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how to protect pets from heat stroke in the midst of a wave of extreme temperatures

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Nobody likes a record heat wave. Not even the summer fans who like to spend hours and hours on the beach, lying under the umbrella and with the murmur of the waves in the background. When we talk about pets, however, the heatwave can become a death trap. So much so that the veterinary colleges and even the government They remind us that we must be responsible when taking care of our animals in summer. Failure to do so can not only end in an avoidable tragedy, it also leads to consequences legal. That’s why it’s good to review some guidelines. Veterinarians on call. Few groups know the needs of animals better than veterinarians. That is why it is significant that, with the summer having just begun, the Spanish referees have not taken long to publish posts and guides on the same topic: how to care for pets during the dog days. In recent weeks, professionals from Barcelona, Lion, Madrid either Alicanteamong other regions, in addition to veterinarians on a private basis and the bosses from pet food manufacturers, ANFAAC. Even the Ministry of Social Rights launched a guide a couple of years ago “to protect pets from heat waves.” Just like him College of Veterinarians of Madrid (Covelma). The idea is very simple: make people aware that their tolerance to heat and that of their pets does not have to be the same and there are tragedies, such as heat stroke, burns or dehydration that are easily avoidable. It often comes with paying a little attention. Are they so common? There are not many studies on the subject, but we do have some data that helps us understand the insistence of veterinary colleges and authorities. There are those who estimate, for example, that episodes of heat stroke in pets they shoot up 35% during the months of July and August, although some sources say that in the clinics they see up to five times more cases of this type when the mercury shoots. As a reference, the British Veterinary Association (BVA) estimates that during the dog days of 2022 51% of the country’s veterinarians treated animals requiring treatment for heat-related illnesses. A percentage to reflect on. These are worrying data if we take into account that only survivors 50% of dogs that suffer from heat stroke, a critical situation during which their body overheats and even loses the ability to self-regulate temperature. What’s more, it only takes a few minutes (just 15) in that situation for the consequences to be fatal. As Colvema recalls, the normal body temperature of a dog is around 38.5º and at 43º the internal organs begin to fail. It is not that much of a difference: there can only be a 6º difference between the interior of a white car and a black car. What needs to be taken into account? If we want to protect our pets, it is important to keep several key pieces of information in mind. From the outset, as I remembered recently the Italian veterinarian Giuiliano Pellegrini in The Worldthat “dogs and cats have a limited ability to dissipate body heat.” Hence they are “particularly vulnerable” during episodes of extreme heat. When temperatures rise, your cardiovascular system is forced to work harder and if our pet suffers from heart pathologies, they may worsen. Heat also does not agree well with respiratory or kidney ailments, something that we must take into account with older, obese or brachycephalic. In general, to avoid heat stroke, veterinarians recommend four very simple guidelines: avoid the hottest hours, walk in shady areas, always carry water and be attentive to the animal’s behavior. If you are breathing hard, feeling down, and have your tongue sticking out, it is better to pay attention. Vomiting, diarrhea, weakness, a change in the color of the tongue and choking breathing are reasons for alarm, so you should go to a veterinary clinic. The decalogue of heat. To avoid scares, a few years ago the Ministry of Social Rights published a decalogue with very simple tips. For example, it warns of the risk of leaving animals locked in the car or approaching walks with our dogs more carefully, thinking for example where we will go, what time we will do it, how far we will travel and how to cool down. It is not a minor issue. For example, you may be wearing sneakers or sandals, but (depending on the time of day) your pet may end up walking on heated asphalt. more than 60º and end up with injuries to the pads. Below are the 10 pieces of advice from the Government: Don’t leave your pet in the car. In summer, temperatures soar and leaving your pet alone, inside a vehicle, can end very badly. “A closed car can reach very high temperatures in a few minutes that are potentially fatal,” warns the ministry. The walks, in the fresh air. Try to avoid the hottest hours and make the longest (and most exhausting) walks the first and last thing in the day. For a large, elderly or brachycephalic dog, temperatures exceeding 30º can be dangerous. From 32º, the risk increases for all dogs, so it is better that they do not do exercises that exhaust them. You wear shoes, he doesn’t. Keep it in mind. When walking next to you, your dog passes over manhole covers, paved streets, concrete esplanades, tiles… surfaces that get hot in summer. Veterinarians remember that during critical hours the asphalt can exceed 60ºC. Hydrate yourself, hydrate him. Authorities and doctors insist that in summer we must hydrate. The same thing happens with your furry companion. In summer you have to change their water more frequently and if you take them out for a walk it is advisable to take a bottle and a water bowl with you. Racing for winter. Physical exercise is fine, but during the heat of the heat it is best to avoid excessive exertion. If you want to play ball … Read more

Italy planted millions of fir trees to protect the Alps. 90 years later they have discovered that biodiversity has been reduced by half

