impossible

LaLiga’s massive IP blocks are making life impossible for users, companies and developers. So you can claim

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LittleCranky67, which is the alias of our protagonist, didn’t know what was happening with his computer this weekend. This developer was doing something that never gave him any trouble: working with the GitLab platform to download a Docker software package. That process kept giving him strange errors, and LittleCranky67 ended up realizing what had caused it all: LaLiga’s indiscriminate IP blocking. After share your frustration on HackerNewshundreds of comments confirmed other similar cases, and in them we also discovered something interesting: how to officially claim LaLiga. Or at least, how to try. A sad old story. LaLiga he shields himself in the Judgment of December 18, 2024 issued by the Commercial Court No. 6 of Barcelona. This allows you to demand from operators such as Movistar, Vodafone, Orange or Digi to block at the IP level any address that is identified as a source of illegal IPTV broadcasts during LaLiga football matches. Many of those IPs are Cloudflare shared IPs, so when the IPTV service IP is blocked, all domains associated with that shared IP are blocked, which can be hundreds or even thousands. And in those domains there are web pages of private usersfrom companies that they stop being able to sell and also critical services for developers such as Docker, GitHub or GitLab. The irony is that lockdowns don’t work. While many users complain about these blocks and how are affecting websites and services that usemany others continue to remember on social networks that in reality the blocks to view these IPTV broadcasts can be easily circumvented in many ways. The most popular, use VPN services. In LaLiga they know that this method is widely used, so for months They are also working on blocking those services. It doesn’t seem to be serving a lotand whoever really wants to watch the football game without paying has many relatively simple ways to achieve it. If you are affected, you can claim. In that thread, several users remember that one way to try to change things is for users to protest, complain and complain en masse. There are several ways to do it: Telecommunications User Service Office. It is the official body in Spain for these cases. A formal claim can be filed for arbitrary loss of service or censorship, and even claim financial losses if the blockade prevents you from working. Those who have a digital certificate or Cl@ve can do so directly online. Complain to your internet provider. It is also important to open a support ticket with your operator. It is true that they are obliged to follow court orders, but they must know that the blockade is causing collateral damage to services that have nothing to do with football. Common Electronic Registry (SARA network). This portal It also allows you to send formal complaints to management if other methods fail. Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD). Those responsible for RootedCON have been fighting this situation for some time, and offer another recommendation: report LaLiga to the AEPD. This template allows you to complete that complaint in a simple way Demagive to Telecommunications Operators. At RootedCON they also suggest filing a complaint against ISPs, and explain the process in a small thread on Twitter. Again, just download a request and file it individually. Complaint to the European Commission. It is also possible to enter the European Commission complaints website to send a claim to the entity. We explained it in Xataka and the process is another way of trying to stop this situation with the help of European bodies. The BOE serves as a defensive argument. In these complaints it is advisable to cite the BOE-A-2022-10757 as a legal reference. It corresponds to Law 11/2022, of June 28, General Telecommunications (LGTel) and is the fundamental rule that regulates your rights as an internet user in Spain. The message that we can write is the following: “Under the protection of Law 11/2022, of June 28, General Telecommunications (BOE-A-2022-10757), specifically regarding the rights of end users (Chapter IV) and the principles of continuity and quality of service, I present this claim for the blocking of access to legitimate IP addresses (specify which ones, e.g. Cloudflare/Docker) unrelated to any illicit activity. This blockade constitutes a violation of my right to communication and the contracted service, causing harm (professional/personal) by preventing the operation of work/security tools. “I request the immediate cessation of said technical restriction in compliance with the provisions of the aforementioned Law.” The nightmare continues. The debate in HackerNews is nothing more than confirmation of what internet users in Spain have been suffering for more than a year. A private organization has the power to order ISPs in a country to indiscriminately block IPs without judicial review in real time, during regular hours, causing documented harm to third parties that have nothing to do with the original violation. In that thread some users compare the situation with that of the Great Firewall of Chinanot so much in intensity as in its logic. We are faced with an infrastructure of selective censorship that seems to be able to be applied to any content that an actor with sufficient judicial power wants to block. From football to tennis or golf. In fact, things could go further, because what began as an attack against illegal broadcasts of football matches could now be seen in other sports such as tennis or golf. Telefónica —which follows in the footsteps of LaLiga— wants to extend indiscriminate blockades to the Champions League, tennis or golf. This threatens to suffer these side effects for many more days and for many more hours, and can mean that for a good part of the week, users like LittleCranky67 find themselves unable to download Docker packages or access thousands of legitimate websites that end up being knocked down by these blocks. Images | Wirestock | LaLiga In Xataka | LaLiga has been at war with Cloudflare for years over piracy. It has just joined forces with its main competitor

Without the support of Europe it would have been literally impossible.

