history

‘Baby Shark’ is the most successful song in YouTube history. It is also the least profitable of all

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It has already gone somewhat out of fashion, at least in terms of omnipresence at children’s parties, birthdays and meetings with children, but in those transition years between the birth of YouTube and the current flood of children’s content generated by AIs and insane algorithms on the platform, ‘Baby Shark‘It was a monumental success. One that, however, did not make its creators millionaires, unlike what many of us came to believe. Baby Shark, the legend. The infectious original song, since its publication on YouTube in June 2016, has accumulated an average of more than 4.7 million daily views. Now it’s at 16.4 billion views. Success transcends borders: available in 25 different languages, the United States leads as the main market in number of views, while Brazil holds the record in number of “likes.” In 2020, it dethroned ‘Despacito’ as the most viewed content on YouTube. And the distance continues to grow: ‘Despacito’ remains at 8.86 billion views, and ‘Baby Shark’ already doubles it. As The Wall Street Journal saysto get an idea of ​​the dimensions of the achievement: the amount is approximately equivalent to the sum of Taylor Swift’s ten most popular music videos on the platform. There is no money. Despite the records, Pinkfong, the South Korean company that created the song, barely generated $67 million in 2024. The reason: child privacy restrictions drastically limit its advertising monetization. In September 2019, Google agreed to pay 170 million dollars to resolve accusations of systematic violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The US Federal Trade Commission determined that the platform had collected cookies and IP addresses from children under 13 years of age to serve you personalized advertisingwithout obtaining parental consent. The sanction (136 million for the FTC, 34 million for the State of New York) represented the largest fine imposed until then for violations of this type. The investigation revealed that YouTube advertised itself among toy brands such as Mattel and Hasbro as a leader in reaching children ages 6 to 11. Changes for Baby Shark. This fine led to YouTube banning personalized advertising in “Made for Kids” content as of January 2020. Additionally, it disabled features such as comments, subscription notifications, playlists, and live chat. The economic impact was notable: Children’s content creators reduced their production by 18% and views fell by 20%. Profits plummeted between 60% and 90% compared to content with personalized advertising. Others affected. Other big names in children’s entertainment also saw stars with YouTube’s decision. Cocomelonwhich has two of the ten videos confirmed significant revenue losses after the removal of personalized advertising. Chris Williams, co-founder of pocket.watch (a digital studio specialized in children’s content), said that the main channels in the sector, such as the Indian ChuChu TV, had experienced drops between 50% and 60% in their advertising revenue since January 2020. To survive. Faced with monetization restrictions, Pinkfong has built a diversified business model where YouTube advertising represents only a fraction of its revenue. According to data from the first half of 202568% of its sales now come from content distribution (YouTube, but also Netflix and live shows), while merchandising contributes 15%, licensing 10%, and the remaining segment corresponds to video games and other digital products. This allowed the company to achieve a profit of approximately 13 million dollars in 2024 on total revenues of 67 million. Of course, its CEO has already spoken of integrating artificial intelligence and data analysis in content creation. No more viral bombs. In Xataka | Baby Shark (doo doo doo doo doo doo): when a children’s song also sweeps the stock market

In 1995, the first product in eBay history was sold. The only problem is that it was broken

