lost

Volkswagen lost 6.24 million with each one it sold

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On the walk of fame of luxury supercars, there is a star reserved for a car that, despite the fact that its wealthy buyers had to put 1.7 million dollars on the table to get it from the dealership, every time a unit was sold, its manufacturer lost 6.24 million dollars: the Bugatti Veyron. Bugatti Veyron: an icon of luxury and speed The Bugatti Veyron born in 2005 of one ambitious idea: create the fastest, most powerful and luxurious car in the world. And boy did they succeed. Ferdinand Piëch, the visionary architect of the current Volkswagen group and grandson of Ferdinand Porsche himself. The passion for speed and luxury was in his DNA. This supercar had one of the engines that has given Bugatti the most joy but, unfortunately, in 2024 it became part of the engine history since the brand stopped manufacturing it. It is about its brutal W16 8.0 liters and four turbos, with which it was capable of accelerating like a rocket and breaking top speed records above 406 km/h. This figure became almost a requirement for the desire for “revenge” of the brand for a speed record at Le Mans. The name of the Veyron is also closely linked to the Le Mans race, as it pays tribute to the Bugatti driver and engineer. Pierre Veyronwhich in 1939 won the 24 hours of Le Mans with one of the brand’s cars. The brand took six years in development of the Veyron for the challenge of implementing an engine capable of developing 1,001 HP of power and 1,400 Nm of torque. To keep the temperature of such a beast at bay, engineers had to integrate 10 radiators. The exclusivity of the Bugatti Veyron was not only noticeable when paying the 1.7 million dollars that it cost each unit. Each set of tires, especially designed for the Veyron by Michelin, cost a whopping $38,000 and had to be replaced every 4,000 km. On the track and at maximum speed, the life of the tires was limited to about 15 minutes before disintegrating. Something that they would rarely do, since the 106 liters of their tank were enough for 12 minutes. Without a doubt, a car with maintenance out of reach of many pockets. The Veyron wasn’t just about speed. It was also extreme luxury. Every detail, from materials to workmanship, was of the highest quality. Owning a Veyron was like owning a artwork on wheelsa demonstration that you could afford the best of the best. aspire to one of the special editions The Veyron was already another level, and meant paying more than 2.7 million for some of them. A ruinous business for Volkswagen But here’s the surprising part: despite its million-dollar selling price, Volkswagen lost money on every Veyron it sold. And not a little, precisely. As and how they counted in Technology.orgthe Wall Street financial research firm Bernstein Research, published a report in which they claimed that the Volkswagen group lost about $6.24 million for each Bugatti Veyron that was sold. However, the authors of that report later admitted that this figure should be taken with caution because it was based on rough estimates. Paradoxically, the explanation for this financial fiasco is given by its engineering and design success. Volkswagen spared no expense to create the perfect car and for this They invested 1,620 million of dollars in its development. Latest prototype of the Bugatti Veyron The negative part is that Bugatti only sold 450 units of its Veyron in the 10 years it was on sale, so the investment in R&D was greater than what the brand recovered by selling the cars, which turned out to be a financial fiasco. However, although in absolute terms, the Veyron’s development effort was greater than the income from its sale, the technology that was developed for that engineering gem later served as the basis for the entire a lineage of supercars. His legacy has served to break all speed records one by one until reaching the 490.48 km/h reached by the Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+ in 2019, as how I collected Car and Driver. Volkswagen was willing to take those losses because it wanted to demonstrate its ability to create the best supercar in the world. Although the Veyron was not a financial success in itself, it managed to position Bugatti as a reference brand on the map of luxury supercars. A “failure” that, in the end, turned out to be a great triumph, although very expensive. A version of this article was published in March 2025. In Xataka | For years no one knew who had bought the most expensive Bugatti in the world: until it became part of an inheritance In Xataka | Mate Rimac takes the first Bugatti Tourbillon to the road: he has fitted it with winter tires to use it as a snow plow Image | Unsplash (Vlad Grebenyev)

Those who played in the street until nightfall gained a skill that we have lost today

