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60 years ago they sank a thousand-year-old church in a reservoir in Barcelona. Only the drought has brought it back to the surface

June 6, 2026 by usatoday24

He Sau swampin the Osona region (Barcelona), has a surprise: when the drought hits, lowering the level of the reservoir enough, it reveals a superb stone bell tower that has been submerged since 1962. The tower belongs to Sant Romà de Sau, a Romanesque church from the 11th century that the Franco regime sank (normally up to 23 meters deep) to supply water to Barcelona In fact, during the pressing crisis of 2023, the drought left it completely grounded, as NASA photographed from spaceThe fact that it is more than a thousand years old and still standing even though it lives submerged is commendable, but it is also the oldest church in the world that is still standing in water. according to the Official World Record. Once upon a church (and a town) submerged in a swamp. More specifically, the church of Sant Romà de Sau is in the Lombard Romanesque style and was consecrated in the year 1061. It was originally built with a single nave oriented from east to west and with a square bell tower three-story semi-detachedprecisely the one that can be seen when there is drought. The church that It is normally submerged at a depth of 23 meters It is not exactly the original: it has been accumulating interventions, such as a reform and expansion after the damage of an earthquake or a remodeling in the 19th century, when the apse was demolished and the orientation of the temple was changed. The bell tower is the vestige of what was once there: the church of a town that was also submerged. The settlement of Sant Romà data 917. Before the water level rose and flooded everything, there they lived 300 inhabitants in the middle of the 20th century who were dedicated to agriculture, livestock and forestry. That of Sant Romà is another story of towns submerged after the execution of the hydraulic project, which led to the expropriation of homes and agricultural farms, its inhabitants had to leave their home without taking part in the matter or receiving compensation. Context. The water that reaches the Catalan capital comes mainly from the Ter and Llobregat rivers through a network of reservoirs. In the case of the Ter, specifically the reservoirs of Sau and those of Susqueda and Pastry. The metropolitan area of Barcelona suffered significant demographic growth during Franco’s development, so the infrastructure was no longer adequate. The construction of the reservoir falls precisely within those years, although the original project goes back to 1931 and the works did not begin until 1942. As the professor and director of the Department of History at the University of Santiago de Compostela Daniel Lanero explains to Newtral.es, what the Franco regime did was “give continuity to the hydraulic policy that had been put into practice since the end of the 19th century.” Beatriz García, professor of contemporary history at the University of León, explains the two bases of this water resources management policy: general plan of irrigation canals and swamps of 1902 and the national hydraulic works plan approved in the Second Republic. Why is it important. That this church breaks conservation records in such complicated conditions does not mean that it is eternal: in 1999 it was already had to be restored after decades under water due to the weakness of its structure. In any case, the church of Sant Romà de Sau is a clear example of the “submerged heritage“, a category in which archeology and cultural law have been trying to regulate for decades. without much success. The sinking of Sant Romà and its church is not an isolated case but a common practice of the Franco regime: the construction of reservoirs during the dictatorship led to the displacement of tens of thousands of people from their towns in a traumatic process of forced displacement of rooted places for its population. In the Spanish state alone there are about 500 towns that were swallowed up by the water due to the construction of dams and reservoirs. In Xataka | In World War II, a town in Lithuania buried its bell to protect it from the Nazis. They did not find it until 2024 In Xataka | For 60 years, a farmer with no idea about architecture built a cathedral from scratch in Madrid. The bureaucracy has closed it Cover | joan ggk and Quico Llach

