recover

One piece of information perfectly summarizes the book bubble in Spain: 95% of those published do not recover costs

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The Spanish publishing sector closed 2025 with historic figures: 76 million printed books sold and a turnover that was close to 1,250 million euros. A record. The cold water came a few weeks later, at the annual booksellers’ conference, where it was certified that almost half of the titles available on the shelves had sold absolutely nothing. Who says so. The data was presented by CEGAL, the Spanish Confederation of Guilds and Associations of Booksellers, in theXXVII Congress of Bookstores held in Valencia in February 2026and has been extracted from LibriRed, the confederation’s own tool, which monitors in real time the final sales in more than 1,000 independent bookstores and chains throughout the country. The figure includes novels, essays and comics, both new releases and catalog contents, but (importantly, we are talking about physical bookstores) Amazon and school textbooks are excluded. The specific data. They are that revealing: 13.2% of the titles sell a copy throughout the year. 19.4% do not exceed ten. Only 4.5% of the books that reach bookstores reach 100 copies sold, a threshold that often does not even cover the costs of a launch. In other words, 95.5% of the books available in Spanish bookstores do not have the slightest economic impact on the publishing industry, not to mention that they are directly deficient. In Xataka If you hate justified text, we have good news: you’re most likely right You bill more, you sell the same. This is the paradox that the CgK consultancy put on the table with its Book Market Data 2025 report: The sector reached close to €1,250 million in turnover in 2025, 4% more than the previous year, which represents a historical record. However, total units sold rose just 0.2%, and novelty units sold on average 2% less per title than in 2024. Further analysis of the report They spoke of a statistical illusion typical of inflationary markets, because what has actually grown is the average price of the book. And this benefits the large groups, with catalogs in high rotation. Why is this happening? In its analysis of the Cedal report, El País collected statements from editors such as Enrique Redel, from Impedimenta, who affirms that there are titles that are not published to sell, but to take up space on the shelves, especially by large groups. The strategy is to publish many titles assuming that most will fail, hoping that one or two best sellers compensate for the losses of the rest. More than 90,000 books are published each year in Spain, about 240 newspapers, and theReturn rates range between 30% and 40%. It is a feverish cycle of full-speed rotation, paradoxically inconsistent with the calmest of cultural activities. {“videoId”:”x7zmsee”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”11 WEBSITES to DOWNLOAD FREE EBOOKS for your KINDLE Xataka TV”, “tag”:”Kindle”, “duration”:”321″} Who can afford it. The two large publishing groups, Penguin Random House and Planeta, in whose shadow it has been for decades the Spanish industry, and which account for more than 40% of the copies sold in bookstores. Fleeing this suffocating single direction are independent bookstores, which offer more than twice the variety of titles than the large chains: more than 525,000 titles compared to 229,633. In this way, visibility is concentrated in a few titles that rotate for a longer period of time, while the rest are buried in excessive catalogs. Some reasons. When looking for factors that exacerbate this situation (the two large groups can suffocate the market with their continuous rotation, but there must be more compelling reasons for so few sales of so many titles), CEGAL points to self-publishing: publishing has been democratized, but the reader’s attention has not. A book without a publisher behind it, without distribution, without promotion and without prior prescription is born practically invisible to the market, and it is normal that many of these launches do not sell anything. ¿AI provides tools to multiply these throws effortlessly? The percentages skyrocket exponentially. In Xataka They are not your imagination: the best-selling books are increasingly simpler and contain less elaborate sentences The difference with other cultural media is in the abundance of second chances. A film that does not perform in theaters can recover the investment in streaming, where consumption already rivals that of theaters. The book that does not sell in its first weeks on the shelf returns to the publisher, returns to bookstores in negligible quantities and is often physically destroyed after months languishing in warehouses. Perhaps finding new ways of dissemination and renewed lives for books would be the solution to this veritable overdose of books without readers. Header | Photo ofBree AnneinUnsplash (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news One piece of information perfectly summarizes the book bubble in Spain: 95% of those published do not recover costs was originally published in Xataka by John Tones .

