NASA just passed a milestone with the X-59. What comes next aims to change commercial aviation

Commercial aviation has been pursuing a difficult promise for decades: flying faster than sound without making that progress a problem for those on the ground. The obstacle is not only the speed, but the shock waves that generates a supersonic aircraft and that can be perceived as a sonic boom. He X-59 was born to test an alternative: reaching those speeds with an acoustic signature that NASA hopes will be much more discreet. NASA is not yet talking about commercial routes, but it is about a step designed to address one of the great barriers to this type of flights. The most recent advance came last Friday, when the X-59 exceeded the speed of sound for the first time during a test flight within the Quesst mission. According to NASApilot Jim “Clue” Less took off and landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, on an 81-minute mission. The plane reached an approximate maximum speed of Mach 1.1, which the agency places in this flight at about 1,150 km/h, at an altitude of about 13,200 meters. It was an important milestone, but still within a testing phase focused on testing its flight qualities. The test of the most discreet supersonic flight enters its decisive phase The important thing, therefore, will not only be what happens inside the plane, but what is heard from below. Quesst is designed to demonstrate a technology capable of softening this phenomenon until it becomes a lighter sound knock. The next part of the plan involves flying over American communities and collecting the reaction of people exposed to that sound. The agency will then share those results with national and international regulators to inform future data-driven noise standards. That is why the first supersonic flight is not an arrival point, but rather the beginning of a more demanding phase. The next step will come in the following days: a first test in “mission conditions”, with a cruising speed of Mach 1.4, which NASA places around 1,490 km/hand an altitude of about 16,800 meters. The data matters because these are the basic conditions that the agency contemplates for future flights over inhabited areas in the United States. Before asking people what they have heard, the aircraft has to demonstrate that it can operate stably in that regime. Behind the X-59 there is not just a striking shape or an isolated commitment to recover supersonic flight. NASA remembers who has been studying this field for more than seven decades, with special attention to the noise associated with these flights and ways to make it more discreet. The Quesst mission combines advanced simulations, wind tunnel testing, schlieren photography and computational fluid dynamics to anticipate how the air around the aircraft behaves. The current phase has to verify something very specific: whether this entire design works in flight with a full-scale supersonic aircraft. The ultimate goal is not for the X-59 to end up transporting passengers, but for its data to help open a door that has been practically closed for decades. The information collected will be shared with national and international regulators to contribute to news noise standards based on data, not just the historical experience of the large noises associated with supersonic flight. The agency also plans to provide design tools and technology for future quieter supersonic aircraft. If the plan works, manufacturers would have more confidence to explore commercial concepts capable of flying fast without disturbing the ground as much. As we can see, the X-59 has crossed an important line, but the Quesst mission still has its most relevant tests ahead. First you will have to get closer to the conditions planned for these test flights over inhabited areas, and then you will come to the verification that really matters for the future of the program: knowing if that sound shock is acceptable. A good part of the value of NASA data will be played there. Images | POT In Xataka | Airbus has just made the most autonomous commercial aircraft in the world fly. Your goal: 22 hours straight without a stopover

We fill the field with solar panels to stop climate change. We have unintentionally saved 122 species of bees