They have brought Mad Max to ships

May 13, 2026 by usatoday24

In World War II, several Allied ships began to cover parts of your covers with mattresses, wooden logs, sandbags and improvised metal structures to try to survive the kamikaze attacks and the bombs that fell from impossible angles. Those modifications seemed absurd to many naval officers of the time, but they hid an uncomfortable reality: when a cheap and difficult to stop threat suddenly appears, even the most sophisticated war machines end up looking more like vehicles. improvised survival than symbols of military power. The war that turned the front into a “Mad Max” landscape. It we were counting during 2025. The war in Ukraine began to generate images that seemed taken from George Miller’s post-apocalyptic universe. Covered tanks with metal cagesvans protected with anti-drone nets and civilian vehicles transformed into improvised war platforms they became common on both sides. Those structures, baptized many times like “cope cages”were born as desperate solutions to FPV drones that attacked from above and turned any armored vehicle into a vulnerable target. The important thing was no longer to advance quickly or shoot further, but survive a few more seconds under a sky saturated with cheap and omnipresent drones. Little by little, this improvised aesthetic stopped seeming temporary and began to reflect a transformation much deeper than modern combat. Russia already escorts vehicles with “electronic guards.” One of the most revealing changes appeared at the end of January of this year with the Russian Zemledeliye systemsvehicles capable of laying mines kilometers away. Russia began to accompany them with GAZ-66 trucks loaded with electronic warfare equipment, antennas and even anti-drone networks to try to protect them during their operations. The important detail was not only the visual improvisation, but what it revealed tactically: Ukrainian drones have turned even the Russian rear into a dangerous zone. Convoys, engineering systems and logistics now need specialized escorts solely to defend against low-cost air attacks. And yet, defenses continue to have enormous limitations against fiber optic drones immune to traditional electronic warfare. GAZ-66 “Mad Max” Roads in hunting areas. While Russia improvises defenses, Ukraine is perfecting an attrition strategy based on increasingly autonomous drones. Ukrainian units no longer attack only positions close to the front, but deep logistics routes connecting Russian ports, warehouses and supply lines. The use of drones with artificial intelligence capabilities It allows trucks to be located and pursued with very little human intervention, increasing constant pressure on Russian mobility. The goal is not just to destroy vehicles, but to slowly erode Russia’s ability to sustain mechanized operations and supply the front lines. The consequence is quite clear: every major road begins to function like a hostile territory where any vehicle can be located from the air at any time. Grachonok a la Mad Max Mad Max, but in the water. The most disturbing evolution has appeared when this improvised logic has jumped from the land front to the naval field. They counted the TWZ analysts than a Russian patrol car Project 21980 Grachonok was spotted sailing in the Black Sea covered by enormous metal anti-drone screens installed on its superstructure. Seeing a military vessel equipped with a kind of improvised cage made clear the extent to which the drone threat is also disrupting naval warfare. The ship attempts to protect itself from aerial drones and munitions dropped from the sky, but the defenses themselves partially limit the operation of its weapons and leave vulnerable gaps. The image perfectly sums up the new reality: even relatively modern military ships are beginning to look improvised armored vehicles designed to survive in an environment saturated with cheap threats. Naval drones are changing maritime warfare. The problem for Russia is that Ukraine no longer uses only maritime suicide drones. Their unmanned vessels begin to act as mobile platforms capable of launching FPV drones and bomber drones against naval targets and positions in Crimea. This evolution has forced the Russian Black Sea Fleet to reduce operations near the peninsula and transfer part of its assets towards Novorossiysk. However, withdrawal does not eliminate the threat. Ukrainian drones combine range, low cost and tactical flexibility in a way that is breaking traditional naval logic. In other words, maritime warfare is beginning to look less like a battle between large ships and more to a constant chase between small and extremely difficult to neutralize autonomous platforms. A much more chaotic phase. The most important thing about this evolution is that Ukraine is showing a broader transformation of contemporary combat. For decades, powers envisioned wars dominated by sophisticated platforms and extremely expensive technology. The conflict is proving something much more uncomfortable: Cheap, improvised, large-scale produced systems can completely upset the military balance. First it happened on land, where multimillion-dollar armored vehicles ended up covered with improvised structures to survive armed commercial drones. Now the same phenomenon is beginning to spread to the sea. The image of protected ships with metal cages reflects precisely that, a modern war that looks less and less like a display of clean technological superiority and more like a chaotic ecosystem of permanent survival. Image | Russia-24, X In Xataka | To achieve the milestone of building the largest drone industry without China, Ukraine has found an explosive ally: Taiwan In Xataka | Today in “the war in Ukraine beyond all comprehension”: drone pilots are training with ‘Grand Theft Auto’

Pokémon Go brought millions of players to the streets. Millions of players who were actually training an AI