Steve Jobs preferred to recover them and bury them in a landfill

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In 1983, Apple launched Lisa, a revolutionary computer for its graphical interface and its innovative use of the mouse, both features ahead of their time. However, several factors worked against it and made it a commercial failure: its exorbitant price of 10,000 dollars (equivalent to about 30,000 euros today), its hardware failures and the tough competition with IBM… and with Apple’s own Macintosh model, much more affordable. So only 30,000 units were sold before Apple canceled production in 1985, leaving the company with a surplus of 7,000 copies stored without a clear destination. The visionary reseller who didn’t see Apple coming That’s where Bob Cook, founder of Sun Remarketing, a company specialized in reselling technology products, especially those from Apple, comes into the picture. After having achieved success reselling the Apple III, Cook decided to bet even bigger and acquired the remaining 7,000 Lisa at a bargain price with the intention of updating and relaunching them to the market as ‘Lisa Professional’. Thus, Cook and his team invested $200,000 in improvements to solve the Lisa’s problems. The floppy drive, RAM and hard drive were optimized, in addition to installing a more modern version of the Macintosh operating system. Everything was ready for a relaunch that promised to give new life to a computer condemned to oblivion. Today, the Apple Lisa is considered a collector’s item and a milestone in the history of personal computing. A drastic decision However, what seemed like a great deal turned into a nightmare for Cook. Apple had a clause in the sales contract which allowed him to recover the computers at any time, and he decided to activate it in 1989, just before the renewed ‘Lisa Professional’ hit the market. Cook couldn’t do anything to prevent it: preferred not to legally confront the powerful Cupertino company and saw his investment disappear in a few days. It is speculated that the company did not want these computers to compete with its new products, in addition to the fact that the image of a failed model recycled by third parties did not fit with its strict brand control policy. Apple did not limit itself only to recovering the Lisa, but also took an even more radical decision: he destroyed them and buried them at a landfill in Logan, Utah: the company even benefited financially from the destruction of the computers thanks to tax deductions for inventory depreciation. A technological burial that has gone down in history The case is reminiscent of the famous burial of cartridges of the Atari’s ‘ET the Extra-Terrestrial’ video gameanother famous failure of the technology industry. But, unlike this one, Apple’s decision generated criticism for the waste of technology which, with a better approach, could have been recycled instead of buried (and we complain today about the planned obsolescence…). On the other hand, there are still doubts about the exact number of computers that were destroyed: while some sources speak of 7,000 units, others leave open the possibility that some updated Lisas “escaped” the fate that the company had prepared for them. Image | Photomontage by Marcos Merino In Xataka | You can now emulate an old Mac from the 80s in your browser In Xataka | This impressive collection of classic computers is made of paper – and there are templates for you to assemble them too This article was originally published in Genbeta in February 2025 and is part of Genbeta’s “greatest hits” that we will discover here in the coming weeks.

We stopped watching traditional television because of advertising, but YouTube is willing to recover it with unstoppable ads

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A few days ago, YouTube users in smart TVs They began to notice something that many thought they had left behind forever: unskippable 90-second ads in the middle of forty-minute videos. YouTube had promised in March that non-skippables would be 30 seconds long, but the limit has tripled in a matter of weeks. You see the ads. On March 2, YouTube released a statement announcing the global arrival of 30-second non-skippable ads for those watching the platform on connected TVs. More people than ever are using YouTube in the living room, and advertisers want formats that look like traditional television. Only five weeks later, things began to change: this April 7, several users began to publish on the r/YouTube subreddit 90-second ad screenshots, triple the advertised maximum, which could not be omitted in any way. Some media They collected part of the reactions of the spectators, which ranged from fury to inevitable resignation. YouTube’s response. The platform assured that those 90-second ads were not intentional and that it was “investigating” what had happened. The same source published a survey in January in which 87% of more than 8,600 people questioned claimed to have received non-skippable ads lasting more than 30 seconds, and almost a third said they had seen them exceed two minutes. Paradoxically, in 2017 YouTube removed 30-second non-skippable ads considering them precisely “a relic of traditional television.” The accounts come out. YouTube generated 40.4 billion dollars in advertising revenue in 2025. A figure that exceeds the combined sum of Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which together earned 37.8 billion. The same firm went so far as to declare YouTube “the new king of all media” by estimate its total income at around 62,000 million a year. And it’s not just a matter of raw money: according to NielsenYouTube took over 12.7% of all television viewing time in the US in December 2025, compared to 9% for Netflix. The gap between the two has widened in recent months. More people watch YouTube on TVs than any other screen, and the AI ​​system Google uses to decide which ad format to show (including bumpers 6-second spots, 15-second spots, and the new 30-second non-skippable ones) now have data to decide when a viewer is comfortable enough to tolerate a long ad break. And if you don’t want ads… Anyone who wants to avoid ads has a way out: YouTube Premium, at 13.99 euros per month. There is no middle option, no setting that allows you to opt for shorter or less frequent ads. According to Google itselfthere is no setting to turn off the 30-second format without a paid subscription. The thing is that not even Premium is what it used to be: some service levels include certain types of ads. It is the same pattern that the greats followed streamers: Netflix launched its tier with advertising in 2022; Disney+ followed suit shortly after. “Pay more to see fewer ads” is no longer a promise of digital platforms, it is their business model. What differentiates YouTube from other streaming platforms is that it is not a paid service that has added a free tier with advertising; It is a free platform that has built an advertising business of such magnitude that it can now afford to behave as if it were traditional television. The 90-second ads are another test for Google to discover how far the user’s tolerance can go before they change services or agree to pay. In Xataka | YouTube knows it has a problem with AI “slop” for kids. It turns out that the main culprit is YouTube

