believes

The big problem with putting robots everywhere is that they get lost. An engineer from Elche believes she has the solution

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It is no surprise that we see more and more robots in our daily lives: in a restaurant bringing orders to the table, in the field as a seasonal workermaking him courier delivery competition…and that’s not to mention its applications in automation on an industrial scale. Robots don’t need to rest, they don’t have labor rights, and they don’t complain. But they get lost. And that is a real, very common problem for which a research team from the Miguel Hernández University of Elche has found solution. The context. Autonomous robots need to know where they are to function and that does not always happen: when the location reference is lost, either because someone moves it, it is turned off or the environment changes without warning, the robot is unable to recover its position. Something as normal as running out of battery can be a technical drama. This phenomenon is not something isolated, in fact it even has a name in robotics: the “kidnapped robot problem“. Although we see more and more robots everywhere, this incident is a pending issue that has not been resolved in a robust way for decades. Without going any further, because resorting to GPS is something that can fail in settings such as indoors or near tall buildings. As deepens Míriam Máximolead author of the article: “It is a classic problem and very difficult to solve, especially in large environments.” The solution. What the team from the University of Elche has implemented is MCL-DLF, the acronym for Monte Carlo Localization – Deep Local Feature, a system that combines two technologies: on the one hand, a 3D LiDAR that emits laser pulses to draw a three-dimensional map of the environment similar to that of robot vacuum cleaners. On the other hand, an artificial intelligence that learns which elements of the environment are most useful for orientation. Why is it important. Because having a reliable location system is essential for any robotic deployment in real life: autonomous vehicles, delivery and logistics, assistance… its presence may be increasingly common, but it is still tremendously dependent on supervision: knowing where it is is essential for it to operate safely. The implemented method also introduces an important change: it is independent, in that it does not require external infrastructure to function like GPS, so its base is more robust and versatile in the face of different use scenarios in the real world. How it works. Its approach is hierarchical, so it first recognizes large structures and then fine details, similar to how people do. When you arrive at an unknown place, first you keep the essentials: what neighborhood you are in, for example. Then you look for more specific references to refine further. Furthermore, the system does not play everything on one card: it maintains several position hypotheses simultaneously and discards or refines them as the sensor captures more information. Tests carried out for months on the university campus with different lighting conditions, vegetation or simply the weather have shown more consistency than conventional methods. A good start with pending subjects. Beyond its promising results, the most striking thing about this research is its commitment to sensory autonomy: it does not depend on networks of beacons or GPS, but on its own sensors. This makes it a potentially more versatile system. However, it faces the great historical challenge of robot placement: how fragile it is in the face of changing environments. It is true that they have tested it in different conditions, but it has been within the campus: making the leap to more complex and constantly changing environments is their litmus test, in addition to additional validation in extreme conditions. Finally, before an eventual real commercial deployment, we will have to see how it integrates with other navigation systems and its computational cost. In Xataka | Tesla has been building the Optimus for years. China has just presented itself with fifteen companies and factories already set up In Xataka | We already have so many “humanoid” robots that it is difficult to differentiate one from the other. This graph fixes it Cover | Enchanted Tools

The owner of Mercadona believes that in a few years kitchens will disappear from homes. The consumption of precooked foods proves him right

