advantage

Your AI advantage is evaporating

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Chinese AI companies are throwing it away. After the launch of the promising Kimi K3, now Alibaba has just introduce Qwen 3.8a gigantic model that according to those responsible is so powerful that only Fable 5 manages to surpass it. If that is confirmed, we will be facing a potential turning point in the AI ​​race. One in which China will no longer be months away. A fearsome rival for GPT-5.6 and Fable 5. Qwen 3.8 Mac has 2.4 trillion parameters, placing it only “slightly” behind the also gigantic Kimi K3 which we learned about last week and which has 2.8 billion parameters. Developers can now begin testing the model through Alibaba’s Qoder programming platform, and those responsible for it have announced that they will release their weights soon. Alibaba’s message is quite a challenge, because they claim that only Fable 5 manages to exceed their capacity. That’s saying a lot… or maybe not. All unknowns. The truth is that this is a preliminary presentation because the availability of the model is very limited. In fact, the company has not even published internal benchmarks and that makes it difficult to validate such claims. Some users have shared theoretical results of the behavior of Qwen 3.8 and according to said data it does seem that we are facing a prodigious model, but one that is also unknown details such as cost or efficiency. Meanwhile, Kimi K3 already shows his power. The launch comes just days after Kimi K3 have managed to overcome to Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol in certain specific tests of the Arena.ai benchmark platform. It also surpassed Opus 4.8 in the text generation test classification, something equally striking, especially if we take into account that the Chinese model costs 40% less. The demand for Kimi K3 has been so high that Moonshot AI has had to announce that for now need to cancel new subscriptions to deal with the enormous amount of requests that their servers are receiving. GLM 5.2 had already struck its own blow. We have had a very busy summer in terms of new AI models from the Far East. In June The big surprise was carried out by GLM-5.2the open Zhipu AI model that with its 744 billion parameters managed to be on par with Opus 4.8 at a fraction of its price. This model left behind all its Chinese competitors at the time (MiniMax, DeepSeek V4 Pro, Kimi K2.6), and began to make it clear that China had “a Mythos at home”. The pattern that begins to be drawn. Neither GLM-5.2, nor Kimi K3 later nor now Qwen 3.8 need to be the best models in the world to change the rules of the game: for companies and developers, having access to a model that performs almost like the best, that costs (sometimes much) less and that can even be installed in their own systems because they are open models can be more attractive than paying for the very expensive frontier models from OpenAI or Anthropic. Each launch actually calls into question the exorbitant amounts these companies are investing in ever larger data centers. Alibaba scores the same. The Chinese company will have to confirm with data that Qwen 3.8 really is as good as they say, but for now they have already achieved a relevant victory: the Beijing government approved Apple Intelligence, and will allow iPhones, iPads and Macs to use said technology in the Asian giant with a very special detail: the AI ​​models used will be from Alibabanot from Google. I distill, you distill, he distills. And while all this is happening, Anthropic accuse Moonshot and other Chinese companies to “distill” their models on an industrial scale to develop their own proposals. That is to say: they claim that if the Chinese models are so good it is because they are doing a kind of reverse engineering on models like Claude Opus 4.8, for example. But the fact that many Chinese models are open has also allowed US companies to take advantage of these models for all types of projects, including specific models. like Composer 2.5 from Cursor or the new Inkling from Thinking Machines that It is based on DeepSeek-V3. The gap disappears. The launch of these models demonstrates that the gap between Chinese and American AI models has narrowed significantly. Not long ago it was said that it took China about six months to match the capacity of US models, but these developments make it clear that now it only takes a few weeks before models comparable in performance appear, but with open weights and a reduced cost. If the race was already getting interesting, now it gets fascinating. In Xataka | A company decided to give the keys to its systems to an AI agent. The AI ​​agent deleted its entire database

Nobody would bet on Meta today in the superintelligence race, but he plays with more advantage than we think to win it