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In 1971, a pioneering study from the psychologist Roger Hart He asked dozens of children to draw a map of places where they could move alone. What he discovered It was surprising: Some traveled several kilometers without adult supervision and knew their neighborhood like the back of their hand. Decades later, Hart repeated the exercise and found that this “territory of freedom” had been drastically reduced, a trend that has since been observed in numerous countries. A value that many of us considered lost. For years, playing in the street until nightfall was remembered above all as an image loaded with nostalgia. However, a number growing research is coming to a conclusion much more interesting: that everyday freedom was also an unparalleled psychological training. Yes, resolving conflicts without adults, exploring the neighborhood, taking small risks or even inventing games on the fly thanks to “boredom” helped develop skills like autonomy, trust, emotional regulation and the ability to face uncertainty, skills that many experts today consider less and less frequent among the children. It’s not the parks, it’s the size of the world. Researchers use a very graphic concept to measure this transformation: the home rangethe territory that a child can walk without supervision. I remembered the Washington Post that just a few generations ago the baby could cover several kilometers. Today, in many cases, it barely reaches the door of the house. In fact, studies carried out in different countries show that less and less minors can go to school alone, cross a main street or visit a friend in the neighborhood without permission or constant supervision of an adult, a reduced independence that reflects the extent to which childhood has changed. Playing was not a waste of time. When a group of children were discussing the rules of a game, deciding who started, or finding a solution to recover a lost ball, they were doing much more than entertainment. The researchers they count that, without realizing it, negotiation, cooperation, creativity, frustration tolerance and decision making were practiced. Precisely for that reason, a study A recent study by Aarhus University concluded that children themselves consider it essential that the game belongs to them and not to adults, to the point that one of its authors summed up the idea with a phrase as provocative as it is revealing: “Sometimes an adult should shut up and go away.” Small risks also educate. Falling off a bicycle, climbing a tree or returning home with scraped knees are part of common memories for several generations. Nowadays, these episodes are usually interpreted as situations that should be avoided, but many psychologists hold that these controlled risks teach something difficult to acquire in any other way: evaluate dangers, overcome fear and verify that problems usually have a solution. In fact, various scientific works they point Even this gradual exposure to uncertainty can strengthen self-confidence and reduce the risk of anxiety in the long term. The data that proves it right. Nostalgia may idealize the past, but scientific evidence is beginning to support some of that perception. a study of the University of Exeter with more than 4,000 children concluded that those who played outdoors more frequently between the ages of two and four were more likely to maintain a good mental health profile up to eight years. Not only that. Other research with 2,500 minors found that outside play was associated with better social and emotional skills, reinforcing the idea that these benefits go far beyond physical exercise. It’s not the screens, but what they have replaced. In what they insist experts is that the decline in outdoor play cannot be explained by technology alone. Traffic, the disappearance of safe spaces, the reduction of recreation time, parental fear and a culture that tends to supervise any children’s activity also play a role. The result is a childhood much more organizedwith more guided activities and fewer opportunities to experiment, make mistakes and learn on your own. The great paradox. Of course, no researcher proposes returning to a time with fewer security measures or letting children do anything. The debate revolves around another question: strike a balance between protecting and allowing them to develop their own autonomy. After decades trying to eliminate any risk from childhood, psychology is beginning to remember an idea that many generations learned by playing in the street until nightfall: confidence does not usually appear when everything is under control, but when someone discovers that they are capable to get ahead on your own. Image | Joe Shlabotnik, Brittany Grater In Xataka | David Sands, expert in animal psychology: “If your cat licks you, he is signaling to you that you are his property.” In Xataka | If you’re overwhelmed, go for a walk: Science confirms that movement literally ignites your creativity

