saved

We fill the field with solar panels to stop climate change. We have unintentionally saved 122 species of bees

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There’s a hum under Minnesota solar panels that engineers didn’t put in the plans. It is a biological, dense, ancient hum. Beneath the photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity, 122 species of native bees have found something that has been disappearing from the fields of half the world for decades: flowers. It’s not a coincidence. It is the result of a management decision that costs money, requires planning and that, according to the latest science, is producing results that no one expected when the first solar panel was installed in a meadow. The bees are disappearing. A study published in Nature Ecology & Evolutionwith data from 681 agricultural fields on three continents and more than 19,500 specimens of 910 species of wild bees, reached an uncomfortable conclusion: pesticides and habitat loss are reducing bee populations in an additive, independent way, without one factor compensating for the other. That is, having more natural habitat around a field does not neutralize the damage from pesticides. And reducing pesticides is not enough if the habitat has disappeared. They are two different problems that require two different solutions. The work, led by Anina Knauer and researchers from Agroscope among other institutions, found that pesticides not only reduce the number of bees: they also reduce their functional and phylogenetic diversity. Communities not only become smaller, they become simpler, less resilient, less able to cope with future shocks. A desert with seasonal flowers. In Iowa, in the heart of the American Corn Belt, 72% of the territory is covered in corn and soybean monocultures. Less than 0.01% of the original prairie remains standing. This is what researchers at Iowa State University publish in BioScience described as “an extreme example of landscape simplification”. Bees literally have very little to go to. And when the soybeans stop flowering at the end of summer, there is nothing. The colonies enter what science calls the feast-famine dynamic: the festival of flowering followed by famine that kills hives before winter. This is the background scenario. An agricultural world that urgently needs more pollinator habitat, free of pesticides or with minimal exposure. And in that desert, solar panels are doing something no one expected. 14 floors. 122 species. And an unexpected star. A team of researchers led by Bethanne Bruninga-Socolar of Western EcoSystems Technology and James McCall of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory asked a very specific question: Of all the plants that can be grown under and around solar panels, which ones actually establish? And how many bees can they hold? The work, published in Environmental Research Communicationstested 101 plant species in eight different seed mixtures at three solar farms in the tallgrass prairie region of Minnesota. After three years of monitoring, 14 species of flowering herbaceous plants had successfully established themselves. With those 14 species as a starting point, the researchers cross-referenced the data with an exhaustive catalog of plant-bee interactions from the same region. The result is that those 14 plants can support 122 unique species of native bees, 24% of all bee diversity in the state of Minnesota, which has 508 documented species. The star of the system is Zizia aureathe golden Alexander, a yellow flowering plant that blooms early in the season. Alone, it supports 67 species of bees. And 36 of those species—30% of the total study—only visited Zizia aurea among all the plants studied. If it is not in the seed mix of the solar park, those 36 species have nothing. Not all flowers are worth the same. The study also documents an important nuance: bumblebees, the group of pollinators with the most species in decline—three of the eleven species of Bombus of the study are classified as vulnerable by the IUCN: B. pensylvanicus, B. terrestrial and B. fervidus—they don’t get along with Zizia aurea. Only one species of bumblebee visited that plant. Bumblebees prefer Monarda fistulosathe wild bergamot, visited by nine of the eleven species of Bombus of the study. The practical lesson: there is no universal mix. The design of what is planted must respond to what is to be conserved. And what if there are pesticides in the surrounding fields? He study by Toth and colleagues in BioSciencewith more than a decade of data on strips of native prairie embedded in corn and soybean fields in Iowa, systematically reviewed chemical contamination in that type of habitat. Pesticides arrive—neonicotinoids, pyrethroids, fungicides—but in concentrations that, for the best studied species, are below the damage thresholds. And most importantly: the concentrations are no higher than in the rest of the surrounding agricultural landscape. They are not an ecological trap; They are an island of resources in a sea of ​​fields that already have pesticides on them anyway. In addition, a diet rich in quality pollen—exactly what these plants provide—makes bees better tolerate chemical exposure. Nutrition acts as a shield. The authors of that work themselves explicitly point out that their conclusions are applicable to “other types of landscape improvements for pollinators such as hedgerows, pollinator gardens, solar installations with pollinator habitat.” It is not a journalistic extrapolation. It’s in the text of the paper. If there are flowers inside there are bumblebees. If field studies answer the “does it work now?” published in Global Change Biology by Hollie Blaydes and colleagues at Lancaster University answers “will it still work in 2050?” The team modeled the 1,042 operational solar farms in Britain under three socio-economic scenarios for mid-century: a sustainability scenario, an intermediate scenario and a fossil development scenario with maximum agricultural intensification. The main finding is compelling: the management of the solar park is the main determining factor of bumblebee density within the park, above land use changes in the surrounding landscape. Solar parks last between 25 and 40 years. That means decades of stable habitat in landscapes that are going to change and possibly get worse for pollinators. And there is an economic angle that is not minor either. Colonies located near diverse native vegetation avoid feast-famine dynamic which in monocultures weakens … Read more

