network

A Catalan city council fined an individual for “cutting down some trees.” They have discovered an international network of illegal garbage trafficking

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The Civil Guard, Europol and the French Gendarmerie They just arrested four people for illegally bringing at least 46,000 tons of French waste into Catalonia. And the case has a crumb. Because when you talk about ‘international garbage trafficking’ you imagine trucks passing in the dark through lost ports in the Pyrenees and ships unloading in the middle of the night. But the truth is that no truck had to hide: they crossed the border between France and Spain without any problems. The papers were, “in theory”, in order. In theory? There was the kid of the matter and what confused the authorities. It made no sense to bring garbage into Catalonia from France because the Catalan fee (75 euros) is higher than the French one (69): although the overall costs are higher, the savings would be very small. The key was something else: that the trucks moved around Europe declaring that what they were carrying in their vats was “soil.” And that was what was new. The network had gone one step further and was no longer “selling” cheap landfills, it was selling completely reclassifying the waste. In this way, the garbage traveled to Spain as material and ended up buried in a fruit field. By using the term “land” everything was radically simplified: no one got paid, no file was activated. Do we have a legal loophole? Not exactly: the legislation is not only clear, but even in this case, the alerts were activated. Sant Esteve Sesrovires detected the irregular actions, opened a file, informed the Prosecutor’s Office and proposed a fine of 814,900 euros. Why concept? Due to land spills and felling of trees. It was when investigating the matter that the bottom of the matter was discovered. Why is it important? Because it is the third episode of the same pattern in four months: in March, a European macro operation with 337 detainees; in April, 167,000 tons of rubble and asbestos in Axarquía; now, this. And, above all, because Spanish legislation continues to be very lax. Our management requires “seriously damaging the balance of natural systems.” It must be modified (it is a European requirement), but we have not done so yet. Therefore, this case will be judged in terms of document falsification, tax crime, money laundering. That is to say, although environmental crimes are among the crimes charged, recent experience suggests that the conviction, if it comes, will come because of the paperwork. It is a good metaphor for a country that has built one of the most expensive tax systems in Europebut we have left it entirely in the hands of responsible self-declaration. Image | Zibik In Xataka | Europe has a problem with waste management, to the point that there are mafias illegally “exporting” it from Italy to Cuenca

The first “social network” in history is 57,000 years old, it was made up of hunters and gatherers and served to avoid extinction

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The survival of prehistoric hunter-gatherers has historically been explained by two things: climate and available natural resources. And although in general terms it is true, a new study proposes that the social relations between human groups at that time were as decisive as the physical environment. The discovery. The research team focuses on small groups of hunter-gatherers who lived in the South Caucasus between 57,000 and 27,000 years ago. Apparently, these small groups traveled long distances and shared tools and techniques with other groups. Initially they thought that due to their size and distance they would live almost isolated from each other, but no. The key evidence is in obsidian objects, a volcanic rock used to make cutting tools, present in deposits located between 40 and 200 km from the quarry of origin. Why it is important. Because it forces us to rethink the classical models of human evolution that attributed the success or failure of a population almost exclusively to its capacity for climatic adaptation. Now we see that cooperation and the circulation of information was an essential survival factorwhich has implications for understand human resilience in the face of environmental change. Context. The study area is the south of the Caucasus, the natural bridge between Europe and Asia where mountains, valleys and very different climates come together in a small space, so it is a key place to understand How ancient humans moved. At the time in which the study is framed, Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in other parts of the world and also when stone tools changed style. That is why the Caucasus is a magnificent place to verify if these changes were a sudden replacement of one population by another or there was coexistence between both cultures. In detail. Each obsidian quarry has a unique chemical composition, which allows us to determine exactly the origin of each tool located. According to the research team, the distance over which these tools are dispersed is too great for a single group to travel in search of food: the most plausible explanation is that different groups were in contact and exchanged materials. But there is another clue: the way of carving the stone is repeated in sites very far from each other, which suggests that some groups learned from others, not that they reached the same conclusion by chance. Furthermore, when dating the layers of earth from different sites, it is seen that the cultures of the Middle Paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic coexisted for thousands of years in the same area, that is, one did not replace the other. Three powerful reasons to maintain that social networks helped these groups survive. Yes, but. The inference of “social networks” or alliances from carved stone is still an interpretation, not a direct observation: there are no written, oral or testimonial records from the Paleolithic, so any conclusion about social relations is constructed indirectly, from material patterns. In fact, the fact that obsidian travels between 40 and 200 km does not in itself prove social exchange between groups: it could also be explained by a single group with a very large territory or by reuse of tools for generations. In Xataka | A remote cave in Africa has revealed something about humans from 200,000 years ago: they already changed the clothes on their beds In Xataka | 77 skeletons, a single head: the mystery of the Slovak mass grave that torments archaeologists Cover | Gemini with AI