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We tend to see the space race as that. A competition in which one country comes first. In 1969 it was said that the United States defeated the Soviet Union (USSR) in the race to put humans on the Moon. Before, it had been the USSR that had prevailed by taking the first human into space. Now, many consider that NASA has once again emerged victorious, by defeating China, which He also wanted to put his flag on our satellite. But, in reality, it has not been NASA alone that has achieved this first step towards returning to lunar territory. Other agencies are involved and, above all, we cannot forget that, without the support of Europe, these four astronauts would not be traveling to the Moon. Literally. Three European engines. The Orion capsule is guided, directed and powered by a set of 33 engines called the European Service Module. The surname is not trivial, since It has been designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and built by Airbus under ESA guidelines. In addition, the engineers at ESTEC, ESA’s technical center located in the Netherlands, work closely with their colleagues at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, monitoring that everything is working properly with this essential piece for the proper development of the Artemis missions. The main engine. The European Service Module has a main engine that is responsible for promoting the speed changes necessary to guide Orion properly towards the Moon. It is a space shuttle engine that has already traveled to space on 6 missions between 2000 and 2002. ESA scientists have reconditioned and restored it so that it fits perfectly into Orion and meets all the needs of this capsule. Eight support engines. The main engine has eight auxiliary engines that intervene in the orbital corrections that are necessary for the trip to reach a successful conclusion. 24 precise motors. Finally, the European Service Module has 24 smaller engines, distributed in 6 capsules, which are responsible for driving more precise control of Orion’s movements. They can function individually or collaboratively, as needed. A key piece at a critical moment. On the second day of Artemis II’s trip, the European Service Module starred in one of the critical moments of this trip to the Moon. This is translunar combustion by injection, a process by which the capsule is accelerated to propel itself out of Earth’s orbit and, therefore, begin the real journey to the Moon. It’s not the first time. The European Service Module was already used on Artemis I with magnificent results. At that time the capsule was sent to the Moon unmanned. Without a doubt, the participation of four astronauts in the process makes this trip even more exciting, which continues to be possible, in large part, thanks to European intervention. Therefore, although NASA has the most press in all of this, we must not forget that it was Europe that pushed its astronauts, as well as a Canadian astronaut, to the Moon. Instead of talking about careers, we can talk about teamwork and, in the process, remember that, although some space agencies make more noise than others, those that work in the shadows are as indispensable as the rest. Images | THAT In Xataka | NASA is on its heels, so it has made a decision: advance its return to the Moon to 2030

In the middle of 2026, a childhood without mobile phones sounds impossible. A town in Ireland is doing it