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The forecast sounded so far-fetched, it clashed to such an extent with the gastronomic tradition of Spain, that it generated a considerable stir. Just a year ago, during the presentation of Mercadona’s accounts, Juan Roig surprised by predicting death (almost) imminent of domestic kitchens. “I said it and I maintain it: in the middle of the 21st century there will be no kitchens,” cried the businessman. In the future imagined by Roig we go from making our own food in the vitro at home to taking it already prepared from supermarkets, which have become an absolute reference for food. The sector data They confirm that, no matter how dystopian Roig’s prophecy sounds, it seems to be coming true. A percentage: 3.8%. Spain is a benchmark for the Mediterranean diet. But also, and increasingly, a country of families who are no longer willing to spend hours and hours in the kitchen. That’s what it suggests at least. the last balance of the Spanish Association of Prepared Meal Manufacturers (Asefapre). According to the data of the sector, in 2025, ready-made foods “reinforced their weight in the shopping basket”, with an increase in consumption of 3.8%. In total, 715,052 tons of prepared meals were sold, “a new record,” recalls Asefapre, which consolidates the trend of the last decade. Translated into hard and fast euros, sales rose to 4,309 million, with an annual increase of 5%. A figure: 18 kilos a year. To give us an idea of ​​what this growth means, Asefapre calculates that last year each Spaniard ate on average about 18 kilos of prepared dishes. As a reference it is almost the same amount of fish products that we Spaniards consume in our homes (another thing is the restaurants) throughout 2024. The difference between precooked and fish is that the demand for the latter takes time to increase. low hours (both fresh and frozen) while the former grows at a good pace. The latest balance sheet of the employers’ association reflects an annual increase of 4.7% in the consumption of prepared foods, a growth rate that comfortably exceeds that of food as a whole (0.6%). What do we eat? Asefapre segregate your data of sales, which offers us an interesting vision of what exactly we Spaniards consume. The cake goes to “refrigerated” products, with a sales volume of 330,602 t shipped in 2025, 5% more than the previous year. In second place are “frozen products”, with sales that amounted to 297,023 t (+2.5%). The “dishes prepared at room temperature”, very common in some supermarket chains, are quite far behind, with 87,426 tons sold, but they leave an interesting fact: their demand grew by 4.1%. From pizza to potatoes and pasta. If we go down to detail we see that what we Spaniards like most (at least it is what we demand most) are pizzas, the leading producer in the sector with a sales volume that amounted to 131,600 tons. They are followed by frozen potatoes, with 98,056 t, and pasta-based dishes, which totaled 72,405 t. The three categories grew, with sales increases ranging between 2.6 and 7.2%. Beyond the Spanish market, one fifth (21.4%) of the industry’s production ends up being exported. More than just strategy. At this point the question is obvious: Why do we buy more and more pre-cooked foods? What leads us to feed ourselves with prepared dishes, whether frozen, refrigerated or food sold at room temperature ready for consumption, like what Mercadona offers in its supermarkets? The answer is complex. On the one hand there is the sector’s strategy, which has increased and perfected its range of products, adding foreign dishes that aim in part at the growing population immigrant living in Spain. Beyond the efforts of the industry, the increase in consumption of prepared dishes also responds to profound changes at a social and cultural level. They increase the single-person householdsit gets complicated conciliation between professional and family life and even change the kitchen structure in the houses. Also our way of thinking, as Asefapre herself remembers: today it no longer ‘squeaks’ at us that they serve us a pre-cooked dish on Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve or that in families there are no longer people willing to lock themselves between the stoves. Of new grandmothers and homes. “Grandmas are not like they used to be and prefer to go walking with friends, do pilates or travel,” he reflected during the presentation of the balance sheet the president of Asefapre, David Aldea. It is not the only cultural change he cited. Added to this are others, such as the fact that it is increasingly easier to find “homes with fewer members” or homes in which the space dedicated to cooking has been reduced to a minimum. The trend seems to confirm Roig’s prediction, which a year ago I already confirmed the good progress of Mercadona’s business line for ready-to-eat dishes, launched in 2018. “It is profitable and continues to grow.” Images | Andalusian Government (Flickr), Mercadona and Asefapre In Xataka | Mercadona has grown so much in Spain that for the US it is no longer just a supermarket chain: it is a “cultural phenomenon”

