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Spain wants its own public Hugging Face. The problem is that he is late to a battle that already has winners.

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The Spanish Government has announced the creation of the Open Source AI Community, a platform that aspires to become the meeting point of the Spanish AI ecosystem. The initiative, presented by the Secretary of State for Digitalization and AI, María González Veracruz, is supported by ALIA and promises to democratize access to AI through open models, datasets and integration tools. Yes, but. He timing It is everything in technology, and Spain arrives when the game is already played: Hugging Face centralizes the development of open models at a global level. GitHub hosts the most important repositories. Flame Meta has become the de facto standard for many developers. Creating a national alternative now is like launching a social network in 2025: technically possible, strategically debatable. Between the lines. The official rhetoric speaks of technological sovereignty and preventing “the digital future from being in the hands of a few.” It is a legitimate argument that works in China, where the State has resources to build parallel ecosystems and close digital borders. But Spain, for good and bad, is not China. Open source AI is, by definition, global and collaborative. Fragmenting it into national initiatives contradicts its very nature. The contrast. The press release sent by the Ministry lists three objectives: Promote practical solutions. Channel Spanish leadership. And create a talent pool. The remaining question is simpler: who is going to choose ALIA when Call 4, Mistral either qwen Are they already integrated into thousands of projects? Not only is the community late, it must compete against models that already have traction, complete documentation, and active communities of millions of developers. What is also missing are concrete resources. The announcement is full of conditional promises: “putting public computing capabilities will be explored,” “there will be” hackathons“sessions will be promoted” networking. What is conspicuous by their absence are specific budget commitments, operational infrastructure from day one, or use cases that demonstrate advantages over what already exists. The big question. If Spain does not have the muscle to create viable alternatives to the American or Chinese technology giants, does it make sense to spend resources pretending that it does? Technological sovereignty is a desirable strategic objective, but it requires sustained investment over decades, not announcements with future tense verbs. The history of European technology is full of failed attempts to replicate other people’s successes without the necessary scale or capital. In Xataka | In Europe we have a problem: we are becoming the Japan of the 21st century Featured image | Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence

What you have is a very serious income problem.

