of genes that defines our face is finite. In this way, as the probability of the genetic dice landing in the same combination increases exponentially. The experts. One of the authors of this study, Carles Lalueza-Fox, granted a recent interview with El País and pointed out that, after analyzing the 200 most important genes for facial structure and calculating the probabilities, they saw that “we probably have more than a double somewhere on the planet.” Now this phenomenon is a little more popular basically because social networks are making it easier to find our doubles. Image | Anton Malanin In Xataka | The surprising thing is not that we have sequenced the DNA of a Neanderthal from 11,000 years ago: it is what it has revealed

We thought it was a bend in the Rhine. In reality it was a huge Roman water channel that survived the fall of the Empire for 300 years.

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If there is something for which Rome has remained in memory, it is for its impressive road layout throughout their empire, but be careful because in hydraulic engineering they were not far behind either, the aqueducts of Segovia and Tarragona serve as close examples. It is true that aqueducts are striking constructions due to their dimensions, but there is another that rivals them in size and capacity to move water: canals. In fact, a research team just “discovered” that what looked like an old abandoned Rhine channel was actually an ancient Roman canal. They had an unappealable clue on the terrain: it is rare to see such a long and straight line in nature. The discovery. In southwestern Germany, on an agricultural plain next to the Rhine River, an interdisciplinary research team from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel and the Hessen Monument Office have found something that has been buried for more than a thousand years: an artificial Roman canal 15 meters wide and 2.5 meters deep that connected the Rhine to a small military fort called the burgus of Trebur-Astheim. Why is it important. Because the Trebur-Astheim Canal is one of the few known navigable canals north of the Alps during the Roman period and the Early Middle Ages, demonstrating that the Roman Empire in Germania modified the landscape more intensely and lastingly than previously believed. The presence of Rome was more than a mere occupation. As explains the research teamthe burgus of Trebur-Astheim probably functioned as a central logistical node for the Landgraben region, where cargo ships of the time could dock and goods were redistributed around the area on other vessels. This demonstrates a global vision of the empire for supplying its troops through infrastructure that goes beyond the roads. Context. The consolidated Roman presence in the Hessische Ried began in the 1st century AD, under the Flavian emperors. The fort of Trebur-Astheim was built between 364 and 375 AD under the command of Emperor Valentinian I as part of his plan for military deployment along the Rhine. with a goal: contain the Alamanni, a group of tribes settled on the right bank of the river. In fact, the Rhineland border is clearly demarcated by watchtowers and forts, as can be seen on the UNESCO World Heritage List. In detail. In short, the town of Trebur-Astheim was practically a protected inland port: its dimensions were similar to those of the Roman navigable canal Fossa Corbulonis (present-day Netherlands) and made it suitable for different types of Roman river vessels, such as military type Mainz-A or the cargo boats found near Xanten, both with drafts of between 0.35 and 0.65 meters, well below the depth of the channel. Carbon 14 has revealed that, from the sediments of the canal, it was in operation from Roman times until the 7th-8th centuries AD, when it became clogged with mud and was abandoned. In fact, the large amount of sediment in the area forced the channel to be dredged frequently for centuries: after the Romans, the team points out that the Merovingian and Carolingian communities exploited it and maintained the infrastructure. Yes, but. The excavation carried out in 2024 did not reach sufficient depth to physically see the walls of the canal due to the high water table and the amount of sediment. That is to say, the dimensions that we know have been estimated indirectly, something that is common in underwater archaeology. In this sense, a complete excavation is pending to obtain direct data on the construction of the canal. In Xataka | Some go to the gym to do legs and others to discover an impressive mansion from the Roman Empire In Xataka | The Romans found a macabre and sophisticated way to use perfume: breaking pigeons’ necks (made of glass) Cover | Wolfgang Pehlemann and An Artificial Canal Connecting the Roman Burgus at Trebur-Astheim (Upper Rhine Graben, Germany) with the River Rhine