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In 1995 the Internet was not what it is now. Many of the great companies and sites related to the network were born then. AuctionWeb was the first official name of what we now know as eBay. Its creator, Pierre Omidyar, gave that name to a personal project that he wrote from his home in Silicon Valley taking advantage of one of the classic long weekends in the US, Labor Day. How do they count in The Perfect Store: Inside eBayfaced with the need to test whether that personal auction website worked, Omidyar grabbed the first thing he had on hand: a laser pointer. The choice was not random. Two weeks after buying it, it had broken, so he thought that if he managed to sell it, he wouldn’t lose anything if they gave him very little money for it. For a week that laser pointer that had cost him 30 dollars He failed to receive a single offer. Pierre Omidyar had not lied and admitted in the description of the item on AuctionWeb that it was indeed broken. There was no way to make it work. A week after being published on the Internet, that AuctionWeb object received the first offer for it. Pierre Omidyar asked for one dollar but the auction ended up closing at $14.83. What was his surprise that, even though he had already warned it in the advertisement, he preferred to make sure that it was clear to the buyer that the object purchased was broken and wrote him an email. Despite everything, the buyer kept it because it was just what he was looking for. This was eBay in 1995, when it was a personal project called AuctionWeb Mark Fraser I had seen some of those pointers and wanted one. But they were still quite expensive, on the order of $100 in those years, so he relied on his skill as electrical engineer to build yours. And he needed a part that he thought he would get from the broken pointer that was being sold on a new online site that he had found out about through a referral in the forums and information exchange places that he frequented on the Internet. Today, and as he confessed in a funny video that could be seen at eBay’s 20th anniversary party, the pointer still doesn’t work but he still has it. In Xataka |

The longest train in history was born in 2001 and since then no one has surpassed it

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The train is the backbone of many countries. In Europe we know it wellin Latin America is catching up and the China and Japan current ones would not be understood without it. Another country where it is vital is Australia, although more than for the movement of the population, for the transport of goods. And, in 2001, in the heart of Western Australia, the BHP Iron Ore It made history by becoming the longest train in the world. More than seven kilometers long that have not yet been equaled. Necessary. One of the most powerful industries in Australia is mining, so much so that there are even mining influencers that recruit workers from any country. In the late 90s, mining companies faced a challenge: an increasing amount of mineral had to be transported from the source to the export ports. It was a challenge because logistics costs had to be kept under control so that prices did not skyrocket. Traditionally, we would have chosen to put more trains into operation, but it would not be efficient because we would have to pay for more fuel, for the use of the infrastructure and the salaries of a larger crew. Come into play BHPthe Australian giant that is one of the largest mining companies in the world, with an idea: what if we set up a huge train to load iron? This is how the Iron Ore train was born. The BHP Iron Ore train. Its dimensions were extraordinary: a convoy made up of 682 wagons, 5,648 wheels, a loaded weight of almost 100,000 tons and a length of 7,353 kilometers. Imagine 22 Eiffel Towers lying down and aligned, like this. To pull such a monster, eight locomotives GE AC6000CW (each with 6,000 HP) with 16-cylinder engines were distributed throughout the vehicle. Apart from the front, the rest were within a kilometer of each other and managed to complete a 275 kilometer Yandi journey, with a cargo of Newman mines, to Port Hedland in just ten hours. The pace was slow, yes, but the important thing about this was not It was the Guinness record that he achieved, but the proof of a technology called Distributed Power. Distributed Power. This was BHP’s goal, to prove that the technology worked. And it basically consists of what we have said: distributing the locomotives along the train instead of concentrating them in the front so that the traction and braking force is greater, more uniform and, also, more efficient. Everything worked like a Swiss clock thanks to great precision and harmony between the locomotives, which were controlled by a single driver in the front system. It’s long, and there’s no train If Distributed Power was the technology, the control system was the LOCOTROL. The leading locomotive communicated with the remote ones through a radio frequency system that synchronized all acceleration and braking operations. This allowed lateral forces and friction to be drastically reduced when cornering, which reduced both wheel wear and the risk of derailment and, in turn, it is estimated that between 4 and 6% less fuel was consumed. Pilbara. The BHP Iron Ore was a technical prodigy that set the record for the longest train in the world in 2001, but if you are a train enthusiast, don’t pack your bags yet to see it in action: it was a one-time event, so much so that there is very little material about it. Once the technology was proven, what BHP did was apply it to smaller trains. The Pilbara is the region in which much of its operations are concentrated, and what the company currently operates are several regular trains with formations of about four locomotives with about 270 carriages. It is still impressive, since the length of these trains is close to three kilometers and they have a loaded weight of about 40,000 tons. The company’s next steps are to electrify these trains to reduce emissions, and one trick will be to use regenerative braking to recharge the batteries in sloped areas. It is something that other companies are also testing in the country. Similar attempts. Thus, the BHP Iron Ore was a prodigy, but also something unique that has not been matched, not even close, more than 20 years after its launch for that test. In August this year, Indian Railways commissioned the Rudrastraa 354-car, 4.5-kilometer-long train powered by seven locomotives (two at the front and one every 59 cars). And in Europe, tests are also being carried out with distributed power trains, but for kilometer and a half trains. In the end, they are all very far from the Iron Ore both in length and weight, but beyond the record in 2001 it was shown that this distributed power technology was a solution for trains longer than conventional ones. We’ll see if at some point someone needs to create a longer train, but it seems complicated. Images | WabtecBHP In Xataka | The longest train journey in the world: more than 18,000 kilometers between Portugal and Singapore without changing transport

