recover

There are people who think that Europe should recover the military. What happened in Germany offers them an unpleasant surprise

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It is still early to know whether or not Germany will be successful with its new volunteer ‘military’but one thing is clear: the German authorities have revived a figure that was in the doldrums for years, the conscientious objector. Although Berlin does not apply a mandatory recruitment system, thousands of young people in the country have wanted to improve their health by starting the procedures to benefit from their constitutional right to not have to hold a weapon. More requests have been registered during the first six months of the year alone than in all of 2025. It has even surpassed 2011, the year in which the mandatory military service ended. What has happened? That the Bundesrat has achieved something unexpected (or not) with your new law of voluntary military service. Its purpose was to give a boost to recruitment so that the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) would go from its current around 184,000 troops to between 255,000 and 270,000 in 2035, but everything indicates that they have activated a mechanism that pushes in the opposite direction: more and more young people declare themselves conscientious objectors, that is, they appeal to their constitutional right not to be forced by anyone to use weapons or be a soldier. That does not mean that the new German ‘military’ is not working (to affirm such a thing it would be necessary to handle updated recruitment data), but it does mean that its future will not be as peaceful as the Government of Friedrich Merz would like. Are there so many objectors? Yes. The data has advanced them Redaktions Netzwerk Deutschland (RND) and show that the figure of the objector is experiencing a real boom in Germany. During the first half of 2026 alone, the Federal Office for Family and Civil Society Affairs received 5,862 applications from citizens who wanted to declare themselves conscientious objectors. There are almost a thousand each month, but the data stands out above all when put into context. Throughout 2025 the Government noted 3,867 requests and in 2024 they were only 2,249. In 2011, the year in which the mandatory military service was suspended, 4,348 were registered. The balance of the first half of the year not only shows a clear rebound, it also suggests that young Germans are increasingly concerned about the issue: 60% of these applications were submitted between April and June, when the country was shaken by several controversies related to the new military law, as if men need authorization to leave the country for more than three months. But is there or isn’t there ‘mili’? Yes. And no. There is no mandatory service like the one that existed in Spain until 2001 or that applied in Germany until 2011, but there is a new legal framework with which Berlin aspires to gain voluntary recruits. To understand it you have to go back to December 2025when the Upper House of the German Parliament approved a military service bill that began to be applied on January 1, 2026. Its objective is very simple: add thousands of new soldiers to the country’s Armed Forces (Bundeswehr), although with a lot of pedagogy and initially appealing to voluntariness. In practice, this means that right now Germans who come of age are only required to go through two relatively harmless and simple procedures. “Men born in 2008 or later must participate in the military registration process. This includes filling out a questionnaire and passing a medical examination by medical personnel,” explains the Bundeswehr. Do we know anything else? Yes. The military explains in detail how it will implement the system. The idea is that all young Germans who come of age (some 650,000 each year) will receive an online questionnaire asking whether or not you are interested in military life. The men are obligated to respond. For women it is optional. If the answer is yes, the Armed Forces invite volunteers to a recruitment center to continue the process. The system is still being implemented, but at the end of last year the German press was talking aboutIn a second phase, late in 2027, 18-year-old men must also undergo a medical examination that will be mandatory whether they opt for voluntary military service or not. “No one forces you to do anything, except to fill out a questionnaire that reflects the recorded data and pass a medical examination that does no harm to anyone,” claims the German Defense Minister, the social democrat Boris Pistorius. “The State does not protect itself. That has to be done by people who are willing to defend it and not sit idly waiting for others to do so.” What is the objective? We pointed it out before: turning the German army into a European reference. And that happens by arriving in the mid-2030s with 460,000 troopsbetween active personnel (260,000) and reservists (200,000). Not bad if you take into account that in 2025 184,000 soldiers were serving. In Germany already throw out the idea that, if this objective is not achieved through voluntary recruitment, the Government could go further and opt for a mandatory model. In any case, that would require a new parliamentary procedure. For now, in view of the changes being promoted by the Merz Executive, the threat from Russia and the rearmament discourse fueled by Donald Trump, more and more young people are choosing to declare themselves objectors. Curiously, there are also people who take the opposite path, although less: the daily Neue Osnabrucker assures that during the first quarter 233 people waived their right to refuse military service. They join the 781 that did so in 2025. Images | Simon Infanger (Unsplash) and Filip Andrejevic (Unsplash) In Xataka | In Spain, 1,149 young people lost their lives in the same place between 1983 and 1989. All of these “accidents” could have been avoided.