China will build the world’s largest AI network with its own chips, although they are not enough

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The Chinese Government is launching a project that seeks to invest $295 billion in five years in the deployment of a national network of data centers of artificial intelligence (AI). In the current scenario of confrontation in the technological field between the US and China, this plan is not surprising at all. However, we cannot ignore the fine print: at least 80% of the underlying technology, including AI chips, must come from domestic suppliers, such as Huawei or Cambricon. Early October 2024 the Administration sent Chinese AI companies were given a recommendation asking them to use chips produced in China as much as possible. Ten months later, this recommendation became a requirement. The Chinese government forced state-owned data centers across the country to use at least 50% Chinese integrated circuits in their servers. Now, as we have just seen, this figure rises to 80%. Be that as it may, this scenario clearly favors three companies: Huawei, Cambricon and Moore Threads. Nvidia and AMD no longer count for China Huawei invests more than 25 billion dollars annually in developing your hardware for AIso presumably it will not take long to match the performance of the GPUs produced by Nvidia or AMD. However, this company faces an enormous challenge that will probably prevent it from meeting the demand for AI chips from the Chinese market in the short term. In mid-June 2025 Jeffrey Kessler, the Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Security at the US Department of Commerce, made this statement in Congress: “Our assessment indicates that Huawei’s Ascend chip production capacity by 2025 will be 200,000 units or less, and we anticipate that most or all of that production will be delivered to companies within China.” This limitation has a specific technical basis: yield per wafer The integration technologies used by the Chinese semiconductor manufacturer SMIC to produce Huawei or Cambricon chips have a very wide room for improvement. The per-wafer performance of SMIC integration technologies has a very large room for improvement SMIC already has the capacity to manufacture 6nm integrated circuits, and will soon also be able to produce 5nm semiconductors, but is limited by the performance of the deep ultraviolet lithography equipment (UVP) that you have in your possession. It is commendable that SMIC and Huawei engineers have managed to refine their integrated circuit manufacturing processes enough to be able to produce 5, 6 and 7 nm chips with ASML’s UVP equipment, but a priori it is very unlikely that with these machines they will be able to go beyond 3 nm. And it is because the technique of multiple patterningwhich is what they are using, imposes important limitations. A note: this strategy broadly consists of transferring the pattern to the wafer in several passes with the purpose of increase resolution of the lithographic process. Its problem is that it usually has an upward impact on the cost of chips and a downward impact on production capacity. For Huawei, it is a big problem not to have the necessary technology to produce cutting-edge semiconductors comparable to those manufactured by Intel, TSMC or Samsung, which is why it is working on the development of its own equipment. extreme ultraviolet photolithography (EUV). This scenario has caused the Chinese semiconductor industry to question whether national hardware can maintain the pace demanded by the Government. SMIC co-CEO Zhao Haijun has warned that this hasty addition of capacity can leave data centers idlecomparing this situation to building highways before there is traffic. In addition, several Chinese executives in the chip sector have recognized separately that his country is five to ten years behind in the cutting edge in silicon for AI data centers. In the current situation, the decision has its logic. Another thing is whether China can comply with it. Image | Cambricon Technologies More information | Tom’s Hardware In Xataka | NVIDIA has to deal with the absolute distrust of several US legislators. Your plan in China is in danger In Xataka | The US wants to end Chinese AI chips sold abroad. And China knows how to defend itself

While Google brags about AI, its employees do something else on an internal social network: laugh at it