prevent you from being “cooked” inside

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Summer is practically here and the thermometers do not stop rising with a heat wave that is at the doors of our country. But beyond the unbearable heat, another of the sensations that we can experience on these dates is the loss of appetite or we even see how our digestion becomes heavier when we eat something heavy. And behind this predilection for salads and the rejection of heavy dishes hides a sophisticated thermoregulatory survival mechanism that science has been studying for years. A grandmother’s advice. When these times arrive, light meals such as the much-loved pasta salads appear on the table, but the reality is that it is not traditional advice, but rather it is a recommendation supported by scientific evidence to avoid heat stress, optimize our metabolism and protect our cardiovascular health. That is why in these coming months the largest meals should be a little further away for our own health. The internal engine. To understand the reasons why we must opt ​​for light meals, we have to go inside our body. Here when we eat, our body needs to expend energy to digest, absorb and metabolize them, and this process, known as thermogenesis induced by diet, generates internal heat. In this way, when we consume large or high-calorie meals, our heart rate rises and blood production doubles during the following two hours to assist the digestive system. Yes to this cardiovascular overload Add to that an extreme ambient temperature that sometimes exceeds 40 degrees, the cocktail can be dangerous. It is studied. A study published in 2022 showed that a high-fat diet dramatically increases oxidative stress in muscles and doubles the risk of heat stroke when exposed to a temperature of 41°C. And, as we have mentioned before, heavy digestion causes greater oxygen consumption and an exacerbated generation of internal heat that predisposes the body to thermal stress. The heaviest. To all this, it must be noted that overeating or eating foods rich in saturated fat during the summer triggers immediate consequences, such as digestive overload. This basically happens because the body tries to send blood to the skin in order to cool down and reduce its body temperature (that’s why we turn red), which delays the emptying of the stomach and makes us feel very heavy. But in addition, foods rich in fat can generate endotoxemia and inflammation after finishing eating, accompanied by drowsiness that can last up to four hours after eating. The advice in summer. In the face of heavy digestion, science points out a clear path that we should follow: extreme hydration, fiber and the Mediterranean diet. The historic PREDIMED study confirmed that this dietary pattern, naturally light and based on healthy fats and vegetables, reduces by 30% the incidence of cardiovascular diseases and reverses the metabolic syndrome that can arise in summer. The objectives. The first of them is hydration, which must be very aggressive, but not only through drink, but also through food. Here there is food such as cucumber or watermelon, which have a composition of more than 90% water and are presented as essential tools to maintain basal temperature. Our microbiota. Our intestinal bacteria also suffer from summer routine changes, as seen in a recent VHIR study carried out with more than a thousand people in Spain, which showed that a diet based on fruits, vegetables and nuts promotes a much more diverse microbiota and prevents dysbiosis. On the contrary, ultra-processed foods, alcohol and sugary drinks, which can increase in the summer, reduce bacterial diversity, bringing our intestine closer to inflammatory patterns. Images | Lee Myungseong In Xataka | Reheating the same container of food in the microwave over and over again has a great benefit: bacteria

Since the 70s, every time it rains heavily, west London floods without anyone being able to do anything. Until, in 2023, the beavers appeared

