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It is increasingly common to find jellyfish on Mediterranean beaches before summer. And it’s a bad sign

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Last weekend and the one before that I tried to swim at the beach. However, upon seeing a few jellyfish I ended up deciding to spend time reading in the sand. The worst of the afternoon was not that. I found more annoying a few teenagers playing soccer a few meters from my towel. Jellyfish, after all, are in their habitat. But it is true that I had never seen in my entire life jellyfish in the month of May. I did some research and discovered that in recent years their arrival in the Mediterranean at this point in spring has become more and more frequent. They are even starting to appear in other waters in which they are not normally so abundant. Logically, the first thought that came to mind was that is related to global warming. The temperature of the Mediterranean has risen at a dizzying rate in recent years. However, I had the feeling that there must be something more. After all, the water has been warming for many years, but this boom in jellyfish populations (known as bloom, by the way) seems more recent to me. To answer my questions, I have contacted Jose Carlos Báez, Chief Program Researcher at the Spanish Institute of Oceanography, CSIC. As I feared, warming water plays a role, but there are even more factors that affect this uncontrolled proliferation that is becoming more and more noticeable. Three phases to give rise to adult jellyfish Although there are small variations between some species and others, in general the reproductive cycle of jellyfish consists of three phases. On the one hand there are the larvae, which float in the water until they find a place to cling to on the seabed. When they achieve this, they move on to the polyp phase, which can last up to a year. When conditions are favorable, the polyp fragments, releasing the ephyras, which are small immature jellyfish that, over time, become the adult jellyfish. The transition from polyp to jellyfish It is known as strobilation and depends on factors such as the temperature of the water, the oxygen dissolved in it or the availability of food. Jellyfish are only released into the water if they are going to be able to live in it. The surface temperature of the water is a determining factor. In fact, it has been observed that with an increase of 1.7°C The rate of asexual reproduction in the polyps of some species is accelerated by 20%. Therefore, strobilation normally occurs at the beginning of summer. It may vary between species. In some it occurs at the end of spring, but it is more common for it to take place from June onwards. According to José Carlos Báez, this is causing “a dilation of the reproductive period“, so we are seeing more generations of jellyfish in a single season. They arrive earlier and leave later. Not everything is going to be global warming The massive proliferations that we are seeing with increasing frequency on beaches are known as blooms. As we have seen, global warming is causing us to start seeing jellyfish earlier and stop seeing them later, but it does not seem to be the cause of the blooms. “It is difficult to affirm with complete certainty that the total biomass of jellyfish in the Mediterranean has increased due to climate change, mainly because we do not have sufficiently long and homogeneous historical series that allow us to compare the current situation with that of past decades,” says Báez. “However, there is evidence that jellyfish blooms, as well as the arrival of large swarms in coastal areas, appear to be increasingly frequent and prolonged.” The problem of overfishing “In a healthy ecosystem, teleost fish eat especially zooplankton, in which ephyras are found,” explains Báez. Among those fish that ephyras eat, sardines stand out, for example. On the other hand, adult jellyfish are typically preyed upon by turtles, but also by large fish such as tunas, to which tuna belongs. All of this, taken together, helps keep jellyfish populations more or less stable. Because of overfishingthere are fewer and fewer predators for jellyfish. There are, for example, fewer sardines being eaten in their ephyra phase and fewer tuna eating adult jellyfish. If we add to all this that more generations of jellyfish are born in a season due to warming water, we have the perfect cocktail for the appearance of blooms. The whiting that bites its tail (pun intended) In 2022, José Carlos Báez’s team published a study in which another less known relationship was described between the populations of jellyfish and sardines or anchovies. We have already seen that fish feed on the zooplankton in which ephyras are found, so they can help regulate jellyfish populations. However, what happens next is not so well known. Adult jellyfish can also feed on the eggs of sardines and anchovies. Therefore, if there are too many jellyfish, they can deplete the sardine population, so there will be fewer of these adult fish to continue feeding on the ephyras. As a result, there are even more jellyfish and we start again. The balance between one predator and another is broken and clearly leans towards the proliferation of jellyfish. Furthermore, in that study a relationship was also found between the proliferation of jellyfish and the decrease in weight of adult sardines. And, in turn, adult jellyfish also feed on zooplankton, which is why they compete with sardines and anchovies for food. If there are many, they do not allow them to feed properly. Not everything is jellyfish in the gelatinization of water With the proliferation of jellyfish, something known as water gelatinization is occurring. Logically, these animals, with their gelatinous appearance, have a great influence. But they are not the only ones who favor that aspect. Other gelatinous animals also proliferate, such as ctenophores. In addition, the water looks cloudier due to excess algae. This is because great eutrophication is occurring in the Mediterranean. … Read more

