idea

from a student’s idea to real research

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Take a week-long trip with a cabin suitcase In winter it is an art that not everyone can match. Traveling to Mars with a spacecraft in which each extra kilo can mean very expensive amounts of fuel, is a problem. Therefore, it is not enough to put socks inside shoes and replace the filling of the cervical pillow with T-shirts. In these cases it is better to travel light and try to take advantage of the destination’s resources later. A destination that, let us not forget, is the most inhospitable. Still, science is developing proposals as interesting as the one published this year by a graduate student at the University of Arkansas: 3D printing tools directly on Mars. A brilliant student. Zane Mebruer was an undergraduate engineering student when he had an interesting idea. Could metal tools be printed on a 3D printer, taking advantage of the main gas in the Martian atmosphere? He communicated the idea to his teacher Wan Shou and together They set off to check it out.. Typically, when making 3D prints with metallic materials, it is necessary to use a chamber with a protective atmosphere of argon, as this gas prevents oxidation. However, we have said that we do not want to take a lot of luggage to Mars: neither the tools, nor the argon. The Martian atmosphere is made up of 95% carbon dioxide, so it could be that this gas is a good substitute for argon. They did the relevant tests and, indeed, it could be a good option. It is true that argon gave better results, but carbon dioxide also turned out to be a quite acceptable option. Background. It should be noted that these scientists have not been the first to propose 3D printing to avoid having to take a lot of luggage to Mars. In fact, it is something that worries NASA so much that in 2015 issued a challenge to companies and universities to try to print a complete habitat. They were offered a succulent prize of $800,000, which in the end went to a team from the company IA Space Factory. In your case, they used as materials a mixture of basalt fibers extracted from Martian rock and bioplastics. They also wanted to take advantage of materials from the neighboring planet. The new. The materials proposed by that team would not be as useful for printing tools. In that case, metals would be a better option. To do this, Mebruer and Shou proposed using a printing technique known as selective laser fusion. To begin with, this consists of spreading a layer of metal powder on a plate. A laser beam then heats the powder and fuses it onto the plate. When this is ready, the plate is lowered, a new layer of powder is dropped and the procedure is repeated. Layer by layer, the piece of metal hardens and enlarges. The problem is that, in this process, the material is very exposed to oxidation. If it oxidizes, it doesn’t fuse properly, so the result is not as good. That is why a protective gas is needed. Microscope proof. These two scientists carried out the 3D printing in three different conditions: with argon, with carbon dioxide or with ambient air. The result was then analyzed under a microscope in search of any imperfections. It was seen that the best result was obtained with argon, but that with carbon dioxide a hardened, resistant material with few imperfections was also achieved. Much better than with ambient air. Only the metals would be missing. We already have the printing method and the protective gas. Only the metal would be missing. For that, other scientists have proposed recently travel to the asteroid belt and use it as a mine. That’s another story. For now, we wanted to check if printing is viable on the red planet and the answer is clearly yes. Image | Mebruer et al/Magnific In Xataka |Growing lettuce on Mars is NASA’s great challenge to colonize the planet. We already have a “shortcut” to achieve it

One more day, Marcos Llorente wants to convince you not to use sunscreen. One more day, we know it’s a bad idea