Perplexity has already marked its path for what it believes is fundamental

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For years, advertising has been the silent fuel of much of the internet. It has financed search engines, web pages, applications and services that we use daily without paying directly for them, something that we have assumed almost as a norm in the digital environment. But the emergence of chatbots and search products powered by AI forces us to rethink that balance, because here the product is no longer just content, but answers that the public should consider reliable. In this area, any suspicion about who influences what is read stops being a technical detail and becomes a central issue. Clash between trust and monetization. In recent months we have begun to see how large AI companies take clear positions, some betting on introducing advertising in their free products and others rejecting it outright due to the impact it could have on user perception. The result is a map that begins to outline a division, just when the sector needs to demonstrate that it can become a sustainable business. And what’s at stake is not just how you make money with AI, but what kind of relationship you build with those who use it. Trust as a product. One of the clearest movements in this division is found in Perplexity. The company even tested ads in 2024, showing sponsored responses under the chatbot’s responses, but it began to withdraw them at the end of last year and now assures that it has no plans to continue down that path. “The user must believe that this is the best possible response to continue using the product and be willing to pay for it,” an executive explained to the Financial Times. The internal conclusion is direct: if the advertisements sow doubts, the value of the product itself is compromised, although the company leaves the door open to revisit that path in the future. War of ads against ads. Anthropic is in the same line as Perplexity, which not only defends keeping its chatbot without advertising, but has turned that decision into a public message. The company launched a campaign prior to the Super Bowl with a direct slogan, “The ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude,” which points to the direction of the sector without explicitly mentioning competing products. The campaign shows scenes that caricature commercial recommendations within personal conversations, underscoring the discomfort that such a scenario could generate. The reaction from OpenAI. Sam Altman rated the campaign of Anthropic as “clearly dishonest” and defended that the ad model his company is exploring would follow different principles, with advertising “separated and clearly labeled” and without influence on the system’s responses. The manager framed this decision as a question of access, arguing that expanding the free use of AI requires new sources of income, and he contrasted this with the idea that Anthropic offers an expensive product for those who can pay for it while OpenAI seeks massive reach with free access. Not everyone wants (or can) do without advertising. Training and sustaining these systems burns cash and has increased the pressure to find sustainable income as usage grows. In this context, some relevant actors are exploring advertising as a way to finance free access, with formulas in which sponsored content appears separated from the responses, with testing on products like ChatGPT and in formats Google Search with AI. It should be noted that Google has not introduced ads to its Gemini chatbot. Images | Perplexity + Nano Banana In Xataka | Claude Sonnet 4.6 promises to do the paperwork for you. Now he has the challenge of his life: dealing with the Spanish administration’s websites

An archaeologist believes his mental rigidity was more lethal than the sapiens’ spears

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For decades, the million-dollar question in paleoanthropology has always been the same: how on earth do we Neanderthals disappeared? We have blamed climate changeto the lower cognitive capacity, to the diseases and even a violent genocide perpetrated by us, the Homo sapiens. However, the French paleoanthropologist Ludovic Slimak has put another theory much more uncomfortable on the table. The theory. Through his latest book, ‘The last neanderthal‘, and in recent statementsthe French paleoanthropologist has pointed out that the Neanderthals were not swept away by an external force, but rather suffered an internal collapse. A true “individual and social suicide” caused by their own cultural rigidity and their refusal to connect. The specimen. Slimak is not an armchair theorist, but has spent decades digging in Grotte Mandrin (France), a key site that has revolutionized what we know about the transition between Neanderthals and modern humans. Here the cornerstone of his argument is “Thorin”, a late Neanderthal whose remains were analyzed in a genomic study published in Cell Genomics. What was seen. In this specimen it was seen that, despite living about 42,000-50,000 years ago (relatively “close” to the end), Thorin’s lineage had been genetically isolated for 50,000 years. This is in addition to the fact that, although there were other Neanderthal populations just two weeks away, they did not mix. They lived in a genetic and social bubble for millennia without gene flow either with other Neanderthals or, of course, with the sapiens who were already around the area. Slimak interprets this isolation not as a physical impossibility, but as a cultural choice. Thorin’s Neanderthals, according to his reading, rejected interaction. A clash of values. Based on this isolation of Thorin and on the lithic technology found in Mandrin, which are very creative but poorly standardized tools, Slimak draws two opposing “mental spheres.” The first of them is the ‘sapiens model’, where vast and interconnected communities meant that, if one group failed, the entire network could be sustained thanks to the efficiency and homogenization. At the other extreme we have the ‘Neanderthal model’ where small, independent and highly creative groups existed, but fragmented. Simply put, each clan was a world where there was no interconnection. The metaphor of ‘suicide’. The author in this case is not referring to them taking their own lives individually, but rather to a collapse of their values. Upon encountering the social “machine” of the Sapiens, the Neanderthal worldview of isolated groups became unsustainable, since, according to Slimaksome groups “decided to become invisible” or their social structure simply imploded due to the efficiency of human networks. The scientific consensus. Although Slimak’s narrative is literary powerful, the current scientific consensus prefers less romantic and more mathematical explanations. Most paleoanthropologists do not see conscious “suicide,” but rather a structural disadvantage. Recent literature explains extinction through a combination of factors such as demographics. In this case, stochastic drift models show that, if you have very small and dispersed populations (like Neanderthals), a very slight disadvantage in the reproduction or survival rate is enough for the species to become extinct in a few thousand years. There is more. Coinciding with Slimak’s data, there are different investigations that accept that Sapiens They had broader social networks. This can allow for help in a major crisis, such as a local drought, where neighbors can help others move forward. In the case of Neanderthals, being isolated, as Thorin demonstrates, they were vulnerable to any ecological “bump.” In addition to all this, we cannot forget about endogamy. Here a genetic analysis confirms that inbreeding weakened Neanderthals, reducing their fertility and biological resistance, without the need to invoke psychological factors. Something that also anticipated his complete disappearance from this planet. Images | 12019 In Xataka | A 4,000-kilometer “hybrid zone” in the heart of Europe: what we know about Neanderthals has just changed