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The ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote a phrase that would end up defining all modern conservation in 1949: “maintaining each piece is the first rule of ecological intelligence.” He said it decades before science could measure it, but today studies like the one in the Alps Italians demonstrate the extent to which removing pieces of an ecosystem can seem invisible… until generations pass. A forest that seemed like a solution. In the 1930s, Italy by Benito Mussolini He decided that the best way to stabilize the Alps was to cover them with trees. The logic seemed impeccable: stop erosion, ensure wood for the future and display an image of order and national productivity. For this they chose norwegian sprucea fast-growing conifer, straight trunk and profitable wood. Thousands of hectares of alpine meadows and native forests were razed to plant dense, homogeneous rows of this species. For decades, that decision was sold as a forestry engineering success. From afar, those green forests looked healthy. But almost a century later, science has discovered that beneath that appearance a silent impoverishment was hidden. Ninety years later, the ecological bill. The studyled by ecologist Gianalberto Losapio and published in the journal Ecology, analyzed two areas of the Italian Prealps, near Lake Como: Monte Bisbino and Vicere Alp. There, the researchers They compared three habitats Neighbors: spruce plantations, native deciduous forests and traditional alpine grasslands. During five months of field work they identified 136 plant species and 201 arthropod species. The results were devastating. In plantations there was a median of only seven plant species per plot, compared to 18.5 in native forests and 37 in grasslands. Translated: more than 50% less diversity than in natural forests and almost 75% less than in the pastures. The problem of planting only one type of tree. The big mistake was believing that more trees automatically equaled more nature. Monoculture works well to produce wood, but It’s an ecological trap. When a landscape is filled with a single species, complexity disappears, because each plant, insect and microorganism plays a role in the ecosystem. Reducing this variety implies reducing resistance to diseases, pests or extreme phenomena. In the Italian Alps, diverse landscapes were replaced by uniform blocks coniferousand the result was a brutal simplification of the ecological network. What seemed like reforestation ended up being a substitution of biodiversity for productivity. A: Location of the study sites. B: Satellite image of the Monte Bisbino site. C: Satellite image of the Alpe del Vicerè site. Satellite images B and C represent the location of the fixed plots. “SM” = monoculture spruce plantations, “DF” = native deciduous forest and “GR” = grassland (prairie/mountain grassland). Map data: Google, Maxar Technologies Darkness as a silent weapon. The norway spruce It has a key characteristic: it is perennial. While beech, maple or chestnut trees lose their leaves and allow light to reach the ground in spring, the spruce maintains a closed canopy all year round. It is not trivial. In fact, that difference changes everything. Many alpine plants flower precisely in that window of early light, before the forest canopy closes. Under a spruce plantation, that opportunity disappears because the ground remains in constant shade and many species simply cannot survive. That is, it is not an open competition, it is a physical and permanent exclusion. The ground was also transformed. There is more, because the damage did not remain on the surface. Spruce needles acidify the soil as they accumulate over decades. The researchers found 25% more organic carbon in these plantations, although that did not mean greater fertility. It was just the opposite: organic matter decomposed more slowly, a sign of lower biological activity. Not only that. The balance between carbon and nitrogen also I was upsetindicating slower and less efficient nutrient cycling. In simple terms, the forest continued to accumulate remains because the system had lost the capacity to recycle them. It was a stuck ecosystem. A poorer and more fragile forest. Beyond the number of species, scientists measured something even more important: the “functional uniformity”that is, how ecological roles are distributed within the plant community. In spruce plantations, this index was 30% lower than in natural forests. That means less balance and more vulnerability. It’s not just that there are fewer species, but rather that entire functions within the system are missing. Some niches were left empty and many ecological jobs stopped being done. In other words, the forest is still there, but it works worse. It didn’t even create a new ecosystem. The researchers of the study said that one of the most revealing findings was verifying that these plantations they did not generate a new community adapted to the spruce. In fact, no specialized boreal species appeared nor a new equilibrium built. No, what they found was a version mutilated of the original forest: the same species as always, but less numerous and diverse. The spruce did not bring new life, it simply eroded what already existed. The insects resisted better, but with nuances. The only less alarming data appeared in the soil arthropods. Its diversity barely varied between plantations and natural forests. Reasons? Scientists believe that this due to their mobility and their ability to move between nearby habitats. Be that as it may, even here there is caution among experts. Soil chemistry suggests that microbial activity and the finer network of underground life have also changed, although they were not directly measured. The surface may give an image of partial recovery, but the subsoil continues to tell another story. The global lesson that comes too late. If you also want, what happened in Italy is not a historical rarity. Today, a good part of the global reforestation commitments continue exactly this model: plant quickly, cheaply and uniformly to meet climatic and accounting objectives. According to previous studies cited by the authorshalf of the areas committed to forest restoration in the world are monocultures of non-native species. Although it is an efficient formula in the short term … Read more

