The Pentagon includes BYD, Unitree, Alibaba and other Chinese giants on its blacklist. It’s taking away competition with cannon shots

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The river already sounded at the end of 2025: the Pentagon agreed that Chinese giants like Alibaba, BYD and Baidu They were linked to the Chinese Army. It was unclear at the time whether the companies would be included on the Pentagon’s 1260H list, but it was clearly a warning and came just three weeks before Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to a trade truce. It seemed like things had calmed down, especially with more recent moves like the opening of the market for Nvidia can sell its GPUs H200 for AI or Donald Trump’s visit to China (accompanied by several CEOs of American companies) to ease tensions and maintain a fine balance in that trade truce. But it turns out not and, as they point in Reuters, Alibaba, BYD and Baidu are the new Chinese companies on the Pentagon’s list. And they are not the only ones. Many more Chinese companies on the Pentagon’s blacklist The update of the known list 1260H It had been expected for a long time. The November thing was a warning, but not a real update. It is now, one month after Donald Trump’s diplomatic visit to Beijing, that the Pentagon has launched the new version that reflects interesting changes. Because we have mentioned Alibaba, BYD and Baidu as companies that join that selector ‘club’ of companies for which there are still no direct sanctions, but there is a clear consequence: starting at the end of this month, the United States Department of Defense will have prohibited from contracting directly with any of these companies. And… what are they? Well, it turns out that there are a lot, and from all sectors. Alibaba and Baidu are two Internet giants (like putting Amazon and Google on the list respectively, wow), but there are also the aforementioned BYD -cars and batteries-, CXMT and YMTC -semiconductors and RAM memory-, Unitree and RoboSense -robotics- or WuXi AppTec -biotechnology-. It is a very curious list because they are companies that are competing, directly, against American or Taiwanese companies. For example, we have recently told how the technology industry is looking so much at CXMT like YMTC for get a RAM memory which they cannot access through traditional means due to the component crisis. The United States and China are immersed in the war over robotics and Unitree is one of the most advanced in both humanoid and quadruped robots (something China is exploring for military use). Precisely, Nvidia announced that it was going to work closely with Unitree for the development of robots. And then there is China BlueChemical Limited, a subsidiary of state oil company CNOOC, and Baicells, which makes telecommunications equipment. As we say, there are no consequences in the form of direct sanctions on these companies or with pressure like what happens with Huawei, but according to US law, the Department of Defense will not be able to make deals with these companies starting this month and, starting in 2027, it will not be able to buy their products or services through third parties. What do Chinese companies say? As we read so much in Reuters as in GuardianAlibaba considers that it is something that has no basis because “Alibaba is not a Chinese military company nor part of any military-civil fusion strategy”, ensuring that they will take “all available legal actions against attempts to tarnish the company”. Baidu, for its part, also rejection the measure, ensuring that “the suggestion that Baidu is a military company is completely unfounded”, noting that they will not hesitate to “use all immediate measures to be removed from the list.” This is something that WuXi AppTec has also responded to and it is possible to get off that list, but only if they withdraw from the United States or if they change the name of the entity. “These Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests” – John Moolenaar From the Pentagon it is stated that publicly traded companies have ballots to be classified as “Chinese military companies”, although they can request their removal from the list, according to Pentagon representatives. House Select Committee Chairman Joihn Moolenaar was somewhat more direct, noting that updating the list “It’s a warning to American companiesall levels of government and for the American people themselves”, ensuring that “these Chinese companies are working with the Chinese military against our national interests.” In Reuters, Craig Singleton, an expert on relations with China, points out that Washington no longer treats Chinese companies as isolated entities, but as a strategic conglomerate that is part of an arm of the Chinese government. In Xataka | A Chinese company has been building AI for years to predict who is going to criticize the government before they do so