March 16, 2026 by usatoday24

In 2016 it came to the mobile market Pokémon Goa spinoff of the popular entertainment franchise with a very interesting premise: capture Pokémon in your city using your cell phone’s GPS. The game caught on very quickly and became a phenomenon. It’s been almost 10 years since that and Niantic, its developer, has taken advantage of all the data that millions of players have been giving them to guide delivery robots through the cities. Your first client: Coco Robotics. The business that no one saw coming. The amount of information that can be obtained from Pokémon Go is truly impressive, since millions of people have voluntarily traveled the world with their mobile phones in order to capture (digitally) this type of creatures. And each game leaves an invisible trace, since there are millions of photos of buildings, squares and streets labeled with very precise coordinates that would not have been possible without the information provided by its users when playing. Five hundred million people installed the app in its first 60 days, according to Brian McClendonCTO of Niantic Spatial. Eight years later, the game still has more than 100 million players in 2024, according to data from Scopely, the company that acquired Pokémon Go from Niantic that same year. The problem that GPS does not solve. GPS devices become a bit silly when they have to operate on sidewalks and much of the urban fabric that does not correspond to the road. Signals bounce between skyscrapers, tunnels and viaducts and the margin of error can be up to 50 meters, enough to place a robot on the wrong sidewalk or the next street. “The urban canyon is the worst place in the world for GPS,” affirms McClendon. Coco Robotics, a startup that operates nearly 1,000 delivery robots in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and Helsinki, knows this well, as its devices operate precisely in those dense areas where the signal is never reliable. This is where Niantic Spatial comes in. In May 2024, Niantic separated its spatial and artificial intelligence division. created Niantic Spatial as an independent company. Its core product is a visual positioning system (VPS) trained with 30 billion urban images, capable of placing a device on the map with a precision of a few centimeters from a handful of photos of the environment. The key is that these images come from millions of points of interest in Pokémon Go and Login (the company’s pre-Pokémon Go AR game, released in 2013). In such popular games, players have for years been directed to photograph the same place from different angles, at different times and in different weather conditions. “We had over a million locations around the world where we can locate you to the nearest centimeter and, more importantly, know where you are looking,” explains McClendon. What this changes for robots. Coco Robotics has been the first partner to adopt this technology. Its robots, equipped with four cameras, will combine conventional GPS with Niantic Spatial’s VPS to position itself more accurately, especially in pickup areas in front of restaurants and in delivery to the customer’s door. According to Zach Rash, CEO of Coco, the goal is meet delivery times promised and not depend on margins of error that in practice mean arriving late or to the wrong place. The model already solves one of the most practical challenges of urban robotics: performing well where conventional systems fall short. Beyond the distribution. John Hanke, CEO of Niantic Spatial, talks about what he calls a living map: a hyper-updated simulation of the real world that updates as robots move through it and provide new data. The idea is not only that the maps are more accurate, but that they are designed for machines, not people. This involves adding descriptions of each element of the environment, its properties, its context. “This era is about building useful descriptions of the world for machines to understand,” says Hanke. In that sense, Niantic Spatial differs from other bets on world models, such as those of Google DeepMind or World Labswhich focus on generating virtual environments. Niantic Spatial wants to replicate the real world as it is. In Xataka | OpenClaw changed the rules of the AI race. Technology companies already have their answer: copy it

Gemini and Siri were monopolizing modern cars. So Musk has brought Grok to European Teslas

February 17, 2026 by usatoday24

Tesla is starting to roll out Grok in Europe for free. The electricians of Elon Musk’s company have been betting on their own software from the beginning, leaving hardly any room for third parties. No trace of Android Auto, CarPlayor the best-known assistants, Grok arrives as that intelligent “co-pilot” aboard the Tesla. The problem is that… still very Musk. the arrival. Grok arrives as a free update on European Teslas. We can choose their voice and personality, like in the smartphone application. To start it, all you have to do is activate it from the application launcher itself or press the voice button on the steering wheel. If we have logged in to Grok, from that moment on, it will become the device’s default voice assistant. What can you do. Grok’s list of possibilities is extensive, from guiding us to a destination to locating a nearby supercharger or simply maintaining an informal dialogue with us and recommending options from our Tesla’s digital manual. In addition to this, it has quite curious functions. You can be our language teacher Has special modes for kids, like “Story Time” and trivia games It has a mode for adults (+18), controversial, “sexy”, “extravagant”. In which Teslas it will be available. Currently, this is the list of Tesla cars compatible with Grok. The requirement is that our car has an AMD processor, that the software is updated to version 2025.26 or later, and that we have a WiFi connection or the premium connectivity pack. To find out if your Tesla has an AMD processor, you must go to ‘Controls’ > ‘Software’ > ‘Additional vehicle information’. Careful. Grok, despite its potential as an AI modelis involved in recent controversies. The app has become a focus of misuse, an infinite well of content related to the naked women. Countries like France and India have already denounced itand the Government of Spain has asked the prosecutor’s office to investigate X for the possible dissemination of child pornography through the app. In this context, perhaps it is worth debating whether bringing Grok with an “adult mode” to Tesla vehicles is the most appropriate. In Xataka | Elon Musk thought that Tesla would live outside politics. Germany has shown him the hard way that he was wrong