Astronomers have no doubt that there is extraterrestrial life. Mathematics says that it will take 1,500 years to find it

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We have been sending signals to the cosmos for almost a century through high-power radio transmissions or even with military radars that exist around the entire planet. Little by little, humanity has been creating an electromagnetic “bubble” that expands at the speed of light, but unfortunately for some, we have not yet received a response to all these signals, and it is easy to fall into pessimism about the absence of other living beings beyond our atmosphere. The mathematics. The question here is not if we will connect with extraterrestrial intelligence, but when. And here the scientific community has great optimismsince the astronomical community is not based on UFO sightings, but on pure statistics. Here institutions like SETI They have been scanning the sky for decadesand although there is still no evidence of interference or signals of artificial origin, the conviction that we are not alone is stronger than ever. The bubble. To understand why scientists are so sure of this, you first have to look at the scale of the problem in our Milky Way, which is 100,000 light years across. This monstrous figure collides with our radio bubble that barely touches 100 light years, so on a galactic scale, we have not even crossed the street. This is where the famous Fermi paradox comes into play, which suggests that, if the universe is so vast and old, there should be someone around us, and that is why the question this researcher asked went down in history: where is everyone? The answer most supported by modern astrobiology is based on the “Mediocrity Principle”, an astronomical concept that maintains that there is nothing special about Earth and suggests that, if life arose here under certain physical and chemical conditions, it is statistically inevitable that it has arisen on a fraction of the billions of exoplanets that orbit habitable zones in our galaxy. Investigation continues. In 2016, an influential study from Cornell University put numbers to this paradox. To do this, the Drake equation was crossed with the expansion of our radio bubble with the aim of calculating how far our signal would have to travel to reach a sufficient number of stars to guarantee, by pure statistical probability, an answer. The result yielded a figure that has become a recurring reference in spatial dissemination: contact should not be expected before about 1,500 years. According to this mathematical model, for our signals to reach extraterrestrial ears requires that we cover at least half of the galaxy. Until then, it will seem like we are alone, even though the universe teems with life. Where do we look? While the 1,500-year clock continues to tick, scientists are not standing idly by, and that is why we have initiatives like SETI that they are not just looking to hear somethingbut to understand how we should listen to it. And for decades, the search for life has focused on very specific radio frequencies, highlighting the famous 1420 MHz hydrogen emission line, assuming that any advanced civilization would use that universal frequency to communicate. But… What if it’s not like that? New approaches aim to diversify the search towards broader technosignatures, since it is no longer just a matter of searching for an intentional “hello” in the form of a radio wave, but rather detecting electromagnetic pollution from other civilizations, the use of optical lasers for interplanetary communication, or even searching for signals at low-frequency radio frequencies that until now had been ignored or discarded by terrestrial interference. Images | Graham Holtshausen In Xataka | If we want to find extraterrestrial life, we already know where in space we should look: the “terminator zone”

Airplanes have circular windows for a reason. It took two plane crashes to find out.

