discovered

NASA has had its ships exposed to hackers for three years. An AI discovered it in just four days

by

If there is a place where they should be open to any type of communication, it should be in a space agency. And it is no longer just a cinematic issue (although it has gone to great lengths to delve into that topic in the cinema), it is that communications are critical: from things as mundane as explaining that all processes are going well, to anomalies, to the specific future of a mission. Getting your hands on the communications of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has to be a real treat and not only to boycott the American entity, but also to access confidential information or even to develop conspiracy theories that dismantle that man will reach the moon. Well, as incredible as it may seem, hacking NASA has been easier than you might think. Three years exposed and billions of dollars at stake And it hasn’t just been a little while: communications between Earth and NASA spacecraft have suffered a critical vulnerability for three years against possible computer attacks. Nor was it trivial: that breach in security could have allowed attackers to take over space missions like the agency’s rovers on Mars. The consequence would not have been cheap either: it poses a threat to billions of dollars in space infrastructure and the performance of these missions. Vulnerabilities are usually detected when it is too late or thanks to the action of researchers, although in this case it was the work of artificial intelligence, more specifically a cybersecurity algorithm integrated into AISLE security software, whose objective is to protect communications between spacecraft and terrestrial systems. This vulnerability had gone unnoticed by human eyes in multiple code reviews throughout that time. However, this autonomous AI-based analyzer detected it and helped correct it in four days, account the team of the Californian startup. As detailed, the fault was in the authentication system and to take advantage of it you only needed to have operator credentials. A little social engineering such as phishing or infecting computers to obtain usernames and passwords of NASA workers would be enough to make this possible. From here, something as common as authentication would become a weapon to, for example, inject commands that are executed with full privileges to access the system. The consequences could be fatal: from intercepting data to hijacking a ship. The only “good” thing about this vulnerability is that it was an essential requirement to execute it on the system locally, which obviously reduces the risk compared to remote. The integration of systems with AI in collaboration with humans is the order of the day and although in this case it has been the machine that has brought out the colors for the team of people, it is worth remembering that with the fall of half the internet because of Amazon servers, the responsibility fell on automation: It was the operators who had to intervene to fix it manually. In Xataka | NASA finds ‘space gum’ and glucose on Bennu: we now have the missing ingredient to explain the origin of life In Xataka | NASA invites you to send your name to the Moon for free. Behind it there is something more than a simple symbolic gesture Cover | Photo of NASA Hubble Space Telescope in Unsplash

A teenager discovered the ‘Málaga’ virus and ended up founding VirusTotal. The enigma that remains is the same since 1992: who programmed it