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China has established itself as one of the driving forces of artificial intelligence, both in adoption and integration of new functions, but the economic balance tells a different story. Its ecosystem grows outward, not upward: it accumulates use, but not income. This divergence between scale and return, increasingly visible in the compared data, explains why the main challenge for Chinese AI is not how much it invests, but how much it manages to earn. The figures and trends we use come from sources that work with updated data series: Stanford University’s global investment tracker and the Tech Buzz China report with Unique Researchwhich examines the performance of Chinese products and companies during 2024 and 2025. Their combination allows us to understand not only how much China is progressing in AI, but also how it is positioned against other markets. The contrast between powers. Stanford University figures for 2024 place global corporate investment in AI at $252.3 billion, in a context of growing demand for these technologies. The United States led with 109.1 billion in private investment, a volume almost twelve times greater than that of China, which stood at 9.3 billion. The data illustrates the magnitude of the gap and the determining weight that American private financing has in the development of AI on an international scale. AI business metrics. To understand the performance of any AI application, it is worth looking at the ARR. This metric reflects the recurring income that a company obtains in a year, a key indicator to evaluate the solidity of its economic model. Unique Research places only four Chinese firms among the 100 private AI companies with the highest ARR: glory reaches 173 million dollars, PLAUD 125 million, ByteDance 116 million and Zuoyebang 33 million. Together they add up to 447 million dollars, 1.23% of the total list, which amounts to 36.4 billion. Compared to that figure, American companies concentrate practically all of the recurring income, which marks a clear difference in scale and commercial maturity. Glority and the piece that fits the context. The name Glority may not sound familiar to you, and that’s completely normal. Most likely, you have ever seen PictureThisits plant identification application that has become the reference in its category. The company was born in 2009 and began working with computer vision models long before the recent rise of AI after 2022. Its trajectory helps to understand how some Chinese companies have grown by combining everyday utility and a technical base developed long in advance. PLAUD and its double anchor: Shenzhen and the United States. Although it appears on the Unique Research list within the Chinese group, Its founder assures that PLAUD operates as a US company. Xu opened an office in San Francisco in 2023, works from there with part of the team and registered the company in Delaware, storing data in Amazon centers in the United States. He himself summarizes its structure like this: “we have the best talent in Shenzhen for hardware design and the best engineers in San Francisco for AI development.” A huge user base. The report figures at 4.78 billion the aggregate monthly active users of the top 100 AI companies as of August 2025. Of these, about 2.2 billion belong to Chinese platforms, around 46% of the total. Baidu, ByteDance, DeepSeekMeitu and Zuoyebang top that list thanks to their presence on multiple daily services. The breadth of its portfolios and continuous integration of AI tools allow its reach to be significantly greater than other markets. Predominance of the visual. In China, many of the most widely used AI applications revolve around the creation and editing of content, from video to photography, including retouching and digital makeup tools. This orientation responds to deeply rooted habits in the country. The result is a powerful visual ecosystem, although less present in business or productivity services, which usually provide more stable income. Where opportunities are concentrated outside China. The report indicates that, on an international scale, the growth of AI is divided into categories linked to daily work: support, development, infrastructure, productivity and improved search. This group includes products developed outside of China, such as ChatGPT, Cursor, Suno either Perplexitywhich are integrated into professional processes where continuity and recurring payment are common. Faced with this diversity, the visual specialization of the Chinese ecosystem occupies a more limited space. An obvious commercial paradox. The Chinese AI ecosystem is built on a huge domestic market, and most companies develop their products with that audience in mind. The report identifies hundreds of startups focused primarily on local users, a strategy that takes advantage of both the country’s scale and its pace of technological adoption. However, when the products that generate the most recurring income are analyzed, those that invoice in international markets predominate. Of the 23 Chinese products present in the top 100 by ARR, 19 earn their main income outside of China. The conclusion is clear: use is concentrated within the country, but the capacity for sustained monetization continues to come from abroad. Achilles heel. By relying on foreign markets to sustain their recurring revenues, Chinese AI companies operate under a higher level of uncertainty than their global competitors. Restrictions associated with “national security,” app bans, and trade measures between countries have become more common, and each of them can limit your international presence. If any of these barriers affected products that are currently monetized abroad, the drop in income would be difficult to avoid. The picture left by the figures is clear: China has built a broad ecosystem, although its income structure continues to depend enormously on foreign sources. The question is no longer how much you invest, but how you convert that effort into lasting results inside and outside the country. The challenge is to consolidate a model that can be sustained beyond reach and that resists an international environment marked by tensions and changing regulations. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 In Xataka | DeepSeek has broken its silence after months without appearing: its … Read more

Stephen Hawking left a hidden treasure that has just been discovered. The problem is that it is in the form of floppy disks

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The Cambridge University Library houses several historical treasures including letters from Isaac Newton and notebooks from Charles Darwin. Now they will take care also of manage 113 boxes with documents and memories of the physical Stephen Hawkingbut in those boxes they also found a surprise turned into a challenge: floppy disks. Lots of them. Computer pioneer. The famous physicist was an early user of those first computers in which data was stored on floppy disks. When he suffered from ALS this was a very important resource to be able to communicate and work, and now those disks that have just been discovered could contain all kinds of revealing data about Hawking’s life and work. Future Nostalgia. That’s what it’s called the project of the University of Cambridge and its library that precisely tries to safeguard all that information that in the past ended up being stored on floppy disks. Recovering such data is not easy when so much time has passed, and this project tries to educate about the best ways to preserve said information and transfer or recover it from those floppy disks. A format with an expiration date. Although one would think that floppy disks are a more secure way to store data than paper and ink, this physical medium also has clear disadvantages. The iron oxide covering the thin layer of plastic can degrade and lose its magnetic capabilities, meaning data could be lost forever. Each floppy disk is a world. With old books there are not too many problems when it comes to retrieving the information: you open them and read them (if you understand the language, of course). With floppy disks you need the hardware to be able to read them—a compatible disk drive—and also figure out how they are formatted. Leontien Talboom, responsible for this project, explained How to also clean those floppy disks was complex and there were various methods that they were exploring. These included the use of hand soap or isopropyl alcohol. Hawking used both a PC and a Mac. The disks arrived at the project in two batches. The first, with five and a quarter (5.25 inch) disks formatted on an MS-DOS based PC. The second, with three and a half disks, somewhat more recent and that were still used on an old Mac. According to Talboom, they are mainly talks that Hawking gave: “from a technical point of view they are really interesting because his talks were so big that he had to divide them into several floppy disks.” I wrote to speak. Hawking’s illness left him unable to speak for himself, so for years he used various voice synthesizers to express his ideas. Precisely for this reason he wrote so much on the computer and saved those documents on disk: this allowed him to use them later so that his synthesized voice could read said documents. Different discs, different readers. Although 5.25″ and especially 3.5″ discs were the most widespread, other formats were also seen such as eight inch discs which for example were used in the Churchill Archives Centre. Chris Knowles, one of the Future Nostalgia participants, explained how he bought a player for these discs on eBay. “It was a miracle that it worked,” but that allowed him to recover the information from those disks. Forgotten formats. They have also received some three-inch floppy disks, a much less widespread and peculiar format that had some success in the United Kingdom before the 3.5″ format was clearly imposed. To recover them, they ended up using an old reader manufactured by Amstrad that they had to modify to bring it back to life. And then there’s the software problem.. The information recovered from these disks can also pose another challenge: that it was created with software that was abandoned and even ended up disappearing. Some disks, for example, had documents written with a missing word processor called Diamond Word. That’s where a kind of “translation” comes into play to convert those files into something readable in the current era. Safeguarding our past. This work demonstrates how critical it is to try to protect and recover information from these old formats. Many of those floppy disks are 40 or 50 years old, and as Knowles says, “old emails and work calendars may not look like historical documents. They might seem banal. But they’re what Newton’s or Darwin’s letters would have looked like 200 years ago. Now they are fascinating documents that open a window to the past.” In Xataka | The 20 most important personal computers in the history of technology

