modern

We tend to think that the war of extermination was invented by the modern State. A mass grave from 2,800 years ago has just destroyed the myth

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There is an almost romantic tendency to idealize the remote past. Perhaps, inspired by the myth of the “noble savage” they often let’s imagine prehistory and the first societies as peaceful environments where extreme violence and systematic was an aberration or, in any case, an invention that came with the help of more modern times. But the reality is that if we had a time machine, this would be one of the few places where we would have to travel. A reality. Archeology has an uncomfortable habit of unearthing truths that do not fit our prejudices. The latest blow to this idyllic vision that some may have comes from the Balkans, specifically from a mass grave in Gomolava from 2,800 years ago that reveals a calculated, selective and brutal massacre against women and children. A mystery. In the 9th century BC, during the first Iron Age, the Carpathian and Balkan region was inhabited by societies that we today consider primitive. Specifically, they could be found semi-nomadic groups and sedentary communities who were beginning to clash for control of the territory. But here there were neither states nor regular armies. In this way, when archaeologists found a huge mass grave with the remains of 77 individuals at the Gomolava site, the first hypothesis was the most logical for the time: a catastrophic epidemic devastated everyone. However, a new study published in the magazine Naturehas completely rewritten the history of this site, combining forensic, genetic and isotopic analyses. Annihilation. Here the DNA was clear, since there was no trace of deadly pathogens. In this case, people died not from a disease, but from an outbreak of deliberate violence that has shocked the scientific community. Not only because of the violence, but because of the demographic profile, since 70.8% of the adults were women and 66% of the total were children and adolescents. Here the forensic analyzes revealed a terrifying pattern, since the vast majority had injuries at the time of death in the skull. Thus, they were forceful blows inflicted from above, suggesting that the attackers could have been on horseback or executing the victims while they were kneeling or subdued. Why children and women? The answer is pure strategic calculation, since the study of isotopes and DNA revealed that, with the exception of a mother and her two daughters, the victims were not related to each other and came from various regions with varied diets. But it was not a simple robbery gone wrong, but rather an interregional selective annihilation designed to wipe the reproductive future of rival groups off the map. And, in a context of profound social restructuring and territorial conflicts in the Carpathian Basin, eliminating offspring and those people who can produce even more offspring, such as women, was the most brutal and effective way to assert power in an area. Without a doubt, a great strategy to prevent anyone from claiming rights in that area. Ritual. To add another layer of complexity to this dark episode, the burial was not improvised. Contrary to what happens in many mass graves that are quickly made to throw the corpses, andIn this case they took their time. Investigators saw that the victims were buried next to bronze jewelry, ceramics and even sacrificed animals, so it was quite taken care of. Here the theory proposed is that it is a “macabre demonstration of power”: an act where the brutality of the massacre coexists with the socioeconomic value of the victims and the need to maintain the funeral customs of the time. Image | Sarah Nylund (Nature) In Xataka | When did human beings start “cooking”? The answer lies in some carp from 780,000 years ago.

Gemini and Siri were monopolizing modern cars. So Musk has brought Grok to European Teslas

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Tesla is starting to roll out Grok in Europe for free. The electricians of Elon Musk’s company have been betting on their own software from the beginning, leaving hardly any room for third parties. No trace of Android Auto, CarPlayor the best-known assistants, Grok arrives as that intelligent “co-pilot” aboard the Tesla. The problem is that… still very Musk. the arrival. Grok arrives as a free update on European Teslas. We can choose their voice and personality, like in the smartphone application. To start it, all you have to do is activate it from the application launcher itself or press the voice button on the steering wheel. If we have logged in to Grok, from that moment on, it will become the device’s default voice assistant. What can you do. Grok’s list of possibilities is extensive, from guiding us to a destination to locating a nearby supercharger or simply maintaining an informal dialogue with us and recommending options from our Tesla’s digital manual. In addition to this, it has quite curious functions. You can be our language teacher Has special modes for kids, like “Story Time” and trivia games It has a mode for adults (+18), controversial, “sexy”, “extravagant”. In which Teslas it will be available. Currently, this is the list of Tesla cars compatible with Grok. The requirement is that our car has an AMD processor, that the software is updated to version 2025.26 or later, and that we have a WiFi connection or the premium connectivity pack. To find out if your Tesla has an AMD processor, you must go to ‘Controls’ > ‘Software’ > ‘Additional vehicle information’. Careful. Grok, despite its potential as an AI modelis involved in recent controversies. The app has become a focus of misuse, an infinite well of content related to the naked women. Countries like France and India have already denounced itand the Government of Spain has asked the prosecutor’s office to investigate X for the possible dissemination of child pornography through the app. In this context, perhaps it is worth debating whether bringing Grok with an “adult mode” to Tesla vehicles is the most appropriate. In Xataka | Elon Musk thought that Tesla would live outside politics. Germany has shown him the hard way that he was wrong

In the middle of World War II, a woman illuminated modern cryptography. The FBI then hid it from us.