Andalusia wants to recover the experience of its retired teachers, but sets one condition: that they do it for free

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The Junta de Andalucía has created a new figure in Spanish public education: emeritus collaborating teachers. The idea is that retired teachers They can rejoin training tasks in schools and institutes to share their experience with active teachers and students. The Board’s proposal It is collected under the Red Share Experience program and can mobilize up to 2,500 retirees a year throughout the community. There is a detail in this measure that has not gone unnoticed: the retired teachers who participate will do so completely voluntarily and will not charge anything, as indicated in the Decree 12/2026 It was approved by the Government Council on February 4, 2026 and has just come into force after its publication in the Official Gazette of the Junta de Andalucía. ​The objective: not to lose the experience. The Ministry of Educational Development and Vocational Training has presented This measure is considered “pioneer in Spain”, and its objective is to take advantage of the knowledge accumulated by teachers who have spent decades in the classrooms and put it at the service of centers that need it. In the standard, the Board defines the figure of emeritus collaborating teachers, retired teachers with a long teaching career who maintain their link with educational centers and carry out advisory, training and support tasks in complementary activities. The program has legal backing under the Andalusian Education Law of 2007, which in its article 23.4 already contemplated the possibility of retired teachers collaborating in libraries and support management teams. This new decree expands and regulates that framework for the first time. What requirements must be met to participate?. It is not enough to have been a teacher to participate in the project, a series of requirements are required. You must be retired for any reason other than permanent disability, be under 75 years of age when submitting the application and have worked for at least 15 years in public or subsidized non-university centers in Andalusia. Furthermore, you cannot have received a firm sanction for serious or very serious misconduct in the five years prior to retirement, nor have you been convicted of crimes against sexual freedom. A maximum limit of 2,500 places is set for the entire community for each annual call. a report of the UGT union of 2022 confirms that in Spain 34.5% of non-university teachers are over 50 years old, while in secondary school this percentage rises to 38.4%, which indicates that there will be a significant number of potential candidates for this project in the coming years. What they can do and what they are prohibited from doing. The decree that has just been published imposes a very clear red line from the beginning: the emeritus “will not occupy jobs or perform functions typical of active professors.” What they can do is accompany newly arrived teachersmentor intern students, energize the school library, organize talks and workshops, participate in innovation projects, guide students in their academic path or collaborate on the center’s social networks and publications, among other activities. However, although they do not receive a salary for their contribution, the emeritus do have some compensation. The Board guarantees them insurance that covers accidents, illness and civil liability. At the end of each course they will receive an official certification and will have free access to cultural institutions under the same conditions as active teachers. How and when to apply for a place. The program works through two methods of incorporation. On the one hand, there is the open route that allows retired teachers to present a project that any center in Andalusia can incorporate if interested. The concrete route, on the other hand, is designed for those who want to collaborate with a specific school or institute. In both cases, the project must fit into the center’s plan and have the prior approval of the Teaching Staff and the School Council. If there are more candidates than places available in a single center, the tiebreaker is resolved in order of seniority in that center or in the teaching staff. In Xataka | In Spain, those over 65 years of age are working like never before. It’s not passion for work: it’s for retirement age Image | Unsplash (Maxim Tolchinskiy)

There was a day when Spain was a reference on the roads of Europe. 13.4 billion need to be invested to recover its splendor