We had a very serious problem with our resistance to antibiotics. Now we are closer to solving it

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One of the great threats that humanity faces today is without a doubt the antibiotic resistancewhich leads to emergence of bacteria that are resistant to all pharmacological weapons that we have. This forces science to have to look for new antibiotics and new ways to ‘attack’ a bacteria. And at the moment it seems that we are approaching this great milestone with a new antibiotic that was hidden in plain sight. The problem. Having bacteria that you cannot compete against is undoubtedly a death sentence for the person who is unlucky enough to be its host. Something that responds to the mechanisms that these microorganisms have to evolve and develop ‘tactics’ that allow them to escape our antibiotics. A very typical situation in a hospital, especially where a bacteria that has been exposed to a treatment, but has survived, will adapt to that environment. This makes the WHO categorize antimicrobial resistance as “one of the top 10 threats to global public health.” Put another way: we are running out of antibiotics that work, since bacteria are evolving faster than we are discovering new drugs. And this is something that is also magnified by our own fault by taking antibiotics uncontrollably or not complete treatment guidelines appropriately. That is why the discovery just made by a team from the University of Warwick and Monash University is so spectacular: have found a “silver bullet” that had been hidden in plain sight for 50 years. The discovery. Published in it Journal of the American Chemical Societywe are talking about an antibiotic that, in early tests, has been shown to be up to 100 times more powerful than existing drugs against high-priority resistant bacteria, such as feared Staphylococcus aureus methicillin resistant (MRSA). The molecule in question is called pre-methylenemycin C lactone (compound 5), and it has arrived to try to save humanity from this pandemic we are experiencing. But the most surprising thing is where they found it: in the Streptomyces coelicolora soil bacteria that is literally the “model organism” for the production of antibiotics and which has been studied endlessly since the 1950s. That is to say, we had a possible solution before our eyes and we had not realized it until now. This bacteria produces a well-known antibiotic called methylenemycin A that is low potency and is not used clinically. However, scientists decided to investigate not only the final product, but the intermediate steps of its biological “assembly line.” This is where it was seen that it intermediately produced methylenemycin C, which has much more powerful antimicrobial effects. And this is a lesson for science: we are always left with the result of the reactions (that is, the final product). But now what should be done is analyze everything that happens between the first substrate and the final product. Because we are seeing how methylenemycin A was discovered 50 years ago and it was not until now that one of its intermediate products has been a protagonist in this fight. As. To achieve this, the team used genetic engineering. Basically, they “sabotaged” the bacteria’s production chain by creating a mutation that eliminated the gene. mmyE. When this piece is missingthe bacteria could no longer complete the process and began to accumulate the “intermediate steps.” Something similar to when in a production line we remove one of the tapes and an intermediate version of what we were manufacturing begins to accumulate. The tests. When they tested the activity of the new molecule, the results were astonishing. Compound 5 (pre-methylenemycin C lactone) was “one to two orders of magnitude more active” (i.e., 10- to 100-fold) than methylenemycins A and C (the final products). In this way, it was finally possible to see that the result was up to 256 times more powerful than even some drugs. Something that is revolutionary. The great hope. Being powerful is all well and good, but the real battle is against resistance. That is, when the bacteria come into contact with this antibiotic, they can develop a system to get rid of its lethal effect. And this is where there is good news, since after subjecting the bacteria E. faecium At increasing concentrations of the new antibiotic for 28 consecutive days, a standard method for forcing the emergence of resistance, no resistance was detected. A new way to search. Until now, the intermediate products generated in the production of different medicines had been ignored. Now this study puts an end to this custom, since it has become clear that the identification and testing of the intermediate elements of biosynthesis can lead to a great revolution. Now with this new treatment, preclinical tests with animals remain to assess its safety with the aim of subsequently moving on to tests in humans and the evaluation of its side effects. Images | CDC Myriam Zilles In Xataka | AI has opened a chest that had been closed for almost 4 billion years: the salvation of antibiotics

