Mobile Tech & Gadgets

The Adamuz accident comes after a year of incidents and controversies

by

The tragic Adamuz accident It is the worst that Spanish high speed has suffered in its entire history, but during the last year both the AVE and the rest of the LAV services have accumulated incidents, delays and problems that have damaged its image as a 100% reliable service. A year to forget. 2025 has chained incidents of all kinds on the high-speed network. Some of the events that have affected the operation of our trains: All of them have been events that, for different reasons, have challenged our perception of railway capacity in Spain. Delays and technical breakdowns. Punctuality plummeted up to levels of 70% in some months, well below the historical standards of the AVE. According to data According to El Mundo, four out of ten trains arrived late during the summer. On the other hand, technical problems forced the temporary withdrawal of part of the Avril and Avlo train fleet due to manufacturing defects, reducing available capacity just when it was needed most. The paradox of success. Despite everything, 37.3 million people traveled on AVE trains and long distance from Renfe during 2025, according to data from the Ministry of Transport. It is an absolute record: 6% more than the previous year. The AVE reached 21.5 million passengers, while Avlo grew from 4.55 million to 6.2 million users. The Madrid-Levante-Mediterranean corridor went from 5.5 to 7.7 million passengers, and the line to Galicia and Asturias skyrocketed from 2.5 to 4.6 million. These are figures that show that we prefer the trainand you like it when it works and offers competitive prices. Despite the figures, the incidents of recent months have given very negative publicity for high speed in Spain. Returns that do not arrive. The recurring incidents, added to the tightening of return conditions due to delays that Renfe applied in 2024, have fueled a story of discontent. Now it takes an hour of delay to recover 50% of the ticket, when before 15 minutes were enough. In September of last year we discovered that only three out of every hundred passengers were able to claim compensation over the summer, despite millions suffering delays. Discontent. We had never used the AVE so much and the incidents of the AVE had never had so much media attention. The competition from Ouigo and Iryo has helped boost the number of travelers thanks to lower prices, but the number of incidents has caused this gradual reduction in prices to take a backseat. And in the case of Renfe, lack of rolling stock It has not followed that growth rate either. Issues. Minister Óscar Puente recognized in September that the system will continue to have problems for at least two more years, in reference to the rolling stock that did not arrive and visited countries such as Germany or China looking for new trains. Meanwhile, the president of Renfe, Álvaro Fernández Heredia, assured at the end of the year that it would not apply the new compensation approved by Congress, which required money to be returned after 15 minutes of delay, considering them unconstitutional and asymmetrical compared to the competition. And now what. The Córdoba accident has been a devastating end to a bad streak of incidents in the Spanish railway system. All railway operators now face the challenge of demonstrating to Spain that the service remains reliable and safe despite the Adamuz accident. In Xataka | More than 30 years ago, Spain decided to invest heavily in the AVE: today it is winning contracts in Vietnam thanks to it

up to four days of leave

by

The derailment of an Iryo high-speed train and the alleged collision with an Alvia train that was traveling on the adjacent track has caused one of the most tragic railway accidents reminiscent of the Spanish railway system. The accident caused train circulation between Madrid and Andalusia to be instantly interrupted, leaving thousands of passengers. no options to return to their places of residence and without being able to return to work today. In this context, the UGT delegation in Andalusia has remembered from their social networks to companies and employees that this circumstance is among the assumptions contemplated by paid leave of up to four days due to “force majeure causes”, as previously happened before the DANA of Valencia. No rail traffic between Madrid and Andalusia. The accident occurred in the municipality of Adamuz (Córdoba), causing the suspension of railway traffic between Madrid and Andalusia, and without a clear date for the reopening of the service, given that rescue tasks and investigation of the event are still being carried out. The closure of train circulation has caused many employees to see how their trains suffered cancellations and they were trapped in their destinies without option to return to their homes and without a clear transportation alternative. Four-day paid leave. As a result of this total interruption of service, UGT has reminded through their social networks that he article 37.3 g of the Workers’ Statuterecognizes up to “four days for inability to access the workplace or travel through the necessary traffic routes to get there, as a consequence of the recommendations, limitations or prohibitions on movement established by the competent authorities.” This situation includes both those who regularly travel from Madrid to Andalusia by train and those who depend on transfers or connections affected by the closure of the line, provided that the mobility problem is a direct consequence of the incident and the decisions of the competent authorities. According to the union, this situation, which has left thousands of workers trapped in a community other than their own and without the immediate possibility of return, could benefit from this paid leave, provided that the company has been previously notified of the situation. Teleworking options. The measure contemplates in these cases the possibility of opting for alternatives such as teleworking until the causative event is normalized, as long as the affected employee has the possibility or option to carry it out. That is, your position allows it and you have the necessary technical means to telework until you find an alternative to return since you still no alternatives have been enabled and services such as rental cars They are saturated. The background of DANA. The measure was initially approved in response to natural disasters such as the one that devastated different towns in Valencia, Albacete and Málaga on October 29, 2024, but its application can be expanded beyond natural phenomena and also applied to accidents such as the one that occurred in Adamuz, which has disabled rail traffic between not only the line that connects Madrid with Seville with High Speed, but also with other branches to Málaga and Huelva. In Xataka | Thousands of employees cannot go to work after DANA. We already know how the Government is going to help them. Image | Flickr (Luis Fernando Franco Jimenez)