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Greystones is a small town on the coast of Ireland, more specifically in County Wicklow. 22,000 inhabitants, semi-detached houses, coastal landscapes, a railway network which allows you to reach Dublin in just over half an hour… A priori, it is the perfect town to enjoy a peaceful life just a stone’s throw from the bustling Irish capital, where companies such as Google or Apple. However, in recent years the town has been in the news for another, very different reason: his crusade against the use of smartphones among the children. His case shows that it is still possible to live a cell phone-free childhood. What has happened? That the small town of Greystones (Ireland) has strived to teach the world a lesson: to show that in 2026 it is possible to keep children away from mobile phones, Instagram, TikTok and the rest of social networks. We just need to join forces to change the sign of social pressure. The initiative is actually not new. Greystones launched their crusade in 2023when it already aroused the curiosity of the rest of the world. However, the unknown remained as to how the experience would turn out. Now we already know. Where does the idea come from? The debate around what age Children should start using mobile phones or social networks and the influence that these have on them is not new. It’s not a concern unique to Greystones, either. There however it happened something interesting during the pandemic. When students returned to classrooms after lockdown, Rachael Harper, headteacher at St Patrick’s School, found that some children were having trouble sleeping or struggling to concentrate. She wasn’t the only one to notice. Other colleagues confirmed that they perceived similar attitudes among their primary school students. What caused them? It didn’t take long for teachers to focus on the use of cell phones. They even encountered children who controlled their calories with apps. Eoghan Cleary, a teacher at another Greystones school, also found that his students admitted seeing violent content on the Internet. The sum of all these factors led several primary schools to send a survey to around 800 parents When asked about the topic: more than half acknowledged that they noticed their children were anxious. In some cases they had even sought professional help. It was enough for the city to decide to make a move. What exactly did he do? We mentioned it before: join forces. Eight primary schools in the Greystones and Delgany area came together to launch an initiative they named ‘It Takes a Village’ (‘It takes a whole village’). Its main tool was the ‘voluntary code without smartphones’, a community pact that basically encourages residents to prohibit children from using mobile phones during their primary education period. In practice this is equivalent to keeping young people away from networks and smartphones until they turn 12 and enter secondary school. The pact is of course voluntary, free and failing to comply with it does not result in fines, but the idea is that whoever signs it applies it both at school and at home. Were you that worried about the issue? It seems so. “As principal of St. Patricks Elementary School I have observed growing concern among parents and teachers,” Harper admitted in 2023 in a column opinion published in Guardian. “The level of anxiety of children in schools has grown steadily, since easy access to online and mobile content has become a threat to childhood. We felt the need to act. The process started with a realization: childhood is becoming increasingly shorter.” Has it worked? That was three years ago. Now we finally know how the initiative is working. Recently The New York Times dedicated an extensive report in which, among other issues, it confirms that the campaign has had a more than reasonable reception. They have supported her 70% of parents and above all it has penetrated the town, moving to businesses and politicians. He has even made his mark beyond Wicklow. Shortly after it was launched ‘Smartphone Free Chilhood’a citizen movement that advocates delaying children’s access to smartphones at least up to 14 years. How has he achieved it? In 2023, Harper herself insisted in that, if it really wanted to work, the initiative had to go beyond the classrooms. “It’s not about enforcing a code. It’s about building a strong network of services that helps children, families and teachers deal with anxiety-related challenges.” The report of The New York Times suggests that goal is also being achieved at Greystones. Beyond what parents do at home, the campaign is completed with training workshops and events such as phone-free beach parties. Even with the commitment of local businesses. For example, one store has offered to help children who need to locate their parents. Is it so important? Yes. And for a simple reason. The very name of the initiative (‘It takes a whole village’) makes it clear that, to succeed, the campaign must play with collective pressure. And it seems that he is achieving it. “In networks everything is collective. Addressing it jointly is the best option,” recognize Jennifer Whitmore, member of the Irish parliament and mother in Greystones. In other words: delaying a child’s access to mobile phones and social platforms is very easy when they are surrounded by other kids of the same age who also do not use them. “What Greystones demonstrates is that parents and communities are not powerless,” agree Clearly. Is it that dangerous? Harper insist in that the initiative is not based on “anti-technology stances” nor does it want to deny children the use of smartphones. The key lies rather in rethinking the times and what it means to have a mobile phone. “Our goal is to ensure that they are adequately prepared and emotionally capable to take on the responsibility that comes with having a smartphone when accessing secondary education”, claims before citing a UNESCO report that suggests it can take up to 20 minutes for a child to concentrate … Read more