The AP-7 has not had tolls for four years. Now the Government is studying whether to recover them or spend 500 million to expand it

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The AP-7 is once again at the center of the debate on mobility in Catalonia. And just as share El Periódico, the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility has four projects underway to widen the highway with new lanes, a joint investment that exceeds 500 million euros. The works will affect almost a hundred kilometers spread between Vallès, Penedès and Terres de l’Ebre. Why it is important. Since tolls were eliminated in 2021the AP-7 has ceased to be a highway designed primarily for long journeys and has become a road that also supports a good part of the daily traffic of the Barcelona metropolitan area, in addition to an intense passage of trucks of all kinds. This has led to almost daily traffic jams in the most densely populated sections and recurring collapses every summer. In detail. The four projects are: Third lane between L’Hospitalet de l’Infant and Ampostajust over 38 kilometers. It is the most advanced, with the drafting of the project underway since 2023. Fourth lane between the B-23 and Martorellabout nine kilometers, in one of the main accesses to Barcelona, ​​with an estimated cost of 94 million euros. Fourth lane between Sant Celoni and Montornès del Vallèsapproximately 30 kilometers. Fourth lane between Martorell and Vilafranca Centerabout 25 kilometers. These last two are, as far as possible confirm ACN and El Periódico, which until now were not publicly known. Each project is in a different phase of processing, from preliminary studies to final drafting, so none of them yet have a closed execution date. Between the lines. The problem is not just with private cars. Of the 41,000 vehicles that cross the border through La Jonquera on average every day, 15,000 are trucks, according to data of 2025 collected by El Periódico. The Ministry and the Generalitat agree that the railway should absorb a greater part of this freight traffic, but the lack of capacity of the railway network and intermodal terminals, together with a Mediterranean corridor still uncompleted, leaves the road as practically the only competitive option. Meanwhile. Expanding lanes requires years of environmental and administrative procedures, so both administrations have chosen to also act where the highway loses fluidity without the need to build anything new. An agreement of 250 million euros Annually between the Ministry and the Generalitat will allow the remodeling of fifteen links (including Girona Nord and Sud, Maçanet de la Selva, La Roca del Vallès, Montmeló-Parets, the connection with the B-30 or Vilafranca del Penedès) to eliminate the so-called “braided”, the conflictive crossings between vehicles that enter and leave in a few meters and that generate a good part of the delays. And now what. It is also still on the table limit truck overtaking in some sections, an option that the Servei Català de Trànsit is studying to reduce accidents while the works have not yet begun. In parallel, the debate has also resurfaced about whether it is appropriate to introduce a toll or a vignette on high-capacity roads, although both the central government and the Generalitat have ruled out recovering any means of payment for now. The Minister of Territory, Housing, Ecological Transition, Sílvia Paneque, already claimed a few days ago in an interview with El Periódico to advance in these expansions to prevent the same image of collapse on the AP-7 from being repeated every summer. Cover image | Costa Brava In Xataka | “The recharging excuse has its days numbered”: the Government confirms that 90% of the main roads already have fast charging nearby