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If there’s one company pushing AI it’s… well, apparently all of them right now. The industry has rushed into the arms of this technology and, with so much money investedthey must use it for something. Google is one of those companies and Sundar Pichai, CEO of the company, has on occasion boasted about how quickly Google itself has adopted AI and how much its engineers use the tools. The boss assures that 75% of Google’s new code It is generated by AI (these companies have an obsession with pointing out that their code is made by AI, Tell Anthropic). The point is that these engineers have an internal document in which they record their daily work with AI, but not to mark progress or benefits, but for something much more curious. Laugh at her. Google engineers making Google AI memes I am one of those who thinks that, if they take away the memes, what are we left with? I have come to have conversations directly based on memes, both established and invented, and I love that both Google engineers and I have something in common: we like crappy and classic memes. Because with generative AI you have people making these crappy memes with… AI, but the ‘sauce’ of the matter is looking for low resolution images and making a crappy edit. That’s part of the joke of the meme, and the ones from Google are great. Obviously, they have not been making them public because Google would not be very happy about it (in fact it has spoken out about it), but this matter has come to light thanks to an investigation by the media. 404 in which they have recreated some of these memes that Google employees themselves made not on any Monday, but on the most important date on the calendar for the company: I/O 2026. While Google presented those AI features that engineers had been working on for the past few months, those same engineers were sharing memes about the presentation on the aforementioned private ‘board’. These memes are ‘voted’ with a system of emojis like the classic raised thumbs. And there are not a few who enter the game. Google meme recreated by 404 Media This one is tough from the start: “I/O Announcement: New Ways to SLOP.” It’s a direct attack on the company that, these employees say, quickly received more than 100 thumbs up from other employees. Google meme recreated by 404 Media Me, working. AI Bro: “still not using AI? Why is it taking you so long? AI is magic, are you a muggle? The best AI tool has been released today” Google meme recreated by 404 Media Jetski, why did you do that stupid thing I told you not to do? Jetski: “Jetski is an internal Google tool” Google meme recreated by 404 Media Jetski has created a functional operating system on its own. Google Engineer: I doubt it Google meme recreated by 404 Media Barbie: what happiness making changes to the code with vibe coding Oppenheimer is the human who must review that code written by a machine Google meme recreated by 404 Media Companies trying to get you to use their new AI features Beyond these artisanal memes, there are two curious things. The first is that several of these engineers share that boredom with AI that is also seen in part of social networks, and it is curious that not even the people who make the tool buy the marketing discourse of those who sell that tool. The second, and getting more serious, is that there are those who want to escape the development of this technology, but doesn’t see alternatives because all the technologies they are in the same boat. There are statements like “I have no motivation and feel burned out by the constant changes, but I have no alternative” or “AI-related projects are prioritized while everything else is put on the back burner.” There are also statements that show a disconnect between internal work policies and the need to push AI development as far as possible. “We are finding that AI has relieved the pressure and bottleneck in code generation,” says another employee, “but everything else has become a bottleneck: build times, testing, the delays in human review, the comparatively slow infrastructure, and the version comparison system.” “The conclusion that many colleagues are reaching is that Google’s infrastructure and engineering culture was built to be stable and intentionally slow, but the pressures to accelerate the pace using AI are colliding with that strategy,” says another. In the end, It is logical that they are pushing this technology internally. Goal, for example, also doesputting pressure from above for employees to use it. And there are good things, but the problem is that these large companies are finding themselves in a situation in which the tools have changed a lot, as well as the tasks, but the core of the ‘bureaucracy’, so to speak, has remained the same. For example, another employee claims that he has completed many tasks quickly thanks to AI, but when the work is finished needs a human review which then takes the same time as always. That’s where the bottleneck is. What Google says Memes are funny, but Google sure wasn’t amused. Have you answered anything? Well yes. 404 includes two statements from Google. On the one hand, the first one they sent: “We encourage our engineers to rigorously test and critique our internal tools. That honest feedback loop is vital to how we build technology. AI coding models are designed to assist developers, but it’s critical that we keep humans in the process, including the oversight and expertise of our world-class engineering talent. “We continue to refine our internal tools based on employee feedback to ensure they are facilitating, not hindering, daily productivity.” Very marketing, but the curious thing is that, after 404 published the article showing the memes, andThe Google spokesperson sent another statement: “We encourage our engineers to … Read more

