internet

What is this network traffic analyzer and how to use it to detect Internet problems or security flaws

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Let’s explain to you what it is and how to take advantage wireshark from the point of view of an ordinary user. I say this because it is a very advanced tool that analyzes all the traffic on your network, and that of all the devices connected to it. When you run this appyou’ll see a series of lines of data that you may not understand. But by knowing a little about what information is going to appear, you can also find ways to diagnose failures in your connection or whether an application or device is spying on you by sending data when you are not using it, or to unknown servers. What is Wireshark Wireshark is a network protocol analyzerwhat in English is called packet sniffer. What it does is capture, isolate and transmit each of the packets that are sent and received through our Internet connection, whether we are connected via WiFi or Ethernet, and it does all this in real time. This is a free and open source programwhich means that any developer can look at how it works inside. This makes it reliable and safe, because if it did things that were not appropriate, users would have already reported it. It has versions for Windows, macOS and Ubuntubeing able to download them at wireshark.org. When it comes to giving you information about the traffic that passes through your network, shows you very important datasuch as the IP and Mac addresses of the person sending or receiving the data, the sending protocol, the content (showing text or images if they are not encrypted), and connection healthwith the exact time it takes to load each piece of information. The operation of this tool is based on three fundamental pillars. First the capture one, because it puts your network card in a mode where it can see all the traffic that reaches it. This includes both information that your operating system displays and information that it does not display. It also has a color code to help you distinguish the packages. As a general rule, green is usually standard TCP traffic, blue is DNS or UDP, and black and red usually indicate problems. That’s why, you can identify that you are having errors or problems quite visually, just by seeing that there are many red or black lines. The app also has a top bar where you can type commands to filter information. This is already quite advanced if you don’t know how networks work, but you can, for example, use “ip.addr == IP Address” changing the address to that of a specific device to see its movements, or type “http” to see only web traffic. In short, it is a fairly complex and advanced tool, so it is not for all users. It is more aimed at system administrators, to detect attacks or bottlenecks. However, If you know where to look you can also take advantage of it as a home user. How you can take advantage of it Although it is an advanced tool, it can be useful for normal users in some contexts as well. We are going to give you some ideas so that you know the type of information you can obtain: If your online games cause problems: A speed test may tell you that your Ping is good, but the experience is different when playing. Therefore, this application can tell you if packets are being lost along the way that are making everything slower. If you are concerned about privacy: You will be able to see what data your devices send to the cloud and the Internet, and if it is not encrypted you will see your content. This can help you be more aware of your privacy, and detect if a device is sending more data than it should. You will also be able to see if a device connects to servers of dubious origin. If you have technical problems: If a website does not load or a printer disappears from the network, this application can show you at what point communication is being cut off. If you want to do lag tests: If in this tool you filter by the appropriate protocol, such as UDP for games, you will be able to find if there are black lines that indicate that the information you send is “out of order” because it never arrived at the destination or did so late. With this you can see that if you have lag it is not a matter of your bandwidth, but perhaps of your network signal or a saturated node of your operator. If you want to know what the devices on your network are doing: As we have more and more connected devices at home, with this you can audit what each one does. You can even isolate the IP of a cell phone or a security camera to know if it is connecting, what data it is sending, or if, for example, it sends data to other servers from time to time. In any case, what you should know is that this tool is going to show you all the traffic that your home network has. It shows all the raw traffic, and doesn’t hide anything, meaning you can have a lot of fun looking at everything that’s happening on your network and learning how to take advantage of it to understand everything. In Xataka Basics | Internet does not work at home: five alternatives to connect without using your router