Science now believes that our biological expiration date is more hereditary than we thought.

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For years, the scientific consensus and popular culture have repeated a reassuring mantra: genes they only determine 20 or 25% of life expectancy. The rest of this fell on our shoulders directly with the lifestyle, diet or even the environment we surround ourselves with. But this figure, which corresponded to old studieshas changed radically. The study. A study published this week in Science has come to shake the foundations of biogerontology. Led by molecular biologist Uri Alon of the Weizmann Institute in Israel, the research suggests that We have been massively underestimating the role of DNA. Something that they have been able to know after cleaning the data from the statistical “noise” with a very resounding conclusion behind it: the heritability of human life expectancy is around 55%. What we knew. The percentage of participation of current genetics was based on research carried out in the 90s and whose key was the definition of “dying.” The oldest studies analyzed cohorts of Danish-Swedish twins taking mortality as a whole. In this way, if one twin died of cancer at 90 and the other from a car accident at 30, the statistics interpreted that genetics had very little influence. The present. But now, Alon’s team has applied a new mathematical model to separate two concepts that used to be mixed up. One of these was extrinsic mortality, that is, deaths caused by external and random factors such as accidents, pandemics or wars. On the other hand, we have intrinsic mortality, which is true biological aging and is not due to an accident, but to the ‘wear and tear’ of the organism over time. In this way, by removing the noise of extrinsic mortality from historical data, the weight of genetics begins to skyrocket. The results. The new study, published at the end of January, is not just based on a simulation but has analyzed decades of records. On the one hand, data from twins born between 1870 and 1900 have been reanalyzed, which are the original studies where the extrinsic factor was included. By removing it, the genetic correlation again became much stronger. The team crossed their models with sibling data for 444 American centenarians confirming that extreme longevity clusters in families much more than chance or shared environment could explain. In this way, the study corrects what experts call prior estimation biases. That is, the 20-25% figures were not wrong. per sebut they included too much “bad luck.” Lifestyle matters. That the weight of genetics is much greater than we think, does not mean that we should abandon the gym and a balanced diet. And although genetics determine 55% of aging, the other almost half continues to depend on the environment and lifestyle. And this must continue to be maintained. On the other hand, this has enormous implications for personalized medicine. If the “expiration date” of our tissues is more programmed than we thought, anti-aging therapies will have to focus much more on editing or modulating that genetic load, and not just on telling us to eat more vegetables (which too). Images | LOGAN WEAVER | @LGNWVR In Xataka | In Spain there are already 148 people over 64 years of age for every 100 young people. And that is a ticking time bomb for the economy.