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A year ago, Zuckerberg was hiring AI talent like the world was ending, offering millionaire salaries and even buying entire companies to be able to sign Alexandr Wang. One year later, 8,000 people have been laid off, the work environment is unbreathable and We are still waiting for them to launch that great model with which to compete with OpenAI and Anthropic, all this while they spend money a lot. Despite everything, Meta has a real chance of closing positions and getting closer to the podium in the AI ​​race. The near future. In a complete report by Semianalysis They talk about how Meta is playing with better cards than it may seem. Muse Spark, its first language model, was somewhat disappointing, falling behind Chinese competitors such as Deepseek v4 Pro or Kimi K2.6. But the important thing is not where Meta is now, but where it can be in the near future thanks to the combination of three key elements: data, talent and computing. Record employees. It was a very controversial decision and, as expected, Meta employees were not amused. Without them being able to object, software was installed on the company computers that I recorded everything they didnot to spy on them, but to train their AI. This data is pure gold for training agents: Meta is accumulating thousands of examples of different people solving the same tasks, while data companies like Surge or Mercor have to partner with others to be able to record their workflows. Meta has the data at home. They say in Semianalysis that this decision is as if they had created a “top-tier startup for RL environments” within the company, with one of the founders of Scale AI leading the transformation. In addition, after the restructuring they have put at least 3,000 engineers on reinforcement learning environment tasks. All this data is key to being able to create programming agents like Claude Code or Codex from OpenAI. Data centers. It is one of the main sources of spending for Meta, which is building several gigantic data centers whose capacities are more than 1 gigawatt. Maybe Meta cannot compete in infrastructure with hyperscalers like GoogleMicrosoft and Amazon, but things change if we confront it with frontier AI laboratories. Here, Meta has a clear advantage and, according to Semianalysis’ projections, Meta will have more computing power than Anthropic and OpenAI combined before the end of the year. The talent. Last summer, Meta began signing talent with a checkbook. They hired at least 14 high-level researchers who came directly from Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, paid $14 billion to keep Alexandr Wang and Scale AI. Bringing together the best does not ensure that the team will work and, in fact, for months now there have been rumors of internal tensions. Of course, if they make it work, they have the talent. keep focus. Meta may be in the rearview mirror of OpenAI and Anthropic sooner rather than later, but it is one thing to have the resources and quite another to achieve it. Meta is in a delicate moment internally, with many employees very dissatisfied with the company’s strategy. If they do not navigate these waves well, they risk becoming unfocused and lost along the way. Image | Xataka with Magnific In Xataka | Meta has a long history of privacy scandals. We can add one more to the list

“They’re damn smart.” Marine chief believes Gen Z has just the advantage the modern military needs

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The same idea has been repeated for years. about generation Z: who lives glued to a screen, who has less capacity for sacrifice and who is less prepared to face great challenges. However, the commander of the United States Marine Corps maintains just the opposite. In his opinion, the biggest change is not in the young people, but in the war. The big mistake. Few generations have accumulated so many stereotypes like Z. They are accused of depending on cell phones, social networks or video games and, by extension, of being less resilient than their parents and grandparents. Eric M. SmithCommander of the United States Marine Corps, counted in Military who believes that this reading is based on a wrong premise: different life experiences are being confused with a supposed lack of character. After almost four decades of service and thousands of recruits seen passing through training centers, his conclusion is blunt: “their surnames have changed, but their character and commitment have not.” Like in WW2. “They are made of the same wood as the Marines of World War II,” explains. The comparison is not accidental. Smith equates today’s young people with those who fought in historical scenarios such as Iwo Jima, the Chosin Reservoir or, more recently, Fallujah. He also rejects the idea that the Corps has lowered its standards to attract volunteers. “We have not lowered standards. We never will,” affirms. Their argument is simple: the Marines continue to demand that the applicants adapt to the institution and not the other way around, maintaining a training process that continues to be the longest in the US armed forces. Eric M. Smith It’s not the character, it’s the tools. Where Smith does see a break with previous generations is in the relationship with technology. He himself remembers that he was already a captain when he had his first mobile phone, while the new recruits have grown up surrounded by mobile phones, video games and the Internet. What for years has been interpreted as a distraction can be, according to the generala strategic advantage. “They’re damn smart,” summarizedbefore adding a sentence that explains his reasoning: just give them a device and five minutes for them to discover on their own how to use a drone, while officers from previous generations would need specific training. Skills that barely counted before. The Smith’s statements They come at a time when the battlefield is undergoing accelerated transformation. The war in Ukraine has become protagonists to FPV drones, artificial intelligencesensors, electronic warfare and connected systems, displacing part of the traditional prominence of the large armored or artillery. In this context, understanding digital interfaces, quickly adapting to new tools or intuitively learning how complex systems work begins to be as important as physical resistance or aim. Each military revolution has changed the profile. History shows that armies have always had to adapt to the technologies of their time. There was a time when know how to ride a horse made the difference, then came radio, radar, cryptography or the guided missilesforcing the incorporation of increasingly more technical profiles. The digitalization of combat represents another similar jump. The skills that many identify with a generation raised on screens can now become a first-rate military asset. The real advantage. He Smith’s message transcends the debate about generation Z. It does not maintain that young people are better than their predecessors, but rather that they have a natural familiarity with technology that fits the needs of the modern army. For him, the core values ​​remain exactly the same as 250 years ago (honor, courage and commitment), but the tools have changed. And in a war where a drone operator can influence so much As an infantry unit, the ability to quickly master a new system may become one of the most valuable qualities of the soldier of the future. Image | CEPA, ACMCphotousmc In Xataka | The US had a ship with 2,000 marines ready to invade Iran. Now he has sent it right to the place where China worries the most In Xataka | The same day that the US sent its marines to Iran, Taiwan woke up with déjà vu: China has surrounded it with 26 planes and 7 warships