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When you get on a plane, have you ever wondered why the windows of this means of transport They have an oval shape. If you look closely, it’s not just the windows: also the armrests, trays, screens and any interior furniture. has a circular shape. Although it may seem something purely aestheticthere is actually scientific reasoning behind this choice. But before getting into the technical details, we need to talk a little about the history of aviation and how two fatal accidents changed everything. In their early days, airplanes had rectangular windows like those found in any house. As taking to the skies became more popular in the 1950s, airlines started flying at higher altitudes. This guaranteed them considerable economic savings, since the thin air generates less resistance and, therefore, less fuel is consumed, as well as allowing more comfortable driving with less turbulence. But in order for planes to fly at those heights, manufacturers were also forced to make design changes. The cabin had to be pressurized so that the pilots could breathe without problems. And a pressurized cabin requires a cylindrical shape to function, which creates a pressure difference between indoor air and outdoor air which increases as the plane rises. The flat body expands very slightly and therefore stress is applied to the material. And this is where the shape of the windows come into play. In 1954 there were two fatal accidents which caused the death of 56 passengers and crew. The reason the fuselage disintegrated had to do with a design flaw, which was that they had kept the windows square. Due to its right angles, Cabin pressure was concentrated in its corners and it was multiplied by three, more than in the rest of the fuselage. That caused the windows to end up exploding. It must be taken into account that airplanes usually fly at an altitude of 10,000 meters or more and that level atmospheric pressure It is about a third of normal. As Real Engineering explains in this video“When a material changes shape like this, stress is created in the material. Eventually, the stress can increase so much that the material breaks.” This is exactly what happened in the aforementioned accidents. The problems However, in a circular plane, tension flows smoothly through the material, a flow that is interrupted by the introduction of a window. But if the window is oval, stress levels are more evenly balanced. The same principle applies to the cargo and cabin doors. And that’s why we also see it in the windows of ships and spaceships. Unfortunately, it took two plane crashes and several decades of research to realize the evils that square windows were causing. Furthermore, as commented Anthony Harcup, director of the Teague design company, which has worked with Boeing for more than 75 years in this article from Travel + Leisure: “Sharp edges hurt elbows, knees, hips… or any part of the body they come into contact with. Rounding of all parts of the plane is also done for the “deletalization”a design principle that ensures that when subjected to Murphy’s Law, a passenger cannot be injured anywhere in the airplane seat.” It’s not just the shape of airplane windows that has changed over the years, but also their material. The windows you see on airplanes actually They are not glass, but acrylicwhich is more durable than the first. Also, as you may have noticed, there are three layers in each window. In fact, the interior window that faces passengers is not even part of the structure of the plane (it is just a safety measure so that the exterior window does not get touched or scratched). And the second layer exists as reinforcement to maintain the pressure on the end in case the exterior window is damaged. If you looked at the window, you will also have seen a small hole in this layer. Its role is essential since it serves as a valve to equalize pressure between this inner window and the outer window. Between the interior and exterior window there is a small air chamber and this hole regulates the pressure between the two sheets automatically. In addition, it balances the humidity level, preventing the window from fogging up or freezing. Everything on an airplane is pure science. Images | Unsplash In Xataka | The design can save the middle seat on airplanes from being the most hated: wider and “without invasions”

Castilla-La Mancha accuses the Southeast of “watering wildly”, while irrigators find it impossible to survive what is coming

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On May 20, just before the Supreme Court will definitively close the door to the aspirations of irrigators to maintain the Tajo-Segura transfer as until now, the spokesperson for the Junta de Castilla – La Mancha He stood in front of the media and said it: water cannot be limited to the irrigators of the region while in the Levant “it is watered freely”, he came to say. That’s the gossip, but that’s not the news. The news is that, 47 years after the inauguration of the transfer and after a decade of judicial conflictthe battle for the water of the Tagus returns to the negotiating table. Not because of ecological flows; That (barring a surprise) has already been decided: he has returned to the table because the most difficult thing remains. Say who pays the bill. Whose water is it? Because that is the heart of the matter and where Castilla – La Mancha is wrong. As I have explained the Supremethe arguments of the Central Union of Irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Aqueduct do not apply, precisely, because it is not about taking water from ‘someone’ to give it to another ‘someone’. The ecological flows (which taxes come by the jurisprudence of the same court and by the EU directive) cannot have “a use character, and must be considered as a restriction that is generally imposed on exploitation systems.” The problem is that these flows represent, according to the technical reports, a water loss of around 40% for the irrigators of the east. Irrigators who, let us remember, have the right to that water according to the current transfer rules, who have made investments and have built businesses (‘livelihoods’) counting on that water that the State had granted them. Rules that do not apply. Due to the court battle, the new flows have not come into force and, at this time, the old rules continue to be used to send water to the Segura basin. In fact, for the April-June quarter There are 180hm3 authorized (a much larger amount than would correspond to the new standard). And the irrigators are nervous. With sense, too: the Administrations’ alternative (desalination) is lost in combat. And, in any case, that is water is between three and ten times more expensive. This is important because (as explained by the Community of Irrigators of Campo de Cartagena) “The irrigable surface has not expanded by one square meter since 2017“. It is no longer a question that without water they cannot grow; it is a question that without water they cannot “maintain what we already cultivate.” And that would lead us to a more than considerable industrial reconversion throughout the region. But there doesn’t seem to be any other solution. Because, as we see, the cuts are due to legal imperative. The administrations have little else to do: they have already been delaying the application of ecological flows for years and the situation has not improved one bit. It doesn’t mean that all this is over. It is likely that the Union will appeal to the European Court, but the reorientation of the agrarian model in the southeast cannot be extended if we want it to remain alive. That is to say: the hour of truth arrives. For decades, politicians have been passing the buck without taking the necessary measures (no matter how painful they may be). That is the economic, ecological and social bill that we are paying now. The only reasonable question is whether we have learned our lesson. Image | David Algas Oroquieta In Xataka | The Tagus reservoirs have reached their maximum level. The response of the authorities has been to empty them immediately