Xbox Project Helix, information

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Several years have passed since Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S They landed in living rooms around the world, and Microsoft is beginning to show the cards for what comes next. Project Helix is the code name for the next generation of Xbox, a console that, judging by how little (and how much) is already known about it, is not going to be too similar to what the company has offered us so far. Under these lines we bring together everything we know about the next generation of Xbox to date. What is Project Helix? Project Helix is the official codename for the next-generation Xbox console. Microsoft confirmed it publicly in March 2026, when Asha Sharma, the new CEO of Xboxwho came to office after the Phil Spencer’s retirement At the end of February, he announced it through his X account. According to counted Sharma at the time, the console “will lead in performance and play your Xbox and PC games.” As is common in the industry, this is not a definitive brand name. As happened with Project Scarlett and Lockhart, which eventually became Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S respectively, Project Helix will receive another name when Xbox confirms it. Until then, this is how we will refer to the device. What has been clear from the beginning is that Microsoft has ambitions that go well beyond a simple generational update. According to Jason Ronaldvice president of Xbox’s next-generation division, the team has been working hard on the hardware for some time and at GDC 2026 in March confirmed that they are “in full development” of the console. What type of console is it? This is perhaps the most striking feature of Project Helix, and the one that has generated the most stir in the industry. Unlike its predecessors, the console will not only run Xbox games, but It will also be able to run PC titles. And supposedly not only from the Microsoft store, but also from other digital platforms such as Steam or GOG natively. Microsoft has been moving towards the idea that “everything is an Xbox” for some time, erasing the boundaries between console and PC. Project Helix would be the most ambitious materialization of that philosophy. Ronald himself counted already at GDC that “the days when people defined themselves as console, PC or mobile gamers really don’t exist anymore.” Xbox Series X For developers, Microsoft is preparing a unified development kit (GDK) that will allow them to release a single version of a game and reach both console and PC users, something that would considerably reduce the effort of studios to adapt their games to multiple platforms. According to Wccftechthe user interface will be built around an evolved version of the Xbox Full Screen Experience, similar to what already exists on laptops ASUS ROG Xbox Ally. In addition, in April 2026, the so-called “Xbox Mode” began to be deployed in Windows 11, a full-screen, controller-optimized experience that acts as a preview of the Project Helix environment. It is only available on Windows 11 and serves both to mature the ecosystem and to familiarize PC players with what is to come. What are its technical specifications? Microsoft and AMD have been deliberately brief with specific numbers, preferring to talk about design philosophy rather than TFLOPS. But what has been officially confirmed, combined with what internal sources have revealed, already offers a fairly clear profile of the hardware. What is officially confirmed: AMD Custom SoC: Project Helix will be built on a custom chip designed jointly by Microsoft and AMD. AMD Senior Vice President Jack Huynh confirmed which uses the RDNA 5 GPU architecture and is manufactured in TSMC’s 3 nanometer process, which represents a huge leap in efficiency compared to the 7 nm of the Xbox Series X. New generation of DirectX and FSR Diamond: The console is co-designed for the next generation of DirectX. AMD has also confirmed that Project Helix will incorporate FSR Diamond, its new scaling and frame generation platform, which integrates a dedicated NPU for multi-frame generation, neural texture compression and neural rendering. dedicated NPU: The console includes a Neural Processing Unit integrated directly into the SoC, independent of the GPU and CPU, to handle all artificial intelligence-driven rendering tasks. Next level ray tracing:Microsoft has described Project Helix’s ray tracing performance as “an order of magnitude jump” over the current generation. This is supported in part by the new RDNA 5 architectures, which include so-called “Radiance Cores”, a specific hardware block for ray tracing, and “Neural Arrays”, a new approach to grouping GPU computing units as a unified artificial intelligence engine. What the leaks point out: Known leakers such as Moore’s Law Is Dead and KeplerL2 have stated on several occasions that the chip is internally called “Magnus” and would have: CPU: Hybrid design with up to 11 cores, with up to 3 high-performance Zen 6 cores and up to 8 efficiency Zen 6c cores. The frequencies of the performance cores are estimated to be in the range of 5.5-6 GHz. This would represent a huge generational leap over the Xbox Series X’s Zen 2 cores. GPU: 68 RDNA 5 compute units. Although only a 30% increase in units over the 52 Series Memory: GDDR7, according to industry analysts. According to Wccftech, if these leaks are correct, Project Helix could offer between 5 and 6 times the rasterization performance of Xbox Seriesand up to 20 times in ray tracing. However, we have no choice but to wait for official information to corroborate these data. When is Project Helix coming? There is no official date. What Microsoft has confirmed in the latest GDC is that the development units in the alpha phase will begin to arrive at the studios from 2027. From there, the calendar is speculative. The launch window that industry sources most point to is end of 2027although some analysts do not rule out 2028 either. In part, this will depend on when exactly the development kits arrive … Read more

