born

If the question is whether the rich are born or made, the answer is condensed in a graph that shows that Spain is different

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Globally, the distribution of wealth is not only measured by how much money the richest have, but also by the economic flow and what it is like. the architecture of success that each country has built. The balance between “own merit” and “cradle” defines the identity of an economy: while in some countries they function as innovation laboratories where fortunes emerge from nothing, in others they function as a kind of safe deposit box where heritage is transmitted from generation to generation like a modern noble title. This chart from the German economic data analysis platform DataPulse and is made from Forbes data for June 2025. At that time, the business magazine counted 2,838 billionaires around the world. Forbes ranks each using its own scoring system (Self-Made score), which ranges from 1 to 10 according to the weight of the inheritance versus one’s own merit. The overall result is clear: two out of every three millionaires are millionaires because they “made themselves.” But this statement hides abysmal differences that reflect how economic power works in each society. By the way, a global fact that the graph itself highlights: between 2024 and 2025 the total wealth of all the billionaires in the world grew by 13.4%. According to the UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025that growth pushed aggregate wealth to an all-time high of $15.8 trillion. Wealth: Self-made vs. inheritances. Data Pulse with data from Forbes Where does the fortune of the world’s richest come from: inheritance or self-made? The upper area of ​​the graph is where those countries are located where it is easier to get rich on your own and is led by Russia and China: both appear with 97% of billionaires self-madethe highest percentage in the world. They may be entrepreneurial countries, but the true differential feature must be found in their history: their respective revolutions of the 20th century They destroyed any inheritable private capital (the Bolshevik in 1917 and the Maoist in 1949). So technically, their fortunes are first generation because they couldn’t be from any other. However, this small print also includes Forbes’ conception of Self-made: In the Russian case, the main oligarchs accumulated their wealth in the 90s by taking advantage of Yeltsin’s savage privatizations. He Harvard’s Wilson Center says it loud and clear: It was one of the largest transfers of public wealth into private hands in modern history. Calling it self-made is at least generous. Although the United States is the country with the most millionaires in number with almost 924 people and according to the UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025 74% of them are self-made, not the one that appears higher in the graph. The United Kingdom, Canada and Israel stand out there. What they all have in common are economies with developed capital markets, active venture capital ecosystems and legal frameworks that facilitate the creation and scaling of companies. In Germany, France or Spain inheritance rules. The Western European bloc is the area where inherited wealth weighs the most, with Germany as an extreme case: only 25% of its rich people are so because they built their own fortune. Family Capital explains it quite well: the ten largest German assets are all linked to family businesses. There are no great new generation technological fortunes. What there are are “old-fashioned” names, such as the Quandts at BMW, the Albrechts behind Aldi or the Würths: post-war industrial dynasties that have passed down their empires from generation to generation. Spain and France embrace a similar logic: they have legal frameworks that strongly protect intergenerational wealth transmission, scarcity and/or weakness of a technological ecosystem comparable to that which exists in the Anglo-Saxon or Asian ecosystem, and a business culture where family control of capital is considered a value in itself. Just above Germany is Spain, which has second place in the world in percentage of inherited wealth, with 74% of its billionaires in that category and only 26% self-made. Although there is the occasional green shoot of a modernized economy, it is residual: Spanish wealth is historically concentrated in a very small number of families with dominant positions in sectors with little competition. In short, generally In Spain wealth comes from dad. As in Germany, the names in the Spanish state are great classics: the Ortega family with Inditex, the Del Pino with Ferrovial, the March, the Entrecanales or the Lara. They are fortunes built for the most part during the Franco regime or the transition, in a context of little competition, privileged access to credit and close relations with political power. The result is what the graph shows: a country where becoming a billionaire from scratch is statistically almost an anomaly. In Xataka | We thought that millionaires had their fortune rain down from the sky without the slightest effort: Spain is different In Xataka | The “Great Transfer of Wealth” is not only a thing for the rich: demographic change will concentrate wealth among the youngest Cover | DataPulse

James Webb has had to investigate whether he was born “from the top down” or “from the bottom up”

