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People are so, so fed up with AI in Windows 11 that a developer has created an app to eliminate it

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A GitHub user named zoicware ended up so fed up with the presence of AI tools in Windows 11 that he ended up making a decision: eradicate them from the operating system. And since doing it by hand was hell, he came up with something that made his life easier and that can also make it easier for those who are in that situation: create an app called RemoveWindowsAI to remove all those functions. Enough with AI, Microsoft. The Redmond company wants Windows 11 to be full of AI, and for some time it has been adding more and more functions that allow you to take advantage of this technology natively both in the operating system and in some applications. We begin to see it with the controversial Windows Recallbut later that obsession was transferred to the native Copilot app, to Copilot integrated into Edge or to the Creator option of the legendary Paint application. Nobody asked for this. Pavan Davuluri, current president of the Windows division, published in X a message in which he explained that “Windows is evolving towards an agentic operating system.” Microsoft’s intention is clear, but the reception of the message was just the opposite of what the company would have expected: people simply You don’t want those AI options because you didn’t ask for them.. An app to leave Windows 11 without AI. A few months ago a GitHub user named zoicware published a unique project there called RemoveWindowsAI. In the tooltip this developer explains how “The current 25H2 build of Windows 11 and future builds will include more and more AI features and components. This script is aimed at removing ALL of those features to improve the user experience, as well as privacy and security.” What RemoveWindowsAI does. The script, which can be downloaded and then run as administrator from a PowerShell console, is responsible for removing the following components and functions: Disable Copilot Disable Recall Disable Input Insights and typed data collection Disable Copilot in Edge Disable Image Creator in Paint Remove AI Fabric Service Disable AI Actions Disable AI in Paint Disable Voice Access Disable AI Voice Effects Disable AI in Settings Search But there is still more. In addition to those actions, the script disables the reinstallation of packages related to AI features so that they are not offered again, hides those components in Windows 11 Settings, and also disables other features such as the new AI rewrite option in notepad. There are some AI features that cannot be removed with the script, but its creator also indicates how to get rid of them manually. Even a video of use. This developer also wanted to facilitate access to this tool adding documentation written and posting an 11 minute video in which he reviews the objective of the project and explains how to use it. bad signal. The criticism of Microsoft’s intention to turn Windows 11 into an operating system full of AI is clear, and this script is the latest demonstration of this. It does not seem that the company is going to reverse this trend. Mustafa Suleyman, head of the AI ​​division at Microsoft, explained in X I was amazed that people weren’t impressed by being able to talk to their PC calmly thanks to AI. “I grew up playing Snake on a Nokia phone!” he explained. Curiously, Elon Musk replied indicating that his argument seemed good to him. In Xataka | There’s a reason AI PCs aren’t hurting Apple: Nobody asked for AI PCs

Korea created 10 m2 micro-flats for students. Rising rents are filling them with more than just students