recover the first stage of a rocket, and he has done it his way

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China now looks a little more like SpaceX, since for the first time it has managed to recycle the first stage of a rocket after separating from the second, which was able to place its payload in low Earth orbit without problem. This is something that for a long time only Elon Musk’s company had achieved. Later, Blue Origin also joined the list. Some companies, such as Rocket Lab, have done something similar, although the recovery has been a ditching directly into the ocean, with the help of a parachute. China, on the other hand, has done the same as SpaceX. After completing its task, the first stage of the Chinese rocket has returned to Earth and landed vertically. Of course, it was not done at the launch base itself, but on a ship at sea. As usual, a posteriori. We are more than used to knowing about China’s great space achievements once they have already been committed. There are usually no prior announcements, no televised launches or a countdown. There was some evidence that China intended to make a recovery of this type, but we did not know its successful completion until it had already ended. The person in charge of announcing it has been China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC)a state-owned company that is the main contractor for this country’s space operations. Only 6 minutes. The launch of the Long March-10B took place on July 10 at 12:15 pm Beijing time, from the Hainan Commercial Launch Center. The first and second stages of the rocket separated, leaving the first ready to return to Earth. 6 minutes laterthe landing occurred on a maritime platform, using a net capture system. This means that, instead of landing directly on its own legs, the rocket is caught by a huge net, which cushions the fall and helps it land on the landing pad. The first steps of Japan. Curiously, another Asian country has recently taken its first steps towards the use of reusable rockets. This is Japan, since its space agency, JAXA, has successfully completed the tests of the RV-X rocket. Of course, it is important to emphasize that it has only been a test. The rocket rose 11 meters, moved 16 meters horizontally and finally landed, all in a period of 40 seconds. No payload was carried, as it did not even go into low Earth orbit. In addition, it is a small vehicle, designed to validate rocket reuse technology, it is not the final model, as is the case with the Chinese rocket. One less Chinese rocket wandering through space. Many experts are worried because of the amount of junk that China is releasing into space. The ability to reuse rockets will not only be advantageous to them economically. It would also reduce the amount of space debris associated with its activity. It’s something they know a lot about at SpaceX. The company has received a lot of criticism for its contribution to both light pollution and the release of space debris. Elon Musk’s ambitious plans to expand the Starlink fleet require many launches, hence a lot of importance is placed on rocket reuse. With Falcon 9 it is more than implemented and the goal is to do it with Starship as well. This does not solve the problem of light pollution, but it is a kind of spacewashing regarding space debris. Perhaps China’s path will also go that way. Of course, their activity in space is becoming more and more abundant. These types of initiatives are key to continuing to increase the pace. Image | 中国新闻社 (not the news rocket) In Xataka | Orbital cleanup is no longer science fiction: the first regular space debris collection service will arrive in 2027

In 2021, Catalonia managed to get rid of the AP-7 tolls. Five years later he has an idea: recover them

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On October 6, 1998, 16 city councils, four regional councils, the two municipal associations of Catalonia, three chambers of commerce and other entities from different fields formed a common front to reduce and rationalize tolls, with the ultimate objective of bringing the situation in Catalonia – with many payment methods – into line with that of the rest of Spain (…). In a 10-point manifesto called the Gelida Declaration, the signatories constituted an anti-toll front and opposed the latest agreement then approved by the Spanish Ministry of Development, the Generalitat and the concessionaire Acesa, which saw exploitation concessions extended until 2021. In exchange, the concessionaire lowered the amount of the tolls. This is how he headed The Newspaper your article AP-7: history of a business and a claim in 2019. It reviewed the, at that time, 20 years that various city councils and associations had been demanding that the AP-7 lift its barriers. And drivers had been paying for the use of that highway since its opening in sections between the 70s and the first half of the 80s. The situation became even more tense when, as we read above, the concession was extended to 2021. It was then that the images of drivers who They refused to pay when passing through the AP-7. In 2021 things changed. The concession ended, it was not extended and the barriers were raised. From that moment on, cars no longer stopped at toll booths. But that had its consequences. Consequences that, once again, bring the shadow of the toll. Too much traffic And the fact that the highway was free brought with it an immediate increase in the volume of cars that traveled on it. Only in its first year free of tolls, the volume of cars grew by 40% and that of trucks by 80%, they pointed out in The Country. With Barcelona as one of the key steps in the entry and exit of vehicles and the passage through the French border, the road has been taken over by trucks. Traffic is now slower and more dangerous. In fact, that first year the highway concentrated 20% of accidents registered throughout the autonomous community. Since then, organizations have been looking for solutions. The last to leave his proposal was Manel Nadal, Secretary of Mobility and Infrastructure, in Chain Being where he has assured that if public entities agree, they could have tolls on this road again “in two or three years.” In his statement, Nadal even points out that not only the AP-7 would once again put barriers in the way of drivers. The proposal is to apply it to the rest of the high-capacity roads to diversify traffic and prevent a funnel effect from occurring as has happened with the free use of this road, which has now become the favorite route for transport companies that have a free passage to France. In the middle they rescue the words of Salvador Illa, president of Catalonia, who has already pointed out that “perhaps we were wrong when we all asked for them to disappear.” They rule out, according to Nadal, a possible Swiss-style Eurovignette (the driver pays a flat rate per year to drive on toll roads) because they assure that Europe would not accept it after 2032. And Europe has been putting pressure on Spain for a long time to turn your free roads into toll roads. For now, Governments have turned a deaf ear because the cost of implementing the measure is very high but we have been there for more than a decade with this possibility floating over our roads. Meanwhile, the authorities in charge of traffic control seem to be doing the best they can. In some sections speed limits have been drastically reduced and in the Servei Català de Trànsit (SCT) They have been working for some time to implement dynamic speed limits that reduce or increase speed depending on the volume of cars and trucks passing by at any given time. Photo | Pere Lopez Brosa and Wikimedia In Xataka | The Basque Country will add the second toll without windows in Spain: you register or pay the fine on the AP-68