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Floods, landslides, fractures, potholes or, directly, sinkholes. What is happening with Spanish roads? Are we facing a real maintenance problem or are we simply facing an avalanche of information or viral videos fueled by railway accidents and doubts about their maintenance? These are the answers we have. The controversy. The roads are bad. Very badly. At least that is the popular sentiment on social networks and in much of the media. The potholes (or directly sinkholes) They are the main ones accused of an alleged lack of investment in the maintenance of Spanish roads. Since the Adamuz train accident (Córdoba) in which 46 people died on January 18, the state of infrastructure in Spain is in the spotlight. The Adamuz railway accident was followed by new accident in Rodalies (Catalonia) in which a trainee train driver died and 37 people were injured just 48 hours later. The focus was then placed on the condition of the roads and their maintenance But, as the weeks have passed, the controversy has moved to the roads. And in recent days there have been videos in which cars are counted that have suffered blowouts due to going over a large pothole and statements on social networks. Is there data?. According to the Association of Infrastructure Conservation and Exploitation Companies (ACEX)Spain has a deficit of 5 billion euros of investment in its roads, distributed as follows: Highways under the responsibility of the State: 2,000 million euros. Highways of the Autonomous Communities: 2,000 million euros. Provincial roads: 1,000 million euros. According to ACEX, Spain invested half that of neighboring countries between 2009 and 2017, with a clear impact of the economic crisis of 2008. Since 2022, the deficit with Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom has been reduced to 30% with the arrival of European funds. It must be noted, however, that ACEX is made up of large construction companies. Source: AEC Officials? More or less. It must be taken into account that the budget items for road maintenance are not only presented in the General State Budgets, they must then be executed by the corresponding administrations. However, the DGT validates the data provided by the Spanish Road Association (AEC). And they say that half of the road surface in Spain is in poor condition. The data is even long before the last rains and a winter that is especially punishing the pavement. In fact, although the report was presented in 2025, the information was collected in 2024 so there is no data after the first months of last year either. which were also especially rainy. The AEC is an association created in 1949 and is non-profit. In 1998, it was also declared a Public Utility Entity and has international recognition. According to their evaluations, Spanish roads are “at the worst moment in its history” and that 13,491 million euros are needed to repair all the roads that need some type of intervention and they are distributed as follows: 4,721 million euros in 26,000 km managed by the State. 8,770 million euros in 75,300 km managed by the regional and provincial governments. A creeping problem. The problem of investments in road maintenance in Spain is not new. According to data from the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) in a 2019 studyroads had absorbed the majority of infrastructure investments between 1985 and 2018, surpassed only by train investments between 2008 and 2012. Those days, from Europe it was supported that the quality of Spanish roads was much higher than average and among the best in Europe. However, investments had been declining for years and although they exceeded 1% of GDP in the 1990s, in 2018 they were below 0.5% of GDP. Of the total money invested, the AIReF report indicates, 35.98% corresponded to the State, 19.96% to the Autonomous Communities and 8.41% to local entities. Money received, for example, with European funds, is not taken into account. European entities, however, attributed this decline in investments to an infrastructure that was already established and in good condition. The OECD pointed out that Spanish roads were above average in quality and connectivity and were only behind in density. Are there solutions? European aid is what once again boosts investments in roads. From the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agency they collected that between 2022 and 2024 2,460 million euros would be mobilized, placing special emphasis on the maintenance of the roads but announcing that they foresee a study to analyze the financing channels, which once again gives rise to the constant background noise about the implementation of tolls. Furthermore, with the impetus of Europe, a project has been created to adapt Spanish infrastructures to the new climate reality, analyzing the interventions that must be carried out to readapt them to more extreme climates where aggressive weather episodes occur more frequently. Photo | Feranza In Xataka | Spain has dozens of unique abandoned roads. Now he wants to save them by turning them into “historic roads”