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If Kim wanted to walk around her house in Seoul from one corner to another, it would take less time than it took you to read this sentence. It’s not that it’s exceptionally fast. It is that he lives in a goshiwonthe quintessence of micro(micro)flats South Koreans, tiny dwellings that in theory were not planned as homes but that necessity turns into the residence of more and more young people in the country. Kim herself is a barbaric example. Despite being 31 years old, having a job as an office worker and having lived in Seoul for five years, he has had to abandon his one-room studio to move to a goshiwonthe same type of accommodation he resorted to when he settled in the capital in 2017. He is not enthusiastic about the idea, but given the rent escalation He doesn’t have many other options left. What is a goshiwon? Microhomes. And micro can be understood in this case in the most literal sense of the word. The goshiwon (either gosiwon) are mini studios that can be rented to affordable prices and they gather the essentials to survive: a bed, wardrobes and some space to install a desk and (perhaps) a shower cabin. Of course, not all goshiwon They are the same and the characteristics can change a lot from one apartment to another. On the Korea.net platform they point out that the rooms are usually around 10 square metersalthough there are those who speak of cabins of barely 3 m2 and on TikTok you can see people showing gosiwons of less than 7 m2. There are also broader options, which exceed the 30 m2. It is not strange that they are located in buildings with common services and its tenants must share bathroom and kitchen. Another thing they don’t always guarantee is a window to receive natural light. Are they that cheap? Yes. The first thing to keep in mind is that the goshiwon They were not designed to serve as stable and permanent domiciles. Korea Herald account that initially, back in the 70s, were designed with students focused on passing their exams and who only needed a space in which to spend the nights between visits to classrooms and libraries. So clear was his approach that the name gosiwon can be literally translated as “examination room”. Hence, among the little furniture they include there is a bed and a small desk. Everything else was superfluous. The undeniable thing is that it is a much more economical accommodation option than other rental formats. Herald explains that one of those micro apartments in Jongno-gru, in the heart of Seoul, it can cost between 400,00 and 500,000 won per month, about 270-340 dollars. In university areas there are even for 150 dollars. Its management is also simple and does not require large deposits. Nothing to do with almost 7,000 dollars deposit and 500 per month that the most conventional studies require on average, according to Danabg; or of course the very high disbursements of the insurance system jeonse rental. Why are they news? The goshiwon They have existed for decades, but it takes a look at the South Korean press to see that have become in news. The reason? Little by little they are making their way among a new audience, different from the one that demanded them decades ago. The format seems to be triumphing among foreign students who spend a few months in Seoul and young South Koreans who, like kimhave been suffocated by the rise in housing prices. That is precisely what just reported the newspaper Korea Times. And do you provide data? Beyond Kim’s testimony, the newspaper provides a series of data which show a clear trend: although the use of goshiwon by young South Koreans is not yet widespread, it is becoming more frequent. In 2024, 5.3% of households headed by people between 19 and 34 years old were registered in homes that are not legally classified as such, which includes from goshiwons to houses made from ship containers. It is a low percentage, but it stands out for two reasons. The first is that if we talk about South Korean households in general, the ratio drops to 2.2%. The second is that this 5.3% represents the highest figure in the last five years, only surpassed by 2017, when it reached 5.4%. In 2020 the rate was actually 3.2%. “This trend coincides with a continued influx of young Koreans to Seoul and the capital metropolitan area and an increase in the costs of their primary housing options,” comments Kang Mi-naexperts from the Korea Research Institute of Human Settlements (KRIHS). Are there more factors at play? Yes. The goshiwons have become a good option for university students who come to South Korea to study, but the Seoul residential market is facing a scenario of rising costs that is not unknown to us in Spain. a few weeks ago The Chosun Daily published that housing prices in the capital had reached their highest values ​​in the last seven years, with monthly rents also experiencing record increases. To that is added the increase in price of leases through the jeonse system, which requires a large initial deposit. Images| TikTok 1 and 2 In Xataka | South Korea has found the formula to improve its birth rate: companies pay fortunes to their employees to have children