Funko literally produced more dolls than it could afford. And now it faces the biggest crisis in its history

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It seemed that this moment would never come, but it did: the Funko Pop They are in crisis. In popular culture everything is cycles, and if now it is an inevitable topic in the conversation the “superhero fatigue“, after having lived through years in which it seemed that there was going to be nothing but superheroes in the cinema, now it is the turn of the Funko Pop. All after an overwhelming success, which has turned these dolls cut from the same pattern into inevitable passengers in any conversation about the pop panorama. The data. The company recognized in its last quarterly report that there are “substantial doubts” about its ability to continue operating for the next twelve months. Funko carries $241 million in total debt while maintaining just $39.2 million in cash reserves, a ratio that puts the company on the brink of the financial abyss. In the second quarter of 2025, Funko lost $41 million, and although the third quarter showed an improvement with losses of less than one million, these contrast with the $8.9 million profit in the same period just a year earlier, in 2024. The reasons. Sales fell from 292.8 million to 250.9 million year-on-year, a 14% drop that originated mainly in the US market. In 2023, the company destroyed between 30 and 36 million dollars in excess inventory, literally sending millions of figures to landfills because it was cheaper to eliminate them than to pay for storage. The crisis has multiple culprits: the Trump administration’s trade tariffs have hit toys with the nature of Funko hard: cheap items made abroad. But the fundamental problem is structural: overproduction. Funko has systematically and for years produced more than the market has been able to absorb, believing that demand would be infinite. This has led to the company’s debt growing from 182.8 million at the end of 2024 to the current 241 million, an increase of 32% in less than a year. The signs told us. There were different crises that made it clear that problems could come for Funko Pop. In 2021, the pandemic led to a boom and the company achieved record sales of one billion dollars, an increase of 58% over 2020. But like the entire economy that emerged during the pandemic, it was temporary. The post-pandemic drop (losses in the fourth quarter of 2022 of $47 million) should have served as a warning. Then, in 2023, the massive destruction of inventory confirmed that Funko Pop was generating material beyond its capabilities. 40 different Grogu dollsIf nothing woke us up before, it should have been a warning to sailors. And what about collectors? The company crisis is not just a problem of corporate mirage: it is the collapse of a dangerous aspect of collectingwhich is done by mere accumulation of assets that it is believed that it is going to revalue in the future. We have seen exclusive figures for the San Diego Comic-Con that They were resold for 200 or 500% above their original price (and the same phenomenon repeated at the recent Comic-Con in Malaga). And we have seen sets reach impossible prices (especially mythical isWilly Wonka quele in 2022 which reached $100,000). Now, second-hand sales platforms show Funkos that sold for $200 languish at $10. Even discontinued figures can be found at bargain prices, all due to overproduction, which made the “exclusive” or “limited release” label lose its value. There are those who compare what is happening with the phenomenon of Beanie Babies, highly coveted a couple of decades ago by collectors in the United States, and whose bubble ended up exploding. Plastic mountains. AND eye on environmental impactwhich goes beyond a few (many) collectors with shelves full of products that have lost their value. The aforementioned between 1.4 and 3 million vinyl figures that were sent to landfill They were only the first phase of mass destruction. The material Funkos are made of, PVC, can remain in landfills for centuries because it is not biodegradable. And hundreds of millions of units are produced every year, which in the United States are deposited in landfills perfectly legally (in countries like France, companies were prohibited from destroying unsold non-food merchandise, forcing them to donate or recycle). Header | Photo of Z Graphica in Unsplash