Spain has lost 17 factories in two decades

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Not too long ago, Spain had a powerful household appliance industry: Balay, Corberó, Fagor… Between the 1950s and 1970s, manufacturers proliferated that manufactured refrigerators, washing machines and ovens “made in Spain” that constituted the middle class’s access to the comfort of the modern era. That era passed away: in the last two decades 17 plants have disappeared (they have closed or relocated) and barely a dozen remain in the entire state, according to APPLIA datathe Spanish Association of Appliance Manufacturers and Importers. Their turnover is 4.5 billion euros per year and they employ 8,000 people, modest figures for a state the size of Spain. They are, literally, low and hanging by a thread. what’s happening. In a word: relocation. Manufacturing outside the old continent is more profitable than doing so within, where the costs associated with production, regulatory and environmental costs are higher. More specifically, there is a star location: Asia. La Vanguardia collects the statements of Augusto Río, spokesperson for APPLIA and sales director of the German company BSH in Spain: “There are certain regulations in Europe aimed theoretically at improving the European industrial environment, but their application makes it more complicated to manufacture within the EU.” An example: the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) taxes the steel necessary for these appliances, but does not apply to imported appliances that arrive already finished. In other words, if you import a ton of steel from Asia, they charge you the tax. But if you use that same ton of steel in Asia to make an entire washing machine there and bring it to Europe, the washing machine enters without paying that green tax. Why is it important. The first consequence is direct and obvious: losing jobs. The not so obvious one is to become strategically dependent on third parties for essential domestic goods. Keeping these companies alive and operational supports local economies under a stable and quality employment model. At least, more than the precarious service sector that usually replaces it. From a technological point of view, the R&D&i ecosystem linked to the industrial fabric is broken: without factories, technical knowledge goes outside and feedback on innovation is lost. Paradoxically, the loss of these industries does not respond to a crisis in consumer demand: according to Renub Researchthe European home appliance market will go from 112.33 billion dollars in 2024 to 147.98 billion in 2033, an annual growth rate of more than 3%. But in this forecast report prepared by Mordor Intelligence We see that the quintet that leads the appliance market is the German BSH, the Swedish Electrolux, the British Dyson, the North American Whirpoool and the Chinese Haier. Precisely another Chinese brand, Midea, was the one that acquired the Teka Group between 2024 and 2025. Context. Historically, the manufacture of household appliances in Spain was a reflection of economic developmentalism and the adaptation of the “American Way of Life” to mass consumption in the mid-20th century. The families established a relationship that went beyond the purchase: they acquired the devices, but they also manufactured them, generating a strong bond and worker identity. I don’t remember one of my student apartments in Zaragoza where there wasn’t something by Balay. The globalization of the late 20th century and early 21st century put an end to it: multinationals moved their factories to countries with lower labor and environmental costs. Added to this context of relocation are specific legal asymmetries: Spain requires three years of guarantee of manufacturing compared to the two required by general EU regulations. Likewise, it is mandatory store spare parts for a decadewhich generates inventory costs that in practice the import avoids. Europe’s (only) great asset. To survive the fierce competition in the Asian market, the strategy of the European industry that is still resisting is to abandon the price war and differentiate itself in quality, as the German Mittelstand serves as an example. That is the plan of the CNA group, owner of the Cata brand and with a factory in Torelló. Santiago Torrent, its executive president, details: “The challenge is not to grow, but to do so with more added value” and that they must focus on quality, innovation, durability and better performance. This also includes after-sales and repairs, two areas in which the European Right to Repair Directive It requires them to have increasing responsibility for the product life cycle. Yes, but. The problem with this value-added strategy requires time, investment and a market that is willing to pay more for a European product, something that does not have to happen. And even less so in an inflationary scenario like the current one. On the other hand, China has already publicly shown its discontent with the protectionist European tariff measures, responding that he will take “the necessary actions.” And Europe’s dependence on China goes far beyond washing machines: it encompasses semiconductors, batteries and rare earths, structurally limiting how far Brussels can squeeze without harming itself. In Xataka | Europe’s passenger car industry, in a revealing map that makes it clear who is the real “engine” of the EU In Xataka | Europe is divided in two: the devastating map of deindustrialization Cover | Homa Appliances and Mati Flo

Today on Prime Video, a disaster movie that lost 45 million in theaters but is sweeping streaming

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In January 2026, ‘Greenland 2‘ premiered at number six at the US box office and closed its run in theaters with 44.8 million dollars collected against a budget of 90. The numbers are incontestable: a tremendous failure. Five months later, the sequel starring Gerard Butler tops the most watched lists on HBO Max in the United States, and now lands in Spain in Prime Video. The story of this saga begins with a pandemic and a comet. The first ‘Greenland’ never reached American theaters: COVID-19 forced it to be transferred directly to video on demand in December of that year. In international cinemas it did have a theatrical release, and it worked very well, since the reviews were good despite it being a genre not very popular with specialists. But it was the perfect time for a film of this type. The sequel tried to ride that same wave, but it didn’t turn out so well, although it ended up finding its audience. The family protagonist of the first installment has been in an underground bunker in Greenland for five years after the impact of a comet, but a series of earthquakes destroys the shelter and forces them to evacuate. They will head towards the south of France, where a crater has generated a habitable microclimate, free of electromagnetic storms and radiation. A true epic in which they will have to test their courage, their resistance and their trust in the family unit. The trajectory of ‘Greenland 2’ has parallels with that of ‘Tomorrow’s War’, the science fiction thriller with Chris Pratt that Paramount gave to Prime Video during the pandemic. It passed without pain or glory in theaters, with barely 19 million dollars collected against a budget of 200 million, but it became one of the most viewed films of the year. streaming at that time and one of the first massive successes of the Amazon platform. New dynamics of exploitation, new unexpected successes, and yes, a common point: the destruction of the planet, better to see it comfortably at home. In Xataka | Premiere: Harlan Coben is the real King Midas of Netflix, and he has a new series to confirm it