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29 Cygni b is a huge celestial object, with a mass equal to 15 times the mass of Jupiter. Apparently it is a planet, but that mass could place it as a star. For example, a brown dwarf. Therefore, a team of astronomers has used the James Webb to analyze its origin, further refining the concept of the formation of stars and planets. A question of metals. The authors of the study, who it was just publishedhave used the NIRCam camera on the James Webb Space Telescope to take photographs of this planet. This instrument allows high-resolution images and spectroscopy measurements to be taken, with which the composition of the atmospheres of stars and planets can be studied, taking into account how they reflect light. Thanks to this, it has been seen that 29 Cygni b is very enriched in metals compared to the star around which it is located. Specifically, it has an amount of metals equivalent to 150 Earths. This is compatible with the accretion of a large amount of metal-laden solids into a protoplanetary disk. It is then confirmed that it is a planet, but a planet very unusual. Planet or star? That’s the question. Planet formation takes place in a bottom-up process. In a disk of gas and dust, known as a protoplanetary disk, dust particles collide to form small fragments of rock and ice, which continue to clump together and grow until they form a planet. It is a process called accretion. The largest ones, in addition, in this process capture gas, which is why they later become gas giants. On the other hand, stars form from top to bottom. A gas cloud fragments and each fragment collapses under its own gravity, becoming smaller and denser. From paradox to paradox. This definition could lead us to think that planets are larger than stars. After all, planets go from less to more and stars from more to less. However, that is not true. Stars form when huge clouds of gas collapse, so they are still very massive. So much so that nuclear fusion can occur in them due to the high conditions of pressure and temperature. On the planets, although there is a growth from less to more, it is not so great. The problem is that with planets as immense as 29 Cygni b there are doubts about the formation from less to more. It would seem that they were also formed by a fragmentation process in protoplanetary disks. As explained by the European Space Agency in a statementis something that “could explain why some very massive objects are found billions of kilometers from their host stars, in regions where the protoplanetary disk should have been too weak for accretion to occur.” That’s just what happens with 29 Cyni b. It has an enormous mass and is 2,400 kilometers from its star. What James Webb teaches us. The fact that 29 Cygni b is so rich in metals indicates that it must have been formed by an accretion process, in which it accumulated more and more. In fact, heIt is normal for a planet to have many metals in proportion to its starwhich happens in the system in which 29 Cygni b is located. In short, it is shown that much larger planets than we thought can be formed by accretion, without having to resort to a top-down process. And now what? 29 Cygni b has been the first of the four objects that will be studied by James Webb. All of them have a mass between 1 and 15 times that of Jupiter and are at least 1.5 billion kilometers from their star. This indicates that they are all in that dilemma of being huge planets or another star. Cataloging them into one of the two groups can help us understand much better the process by which the largest planets are formed. Image | NASA, ESA, CSA, J. Olmsted (STScI) In Xataka | Since we were children we have been told that Jupiter is enormous, colossal, exaggeratedly large. It is 8 km smaller and that changes everything

humans born there will cease to be Homo sapiens

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with the mission Artemis II operational around the Moon, humanity has Mars among its colonizing desires. Past and present missions, such as NASA’s Curiosity rover, aim to analyze its surface for clues to past habitability. And although we have found them, leave a lot of unknowns. We haven’t set foot on Mars yet and we already have in mind how we will build the houses there (spoiler: with bricks and urine). And that if one day a human being is born in a possible human colony on Mars, it will not be homo sapiens on the anthropological level. Because in short, if we get to Mars and start being born there, we will no longer be the same species: Scott Solomon, an evolutionary biologist at Rice University, has been studying this question for years and has reached that conclusion, which he recently published in his work “Becoming Martian“. If you are born on Mars, you are not homo sapiens. Solomon differentiates between those who arrive from Earth to Mars and survive there, those colonists who arrive at the red planet with a body molded by millions of years of evolution here. But their creatures and their creatures will not have the same luck. In short, it will be the beginning of the end for homo sapiens. Mars has 38% of Earth’s gravity, radiation two or three times higherthere is no protective magnetic field nor the microbial biosphere with which our immune system It was evolving. All of the above constitutes an engine of biological change and evolution that has marked our anatomy and its absence, too. Why is it important. Evolutionary biology has a name for what will happen: allopatric speciation. That is, when a population is isolated and develops in a new environment, natural selection and genetic drift continue their course within the adaptation to the environment with respect to the original population (in this case, those who remain on Earth). The passage of time can cause the two groups to become so different that they are another species, a new human species. And something paradoxical would happen: by looking for planets other than Earth as an alternative to continue preserving the species, we would stop being the same. Context. You don’t have to go to future generations to see the consequences of space life. There is evidence of astronauts on the ISS who have suffered accelerated loss of bone mass, muscle atrophy, cardiovascular problems, vision problems and stress. Until your blood is mutating. The creatures born there will develop their skeleton and nervous system directly under these conditions. Salomon offers concrete changes: denser and shorter bones, greater eumelanin production (a type of melamine responsible for the dark coloration) as protection against radiation, an immune system calibrated for the closed environment of the colony and potentially vulnerable to diseases common on Earth. However, the most sensitive point is reproduction: we do not know for sure whether humans will be able to conceive, gestate and give birth successfully on Mars. Experiments with mammals in microgravity are worrying. The biologist also anticipates that childbirth on Mars would inevitably be surgical: the lower bone density and muscle atrophy make it an even more risky activity. What will happen next. For Solomon there are two possibilities: Let natural selection take its course and shape future generations. The second is to resort to genetic engineering: get ahead of the problem before sending them there. In any case, the macro result is the same: two branches of humanity evolving on separate paths, in different conditions and in different worlds. A dystopian future of genetics and ethics. It should be noted that thousands of generations are needed for speciation to occur, which gives sufficient time for humanity to take measures, such as frequent travel or assisted reproduction with transferred genetic material. Or that genetic engineering steps on the accelerator so much that natural selection takes a backseat. Ethics also comes in here: if a boy or girl is born on Mars and cannot return to Earth because their body cannot resist it, humanity will have made an irreversible decision without their consent. Solomon warns also of that gap in humanity in terms of identity and rights. These are questions that we cannot answer now, but that should be clear before the existence of a colony on Mars is seriously considered. In Xataka | Europe has thought of throwing three robots into a volcanic lava tube and now colonizing the Moon or Mars is closer In Xataka | If the question is “how are we going to build houses on Mars” the answer today is “with bricks made of urine” Cover | Photo of Dmitry Grachyov in Unsplash