the ‘miracle’ of the refineries that has saved our holidays

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For more than two decades, Europe became accustomed to a historical anomaly: crossing the continent for less money than a taxi to the airport costs. However, the outbreak of the Third Gulf War has broken the fragile thread from which aviation was hanging. low-cost: cheap oil and geopolitical stability. With 40% of Europe’s kerosene supply trapped in the Persian Gulf, the ghosts of grounded planes and mass cancellations They flew over the beginning of the high season. But the air apocalypse seems that will not materialize this summer due to a rescue in extremis of European refineries. And although the summer holidays of 2026 seem safe, the price to pay will transform the way we fly forever. For great evils, great remedies. To understand the magnitude of the problem, EUobserver provides devastating information: Before the conflict, Europe imported 500,000 barrels of kerosene per day, and 75% of those imports came from the Middle East. Faced with the threat of shortages, the industry has reacted by forcing the machine with exceptional decisions. Refineries typically have very limited flexibility to alter what they extract from each barrel of crude oil. However, as revealed Financial Times, Operators such as the Spanish Repsol have configured their plants to squeeze out much higher performance, increasing kerosene production between 20% and 25% compared to last year and delaying technical maintenance stops. For this reason, Europe has had to look for new suppliers against the clock. The United Kingdom multiplied its kerosene imports from the United States tenfold in April, according to The Timeswhile it has also been used in Nigeria. But here a technical problem arises: how to explain EUobserverEurope routinely uses “Jet A-1” fuel (which resists down to -47 °C without freezing), while the US refines “Jet A” (which freezes at -40 °C). In a measure of historic urgency, the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has given the green light for European airports to use and mix American fuel, warning only to take extreme precautions on very cold routes. Furthermore, the airlines themselves have adopted purely logistical strategies. In fact, it is becoming popular tankinga practice that consists of loading up on extra fuel at the airport of origin to be able to make the return flight without having to refuel in destinations where kerosene is scarce or has prohibitive prices. The direct impact on the passenger. The industrial effort keeps the planes flying, but the user will pay the bill. Filling the tank of a giant like the Airbus A380 has gone from costing around $211,000 to more than $340,000, details Business Insider. Not only that, but the tariff business model ultracheap is staggering. Willie Walsh, Director General of IATA, acknowledged in statements to the BBC that, although some airlines have launched specific discounts to stimulate demand, in the medium term higher fares are “inevitable”, since companies cannot absorb these extra costs. And he warns that even if Hormuz opened tomorrow, the logistical damage will keep prices high until next year. In fact, tickets are already 24% more expensive than in 2025 driven by kerosene that reached a record of $1,904 per ton in April, according to Financial Times. In addition, airlines such as Virgin Atlantic have already added fuel surcharges of up to £360 per flight, while others in the US are raising fees for checked baggage, point Business Insider. A new labyrinth: compensation. Globally, airlines have eliminated 9.3 million seats from their summer schedules (a 4% cut), eliminating less profitable short routes. The Lufthansa Group, for example, has canceled 20,000 flights, as collected The Japan Times. But be careful with the passenger’s rights. There is a crucial legal nuance in the European Union: if your flight is canceled due to a physical and actual lack of fuel supply, it is considered “force majeure” and you are not entitled to financial compensation. However, if the airline cancels it simply because fuel is too expensive and the flight is no longer profitable, it is considered under its control and you could be entitled to compensation of up to 600 euros. So, do you have to worry about vacations? The official message from the industry is unanimous: summer is saved. Analysts consulted by Reuters They point out that airlines, tour operators such as TUI and airports are playing down fears of shortages to protect ticket reserves, which are vital to their annual revenues. This is helped by the fact that European airports did their homework and increased their kerosene reserves by more than 60% during the month of April. Besides, as the CEO of Wizz Air points out in Financial Timessuch high prices attract boats from all over the world, which “makes the market get creative.” However, the real danger comes in winter. The high season lasts because the planes are full and the tourist assumes the cost. But, as they warn traders in it Financial Timesautumn will be a real “stress test”. If the conflict continues and prices remain sky-high when travel demand falls in winter, many routes will no longer be viable and could temporarily disappear. Furthermore, European airlines are holding up better right now thanks to hedging (fuel purchases at a fixed price made months or years ago), a practice that US airlines abandoned after the 2008 crisis. When these European coverages expire, the blow will be total. The Iberian exception: Spain as a refining power. In the midst of the European storm, Spain is experiencing a very different reality. Energy Minister Sara Aagesen assured Reuters a month ago that the national supply is not only robust, but that the country is in a “privileged” situation. While Europe has closed 35 refineries since 2009, losing 20% ​​of its capacity, Spain took the opposite path. According to The EconomistIn the past, companies such as Repsol, Moeve and BP invested 15 billion euros in updating their plants, going against the grain of political signals. In this way, Spain today has eight refineries that represent 13% of the capacity of the entire European … Read more