There’s a hum under Minnesota solar panels that engineers didn’t put in the plans. It is a biological, dense, ancient hum. Beneath the photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity, 122 species of native bees have found something that has been disappearing from the fields of half the world for decades: flowers. It’s not a coincidence. It is the result of a management decision that costs money, requires planning and that, according to the latest science, is producing results that no one expected when the first solar panel was installed in a meadow. The bees are disappearing. A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolutionwith data from 681 agricultural fields on three continents and more than 19,500 specimens of 910 species of wild bees, reached an uncomfortable conclusion: pesticides and habitat loss are reducing bee populations in an additive, independent way, without one factor compensating for the other. That is, having more natural habitat around a field does not neutralize the damage from pesticides. And reducing pesticides is not enough if the habitat has disappeared. They are two different problems that require two different solutions. The work, led by Anina Knauer and researchers from Agroscope among other institutions, found that pesticides not only reduce the number of bees: they also reduce their functional and phylogenetic diversity. Communities not only become smaller, they become simpler, less resilient, less able to cope with future shocks. A desert with seasonal flowers. In Iowa, in the heart of the American Corn Belt, 72% of the territory is covered in corn and soybean monocultures. Less than 0.01% of the original prairie remains standing. This is what researchers at Iowa State University publish in BioScience described as “an extreme example of landscape simplification”. Bees literally have very little to go to. And when the soybeans stop flowering at the end of summer, there is nothing. The colonies enter what science calls the feast-famine dynamic: the festival of flowering followed by famine that kills hives before winter. This is the background scenario. An agricultural world that urgently needs more pollinator habitat, free of pesticides or with minimal exposure. And in that desert, solar panels are doing something no one expected. 14 floors. 122 species. And an unexpected star. A team of researchers led by Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar of Western EcoSystems Technology and James McCall of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory asked a very specific question: Of all the plants that can be grown under and around solar panels, which ones actually establish? And how many bees can they hold? The work, published in Environmental Research Communicationstested 101 plant species in eight different seed mixtures at three solar farms in the tallgrass prairie region of Minnesota. After three years of monitoring, 14 species of flowering herbaceous plants had successfully established themselves. With those 14 species as a starting point, the researchers cross-referenced the data with an exhaustive catalog of plant-bee interactions from the same region. The result is that those 14 plants can support 122 unique species of native bees, 24% of all bee diversity in the state of Minnesota, which has 508 documented species. The star of the system is Zizia aureathe golden Alexander, a yellow flowering plant that blooms early in the season. Alone, it supports 67 species of bees. And 36 of those species—30% of the total study—only visited Zizia aurea among all the plants studied. If it is not in the seed mix of the solar park, those 36 species have nothing. Not all flowers are worth the same. The study also documents an important nuance: bumblebees, the group of pollinators with the most species in decline—three of the eleven species of Bombus of the study are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN: B. pensylvanicus, B. terrestrial and B. fervidus—they don’t get along with Zizia aurea. Only one species of bumblebee visited that plant. Bumblebees prefer Monarda fistulosathe wild bergamot, visited by nine of the eleven species of Bombus of the study. The practical lesson: there is no universal mix. The design of what is planted must respond to what is to be conserved. And what if there are pesticides in the surrounding fields? He study by Toth and colleagues in BioSciencewith more than a decade of data on strips of native prairie embedded in corn and soybean fields in Iowa, systematically reviewed chemical contamination in that type of habitat. Pesticides arrive—neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, fungicides—but in concentrations that, for the best studied species, are below the damage thresholds. And most importantly: the concentrations are no higher than in the rest of the surrounding agricultural landscape. They are not an ecological trap; They are an island of resources in a sea of ​​fields that already have pesticides on them anyway. In addition, a diet rich in quality pollen—exactly what these plants provide—makes bees better tolerate chemical exposure. Nutrition acts as a shield. The authors of that work themselves explicitly point out that their conclusions are applicable to “other types of landscape improvements for pollinators such as hedgerows, pollinator gardens, solar installations with pollinator habitat.” It is not a journalistic extrapolation. It’s in the text of the paper. If there are flowers inside there are bumblebees. If field studies answer the “does it work now?” published in Global Change Biology by Hollie Blaydes and colleagues at Lancaster University answers “will it still work in 2050?” The team modeled the 1,042 operational solar farms in Britain under three socio-economic scenarios for mid-century: a sustainability scenario, an intermediate scenario and a fossil development scenario with maximum agricultural intensification. The main finding is compelling: the management of the solar park is the main determining factor of bumblebee density within the park, above land use changes in the surrounding landscape. Solar parks last between 25 and 40 years. That means decades of stable habitat in landscapes that are going to change and possibly get worse for pollinators. And there is an economic angle that is not minor either. Colonies located near diverse native vegetation avoid feast-famine dynamic which in monocultures weakens … Read more

Microscopes had been dependent on human operators for almost a century. China wants to change that with AI