There is no way to find parking and it’s China’s fault

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The scene takes place in the 90s, when a Western tourist who visited Pyongyang tells the story same strange experience: He could travel down gigantic avenues for whole minutes without hardly crossing paths with another vehicle. Some roads seemed so empty that many thought they had been built more like decoration propaganda than to support real traffic. Decades later, that same city begins to discover a problem that for a long time seemed reserved for the rest of the world. The most unexpected paradox. For decades, one of the most recognizable images of North Korea was its enormous practically empty avenues. Pyongyang was designed as a monumental capital to display state power, but with very few cars circulating really through its streets. Reuters counted that now the situation is changing so rapidly that the regime is beginning to face a problem that would have seemed absurd just a few years ago: traffic jams, lack of parking and difficulties in managing the growth of private traffic. The most striking thing is that much of this transformation has a very specific origin. Although international sanctions prohibit the export of vehicles to the country, North Korean roads are filling up with cars and components arriving directly or indirectly. from china. The result is a most fascinating paradox: one of the countries most isolated on the planet It is beginning to look, little by little, like any large Asian city trapped by its own automobile boom. Kim has opened a door. The traffic explosion is not accidental. In recent years, North Korea has legalized and regulated partially private ownership of automobiles, allowing certain citizens to purchase one vehicle per household through state-controlled dealerships. The move is part of a broader strategy by Kim Jong-un to absorb and control economic activities that previously operated in gray or directly clandestine markets. Of course, the private car remains a luxury reserved above all for urban elites and the business class. known as donjubut the simple fact that a relatively formalized market already exists is rapidly altering daily life in Pyongyang. Where military and official vehicles with blue or black license plates once predominated, yellow license plates for private cars are now beginning to multiply. Pyongyang several years ago China as a silent engine. The most important detail is that this new car culture depends almost entirely from china. Officially, Beijing barely recognizes vehicle exports to North Korea since UN sanctions came into effect. in 2017. However, parts and supplies export figures tell a story completely different. Shipments of tires, rearview mirrors, lubricants and related auto components have skyrocketed in recent years. To this, Reuters recalled Added to this is the informal flow of used and new cars that cross the border through networks of intermediaries and smuggling. Many vehicles change hands several times before entering North Korea, making it difficult track your final destination. Thus, while officially cars hardly arrive in the country, the streets of Pyongyang are increasingly filled with Chinese models from brands such as Changan, Chery or Geely. Suffering as if it were London. The consequences are beginning to be visible throughout the capital. Foreign visitors and satellite analysis describe hotels with saturated parking lots, vehicles occupying adjacent streets and congestion points unprecedented until a few years ago. Some new businesses and buildings already incorporate underground parkingsomething extremely rare in the city traditionally. Infrastructure for electric taxis and limited charging stations are even beginning to appear. The most symbolic thing is perhaps the psychological change: finding a parking space begins to become an everyday concern among wealthy sectors of Pyongyang. The image of almost empty avenues It is rapidly disappearing and being replaced by something much more recognizable for any large contemporary city: slow traffic, traffic jams and streets saturated with private cars. Nothing stops China. All of this also reflects the extent to which North Korea economically dependent of China despite international isolation. The expansion of the private car It is strengthening that relationship even more. The cars, parts, fuel and much of the infrastructure needed to sustain this growth come directly or indirectly from the Chinese market. Even European brands like BMW or Audi appear occasionally in Pyongyang through channels that are difficult to trace. If you like, the situation shows (again) an uncomfortable reality for the sanctions system: although trade is officially restricted, the border with China continues to function as an economical valve fundamental for the North Korean regime. And now that dependency is becoming visible in a very concrete and almost surreal way: North Korea is having trouble finding parking because Pyongyang’s roads are filling up with Chinese cars that, on paper, should never have arrived there. Image | (stephan), Roman Harak In Xataka | In 2024, a Russian ship sank off Spain under mysterious circumstances. What he was carrying is even more suspicious In Xataka | Ukraine has barely captured any North Korean soldiers. The reason is brutally simple: they prefer to immolate themselves

The hantavirus outbreak has sparked a search to find its origin. Ushuaia fears that this will cost it its tourism