This is how the most brutal engineering work in urban history was born

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London Underground, known in our language as the London Undergroundis one of the most famous public transportation networks in the world. With more than 543 units, 408 kilometers long and 274 stations, this precious piece of the United Kingdom capital is capable of handling up to five million passengers a day. Now, this service did not become what it is today overnight. London Underground has a fascinating history, a history that, by the way, began more than 160 years ago with a completely innovative project for the time: the construction of an underground railway. Let’s go back in time. In the 1830s, London was the largest city in the world. It was a rapidly growing global economic epicenter that needed to decongest its streetsso the idea arose that trains They will begin to move underground. The problem was that until then nothing similar had been implemented. After many years of being just a proposal on paper, a test tunnel was built in 1855 at Kibblesworth. After this step, which turned out to be a success, work began on the world’s first underground railway, a circuit between Paddington (then Bishop’s Road) and Farringdon that entered service on January 10, 1863. The locomotives ran on steam engines and the carriages were lit with gas. It was basically like putting up a traditional railway system in a closed placewhich translated into inconvenience for passengers, who often had to travel in a polluted environment with high temperatures. In any case, the metropolis continued to grow and there were more and more transportation initiatives with private investment. Therefore, in 1868 the first section of the Metropolitan District Railway was inaugurated. This was a service that ran between South Kensington and Westminster (now part of the District and Circle lines). Electricity reaches trains Both services continued to expand as tunnel construction techniques improved. On December 18, 1890, The City and South London Railway launched the first electric railway. This was a very important advance because it allowed us to solve some of the main drawbacks of the service. In 1905, electrification came to the District and Circle lines, but the London Underground network operated as separate systems. This changed after 1906, when companies began to make their way deep into the city to unify. In all this, the name ‘Underground’ did not yet exist. Artist’s representation of a platform on Baker Street London in 1906 The companies that had come together for the project proposed different names, including ‘Tube,’ ‘Electric,’ and ‘Underground,’ but the latter was the winner. In this way, in 1908 it appeared for the first time the name ‘Underground’ in the seasons, and he did it with the roundel symbol that we know today. The technological progress of the London Underground seemed unstoppable. That same year, electronic ticket-issuing machines arrived and in 1911 the first escalators were installed. In 1929, manually operated doors began to become extinct. These were updated with pneumatic systems. Until this point, the service was operated by the Underground Electric Railways Company of London (UERL). In 1933, however, underground transportation services merged with the railroads and bus services under the London Transport brand, which was overseen by the London Passenger Transport Board. That same year Harry Beck’s map appearedan element intended to guide users. The system had grown so large that some stations were just meters away, while others were kilometers away. It is a cartography that was received with skepticism, but ended up triumphing. Aldwych tube station, in 1940 For the first time, decisions about London’s public transport services were perfectly coordinated. This allowed us to improve the service and outline an ambitious improvement plan. However, the outbreak of World War II in 1939 meant that the plan could not be completed as originally envisioned. The underground transport service was converted into a huge air raid shelter between September 1940 and May 1945. Some stations were also used during the war as a warehouse to keep valuable historical items safe, for example pieces from the British Museum. After the war, in 1948, the London Passenger Transport Board acquired a public role. HE nationalized and became the London Transport Executive, years later being renamed the London Transport Board and operating under the orbit of the Ministry of Transport. The system also suffered several tragedies. In 1975 a train heading south did not stop at the final terminal and crashed at the end of the shift. 43 people died and 74 were injured. In 1987, a fire claimed 31 lives at King’s Cross station. Later, in 2005, an attack on the London transport system It caused 52 people to lose their lives. Nails contactless cards called Oyster They were implemented on the London Underground in 2003, but by 2014 you could already pay directly with contactless bank cards. By 2016, some lines provided evening service on weekends. Currently the service is run by an organization called Transport for London (TfL) which comprehensively manages the city’s state transportation strategy. Images | Joel de Vriend | Nelson Ndongala | Tomas Anton Escobar | Tom Parsons | Will H McMahan | The Graphic (Wikimedia Commons) | John Jackson In Xataka | The unfinished dream of the Roman Empire: a 125-kilometer train to link Europe and Asia over the Bosphorus In Xataka | France has been torpedoing the possibility of AVE reaching Paris for years: Renfe’s plan is now regional ones In Xataka | In 2007, Japan made a cat the station master of a dying train line. Today that line is saved