A team of Chinese researchers has presented in Beijing which they claim is the first transmission electron microscopy system in the world capable of operating completely autonomously. Dubbed “Aeye-1”, the device has demonstrated in tests its ability to replace a human operator in all phases of the process thanks to AI. What exactly is it. A transmission electron microscope (TEM) is a tool that has been essential for decades to observe matter at the atomic scale. It is used to develop new materials, energy technologies, industrial chemistry, and has been a key instrument for evolution in science. For almost a century, these devices have always depended on manual handling by a technician, something that in the end ends up giving subjective results and entails certain difficulties in performing quantitative analyses. Why it is important. Aeye-1 makes the leap from “manual operation” to “AI-led autonomous operation”. According to they count its researchers, the system carries out the entire work chain by itself, from transferring the sample to capturing the images and analyzing the data without the intervention of any person. According to Deng Dehuiprofessor at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and leader of the project, the system works “like an ‘intelligent eye’ that visualizes the atomic world.” In detail. The development was carried out by the team of Deng Dehui and Professor Liu Wei, in collaboration with researchers from the Shenyang Institute of Automation. Together they have designed the algorithms that allow the microscope to perceive, analyze and control the process independently. To achieve this, they had to overcome many technical challenges, including the intelligent transfer of samples in high vacuum, the autonomous optical adjustment of the image, the precise localization of objects at the nanometer scale, the capture and analysis of images in real time and the coordination of all subsystems at the same time. The figures. According to Deng, image analysis It is more than 300 times faster than manual. To understand the magnitude, two weeks of Aeye-1 operation are equivalent to one year of work of a conventional microscope. In tests with molecular sieve catalysts, the system analyzed an average of 168 samples per day, captured more than 4,000 images per day and automatically generated professional reports with detailed statistics on particle size, dispersion or crystal structure. Who supports it. The system surpassed last Sunday an evaluation of scientific and technological achievements held in Beijing and organized by the Chinese Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation. The evaluation committee unanimously concluded that it is a “highly innovative technology, the first of its kind in the world and an international leader.” And now what. Those responsible for it expect that Aeye-1 will be able to continuously provide large volumes of high-quality structural data in fields such as energy, industrial chemistry, advanced materials and life sciences. The long-term goal is for this new team to drive a paradigm shift in AI-supported scientific research. It really is a process in which automation through AI can be highly beneficial. We will have to wait to find out if it ends up setting a trend in the scientific world. Cover image | China Daily and National Cancer Institute In Xataka | South Korea has just entered the most exclusive club on the planet. And China and North Korea are not exactly calm

How to change the name of your Gmail email and what happens to the old address when you do it

Let’s tell you how to change Gmail email name from your Google account. With this, if you have an old email with a name that you no longer like or represent you, you can change it without having to create a new accountand maintaining all the data you have about yourself. This is an option that has already begun to be deployed in Spain, although in a phased manner. This means that you may not have it available yet. Another thing you should know is that It is only possible to change your name once every 12 monthsso you better be clear and think carefully about the change you want to make. What happens to your old account after the change The name of your Gmail email It is the one you use not only to receive emails, but also to identify your Google account. And with this, it is the email with which you register for services, the one used in Google Drive, etc. Your Google identity identifier. When you change your Gmail email name, your old email becomes an alternate secondary address. This means that you will keep both email addressesand that you will receive emails on both accounts. This is important so that you don’t suddenly cut ties with whoever may write to your old account. Changing your email does not mean losing the previous oneand you will continue to receive all the emails sent to your old address in the inbox of the new one. Change the email address of your Google account does not affect the data saved in your account. Your photos, messages, files, subscriptions, and more will remain. Some Google and third-party services, such as smart home services, will use the new address if you have them linked directly to your account. In other cases, you will have to change the address. And as we have told you, Google will allow you to change your email address again for an alternative, although You will not be able to create a new one until 12 months have passed since you last created one. How to change the name of your Gmail account To change your Gmail email address, you have to enter myaccount.google.comwhich will take you to your Google account settings page. You can also do it from any Google service, because by clicking on your profile image at the top right, in the menu that opens you can click on Manage your Google accountwhich will take you to the same configuration page. Once inside your Google account settings page, in the menu on the left Click on the section Personal information. Within this section, now click on the option Email. This will take you to a screen where you can manage both your main and recovery emails. Here, click on Email from your Google accountwhich is where you manage your primary Gmail address. You will enter the screen where you can see your Gmail email account. Here, click on Change your Google Account email address. If the option does not appear, you will have to wait for Google to implement it in your account. This will take you to a screen with all the information. In it, at the bottom you will have a box of User namewhere you can write the new address you want to use. Of course, you will have to do tests, because it must be an address that is free. In Xataka Basics | European alternatives to Gmail and Outlook: the best email providers made in Europe

Eric Schmidt warned young university students that AI will change everything. Response from the university students: boo him