We have been mapping Antarctica for decades. We have just discovered that its largest basins form a single tectonic “fan”

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For decades, researchers have mapped the frozen continent, finding huge depressions and subglacial lakes that have left us in awe. Until now, these formations were studied as isolated pieces of a geological puzzle; However, a new study has turned this view on its head. The demonstration. This study has been published in Nature Geoscience and has just demonstrated that the great basins of East Antarctica are not independent accidents, but form part of a single, gigantic fan-shaped tectonic province. The tectonic fan. The research team, using a combination of subglacial topography, gravity and magnetism data, proposes that this entire vast region is the result of a distributed rotational extension process. To understand it, we can imagine the Earth’s crust in this area opening and stretching asymmetrically, unfolding as if it were a fan. This colossal tectonic movement makes East Antarctica one of the largest known examples of rotational extension in continental crust on the entire planet. The beginning. The origin of this continental scar is closely linked to the history of our planet, specifically to the tectonic phases linked to the fragmentation of the supercontinent Gondwana and the dramatic separation between Antarctica and Australia. As the land masses separated, the crust stretched and fractured, leaving this “bounced topography” that today lies hidden under miles of ice. Its importance. Beyond the undoubted geological and historical value, understanding this structure has a practical and urgent application, since Antarctica is the great thermostat of the Earth and its stability is key in the face of climate change. The topography beneath the Antarctic ice sheet acts as a mold that conditions absolutely everything that happens on the surface. This is seen, for example, in how the shape of bedrock controls the flow of today’s glaciers and determines how subglacial lake and basin systems are distributed. That is why, if we want to predict with mathematical precision how the Antarctic ice will respond to global warming and how it will flow towards the ocean, we need to know the tectonic “pipe” on which it rests to the millimeter. Its mystery. Although the article Nature Geoscience manages to unify structures as massive as the Wilkes and Aurora basins under the same theoretical framework, the authors maintain scientific caution. The exact age at which this fan province formed and the fine geodynamic mechanism that triggered it remain, to a large extent, open questions, and this means that work still needs to be done to find out exactly when the movements of the Antarctic crust will occur. Images | Tam Minton Nature In Xataka | Antarctica was practically the last corner of the Earth immune to touristification. That’s ending