They have created an extension for you

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We already warned you, AI is ruining the internet and things have not improved. I recently talked about how Etsy, the craft platform par excellence, had become a minefield riddled with AI. I have encountered this problem myself by searching for decoration ideas or haircuts on Pinterest. Distinguish what is real and what is not It’s impossible. Given this scenario, someone has had a radical idea: travel to the past Slop Evader This is the name of the invention of Tega Brainan artist and researcher who, like many people, is also tired of finding AI in absolutely every corner of the internet. The author admits in 404media that he was thinking of ways to avoid all the AI ​​’slop’ that plagues the internet and “the simplest and silliest way to do it is to only look before 2022.” Slop Evader is a browser extension that filters searches so that only results older than November 30, 2022 appear. Why that date? because it was on ChatGPT launch day. The extension is compatible with Firefox and Chrome, which means that you can also install it on any Chromium-based browser such as Microsoft Edge, Brave, Opera or Vivaldi. To install it, simply access it through one of the following links: Return to the pre-AI era This is what this extension wants to achieve. After installing it, we can click on the extension icon and a panel like the one you can see in the image will open. In it, we have seven search fields for different websites: Google, Reddit, Quora, Stack Exchange, Mumset, Pinterest and YouTube. The author plans to expand the available sites. Obviously, if you need to find updated results, this tool is not for you, since you will only be able to see things from three years ago. But the objective of Slop Evader is not to be a productivity tool, but to denounce a situation that, far from improving, seems to be every day it gets worse. Of course, even though it is not its objective, it has already been useful to me and I have been able to look for ideas for curly haircuts without the AI ​​ending up confusing me. The permanent doubt Until recently it was relatively easy to detect what was made with AI and what was not. The first slop either AI filth that flooded the networks It was detected instantly; Of course, these were animals and people with impossible anatomies that transformed into the most disturbing beasts. The arrival of new video generation tools like Sora 2 They have made many videos pass as real. Who hasn’t had an AI video shared without knowing it? And if they haven’t shared it with you, you probably have. Click on the image to access the post in X. Much AI content is still detectable to the trained eye, but the arrival of Nano Banana Pro has crossed the line of what is real and what is not. A few days ago my colleague Javier Lacort said that we have just entered the era of permanent doubtone in which looking at an image will automatically make us suspicious and think twice before sharing it, lest we end up looking like a boomer. Is extra cognitive work What we will have to do with each of the images we see every day. It’s no small thing. And there is not only generative AI in social networks. I commented at the beginning about the case of Etsy, but the thing is that AI is reaching Idealista, where there are advertisements with immaculate houses that later turn out to be falling apart. The excuse is that “this is how you see how it would look renovated.” Slop Evader He reports the problem, but it doesn’t solve it. This will require a more forceful effort on the part of the large platforms and even governments that will allow real images to be verified from those generated by AI. Images | Slop Evader, Xataka In Xataka | The ChatGPT Atlas agent made my purchase at Mercadona and now I have a pantry full of garlic

A Chinese startup claims to have created its own TPU to compete with NVIDIA. The only problem is that it is three years late

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A Chinese startup called Zhonghao Xinying (known internationally as CL Tech) has come to the fore with a bold promise. The company claims to have developed an AI chip that not only circumvents Western intellectual property restrictions, but also outperforms NVIDIA’s A100 chip. Which is very good, but also a little bad. Chana arrives. The chip in question has been named “Chana”, and according to SCMP we are dealing with a GPTPU (General Purpose Tensor Processing Unit). Unlike NVIDIA GPUs, aimed at accelerating AI workloads, this is an ASIC, that is, an application-specific integrated circuit designed from the ground up for neural network workloads. promise. According to Zhonghao Xinying Chana, it offers up to 1.5 times the performance of the NVIDIA A100 based on the Ampere architecture. Not only that: it achieves that performance with 30% lower consumption. The startup highlights that the computational cost per unit would therefore be less than half of that offered by the A100 chips. A little history of the company. Behind Zhonghao Xinying is Yanggong Yifan, an engineer formed at Stanford and the University of Michigan. He worked on the development of several generations of Google TPUs and also on the development of Oracle chips, and in 2018 founded this startup in Hangzhou together with Hanxun Zhengan engineer who worked at Samsung for several years. They were joined by other engineers from Microsoft, Oracle, NVIDIA, Amazon and Facebook, they indicate. on Baidu. We are therefore faced with several of those cases of “boomerang talent” with Chinese engineers who are forged in the US and then return to China to create solutions for their own industry. Solutions that do not depend on the West. Yanggong affirms that its chip features “fully self-controlled IP cores, a custom instruction set, and a fully in-house computing platform. Our chips do not rely on foreign technology licenses, ensuring long-term security and sustainability from an architectural perspective.” But. Although the achievement is striking, it is necessary to put it in perspective. The NVIDIA A100 is a 2020 AI GPU, and even with the improvements that this Chinese startup promises, its performance is, for example, far from H100 chips with Hopper architecture that appeared in 2022. Not to mention of the latest Blackwell Ultra chipswhich are currently NVIDIA’s greatest exponent in terms of AI chips. There are also no details about who makes the chip, and one of the candidates it would be SMICwhich has 7nm technology. They are very far away, and they have another problem. The technical achievement of these engineers is certainly notable, but everything indicates that they are still far from what NVIDIA and its competitors are achieving. like AMD or Google with its recent TPU Ironwood. There is another element that works against them: Chinese manufacturers continue without having direct access to the most advanced photolithography on the market, and although it also there is progress from Chinese manufacturers in that sense, competing is certainly complicated without access to the most advanced technologies. Pressure. In 2024 the company achievement revenues of 598 million yuan (73 million euros) with a net profit of 85.9 million yuan, but in the first half of the year the income was only 102 million yuan and had losses of 144 million yuan. The firm has reached an agreement with its investors by which it will have to go public at the end of 2026, or else it will be forced to buy back shares. The financial pressure is therefore notable for the company, which must demonstrate in the coming months that its roadmap is truly competitive. In Xataka | China was no longer supposed to be able to get its hands on NVIDIA’s most advanced chips. Until he found a shortcut in Indonesia