Not even God is saved from AI, so the Vatican has gone from the commandments to being the first State to legislate it

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Incredible as it may seem, the Vatican is moving faster than most historical institutions in the face of artificial intelligence and everything that is coming our way (and that, in fact, we are already getting a glimpse of), from disinformation to voice and video deepfakes, to the silent erosion of what we understand as reality. An institution that is more than 2,000 years old and old-fashioned is giving a lesson in institutional agility to governments, parliaments and even technology companies that do not know where they are going. And it does not do so from naivety, but from a firm and concrete theological conviction: that human dignity is not negotiable, not even in the face of a language model with a billion parameters. It has taken the EU years to approve its AI Act and even so it was a pioneer, but big tech in general is behaving like the tobacco industry by self-regulating tobacco. In this scenario, the Holy See has had internal directions in force for months, alliances in cybersecurity and a pope who has already said that AI cannot preach faith. The Vatican’s position. In addition to prohibiting the use of AI to write sermons, last February Pope Leo XIV asked the priesthood do not look for “likes” on social networks. A year earlier, the Vatican had issued one of the world’s first regulatory frameworks on AI demanding ethics, transparency and putting humans at the center Thus, Vatican policy establishes that technology “should never surpass or replace human beings” and must be at the service of human dignity. And it is not something new: the previous Pope Francis already laid the foundations in his Laudato Si’ of 2015, but applied to the digital world. Why it is important. Because the Holy See is moving more and better than the bulk of traditional institutions to establish norms and safeguards against disinformation generated by AI. While the EU approved its legislative framework as a bloc, the Vatican has been the first individual sovereign State to have immediate compliance guidelines for its administration, ahead of powers such as the United States or China. By positioning itself as a moral authority, it seeks to fill the regulatory and ethical void that technology companies have left open. This positioning has real institutional weight: the Vatican operates as a diplomatic actor with permanent observer status at the UN and relations with more than 180 states, which allows it to project its ethical standards beyond the religious sphere, in a space where neither governments nor technology companies have achieved global consensus. Context. We have already seen that the movement is not something sudden or improvised and that the Vatican’s position has been brewing for years. In fact, it is the evolution of the “Rome Call for AI Ethics“, a historical (but voluntary) document where the Vatican managed to get giants such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco will sign a commitment to develop technologies that respect privacy and inclusion The current geopolitical context, marked by cyberattacks and the use of deepfakes in conflicts, has forced the Holy See to accelerate its cybersecurity partnerships and establish monitoring within Vatican City itself to protect its information sovereignty. At a regulatory level, the Vatican is not going it alone: ​​the Holy See’s approach is complementary to that of the AI ​​Act: the EU regulates by law and the Vatican provides the moral authority and ethical principles of universal application, something that cannot be legislated. Retail. The Vatican’s regulatory framework focuses on both technical security and the social impact that algorithms have and seriously warns about the risk of a new inequality gap: between those who control AI and those who are controlled by it. The Vatican has established formal cybersecurity alliances with simultaneous focus on defense, diplomacy and ethics. The internal guidelines They prohibit AI that manipulates people, generates discrimination or compromises institutional integrity and there are specific safeguards on data. In Xataka | “AI will never be able to preach the faith”: the Pope is asking priests not to use ChatGPT to write their sermons In Xataka | The Vatican, a holy and renewable city: the Pope’s plans to make the small Catholic state more sustainable Cover | Google DeepMind and Julien DI MAJO