the trick to find the best pack and what to do if it doesn’t appear

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We are going to tell you a trick to be able to see the entire 2026 World Cup in the cheapest way possible. And we are going to explain it to you clearly and without deceiving you, because although it is about paying a pack of 7.99 euros, then you have to activate an additional pack. In short, we are going to guide you so that ALL the matches of the ENTIRE World Cup they cost you 56 euros. It is expensive, but it is the cheapest offer you will find. Of course, it is a trick that you have to pay attention to, because If you make a mistake you can end up paying an additional 28 euros for not canceling it on time. Where can you watch the world cup? As we have explained to you when we told you where you can watch the 2026 World Cupyou could see that you basically only have four alternatives to watch the championship. On RTVE you will only be able to see part of the matches, although all of the Spanish National Team matches are included. But if you want to see them all, you will have to go to Movistar Plus+ with its football or Orange packages. These two payment alternatives are very expensive, and require either extra packages or phone rates with them… or even both. The fourth alternative is DAZN, a service that you can contract without belonging to any operator. But this service has several plans, and here comes the mess where you have to clarify. The cheapest option you can opt for The cheapest alternative to watch the World Cup It costs 28 euros per month. To do so, you will have to resort to a specific plan and include the World Cup package. DAZN has a series of 5 subscriptions with different content, and you can include the World Cup in any of them for 20 euros per month, except for its premium plan with practically everything for 26 euros per month, which is really 45 euros if you want to pay month by month and only use it for the World Cup. The trick is in hire the Made in USA pack and add the World Cup package. By contracting the plan individually month by month you only have to pay 7.99 euros. To this you will have to add the 19.99 euros for the World Cup. This pack has very little content, you will only be able to watch the NBA, NFL, NASCAR races and other American competitions. But if you are only interested in the World Cup, you can manually add this pack with the 104 matches. The World Cup lasts 39 days, from June 11 to July 19, 2026, so the total price will be 56 euros to be able to see ALL the games. To access the Made in USA pack you can enter in this link. But here comes the important thing, because you have to remember to cancel the pack in time so that you are not charged for an extra month. DAZN requires a 30-day notice to unsubscribemeaning that you will have to cancel as soon as you pay the second month so that they do not charge you for the next one. ‘Made in USA’ plan without permanence The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Be very careful, because there are pages that tell you about watching the World Cup for 7.99 euros per month, when the truth is that watching the World Cup matches requires adding the extra pack. What to do if you can’t find the Made in USA pack The fact that many of us are talking about this pack can mean that sometimes you click on the link and it does not appear, and you do not see it on the DAZN website either. If this happens to you, try entering with the browser’s incognito modeand subscribe from it.

A Renfe train was left without air conditioning at 40ºC. 1,056 days later, an affected person has just collected her money

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How much would you fight for the refund of 31.90 euros? Macarena LE, a resident of a town in Teruel, is clear: three years, if necessary. And that is how long it has been behind Renfe for it to refund the price of a ticket between Zaragoza and Barcelona. The reason? The car’s air conditioning. Evident, due to the non-existent air conditioning of the car. What has happened? A Renfe user named Macarena LE, a member of Facua, has gotten the money back for a train ticket she took three years ago. The company had promised that it would do so with each and every one of the people who took that train, but the money never appeared in the user’s bank account. a little odyssey. Despite telling them that they would return the money to the passengers, the amount never arrived so after a few weeks, the affected person filed a claim, they explain in Facua. With no news about it after three months, he decided to put himself in the hands of the legal service of the consumer defense association. Once reaching this point, the association filed a new claim. To this complaint, Renfe responded that it gave the order to return the money but it still did not arrive. After another four months, Facua files a new complaint and Renfe assures him that it has tried to refund the money but that the procedure has been rejected on two occasions. At that moment, Renfe instructs Macarena LE to receive the money through a payment platform. This method also being impossible and the months accumulating, Facua sends a third claim to Renfe in which they simply ask it to deposit the money into the bank account of the affected person, attaching the document that proves its ownership. Three years after taking that train, the associate has ended up receiving her 31.90 euros. A trip… complicated. And, once seated, they assure in Facua that the conductor informed the passengers that the air conditioning was broken and that their travel money would be refunded in compensation for the inconvenience caused. But the journey between Zaragoza and Barcelona had an added problem: July 18 with departure at 3:52 p.m. and arrival at 5:20 p.m. That day maximum temperatures of 44 degrees were reported. Obviously, the heat must have been oppressive inside and the affected person claims that they had to drink water constantly to get through the trip in the best possible way. The expected quality. Due to the numerous claims filed by Facua, and beyond the fact that the money was not returned until three years later, Renfe never fought not to return the money. Instead they admitted that they would send the money back for “not having offered the service with the quality levels” expected. However, the fulfillment of the procedure itself does not seem to have had the expected quality either. And Facua pointed out to Renfe that they were failing to comply with article 21.3 of the Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007, of November 16according to which: “Employers must respond to the claims received in the shortest possible time and, in any case, within a maximum period of one month from the presentation of the claim.”. When Facua presented this second claim in which this regulatory text was recalled, Renfe had not given a response or paid the corresponding money for four months. What if it happens to me? That Renfe has returned the money to a passenger sets a precedent but does not automatically lead the company to return the money in the event of an air conditioning breakdown. In its rules, Renfe states that the traveler has the right to receive compensation for the cancellation of the trip, for its interruption, for a lack or deficiency in the service provided on board or for delay, but it makes it clear that such compensation will not be carried out if: The reason is an extraordinary circumstance unrelated to railway operation, such as extreme weather events (a storm that leaves a train without heating in winter, for example) or natural disasters. Nor if the breakdown or problem was caused by the behavior of the traveler. Nor if it is the damage caused by a third party outside the railway company that causes the incident (people on the track, copper theft, sabotage… etc.) That is to say, the mere absence of air conditioning does not automatically imply that the passenger’s money will be returned. What has happened will have to be taken into account to decide whether the company is obliged to act in this way. Photo | Nelson Silva In Xataka | The Madrid Cercanías have become a nest of problems and delays: their solution is new “megatrains”