The Silver Route seemed like the perfect train for the Spanish west. They seek to recover it with one objective: forget about Madrid

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Cáceres and Salamanca are separated by just 200 kilometers but the journey takes seven hours in the best of cases and requires passing through Madrid. We talked, of course, about going by train. And the capitals of these two provinces represent one of the biggest railway holes that our country has. The situation is not unique in Spain (from Murcia to Granada you also have to go through Madrid) but perhaps it is more bloody because one day there was that option that structured the west of Spain. It was known as the Silver Route. Now, more than 40 years after its closure, there are those who continue fighting for its reopening. A line that was born sentenced From Seville to Gijón, passing through Mérida, Cáceres, Salamanca, León or Oviedo. The Silver Route It was designed as a railway corridor for passengers and goods away from the large Spanish economic centers. It was about finding an alternative so that not everything went through Madrid, Bilbao or Barcelona. And, curiously, its origin must be sought very far from these cities. It was in Paris in 1877 when the contract was signed to build a railway between Palazuelo (current Monfragüe station) and Astorga, they explain in The Extremadura Newspaper. The project was ambitious as it passed through a lot of unpopulated area in its attempt to connect the north of Extremadura with Salamanca, Zamora and León. Yet, the line went ahead in the last years of the 19th century. Between 1893 and 1896, the four sections that would end up forming the most representative axis of the line were inaugurated from south to north. This was the backbone of a road that connected to the south with the Mérida-Seville section and the Venta de Baños-Gijón in the north. Without a large city to drive it and without direct access to a large port, the line was falling into ostracism. First, because the State did not find sufficient reasons to modernize it and, at least, electrify it. And without investments, the tortuous path became less attractive for passengers and companies. The axis survived the Civil War but beforehand an investment had been requested that never arrived. In 1933, the iron bridges were replaced by steel ones but no major efforts were made. In the following years, they point out in the local mediaderailments and accidents multiplied due to lack of investment. For decades, once sentenced, the line remained open but in 1984 its definitive closure was confirmed. By then, the trains were barely running at 50 km/h, an average speed lower than that recorded during their opening. A train bus accident in 1981 in which a woman died put the finishing touches on a decision that began decades ago when no one wanted to invest in the western axis. Let it come back! Today, the connection between Cáceres and Seville, passing through Mérida, continues to exist, although it is a single-lane railway and is not electrified. The connection between Salamanca and Gijón is also maintained. But how you can see on this Adif mapa hole separates Cáceres and Salamanca. From Plasencia, you will see a green line leaving towards the north. In Salamanca, another leaves in a southerly direction. Are they projects to recover this train? No, they are Greenwaysconditioning of the old railway section to convert them into easy paths for walking, running or cycling. What some institutions have been demanding for years is that these Greenways are not the only vestige that remains from those days. In 2023, the city councils of Salamanca, Cáceres, Béjar, Plasencia Guijuelo and Hervás together with the Chambers of Commerce of those first three cities signed an institutional declaration demanding the return of the train. “Employment, creation of opportunities, logistical development, diversification of the productive system and stopping depopulation,” with these words they began a text to justify their demands. It pointed out some technical issues such as that the section between Plasencia and Salamanca has 4G network coverage on 90% of the route. But, above all, it was remembered that the new train could be an alternative route for the transport of goods in the western area, capable of connecting the Atlantic ports in the north with those in the south without passing through Madrid. This was the premise, in fact, with which the idea of ​​resurrecting the West Corridorunder the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. A project that, as they remember in the text, was not carried out. in the diary Today They collected information that the Gijón Chamber of Commerce put on the table in 2022 to defend this line: it could capture up to 625,000 journeys for goods which now carry trucks going up the A-66, also known as Vía de la Plata. Beyond unfulfilled promises (in addition to Zapatero, José María Aznar also promised to reopen the line after Felipe González closed it to passengers in 1984 and to goods well into the 90s), one of the biggest problems that this Western Corridor has is that it does not fall within the plans of the European Union as far as the railway is concerned. The Trans-European Transport Network ignores this and maintains that hole already mentioned between Cáceres and Salamanca and Salamanca and the south of Asturias if it is not passing through Valladolid. Regardless of whether we are talking about a passenger or freight network, the result is the same. That is why from the Corredor Oeste platform, together with the city councils and the rest of the local organizations, They have been organizing mobilizations and meetings to press and get the project taken to Europe. According to his calculations, it would hardly be necessary to invest 1.9 billion eurosvery far from what is being invested in other corridors such as the Mediterranean, which already exceed 8,000 million in investment. They also defend that the new Silver Route railway would be key to connecting the Atlantic Corridor, which does have European approval, with the Spanish south, offering a … Read more