It is the battle for the Internet of the future

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One of the biggest changes on the Internet since the democratization of devices and networks It allowed us all to have a window to the world, and a speaker, in our pockets. With the underlying idea of ​​protecting minors, the world has embarked on the great adventure of putting doors to the countryside: verify the identity of users who browse the Internet. And the reactions couldn’t be more polarized between defenders and those who see it as the latest blow to privacy. What is evident is that it is the great battle of the Internet, and positioning yourself is extremely complex. In short. The earthquake started last week. Adapting to measures that are being taken from Europe, the President of the Government of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, announced a package of measures with the intention of regulating digital platforms. Among them, in addition to criminal liability for company directors in case of inaction, is the prohibition of access to social networks for minors under 16 years of age. At the time we already mentioned that everything is a potential social network, even the comments box on our website, so the description seemed vague. But there were two mentioned: Elon MuskCEO of X, charging against Sánchez, and Pavel DurovCEO of Telegram that sent a message to its users warning about the Government’s intentions. Durov Dúrov’s message translated into Spanish in the Telegram bot. Imagine not knowing who this man is and having him assault you talking about privacy with a message that could very well be written by ChatGPT I just want to imagine the face of someone who doesn’t know Pavel and sees that a user whose number you haven’t given appears on their Telegram saying that privacy is very important. Telegram and Discord, proper names. Although it is social networks in general that are in the crosshairs of these identification policies, Telegram has been the most vocal. Not the most transparent. Because there we must talk about Discord. proving that It is not something that comes only from Spain, Discord announced a few hours ago that will be able to launch a global age verification system. It will be starting next month and it may be the compass of what we find in other similar apps. The way to proceed will be as follows: All accounts, by default, will be set to “teen friendly”. This implies that there is certain content that we will not be able to access and, if we want to change it, we have to prove that we are adults. Discord’s product manager has commented that private messages will not be used in the verification process, but that the system will take into account the age of the account and the activity, as well as the patterns shown in Discord, to verify that we are adults without us having to do anything. BUT, and here comes the asterisk, if we have to identify ourselves, actions will be needed on the part of the users. If not, you will not be able to access age-restricted channels and servers, but you will also not be able to talk on live channels. Okay, but… how? There are two ways to verify our age. One will be through a selfie video that, according to Discordit will not leave our device. The system will analyze the face in real time and give us access. If you consider that we are not of legal age, you have to upload a photo of the identity document. And here comes the tricky part: Discord assures that the images will be deleted quickly, but the documents need to be verified by a third party. And the thing is, this is old business. If we go to the summer of 2024, we have the controversy that arose with the Digital Wallet system and what caught the most attention, the ‘Pajaporte’. The Digital Wallet It was the preview of what they are seeking to create now: a system to verify that we are of legal age and can browse the Internet without barriers. And, instead of using a video of our face or sending a photo of our DNI to a foreign application, the Spanish app works by securely storing the legal age credential issued by the Government. When you try to access a site that requires verification, the application sends those credentials, but the information is encrypted, ensuring, according to the Government, the anonymity of the user. If there is a data leakthere is no information linkable to a user, but rather a key that identifies us anonymously. And it is also not useful to track the operations carried out by the user. in favor. Once we have everything on the table, the reactions come. And there are two opposing currents in this in what we can call the ‘great battle of the Internet’. Being in favor of identification implies potentially losing privacy in favor of gaining security. It is no secret that the networks are plagued with toxic political discourse, polarization, false information (and even more so now with the democratization of generative artificial intelligence) and a system that encourages insults and threats to occur under that anonymity. Pavel Durovvery vocal about this whole matter, is the head of a social network that has been in the spotlight on several occasions. The promises of Telegram encryption (a end to end encryption that does not come by default in all chats) have given rise to illegal activities. In fact, France launched a crusade against him and the platform by alleged crimes of money laundering, drug trafficking or distribution of child pornography, as well as being a nest for political extremists without the application exercising moderation. That Telegram or The video game ‘Roblox’, for example, has a huge community of minors and It was in the news at the end of last year. for not being forceful with the reports of sexual predators that inhabit the platform. Among other atrocities. Cases like this are what explain … Read more

The great battle of the internet of the future is fought against anonymity. And Discord has taken a step requiring ID to enter