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Until a few days ago, the vast majority of Spaniards had never heard of hantavirus. Probably not Ushuaiathe capital of the province of Tierra del Fuego. The crisis unleashed by the MV Hondius cruise ship, however, has united both names in one of the most worrying episodes so far in the turbulent 2026, at least in health terms. And so worries in Ushuaia. A lot. Although there are still unknowns about how, where and when the viral outbreak broke out, in the southern region they fear that what happened affects one of the pillars of their economy: tourism. They even talk about a “smear campaign”. And the hantavirus arrived. Although there are still many months ahead until December, 2026 seemed basically doomed to be the year of the iran waroil through the clouds, Maduro’s arrest or (in another order of things) the North American World Cup. Now that list is expanded with one more item: the hantavirus. Since on May 2 A viral outbreak was confirmed on board the MV Hondius, the world is waiting for what happens to the ship, its passengers and the chain of possible people infected by a virus that until almost two weeks ago was almost completely unknown in Europe. In a place in Patagonia… In Ushuaia, capital of the province of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina), one of the southernmost cities of the planet, the evolution of the outbreak is also being followed with interest. Although there what really generates debate is not the last hour about the outbreak or what may happen from now on, but what has happened in recent weeks. The reason is very simple: the fateful voyage of the MV Hondius left its port April 1. When the ship set sail, there were about 140 passengers on board, including the septuagenarian Dutchman who only a few days later (on the 6th) began to show symptoms of infection. More than a month has passed since then, four long weeks during which events have happened at breakneck speed. That first patient died on April 11, days later his wife did and since then at least one more dead and half a dozen infected. As for the MV Hondius, after the evacuation of the last hours on board the ship there are only a few dozen of people who will continue heading to the Netherlands. What has not changed is the question that authorities have been asking for days: Where is the origin of the outbreak? Where the hell did the Dutch couple get infected? A remote landfill. Taking into account the incubation period of hantavirus, which ranges between one and six weeks, authorities are working with the hypothesis that the epicenter of the outbreak is not on the ship. That is, the most plausible theory (at least in appearance) is that the virus they took him to the MV Hondius one or more travelers who were already carrying it before navigation began. That made all eyes turn first to the couple of Dutch retirees and second to Ushuaia, the place where they embarked. In recent days the conversation has revolved around a very specific point in the town: a garbage dump located about seven kilometers from the center of Ushuaia, a place where, assures The Countryepidemiologists are looking for traces of infected rodents. Hantavirus infection, let us remember, is contracted mainly by coming into contact with the urine, feces or saliva of certain rodents. The most common thing is that contagion occurs by inhaling remains of this waste in poorly ventilated spaces, but it could also be contracted in a large landfill. The unknowns begin. That a Dutch couple (he 70 years old, she 69) stop by a mega urban garbage dump before embarking on a luxury cruise through the South Atlantic may sound strange, but it makes a lot of sense. The MV Hondius trip was not just any trip. It was planned as an expedition cruise to contemplate Atlantic fauna. And the Ushuaia landfill is not just any garbage dump either. Lovers of birds and natural photography usually go there to enjoy the species that fly over it, including scavenger birds such as the white matamico. In recent days it has been published that some of the travelers who boarded the MV Hondius visited the dump. The Country even interviewed to a guide who was in the area with some of the tourists from the cruise, although the Dutch couple was not among them. Did they get infected there? Is that the epicenter and genesis of the outbreak? Hard to know. First because the marriage (unfortunately) has died. Second, because before boarding the cruise the couple had made a long road trip that took them to different parts of South America. In fact, it is believed that they were four months visiting several countries on the continent, including Chile and Uruguay. “We have no evidence”. This fact (that the first deaths were in other parts of South America) has been strongly emphasized by the authorities of Ushuaia, who do not quite understand that the couple was infected in their territory. The reason? The main one, insists Juan Facundo Petrina, general director of Epidemiology and Environmental Health of the province, is that the hantavirus is not a problem in the area. “In Tierra del Fuego we have no record of cases in our history,” clarifies to the BBC. “Specifically, since 1996, when the National Surveillance System included it among the notifiable diseases, we have not had a single case in Tierra del Fuego.” More than 1,000 km north. As if that were not enough, Petrina details a few more facts. To begin with, the hantavirus endemic area is more than 1,500 km to the north. Also remember that there are no records confirming that the mouse subspecies that transmits the disease lives in the area. “And if rodents begin to move, since they do not respect borders, it is important to remember that we are an island,” duck. Another key that … Read more

With the Find X9 Ultra, OPPO has an ambitious plan to conquer the heart of Spain. And its CEO has told us what it is