SoftBank abandons NVIDIA in its prime. What comes next is the biggest bet in its history

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SoftBank has sold its 32.1 million NVIDIA shares for $5.83 billion, completely liquidating its position in the chipmaker, according to CNBC. It has also divested part of its stake in T-Mobile for another 9.17 billion. Why is it important. The sale speaks of a radical strategy: SoftBank is abandoning the physical infrastructure (chips) to bet directly on the application layer (AI models). This is not necessarily a lack of trust in NVIDIA (although that is not a great sign), but an extreme concentration of capital in OpenAI, where it has committed up to $40 billion and leads the stargate project of 500,000 million for data centers. The facts. SoftBank announced profits of $16.3 billion in its fiscal second quarter, driven primarily by your investments in OpenAI through the Vision Fund. The fund earned 19 billion in the July-September period, offsetting losses in other positions such as another AI giant: Alibaba. Between the lines. This is not the first time that SoftBank has sold NVIDIA. He already did it in January 2019, then liquidating a position of 4,000 million acquired in 2017. That move, made when NVIDIA shares had fallen more than 50%, received a lot of criticism for its timing. Now it repeats the move, but in a radically different context: NVIDIA is at all-time highs and dominates the AI ​​chip market. The difference is that in 2019 SoftBank sold due to the need for liquidity after the WeWork fiasco. In 2024 he sells by strategy: he needs a lot of cash to finance his bet on OpenAI and he cannot do so without liquidating winning positions. In any case, the reading is clear: when it comes to AI, SoftBank believes more in the profitability of the models than in that of the infrastructure. The money trail. SoftBank has already invested 9.7 billion in OpenAI through Vision Fund 2 since September 2024. The company will lead the Stargate project with OpenAI, contributing 19 billion of the initial 100 billion (OpenAI will put in another 19,000). Each firm will control 40% of the project. To contextualize the magnitude: SoftBank’s total commitment to OpenAI (40 billion) is equivalent to almost seven times the value of the NVIDIA shares it just sold. The contrast. The really surprising thing is not that someone is selling NVIDIA at maximums, but that that someone is precisely SoftBank. Masayoshi Son He has built his reputation as one of the most aggressive investors in the tech world, known for holding positions even when the market turns against him and for doubling down on bets in times of uncertainty. This sale of NVIDIA, the most coveted asset of the moment in technology, would have made more sense coming from conservative funds or traditional institutional investors looking to secure profits. But SoftBank is not that type of investor. That it is precisely the Vision Fund that abandons the star AI stock says more about the magnitude of its commitment to OpenAI than about its vision of NVIDIA. Yes, but. SoftBank remains indirectly linked to NVIDIA. The Stargate project will rely heavily on NVIDIA chips for its data centers. The company also maintains its majority stake in ARM, whose architecture competes with NVIDIA’s in certain segments. In addition, Son’s record in big bets is lime and sand: the Vision Fund lost 27.4 billion in 2022 due to failed investments like WeWork (100 million invested) and FTX. OpenAI could be your great redemption. Or your biggest mistake. At stake. SoftBank’s bet represents a clear hypothesis about where value is captured in AI: not in making the chips that train the models, but in owning the models and the infrastructure that runs them. It is choosing to be OpenAI rather than being the provider of OpenAI. Time will tell if they were right to change picks and shovels for the mine itself. In Xataka | AI is a bonfire of money and the ‘big tech’ have just decided that they are going to add even more fuel to it Featured image | Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons

the mythical episode that changed the history of television

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On October 29, 1995, on the brink of Halloween, Fox aired a very special episode of the already very popular ‘The Simpsons‘. It was ‘Treehouse of Horror VI’, the sixth episodic special in the series, which has become an annual tradition. It’s been exactly thirty years since that, and the result was so visionary and revolutionary as was everything ‘The Simpsons’ did in the nineties. What was happening. In ‘Homer’Homer passes through a portal that transports him from his traditional 2D animated world to a strange 3D computer-generated universe. Quite a technical challenge unprecedented for the series and a true milestone in television animation, as it was one of the first visible incursions of CGI graphics in an animated series, which is doubly surprising because we are not talking about an experimental program, but rather one of the most watched series of the moment. For many viewers it was their first encounter with an aesthetic of this type: a pioneering work by the company Pacific Data Images (PDI), who with limited resources managed to create a few minutes of sequence that today are considered a benchmark. Why it is important. The segment not only attracted attention for its impressive technical innovation, but also for its characteristic humor. In short: it never stopped being a ‘The Simpsons’ sketch. The episode aired just a month before the premiere of ‘toy story‘, helping to mark that year as essential for CGI animation. How it was born. The original idea was conceived by series executive producer Bill Oakley, inspired by the episode ‘Little Girl Lost’ of the legendary ‘The Twilight Zone’. To carry out this vision, the pioneering computer animation studio Pacific Data Images (PDI) was contacted, but the economic and technical demands were very high: the budget assigned by Fox for the segment was extremely low, barely $6,000, but the real cost to make the four minutes planned exceeded hundreds of thousands of dollars. Hair and other problems. PDI decided to take on the project almost as a strategic investment to achieve visibility and prestige in the industry, which would later allow them greater commercial opportunities (as indeed happened with their subsequent link with DreamWorks, by whom they were acquired and with whom they collaborated on ‘Antz’ and ‘Shrek‘).The animation ended up being limited to just Homer and Bart, and a few minutes of footage. The PDI team had to reinvent the characters, creating three-dimensional models that preserved the essence of the original design. Significantly, Homer’s iconic hairstyle was among the biggest challenges, as it was difficult to replicate with the digital tools of the time. The production process required the coordination of the series’ traditional animators team and PDI specialists. And with easter eggs. The backgrounds and objects in the 3D world were designed for both a sense of strangeness and an urgent minimalism, and included easter eggs like the iconic Utah Teapota test standard in computer animation. And there were also references to the video game ‘Myst’. This setting sought to emphasize the feeling of being in an artificial dimension, leaving behind the familiarity of Springfield. As a total exhibition of the possibilities of 3D animation, a scene was included where Homer appears in the real world, filmed on Ventura Boulevard. It was another nod that sought to experiment with different styles and genres within a single special. The legacy. The positive response was immediate. It was the most watched fiction program of the week on Fox, with an audience of 22.9 million viewers, a very notable figure for an animated special. In addition, ‘Homer³’ received awards such as recognition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, highlighting its innovative and artistic value. A milestone that, thirty years later, continues to amaze due to the daring and disruption it presented in a series that, at that time, no longer needed to prove anything. In Xataka | In 1997, a construction company had the crazy idea of ​​building the Simpsons’ house and putting it up for sale. It ended so-so

YouTube is ready to launch the largest video reconstruction project in history. And yes, it will use AI