how to protect your files with post-quantum encryption today

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Quantum computers will acquire the ability to break classical cryptography in a relatively short period of time. At the end of last March, a group of researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the University of California at Berkeley and the emerging company Oratomic published a scientific article preliminary in which he explored the capabilities of quantum computers of neutral atoms. These machines are an alternative to quantum computers with superconducting and ion trap qubits, and are still in an experimental phase. These scientists have estimated that Shor’s algorithm can be implemented using a quantum computer equipped with between 10,000 and 20,000 qubits of neutral atoms. In fact, in their article they even propose a design with which in theory it would be possible break bitcoin encryption in a few days using 26,000 qubits of neutral atoms. In any case, these researchers are not the only ones who in recent months have alerted us to the ability of quantum computers to violate classical cryptography. In that same period, the group of artificial intelligence Google quantum published a study in which he demonstrates that the elliptic curve encryption used by Bitcoin or Ethereum, among other cryptocurrencies, can be overthrown using far fewer resources than initially estimated. According to these researchers, a quantum computer with less than half a million physical qubits will be able to decipher the algorithms used by current cryptocurrencies in a few minutes. In short, the scientific community has agreed that classical encryption technologies will be vulnerable before the arrival of large-scale quantum hardware. We can now protect our data Cryptography is the art of protecting our information through mathematical transformations. In this way, an encrypted message is incomprehensible to anyone who does not have the correct key. For decades, Internet security has rested on a seemingly solid principle: certain mathematical problems are so difficult to solve that no conventional computer could attack them in a reasonable amount of time. Post-quantum cryptography brings together a set of cryptographic algorithms designed to resist attacks from both classical and quantum computers. However, as we have seen, quantum computers are going to overturn this premise sooner rather than later. Fortunately, we have the post-quantum cryptographycommonly known as PQC due to its English name (Post-Quantum Cryptography). This technology brings together a set of cryptographic algorithms designed to resist attacks from both classical and quantum computers. The most important thing is that these algorithms run on conventional hardware. They do not require quantum computers to operate and are designed to replace current standards on the same processors we use today. In 2024, the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published an initial set of standards that includes a post-quantum key exchange mechanism and several post-quantum digital signature schemes. The three standards published by NIST have clear functions. ML-KEM is based on the CRYSTALS-Kyber algorithm and is a key encapsulation mechanism. Its function is to establish securely encrypted communication channels, replacing the classic protocols that the browser and the operating system use today to protect our connections. On the other hand, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA are digital signature schemes. They serve to verify that a message or file comes from who it claims to come from, without any quantum computer being able to falsify that signature. The three standards rely on mathematical problems that quantum computers cannot solve efficiently with current knowledge. The good news is that we don’t have to wait for our operating system to update. Some of the most used applications have already incorporated these standards in a way that is transparent to the user. Encrypted messaging app Signal implemented ML-KEM-1024 in its PQXDH protocol in 2024. Since then, every conversation protects session keys with post-quantum cryptography without the user having to configure anything. It is the clearest example that the transition has already begun, and that it can be completely invisible to users. How to encrypt your files with a certified tool To protect the files stored on our computer, the most accessible and audited tool available today for home users is VeraCrypt. It is free, open source and compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux. Its encryption is based on AES-256, a symmetric algorithm that NIST maintains as a standard and that remains resistant to quantum attacks. And the quantum threat does not affect all cryptography equally: Shor and Grover’s algorithms effectively attack asymmetric cryptography (RSA, elliptic curves, etc.), but symmetric cryptography with 256-bit keys retains sufficient strength against any quantum computer. In practice, AES-256 offers quantum security equivalent to 128 bits – enough to protect any personal file for decades. Using VeraCrypt takes just a few minutes. Once we have downloaded it from its official websitethe process involves creating an encrypted container: a file that acts as a password-protected virtual disk. On the main screen we will select Volumes/Create New Volumeand then Create an encrypted file container. The strength of symmetric encryption ensures that no next-generation quantum computer will be able to access content by brute force Next, we will choose the location and size of the container, select AES as the encryption algorithm, and set a strong password. Once created, that container is mounted as if it were another unit of the computer. In this way, any file that we drag inside is automatically encrypted. When you unmount the volume, the data is unreadable to any person or machine that accesses the disk without the password. To protect our passwords, the most reliable domestic option is KeePassXC. It is an open source manager, without connection to external servers and with periodic independent security audits. Stores all passwords in a locally AES-256 encrypted database that is only opened with a master password or additional key file. The cloud alternative is Bitwardenwhich also encrypts the data with AES-256 before sending it to the server. In both cases, the strength of symmetric encryption ensures that no next-generation quantum computer will be able to access the content by brute force. Whoever wants to complete this strategy can do so … Read more