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In 2026, we are not going to discover Marcos Llorente. Not just because it is an old acquaintance of the Spanish public conversation: midfielder for Atlético de Madrid, Instagrammer with more than two million followers and owner of an enormous amount of pseudoscientific (and, above all, very dangerous) ideas on health issues. But because the large media groups are already in charge of ensuring that it does not go unnoticed. Last night, in the Hormiguero, he repeated again verbatim his usual speech against sunscreen. It is true that Pablo Motos confronted him with data from the Spanish Academy of Dermatologybut Llorente got away without a problem, questioning the studies and maintaining that “many dermatologists and health professionals defend this lifestyle. It is simply having a coherent relationship with the sun.” This, of course, it’s a lie. But we are talking about a serious topic and, for that reason, it is worth returning to it. A “coherent” relationship with the sun? On the one hand, The Skin Cancer Foundation estimates that 86% of melanomas and 90% of other skin cancers are associated with UV radiation. On the other hand, the AEDV maintains that “a significant portion of sun damage accumulates before the age of 20.” In this sense, having TikTok star footballers defending that chemical protection is useless is extremely dangerous. Above all, because it is not (far from it) the first time he has defended it. And we must not forget that, every year, more than a thousand people die from cutaneous melanoma. A misconception, but a very widespread one. Because we must not forget that, as José María Ricart explained to usdermatologist and medical director of the Ricart Medical Institute (IMR), “many people still believe in the idea of ​​a ‘healthy tan’, when in reality it is a sign of skin damage.” Sometimes we have the feeling that sunbathing without protection is little more than simple carelessness; but no: it is a practice that accelerates skin aging and increases the risk of skin cancer. We focus on the most well-known rays, but not the most insidious ones. As Ricart explainedit is important to know well the two types of ultraviolet radiation that can affect us. On the one hand, UVB rays, more powerful in summer, are those that cause sunburn and damage cellular DNA. On the other hand, UVA rays, present all year round, even on cloudy days, penetrate more deeply and are responsible for premature aging. It’s time to stop seeing melanin as a “biological protection” and tanning as something positive. They are not. Tan “is nothing more than a defensive response of the body. It is its way of saying: ‘I am damaging myself’. If anyone still doubts this, compare the skin of the face with that of the buttock, an area never exposed to the sun: without spots, without wrinkles, without photoaging,” explained the dermatologist. What is happening? let there be people deciding not to apply sunscreen going tan is problematic (and bad news for your dermatological health); But the fact that large media groups have no problems with bringing these types of ideas to ‘prime time’ is absurd. Because it is worth remembering that, despite the fact that he presented it as a debate, what was done yesterday in Hormiguero is advertise personal opinion of a footballer against the consensus of the AEDV, the WHO, the SEOM and the Ministry of Health. The mere idea of ​​calling it ‘debate’ is a mistake. Image | The Anthill Xataka | That the AEMPS withdraws six sunscreens is good news. That the OCU had to ask for it is worrying

All experts agree that introducing bison into Spain is a bad idea. And yet we’re doing it

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Nine European bison have been grazing for four months in the Guadalajara municipality of El Recuenco, in the heart of the Alto Tajo. And the only really relevant question is why. I mean, we know why. They are there because the Rewilding Spain foundation and the town council itself have placed them in what has become the first case of bison in public forests in Spain. In fact, as long as we pay attention to what its promoters say, it is not only a renaturalization initiative, it is “a tool against forest fires.” The thing is, none of that explains why anyone thinks any of this makes sense. There have never (as far as we know) been European bison in Spain. Yes, yes. I know that one of the most iconic Spanish images is that of the painted bison of Altamira, but that animal was not a Bison bonasuswas a Bison priscus. A species that became extinct 9,000 years ago just when the habitat (the mammoth steppe) that welcomed it did. There is no conclusive paleontological evidence to say that there was ever a European bison on the peninsula. In fact, in 2020, MITECO commissioned a report that unanimously denied that this animal could be defined as an “extinct species in Spain”. Does that mean that it is proven that there was not? No, one thing does not imply the other. At any time we can find remote proof that there were. In fact, in February 2026 was announced that a skeleton about 4,000 years old had been found in Navarra that could be from a Bison bonasus. It is a matter of time before a genetic test confirms it (or not). Be that as it may, no one seems to care: the nine bison are in Guadalajara. And there are up to two doctoral theses that will examine fecal samples, stress levels and diet to study the adaptability of these animals and their effect on vegetation. The latter is interesting because, as I said, the second objective of all this has to do with vegetation. With its control and management. There it is, despite the skepticism of many expertswhere there may be a future. But it is not a simple future. To begin with, because the species cannot be the subject of an official reintroduction program. The nine specimens from El Recuenco (and the other 160 in the country) are not protected wildlife, but are classified as livestock or zoological nucleus. This requires them to be controlled, geolocated and monitored. But, above all, that forces us to ask ourselves many things and “do we have any capacity to control our country?” It is perhaps the most important. For years, people have been releasing beavers into the main Spanish rivers without anything happening. What’s more, in Spain have been detected more than 200 invasive species. The debate is not ‘bison yes or bison no’. Above all, because it is not a strictly Spanish debate. The United Kingdom reintroduced bison to Kent, the Netherlands did it decades ago… European rewilding is being done, to a large extent, outside the usual channels of conservation. And El Recuenco is just the local version of a deeper debate: that of what nature we want to exist in the future. Image | Oskar Jablonski In Xataka | We are reforesting Europe with trees that will not survive by 2100. If pests don’t kill them, climate change will.