Before, stars were born in movies and ended up on Netflix. Now they are born in streaming and end in movies

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‘War Machine’, the war science fiction film starring Alan Ritchson, has accumulated 39.3 million views in its first three days on Netflixbecoming the most viewed title on the platform globally today. The second most viewed film that week was ‘Jurassic World Rebirth’, by a huge margin: 6.7 million. The result is also a symptom of how the star factory has changed: the new star system is born on the platforms, not in the multiplexes. Other figures. The opening of ‘War Machine’ is the second best placed of the year on Netflix to date. If it keeps up the pace, it could aspire to enter the platform’s all-time Top 10 in the English-language film category. To gauge the magnitude: in all 87 countries tracked during that four-day windowthe film ranked number one in 80 of them. What is it about? The film is not especially original in its premise, and its authors do not intend it to be. Directed by Patrick Hughes (from the weak ‘The Expendables 3’ and the fun ‘The Other Bodyguard’) and produced by Lionsgate, it follows a group of candidates for the American Rangers during the final selection phase. Their training maneuver becomes a fight for survival when a robotic threat of alien origin appears. Alan Ritchson plays the character known only as 81, a traumatized combat engineer, even more silent and introverted than his famous Jack Reacher. Although all the critics have stressed its derivative and unpretentious nature, the truth is that its two-hour chase structure finds an enjoyable middle ground between ‘Predator’ and Heinlein’s Space Troops (not Verhoeven, there is no irony here, as seen in an ending with will continue that replies, without venom, the recruitment spots of that masterpiece 1997). ‘War Machine’ embraces its spirit of an effective and direct B series with a healthy brainlessness that makes perfect sense that it has found a millionaire audience, eager to disconnect and let themselves be dazed. The star. It has taken Alan Ritchson almost two decades to become a star. He debuted in ‘Smallville’ as Aquaman and then went unnoticed through multiple series as a secondary character until in 2022 he played the protagonist of ‘Reacher’ on Prime Video. The series, which championed the return of the television “for parents” (of which ‘War Machine’ is also an excellent example), is one of the biggest hits on the Amazon platform, and is already preparing its fourth season. In just a few weeks, Ritchson has managed to position himself as the number one actor simultaneously on Netflix and Prime Video with different projects. The distinction that for years existed between the star of streaming and the one that can sell a blockbuster in theaters with its mere presence is blurring. It is not the only case. Although the case of Ritchson, exclusive streaming star, is particular due to his almost total absence of films in his filmography, there are many other cases of proper names who owe a good part of their fame to the platforms. Pedro Pascal is now a global star whose fame was born entirely in hits for streaming (‘Game of Thrones’, ‘Narcos’, ‘The Last of Us’, ‘The Mandalorian’). Henry Cavill or Chris Hemsworth were born as movie stars, but they consolidated (‘The Witcher’, ‘Tyler Rake’) their fame in streaming. Dave Bautista or John Cena is also finding a second home in streaming thanks to hits like ‘Trap House’ or ‘El Pacificador’. Unmistakable signs of the change of times. Stars germinate in different places, but they generate hits with figures that rival the biggest blockbusters on the big screen. In Xataka | When medical dramas seemed to be in the doldrums, ‘The Pitt’ appeared. And that has forced Netflix to make decisions

Jesus was not born in the year 1 or on December 25. Here’s what we know about his actual and exact date of birth