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YouTube was born in 2005 and, since then, it has become the largest audiovisual archive in recent history. For years, millions of users uploaded videos in 240p or 480p because that was what the cameras, connections and devices of the moment allowed. This material does not lose value because it has low resolution: there are extraordinary pieces that continue to be a reference. But today the screens are better, the sound matters more and that difference is noticeable. So now comes an attempt to update that experience without erasing the past. An ocean of videos. The YouTube catalog is not large: it is huge. The figures published by electroiq put the total at around 4.3 billion videos in 2025, after a stage in which the Shorts format It pushed the increases to levels never seen before. About 800 million were added in 2023 alone. That momentum has tempered, in part because of controls on repetitive content and a lower craze for short clips, but the trend remains. If the current pace continues, the service could surpass 10 billion videos before 2030. YouTube begins to “reconstruct” its videos. YouTube has announced that will begin to automatically improve videos uploaded in resolutions between 240p and 720p, raising them to HD quality using artificial intelligence. The process does not delete the original files or modify the base video: it is an alternative version visible under the “super resolution” label. Creators will be able to decide if they want it to be applied and viewers will retain the option to view the content in its original resolution. It is a measure that seeks to modernize the archive without altering its authenticity. Lens: 4K. The roadmap is clear. After starting with videos below 1080p, YouTube wants automatic enhancement also reach 4K resolutions “in the short term,” according to its announcement. To support that jump, heavier uploads are already being tested with some creators and thumbnails will also be able to reach 4K, thanks to the extension of the file limit from 2 MB to 50 MB. Everything points to an attempt by the platform to ensure that both the content and its presentation are at the level of current panels. The audio also goes up a notch. The modernization of the catalog does not stop at the visual. YouTube has also introduced automatic audio enhancements that adjust the mix and maintain a more consistent volume between different scenes. These automatic improvements are grouped under the “Stable volume“, which the viewer can activate or deactivate according to their preference. With this, the company seeks to prevent sound jumps from breaking the experience, something common in old videos or recordings with basic equipment. It will not be for all videos. YouTube clarifies that these improvements will not be applied indiscriminately. They will only affect videos uploaded in low resolution that have not been previously remastered to 1080p or higher. Additionally, as we already mentioned, creators can decide from YouTube Studio whether they want the platform to apply visual or audio enhancements to their future uploads. It is a measure that seeks to avoid unwanted distortions and give room to those who prefer to keep their content exactly as it was published. If these enhancements are disabled for the channel, viewers may not be able to use features such as “Stable volume” or “Super resolution” on that content. Upscaling no longer lives on your TV. Many televisions include their own systems to improve the image, but YouTube’s approach is different. Instead of applying upscaling on the device, the platform does it in the cloud, allowing it to process millions of videos consistently without depending on the user’s hardware. Additionally, the viewer can choose between the original playback or the enhanced version from the quality menu, with an option visible and explicit in the interface. Catalog, discovery, legacy. For creators, this update has an immediate benefit: they don’t need to re-upload old videos to make them look better on current screens. The file remains intact and the enhancement is applied as an additional layer, respecting the original. This can help valuable pieces from years ago gain presence, without altering their essence. The viewer, for their part, receives a more homogeneous experience and the possibility of choosing how to view each content. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 | CardMapr In Xataka | NVIDIA has risen to the top for its AI data centers. Your next big leap: cars