Arab Emirates has oil and desert in abundance. Now they have discovered how to take advantage of sand: turning it into brick

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Although transport or energy are the sectors that first come to mind when we talk about emissions, there is a third industry with a comparable share of responsibility: construction, responsible for 34% of global CO₂ emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. The problem is in the materials: manufacturing a ton of Portland cement emits between 0.6 and 0.8 tons of CO₂ both due to the energy consumed in the process and the chemical reaction that produces it. So any idea to replace classic construction materials such as concrete and brick is good to decarbonize the industry. We have already seen alternatives such as the shells on the beachbut to a company in Dubai Another idea has occurred to him: instead of importing materials, manufacture them with abundant resources in the area. More specifically, with sand and date seeds. The invention. The star product of ARDH Collective, which is the name of the Dubai company formed by Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Máximo Tettamanzi, is DuneCrete: An alternative to concrete made from locally sourced desert sand, which reduces cement content by 50%. From there they manufacture the DuneBlockthe building blocks. In their product catalog they also have the Dateforma material that reuses 1,000 date seeds per square meter. Why is it important. Because after water, sand is the second resource we consume the most. The United Nations Environment Program esteem that up to 50,000 million tons of sand and gravel are consumed annually worldwide. Removing sand from rivers and coastal ecosystems causes erosion, damages water supplies, harms biodiversity and reduces storm protection, so replacing it with underused desert sand would be a turning point. DuneCrete reduces cement content by 50%, which according to its founders represents approximately half the carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional concrete. It makes sense: Portland cement alone is responsible for 8% of global emissions and its footprint does not disappear using renewable energy, since much of it comes from a chemical reaction, not from burning fuel. Context. Paradoxically, the UAE has to import sand even though it is basically a desert. The underlying problem is that desert sand particles are rounded due to wind erosion, which makes their adhesion in conventional concrete mixtures difficult, while river sand has more angular particles that favor compaction and resistance. In detail. This project arose during a master’s degree at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. After obtaining a couple of grants totaling $8,000, they began research in a laboratory that they set up in the garage of one of their homes in Dubai during the pandemic. That was where they found the formula that stabilized the mixture with desert sand. Laboratory tests confirmed that the material met the resistance standards necessary for commercial development. The company start production in 2021. Yes, but. Once the problem of the geometry of desert sand has been solved, there is another obstacle to solve to scale the project: its morphology varies enormously by region and is not homogeneous. ARDHCollective affirms DuneCrete is “just as strong” as conventional concrete, but there are no academic publications or third-party test reports to support its mechanical properties. Simply put, the transformative potential of this DuneCrete remains to be seen. In Xataka | A young woman from Kenya has developed brick 2.0: the main ingredient is the plastic of the shampoo bottle In Xataka | We have just reinvented the brick. It is just as it was millennia ago Cover | ARDHCollective and Fredrik Öhlander

If you fly with a child under 12 years old you have to sit next to them. UK suspects Ryanair of taking advantage