one that Hyundai and Kia want to recover

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There are several reasons why Porsche you are not finding the best results of its history in recent times. Some will point directly to its shameless commitment to the electric car. A bet that, right now, is being reversed but that has left us a product portfolio in which its best-selling car, the Porsche Macan, can only be purchased right now in electric versions. It is very likely that they themselves believe that the Porsche customer He doesn’t even want to hear about the electric car. And, no doubt, there will be a few who think this. But as they explained a few days ago in The Coches.net podcastnot all Porsche customers are the same. In fact, the brand itself is much more linked to the electric car than we might think. So much so that your first vehicleat the end of the 19th century, was moved by electricity. The one known as Porsche P1 It had an “octagonal electric motor” capable of developing a power of up to 3.7 kW (5 horsepower). Its maximum speed: 35 km/h. A missile compared to the 16 km/h reached by the vehicles of the benz family that were moved by a combustion engine and were produced just a few kilometers away. Semper Vivus, the first hybrid car from Porsche and in history Trusting in that technology, Ferdinand Porsche would continue to evolve the concept and in the year 1900 he stood in the Palace of Electricity at the Universal Exhibition in Paris with what was known as “Lohner-Porsche system”. This innovation integrated what were called “wheel hub motors.” These were installed on the front axle wheels. Yes, 125 years ago the creator of Porsche boasted completely electric front-wheel drive cars. We can ask for some other Valium. The company explains that these engines could generate 2.5 HP each and the top speed rose above 30 km/h. The system was perfected and presentedn three different sizes with increasing powers, with the aim of being able to test them in larger vehicles. Thus, the most advanced evolution incorporated wheels with 12 HP motors that pushed the cars for a maximum of 50 kilometers, with the energy accumulated in lead batteries. Even that same year, what is known as the world’s first electric competition vehicle was unveiled. Named “La Toujours Contente” (“Always Happy”), it was a vehicle with four wheel hub motors that could produce up to 14 HP of power each. It is also considered the first car with four-wheel drive. a century later As we already know, electric cars from the beginning of the 20th century did not have much further travel. At that time, lead batteries were very expensive and required maintenance that was almost prohibitive for most car owners’ already deep pockets. Besides, the rapid evolution of combustion engines They promoted this technology that quickly left the electric car behind. As one century passes since those early days of automotive history, the electric car He is going through his best days. Not only do we have among us vehicles with features unimaginable more than 100 years ago, we must also take into account the rapid evolution that we have experienced in the last decade, which generates a certain optimism about what cars we will find in another ten years. From that point of view, there are those who are betting on recovering what was once called a “wheel hub motor.” That is, including an electric motor in the wheel concept itself, with the aim of limiting power losses and controlling the amount of energy delivered down to the smallest detail. This allows a car to be more precise, faster and should be able to improve control over it. In Hybrids and Electrics They include a good number of proposals that are currently being developed. We have developments underway from Toyota or BMW that have opted for better dynamism but also from Hyundaiwho aspire to get a car with much greater interior space thanks to eliminating the engines located in the center of the axle, front or rear, it doesn’t matter. Companies like Protean Electric They are developing their own versions, with the intention of showing them to the big manufacturers and being able to stake advantage of their innovations in the future. The main advantage is that, according to their calculations, the efficiency is 97% so the losses in power delivery are minimal. These changes should be key to achieving electric beasts like the Renault Turbo 3E. But it is not only a question of improving dynamism with higher powers or a better distribution of engine torque, popularizing this system aims to revolutionize the concept of the car itself because we would gain much more interior space and the autonomy of the electric vehicle that fitted this technology would be improved, benefiting from said improvement in efficiency. In the face of revolutionary promises, physics prevails for the moment. And including a motor in the wheel also increases the unsprung mass. That is, the kilograms that are not directly supported by the suspension. When the unsprung mass increases, the problems grow exponentially because inertia multiplies the impact that its weight has on the dynamic behavior of the car. It is no coincidence that Hyundai’s proposal It also comes with a new air suspension to more closely control this increase in unsprung mass. Because your biggest problem It is not that it is more difficult to control that mass at high speed (which is also true), the problems are already apparent from the start, generating greater vibrations that are transmitted to the vehicle’s cabin before they can be filtered, worsening driving comfort. It must be added that although the efficiency of the system seems guaranteed… this does not always seem to be fulfilled. By installing motors in the wheels, cooling is more complex, so the temperature increases and the motors may lose efficiency. That is to say, yes, losses in power delivery are reduced but only if the engine is sufficiently well cooled … Read more

Novo Nordisk has found the formula to recover the profitability of Ozempic: fire 9,000 employees