China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision

February 17, 2026 by usatoday24

Every year, hundreds of millions of people in China sit in front of the television to watch the Spring Festival Gala, recognized by the Guinness Book of Records as the most watched annual program on the planet. It is not only a music and dance show, but also a showcase where the country decides what image it wants to project of itself. In this scenario of maximum visibility, the presence of humanoid robots ceases to be a simple technological curiosity and begins to function as a public declaration about the place that innovation occupies in the national narrative. What happened there was not just an artistic number, but a clear clue as to where the Asian giant is looking when it thinks about its technological future. Kung fu, choreography and coordination. To present their robots to millions of spectators, the organizers turned to a deeply recognizable symbol: martial arts. In the CCTV broadcast available on YouTube We can see robots using traditional weapons such as swords and nunchucks, as well as doing tricks and jumping from trampolines, always in sequences shared with human performers. The choice of kung fu provided more than just visual spectacularity, it can also be interpreted as a close way of reading technological advancement within a tradition known to the public. The magnitude of the event. The Spring Festival Gala has been broadcast since 1983 and is an inseparable part of the New Year celebration in hundreds of millions of homes. Reuters also describes it as an event comparable, in terms of media scale, to the American Super Bowl, capable of concentrating popular culture, political message and industrial ambition in a single night. What appears in that scenario entertains and, at the same time, projects a message and indicates priorities. A gateway for the industry. Behind the staging there were specific names and a visible strategy. They participated in the gala companies known in the West such as Unitree, but others less known such as MagicLab, Galbot and Noetix. The immediate precedent helps to understand the moment: Unitree’s robot performance in the previous edition went viral and, in a way, brought this technology closer to the general public. So the idea of betting on a similar show again is reasonable. From the stage to the factory. The public display of these systems fits with a line of industrial policy that places robotics and AI at the center of the next Chinese manufacturing stage. In recent years we have seen how the Asian giant has invested heavily in this sector. According to OmdiaChina accounted for around 90% of the nearly 13,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide last year, a global shipping metric that does not go unnoticed. Morgan Stanley also projects that Chinese sales could exceed 28,000 units this year, which would point to a notable expansion phase. In Xataka There are people sharing their court cases with AI. The problem is when a judge considers the conversations as evidence In the end, what was seen on that stage went beyond well-executed choreography. Behind each movement appeared a country narrative that combines technological ambition, industrial policy and cultural projection in the same television image. The question is no longer whether these robots can perform in front of millions of people, but rather how much their presence will grow in the coming years and into what spaces of daily life they will end up integrating. For now, its massive presence is destined for this type of spectacle. Images | CCTV In Xataka | While technology companies dispense with juniors to replace them with AI, IBM is doing the opposite: catching bargains (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news China brought humanoid robots to the country’s biggest television show: it made them practice kung-fu with millimeter precision was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

The countries with the highest number of billionaires among their population, brought together in a very revealing graph