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He did not study mathematics, nor did he enlist in the army: Elizabeth FriedmanShe simply fell in love with Shakespeare and that love embarked her on an adventure that led her to uncover Nazi spy networks in World War II, lock up Al Capone’s lackeys, and lay the foundations of the modern NSA. This is the story of how, with the only help of a pencil and paper, a poet from the American Midwest became one of the most important cryptographers in the United States. It is also the story of how they hid their work and we forgot about it for decades. Although she was the youngest of new siblings and grew up in a Quaker family in rural Illinois, Elizebeth graduated in English literature for him Hillsdale College of Michigan. Almost immediately she began working as a teacher. That seemed like it would be his vocation until Shakespeare crossed his path again. The Newberrya Chicago research library, was looking for an assistant. It was nothing too striking except for the fact that, it was said, an original by the Stratford-upon-Avon playwright was kept in the library’s holdings. That was enough for Elizebeth. It was there, working at Newberry, where he met George Fabyana millionaire convinced that Shakespeare’s plays had been written by Francis Bacon. It is not a very strange belief, for centuries the confusing past of the English poet has generated rivers of ink about who William Shakespeare really was. What had not happened until then was that an eccentric billionaire decided to put his fortune at the service of the idea. In 1916, at the age of 23, Elizebeth began working at the Fabyan think tank, a private laboratory, Riverbankwhere things as varied as genetic engineering or they worked on the development of weapons. Now, he would also have a team dedicated to finding the clues that Bacon ‘had left’ in works like ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Romeo and Juliet’. That Riverbank was surely one of the first modern cryptography laboratories. There Elizebeth met her husband, William Friedman. Together, and unintentionally, they would shape modern American cryptography and play a very important role in the next 50 years of American defense. ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’ It all started because, in the middle of the First World War, the army decided to turn to Riverbank to help them with code breaking. It was such a great success that the Secretary of War signed them and took the couple to Washington, DC. Shortly after arriving, Elizebeth began working for the Treasury: the eighteenth amendment (the famous Prohibition) and alcohol trafficking networks were rampant throughout the United States. Elizebeth was terribly productive. It is estimated that, between 1926 and 1930, he deciphered an average of 20,000 smugglers’ messages a year, dismantling hundreds of ciphers in the process. And the Second World War. The role of American cryptographers “was not very important”, but among them the Friedmans shined especially. Elizebeth’s skills were already known and served to dismantle a complex network of Nazi spies in Latin America that tried to promote fascist revolutions and weaken the “backyard” of the United States. Despite this, resources were very scarce and recognition even less. Surely his most impressive work was the one that led to the arrest and imprisonment of Velvalee Dickinsonthe “doll woman”, a spy arrested in 1942 for passing all kinds of information to Japan (hidden in letters about patent leather dolls) during World War II. “His abilities were so unusual that he became indispensable,” he explained. Jason Fagone who has written a spectacular book on Friedman’The Woman who smashed codes‘. “She was called on repeatedly to solve problems that no one else could solve. A secret weapon.” However, and despite the publicity of these cases, the Friedman surname did not transcend. It was not an forgetfulness. Hoover, the famous and controversial director of the FBI, wiped the Friedmans off the map and awarded the merits of each of the cases to his Agency. Nothing surprising in a figure, that of Hoover, key in much of the American 20th century, capable of creating the largest research office in the world and, at the same time, using it as if it were his ‘private army’. Although Elizebeth’s work and that of her husband were the seed of what would later become the NSA, their figure was forgotten, relegated and, until very few years ago, remained unrescued in the drawer of history. In 1999 he entered the NSA ‘Hall of Fame’ and in 2002 a building was dedicated to him. It’s another one of those ‘hidden figures‘without which we could not understand today’s world. In Xataka | In 1925, procrastination was already a problem and someone found the definitive solution: the isolation helmet. In Xatka | Scotland remains almost a fiefdom in the 21st century: half of its land is owned by 421 owners