We are living a curious moment in daily technological life. Well, in many ways, really, but obviously artificial intelligence is something that takes up a good part of the conversation and it seems that there are no half measures. Or wild optimism about how good this technology is for humanity (for the few who are striking gold, rather) or criticism and opposition. Because while Big Tech and technology gurus evangelize about the benefits of AIthere are more and more They oppose this technology and the gluttonous infrastructure it needs to function. And nothing represents that duality as well as the loud booing that Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, received when he spoke about AI in his graduation speech at a university. Schmidt’s speech. In large American universities it is common for them to invite personalities to give the graduation speech and, in Arizona, the chosen one was billionaire Eric Schmidt who commanded Google and Alphabet. He took the stage and, in front of 10,000 students, gave a speech that addressed several topics, but focused on the impact of modern technology on society. Last December, Time magazine selected its person of the year for 2025. And this time, they were the architects of artificial intelligence. So today we find ourselves on the verge of another technological transformation. One that will be bigger, faster and more impactful than what came before. It will affect every profession, every classroom, every hospital, every laboratory, every person and every relationship they have. I know how many of you are feeling about this. I can hear them. There is a fear. There is a fear in your generation that the future has already been written. That the machines are already coming. That jobs are evaporating. That the climate is being destroyed. That politics is fractured. And that you are inheriting a disaster that you did not create. And I understand that fear. It’s rational. And it is amplified every day by social media platforms with algorithms that have learned with great precision that fear drives clicks and anxiety drives engagement. But I want to tell you something tonight in the clearest way possible. To talk about the future as if it had already been decided is to give up on the only thing that really matters. They are giving up their ability to act. The future doesn’t just arrive. It is built in laboratories, in college dormitories, in startups, in classrooms, in legislatures. And the people who will build it will be you and people like you. The booing of Schmidt. Depending on whether you are on the most optimistic side or the most critical side of the current situation of artificial intelligence, you will imagine the fragments in which the public could react to the speech, but one thing is clear: graduates do not seem to like being reminded of the world they are inheriting, that a technology that is far from perfect is going to impact all aspects of society (already is doing so, in fact) and that, with a certain hypocrisy, the blame is placed on the social media algorithms that serve as speaker of certain currents of thought. Whatever path you choose, AI is going to be part of it – Eric Schmidt Especially from a person who was in positions of responsibility at Google and Alphabet for more than 15 years, and Google works the way it works. In his speech, the former CEO addressed other issues such as that the same tools that connect us are the ones that are isolating us and more that “the question is not whether AI will shape the world: it will. The question is whether you will have been part of artificial intelligence.” The new Industrial Revolution. The video of Schmidt’s booing is not framed in a vacuum and has not been the only one that has gone viral in recent weeks. a few days ago, Gloria Caulfield received the same treatment from graduates at the University of Central Florida. Gloria is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for Tavistock and Executive Director of the Lake Nona Institute and hit a nerve when she compared artificial intelligence and the moment we live in with the Industrial Revolution. Glory commented that we live in a time of profound change and, unlike Schmidt, he had to stop a couple of times due to the force of the boos. In fact, he reacted by pointing out that it was evident that there was a division of opinion and that he loved the passion of the students. He commented that, in his day, his generation had the same problems with the birth of the Internet and insecurity about the future, but it did not seem to convince the students. There was also applause, of course. Weird climate. These types of positions by personalities who give speeches about AI, as we say, are not isolated. Someone very active in this sense is Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia and a person extremely involved and interested in the development of AI, who also gave a talk recently at Carnegie Mellon University in which he commented that there is no better time to start working on “the job of your life”, which AI is a positive network for humanity because it provides opportunities that favor young people and that AI “will create many new jobs and new industries.” “AI is not likely to replace you, but someone who uses AI better than you could” – Jensen Huang Another example is that of monumental anger of the graduates of calartsone of the most important universities in the world in the arts segment, when the president of the institution began to praise artificial intelligence. The problem here is that, again, young people are not so convinced that AI is going to change their future… for the better. As they point out in Guardiana recent study suggests that about half of young Americans are more worried than excited about the rise of AI in … Read more

There was a time when Nvidia was a gaming company. That business is now pocket change for the owner and lady of AI