Scientists have put kombucha to the test against stress. and has lost

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For many people, kombucha is a super drink. They consider it the ideal option for replace soft drinksbecause it is better than water and does not cause health problems, but it does bring many benefits. Some experts have warned that we must be careful, since many commercial kombuchas have a large amount of added sugar, so the benefits can be overshadowed by the risks. However, it’s not just about the risks related to sugar. According to a team of Australian scientistswe could be relating kombucha to more benefits than it really has. Having the bioactive compounds is not enough. These scientists carried out two studies in the same group of healthy adults. On the one hand, they analyzed blood and urine samples in search of metabolites associated with the positive effects of kombucha. On the other hand, they analyzed how the consumption of this drink affects a controlled stress test in the laboratory. Although most of the benefits conferred on kombucha are digestive, there has been a lot of talk lately about how it can help reduce stress through the gut-brain axis. That is why this second test was carried out. In the first, as expected, they found very interesting metabolites. This indicates that kombucha contains bioactive ingredients, which have effects on metabolism. However, in the second test they did not find the benefits they expected. Not all kombuchas are the same. Kombucha is a drink obtained by fermenting tea with sugar, thanks to the bacteria and fungi present in a culture called scoby. As a result, some beneficial tea polyphenols are mixed with organic compounds and metabolites resulting from fermentation. Beyond that, it is important to clarify that not all kombuchas are the same. The final result depends on factors such as the storage method, the tea used, the fermentation process or added sugars. There is also a big difference if technologies such as filtering or pasteurization are used. That’s why, in an article for The Conversationthe authors of the Australian study point out that one cannot compare some studies with others without taking into account that possibly very different kombuchas were used. Homemade Kombucha The studies. To avoid the problem of different kombuchas, all participants in the Australian study drank the same kombucha. It was a drink based on organic black and green tea fermented for 4 weeks. Half of the participants drank 330 ml of this drink, once a day for 8 weeks. The other half did the same, but with a placebo with a similar flavor. Before, during and after the process, blood, saliva and urine samples were taken and they were subjected to a stress test that consisted of alternately putting their hand in cold water and doing mathematical calculations under a stopwatch. Basically, it is a way of mixing physical and mental stress. The results. Blood and urine samples showed that those who drank kombucha had higher levels of beneficial metabolites. The compounds in this fermented drink had acted on their metabolism in an apparently advantageous way. The problem is that, as they concluded with the second experiment, not everything that has bioactive ingredients generates visible benefits. There is nothing more to see than the Saliva levels of cortisolthe famous stress hormone, did not improve with kombucha consumption. They increased with the stress test, but did not decrease with the kombucha, but rather with the passage of time. There were also no beneficial effects on other stress markers such as sweating, heart rate or self-observed stress. Yes, there was habituation. As time passed and the stress test was repeated, cortisol levels and the rest of the markers improved. This, according to the authors of the study, is due to a habituation phenomenon, but most likely not to the kombucha, since there were no differences with the placebo. Studies will have to be improved. These Australian scientists consider that, in the future, it would be interesting to carry out studies with more participants, for a longer time. If possible, also with people with high basal stress. It would be the best way to thoroughly study whether there are real effects of kombucha on stress. At the moment, with what they have observed, it seems that we have overestimated this drink. In the end, if you need a raise in your salary or for your landlord to lower your rent, it seems that kombucha is not going to solve anything for you. Image | Magnificent In Xataka | Neuroscientists believe they have found the trick to solving the most complicated problems: taking a nap