We have a problem with wind blades and another with concrete. Spain has decided to resolve both at the same time

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In the Algete workshops, north of Madrid, the remains of a crushed wind blade await their second life. For years he captured the wind in a park in Cadiz; Today it is part of an experimental concrete slab. Spain is finding an unusual way to unite two environmental challenges: the recycling of thousands of wind blades that accumulate as waste and the urgency of reducing the carbon footprint of concrete, one of the most polluting materials on the planet. From the blades to the ground. Acciona and Holcim have developed successfully a new sustainable concrete made from recycled wind turbine blades. The project, named Blade2Buildis part of a European innovation initiative in the circular economy. The prototype consists of a slab of more than 120 square meters built in the Demoparque of the Acciona Technology Center, in Algete (Madrid). As the company explainsthe composition incorporates materials from wind turbine blades in fiber form as a partial replacement for natural aggregates. In other words, crushed shovels are used to replace some of the gravel or sand normally used in concrete. The mix. The base of the new concrete is an ecological version developed by Holcima type of material designed to minimize its environmental impact. In this case, the formula includes 11% recycled components, including fibers from crushed wind blades. This technology, known as ECOCycle, allows you to reuse materials that would otherwise end up as waste, without compromising the strength or durability of the product. A low CO₂ emission cement is also used, manufactured with less clinker —the substance obtained by heating limestone to more than 1,400 °C and which is mainly responsible for the emissions of traditional cement. According to Holcim This combination reduces the carbon footprint of the final product by almost half. In addition, the glass fibers and resins of the blades act as internal reinforcement, improving the material’s resistance to traction and fractures. The energy that once moved with the wind now settles in the earth. The dilemma of the shovels. In the coming years, thousands of wind blades will stop spinning in Europe. Silent, gigantic, they will remain on dry land after two decades facing the wind. It is calculated which will be about 14,000an avalanche of materials—fiberglass, carbon and resins—that will add up to between 40,000 and 60,000 tons of waste. They are made to last, not to disappear. And that is the great dilemma: their resistance, the same that made them useful, now condemns them. In the United States, the consequences of not planning the end of the cycle have already been seen: in 2020, an aerial photo of a landfill in Wyoming, taken by Bloombergshowed hundreds of half-buried wind blades. The scene went viral and served as a warning to Europe, which is now working on solutions that allow its materials to be recovered instead of burying them. ¿Does it really work? The first trials are promising. According to Holcimthe resulting concrete maintains the necessary structural properties and meets durability standards. The shredded blade fibers not only reinforce the material, but also improve its flexibility and resistance to fracture. It is not the only case. The University of Burgos has been experimenting with its own method for several years, based on the use of TPA (Wind Turbine Blade Grinding), a material obtained by cutting and grinding the blades into tiny fragments. The Sustainable Construction Research group (Sucons) has even paved a 50-meter street on the Milanera campus with this type of concrete. But it is not Acciona’s first project. As part of the #TurbineMade initiative, one of the blades in the Tahivilla park in Cadiz was transformed into a limited series of sports shoes manufactured together with the El Ganso brand. As explained by the companythose recycled soles symbolize their commitment to achieving 100% sustainable materials in their collections. The paradox is unique. The same materials that once helped produce clean energy can now be used to reduce emissions from the most polluting industry. If concrete was the material of the 20th century, perhaps the material of the 21st is the one that manages to build without destroying. And in Spain, at least, they have already begun to do so. Shovel by shovel. Image | FreePik and FreePik Xataka | Spain has become the first European country to break with gas. The only problem is that the invoice says something else.