The question after the Adamuz accident is whether he is investing in maintaining them

by

On May 7, 2021, rail transport in Spain entered a new dimension. For the first time, a train that was not owned by Renfe stepped on our lines to operate between Madrid and Barcelona. It was the maiden voyage of Ouigoowned by the French SNCF in Spain. Objective: to offer a cheap alternative to the most famous high-speed service in our country. Shortly after, Renfe itself launched a new service to safeguard their backs. The first service AVLO (High Speed ​​Low Cost) arrived on Spanish roads a month later. In November 2022, Iryo It kicked off its operations with a Madrid-Valencia trip as its inaugural trip. In a year and a half, Spanish roads had gone from supporting the weight of Renfe to that of three companies (Renfe, Ouigo and Iryo) and four services (Renfe splits into AVE and AVLO). Over time, operations have increased and the competition that had been initially restricted to Madrid-Barcelona has also reached Levante and the Andalusian corridors. The plans go through continue expanding competition to the Galician corridor and the branches to Asturias and Cantabria, as well as the Madrid-Cádiz/Huelva. To have a clear picture of the increase in traffic volume in the Andalusian corridor, Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport, pointed out last summer that “in the 90s six trains circulated a day between Madrid and Seville (…) today 289 trains circulate”, referring to the drop in Renfe’s punctuality but the increase in complexity in traffic management. However, Renfe has been receiving numerous reviews for their lack of punctuality and their cancellations. But it is not the only company that has suffered significant inconveniences. In May, a cable theft and a coupling of an Iryo train with a catenary caused the collapse in the Andalusian corridor with more than 10,000 affected. Weeks later, a concatenation of incidents originated by an Ouigo train ended up causing a fire on a Renfe train and hundreds of lost passengers for more than 13 hours in the middle of the line spending the night outdoors. Facts that have been accumulating, that have been used as a political weapon (such as Renfe compensation in case of delays) but above all, they have put a recurring question on the table: what happens with investments? Investments in high speed To keep the roads and infrastructure in good condition, Adif (the company in charge of this) receives funds from the State and the European Unioncharge some fees to operators who use their channels to do business and issues bonds. However, the bulk of the money for road maintenance and future investments continues to come from the State. Whether these investments are sufficient or not is something that has been questioned for some time. Operators have long pointed out investments in the roads as insufficient. Ouigo did it when the July case left the Andalusian corridor paralyzed. Since July, Renfe, Adif and Talgo have been living a kind of triangle of love and hate in which they blame each other for the cracks caused in AVRIL trains that covered Madrid-Barcelona, leaving Renfe without this service in the corridor and with trains running at a lower speed as expected as a temporary patch at that time. In an article published in The World Last November it was pointed out that high speed in Spain has experienced three clear phases since the first Madrid-Seville was covered in 1992. The first points to the first years, with sustained investments between 1992 and 2005. The last refers to the liberalization of roads, active since 2021 in practice. Spain has gone from investing 6,558 million euros in the railway sector in 2009 to 2,318 million in 2018 but the figure hides the real maintenance In the middle, an explosion and a stagnation that marks our daily life. Between 2005 and the crisis of 2008 and the years to come, investment in Renfe and Adif skyrocketed. And it is in those years when high speed is extended to Córdoba and Málaga, to Valladolid after passing through Segovia and to the Levante area. High-speed investments in Extremadura or the Galician corridor and expansions to the north of Catalonia are also underway. But the years of crisis hit hard and investment falls. Once the budgets that have been approved in the years before the crash have been concluded, between 2014 and 2020 investments plummet. According to the Railway Observatory In its 2023 edition (last available), the real brutal investment fell from 6,558 million in 2009 to 2,312 million in 2018. Since then, it has grown and in 2023 it touched 4,000 million euros. But those numbers hide another perspective. If railway investments in Spain were reduced by a third in less than a decade, it is also a consequence of a stoppage in the construction of infrastructure. And, as we have seen, the years before the crisis saw a boom in the opening of high-speed stations and new corridors. Since then, expansions have been minimal. Source AIReF The Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) shows how the opening of new lines has a direct impact when preparing budget plans. Thus, 88.6% of investments in high-speed railways between 1987 and 2018 were taken by the allocation dedicated to the construction of new lines. The rebound in investments that we have experienced since 2020 is closely linked to this way of acting. In recent years Full high speed has arrived in the Galician corridorwhich includes new gauge trains variable, the AVRILs, and great progress has been made in the Asturian and Cantabrian high speed. Óscar Puente visits the Hitachi Rail factory in Pistoia (Italy) Those numbers are skyrocketing again but they will do so in a different way. Although in 2024 The Government has allocated 4.5 billion euros to the trainof which 2,500 million euros were made in high speed and that the investment in Adif AV (high speed) should reach 12,000 million euros between 2022 and 2026, the announcement for the future is somewhat different. Because in its future investments the … Read more