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With Jesus of Nazareth something curious happens. Few characters have been more celebrated, discussed and reviewed throughout the centuries. Today historians they usually coincide in which (although there is no material evidence of its existence) was a historical figure that can be framed in the Galilee of 2,000 years ago. However, despite all the attention he has received over the last 20 centuries, there are certain key details of his biography that remain shrouded in shadows. For example the date of your birth. And by “date” we don’t just mean the day, but also the year. When discussing, we could even question where was he born. The usual thing is to think that Jesus came into the world on December 25 in Bethlehem of Judea and that six days later humanity (at least the West or the West of Christian influence) entered into a new eraone in which history was dislocated into two stages that we still use today in the 21st century, whether we are Christians or not: the one before and the one after the birth of Christ (Anno Domini). Totally normal, right? That is, why else would we celebrate Christmas every December 25th, a word that comes from the Latin “https://www.xataka.com/magnet/nativitas” (“birth”)? And why do we talk about years BC and AD if it is not for the birth of Christ? Reality is more complicated and has some chiaroscuros. What do we know about the birth of Jesus? The answer to the previous question is very simple: little. Historians usually agree that there are basically two sources to address the topic of the birth of Jesus and both are reflected in the same work: the New Testament of the Bible. The evangelist gives us a clue Matthew. The other, Luke. The problem is not only the scarcity of information, but that both texts were written many decades after the events they narrate. To be more precise, around 80 and 90 AD, half a century after the crucifixion. Of course in the New Testament there are older texts (such as the letters of Paul or even the gospel of Mark, written around 70 AD), but they are of little use if what interests us is the childhood (and especially the birth) of Jesus. Taking into account the few references there are and the importance of the topic (we are talking about the birth of the central character of one of the most influential religions in history), it would be logical that Matthew and Luke coincide in their stories. It’s not like that. In their texts both offer us what experts call “chronological anchors”references that help us date the birth of Jesus, but those clues are scarce and do not quite fit together. What exactly do they tell us? Let’s see. “And when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, behold, wise men came from the east to Jerusalem, saying, ‘Where is the King of the Jews who has been born? For we have seen his star in the east, and we have come to worship him. When Herod heard this, he was troubled, and Jerusalem with him.’ Matthew 2:2-4 “And it came to pass in those days that an edict went out from Augustus Caesar, that all the land should be enumerated. This first enumeration was made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria. And they all went to be enumerated, each one to his city. Then Joseph went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, to be registered with Mary, his wife, who was betrothed to him, who was with child. And it came to pass that while they were there, the days were fulfilled in which she was to give birth.” Luke 2:2-7 Although it may not seem like it a priori, both passages hide a small discrepancy, as explains in Wake up Ferro Professor Javier Alonso, philologist, historian and biblical scholar. The evangelist Matthew (and Luke) tells us that Jesus was born in the time of King Herod, but then Luke specifies that Mary was counted while she and Joseph were traveling to fulfill the census ordered in the time of Augustus. If we review history we see that both “anchors” they collide with each other. Herod the Greatruler under the orders of Rome, ruled Judea more or less between 40 and 4 BCyear of his death. As for the census that Luke tells us about, historians believe that it coincided with the census carried out by Quirinus in the time of Augustus, a fact mentioned by Flavius ​​Josephus. The problem, remember Alonsois that Quirinus ruled around 6 AD the region that covers Judea, years after the death of Herod. Conclusion? Both evangelists are actually drawing a fairly broad time frame, of a decade, that could be set between the years prior to the king’s death and 6 AD “There is a difference of at least 10 years between Matthew and Luke,” explains Alonso. Why do we say that Jesus was born when he was born? At this point that is the most reasonable question. If the evangelists point to a time horizon that begins several years before our era (Anno Domini), because devils Do we say that Jesus was born a few days before the 1st AD? Who and how set that date? To answer these questions we must go back a few centuries, although without reaching the era of Herod. Our attention will focus on beginning of the 5th ADwhen at the request of the Pope the Scythian monk Dionysus ‘the Exiguous’ He launched into a difficult task: calculating the date of Christ’s birth. It may sound strange that so many centuries later the followers of Jesus would worry about this question, but at stake there was a primary issue: clarifying when Easter should be celebrated (Computus paschalis), the main celebration of Christianity. Its date … Read more

TeraWave, Blue Origin’s satellite internet, is born

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Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has announced this Wednesday the deployment of 5,408 satellites to create TeraWave, a satellite communications network that will compete directly with starlink from SpaceX. But there is a crucial difference: it is not intended for you or me. What Blue Origin proposes. TeraWave promises speeds of up to 6 terabits per second, both upload and download, anywhere on the planet, according to the company. Deployment will begin at the end of 2027 with a constellation that will combine satellites in low and medium Earth orbit, connected by optical links. The network is designed to serve a maximum of approximately 100,000 customers, not millions like its competitors. The big difference with Starlink. While the service deployed by Elon Musk’s company, with more than 9,000 satellites in orbit and some 9 million customers, focuses on offering internet to individual consumers, companies and governments alike, TeraWave is committed to an exclusively business approach. Blue Origin has made clear that its network is “designed specifically for enterprise customers,” targeting data centers, governments and enterprises that require reliable connectivity for critical operations. Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin and former head of Amazon devices, confirmed in the statement that this is an “enterprise grade” service. An increasingly saturated market. Bezos is not only competing with Musk, but also with his own creature: Amazon. The e-commerce company Leo is deploying (formerly Project Kuiper), a network of 3,236 satellites of which there are already 180 in orbit. Unlike TeraWave, Leo does target both businesses, consumers and governments, competing more directly with Starlink. In addition, several Chinese companies are rapidly developing similar constellations with low-cost reusable rockets, following the strategy that SpaceX established with your Falcon 9. Why do they aim so high in speed?. Those 6 terabits per second that TeraWave promises are extreme even by current enterprise standards, well above what rival commercial services offer. So yes, indeed, Blue Origin aims to meet the demand for data centers for AI. And the TeraWave announcement coincides with a career in the space industry for building data centers in space that can meet the growing demand for large-scale AI processing. Musk has already expressed his desire to build these space centers complementing Starlink, while Bezos already predicted that will be common in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years. The logistical challenge. To put 5,408 satellites into orbit you need a reliable and economical launch machine. This is where Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket comes in, which although it has completed two launches, has not yet reached the necessary flight rate. Last November, the company achieved an important milestone upon successful landing the New Glenn booster after the launch of two NASA spacecraft, becoming the second company, after SpaceX, to achieve this feat. Bezos’s commitment to space. The founder of Amazon has been preaching about the potential of Blue Origin for years. In 2024, during an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Bezos stated who believes Blue Origin “will be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it will take time.” Founded in 2000, the company has been primarily known for its tourist flights to the edge of space. Last year he also took both his current wife, Lauren Sánchez, and to the singer Katy Perry or to our national survivor, Jesus Calleja. Cover image | Jeff Bezos In Xataka | SpaceX has made sending things to space very cheap. The problem is that now space is full of things

