happened

There are people who think that Europe should recover the military. What happened in Germany offers them an unpleasant surprise

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It is still early to know whether or not Germany will be successful with its new volunteer ‘military’but one thing is clear: the German authorities have revived a figure that was in the doldrums for years, the conscientious objector. Although Berlin does not apply a mandatory recruitment system, thousands of young people in the country have wanted to improve their health by starting the procedures to benefit from their constitutional right to not have to hold a weapon. More requests have been registered during the first six months of the year alone than in all of 2025. It has even surpassed 2011, the year in which the mandatory military service ended. What has happened? That the Bundesrat has achieved something unexpected (or not) with your new law of voluntary military service. Its purpose was to give a boost to recruitment so that the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) would go from its current around 184,000 troops to between 255,000 and 270,000 in 2035, but everything indicates that they have activated a mechanism that pushes in the opposite direction: more and more young people declare themselves conscientious objectors, that is, they appeal to their constitutional right not to be forced by anyone to use weapons or be a soldier. That does not mean that the new German ‘military’ is not working (to affirm such a thing it would be necessary to handle updated recruitment data), but it does mean that its future will not be as peaceful as the Government of Friedrich Merz would like. Are there so many objectors? Yes. The data has advanced them Redaktions Netzwerk Deutschland (RND) and show that the figure of the objector is experiencing a real boom in Germany. During the first half of 2026 alone, the Federal Office for Family and Civil Society Affairs received 5,862 applications from citizens who wanted to declare themselves conscientious objectors. There are almost a thousand each month, but the data stands out above all when put into context. Throughout 2025 the Government noted 3,867 requests and in 2024 they were only 2,249. In 2011, the year in which the mandatory military service was suspended, 4,348 were registered. The balance of the first half of the year not only shows a clear rebound, it also suggests that young Germans are increasingly concerned about the issue: 60% of these applications were submitted between April and June, when the country was shaken by several controversies related to the new military law, as if men need authorization to leave the country for more than three months. But is there or isn’t there ‘mili’? Yes. And no. There is no mandatory service like the one that existed in Spain until 2001 or that applied in Germany until 2011, but there is a new legal framework with which Berlin aspires to gain voluntary recruits. To understand it you have to go back to December 2025when the Upper House of the German Parliament approved a military service bill that began to be applied on January 1, 2026. Its objective is very simple: add thousands of new soldiers to the country’s Armed Forces (Bundeswehr), although with a lot of pedagogy and initially appealing to voluntariness. In practice, this means that right now Germans who come of age are only required to go through two relatively harmless and simple procedures. “Men born in 2008 or later must participate in the military registration process. This includes filling out a questionnaire and passing a medical examination by medical personnel,” explains the Bundeswehr. Do we know anything else? Yes. The military explains in detail how it will implement the system. The idea is that all young Germans who come of age (some 650,000 each year) will receive an online questionnaire asking whether or not you are interested in military life. The men are obligated to respond. For women it is optional. If the answer is yes, the Armed Forces invite volunteers to a recruitment center to continue the process. The system is still being implemented, but at the end of last year the German press was talking aboutIn a second phase, late in 2027, 18-year-old men must also undergo a medical examination that will be mandatory whether they opt for voluntary military service or not. “No one forces you to do anything, except to fill out a questionnaire that reflects the recorded data and pass a medical examination that does no harm to anyone,” claims the German Defense Minister, the social democrat Boris Pistorius. “The State does not protect itself. That has to be done by people who are willing to defend it and not sit idly waiting for others to do so.” What is the objective? We pointed it out before: turning the German army into a European reference. And that happens by arriving in the mid-2030s with 460,000 troopsbetween active personnel (260,000) and reservists (200,000). Not bad if you take into account that in 2025 184,000 soldiers were serving. In Germany already throw out the idea that, if this objective is not achieved through voluntary recruitment, the Government could go further and opt for a mandatory model. In any case, that would require a new parliamentary procedure. For now, in view of the changes being promoted by the Merz Executive, the threat from Russia and the rearmament discourse fueled by Donald Trump, more and more young people are choosing to declare themselves objectors. Curiously, there are also people who take the opposite path, although less: the daily Neue Osnabrucker assures that during the first quarter 233 people waived their right to refuse military service. They join the 781 that did so in 2025. Images | Simon Infanger (Unsplash) and Filip Andrejevic (Unsplash) In Xataka | In Spain, 1,149 young people lost their lives in the same place between 1983 and 1989. All of these “accidents” could have been avoided.