In 1982 Seiko created a watch for making calls and watching television. His only problem was arriving too early

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History is full of devices that were ahead of their time. I am not referring to literary or cinematographic machines like the tablet by Kubrick or the multiple predictions from Verne, but to other devices that were put on sale decades ago and now we realize that they are very similar to some of the latest gadgets on the market. One of these inventions was Seiko TV Watch. In its day this rarity was considered and recognized as the smallest television in the worldand even made appearances in some movies, but today no one can miss its striking resemblance to current smart watches, and in a way we could say that we are facing a distant relative. The history of this device began in 1972, but the first step was not taken by Seiko but by another North American company called Hamilton. They were the creators of Press P1the first digital wrist watch in history. The Japanese they acquired to Americans, and they embarked on their own path into the digital age by launching their first watch of this type in 1973. At that time it was said that society was moving towards a revolution in visual information, and to join it with its new range of watches the japanese company started to work on the research and development of liquid crystal panels (LCD) with active matrix that were capable of reproducing moving images. Over the following years, these efforts helped their watches become increasingly smaller and thinner, with higher component density and more energy efficient. They were also implementing new functions such as stopwatches and calculators. After three years of development and hundreds of millions of yen invested, the summer of 1982 Seiko advertisement in Tokyo a new watch. It was about TV Watchthe first to finally allow us to watch television on our wrist. This was Seiko’s TV Watch A watch that you can watch television on. Today this concept seems simple, but back then being able to carry it out was a little more complicated. The TV Watch was made up of three different elements that had to be connected together for it to work. The result was a science fiction product, yes, but a little uncomfortable to wear. On the one hand we had the clock, but we had to connect it to a radio and television receiver the size of a walkman. We also needed headphones, and these also had to be connected to the signal receiver. And how could you carry so much cable with you in a fairly comfortable way? Well, very simple, pay attention to this drawing that appeared in your manual. As you can see, the trick was to put the receiver cable under the sleeve to connect it to the watch. But in case we didn’t want to complicate our lives, the TV Watch also had a function to listen only to the audio of television broadcasts. The watch itself had dimensions of 40 x 49 x 10 millimeters and a weight of 80 grams, and all its magic was concentrated in its innovative 1.2-inch white and blue LCD screen with a resolution of 32k pixels and 10 shades of gray. I also had a second smallest screen in which we could see the time, set the alarm and use the stopwatch as with any other digital watch. During the presentation of the device, its creators had to give certain explanations about how they had achieved such ingenuity. They said their new panels controlled the molecular arrangement of liquid crystal within an electric field, and that this made it possible to create miniature images with very low power consumption. Especially when compared to the cathode ray tubes of conventional televisions. The receiver measured 74.5 x 125 x 19 millimeters and weighed 140 grams. This made it too big to carry in a back pocket, but perfect for the inside jacket pocket. Its battery consisted of two AA batteries that gave it a range of five hours, and it tuned both FM radio and television on VHF & UHF channels. What could have been and was not The TV Watch arrived on the Japanese market in December 1982 with a single DXA001 model that cost 108,000 yen, although a second, cheaper DXA002 model was later released. The difference between the two was that the second included a hearing aid instead of headphones, and its price dropped to 98,000 yen. In exchange, these two models today would be worth around 600 and 500 euros respectively. The presentation of the device managed to generate a lot of interest, and the watch made front pages of newspapers and headlines on television. It was considered an innovative product for allowing us access a large amount of information in real timeand it attracted so much attention that a year later it also ended up reaching the US market. Errr, okay? During its launch in Japan, Seiko managed to sell 2,200 units, and the president of the company’s North American subsidiary said that the reception from the American media had been so good that he believed he could sell all the ones they manufactured. This optimism translated into the production of between 15,000 and 20,000 units ready for export. But not everyone saw the TV Watch as an invention destined to revolutionize the market. In fact, it is known that at Sony they came to say that their laboratories had the capacity to develop a similar product, but that They didn’t think there was a big enough market. for this type of devices. In the end it turns out that they were right, and the watch did not end up becoming a successful product. In the TV Watch curriculum we find several dates indicated. In 1982 he won the Nikkei Award for Superior Quality Products and Services, and a year later he made an appearance in Octopussythe new James Bond movie. The watch culminated its career in 1984 by entering the Guinness Book of Records as … Read more