Europe throws away 16 billion a year in electronic waste. Spain has just turned on the first oven in Europe to recover them

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Those cell phones, computers and small devices that are gathering dust in a drawer and ending up in a landfill contain valuable minerals such as copper, silver and platinum inside, which also end up there. Every year in the Spanish state almost 930,000 tons of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) are thrown away, which makes Spain the sixth state on the continent in generation of this type of waste. according to data from the UN E-waste Monitor by 2024. Of these, less than half is documented and recycled waste. In a context in which rare earths and critical minerals are a strategic resource of which Europe wants to achieve sovereignty, Spain has taken a step forward with a CSIC pilot plant pioneer in the old continent: a furnace capable of melting that electronic waste to extract valuable metals from it. The pioneer oven. A few days ago the National Center for Metallurgical Research of the CSIC inaugurated in Madrid the first European pilot plant capable of recovering critical metals from electronic waste using a submerged lance furnace, which exceeds 1,200 °C to melt electronic waste. The milestone was formalized with the first experimental casting of metals obtained directly from electronic waste and obtained materials such as copper, gold, silver and platinum in a clean and efficient way. In conventional furnaces, the heat comes from the outside, but in this case a metal lance is introduced that injects oxygen and fuel directly into the molten bath, which generates intense turbulence that mixes and homogenizes the material, accelerates chemical reactions and improves energy efficiency. Why is it important. Because every year Europe generates millions of tons of electronic waste containing copper, gold, silver, platinum and strategic minerals necessary for the energy transition and digitalization. A part of them is not recovered: it is lost or used outside the continent. The facility in question is an advance in advanced pyrometallurgy and the management of waste from electrical and electronic equipment that shows that it is possible to treat this waste in Europe, thus preventing the associated economic value from leaving the continent, which allows the raw materials to be reincorporated into the European production chain itself. In addition, it connects directly with the Critical Raw Materials Law of the European Union, which fixed that at least 25% of the critical raw materials consumed by the EU by 2030 must come from recycling. The EU is currently heavily dependent on imports of critical raw materials, often from a single supplier, which poses a serious geopolitical risk in the form of dependence on strategic sectors such as renewable energy, digitalisation and defence. Context. The generation of WEEE is out of control and breaking records. According to the UN international waste observatoryin 2022 the world generated 62 million tons, 82% more than in 2010, but less than in 2030, when the estimated figure is 82 million tons. Europe takes the cake: in 2022 it was the region with the highest volume of WEEE per inhabitant with 17.6 kg per person, of which only 7.3 kg were recovered. But that garbage is money: the UN E-Waste quantifies the economic value of those 62 million tons at 91 billion dollars a year. If of this global total of WEEE, 13 million tons of garbage per year They belong to Europe. Calculated proportionally, it would be equivalent to losing about 19,000 million dollars annually due to poorly managing these materials (about 16,340 million euros at the exchange rate). While we search for deposits and accelerate their exploitation in a sector dominated by China, we have a deposit pending to be exploited: the “urban” mine with WEEE recycling. The situation regarding WEEE in Europe in 2022. UN E-Waste 2024 How it works. He submerged lance furnace is based on the ISASMELT processso that the raw materials only need to be pre-mixed, there is no need for fine grinding or drying, which simplifies the feeding with materials as heterogeneous as WEEE. The separation of materials is based on the difference in densities: once the waste is melted, copper and precious metals such as gold or silver tend to sink to the bottom of the reactor due to their greater density, while the slag (which is non-metallic) floats on the surface, which makes extraction simple. The project has been possible thanks to a public-private collaboration between CENIM-CSIC and two companies, the European copper smelting giant Atlantic Copper and the metallurgical company Glencore Technology. Yes, but. The CENIM facility is a pilot plant, not an industrial plant, and this leap in pyrometallurgy is not exactly small: engineering issues must be resolved such as the management of the gases emitted in the process or the useful life of the furnace’s refractory materials, among others. And this project may find its political framework in the Critical Raw Materials Act, but this It’s more of a statement of intent. than anything else: it does not have a roadmap nor has it made available new funds to accelerate these initiatives. However, the biggest problem is not in the oven, but in recycling or the absence of this: 46% of WEEE and the critical materials it contains are lost before reaching any recycling facility, simply because collection is poor. There is little point in developing highly efficient recovery technology if electronic waste ends up mixed with organic waste in the brown container. Or if it is exported outside of Europe. The real bottleneck remains collection. In Xataka | Mortadelo and Filemón work for the CSIC: TIA agents explain the history of science to us with their comics In Xataka | The CSIC wants to create quantum solar energy capable of self-regulating its temperature. His inspiration: painting Cover | yasin hemmati and Nathan Cima