by

Bernardo Quintero (@bquintero) was 14 years old and his first PC, an Amstrad PC-1512, had just arrived home. It was 1987, and the co-founder of VirusTotal He was excited by this machine that allowed him to exploit his computer curiosity. His hobby ended up being trying to circumvent the copy protection systems of some games, and he was there one day when something suddenly happened. A little white ball moved on your screen. By itself. Without him having done anything. He soon discovered that it was a computer virus. One that he ended up studying to know how to detect and eliminate it. He succeeded, and over the next three years he ended up improving his first antivirus, a tool that allowed him to recognize and eradicate seven different viruses he had encountered. It didn’t seem like that project was going to go much further, and Quintero began his studies in Computer Science at the Polytechnic University School of Malaga. In one of the first classes, a professor asked if anyone wanted to raise a grade with a Pascal programming project. He signed up, and when talking to the professor, he asked him if he had done any previous projects. “Well, yes,” he replied. “An accounting program, disk utilities, an antivirus…”. The teacher cut him off. “Did you say antivirus?”. When he answered affirmatively, the professor asked him to accompany him to his office. There he showed him how the entire IT department had been infected by a virus that the antivirus did not recognize. Fragment of the code in Turbo Pascal 5.5 of the antivirus that Bernardo Quintero developed to eliminate the “Málaga-2610” virus (1992). Source: Bernardo Quintero. Quintero soon detected where the problem could be and went home with an infected disk to work on an antivirus. It took him more than he thought, but after a few hours he managed to figure out how to detect it and delete it. That helped him pass the subject, but it also ended up being the definitive seed of the professional project that would end with the founding of Virus Total. He tells it all in more detail in his novel, ‘Infected‘, which he published at the beginning of the year and in which he narrates those beginnings and how that ended up leading him to create VirusTotal, the Malaga company that would later end up being bought by Google. That virus in his faculty was called “Málaga”, and Quintero spent years without paying much attention to it again. So, three years ago, this expert posted a message on Twitter (X) to try to solve the mystery of who would have created it. Already then he discovered that according to several sources the virus had been created at the Polytechnic School of Informatics. The objective, I counted thenit was not about bringing the name to light, but about chatting with that person and remembering those times. He failed to reveal the mystery, and that mystery remained unsolved again. But Bernardo Quintero never forgot that and returned to the fray with a new attempt a few days ago. After first publishing a message on X, the next day he published a summary of that story on LinkedInand asked for help in that post to try to solve the mystery once and for all. We contacted him, and he told us how while in the past he had focused on discovering how it infected and creating the disinfection tool, he never tried to find out who had created the “Malaga” virus. But he told us that “now, looking at it with new eyes, I have seen a couple of interesting details and I have discovered the motivation.” In fact, he adds that thanks to those messages on X and LinkedIn “I have received stories from several people who studied those years at the Polytechnic of Malaga and who believe they know the author.” Of those candidates, he explains, “I have ruled out 3 or 4, but there is one that fits very well with the new data I have.” The mystery seems to be close to being solved. “I just need to clear up one unknown to confirm the author.. And if it is confirmed, there is a beautiful and sad story that will be worth telling.” Everything therefore indicates that it will finally be known who was the author of that virus, and Quintero has promised to tell more details these days. We will be attentive. Image | Mika Baumeister In Xataka | The computer with the most malware in the world: this is MICE, the challenge of Bernardo Quintero and VirusTotal

The Academy has discovered that being relevant matters

by

The Hollywood Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has signed an agreement that, beyond the specific broadcast of its awards gala, marks a turning point in the entertainment industry: from 2029YouTube will broadcast the oscars exclusively and free for everyone. The story underlying this movement is not so much the demise of cable television (a phenomenon that in Spain we perceive from a certain distance) but the confirmation of a fundamental change: if the content is not available in a simple and instantaneous way, it does not exist for the majority. The deal. YouTube will obtain exclusive worldwide broadcasting rights from the 101st edition of the awards, scheduled for 2029. The deal extends until 2033 and the transmission will be free worldwide, including the main ceremony, the red carpet and exclusive material from the backstage and the Governors Ball. Until now, Disney paid $100 million each year for broadcast rights on ABC, a very tight economic dealsince this year, for example, it only earned 127 million from advertising during the broadcast. Little thing compared to YouTubewhich recorded advertising revenue of $36 billion in 2024. Worse and worse audiences. The break between ABC and the Academy comes from progressive worsening of audience data. The 2019 ceremony brought together 29.6 million viewers; In 2020, the figure dropped to 23.6. But the real collapse came with the 2021 edition in the middle of the pandemic, which sank to 10.4 million viewers. In 2025 there were signs of recovery with 19.69 million viewers, the highest audience in five years, thanks to simultaneous streaming on Hulu and the return of Conan O’Brien as host. Possible solutions. To improve the numbers (and the friction between ABC and the Academy) the network proposed changes inspired by the Grammys: moving technical categories out of the main broadcast, prioritizing musical performances and reducing the total duration. The Academy resisted, but in 2018 announced the creation of a category of Outstanding Achievement in Popular Filman idea so bad that it was canceled just 29 days later. Instead of actually cutting the Academy added two new categories (casting in 2025 and stunt coordination in 2028). It was seen coming. In fact, the jump to YouTube is the inevitable step that certifies the agony of cable. In fact, this is demonstrated by the Academy’s own decision to incorporate streaming simultaneous on Hulu this very 2025, despite a good number of technological difficulties. YouTube is the inevitable next stop: instant distribution, unrestricted global reach, and free (or, at most, dependent on a single subscription to the platform’s premium option). Taking into account the traditional difficulties in watching the ceremony, YouTube’s proposal has a certain radicality: from anywhere you can watch the ceremony without downloading applications or bypassing blocks. The lace There is one more detail that certifies that the grudges come from afar. In May 2024, YouTube hired Justin Connolly, a veteran who had spent a quarter of a century at Disney, to oversee the platform’s media and sports operations. The signing triggered a legal battle: Disney filed a lawsuit trying to block Connolly’s incorporation, in a dispute that was resolved through an out-of-court settlement. A former Disney executive, speaking to The Wrap, stressed: “Do not underestimate the importance of the hatred and resentment between Justin Connolly and Bob Iger. The dispute continues.” And we just saw the last blow. In Xataka | The “ghost” category of the Oscars: it exists but it is so demanding that there have never been films that compete for it