the idea is reminiscent of how macOS works

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The speed of an operating system is not always noticeable when we export a video or open a demanding game. Many times we perceive it in much smaller gestures: a menu that appears instantly or a window that responds without delay. It’s a hard feeling to sell on a spec sheet, but easy to notice when it fails. Microsoft has been trying to convey for months that it wants to improve Windows 11and one of its next adjustments goes right into that area where fluidity is gained or lost in tenths of a second. Low latency profile. Microsoft is testing what is known as low latency profile. The idea is to ask the processor for an additional boost of speed at specific times, such as when opening the Start menu, an application, or certain context menus. We are not facing a function announced as a great novelty for all users, but rather a setting present in test builds. Secure Windows Central who has already tested this profile and has observed an appreciable improvement in speed and response compared to the current public version of Windows 11 25H2. It’s not magic, it’s latency. The reference to macOS does not point to a specific Apple feature, but to a principle that, according to Scott Hanselman, vice president of Microsoft and GitHub, modern operating systems share. “All modern operating systems do this, including macOS and Linux,” wrote in X. Their argument is that this is not “cheating,” but rather a common way to make applications appear faster: temporarily raising the CPU speed and prioritizing interactive tasks to reduce latency. In other words, Windows 11 would be trying to react better in those seconds in which we most notice if the system is accompanying or lagging behind. Spot power. At first glance it may seem contradictory that asking more from the processor also helps to take care of consumption. But reality goes the other way: many modern chips are designed to exert intense effort for a very short period and then return to a low-power state. Applied to Windows 11, the goal would not be to keep the CPU accelerated, but rather to take advantage of a specific push when the system needs to respond to the user. The key is that this impulse does not last longer than necessary. The test has not convinced everyone. Some users criticized on social networks that Microsoft resorted to this type of CPU boost, understanding that it could increase consumption and reduce autonomy, or that the company was leaning too much on the hardware instead of better optimizing the software. Now, Microsoft does not present this adjustment as the only answer to the fluidity problems of Windows 11, but as one more piece within a broader work. Windows 11 also needs convincing. The interesting thing is that Microsoft isn’t just talking about making an animation go a little faster. The company has begun to publicly organize its progress around a very specific idea, its “commitment to Windows quality”, with posts tracking the status of several changes in testing, including a less loaded Widgets view, lower RAM usage, adjustments to the Windows Insider program, and more leeway to decide when updates are installed. The timing is not coincidental either.. All of this comes as Microsoft tries to push users and businesses towards Windows 11, with Windows 10 still installed on just over a quarter of the world’s Windows PCs, according to StatCounter. When I finish that free year of extended security updatesanyone who wants to remain protected will have to update the system, change equipment if their hardware does not meet the requirements of Windows 11, or pay for more support. For companies there is a little more margin, but not infinite: they will be able to purchase one or two additional years of updates, with a cost that will increase each year. Images | Nicholas Worrell In Xataka | The big bet for the future of Android is not just Android 17: it is Gemini Intelligence and your mobile phone doing things on its own

Sony has launched the most anti-2026 high-end mobile. It’s an idea as good as it is risky.