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The Pharmaceutical Novo Nordisk, manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, is living one of the biggest turbulence in its history recent. After losing the favor of investors and a good part of its stock market value in the last year, the company has announced a drastic reduction of workforce that affects 9,000 employees around the world: 11.5% of the total staff. 9,000 layoffs, most in Denmark. Novo Nordisk has confirmed Through a statement the cut of 9,000 jobs in the coming years, a figure that represents 11.5% of its template globally, composed of 78,400 employees. Denmark, a country of origin of the pharmaceutical, will be the country that will receive the greatest impact of that measure, accumulating about 5,000 of the planned dismissals. The firm has not yet specified how layoffs will be distributed in the rest of international venues, since the decision is subject to “to the relevant consultations in accordance with local labor legislation.” The multinational has remarked that “this is a global transformation, and each country, headquarters or region will be affected differently,” underlining the international dimension of its labor adjustment process. Multimillionaire savings and business reorganization. With this cut, the pharmaceutical enhance business lines centered on the Research for new treatments For diabetes and obesity, putting greater emphasis on commercial initiatives. It should be remembered that, in origin, both Ozempic and Wegovy were born as a new treatment to enhance insulin generation, but its satiating effects turned out to be much more profitable. Among the objectives mentioned in the official statement include organizational simplification, the increase in speed in decision making and the reallocation of resources towards the strategic fields of the company. According to the statement, Nordisk “must evolve in a market that has become more competitive and consumer oriented”, which implies “a change of mentality and approach that allows us to be faster and faster.” According to published by Reutersthe company would have asked its employees to return to its full -time offices within that same restructuring and optimization plan for its operations. Bursatile bleeding as a trigger. The collapse of the stock market suffered by Novo Nordisk during the last year is the main trigger for the adjustment measure. As published the BBCthe price of your shares was reduced by 60% Since June 2024, losing 430,000 million in stock market capitalization. The situation was especially aggravated on July 30, with a decrease in 23% in a single day After the downward review Growth forecasts and the announcement of the relay in the executive direction. The official presentation of Mike Doustdar as the new CEO of the company has marked the beginning of this stage of changes, which aims to recover the confidence of investors and redefine the corporate culture of the company. Its first measure has had a positive impact on the markets, and after the announcement of the template cuts the value of its shares has increased by 3%. In Xataka | If you want a “miracle” medication to lose weight, you no longer resort to Ozempic: the competition is starting to overcome it Image | Flickr (News Oresund, Chemist4u)

A VHS tape, an AI and eight seconds of audio. That is all a woman needed to recover her lost voice

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At some point from the 90s to a young Sarah Ezekiel they recorded her with a video camera and kept that recording In a VHS tape. In that little Sarah appearance he only spoke eight seconds, but almost three decades later those eight seconds have ended up being an incredible gift. One that He has returned his voice. Sara Ezekiel lost her voice in 2000, before smartphones became massive and allowed us, among many other things, to capture video easily. A motoneurone disease caused that both capacity and mobility in his hands lost just when he was going to have his second child, a child called Eric. As indicated in a BBC interview“I thought it would be fine, but after Eric was born, I quickly deteriorated.” In a few months he lost control of his hands, and shortly after he was incapable of any type of intelligible conversation. His marriage ended shortly after, and Sarah, in the care of his two children, found himself in a terrible situation. Eric, now 25 years old, just remembers his mother being paralyzed. Aviva, her 28 -year -old daughter, remembers when she realized that her mother was different. “I have that memory of asking him to prepare some strawberries and see that he was not able to cut them. He had to ask someone.” Five years after diagnosis, Sarah found A break Thanks to the Ocular monitoring technology. He could build words and phrases with the movement of the eyes, so that a voice synthesizer offered a synthetic voice similar to what for example I used Stephen Hawking. That was the beginning of a new life that adapted with joy. He became a volunteer of the association to affected by his illness, and painted again thanks to that same technology. And a few years later a small milestone began to take shape. The AI ​​and the “miracle” of the cloning of the voice A company called Smartbox He had announced what was going to provide cloned voices Free for a million people at risk of losing their voice or those who had already lost it for diseases such as cancer or motorcycle. They asked Sarah a voice recording to rebuild her, but the only thing Sarah had was an old VHS tape in which they had recorded her daughter Aviva and in which she spoke just eight seconds. That recording was a disaster. Image quality was bad, but In addition the sound was distortedwith people mixing when speaking and a television sound at full volume. Simon Poole, one of those responsible for Smartbox, thought it would not be possible. However, Poole managed to isolate Sarah’s voice thanks to the Voice Isolator application of Elevenlabs, Specialized company in This type of solutions. The problem is that the result lacked intonation and personality, and also had a strange American accent. To try to solve it, he used another application trained with thousands of voices to fill holes of this type of recordings and that could help recover a voice like Sarah’s. After achieving a result that he believed appropriate, he sent several phrases to Sarah with his cloned voice. He called and heard her how Sarah, hearing those phrases, almost broke out to cry. One of Sarah’s old friends, who met her before losing his voice, was “impressed by how realistic he sounded.” His daughter Aviva said he was also impressed although he admitted that he had to get used to her. “Hearing her now daily still surprises me.” For Eric “it has made an incredible difference”, because that voice can also include an intonation that shows that your mother is cheerful or angry. Sarah misses her authentic voice, but as she said, “I’m happy to be back. It’s better than being a robot“ Image | Gabriel Petry | Ursula Castillo In Xataka | The AI ​​was already able to clone voices and faces. Now also clon our way of writing

