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The great battle of the Ebro is not between Murcia and Aragón, it is between the headwaters of the rivers, the large cities and the delta

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The image is straight out of a movie: a team of divers diving into the cold waters of the Arija reservoir to dredge more than three meters of silt accumulated in front of its floodgates. It’s not a whim, It’s the only way to remove them.: that is, the consequence of having hundreds of infrastructures that have not been thoroughly maintained for decades. But, above all, the most striking symptom of a very deep problem: the sediments are killing, at the same time, the reservoirs and the rivers. Reservoirs due to loss of capacity (Mequinenza has lost since its opening more capacity than the sum of the last three reservoirs put into operation), rivers because deltas need sediment to stay alive. The Ebro, without going any further, needs 1.2 million tons per year. And the authorities know it. In fact, since 2003, the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation has been carrying out controlled floods in the lower section of the river to mobilize sediments towards Tortosa. The problem is that each controlled flood moves about 10,000 tons; that is, two orders of magnitude below what is necessary. It’s like emptying a swimming pool with a coffee spoon. So in the last few months, something has changed. Since November 2024, the CHE began a series of measures to try to fix it. Things like extending the discharge by two days, starting it from much higher up (El Grado in Huesca and Camarasa in Lleida) and draining Ribarroja more than usual to mobilize all the possible sediments. Will it solve the problem? It’s not clear, but it doesn’t seem like it. We have to take into account that, only in the Ebro basin, there are many reservoirs and that is an inevitable brake. Calculations say that of the five million tons that were brought to the Mediterranean before the reservoirs, only between 100,000 and 200,000 now arrive. It would take around 100 floods to reach the appropriate figures. And no, we don’t have enough water for that. So? That is the big problem, seeing what we do. We must not forget that the Ebro delta supports 20,000 hectares of rice fieldstens of thousands of inhabitants and is a biosphere reserve. The loss of wetlands and their salinization have a direct impact on agriculture, fishing and tourism. Come on: the interests are crossed and they confront people hundreds of kilometers away. We are entering a new era of hydrological wars in which we are all against each other. Image | Sinto MQZ In Xataka | The Ebro is filling with brown prawns, an invasive species that we are going to find more and more on our plates.

If the question is how much of Europe is within range of Iran’s missiles, the answer is simple: a fairly large