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Sony continues launching mobile phones. And it has reached a point where the news is not that it has launched a mobile phone, but rather why it has done so and what it wants to tell the market when it does so. Although it may seem like a counter-current idea, launching mobile phones knowing that you are only going to sell them makes some senseand Sony is not alone there. The anti2026. For some reason, manufacturers have been convincing us for years that more than useful technologies should disappear. All in pursuit of a more minimalist design, larger batteries and an evolution close to that of the portless mobile. To this, Sony responds with a blunt “hold my cap.” The Sony Xperia 1 VIII. He Sony Xperia 1 VIII It is a return to the past, maintaining technologies that the vast majority of its rivals discarded years ago. It has a 3.5mm headphone jack It has a slot for microSD cards up to 2 TB Thick, very thick bezels The SIM slot is not removed with the tool, just press it The stereo speakers are front-facing, there is no one below There is no trace of what might look like an iPhone Very good. Sony’s proposal is clear: in the middle of 2026 you can enjoy technologies that one day we banished and that are useful despite the passing of the years. Furthermore, each and every one of these steps does not distance the Xperia 1 VIII from what is required of a modern flagship. The best Qualcomm processor A powerful camera system with ZEISS optics Up to a generous 16 GB of RAM The only unforgivable point is that of a Full HD+ panel. On a 1,499 euro mobile phone this resolution is not acceptable. Because. The short answer is that Sony is not launching the Xperia 1 VIII to compete with Samsung or Apple. He gave up that battle a long time ago. In the last Corporate Strategy MeetingSony president Kenichiro Yoshida made it clear that the smartphone division does not exist to sell volume, it exists to prove something. Sony Xperia is, above all, a technological showcase. In addition, the Xperia division is a fundamental pillar for the company’s R&D. The advances made in these smartphones are later applied to what really matters: the brand’s cameras. In Xataka | At half price the Sony WH-1000XM5, headphones with one of the best noise cancellations we have tested

End-to-end encryption is a great idea and that’s why it’s almost impossible to understand why Instagram removes it. Almost

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In an era where many users may be concerned about their privacy and looking to ensure their conversations are as secure as possible, Meta has made a curious move. On May 8, as planned, instagram removed end-to-end encryption in direct messages. The big question now is no longer how to communicate safely but something deeper: what interest Meta may have in those conversations. And AI leads the first suspicions. In short. Although it may seem contradictory, Meta is a company that has shown some concern about allowing the user to have secure private conversations. WhatsApp has been using end-to-end encryption for years and, although It took longer to arrive than desiredFaceBook and Instagram also implemented it for direct messages years ago. Simply put, end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is a technology that ensures that only the sender and receiver can read chats. There are applications that implemented it by default (WhatsApp), but on Instagram it wasn’t like that. It is the user who had to activate it and, if done, automatically and transparently for the user, the device blocks the message using a unique key that prevents anyone other than the recipient from accessing the conversation. It’s over. Download your messages. As we say, it has been on their support blog where Meta has confirmed that end-to-end encrypted messages are no longer available on Instagram. Since last May 8, in fact, and if you have a chat that was protected in this way, a message will appear with instructions to download the messages and keep them safe in case you want to do so. Pressure. The end of this security feature has not been accompanied by a reason why Meta abandons this feature, but it is clear that the company has not done it simply for the sake of it. A few weeks ago, when the company’s plans were announced, a Meta spokesperson told Guardian that “very few people were choosing to send end-to-end encrypted messages.” That was the main reason they cited for stopping service, but you don’t have to scratch the surface too hard to find shadier reasons. For example, different police agencies (Interpol, the United Kingdom National Crime Agency or the FBI) ​​have been pressuring FaceBook to grant them access to encrypted messages. Because of course, this technology is very useful for all of us who value privacy, but it also gives wings to those who want to use it for much darker purposes. There are organizations that have criticized the implementation in apps like Instagram because they point out that, although it is useful, if the company does not implement adequate security measures, it can intensify acts of child sexual exploitationterrorism or giving rise to violent extremism. In fact, the UK government has been searching that Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp or iMessage open or end with that end-to-end encryption. And Apple has had a media battle against the FBI for that very reason. The suspicion. But of course, for a company that has been promoting the discourse since 2019 that encryption in its applications was the way to follow to protect users, this movement seems strange and there are already those who point to more practical reasons for Meta than, simply, to please governments. Those reasons are the ability to train AI. Because if there is no encryption, there is nothing hidden. And, although there is no human reading (although it seems increasingly evident that behind the AI there are humans labeling what our video devices and voice see and hear), having access to the conversations of millions of users allows the algorithms to continue training with the aim of offer advertising more personalized (something that Meta has become very aggressive about in recent months) or chatbots that can continue drinking the Internet. It’s not such a crazy theory.. WhatsApp. “Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can go to WhatsApp,” is Meta’s own recommendation and something they said both in statements to The Guardian and on their support page. Because for their communication app they do continue to aggressively push that argument of “express yourself freely with end-to-end encryption”, “show yourself as you are, speak freely” and “no one else has access, not even WhatsApp”. Seeing that the company maintains this encryption on WhatsApp, but not on an Instagram that is increasingly a bazaar, makes the opinion that they withdraw end-to-end encryption based solely on government pressure lose some weight. In any case, as Meta itself says, if you want privacy in your conversations… you will have to go to WhatsApp. Or to any other app with end-to-end encryption. In Xataka | Meta will pay $1.4 billion to Texas for violating the privacy of its users. Used facial recognition without permission