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Discord announced yesterday that will launch an age verification system on its platform globally starting next month. This will be when you default to setting all accounts as “appropriate for teens” (“teen-appropriate“) unless the user proves that they are an adult with a partially automatic process that may require the system to scan our face or our identification document. This has reopened the debate about privacy and privacy not only on social networks, but throughout the internet. How it will work. Savannah Badalich, Product Manager at Discord, explained in The Verge that “Discord does not use private messages or any message content in the age verification process”, and clarifies that in many cases this verification will be transparent and the user will not have to do anything: “For most adults, age verification will not be necessary, as Discord’s age inference model uses account information such as account age, device and activity data, and aggregated high-level patterns in Discord communities. But if you need to verify yourself, be careful. Those users who do not obtain this automatic verification will not be able to access channels and servers that have age restrictions, will not be able to participate by speaking on live channels and will have sensitive or graphic content filters activated. They will also receive notifications of friend requests from suspicious users, and even direct messages from unknown users will be automatically filtered to a separate mailbox. The protection that Discord proposes is analogous to that already proposed by the Government of Spain with the beta Digital Wallet, popularly known as the “pajaporte”. Your face or your ID to validate your age. If Discord’s inference model fails to automatically determine your age, the global rollout will require users to present identification to prove they are of legal age to have an adult account. According to Discord, removing those limitations from teen accounts will force users to “choose to use facial age estimation or offer a form of identification to Discord partners.” So, there will be two great options: your face– The user will need to appear in a selfie video during the verification process and a Discord AI system will analyze that image in real time. According to Discord, that selfie will not leave our device. Your ID– If the selfie process fails, users can appeal or verify their age with a photo of their ID. These documents will be verified by third parties, but on Discord they assure that these images of the document “are quickly deleted — in most cases immediately after confirmation of age.” Discord already had a scandal with this. This is actually not the first time Discord has tried something like this. Last year it already deployed an age verification system in the UK and Australiaand the curious thing is that some users exceeded that measure using the ‘Death Stranding’ photo mode. Mass data theft. In October one of those Discord partners suffered a massive data theft in which users’ age verification data, including the government identification documents of said users, were leaked. Badalich states that they stopped working with that company and now use another. “We do not do biometric scanning or facial recognition, but rather facial estimation. The DNI is deleted immediately. We do not store information about you,” said the directive. Anonymity in danger. For decades, anonymity has been considered an acquired right and a pillar of Internet freedom. It is something that allows exploration and criticism without fear of retaliation, but at the same time that has facilitated a toxic public discourse that has turned many platforms—starting with social networks—into “digital dumps” in which harassment and abuse are difficult to stop. Content moderation on social networks has been so problematic that X and Facebook have ended up eliminating their moderation teams—or reducing them to a minimum—so that let the community itself warn of misuse of these networks. Government pressure. Discord’s announcement follows an increasingly recurring trend on the internet. The pressure from governments around the world is notable and wants to eliminate anonymity with the argument of protecting teenagers. Bills are being promoted that force platforms to monitor who enters and how old they are. Eliminating anonymity would certainly have advantages in mitigating toxic speech and instances of harassment or abuse, but it would also have enormous disadvantages. From protecting minors to spying on us all. Among these disadvantages is the risk that these social networks become a massive system of citizen espionage in which the violation of privacy is real. By forcing users to go through these filters, massive databases can be created that are not only targets for cybercriminals, but also potential tools for state surveillance. Is the cure worse than the disease? This government battle against anonymity is justified as a fight against hate and abuse, but the collateral damage is extraordinary. We would lose that structural privacy that the Internet has always offered. If to prevent a stalker or scammer from acting we must identify each individual on the network, we end up turning the Internet into a gigantic registry in which freedom of expression is conditioned by government blessing. Total paradox. The most ironic thing is that Europe, which has traditionally been a defender of privacy, is now totally in favor of those age verification measures that precisely put her in danger. The old continent, which has always criticized Big Tech for aggregating personal data of European citizens, now supports measures that will precisely help build these gigantic databases. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. It has been more than a decade since we reflected on that typical phrase of those who did not seem to care that the NSA PRISM program I would have spied on them because they “had nothing to hide.” It’s easy to dismantle that theoryand it is a fallacy that Giving up privacy means greater security. Open debate. The Discord announcement has generated a huge debate in all types of networks, but we found a good … Read more

A Brazilian has shown that having Internet in mid-flight is possible with Starlink. It has also shown that it is a real danger

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If the Internet does not reach the plane, let the plane reach the Internet. One of the Azul Linhas Aereas travelers must have thought something like this, who along with another hundred passengers began to discount the first minutes of their flight. A flight that began on the ground but has not yet ended. And our protagonist tried to connect to the Internet during takeoff using a Starlink antenna and a battery that far exceeded the maximum allowed capacity. The flight has landed but is not over. And the company is now investigating what happened. On Instagram. It’s where the Azul Linhas Aereas traveler has published his invention with the following text: “Who hasn’t suffered the frustration of getting on a four-hour flight and not having Internet? When you get on the plane and the WiFi doesn’t work… Your problems are over.” The video briefly shows how the passenger places the Starlink antenna on the window and hooks it to the window blind. From it, a cable hooks up to a large battery stored in the pocket of the front seat. Click on the image to go to the original post What is Starlink? Starlink is a internet service through satellite connection designed by SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company. The system is simple, with thousands of satellites orbiting around the earth, the service seeks to ensure that a small antenna can provide Internet to anyone anywhere in the world, no matter how remote it may be. To do this, the customer mounts the antenna and points it towards the sky. From there a signal arrives that is interpreted by a router included in the pack to, in turn, multiply the signal so that we can connect to the network. Its latency is high compared to fiber optics, so it is not a system to compete with home connections, it is designed to provide Internet to areas without 4G or 5G coverage. And does it work on a plane? Of course, the operation is exactly the same as if we placed the antenna on the ground. In this case, what the airline passenger did was put the antenna in the window pointing outside to improve signal reception. For the rest, it works exactly the same as if we contracted Starlink to have Internet at home. In fact, Starlink service is being offered to airlines. And although it has been the trigger between the latest tantrum between Elon Musk and Michael O’Leary (CEO of Ryanair), the truth is that Starlink will be offered this year on Iberia, British Airways or Vueling flights. And the first tests with United Airlines They were already very satisfactory. Starlink improves what is already known because, although a plane also connects via satellite to offer Internet on its flights, the bandwidths that customers demand and its applications are increasing, which has been reducing the speed of data transfer that each device on board can enjoy. But it’s a danger. However, what this passenger has done is a real danger that is being investigated by the airline. In the Brazilian State Post Office They explain that the Starlink antenna was powered by a 60,000 mAh portable battery. Its 222 Wh capacity is far from the 100 Wh maximum that can be carried on board a plane according to Brazilian aviation regulators. Large power banks can be a danger on board, so Aeronautical authorities limit them in size and number. And it is that batteries can self-combust if a thermal leak occurs, which may be caused by overheating or a blow that results in a short circuit. The problem is already huge if we are on land But it can be much more serious if the plane is fully operational because lithium ion batteries are very difficult to turn off and, in addition, they release gases that are harmful to our health. That is why the size of the battery is limited and if an incident occurs, it is manageable by the crew. Photo | Wikimedia and Fallon Micheal In Xataka | Airlines are beginning to regulate and restrict the use of power banks on airplanes: South Korea leads the way