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In recent decades, the missile range It has become a silent measure of a country’s strategic power. Every few hundred kilometers added to their radius of action change not only technical maps, but also political calculations, alliances and perceptions of security. In this game of distances, Europe already it doesn’t appear that far away as before. From 1,300 to 3,000 km. It we count yesterday. Iran has built its deterrence on a missile family medium range (the Shahab-3, Sejjil, GhadrEmad or Khorramshahr) with ranges that start at 1,300 kilometers and are around 2,000–2,500 kilometers in most configurations, although certain variants of the Khorramshahr could approach 3,000 if they reduce payload. That threshold is what changes the European map, and the reason is very simple. With 2,000 kilometers, the eastern Mediterranean and southeastern Europe are clearly within the radiusand with 3,000, the arc of threat extends into the heart of the continent. The difference, therefore, is not technical, it is strategic. The eastern Mediterranean. Cyprus has been the clearest sign that the border is no longer theoretical. British bases of Akrotiri and Dhekeliaused as logistics and aerial projection nodes, are fully within range of both ballistic missiles and long-range drones such as the Shahed-136. In fact, Greece enters in the same arch, with Souda Bay in Crete within 2,300–2,400 kilometers from Iran. Athens, Sofia and Bucharest are among the capitals that fit comfortably within the 2,000 kilometer radius. Türkiye and Iraq: the exposed belt. Türkiye is located in the first critical strip. Incirlik, just over 1,000 kilometers from Tehran, is high value target for its role in allied architecture and its link to the nuclear sharing scheme. Kürecik, with its AN/TPY-2 radar, is the forward “eye” of the anti-missile shield and therefore a logical target in any prior suppression scenario. In Iraq, bases like Ain al-Asad or Erbil, in addition to the NATO mission in Baghdad, are not only within ballistic range, but also in the radius of drones and networks of militias supported by Tehran. Central Europe: the gray area. When the second and third arcs of the map are projected, cities appear like Budapest, Vienna or Bratislava on the periphery of the estimated range. Bucharest clearly enters the range of 2,000–2,500 kilometers, which places the base Aegis Ashore of Deveselu in a sensitive position within the maximum Iranian perimeter. If Khorramshahr really reached 3,000 kilometers, and that remains to be seen, the threat contour would touch cities like Berlin and Rome. Of course, just another hypothesis, but the pressure is expanding from the eastern flank towards the political center of Europe. The pieces of the shield and their limits. The Aegis Ashore system in Romaniathe one located in Poland and the Arleigh Burke destroyers in the Mediterranean they form the backbone of defense against Middle Eastern vectors. Germany, furthermore, has added the Arrow 3 system to reinforce its upper interception layer. However, any attack would have to fly over monitored airspace. like Türkiye, Iraq or Syriawhich adds operational complexity and interception windows. The shield exists, there is no doubt, but it does not eliminate the risk equation. Drones and saturation. Impossible to ignore it. Beyond ballistic missiles, Iran has turned attack drones into strategic multipliers. With ranges of up to 2,000–2,500 kilometers and costs much lower than missiles, they can be launched in waves to wear down defenses. Its previous use against British facilities in Cyprus demonstrates that the geographical barrier is no longer an automatic shield. The combination of expensive and cheap systems complicates defense. Underground and asymmetrical doctrine. As we count yesterday, the construction of “underground cities” to store and manufacture missiles is part of a strategy designed to compensate for the absence of a modern air force in Iran. Since 1979, sanctions pushed Tehran to invest in rockets, tunnels and technological alliances with other states, turning the missile into your main tool of deterrence. This asymmetric logic does not seek to equal the West in air and sea, but rather to impose cost and vulnerability from land. What changes strategically. As long as the effective range remains around 2,000 kilometers, the threat is mainly concentrated in the eastern Mediterranean and southeast Europe. If the actual ceiling is close to 3,000 km, the european political map enters the calculation. The difference between 2,400 and 3,000 kilometers is not a technical nuance, because it is the line that separates the periphery of the continental core. In that margin, a priori, the perception of risk for European capitals and the credibility of allied deterrence are at stake. Image | Mahdi Marizad, Defense Intelligence Agency, Mehr News Agency In Xataka | The arrival of the B-2s to Iran can only mean one thing: the search for the greatest threat to the United States has begun In Xataka | Iran has just attacked a base in Europe: the paradox of Spain is that it condemns the war, but the US does not need to ask to use its bases

Since we were children we have been told that Jupiter is enormous, colossal, exaggeratedly large. Turns out not so much.