Mercadona has gotten rid of its search engine and replaced it with its own. They did it in a month with Claude Code and saved 90%

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Mercadona’s online store processes 4.4 million searches a week. Until recently, that volume was managed Algoliaa well-established search service used by companies like Sephora or LVMH. They had been with him for eight years. Now They have replaced it with their own search enginebuilt largely by José Ramón Pérez Agüera, CTO of Mercadona Tech. He has done it largely by himself, from his home, over a long weekend. This is how he told it in a successful LinkedIn post which now extends us in a video call with Xataka. “I’m going to be very honest and I know that this is going to look tacky, but it’s the truth,” says Pérez Agüera. “70% of the work (implementing the search engine, improving search quality and laying the foundation) took three days. One weekend plus an extended Monday.” The result: an 85% improvement in the quality of the ranking, the complete elimination of searches without results (previously 4% of the total) and a reduction in the monthly cost of between 9,000 and 15,000 dollars with Algolia to less than 900. That is, a saving of between 90% and 94% depending on the month. A decision that had been on hold for years The idea of ​​abandoning Algolia is not new at Mercadona Tech, it had been ruminating for a long time. The reasons are not surprising either: the search engine directly moves between 30 and 35% of the products that end up in the cart, which makes it a critical piece of business. And Algolia, like most SaaS services, has a pricing model that scales with use: as the company grows, the cost grows, with no way to stabilize it. “In the end you end up in a vendor lock-in of very critical software that is then difficult to get rid of,” explains Pérez Agüera. But Every time the team considered building something of their own, the work estimate was pushed back.. “The most optimistic vision we had, and with a much more basic version than the one we are going to release now, was five months. And it already seemed fast to me.” Then came the era of AI agents in software development. Pérez Agüera used Claude Code as the main tool and began to experiment on his own, without a formal project or assigned team. More out of curiosity than anything else. For playing. What AI did and what it didn’t The technical process combines hybrid search (by keywords and semantics) with a machine learning system that optimizes the ranking of results. AI made it possible to iterate on dozens of experiments in hours, analyze 479 MB of catalog and analytics data in days, and explore different ranking configurations by chatting with the agent instead of manually implementing them one by one. “I easily did 40 or 50 experiments in a weekend. That would have traditionally taken me weeks,” he explains. But the speed has a precise limit: the 29 technical decisions that AI did not make. Documentation generated during the experimentation process with Claude Code: the 14 parameters that Mercadona’s search engine evaluates to order results (from the popularity of a product to how well it fits semantically with what the user is looking for), its relative weight in the final ranking (popularity and semantic similarity account for two thirds of the decision) and the configuration of the machine learning model used to train it, based on click and purchase data from the last four weeks. Each of those parameters was discussed and validated with the AI ​​agent, but the final selection was made by the human team. Image provided by Mercadona Tech. The most representative was the choice of the indexing engine. Most systems, and probably any AI agent consulted, would have recommended Elasticsearch, the most widespread solution. Pérez Agüera chose Tantivy, a much smaller library written in Rust that integrates as an embedded component, without the need for a separate Java virtual machine. An impossible decision without knowledge of the Mercadona ecosystem. “The AI ​​always recommends the most generic option,” he says. “I made that decision because I have the context and the knowledge to make it.” The transfer to the team When the core of the search engine was ready, the project passed to the engineering team. What they found was not bad code, but it was ccode that did not follow Mercadona Tech’s internal standards. The architecture was hexagonal, as is the company’s style, but it used a different approach than usual. The tests existed (Pérez Agüera applied TDD during development) but some did not make sense or were missing cases. The agent had written thousands of lines of code in a few hours and reviewing them all was unfeasible. “The team’s Tech Lead took two or three days to adapt the project to our good practices,” he summarizes. “Not because the code was wrong, but because it didn’t meet our standards as a company.” In total, adding the initial phase and the launch into production, which includes load testing, infrastructure adjustment and integration into the Mercadona Online architecture; The project has taken approximately a month of work. And “two and a half people” have been in charge of it: Pérez Agüera, the Tech Lead of the Shop team and a part-time Staff Engineer for infrastructure. The original five-month estimate required five or six people. “FWe have easily done a x5 to the speed of the projectand what we have now is much more advanced than what we would have had in five months,” he says. What changes for the teams For Pérez Agüera, the search engine is one more experiment within a larger transformation that Mercadona Tech continues to process internally. The question on the table is not whether to use AI in development, but how to redesign the entire development process based on it. His diagnosis of the profiles is forceful: “AI is going to mean that fewer developers are needed and more engineers are needed. Coding loses value per se; the … Read more