In 1993, Nvidia was founded with the goal of creating graphics chips for video games. For almost three decades Nvidia has been basically that: a semiconductor company for gaming that yes, I had ambition in the field of professional computing. But things change: Nvidia’s gaming business has generated $6.4 billion the first fiscal quarter of 2027and although it is a healthy business, for Nvidia it is something else: It’s almost pocket change. Gaming no longer (almost) matters. In any other company in the sector, this income (29% more than last year) would already be extraordinary, but at Nvidia they are almost a footnote, because gaming represents less than 8% of the company’s total income. The other $75.2 billion came from the data center business, which grew 92% from the previous year. AI has made Nvidia’s original business almost irrelevant in relative terms. Stratospheric numbers. Nvidia has earned $81.6 billion in the first fiscal quarter of 2027. It is an absolutely colossal figure that should be put into perspective: it is so large like GDP from Croatia, Panama or Uruguay. The company led by Jensen Huang has managed to grow 85% in revenue since a year ago, almost double. The surprising thing is that it has also done so when it seems increasingly difficult to grow at this rate. The graph shows year-over-year growth in revenue in percentage. In 2026 the trend is bullish again. Source: FT. This is non-stop. The company exceeded Wall Street expectations, which projected revenues of 78.86 billion, but Nvidia also states that its forecast for the next quarter is to earn 91 billion dollars, 12% more than the current one. It’s true that growth is slowing in percentage terms, which is normal at this point, but in absolute terms the company continues to add billions of dollars of additional revenue each quarter. Data center numbers. Those $75.2 billion in data center business aren’t just GPU sales for hyperscalers. It also includes the company’s networking solutions business, which has grown no less than 199% year-on-year to $14.4 billion: it has tripled. The reason is logical: the demand for interconnection infrastructure for the large clusters that are being created everywhere is enormous, and Nvidia provides an ideal solution for those who buy its AI chips. Beware I, Anthropic is coming. On the call with investors, Jensen Huang gave a singular fact: Anthropic has made virtually no use of Nvidia solutions to train and serve its AI models, but that is going to change. The company’s CEO highlighted that the computing capacity they are going to deploy for Anthropic this year and next is going to be “quite significant.” Or what is the same: they are going to continue selling like hotcakes even if the competition tightens. Nvidia is also an investor in startups. Nvidia’s strategy is also being curious on a financial level, because it is not content with growing its business, it is betting on AI startups. It has invested more than 26,000 million in investments in this type of companies, and that does not include the recent agreements with OpenAI or in listed companies like corning. Beware II, China is coming. All these numbers, attention, are being achieved without the help of the Asian giant. In December, the Trump administration authorized Nvidia chip exports to China (with a 25% government fee). Theoretically that should make Nvidia generate notable income thanks to said authorization. Huang explained that at the moment these revenues are zero and that there is some uncertainty about whether China will finally allow its chips to be imported. In the second fiscal quarter of 2027, income from China is not assumed, but if that market finally opens, we will have even more extraordinary numbers. Buying back shares. Nvidia has returned about $20 billion to shareholders this quarter between buybacks and dividends. The board of directors has approved investing $80 billion more in share buybacks, thus multiplying by four what had previously been authorized. That’s a clear sign of Nvidia’s confidence in its future, which will also benefit shareholders: the dividend has passed from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share. Previously, Nvidia offered specific data on gaming revenue. From now on, stop doing so to put that division within the Edge Computing category. Gaming no longer appears in the accounts. Typically Nvidia’s financial reports divided revenue into data centers, networking, gaming, professional visualization, automotive, and a few other fields. Now that Nvidia is a fully AI-focused company, it has changed its revenue pooling structure. Everything related to gaming, PCs, consoles, workstations, robots, cars and other devices is part of the “Edge Computing” category. Gaming, we insist, no longer (almost) matters. In Xataka | For the first time in 30 years, Nvidia will not present new GPUs for gamers in 2026. They earn much more with AI