We thought we “discovered” fire 50,000 years ago. We didn’t know how wrong we were.

by

For decades paleontology has maintained a clear distinction in history: it is one thing to use fire and quite another to create it at will. Something that seems very silly, but is essential since until now the evidence we had on the table pointed to the ability to light a bonfire from scratch They dated back 50,000 years. But this has changed. A big change. A published study in Nature He told us that we were quite wrong about this. A team of researchers has pointed out that hominids already possessed technology to make fire voluntarily 415,000 years ago. That is, 375,000 years earlier than we thought. Although what is surprising is that it was not even our species, but the early Neanderthals. Something that has been known after studying a site found in Barnham in England that has given the necessary evidence to reach the end of the matter. How do we know? At the moment we do not have a time machine to travel to the past and see what happened in our history. That is why this discovery makes it surprising that they used reverse engineering to reach this conclusion. The elements that were available at the site were not just ashes, but the “ignition kit.” Researchers were able to identify fragments of pyrite and flint axes, which can be used to make fire. Although the key here is that the pyrite It is not native to that area, but hominids had to intentionally transport it to make fire voluntarily. The mechanism is, in essence, the prehistoric version of a modern lighter: striking the pyrite with the flint generates sparks capable of igniting dry tinder. Confirming it. With these indications, anyone could think that it could be a random fire, and that is why advanced techniques such as archeomagnetism, micromorphology and spectroscopy were used. In this case, the results indicated that the sediments had been heated to more than 700 ºC, which suggests that it was a concentrated and fed fire. This is also added to the fact that the flint axes presented specific cracks caused by cycles of heat and cooling, indicating that fires were made repeatedly. A big jump. The importance of this discovery is monumental since until now we assumed that complete control of fire was a late skill. This discovery sets the controlled ignition clock back by 375,000 years compared to previous evidence from French sites. This tells us that the minds of early Neanderthals, who were most likely found in that area, were more developed than thought. In this way, transporting pyrite implies long-term planning, which is not an instinctive reaction to the cold, evidencing a cognitive ability to think about the future. The domain of fire. Making fire at will is considered a great evolutionary advance since fire can lengthen the day for nighttime socialization or even cook food to obtain more energy with less digestive effort. This also represents a great geographical expansion for the species, since 400,000 years ago Europe was going through a very important glacial period, which made the heat of fire essential for the species to perpetuate itself. Images | Mladen Borisov In Xataka | Neither lions nor hyenas: at the top of the food chain 30 million years ago, there was a “pig” weighing more than a thousand kilos

We have been believing that bacteria are a weapon against tumors for 150 years. And finally we have discovered how