how a relay in Gipuzkoa saved Europe while the Spanish system died of success

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Next April 28 it will be exactly one year of the biggest collapse in our recent history: the great blackout that turned the Iberian Peninsula black and left 55 million people in Spain and Portugal without electricity supply for 12 hours. Almost twelve months later, we finally have the official autopsy. The final report. The European Network of Electricity Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) has made public the long-awaited final report. Throughout 472 pages, the panel of experts dissects an unprecedented event to the millisecond. The document, which warns from its preamble that it does not seek to assign legal responsibilities but rather to learn from mistakes, reveals a chilling diagnosis: the blackout was the perfect storm caused by the rigidity of new technologies, manual ineffectiveness in the face of a millisecond crisis and an infrastructure incapable of keeping pace with the energy transition. The anatomy of collapse. To understand the ruling, you have to look south. According to the European report, at 12:03 p.m. on April 28 a local vibration was recorded of 0.63 Hz caused by instability in the electronic converters of renewable plants. Minutes later, at 12:19, the swing was amplified, affecting the entire continent. Technical research points to what could be defined as “operational blindness.” The report notes that much of the renewable generation in Spain operated under a “fixed power factor.” That is, the solar and wind plants were blind to the needs of the grid; they could not absorb reactive energy dynamically. When the voltage rose, these plants were simply taken offline for safety. When they stopped generating electricity, their reactive absorption also suddenly stopped, causing a rebound effect that triggered the voltage in an uncontrolled manner. Furthermore, while the crisis required millisecond reflexes, the control of reactances (the machines that absorb excess voltage) was carried out manually. Operators needed vital minutes to assess the situation. The blackout that could have been avoided. The European report not only acts as a notary for what failed, but also puts on the table what should have happened. By diving into the technical simulations of the ENTSO-E document, sector experts such as Joaquín Coronado have drawn a devastating conclusion: The collapse of the Spanish electrical system was not inevitable, but the result of ineffective management of voltage control by the System Operator (Red Eléctrica). The European analysis is blunt. In his simulation of sensitivity (named Analysis 7), the report concludes that if the connection of the reactances – such as the Caparacena shunt reactor at 400 kV – had been automated instead of depending on the slow human factor, the voltage rise would have been limited and the cascade effect avoided. In addition, ENTSO-E simulates alternative scenarios that show that electrical zero would have been stopped cold with measures that should already be operational: an increase in reactive power margins, the requirement that conventional generators absorb more voltage, or the use of the eight new synchronous capacitors that were already planned in the 2021-2026 planning. Without this automated reactive power reserve or dynamic support, the network was orphaned at the worst possible moment. The rescue from Gipuzkoa. The continental disaster was avoided thanks to Gipuzkoa. At 12:33, the high voltage substation in the Osinaga neighborhood of Hernani detected that the Spanish chaos threatened to drag down all of Europe. In milliseconds, the protection relay out-of-step (out of step) decapitated the connection with the French Argia substation. This “shot” left Spain in the dark, but it shielded the continental network. Barely ten minutes later, Hernani became the rescue route, allowing France to inject energy to resurrect the peninsular system from top to bottom (Top-Down). The structural problem of the market. The targeting of clean energy in the moments before the blackout has raised eyebrows, but the sector defends itself by pointing directly to regulatory inaction. In an interview for XatakaHéctor de Lama, technical director of UNEF (the photovoltaic employers’ association), is blunt: “A plant, no matter how large, cannot cause a blackout. Many other factors must come together.” De Lama explains that the current inverters installed in Spain meet very high European technical requirements, but places the structural problem on the roof of the Ministry (MITECO) and the CNMC for not financially incentivizing renewables to provide security services to the grid. “The current remuneration of €1/MVArh is not enough to encourage renewables to provide this service (voltage control) when we are paying combined cycle plants between 100 and 200 times more for the same thing,” details De Lama. The UNEF expert also recalls a historical administrative negligence that took its toll on us on April 28: while Portugal approved regulations to take advantage of the voltage control of its renewables in 2019, Spain took years to implement vital mechanisms such as Operation Procedure 7.4. We were playing with the rules of the past in the face of a crisis of the future. “A gold mine without a road.” This diagnosis fits with the voices of the industry. During the VI Economic Forum of elDiario.esPatxi Calleja, director of regulation at Iberdrola Spain, defined the national system as “a gold mine without a road.” We have enormous cheap generation capacity, but the electricity grid is the great limitation due to lack of investment compared to our European neighbors. And this green shield also has cracks. As we already analyzed in Xatakathe very high renewable penetration shields us from geopolitical crises (such as the increase in gas prices due to the war in Iran) during daylight hours, plummeting prices to zero. However, as soon as the sun goes down, the lack of mass battery storage sends us back to square one, leaving us at the mercy of combined cycles and fossil volatility. The war without quarter. While technicians analyze the ENTSO-E simulations that point to operational failures, a fierce battle is being waged in the offices. The president of Redeia (parent company of Red Eléctrica), Beatriz Corredor, has used the Brussels report in her appearances in the Senate to entrench herself … Read more