Character.AI has just shown ChatGPT the way to tackle the problem of AI and minors

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The suicide of a teenager and other cases of delusions have put AI chatbots in the spotlight for their effects on mental healthespecially that of the youngest. ChatGPT has already implemented parental controls in response to this growing concern and a few days ago they admitted to being aware that ChatGPT was causing serious mental health problems for some users. . Now, Character.ai, one of the chatbots that is also at the center of the controversyhas made a drastic decision. +18. United States already is legislating to regulate the use of so-called ‘AI companions’ in minors and Character.ai has gone ahead by taking a more drastic measure than parental control. As they say in TechCrunchStarting on November 25, the app will begin limiting the usage time to two hours for those under 18. Little by little, that time will be reduced until it is zero. Age verification. To ensure that those under 18 can no longer use the app, Character.ai is going to deploy an age verification system that analyzes user behavior. If it fails, the app will use additional identity verification and facial recognition to block users who are not of legal age. ChatGPT, warm up as you go out. OpenAI has recently taken steps to prevent cases like that of Adam Rainemainly the integration of parental control in ChatGPT. The measure contrasts with Altman’s statements days later, when he said that ChatGPT would allow us to have conversations with erotic contentbut only for adults. Altman said that the app would require age verification for anyone who wanted to use it, but he did not say anything about blocking it completely to minors as Character.ai has done. Shot in the foot? Making ChatGPT an app for people over 18 years of age would be a strong measure to end the problem or, at least, comply with what the regulations ask for. first laws that want to regulate ‘AI companions’. However, it could be shooting themselves in the foot because it would cause them to lose a lot of users, something that cannot be afforded in the current climate. OpenAI recently published a in-depth report on your usersbut did not share the data of users under 18 years of age, according to them for privacy reasons. We know that almost half (46%) of their total user base are between 18 and 26 years old. That is, a large part of them are very young users. Minors and AI. OpenAI does not want to tell us how many minors use its chatbot, but thanks to other studies we know that the use of generative AI is very popular among this age segment. According to a International Plan studyin Spain 86% of young people between 12 and 21 years old have recently used AI. In turn, 18% of girls and 12% of boys admit to using it “to talk and tell their things.” Image | Character.ai, Pexels In Xataka | The great paradox of cell phones in adolescence: they are bad for performance and mental health, but banning them at school does not help