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It is not mandatory but for Ryanair it is. At least for children between 2 and 11 years old, as indicated in their own reservation conditions. The Irish airline requires parents to travel, no matter what, in the seats next to their children when they are under 12 years old. An obligation that Ryanair, assures, is free. The United Kingdom is not so clear. What’s happening? That Ryanair requires minors under 11 years of age to travel accompanied by one of the parents in the adjacent seats, as they explain on their own website. This seat selection must be made during the reservation and does not entail any additional charge. But the United Kingdom is not so clear. And the body in charge of ensuring competition in the country assures that the company would be charging an average of about nine euros for reserving “family” seats. That is, it would charge because parents and children sit together even though the rules prevent them from doing so separately when the children are under 12 years old. What does Ryanair say? The Irish company assures that this does not happen and refers to its reservation conditions. When you make a reservation on a Ryanair flight you have the opportunity to choose a seat, but this comes with a cost. If you do not do so, the seat is assigned automatically. When a reservation is made with a child under 11 years of age, the platform enables the possibility of reserving up to four adjacent seats (up to three children per parent) completely free of charge. Yes, but. What the British organizations point out is that this does not always happen and that the Irish company is charging for the seats. And, really, there is something tricky in the information that Ryanair presents. The company itself indicates that the allocation of adjacent seats will be “in specific rows (depending on the aircraft)” and that there will be a charge for changing seats. There should be no problem there. However, it makes it clear that if there is no possibility of combining seats in these specific rows, the customer must make a reservation for a different flight. That is, if the company does not have space available in the usual rows where parents and child travel together, there are two options: reserve seats upon payment or change planes. The mess. What they are investigating in the United Kingdom is whether the company can charge for seats when traveling with children. There, at this rate the company calls it “mandatory family seat” and may be enough to fine the company for applying an abusive rate. For its part, Ryanair defends itself by ensuring that the parent does have to pay for seat selection but that this does not apply to the four adjacent seats in which they can seat their children. That is, the adult would be paying but not the child and the company ensures that, in this way, the country’s legislation would not be breached. And in Spain? European regulations state that adults and children under 12 years of age must travel together and that the child seat must be offered free of charge whenever possible. To comply with regulations, airlines usually automatically generate a reservation with two adjacent seats in these cases, but they are not required to do so. That is, if the airline does not have two adjacent seats available on that flight, it will be mandatory to change them. But, in addition, the interpretation of the rule leaves open the possibility that, as is being studied with Ryanair in the United Kingdom, surcharges may be applied to the final price. one more fight. Ryanair has also taken advantage of the confrontation to ensure that all this controversy is only motivated because the country’s government wants to appear to protect travelers instead of lowering rates. Another open front for the company with a national government that, as happens in Spain, has open disputes with numerous European states in relation to the fees they must pay for providing their services at airports. Photo | Paul Hanoka and Nejc Soklič In Xataka | The Spanish Justice is unable to determine whether it is legal for Ryanair to charge for hand luggage. So he has already asked Europe for help

with cars prepared to take advantage of them

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The United States has been playing catch-up for some time when it comes to high-power chargers for electric vehicles, many of them capable of delivering 500 kW, 600 kW, and even one megawatt. The problem is that, right now, almost no electric car sold there can swallow such power. In Europe, however, we are starting to see cars that take advantage of this capacity. And although at the moment it is still somewhat testimonial, for the electric promises to be fulfilled, the infrastructure must accompany the innovation of these cars. Why is it important. For years, recharging has been the great brake on electric cars convincing the general public. The promise of charging as fast as you fill a tank of gas has been promised for some time, and now the technology is starting to live up to it. But a one-megawatt pump is of little use if the car you connect only accepts a fraction of that power. More fast charging in the US. According to collect InsideEVs, the company ChargePoint presented last month a 600 kW device that it described as “the fastest independent charger for electric cars in the world”, while the Swiss ABB announced 1.2 megawatt units and Kempower showed a charger with an MCS connector capable of delivering 1.2 MW. The Italian Alpitronic, for its part, is preparing chargers that provide up to 1,000 kW to trucks and 600 kW to passenger cars, and which will begin to arrive on American soil at the beginning of next year. Even Tesla, historically limited to 250 or 325 kW, is slowly rolling out its 500 kW V4 Superchargers. Few take advantage of it. As the same media points out, right now there are no electric cars for sale in the United States that accept more than 500 kW. He Tesla Cybertruck It has been seen charging at 500 kW, but its official specifications still indicate a maximum of 325 kW. The most capable models on the market or about to arrive, such as the Lucid Gravity, the Porsche Cayenne Electric or the BMW iX3reach 400 kW. The reason for such a rush. Loren McDonald, CEO and Chief Analyst at Chargeonomics, explains told InsideEVs that some of the high-powered Chinese cars could arrive in the United States in the next five years, so these chargers “shield” the facilities for when that happens. The idea, furthermore, is to distribute the load intelligently between several points according to what each car can absorb, so that a modest model and a high-end model can be plugged in at the same time without either wasting power. Who is really ahead?. China and Europe are setting the pace in this regard, with systems such as BYD’s 1.5-megawatt “Flash” stationsto which we were able to access first-hand with the presentation in Europe of the Denza Z9GT. More in China than in Europe, the difference is not so much in the raw power of the plugs as in the fact that manufacturers are releasing vehicles prepared to take advantage of it. In Europe we also have a long way to go to be able to take advantage of these capabilities in commercial passenger cars, but little by little we are getting to know more brands that want to join. And Spain, where is it? He latest Barometer of ANFAC Electromobility, corresponding to the first quarter of 2026, makes it clear that the priority here continues to be the basics, that is, having enough points and making them work. Spain closed March with 55,077 public access charging points, after adding 2,005 in the quarter, a growth that the report itself describes as lower than that recorded in the same periods of the previous three years. The quality problem. Beyond the total number, ANFAC data points to two weaknesses. The first, power: only 31% of the infrastructure exceeds 22 kW, far from the 55% objective that the association sets for 2026. The remaining 69% are low power points that require charging times of at least three hours. The second, reliability: ANFAC estimates that 17,073 points are out of service (24% of the total installed) due to breakdown, poor condition or lack of connection to the electrical network. If they worked, Spain would be close to 72,150 points. The high power, still testimonial. Chargers of 250 kW or more, those that truly allow recharging in minutes, There are only 2,469 units in all of Spain.. They grew by 309 during the quarter, and the report indicates that around 75% of high power points respond to projects by the automobile manufacturers themselves. The big obstacle, according to the association, continues to be administrative, since processing difficulties and, above all, access to the electrical distribution network keep many projects paralyzed. Cover image | myenergi In Xataka | The hydrogen fuel cell at 250º C that solves a decades-old problem: the constant need for water