by

In the fight against cancer, there are many treatments that are emerging, being the immunotherapy one of the most innovative, although there are also other alternatives such as based on LED light. Now therapies continue to advance and science is already pointing to a group of bacteria to be able to destroy tumors without depending on the immune response, opening a new era in oncological medicine. It’s not something new. The idea of ​​using bacteria to treat cancer is not new: already in 1868 the German doctor Busch observed that some cancer patients experienced remissions after bacterial infections. Later, William Colby developed bacteria-based treatments that they laid the foundation of modern immunotherapy. However, these traditional therapies require a functional immune system, which is a serious problem for patients who are immunocompromised due to cancer. The present. a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering presented an innovative “drug-free” strategy that uses a group of bacteria to fight cancer, rescuing this old idea of ​​bacteria against cancer. This treatment has not only demonstrated powerful antitumor efficacy, but it has done so by achieving complete remission of the tumor and, most importantly, it has been maintained for years in mouse models, even in those who are immunosuppressed. The most relevant thing is that the fact that a bacteria helps us with this disease has been achieved without the need to use genetic engineering that alters your RNA. And also, without generating toxicity on the body. A priori they are all advantages. A bacterial duo. The protagonists of this therapy are a bacterial group called AUN, composed of two specific bacteria: Proteus mirabilis (nicknamed A-gyo) and Rhodopseudomonas palustris (UN-gyo). And although we may all have in mind that bacteria are bad for humans, the reality is that They help us (a lot) starting with all those that are in our intestine. When this bacterial duo was administered directly into the blood of tumor-bearing mice, the results were dramatic: complete tumor remission and prolonged survival. And it wasn’t magic. How does it work? It is the obligatory question after seeing the results of this study. The researchers explain that what these bacteria do in short is block the arrival of oxygen and nutrients to the tumors, which literally causes them to suffocate. And a tumor is nothing more than a set of cells that have an advanced metabolism. When taking away their food they end up dead. In essence, these bacteria can reach the tumor and enter its interior, as if it were a Trojan horse. Upon arrival, it causes very small blood clots to form and only in the blood vessels that go to the tumor. In this way, blood clots block the passage of blood and, therefore, its food source. Bacterial transformation. Bacteria are STILL not passive agents, but are dynamic actors that change their behavior when detecting cancer. In this way, the study observed that the A-gyo bacteria undergoes a “wonderful fibrous transformation.” This change is not random. It is specifically activated when the bacteria encounters “oncometabolites“, chemical signals emitted by cancer cells. This highly mobile form of “swarm”, together with the toxins and hemolysins secreted by the consortium, seems to be responsible for the tumor vascular destruction without affecting the rest of the healthy cells. A safe treatment. Using live bacteria as therapy may sound risky, but the study spends much of its time demonstrating the safety and control of AUN. The first thing that has been seen is that the bacterial strains have a unique non-pathogenic profile. Furthermore, to achieve a 100% complete response and avoid the lethality of a single high dose, the researchers developed a “double dose” regimen: a first injection at a low dose, followed days later by a high dose. The low dose “primes” the body, consuming aggressive neutrophils and mitigating the risk of severe cytokine release syndrome. Looking to the future. Although the experiments were performed in mice, the therapy was tested against human cancer cell lines in xenograft models. In this case, cells from human colon adenocarcinoma, ovarian cancer and pancreatic cancer were used. The results in this case were very clear: all the tumors tested successfully disappeared in the mouse models, without very serious side effects. In this way, we are faced with a therapy that does not require any type of drug a priori and that can be self-managed. The authors of the study point out that this approach can revolutionize cancer therapy, but there is still a long way to go. Images | CDC In Xataka | Colon cancers are increasing alarmingly among young people. We have a suspect: sedentary lifestyle

science has discovered why

by

Sleeping little is still one of the great silent evils of modern life. Long workdays, screens on until dawn, and the glorification of eternal productivity have normalized something that science has been warning about for decades: subtracting hours of sleep is not freeand can even be likened to going through life drunk. The psychologist specialized in sleep Nuria Roure summed it up on the podcast from ‘Mommy, what are you saying’: “People who have spent more than 20 hours awake have a level of attention similar to that of someone who has consumed about six beers”. It may seem like an exaggeration, but science backs up his claim. Like he was drunk. If you have slept very few hours, surely when you get out of bed the first steps you take hardly follow a straight line, but rather they may seem quite similar to the house having become a real boat. Something that also happens when we have two too many drinks. And it’s not that during the night you woke up sleepwalking and grabbed a few beers from the fridge, but the fault lies in your sleep hygiene. A study from the University of South Australia published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine compared the effects of lack of sleep with those of alcohol. After 17 to 19 hours without sleep, the participants showed cognitive and motor impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.05%. That is, the tired brain and the drunk brain process information with comparable slowness and clumsiness. And this is something that also justifies that Driving without sleep is as dangerous as being a little drunk. Although it is not the only evidence we have, since a great study has confirmed that even partial sleep deprivation, which consists of sleeping four or five hours for several consecutive days, affects attention and decision making. You can also get sick. Although we focus on the effects on our brain, the reality is that it goes much further. A study published in the journal Sleep concluded that sleeping less than six hours a night was associated with an increased risk of hypertension, type 2 diabetes, or obesity. But we must not forget about Alzheimer’s. It must be remembered that during sleep, the brain activates its ‘cleaning’ systems to eliminate the garbage produced by neurons, including beta-amyloid that is implicated in Alzheimer’s. In the magazine itself Nature we can find solid evidence which warns that people who consistently slept less than six hours a night in middle age were more likely to develop dementia. Adolescents at the center of the problem. Sleep deficit begins every time before. According to the Spanish Sleep Society, Spanish adolescents sleep on average between six and six and a half hours a day, when their brain needs between eight and ten. One of the culprits in this case for science is the educational system, as pointed out by the American neurologist Mary Carskdon who has been pointing because having to get up early to go to class is a key factor in chronic fatigue syndromes among youth. Images | Shane BENCE BOROS In Xataka | Modern life is destroying the dream. Science explains how to fight back using your greatest ally: light