has just opened its warehouse and delivery network to any company in the world

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For decades, Amazon has built its business one of the most powerful distribution infrastructures on the planet, one that allows its workers to ship products anywhere in the world extremely efficiently. Now he is going to make it available to any business that wants to use it. global network. amazon has announced the launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), a service with which any company, not just its marketplace sellers, will be able to access its global logistics network. Transport by sea, air, road and rail; warehouses; distribution centers; and last mile delivery: all under one umbrella and available for companies in all types of sectors, whether healthcare, automotive, manufacturing or retail, among others. Why does it matter? Amazon has a fleet of more than one hundred cargo planes, only behind FedEx and UPS, thousands of warehouses and sorting centers around the world, and its own last-mile delivery service. In fact, according to data from ShipMatrix, this parcel service is already the largest in the United States by volume, ahead of UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service. What changes now is that all that capacity, previously reserved for its own sellers and internal operations, is formally opened to the market. Likewise, the movement turns Amazon into a gigantic logistics operator, what is known in the sector as 3PL (third-party logistics provider) and places it in direct competition with giants such as DHL, Kuehne + Nagel or DSV. According to data From the consulting firm Armstrong & Associates, it is estimated that this global market moves more than 1.3 trillion dollars. The parallelism with AWS. In 2006, the company took the technological infrastructure it had built to run its own business and began selling it to third parties. This is how Amazon Web Services was borntoday the largest cloud service provider in the world. Now try to replicate that model with logistics. “Amazon brings the infrastructure, intelligence and scale of its decades-proven supply chain services to businesses around the world, just as Amazon Web Services did with cloud computing,” counted Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, in the company’s official statement. Variety of services. According to the company, ASCS offers services divided into four large blocks: Transportation of goods (sea, air, land and rail freight). Distribution and storage with automated inventory forecasting. Preparation and shipping of orders through any sales channel, including rival platforms such as Walmart, Shopify, Shein or TikTok. Parcel delivery with deadlines of between two and five days, seven days a week. A blow to the sector. Following the news, FedEx and UPS shares fell more than 9% each after the announcement, while GXO Logistics plummeted around 13% and DHL lost 7.3%. For these companies it is a direct competitive blow, and according to analysts from the Baird firm, the impact could also extend to air and maritime cargo transport operators. With this blow on the table, another of the threatened segments is business-to-business (B2B) logistics, a niche with a high profit margin where UPS and FedEx have been focusing all these years. Between the lines. Beyond the competitive threat, Amazon seeks to monetize an infrastructure that already exists and in which it has been investing for almost thirty years. The company was already according to Armstrong & Associatesthe world’s largest logistics operator by gross revenue in 2025, although its services were sold in a fragmented manner and without a unified proposition for external clients. “They have warehousing operations, transportation management, and international air and sea freight, but they did not have a coordinated sale like 3PL, although together they are already the largest,” counted Evan Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong & Associates, told the Wall Street Journal. Customer data. Opening the network to external companies raises a question: what does Amazon do with the information of its logistics clients? The company has already been accused in the past of using data from sellers in its marketplace to compete against them, something it has always denied. Larsen assures told the WSJ that Amazon explicitly prohibits using ASCS customer data to make decisions in its own marketplace, citing the fact that hundreds of thousands of sellers already use its logistics services for channels outside of Amazon. Cover image | Garakhan Safarli and Claudio Schwarz In Xataka | What is the cheapest Amazon device you can use Alexa+ on?

The European Union is very clear about the future of its network infrastructure: there will not be a single Chinese device

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Europe is intensifying its battle against Chinese equipment, both in its electrical network and in its telecommunications infrastructure. The European Commission has again recommended earlier this week the exclusion of Huawei and ZTE equipment by local telecommunications operators, paving the way for a review of the Cybersecurity Regulation in which it is proposed mandatory elimination of high-risk suppliers. A new touch. The European Commission has started the week with a reminder: member states must exclude Huawei and ZTE equipment from their telecommunications network. In January of this year, Europe published a draft establishing the mandatory withdrawal of “high-risk suppliers”, posing a formal veto on Chinese telecommunications companies. It is a particularly sensitive issue in Spain, where communities like Catalonia have ignored European recommendations and they have renewed again recently with companies that use Huawei equipment. The Generalitat case. Last March, the Generalitat of Catalonia renewed its contract with XCAT. A budget of 127 million euros to maintain Huawei as the main equipment supplier, despite the EU notice and challenges from Telefónica and Cellnex that paralyzed the process for a few weeks. {“videoId”:”x9gqo70″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”YOU ARE NOT GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR MOBILE if you are not using AI like this”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”617″} In addition to the Catalan case, practically a third of Spanish 5G networks are from Huawei, with an estimated replacement cost between 400 and 1,000 million euros. Beyond. It is not the only measure that Europe wants to implement against Chinese suppliers. The Commission also wants to protect itself in relation to renewable energies, vetoing access to community funds to those projects using converters made in China. “Our risk assessments have confirmed threats, including manipulation of electricity production parameters, interruption of electricity generation and even unauthorized access to operational data. In practice, this could mean a blackout, a remote blackout of Member States’ networks leading to nationwide power outages.” As with the network infrastructure, according to the Commission, this measure responds to a shield for security reasons, applicable from next November 1. Again, a blow to the giant Huawei, one of the main suppliers of solar inverters in Spain. In Xataka 6G is not being developed to improve mobile speed: it is geopolitics and China is going with the accelerator to the table The Chinese response. China is no stranger to the measures being prepared by Europe, and has made it clear that it considers these proposed acts to be discriminatory and harmful to trade. Without detailing his plans, he has made it clear that he will take countermeasures. The Swedish case. Decisions have consequences, and Sweden is a country that knows very well what happens if you ban Huawei on your telecommunications equipment. In 2020, the country banned the use of telecommunications equipment from Chinese manufacturers under the argument of national security. Although a priori this was a lifeline for Ericsson, the consequences were just the opposite. China retaliated, and China Mobile expelled Eriscsson from its network infrastructure, going from 11% market share to 2%. In case Europe hits China again. In Xataka | There is a crucial technology for the deployment of AI and China is also securing the lead: 6G (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The European Union is very clear about the future of its network infrastructure: there will not be a single Chinese device was originally published in Xataka by Ricardo Aguilar .