The US has rescued its most “brute” plane for an impossible mission

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The 30 mm cannon an A-10 It can fire almost 4,000 projectiles per minute and its sound is so characteristic that soldiers identify it before even seeing the plane coming. In fact, for decades it has been one of the most recognizable symbols of air support in combat, although its withdrawal had already been decided. The war in Iran has resurrected it. Which means the return of the A-10. At this moment there are dozens of A-10s that have put heading to the Middle Eastand among military analysts that can only be due to one thing: that the United States has rescued its most “brute” plane for a mission that it seems impossibleand that points directly to a change in the nature of war. Because the Warthog It is not an aircraft designed for clean campaigns from high altitudes or for technological wars at a distance, but rather for flying low, “dirty” and shoot a few meters of the enemy supporting troops in direct contact. His massive deploymentalso in the twilight of its operational life, suggests that Washington is no longer thinking only about degrading Iranian capabilities from the air, but in scenarios where there will be soldiers on the ground who will need close, constant and brutal coverage. Distances in war. Hours before the deployment was known, they went viral some images of A-10s making unusually long strafing passes in Iraq (of more than 9 seconds), which gave an idea that they are not a technical anecdote, but rather a clue to what is changing on the battlefield. This type of use (long, less precise and unusual shots) only makes sense for dispersed, dynamic and close targets, as groups of combatantsnot infrastructure. That is, scenarios where the plane acts almost like aerial artillery in direct support of troops, reinforcing the idea that the conflict is evolving towards more chaotic, closer and less controlled confrontations. What the A-10 fits with. It we count yesterday. At the same time that these planes arrive, the United States does not stop to accumulate troopsspecial forces and logistics capabilities in the region, preparing operations that would no longer be only aerial but also incursions on the ground. The options being considered (from assaults on coastal installations to the taking of strategic enclaves like Kharg Island or missions for capture nuclear material) fit perfectly with the type of support that offers the A-10: close, persistent coverage designed to protect soldiers in high-risk situations. The plane thus appears as the missing piece to complete a hybrid war scenario that mixes air attacks with limited but intense ground operations. The strategic contradiction. All this occurs in parallel to a political speech from Washington increasingly contradictorywhere there is talk of ending the war in weeks while deployments are prepared that point just in the opposite direction. The possibility of closing the conflict without reopening the Strait of Hormuz reveals that the United States wants to limit its involvement, but the media accumulation (troops, drones, electronic warfare and now A-10) indicates that it is preparing for escalation if negotiations fail. In other words, we are facing a strategy that tries to keep all options open, but that in practice increases the risk of a deeper and longer war. Point of no return. If you like, on the whole, all the signs seem to converge in the same direction: the conflict is entering a phase where distance is no longer sufficient and direct contact points to be inevitable. The A-10, with its ability to operate at low altitude and punish nearby targets for long periods, symbolizes that shift toward a harsher warmore physical and more dangerous. In any case, it does not guarantee the success for the United States (in fact, his presence suggests how difficult what lies ahead will be for his troops), but it does confirm that Washington is preparing for a scenario where missiles and bombings will no longer be enough, but rather the ground will have to be held under constant fire with those thousands of soldiers that have been arriving in the Middle East. Image | US AIR, United States Air Force In Xataka | By launching more than 850 Tomahawks a month, the US was going to lose its war with Iran. So he has changed ammunition: thousands of soldiers In Xataka | The US had 17 irreplaceable “radar” planes: now it has 16 planes and many reasons to worry in Iran

It should be impossible for an iPhone 17 Pro to run a gigantic 400B AI model. Ought