Sony has taken advantage of its AI to improve photos. It turned out quite average

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Sony presented the mobile this week more anti-2026 that we had seen in the high range. A return to the headphone jack, the generous bezels, the microSD card and, beyond the curious, a photographic bet that promised to be solid. Just yesterday, the Japanese company published on its social networks how the new assistant worked AI camera in the new Xperia, one “to bring photos to life.” The post has gone really viral, since it is not clear who and why it seemed right to publish said publication in X. all bad. The publication already has 8 million views and more than 3,000 comments, the first of which are directly memes. Beyond the fact that this is the usual trend in X, there are reasons to be disoriented by Sony’s publication. According to the company, which also publishes the same examples on its website, the new AI camera assistant helps create “expressive options to bring our photos to life.” And yes, although what is a good photo and what is not is partly subjective, the publication leaves no room for interpretation. Yes, I laughed. “Life”. The photographs that Sony has shown with the AI ​​mode are terrible. Not from a subjective interpretation, but from introducing photography into any editing programread the histograms, and objectively analyze that they are completely burned (full overexposure) and with a very high color distortion. As the company has shown, this is a mode that completely destroys the naturalness of the original photography, and without practical use to improve the results on a daily basis. Not too surprising. Sony is the leading camera manufacturer in the world. In fact, there are hardly any filmmakers and content creators who do not use their cameras. When buying a phone, the reference to know if it has a good camera is that it has a Sony sensor. But, for some reason, in all Xperia generations there have been serious problems with the camera. Usability of the apps, final quality of the photographs, strange looks that were not completely understood… Despite leading with an iron fist in video cameras, the Xperia division in mobile phones does not come close to what is expected from the manufacturer. Hope? The margin of doubt is always necessary and, after the virality of the publication, it is more than likely that Sony will give AI processing a twist. And, if not, we will always have an additional way to create memes. In Xataka | We have been juggling for ten years to transfer a photo from iPhone to Android. Google closes the wound with AirDrop

The iPhone can do much more than we think. The key is in the Shortcuts and this way you can start taking advantage of them