During World War II, a bell was buried to protect it. A farmer found it in 2024

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One morning in August 2024, Laurynas Družas once again passed his metal detector around his village, Antašava, in northern Lithuania. But this time, unlike the previous ones, he was lucky: He found something he had heard about all his life. In fact, explains This farmer by profession, who bought his first metal detector when he was 18. There it was, two meters underground, the bell of his town’s church. The bell tower of the Jackaus church had been without a bell since 1942 because someone had kept it safe in the middle of the Second World War. Maybe too good, because getting her back had become a chimera. Saving the San Jacinto Bell. In 1942 Lithuania was occupied by the Nazis within the Reichskommissariat Ostland. The previous year, the United States had joined the fray and Germany had failed in its attempt to conquer the east in Operation Barbarossa. In this scenario, the bell of Saint Hyacinth of Antašava disappears. Druzas account that the townspeople risked their lives to hide it from the occupiers with all the sense in the world: it is worth remembering that the Nazi party issued a decree to confiscate the bells and melt them for war purposes. And be careful because at that time there were no tractors: they did it with a horse, a cart and brute force. Quite an act of resistance, protection of heritage and a truly dangerous mission to hide a bell that weighs more than half a ton behind the backs of the Nazi occupiers. The bell became a legend. And time passed, Antašava said goodbye to the Nazis, Lithuania ceased to belong to the USSR to become independent in 1990 and the bell was still missing. The problem was that, as the years went by, those who knew where the bell was buried began to forget the exact place: the landscape changes, bushes grow and memory becomes blurred. But people knew that there was a bell in the bell tower and that it was hidden and the story was passed from generation to generation. In fact, Laurynas’ grandmother knew approximately where she was because as a child an uncle showed her the area. Grandma forgot the exact location, but not the idea of ​​finding it. He passed that “obsession” on to his grandson who, 82 years later, found it. A bell with 100 years of history. The bell of the Antašava church was cast in Poland in 1908 in a foundry that, as confirmed by the Polish “campanologist” Dr. Piotr Jamski, is still active today in the hands of a different family than the original. After 82 years underground, its state of conservation It was almost perfectneither the bell nor the wood show any signs of deterioration, as Laurynas Družas himself described after the discovery. The only thing missing was the clapper, which according to oral tradition was dismantled the same night the bell was buried and kept separately in a house in the town, although it is still missing. When the discovery came to light, heritage professionals they took care to verify its authenticity and origin. Back to the bell tower. In August 2025, a year after the discovery, the bell he returned to his houseto the church of San Jacinto. Polish technicians installed the system to make it ring next to the other bell that was already in the bell tower. Vidmantas Družas, Laurynas’s uncle and church bell ringer, account that the two bells are now connected and ring by pressing a button. In Xataka | We have found a fortress from the Bronze Age: it had been hidden under the Romanian forest for almost five millennia In Xataka | Some 5,000-year-old tombs went unnoticed for millennia. Until we look from the sky Cover | Authorius Vilensija and Vadym Alyekseyenko

Orange’s “life insurance” to protect the internet

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More than 95% of international internet traffic travels over cables that are at the bottom of the sea. Africa and Europe start from very different positions, but they are essential to sustain essential services on both continents, such as the cloud or financial systems. Thus, while Africa It is the continent where demand grows the most bandwidth in the world and faces the problem of relatively old cables designed for much lower traffic than the current one, Europe has consolidated strategic nodes in places such as Marseille, Lisbon or the south of England, but is still exposed to the same risks of concentration and aging. Via Africa is born from both needs, the new submarine cable that Orange and an open consortium of seven operators have announced. The Via Africa cable. Via África is a new submarine fiber optic cable that will connect southern Europe with South Africa bordering the Atlantic. It will have European connection points in the United Kingdom, France, Portugal and the Canary Islands. On the western African coast, its nodes will be in Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Nigeria, although both the final complete route and other points in southern Africa are still pending definition. In any case, The reason for this cable is improve the diversity and resilience of international communications between both continents. Sketch of the layout. Orange Why is it important. To start with, this cable is the answer to that veteran and undersized infrastructure of the African continent and its growing demand at a time when cloud services, artificial intelligence and teleworking are skyrocketing traffic. Furthermore, the African Atlantic coast has some critical points due to the high concentration of marine infrastructure, such as the Ivory Coast, where several cables converge in the same physical place. This example is not coincidental: in March 2024 they failed the four cables that were there at that time at the same time due to a rockslide. The result? 13 West African countries with connectivity at minimum levels for weeks. But the problem is not only African: when these cables fail, Europe loses traffic capacity to the continent, dragging down operators, companies and cloud services that depend on that route. What Via Africa proposes is precisely a geographically different route, that is, an alternative that breaks that dependency. Six cables, the same physical point in the Ivory Coast. Submarine Cable Map Context. The African Atlantic coast is already served with cables such as SAT-3/WASC (2002), WACS (2012), ACE (2012), MainOne (2010) or Google’s Equiano (2023), but some of these systems are aging or have proven to be vulnerable. This new cable adds to a wave of investment in African submarine infrastructure, such as the recent 2Africa in Meta (2025) or the Medusa in the Mediterranean (2026). Orange needs few introductions: it manages more than 450,000 kilometers of submarine cables around the world through its subsidiary Orange Marine and in fact, last year charge two new cable carrier vessels to reinforce its maintenance and deployment capacity in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, with delivery scheduled in 2028 and 2029. How are they going to do it?. At the moment the only thing that there is closed It is a Memorandum of Understanding for its construction by a group of investors among which are CanalinkGUILAB, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange Group, Orange Côte d’Ivoire, Sonatel and Silverlinks. From here, the process starts with a route study to determine the optimal route in terms of resilience, technical feasibility and economic efficiency. Likewise, the business consortium will prepare the bidding process to select the cable manufacturer, the next step. Yes, but. The announcement is a memorandum with big names behind it, not a construction contract, which means that the stage of the operation is extremely early: it could take years until it is operational or even never materialize. In this sense, logically there are still important unknowns pending that range from the total layout and its length, all the nodes, the manufacturer and installer and the route sheet with a date for its entry into operation or the cost. Furthermore, Via África is going to enter a space that is not free: Google already operates Equiano on the same coastal strip and Meta has its own cable circumnavigating Africa with the very long 2Africa of 45,000 kilometers. In short, it will have to compete with the infrastructure of the large hyperscalers. In Xataka | The submarine cables belonged to the teleoperators, and now the big technology companies are controlling them In Xataka | The first great Atlantic submarine cable that connected us to the internet says goodbye for a simple reason: it was too expensive to repair it Cover | Bryan Christie Design and Orange