February 8, 2026 by usatoday24

The great fortunes they are not distributed uniformly across the planet. A few countries concentrate the majority of the world’s billionaires, while others barely contribute names to that exclusive club. The geographical distribution of extreme wealth leaves us with a snapshot that gives clues about which countries or tax policies encourage capital accumulation and they are the perfect breeding ground for generating wealth. In 2025, the wealth gap between the average population and the great fortunes has skyrocketed, but it has also left evidence of this difference between countries. The comparative graph prepared by Visual Capitalist allows you to compare this distribution in a very visual and direct way. The graph is powered by data provided by the study’Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025‘ prepared by UBS and the consulting firm PwC, in which an annual record of the number of billionaires is maintained. That is, people with assets exceeding one billion dollars at the beginning of the year. A billionaire factory To no one’s surprise, the US dominates by a wide margin the world ranking of countries according to the number of billionaires. The country hosts 924 people with a net worth of over a billion dollars, a figure that practically doubles that of the second-ranked player. This concentration also translates into a increase in joint wealthsince the sum of the US fortunes reaches a total of about 6.9 trillion dollars. China is in second place with 470 billionaires among its population. However, despite accounting for almost 50% of the billionaires in the US, their combined wealth is much lower, being close to 1.8 trillion dollars. That is to say, we only have half as many millionaires as the US, their combined assets are almost four times less. Third place on the list of countries with the most billionaires is occupied by India with 188 people with assets exceeding one billion dollars. Again, the comparison between India and China reveals a asynchronous growth between the number of millionaires and their total assets, with a combined capital of 888,000 million dollars. That is, with one third of China’s millionaires, the sum of the assets of the Indian magnates It is half of its Chinese counterparts. This reveals that a good number of Chinese millionaires have managed to overcome the billion-dollar barrier, but the accumulation of wealth from these great fortunes is not as pronounced as in other countries such as the US or India. The European map of billionaires Europe presents a internal distribution marked by notable differences between countries. According to data from the UBS report, Germany tops the European list with 156 billionairesbeing the main country on the continent in this aspect. Their combined fortune amounts to 692 billion dollars, which places them in a position alienated from the proportions of the United States or India. Common names also appear in the list in the lists of countries with millionaire populations, What are the United Kingdom like?which occupies fifth place with 91 billionairesor Switzerland with 84 great fortunes. In the following ranks are countries like Italy, which with 61 billionaires occupies the eighth position in number of great fortunes. France is also among the countries with outstanding figures, although well below these three leaders as it occupies thirteenth position in the ranking. In these cases, the harsh sales crisis in the Chinese and Asian markets for luxury products have seriously affected the balance sheets of exclusive brands like LVMH or Ferrariwhose owners are located as standard bearers of those great fortunes. The distribution of fortunes makes it clear that, even within Europethe concentration of billionaires tends to cluster in industrialized economies or with fiscal policies very oriented to capital returns. Spain takes positions Spain is not among the European countries with more billionairesalthough it has experienced recent growth in that select group. According to UBS data for 2025, the total number of Spanish billionaires who exceed the billion-dollar threshold It is 32 people. This figure places Spain as the seventeenth country with the most billionaires behind countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom or Italy in the continental ranking. The total combined wealth of the Spanish billionaires reaches $213.1 billion (about 182,602 million euros) in 2025, with an increase of 21.5% compared to previous years. However, in the Spanish case, the concentration of assets is not uniform, there is one figure that monopolizes a good part of that total assets: Amancio Ortega. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Image | Visual Capitalist

Samsung and Apple brought ultra-thin mobile phones to the market with little battery life. China’s response: hold my tank

January 30, 2026 by usatoday24

Samsung was the first, and Apple followed a few months later. The introduction of increasingly thinner mobile phones on the market did not meet any specific need, beyond reducing weight and thickness. Betting on this format, at least with the proposals of Western manufacturers, brought with it sacrifices both in camera and autonomy. In China they are clear that There is no need to sacrifice one thing or the other.. The Honor Magic8 Pro Air. Recently, Honor presented the Magic 8 Pro Air in China. The surname already tells us where the shots are going. It is a mobile phone of only 6.1mm It has the best MediaTek processor It has a 5,500mAh battery It has a triple camera system (wide angle, wide angle and telephoto). It turns out that it was possible. There are a few millimeters of difference between the Honor Magic8 Pro Air and its direct rivals, the iPhone Air and Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. But the numbers speak for themselves. Honor magic8 Pro air iphone air samsung galaxy s25 edge dimensions 150.5 x 71.9 156.2×74.7x 158.2 x 75.6 thickness 6.1mm 5.6mm 5.8mm battery 5,500mAh Si/C 3.149mah Li-Ion 3,900mAh Li-ion camera system 50MP, 1/1.3″, OIS 64 MP, /1.2″, OIS 50MP 48 MP 1/1.56″ OIS shift sensor 200 MP, 1/1.3″, OIS 12MP,1/2.55″ The Honor device is 0.3mm thicker than an S25 edge and 0.5mm thicker than the iPhone Air. To give you context, there is a guitar pick difference and a 75% higher energy density in the case of the Chinese mobile. An outrage. Furthermore, China has shown that it is not necessary to give up a single camera to opt for this format. And when we talk about flagships, this point is key. The 10K club. Beyond demonstrating that in ultra-thin mobile phones, silicon-carbon technologies allow energy densities that were impossible until a few years ago, the “10K club” is adding more and more participants. Chinese phones with normal thickness or even less than usual with 10,000mAh batteries. The last one to join the club was Realme P4 Powerthe first mobile phone in the world with a 10,001mAh battery. These are figures that double the usual standard in the rest of the ranges. The answer? There is neither nor is it expected in the short term. China has been ahead in the race to deploy silicon-carbon batteries, one that is not so easy to get into. Such high density batteries require: Greater regulations at the transport level, especially in the European Union. Much higher prices, as Xiaomi advanced. A durability risk not yet proven. Moving towards silicon entails important changes that traditional manufacturers, accustomed to a conservative and slow strategy, are not yet willing to take on. Image | Honor In Xataka | The 80/20 rule seemed like the holy grail for cell phone batteries. It’s not as infallible as it seems.