Getting a manicure while she was on sick leave almost cost her her job. He was saved by a detective who didn’t know how to do his job.

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Companies increasingly make use of the services of private detectives to investigate whether their employees really They are on sick leave or they are faking itwhich would be reason enough to a disciplinary dismissal. According to the detectives themselves, the companies that use their services do so because they previously They already have signs that there is fraud, which is why the majority of cases that are investigated agree with the companies that hire them and end up in disciplinary dismissal. However, in some cases, the way that evidence is obtained is the key to the success of the case. This is what happened to the employee of a beauty center in Barcelona. Despite being able to prove that there had been fraud, a sentence The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia declared the dismissal null and void and forced the company to compensate its employee. Medical leave and dismissal. The employee at the beauty center went to the doctor because of pain in her left hand and back, and they gave her the temporary disability leavewith rest and rehabilitation to recover. While she was still on sick leave, the company began to suspect that perhaps she was not that sick and decided to hire a private detective to check what she was doing outside of work. The detective prepared a report in which he noted that the worker had performed a manicure service for which she had charged 35 euros in cash while she was still on sick leave. With that report as a key piece in its argument, the company fired her via disciplinary dismissal, alleging that she had broken trust and that she was taking advantage of her leave to work on her own. In your dismissal letter you could read: “(…) you summoned, and performed a manicure treatment on, a person who was accompanied by said company (of detectives), at the aforementioned address, and charged this person in cash 35 euros for the service performed. The company has sufficient evidence, images and videos that confirm the regularity of these events.” What the court decides. The worker appealed the dismissal because she understood that it was unfair and was based on evidence obtained illegally. In the first instance, the Social Court No. 1 of Barcelona agreed with the company and declared that the dismissal was appropriate, and assigned the employee to collect 771.15 euros for untaken vacations plus 10% late payment interest. But did not recognize compensation some. The story changed when the case reached the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJCAT), when the worker appealed that first sentence. The Social Court reviewed how the detective’s evidence had been obtained and concluded that it was invalid because it had been obtained by inducing the situation. That is to say, something that was already happening had not been observed, but rather the opportunity had been created for the employee to do that manicure. What Detectives Can and Can’t Do. The case puts on the table what private detectives can do when investigating a person on sick leave and what lines they cannot cross. From Sentinel Private Detectivesremember that the law “prohibits them from taking images or evidence of events that occur in the intimate part of people’s lives. The garden is also considered an extension of the home,” so they cannot record there if it is a closed space. The investigation agency points out that their work should focus on “following and observing, without forcing situations,” and that their role is that of “mere observers of facts and behaviors.” Jordi Briñoldirector of Brininvest Detectiveshighlights that its activity is regulated by the Private Security Law and for the Civil Procedure Law, and that in cases of sick leave they can only act in “open spaces.” According to his explanation, “anything that happens in intimate spaces or that has what is called an expectation of privacy, we cannot access there”, and any monitoring must comply with what he calls “the triple judgment of proportionality”, that is, that the evidence is adequate, necessary and that it does not take longer than reasonable. The researcher clarifies that they can carry out actions under pretext (for example, making an appointment in a publicly announced consultation), but “we cannot provoke an unnatural response”, which fits with the idea that the person under investigation cannot be induced to commit the infraction. Why the detective’s evidence is useless. In this case, the court considers that the detective did not limit himself to looking from the outside at what the convalescent employee was doing as his regulations dictate, but that he intervened to make the behavior happen for which she was later punished. Along these lines, the ruling links with the doctrine of the Supreme Court that rejects evidence based on provocation, and remembers that situations cannot be fabricated and then used as an excuse to fire. By removing the detective’s report from the case, the company’s entire argument collapsed, so the Court understands that the true reason for dismissal is that the worker I was on medical leavesomething that Law 15/2022 prohibits using illness as a reason to dismiss a person because it represents discrimination due to illness. For this reason, the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia declares the dismissal void, orders that the company reinstate the employee, pay her all the salaries that she stopped receiving during the time that the judicial process lasted and pay her 7,501 euros for moral damages, in addition to 600 euros in defense fees. In Xataka | Social Security has published the data on sick leave in 2024 and we have bad news: we have broken a record Image | Unsplash (Behnaz Kh)