Claude has helped a man recover $400,000 worth of bitcoin he lost 11 years ago. Logged in and forgot password

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An X user named Cprkrn recently told of his odyssey with a (very) happy ending in X. In 2015 he bought five bitcoins (BTC) when the price was around $250. In a fit of university euphoria he decided that his password should be an anti-establishment manifesto and changed it to the phrase ““lol420fuckthePOLICE!*:)”. The problem is that he did it completely stoned, and when he got up the next morning he realized that his money had disappeared. He then began an odyssey to try to remember that password. One with a happy ending. Eleven years of despair. For eleven years, those five bitcoins remained lost while their value continued to increase. Today its value is around $400,000, and our protagonist has not stopped seeing how this fortune had slipped through his fingers. To try to recover the password he tried everything, especially brute force attacks to try to guess the password with thousands of combinations. He looked through old folders that he had saved without success, and then something occurred to him: turn to Claude. Claude didn’t hack your wallet, he was just a spectacular detective. What Cprkrn ended up doing was ask Claude to analyze 1 GB of iCloud backups, old Apple notes, emails, and forgotten system files saved on a computer I had used in college. The challenge was not to “crack” the password, but to find the trace of how it could have been created. Order within chaos. What Claude did was organize all that data that was scattered to turn it into a perfect structured file that could be analyzed. After evaluating all the information, the AI ​​model realized that it was trying to open the wrong file. He located a file called wallet.dat from before the password change that caused the nightmare, and crossed it with a mnemonic phrase that the user had written down in an old notebook that he had discarded. That allowed that password to be reconstructed, and in less than an hour Cprkrn had recovered his fortune and regained access to your BTC wallet. Money safe. The first thing he did after discovering that password was move those bitcoins to another secure wallet to avoid problems: every conversation we have with Claude or other chatbots is recorded on the servers of those companies in plain text, so Cprkrn covered his back to prevent that information from being used to avoid scares. Blessed Darius. The joy of having recovered those five bitcoins led this user to publish a message on Twitter telling the whole adventure. In said message promised who would name his future son “Darío” in honor of Anthropic CEO, Darío Amodei. Needles in the haystack. History shows that great language models are extraordinary tools for finding needles in haystacks. Traditional tools helped, but AI’s ability to analyze information and find patterns is once again amazing. This anecdote is linked, for example, to recent rise of models like Claude Mythos Preview to find security vulnerabilities that seemed impossible to find. Again, everything is based on the ability of these models to “understand” the data provided to them, organize them and extract what is needed from them. Being a digital Diogenes has a reward. For years the recommended practice for those changing or upgrading equipment was “delete/format the old, start from scratch with the new.” This story changes the focus, because in the age of AI, messy data from 15 or 20 years ago is not digital garbage: it can be a treasure that helps us review our past and reveal data that we no longer remember. The story, however, contrasts with that of James Howells, who for years struggled to try to recover the hard drive with thousands of bitcoins that ended up in a landfill. He ended up giving up after the court’s refusal to give him permission to search for that hard drive. Image | Kanchanara In Xataka | The NYT claims to have found Satoshi Nakamoto and the evidence is as conclusive as ever: little or nothing