the company is drowning in the market that it itself created

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The first time I ordered food at home, it was from Telepizza. It’s possible that you do too. In the nineties, Telepizza was the perfect plan for hangouts to watch football or a movie at home. They had no competition. Today yes, and a lot. This, together with decades of treating the company as a financial asset and not as a long-term business, has caused the current situation: the company’s accounts are bleeding and there are serious doubts about its viability. Debt, restructuring and losses According to one PricewaterhouseCooper audit published in Merca2in 2024 Telepizza lost more than 48 million euros and carries a total debt of 150 million euros. The expected turnover for this period was 300 million euros, but they achieved 249.9 million, 18% less. This is in addition to expenses that amounted to 18.6 million euros in 2024 alone. Spain continues to be its strongest market and accounts for 60% of all its income, but also where the loss is greatest (almost 25 million euros). According to PwC, there are “material uncertainty regarding the continuity of the business”, and it is not the first time they have warned of something like this. They did another audit of the company’s accounts in 2022 in which they showed “significant doubts about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern.” Telepizza is at a crossroads: it needs to generate income quickly to cover expenses and debt, but at the same time it needs to invest if it wants to become competitive again in the current landscape. The accounts don’t work out. Telepizza and the delivery boom The food delivery landscape has radically transformed. Telepizza no longer competes in the market it founded, but in a totally saturated ecosystem where there are more and often better options. According to Dashmote data in 2024between 2019 and 2022 the delivery market in Spain doubled its income, reaching 5,000 million euros and in 2023 it would grow to 6.6 billion. Not all the mountain is oregano, the main delivery operators They also cannot boast of stability and profitsbut for Telepizza the reality is that, where they once reigned, now There are hundreds of thousands of restaurants available. It also happens that pizza is no longer the favorite option to order at home. According to DBK dataIn 2024, hamburger restaurants accounted for 61% of the market. Fried chicken restaurants and “other concepts” also grew, while pizzerias decreased their turnover by 1.8%. There is also the problem that entering this model implies give a third of income in commissionssomething that does not suit Telepizza very well in its delicate situation. Given this panorama, Telepizza has opted to encourage orders through its app and website. Recently They celebrated a pyrrhic victory: They are the pizza brand with the most users through their website and appreaching a total of 1.8 million monthly users. The problem is that the figure is not even striking. To put it in context, Burger King and McDonald’s have 4.7 and 4.5 million users through their apps respectively. Telepizza’s strategy involves reinforcing its own channel and betting on loyal customers who already know them and return to their app, but at the same time has become practically invisible for the rest of the public, who have many more pizzerias to choose from through the apps. It is an isolation strategy. The final chapter of a series that began decades ago To understand how Telepizza is today, you have to look back. The current situation is the consequence of a trend that began in the nineties. After a spectacular IPO in 1996, at the end of 1999 its founder sold his stake (months before the collapse of the dotcom bubbleby the way). This sale marked the beginning of an era in which Telepizza became a financial asset at the hands of venture capital funds and its valuation fell with each movement. In 2007, Telepizza went public after the takeover bid by the Permira and Ballvé fund and was valued at 850 million euros. In 2016, after the entry of the KKR fund, it went public again, although with quite disastrous results. Here the valuation had dropped to 780 million euros, but the worst thing is that not even three years passed when the KKR group launched another takeover bid again for take it out of the bag againvaluing it only in 600 million euros. Paradoxically, 2017 was a good year for the company’s accounts, which achieved record profits. Right after it was signed the agreement with Pizza Hut in which Telepizza committed to opening 1,300 restaurants, almost nothing. The plan ended up going awry internal tensions and the pandemic. In the end Telepizza broke up with Pizza Hut in many of the countries in which it was going to operate. In 2023, the debt caused the KKR fund left the equation and a financial restructuring was signed in which the company passed into the hands of its creditors, among which are Oak Hill and Fortress, two opportunistic funds, also known as vulture funds. Under this new mandate the objective was to try to stabilize the losses with the exit from Latin Americaalthough They couldn’t sell everything. The image speaks for itself In contrast, its most direct competitor, Domino’s Pizza, has had a stable trajectory of growth and is in good financial healthyou just have to look at its growth curve on the stock market. In addition to the global parent company, behind Domino’s Pizza Spain is Alsea, the Mexican restaurant provider which also manages brands such as Starbucks, Burger King or Foster’s Hollywood. Venture capital has squeezed Telepizza so much that has left it without operating marginleading it to a delicate situation that has lasted for years and that calls into question its continuity. In the end, the secret was not in the dough, but in being a restaurant chain and not a financial asset that passes from hand to hand. Image | Telepizza In Xataka | Robotic vans are already key in … Read more