the first “drone” attack in history

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If the war in Ukraine has shown us anything, it is that the rules of the game have changed. The drones dominate the battlefield and they don’t have to be cutting-edge creations: commercial and recreational drones They can perform precision attacks. However, the technical and even psychological foundations were laid more than 175 years ago, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire carried out the first bombing with unmanned vehicles of history against Venice. In the mid-19th century, today’s Italy did not exist. The territories were fragmented into a series of kingdomss, but within the framework of the liberal revolutions of 1848, some of those kingdoms tried to become independent from the control of the Austrian Empire. That same year, Venice rebelled and proclaimed itself the ‘Republic of San Marco’. It was a symbol of resistance to Austrian rule and, evidently, the Empire was not going to let it pass. Led by Marshal Radetzkythe Empire carried out a siege of the city, but as you might already guess, Venice is not an easy city to attack due to the “natural” defenses of the canals. Yes, in a war of attrition, disease and famine would take their toll on the population, but the Austro-Hungarians were in a hurry. Faced with the impediment of bombing and attacking the city in a conventional way, someone came up with an idea as crazy as it is tempting: bomb it with drones. Well, with the drones of the time. The UAVs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire against Venice The key name in this story is Franz von Uchatius. He was an artillery lieutenant who was also an inventor. Nothing like what he proposed had ever been done and I would have loved to have been in the room when he presented his idea, but basically the plan was loading hot air balloons with explosivesand control them in some way so that they would release the bombs on the city. Specifically, what von Uchatius suggested was launch 200 balloons both from the ground and from the SMS Vulcano (which we could consider as the first aircraft carrier in history), each loaded with about 15 kilos of explosives and a detonation system based on continuous combustion fuses (coal and cotton with fat). Each of the ‘drones’ It would have an activation system using copper wires and, in the case of some prototypes, galvanic batteries. Remote control? The wind and a series of estimated flight calculations, as well as a very strong desire for each of the balloons to fall where they had to fall: on the city’s population. On July 12, 1849 began the deployment of Austro-Hungarian drones, the first time humanity experienced that remote aerial threat. Now, the result was very different from what the attacking forces expected. Military failure… BUT Although they did the calculations, the balloon-bombers had no real guidance: they were pushed randomly by the wind. And the result was devastating for both forces, as impossible as it may seem. The first thing is that few bombs hit the city and the material damage was practically non-existent. In fact, changes in the wind and failure in those calculations caused some of the explosions to affect the Austro-Hungarian forces. Basically, the balloons were unpredictable. But do not think that the Venetian population had reasons to rejoice about this, since, although we may intuit that they would rejoice to see how the weapons of the enemies “revealed” against them, the truth is that the Venetians added a new concern to those they already had: an unlikely attack. The possibility of being attacked from the sky by devices like this It shocked the population and, although it was not the reason why the city capitulated days later (most likely it was due to the desperation caused by the siege), it was surely another item to add to the list of concerns. Although useless militarily, it was the conceptual germ of an unmanned aerial attack, something that was also used in the war between the US and Spain of 1898, later it was continued exploring in the World War I (where chilling new ways to kill each other were invented) and perfected in the modern era. Although the use of balloons with dangerous cargo has not stopped being used, and an example of this is the balloons with excrement that are thrown between North and South Korea. With all that this implies at a security level, since a few months ago they were feces, but they could perfectly have been explosives. Images | Timetoast National Library of France In Xataka | Using aerial balloons to smuggle tobacco is common in Eastern Europe. And then the airports have a problem

For the first time in history there are mosquitoes in Iceland. And it was assumed that they couldn’t get there

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Iceland is being invaded. Not just for touristsbut because of something perhaps more undesirable: insects that had never been seen on the island. For the first time in their history, at least since records have been kept, Icelanders have encountered one of the bugs most undesirable and hated for all of us who have to sleep with the windows open in summer: mosquitoes. They have been few, but they can represent the advance of a full-fledged colonization. Unwanted guests. Bjorn Hjaltason is an amateur entomologist who was hunting for insects last week when he found something strange. On the wine-soaked rope he uses to catch moths and being able to observe it, three insects fell that have nothing to do with moths. They were mosquitoes, specifically two females and a male, but at first, Hjaltason described them as “some strange flies.” And as they count in BBCthe event was such that the local media opened with the news. Because yes, it is more serious than it may seem (and not because of the bites). Shelter. Iceland has remained one of the world’s mosquito-free bastions, one of only two mosquito-free havens. The other is Antarctica, and the reason is that these insects they don’t handle the cold well. Being cold-blooded, they need environmental heat to carry out their activity. When air temperatures are around 10º, their metabolism slows down so much that they become dysfunctional. Not only can they not fly, but they also cannot reproduce. In warmer climates, this is the time when they enter a kind of hibernation, looking for shelters in which to weather the storm until the heat returns. In Iceland it was not necessary because the average temperature was below 10º. BUT. Climate changethere is no more. Records from the Reykjavík observatory show that in the last 30 years there has been a gradual increase of temperatures, with average values ​​that have past from 2.4º to 4.1º. The average temperature has increased by 0.5º in the last decade, almost double of the planet average and there are areas that have broken all records. They are also occurring extreme episodeslike the 26.6º that in Córdoba would be pleasant and to go out with a jacket in the morning, but that in May of this year must have felt like real hell in Egilsstaoir. There were episodes like this before, but reports indicate that these events that were anomalies are becoming more common. You have to wait. Mosquitoes, of course, are at ease with those temperatures, but the big question is where they came from. Hjaltason found them in Kjós and speculates that they may have come on a freighter that landed at Grundartangi. The two cities are in western Iceland and the insect enthusiast points out that unusual ‘bugs’ usually come in those freighters. Another entomologist, Matthías Alfreodsson, to whom Hjaltason sent the mosquitoes confirmed that, although they belonged to a species that tolerates low temperatures somewhat better –Culiseta annulata-, they should not be in Iceland and we will have to wait until spring to check if the species has really established itself on the island. But Hjaltason is clear that if three of them went directly to his garden, “there will probably be more.” I feel sorry for you, fellow Icelanders. Images | Enzo Guidi In Xataka | The Japanese method to get rid of mosquitoes at home during the summer: katori senko