In 2010, a student from Barcelona was looking for an easy way to edit PDFs. 16 years later, it is one of the most viewed websites on the internet

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From a form to a receipt to an invoice: PDF is the quintessential extension for sharing documents, regardless of whether you do it from a Windows computer to an iPhone or an Android tablet. It doesn’t matter: you’re going to see the original format no matter what. But, oh my friend, if you have to get your hands on a PDF. Marco Grossi also found himself in trouble with a PDF. One, who is already in her years, had to make a living to avoid paying for the Adobe Acrobat license (in the past it was not a subscription and the price was not exactly cheap) to edit a PDF for a cent by the wind: from printing and scanning to wasting time reconstructing with a word processor. In that first decade of the 2000s I was a student who struggled with documents and Marco Grossi, too. Back in 2010, this Barcelonan, who has studied Multimedia and Photography and also programming, found himself faced with a task as mundane as having to copy and paste a PDF: it was not an easy task. How does it count himself for La Vanguardia“I’m a programmer, and I’m good at computer issues, so it took me about 15 minutes to figure it out.” And then came iLovePDF. As the founder and CEO confesses for El Paísat that moment he discovered that there was a need: “I realized that it was very simple and that I could create it myself.” It was not the first (the ancient but reliable PDFSam It had an interface that was backwards), but it was the one that managed to establish itself as the software to manage PDF for normal and ordinary users (although also for companies reluctant to pay, because it solves the basics quickly and well). A meteoric rise. What started as a personal project that he combined with freelance web design, in 2014 became his 100% occupation. Until 2017 he worked alone from home, but at that moment he took a step forward: He rented an office and hired an old college classmate. Now there are 43 people. At that time, his website was already receiving between 200,000 and 300,000 daily visits from organic traffic. In 2025 Grossi counted which were around 150 million unique users per month. The portal ahrefs listed it in 2024 in 34th place on a global scale, above Amazon in India and just below Wikipedia in Russia. Screenshot of iLovePDF from 2018. via Archive.today Good, nice and cheap free. Your philosophy From the beginning it has been to be a free, accessible, high-quality and easy-to-use service. A quick visit to their website gives us a mosaic with icons and clear messages “Join PDFs”, “Split PDFs” and an agile and intuitive step by step to obtain documents with good quality, without limitations or watermarks. We are using iLovePDF in Spanish, but the website is translated into 25 languages ​​so that language is not an obstacle. In 2018 (the oldest capture saved on Archive.today) also. They also do not market with the data: Marco Grossi details that as a European firm they are governed by the GDPR and that all PDFs are deleted within two hours, without anyone being able to access them. In addition, he explains that they have ISO 27001 certification. In the beginning they financed themselves by advertising, but according to their CEO that is very risky. How iLovePDF Makes Money. So since 2014, in addition to the free options, they offer subscription services, so that advertising generates residual income. They are a small company, but they provide service to those people who visit their website, which we have already seen are many. That is why the Barcelona native explains that “we only need a very small percentage of users who pay to finance us.” 80 – 90% of your income they come precisely from its premium subscriptions, aimed at companies. The rest comes from an advertising banner that, my servant who has been using the service for so many years that she does not remember, nor did she remember it. The cost of being premium It is 5 euros per month and access to extras such as digital signatures or getting rid of ads, but it is totally dispensable: its founder details that the free version is enough for 99.9% of those who use us. They are not for sale. Marco Grossi is not a wolf of Wall Street: he himself admits that he never had an entrepreneurial spirit and that he does not open purchase proposals, something similar to the VLC project and that has turned both platforms into memes of saints or heroes on social networks like X/Twitter. Being a self-financed company allows Marco and his team to maintain their philosophy and reject offers. Although its history is meteoric considering its 15 years of life, the CEO speaks of sustained business growth and that they will never hire 200 people in a year to have to close. Their staff turnover is very low, but solid: they want to replicate their model with their counterpart for images, iLoveIMG. In Xataka | In 1990, a company in Barcelona came up with a crazy and visionary idea: talking on your cell phone while you’re stuck in traffic. In Xataka | In 1901, a Spanish man had one of the ideas of the century: invent the remote control before television