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A few days ago I was in a cafe with a friend when, in the middle of the conversation, he took out his iPhone and showed me how much of a Shortcuts expert. At that time I thought more people should know that. Barely two weeks have passed since then and now I have to present to you this video that my colleagues at Xataka have made, a very good opportunity to start using the mobile “like a pro”. Ana Boriawhich has tested devices like the Plaud Note Pro or the Nothing Phone (4a) Pro and that even you have been encouraged to home automation your homenow wants to help us make life easier for iPhone users. This is a video in which he shares his experience with a tool that can be very useful and explains how to use it for tasks such as scheduling the sending of messages, reading news with a single click or creating a QR code to share the WiFi network. The video that we have just published on the Xataka YouTube channel It starts precisely with that last possibility. “You probably know that on Android, simply clicking on the Wi-Fi network gives you the QR code to share it with everyone. Well, then on iPhone it is not so simple”, says our colleague. How to do it then? With Shortcuts. We just have to add the shortcut that Ana left us and configure it exactly as she explains. In addition, it proposes three different options so that everyone can choose the one that best suits their needs. “If you have traveled, it may have happened to you the same as me, that when you go to another country they don’t speak your language, but they don’t speak English either. Well, for that, this shortcut has been great for me,” says our colleague when presenting her next recommendation. In this case You don’t even need to download any additional applications. All you have to do is take advantage of a shortcut that is also capable of detecting the language automatically. Ana also reviews other especially useful shortcuts, such as one designed to read the last 10 articles from our favorite websites, another to obtain a personalized note with parameters from the Health app and several automations for the iPhone to execute certain actions based on the time or location. It is true that launching these shortcuts requires following some steps, but In the video there are all the necessary links to download them and start playing with them. I hope you like preparing it as much as we do. And, of course, we invite you to leave your comments both here and on YouTube. Images | Xataka In Xataka | The foldable iPhone is getting closer every day: this is everything we know about it so far

If fog was deadly in Ukraine’s winter, spring is offering Russia a key advantage: greenery

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In modern conflicts, small changes in the environment can completely alter the balance of combat, even in the face of advanced technologies such as combat drones or sensors. Throughout history, factors such as climate, the ground or the vegetation have conditioned entire offensivesdeciding when and how to attack. In many cases, the difference between advancing or being exposed didn’t depend on a weapon, but on what was happening in the landscape. The same is happening in Ukraine. The cold as an invisible brake. It we count in several occasions. Last winter, the war in Ukraine was marked for a factor as silent as it is decisive: the visibility and conditions meteorological conditions that favored some over others, where the absence of vegetation and phenomena such as the fog and the cold They turned the battlefield into an exposed and lethal space for any offensive movement. In that environment, the drones dominated the air with ease, detecting practically any movement and converting each advance into an immediate risk. Russia, despite its superiority in resources, saw its momentum partially slowed while Ukraine took advantage of this scenario to stabilize the front and launch limited but effective counterattacks. Spring changes the script. With the arrival of spring, that balance begins to break because the terrain is no longer the same nor is the visibility. The vegetation, especially the lines of trees that run through the agricultural fields, introduces a concealment element which profoundly alters the dynamics of combat. So, I remembered this morning the new york times that what was previously an open space dominated by sensors and drones is transformed into a fragmented environment where movement is once again possible, even if in a limited and slower way. Trees as a tactical weapon. Tree lines, inherited from the soviet era to protect crops, they have become natural corridors for the advance, withdrawal and reorganization of troops, offering cover from constant aerial surveillance. In a conflict where large mechanized movements have lost effectiveness, the war is now being fought on foot and in small groupsand this vegetation cover reduces exposure and increases the chances of survival. Vegetation does not eliminate drone threatbut it does hinder their detection ability, enough to change the probabilities on the ground. The Russian advantage. They remembered in the Times that, although both sides benefit from this new coverage, Ukraine recognizes that the effect can favor Russia more due to its greater number of troops, which allows it to better take advantage of any concealment opportunity and advance with fewer relative losses. In areas such as around the Dnieper River, where vegetation has grown especially dense, Russian troops can concentrate and maneuver with a level of discretion that did not exist in winter. This change does not guarantee decisive advances, but it does increase the options for achieve tactical progress. War and the seasons. If you like, the evolution of the conflict confirms to what extent seasonal factors They continue to be decisive even in a dominated war by advanced technologywhere each season alters the rules of combat. If winter favored the defense by exposing the attacker, spring introduces a room for maneuver that Russia tries to exploit to regain initiative. Even so, the constant presence of drones maintains large areas of the front as spaces of high lethality, which limits the scope of any offensive and suggests that, despite the change in scenario, the war will continue to be slow, costly and still far from being resolved in the short term. Image | 7th Army Training Command In Xataka | If the question is where Russia’s missiles come from in the Ukrainian war, the answer is surprising: from cigarette filters In Xataka | Neither drones nor missiles nor AI, the war in Ukraine has turned a vehicle from 1950 into a key piece: the M113