discovering the largest railway network in the world at 347 km/h

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A new day dawns in Beijing. After a long (and exhausting) day at the Motor ShowToday we have a long train journey ahead of us. Today we leave Beijing to head to Wuhuthe city where the headquarters of the Chery group is located, and yes, we do it by train. I admit that I am excited: it is the first time that I have gotten on both a bullet and a Chinese train. When I ask local Chery employees about Wuhu, what it is like, they all tell me the same thing: “for you it is a huge city, but for us it is a small city.” Wuhu has four million inhabitants. Madrid, to put us in context, has 3.4 million. I imagine that living in a country of 1.4 billion inhabitants causes the dimensions of things to become distorted. I suppose that for someone from Beijing traveling to Madrid is like when we go to town. Buildings in Wuhu | Image: Xataka Wuhu is located around 1,000 kilometers south of Beijing. Specifically, between Wuhan and Shanghai. Google Maps, which is not the most reliable reference in China, shows me almost 11 hours by car. By train, the trip lasts around four and a half hours, which is more than enough time to talk a little about this other small-big city and, in the process, get to know the city more closely. chinese railway network and the experience of traveling on one of its trains. China has made leaps and bounds in its electrification, we have seen that in the two previous installments of this daily blog. Well, in the same way that the electric and hybrid car has evolved, so has its railway network. Let’s go in parts. To get into flour let’s look at some numbers. Let’s talk about Spain. Our country has 15,652 kilometers of road, of which 4,000 kilometers are high-speed (+200 km/h). It is the second most extensive high-speed network in the world. The first, indeed, is the Chinese one. And it is with an absolutely insane difference. Roads in China | Image: Xataka According to the Chinese government and according to the local Xinhua agencyChina closed last year with 165,000 kilometers of track, of which “more than 50,000 kilometers” are high-speed. In 2025 alone, Chinese railways transported a whopping 4.59 billion passengers, 6.4% more than last year. In Spain, the figure was of 177.6 million. We cannot make the direct comparison because the size of China is like 17 times that of Spain, but it helps us put into perspective how enormous this infrastructure is. And it is getting worse, because this year they intend to put 2,000 more kilometers into operation. Only in the first quarter of 2026 will Chinese railways they completed an investment in fixed assets of 20.9 billion dollars. By 2050, the country’s goal is to achieve 274,000 kilometers. Image | Xataka The body in charge of managing most railway operations is in the hands of China State Railway Group Company, a state-owned company created in 2013 after the dissolution of the Ministry of Railways. Since 2019 it has been under the umbrella of the Ministry of Finance. There are other “private” lines that connect mines with refineries, for example. The network is divided into several horizontal and vertical corridors, mostly concentrated in the east of the country where, evidently, most of the population is concentrated and where coal is produced. Only one line extends to the northwest (crossing the Gobi Desert and bordering the Taklamakan Desert) and southwest of the country (near the Tibet Plateau). A train on the way to Wuhu | Image: Xataka ​But let’s leave geography and talk about experience, because it is not only that the Chinese network is larger than the Spanish one (for whatever reason), but it is also significantly faster. And no, it is not noticeable | Image: Xataka The Spanish high speed can be up to 300 km/h, but on a line like the one from Andalusia to Madrid it is normal for trains to not exceed 250 km/h. Sections of 200 km/h are also frequent. Also, recently, there have been more aggressive speed limitations on some lines. I write this on a train that moves exactly at 347 km/h and I must admit that because I have seen the figure on a screen, otherwise I would not have known. I don’t know if it will be the same on all trains, but the experience on this one has been exquisite. The train, despite going 50% fast, vibrates much less than the trains I am used to taking in Spain. I think the video speaks for itself. This speed, which has remained relatively constant throughout the trip, allows us to get from Beijing to Wuhu in about four and a half hours. The train has made some stops of just a few minutes at certain stations, but little more. In a country of these dimensions it makes all the sense in the world to bet on the railway. Not only to transport people, that too, but for the transport of goods. If we have discovered something these days it is that China has a competitive advantage by having all the links of the supply chain very close at hand. That, however, is of little use if the transport of goods does not accompany. It is not the case, although half. In Wuhu, where Chery was founded, the brand’s presence is much, much more evident | Image: Xataka Again, according to official Chinese government data, in 2025 alone railways moved a whopping 5.27 billion tons of freight, 2% more than the previous year. However, road and air transport remains very important when moving goods in the domestic market. At an international level, air and sea are the two great cornerstones. Tomorrow more, this time in Wuhu. More deliveries: Journey to the center of the Chinese motor (part 1): a walk through Beijing, Ebro, Chery and the silent streets Journey to the … Read more