A 4.4 million-year-old ankle has turned the history of bipedalism and everything we knew about our ancestors upside down.

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The origin of human bipedalism, the ability to walk on two legs, is one of the great debates in science today. For decades, scientists have wondered what the last common ancestor we share with us was like. chimpanzees and its characteristics. Now an ankle bone has ended up giving us the key we were looking for to rethink everything what we knew about our ancestors. The study. Published in Communications Biology and as the protagonist a 4.4 million year old ankle bone that belonged to a Ardipithecus ramidus. a hominid which was discovered in Ethiopia and which gives us many data about the history of human evolution. And this is because the conclusion is surprising: the ankle of this ancient hominid has surprising similarities with those of modern chimpanzees and gorillas. Something that makes us think that humans evolve from an ancestor similar to African apes, which makes us wonder about how and why we began to walk upright. The great debate. He Ardipithecus ramidusor “Ardi”, is essential in this case. It lived 4.4 million years ago and already displayed hominid characteristics, but combined primitive features such as a prehensile, ape-like big toe with human-derived features in the pelvis and skull. This is what suggests right now that an “early form of bipedalism” was used. The key is in the morphology of the talus, which in Ardi resembles that of African apes more than that of any other fossil hominin analyzed. The objective in this case is to know how our ancestors moved on the surface, but they also climbed trees vertically. This suggests that it made use of both early bipedalism and skills typical of arboreal life, placing Ardi in an intermediate position between Australopithecus and the great apes. And this bone is the fundamental key to knowing how the evolution to bipedalism took place. The challenge. This finding broadly challenges the traditional model of human evolution, which assumed that the last common ancestor with chimpanzees was a generalist and arboreal ape, alien to terrestrial life and bipedalism. New evidence indicates that humans most likely evolved from an African ancestor specialized in vertical climbing and also had plantigrade terrestrial locomotion. That is, with the soles of the feet completely supported like current gorillas and chimpanzees. A true hybrid between the two automotive models. The authors maintain that several lineages (humans, chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas) share a past adapted to mixed life between trees and soil. The subsequent evolution of bipedalism would have been built on that basis, little by little modifying the anatomy and locomotor abilities to stop climbing trees and move on to what we now all use in our daily lives. Its implications. The morphometric data of the ankle of Ardipithecus demonstrate the presence of a structure designed to “push” when walking and improve balance, but without completely losing the ability to grip. The evolutionary process towards complete bipedalism was much more gradual and less linear than what had originally been proposed by experts. Furthermore, the most recent studies not only focus on the talus, but also on the metatarsus and pelvis, confirming that Ardi could walk upright during his short journeys and return to trees to climb and take shelter. This duality is key to understanding how our ancestors adapted to different environments and ecological pressures. What changes. The hybrid anatomy of Ardipithecus ramidus dismantles the chimpanzee ancestor myth, and presents a new branch on our human evolutionary tree. Far from being a rarity, Ardi represents an example of evolutionary transition and the complexities that may exist in the origins of our species. Thus, scientists propose abandoning this concept of a straight line in evolution and embracing an adaptive mosaic between different species. Images | Wikipedia Satya deep In Xataka | The skull that changes everything: a million-year-old fossil suggests that ‘Homo sapiens’ did not come from Africa

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