If the question is how the Egyptian pyramids were made, science has an idea: hydraulic systems

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Ancient Egypt is recognized for being one of the first hydraulic civilizations in history: they had control over irrigation canals, dams and transportation that was essential for erect and maintain a centralized kingdom for more than three thousand years in a fertile strip surrounded by desert. In the Old Kingdom period (c. 2700–2200 BC), the Egyptians built seven enormous pyramids representing approximately 25 million tons of rock cut, transported and fitted in less than 150 years. How they did it remains a mystery. In that period the pharaohs they ordered stone blocks to be moved at a rate equivalent to 50 tons per hour sustained for decades. There are several hypothesesbut none are satisfactory enough to explain that performance, especially at the beginning. The origin of everything is in Saqqara: the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser It is the oldest of the great pyramids and the first built entirely of carved stone. This is precisely where a multidisciplinary team proposes for the first time that water was the driving force of its construction. The hydraulic hypothesis. What the research team led by Xavier Landreau proposes is a kind of hydraulic elevator formed by three large structures from the Zoser complex. The Gisr el-Mudir functioned as a retention dam, the southern Dry Trench was the settling tank and the twin shafts (connected by a 200 meter underground tunnel) constituted the lifting mechanism: a huge float that would have raised the blocks from inside the pyramid in cycles of filling and emptying. Water from the desert wadis was channeled and filtered before reaching the vertical wells. When filled, the water buoyantly raised a platform on which the blocks rested, allowing them to be deposited on the upper levels without the need for external ramps and with less labor effort. Why is it important. Firstly, because it provides a coherent functional explanation for three structures at Saqqara whose purpose was not entirely clear. The analysis brings together hydrology, archeology and civil engineering to integrate all these elements into a unified and logical system, possibly making the Saqqara complex the oldest hydraulic infrastructure in history. If the hypothesis is confirmed, it would leave behind the hegemonic belief of ramps and a large amount of labor as a universal solution for building pyramids. A hydraulic lifting system implies efficient management of resources, energy and logistics, by significantly reducing labor. Additionally, it involves even more advanced knowledge of hydraulics. The next question is clear: are there more pyramids in Egypt built like this? Context. Saqqara is on a limestone plateau west of the Nile. How the research team mappedto the west of the complex there was a potential watershed of 400 square kilometers linked to the wadi Taflah, an ancient tributary of the Nile already documented on 18th century maps. This point is important because although today it is a desert plateau, studies of sediments from the complex itself show that during the reign of Djoser the area received intense seasonal runoffwith enough kinetic energy to deposit sediments of water origin inside the structures. In short, there was water available and in quantity. Other historical hypotheses. The most consolidated theories about the construction of the pyramids point to ramps with different geometries combined with levers and sleds. For Giza for example, Jean-Pierre Houdin proposed an interior spiral ramp. For Saqqara, studies collected in the paper itself suggest that the Dry Pit was the main limestone quarry, with short ramps on each side as a supply mechanism. As for the twin wells, the dominant interpretation until now was funerary: the royal tomb of Djoser and the abode of his ka. As for the dry grave, it was considered a quarry or had a ritual function. How have they done it. This research team has not excavated anything: it has combined satellite images of Airbus Pléiadeselevation models from the French IGN and the QGIS GIS to reconstruct the paleohydrology of the environment. From here, they generated 3D models of the complex’s internal architecture with quite popular commercial software such as SolidWorks or SketchUp. Regarding the hydraulic mechanism, they developed their own deliberately simple numerical model to estimate the water consumption and carrying capacity of the system. Yes, but. Using existing data has been both its greatest strength and also its greatest virtue, as the team recognizes. That is, although their study integrates basin topography, hydraulics and internal architecture, they have not accessed the wells or dated the sediments directly. On the other hand, from the perspective of the study of Egypt, stating that the wells are not funerary contradicts decades of consolidated interpretation. On the other hand, it raises a structural question: if those who made the first pyramids in Egypt mastered this hydraulic technology, why are the pyramids after Giza increasingly smaller and poorer? In Xataka | China’s first pipeline network is 4,000 years old and something revolutionary: it was built without the need for kings or nobles In Xataka | What we see in Petra is a city “carved in stone”: what it really hides is an amazing water system Cover | Charles J Sharp