There is an unexpected victim of the rise in RAM memory prices: the very modern connected cars

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Which what’s happening with the RAM memories is making one thing clear: the best time to buy memory modules is yesterday. The price increase is so extraordinary which is already affecting other classic components of our PCs such as SSD units or graphics cards. However, the crisis that these components are generating goes further. Much further. Data centers devour memory. The AI ​​fever, we already know very well, has generated a voracious hunger not only for cutting-edge AI chips, but also for RAM and HBM memories that accompany these chips. As indicated in The Wall Street Journaldata centers (both conventional and those dedicated to AI) will consume more than 70% of the high-end memory chips that manufacturers produce in 2026. And if they could take more, they would take them. This is not (only) about PCs or mobiles. It is evident that the first affected by this problem are conventional desktop and laptop computers, as well as our mobile devices. Hundreds of millions of them are sold every year and they all have a certain amount of RAM that is now more expensive than ever. The shock wave is already causing other components such as SSD drives or graphics cards affected, but in reality memory chips are everywhere. And above all, in one. From TV to car. The frenetic rise in memory prices is certainly going to affect other segments that we had not thought about soon. Of course it will do so on other consumer electronic devices, and this certainly includes Smart TVs, which They have their own processor, memory and storage to offer us its functions. But the problem may be even more critical for cars, which for years were already computers with wheels and which are now even better and more powerful computers (and with more memory) with wheels. Memories of all kinds. Although car electronic systems have traditionally used RAM, the latest in most cases was not needed. But that was in the cars of a few years ago, because the arrival especially of the electric car and the fever for screens in our vehicles has made these needs different. Now our cars need various types of memory, but in some cases those modules are as good (or better) than the ones we have in our cell phones and computers. The ECUs. A modern car makes use of so-called ECUs (Electronic Control Units) for issues such as controlling the transmission, the airbag system or the engine itself. It is normal for them to have between 50 and 150 of these control units or microcontrollers, and almost all of them contain RAM for temporary data and a ROM for firmware and software. Infotainment systems. The most obvious component that surely comes to mind as that “car computer” is the infotainment system, which usually consists of a touch screen, navigation functions, support for CarPlay and Android Auto systems, and voice assistants. Although in many cars these systems use 1 GB or 2 GB of DRAM memory, there are more modern cars that They reach 4 GB and even 8 GB of LPDDR4 memory. And if we talk about some manufacturers like BYD or NIO, there are models in which They use 16 GB of LPDDR5 memory. The Ford SYNC 5 system, for example, is based on a Qualcomm SoC with 16 GB of RAM. Driving assistance requires memory. In addition to these components, there are others that also require the use of RAM. Advanced driving assistance systems (ADAS) allow you to activate functions such as adaptive cruise control, lane keep assist, automatic emergency braking or parking assistant. And to achieve this they use RAM with high bandwidth, which allows working with real-time images and processing of sensor signals. Samsung knows this well and in fact manufactures modules specifically oriented to this market. Tesla’s well-known autopilot hardware, Hardware 4 (currently used) makes use of 16 GB of RAMFor example. Micron already warned. In December 2023 Micron already indicated that “a car needs more memory than a (space) rocket.” The firm, an absolute protagonist in the field of RAM memory module manufacturing, indicated how in 2023 the average vehicle used 90 GB between RAM and NAND, but in 2026 that figure was estimated to be 278 GB and would reach 2 TB in high-end vehicles. That was good news for it and other manufacturers, and even then it pointed to how “generative AI is transforming automotive.” What they probably didn’t realize is that this revolution was going to need many data centers, and those data centers were going to need a lot of memory. And this is where we are. In Xataka | “Not a phone, it’s a car”: Volkswagen believes that screens in cars are going too far