Bugatti has brought the Veyron back to life in the worst possible way: taking advantage of nostalgia

January 29, 2026 by usatoday24

I confess: I have laughed at my parents. Not once, many times. My parents are those considerate boomers. A generation that took the reins of our society when the century changed and we entered the 2000s. And the market noticed it. In 2001 it premiered on RTVE Tell me how it happened. Three years later it was republished he One, Two, Three…. In 2009, a phenomenon was launched that now seems timeless: I went to EGB. That same year, Antena 3 put on television Course of ’63. The look at the past does not only remain in Spain. The Police return for a new tour. Indy returns from the 80s to live an alien adventure in 2008. Guitar Hero puts us in the skin of the rock myths that had happened a decade or so before. Does anyone remember Guitar Hero Live? I doubt it and I think you already know the answer. And here I am, tasting at night the first seasons of There is no one who lives herewhile I watch in horror as my friends search for tickets to another Love The Tweenties and Villafrío de Abajo faces Villafrío de Arriba in another exciting final of the Grand Prix. I want to run away but the past catches me. That past that brings us back to Andy and Lucas but at least brings us back to the best days of Crash Bandicoot. A past from the day before yesterday. I laughed at my parents but here I am, drooling over the new Bugatti FKP Hommage. ELON MUSK VS JEFF BEZOS: STAR WARS Of necessarily unnecessary tributes and cars 20 years. What is 20 years? Enough, according to Frank Heyl, Bugatti Design Director, to “create what I consider the ideal and definitive Veyron.” What he’s talking about is the Bugatti FKP Hommage. We could say that it is the “last Veyron”. We could say that it is the final and last evolution of a legendary car. We could say it. If it were a Veyron. The Bugatti FKP Hommage is actually a Bugatti Chiron disguised as a Veyron. The hyper-luxury company, through its even more exclusive division Program Solitaire wanted to pay tribute to Ferdinand Karl Piëch, who was the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche and took the reins of the Volkswagen Group for almost a decade after having held all types of roles in the company. A key man in the company who was even more key for Bugatti. And Piëch was the one who gave the order to buy Bugatti and to make it a different brand, to give it back a glorious past, W16 via. “He was a man who saw the impossible not as an obstacle, but as a challenge. His vision for Bugatti was absolute: 1,000 horsepower, 400 km/h top speed, all-wheel drive, and refined enough to arrive at the opera in a tuxedo or a dress,” defines Hendrik Malinowski, General Director of Bugatti to Piëch. And to honor him, Bugatti has created a one offone of those unique units of your Bugatti Chiron. “The FKP Hommage celebrates this uncompromising pursuit of excellence, combining the timeless proportions of the original Veyron with two decades of engineering evolution,” reflects Malinowski about a luxury hypercar that comes with the latest evolution of the W16 engine and the 1,600 HP that the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport has. To resemble the original model, Bugatti’s most exclusive division has dressed the Chiron in the outfit that the Veyron would wear today. Play with the proportions to maintain the essence of a car of which only 450 units were manufactured. The request, of course, comes from a millionaire whose name we do not know. At least for now. But we can say something about him: he feels “melancholic sadness caused by the memory of a lost happiness.” This is how the RAE defines nostalgia. The question is what this loss has attracted a millionaire to convert one of the most technologically advanced cars in the world into another hypercar from just 20 years ago. What is the sense? Aren’t the 450 units of the original Bugatti Veyron unique because… they are unique? What is there to gain? Nothing. Since there is nothing to gain from updating an iPod when you have millions of iPods elder brother hand. It’s not a question of nostalgia. It’s a matter of the original product being there, just around the corner. We can’t miss him because he never left. You can’t long to go out partying singing Melendi at the top of your lungs because at less than 40 years old you are at the perfect age to continue going out partying and singing whatever you want at the top of your lungs. It’s okay for nostalgia to get to us. But at least it serves to give new life to the product. Unless it serves to make accessible an object of which there are few left, they are difficult to obtain or expensive to maintain. It’s funny that Renault brings back the Five in electrical format. And it makes sense that now the Twingo It also doesn’t have a combustion engine. Or what Renault brings the car back to life Turbo like an electric beast. As harsh as it may seem to a purist, even Ford Mustang Mach E It makes sense when it comes to bringing the driving sensations of a classic Mustang to an electric car. It is the same and, at the same time, very different. But the automobile market is beginning to be dragged into a well of nostalgia that contributes between little and nothing. He Lamborghini Countach LP 800-4 It is interesting as a design exercise because it updates a mythical model. This Bugatti FKP Hommage only repeats what is already known. The same is happening with the “serial” production of restomod. The trend of taking an old car and bringing it back to life by turning it into a modern car with a classic flavor makes sense … Read more