After deploying its data centers in Aragon, Amazon wants to protect Zaragoza from floods

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On July 6, 2023, a torrential storm collapsed the Barranco de la Muerte in Zaragoza, leaving the Z-30 under two meters of water and causing damage valued at 125 million euros, as collects The Herald. Among the affected structures, the high-speed train between Madrid and Barcelona and the capital’s main ring road. This natural disaster made it clear that Zaragoza lacked hydraulic infrastructure capable of absorbing extreme weather events, increasingly frequent with climate change, such as explains AEMET. In response, the City Council made a plan structured in three phases and began conversations with Amazon Web Services, the hyperscaler that Aragón has chosen for its data centers in Spain: the result is a public-private alliance that combines hydraulic infrastructure and real-time monitoring technology with the aim of turning Zaragoza into a European benchmark for urban resilience. Zaragoza, flood-proof. The Zaragoza City Council and AWS with the collaboration of the Government of Aragon and the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation have agreed implement a global technological and hydraulic strategy for environmental risk management. Amazon will contribute 13.8 million euros, distributed in three annual installments. The collaboration has two legs: a physical one, with the construction of hydraulic infrastructure in the Barranco de la Muerte; and another technological, with the deployment of an intelligent early warning platform based on the AWS cloud. Why is it important. This system will benefit more than 700,000 people who live in the Aragonese capital, in addition to protecting critical infrastructure for the city such as the Z-30, the train and entire neighborhoods such as Parque Venecia, today exposed to intense storms. Beyond the scope of the work, this is one of the few cases in Spain where a large technology company directly finances public civil protection infrastructure as a condition of its installation in the territory, which puts a question on the table: what the companies that consume the most resources can and should contribute to the cities that host them. Context. AWS maintains one of the largest investment plans in digital infrastructure in Spain: in 2024 announced an investment of 15.7 billion euros in Aragon over the next decade to expand its cloud infrastructure and new data center campuses in Villanueva de Gállego, El Burgo de Ebro and Huesca. This expansion has a B side: enormous pressure on the territory’s electrical, water and transportation networks. The Barranco de la Muerte is not an isolated case: the Valencia DANA of October 2024 left more than 220 dead and politically accelerated the demand for drainage infrastructure in vulnerable urban areas. Zaragoza, with active ravines and a climate prone to intense convective storms, is one of them. How are they going to do it?. From the point of view of hydraulic works, it is a lamination of avenues combined with sustainable urban drainage enhanced with real-time monitoring. The plan is divided into three technical phases. The first, financed by the council and already underway, consists of a perimeter canal and a retaining wall around the Barranco de la Muerte. The second, financed by AWS, adds a storm tank next to the Torrero Cemetery with a capacity for 20,000 cubic meters, five lamination dams and the improvement of the existing ones upstream of Z-40. The third would bury the ravine as it passes through Z-30 with a collector that would double the current drainage capacity. Added to this is a cloud platform that will combine sensors, artificial intelligence and real-time analysis to monitor flows and launch early warnings. That is to say: the physical infrastructure retains and laminates the water, and the technological infrastructure anticipates when and how much will arrive. AWS support is not only financial: it provides digitalization and predictive hydraulics that multiply the effectiveness of physical infrastructure. Yes, but. The collaboration is a real advance for the city, but it raises uncomfortable questions. The first is obvious: Amazon does not pay for these works out of altruism: its data centers in Aragon are voracious consumers of water and energy, so building water infrastructure in the city is a win-win: it minimizes the risk of supply failures in the event of potential natural disasters and improves its image while strengthening ties with the authorities. Water management is one of the thorny points of data centers and with its proliferation increases scrutiny and protests over the consumption of a scarce good, such as Amazon has already suffered itself in Aragon. On the other hand, for the alert technological platform to be useful, it will be an essential requirement that it be accompanied by proven evacuation and response protocols, which turns an alert into a real solution. How they plan to do it is something that has not been publicly disclosed at the moment. In Xataka | Zaragoza is so full of data centers that Amazon has decided to take one to… a town in Teruel with 900 inhabitants In Xataka | Quietly, Aragón is becoming a data center “powerhouse”: now it has taken a crucial step Cover | David Vives and AWS

Dubai has come to the same conclusion as Russia. To protect your oil from drones there is something better than missiles: giant cages