has lost almost 20% of travelers in four months

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The INE data confirms the worst start to the year for Spanish high speed since the pandemic. Between January and April, the number of travelers on AVE, Avlo, Iryo and Ouigo It decreased by 19.6% compared to the same period in 2025going from 13.75 to 11.06 million passengers. The collapse comes after the Adamuz accident on January 18 and the numerous outages and breakdowns that the railway network is suffering these months. Adamuz has been a turning point. The train accident that occurred on January 18 in the Cordoba town of Adamuz, which claimed the lives of 46 people, caused the immediate cutting of the corridor between Madrid and Andalusia for several weeks. Furthermore, the tragedy led Adif to impose multiple temporary speed limitations (LTV) at different points of the network, after the train drivers denounced the poor state of the infrastructure. The result was longer travel times, poorly functioning services and sub-par punctuality. Month by month. February was the worst month. And the number of high-speed travelers plummeted by 32% compared to February 2025, according to INE data. In March the drop was 18% and in April, 15%, despite the arrival of Easter (where there is normally a great demand). The accumulated figure for the first four months of 2026 is even lower than that of the same period in 2024, when 11.63 million travelers were registered. A second runner out of commission. After the closure of the corridor affected by Adamuz, another blow was added: the Madrid-Málaga corridor was disabled for four months due to the detachment of a slope at the height of Álora (Málaga), caused by the intense rains that fell in Andalusia at the beginning of the year. Service was not restored until April 30. Punctuality. Beyond the cuts, high speed in Spain too has a punctuality problem. And according to him AVE and Renfe long distance punctuality reportonly 46.9% of trains arrived less than five minutes late during this period. In the Madrid-Barcelona corridor, the operators had to remove the last train of the day to avoid it coinciding with the maintenance slots, a direct consequence of the LTV. Just like account La Razón, Adif also extended travel times by 25 minutes in that corridor to facilitate conservation tasks. Other transport. The fall in high speed has not ended up being transferred to public transport as a whole. And it is that according to INE datain April, intercity bus grew by 4.7% and air transport by 3.2%, while urban transport (metro and city bus) rose by 8.4%, with the metro growing by almost 10%. Maritime, on the other hand, fell 11.2%. The sign of recovery. Despite the bad start to the year, there are signs that demand is picking up. The Trainline comparator points out that ticket prices are rising, with Madrid-Barcelona routes 9% more expensive compared to the summer of 2025, as a sign that demand is reactivated. Its general director in Europe, Pedro García, counted to El Mundo that predicts a “super promising” summer for the train, also supported by aid from the program Young Summer of the Ministry of Transportation and in the effect of railway liberalization since 2020, which has reduced the cost of routes such as Madrid-Málaga or Madrid-Valladolid by more than 50% compared to 2019. The underlying problem. What the Adamuz accident has highlighted is the fragility of a network that, in words from Trainline’s own Pedro García, needs investment to be able to compete with other European countries. The constant growth in passengers that the Spanish high speed had been registering (42% more since liberalization, according to Trainline) came to a halt in January, and recovering that trend will depend above all on the speed in the repair of the infrastructure as well as the confidence that travelers regain in the system. Cover image | Renfe In Xataka | The punctuality of trains in Germany is a myth: 100,000 million euros are going to be spent to solve it

OpenAI lost $38.5 billion in 2025, almost eight times more than in 2024. It will still go public