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From the offices of OPPO In Madrid, at the top of a building very close to Plaza de Castilla, you can see an old water tank from the Canal de Isabel II. It is a huge concrete structure inaugurated in the middle of the last century that today, no longer in use, functions as one of the visual “landmarks” of the square. It is very big, about 40 meters high, but it is very far away. I take one of the OPPO Find X9 Ultra that’s on the table, I open the camera, zoom in 10x and take a photo. The result is impressive. The camera returns an image full of details: the contours of the concrete, already worn, the advertising signage that floods its dome, the brutalist curves that the tower draws. All this from inside an office and interrupted by a large window. I look towards the back of the room, where there are some boxes of snacks and pastries ready for breakfast. There are tiny inscriptions on the side, so I repeat the process: I open the camera, zoom in 10x and take another photo. The sharpness is extraordinary. There is no pixelation or noticeable distortion or digital zoom artifacts in the drawing of the letters, nor a great chromatic distortion with respect to what my eyes see. “What we want to do with the Ultra is not just another incremental improvement, we want it to be an alternative to your professional camera,” he explains to me. Kevin ChoCEO of OPPO in Spain since last summer. “It would be like buying a camera with a built-in phone and not the other way around, right?” I ask him. “That is, camera firstmore than a phone with an interesting camera.” Looking at the wide range of tools on the table, it’s hard not to agree. The launch of the Find X9 Ultra in Spain marks a milestone for OPPO: for the first time, the company launches its top-of-the-range phone in Europe, something reserved until now for Chinese consumers. OPPO has not spared any details: the Ultra incorporates an ambitious 300 mm teleconverter equivalent in 35 mm and 13x format that is attached to the phone’s gigantic lenses to multiply the camera’s possibilities. Why has OPPO made such a determined bet for photographyWithout a doubt the most notable aspect of a Find X9 Ultra full of attractive features and specifications? “There is a very marked polarization in the market,” explains Cho. “Around 30% or 40% of buyers continue to opt for devices under 200 euros, or even second-hand, but what we are also seeing is an expansion of the premium segments. It is the same trend month after month: premium sales are growing.” (Xataka) Cho introduces a key word: “premiumization.” The market polarization of the mobile phone is neither new nor surprising for anyone who has paid attention to the dynamics of recent years. Many consumers tend to hold on to their devices for longer, as a result of the large investments they must make, which is why they demand more performance and quality from their products. This gap, also present in markets such as the car, has forced almost all brands to recalibrate their strategies. OPPO’s ambitious plan “We don’t want transactional volumes,” Cho continues, “you know, competing on price. We want to make sure we bring products that can create value for the consumer.” According to Cho, OPPO is facing its second wave of expansion in the European market: after a consolidation of the brand and sales in recent years, it is time to grow not so much through raw numbers as through loyalty in the segments. more exclusive of the market. And for that you need a product up to the task, hence the arrival of the Find X9 Ultra. A landing that, however, has required adaptations. Since his arrival in Spain, Cho has promoted a change in OPPO’s methodology, especially regarding the consumer: “We are doing studies to understand consumer preferences and to define our strategies.” Refers to focus group and surveys with more than 4,000 respondents, a very large sample that exceeds those that the brand was doing until then. Cho is clear that the only way to compete in the premium segment is by going to the user, or, in his words, “winning the heart and brain of the consumer.” (Xataka) The approach is ambitious, as are its objectives. When I ask him where he would like to see OPPO in five years in Spain, he answers without much hesitation: “As the number one brand.” The Find X9 Ultra is the first stone of a long road ahead, a way to “test the roof” of OPPO in Europe. His first steps have consisted of relearning and readapting the lessons of the chinese marketwhere OPPO is a brand with a lot of penetration and experience in the premium segments, for Spain and Europe. Before the launch on the old continent, OPPO has had to make some adjustments in terms of operating system and memory to adapt them to local needs and preferences. Given the constraints of such a competitive segment Like the premium one, OPPO has two other arguments to win over the consumer: its operating system, ColorOS, and the battery. Cho boasts leadership in the second area and widespread user satisfaction in the first: “In China, our operating system has consistently been our main selling point for the past three years.” In Spain, the Ultra works on Android, like the rest of the market, but Cho highlights the interoperability and customization of OPPO: “We have been working on inter-device and inter-ecosystem interoperability for some time, so that you can use the phone with a Windows computer or a Mac.” (Xataka) Camera, battery, operating system… The elephant in the room that needs to be addressed is AI. Is there the definitive angle for a mobile phone brand to be more attractive than its competition? Cho’s answer is not direct but clear: OPPO’s strength is … Read more