If the war involves electromagnetic catapults, Beijing has a problem

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In mid-September there was a tense scene in China. It happened on the deck of his brand new Fujian aircraft carrierand all the hopes of his Navy were placed on the reliability of that test: If for decades takeoffs were dominated by steam, his new “monster” was going to do it with electricity. Your electromagnetic catapult confirmed They were very serious. Although now the United States has something to say. Structural limitation. The news have given two former US Navy aircraft carrier officers, who conclude, after analyze images of the Fujian, that the deck configuration of the new Chinese aircraft carrier forces takeoffs and landings to be sequenced instead of overlapping them, which reduces its operational rhythm to approximately 60% of a Nimitz no less than half a century. The explanation. As they say, the angle of support of only 6th compared to 9th of the American ships, the greater length of the landing area (which invades the area where the planes are parked in tip before the catapult) and the position of the two forward catapults intercepting the landing system convert the deck into a plane with kinetic conflict pointswhere moving a recovered aircraft can momentarily block the catapult and disrupt the next sortie. Given this risk of collisions in an extremely dense and fast environment, the only realistic mitigation, according to officialsis to lower the tempo, which is equivalent to a direct degradation of the output generation capacity. Technological leap. He FujianAs we said, it is the first Chinese aircraft carrier with electromagnetic catapultsallowing devices to be launched with more fuel and weapons, increasing radius and hit mass. In fact, only Gerald R. Ford American shares this characteristic. It is a radical leap from Liaoning and Shandongwhich continue with ski jumping and limit weight at takeoff. But the material leap does not imply an immediate doctrinal leap: the deck operational culture (cycles, sequences, discipline of human and mechanical flow under hostile climate) is only achieved through years of operation and “with a blood curve,” as veterans remember. Without that accumulated experience, hardware introduces potential capacity that practice does not yet know how to exploit without a penalty in pace (or risk). Quantitative advantage. we have told before: China launches ships at an accelerated pace, building the largest navy in the world in total numberbut its deficit in aircraft carriers is not countable but rather generational: eleven compared to two in service, and decades of know-how compared to a first cohort that is barely entering the real training phase. The Fujian is the first volumetric competitor of the Nimitzbut according to American commanders, it is born with a deck topology that compromises your cadencewhile Washington operates ten Nimitz with doctrine mature and closes the cycle with the Ford class. That the Nimitz, launched in 1975in its last deployment may still surpass Fujian in rate of departures, illustrates that distance between tonnage and competition. The “intermediate link.” The officials, furthermore, interpret the Fujian as a bridge platform: first introduce the catapult, and then clear restrictions in subsequent generations. The next unit (the Type 004) will adjust, a priori, errors and move geometries to unleash the potential that the Fujian contains but does not release due to its disposition. China already shows the industrial pattern of fix in production: fail, learn and launch an iteration in a few years, something consistent with its naval pattern in other ship classes. In that sense, it would not be entirely correct to say that the Fujian fails: rather it fulfills the function of teaching and learning so that the successor is born without those collars. From steam to electricity. Steam catapults dominated shipborne aviation since the fifties: They use steam pressure to drive a piston that drags the plane. They are huge, but energy inefficient, with control thick acceleration and high maintenance requirements. the arrival by EMALS (Electro-Magnetic Aircraft Launch System), first in the Ford class and now in Fujianreplaces thermal hydraulics with digitally controllable induction force: acceleration can be modulated, reducing the structural fatigue of the aircraft, allowing heavier devices to be launched with less stroke and recovering energy more quickly between departures. The “but”. It turns out that the electromagnetic advantage is conditional: to translate into real power requires a deck architecture, doctrine, rhythms and sequence discipline capable of capitalizing on the new margin. In other words, the first generation system in the hands of a fleet without “deck kilometers” inherits the physical power but far from the operational efficiency that decades of steam they taught to squeeze. The key is time. Ultimately, the background thesis of the veteran Marines is not that the Fujian is an unsolvable error, but that its limitation reveals the real nature of naval aviation warfare: it is not pure engineering but engineering amortized with habit, and where the enemy is not design but the chronology. Although it may seem like it, the combat power of an aircraft carrier is not its displacement or its systems, but rather the cycles per hour and the psychological confidence accumulated to sustain them at night, under storms, with low fuel and/or zero margin. That casuistry, which defines lethal performance, cannot be bought. AND, according to officialsChina still operates in the stadium in which only through years of cover will it be able to convert the physical leap from Fujian in sustained air power output. Image | Ministry of National Defense The People’s Republic of China/ LI GANG/XINHUA, Ministry of National Defense In Xataka | China has just tested the Fujian with three different aircraft. The electromagnetic catapult is no longer theory, it is practice In Xataka | For years the Airbus A380 symbolized European power against Boeing. Today he survives like a colossus without a kingdom

Real Betis Balompié has joined the space race to solve a pressing problem: collisions between satellites