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There are things that we learn in childhood that accompany us throughout our lives and one of them is to recite the Solar System at once, which has its disadvantages: for those of us who are already old, mentioning Pluto (which It is no longer a planet) either make mistakes when estimating distances interplanetary. Another classic misconception is the size of Jupiter. Data from the Juno mission published in Nature Astronomy They change the shape and size of the colossus of the Solar System. Jupiter is flatter and smaller than we thought. We knew that Jupiter was the largest planet in the Solar System, a gaseous colossus whose mass exceeded that of the rest of the planets combined, which gave it the power to be almost the conductor of the orchestra (with the permission of the Sun) as long as its gravity had a lot of weight. Its large magnetic shield protects its moons from solar radiation, it has iconic clouds and storms in astronomy and its Great Red Spot It exceeds the Earth in size. But there is something wrong with its shape and size. The Context. The missions Voyager and Pioneerdating back to the 1970s, established figures that today we read in science books: that Jupiter has an equatorial radius of 71,492 kilometers and a polar radius of 66,854 kilometers. With this model, the planet was assimilated as a sphere flattened at the poles (oblate spheroid). These dimensions were calculated with just six indirect measurements with profiles of radio occultation. The discovery. Because what Juno has seen shows that the equatorial radius is approximately 8 kilometers smaller and the polar radius is about 24 kilometers smaller than previous missions said. Qualitatively, Jupiter is flatter. The first thing that comes to mind is: How important are eight kilometers on a planet 140,000 kilometers wide? Well scientifically, it has it. In fact, it’s the difference between whether the laws of physics fit or not. Why is it important. Well, because although the difference is comparatively minor, the fact that it is smaller and has a flatter shape has thermodynamic implications. Thus, it suggests a colder atmosphere enriched with heavy elements that better suit what the Galileo probe measured in 1995. Additionally, having accurate geometry is essential to understanding what’s inside and interpreting the gravity data provided by Juno, so we can accurately map how its mass is distributed inside and how hydrogen behaves under extreme pressures. On the other hand, knowing Jupiter better is getting closer to the recipe of how the Earth was formed and going beyond: facilitating the understanding of thousands of other exoplanets giants that we are discovering in the stars. Radio occultation operation diagram. MPRennie Wikipedia Juno’s look. Both Pioneer and Voyager and Juno use radio occultation, that is, they use the same physical principle. The radio occultation technique consists of measuring how a planet’s atmosphere bends and slows down the radio signals of a probe when it is hidden behind it. By analyzing the delay and deviation of these waves from the Earth, the scientific team can precisely calculate the density and pressure and therefore the exact shape of the planet. Of course, from a technological point of view there has been half a century of evolution and it is noticeable in terms of quality due to its multiband operation, precision and repetition. Thus, the probes of the 70s mainly used one radio band while Juno uses two, which allows, among other things, to eliminate noise. Likewise, the original ones were passing missions in front of the planned June orbit, that is, we have gone from having six points to an almost complete map. And finally, ground-based tracking systems are night and day when it comes to measuring changes in frequency and signal arrival time. In Xataka | We have been deceived by the distances of the Solar System: the closest neighbor to Neptune is Mercury In Xataka | We knew that there was water on Mars, but not how much. It turns out that 3.37 billion years ago an ocean covered half the planet Cover | NASA Hubble Space Telescope

Ariane 64 debuts with large Amazon payload in orbit

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Putting large payloads into low orbit is not just a technical issue, it is also a strategic decision. When the figure is around 20 tons, it is easy to think about Falcon 9than SpaceX, but that is not the only possible path. Europe has just demonstrated this with the operational debut of Ariane 64, the most powerful version of Ariane 6which has already completed a real mission and has successfully deployed 32 satellites of a constellation into orbit. First flight. The VA267 mission It took off today, February 12, from the Guiana Space Center and marked the operational debut of the aforementioned rocket. As confirmed by ArianeGroupthe launcher successfully placed the payload into orbit and completed the mission after 1 hour and 54 minutes.” The result not only validates the performance of the new launcher in real conditions, it also inaugurates the first of 18 missions that Amazon has contracted with Arianespace. The version with four lateral thrusters. Within the Ariane 6 family, Ariane 64 is the configuration designed for the most demanding missions in terms of mass and cargo volume. This places its capacity at around 20 tons towards low Earth orbit, approximately double what Ariane 62 allows with two lateral thrusters. That jump explains its role in large-scale commercial deployments, such as entire satellite constellations. In addition, the program foresees additional performance increases throughout the year with the introduction of new engines P160C in the solid fuel lateral thrusters. Ariane 64 on the launch pad before mission VA267 Three first times. VA267 brought together several premieres in a single release and all of them define the leap in scale of the new European system. ArianeGroup first identifies the inaugural use of Ariane 64 in its four-sided booster configuration, which made it possible to deploy the aforementioned more than 30 satellites into orbit. Added to this is the first use of the 20-meter fairing, designed to protect the dispenser during the initial phases of the flight and which places the total height of the launcher at 62 meters. Previous missions with the 14-meter hull and Ariane 62 were around 56 meters. Choreography in orbit. Beyond the visible milestones, the mission required a precise sequence after liftoff to ensure the safe release of the satellites. As we can see in the official broadcastthe launcher detached from the side thrusters and fairing in the first minutes of flight, after which the upper stage assumed orbital insertion through carefully timed ignitions. The deployment began approximately 90 minutes after launch and was extended during sequential releases. Satellite deployment in live broadcast Evolution of Project Kuiper. The deployment is part of a broader space infrastructure plan. Amazon Leo, evolution of the previous one Project Kuiperis conceived as a low-orbit satellite system intended to provide fast, low-latency internet to communities far from conventional networks. With the new thirty satellites in orbit, the total rises above 200, bringing the company closer to its goal of global connectivity. Turning point for European access to space. With the first flight of Ariane 64 carried out as planned and the satellites already deployed, the new launcher leaves the technical validation stage behind and enters effective service. The real test begins now, when operational continuity becomes as relevant as initial success. Images | ArianeGroup In Xataka | Venus has always seemed to us to be one of the least interesting planets. That just changed thanks to a discovery