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In World War II, the British discovered something disconcerting when analyzing the German bombings on its industrial cities: many times it was not necessary to completely destroy a refinery or factory to paralyze it for weeks. It was enough to hit some few vulnerable points to cause fires, disruptions and a disproportionate economic effect. Eight decades later, that same logic once again dominates another war, only now the weapon that attempts to find those weak points fits in an operator’s backpack and costs a fraction of an anti-aircraft missile. Dubai is located in Ukraine. For years, the United Arab Emirates built its security around a very specific idea: cutting-edge technology, advanced anti-aircraft systems and one of the most sophisticated defensive architectures in the Middle East were enough to protect the country’s energy heart. The war with Iran has begun dismantle that trust. After enduring hundreds of missiles and more than 2,200 Iranian drones, Dubai and Abu Dhabi have reached an uncomfortable conclusion that Russia learned before in Ukraine: in the face of cheap, numerous and persistent drones, it is sometimes more effective to raise huge metal structures over oil deposits than spending multimillion-dollar interceptors trying to destroy every threat in the air. The images that appeared near Dubai International Airport show precisely that: those gigantic “cope cages” surrounding fuel tanks, a scene that until recently seemed exclusive to Russian refineries attacked by Ukrainian drones, or in the films of George Miller. The cheap drone war. The problem facing the Emirates has less to do with the individual sophistication of each drone than with the economic logic of the conflict. Iran has demonstrated that it can launch massive waves of Shahed-136-type UAVs and other relatively cheap attack munitions against extremely expensive infrastructure and difficult to replace. Even when air defenses work, the economic drain It’s starting to be absurd: Shooting down low-cost drones using advanced interceptor missiles turns defense into a financially unsustainable battle. That’s where these appear giant metal cages. They are not designed to stop ballistic missiles or complex attacks, but to create a physical separation that reduces the damage of suicide drones or improvised munitions before reaching fuel depots, pipelines or critical facilities. A brutally simple solution, and precisely for this reason it is beginning to spread. Russia led the way. Because what the Emirates is doing now has been going on for years. happening in Russia. Since Ukraine began hitting refineries, oil depots and military bases with long-range drones, Moscow began to cover facilities strategic with nets, metal mesh and improvised structures. What was initially derided as a desperate solution ended up evolving in a defensive system relatively common around vulnerable assets. The logic is simple: an FPV drone or a Shahed does not need to completely destroy a facility to cause a huge problem, it is enough a precise impact on a tank, a pipe or a critical point to cause fires, interruptions and million-dollar costs. The Emirates, despite having practically unlimited resources compared to Russia, is discovering exactly the same structural vulnerability. The difference is that now these cages appear next to the most futuristic skyscrapers and financial centers in the Gulf. Oil as a strategic objective. Iran has focused a good part of its attacks precisely on the Emirati energy heart. Facilities such as the Fujairah oil port or the Habshan gas plant have suffered damage that will take months to fully repair. That explains why the country has accelerated visible defensive measures even after the partial ceasefire between Washington and Tehran. Because the threat has not disappeared. In fact, one of the most disturbing aspects of the conflict is that the attacks continued even after the truce announcements, reinforcing the feeling that any critical infrastructure can become a target again with very little notice. In this context, protecting refineries and warehouses no longer depends only on radars or anti-missile batteries, it also implies physically harden facilities, assume partial impacts and prevent a relatively cheap drone from causing a national energy disaster. The Pentagon changes its mentality. The expansion of these improvised defenses also reflects a broader doctrinal shift within of the US military itself. For years, many officials in Washington considered inefficient invest large amounts of money in physically shielding bases, hangars or critical facilities from cheap drones. Ukraine, Russia and now the Middle East are completely changing that perception. Shortly before the war between Iran and the United States broke out, the Pentagon published new guidelines precisely recommending networks, cables and other passive physical defenses to protect strategic infrastructures. The reasoning is beginning to be difficult to ignore: in an era of massive and cheap dronesthe survival of multi-million dollar facilities may depend less on futuristic systems and more on simple, ugly and gigantic industrial solutions. Dubai, probably one of the most recognizable symbols of global technological modernity, has just assumed exactly that reality. Image | x In Xataka | Every time the US takes stock of Iran’s arsenal and capabilities, it realizes something: it has destroyed very little. In Xataka | Suddenly, a military outpost sprouted up in the Iraq desert: it was Israel in its bombing campaign of Iran