There is a “nihilistic” penguin who decided to embrace certain death. The Internet has been obsessed with him for weeks

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If in many years some historian were to investigate how the world has started 2026, they would find one of those surprises that raise eyebrows: humanity (or at least that part of humanity that rubs shoulders on the Internet) has started the year fascinated by a “nihilistic penguin”. With Ukraine at war, Trump threatening to annex Greenland to the US (by hook or by crook) and Nicolás Maduro detained In a New York prison, half the planet is dedicated to speculating why the hell one fine day in 2007 a palmiped from Antarctica undertook a suicidal trip that would have inspired himself Friedrich Nietzsche. It sounds bizarre, but it makes sense. What the hell is that penguin doing? It sounds bizarre, but for weeks thousands of people around the world have been asking themselves that same question: What is that penguin doing? The bird in question is a Pygoscelis adeliaean ‘Adelia’ like there are thousands of them in Antarctica, but which about 19 years ago came across the German filmmaker’s cameras by pure chance Werner Herzog while recording his documentary ‘Encounters at the End of the World’. The film lasts almost 100 minutes during which Herzog shows snowy plains, seals, underwater scenes and a multitude of frozen landscapes. At one point, however, his camera captured something curious, a detail that caught the attention of some critics years ago and now it has revolutionized half of the Network. The scene shows an Adelie penguin doing something totally counterintuitive. Without us knowing very well why, the animal begins to walk with a firm step away from the rest of its flock, entering between frozen mountains. Ahead, nothingness. No company. No food. That is, death. “But, why?“ The scene is shocking. First because it seems to go against the most basic common sense. At least the human one. Second, because of the surprising determination of the penguin, who sets off on his way without hesitation and only for a brief moment seems to stop to look at everything he leaves behind him. The third reason why it has captivated half the Internet is because Herzog himself was in charge of giving it importance and highlighting its drama. “But why?” he wonders the German filmmaker in the narration that accompanies the scene. After all, he only has miles and miles and miles of barren land ahead of him that take him further and further away from the safety of his colony and food sources. “It caught our attention. It wasn’t heading to the feeding grounds at the edge of the ice or returning to the colony. Shortly afterwards we saw it heading towards the mountains, 70 kilometers away. Dr Ainslie explained that even if he captured it and brought it back to the flock, it would return to the mountains. But… Why?” fascinated account Herzog. The full question would be a little longer: Why the hell would a penguin ignore its own survival instinct? There must be a reason, right? That is exactly what the documentary filmmaker proposed at the time and it has been worrying half the world for weeks. There is who has speculated that the penguin perhaps had a problem that altered its orientation or an ailment that affected its behavior. There is even talk of possible changes at an environmental level or of a exploratory instinct unconventional. If the panorama were not disturbing in itself, add Ainslie’s disturbing observation: it does not matter that Herzog or anyone else tried to correct their course. The animal would begin its deadly journey again almost instantly. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Is this something so strange? The penguin’s attitude does. Our attempts to find an explanation that fits our way of seeing the world (often from a anthropocentric optics), No. We humans have been debating for some time whether animals have something similar to a sense of morality. For example, we ask ourselves if in episodes that seem to us cruel There is a latent intention or they are simply the result of instinct. We have even speculated on the possibility of “altruistic” behavior in fauna. It may sound strange, but these are questions that have arisen in view of specific behaviors. A crow that finds a large amount of meat and decides warn others companions to share the feast, a whale investing time and energy in protect a seal harassed by killer whales, a duck that cares for a cub of another species, even putting itself in danger. Are those animals being generous? Are they selfless or do they act motivated by an instinct that, ultimately, seeks the preservation of themselves and their species? These are issues so complex that they have even given rise to scientific studies. What does it have to do with the penguin? Well, in recent weeks, after Herzog’s video once again gained popularity on the internet, many people have seen a 100% human attitude in the palmipede. Of course, one that has little or nothing to do with altruism or cruelty. What they appreciate is pure nihilismthe doctrine that embraces “nothingness” (hence its name, ‘nihil’) and denies the pillars on which philosophers have relied for centuries: the existence of religious, political and social principles and, in general, any foundation in morality. There is no purpose. Not even life has a meaning like the one that religions have sought for centuries. And what does Herzog’s penguin do if he doesn’t embrace that very thing, nothingness? Does it not evoke, in words by journalist Adil Faouzi, “a willful desertion of the logic of life itself”? The animal recorded by Herzog seems to capture these ideas so well, to condense them in such a powerful way, that many have nicknamed it: the “nihilistic penguin”. A little far-fetched, right? Depends. We do not know what motivated that small creature to undertake a journey towards its own death and who have tried Finding an explanation points (as we said before) to a possible illness or some type … Read more