with a large amount of water but no trace of polar cold

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January is going to say goodbye with great weather instability that we are already experiencing in our flesh throughout the entire Spanish territory. If we look at the weather maps for this week that begins today, the conclusion is quite unanimous. both in the AEMET as in the European ECMWF prediction model: stability has been broken. Starting today we enter a regime of humid winds accompanied by rainfall well above average on the Atlantic slopewith special impact on Galicia and the central system. Rain, a lot of rain. If we look at the forecasts on a national scale, we are facing very marked rainfall this week. And we are not talking about normal rains, but rather accumulated ones that in the northeast could exceed the usual average for these dates by 60%. Something that responds to saying goodbye to the storm Ingrid to give way to the storm Joseph that will affect Galicia above all. Galicia is one of the points where accumulations are expected to reach 90 liters per extra square meter of anomaly with peaks of up to 150 liters per square meter in orographic points. But mountain systems such as the Sierra de Gredos, the Pyrenees and the high areas of Andalusia will also receive significant amounts of water and snow due to the orographic enhancement of the southwest winds. The AEMET. In a post on his blog, The public agency points out that this week will be marked by the passage of “fronts associated with Atlantic storms, which would leave rain in most of the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands.” Likewise, it points to the great intensity that they will have in Galicia, which will undoubtedly bear the brunt throughout this week. The thermal paradox. One of the key points that highlight the predictions is in the thermometer. Anyone could imagine very low temperatures accompanying this amount of precipitation that is expected, but the reality is very different, since we are not facing a polar cold wave. The models indicate in this case that since the winds come from the Atlantic, the air arrives warm and loaded with humidity. This will keep temperatures above the climatic measurement as the maximum temperatures will be between 10 and 16ºC, while the minimum temperatures will remain between 8ºC and 12ºC, avoiding severe frosts in low areas. The snow. In this sense we can rest assured, since according to the AEMET, the snow will be limited mainly to the mountain systems of the peninsula. However, we must be attentive to Wednesday, January 28 and Thursday, January 29, since a specific drop in elevation after the passage of a cold front could leave snowfall in areas of the northern plateau and medium-low elevations, although it will be a transitory episode within a generally mild environment. Why does this happen? To understand this carousel of storms you have to look at the index of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). Currently, it is in a negative phase, which means that the Azores anticyclone weakens or shifts, allowing storms to circulate at lower latitudes (i.e. over Spain) instead of deviating towards northern Europe. Images | AEMET In Xataka | We have always believed that London is very rainy and that Barcelona is not. The only problem is that it’s a lie

IKEA has had to close seven large stores in China. It is the symptom of a much more important trend