In 2024 we feared that the asteroid YR4 would impact the Earth. Now NASA believes the Moon is threatened

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For a few weeks at the beginning of 2025, the name 2024 YR4 became an absolute protagonist among the main institutions around the planet. It was no wonder, since this object, with an estimated size between 40 and 60 metersreached the level 3 on the Torino scalea milestone that we have not seen for a long time and that implies a probability of collision greater than 1% with the capacity to produce devastating local damage. We are saved. After this fear, science has managed to reach the conclusion that the Earth is safe now. However, the story of 2024 YR4 is not over, since the latest models suggest that, although it will avoid us, there is a non-negligible probability that it will end up crashing into the Moon. How we knew. Initially, NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) held his breath in early 2025. The first observations showed a worrying scenario for the year 2032 with this possible impact, but the moment more attention began to be paid to this object it was seen that it was not going to end up on Earth. The key to being able to breathe a little calmer again lies in the ‘shoulders’ of the James Webb which began making observations in May 2025. The space telescope made it possible to refine the asteroid’s orbit with a 20% precision improvement, confirming that there is no risk of impact against our planetnor an orbital alteration of the Moon that could affect us secondarily. But by closing a door, the JWST opened a fascinating and destructive window: the probability that 2024 YR4 will impact the Moon has risen from 3.8% to 4.3%. The lunar judgment. According to studies recently published on arXiv, the key date is December 22, 2032. That day is where there is about a 1 in 23 chance that we will see a violent spectacle on the lunar surface with an impact that would release an energy of 6.5 megatons of TNT. This is something very relevant, since this great energy would generate a crater approximately one kilometer in diameter and the ejection of 100 million kilos of lunar debris with a cloud of material equivalent to the weight of about 20,000 elephants. From Earth. Logically, this impact, although it does not occur on the planet, the truth is that it will have important consequences and not exactly physical ones, but rather a visual phenomenon. The debris that will be ejected from the Moon could enter the Earth’s atmosphere some time later, generating an unprecedented meteor shower caused by a secondary impact. The use of technology. Over time, the European Space Agency has also validated this data, placing the size of the object more specifically between 53 and 67 meters and confirming the 4% probability of having an impact on the moon. Although logically we also have a 96% chance that it will completely pass from the Moon. But this asteroid has had a very positive point: it has vindicated the need to improve space detection tools. And right now these objects are hiding in the “blind spot” of the sun’s glare, although with this one we were lucky that the ATLAS system in Chile managed to detect it. A future mission. Given this limitation that we have, the ESA has seen it necessary to activate the NEOMIR missionsince if it had already been active, it would have detected the asteroid a month earlier, offering vital reaction time if the threat had been against the Earth and not against the Moon. And now what. For now, we have to wait. The asteroid has moved away in this case and will not be in an optimal position to make an observation again until 2028. It will be then that astronomers will be able to refine this 4.3% probability and tell us definitively whether we will spend Christmas 2032 looking at the Moon to see how a new crater forms live. Images | Mike Petrucci NASA Hubble Space Telescope In Xataka | Japan has lost a five-ton satellite in the most unusual way imaginable: “it fell” during launch

We have been relying on the Nutri-Score in stores for years. Science believes that its real impact is zero