that the birds recover their original song

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Noise is an invisible pollutant, but its effects can be seen. To begin with, the natural soundstage changes, altering the behavior of animals and affects health of humans and other species. It is true that in cities noise pollution is usually overshadowed by other pollution such as air or water quality, but its consequences are equally tangible. At the beginning of this century, studies on urban birds They found that noise caused by human activity causes birds to sing at higher frequencies to avoid masking traffic, a source of low-frequency noise. What Paris has achieved. As collects the paper published in Oxford Academicthe French capital has been fighting noise for decades directly and indirectly, especially focused on traffic, which shows a transformation in its urban mobility: it has gone from having 250 kilometers of bicycle lanes in 2003 to 800 kilometers in 2023, recycling traditional traffic lanes, with sound-absorbing asphalt, lowering speed limits, the expansion of electric vehicles and the installation of acoustic chambers capable of detecting and fining the noisiest vehicles (the famous “Medusa radars“). The result is obvious: the government agency Bruitparif demonstrates that Paris is today approximately three decibels quieter than it was almost 20 years ago (since 2008). It may not seem like much, but it is worth remembering that the decibel scale is logarithmic and that in practice this reduction represents approximately half of the previous sound intensity. Why is it important. The WHO is clear: Noise is the second most harmful environmental stressor for health in Europe (behind air pollution) and prolonged exposure to it increases the risk of cardiac ischemia, hypertension and sleep disorders in humans. The European Environment Agency details in its 2025 report that noise contributes to 49,000 new cases of ischemic heart disease annually on the continent. The prestigious The Lancet states in this paper that nocturnal noise causes sleep fragmentation, which raises blood pressure and, in the long term, damages the endothelium. If we stick to birds and their song, it is something like human language: they are culturally transmitted from generation to generation and changes in song are also learned by individuals of the same species in the environment. But it goes beyond changing a sound: it affects your ability to attract a mate, warn of danger, defend your territory or simply communicate. And be careful because this also affects other species such as whales because of the noise of the boats either the bats. This other one study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B which analyzes 160 species of birds since 1990 found that noise significantly impacts communication, risk behaviors, feeding, aggression and physiology, with a clear negative effect on reproduction. Context. He Noise Prevention Plan in the Environment of Paris seeks to transform the French capital into a more livable city, becoming a living laboratory where urban planning and sensory planning combine to try to curb the impact of decades of acoustic degradation due to automobile dependency. For the study of Parisian birds, the great tit is the sentinel, using recordings of its songs both in the center of Paris and in the Fontainebleau forest as a wild reference. This observation is not new: already in 2006 a study showed that the chickadees that sing under the Eiffel Tower did so with a minimum frequency 400 Hz higher than those that sang in the Fontainebleau forest. This pattern has been replicated in other cities and species and the result is the same: it is common for birds to increase the minimum frequency of song in response to urban noise. The pending subject. Even though noise has decreased, Parisian tits continue to sing with significantly higher minimum frequencies than non-urban birds, and these frequencies have not decreased along with noise reduction. The explanation, according to the research teamis the cultural mechanism: young birds learn to sing by imitating the adults in their environment and for decades the only adults available to teach them sang high because it was the only way to make themselves heard. Now the city is quieter, but there are no teachers who sing gravely to learn. The habit persists even if the original cause has diminished. San Francisco in COVID-19 leads the way: during the pandemic background noise was reduced by about seven decibels and the white-crowned sparrow responded by singing at lower frequencies. Nature is speaking loud and clear: the reduction achieved by Paris is real but insufficient. In Xataka | China was the great polluter of the planet: now it is emerging as the first “electrostate” in history In Xataka | If the question is whether a skyscraper can be erased without demolishing it, Paris has the answer: yes, in exchange for a fortune Cover | Noureddine BOUABDALLAH and Alexander Kagan

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.

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