Two men thought it was a good idea to lend their houses to a North Korean laptop farm. It went wrong

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Teleworking has accustomed us to a very comfortable idea: if someone delivers work, attends meetings and responds to messages, perhaps it doesn’t matter too much where they do it from. The problem appears when that distance becomes an advantage to hide identities, move money and enter companies that believe they are hiring a legitimate professional. North Korea has been exploiting precisely that rift. And the case of two men convicted of hosting laptops in their homes shows the extent to which the plot could rely on domestic infrastructure. Two men condemned. Matthew Isaac Knoot, of Nashville, Tennessee, and Erick Ntekereze Prince, of New York, have been sentenced in the US to 18 months each in prison for their role in fraudulent schemes involving remote IT workers linked to North Korea. according to the Department of Justice. The house as a piece of the plot. The mechanism was more domestic than one might imagine. Companies shipped corporate laptops to American addresses because they believed the contracted workers were there. Once received, the computers were housed in those homes and configured with remote desktop applications installed without authorization. This allowed the fake workers to operate from abroad while, to the companies, the connection appeared to come from an address within the United States. What did each one do?. Prince, according to official information, facilitated at least three North Korean IT workers to obtain remote employment in US companies between June 2020 and August 2024, and used his company Taggcar Inc. to fraudulently supply “certified” workers, despite knowing that they were outside the US and using false or stolen identities. Knoot, for his part, operated a laptop farm from his Nashville residences between July 2022 and August 2023. Money, companies and damages. The Justice Department maintains that the two schemes together generated more than $1.2 million for North Korea and affected nearly 70 U.S. companies. In the Prince case, the companies paid more than $943,069 in salaries to IT workers linked to the file. In Knoot’s case, the payments exceeded $250,000. More than labor fraud. The US justice system presents the sentences as part of a specific line of action against facilitators located in the US. The note itself highlights that these are the seventh and eighth convictions of “laptop farmers” obtained in the last five months within their efforts to interrupt North Korea’s illicit generation of income. It is an important nuance: the focus is not only on those who connect from abroad, but also on the local network that makes the operation viable. Expansion into Europe. As we have seen in the pastthese cases are also present outside the United States. The Record discovered in April 2025 an investigation by Google Threat Intelligence Group according to which North Korean operatives had increased their activity in Europe following US police actions against laptop farms and financial networks. At the center were job searches linked to the United Kingdom, Germany and Portugal, in addition to the use of local facilitators to support the alibi of a work presence in the corresponding country. AI and fake identities. One of the most current layers of this story is not only in the laptops, but in the ease of building increasingly credible profiles. BISI points out that North Korean operations combine stolen identities, manipulated professional profiles and AI tools capable of writing localized CVs and cover letters. In the Old Continent, platforms such as Upwork and Freelancer are usually used, in addition to Telegram. The consequence is obvious: detecting the fake candidate can become much more difficult before the company even ships the equipment. What started with laptops housed in private homes ends up having something much bigger than a criminal conviction. The companies were not attacked from outside in the classic sense, but ended up opening the door to workers they believed to be legitimate. So everything seems to indicate that in these times it is no longer enough to protect servers, credentials or repositories, but rather to review the processes that we consider normal, such as the hiring of personnel. Images | Xataka with Grok In Xataka | The ‘vibe coding’ promised to democratize software. Your first gift is 5,000 apps with open sensitive data