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The well-known analyst Ed Zitron has leaked the audited financial statement of OpenAI for 2024 and 2025. The data is overwhelming and shows how the company, which lost $5 billion in 2024, lost almost eight times more in 2025: $38.5 billion. These colossal amounts do not seem to be an obstacle to the company’s new ambition: going public. It looks like a big hole… When analyzing the 2025 numbers, it is clear that OpenAI’s operating business is not the real cause of this hole in its accounts. Much of the net loss is due to the transition that the company made from an entity non-profit (non-profit) to a traditional business corporation (for-profit). By doing soUS tax regulations caused a loss of $41.55 billion due to changes in the value of convertible interests and stock options (warrants) that had been agreed with partners and investors. …but maybe it’s not. The fascinating thing about this situation is that although the data is worrying, it also contains a probable contradiction. OpenAI records this colossal loss of $41.55 billion not because business is bad, but precisely because it is worth much more than before. How do they explain in Financial Timesupon becoming a for-profithad to update all those “accounting promises” at a fair and reasonable value, which generated that notable negative impact on the balance sheet. The “real” loss. The leaked balance sheet explains that if this “technical” loss from revaluation and some other tax credits is discounted, the pure operating loss from its traditional commercial activity is around a much more acceptable figure and less than $8 billion. It is still a huge amount (in 2024, we repeat they lost 5.08 billion), but it changes the perspective. Investors still believe in OpenAI. These data may seem terrifying and should make investors flee. They are doing just the opposite because they firmly believe in the future of the company. A few months ago the company raised an absolutely astronomical investment round of 122 billion dollars to reach a valuation of $852 billion. At the moment the one that wins is Microsoft. The leak also shows who is currently the big financial winner of this AI fever: Microsoft. In 2025, OpenAI paid the Redmond giant a total of $17.2 billion to be able to use the computing capacity of its cloud infrastructure, Azure. The amount Microsoft paid OpenAI for licenses or services was ridiculous by comparison: $303 million. Source: Sherwood News. Revenue is growing. For investors, the metric that is sustaining optimism is the speed at which OpenAI has managed to grow its revenue. The company closed 2025 with consolidated revenues of 13.07 billion dollars, almost tripling the 3.7 billion in 2024. But what is really notable is the evolution of its annualized income (Annual Run Rate, ARR), which allows projecting what is expected to be earned at the end of the year. OpenAI started at a pace of $1 billion per quarter, and then accelerate and end up closing with a turnover of more than 2,000 million per month (per month!). The condemnation of everything free. OpenAI’s commercial strategy, however, may have been its great Achilles heel. The company has paid a high price for wanting to be the free AI of the end user. Keeping hundreds of millions of people querying for free on ChatGPT certainly has a huge impact on operating costs. That contrasts with Anthropic’s approach, which from the beginning focused on business users who pay in much greater proportion. This tactic has allowed the rival company to achieve something unusual: make money with AI. With small print, but they win it. And the IPO, what? The truth is that OpenAI has already sent the confidential documentation that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) needs to start the IPO process. That doesn’t necessarily mean such an IPO is near, but there’s a problem: Anthropic has taken the exact same step. If the company led by Dario Amodei comes forward in that appearance on Wall Street, it will be another reputational battle won just at the moment when OpenAI is generating the most doubts. In Xataka | Anthropic is at the most important moment in its history and has a warning: we must lift the AI ​​accelerator

Sudan hid hundreds of unknown tombs of a lost civilization. They have appeared thanks to satellites

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If there is a known civilization within the African continent, it is Ancient Egypt and figures like Ramses or Cleopatra. However, relatively nearby there was another kingdom studied at length by archaeology: Nubia (although less famous to the general public). And between the two, a desert to pass by, literally and figuratively. Because there is the Atbai desert, a region between the Nile and the Red Sea where an archeology team just discovered hundreds of tombs from more than 5,000 years ago arranged in a monumental way, as you can see on these lines. The discovery. An international archeology team has identified 280 stone funerary monuments scattered throughout the desert, of which only 20 were known to exist. That is, 260 are “new.” The funeral complex has been called Atbai Enclosure Burials and its construction probably dates back to between 4500 and 2500 BC. These structures consist of large circular or ovoid enclosures delimited by large walls made of local stone, whose diameters vary from five meters in the most modest examples to reaching 82 meters. Inside they have found remains of both humans and cattle, sheep and goats. The internal layout of some tombs points to a certain social inequality: in several landmarks there is a central burial that dominates the structure, with other humans and animals arranged around it. In fact, the tomb with the most grave goods contained the remains of about 18 cows. Why is it important. Because these tombs suggest that the region was not a mere passageway between civilizations, but the home where pastoral people lived. The Atbai Desert was not a no man’s land between Egypt and the Red Sea, but had its own identity. As suggests the paperthe monuments are the cultural expression of a society with social strata in which wealth was evidenced with rituals, these stone milestones and livestock, like other neighboring regions. Context. According to previous excavations and the radiocarbon used on them, these monuments were probably built during the decline of the African Humid Period, when that area located in northeastern Africa went from more humid conditions to aridity because at that time the Atbai desert was not such: it contained vegetation and water sources, even if they were seasonal. As the climate became harsher, herding cows also became a more arduous task, so they adapted their herds: sheep, goats and finally camels. How they discovered it. In a word: satellites. The team made up of archaeologists from Macquarie University, France’s HiSoMA research unit and the Polish Academy of Sciences used satellite remote sensing over the eastern Sudan desert to map 1,000 kilometers of desert in search of more clues to its history. Why would an archaeologist want to avoid digging? Basically because in Sudan there is an armed conflict which means that field work can be directly lethal. But in addition to locating the tombs, the satellite images also revealed dense networks of ancestral trails engraved in the landscape by the repeated passage of livestock between grazing areas and water sources, a direct and visible trace of livestock activity linked to the funerary sites. That is, they not only found where they buried their dead, but also the paths they traveled in life. Yes, but. The first “but” is obvious: the majority of this funerary display has only been seen on satellite and has not been excavated, which leaves basic information such as precise dating in the air. On the other hand, this discovery located in the Atbai Desert could be just the tip of the iceberg: others may have been lost due to erosion, floods or even modern mining, which is very active in the area. The authors themselves acknowledge that they do not know with certainty whether these structures are exclusive to the Atbai or if they existed in neighboring regions and simply have not survived. The million-dollar question is: if in a desert as little studied as this one, 260 monuments have just appeared at once, how much history of the pastoralist Sahara will still be hidden under the sand waiting to be discovered? In Xataka | We just discovered that a semi-legendary Nile king really existed thanks to a 17th century document found in trash In Xataka | A Spaniard claims to have solved how the Great Pyramid of Giza was built: the answer was right under our noses Cover | Atbai Enclosure Burials: Monumentalism, Pastoralism and Environmental Change in the Mid-Holocene East Nubian Deserts edited with Gemini