eight trillion dollars in assets

by

From politics to finance. If anything has become clear during Donald Trump’s first year in the White House, it is how blurred the separations (if there are any) between geopolitics, defense, economics and taxation are for him. He made it clear shortly after assuming his second term, with the round of tariffs which followed what he baptized as “Liberation Day.” And it has become clear again now with the threats of liens to European countries on account of the tensions created around Greenland, an island that the Republican wants to incorporate to the USA. Against this backdrop, Brussels is asking what response the EU should (can) offer. There is talk of activating tariffs worth 93 billion to punish American companies, to dust off the so-called “commercial bazooka”…and even a financial ‘nuclear bomb’ with which Brussels could pressure Trump, one that amounts to eight trillion of dollars. What has happened? That Trump is not willing to give in to Greenland. And he did not like it one bit that a delegation of eight European countries (and colleagues in NATO) sent a small group of soldiers to the Arctic island to guarantee its defense. The Republican weekend threatened to punish them to all (Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) true to its style: imposing tariffs on them. The new rates will focus on commercial exports to the US and would be activated on February 1 with a value of 10%, although the idea is to raise them to 25% in June if the outlook does not change in Greenland. The message is clear: the Republican wants the Stars and Stripes flag to fly in Greenland, regardless of who he is, be it Denmark, the greenlanders themselves or other European nations with which it shares an alliance in NATO. “We need Greenland for national security reasons,” ditch the republican. “He will not allow himself to be blackmailed”. Trump threatening tariffs is nothing new. In fact, one of his first star measures shortly after returning to the White House (just a year ago) was to announce a wide range of rates for an even broader list of nations, including the EU. What is more shocking is that it encounters the manifest anger that the EU has shown on this occasion. “Europe will not allow itself to be blackmailed,” he warned shortly after from Trump’s announcement Mette FrederiksenPrime Minister of Denmark. Similar messages (more or less emphatically) have been launched by Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer or even the leaders of Norway and Finland, Alexander Stubb, who on other occasions has praised the American for his international policy. Not only the leaders have spoken out. Community parties have also done it, which they seem willing to go beyond rhetoric. How to respond to Trump? That is the debate that has been flying over Europe since the weekend. Bloomberg assures that representatives of the 27 EU countries met yesterday precisely to discuss solutions. This week a new summit will be held with the same objective: to discuss retaliation. For now, the European People’s Party (among other formations) has shown in favor to leave in the air the trade pact reached in the summer with Washington. It talks about restrict access of North American companies to the EU market and imposing tariffs on the US worth 93 billion of euros. all this on the eve of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos. The clearest and most resounding voice has probably been that of Macron, who has encouraged for the EU to activate its anti-coercive instrument, known as the community “trade bazooka”, which (if applied) could complicate US access to EU markets. Brussels itself clarify that this tool allows it to “launch countermeasures against a non-member country, including a wide range of restrictions related to trade, investment and financing.” These are big words if we take into account that in 2024 transatlantic trade in goods and services between the EU and the US exceeded 1.68 billion of euros. “The biggest lender”. In recent days, another course of action has circulated, much more complex (and emphatic) that focuses on another key link between both territories: the enormous amount of US assets in the hands of Europeans. In a report released yesterday, George Saravelos of Deutsche Bank AG, I remembered that Europe is the largest lender to the US. To be more precise, their countries hoard eight trillion dollars in bonds and stocks. For reference, it assumes almost double than the rest of the world as a whole. “Enjoys influence”. He is not the only one who has slipped that figure. In another report published today by ING Think, Carsten Brzeski and Bert Colijn recall that in recent days there has been talk of “the exposure” of the US to investors on the other side of the pond. “European countries own $8 trillion in US bonds and stocks, making Europe by far the largest US lender. Not only does this illustrate the interdependence between the regions, but Europe also enjoys influence over the US.” Why is it important? Financial Times even goes further and estimates, using data from the Federal Reserve, that the total value of US financial assets in the hands of NATO countries in Europe reaches 12.6 trillion dollars. Savarelos slips that this figure represents a “weakness” of the US that makes it “dependent on others to pay its bills through large external deficits,” and cast a reflection: “In a context where the geoeconomic stability of the Western alliance is seriously disturbed, it is not clear why the Europeans would be so willing to assume this role.” “Danish pension funds were among the first to repatriate money and reduce their exposure to the dollar a year ago. With dollar exposure still very high in Europe, the events of recent days could further drive dollar rebalancing,” duck the analyst. The question therefore is… Does the EU have a secret weapon, a pressure tool in its favor against Trump? Could Europe embark on “an … Read more