It has taken us 30 years to find 6,000 exoplanets. TESS just found 10,000 candidates in one fell swoop

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Since the first exoplanet was detected in 1992, have been discovered 6,273 planets outside the solar system. However, detection methods have become so refined that that number is expected to skyrocket in the coming years. Just look at the list just presented by a team of scientists from Princeton University, which includes more than 10,000 new candidates. Many may not be exoplanets when they are reviewed, but the fact that so many candidates have been found is already a good sign. A very well spent first year. This new list It comes from the analysis of the first year of data from NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Exploration Satellite (TESS). In total 11,554 possible exoplanets have been found. However, 411 of them were only captured in one transit, so their orbital parameters could not be calculated. Another 1,052 had already been confirmed as exoplanets in the past. The remaining 10,091 do make up a list of possible exoplanets that had not been noted before. Transi what? Transit is one of the most useful methods of exoplanet detection. Typically, it is much easier to detect the star around which a planet orbits than the planet itself. After all, stars are bigger and brighter. However, observing the star itself can give us data on the existence of planets orbiting it. And when these pass between the star and the telescopes that observe it, their light is interrupted. Like when a cloud passes in front of the Sun or a very large moth flies in front of a light bulb. We know that planets revolve around their stars with a fixed period. For example, it takes the Earth 364 days to orbit the Sun. When these light interruptions are seen cyclically, it can be assumed that there is a planet orbiting the star. That’s what TESS detects. The advances of TESS. Until now, exoplanets have been searched around very bright stars. However, TESS has the ability to also study stars with weaker illumination. This allows us to do a much more complete analysis of the sky and find many more candidates for exoplanets. In fact, a lot of data is generated at once, so it has also been necessary to use a machine learning algorithm to analyze it all and find the real candidates. It must be confirmed. There are other reasons why a star’s light could be interrupted. For example, eclipsing binary stars either solar activity itself. That is why the next step, once a list of possible exoplanets is found, is to analyze them carefully to rule out those other possibilities and check which ones really are. It can still improve. These scientists are now ready to also begin analyzing data from the second year of TESS observation. In this case, some changes have been made in the study methodology, such as studying stars that are observed at different times of the year. This way, exoplanets with a long period can also be detected, which sometimes go unnoticed if they are not observed at the right time. When the period is very small, they pass many times between the star and the telescopes, so it is easier detect traffic. If the period is long, it is difficult to detect them if you do not look at the right time. With this in mind, the study’s authors hope to double the list of candidates. If this time there have been more than 10,000, the next time we have news about TESS there could be many more. Image | POT In Xataka | How the solar system was formed: for the Earth to be born, a star had to die first

Fed up with paying almost 8 euros for a Guinness, someone thought of setting up an index to find cheap beer