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The iPhone 17 Pro has 12 GB of unified memory. It is a very decent figure for a mobile phone, but in theory absolutely insufficient to run large AI models locally. And therein lies the surprise: a new project has made it possible for this mobile phone to run locally a model with 400,000 million parameters (400B). And that opens the doors to a promising horizon. Giant AI model, dwarf memory. A developer named Daniel Woods (@dandeveloper) has created, thanks to AI, a new inference engine called Flash-MoE whose code has been published as Open Source on GitHub accompanied by a study about his behavior. woods managed to run locally the Qwen 3.5 397B model (the full version, without distillation or quantization) on your MacBook Pro with 48 GB of RAM. Downloaded the model (209 GB on disk) and developed that inference engine to achieve something that seemed almost impossible. Other developers have gone even further and have managed to run models like DeepSeek-V3 (671B) or even Kimi K2.5 (1.026B!!) on their MacBooks. The speed is slow, no doubt, but they work, they work. It’s amazing. iPhone 17 Pro is capable of running a 400B model. Another developer called Anemll wanted to go a little further and try to run this model with almost 400,000 million parameters on his iPhone 17 Pro with 12 GB of RAM… and he succeeded. It is true that the model is very slow in responses (0.6 tokens per second, very unusable), but achieving something like this opens the doors to a future in which video or unified memory is no longer so critical to be able to use huge AI models locally. a few hours ago doubled the speed at 1.1 tokens per second, reducing the number of experts to four (2.5% quality loss in responses). It is still not entirely usable, but the technical demonstration is evident. Another user has preferred to use a somewhat smaller model (Qwen 3.5 35B) but still huge for the iPhone, and has already managed to get it to run locally at about more than acceptable 13.1 tokens per second. Why it matters. The AI ​​models we use in the cloud (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude) are gigantic and run in data centers with thousands of chips and enormous amounts of memory and storage. They are the most powerful because they run on the most powerful machines. Although it is possible to use AI models locally, the models that we can run are much smaller and that makes it difficult for them to behave equally well both in quality of responses and in their speed or precision. This method opens the door to a future in which even on “modest” machines it is possible to run giant AI models that give better answers and allow us to avoid using models in the cloud. Apple already warned. Three years ago a group of Apple researchers published the study ‘LLM in a flash‘ which precisely pointed to that: to run AI models locally it would be possible not only to take advantage of the unified memory of Macs, but also their storage units. The speed would be slow, yes, but this would open up the possibility of running gigantic models locally on machines with much smaller amounts of unified memory. Woods used Claude Code with Claude Opus 4.6 and applied the new methodology “autoresearch” by Andrej Karpathy to implement Flash-MoE based on that research. The result is really promising. Video memory was everything. On my Mac mini M4, for example, I have 16 GB of unified memory. This means that with tools like Ollama you can install and run models like Qwen 3.5 4B locally with some fluidity, but 7B models or others like gpt-oss 20B would be much slower in responding (or would get stuck altogether). Video memory (or unified on Apple devices) is the most important parameter when running local models, both in terms of quantity and bandwidth. If you want to use them fluidly, that’s the limiting factor. It is possible to use “regular” RAM, but the speeds when using it are reduced so drastically that it is often better not to use that option at all. If you have a fast SSD, you have a treasure. Now the limiting factor is our SSD drive, since the model uses it as if it were a kind of substitute for video memory. And the faster the SSD drive on our computer, the better. There is good news here, because lately we are seeing how PCIe 5.0 drives they achieve about 15 GB/s without too many problems, and that speed already gives enough room for maneuver to use much larger AI models locally than we could use before. A promising future for local (and more private) AI. This discovery is really striking for everyone who wants to use AI locally, because it allows you to use huge models without having to make a huge investment in the latest generation graphics cards or, for example, in a Mac with a lot of unified memory: a Mac Studio M3 Ultra with 512 GB of memory, for example, costs more than 10,000 euros. With this new method we could opt for a much cheaper machine that, with a good SSD unit, would allow us to use giant models in a fairly decent way. Not as fast as those other options, sure, but still very decent. It’s a notable step forward in enjoying the benefits of running local AI models, including the biggest of them all: privacy. With this type of local execution, our conversations and everything we tell the chatbot stays on our machine, it does not end up on the servers of companies like Google, OpenAI, Meta or Anthropic. In Xataka | Jensen Huang believes we have reached the “coming of the AI ​​wolf.” It is perfect for feeding a Tamagotchi

Sleeping in tourist class has been an impossible mission. Some airlines are testing three seats that convert into beds

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Traveling in economy class on a long-haul flight usually means accepting a fairly clear toll: sleeping poorly or, at all, not sleeping at all. We have all experienced it, narrow seats, little space to stretch our legs and a posture that rarely invites rest. That discomfort is not a minor detail, it is part of the experience of flying in this segment. And yet, it is precisely there, in this very everyday problem, where some airlines are beginning to explore solutions within the economy cabin itself. If we go to the opposite extreme, we have seen the reference to what it would be like to fly in absolute comfort many times in airline campaigns. The Emirates ad with Jennifer Aniston illustrates this wellgoing from a cabin without notable services to a private suite with a completely flat bed, that is, to the premium end of the experience. The proposal is not limited to improving comfort, it completely redefines life on board. An attempt to make tourist class habitable And at that point is where we begin to see concrete movements. United just announced a proposal of this type with its call Relax Rowan option within its own economic class that seeks precisely to alleviate that problem. The company presents it as a specific row that, once in flight, can be adapted to stretch out or rest with a little more space. The airline plans to launch it in 2027, place it between United Economy and United Premium Plus and progressively deploy it on more than 200 Boeing 787s and Boeing 777 from now to 2030. But the truth is that this idea is not completely new. Air New Zealand has been exploring this concept for some time with his well-known Skycoucha proposal that also starts with a row of seats in economy class. In its case, the system allows the legrests to be raised until they form a continuous surface on which we can stretch. It is not equivalent to a premium cabin bed, but it does offer more versatile space than the conventional seat and the airline itself presents it as a way to gain comfort without paying for a superior cabin. If we go down to detail, the interesting thing is not so much the configuration itself, but what it allows once we are in flight. Both proposals seek to expand the available surface so that we can really stretch out, something that is not usually common for tourists. Air New Zealand specifies that area in about 1.55 meters long and 74 centimeters wideaccompanied by additional bedding, a seat cover and specific belts or restraint systems to use it safely. United, for its part, adds an adapted mattress, blankets, extra pillows and kits designed to make rest more bearable. With all this, the logical question is who is really compensated by this type of option. United’s promotional video gives us an idea. If we travel alone, having all that space gives us a much more usable surface to stretch out. In the case of couples, the idea is to share it in a more flexible way, alternating positions or using it to rest better during the flight. And if we think about families, especially with small children, Air New Zealand considers different configurations. Now, before imagining a perfect rest, it is worth taking into account some conditions. In the case of Air New Zealand, as we have seen, availability depends on the aircraftroute and operational or regulatory factors, and not all configurations are always accessible. In addition, the price is not fixed, since each passenger’s ticket is paid plus an additional cost for this option, while United has not yet detailed prices, although it has indicated that its deployment will be progressive. Taken together, these proposals don’t completely change what it means to fly economy class, but they do introduce an interesting nuance. The idea is not to replicate a first-class suite, but to offer a little more room to rest within the usual limitations. That balance between cost and convenience is what seems to be guiding these developments. Images | United Airlines In Xataka | Luxury superyachts have a new enemy in Monaco: a “low emissions zone” that will penalize those who pollute the most