solar panels that do not compete with the earth, but rather protect it

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In the vast regions of northern Mexico, where the sun beats down with relentless intensity and water is an increasingly scarce and coveted resource, a quiet revolution is brewing. The growing demand for food, the scarcity of water and the urgency of moving towards clean energies force us to rethink how we manage our resources. In this scenario, a technology emerges that seems to challenge the traditional logic of competition for land: agrivoltaics. Far from choosing between growing food or harvesting light, agrivoltaics strategically combines agricultural production and solar energy generation on the same surface. By installing solar panels elevated above the crops, space is dually used without interrupting agricultural activities. A concept that comes from Germany. This idea, which began to germinate in Germany in the eightiesmanaged to land as a real option in Mexico thanks to the historic collapse in the prices of solar panels during the last decade, which transformed this vision into a financially viable alternative for countries with our climatic characteristics. In the year 2023, The Mexican Agrovoltaic Network (RAMe) is bornan initiative that, according to its own mission statement, seeks to analyze, disseminate and promote these projects by integrating specialists from multiple disciplines. Today, RAMe brings together more than 70 organizations—including universities, companies and rural communities—with a presence in at least 14 states in the country. The urgency to optimize the territory. According to data revealed in Intersolar Mexico 2026For this year alone, conventional photovoltaic developments have been authorized that will devour around 5,000 hectares of land. This shows a voracious need for space for electricity generation that, if not managed properly, could displace primary activities. “Agrivoltaics comprehensively addresses three critical challenges for the country: energy security, water security and food security,” explained Valeria Amezcuapresident of the RAMe. Water is crucial. In Mexico, the agricultural sector consumes about 76% of the available fresh water. This is where solar panels they do their magic: they act as technological umbrellas that moderate high temperatures and protect crops from intense solar radiation. This drastically reduces plant evapotranspiration, helps conserve soil moisture and reduces water demand. The potential for the country is massive. If we look to the southeast, in the Yucatan Peninsula —where electricity consumption is growing above the national average— the data is revealing: Using just between 1% and 2% of the region’s livestock territory would allow for the installation of up to 12,000 MW of solar capacity. Current energy needs would be covered without the need to cut down a single hectare of forest or sacrifice the livestock vocation of the land. lThe challenges from the field to the law. However, bringing the theory to the field involves technical and economic challenges. photovoltaic structures must be modified and installed at a higher height (up to two meters) to allow the passage of tractors and the natural growth of plants. This adaptation increases installation costs between 50% and 100%. Despite the cost barrier, the evidence in the field is promising, since there are successful tests with lettuce, tomato, carrot and chiltepin pepper crops. In addition, RAMe is leading projects with high social impact, such as collaboration with Otomi communities in the State of Mexico, installing panels on greenhouses to generate clean energy that powers drip irrigation systems, saving up to 80% of water. The academic effort in Mexico City with the Sustainable and Educational Agrovoltaic Plot (PASE) also stands out. promoted by UNAM. However, the biggest current brake is bureaucratic. In Mexico, agrivoltaics lacks its own legal figure. Producers and developers face a regulatory labyrinth where they are required to process the same permits as a large-scale power plant, even though the land maintains its original agricultural vocation. This contrasts with countries like Italy, that have already been adapted its legislation to facilitate this dual model. htowards the circular economy. For the model to be truly revolutionary, it is not enough to generate shade and electricity; We must also look towards the earth. The magazine of the National Solar Energy Association (ANES) puts an innovative proposal on the table: integrate solar pyrolysis to manage agricultural waste (stems, stubble, leaves) left after harvest. Solar pyrolysis is a process where biomass decomposes at high temperatures (between 400 and 800 °C) limiting oxygen. Unlike conventional methods, this uses a solar oven (composed of a heliostat and a parabolic concentrator) as a source of pure heat, eliminating the use of fossil fuels. With this you obtain biochar (biochar), a highly stable and porous material that remains in the soil for decades. This biochar is an excellent improver that increases soil fertility, optimizes water retention and sequesters carbon from the atmosphere, becoming the perfect ally against climate change and replacing chemical fertilizers. A call to action. The circular agrovoltaic model, anchored in the vital nexus of Water-Energy-Food, is much more than an engineering curiosity. But as the RAMe warnsthere is a latent risk: that the energy transition is purely technological and forgets the people. Changing the origin of electrons from fossil to solar is of little use if it does not improve the quality of life and the economy of peasant families. The development of this sector will inevitably require effective public policies, strategic investment and genuine collaboration between the agricultural, energy and academic sectors. Agrivoltaics is not only a technical alternative to meet clean generation quotas; is an imperative call to action to build a more resilient and equitable future. Mexico has the sun, it has the land and it has the urgency; Now all that is missing is the will to awaken this sleeping giant. Image | EnelGreenPower Xataka | Chile has one of the most valuable skies on Earth. Renewables are putting it on the ropes

Toyota has created the city of the future and it is full of AI and cameras that protect you. It’s also a privacy nightmare