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The real estate market was the great economic engine in China, but currently it is plunged into a deep crisis from which it does not seem that it will come out soon. Houses are not sold and, consequently, not as much furniture is sold either. If we add to this an increasingly strong online market and competitors with very aggressive prices, it is not surprising that IKEA is not doing very well. Seven fewer stores. IKEA China has announced which will close seven of its stores on February 2. These are seven large stores, known as ‘blue box’, located in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Nantong, Xuzhou, Ningbo and Zhejiang. After the closure, there will be 34 more operational stores in the country. Change of strategy. IKEA emphasizes that “we will move from large-scale expansion to focused development.” Its strategy is to move away from large stores and focus on local commerce. They plan to open ten small stores in the next two years, starting with the Dongguan store scheduled for next February. This strategy contrasts with the one they are following in other countries like the United Kingdom either USAwhere what they are closing are some small stores opened after the pandemic. Competence. As we said, the Chinese real estate crisis is one of the reasons why sales have fallen, but not the only one. The Swedish giant faces other difficulties, such as the emergence of new local competitors that offer Much lower prices and much faster deliveries. In this context, it makes sense that IKEA wants to focus on small stores and strengthen its online channel. In fact, recently They opened a store on JD.com. Online presence. In statements to South China Morning Posteconomist Fan Xinyu, attributes the closure to “a highly developed online sales market in China, a trend that has reduced the survival margin of physical points of sale.” It is estimated that in 2024 in China They delivered 5,400 packets per secondmaking it the largest online marketplace in the world. In this sense, we can say that in China it is more common to place an order online than to go to a large store such as IKEA. IKEA China. The Swedish company opened its doors in China in 1998 and went on to open 41 large stores. The company has not published financial data, but China continues to be among the ten markets where they sell the most. According to ReutersChina accounts for 3.5% of all IKEA global sales. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | The founder of Ikea was one of the richest men on the planet, but his most famous trick is available to everyone

the first large pure hydrogen turbine to fight renewable waste

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Talking about renewable energies is talking about China. Although they continue to burn coal and gas and want to become an oil power, the country is positioning itself as the major player in renewables. Also of the ‘megastructures’. And, combining both, we have Jupiter I. It is the first 30 MW class turbine in the world that works with pure hydrogen, it has just been launched. light and they aspire for it to be the solution to one of the biggest renewable energy problems. Take advantage of surplus energy. Jupiter I. Like practically everything that has to do with energy and China, the numbers of this plant are, to say the least, striking. Now we will get into the fact that it is the first 30 MW class turbine that runs on pure hydrogen. There are others in the world that operate in pilot mode on a scale of 5 or 10 MW, but they are natural gas turbines that have been converted. Jupiter I has been designed from the ground up as a pure hydrogen machine that, in combined cycle mode, can generate 48 MWh. It is estimated that it is enough to satisfy the daily demand of more than 5,500 homes. Those responsible for the turbine they claim that the machine “can use more than 30,000 m³ of hydrogen per hour, which calculated annually is the equivalent of 500 million kWh.” In perspectiveit’s like filling the gigantic Hindenburg airship 25 times every hour. And the key to this is that it is electricity stored in the form of hydrogen pure hydrogen. Although it has not fully caught on in sectors such as utility vehicles, hydrogen has the potential to be one of the fuels that helps achieve decarbonization objectives. It all depends on its color: green is achieved through renewable energy and black through burning coal, for example. Turbines are classified according to the type of fuel they burn and the percentage of hydrogen in the mixture. There are those that use only up to 20% H2, others that use 50% H2 and those that use pure hydrogen, which operate entirely with this fuel. They are usually pilot or demonstration units, but Jupiter 1 is the first of its kind in which all its systems (combustion chamber, injection and flame control) are optimized for that fuel. Megaplant. The turbine is not isolated. It is located in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, and is part of a larger system. It is inside a 500 MW wind farm. It is not an astronomical figure considering what we are used to, but it is important to remember that not all the energy produced by renewables is stored correctly. Much of it is wasted, either because there are not enough batteries, or because it is not consumed when needed or because it is stored and lost. How it works. That’s where Jupiter I comes into play. The system works through a kind of closed cycle of electricity – hydrogen – electricity. When wind turbines generate more energy than the grid can consume and it is not going to be stored in batteries, turbines like this one can use that excess to produce green hydrogen. Once produced, it is stored in tanks, and at the Ordos plant there are a dozen of 1,875 m3 each. If the grid is stable and can operate well with renewables, that hydrogen is stored there, but in times of greater demand or when renewables cannot satisfy it, that stored green hydrogen comes into play to produce emissions-free and immediately accessible electricity. Fighting deserts. Placing a hydrogen turbine right in a renewable plant solves the challenge of wasting electricity, but also that of transporting hydrogen, which we have already seen is complicated. Precisely, that is where those responsible say that the technology has great potential. It is in the deserts where China has found an oasis of renewable energy, and having turbines of this style can further enhance those megascale energy projects – greater than 1 GW – that China is deploying. Now we have to see if it fulfills what it promises, since it is the first of a pilot project, but according to warned by the China National Energy Administration in June this year, it will not be the last. Image | FreePik and Pexels In Xataka | We have known for years that the future of wind power was in the sea and yet only one country has believed it: China