Elon Musk often promises impossible things like Terafab. The problem is that sometimes he manages to turn them into reality.

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It was up to Elon Musk to revolutionize the automotive industry with Tesla and the electric car. Probably no one believed he could do it. Then he did the same with the aerospace industry with SpaceX, and that was more of the same: it seemed impossible. It may be many things, but the truth is that although Elon Musk promises many things and does not always fulfill them when he says (hello autonomous car), has achieved unimaginable things. That’s why when you talk about Terafab, maybe we should give it a chance. Because this seems almost as impossible as his other feats. Terafab and Musk’s master plan. On Saturday night, from a power plant that has not been used for a long time, Elon Musk advertisement the last of the components of its master plan: Terafab. The objective is to create a chip factory in which Tesla, SpaceX and xAI will collaborate. According to Musk, this plant will be capable of manufacturing between 100 and 200 GW of computing capacity per year on earth, but it will reach 1 TW in space. The problem, as always with Musk, is distinguishing what part of the plan is engineering and what part is theater and fireworks. He doesn’t do it just because. At that event, the magnate explained that semiconductor manufacturers do not produce enough chips for their AI and robotics needs. And since TSMC and the rest of the manufacturers cannot meet Musk’s demand, he has proposed manufacturing them directly. You need them for your robotaxis and your humanoid robots, Optimuswhich he hopes will end up multiplying by 10 or 100 the production rate of his cars. But it also needs chips so that xAI can compete in the field of AI, and SpaceX needs them for its satellites. That is, it actually needs a lot of chips. Many. Chips from space. At Terafab they intend to create two types of chips. On the one hand, there will be those intended for autonomous vehicles or Optimus robots. On the other, the chips that already have their own name, D3, and that will be designed specifically for space, with products that use them that work in low Earth orbit and are powered by solar energy. For Musk, the idea “becomes an obvious decision”: there will come a point where putting payload into orbit is so cheap that host data centers in space It is cheaper than doing it on land because solar energy is practically unlimited there. Too many unknowns. Everything was very nice and promising, but once the speech and promises were over, the questions began. Building a state-of-the-art semiconductor factory is a colossal challenge. It’s not just a matter of money: it’s that advanced chip manufacturing is in the hands of three companies around the world (TSMC, Samsung and Intel), and requires photolithography with UVE technology which is only manufactured by the well-known Dutch company ASML. And here’s the thing, that Musk: Did not announce any agreement with ASML It has not shown orders that demonstrate that it will have these equipment He has not named a technological partner for the project No estimated dates or calendar have been given. And he hasn’t talked about the budget either. It’s all a gigantic unknown. The most ambitious vertical integration in tech history. On several occasions Musk repeated how at Terafab they intend to cover the entire development, manufacturing, packagingtesting and improvement in the same facilities. If we fulfill that promise, we would be facing another unprecedented achievement, because the semiconductor industry has been doing just the opposite for decades: hyperspecialization by different suppliers: some design, others manufacture, others package… Musk wants to do it all, and if he succeeds he will become a direct rival for Samsung or TSMC, which a priori he would no longer need. Promises and realities. This project seems especially diffuse, but with Musk anything is possible, as we have said. In recent years, yes, we have seen how several of his ideas or they have failedor they have been delayed, or they have been left in no man’s land. The robotaxis still haven’t arrived, the Cybertruck arrived late and it’s not settingand companies like The Boring Company or products like Solar Roof have had less reach than they promised, at least for now. Terafab seems like another impossible project from Musk. We’ll see if it ends up not being so. Image | tesla In Xataka | 8 years ago Elon Musk launched a Tesla Roadster into space: it continues to orbit and was mistaken for an asteroid