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At the foot of Mount Fuji, Toyota he has been building a city for years entire designed from scratch to test their future inventions. It’s called Woven City, and it already has its first inhabitants. And although the city does not lack one bit of technology, living there also involves making certain concessions in terms of privacy. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Why does this exist? At CES 2020, then-Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda advertisement that the company was going to build a laboratory city on the land of a former factory in Susono, in the Japanese prefecture of Shizuoka. The idea was not to create just another corporate campus, but to build a real urban environment where engineers, researchers and residents would coexist and test advanced mobility, robotics, artificial intelligence and sustainability technologies. The project, developed under the subsidiary Woven by Toyota, has cost about 10 billion dollars, according to they count from Ars Technica, and its first inhabitants arrived just a few months ago. In detail. Woven City has, at the moment, about 100 hand-selected residents, who they internally call Weavers. They are Toyota employees and people chosen for their technological profile. They live in Japandi-style apartments (fusion between Nordic and Japanese) equipped with domestic robotics and health monitoring systems. The city is powered by rooftop solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells, and its streets are designed in three categories based on vehicle speed: expressways, personal mobility zones, and pedestrian-only areas. When completed, the total area will be about 294,000 square meters, although only about 10% of the planned space is operational right now. What is proven there. Residents act as beta testers for a diverse list of projects: from AI karaoke systems that choose songs based on mood to an air conditioning system capable of eliminating 95% of pollen from the environment, something relevant in a country where half of the population suffers from allergies. Delivery robots, tricycles or, as point the middle, the Guide Mobi, an autonomous vehicle that acts as a digital towboat to take cars out of the garage and take them to their owners without the driver having to move. According to they count From Ars Technica, 98% of residents have given permission for a robot with cameras to operate within their own homes. Here comes the problem. For all of this to work, Woven City is full of cameras. Many. According to the mediumyou could count up to eight cameras at a single intersection, and dozens more spread across the roofs of buildings, common spaces, and even the small cafeteria there. All that network of images feeds what Toyota calls the AI ​​Vision Engine, an artificial intelligence system designed to monitor, catalog and report on activity in the city. The system can identify people and follow them from camera to camera based on their clothing, without using facial recognition. They used it in a demo to detect potential thefts in a business. What Toyota says. The company says it has its own consent management system called Data Fabric, which allows residents to decide what data they share and what they don’t. “We allow Weavers to select what they want to share or not. Whether they don’t want to share anything or if they want to share everything is up to each individual,” explained John Absmeier, CTO of Woven City, told Ars Technica. The data, according to Toyota, is not sold to third parties. “At least for now,” they added in the media report. Between the lines. That 98% of the residents have accepted practically all the privacy conditions does not say as much about trust in Toyota as it does about the profile of the people who live there: they are selected technicians, who know perfectly well what they are agreeing to and who have come precisely to participate in the experiment. Kota Oishi, CEO of Woven City, recognized Japanese citizens, like Europeans, are especially sensitive to privacy and demand to know exactly what their data will be used for. The leap between this group of controlled volunteers and the implementation of similar technology in a real city with millions of ordinary people would be enormous, and questions about mass surveillance inevitable. The other big bet: a Own AI. While all this is happening on the streets, Toyota is working in parallel to not depend on the large technological giants in terms of artificial intelligence. Daisuke Toyoda, son of President Akio Toyoda and head of the Woven City project, counted on an interview in April to Automotive News that developing AI internally is key to protecting jobs and the company’s industrial knowledge. “If you only work with the biggest or best companies abroad, you run the risk of becoming a mere user,” he said. Toyota sees AI not as a tool to cut staff, but to digitize the knowledge of its best workers and raise the level of the rest. One of the most striking projects of this line is an AI clone of Akio Toyoda himself (even with his voice, his way of speaking and his philosophy) that is already used internally to train managers. And now what. Woven City is still in its infancy: only 10% built, 100 residents and many robots that “don’t do much yet,” according to counted the middle. The objective is reach 2,000 inhabitants when all phases are complete. Toyota does not expect it to be profitable in the short term; understands it as a long-term technological incubator to test its technology in more open, but controlled spaces. Cover image | toyota In Xataka | Chinese manufacturers no longer know what more innovations to incorporate into their cars, so they have added a toilet to one

Millions to protect a war frigate. A Bluetooth tracker worth a few euros has been enough to follow her in real time

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Protecting a warship costs a fortune. We are talking about sensors, protocols, personnel, weapons and a security chain designed to minimize any unnecessary exposure. That is why what has happened with the Zr.Ms. Evertsena frigate of the Netherlands Navy integrated into the battle group of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. According to Omroep Gelderlandtheir position could be tracked in real time for hours with something much more mundane and cheaper: a simple Bluetooth tracker sent via military mail. The story does not begin with a technological gap or with a particularly complex maneuver, but with something much more earthly: a postcard. That was what the aforementioned medium used to introduce the tracker into Evertsen through the military mail service. The sources do not specify what device was used, beyond describing it as a low-cost tracker. It is easy to think of a Apple AirTagbut there is no indication that it was that specific model and the market offers many similar alternatives. How a minor failure left a frigate exposed The case gains another dimension when you look at what Evertsen’s mission was at that time. According to the source, the frigate was part of the group that escorted the Charles de Gaulle and its function was to help protect the aircraft carrier of possible air or missile threats. This task makes its location especially sensitive data within an ongoing military mission. In other words, it was not just about knowing where a ship was, but about being able to keep track of a relevant piece within a real operation. The really delicate thing about this episode is not only that a tracker managed to enter the military postal circuit, but what that suggests about certain procedures that continue to operate with a logic from other times. According to the media itself based on official videos from the ministry, the packages did go through X-rays, but the envelopes did not follow the same control. That combination opened enough of a gap to compromise the discretion of the deployment. We are not facing a spectacular failure, but rather an apparently minor vulnerability, but sufficient to allow the ship to be monitored. Once the initial filter was passed, the case stopped being a hypothesis and became a real follow-up. According to the reconstruction published by the Dutch media, the tracker signal made it possible to follow a path that went from Netherlands to Cretewith steps through Den Helder and Eindhoven airport before reaching the port of Heraklion. There, in addition, images from a camera fit that clue and showed the Evertsen moored at the dock. On March 27, once out of port, the frigate continued broadcasting its position for about 24 more hours: first it skirted the Cretan coast and then headed east, until the device stopped giving a signal near Cyprus. The official reaction came after publication and was, at least in part, corrective. The Dutch Ministry of Defense made changes following this incident and stopped allowing battery-powered greeting cards to be sent to Evertsen, as well as announcing a broader review of military mail guidelines. At the same time, the department held that the tracker was located while the correspondence on board was being sorted, once the frigate had already left the port. And although he admitted that the ship could be followed at sea, he assured that this did not constitute an operational risk. There is a quite obvious reading in closing this story. The frigate was still part of a military mission, protected within a much larger device, and yet a low-cost domestic object managed to open a tracking window for hours. Not because it replaced the big threats, but because it slipped through a minor seam that no one had fully adjusted. That’s what makes this episode especially revealing: remember that, in 2026, security doesn’t just depend on large systems. Images | Ein Dahmer | Xataka with Nano Banana In Xataka | France was moving its aircraft carrier without revealing its location. Until a runner on board uploaded an activity to Strava

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