Something unusual happened in Chernobyl when the Russian soldiers arrived. The cameras that monitored the animals have never stopped recording

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In April 1986, just a few days after the Chernobyl accidentSoviet scientists feared that radiation had turned the area into a biological desert for generations. Occurred exactly the opposite. With the disappearance of human activity, the forest recovered the lost ground and the exclusion zone ended up becoming one of the largest wildlife refuges in Europe. The animal cameras that recorded the war. I told it this week in a report The New York Times. When Ukrainian conservationist Svitlana Kudrenko installed dozens of camera traps throughout the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2020, her goal was much more routine: to study how populations of wolves, lynxes, deer, foxes and other species that had thrived after decades without human presence were evolving. Two years later, Russia invaded Ukraine and turned Chernobyl into an improvised military base. The soldiers arrived, the tanks went through the forests, the explosions began… and the cameras never stopped recording. An unprecedented experiment. The Russian occupation barely lasted a little more than a month, but it left behind a extraordinary scientific opportunity. Because the cameras continued to operate throughout the invasion, the researchers were able to compare the behavior of eleven species before, during and after the passage of the troops. In addition, they crossed these images with testimonies from people who remained in the area and with satellite data capable of detecting fires, building an almost real-time portrait of how fauna responds to a war. The uneven reaction of the animals. One of the most interesting findings was that did not exist a universal answer. Roe deer, especially shy animals linked to the forest, began to appear much less as the intensity of military activity increased. Red deer, on the other hand, were detected more frequently, probably because They fled from open areas where tanks, vehicles and explosions were concentrated, thus increasing the chances of being recorded by cameras. The war changed the forest’s schedules. The differences were not limited to the number of animals observed. red deer They modified their routines and they began to be more active during the day and less at night. Foxes and hares also reduced part of your activity night, although the latter reappeared precisely on the days when the satellites detected fires, an indication that they were trying to escape the fire caused by the fighting. Spaces that did not move. On the contrary, not all the inhabitants of Chernobyl reacted in an obvious way. Researchers found few changes in species like wolves or Eurasian lynxesalthough recognize that the conclusions are more limited because they were photographed much less frequently. They also propose another possibility: The enormous size of the exclusion zone and the scarce human presence accumulated over decades perhaps cushioned part of the impact that a similar conflict would have had on a much more altered ecosystem. The war left another invisible victim: nature. The study, published in Science magazinedoes not aim to measure the total ecological damage of the invasion, but rather to observe how the fauna reacted while everything was happening. Even so, its authors remember that armed conflicts also destroy habitats, cause fires, introduce pollution and increase the mortality of numerous species. As resume ecologist Kaitlyn Gaynor, animals are involuntary spectators of human wars and we still know very little about the consequences that these episodes leave on them. Chernobyl and the paradox. For decades, the exclusion zone symbolized the biggest nuclear disaster of history. Then it became an unexpected refuge for wildlife. Finally, the Russian invasion added a third, equally improbable chapter: a natural laboratory where the very cameras installed to study animals ended up recording one of the few involuntary experiments on how an entire ecosystem responds when war breaks out in the middle of the forest. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | The men who closed the new Chernobyl hole: “Destiny gave us an opportunity to test ourselves to the limit” In Xataka | We had been wondering for years why the Chernobyl wild boars were so radioactive. The answer was not in the accident

23 years ago a Boeing 727 left the runway without authorization. What happened next remains an enigma