South Korea’s KSTAR reactor has rewritten the limits of what is possible

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Three of the experimental reactors nuclear fusion most promising on the planet reside in Asia. He JT-60SAin which Europe participates, is hosted in Naka (Japan). Not too far from there, in Hefei (China), it is being built the CFETR reactor (Chinese Fusion Engineering Testing Reactor), a name that we can translate as Chinese Fusion Engineering Test Reactor. However, the real protagonist of this article is the KSTAR fusion reactor (Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research), a machine located in Daejeon (South Korea). This latest genius It is being operated by the KFE (Korea Institute of Fusion Energy or Korean Fusion Energy Institute) and aims to demonstrate that fusion energy on a commercial scale is viable. Neither more nor less. And it’s on the right track. In fact, it has just signed the most important milestone in the field of nuclear fusion so far this year: it has managed to sustain stable plasma at fusion temperatures for 102 seconds. It is a true feat if we keep in mind that stabilizing plasma under these conditions is not easy at all. However, it is worth taking a closer look at what the researchers operating the KSTAR reactor have achieved. What they have achieved is exactly this: they have sustained the plasma in high confinement mode (H-mode) for 102 seconds while simultaneously maintaining the plasma temperature at 100 million degrees Celsius for 48 seconds. These are record numbers. Be that as it may, not only what they have achieved is important; It is also crucial to know how they have done it. A key piece in fusion energy Maintaining a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius or more over time is essential in nuclear fusion. And it is because under these conditions the ionized nuclei of deuterium and tritium acquire the kinetic energy necessary to overcome their natural electrical repulsion and fuse. However, dealing with plasma at such a high temperature is very complex. In magnetic confinement reactors, such as KSTAR, a sophisticated system of high-power magnets is responsible for confining this ionized fuel at very high temperatures. The problem is that the plasma is subject to turbulence that originates naturally and is especially intense in the outermost layer of this gas. Understand how plasma behaves when nuclear fusion processes begin is essential on the path to a solution that allows us to control it precisely, and, therefore, stabilize it. The ‘divertor’ is responsible for purifying the plasma, allowing the extraction of ashes and impurities One of the determining factors in KSTAR’s recent success is the use of the new divertor tungsten. This component is made of stainless steel, although it incorporates tungsten shields that are responsible for withstanding the bombardment of high-energy neutrons from the plasma, transforming its kinetic energy into heat. To release this thermal energy and cool the divertor The water that circulates inside is in charge. Tungsten has been chosen to tune the shields exposed to plasma because this is the metal that has the highest melting point: no less than 3,422 degrees Celsius. Furthermore, the divertor is responsible for purifying the plasmaallowing the extraction of ash and impurities resulting from the nuclear fusion reaction and the interaction of the plasma with the most exposed layer of the mantle. According to the Korean Fusion Energy Institute, the divertor previously installed carbon had reached its limit as experiments intensified and temperatures increased. The next step he wants to take is ambitious: operate the reactor for 300 seconds at temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius. This achievement invites us to be optimistic, but we must not overlook the fact that keeping the plasma stable for minutes, or even hours, and ensuring that the reactor generate more energy than you consume It is undoubtedly one of the greatest engineering challenges facing science. Image | Michael Maccagnan More information | KFE | The Times of India In Xataka | Spain’s milestone in nuclear fusion: the first plasma produced by the SMART reactor invites us to optimism

Apple has designed Siri AI so that we can use the iPhone without touching it. I’ve been doing the same thing on my Android phone for months.