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He Nutriscore what we can see in some foods born with an ambitious promise: simplify the nutritional complexity of products into a code of easy to understand colors to know if a food is healthy or not. However, what on paper seemed like the definitive solution against obesity and poor diet is facing a much grayer scientific reality. His dark side. Although the idea seemed quite good, the reality is that new scientific reviews are setting off alarm bells. The conclusion being drawn is quite clear: the real impact on the shopping basket is minimal and the algorithm categorizes foods that are essential as something very bad. A good gap. One of the strongest arguments in favor of Nutri-Score comes from studies conducted in controlled environments, i.e. a laboratory. But what happens when we go down to the real, everyday world? This is what they wanted to analyze in a recent narrative reviewwhich evaluates consumer behavior in physical supermarkets and throws cold water on the system. And with this food color coding, the data shows that the improvement in the nutritional score of the purchase is only 2.5%. That is to say, it has hardly been noticed that a person begins to eat much more appropriate foods with this color code. Something that quite disagrees with the laboratory results that predicted that the effect was going to be much better. The real victim. The fact that some people’s shopping baskets have improved a little is the motivation that some producers of these foods have to change their ingredients to achieve a better Nutri-Score. as seen on Eroski. But this does not mean that citizens have changed the way they shop. The great blind spot. The fiercest criticism from the scientific field, highlighted by organizations such as the Puleva Nutrition Instituteis the omission of micronutrients. The current algorithm focuses almost exclusively on macronutrients, which are fat, sugars and proteins, but forgets other points that are fundamental. One of these points are vitamins and minerals, which are logically essential for the body, especially because some of them must be taken as they are not produced by the body. But polyphenols or bioactive compounds also stand out, which are essential antioxidants that can prevent chronic diseases. Unfair penalty. The system that is implemented right now also penalizes foods for their total fat content without differentiating whether they are healthy, something that has led to putting a bad score for olive oil. A paradoxical situation. The study from the University of Granada wanted to see the same thing about soluble cocoa to highlight these large discrepancies that force us to question Nutri-score. The result of the research team indicates that while pure cocoas with a higher bioactive profile can receive low grades such as C or D. But, on the other hand, others ultra-processed products with additives They achieve better scores, even A, simply by adjusting their sugar or fiber levels, without necessarily being healthier. Trying to correct it. The scientific community is no stranger to this problem and logically when something goes wrong you want to fix it to make it fit reality and that it truly fulfills the objective with which it was created. In fact, recent updates have already tried to correct the algorithm to better treat vegetable oils and nuts and penalize ultra-processed foods more strongly. However, the validations insist that, although there is an association between scores and macronutrientsthere remain huge gaps with comprehensive dietary guidelines. And we must keep in mind that the Nutri-Score measures “isolated nutrients” but not the overall quality of the food. ¿Where are we going? Science seems to indicate that the Nutri-Score is a useful but overly simplistic tool. By trying to condense health into a letter, nuances are lost that really make a difference in longevity and disease prevention. Although the algorithm is being refined to better align with European recommendations, the risk of the consumer blindly trusting an “A” for a processed product versus a “C” for a natural food remains present. Images | Franki Chamaki In Xataka | Ozempic’s “great rebound”, in figures: science reveals that the weight returns four times faster than with a diet

Barcelona believes it has a night security problem. So you’re going to leave the Christmas lights on all year long

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Vigo risks losing his position as “city of lights” (from Spain). Although the Galician City Council usually displays its Christmas decorations already in July and boasts every year of the millions and millions of LEDs that adorn its streets for almost two months, from November to January, there is another city that is about to raise the stakes: Barcelona. There the Consistory has decided maintain part of the lighting for the festivities Old City during the remainder of winter. Their reasons actually have little to do with Christmas. Lights, lights and more lights. Christmas may be over, but in Spain it is becoming common for us to talk about its lights for months and months. In Vigo they do it because the City Council begins to hang them in the middle of Julywith the thermometer flirting with 30º and the city full of tourists in shorts and flip-flops. Now they will do it too in Barcelonaalthough for other reasons. What do they want to do there? The news I advanced it on Monday The Vanguard: Barcelona is finalizing a plan to improve the lighting of some of the narrowest (and darkest) streets of Ciutat Vella, taking advantage of part of the decoration that was installed there this Christmas. That is to say, in the absence of traditional streetlights, garlands strung between facades are good. Although Jaume Collboni’s team has not yet revealed the details of the initiative, the idea does seem clear: it is not so much about neighbors, merchants and tourists continuing to walk for months under decorations of Santa Clauses, Three Wise Men and Christmas trees, but rather about maintaining the most ‘timeless’ designs. Walking under light bulbs. The key is therefore to take advantage of decoration that does not clash with the rest of the winter. To reinforce it, the municipal government also proposes maintaining the garlands that the merchants themselves have placed. In the Gòtic there are businesses that have been hanging decorative lights on their own, although as these were private initiatives they encountered challenges such as the passage of garbage trucks or some parades. Where, when and how. While waiting for the City Council to provide more details about where, when and how the initiative will be deployed, The Vanguard has advanced some keys: the measure will focus on points in Ciutat Vella, Gótic and Sant Pere streets, Santa Caterina and Ribera that aspire to improve their lighting. Regarding the calendar, councilor Albert Batlle explains that the Consistory proposes keeping the lights for several months: “The will is that the measure be implemented, now and in the future, during the winter time period, approximately between the last weekend of October and the last weekend of March.” Two keys: trade and security. Batlle too confirm that the measure pursues two objectives: to favor the businesses and residents of the area and to put an end to alleys in which pickpockets find refuge. “We want to improve the lighting of some small streets in Gòtic and Sant Pere, Santa Caterina and la Ribera to promote commercial, cultural and social revitalization, and also to improve the feeling of security, especially on days with fewer hours of daylight,” he adds. “We are working on the formula to enhance this network.” “They give them more qualms”. The measure appears to have had good reception among the businesses in the area, which even proposed expanding the list of roads that were initially going to benefit from the lights. “If the streets are more illuminated, walking becomes safer and commerce will benefit,” recognize to The Newspaper David González, from the Via Laietana Merchants Association. Proof of how convincing the measure is is that at the time some businessmen from Born they already started to hang garlands at your own risk. “People go along Paseo del Born very happy because the promenade and the streets are usually well lit. But the dark alleys make them hesitant.” The idea has also been found with detractors who consider it a patch. But… Does it work? Although he has achieved reduce your crimeBarcelona usually appears in the area highest of the rankings about the cities insecure from Spain. The key is whether more public lighting will translate into greater real safety, a question that has generated debate in recent years. What they do seem to confirm cases like that of Vigo is that a good commitment to street lighting (even if it is seasonal) serves to attract thousands of visitors. Images | Barcelona City Council (X) and Núria (Flickr) In Xataka | The upper area of ​​Barcelona no longer interests the rich: the Eixample has become fashionable and its neighbors tremble because of the prices