We choose our vacations in the series. That is why 44% of our tourists have discovered us on the screen

by

Spain has a significant history as a movie settingsometimes with more glamorous glitz than our own national cinematography. The natural landscapes and the diversity of ecosystems create a western desert in Almería that, in the north, approaches the Nordic air landscapes (but without bad weather) of a sword and sorcery production. But with the arrival of streaming (and the international reach of the Spanish series), Spain is beginning to shape itself as a perfect destination for travelers with audiovisual culture. Booming phenomenon. 44% of foreign visitors discover and choose destinations in the country after seeing them in audiovisual productions. It is data provided by The Screen Tourism Observatorywhich speaks of this type of travel as one of the tourism segments with the greatest projection in 2025. This type of tourism moves 40 million international travelers each year worldwide, and Spain is benefiting from it. How it works. According to comments Carlos Rosado, president of the Spain Film Commission, where the public filming offices in Spain are grouped, a film or series acts on the viewer like a virtual brochure, with different advantages over traditional tourist advertising: it is longer in time, reaches more people and creates emotional ties. Spectators become potential tourists thanks to the places in the north of the peninsula that, for example, are seen in ‘Game of Thrones’. Perfect scenario. Spain became a relevant Hollywood set in the 1950s, when the major studios discovered its advantages for filming: diverse landscapes and costs up to 50% cheaper than in the United States. From that time come films such as ‘El Cid’, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and, without leaving Europe, the more than 300 films that the Eurowestern factotums filmed in the desert of Tabernasin Almeria. The difference with the present is that those super-productions did not generate tourist flows. But now yes: for example, from the fifth season of ‘Game of Thrones‘, when HBO filmed in the Alcázar of Seville, Girona and other Spanish locationstourism in Seville increased by 25% and in Osuna by 75%. And San Juan de Gaztelugatxe became the second tourist focus in the Basque Country after the Guggenheim. By countries. In the aforementioned study by the Screen Tourism Observatory, carried out with thousands of surveys and an exhaustive compilation of online opinions, we discovered that Germans lead this type of tourism, with 53% having visited Spain after seeing it in audiovisual productions. Italy follows with 46% and the United States with 45%. Among them, half opt for self-guided routes and not organized trips. He is “an autonomous, curious and digitally informed screen tourist, who prefers to design his own experience rather than contracting closed products.” Go to more. Along these lines, the Spain Film Commission itself has launched the Experiences programa project financed by the Secretary of State for Tourism, which wants to transform Spanish audiovisual heritage into sustainable tourist experiences. The proposal will have pilot experiences in Formentera, Seville, Galicia and Burgos that will serve as a model to develop a methodology that will be repeated in other areas of Spain. On the horizon, phenomena such as New Zealand, a benchmark after ‘The Lord of the Rings‘, and who experienced a 40% increase in tourism between 2000 and 2004. Very attractive figures that we will try to replicate with all these proposals. Header | Clementp.fr In Xataka | The reduction of the working day to 37.5 hours was going to sink the hospitality industry: a hotel chain in the Balearic Islands has proven the opposite