take advantage of one of the largest sources of renewable energy

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The energy wave drive It has a great advantage over other more popular renewable energy sources, such as the sun or wind: it never rests. Waves are an almost continuous and enormously energetic resource. And yet, it is the ugly duckling of green energies because its unpredictable and far from constant nature turns energy extraction into a titanic task in terms of efficiency. An American startup, Panthalassa, has been testing for a while In Pacific waters, a prototype that rethinks from the ground up how to relate to the ocean: instead of resisting it, it follows the flow. The invention. He Ocean-2 It is a device that at first glance looks like a giant buoy. In fact, in tests in Puget Sound, Washington, several people reported an unidentified floating object. The spherical part of the end (the node) has almost 10 meters in diameter and is mounted on a tubular hull approximately 60 meters long (which is submerged under the sea). But the analogy with the buoy is accurate in that it is a simple structure that sways with the waves. When it is horizontal it moves and when it is vertical (when it looks like a buoy) it starts working. Why it is important. Because the oceans They cover 71% of the Earth and its energy has an advantage that solar and wind power lack: consistency. The ocean generates energy regardless of whether it is day or night, even if it is calm or the sky is cloudy, which makes this energy source the ideal complement to stabilize networks. The endemic problem of this technology is its low efficiency. If this prototype can be scaled, it could become an alternative and complement to clean and independent energy for coastal areas. Context. In the midst of the race for AI and data centers, the great bottleneck of the United States is the energyso much so that they are dusting off old energy solutions as fossil power plants and resurrecting its nuclear industry. Of course, and although his role in the US, Israel and Iran war is different from Europe and so is its access to oil, the reality is that the price of a barrel being uncontrolled does not benefit them either. In that scenario, it is expanding your investment in renewables. Wave energy has been promising and disappointing for decades. Salt, corrosion, biological growth on structures, and the brutal cost of offshore maintenance have literally and figuratively sunk dozens of projects around the world. The result: almost everything has remained in the pilot phase. Nor has efficiency ever been anything to write home about. And while wave power has stagnated, the price of solar and wind has fallen so rapidly that it has left other clean energies without a competitive advantage. However, wave energy faces another opportunity: Ocean Energy Europe figure The portfolio of planned deployments until 2030 is at 165 MW and the United States has invested $591 million in ocean energy in the last five years. How much energy it produces and uses. In the test he managed to generate up to 50 kW in decent wave conditions, enough to power a small coastal town. However, its priority application is not the domestic electrical network, but something more specific such as clean fuels and computing: producing green hydrogen that is transported to shore in autonomous ships, and powering data centers in the ocean. How they do it. The design of the Ocean-2 has a more philosophical than technical point: it is not so much about resisting the ocean but about accompanying it. As the waves oscillate, water is propelled through an internal pipe to the spherical surface and then descends through turbines to generate power. It has hardly any moving partsbeyond the turbine, integrated into the steel structure The buoy does not have nets or elements that can trap marine fauna, it operates silently and with slow movements: Panthalassa’s environmental manager, Dr. Liam Chen, explained for local TV KOMO that its soft, low-impact design allows you to “live in harmony with the ocean.” Testing in Puget Sound showed no visible alterations to the surrounding marine ecosystem. According to the co-founderGarth Sheldon-Coulson, these machines can be made for around $1,500 per kilowatt. What comes next. As account its co-founder, have been working for about ten years: the first four or five years was only R&D, in 2021 they launched their predecessor the Ocean-1, in 2024 the Ocean-2 was released and the Ocean-3 is already in development and It is making steady progress in its financing. Yes, but. So far, everything is testing and prototypes because the project is in the experimental phase, that is, there is not a single commercial kilowatt generated, nor a connected network, nor long-term durability data. And the sea is not exactly an easy environment: knowing how it will withstand storms and the passage of time, what maintenance will be like or simply something as basic as the transfer of energy from the device to the network is essential. Without forgetting the cost, especially given the collapse in the costs of solar or wind energy, both technologies that are already mature, consolidated and very cheap. In Xataka | With oil skyrocketing, Japan has resurrected an old idea to extract infinite energy from the ocean In Xataka | Something is happening in the oceans for which we have no convincing explanation: the waves are disappearing Cover | Panthalassa and Matt Paul Catalano

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