We know that role-playing video games were born 50 years ago. What we don’t know exactly is which game was the first

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If when they ask you about the first role-playing video game in history, a legendary franchise will undoubtedly come to mind: ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘. The influence of the then newborn board role-playing game was undeniable in the first titles of the genre, but to determine a foundational touchstone we have a serious problem: there are several candidates. The first roles. In 1975, half a century agothe genre of role-playing video games as we know it was born. Just one year after Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson will publish ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘, different American university students They transferred the board game experience to computer systems of the time (huge mainframes or data systems), creating titles like ‘dnd’, ‘pedit5’ and ‘Dungeon’. Those experiments laid the foundations for the industry along with early icons like ‘Spacewar’, but determining which came first is not so easy. Why D&D. Dungeons & Dragons It sold 3,000 copies during its first year.a modest figure but behind which there is a great cultural impact among university students. Some of the concepts that ‘D&D’ introduced in early role-playing games (life points, accumulating experience, progression by levels, character classes, dice system – that is, chance – to resolve combat…) were of a statistical nature. It was ideal to be processed by computerswho calculated probabilities faster than any human game master. The convergence was inevitable: American campuses brought together both programmers with access to computers and players obsessed with Dungeons & Dragons. Sometimes it was the same people. What was PLATO. This proto-internet served as the basis for many of these games to spread: its acronym is equivalent to Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations, it was developed at the University of Illinois in 1960, and was born as an educational tool, although it ended up going far beyond that initial purpose. Towards the mid-seventies This network connected approximately a dozen mainframes with several thousand terminals distributed globally. The system incorporated revolutionary technologies for the time: plasma screens with a resolution of 512×512 pixels, interfaces 16×16 touch points and transmission speed of 1,200 bits per second. But his true legacy was to become a precursor to the Internet by including discussion forums, email, chat rooms and, at a certain point in its history, real-time multiplayer video games. In this way, and as it could not be otherwise, the university students subverted the initially academic purpose of PLATO: the programmers disguised their games with names that pretended to be educational files to avoid being detected and deleted by university administrators (hence the cryptic titles, almost based on acronyms, of some games). The pioneer dungeon. In this way, and thanks to the possibilities that PLATO offered, during 1975 several programmers worked without knowing each other on the creation of the first RPG for computer. Rusty Rutherford, a 35-year-old doctoral student at the University of Illinois, developed ‘pedit5‘ (also called ‘The Dungeon’). The game featured a fixed 40-50 room dungeon with random monster and treasure encounters, establishing the concept of the “dungeon crawl”. The character combined the three classic ‘D&D’ classes: warrior, wizard and cleric. Players generated attributes such as Strength, Dexterity, Constitution and Intelligence, and had eight different spells at their disposal. The random nature of the encounters made it a direct precursor of the roguelike. The game could only hold 20 simultaneous characters, a limit that became a problem when its popularity exploded. The first final boss in history. Southern Illinois University students Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood completed ‘dnd‘ (‘The Game of Dungeons’) after ‘pedit5’ demonstrated the viability of the concept. ‘dnd’ expanded its offering with multiple dungeon levels, a teleporter system, and allowed players to leave the dungeon, recover, and return later, gradually accumulating power over multiple sessions. Its big innovation was a scoring system inspired by pinball machines, which made players collect gold and leave. The solution was to create an ultimate goal, the Orb, guarded by a dragon in the deepest levels. Thus, it was the first video game to feature a “boss fight”, a final climatic encounter. Technical sophistication. In California, meanwhile, Don Daglow was programming his own game, Dungeonfor him mainframe PDP-10 from Claremont University. Daglow implemented sophisticated mechanics: line of sight, fog of war, automapping, and NPCs with rudimentary artificial intelligence. The game required 36K of RAM, a very notable amount at the time. Finally, on November 4, 1975, John Daleske, Gary Fritz and their team released a second game called ‘Dungeon’ on PLATO, considered as one of the first MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons). That same year ‘Moria’ also appeared, by Kevet Duncombe and Jim Battin, allowing up to ten simultaneous players in the same game, which is a direct precedent for future MMORPGs. In Xataka | Virtual dungeons: The successes and failures of bringing ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ to video games