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It sounds unlikely, but it is a fact. Real Betis Balompié has entered the space sector. And without leaving Seville. GMV’s new partner. The historic football club and the aerospace company GMV have installed in the Rafael Gordillo sports city a satellite surveillance and tracking antenna. The agreement makes Betis the first football club in the world to host a facility dedicated to the sustainability of the space. More specifically, at pressing space debris challenge and the increasing risk of collisions in orbit. Betis 1 – Space trash 130 million. Earth orbit congestion may not be the main concern of green and white fans, but it is a danger for the satellites we use every daywhether with the car navigator, to see the weather forecast or when we turn on the broadcast of a football match. Thousands of operational satellites coexist with up to 130 million fragments of space debris: pieces of dead satellites and rocket remains that travel at hypersonic speeds and have triggered the evasion maneuvers of the active satellites. It is “one of the great challenges that humanity faces in the orbital environment,” says Miguel Ángel Molina, of GMV. Monitor and prevent. This is where the new 2.7 meter satellite dish installed at the Betis training center in Seville comes into play. Its mission is to track space debris and predict collisions in order to avoid them. To this end, GMV internally developed a system called Focusear. It works by “listening” to the signals that the satellites themselves emit in the Ku band (the same one used by satellite television) from the geostationary orbit, about 36,000 km high. Nanosecond precision. Upon receiving these signals, the system uses radio frequency triangulation techniques (TDoA and FDoA) to determine the position and orbit of the satellites with a margin of error of about three meters, equivalent to 10 nanoseconds. These data are vital to inform satellite operators, who are in charge of managing the evasion maneuvers of their fleets. But also to expand the European Space Surveillance System (EUSST), a catalog of objects that helps prevent large-scale collisions. Why Betis. The Sevillian club had created the Forever Green foundation, whose name has a double meaning. In addition to being green for its kit, Betis has become the most sustainable club in LaLiga (and the second in Europe) in terms of energy efficiency, recycling and water reuse. Expanding this vision of sustainability to space is literally taking its environmental commitment “beyond the Earth,” says Rafa Muela, manager of the foundation. But there is something else. Seville is the headquarters of the Spanish Space Agencyso the choice is not accidental. Somehow the Andalusian capital must be placed on the map of national spatial development. Image | GMV, Real Betis Balompié In Xataka | Three large pieces of space debris reenter every day: “one day our luck will run out and they will fall on someone”

Tinder has a serious problem with bots posing as humans. So it’s going to ask you for facial recognition.

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Creating a fake profile on Tinder can take just a few minutes. Soon it won’t be so simple. The app is implementing a security measure to combat the problem of fake accounts which will force all users to undergo facial verification. Show me your face. Face verification was optional, but with Face Check it is made mandatory for all new users. During the account creation process, a selfie video will have to be taken as “proof of life”. The measure is already underway in some countries such as the United States, Australia, Canada, Colombia and India, among others. There is no date, but it is expected that it will soon be deployed in the rest of the world. Does not save the photo. Tinder’s security manager tells it in Wired. During verification, the app does not save a photo of our face, but instead saves reference points on the shape of the face and converts them into a mathematical hash. The app compares that file with its database to check if it matches another account. With this measure, Tinder will prevent the creation of bot accounts, but it will also prevent the same person from having multiple accounts. a serious problem. We don’t have updated data on the volume of fake accounts, but in 2021 it was at least 23%. Tinder admits that almost all (98%) of the moderation actions they carry out are motivated by fake accounts, spam and fraud. And the problem is serious. In 2024, Bloomberg published a report about the extent of romance frauds, many of them carried out through fake profiles created by AI. The usual topic is cryptocurrencies and other fraudulent platforms. According to the Federal Trade CommissionIn 2022 alone, more than $1.3 billion were scammed in the United States. Loss of interest. After the boom of the pandemic, Tinder began to lose users, especially paid. Others like Bumble also began to decline and the trend has continued. According to this survey78% of users were tired of using these apps. It’s what they call ‘dating fatigue‘ and basically it is that we are too lazy to flirt through apps. and trustworthy. The fact that apps are full of fake profiles does not help their growth and Tinder knows it. The new measure is aimed at regaining the trust of users, ensuring them that they are talking to a real person and not a bot or a multi-account. Of course, it still does not address other problems, such as those who upload fake photos, lie about their relationship status or they use ChatGPT to seem more interesting than they really are. Image | Pexels In Xataka | Singles are fed up with Tinder. So they are starting to turn to an old acquaintance: marriage agencies

Spain wants to show that it can live without nuclear weapons. The problem is that he is still testing how