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A young Apple manager appears on the scene with a Profidén smile, very excited. “Siri is going to be much more conversational“he begins by saying. It refers, of course, to the new Siri AI that Apple has just presented. The hope—It has been difficult, we will see— is that finally Siri stop looking stupid. After talking about some of these options, the young man is encouraged to give a demonstration in real time. Press the side button and ask Siri about World Cup match planning for the first weekend. After a few seconds – the video is honest and reflects that Siri takes a few moments to respond, like any AI – the answer appears. The assistant suggests some dishes, but he thinks he remembers that someone mentioned a dessert from a friend. Siri, who has access to his messages and iPhone data, finds the answer and the young man asks him to plan the menu with that last dessert. You do so, and then ask Siri to set up a message to invite your chat group to the event. Soccer party set up. Everything seems to work, and it’s a relief, because this is just what one would have expected from Siri with AI. That’s the good news. The not so good thing is that this is actually latealthough as they say, better late than never: everything that the young man showed in that video we can do on Android phones thanks to Gemini for months and even years. I did the test on my mobile asking the same thing. It is true that it did not show me circular icons with the flags of the countries that face each other in each match (mini point for that Siri visual detail), but then I followed the same process. So, I asked him to recommend ideas for organizing a small party to watch one of the games with friends, and he suggested a menu similar to the one Siri proposed in the Apple demo. Then he suggested that I want to add the appointment to the calendar, and when I said yes, he told me to connect my calendar to Gemini, which I had not done yet, and the same thing if I wanted to invite friends to the event: he asked me for permission to access my contacts. Personally, I’m still not entirely comfortable with giving Gemini that access to those personal data on my phone, so the demo didn’t turn out as nice to me as it did to the Apple executive, but one thing is clear: the option is there if one wants to use it. The arrival of Siri AI, however, is great news, because it “normalizes” something that iPhone users inexplicably could not do when it had been available on Android phones for a long time. Copying Gemini is just what Siri needed Actually it doesn’t normalize it at all: European citizens will not have access to Siri AI on their iPhonesbecause Apple has indicated that the European DMA prevents it. Beyond the fact that this decision is motivated by much more delicate issues (such as the obsession with maintain full control of its platform), the reality for the moment will be that. But as we said, the arrival of Siri AI, although late, is very welcome because it confirms a paradigm shift that we are experiencing very little by little but that is infiltrating our lives: instead of touching our smartphone, we will talk to it. AI-powered conversational voice assistants, such as Gemini or Siri AI, will allow let’s do more and more things with our mobile without having to touch it. All you have to do is talk to it to ask for them, and AI models that are increasingly capable and have increasing access to the resources of our mobile phone—not only the data we store on it, but also its applications and services—execute those requests. Being able to customize Siri AI’s voice is a very strong point in this assistant. It is an evolution that is slowly and progressively creeping into our mobile usage routine. It also does so with continuous improvements both in the way of interacting with these AI-powered assistants and in the ability to personalize them. In fact, it was striking how Apple now offers a new voice for Siri AI, but above all it offers the possibility of modify that voice so that it has a different rhythm and expressiveness according to our preferences. The options shown by Apple are not at all new. We saw it when another Apple official asked, for example, that Siri AI search for information about an upcoming concert by a group in San Francisco or when it used the system’s “visual intelligence” to identify a place in a photo. All of this is basically a copy of what we already had on Android phones thanks to Gemini, and precisely that Google experience has been what Apple has taken advantage of to transfer all those capabilities to its devices. It’s good news. but maybe be more for Google than for Apple. In Xataka | Siri, help me commit suicide