The longest train in history was born in 2001 and since then no one has surpassed it

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The train is the backbone of many countries. In Europe we know it wellin Latin America is catching up and the China and Japan current ones would not be understood without it. Another country where it is vital is Australia, although more than for the movement of the population, for the transport of goods. And, in 2001, in the heart of Western Australia, the BHP Iron Ore It made history by becoming the longest train in the world. More than seven kilometers long that have not yet been equaled. Necessary. One of the most powerful industries in Australia is mining, so much so that there are even mining influencers that recruit workers from any country. In the late 90s, mining companies faced a challenge: an increasing amount of mineral had to be transported from the source to the export ports. It was a challenge because logistics costs had to be kept under control so that prices did not skyrocket. Traditionally, we would have chosen to put more trains into operation, but it would not be efficient because we would have to pay for more fuel, for the use of the infrastructure and the salaries of a larger crew. Come into play BHPthe Australian giant that is one of the largest mining companies in the world, with an idea: what if we set up a huge train to load iron? This is how the Iron Ore train was born. The BHP Iron Ore train. Its dimensions were extraordinary: a convoy made up of 682 wagons, 5,648 wheels, a loaded weight of almost 100,000 tons and a length of 7,353 kilometers. Imagine 22 Eiffel Towers lying down and aligned, like this. To pull such a monster, eight locomotives GE AC6000CW (each with 6,000 HP) with 16-cylinder engines were distributed throughout the vehicle. Apart from the front, the rest were within a kilometer of each other and managed to complete a 275 kilometer Yandi journey, with a cargo of Newman mines, to Port Hedland in just ten hours. The pace was slow, yes, but the important thing about this was not It was the Guinness record that he achieved, but the proof of a technology called Distributed Power. Distributed Power. This was BHP’s goal, to prove that the technology worked. And it basically consists of what we have said: distributing the locomotives along the train instead of concentrating them in the front so that the traction and braking force is greater, more uniform and, also, more efficient. Everything worked like a Swiss clock thanks to great precision and harmony between the locomotives, which were controlled by a single driver in the front system. It’s long, and there’s no train If Distributed Power was the technology, the control system was the LOCOTROL. The leading locomotive communicated with the remote ones through a radio frequency system that synchronized all acceleration and braking operations. This allowed lateral forces and friction to be drastically reduced when cornering, which reduced both wheel wear and the risk of derailment and, in turn, it is estimated that between 4 and 6% less fuel was consumed. Pilbara. The BHP Iron Ore was a technical prodigy that set the record for the longest train in the world in 2001, but if you are a train enthusiast, don’t pack your bags yet to see it in action: it was a one-time event, so much so that there is very little material about it. Once the technology was proven, what BHP did was apply it to smaller trains. The Pilbara is the region in which much of its operations are concentrated, and what the company currently operates are several regular trains with formations of about four locomotives with about 270 carriages. It is still impressive, since the length of these trains is close to three kilometers and they have a loaded weight of about 40,000 tons. The company’s next steps are to electrify these trains to reduce emissions, and one trick will be to use regenerative braking to recharge the batteries in sloped areas. It is something that other companies are also testing in the country. Similar attempts. Thus, the BHP Iron Ore was a prodigy, but also something unique that has not been matched, not even close, more than 20 years after its launch for that test. In August this year, Indian Railways commissioned the Rudrastraa 354-car, 4.5-kilometer-long train powered by seven locomotives (two at the front and one every 59 cars). And in Europe, tests are also being carried out with distributed power trains, but for kilometer and a half trains. In the end, they are all very far from the Iron Ore both in length and weight, but beyond the record in 2001 it was shown that this distributed power technology was a solution for trains longer than conventional ones. We’ll see if at some point someone needs to create a longer train, but it seems complicated. Images | WabtecBHP In Xataka | The longest train journey in the world: more than 18,000 kilometers between Portugal and Singapore without changing transport

Gibraltar airport was born as a British military bastion. Now Spain has imposed a veto that will be very expensive