The price of electricity, the cold and the fear of a blackout have brought a 19th century job back to London: chimney sweeps

January 25, 2026 by usatoday24

When you hear about chimney sweeps, the image that comes to mind is that of men (or boys) from the late 19th century with smudged faces, shirts full of soot and a large broom on their shoulders. That’s the topic. The photographs that Google shows when we search for the word and the one it illustrates your entry on Wikipedia. Today the reality is very different. In the middle of 2026, not only are there still professionals dedicated to the trade, but they use cutting-edge technology and in cities like London they are experimenting a resurgence thanks to the price of energy. His appearance is nothing like that of the famous Bert de ‘Mary Poppins’but they continue to play a key role… and above all they are in demand. Chimney sweeps in 2026? Exact. And at least in London they are not an extemporaneous and decadent group, the memory of a bygone era. On the contrary. As I counted a few days ago The New York Times The profession is still very much alive there, it has been able to adapt to the needs (and resources) of the 21st century and above all it is experiencing a resurgence thanks to the cost of energy. The clearest proof is left by National Chimney Sweeps Association (NACS, for its acronym in English): in 2021 it had 590 members, today its membership base is already around 750. The union includes dozens of women and some businesses claim that in winter they receive between 70 and 80 calls a day. What do they do? Essentially the same as its predecessors from the 19th and 20th centuries, although in a very different context and with very different resources. To remove soot from chimneys they still use brushes that Bert from ‘Mary Popins’ would perfectly recognize, but that is only part of an arsenal that also includes digital cameras, industrial vacuum cleaners and smoke detection equipment. “Almost like chimney technicians,” points out Martin Glynnfrom NACS. Companies are even using drones to scan rooftops. Nothing to do with the habits that once made the profession infamous, such as employing orphans to climb chimneys and clean ducts. It sounds like terrifying science fiction, but this practice was common in the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact in 1875 the death of a child that got stuck in Fulbourn generated such a stir that the Government approved a law that banned “climbing children.” Are there still chimneys? Yes. British chimney sweeps were not immune to key changes, such as the popularization of central heating in the second half of the 20th century or the Clean Air Act (‘Clean Air Act‘) of 1956, but the union has been able to endure and today lives in a much kinder time, even one of vindication. I told it just a year ago in The Telegraph Steven Pearce, descendant of a long line of chimney sweeps who started in the trade decades ago, convinced that the profession’s days were numbered. “At first I only accepted it as a weekend job because we thought the trade would disappear with the 1956 law, when the Government gave local authorities the power to control the burning of coal and boiler fumes,” Pearce relates. “But that didn’t happen, in fact the last five years have been better than ever in business. It’s the busiest time I’ve seen in 45 years.” He is not the only one which confirms the rebirth of the profession. What is the reason? In 2026 English homes may not rely on coal and wood for heat, but they will still light their fireplaces. And not only because of the popularization of stoves. NACS itself admits that demand for its services has been driven by two factors: the increase in energy prices of recent years and a turbulent international context, in which the electricity supply seems a vulnerable flank to enemy attacks. The group also remembers that people simply “like to sit in front of a fireplace” to read, have a glass of wine, watch a movie and unwind. As if that were not enough, a good fire also helps reduce dependence and expense on central heating. What does the regulations say? Of course there are restrictions on the domestic use of coal, but The New York Times remember that even in areas like London the burning of authorized fuels They emit very little visible smoke. What they do generate is soot, which explains why the Government advises that chimneys be cleaned every year with professional help. “People think: ‘We’re going to have a plan B, a fireplace, a stove in case the power goes out,’” Glynn adds.president of NACS. “If you have the option of burning wood or smokeless fuel you can still cook and have some heating. There is a big increase in demand, people are lighting fireplaces again.” How does the future look? Steven Pearce assures that his clients continue buying stoves and admits that it is difficult for him to believe that people are going to do without the installations, even if they are prohibited. “I can’t imagine those who have spent £3,000 to £5,000 installing them not using them.” In fact, he maintains that in recent years he has seen “a great resurgence in the purchase of multi-fuel fireplaces and stoves, which burn wood, charcoal and smokeless materials.” It’s not all advantages: your ‘bill’ is PM2.5 emissionparticles invisible to the naked eye but which do represent a harmful “air pollutant”. Images | Wikipedia, Jorbasa Fotografie (Flickr) and NACS In Xataka | While the whole world looks at oil, Venezuela’s true treasure is hidden in the basements of London: its gold