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A commercial airliner should not disappear like this. We are talking about one of the largest and most monitored machines in the transportation industry, with flight plans, airport controls, maintenance records and normally traceable components. That is why the case of Boeing 727 N844AA It’s so hard to close. According to Aviation Safety Networkthe aircraft took off from the Quatro de Fevereiro international airport, in Luanda, on May 25, 2003, around sunset and without the corresponding authorization. Since then there has been no confirmed landing, no identified remains or a definitive explanation. Before becoming a mystery, N844AA had led a much more conventional life. Washington Post explains that it was a Boeing 727-223 built in 1975, delivered to American Airlines and removed from the airline’s fleet towards the end of the summer of 2001. Then came the strange twist: the plane was converted to transport diesel within Angola, with seats removed and large internal tanks installed in the cabin. The idea was to supply operations linked to diamond mines in areas difficult to serve by road, but the plan soon went awry. The operation began to accumulate problems. The fuel transport project was met with unpaid invoices, problems with stolen passports, security lapses and questions about who really controlled the plane. By May 2002, the crews had already left and the original plan was practically undone, but the 727 was still there, immobilized at the Luanda airport. Almost a year later Ben Charles Padilla appearedsent by Aerospace Sales & Leasing for try to recover an aircraft that it could still have value as an asset, even if it fit increasingly worse into its previous life. A stranded plane, an unauthorized departure and too many open questions Padilla is a central figure because most stories place it inside the plane at the time of departure. There is also an important nuance: he was a certified flight engineer, aeronautical mechanic and private pilot, but not a qualified captain for a Boeing 727. That model required a crew of three people, with two pilots and a flight engineer dedicated to managing systems. John Mikel Mutantu is also mentioned as a possible companion, although the accounts do not entirely agree on his identity and there is no clear evidence that he was trained to pilot that device. The known sequence of May 25, 2003 is brief, but enough to explain why the case caught on so quickly. That afternoon, N844AA began taxiing without proper communication, entered the track without authorization and took off towards the southwest, towards the Atlantic and the Gulf of Guinea. Its lights were off and the transponder, the equipment that allows an aircraft to be identified in air traffic systems, was not transmitting. And there was another important point: the 500-gallon tanks installed in the cabin were part of the diesel transportation project, but they were not used to fuel the plane’s engines. To fly, the 727 relied solely on the aircraft fuel available in its own tanks. If he went low, he would hardly have gone far; If there was more margin, the range of possibilities expanded. Delta Air Lines retired its last 727 from scheduled service in April 2003. The image shows a plane of that model, not the N844AA missing in Angola The search did not close the case either. US organizations such as the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, Homeland Security and CENTCOM participated in it, and the US embassies in Africa received notices to monitor a plane that needed a long runway to land. In the weeks that followed, and also over the years, theories circulated: a fall into the sear, a landing at another airfield, a dismantling to sell components or even its use on irregular routes. A runway of a repainted 727 in Conakry, Guinea, looked promising in July 2003but the US authorities ended up discarding it. A possible terrorist connection was also examined, in the midst of post-9/11 sensitivity. It was a logical fear for Western intelligence services at the time, but The Washington Post and ABC News agree that no evidence emerged to support that hypothesis. That is precisely what keeps the enigma alive 23 years later. There is no confirmed landingidentified remains, pieces publicly linked to N844AA nor a record of maintenance or sales of components that would allow its fate to be reconstructed. If one day an answer appears, it will probably not be the entire plane: it will be a fragment, a document or a part number capable of finally giving it a place on the map. Images | JetPix In Xataka | The European fighter may have died, but there is a plan B to avoid the F-35. One with Spain, Germany and an unexpected guest

A Chinese billionaire bought the most expensive house in London. What happened next is a real estate horror movie

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In 2021, the Evergrande collapse It erased more than $300 billion in liabilities and triggered a real estate crisis that shook all of China. Among his most extravagant assets was a record mansion in London that today remains trapped in lawsuits, divorces and frozen accounts: a financial ruin turned into an empty monument. The perfect purchase that went wrong. Year 2020, a Chinese billionaire buys for 210 million pounds number 2-8A Rutland Gate, then the most expensive home ever sold in the United Kingdom. On paper it was the definitive investment: a palace with 45 rooms, four elevators, an indoor pool, 24 marble bathrooms and privileged views of Hyde Park. But what seemed like a prestige move ended up leading to a chain of misfortunes so strange that it seems written like a thriller. Since then no one has lived inside, the real owner was caught in a financial collapse and the building became an empty shell with only one “tenant”. Palace with a cursed past. The history of the building was already coming loaded with symbolism. For decades it was the London palace of Rafik Haririwho transformed it by joining together several Victorian houses and decorating it with almost obscene luxury, from gold-plated trash cans to bathrooms encrusted with semi-precious stones. Hariri was assassinated in Beirut in 2005 and, after passing through the hands of the Saudi royal family, the interior was auctioned piece by piece in 2015. That left the mansion empty, as if it had been dismantled before its next owner arrived. The Evergrande turn. The official buyer of 2020 appeared to be the Hong Kong tycoon Cheung Chung-kiubut later was discovered that the real owner was Hui Ka Yanfounder from Evergrande and for years the richest man in China. And there the descent began. Just a year later, Evergrande began with non-payment of debtsbecame a symbol of the Chinese real estate collapse and ended up collapsing in 2024. Hui ended up declaring guilty of fraud and other financial crimes, while the mansion was trapped in a legal tangle: registered in the name of his ex-wife, with frozen assets and no possibility of sale. The most expensive house in the United Kingdom lost in limbo and a symbol of the real estate gap. Fernstedt at the entrance to the house The empty house and the Swede on the porch. And it is at this point in history where the image appears that changes everything to this day. While inside the mansion there are dozens of empty rooms and millions of pounds tied up, outside, on the same porch, lives Anders Fernstedta homeless Swede who has been living at the entrance for three years. Your “camp” It is made of umbrellas, flowers, broken bicycles and stuffed animals. The paradox could not be starker, because he sleeps inches from one of the most crazy expensive shelters in Europe, but separated by a door that never opens. Ironically, the only stable inhabitant of the house does not have access to it. The fall of Anders. As to the history of man Swedish, is almost as chaotic as the architecture on which it rests. Andres was a technology journalist, then he worked in horticulture, collaborated with people from the Silicon Valley environment and even worked for The Economist as a freelance fact-checker. However, a chain of failed jobs, evictions, attacks and personal losses dragged him onto the streets. He ended up landing in front of the palace purely by chance: He was looking for a covered shelter and found an empty porch. He has since converted that space into a kind of makeshift garden and permanent bedroom. The symbol of a broken city. It had an extensive Guardian report that the story of Rutland Gate sums up a huge contradiction in London. While more than 300,000 homes remain empty in England and hundreds of thousands are waiting for a house, one of the most luxurious properties in the country has been closed for years because it is, in reality, a frozen financial asset. From that perspective, it is no longer a home, it is a figure trapped in offshore companies, lawsuits and bankruptcies. And in front of that door, every night, a man sleeps what represents just the other end of the system: someone with nothing, living in the shadow of a palace that no one can use. Image | Gareth E. Kegg In Xataka | Now that the Pope is in Spain, he should visit this surgeon’s castle. Inside is the smallest church on the planet In Xataka | In 1972 Italy wanted to put an entire city in a one kilometer building. Half a century later he is still paying the consequences