the controversial measures with which we have shielded the network a year after the collapse

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Next April 28 will mark exactly one year to the day that Spain and Portugal faded to black. An unprecedented “zero energy” in the last two decades that left nearly 60 million citizens without electricity, without internet, without traffic lights and with the banking system paralyzed for up to 16 hours. As they reflect in the magazine freenthat day we suddenly discovered that something we take for granted—electricity—is the fragile foundation on which our entire modern life rests. One year after the event, the initial shock has given way to data. We no longer ask ourselves only if such a blackout can happen again, but how much it is costing us to avoid it and if we have really learned our lesson. D-day is about to arrive. Twelve months later, we finally have the “official autopsy.” The European Network of Network Operators (ENTSO-E) published a comprehensive report of 472 pages where he concludes that there was no single cause, but rather a “perfect cocktail” of multiple factors. A sudden surge originating in Spain triggered instability that the system was unable to stop. As we have already explained in Xatakathe failure can be defined as “operational blindness.” The renewable plants operated with a fixed power factor; They did not know how to read the network surge and, for safety reasons, they disconnected suddenly, causing a rebound effect. Besides, as he adds BBClocal generator voltage controls were not fully aligned with operator requirements. The crisis required millisecond reflexes, but tension control was done manually. In fact, if Europe did not fall like a house of cards, it was due to an almost miraculous technicality: a relay in the Hernani substation (Gipuzkoa) acted like a “fusilazo”, cutting the connection with France in milliseconds to shield the continent. Ironically, just ten minutes later, it was that same interconnection that served as assisted breathing to resuscitate the system. The big question: what has Spain done differently? The fear of a new blackout has changed the rules of the game, but at a high price for the citizen. Electrical Network has imposed a “reinforced model” of operations. This means that they prioritize safety over cost, keeping more expensive and stable backup plants on, such as gas combined cycles. The result? The Spanish They have been paying an extra cost of 666 million euros In these eleven months only in “adjustment services”, which have shot up 43%. In the legislative sphere, the Government has approved the Royal Decree-Law 7/2026 to streamline bureaucracy through the “Renewable Acceleration Zones” (ZAR). However, experts warn thatSince there is still no structured capacity market, investing in the necessary storage systems (batteries) continues to be a financial risk for developers. There’s more shielding going on. The collapse not only left us in the dark, but it left us cut off, although in a very uneven way. While some completely lost the signal, others managed to maintain it thanks to the logistical efforts of some operators. To avoid this coverage lottery, the CNMC has proposed that Telefónica, Vodafone and MásOrange offer a “national roaming” plan in case of emergency. If your operator’s network goes down, your mobile phone would automatically connect to the competition, based on the Swedish model. Added to this is the request to make the alert system (ASA) mandatory in cars with digital radio (DAB+), to send warnings to the population immediately even if the internet is down. The false culprit and the new energy guzzler. After the collapse, many were quick to blame green energy, but the reality is different. As explained from freenthe problem is not that Spain has a lot of solar and wind energy, but that the electrical grid is still stuck in the 20th century, designed for fossil power plants and not for a decentralized system. In fact, Spain is a fascinating laboratory. According to EUObserverthe country has managed the recent price crisis caused by the Third Gulf War much better than its European neighbors thanks to its enormous solar shield. However, the trauma of the blackout has caused an absurd side effect: operators are so afraid of overloading the grid that they force solar and wind farms to disconnect more frequently. Curtailment (clean energy generated that is thrown away) has gone from 2% to 7%. And if that were not enough, the saturated network assumes the imminent arrival of a new energy-consuming giant: the massive data centers for Artificial Intelligence. The exchange of accusations is served. In the offices the short circuit has only just begun. As detailed Financial Times, The National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC) has opened formal investigations. Red Eléctrica (REE) faces proceedings for “very serious” infractions, while giants such as Iberdrola, Naturgy, Endesa and Repsol face possible fines of up to 60 million euros for “serious” infractions. Besides, as accounted Public, up to twenty open sanctioning files. REE defends itself by ensuring that the opening of the file does not prove its guilt. Meanwhile, a Senate report promoted by the PP directly blames the Government, REE and the CNMC for ignoring known vulnerabilities, according to Reuters. And the tension reaches the limit: electricity companies like Endesa and Iberdrola They have demanded a judge access more than 8,000 calls and emails from REE executives during the hours of the blackout, after the leak of audios where technicians warned of the danger 15 days before. An electric heart that remains at risk. Spain is “a gold mine without a road”, as defined by Patxi Callejadirector of Iberdrola. We have the sun, the wind and the technical capacity. But the great lesson of this last year is that true energy independence is no longer played at the national level, but at the local level, where factories and homes install their own batteries and hybrid panels so as not to depend on the fragile central system. We survived the blackout and avoided another one by reaching for our wallets and operating defensively. But as long as the line procedures last a decade, mass storage … Read more