Predicting dementia seven years in advance seemed impossible. An AI with Spanish participation has just achieved it

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The diagnosis of the neurodegenerative diseases You face a problem at the time the diagnosis is made, since in many cases it is diagnosed when the symptoms are already evident and this makes the brain damage irreversible. But… What if we could peer into the future of the brain years before the disease shows its face? This is precisely what a Spanish team has done with a new biomarker. The study. The future of medicine involves making increasingly earlier diagnoses so that the success of treatments is much greater, and now in a recent published article in Science Report The door opens for this to be a reality in dementia. To get here, what the researchers propose, where have you participated Rubén Armañanzas, from the DATAI Institute of the University of Navarra, is the use of a test such as the electroencephalogram together with artificial intelligence to develop a biomarker capable of predicting the risk of dementia with up to seven years in advance. Your methodology. To understand the magnitude of this advance, we must look at the population on which the study was carried out, which are people with subjective cognitive impairment. These are patients who go to the doctor because they notice that their memory is failing, but when they undergo standard cognitive tests, the results are completely normal, so they cannot be given a clear diagnosis even though it seems that something is not right. Until now, medicine found a blind spot in this phase as there was no way to know if these ‘complaints’ in memory were the prelude to Alzheimer’s or simply confusion. But now, the study with 88 older adults with this situation has shown that the brain emits alarm signals long before psychological tests detected them. You just had to know how to ‘read’ them. A new method. Here the research has unified different metrics to be able to read these warning signs. The first thing of all is to use an electroencephalogram to measure brain activity, which is a cheap, quick and non-invasive test. From here, the BrainScope technology platform analyzes this data by looking for 14 specific features related to neuronal connectivity and brain wave behavior. Once these characteristics are ‘found’, an AI algorithm comes in that processes the patterns and determines whether the patient analyzed can progress towards mild cognitive impairment or dementia such as Alzheimer’s. And the results are spectacular, since it has demonstrated outstanding precision when separating patients who develop the disease from those who do not. The future. The great value of this biomarker is not only technological, but also clinical, since the most reliable current tests to predict pathologies such as Alzheimer’s require painful lumbar punctures or scans that are not cheap. A system based on EEG and AI could be easily integrated into primary care clinical protocols or routine neurological consultations as it does not have a very high cost and, above all, is not invasive. The important thing here is to detect neurodegeneration in the earliest phases in order to gain golden time so that new drugs can act at the beginning of the disease and gain years of quality of life. Images | Robina Weermeijer In Xataka | We have a new “theory of everything” to understand Alzheimer’s. Its key is in some small granules

The Balearic Islands welcome an invasive plant that until now was impossible in its waters