In 2023 we detect an absolutely anomalous explosion at the edge of the Universe. Now we know what happened

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In 2023, the Zwicky Transient Facility, an astronomical consortium led by Caltech, detected a curious signal on the outskirts of a dwarf galaxy 1.3 billion light years away. At first everything seemed to indicate that it was the result of a type II supernova explosion. It’s always interesting to spot one, but it’s not unusual. However, as soon as they tried to classify it a little better, they realized that it had many qualities that did not fit within the definition of this phenomenon. Investigating, they discovered that, in reality, the signal corresponds to one of the rarest explosions that occur in the Universe: a pairwise instability supernova. A special supernova. Pairwise instability supernovae are supernova explosions that occur when the original star is very massive and is in an environment with low metallicity. Furthermore, there is another big difference. After a typical supernova explosion, either a neutron star or a black hole usually forms. In this case, however, it can be said that the stars completely self-destruct, without leaving any remnants. It is a very rare phenomenon, very difficult to detect. However, the authors of the study that has just been published hope, with what they have learned from this finding, to locate other similar events based on the data obtained with the Vera Rubin Observatory. The brightness curve that didn’t add up. Normally, when a normal supernova explosion occurs, the brightness curve is plateau-shaped. On the other hand, in this event, named SN 2023vbw, after an initial cooling, a constant increase in brightness was observed until reaching a very bright peak around 190 days. Then, until day 230, the brightness began to decrease and finally stabilized on a plateau. Other data that did not add up. The total irradiation energy of this phenomenon was 3× 1050 Ergs, a figure that is more than 10 times higher than that of a type II supernova. Furthermore, during ascent, the explosion stabilized at a nearly constant temperature while its outer shell continued to expand. For this to occur there must be a large and continuous internal heating source, which does not happen with a type II supernova. On the other hand, as the supernova faded, the emissions that were detected had nothing to do with those normal for a conventional supernova. Finally, the kinetic energy was 60 to 130 times greater than the maximum energy that an ordinary supernova can produce. Two very different supernovae. Normally, a very massive star is subject to two very powerful forces. On the one hand, that of gravity, which compresses it inward. On the other hand, that of radiation, which pushes outwards. Both forces remain in balance. However, when the star runs out of fuel to stay “on,” the radiation pressure decreases, so gravity pushes strongly inward. As a result, the star collapses, leading to a supernova explosion. Behind it a black hole or a neutron star can form. If the star is very massive and is also located in an environment with low metallicity, the process is slightly different. To begin with, such high temperatures are reached in its core that enough energy is generated for the photons to transform into an electron-positron pair. This phenomenon eliminates the pressure exerted by radiation much more suddenly, so that the force exerted by gravity, which is immense, causes the collapse of the star and, later, a very violent explosion. So violent that everything is destroyed, there is no remnant left. The location of SN 2023vbw (magenta circle) on the outskirts of its dwarf host galaxy (green circle). The role of metallicity. The low metallicity of the environment helps because metals normally absorb the radiation coming out of the star, favoring the expulsion of matter outward. If there are few metals, less matter will be extracted from the star and the greater its mass. A blue supergiant in an environment with very low metallicity. The light curves that were detected seem to correspond to a blue supergiant as a starting point. This very massive star, which can be caused by the merger of two stars in a binary system, can give rise to a type II supernova. However, we have already seen that the characteristics do not add up. However, the scientists who analyzed the results found the clue they were missing. That the explosion had occurred in an environment with very low metallicity. It corresponded approximately to a tenth of that of the Sun. It is the missing ingredient for a pairwise instability supernova to occur. A very rare phenomenon. This phenomenon is one of the rarest explosions that occur in the Universe. There are many very massive stars, but in general they are in very metal-rich environments, so a pairwise instability supernova cannot occur. Therefore, this discovery is very exciting. Although it may soon become more common. And not only because of the Vera Rubin Observatory that we have already mentioned. It is also expected that the brand new Nancy Grace Roman from NASA can detect more phenomena of this type when you start doing your work. Until then, detecting stars self-destructing in this way will remain even more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack. Image | Supernova remnant on cover. Credit: NASA/CXC/Rutgers/G.Cassam-Chenaï, J.Hughes et al.; Radio: NRAO/AUI/NSF/GBT/VLA/Dyer, Maddalena & Cornwell; Optical: Middlebury College/F.Winkler, NOAO/AURA/NSF/CTIO Schmidt & DSS | Hiramatsu et al. In Xataka | Caltech has published the “strongest evidence yet” that an unknown planet exists in the solar system