In 2015, a man found a rock and kept it thinking it had gold. Ten years later he discovered his true value

by

Imagine that one day, while searching for precious metals with a metal detector, you come across a strange reddish rock. You immediately think that it may be hiding gold, so you don’t hesitate to take it home. After numerous attempts to pierce it and discover what’s inside, you give up. It is a practically invulnerable rock, at least with everyday tools, such as grinders. This is what we just described This is what happened to David Hole.an Australian who used to explore Maryborough Regional Park with his detecting equipment in search of precious metals. And yes, he found the rock and tried to open it without success. In the end it turned out to be something much more valuable than any precious metal: a celestial body that had probably traveled to our planet from Mars or Jupiter, in other words, a meteorite. The Maryborough Meteorite The cosmic rock was discovered by Hole in 2015, although the man did not know what it was until 2018. Three years after its discovery he decided to take it to the Victoria Museum of his country in search of answers. Geologists Bill Birch and Dermot Henry They immediately suspected that it was a meteorite. And this was actually a surprise since most of the “meteorites” that people bring to the museum are not actually meteorites. The specialists had a peculiar piece measuring 38.5 cm x 14.5 cm x 14.5 cm. The next step was to photograph it and do a thorough analysis that consisted of making a small cut in order to analyze its composition. After analysis, it was confirmed that it was a meteorite with a high percentage of iron, that is, an ordinary H5 chondrite meteorite, which suggests that its formation could have occurred in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The origin of the Maryborough Meteorite, it should be noted, is a hypothesis, as researchers do not know exactly where it came from or when it may have impacted Earth. However, radiocarbon dating indicates that the rock has remained on Earth between 100 and 1,000 yearsalthough it is believed that it could have crossed our atmosphere in a period of time between 1889 and 1951, that is, in a recent period. If we talk about the value of the meteorite compared to gold, it is difficult to establish a comparative framework, but the museum points out that this is much more valuable. They say that finding gold on Australian soil is more common than finding a meteorite of these characteristics. “This is only the 17th meteorite found in Victoria,” they point out, adding that they are important scientific elements that “take us back in time” to study our Solar System. Certainly, meteorites contain valuable information about the formation of elements in the universe and give us a unique opportunity to study them closely to analyze their characteristics and chemical composition. A different type of research, but complementary, to the missions that are driven towards space, such as that of James Webb Space Telescope u the ambitious OSIRIS-REx. Images | Museums Victoria In Xataka | Who or what excavated the ravines on Mars? The answer is even stranger than we always thought In Xataka | There is already speculation even with Martian soil: the largest piece of Mars on Earth has just been sold for 5.3 million dollars

Years ago we discovered that our ancestors’ dreams were not like ours. There are now thousands of people trying to introduce biphasic sleep into their lives.

by

It’s two or three in the morning and something clicks in your eyes. You wake up. There are five seconds of disorientation. You try to go back to sleep, but many people can’t. In fact, those early morning awakenings they become a curse. Therefore, when they see on social networks that there are experts who recommend sleeping in two blocks (either in more); What’s more, when they read that biphasic sleep It is ‘normal’ biologically speakingthey think maybe they don’t have a problem. Maybe, just maybe, society has the problem. What is true in all this? How human beings sleep. A few years ago, historian Thomas Ekirch discovered recurring references to “first dreams.” It was not something isolated: he found them in documents that covered not only the Middle Ages but also the modern age. Many centuries of “first dreams” that contrasted with the fact that, in short, he did not know what they were talking about. He decided to investigate it in detail and, with this, he managed compile a series of tests historiographical evidence of the existence of a biphasic dream in these periods: according to their research, the first dream lasted from 9 to 11 at night. Then there would be a period of wakefulness (which is dedicated to the most diverse activities: chatting, praying, visiting neighbors…) and, subsequently, there would be another period of sleeping again until dawn. It’s not just something historical. Seduced by Ekirch’s ideas, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr performed an experiment with 15 subjects who were left without artificial light. He found that under certain restrictions (basically limiting their leisure activities), participants adopted a biphasic pattern. This has triggered the ‘two-phase evangelizers’. And, in fact, it is increasingly common to find people who defend it. The problem is that this ‘natural’ pattern is highly debatable. Yes, in the pre-industrial European era many slept in two phases: but that is not ‘natural’. As Wehr himself discovered, it is, in any case, the natural adaptation to short days (around 10 hours). If we go closer to the equator, where the days are more stable, the anthropological evidence does not find the same patterns. What does this mean? That there are no magical ways. If we review the research on naps, for example, we will see cases in which there is a lower cardiovascular risk and others in which cardiometabolic risk skyrockets. Here we are defenders of the napbut only when it makes sense. The bottom line here is that lack of sleep or poor quality sleep has been linked to immunological problems, metaboliccardiac, psychological and cognitive. Not only that, the scientific literature is full of studies showing an increase in coronary heart diseaseof the diabetes and of the obesity. To make matters worse, social problems they are also on the agenda. The important thing, therefore, is to find a way of sleeping that works for us. And for this we have some tricks. a lot of tricks: turn sleep into a routine (whatever it may be), exercise throughout the day, do not consume substances that affect it, relax and use our physiology to our advantage. However, the central trick is not to overwhelm ourselves. As we said years agothe idea behind all sleep experts is that, we can use certain techniques to help us sleep, but the only way to cultivate restful sleep is to reconcile ourselves to it. Image | Mussi Katz In Xataka | When “dying of sleep” is literal: This is how not sleeping can kill us