It’s called Sirius-82 and it has turned rivers into modern minefields

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On a front where everything seems decided by trenches, artillery and drones In heaven, there’s another war going on moving in silenceclose to the water and away from the spotlights. The Dnieper River, turned into a natural border and lifeline, has been filled with small battles for islands and passes that can change the balance of an entire region. And in that fight, Russia has just introduced a novelty explosive. A river as a front. The war between Russia and Ukraine remains bogged down in a wear balancewith Ukrainian defenses slowing advances and much of the attention focused on Donetsk, but beneath that noise there is another battle less visible and very strategic: control of several islands in the Dnieper River. Ukraine dominates these islands and the western shore, while Russia controls the eastern shore and tries to seize them to facilitate assaults across the river and, in perspective, sustain operations that once again put places like Kherson at risk. On that river board, where each crossing is a potential suicide, technology appears again as the shortcut to gain margin without paying the human price. Sirius-82. The broadcast videos by the Russian Army show a new unmanned surface vehicle, Sirius-82which begins to operate in the Dnieper with a much more pragmatic than sophisticated approach. From what can be seen, it is compact, about two meters long, and is oriented towards short duration missionsprobably with electric and battery propulsion, which fits the river environment and quick round-trip tasks. It does not look like an advanced autonomous system, but rather an instrument of “useful warfare” built to work now, here and now, even if it is crude and limited. A YaRM Modular charging and FPV control. The design suggests modularity, with the ability to carry cargo on the deck and also within the hull, making it an adaptable platform to different missions without redesigning the vehicle from scratch. In one of the recordings you can clearly see how he has two YaRM anchored river minesweighing about 13 kilos each, placed on the deck and released by mechanical actuators that release them into the water. Control, furthermore, cannot be more “old school”: an operator directs it with a joystick like those of FPV drones and monitors the camera on a laptop, a simple recipe that reduces costs and speeds up deployment, but that in real combat may be enough. River mining: the trap. The first function shown is the placement of YaRM mines in shallow watera Soviet resource intended for rivers and canals, usually anchored just below the surface to threaten light vessels. Russia would use them to attack Ukrainian resupply boats moving towards the islands, which is precisely the weak point of any forward control on a river: maintaining supplies and rotations under fire. Ukraine, in turn, uses similar mines to stop or destroy Russian attempts at rapprochement, and the result is an environment in which the Dnieper ceases to be a natural barrier and becomes a dynamic minefield, where the risk is not on the horizon, but under water. Demining and sacrifices. The other side of Sirius-82 is that it can serve to clear mineswhich is just as important in a river war where each step requires opening a safe corridor. A video shows it as a sacrificial platform, advancing until it detonates a Ukrainian mine to clear a passage before a manned boat enters, a brutally logical concept if lives are put before material. Furthermore, it is mentioned a common Russian technique demining by explosive charges with delayed fuses launched at intervals to detonate nearby mines, and the Sirius-82 could do that job without exposing a crew in the middle of a river with no coverage. A type of solution that only requires repetition and the absence of remorse when losing the vehicle. Kamikaze attacks and assault support. Beyond mining, the system could be used like kamikaze drone against Ukrainian vessels, ramming them and detonating a charge on board to destroy both, taking advantage of their low profile and the discretion of electric propulsion. It is also suggested a more “logistical” use in support of assaults on the islands, carrying supplies or even evacuating wounded if it is adapted for larger loads, something that would fit with a positional combat where the islands function as small bridgeheads. All in all, the Sirius-82 does not seem like a superweapon, but rather a tool to win the daily battles on the front, where each box of ammunition and each water crossing decides more than a major offensive. The pattern of war. What the appearance of Sirius-82 reveals is a trend of which we have talked before: Russia and Ukraine are pushed by personnel shortages, casualties and a very long front to replace humans with machines in tasks where the risk is disproportionate. And the interesting thing is that this replacement does not necessarily come with advanced autonomy and latest generation sensors, but with “primitive” systems but perfectly functional, built quickly and with a clear objective. The underlying message is that modern warfare does not always reward the most sophisticated, but rather what can be mass produced and deployed, what is sacrificed without hesitation and what solves a specific problem this week. A river that is no longer geography. If you like, Sirius-82 is a symptom of how the Dnieper is transforming in a space of access denial on a tactical scale, where mines, drones and remote control They replace the classic patrols. It is small, cheap and expendable, but that is precisely why it is dangerous: it allows the river to be planted and cleaned with less human risk, and it maintains constant pressure on the islands that Ukraine controls. And the more these platforms become normalized, the more likely it is that river combat will evolve into a “micro-robot” war who decide the terrain meter by meter, until crossing the nation’s largest river is less a military maneuver and more a technological lottery. Image | Telegram In Xataka | Ukraine … Read more