Emilia Clarke talks about her work in Marvel, Star Wars and Terminator: “it should never have happened”

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In one recent interviewEmilia Clarke reviewed her post-‘Game of Thrones’ career with unusual frankness. About ‘Secret Invasion’ he said: “I don’t think anyone liked the series.” On ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’: “The viewers were not happy either.” On ‘Terminator: Genisys’: “It should never have happened.” He adds: “But they were jobs I said yes to. I joined franchises that were already big and established. That’s why I don’t take it personally.” It is difficult to find a better summary of how the big franchise business works in Hollywood. Some collections. Let’s see if Clarke’s feeling that they were failures is accompanied by data. ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ cost between 275 and 300 million dollars and raised 393 million worldwide. According to is calculatedDisney lost about $77 million on the film, making it Star Wars’ first commercial failure. ‘Secret Invasion’ had a production cost of 211.6 million dollars, a figure known thanks to the transparency demands of the UK tax incentive program, where it was filmed. More than ‘Barbie’ or ‘Oppenheimer’ cost that same year. Viewership figures on Disney+ in its first five days were the second lowest of any MCU production, only above ‘Ms. Marvel’. Critical reception was equally poor. Regarding ‘Terminator: Genesis’, 155 million budget, collection insufficient to justify sequels that had already been announced, and weak reviews. It’s not the first. In 2021, with the MCU still dominating the box office, Anthony Hopkins summarized his experience in the ‘Thor’ trilogy, between 2011 and 2017: “They put armor on me and gave me a beard. Sit on the throne, shout a little. If you’re sitting in front of a green screen, it’s acting in front of nothing.” Chris Hemsworth came to similar conclusions: recognized that in ‘Thor: Love and Thunder‘ “I got stuck improvising and clowning around, and became a parody of myself.” This time, critics and the public accompanied him in doubts. Hemsworth has described the dynamic that he calls “the curse of the superhero,” which is simply that “you get pigeonholed.” But at the same time he rejects the attitude of actors like Clarke, who criticize Marvel when their projects don’t work: “They are successful movies: put me in one. Mine doesn’t work? Well, I attack them all.” What Clarke is really saying. The heart of Clarke’s complaint is that major franchises operate as hiring machines that offer global visibility and financial rewards that few independent productions match. In return, the actor’s creative control over the result is minimal. Clarke said in the same interview that in ‘Game of Thrones’ she received the scripts and did “everything in my power to understand and empathize with the decisions.” This was not the case in later franchises. Not just Marvel. The pattern is not exclusive to a single franchise. When actress Jamie Lee Curtis rejected in 2022 participate in Marvel projects, he did so with the same type of argument as Hopkins: “they will stick stitches in my body and force me to perform in some warehouse.” What does seem to be clear and Clarke demonstrates is that when there is a commercial failure, actors seem to feel freer to point out the obvious shortcomings of a system in which they are just more meat for the content grinder. In Xataka | I have detected the exact moment in which things at Marvel began to fail and that culminated in ‘Captain America’