The answer lies in what happened yesterday afternoon.

by

The normality of a Sunday marked by strong wind in the Canary Islands was abruptly broken at 12:13 p.m. At that moment, the clocks stopped and the screens went off throughout La Gomera. According to official sourcesthe island suffered a total “zero energy” that left 15,610 medium and low voltage points without supply. It was not just a question of lighting: the fall of the system took telecommunications with it, leaving a large part of the population without mobile coverage and plunging businesses into chaos as the dataphones became inoperative, as reported by testimonies collected by The Newspaper. The question iinevitable: again? The technical cause points again to the energetic heart of the island. As explained by Radio Televisión Canaria (RTVC)the origin was a “destabilization of one of the generators” located at the El Palmar thermal power plant. This initial failure caused what is known in electrical engineering as a load shedding or cascade effect. For safety reasons, the instability of that first piece of equipment caused the rest of the generators to fail, resulting in a general power outage. Although the Endesa company has communicated that the exact causes are under investigation, the president of the Cabildo, Casimiro Curbelo, has been more blunt pointing out the age of the infrastructure: “One of the equipment failed, possibly because its engine is old, and that caused the entire unit to destabilize.” A recovery in record time. Unlike the traumatic blackout of July 2023, which kept the island in the dark for three days and resulted in a penalty of 12.1 million euros for Endesa, the response on this occasion has been noticeably more agile. The technicians managed to reverse the situation from “zero” in just 17 minutes. The recovery was, however, “gradual.” As explained in ElDiario.esthe Minister of Ecological Transition and Energy, Mariano Hernández Zapata, warned that the process had to be slow to prevent the system from collapsing again when receiving the entire load at once. At 3:25 p.m., approximately three hours after the start of the incident, the Cabildo confirmed the restoration 100% of the service, although maintaining alert for possible “micro-cuts” of adjustment and maintenance. The technical feat that did not arrive in time. This new incident reveals a critical technological reality: the extreme vulnerability of “isolated systems”. The definitive solution is already under water, although with a bittersweet taste due to the deadlines. As detailed by Red Eléctrica de España (REE) In its planning, the ship Enterprise Cable In August 2025, the laying of what is the deepest tripolar AC cable on the planet began, descending to 1,145 meters on the seabed. This 36 kilometer engineering work, which will connect the substations of Chío (Tenerife) and El Palmar (La Gomera), is the 66kV “umbilical cord” that will allow: End isolation: La Gomera will be able to receive up to 50 MVA of energy from Tenerife in case of failure. Integrate renewables: It will make it easier for the island to advance its decarbonization goals by being able to pour clean energy into the grid. Robustness of the system: We move from a single, dependent generation model to an interconnected network model. But the irony tells itself. According to the official REE schedule, the completion of the interconnection was scheduled for the end of 2025. However, at the start of 2026, the Gomeros They have verified again thatwhile the last connections are not completed and the infrastructure comes into operation—predictably in this first quarter—, its electrical security continues to depend on a plant whose material fatigue is no longer a secret. An island on alert. Although the light has returned to homes, the feeling of uncertainty persists. The president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo, and the minister Sara Aagesen have maintained permanent contact to monitor the situation, aware that the island’s image is damaged with each blackout. La Gomera has shown to have learned its lesson in terms of emergency protocols and speed of response, but the infrastructure is still at its limit. All eyes are now on that submarine cable that, according to Casimiro Curbelois the only real guarantee that an old engine will not silence the life of an entire island again. Image | freepik and Tony Hisgett Xataka | 99% of the internet travels through submarine cables. Now there is a much more ambitious plan underway: linking the electrical grid