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Spain is experiencing a decisive moment in its energy policy. While the Government defends an orderly closure of nuclear power plants and relies on an experimental digital system to stabilize the grid, large electricity companies warn that the transition It is being faster than safe. At the epicenter of this tension is Almaraz, the Extremaduran power plant that refuses to turn off its reactors and that has once again divided technicians, politicians and neighbors. The nuclear dilemma. The closure of the Almaraz nuclear power plant in Cáceres is officially set for 2027 and 2028, but the debate over its future has returned with force. Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy agreed to present to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition a formal request to extend their activity until 2030. They will do so, they say, out of “responsibility with the supply” after the voltage failures recorded in recent weeks that “they reactivated the risk of blackout”. Companies have, for the moment, given up asking for tax reductions. Their message is different: Spain, they argue, is not prepared to disconnect from the atom. “Nuclear is the system’s anti-blackout shield,” says the CEO of Iberdrola Spain. However, the Government does not move. The Minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, has reiterated the commitment to the closure calendar agreed in 2019, which foresees the nuclear blackout between 2027 and 2035. Only if three conditions are not met: security, guarantee of supply and zero cost for the taxpayer, will the Executive would reconsider his position. A model in testing. The core of the controversy is not only political, but technical. The Executive’s plan involves replacing the stability offered by nuclear and thermal plants with a digital voltage and frequency control system based on renewables. In theory, wind and solar farms will be able to simulate electrical inertia —the ability to resist sudden changes in frequency— through advanced electronics. In practice, the model is still in the testing phase. According to Energy NewsRed Eléctrica (REE) is developing new control tools to integrate non-synchronous generation, but still without complete validation. Additionally, new digital control algorithms have not been tested on a national scaleand its reliability at high power has not yet been demonstrated. Sources from the Ministry of Ecological Transition cited by El Periódico They admit that full stability of the system “will only be possible when all renewable plants are digitally synchronized with the operator”, a process that – they acknowledge – “will still take time.” The network under surveillance. Aware of these risks, the CNMC approved an emergency modification of the operating procedures (OP 3.1, 3.2, 7.2 and 7.4) to reinforce the stability of the system. In practice, they are standards that determine how Red Eléctrica must react to variations in voltage and frequency, and allow it to act with more flexibility in times of risk. However, not everything went as planned. As energy expert Joaquín Coronado explains on his networksthe CNMC stopped the complete approval of OP 7.4 when it detected that the new model required responses that were impossible for many conventional plants to comply with. Several generators alleged that too rapid a reaction could damage the machines or generate additional oscillations, something the CNMC acknowledged in its resolution. The regulator asked Red Eléctrica to “intensify coordination and temporarily make the requirements more flexible”, making it clear that the problem was not one of inertia, but rather speed of response. A pulse of time. The electricity companies’ proposal to extend the first Almaraz reactor until 2030 and the second until 2029, would give three additional years to the current calendar. However, the Nuclear Safety Council requires that documentation be submitted before November 1 to begin the decommissioning process. In parallel, the Government of Extremadura has announced that it will reduce the regional “ecotax” by half if the plant remains operational, a gesture that the central Executive views with suspicion. “Taxpayers cannot pay more to maintain a plant that had to close,” recalled the Government delegate in Extremadura, José Luis Quintana, in statements to Canal Extremadura. Mobilization in the streets. While the technical and political debate becomes entangled, the residents of Almaraz took to the streets. Last Marchhundreds of people marched under the slogan “Yes to Almaraz, yes to the future,” in a protest supported by mayors of nearby municipalities and nuclear sector associations. In their arguments they defend their position in favor of nuclear power for fear of job loss, a population exodus and the fall of the local economy. But not everyone shares that enthusiasm. Ecologists in Action criticized the presence of local authorities at the protest and asked to accelerate a “just transition” that generates employment alternatives. “You cannot continue tying the future of a region to an industry that promotes environmental and health risks,” the organization said in a statement. Europe looks at Spain. While France and Belgium extend the life of their reactors until 2060, Spain remains firm in its nuclear closure. The Enresa fund to dismantle the plants drags a deficit of 11.6 billion euros. The electricity companies cite this as proof that closing early makes the system more expensive; The Government replies that extending it would jeopardize the ecological transition. The peninsula remains an “energy island” with only 3% interconnection with France, which amplifies any failure. And more and more experts repeat the same thing: the problem is not the speed of the transition, but that the network and the rules They are not getting stronger at the same rate.. A still uncertain future. Almaraz has become much more than a power plant: it is a symbol of the tension between climate urgency and energy security. The Executive insists that Spain will be able to sustain its network with renewable technology and digital control; Technicians and electrical companies ask for caution. Meanwhile, Red Eléctrica engineers fine-tune algorithms, the CNMC approves regulatory patches and the residents of Almaraz prepare for a future that, for now, continues to depend on its two reactors. Spain wants to turn on … Read more

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