A bad spell devastated my kitchen. The most useful personal finance tool has saved me

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They say that misfortunes never come alone and, when it comes to appliances, that is a more than likely reality. In the last year, all the appliances in my kitchen have been falling apart one by one. First the washing machine, then the dryer, the coffee maker, a couple of months ago the refrigerator, and now the microwave is starting to beep randomly. He’s asking for the time. Being an adult was this. For an average economycope with replacement of all those appliances In a single year it represents a significant setback. However, we have been able to face this important unforeseen event thanks to a key tool in personal finances: the emergency fund. Concern in Spain about unforeseen events The concern about not being able to face an unexpected expense is very present in Spanish households. a study from the neobank Nickel points out that 64% of the people surveyed are concerned that their savings are not enough to cover an unforeseen event, five percentage points more than what was stated in the same study from the previous year. The same report shows that 28% claim to have planned their savings well, while 8% claim to have not no savings available. Furthermore, the impact is not the same for everyone: 5% of men say they do not have savings, compared to 12% of women, and only 35% of those over 65 consider that they have a cushion large enough to deal with an unforeseen event. Why an emergency fund matters The case of my appliances being damaged is a good example of what it is and the importance of having an emergency fund. Financial institutions define the emergency fund as an amount of money saved only for unforeseen events, different from savings for goals such as trips or renovations. It is used to cover, for example, a car breakdown, a boiler that breaks down or a sudden healthcare expense, without upsetting the entire month’s budget. Having this mattress provides two clear advantages: on the one hand, it reduces stress because it allows face unexpected expenses without making hasty decisions, and on the other hand, it protects you from falling into debt that later becomes difficult. How much money do you need? Ok, it is useful and necessary to create “a little corner” for unforeseen events, but how much money would we be talking about? Factors such as inflation, rising prices from the shopping cart or wage stagnation makes saving a utopia. According to a report Elaborated by Triodos Bank, 19.4% of those surveyed say they are never or almost never able to save, while 36.9% can only do so some months. Only 43.7% claim to be able to save regularly. Therefore, it is understandable that the idea of ​​saving, when you have a month left at the end of your salaryit becomes difficult for you. Don’t panic. Some banking entities match in which the fund should cover between three and six months of monthly fixed expenses, adjusting the figure to the financial situation of each person or family. If you have variable income or self-employment, some experts recommend expand that margin by covering six to twelve months of fixed expenses. The result will be your goal saving for emergency fund. To establish a specific savings figure, you must calculate how much you spend each month on housing, supplies, food, transportation and other basic expenses, and multiply that amount by six or twelve months, depending on each situation. There is even calculators that help you to establish that figure. Tricks to build the emergency fund without stress Once the savings goal has been established, it is time to start the plan to make it possible. It is not necessary to spend a large amount of money monthly for this fund, although it is advisable to establish an affordable monthly fee. They can be 10, 20 or 50 euros. It depends on your economy. The important thing is to start contributing. When it comes to money, the flesh is weak and the temptation to skip the monthly contribution will be very strong, so it is best to establish a savings strategy. Automate monthly savings On the one hand, physically separate that emergency fund from the rest of your savings. For example, in a new account. By separating it from your savings or checking account, it will be much easier for you to know how much money you have saved in it and adjust your savings plan. On the other hand, on a psychological level, seeing how that amount grows will serve as motivation to achieve the goal. In order to avoid temptations, it is best to automate the monthly transfer of the amount you have established as a quota for your emergency fund. That way, as soon as your salary is credited to your account, that fee will be reserved for emergencies without you having to do anything. If you are not obliged to manage that money every month, you will not be tempted not to reserve it. It’s not what you save, it’s what you don’t spend When the savings capacity is limited, it makes a lot of sense to review the so-called “ant expenses“: coffees away from home, impulsive purchases on apps, subscriptions to services you never use or frequent low-cost cravings. Redirect those small expenses Frequent trips to your emergency fund can make a difference over time, transforming money that slips away almost without realizing it into a cushion that protects against fines, repairs or unexpected bills. Another key to making the emergency fund grow without realizing it is to redirect all or a good part of any unexpected incomesuch as tax refunds, extra payments, bonuses, smaller prizes or cash gifts to your fund instead of your checking account. After all, it is a income you didn’t count onso nothing better than dedicating it to an equally unexpected emergency. When to use the emergency fund? It seems like a truism question, but when you have a certain … Read more