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The truth is that the headline is irresistible: a family of beavers have resolved in a handful of months a problem that London Underground engineers had been unable to solve for years. Rodents 1 – humans 0. The problem is that, as almost always, the story is more complex. It is true that engineers have spent years trying to find the best way to fix it, but the truth is that they did find a way to do it. And that way, it included beavers. What really happened to the London Underground beavers? On October 11, 2023, a family of five Eurasian beavers were released into Paradise Field, a former golf course west of the British capital. In that area of ​​Ealing and every time it rained, the Costons Brook stream overflowed and caused enormous flooding. Since the 70s, whenever it rained heavily, the area became an improvised swimming pool. 2024 was the first year in which this did not happen. “The UK’s first urban beaver count”. Sourced from wild populations in Scotland and financed by the city’s mayor’s office, the project has been a success. Now, in fact, There are now eight beavers that live in the area. Why has it happened? That beavers have “beavered.” Little by little they have built a dense network of dams that retain and release the water slowly, turning the Paradise Field into a sponge. This has protected the subway tracks, the station and the rest of the urban environment. Why is it interesting? For many things, but especially for money. Between 2015 and 2021, the United Kingdom spent about 2.6 billion pounds in flood defenses and estimates spoke of doubling that figure. The beaver colony and urban park system are a bargain by comparison. And not only at the urban level, everything is said. The River Otter trial, in Devon (2015-2020), does allow us to talk about effectiveness and points to a reduction in flood peaks of 30-60%. Can we learn something from it? In reality, we will have no other choice: for years There are people releasing beavers all over Spain. The question is whether we can do something to solve the eternal problem of recurring floods (in a context in which DANAs are going to become increasingly frequent and intense). But, of course, for that we have to understand well what has happened. It’s not like five beavers snuck into London’s sewers like ninja turtles and solved everything. A team of engineers and biologists have designed an intervention in which beavers have turned out to be wonderful. It remains to be seen what happens in the future and begin to accept that it is still better to collaborate with nature than to continue fighting against it. Image | Xataka In Xataka | After centuries of disappearance, there are people releasing beavers into the Tagus and other rivers in Spain. The problem is that we don’t know who

More and more people are going to concerts with AirPods in their ears. The reason is simple: they function as a stopper

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For some time now, it has not been a completely strange image to see someone at festivals or concerts with AirPods. You’re not listening to Spotify (that would be weird, frankly), but using them as earplugs to muffle the noise. The trend has spread to such an extent that Apple now has an official name and has cataloged the trend with technical documentation. But… do they really work? Since when? On October 28, 2024, along with the first wave of Apple Intelligence, iOS 18.1 arrived. In that updatethe AirPods Pro 2 received three new functions: hearing test, OTC hearing aid mode with FDA authorization and the one that interests us: Active Hearing Protection. Apple had been presenting it for months in keynotesbut finally, with the software came the legitimization of the company that they had been observing the behavior of users at concerts for some time. How it works. Apple’s official documentation Sets three levels of protection depending on which mode is active. Transparency, which lets you hear the stage through the microphones, attenuates between 11 and 15 decibels. Adaptive mode, which mixes Cancellation and Transparency depending on the environment, raises that figure to between 25 and 29 dB. Pure Active Noise Cancellation averages 27 dB according to eardrum measurements from 2023, although the attenuation is not linear: at low frequencies there are notable improvements compared to the first generation; At mid and high frequencies, performance varies with the physical fit of the headphone. No more than 85. And there is an even more specific mode: the algorithm in Adaptive Transparency (an activatable mode within Transparency) detects the 85 dB threshold and compresses everything above it. In a room at 110 dB (usual level at rock concerts or electronic festivals), that means reducing the peaks to around 82-85 dB. The subjective result described by media such as TechRadarwho tested them in a room with 114.7 dB peak, is that the sound is comfortable and with good nuances for bass and percussion. On the AirPods Pro 3, released in September 2025, the dynamic range even improves. Of course, if the volume consistently exceeds 110-115 dB, even with 25-29 dB of attenuation, the user is exposed to hearing fatigue after ten minutes using AirPods Pro 2 in adaptive mode. That is to say: AirPods reduce damage and are a better option than going to the concert without anything. But they are a worse option than a calibrated hi-fi plug. The fashion of the plug at concerts. According to Loop manufacturer datathe main users of hi-fi earplugs at concerts are young people millennials and Gen Z. Videos with tags like “hot girls wear earplugs to raves“, and the earplugs appear in lists of “rave essentials” as a meme. Hearing protection is no longer a thing for older people or sound engineers, and is now a hallmark of festival identity. In fact, it is Loop itself, founded in Belgium in 2016, that has pushed this change. Their Experience models reduce 17 dB with flat attenuation, which means that the tonal signature of the concert is maintained: everything sounds the same but at a lower volume. The comparisons point Because Loop lags behind specialty brands like EarPeace or Alpine in pure attenuation quality, but the difference is negligible to the non-music user. Design, as with Airpods, plays an important role in its success. Of course, the difference is that people already have the Apple device for other purposes. Why Airpods are not earplugs. The most relevant technical difference between a hi-fi earplug and AirPods is not in the number of decibels, but in how the sound reaches the ear. A plug like Loop or Alpine attenuates acoustically: the physical material absorbs sound energy before it reaches the ear canal. AirPods, on the other hand, capture external sound with microphones, process it digitally and reproduce it modified through the headphones’ speakers, so there is a dependence on the battery and the physical fit in the ear, just as Apple itself warns. In Xataka | Gen Z has become so disengaged from addiction that it is holding daytime raves with coffee and sound healing.