Surfshark is a top tool to protect your privacy on the Internet

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With news of massive hacks almost every week, it is logical that we want to add an extra layer of security while browsing the Internet. Of all the ways there are to do this, the most useful and easy to use is a VPN. If we are actively searching for one of them, we have one of the best VPN available at a discounted price: it is surfsharkavailable now for 1.99 euros per month. Surfshark Starter Subscription – monthly The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A secure, fast VPN that you can use on all the devices you want As we always tell you, a VPN It is one of those tools that does not get in the way and that is always good to have installed on our devices. Yes, there are free options on the Internet that, for specific use, are not bad. The problem is that most of them They are not as safe as they say they are.hence It is advisable to invest a little and get a payment one that is safeas is the case with Surfshark. How can a VPN help us be safer on the Internet? By activating it, what we will be doing is passing our traffic through an encrypted and secure tunnelin such a way that no one will be able to see what we are doing. This is ideal in any scenario, but especially recommended if we are going to use a WiFi network that is not ours, such as that of a hotel. Another thing that a VPN also allows us to do is keep our IP address hidden. By using it, we will be preventing it from being registered anywhere or that no one will be able to intercept it, something ideal, since with it they can even impersonate our identity. Let’s now talk about Surfshark’s offer. This company offers three different plans, the Starter being the cheapest of them. Right now we have it available for 1.99 euros per month if we go for their two-year plan. In this way, in total we will be paying 53.73 euros and we will take three extra monthsso we will enjoy the tool for 27 months in total. And be careful, because you can use it on as many devices as you want without paying more. If we don’t mind investing a little more and are looking for a more complete tool, we can automatically go to your plan Surfshark Onereduced right now to 2.49 euros per month. This, in addition to including the VPN, comes with more additional tools, such as an antivirus or a tool that warns you in case your data is leaked on the Internet. Surfshark One Subscription – monthly The price could vary. We earn commission from these links The improved version of the previous plan, called Surfshark One+is also on sale: it goes for 4.19 euros per month. This includes, essentially, everything from the previous plan, along with a very interesting tool called Incogni. It allows us to delete our data from people’s company databases, which is very useful. Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Image | Nathan Fertig on Unsplash,Surfshark In Xataka | Why it is dangerous to connect to public Wi-Fi and what you should do to protect yourself In Xataka | Free VPN and security: what’s the problem, why you should be careful

Someone dumped three cubic meters of asbestos in Las Palmas. They caught him because he advertised on the internet as an unlicensed manager

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In the age of digital immediacy, it seems that any problem has a solution just a click away. “Economic debris removal”, “Rapid waste management”. These ads flood shopping portals and social networks. However, behind some of these profiles there are no authorized companies, but rather a network of illegal activities that end with carcinogenic materials abandoned on the corner lot. The latest case detected in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is the perfect reflection of this problem. The Local Police have managed to identify an individual who not only operated clandestinely, but also converted the surroundings of the Mirador de Las Torres at a hazardous materials landfill. The alarm voice. The events date back to December 19, when a citizen’s notice alerted the authorities about a van that was unloading debris in a suspicious manner on an embankment in the Díaz Casanova urbanization. Upon arriving at the scene, agents from the Environmental Group of the Mediation and Coexistence Unit (UMEC) of the Local Police found an alarming sight: approximately three cubic meters of asbestos-containing fiber cement sheets. In other words, it was not common debris, but a cataloged material as hazardous waste due to its high toxicity if the fibers fracture and are inhaled. An investigation connected to the network. The investigation did not stop at the spill. Upon tracking the vehicle, officers discovered a pattern of professional deception. As reported by local mediathe suspect actively advertised on internet portals, offering to manage all types of waste, including asbestos. However, when cross-referencing data with the Registry of Waste Managers of the Government of the Canary Islands, the reality came to light: the individual was neither listed as a manager nor as an authorized transporter. He did not have the equipment, training, or permits required by law to manipulate “uralite.” After being located, the investigated person had no escape. According to Canarian sourcesthe man acknowledged being the author of the spill and admitted that he charged his clients for a service he provided illegally. Instead of taking the asbestos to an authorized treatment plant – where he would have to pay for its correct disposal – he simply dumped it in open fields to keep the full benefit. The legal framework: Law 7/2022. This behavior is not just incivility; It is a serious violation of public health and the environment. According to Law 7/2022of waste and contaminated soils for a circular economy, the abandonment of hazardous waste is strongly penalized. This law seeks precisely to end the underground economy in the waste sector. The regulations are clear: whoever generates the waste (the owner of a home who is renovating, for example) has the responsibility of ensuring that his garbage ends up in the hands of an authorized manager. If it is delivered to a “fake manager” of the Internet, the producer of the waste could also find himself involved in legal problems. Asbestos, an invisible enemy. The City Council of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, through its waste guide, reminds that asbestos requires special handling. It is classified under specific codes like LER 170605. When these planks break when thrown down an embankment, they release microscopic fibers that, when they enter the lungs, can cause serious respiratory diseases and long-term cancer. Therefore, its withdrawal must be carried out by companies registered with RERA (Registry of Companies with Asbestos Risk), something that the accused was completely unaware of. How to act correctly? The case of Las Torres is a warning for all citizens. The City Council and the Cabildo of Gran Canaria offer legal alternatives To avoid these crimes: Clean Points for domestic debris from small works (minor renovations). Asbestos Census: the Cabildo usually opens calls for the orderly removal of elements with asbestos in homes (drums, sheets, pipes). Authorized Managers: the authorized manager number should always be required before contracting any service. Closure against impunity. The person responsible for the spill in Las Torres now faces economic sanctions that, according to Law 7/2022can reach very high amounts for serious infringement. This case serves as a reminder that the city’s natural environment is no one’s backyard, and that the digital trail of offenders, sooner or later, ends up reaching the hands of justice. What began as a “cheap” advertisement on a website has ended in a criminal complaint and environmental damage that now all taxpayers must, in one way or another, help to remedy. Image | Las Palmas Local Police Xataka | These days Tenerife is experiencing a phenomenon that only occurs every 60 years: the “blooming of death” of the Ceylon palm trees