Someone thought it was a good idea to bring a Bluetooth device called “Bomb” onto a plane. What had to happen happened

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Imagine that you are sitting in that modern torture chamber that we call “economy class” on a transcontinental plane when, after an hour in the air of the eight-hour trip from New Jersey to Mallorca, the aircraft turns around to land at the point of origin because the bomb threat protocols are activated. Now stop imagining because that is precisely what happened this past May 30 when the United Flight Boeing 767 that covered the Newark – Palma de Mallorca route thad to turn around with 12 crew members and 190 passengers of which one was the owner of a Bluetooth device with a peculiar name. “Bomb”. The “Bluetooth bomb” He United Flight 236 It should be just another conventional flight, but those who took the one last Saturday experienced an unusual adventure. When the ship was flying over the Atlantic and in a period Between 60 and 90 minutes after takeoff, someone noticed a disturbing detail: searching for Bluetooth networks, They found a device called “BOMB”. If someone was carrying a bomb with a Bluetooth connection, I highly doubt it would be visible to everyone and, on top of that, it would be called “Bomb”, but it was enough for the situation to explode. The crew, using the public address system, repeatedly asked that the Bluetooth devices be turned off, even threatening with turning around, but after seeing that there were still some lights left and that the “bomb” was among them, the maneuvers began. In coordination with the company’s operations center in Chicago, it was decided that it was best to declare a state of bomb emergency and return to Newark. The plane landed as if nothing had happened, but on the ground there was a significant police and security deployment that forced the passengers to vacate the ship, leaving their hand luggage behind. Image | Flightradar24 As part of the procedure, it was now the security forces that were going to be in charge of inspecting that luggage again. It has not really emerged what the device was, but what is clear is that there was no real explosive device. United has not given detailsbut different media indicate that a 16-year-old passenger had a device named with that name. Some say it’s a Fitbit, others say it’s a Bluetooth speaker. No details have been given about the consequences. that the passenger will have to face and everything has remained an anecdotal situation and a story that those 212 people will tell at some point. Now, there are interesting readings. The first is that there are devices for which you can change the name of the Bluetooth connection. For example, we can call our cell phone whatever we want, just like Wi-Fi networks, but there are others that are not easy to change the name of. A speaker or headphones usually have the name they come from the factory, unless they have an app that explicitly allows you to change the identifier. This is important because there are speakers like the Bombbox from JBL and, above all, the Hama Bomb 3.0 that have ‘BOMB’ in the name. Obviously, it doesn’t just say that and there are numbers and the brand, so it would be easy to deduce that it is a totally different device than a bomb. Also, if this were the case, the device would be turned off and not searching for Bluetooth all the time, so what makes the most sense is that it is a mobile phone with that ‘nickname’ for Bluetooth. That said, when the crew asked to disconnect the Bluetooth, if the person had headphones on they might not even notice and, if they did, it was a message that could be interpreted as “put the phone on.” airplane modeThere are cell phones that, when they activate airplane mode, deactivate all wireless communications, but there are also those that only deactivate Wi-Fi, the mobile network and leave Bluetooth to allow connection with headphones. This is for trying to find an explanation for a bizarre story like few others that had a happy ending for the passengers, being able to board a new flight the morning of the next day, but which could be very serious for the funny or clueless owner of the device. Because it is one thing to take longer to take off, but having a plane turn around, relocate all the passengers and the company pay compensation… is not cheap. AND I’m sure someone at United Flight isn’t happy at all.nor were those who were on that flight and who had zero information about what was happening, even having to go to reddit to find out about the movie and report the company’s compensation: a $15 bonus to spend on food. Moral: take a look at what your devices are called. In Xataka | Airplanes have circular windows for a reason. It took two plane crashes to find out.