This Xiaomi mobile with a large screen and 108 MP camera costs less than 150 euros

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If you are thinking of renewing your old smartphone and you don’t want to spend a lot, now, in the official Xiaomi store you can buy one of its mid-range flagships, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 5G. It is on sale and has gone from costing 279.99 euros to 149.99 euros. Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 5G 6+128 GB The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A mobile phone with a 108 MP camera and large screen For its price, there are many features that make this mobile stand out. Redmi Note 14 from Xiaomi. One of them is its screen, which is type 6.67 inch OLED with resolution of 2,400 x 1,080p. It reaches a maximum brightness of 2,100 nits and has a refresh rate of 120 Hz. This model on offer comes with 6 GB RAM and 128 GB internal storage. Furthermore, another of the great assets of this mobile is its touch control. This is very precise and will allow you to use your phone even if your fingers are stained with grease or wet. The photographic system is another of its star features. Comes with a 108+2+2 MP triple rear camera and the front one is 20 MP. Its design stands out for its ice-like texture and makes you fall in love with it at first glance. As for its battery, it has a capacity above average, of 5,500 mAh and admits fast charging at 33 W. Finally, it is worth mentioning that it has a wide connectivity section, since it comes with NFCdual WiFi, GPS and Bluetooth 5.3. Some accessories that may interest you for this mobile Tentoki 3 in 1 Case and Screen Protector for Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 5G The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Xiaomi Redmi Buds 6 – Wireless headphones The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | Xiaomi In Xataka | The best mobile phones, we have tested them and here are their analyzes In Xataka | The best quality-price mobiles. Their analyzes and videos are here

All the skulls of the great apes were equally large. Until homo sapiens got fifth

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Talk about the human evolution is talking about a gigantic puzzle of which we have completed a large percentage, but whose last pieces resist us. There are many who continue trying to put these pieces together, and each new fossil studied brings us one step closer to the goal… or to rethink everything. One of those questions was at what rate the hominid brain evolved compared to that of the great apes, and the conclusion of a new study It has been devastating. Double. The hypothesis. The researchers at University College London, led by the Spanish Aída Gómez-Robles, started from a well-known premise: current humans have brains about three times larger than those of our closest ape relatives. And not only a different sizealso a noticeably different cranial structure. While most great apes have forward-projecting faces and small brains, humans have a flatter face with a larger head and rounded. The exception among the apes would be the gibbons and their heads were rounded, but with much smaller brains. The hypothesis they used was that these craniofacial adaptations evolved at an accelerated rate in humans thanks to the advantages of having a large brain, but also that social factors would have influenced this accelerated transformation. The study. The team examined virtual models of skulls of several species of modern primates. Thus, they analyzed the skulls of seven species of “great apes” including humans, two species of gorillastwo of orangutans, chimpanzees and bonobosas well as nine species of hylobatids or “lesser apes”, like the aforementioned gibbons. To do this, and using a technique that allows landmarks to be mapped onto anatomical structures, the researchers divided each skull into four sections. They analyzed the markers of the upper face, lower face, front and back of the head and compared between all the skulls analyzed. As a control group, they used hylobatids, since the species separated from hominids about 20 million years ago and they realized something: while gibbons are very similar to each other, hominids are very different from each other. And, among them, humans are the ones that evolved the most. At an astonishing speed, too. Face + neuroskull. The conclusion is that the human brain It evolved twice as fast as that of other hominids. Studies have already been done on additional factors driving accelerated changes in the brain and skull, but this study is the first to quantify the speed at which different species evolved. And, in addition to speed, what they found is that the human face transformed almost as quickly as the neuroskull. Brain expansion and facial flattening are related, but in other species there is not such a clear relationship between the evolution of the neurocranium and the face. Therefore, the team concluded that there was something external at play: a selective pressure caused because we started living in a society. “The face is the interface through which we interact with other people, so a possible explanation is that the selective pressure that caused its accelerated evolution is related to how we interact with each other in a social group,” exposes Gómez-Robles. Implications. This has not happened exclusively with humans. In the case of gorillas, the UCL team concluded that they had had the second-fastest rate of cranial evolution, probably also driven by social selection, which means a larger cranial crest is a symbol of higher social status. Now, as we said at the beginning, although the UCL study has demonstrated the evolution of human brain growth in relation to that of other similar species, there are still pieces of the great puzzle to put together. Future studies can examine other aspects to better understand what were those biological or social factors that drove the accelerated cranial development in humans. Images | UCL, Jacklee In Xataka | A 4.4 million-year-old ankle has rewritten human history: our first steps were not as we thought