NASA lost the best camera in Jupiter. A suicide plan has served to recover it successfully

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It seemed the premature end of the mission. The Junocam, the camera that has given us the most spectacular images of Jupiter and his moons, was dying. The relentless radiation of the gaseous giant had degraded the sweat sensor Juno turning his photos into a noise knead and corrupt lines. We had to try. With an overfruit of the moon ío just around the corner, the NASA team played the whole for the whole with a risky maneuver: cook the camera slowly at 600 million kilometers away to try to repair it. Although all at the control center endured breathing, the play worked. And not only that, but the miraculous rescue has sat a precedent for future space missions. Jupiter’s best photographer. Trying it was worth it because Junocam is not any camera. Is responsible for those Jupiter images that seem impressionist paintings and that, curiously, they are prosecuted by a community of fans on Earth. But its location is priced: it is out of titanium “bunker” that protects the main electronics of the Juno probe. NASA engineers knew that their useful life would be limited in one of the most radioactive environments of the solar system. The Calvary of the Junocam. The juno probe, that arrived in Jupiter in July 2016was designed to last until 2018, but its success has led NASA to extend the mission several times. During the first 34 orbits, Junocam worked perfectly. From orbit 47, radiation ravages began to be evident. For orbit 56, in November 2023, the situation was critical. “Almost all the images were corrupt,” admits NASA In a statement. The planet Jupiter and the moon ío photographed by Juno before and after repair A repair to all or nothing. Diagnosing the failure of a component at millions of kilometers is a titanic task. Repairing is a miracle. The clues pointed to a damaged voltage regulator at the camera power supply. With few options, the team resorted to a process called annealing or Annealing. The idea was, in essence, to heat the material and then cool it slowly, with the hope that heat would repair microscopic defects at the atomic level. “The annealing can sometimes alter a material such as silicon at the microscopic level, but we did not know if this would solve the damage,” explains Jacob Shaffner, chamber engineer. Forged on fire. NASA sent a command to Juno so that the only heater in the Junocam raised its temperature at about 25 ° C, much more than usual. The result was a success … temporary. The camera sent sharp images for several orbits. But Jupiter does not forgive. As the probe entered the radiation belts, the damage returned more strongly. “After orbit 55, our images were full of stripes and noise,” says Michael Ravine, head of the instrument. With an upcoming one Near Iro of íoonly one option was left. The only thing they had not tried was to take Junocam heater to the fullest and see if a more extreme recovery would save us. The reward. The first week there were no improvements. The tension in the equipment was maximum. But just a few days after the encounter with ío, the images began to improve dramatically. By the time Juno went to just 1,500 kilometers of the most volcanic moon in the solar system, the camera worked almost as well as the day of its launch. The success of the maneuver allowed Juno to capture very unprecedented and unprecedented images of the northern pole. The images revealed mountains covered with sulfur dioxide frost and Lava rivers that allowed scientists to rebuild geological formations as fascinating as A lava lake with a glass mountain Inside. This achievement is the culmination of an extended mission that has led Juno to explore Jupiter’s great moons. First it was Ganímedes in 2021the largest satellite of the solar system, and then Europe in 2022. I was as follows on the list, and losing the main camera would have been a hard blow. The repair, of course, is not eternal. NASA informs that noise has begun to reappear in orbit 74. But the lesson learned is incalculable. Images | NASA/JPL-CALTECH/SWRI/MSS In Xataka | The NASA Juno probe sends six photos of its passage through ío, the most inhospitable moon of the solar system

North Korea threw his “greatest war boat,” he sank instantly and now he is trying to recover it with … balloons