The US has invested 16 years and 8 billion dollars in renewing the software of its GPS network. Result: a failure of epic proportions

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The Next-Generation Operational Control System project (OCX) was going to modernize the constellation of the United States’ more than 30 GPS satellites. The company RTX Corporation (previously known as Raytheon) managed to win the project in 2010 with a budget of 3.7 billion dollars. The project was supposed to be completed in 2016, but in reality the US has spent $8 billion and 16 years later has an absolute disaster on its hands. 16 years of broken promises. In 2010 the iPad had just appeared on the scene and cloud computing was a somewhat diffuse concept. The project of the US Government was reasonable, and proposed that the OCX system be operational by the time Lockheed Martin’s new GPS III satellites debuted. The development became a chaos of bugs and requirements changes, and to this day it is unclear when, if ever, it will be completed. In Xataka 90% of Iran’s oil industry depends on a tiny island. One that is already on the radar of the US and Israel A fortune invested. The financial management of the project is the first big disaster. The initial budget was estimated at 1.5 billion dollars, but since the award until today that figure has risen to reach almost 7.7 billion of current dollars, to which another 400 million are added to support an improved version of the satellites, the GPS IIIF. This increase is not due in large part to the project suddenly being much more ambitious or more capable, but rather to the costs of having been fixing everything that has gone wrong since they started working on it. Software costs more than satellites. Every time software fails an integration test, the bill runs into tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. That has made the OCX system one of the most expensive and least efficient software projects in recent US military history. In fact, it far exceeds the cost of the satellites themselves that it had to control: the 22 GPS III satellites of the contract signed in 2018 have a budget of 7.2 billion dollars. Satellites of the future controlled by a fairground shotgun. Currently the United States has a fleet of GPS III satellites in orbit capable of emitting much more powerful “M-code” signals and interference resistantsomething that among other things allocates them especially for military applications. The problem is that since the OCX software not workingthey are managing them with control systems inherited from the 90s. It is as if we had a VHS video connected to watch movies on an 8K Smart TV: the potential is there, but one of the components is an absolute bottleneck. {“videoId”:”x8wlh9q”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”United States vs. China: The CHIPS WAR”, “tag”:”webedia-prod”, “duration”:”1611″} The cybersecurity nightmare. One of the big problems of this project has been the cybersecurity requirements. OCX was designed to resist cyberattacks from powers such as Russia or China, but that requirement has become a spectacular technical burden. Pentagon standards have evolved so quickly that they have not been able to be adapted to an architecture that begins to become obsoleteand covering successive patches is locking the system in a complex vicious circle: the software is never finished because more and more vulnerabilities appear. Failed tests. The latest report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been the final straw. During the tests the system again showed once again instabilitywhich has forced the final delivery to be delayed to the end of 2026 or even 2027. Frank Calvelli, of the Air Force, has expressed his dissatisfaction with that unacceptable management of private industry: the strategic advantage that this project should offer at a time like this is inaccessible due to the disastrous progress of the project. It’s not that difficult. for a long time the excuse for justify the delays was that OCX was “the most complex software ever created for space,” but other players in the sector have shown that achieving these types of technical milestones is possible. SpaceX has demonstrated this with technical “miracles” like its reusable Falcon 9 or with the development of Starship, for example, so those arguments are falling on deaf ears now. Waiting for a better GPS. These problems also affect us end users, who will not be able to enjoy the L5 signals for now. This much more robust frequency will significantly improve accuracy in urban centers with many tall buildings. The irony is tragic: we cannot use extraordinary space infrastructure because the base stations cannot cope with it. While waiting for the problems to be resolved, the learning is clear: the software cannot be a monster that takes 16 years to build In Xataka The GPS in the Baltic has been experiencing interference for months and the culprit is becoming increasingly clear: Russia And while as always, China. While the US crashes against its project to renew the GPS constellation, China has once again managed to “become independent” from Western technology. Your satellite navigation system Beidouit does not replace GPS, true, but It already complements it in 140 countries. Once again China’s long-term view has its obvious result: it has taken 20 years in deploying its constellation, but they already surpass the GPS system in metrics such as signal availability or integrated messaging services. Europe, by the way, also has its own alternative. In Xataka |GPS “dead zones” are spreading around the world: jammers are to blame for confusing drones (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news The US has invested 16 years and 8 billion dollars in renewing the software of its GPS network. Result: a failure of epic proportions was originally published in Xataka by Javier Pastor .