A company claims to have created the first transparent computer monitor: it has borrowed technology from aviation

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The idea of ​​“seeing through” the screen is not new. For decades, HUDs have projected data onto the windshields of airplanes. and today many cars offer own versions to show speed or navigation without taking your eyes off the road. That principle, project or reflect information on a transparent elementis the one that Visual Instruments ensures have brought to the desktop with Phantom, a monitor that seeks to mix the digital and the physical and that adjusts its transparency in real time. Phantom does not use a panel that becomes transparent on its own, but rather an optical assembly similar to that of a teleprompter or HUD. The image is reflected in a tilted glass and thus appears to “float” over what is behind, with an opacity control that allows it to go from transparent to opaque. The company presents it as “the first transparent computer monitor.” The key to the invention is in the optics, not in a futuristic panel According to the manufacturer, Phantom is presented as a 24-inch monitor in 16:9 format with 4K resolution. The company sets the brightness in a range from 5 to 5,000 nits and places the color coverage at 100% sRGB, figures that must be confirmed when the product reaches the hands of users and analysts. As for the connection, it is limited to the most common options: USB-C with DisplayPort and HDMIwithout the need for additional software to operate. {“videoId”:”x87bool”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”How to CALIBRATE your MONITOR for VIDEO GAMES and enjoy it to the fullest”, “tag”:”monitor”, “duration”:”230″} It is worth putting it in context. Transparent screens have been appearing in consumer markets for years. LG has been marketing a 77-inch transparent OLED TV since 2024. Lenovo, for its part, has also developed a concept laptop with a transparent panel. The difference here is key: those products use transparent base panels, while Phantom uses, as we say, HUD-type optics. They are different technological routes, with different commitments and limitations. Aspects such as contrast, color representation with different ambient lights, the presence of reflectionsuniformity or comfort in prolonged use remain unknown. It is also unclear to what extent alternating between the monitor and the background can translate into real relief from eye strain beyond the idea put forward by the manufacturer. Everything will depend on the first independent tests and the measurements that are published when demonstration units exist. In Xataka There is a cheap TV sweeping Amazon: after a week of use it became clear in which situations it can make sense Phantom arrives, therefore, as a suggestive idea that has yet to demonstrate whether it can be sustained in everyday use. The commercial status points to a very early and selective launch. The Founders Edition is limited to ten units intended for early adopters, with shipping expected in Q4 2025, 30-day returns, and a one-year warranty. The price is not final: each unit is custom configured, but the company itself compares it to an Apple Studio Display whose price in Spain starts at 1,779 euros. Images | Visual Instruments | Telstar Logistics In Xataka | Xiaomi TV S Pro MiniLED 2026, analysis: the juggling act of wanting to offer the quality of a high-end and the price of a mid-range (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 A company claims to have created the first transparent computer monitor: it has borrowed technology from aviation was originally published in Xataka by Javier Marquez .