Claude has become more than just a rival to OpenAI: he is its new existential threat

by

Several software stocks are falling just since Claude Cowork It’s going viral. Those collected by iShares Expanded Tech Software ETFwhich has a cumulative drop of 6.4% in the last five days. It has also been a few days since OpenAI announced that it is going to introduce ads on ChatGPT. Why important. It’s not just that Claude Cowork is cool and works well. The thing is that OpenAI’s business model is beginning to show cracks while Anthropic gains ground where it matters: in companies that really pay. In figures. Claude dominates 54% of the AI ​​programming market. In business environments controls 42%more than double that of OpenAI. This last piece of information is from six months ago, presumably now it has gotten worse. Cowork has only made accelerate the trend. 20% of Anthropic’s revenue comes from Claude Code alone. Meanwhile, ChatGPT quota has gone from 87% to 64% in a year. In Xataka People are holding funerals for retired AI models for a reason: they are not a "tool" but a support The background. According to historical data since 2001 that collect Sherwood Newswhen the software ETF falls at least 5% in a month, the S&P 500 usually also falls between 5% and 6%, but this time it has not been like that: it has risen 1%. The overall market going up while software goes down has only happened 28 times in over twenty years. And three of them have been this week. Between the lines. Doug O’Laughlin of SemiAnalysis explains it this way in Sherwood News: “Claude Code is the ChatGPT moment repeated. You have to try it to understand it.” His argument is devastating for traditional software. Workflows, interfaces, integrations are going to stop mattering. The only valuable thing will be access to the data via API. Everything else is generated instantly. Yes, but. OpenAI urgently needs money to build its data centers. And it does not have an ecosystem of services like Google or Meta to finance itself. Hence the newly announced announcements for ChatGPT, which will arrive “in the coming weeks” as announced on Friday. Clearly it is a way to better monetize the hundreds of millions of free users, and with that cash flow sustain their growth and spending. On the other hand, Claude Code is powerful, but not perfect: as Kelsey Piper said99% of the time using Claude Code is like having a magical, tireless genie, but 1% of the time it’s like yelling at a pet for peeing on the couch. He keeps making mistakes, sometimes gets stuck on complex tasks. {“videoId”:”x9u4ml2″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Does Gemini 3 surpass ChatGPT? This is Google’s new AI”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”156″} And now what. For software companies, O’Laughlin’s message is devastating: get out of “information work” as soon as possible. If your differentiation is doing things faster or with better design, you’re done. The only thing that will matter is who has the data and who controls access via API. As summarized Axios in his analysis of the weekit’s unclear who wins the AI ​​race. But the pace is accelerating with no signs of slowing down. And what is increasingly clear is who is losing it. In Xataka | The AI ​​of 2026 brings an uncomfortable truth: the most useful will be the one that watches us the most Featured image | Anthropic (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 Claude has become more than just a rival to OpenAI: he is its new existential threat was originally published in Xataka by Javier Lacort .