Claude has helped a man recover $400,000 worth of bitcoin he lost 11 years ago. Logged in and forgot password

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An X user named Cprkrn recently told of his odyssey with a (very) happy ending in X. In 2015 he bought five bitcoins (BTC) when the price was around $250. In a fit of university euphoria he decided that his password should be an anti-establishment manifesto and changed it to the phrase ““lol420fuckthePOLICE!*:)”. The problem is that he did it completely stoned, and when he got up the next morning he realized that his money had disappeared. He then began an odyssey to try to remember that password. One with a happy ending. Eleven years of despair. For eleven years, those five bitcoins remained lost while their value continued to increase. Today its value is around $400,000, and our protagonist has not stopped seeing how this fortune had slipped through his fingers. To try to recover the password he tried everything, especially brute force attacks to try to guess the password with thousands of combinations. He looked through old folders that he had saved without success, and then something occurred to him: turn to Claude. Claude didn’t hack your wallet, he was just a spectacular detective. What Cprkrn ended up doing was ask Claude to analyze 1 GB of iCloud backups, old Apple notes, emails, and forgotten system files saved on a computer I had used in college. The challenge was not to “crack” the password, but to find the trace of how it could have been created. Order within chaos. What Claude did was organize all that data that was scattered to turn it into a perfect structured file that could be analyzed. After evaluating all the information, the AI ​​model realized that it was trying to open the wrong file. He located a file called wallet.dat from before the password change that caused the nightmare, and crossed it with a mnemonic phrase that the user had written down in an old notebook that he had discarded. That allowed that password to be reconstructed, and in less than an hour Cprkrn had recovered his fortune and regained access to your BTC wallet. Money safe. The first thing he did after discovering that password was move those bitcoins to another secure wallet to avoid problems: every conversation we have with Claude or other chatbots is recorded on the servers of those companies in plain text, so Cprkrn covered his back to prevent that information from being used to avoid scares. Blessed Darius. The joy of having recovered those five bitcoins led this user to publish a message on Twitter telling the whole adventure. In said message promised who would name his future son “Darío” in honor of Anthropic CEO, Darío Amodei. Needles in the haystack. History shows that great language models are extraordinary tools for finding needles in haystacks. Traditional tools helped, but AI’s ability to analyze information and find patterns is once again amazing. This anecdote is linked, for example, to recent rise of models like Claude Mythos Preview to find security vulnerabilities that seemed impossible to find. Again, everything is based on the ability of these models to “understand” the data provided to them, organize them and extract what is needed from them. Being a digital Diogenes has a reward. For years the recommended practice for those changing or upgrading equipment was “delete/format the old, start from scratch with the new.” This story changes the focus, because in the age of AI, messy data from 15 or 20 years ago is not digital garbage: it can be a treasure that helps us review our past and reveal data that we no longer remember. The story, however, contrasts with that of James Howells, who for years struggled to try to recover the hard drive with thousands of bitcoins that ended up in a landfill. He ended up giving up after the court’s refusal to give him permission to search for that hard drive. Image | Kanchanara In Xataka | The NYT claims to have found Satoshi Nakamoto and the evidence is as conclusive as ever: little or nothing