TeraWave, Blue Origin’s satellite internet, is born

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Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’ space company, has announced this Wednesday the deployment of 5,408 satellites to create TeraWave, a satellite communications network that will compete directly with starlink from SpaceX. But there is a crucial difference: it is not intended for you or me. What Blue Origin proposes. TeraWave promises speeds of up to 6 terabits per second, both upload and download, anywhere on the planet, according to the company. Deployment will begin at the end of 2027 with a constellation that will combine satellites in low and medium Earth orbit, connected by optical links. The network is designed to serve a maximum of approximately 100,000 customers, not millions like its competitors. The big difference with Starlink. While the service deployed by Elon Musk’s company, with more than 9,000 satellites in orbit and some 9 million customers, focuses on offering internet to individual consumers, companies and governments alike, TeraWave is committed to an exclusively business approach. Blue Origin has made clear that its network is “designed specifically for enterprise customers,” targeting data centers, governments and enterprises that require reliable connectivity for critical operations. Dave Limp, CEO of Blue Origin and former head of Amazon devices, confirmed in the statement that this is an “enterprise grade” service. An increasingly saturated market. Bezos is not only competing with Musk, but also with his own creature: Amazon. The e-commerce company Leo is deploying (formerly Project Kuiper), a network of 3,236 satellites of which there are already 180 in orbit. Unlike TeraWave, Leo does target both businesses, consumers and governments, competing more directly with Starlink. In addition, several Chinese companies are rapidly developing similar constellations with low-cost reusable rockets, following the strategy that SpaceX established with your Falcon 9. Why do they aim so high in speed?. Those 6 terabits per second that TeraWave promises are extreme even by current enterprise standards, well above what rival commercial services offer. So yes, indeed, Blue Origin aims to meet the demand for data centers for AI. And the TeraWave announcement coincides with a career in the space industry for building data centers in space that can meet the growing demand for large-scale AI processing. Musk has already expressed his desire to build these space centers complementing Starlink, while Bezos already predicted that will be common in orbit in the next 10 to 20 years. The logistical challenge. To put 5,408 satellites into orbit you need a reliable and economical launch machine. This is where Blue Origin’s reusable New Glenn rocket comes in, which although it has completed two launches, has not yet reached the necessary flight rate. Last November, the company achieved an important milestone upon successful landing the New Glenn booster after the launch of two NASA spacecraft, becoming the second company, after SpaceX, to achieve this feat. Bezos’s commitment to space. The founder of Amazon has been preaching about the potential of Blue Origin for years. In 2024, during an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Bezos stated who believes Blue Origin “will be the best business I’ve ever been involved in, but it will take time.” Founded in 2000, the company has been primarily known for its tourist flights to the edge of space. Last year he also took both his current wife, Lauren Sánchez, and to the singer Katy Perry or to our national survivor, Jesus Calleja. Cover image | Jeff Bezos In Xataka | SpaceX has made sending things to space very cheap. The problem is that now space is full of things

The internet has decided that 2016 was great and worth remembering. But there’s a problem: it wasn’t at all.