MediaMarkt’s Downhill makes this Google Pixel cheaper. A small and ideal mobile if you prioritize photography

by

MediaMarkt’s La Cuesta Abajo is leaving quite interesting discounts on telephones. In relation to mobile phones with a good photographic section, the store right now has the Google Pixel 10 for a price of 649 euros. This is one of the best prices MediaMarkt has had to date. Of course, the offer will end on January 23. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A mobile phone with an excellent photographic section He Google Pixel 10 It is a perfect mobile phone for those looking for good design, a small format and an excellent photography section. Ride a OLED panel with a size of 6.3 inches which offers a resolution of 2,424 x 1,080 pixels, a refresh rate of 60 to 120 Hz and 3,000 nits of peak brightness. Internally it incorporates the processor Google Tensor G5 and in this case it comes with the configuration of 12 GB of RAM and 128 GB of internal storage. Its operating system will be updated for many years and its battery supports both 30W fast charging and 15W wireless charging. On the other hand, this Google mobile stands out, like other models of the brand, for its photography section. The front camera is 10.5 MP and on the back it comes with a 48 MP main sensora 13 MP wide angle and a 10.8 MP 5x telephoto. You may also be interested Pixelsnap Case for Google Pixel 10 & Pixel 10 Pro – Durable Protection – Stylish Protection – Obsidian (Created by Google) The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Spigen Glas.tR EZ Fit Screen Protector for Google Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, 2 Units, Easy Installation, High Definition, 9H Hardness, Anti-Scratch 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 | Pepu RiccaGoogle In Xataka | The best mobile phones, we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | The best quality-price mobiles. Their analyzes and videos are here

We already know the best day to buy a new SSD: yesterday

by

Six months ago, a Lexar NQ790 SSD with a 1 TB capacity had a price of 67.68 euros on Amazon. Today that same unit It is 139.99 euros: more than double. The worrying phenomenon that we have already seen with DRAM memories is now also beginning to be a reality in this type of storage units, but the worst is yet to come. what’s happening. At the end of 2025 we already saw how the average price of RAM memory modules had tripled or quadrupled in some cases. This component is becoming an absolute luxury for users and manufacturers not only of PCs and laptops, but also of mobile phones. AI, once again guilty. The AI ​​industry demands all production for itself, and that has made manufacturers focus on that segment for a simple reason: they make more money than ever thanks to it. The problem? that at focus on memories for AI chips and data centersthey do not have the resources to manufacture memories for the rest of the segments and of course not for end users. And what we already saw with RAM memories is now clearly seen in other components such as SSD units and also graphics cards for gamers. bad business. If you are undecided when it comes to building your PC, two messages. The first: it doesn’t surprise us. The second: if you are going to buy the components, do it as soon as possible. The catastrophe that is occurring with DRAM memories was just a prelude to what will happen with other components, and among them, SSD units are directly affected, which will soon also become a small luxury product. Price of a Lexar 790 1TB SSD on Amazon. Source: CamelCamelCamel They are already worth more than gold. What happens with the 1 TB capacity Lexar drive is almost anecdotal compared to larger capacity SSD drives. At Tom’s Hardware They made a disturbing comparison: an 8TB M.2 NVMe SSD weighs 8.2 grams on average and right now its average price is $1,476. And pay attention, because 8.2 grams of gold today costs about $1,150. 4 TB SSD units are “somewhat cheaper” than gold by weight, but even these models can be comparable if we choose one of the units with the best features. Dangerous trend. In PC Part Picker they have graphs of price tracking and the evolution of SSD unit prices is clear. As the image shows, the average price of 4TB NVMe drives is already practically 50% more than it was more than a year ago. For now, prices seem to be weathering the storm due to the inventory that was available, but as shown by the fact that the gray area already occupies almost the entire graph in recent months, those inventory units are disappearing and demand will predictably make this growing trend maintain… or skyrocket even more. Better not even talk about graphics cards. The RAM memory problem is also affecting the graphics card segment and in recent days we are seeing an important collateral effect. Some manufacturers are abandoning the manufacturing and marketing of some “more affordable” models to focus on more expensive ones. ASUS advertisement recently that it was going to stop selling its GeForce RTX 5070 Ti and the reason is simple: this card has 16GB of GDDR7 memory, which is the same as used in the RTX 5080. Why settle for selling a $749 MSRP card when you can sell a $999 one instead? If you want to buy, the sooner the better.. If you were thinking about upgrading or building a new PC, it seems clear that the best time is yesterday. The prices of memory, SSD units and graphics cards are beginning to break worrying records, and it is not likely that these increases will relax. In fact, everything indicates that they are going to get worse. Bad time for those who were hoping to renew their PC. In Xataka | The situation with RAM prices is so desperate that there are already those who build their own memory at home