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Last week a relevant event occurred in North Korea. The nation presented in society a destroyer who was going to become the largest warship in the nation, and for this he had announced the bombing and dish with all kinds of political representations. However, just touching water, The ship sank and ended sideways. Kim Jong-un did not come out of his astonishment and promised fix the ship In the short term. The space is showing that they are trying, although with mixed results. Balloon hypothesis. Satellite images over the weekend revealed the appearance of a kind of balloons Around the ship. South Korean and Western experts have speculated that these balloons could have various functions: Avoid new water leaks, prevent recognition from drones or relieve the weight that fell on the still stranded part on the dock. The objects have a form reminiscent of small airships or aerostatos, and some seemed to be equipped with stabilizing fins. Although traditional flotation structures such as those used by the United States (for example, air cameras under the helmet) were not detected, analysts believed that North Korean technical resources limit the options of rescue available. The position of the ship then, embedded between earth and sea, further aggravated the technical challenge, since any attempt to straighten it could fracture the keel and condemn the ship to its total scratch. Precarious advance. With this week’s entrance the satellite images captured by Planet Labs showed a great change. The North Korean frigate of Choi-Hyun class seems Finally straightened and now floated on its own in the port of Chongjin. This advance represented a modest achievement after public embarrassment that the accident for Kim Jong Un, who personally witnessed the disaster. Although Pyongyang had initially affirmed that the damage was minor and that the repair would take “About ten days”the complexity of the situation, the lack of adequate facilities and the little transparency of the regime generate doubts about the true state of the ship. Beyond Parallel and 38 North have confirmed that They have been completed the first rescue operationsbut they warn that it is still A long way to go before the frigate can be considered restored or ready for incorporation into the fleet. Technical details and limitations. The most recent image shows the boat (about 5,000 tons of displacement) floating in the center of the port, surrounded by other auxiliaries and with what they seem to be, again, rescue balloons and temporary ramps around them. Although the ship has recovered a vertical position, it presents a slight inclination towards port, indicating that it still water is being pumped and stabilizing the structure. They have not been able to accurately evaluate the damage to the helmet due to the limited resolution of the images, but experts Like Jennifer Junof the CSIS, insist that continuous monitoring will be key to assess Real progress of the works. Since the Hambuk shipyard in Chongjin does not have a functional dry dock, it is possible that the ship should be transferred to another installation if severe structural damage is confirmed, something that cannot be discarded yet. Political pressure and propaganda. What’s doubt, the political pressure imposed by Kim Jong una (who ordered that the ship was repaired before the next plenary session of the Central Committee at the end of June) has added an almost theatrical emergency component to recovery efforts. However, both analysts and South Korean military sources consider extremely unlikely that this period can be fulfilled. The reason? The lack of a Public Evaluation credible the state of the ship and the insistence of the regime to project efficiency at all costs contrast with the visible evidence: blue canvases covering damaged sections and the suspicion of internal deformations in the keel, which could inevitably compromise the integrity of the helmet. A touched symbol. As we countthe injured frigate is the second unit of its class, after the launch of the Choi Hyon in Apriland represents the most ambitious attempt of North Korea of ​​modernizing its naval power. Equipped with multiple weapons systems, these vessels are intended to be a symbolic response to the naval presence of South Korea and the United States in the region. However, the failure of the launch and the improvised rescue works have exposed the technical and logistics limitations of the country. As now He pointed 38 Norththe ruling was probably due to a malfunction of the launch mechanismwhich left the helmet trapped by the bow on the ground while the stern rushed into the water. The result was a stranded vessel in A highly unstable anglethe worst possible scenario for any naval rescue operation. Uncertain end. In summary, and although the regime can proclaim having made an advance by having put the frigate again afloat, the operational reality seems Much more uncertain. The lack of visual evidence of the state of the helmet, the absence of a suitable dry dock and the political pressure For fulfilling unreal terms they draw a panorama in which the ship could end up being more useful as a propaganda symbol than as a functional element of the North Korean navy. At the moment, the ship remains in a floating limbo: straightened, or almost, and without being operational. And above all, exposed to International viewdespite all attempts for cover Its rugged story and progress. Image | Sentinel-2, CSIS/BEYOND PARALLEL/MAXAR In Xataka | The ridiculous premiere of the “Greater War Ship” of North Korea has a great suspect: Kim Jong-un In Xataka | North Korea has been sending armament for months to Russia. In return, Russia is giving him what longs for her: a functional army

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