The United Kingdom has just activated an unprecedented air mission over a lost island in the Atlantic. There is a hantavirus suspect

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In 1961, a nurse had to be urgently evacuated from Tristan da Cunha after a volcanic eruption forced completely vacate to the entire population of the remote island. For weeks, that small territory lost in the middle of the Atlantic remembered something that remains true today: when an emergency occurs there, arriving on time can become an extremely complicated operation even for a country like the United Kingdom. The forgotten island of the Atlantic. While dozens of passengers from the MV Hondius cruise They began to disembark in Tenerife between health checks and repatriation flights for a hantavirus outbreakmuch further south and far from the cameras, the United Kingdom has started an operation completely different on an island that almost no one would know how to locate on a map. Tristan da Cunha, considered the most remote inhabited island on the planet, has suddenly become the scene of a unprecedented air mission for British forces after a british citizen showed symptoms compatible with hantavirus after leaving MV Hondius. With just 221 inhabitants, no airport and almost a week by boat from the nearest major port in South Africa, the island was caught in an extremely delicate situation when oxygen reserves began to run out and the small local medical system found itself unable to face the risk of contagion and isolation alone. An unprecedented military mission. The British response was as extraordinary as the place where he was to be executed. The Royal Air Force mobilized an Airbus A400M Atlas from RAF Brize Norton accompanied by a Voyager tanker plane to carry paratroopers, doctors and tons of medical supplies to the middle of the Atlantic. There was no possible landing strip, so the United Kingdom took a unprecedented decision: drop military doctors by parachute over the island. Six members of the 16 Air Assault Brigade They jumped alongside a doctor and an intensive care nurse in an extremely complex operation marked by strong winds and a minimal margin for error. The jump was made practically over the ocean before to correct the trajectory towards the island, with the real risk of ending up falling directly into the Atlantic if something went wrong. Never before have British forces deployed medical personnel by parachute drop on a humanitarian mission of this type. Medical supplies were dropped on the remote island, which has no landing strip and has a population of just 221. The cruise ship that took the problem to the middle of the ocean. It all began weeks before aboard the MV Hondius, the expedition cruise ship that was sailing through the South Atlantic when it appeared a hantavirus outbreak which would end up leaving several dead and multiple confirmed cases. The case has been of particular concern because the identified variant belonged to the Andean strain, one of the few capable of be transmitted between people. Apparently, the British citizen who ended up isolated in Tristan da Cunha had abandoned ship mid April and began to develop symptoms days later on an island that, as we said, does not have advanced hospital capacity and is normally cared for by just two medical professionals. While some passengers were treated in the Netherlands or South Africa and others were isolated in the United Kingdom After returning from Tenerife, the British health authorities quickly understood that the real problem was no longer on the cruise ship, but in that small isolated community in the middle of the ocean where any worsening could turn into a emergency impossible to manage with conventional means. Geography as a threat. Plus: the operation revealed the extent to which geography continues to condition even to countries with enormous military capabilities. Tristan da Cunha has no airport, no regular air routes and its sea connections are extremely slow and limited. Simply evacuating paratroopers and medics after the mission will require a complex maritime operation carefully planned due to health risk. I was counting a few hours ago BBC that the jump was not made over a large open space either, but rather over a small island buffeted by winds that usually exceed 40 kilometers per hour. The soldiers, in fact, ended up landing at the local golf course while the island’s inhabitants improvised receiving medical equipment and unloading more than three tons of supplies for the hospital. All this to contain a possible contagion in a territory where any logistical failure can take days to correct. The unknown Atlantic. If you will, history also reveals an uncomfortable reality about major modern health and geopolitical crises: almost all the attention tends to be focused on in visible places and connected while huge peripheral spaces remain out of focus until an emergency breaks out. Thus, while the media focus has followed the arrival of the cruise ship to the Canary Islands minute by minute, the hantavirus has ended up activating parachute dropsmilitary doctors and extreme logistical operations on Tristan da Cunha, a place so remote that even a relatively small health emergency forced resources to be mobilized normally associated with war scenarios or major catastrophes. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | It is not so contagious, but it is very lethal: in Argentina the hantavirus went from 17% to 33% in the blink of an eye In Xataka | We believed that hantavirus did not jump between humans. Until someone went to a birthday party in Argentina

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