The network does not always respond. Orange wants to remedy it by charging extra

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In big events there is a moment that we all recognize: we are at a concert, at a fair or at a massive celebration and just when we need the cell phone, the connection does not respond as it should. We want to send a location or publish something on networks and everything takes longer than normal or does not load at all. There is no mystery behind it, but a known problem: the network has to serve too many devices at the same time. And when that happens, the experience suffers. An extra connection. About that experience that we all know, Orange has launched “5G Fast Track”, a service that seeks to improve the connection in very specific situations. The company proposes it as a solution for events with a high concentration of people, where the demand for data skyrockets in a matter of minutes. What it introduces is an interesting nuance: the user can activate a connectivity boost to try to maintain a more stable experience in the midst of that saturation. “This service is complementary to the usual network: it is an optional extra, activated for a limited time, which optimizes the use of the network in extraordinary situations of high traffic and that are important for the customer.” Timely activation and different formats. One of the keys to “5G Fast Track” is that it does not require you to change the rate or maintain the service permanently. As our colleagues from Xataka Móvil explainthe user can activate it only when needed, for example, before entering a busy event. Orange sells it in three formats: 24 hours for 3 euros, 7 days for 7 euros and 1 month for 10 euros with automatic renewal. In this first phase, the service is available to residential, self-employed and small business customers. The company has announced that it will soon launch a modality for companies and public administrations. What about net neutrality. The idea of ​​paying for a better quality of connection in these contexts may raise questions, and the main one has to do with whether this clashes with the principle of net neutrality. The European regulation, in force since 2016, requires that traffic be treated equitably and without discrimination, something that Spanish legislation also includes. With the information available, there are no clear reasons to conclude that this service violates current regulations, among other things because it does not discriminate between specific applications or content, but rather acts on the quality of the user’s connection in a general way. The question. However, regardless of how it fits within the current framework, the proposal leaves an open question that is not minor. If paying for a better experience at specific times becomes established as an option, it is worth considering how far this type of services can evolve within the market. For now we are talking about a specific extra linked to very specific situations, but the idea of ​​introducing differentiated levels of quality in connectivity could generate debate if it is extended. Images | Orange In Xataka | MásMóvil has said goodbye to triple coverage. Although it may seem like it, it is not bad news.

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