Elon Musk boasted of having created an “apocalypse-proof” car. Now the Tesla Cybertruck’s headlights are falling out

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Who doesn’t know a C15, prays to any Tesla Cybertruck with this title we headed this article in July 2024. We did it because on social networks it was already common to find comparisons between a Tesla Cybertruck which began selling just half a year before for a price close to $100,000 (sometimes much higher) with the car of “a Spanish farmer flying with three bags of fertilizer and a pregnant sheep in the trunk”, as this X user described. It was no wonder. Since it was first announcedElon Musk did not stop boasting that Tesla’s future electric car was nothing short of indestructible. A story that began crack when, live, the car glass itself could not resist the launch of a steel ball that, in theory, should not have caused any scratches. Now, less than two years after the car went on sale we know that the crack has been getting bigger and bigger. Because Tesla has recalled its Cybertruck for review. This time there have been 6,200 units. It is the tenth time in less than 24 months. Now, the headlights are going out. Indestructible, when it does not self-destruct Elon Musk boasted during the Tesla Cybertruck launch event about having a car “apocalypse proof”. He was talking, we assume, about real apocalypses, not metaphorical ones like the one they are experiencing Tesla sales in Europe. Beyond the jokes, what the owner of the company wanted to show is that he had something like a “armored street car”. In Xataka We already explained why a car that does not deform is a bad idea. If the car does not absorb the impact, it is the passenger who suffers the impact against himself. We are talking, of course, about cars that are on the street, working with all the guarantees. The problem for Tesla is that it keeps call cars for inspection. In the first year he had to do five calls for review. Today it has already been 10 and there are two full months of 2025 ahead, they collect in Electrek. While it is true that some of the problems have been solved with simple software updates, on other occasions they have had to go to the workshop because they were losing pieces in progress. The problem, everything indicates, is the same as on this occasion. The Tesla Cybertruck has some unusual headlights falling out, according to the American media. That is why the NHTSA has had to activate a recall so that 6,197 Tesla cars return to facilities. And Tesla sells headlights that can be installed on the roof of the vehicle as an accessory in its after-sales network, expanding the car’s off-road characteristics. The problem is that those headlights fall out. The glue simply cannot withstand their weight and in some circumstances it ends up expiring. This It hasn’t been the first time that Tesla has problems with the glue used, which has led to calls for review because, among other elements, the decorative molding of the A pillar, the one located on the side of the windshield, fell off. Beyond the possible fun of having an indestructible car that pieces are falling off while movingTesla is experiencing an ordeal with the electric off-roader. The company had the opportunity to make it a flagship, aspirational model and always sell it at a very high price but without aspirations of turning it into a mass product. like Mercedes does with its G-Class. However, it opted for the opposite and now finds itself unable to put the promised versions on the market at affordable prices. But, above all, it does not seem to be selling the expected numbers. And the company says it has a production line ready capable of produce 125,000 units each year. Musk even boasted that they expected sell more than 250,000 units annually. Electrek They point out that less than 65,000 units have been sold since November 2023. Photo | Josip Ivankovic In Xataka | In an attempt to improve sales of the Cybertruck, Elon Musk has found an unexpected buyer: himself

Spanish scientists have created a material that swallows 99.5% of light. And it is great news for renewables