the secret was an invisible ice “blanket”

by

For decades, planetary geologists have faced a paradox that didn’t quite add up. On the one hand, the missions like Curiosity in Gale Crater show irrefutable evidence that there were lakes of liquid water for thousands or millions of years. On the other hand, climate models insist that ancient Mars It was a cold place.with temperatures well below freezing point. A new paradigm. The question in this case is quite clear: how can there be stable liquid water on a planet where the thermometer barely rises above zero degrees? A new study led by Rice University and published in AGU Advances seems to have found the missing piece in the puzzle: seasonal ice shields. The LakeM2ARS model. To solve the mystery, the team of researchers developed a specific model called LakeM2ARS. This model included everything we know about terrestrials, but adapted to the extreme conditions that existed on Mars 3.6 billion years ago. That is, a climate with less sunlight due to a younger Sun, an atmosphere with much more carbon dioxide and much more aggressive freezing and thawing cycles than those on Earth. Using these models, the researchers began to apply different climatic situations, covering a period of 30 Martian years, which is equivalent to 56 Earth years. The results in this case pointed to something quite fascinating: the water in the lakes only froze on their surface, creating a shield of ice. A natural “blanket”. The research introduces the concept of “ice shield” or “natural blanket.” Instead of being a solid block of ice, the Gale Crater lakes they would have been protected by a seasonal ice sheet thin enough to allow dynamic processes beneath it. In this way, this “blanket” acted as a thermal insulator, since ice has a low thermal conductivity. The good thing about this is that once a layer forms on the surface, the liquid water underneath is “trapped” and protected from the frigid air, maintaining a stable temperature even if the thermometer plummets outside. Another advantage. Beyond this we can see that the low Martian pressure causes liquid water to tend to sublimate quickly. The ice thus acted as a physical plug, conserving the water inventory for decades or even centuries. But it is not that the water underneath was completely cold, but rather that since it was a thin layer, sunlight could pass through it (similar to what happens in the lakes of the Dry Valleys of Antarctica), generating a slight internal heating. The missing piece. One of the biggest criticisms of the cold Mars hypothesis was the absence of geomorphological traces. The big question we can undoubtedly ask ourselves is that if Mars was a freezer, where are the large moraine deposits and the scars left by the glaciers as they advance? The Rice University study gives an elegant answer: the ice was too thin. Since they were not massive glaciers, but rather thin and seasonal layers, they did not have the weight or dynamics necessary to erode the terrain drastically. This fits perfectly with Curiosity’s observations, which show fine-grained lake sediments, typical of calm waters, and not the chaos of rocks that a glacier would leave behind. Microscopic life. This discovery changes the rules of the game for astrobiology, which wants above all to search for evidence of life on the red planet. In this case, the theory is put forward that if Martian lakes were sealed by ice, they became extremely stable environments. Under the ice, life would have been protected from harmful UV radiation and extreme temperature fluctuations. This is why Mars did not need to be a tropical paradise to be habitable; It was enough for him to have a good “armor” of ice that would keep his liquid oases safe from the icy vacuum of space. Images | BoliviaIntelligent In Xataka | China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