Something strange happened inside the Earth in 2011 and 27 years of data have not solved the mystery

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In 2011, scientists observed an unexpected change in the flow of molten iron and nickel that makes up the earth core external. While its surface flow normally moves westward, it was detected to be moving just eastward. It was something totally unusual and mysterious. As a result of this observation, a study was launched, the results of which have recently been published. The objective was to know the reasons, but now there are only a few certainties and still many doubts. 27 years of observations. In this study 27 years of behavior of the Earth’s core were retrospectively analyzed, between 1997 and 2025. The core cannot be directly observed. However, its behavior directly influences that of the Earth’s magnetic field. Therefore, fluctuations in one can be detected in the other using satellite observations. It was seen that while the Earth’s outer core moves normally westward, there was a portion of it that went from a weak westward flow in 2010 to a much stronger eastward flow in 2012. It remained that way until 2020 and now appears to be starting to weaken again. Three options. When this change in movement was detected in 2011, it was thought that it could be due to three reasons. On the one hand, it could be a one-off fluctuation. On the other hand, it is possible that it is part of a periodic oscillation. And finally, it could be due to a way of establishing a balance in the circulation of the core. The only thing we see at the moment with the satellite observations is that the change was progressive. The behavioral modification began in 2010 and was already very clear in 2012. In 2011, when it was observed, it was in full transition. Other simultaneous observations. When analyzing the data from that period, it was seen that, coinciding with this change of direction, there were also some seismic signals that agree with the dates. Even geomagnetic shocks have been detected that correspond to a turbulent activity in the earth’s core. It’s not a whirlpool. This change of direction has not occurred throughout the core. For a start, the earth’s core consists of two parts: the internal and the external. The internal one is subjected to so much pressure that the metals are in a solid state despite the high temperatures. On the other hand, on the outside they are in a liquid state and, therefore, in motion. Even so, it wasn’t the entire outer core that changed its movement either. It corresponds to a specific region, located under the Pacific Ocean. It could be seen as a whirlpool, but these scientists have concluded that it is not, since the movement is part of a larger, wavy structure. Something like if an entire section of this part of the core suddenly began to move against expectations. Why is it important. The movement of the molten metal in the core generates electrical currents, which in turn give rise to a geomagnetic field that extends into space. Therefore, thanks to the movement of the Earth’s core we have an entire magnetic shield around the Earth that protects our atmosphere from the erosion caused by particles from the solar winds. For this nucleus to change its movement is not dangerous. We are not going to run out of atmosphere, because the core is still there. However, understanding its fluctuations can help us also understand the fluctuations of the magnetic field. This not only protects the atmosphere from erosion. It also helps us keep away a good part of the particles that could affect our telecommunications systems. Therefore, understanding how this shield works can help us prevent those more extreme events that do cause some technological havoc. That’s why, while this study has given us a lot of interesting data, it’s still not enough. We must continue monitoring the Earth’s core, what caused this anomaly of 2011. Image | THAT In Xataka | The Webb and Hubble telescopes simultaneously observed Jupiter’s auroras. The problem is that they didn’t see the same thing

With the RAM market impossible, the inevitable happened: counterfeit DDR5 tablets