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At first glance they look like invisible needles, thin to the extreme and tiny like a thousandth of a human hair. A group of Spanish researchers has created ultra-black nanoneedles that absorb up to 99.5% of the solar radiation they receive, a record figure that not only sets an optical record, but will increase the efficiency of solar thermal plants. Made in Euskadi. The discovery comes from the Thermophysical Properties of Materials group at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU). There, the researchers have designed a surface composed of copper cobaltate nanoneedles—a mixed oxide of copper and cobalt—with exceptional optical properties. Its ultra-black tone and its resistance to humidity and high temperatures make it ideal for solar tower receivers. According to tests, the material achieves an absorption of 99.5% of sunlight, surpassing black silicon (95%) and carbon nanotubes (99%). “We are looking for ultra-black materials for more efficient solar towers,” noted researcher Íñigo González de Arrieta. A change for solar energy. In concentrating solar thermal power plants (CSP), hundreds of mirrors reflect and concentrate sunlight towards a central tower. There, heat is used to melt salts that retain thermal energy and allow electricity to be generated even when the sun has already set.The key is to take advantage of each photon: if the receiver material reflects part of the light, that energy is lost. And this is where the new nanoneedles come into play. Until now, the most used material was black silicon, with an absorption level of 95%. The new nanoneedles, on the other hand, could raise that figure significantly and, with it, make solar thermal energy, one of the most promising clean sources in countries like Spain, more competitive and profitable. Beyond the blackest black. Carbon nanotubes seemed unbeatable: dark as a vacuum, capable of trapping almost all light. But they had an invisible enemy: the heat and humidity deteriorated them quickly. The copper cobaltate nanoneedles, developed by the Basque team, endure what their predecessors could not. They withstand temperatures above 700 degrees without losing effectiveness and, in addition, they are more stable. In solar towers, that difference can translate into more energy and less maintenance. A real impact. Dr. Renkun Chen, from the University of California, San Diego, is collaborating with the Basque team and the United States Department of Energy to study the feasibility of applying nanoneedles to industrial solar plants. “We observed that these nanoneedles performed better than the carbon nanotubes used until now, and that their performance increased when coated with zinc oxide,” Chen explained.. However, González de Arrieta himself clarifies that there is still some way to go: the next pilot-scale tests will determine if the process is economically viable and if the material can be produced industrially without losing its optical properties. Darker, brighter. Ultrablack nanoneedles are an example of how nanotechnology applied to energy can have a direct impact on global sustainability. The UPV/EHU team plans to continue developing new compounds with better thermal and optical conductivity, designed to withstand the challenges of future solar towers. Promoting this renewable energy offers many advantages: it is totally clean and can also be used when the sun does not shine,” recalled González de Arrieta. And if everything goes as expected, the future of solar energy could be, paradoxically, darker than ever. Image | Flickr Xataka | In the midst of a trade war, there is a battle that China has already won: that the world depends on its new energy

There are so many trips planned to the Moon that the UN has created a “lunar circulation committee” to regulate traffic.

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The Moon is coming into fashion after 50 years of calm. But this time it is not a race between two: it is a commercial race in which old and new space powers, as well as a multitude of private companies, participate. The lunar “jam.” The interest is so sudden that in the last two years there have been 12 attempted lunar missions. This “blitz” of moon landings, driven by public-private programs such as NASA’s CLPS, has proven to be a quick, cheap, but also a little chaotic to reach the Moon. Still, worrying about “traffic jams” on the Moon sounds absurd. Cislunar space (the region between the geostationary orbit of the Earth and the Moon) is gigantic: 2,000 times larger than that of Earth’s orbit. If there is so much room, where is the problem? The problem is that everyone wants the same place. In the same way that on Earth all cars use the roads, on the Moon missions tend to cluster in a very select set of stable orbits. The immensity of cislunar space is, therefore, deceptive, explain professors of International Affairs and Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in an article for The Conversation. To make matters worse. Most government sensors that track satellites in Earth orbit are not designed to detect and monitor objects this far away. The Moon’s own glare makes the task difficult. This uncertainty has a direct consequence: it forces operators to be excessively cautious. When in doubt about a possible collision, agencies prefer to waste fuel and carry out an evasion maneuver, which interrupts scientific missions and shortens the useful life of the ships. 50 satellites are enough for chaos. According to research published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rocketsonly 50 satellites in lunar orbit are enough for each of them to have to maneuver an average of four times a year in order to avoid a possible collision. 50 satellites may seem like a lot, but at the current rate of launches, we could reach that number in less than a decade. And it’s not theory. It’s already happening. The Indian orbiter Chandrayaan-2 had to maneuver three times between 2019 and 2023 to avoid dangerous approaches (one of them with NASA’s LRO probe). And this occurred when there were only six operational spacecraft orbiting the Moon. The UN wants to bring order. This is where international diplomacy comes in. The United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), the main global forum for space law, has taken action on the matter. In early 2025, COPUOS formally established a new working group: the Action Team on Lunar Activities Consultation (ATLAC). The goal of this team is precisely to create a draft of space “traffic rules.” They have until 2027 to study recommendations and a possible international consultation mechanism. Image | POT In Xataka | How many times have we gone to the Moon and why have only 11 military aviators and one geologist set foot on it in all of history?

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