LiDAR has brought it back

January 16, 2026 by usatoday24

On the same day in 979 that Hisham II became Caliph of Córdoba, Muhammad ibn Abi Amir (Almazor), his most faithful servant, began the construction of Medina Alzahira, the ‘shining city’, a magnificent palace-city to the east of the city and on the right bank of the river. For 20 years, while the Caliph lived locked up in Medina Azahara, the entire peninsula revolved around that small palatial villa. But power is a voracious monster and, more often than not, it ends up devouring oneself. Thus, on February 15, 1009, the people of Córdoba, raised in arms, expelled the weak Caliph, invaded the city of the Amirids, looted its treasures and vandalized it with infinite fury. Shortly after and to ingratiate himself with the masses, the new caliph (Muhammad II) ordered it to be razed, burned completely, forgotten. And boy did he forget. The glow that never goes out completely Torres Balbas explained that the ruin of Alzahira that was so complete that it left no echo of its name in local tradition, nor memory of the place it occupied. According to the historian Juan Quilesthe last historical mention of the ruins of the city is dated June 12, 1172. We had to wait until 1772, when a doctor and writer named Bartolomé Sánchez de Feria recovered the memory of the city and published a hypothesis about its location. There began an incessant search that has not borne fruit in the last two and a half centuries. Progressively, as Professor Quiles explains“the settlement of the Resplendent City has been moving, as if it were a spiral, from the center of the medina to its western end, to then pass along the banks of the river and head towards the east of the caliphal capital.” Now, the University of Córdoba is convinced that the search is over. One thing beneath the surface Antonio Monterroso Checa, a UCO researcher, has just found something near Alcolea, in an area called Cabezos de Las Pendolillas, about 12 kilometers from the city’s Mosque. For this, has reviewed more than 120 hectares in that area thanks to the data of the third LiDAR coverage of the Mining Geographic Institute. And it makes sense. A priori, there are not many more buried structures (compatible with architecture and urban fabric) that could have those dimensions in that area of the river. However, as the authors themselves point outidentifying LiDAR-only structures is unlikely without field verification and is reminiscent of other hypotheses that have ultimately been discarded. A fight revealed There have been no shortage of voices against these findings. Many linked to other of those living hypotheses (such as those of Arenal/Fuensanta), which say that it is hasty to give too much credit to LiDAR without field work. And they are right: it is true that the data provided cannot confirm that the city is down there. However, it should not be ignored that, as they say from the UCO“this is the only proposal, of the twenty-two so far existing on the argument, that adduces certain and verifiable physical data” But it would be naive not to understand that what is at stake here is much more than the location of some stones: the discovery of such a site would be an injection of resources and work for the municipality (and the area). And that, of course, also counts. Image | Sergio Guardiola Farrier In Xataka | We have discovered two “Machu Picchu” lost in Uzbekistan. And that tells us a lot about the Silk Road.

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