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Since its construction during the Second World War on the narrow strip that separates the Rock from the isthmus, the Gibraltar airport It has been much more than a landing strip: an RAF military enclave, a nerve center for British logistics in the Mediterranean and, at the same time, a constant source of diplomatic friction with Spain. Today, and after Brexit, that old tension resurfaces in new forms. More restrictions. The United Kingdom has confirmed that the restrictions imposed by Spain on the overflight of British military aircraft remain in force, affecting flights arriving or departing from the Royal Air Force (RAF) air base in Gibraltar. Despite this, the British Ministry of Defense insists that the measure has no operational impact and that the base continues to operate as a sovereign military airfield under full authority of the United Kingdom. So he reiterated it Under Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, Alistair Carns, in response to a series of parliamentary questions posed by Liberal Democrat MP Helen Maguire, who asked for clarification on the logistical and financial consequences of this situation. Carns claimed that RAF aircraft simply They trace alternative routes to avoid Spanish territorial airspace, in accordance with the restrictions imposed by Madrid, and that Gibraltar’s operational capacity has not been compromised. The big doubt. Nevertheless, admitted that no formal study has been carried out on the economic costs derived from diverting flights through other international air information regions, despite the increase in fuel costs and flight time that this implies. The dimension of the blockade. The debate about the military overflights reflects a historical conflict between London and Madrid that has survived all diplomatic stages, from the Cold War to Brexit. Spain, relying on international law and its claim of sovereignty over Gibraltar, maintains that all British military activity in the area must comply with its air traffic rules. For the Spanish Government, overflight restrictions are not a sanction, but a legitimate expression of its jurisdiction over the airspace it considers its own. An RAF Hawk at the airport What do the English say? From the British perspective, however, these limitations are a inheritance of tensions that surround the sovereignty of the Rock and a technical rather than political obstacle. In the Westminster Parliament, the issue continues to be a recurring theme, periodically reactivated by particularly combative deputies who see every Spanish gesture as a threat to the British integrity of the enclave. To them, successive governments of the United Kingdom have always responded in the same way: reaffirming their full sovereignty over Gibraltar and the right of its inhabitants to self-determination, without opening any loophole for territorial negotiations with Spain. A Lockheed Hudson of No. 233 Squadron RAF lands at Gibraltar in August 1942 Gibraltar after Brexit. Brexit introduced a new framework of relations that fully affected Gibraltar’s position. After months of negotiationSpain, the United Kingdom and the European Commission reached an agreement that established a joint system customs and border control. Under this pact, Spain will assume controls on the European side at the Peñón port and airport, which will allow more fluid transit to destinations within the European Union. However, the military issue was left out of those understandings. The Liberal Democrat Helen Maguire brought this sensitive point back to the table by asking whether the impact of restrictions Spanish reports on the operations and costs of the British Ministry of Defence. Carns’ response was blunt: air limitations continue, aircraft avoid Spanish space and the base maintains its sovereign status. But, as we said before, the absence of an official calculation on additional spending reflects political will to publicly minimize any consequences derived from the dispute, preserving the narrative of autonomy and absolute control over Gibraltar. Strategic impact. Although London maintains that the Spanish veto does not interfere In its operational freedom, the diversion of military routes involves a considerable logistical effort. Instead of crossing the Iberian Peninsula, aircraft must border it by the Atlanticprolonging the journeys from the British Isles to Gibraltar and complicating supply at a point of strategic value for British operations in the Mediterranean and North Africa. The RAF base in Gibraltar, next to the port used by the Royal Navy, constitutes an essential axis for surveillance, supply and military transit missions to Africa and the Middle East. The United Kingdom has not revealed figures on the economic impact of the diversions, but parliamentary sources acknowledge that fuel and planning costs are inevitable, especially in rapid deployment exercises or emergencies. Even so, the Ministry of Defense avoid recognizing officially these damages, aware that admitting them would imply granting Spain a political advantage in a matter where each diplomatic gesture has symbolic weight. A geopolitical symbol. If you also want, the conflict over Gibraltar’s airspace condenses centuries of friction between both nations and is projected as a microdemonstration of the balance of power in the Mediterranean. A pesar de los acuerdos pos-Brexit y de la cooperación en materia fronteriza y económica, la defensa del Peñón continúa siendo un terreno de maximum political sensitivity. The RAF base and the port of Gibraltar are more than simple military infrastructure: they represent the last vestige of British projection in southern Europe, a symbolic platform of sovereignty in disputed territory. The Spanish restrictions They do not prevent the operation of that presence, but they require a constant effort of logistical adaptation and a careful diplomatic balance. In this context, the United Kingdom maintains its usual line: denying any operational impact and reaffirming that Gibraltar continues to be, both in the air and on land, an unbreakable piece of its strategic identity. Image | Dicklyon, Harry Mitchell In Xataka | The Strait of Gibraltar was very different eight million years ago. So different that there were two In Xataka | In World War II, Hitler gave Spain the keys to Gibraltar. He did not have what Franco demanded in return

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