has launched a modern autonomous minibus

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Something is changing in Mercamadridand it’s not just the pace of trucks that enter and leave from the first hour. The venue has taken another step towards the future with the entry into the scene of a minibus capable of moving without depending on the direct control of a driver. The image may surprise even those who know this place well, an enclave that operates day and night. The City Council has chosen this space to show how it wants to start testing technologies that aim to become everyday in the coming years. Where the experiment really begins. The new Smart Urban Space turns Mercamadrid into a place to measure, with real data, how certain technologies work in urban management. The City Council has activated a pilot here included in the European project Mobilities for EUwhich uses delimited enclosures to evaluate its impact in operational situations. In this case, mobility, efficiency and safety indicators are analyzed that will allow us to know if the solutions applied can be replicated and later scaled to other areas of the city. Who is behind the minibus. The official note from the City Council does not specify the manufacturer of the vehicle used in the pilot, but the images released by the project partners and the material provided by Somauto They point out that it is the e-CENTERa model from the Turkish company Otokar. It is an electric minibus designed to operate in urban environments and has a version with level 4 autonomous driving capabilities. The e-CENTRO is prepared to move autonomously thanks to a system that combines perception of the environment, 360-degree vision and continuous analysis of the road. This equipment allows the vehicle to plan its route and react to the elements it encounters in a limited and monitored space. In the shared material, a person can be seen in the front seat, but the official communication has not specified their function. Vehicle numbers. The e-CENTRO is a 6.6 meter electric minibus that incorporates 110 kWh NMC Li-ion batteries installed in the floor, an arrangement that frees up interior space and allows a capacity of up to 32 passengers. Its DANA-TM4 engine delivers 100 kW (peak 200 kW) and 1,200 Nm for urban routes. According to the manufacturersupports a full recharge in 1.5 hours and uses a regenerative braking system that recovers up to 25% of energy in urban circulation. The concept behind the experiment The City Council defines these spaces as areas where physical infrastructure is combined with sensors, actuators and telecommunications systems connected to the City Operating System. Its function is to monitor in real time what is happening in the environment and generate data that allows urban management to be adjusted more precisely. The project also includes a Smart City Interpretation Center, designed to show citizens how these technologies work. As we say, the pilot is part of Mobilities for EU, a consortium led by Madrid and Dresden, the German city that co-directs the project and acts as a strategic partner in its coordination. This group brings together 29 partners from nine countries and extends its tests to cities such as Espoo, Gdansk, Ioánnina, Sarajevo and Trencin. It involves transport operators, technology companies and universities that collaborate at different levels of the project. Among the members are Alsa, PreZero, MásOrange, Ferrovial, SAP, Volkswagen, T-Systems and the Polytechnic Universities of Madrid and Dresden, along with other entities linked to the digital transition and sustainable mobility. The roadmap and the money at stake. The City Council has framed this pilot within its Digital Transformation Strategy, a plan that reserves more than 60 million euros for different projects over the next five years. These include the contract for smart urban spaces, currently in the bidding phase, with a budget of 7.5 million and an execution period of 48 months. Images | ALSA | In Xataka | A fear begins to grow in some European countries: that China will deactivate its electric buses remotely

Gorillaz revolutionized the Internet 26 years ago with a flash website. Now they recreate it with modern technology … and the same aesthetics