Europe believes it has won the gas war against Russia, but it has forgotten one small detail: infrastructure

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Europe has made a historic decision: 2027 will be the year in which the last trace of Russian gas disappear from the energy system of the continent. However, between the offices in Brussels and the reality of homes there is a chasm that is not measured in cubic meters, but in months of construction. The continent’s security no longer depends on diplomacy with the Kremlin, but on the speed at which terminals can be erected, tubes connected and ships deployed. The new European sovereignty is in the hands of the engineers. A system to build. As analyst Giacomo Prandelli explainsthe focus of the Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) market has been on the price, but the real crisis is infrastructure. Europe is in a frantic race to replace Russian gas, but much of the necessary capacity is still under construction or in the planning phase. This has created a golden opportunity for a very select group of companies that own the physical assets. According to Prandelli, there are vital European companies that still go unnoticed. He gives as an example a firm valued at 662 million euros that operates “at a bargain price”: Their profits are very high compared to their stock market value and, most importantly, they already have government contracts secured until 2030. They are, basically, the owners of the “plugs” that Europe is forced to go through. The reasons for structural change. The reason for this urgency is an irreversible “divorce”. According to data collected by OilPriceRussian exports by gas pipeline to Europe have fallen by 44% in 2025, reaching lows in the 1970s. The definitive closure of the Ukrainian route this December leaves the continent without its historic arteries. The reasons for this new reality are three: US dependence: US gas It already represents 56% of LNG imports in Europe. The July 2025 agreementby which the EU will buy 750 billion dollars in energy from the US, has reconfigured the global board. The physical rigidity of the system: Although there is plenty of gas in the global market, European regasification plants (especially in the Netherlands) have operated at the limit of their technical capacity. Spain has the gas, but cannot send it to the rest of Europe: its pipelines with France they only allow export 8,500 million m³ per year. The problem is not the lack of fuel, it is the “funnel” of the pipes. Gas as an eternal backup: A report from McKinsey & Company issues an uncomfortable warning: Gas demand will grow by 26% until 2050. Europe needs gas to stabilize its electricity grid when renewables fail. The energy transition, far from eliminating gas, has turned it into a “permanent strategic pillar.” The Black Sea axis and the ghost fleet. However, the European wall has cracks. Hungary and Slovakia they keep injecting money to the Kremlin via the Druzhba pipeline and the TurkStream route. While Brussels asks for disconnection, Budapest and Bratislava build new connections towards the Black Sea, claiming that the cut would be “economic suicide.” Added to this is the fear of the “ghost fleet.” Brussels fears that Russian gas will repeat the oil scriptan opaque market of ships that change flag and documentation to hide the origin of the gas. To avoid this, the EU has imposed fines of up to 3.5% of global turnover and certificate of origin systems, but the crude oil precedent shows that, when Europe closes a door, the market usually opens a clandestine window. Europe’s floating lifebuoy. Given the slowness of concrete, a technical solution arises. According to Professor Alexandre Munspoints towards FSRUs (Floating Storage and Regasification Units). These ships are mobile regasification plants that use the heat of the sea to process the gas. According to Muns, their advantages are the speed of deployment and the cost since they can be rented for about $155,000 per day. Giants such as Excelerate Energy or Höegh LNG are those that today allow the EU to keep the pulse. Without these ships, the gas crossing the Atlantic simply would have nowhere to enter the continent. The tyranny of the calendar. Europe closes 2025 with deceptive calm. As reported by El Economistaprices have fallen to four-year lows (€27/MWh) thanks to a mild winter and the constant flow of ships. But, as the president of Sedigas, Joan Batalla, warns, this stability is “conditional.” Any extreme cold snap or technical failure in a saturated terminal could skyrocket prices again, because the network operates without margin for error. Europe’s autonomy is no longer negotiated in Moscow; It is built in the ports of Germany, in the interconnections of the Pyrenees and in the FSRU shipyards. The success of the 2027 plan will not depend on politicians’ promises, but on cranes and welders finishing their work before the climate changes the rules of the game. Image | freepik Xataka | The European Union has finally made the decision that has terrified it for so many years: stop importing Russian gas