SpaceX tests Starship V3 with improvements that will change the lunar race

SpaceX is about to make a very important flight to complete its path to the Moon. Next May 19 (although it will already be May 20 in Spanish peninsular time), Starship flight 12 will take place. In it will try version 3both from the Super Heavy rocket and from the Starship itself. This third version includes new improvements, which will be vital for many of the future projects of Elon Musk’s company, but above all to become the main private partner that will take the next batch of astronauts to land on the Moon. Write down the date. On May 19, at 6:30 p.m. EDT, (12:30 a.m., Spanish peninsular time), will be launched Starship version 3. This ship is one of the two candidates to dock with the Orion capsule of the Artemis mission and facilitate the landing of two astronauts on the Moon. At the moment it competes with Blue Origin, whose candidate ship is advancing at a very good paceso it is very important that this mission be completed successfully. The improvements. Starship version 3 includes many improvements. For starters, the first phase of it, the Super Heavy rocket, will be a little higher. In its last flight it measured 71 meters, while now it will reach 72.3 meters. It will also carry 250 more tons of propellant, reaching a total of 3,650 tons of methane and liquid oxygen. Continuing with the fuels, its innovative internal conduction system has been redesigned to ignite the 33 engines at the same time and maneuver better. Finally, it should be noted that it includes 3 large aerodynamic control grilles, instead of 4 smaller ones, and that it has a hot separation structure that facilitates the recovery of the rocket. More about engines. The 33 Raptor 3 engines will replace the 33 Raptor 2 engines, resulting in a thrust of 280 tons each. In version 2 it was only 230 tons. The result will be a total rocket thrust of 9,240 tons.. On the other hand, they are lighter engines, so, despite incorporating improvements in their thermal protection shield and fire suppression system, the set is less heavy. Ship improvements. In addition to the improvements on the Super Heavy, the Starship will also include major technological advances. For example, its new orbital maneuvering engines will allow the approach and docking maneuvers in orbit that will be so necessary with Artemis to be carried out. It can remain in orbit for up to 48 hours without solar panels and carry a load of 100 tons to it. Version 2 could only carry 35 tons. This time, the Raptor engines are much more powerful Journey to quasi-orbit. Like the rest of Starship’s flights, this one will take the ship to something known as quasi-orbit. It means that, although it will be a suborbital flight, energetically it will remain very close to the real orbit. In simpler terms, the ship is ready to go into orbit. However, these tests are aimed at analyzing its reliability. Until this is confirmed, SpaceX does not want to risk leaving a 135-ton object wandering in low orbit. Guardian Starlinks. One of Starship’s missions in the future will be to continue contributing to increasing the Starlink satellite fleet. Therefore, on test flight 12 will fly with 22 models of these satellites. He will not take them with the rest, but will release them on a trial basis. Although two of these will also have an important mission, since they will be in charge of analyzing the behavior of the thermal study and taking photographs. This system has a series of dark tiles, which must be kept in place for its proper functioning. Therefore, to ensure that satellites are capable of detecting errors, some tiles have been painted whiteas if they weren’t there. It is a fictitious test error. If they do not locate it, modifications will have to be made. The end of a short but intense journey. Since it is the first test of this new version, there will not be a recovery on Earthbut the two phases will land for later collection. If all goes well, a landing could be tried on the next flight. Step by step. There are many new things to try. Images | SpaceX In Xataka | The launch pads are saturated for all space companies. For all but one: SpaceX

Russia has been advancing at a snail’s pace in Ukraine for months. That’s about to change because of one season: summer.