The biggest sign that a foldable iPhone is coming went unnoticed at WWDC

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Yesterday Apple held the opening keynote of the WWDC 2026. The great protagonist was Siri AIthe long-awaited update that comes from Google’s AI, but they announced more news and there was one in particular that Apple did not mention, but which is the clearest clue of a highly anticipated device: the foldable iPhone. The function we are talking about is the ability to resize windows in iPhone Mirroring mode. Apple didn’t show it at the presentation, but rather it was discovered by developer Dylan McDonald, who showed it in action in X. You can also see in this post in X from a Macrumors analyst. Click on the image to go to the post in X How it works and why it is important iPhone Mirroring is a feature that allows us to view the iPhone screen directly on the Mac, as if it were a floating window. This window has the format of the iPhone screen, but in the betas of iOS 27 and MacOS 27, these developers have seen that the window can be resized, adopting a format like that of the iPad. Until now, if you mirrored the screen on the Mac, the format of this window was fixed. The fact that it allows it to be enlarged is one of the strongest evidence we have of the existence of a foldable iPhone, which you can change your screen format depending on whether we use the exterior screen or the interior screen. Of course, at the moment it can only be done with apps that have adopted iOS 27 By the way, iPhone mirroring is not available in the European Union, although There are ways to activate it. What do we know about the foldable iPhone Although Apple has not mentioned it directly and it is not yet official, the rumors are increasingly intense. Everything indicates that the iPhone Fold (as it is believed to be called) will have a book type design like that of the Galaxy Z Fold, with a 5.5-inch exterior screen and a 7.8-inch interior screen. The characteristics that have been leaked pose a aluminum design with titanium reinforced parts120Hz OLED screens and four cameras, two on the back and one on each screen. As for hardware, it is expected to feature a next-generation chip (probably an Apple A20 Pro), 12GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. What there are more doubts about is the release date. Most information indicates that will be announced in September of this year, but its arrival on the market would be later. We recently talked about how Apple had encountered unexpected problems in the engineering phase which could make it take longer than expected. In September we will clear up doubts, but the fact that they are already including this type of functions in the next version is an argument in favor of a presentation this year. Cover image | Xataka with Google Gemini In Xataka | All the news of iOS 27: the new Siri at the forefront of an update bigger than it seems

The long waits between seasons of series have doubled in five years. Some platforms have turned it into a strategy

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Some cases of recent successful series in which a more than proven trend is detected: ‘Stranger Things’ took more than three years to launch its fifth season. ‘Separation’, almost the same time for his second. ‘Wednesday’ was not the fastest series either. The pattern is so clear that they have even given it a name. And for once we can’t put all the blame on the pandemic or the writers’ strikes (although they played a role in getting us to this point). The figures. Ten years ago, the average wait between seasons of original series on the main streaming platforms was 10 months. In 2025, this figure reached 21 months, according to a Ampere Analysis report published in May 2026. This analysis covers 1,611 original series on very diverse platforms, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock. The firm has dubbed the phenomenon “the Stranger Things effect.” It was seen coming. But although the pandemic is not the final cause of this phenomenon, its impact is indisputable in the paradigm shift. The gap between seasons was already growing slowly until the 2020 pandemic he shot her 12 to 16 months in a single year. After that, the data relatively stabilized until the strikes of writers and actors 2023 caused the second big jump: from 17 to 21 months between 2023 and 2024. In 2025 the trend stabilized, for now definitively. But you have to understand the context beyond “the industry was paralyzed by the pandemic.” For example, in 2022 we were at the height of the “streaming war”, and the large platforms published 599 seasons of original series, that is, more material than in the entire period 2015-2019. Granted, the pandemic had devastated more than one economy in the industry, but that volume of production also exhausted human resources, studies and calendars. When the forced shutdowns came, first due to the pandemic and then due to strikes, the bottleneck was inevitable. The counterpart: it works. The point is that contrary to what common sense might dictate, the report detects that the series that returned after more than thirty months of hiatus (that is, two and a half years) registered the highest search activity on the internet in the month of release. For example, ‘Stranger Things’ accumulated a 300% increase in views during the second half of 2025, before the premiere of its final season, with an especially strong rebound from the first season: it was new viewers discovering the series and fans reviewing previous episodes. ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Separación’ almost doubled the average engagement on their platforms. Movies on television. There is a possible reading of this data: the model of the blockbusters cinematographic films has migrated to television. If a highly anticipated movie in a franchise generates expectations months before its release, a highly anticipated season of a series does too, in a way that a routine annual release does not. Which is combined with another reason: sometimes highly complex series (effects, script, post-production, cast, as is the case with the three mentioned) require more time. The case of the second season of ‘Separation’ and its multiple rewrites It is significant. That is to say, just like blockbusters, there are series that require more filming time than average. Because of this, they take longer to see the light, but they also generate more expectation because the public expects the wait to be compensated with more spectacle. The risk. This practice can generate anticipation, yes, but there is a danger for the platforms that Ampere specifies: “Streamers need to balance production deadlines for big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around star titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” It is the phenomenon of churn and returnthat is, canceling a subscription and renewing it when the series returns, something that from the point of view of monthly income, is basically the same as not being subscribed. Generate excessive expectation or ensure a loyal and expectant audience, accustomed to an almost continuous supply of episodes, as is happening, for example, with ‘The Pitt’? Virtue lies in the middle ground, possibly: neither stretching the rope until it breaks nor suffocating the viewer with excess content. Late for that last one, on the other hand. In Xataka | 29 years later, Netflix has become the television it promised to replace. That’s why Wall Street has punished her Ampere analyst Christen Tamisin put it this way in the report: “Streamers need to balance the production timelines of big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around flagship titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” The paradox does not have a simple solution: reducing the wait can mean compromising the quality that, precisely, turns these series into events.