BlackBerry seemed dead and buried. You have no idea how important it still is (but not for your mobile)

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Let’s take a little trip back in time. It’s 2014 and we’re in Silicon Valley. An executive named John Wall, president of QNXa division of Blackberry, has just arrived in the world’s technology mecca, fresh from Waterloo, in Ontario (Canada). He goes to a meeting with managers from Audi, one of his company’s best clients. The automotive firm has just announced the arrival of Android Auto to its cars. Meanwhile, Apple he doesn’t stop signing QNX engineers to create their own operating system for cars. Blackerry’s shortcomings continue to grow: after losing in mobile phones, it now also had a really bad time in the infotainment systems business. And then, something happened. A beer. The beer of the resurrection. Audi’s head of engineering went to have a beer with him and confessed that Audi was going to use Google’s infotainment systems. However, he told him, his next generation of cars would still need safety features that didn’t exist yet. So Wall came up with an idea. Instead of trying to control the car’s screen, I would try to conquer the software that is the backbone of that entire experience. “The circumstances that caused us to lose infotainment caused the company to pivot in the right direction, whether we knew it or not at the time,” counted Wall. The truth is that they did not have many alternatives, especially after experiencing one of the most famous boom and bust phenomena in the technology industry. From everything to (almost) nothing. In 2008 BlackBerry I was on top of the world. Its market capitalization at that time reached $83 billion, but from then on it plummeted mainly due to the iPhone. Today its capitalization round the 3,000 million dollars, but the surprise is that its great treasure is an almost mythical software that has turned out to be a success in the automotive world. Its name: QNX. How BlackBerry ended up making car software. In 2010 Research In Motion (RIM)—BlackBerry’s former official name— acquired QNX. This real-time operating system that appeared in the mid-1980s and in the 2000s completely changed its focus to target the automotive industry. When RIM bought it, it tried to take advantage of it for its own operating system, blackberry 10but we already know how that ended. QNX’s other big business. The curious thing is that while the company was sinking in the mobile market, QNX engineers who had not moved to the smartphone team continued working on car software. John Wall, president of QNX, has been with the company since graduating in the early ’90s, and in an interview in The Wall Street Journal he recalled how “no one paid attention to us.” That was precisely what changed the course of the company. A crucial operating system. QNX is the operating system that operates collision alerts, blind spot notifications, adaptive cruise control, pedestrian detection or lane correction systems. Not only in cars, be careful: also on motorcycles. It is invisible to the user, who never sees the QNX logo, but certainly sees that everything works. Wall compared his engineers to plumbers and electricians: “What makes QNX virtually irreplaceable is its reputation for never failing.” In Fortune a user commented years earlier how “the only way to make this software fail is to shoot a bullet at the computer running it.” A flourishing business. For years QNX was an overlooked division within an ailing company, but today it accounts for about half of BlackBerry’s total revenue. The software that failed on mobile phones and tablets has ended up being almost the only business that matters for the company, but it has not been limited to cars. QNX is integrated into surgical robots and dozens of medical devices in hospitals around the world. It is also used in industrial plants and automation systems that depend on the security and reliability that QNX provides. It is not without problemsof course, but its software is still key in many critical systems. Prize for being late. BlackBerry was late to the smartphone revolution and lost. It was also late to try to conquer the infotainment segment in the automobile industry and lost. But upon losing that second battle, it adapted and managed to reconvert its operating system into something for which it was precisely designed: a real-time operating system that does not fail and whose latency and response time was (and is) extraordinary. If QNX had continued trying to compete with CarPlay or Android Auto it would probably have disappeared completely, but now it is an absolute benchmark in a niche where its reliability is much more valuable than the flashy new features that infotainment systems usually sell. Today its systems are installed in more than 275 million vehicles. BlackBerry is doing well. BlackBerry shares are up 50% in the latest financial results, and the company has four consecutive quarters in profits. That has caused BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo to declare that his company “is now a growth story.” These data must be taken with caution, because BlackBerry is very far from where it was almost two decades ago, but the path this company has taken seems the right one. We may not see it compete in the mobility arena anymore, but it has become a fundamental element of an automobile industry that is only doing one thing: growing. In Xataka | There are still those who insist on resurrecting the keyboard and the jack: this is the mobile phone that brings them back with the scent of BlackBerry