During World War II, many commanders discovered that a simple station could completely alter the rhythm of a military campaign: on the eastern front, the arrival of spring turned roads and fields into seas of mud capable of immobilizing tanks for weeks, while summer suddenly reopened enormous corridors of advance for both armies. The war that no longer advances as before. I counted the weekend the new york times that for months, the Kremlin has tried to sell the idea that a Russian victory in Ukraine is only a matter of time, pressuring even Trump and Western negotiators with the argument that kyiv Donbas will end up losing inevitably. However, on the ground the reality is much less spectacular. Russia has been advancing at a snail’s pace practically all year, to the point that, maintaining the current pace, it would take decades to completely occupy the region whose surrender it demands to negotiate peace. The problem is that this apparent paralysis can be misleading. Both Ukrainian commanders and military analysts carry weeks warning that summer is slowly changing the conditions of the front: the dry terrain allows the use of motorcycles and light vehicles to recover, the vegetation offers coverage against drones and Russian infiltrations are beginning to gain effectiveness after extremely difficult months for Moscow. The front is a drone war. The great transformation of this phase of the war is that Russia can no longer advance as in previous conflicts. Massive assaults with armored columns have become too vulnerable in a field of battle saturated by dronessensors and constant surveillance. Every movement is exposed from the air and any concentration of troops can be quickly destroyed. That has forced Moscow to completely modify its tactics. Now small groups of soldiers predominate slowly infiltratingon foot or on motorcycles, trying to open gradual gaps within a huge “gray zone” where control of the territory is no longer clear for either side. In other words, the conflict is looking less and less like a conventional war and more like a technological competition permanent between drones, electronic warfare and improvised survival systems. Russia makes little progress, but continues to push. The big problem for Ukraine is that even these minimal advances remain generating constant wear. Russia has suffered huge human lossesrecruitment problems and technological difficulties, including communications restrictions and obstacles to coordinate your drones. However, the Kremlin appears to have accepted that a slow and costly war remains preferable to launching large, risky offensives that could end in failure. In places like Pokrovsk or Chasiv YarMoscow has been fighting for years without managing to definitively break the front, but it has not retreated decisively either. Their troops infiltrate little by little, occupy temporary positions and turn huge areas of Donbas into spaces impossible for either army to completely control. The sensation is that of heavy, slow and damaged machinery that still continues advancing meter by meter. Summer is coming. That’s where it comes into play the seasonal factor which worries kyiv so much. During the mud and cold, Ukrainian drones have been especially effective at detecting Russian movements over open terrain. But the arrival of summer changes part of those dynamics. Trees and vegetation make aerial surveillance difficult, dry routes allow faster movement, and small Russian units find more opportunities to infiltrate without being immediately detected. In fact, Ukrainian officials recognize that Russian operations are already showing signs of improvement and that offensive activity is intensifying along the front. This is not yet a large mechanized offensive like those at the beginning of the war, but something much more disturbing: a constant pressure and diffuse design designed to exploit any weakness accumulated after years of wear. Between wear and tear and negotiation. All this greatly complicates international negotiations. Putin needs keep the image of a Russia advancing towards victory to pressure Ukraine and convince the United States that time is on the Kremlin’s side. But the real data show an exhausted army, enormous human losses and a front that barely moves. At the same time, Ukraine also does not have a comfortable situation: suffers from personnel shortages, desertions and difficulties in sustaining such a technological and costly war indefinitely. That’s why summer worries so much on both sides. Not because it will produce an immediate definitive rupture, but because it may slightly alter the balance of a war that has been trapped for months in a kind of lethal stalemate. And in a conflict where every kilometer costs thousands of lives, even small changes in the terrain, vegetation or climate They can end up having enormous strategic consequences. Image | Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, 7th Army Training Command In Xataka | While we all look at Iran, something is moving in the Arctic Circle: Russia is sending bombers with missiles In Xataka | To achieve the milestone of building the largest drone industry without China, Ukraine has found an explosive ally: Taiwan

It’s called Gemini Intelligence and it wants to change how we use our mobile phones