They seemed like useful tools for WhatsApp Web, but they were part of a large spam campaign

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When it comes to using third-party applications and software that interact with WhatsApp, you have to be especially careful, since you never know what may lie in store for you. In this sense, a massive spam campaign has used 131 fraudulent extensions of Chrome to automate mass sending on WhatsApp Web, affecting more than 20,000 users. Researchers at cybersecurity firm Socket have reported of the operation, which has remained active for at least nine months. what has happened. According to the investigationthe extensions were presented as CRM or contact management tools for WhatsApp, promising to increase sales and improve productivity. Names like YouSeller, Botflow or ZapVende hid their true function: injecting code directly into WhatsApp Web to send massive messages without the user’s permission, bypassing the platform’s anti-spam systems. The spam business model. According to Socket, all extensions They shared the same code base and they came from a single Brazilian company, DBX Tecnologia, which sold a white label reseller program. Researchers say that affiliates paid about 2,000 euros in advance to rename the extension with their own logo and name, promising recurring income of between 5,000 and 15,000 euros. “The goal is to keep massive campaigns running while evading anti-spam systems,” explains security researcher Kirill Boychenko. How the fraud worked. The extensions used sophisticated techniques to manipulate WhatsApp Web. They ran alongside legitimate WhatsApp scripts, using internal functions to automate message sending. Users could configure send intervals, pauses, and batch sizes specifically designed to circumvent detection algorithms. According to the researcher, DBX Tecnologia even published tutorials on YouTube explaining how to adjust these parameters to prevent WhatsApp from blocking accounts. Why is it dangerous. Although these extensions are not considered malware classic, they also represent a significant risk. When an extension injects code into web applications like WhatsApp, it can read your messages, monitor your actions, and send automated content using your account. The extensions had full access to the page WhatsApp Webpotentially allowing them to access private conversations and personal data. What to do now. According to firm, Google has already removed the extensions from its store, although they were available for more than nine months, accumulating tens of thousands of downloads. If you have installed any extension related to WhatsApp or message automation and it appears in the list of extensions provided by the research, you must delete it immediately. To do this, access ‘chrome://extensions‘ in your browser, review the entire list and uninstall any suspicious or unrecognized tools. Above all, pay attention to extensions that request permissions to access all websites or modify page data. Just because it’s in the store doesn’t mean it’s safe.. Socket recommends Regularly review installed extensions, reject those that ask for excessive permissions, and be wary of tools that promise to “boost” popular services. The presence of an extension in the Chrome Web Store does not guarantee security, as well as in the rest of the extension and application stores. Cover image | AI-generated with Gemini In Xataka | It’s a matter of time before WhatsApp ends up filling your phone’s memory, unless you do these three things

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