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The aesthetics of 2016 comes back strong: filters that They imitate the Instagram of then (according to Wikipedia, more than 200 million videos with filters that imitate visuals), trends that they recover photos from thenrecreations of the summer of ‘Pokémon GO’, tributes and memories to David Bowie. Generation Z users, many of them teenagers at the time, they rebuild 2016 like a golden age (there has been a 450% increase in searches of the term “2016” on TikTok). The contradiction is obvious: That same year, numerous media declared it one of the worst in recent history. What happened. On January 10 he died David Bowie; they followed him Prince, Leonard Cohen, George Michael, Carrie Fisher. On June 23, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. On November 8, Donald Trump won the US election. Media like slate either Newsweek They wondered if it was the worst year in history. Less than a decade later, that same year it has become an object of nostalgia. Starting shot. The Bowie’s death January 10 marked the year since its inception. Two days before he had published ‘Blackstar’, an album that today is interpreted as a farewell but that then went unnoticed in its testamentary dimension. The shock was immediate: an artist who had hidden his cancer for 18 months disappeared without warning, and memes filled that void almost immediately. The artists mentioned above followed, and each death reinforced the same idea: 2016 was cursed. In Xataka All the reasons you should listen to David Bowie if you haven’t already Imbalance. Trump and Brexit shattered the expectations of progress and openness that dominated Western political discourse. In‘The future of nostalgia’already in 2001, Svetlana Boym distinguished between “restorative nostalgia” (which seeks to reconstruct a mythical home) and “reflective nostalgia” (which enjoys longing without seeking to recover anything). Nostalgia for 2016 is of the first kind: it invents a year that never existed. Boym noted that restorative nostalgia “does not recognize itself as nostalgia, but as truth and tradition.” Just what happens when TikTok recreates the summer ofPokémon GO as if it had been edenic. This has already been said. There are theorists who have reflected on the phenomenon to remember 2016 just ten years later. David Foster Wallace documented in the 1990s what he called “nostalgia for the present”: the urge to long for something that is not yet over. 2016 fulfills that paradox: it has become an object of nostalgia before being historically processed, while its political consequences remain active. The temporal distance necessary for nostalgia, usually two or three decades, has been compressed to the point of almost disappearing. {“videoId”:”x9785qi”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Prince – Partyman”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”233″} Retromania. It is inevitable to refer to ‘Retromania‘a 2011 essay in which Simon Reynolds argued that since the 2000s, pop culture had reversed its direction: instead of generating the future, it was dedicated to reactivating the past. Reynolds documented band reunions, deluxe reissues, revival festivals, nostalgic samples. Fifteen years later, his thesis has intensified: no society has ever been so obsessed with the cultural artifacts of its most recent past. The return to 2016 confirms his diagnosis: a decade is enough to activate nostalgia. Hauntology. Mark Fisher elaborated on this idea in ‘The ghosts of my life’where he developed the concept of “hauntology” that Derrida had coined: we are inhabited by futures that did not materialize. Fisher, who died in 2017, argued that contemporary culture had lost its ability to imagine alternatives to the present. The past cannot be recovered; Their ghosts haunt a present incapable of projecting forward. Nostalgia for 2016 materializes this paralysis: one longs for a year defined by its catastrophic nature because there is a lack of vocabulary to articulate desirable futures. In Xataka A rosy past: why our brains can’t fight nostalgia Nostalgia mode. Finally, Fredric Jameson had anticipated this phenomenon in ‘Postmodernism: or the cultural logic of late capitalism’ in 1991, when describing the “nostalgia mode”: postmodern culture reproduces styles from the past by emptying them of historical reference and reducing them to an aesthetic surface. Instagram and TikTok accelerate this process. What was present yesterday is content today vintage available for consumption. The Spotify playlists of 2016 and the summer of ‘Pokémon GO’ are remembered, but not the bad thing. The algorithm creates a sweetened version of the past that eliminates conflict. It could be worse. 2026, without going any further. The nostalgia of 2016 reveals an escape from much more present horrors: those of 2026. That year has been dwarfed as a “bad year” because a decade later Trump returns to the presidency in a much more virulent way, with attacks on international law and invasion of countries, the war in Ukraine has no signs of ending, Gaza is going through a humanitarian disaster that shames the planet, political and media polarization has become radicalized, housing has become inaccessible… Carrie Fisher, who died in 2016 If in 2016 there were those who considered it exaggerated to talk about authoritarian drift, 2026 materializes that exaggeration: the alarms that seemed like hyperbole turned out to be prophetic. Nostalgia for 2016 is not innocent: it is the implicit recognition that the situation has worsened, that that year, with all its disasters, was preferable to the present. It’s coming. The cycle accelerates. If 2016 is already an object of nostalgia in 2026, what year will be nostalgic in 2030? 2020, the year of the global pandemic? 2024? Culture is caught in a loop where the present devours itself before it has been digested, where the ability to imagine alternatives has atrophied to the point that we can only look back. Even when what we see behind is disaster. In Xataka | People are so fed up with the current Internet that they are returning to MySpace. Not out of nostalgia, but out of rebellion (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news … Read more

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