Stephen Hawking left a hidden treasure that has just been discovered. The problem is that it is in the form of floppy disks

by

The Cambridge University Library houses several historical treasures including letters from Isaac Newton and notebooks from Charles Darwin. Now they will take care also of manage 113 boxes with documents and memories of the physical Stephen Hawkingbut in those boxes they also found a surprise turned into a challenge: floppy disks. Lots of them. Computer pioneer. The famous physicist was an early user of those first computers in which data was stored on floppy disks. When he suffered from ALS this was a very important resource to be able to communicate and work, and now those disks that have just been discovered could contain all kinds of revealing data about Hawking’s life and work. Future Nostalgia. That’s what it’s called the project of the University of Cambridge and its library that precisely tries to safeguard all that information that in the past ended up being stored on floppy disks. Recovering such data is not easy when so much time has passed, and this project tries to educate about the best ways to preserve said information and transfer or recover it from those floppy disks. A format with an expiration date. Although one would think that floppy disks are a more secure way to store data than paper and ink, this physical medium also has clear disadvantages. The iron oxide covering the thin layer of plastic can degrade and lose its magnetic capabilities, meaning data could be lost forever. Each floppy disk is a world. With old books there are not too many problems when it comes to retrieving the information: you open them and read them (if you understand the language, of course). With floppy disks you need the hardware to be able to read them—a compatible disk drive—and also figure out how they are formatted. Leontien Talboom, responsible for this project, explained How to also clean those floppy disks was complex and there were various methods that they were exploring. These included the use of hand soap or isopropyl alcohol. Hawking used both a PC and a Mac. The disks arrived at the project in two batches. The first, with five and a quarter (5.25 inch) disks formatted on an MS-DOS based PC. The second, with three and a half disks, somewhat more recent and that were still used on an old Mac. According to Talboom, they are mainly talks that Hawking gave: “from a technical point of view they are really interesting because his talks were so big that he had to divide them into several floppy disks.” I wrote to speak. Hawking’s illness left him unable to speak for himself, so for years he used various voice synthesizers to express his ideas. Precisely for this reason he wrote so much on the computer and saved those documents on disk: this allowed him to use them later so that his synthesized voice could read said documents. Different discs, different readers. Although 5.25″ and especially 3.5″ discs were the most widespread, other formats were also seen such as eight inch discs which for example were used in the Churchill Archives Centre. Chris Knowles, one of the Future Nostalgia participants, explained how he bought a player for these discs on eBay. “It was a miracle that it worked,” but that allowed him to recover the information from those disks. Forgotten formats. They have also received some three-inch floppy disks, a much less widespread and peculiar format that had some success in the United Kingdom before the 3.5″ format was clearly imposed. To recover them, they ended up using an old reader manufactured by Amstrad that they had to modify to bring it back to life. And then there’s the software problem.. The information recovered from these disks can also pose another challenge: that it was created with software that was abandoned and even ended up disappearing. Some disks, for example, had documents written with a missing word processor called Diamond Word. That’s where a kind of “translation” comes into play to convert those files into something readable in the current era. Safeguarding our past. This work demonstrates how critical it is to try to protect and recover information from these old formats. Many of those floppy disks are 40 or 50 years old, and as Knowles says, “old emails and work calendars may not look like historical documents. They might seem banal. But they’re what Newton’s or Darwin’s letters would have looked like 200 years ago. Now they are fascinating documents that open a window to the past.” In Xataka | The 20 most important personal computers in the history of technology

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.