Almost all phones with optical zoom have the same problem. This Chinese brand believes it has solved it in a curious way

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The greatest illusion trick in mobile photography is continuity between cameras. When we zoom from 1x to 5x on a telephoto smartphone, we are not moving lenses like on a camera; the mobile jumps between fixed sensors and fills the gaps with digital cropping and AI. The result is those sudden jumps in color and image in the viewfinder and a loss of quality in the “intermediate zooms” that we make when pinching the screen. Tecno, the star brand of the giant Transsion—the fifth largest manufacturer in the world hot on Xiaomi’s heels in some markets—has taken advantage of its annual event to present two technologies that attack precisely this problem: a zoom that does not “jump” and a periscope that shrinks. Optical continuous zoom. And from an increase, up to nine. The most ambitious proposal is the “Freeform Continuum Telephoto”. On paper, it promises to maintain optical sharpness throughout. It represents an important leap, although it is not the first: Sony tried it with the Xperia 1 IValthough its range was more limited. LG also showed similar concepts a few years ago, but no one had promised to cover the main angle lens to the long telephoto lens in a single module. To achieve this milestone without turning the mobile phone into a brick, the Chinese firm moves away from the traditional design of lenses that move longitudinally. Instead, they turn to physical principle of the “Alvarez Lenses”: a system that employs two lenses with free-form surfaces that move perpendicular to the optical axis. By sliding one over the other from the side, they change the optical power of the set and achieve that zoom effect. This technology is related to recent reports that Samsung was developing cameras with continuous zoom for Chinese manufacturers. A periscope that folds on itself. The second innovation presented by Tecno attacks the volume. We are obsessed with increasingly larger sensorsbut the space inside the mobile is finite. Periscopic telephoto cameras require a lot of space, but Tecno and its “Dual-Mirror Reflect Telephoto” promise to reduce the size of the module by 50% and its height by 10%. Instead of a simple prism that bends light 90 degrees, the system uses coaxial optics that bounce light multiple times inside the lens using reflective mirrors. It is what allows long focal lengths in a shorter physical distance. However, this design has a physical trace– When using a central obstruction, the bokeh is not circular, but rather takes on a donut shape. Tecno sells it as an artistic feature, the truth is that it is a consequence of mirror optics. Battle against the accused. The new thing from Tecno comes at a time when mobile photography It depends a lot on the processing what are you looking for the photo instagrammable above realism. Going for better optics instead of digital cropping and AI rescaling seems to be the right direction to achieve naturalness. However, we must maintain some caution. The challenge of this zoom is not only that it works, but that it is bright. Maintaining a decent aperture throughout that range is no easy task. If the system is too dark, the ISO will shoot up, generating noise that the software will have to remedy: back to processing. For the moment, we must wait to see if these concepts end up in a commercial mobile phone. Images | Techno In Xataka | I am an amateur photographer, and I will tell you which are the best phones to take almost professional photos without leaving you a fortune.

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