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If you lived the Internet at the end of the nineties, you certainly remember Flash animations overflowing pageswith embedded videos, interactive parts that were sometimes like complex riddles … They were the first steps of the web exploring their potential as an advertising tool, and all groups wanted to have a digital presence. Gorillaz made one of the most sophisticated proposals, and now … his virtual house has returned. A walk through Kong Studios. In 1998, we could take a digital walk through the interior of the alleged studies where the Gorillaz virtual band lived and rehearsed. It was a website that worked under the missing and cried Flash, and was full of Easter eggs for fans, extra material that was not on the discs, miniguegos … a large amount of material that grew for ten years, when it ended up closing. The best non -existent band in the world. Gorillaz is a virtual British band founded that same 1998 by musician Damon Albarn (Blur) and the cartoonist Jamie Hewlett (Creator of Tank Girl). The group is made up of four fictitious animated members (2-D, Murdoc Niccals, Noodle and Russel Hobbs), whose history has been developing, in more or less real time (they have been aging, in fact) through an elaborate narrative universe. Gorillaz He was born as a criticism of the superficiality of the MTV -type media, and with their characters, Albarn and Hewlett wanted to subvert the codes of the pop stars. They debuted in 2001 with a homonym album, where they already had successes that merged rock, hip hop, electronics and pop. Since then, and Despite more or less prolonged parenthesisthey have not stopped recording and playing live, with sophisticated assemblies that respect the virtual identities of the members. Kong Studios rises. Gorillaz (who are now more active than ever) have brought back that original walk through the Kong Studiosthey have reprogrammed the web so that it is not necessary to execute flash, but it remains faithful to the original aesthetics and limitations: rigid animations, pixelated visuals … and with a gift, a game (which seems programmed, really, in 1998) where we must enter the cemetery that surrounds the study armed with a shovel to defend ourselves from the attack of some zombie gorillas The legendary ‘Clint Eastwood’ video clip. More of the same. The original site provided half an hour of delusional minijuegos, a jukebox where the then short discography of Gorillaz in full could be reproduced, including unpublished remixes and versions … in This video You can remember what that walk was, which has not been replicated with total accuracy, but in large part. Enough to miss the days when the presence of the bands on the Internet was not a mere Instagram account, but a real effort to dedicate their fans, with gifts and interaction with anyone who would give them some time. Long live the flash. With one aesthetics that today we would consider squeaky and excessive In these times when gray is the norm, Flash Player, deceased since December 31, 2020 He laid the aesthetic basis (and almost philosophical) from another internet era, where everything was a chaotic jungle of animations and games made by clown in their rooms. Kong Studios was an Asian luxury compared to the shabby and debauchery that he camp on an internet without limits, one that will not return: although we can celebrate it as it deserves, returning to the Gorillaz domains. In Xataka | Large rock bands have found how to extend their withdrawal indefinitely: with digital avatars

The largest Russian nuclear cruise has returned to the sea after 28 years. What is not clear is how modern its technology

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Russia has returned to the sea to its largest nuclear cruise For the first time since 1997. The Admiral Nakhimov began the trials on August 18, 2025 at the White Sea, the first concrete sign for a program that has been prolonged for decades. According to Tassthe two nuclear reactors were reactivated in early 2025 and the ship moves again by their own means. However, the return of this 28,000 tons ship It raises the background question: To what extent has modernization fulfilled what is announced by Moscow? Its recent history is marked by a sequence of breeding deadlines. Although modernization was raised more than two decades ago, The War Zone pointsthe works did not really begin until 2014. Since then, the dates were postponed: 2018, 2020, 2021, 2023 … The exit to the sea is a tangible advance, but also the end of a stage full of dilated promises that must now translate into real capabilities. What has really modernized and what follows in the air The return occurs in a context where information about the ship does not abound and, as we see, there are many questions. At the moment, says the aforementioned medium, it can be said that the ship has received at least A new radar systemas well as a new main Caño AK-192m. Modernization aspired to place it as the ship with the most vertical pitchers in the world: 174 cells in total, of them 78 for attack missiles (Kalibr, Oniks, Zircon) and 96 for S-300FM air defense. Today, the only unequivocal is the new main cannon; The rest must demonstrate in evidence and, eventually, in official images and documents. His return to service is not only technical, also symbolic. Everything indicates that he will assume the role of flagship of the northern fleet when Complete trials And be accepted by the Navy, in relief of the Pyotr Velikiy, also a nuclear propulsion cruise. The difference? It began to be built in the Soviet era and was thrown in 1996, but has received minor modernizations. In parallel, the aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov Keep on the wire. In statements collected by Reutersthe president of the State Naval Construction Corporation came to affirm that it is most likely to sell or tear it, which would further raise the weight of the cruise on the Russian surface. The admiral Nakhimov still has a lot to prove. That it has navigate again does not imply that modernization is complete or fully operational. The real state of sensors, combat systems, data links and integration with other naval units remains unconfirmed. Beyond the official story, what happens in the sea will say if this return to the activity is a change of cycle or a maneuver without real impact. Images | RSS_40 In Xataka | Ukraine has entered a phase so deranged with the drones that his drones are knocking themselves to themselves

Modern tunneladoras are authentic monsters compared to those of 1950. The paradoxical is that they are equally slow