Google just introduced Gemini Intelligence in The Android Showthe great event dedicated to the green android operating system. The name, which inevitably reminds Apple Intelligencemakes it quite clear where the news is going: artificial intelligence. But here we are not just talking about creating emojis or generating images, but about something more ambitious, at least on paper. The company wants to change the way we use our devices. So how does that promise hold up? Google assures that Gemini Intelligence will allow us to automate tasks, as can be seen in the example shown during the event and included in the cover image, reading the information that appears on our screen and interacting with it. It will also arrive with a navigation assistant for Google Chrome, make it easier to fill out forms, and update Gboard to help us shape our thoughts out loud. Let’s see in a little more detail what each new feature consists of. Everything Gemini Intelligence brings to Android Google says it has been working on automation features for months alongside several popular food and transportation apps. The goal is for Gemini Intelligence to be able to take care of certain tasks for us, not just answering questions, but acting within the device and some compatible applications. “Gemini takes care of the logistics so you can enjoy the moment,” the company says. These are some of the examples that Google has shared: Reserve a bike in the front row for a spinning class Find a class program in Gmail Add to cart the books you need Gemini Intelligence may also use the context of the screen or an image. The company proposes, for example, an open shopping list in a notes application. In that scenario, it would be enough to press and hold the power button to activate Gemini Intelligence and ask it by voice to create a shopping cart with those products. In theory, the system would take care of it. Another example is photographing the poster for an activity and asking them to search Expedia for a similar tour for six people. Another important piece of Gemini Intelligence will be in Chrome. Google wants to make its browser on Android smarter starting at the end of June, with Gemini built in to help us research, summarize information, and compare content on the web. It is not just about reading a page and returning a summary, but about accompanying us in tasks that normally require jumping between several tabs or services. In addition, Chrome will incorporate a function called auto browse, aimed at more mechanical tasks. Google gives examples of booking an appointment or a parking space. On paper, it is another step in the same direction: less manual interaction and more capacity of the system to take care of specific procedures. Android autofill will also take a leap with Gemini Intelligence. So far, Autofill with Google has mostly served to save time in basic fields, but Google wants to take it further. The feature will be able to take advantage of Gemini’s personal intelligence to fill out more fields within apps and Chrome, even when forms are longer or have small boxes spread across the screen. The promise is simple: that filling out forms from your mobile will no longer be such a burdensome task. Android may use relevant information from connected applications to fill in that data for us. In any case, Google emphasizes an important point: this integration will be strictly optional. Each user will decide if they want to connect Gemini with Autofill, and that connection can be activated or deactivated from the settings. Gboard will also be updated with a new Gemini Intelligence feature called Rambler. The starting point is quite recognizable: Android already allows you to quickly convert voice to text, but we don’t speak the same way we write. We correct ourselves as we go, we repeat ideas, we leave half-sentences or we fill in the gaps with fillers. Rambler wants to take care of just that. The idea is that you can speak naturally, without having to construct the perfect sentence before starting. The system will take the important parts of what you say and organize them into a clearer, more concise message. Google ensures that Gboard will clearly show when Rambler is activated and that the audio will only be used to transcribe in real time, without being stored or saved. In addition, Rambler will be designed for multilingual conversations. Thanks to Gemini’s advanced model, you will be able to change languages ​​within the same message and understand the context even if we mix several languages. Google uses a combination of English and Hindi as an example, but the idea is broader: that the message still sounds like us, just a little more polished. 10 GOOGLE APPS THAT COULD HAVE SUCCESSFUL Which phones will be compatible with Gemini Intelligence Google has made it clear that Gemini Intelligence will be an exclusive function of Android phones, something that we could already imagine due to its characteristics. Nothing about an application that allows you to use some of its new features on the iPhone. Now, even within the Android ecosystem, its deployment will also be limited: it will be focused on the “most advanced devices” and will arrive in phases. According to official information, Gemini Intelligence will first arrive on compatible Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel phones as early as this summer. Later, at the end of the year, it will also land on other devices, such as smart watches, cars, glasses and laptops. In development. In Xataka | Anthropic does not offer its services in China. So China has invented a black market for Claude tokens

How a seat change on flight KL592 has shown the cracks in the system

We’ve been talking about it for two weeks. hantavirus in Europe and the script is getting more complicated. It is no longer just the three dead, the rejection of the president of the Canary Islands, the air evacuations to Nebraska or the French emergency decrees. Now, in the last few hours, the plane thing is added. And the Health Department of the Generalitat of Catalonia investigate a third case: a passenger on flight KL592 who did not appear in the first scan because she had changed seats during the flight. The important thing here is not the virus. It never has been: hantaviruses have been known for decadesthe Andes variant has waging war for years and the WHO itself classifies the population risk as low. The important thing is the x-ray that traces everything about our international epidemiological control system. And what a picture… The way in which this outbreak has been detected (an autopsy in Johannesburg and not through active surveillance protocols), the failures of tracing (about thirty people disembarked before there was an alert) and the heterogeneous response of the different states are drawing the first serious “stress test” for a world that said it was prepared for the post-COVID world. But it wasn’t. Although the response is being good, effective and worthy of praise, there are three big gaps that we cannot ignore: how diseases are tracked in an increasingly complex world, what happens to the international health cooperation network (when there are people actively trying to dismantle it) and how is it possible that a change of seat can be, even today, enough to lose a contact. In the end, what differentiates this outbreak from that of El Bolsón in ’96 or that of Epuyén in 2018 is that, in addition to affecting a considerable group of Westerners, it has generated an enormous trail of cases internationally. We must not forget that the first deceased from the ship died on April 11 and no one identified the cause until three weeks later. In fact, the detection has had a lot to do with chance: if it had not been for the autopsy that was performed on his wife in Johannesburg, no one would have found out until a long time later. That allowed more than thirty people to get off the ship and move around the world. And how is it that we have ‘unlearned’? The best example is the EU cross-border tracking system which, although it has many technical and legal devices, has been hibernating since 2026. But there are many more, no country had updated protocols for a virus that, let us remember, was causing problems in one of the largest (and interconnected) metropolitan areas in the southern hemisphere. And that should lead us to reflect on how we are going to prepare for a world where these types of problems They are going to be more and more common. Image | Ministry of Health In Xataka | It is not so contagious, but it is very lethal: in Argentina the hantavirus went from 17% to 33% in the blink of an eye

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