Samsung has shown a new device with AI. It is not what we imagined and is reminiscent of an Apple idea

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When they tell us about a new device with artificial intelligencethe normal thing is that we think of a mobile phone, a laptop or, at most, the disappointing Rabbit R1 either Humane AI Pin. That’s why it’s interesting to stop when a company like Samsung teaches something that doesn’t quite fit into any of those boxes. What we have seen this time is not a common gadget, but a rather revealing clue as to how the South Korean giant could imagine a possible home interface of the future. What Samsung has shown in Milan is called Project Luna and, at least for now, it moves in the field of concepts. It is a desktop device with a mobile circular screen that acts as a head and can rotate to face the user. The company’s materials also show that this head not only rotates, but also changes orientation depending on the angle it needs. With that combination, Samsung draws a home device that wants to look less like a conventional speaker and more like an object designed to interact with the user. A concept that points further than a speaker One of the scenes that Samsung has used to show Luna places it on a kitchen table, connected to the user’s smartphone, playing music with an interface reminiscent of a record player and answering questions both by voice and on screen. In that same demonstration he also appears controlling the lighting in the room and suggesting food options for the day. Additionally, there are projectors scattered around the kitchen that display data such as the calories in the recipe or a calendar notice for a dinner party. And that’s where Luna begins to tell us something more interesting than her own design. In an interview with Fast CompanyMauro Porcini, Samsung’s chief design officer, explained that this concept represents more of “a vibe, a feeling of the type of design language we want to use.” The phrase matters because it lowers any immediate commercial reading and forces us to look at it differently. Rather than anticipating a launch, the firm seems to use this project to teach the type of language and relationship with the user that it wants to explore in future AI devices. And at that point it is difficult not to remember Apple. In August 2024, Mark Gurman told Bloomberg that the company was moving forward with the development of a home desktop device that would combine an iPad-like screen with a robotic arm. The proposal, according to that informationwas conceived as a home control center, a tool for video calls and a remote surveillance system, with a screen capable of tilting and rotating 360 degrees using actuators. It has not materialized as a product, but there is some underlying parallel with what Samsung is now teaching. The most interesting reading may not be in looking for an exact equivalence between what Samsung has taught and the rumors about Apple, but in stopping at the underlying trend. What we’ve seen suggests that home AI could end up taking a much more tangible form than the assistants or screens we already know. We are not yet talking about a consolidated category, far from it. But it does provide a fairly serious clue as to where the industry could move in the coming years. At this point, the temptation is to think: okay, that sounds good, but where exactly does something like this fit into our daily lives. Because we can imagine it on the kitchen counter, recommending a mealanswering a quick question or accompanying us while music plays, and the scene is even convincing. The problem is that that same house is already full of devices that already cover a good part of all that. Images | Samsung In Xataka | Meta spent 2 billion on a Chinese AI startup. China is clear that it was a conspiracy

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