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Each person has His own Roman Empire. This is those five minutes a day that we dedicate to what we are passionate about, and topics such as Megaestructures either absurdly large tractors They can be that personal “Roman Empire.” Speaking of huge machinery, we have the tunneladoras. They are every time bigger and have more technologybut they are not advancing to the rhythm that, perhaps, we would need to Transform cities. Because after a few meteoric years, its speed seems to have stagnated. And … makes sense. Desperately slow beginning. The history Of the tunneladoras it is relatively recent, since it is a machinery that depended on the technological advances in machinery. Inspired by the cranial shell of Los Teredos, which are mollusks with jaws capable of drilling the wood of the ships, the French engineer Marc Isambard Brunel patented in 1818 the Tunnelador shield. It was a revolution and, literally, a shield: it was a cast iron structure that protected the miners while they chopped. As they progressed, the finished section was reinforced with bricks and advanced the shield by huge cats. It was still a manual work, but going protected with that shield and not “discovered” allowed to undertake works as complex as that of Támesis tunnel. And the problem is that this prototumer advanced to the rhythm of the work of the workers: one meter a day, more or less. Brunel’s shield. On the right side we see the operators picing and advance the shield from the rear while, from behind, another group is responsible for placing the supports Electricity does not improve things. In the development of the tunneladoras there were three key moments. The first was the idea of ​​the shield, the second the mechanization of the tool. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth, different engineers tried Improve the formula of Brunel adding cutting devices to the head of the shield. Several ideas such as drills and cutting discs were tested that were mounted in their arms or on a frontal rotating plate. This mechanization was achieved thanks to pneumatic systems, steamed and, subsequently, electricity. It was clear that they were safer for operators thanks to that automation, but the drilling rate, although it had bent with respect to the manual rhythm, remained slow. The cities were hungry for Tunnels for your rail networks and channels, but the advance of steam machines was one to two meters a day … and the electricity advanced between two and five meters a day. The height is that they had reliability problems and the operators had to hold the tunnel in a traditional way. Mid a century to all fuse. In addition to the technical problems, the tunneladoras continued to have problems with the hard rock. The operators needed to resort to blasting, which made everything slower and more dangerous, but in the 50s, the American James S. Robbins was occurred Something that revolutionized the panorama: a rotating head that mixed the previous advances. The tunnelador of the Oahe dam was the First modern tunnel and had a rotating head that equipped drag cutters and disc. The tandem allowed working on tougher land continuously and, in addition, supposed the culmination of Brunel’s idea: the head perforated and the shield protected the operators who were placing the tunnel lining as the set advanced. It was also safer for these operators and the advances gave way to maximum speeds of about 200 meters a week, according to the land. The head of the tunnelador of Oahe, the first modern tunnelador Stagnation. In half a century, the speed had multiplied by ten at best, but the advances of the 21st century were by other paths. The machines continued to evolve and perfect the idea of ​​that hybrid robbins ‘morro’. They also became larger, efficient, safe and with automated systems when placing reinforcements. But despite all improvements, speed did not multiply as in past decades. He folded, but there is a problem: this speed is the theoretical one, not the real one. Jaws from the front of a double -shaped tunnelador ‘or’ The Boring Company arrives. There it enters Elon Musk on stage with his The Boring Company (An interesting game, since Boring Machine is “Boring Machine”, but it is also how the tunneladoras are known). The businessman had the Hyperloop project, which made sense to have a tunnel company company, and the objective was to drastically increase the excavation speed. Your goal? Get over The speed of 140 meters daily of a snail, 980 a week. PRUFROCK It is its great bet with, a promised speed of more than 1,600 meters per week and an objective of 80,000 meters per week. It is an objective that seems utopian, but its idea is that machines work without stopping to maintain or to install the coating. Instead of installing the traditional transport rails of coating segments, the machine is more autonomous and that rail installation time is eliminated to transport the segments of the tunnel coating. The idea of ​​The Boring Machine is to release the tunnelador, to start excavating uninterruptedly and returns to the surface. It is good, but in urban land and unstable land, it is more utopian It is really not novel because there are other machines that do it, but on soft land, working without coating can be dangerous. In current projects, such as Line 2 of the Lima Metro, the speed round 15 meters a day and everything has to do because the land is complex and urban. There are many factors to consider when talking about the speed of these machines, go. The pruffrock What if the race is no longer the speed? Leaving aside the objectives of The Boring Company, the problem may want faster machines when progress are being made in a more important area: safety. Because, although machines are now more capable and their speed It has increased slightly, that apparent stagnation can respond to a change in objective. The speed of the … Read more