we have to get to the month of March no matter what

by

Russia has intensified a strategy of attrition that aims less to gain ground than to disrupt daily life, and it has done so hitting the energy system Ukrainian to leave the country without electricity, without heating and without basic services at the cruelest time of the year. Faced with Moscow’s missiles, kyiv has called in a group of kamikaze hunters with a very clear plan. The terror ends. It we count last week. With temperatures plummeting to -20ºC and a network already weakened by months of attacks, waves of missiles and drones they seek to collapse substations, electrical infrastructure and nodes that sustain urban heat, and there is even fear of a more precise campaign against points that feed to nuclear plants. The goal it’s simple: turn the cold into political pressure, erode civil resistance and push kyiv towards a negotiation under torment, just when the United States tries to open a diplomatic path. The result is a country forced to live in survival modewith blackouts that last for days in some districts, thousands of buildings without heat in the capital, schools closed and citizens who, unable to leave, endure in dark and frozen homes, wrapped in blankets, with candles, camping burners and a shared feeling that the front is no longer only in the trenches, but also in the living room. Heat, water and normality under minimums. In cities like kyiv, the blow is especially dangerous because the heating depends on centralized systems that distribute hot water from cogeneration plants, and when the supply is cut off in the middle of the ice, the risk is not only of being cold, but also of the pipes freezing and bursting, causing flooding when the service returns. That is why the authorities have come to recommend draining circuits in thousands of buildings, accepting temporary cold weather to avoid a major disaster, while repairs are made slow and difficult by the weather and repeated attacks. Searching for fire. Life is reorganized around of heat points: public centers where people take shelter, charge mobile phones and receive hot food, and extraordinary solutions such as adapted trains as mobile hubs to warm up and regain some autonomy. Even so, they remembered in Forbes What is most striking is the obstinacy of normality: businesses operating with generatorsneighborhoods that resist in the dark, families improvising routines and a society that, instead of becoming anesthetized, tangibly feels again what it means to sustain a country at war when the temperature turns each blackout into a physical threat. Air saturation. Russian pressure is not only more constant, it is also more massive, and its strength resides in the volume: The number of attack drones has escalated to exceed 5,000 a monthwhich is equivalent to more than 150 every nighta figure designed to deplete defenses and force Ukraine to choose what saves and what doesn’t. Although the interception rate stays highthe strategic cost is enormous because shooting down swarms with surface-to-air missiles or aviation weapons consumes scarce and very expensive resources at an unsustainable speed. Zelensky himself has warned that there are systems that run out of ammunition. Mobile teams with autocannons and machine guns provide useful and relatively cheap defense, but its scope is limited and they can only protect specific points, such as a power plant, leaving too many gaps for an enemy who strikes and repeats the pattern every night. In that equation, the “thermal terror” It does not depend on destroying everything, but on having enough impacts so that the system does not raise its head and the population can’t rest. The kamikaze “hunters”. The Ukrainian response is coming through a route more adapted to this new mass war: interceptor drones small, fast and cheapconceived like disposable hunters capable of taking down Shaheds from a distance without burning a missile for each target. They are a evolution of the FPV ecosystembut oriented towards pure performance, with “bullet” type designs and industrial logic looking for volume: different models, several suppliers, accelerated production and a cost per unit that allows you to take risks without mortgaging the arsenal. Its effectiveness is maximized by launching more than one per whitejust as is done with expensive interceptors when the priority is to ensure the downing before the drone reaches a substation or thermal plant, which requires manufacturing many more interceptors than enemy drones. Aid. And yet, what seemed impossible a few months ago is beginning to sound viable: manufacturing has been triggered and, with allied supportUkraine is reaching a scale that It is no longer symbolicbut operational, to the point that interceptors are becoming protagonists of night demolitions and claiming a growing share of the work that previously fell on missiles. Hold on until March. The strategic sense of these interceptors is not only to shoot down drones, but to open a window of timebecause Ukraine will not be able to rebuild or stabilize its energy network as long as it continues receiving daily blows on the same critical points. The winter war is decided, therefore, in the ability to reduce the impact leak enough to repair without the repair being destroyed the next day, and in maintaining morale when the cold punishes as much as the enemy. Russia bets on fatigue and despairwhile Ukraine does it for a defense cheaper and massive that allows it to resist the peak of winter demand and reach the temperate spring season with the system alive. If the Russian plan is to push a country into a dark age of ice and blackouts, the Ukrainian response is to build, urgently and with war engineering, an aerial barrier made of kamikaze hunters that not only protect transformers, but buy something much more valuable: time not to break (or freeze). Image | Denys Shmyhal In Xataka | Russia has dynamited electricity in Ukraine to activate “thermal terror”: that “warming” in winter is a lethal risk In Xataka | Russia’s drones are dropping like flies and it’s because of Ukraine’s craziest weapons: a fishing … Read more

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

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

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

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