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In October 2023, a group of divers were fully immersed in the Bay of La Palma when they found something that should not be there: a tropical marine plant rooted in the bed, where we usually find either sandy bottoms or Posidonia meadows. The notice from the Balearic Center for Applied Biology was confirmed through dives by the CSIC-UIB and CEAB-CSIC teams and the discovery was published in Mediterranean Marine Science. The presentations. The name of tropical marine plant is Halophila stipulacea and it is a seagrass and not an algae (unlike algae, it has roots, stems and leaves), much smaller than the native Posidonia Oceanica, with which it now shares spaces. And although it has appeared about 3 kilometers from the port of Palma, on a sandy bottom, it is foreign: its origin comes from the Indian Ocean, Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, although as a good tropical came to the Caribbean. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was its one-way ticket to the Mediterranean, however in these 150 years its expansion was only recorded in the eastern area, never as far west as the Balearic Islands. It is already a total colonization. Context. The waters of the Mediterranean Sea are warming more than the global average: between 1982 and 2019, its surface temperature increased by 1.3 °C compared to a global average of 0.6 °C, according to MedECC data. In summer, the temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea recorded in the Balearic Islands They are around 30 °C. This point is important because it marks a milestone: the conditions of the Mediterranean are changing. That is, Halophila may have reached this far west before, but it did not have favorable conditions to survive and now it does. As explains Andrés Arona, first author of the study and Imedea researcher, is “a clear indication of the ‘tropicalization’ of the Mediterranean.” Why is it important. To begin with, because Halophila Stipulacea acts as a biological thermometer of real change in the Mediterranean. A tropicalization that opens the doors to some species and closes them to otherslike Posidonia or corals. But it also matters because the worrying precedent of the Caribbeanwhere its rapid colonization of large areas reduced biodiversity, altering the ecosystem. Something that is already happening in the eastern Mediterranean. Potential environmental impact. Given its presence in degraded sandy bottoms, its effect is ambivalent: it can increase structural complexity, although it can also displace the fauna typical of these bottoms. The greatest risk, however, would be if it came to compete with native phanerogams such as Posidonia oceanicasomething it has already done with other species in the Caribbean, where it colonized large areas in less than 20 years. The difference between both plants is not trivial. in words from Imedea researcher, Fiona Tomàs, “Posidonia is like a sequoia, Halophila is much smaller”: Posidonia generates a structural complexity that supports breeding habitats for hundreds of species and accumulates carbon in another order of magnitude. Halophila It does not generate anywhere near that architecture or that carbon storage. A change in species dominance would profoundly alter the ecosystem. What can be done. The good news is that this detection has been early and the sooner the warning comes, the more room there is to take action. The not so good thing is that it is a plant with its seeds and that the most definitive thing would be for the Mediterranean to reverse its tropicalization, but that means stopping the global warming. Little joke. In Xataka | The Ebro is filling with brown prawns, an invasive species that we are going to find more and more on our plates. In Xataka | The US has such a big problem with Asian carp in its rivers that it has decided something extreme: electrocute them Cover | Benjamin Guichard and Mariya Oliynyk

Mexico has placed impossible tariffs on Chinese cars. What they didn’t imagine was that the cars were already there.

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Export to buckets. That was China’s goal in 2025 towards Mexico. Alerted by the enormous tariffs that the country was going to impose, as it has been, Chinese manufacturers have done everything possible to be faster than the Government. Now, exporting a car to Mexico from China is unfeasible. But the Chinese cars arrived months ago. taxes. Was a 20% tariff on Chinese cars too little? Mexico believes so and that is why, since January 2026, it has been applying a new 50% tariff on imports of products arriving from countries with which it does not have trade agreements. Come on, what Chinese cars now have to pay 50% tariffs to enter Mexico. The measure, explained in Motorpasión Mexico has a bit of a protectionist flavor compared to China or India (the latter country has Mexico as the third country to which it sends the most cars). But, above all, It has a lot of nods to the United Stateswith whom Mexico has a special trade agreement that has been at risk since Donald Trump returned to the White House. when you go. I will tell an anecdote from the writing of Xataka. In our Slack we have a reaction from Chenoa to point out to someone that we were already contemplating writing on a topic that he now proposes to us again. You know: “when you go…”. And that is what has happened to Mexico with China. Manufacturers, alarmed by the possibility of tariffs being raised in their country of origin (as has finally happened) began to send all the cars they could to Mexico. The result: 625,187 cars exported to Mexico in one year. They have done “a Chenoa” to Mexico. one in three. To understand the magnitude of exports, according to data from the China Passenger Car AssociationMexico is the country to which China exported the most cars in 2025. These more than 625,000 vehicles surpassed those purchased by Russia (582,738 units), which has serious difficulties in obtaining vehicles from abroad. The United Arab Emirates, with 571,937 cars imported from China, was the third country that received the most cars. The figure is enormous. And in Mexico around 1.5 million cars are bought a year. That is, if in 2026 each and every one of the cars exported by China were sold, in 2025 we would be talking about one in every three sales in the country being from Chinese manufacturers. How many are available? Those exports, of course, leave a pool of cheap cars in stock so the impact of Chinese cars on the market will continue to be felt for some time. It must be taken into account that it is calculated that China had already taken 15% market share. The storage of these cars, everything indicates, guarantees that Chinese brands continue selling at the same rate throughout the year. They point out in Motorpasión Mexico In 2025, it is estimated that Mexicans will buy just over 400,000 cars of Chinese origin. The only question is how many of them belong to the more than 630,000 cars imported last year and how much is the stock since a part of them must have been imported into the country in 2024. Photo | aboodi vesakaran and BYD In Xataka | Japan has been charging a 0% tariff on foreign cars for half a century. It will be very difficult for you to find one on the street.

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