The ‘Napier bones’ seem a dominoes, but they are the link between the abacus and the modern calculator

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The name of John Napier It may not sound to you anything, but I already tell you that, very possibly, it is a person who does not like you. Because what may sound to you is about Neperian logarithms than so many They brought us head in high school. It was Napier who first defined this function, but to “compensate”, he also gave life to what we can consider as the precursor of the Current calculator. Something called ‘Napier bones’ that looks like a dominoes, but that brought mathematical operations to more people. John Napier. This Scotsman were interested in many things. His family was more than settled and, as a good son of wealthy, he attended the University of Saint Andrews at age 13. It did not last long, but not because I would like to leave the studies, but because it went to others Universities of France, Italy or Flanders. Life living from Castillo in Castillo, where he gave free rein to several of his passions. A magician (but not of the numbers). Was a Protestant and considered A black wizard for its neighbors. He was also an ingenious guy. When the pigeons ate their grain, decided Spread wet seeds in alcohol through the field and, with ‘anesthetized’ pigeons and unable to fly, he dedicated himself to capture them. As always, and more when we talk about this type of stories with several centuries behind them, imagination and exaggeration do their job, but what is undeniable is that Napier liked solve problems. His greatest contribution is the one commented Mirifici Logarithmore Canonis Description in which he defined the current logarithms in 1614, but before and then I publish other treaties of the Mathematics field in which he explored how to simplify the calculation tasks. And not only theorized about them or impulse The comma in the decimals: created tools to solve those calculations more easily. The new abacus. Since we need to solve mathematical problems, humanity has sought ways to support tools. This is how the abacoseither The quipus with those who could do simple operations such as sums, subtraction and multiplications. With more complex mathematics, we had to go around the system, and Napier took off his new abacus, or a protocculator. Napier’s bones. In 1617, shortly before he died, the mathematician invented a manual tool focused on facilitating some more complex operations, such as multiplication and division, but also square roots. It was a set of rectangular rods in which the multiplication tables were recorded, in addition to a board with holes for the rods and with the figures of 1 to 9 arranged vertically on the left side. By placing these rods next to the others, multiplications and divisions operations were reduced to simple sums and subtraction, respectively. Originally, they were manufactured in metal or wood, especially, but these rods could also be built in ivory, and a complete game included 10 rods to represent the numbers from 0 to 9. That? Ok, as with mathematics, let’s see examples. One very simple is seen with multiplication, because we do not need to memorize the tables. If we want to know how much 2 x 6, we simply look for row 2 on the right and the rod that begins by 6 and we see what number is in the quadrant: 12. If we want to do an 8 x 8, we repeat the process and we see that we have a 64. If we do a more complex operation, such as 46785399 x 7, we place the rods corresponding to that number (the one that begins by 4, which begins by 6 and so on) next to each other from left to right and we look at the number that comes out in row 7, which is why we want to multiply. Now, from right to left, we are placing the numbers that appear together in the diagonal box: 327497793. Later mathematicians improved the system by creating a board with a 65º inclination that improved the visual identification of that formula, but the ‘Napier bones’ were a revolution when approaching that more complex mathematical calculation to people without higher studies. The only thing that had to be learned was the rule of multiplication and division with the board system. Variants were created, with circular format tablets A jewel. Dying in 1617, it is complicated that Napier saw the transcendence of his theoretical and practical work, but today his logarithmic foundations continue to be used, also the coma of the decimals, a lunar crater bears his name and that Neperian abacus is one of the jewels of the National Archaeological Museum of Madrid. It is not known who manufactured it, but it is a wooden case of a considerable size with 30 drawers in which the sheets of the two abacos designed by the mathematician are stored. One of them formed by 60 numbered rods built in bone and the second, called ‘Promptuario’, composed of 300 numbered and perforated wool chips to perform multiplications. The ‘promptuary’ of the man of Madrid And it’s like a Megachuletasince in the doors of the boxes are the first powers of the digit numbers, the coefficients of the first powers of the binomial and the numerical data of the regular polyhedra. Curious that calculators, apart from being objects with a specific purpose, have become some cases in authentic works of art. To tell the divisumma. Images | Maksim, Willy, Luis García, Kim Traynor, The Wub In Xataka | The “computer” of 2,000 years ago fascinates us for decades. A new study points out that it might have not served at all

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