released the energy of 10 atomic bombs

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On December 18, 2018, American satellites saw a “small” flare over the Bering Sea, in the Pacific Ocean. From space the flare may have seemed small, however it was the second largest asteroid explosion recorded in the last 30 years. Off the coast of the Russian peninsula of Kamchatka, energy equivalent to 173 kilotons had just been released. The asteroid was initially detected by US Air Force satellites, as well as by infrasonic stations installed to detect possible nuclear detonations. However, the CNEOSwhich tracks dangerous objects near Earth, took months to record it. Many times it is necessary to analyze to know exactly what it is about. On the other hand, It occurred in an area of ​​the planet far from the populationso there were no witnesses who could see it and report it. According to indicated on the BBC At that time, the asteroid was actually only several meters in diameter. At a speed of 32 km/s that size is more than enough to explode with the force of several atomic bombs. More than enough also for the explosion to be seen from space. There is a photograph (at maximum resolution) in which we can see an orange flame in the vast ocean with its white clouds. We are increasingly able to detect and track the orbits of more asteroids and in general potentially dangerous near-earth objects. In recent years we have even learned to divert them from their orbit. However, there are still many to be recorded and to be able to predict when they will impact the Earth, if there is a possibility that they will do so. So big that it only occurs two or three times every 100 years Asteroids reported by the US government from April 15, 1988 to March 15, 2019. Via CNEOS. This explosion in the Bering Sea is the second largest on record. The largest of all is still that of the Chelyabinsk asteroid in Russia, in 2013. On that occasion andThe asteroid unleashed an energy of 440 kilotonsfell near the city of Chelyabinsk and caused various accidents and injuries. The shock wave and flash of the Chelyabinsk meteorite caused harm to people, including temporary blindness from the flash and injuries from broken glass or debris. There were no confirmed deaths. Some people managed to record it: If it’s for records neither the Bering Sea nor the Chelyabinsk asteroid are the largest ever recorded. In 1908 an asteroid caused a 12 megaton explosion in Tunguskaa remote region of Siberia (again). But there are still louder explosions, or at least that have been heard louder, like the one that caused the Krakatoa volcano eruption. Luckily, most asteroids that hit Earth they disintegrate in the atmosphere and They only produce small amounts of “debris” on the earth’s surface. On the other hand, due to the fact that most of the surface is ocean, it can be said that it acts in a way as a shield and also prevents human damage. Image | CNEOS In Xataka | We have been trying to answer the question “where do meteorites come from” for years. And it’s harder than it seems A version of this topic was published in 2019. We have updated it.

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