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Make a reference to ‘The Simpsons‘At this point it’s complicated because the new generations may not get it, but there is an episode in which Springfield declares the dry law and, when they knock it down, the mayor asks the mafia how long it will take for alcohol to flood the city. The answer: five minutes. And that is exactly what is happening now with the RAM memory: where the market does not reach, counterfeiters enter Because after the DDR5 memories that are really DDR2 come the DDR5 memories with plastic chips. In short. The truth is that I did not imagine that we would reach a point where there would be well-crafted scams with all the intention of deceiving buyers of a RAM memory stick, but the truth is that we have been there for a few months. It was at the end of 2025, at a time when the RAM crisis was beginning to tighten (but it was far from the current moment) when it was reported that an Amazon Spain buyer received a kit of supposed DDR5 memory from Ireland that was nothing more than a DDR and DDR2 chip with a sticker on top. It was quite tacky, but you realized it instantly and you could always claim a refund because Amazon covers it in these cases. The problem is that there are scams that may be a little more ‘worked’ and that involve unsoldering the chips from a RAM tablet and replacing them with plastic parts. This is what, as we see in Digital Trendshas just happened to some users in Japan, who report the sale of memory tablets that do not correspond to previous generations, but are carefully designed to appear to be legitimate RAM when, as we say, it is a PCB with imitation chips. Or directly the entire pill being fake. An example of an auction stick ram. He original message It has moved a lot on Twitter and describes a full-fledged scam. Through stores like Yahoo Japan, users sell used RAM sticks as “junk” or “untested” in batches and at affordable prices. This is a practice that is also done with processors that we can find in stores like Wallapop and it may work… or it may not. That is why there are those who risk buying. In this case, a frog came out. The SO-DIMM modules (for laptops) had stickers that looked legitimate from Samsung or SK Hynix, but were nothing more than labels cloned from real memories used to cover the supposed chips. Instead of being DRAM memory as such, these are modules made of fiberglass that obviously do not work. In some cases, there are real circuits, but they correspond to lower-grade recycled chips. The important thing is that, be it one case or another, it is obviously not what you are paying for, but they are made well enough so that a person without knowledge cannot identify why the new memory module they have paid for does not work. Even a quick inspection can fool someone who has changed a few of these pads. It is no longer that they clone real stickers with their serial number and so on, but rather the dedication to produce those fiberglass “chips” screen printed like a legitimate one. One supposedly made by SK Hynix Another from Samsung (with SK Hynix chips, curiously…) One of the chips made with fiberglass Meteoric. Unlike the December 2025 fake RAM case, these pills are being sold in auctions on Yahoo Japan and there are already users with the fly behind their ear, which causes them not to bid and the modules to no longer be sold. But in the end it is the consequence of a market that is really impossible and in which scammers enter with promises of components at better prices than those we can find on the market first-hand. Because building a PC today is extremely expensive due not only to RAM that has been able to increase up to 400% in some cases, but for some SSDs that have also explodedgraphics cards that are beginning to be scarce and segments such as processors and the motherboards that are moving to the hoarder we’ve been talking about for months: AI hyperscalers. As I say, with prices through the roof, scams appear. with head. And (again, I didn’t think I had to give recommendations to avoid falling into a scam when buying a RAM pill), the important thing here is to have common sense. It really is like any other scam attempt: if the thing is too good to be true, we have to tune our antennas to see if they want to sneak it in. The first thing is to buy in stores and platforms that provide certain guarantees to the customer, but also look closely at the photos, compare serial numbers and ask for more photos from the seller if we are not 100% sure. And if the price is very good and we are not convinced by the explanation that the person may not know the market situation, ask as much as possible and do not trust the first thing they tell us. The RAM with a sticker that appeared in December last year. Image from VideoCardz. In the end, it is curious, but buying second-hand memory pills can become something that validates criminology, just like buy retro games on cartridge through Wallapop. Images | Taki, ri In Xataka | Nothing will be the same again: the price increase of the Nintendo Switch 2 in less than a year draws a new horizon

Someone has created an AI that knows nothing about what happened after 1930, and it has more use than it seems

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One of the problems with language models is that there is a cut-off date in the training data, that is, the model does not know current events that go beyond that date. Rapier In certain sectors it can be a serious problemis precisely the objective of Talkie-1930, a language model trained solely on texts from before 1930. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to talk to someone from the past, there’s an AI for that. A vintage language model. This is how These LLMs have been baptized who are trained with historical content. Talkie-1930 is a model with 13 billion parameters that does not have access to modern information nor can it consult the Internet, but has only been trained with books, newspapers and other texts from before 1930. To explore the model, the researchers had Claude converse with the model, evaluating his responses. The model showed great knowledge of the world, with many historical details of the time, and a great ability to imitate the style of Victorian authors such as Dickens, although somewhat limited in more satirical formats. More than a cultural experiment. Talkie is the closest thing to talking to someone educated in the early 20th century. This turns the model into a window that allows us to explore the mentality and culture of a past time and learn how society, politics or daily life were described back then. But beyond curiosity, Talkie-1930 also functions as a “control subject” to better study the functioning of AI and achieve important advances. Predicting the future. By being “frozen” in 1930, Talkie makes it possible to better measure how far a model can extrapolate and predict the future from historical patterns alone, without cheating with later data. To test this anticipatory capacity, the researchers showed up to 5,000 descriptions of subsequent historical events, taken from the “On this day” section of the New York Times, and measured the model’s degree of surprise. The result was that the model showed more surprise in the decades after the data cutoff, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, but then its degree of surprise stabilized. According to the researchers, this suggests that predictive performance improves as the time horizon becomes longer, but they point out that it will be necessary to train older models to be able to measure it well. Invention. Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, raised a very interesting question at a conference recently: if an AI with a limit of knowledge until 1911 could reach the theory of relativity that Einstein discovered in 1915. In this sense, models like Talkie-1930 are a very interesting tool to observe its ability to generate new ideas that can lead to discoveries. No pollution. Is one of the problems that the models have trained with large corpuses of current data, in which the evaluation data itself usually also sneaks in and ends up causing their capabilities to be overestimated. With vintage models there is no contamination and that allows you to carry out very specific experiments, such as seeing if you are able to learn to program without having any prior computer knowledge. Talkie-1930 is open source and is available on Github. Image | Xataka In Xataka | A macro experiment has tried to find out if we differentiate real images from those generated by AI. The answer is not optimistic

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