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How delicious is that little beer that you drink right after leaving work or after a paddle tennis game and how angry it is when you find out that they have raised the price. Matt Cortland He paid €7.80 for a pint of Guinness in Dublin in March 2026 and didn’t like it one bit (the price, not the beer). So instead of criticizing the waiter or posting a review on Google complaining like some people do, he adopted another strategy that was slightly more laborious but much more effective (judging by its results): a very complete price index where he would know where to drink the best and at what price. Because revenge, like beer, is served cold. The project. Is called Guinndex and is independent of the very famous Irish beer brand. You go to the website, enter a pub, a city, a county or a postcode in the box and it returns pubs and the cost of a pint, as well as useful information such as its location or its score. Or you zoom in on the map to see with a traffic light map which taverns look cheaper than others. A good way to save if you travel to Ireland and fancy a pint of Guinness. In fact, it has very diverse rankings ranging from how long it takes to earn a pint (depending on salary) to pubs named after animals or the best pub names (praise be the “Hairy Lemon”). Today it has almost 6,500 registered pubs in the 32 counties of the country and almost 1,300 prices verified and rising thanks to anonymous contributions from users. The price index for Dublin. Guinndex Why is it important. Because the Irish Central Statistics Office stopped tracking the price of a pint since 2011, leaving a data gap of more than a decade in a country where Guinness is much more than a beer. And although Guinness is almost a religion in Ireland, it is the same everywhere: no one knows for sure if they are overcharging you compared to the standard price or how much extra. The Guinndex fills that gap with real, verified data, not estimates. Furthermore, it does so publicly and for free, so that it allows obtaining an objective reference so that consumers have information and can put pressure on prices. It’s the market, friend. On the other hand, and leaving aside the anecdote of finding where to drink cheaper, what it shows is relevant: that the cost of carrying out a complex idea has plummeted and streamlined so much that a single dev is capable of setting up a project of this magnitude in just 48 hours when before it took weeks of work, a certain budget and a team. Context. Matt Cortland likes AI, data and Guinness, as he himself admits on the project website. He is an American engineer based in London with strong ties to Ireland: his partner is irishlived and trained there with the George Mitchell scholarship and course the Creative Digital Media master’s degree from TU Dublin. He is not just a tourist they are trying to scam. The project came at a critical time: Diageo, the company that owns Guinness, had applied several price rises in a row and some pubs had taken the opportunity to inflate margins. If you’re not careful, you can pay up to €11 for a pint, although the average price in Dublin is €6.94 and €6.06 nationwide. How has he done it. With an AI agent named Rachel who looked human, understood Irish humor, and had a Northern Irish accent (after several tests, she concluded that this worked best), as its author tells. The task was simple and quick: call, ask the price of a pint of Guinness, say thank you and hang up. Few people discovered that it was a chatbot and there were all kinds of responses, even waiters who offered to buy him a round. During the St. Patrick’s weekend he called 3,000 pubs, answered more than 2,000 calls and more than a thousand pubs provided a price: he already had the Guinndex base. The technical stack was jack, knight and king: the Google Maps API, ElevenLabs for the voice and agent logic, Twilio for making the phone calls, and Claude for extracting Guinness prices from the transcripts. Cortland explains What cost him the most was time, since he only invested about 200 euros. The consequences. The most immediate impact is behavioral: Cortland account that the owner of a pub lowered the price of his Guinness by 0.40 euros and then updated the information in the Guinndex himself. When there is price transparency and it is available to everyone, it is capable of changing behaviors. However, the biggest consequence is the technological moment in which we live: three APIs, 200 euros and a weekend are enough to build a project from scratch, with real utility and that is already changing prices. The bottleneck is no longer money or infrastructure: it is knowing what problem is worth solving. In Xataka | Spain can tell itself as many times as it wants that it hates Cruzcampo. The figures say a very different thing In Xataka | We humans like beer. The big question is whether we like it enough to have invented agriculture Cover | Guinndex and Christopher Zapf

What did Nietzsche mean by “we contradict an opinion when in reality what we find unpleasant is the tone”

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I’m not sure how to write this so as not to be unpleasant, but Nietzsche was right. Yeah, he had a weird mustachehe was loaded with opium and loved to take long walks in the Alps; but he was right. At least when it comes to one of his most apparently innocuous, but most radical ideas: that it often doesn’t matter if someone is right or wrong, that we make the decision to agree with them beforehand, that what matters most to us is the tone, the forms. The rest, although it doesn’t hurt to admit it, doesn’t matter. 150 years after Nietzsche, cognitive science has proven him right. What did Nietzsche mean…? In 1878, in the midst of a break with Wagner and Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche published ‘Human, too human‘. It was his first book of aphorisms and in it he abandons romantic aesthetics and sets out to find a new way of observing the world. In that book, the Austrian philosopher makes a complete x-ray of the psychological junk of human beings. “Opinions are born from passions,” he says in aphorism 637. “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies,” he writes in 483. But the one that interests us is 303. Where Nietzsche discovered confirmation bias. “Often, we contradict an opinion when in reality what we find unpleasant is only the tone in which it was expressed,” says that aphorism. And that sounds a lot like what modern cognitive science calls ‘confirmation bias‘: the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information in such a way that pre-existing beliefs, expectations or hypotheses are reinforced. First we form an idea from the tone of the person speaking to us and then we justify it. Simple, clean and perfectly confirmed by the evidence. Ultimately, what Nietzsche did is anticipate many of the ideas that Kahneman and Tversky They earned him the Nobel Prize. But that matters little, what matters is what we can learn. And, under that sullen and savage reputation, Nietzsche has a lot of useful ideas. This intuition, without going any further, has a direct and everyday application: when someone addresses us with a tone that we perceive as aggressive, condescending or arrogant, our brain activates defense mechanisms that prevent us from rationally processing the content. We do not evaluate what they tell us, we evaluate how they tell us. Reactanceconfirmation bias and post-hoc rationalization: the perfect combo to act automatically without paying attention to reasons or consequences. In the same way, Nietzschenian reflection helps us think about how we address others. And that is worth it. Image | Xataka In Xataka | “A place of joy with pain”: the phrase that summarizes the Aztec philosophy to be happier in this life

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