China has just published a manual to hunt them from 3,000 km

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Japan designed the battle of midway convinced that the distance and dispersion of his fleet gave him an advantage. The problem is that the United States had deciphered the plan and converted that distance in a trap in 1942: four Japanese aircraft carriers ended up at the bottom of the Pacific in just a few hours. In naval warfare, staying away has never been a guarantee of safety. Retreat is no longer a refuge. For years, the United States’ response to China’s military buildup in the Pacific was clear: move away its aircraft carriers and large naval assets from the Asian coast. The reasoning seemed sound. The further away they were from Chinese ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missiles, the harder it would be to destroy them. Bases like Guam They thus became a kind of strategic sanctuary… until Beijing just made something uncomfortable clear: distance no longer guarantees security. The Chinese manual. A group of Chinese military scientists, led by Gao Tianyun from the National University of Defense Technology in Nanjing, has published a study which describes how to destroy an aircraft carrier battle group at 3,000 kilometers. The figure is by no means coincidental. It is practically the exact distance between Shanghai and Guam. What is striking is not only the ambition of the plan, but the implicit message: the refuge that Washington chose to protect its most valuable ships is already within the threat map that China says it is studying. The great chain of death. The study does not present a “miracle weapon,” but rather something more dangerous: a complete system. First locate, then follow, and then saturate. The proposal combines satellites, drones, radar aircraft, submarines, ships and signals intelligence to build a chain of constant monitoring of an enemy naval group. Once the objective was set, the real key would arrive: a massive attack with coordinated missilessharing data in flight, differentiating decoys from real targets and assigning targets from multiple angles of attack. The war of exhausting defenses. The Chinese logic is not so much to pierce the armor of an aircraft carrier as to break the defensive architecture that protects it. An American battle group depends on Aegis destroyersinterceptor missiles, electronic warfare, decoys and CIWS systems last line. The problem is that all these systems have limits. The goal of a coordinated swarm is not to be unstoppable, but to make the defense run out of timewithout radar capacity or without sufficient interceptors. In other words, it is a war of exhaustion in seconds. Hiding is no longer enough. Here is possibly the central idea that worries Washington. The United States dispersed its ships and moved its aircraft carriers away to avoid having “all their eggs in one basket,” making it difficult for China to locate and attack them. But he chinese study issues a very specific warning: hiding and dispersing does not necessarily mean being safe. If the detection and tracking chain works, distance ceases to be a barrier and simply becomes a logistical variable. The most difficult point. Of course, work does not mean that China can do it tomorrow. The analysis itself makes it clear that the problem is not the range of the missiles, but maintain targeting data precise information about a naval group that moves, maneuvers, camouflages itself, emits interference and deploys decoys. Why hit a moving target? 3,000 kilometers It remains one of the most complex tasks of modern warfare, and although the theory now exists, the practice is a very different matter. More message than capacity. Because perhaps that is precisely the point. Post this study It doesn’t seem like a technical demonstration so much as a strategic statement. If you like, Beijing is also saying something very concrete to Washington: move your aircraft carriers Any further does not solve the problem, it only changes its form. In other words, the new Pacific war is no longer about getting close enough to strike, but about proving that even thousands of miles away no one is really out of reach. Image | US Navy In Xataka | While the world looked at Iran, China has seized an island in the Pacific without a single shot. And now he is militarizing it In Xataka | Japan has crossed a red line in the Pacific with the US: China has just responded with warships closer than ever

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