Spain had been saved from neo-Nazi terrorism. The police have just dismantled the first accelerationist cell

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The National Police has dismantled a terrorist cell installed in Spain. That alone would be news in itself, but in this case the operation has been special due to the ideology of its protagonists. What the agents have dismantled is a neo-Nazi group, “the first accelerationist in nature” detected in the country. In fact, the police suspect that the detainees are linked to ‘The Base’a far-right and supremacist network that the European Council included ago just over a year on its list of terrorist organizations active in the EU. Where and when? The operation It took place in the province of Castellón, where the National Police arrested three people allegedly related to the terrorist group on Tuesday last week. ‘The Base’. For now, the person in charge of the Spanish cell is already in prison. The detainees are accused of belonging to an illegal organization and crimes of recruitment, indoctrination and training for terrorist purposes, in addition to possession of weapons. During the five searches carried out in Castellón, the agents located nine weapons (two of them firearms), ammunition and around twenty knives. This is without taking into account technical equipment, propaganda from ‘The Base’, Nazi paraphernalia and other organizations and supremacist material. The operation to dismantle the cell was deployed at dawn on the 25th, although has been announced now. Why did the police act? Although the police has made a move now In reality, the investigation began months ago, when the agents detected a person who was “very radicalized and” aligned with the supremacist postulates” of ‘The Base’. Upon investigating, they discovered a “cohesive cell” made up of two other people, also radicalized, with a lifestyle marked by the organization and (most importantly) “in a position to carry out attacks.” The inspectors found out in fact that they had already participated in tactical training during which paramilitary equipment was used. Did they pose a danger? “In recent months, the detainees had hardened their radical discourse, encouraging violent actions, even stating that they were willing to carry out selective attacks for the cause,” he adds. the note published by Interior, which recalls three other key facts. First, the detainees resorted to the network to recruit more militants. Second, that they had stockpiled weapons. Third, just a month ago the founder of ‘The Base’ launched a call to consolidate organized cells at an international level and carry out “selective attacks.” How was the operation? Europol, which has supported the National Police to disarm the terrorist group, explains that in reality the operation took place over three days between Madrid and Valencia and resulted in the three arrests last Tuesday the 25th. In total about 50 agents participated and carried out five home searches. In addition to the three detained suspects, the community organization highlights the seizure of weapons, supremacist material and material that praises other terrorist groups and propaganda from ‘The Base’. What is ‘The Base’? A far-right network included in the list terrorist organization of the European Union, which among other issues affects its funds and financing channels. Other countries, such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada or the United Kingdom as well They consider her a “terrorist”“. From her Europol points out its “militant neo-Nazi accelerationist ideology” and remembers that its objective is “to achieve white supremacy through terrorism” and achieve the collapse of the system. To this end, it relies on a network of paramilitary cells. The origins of ‘The Base’ date back to the US in 2018. Europol precise Furthermore, its founder is Rinaldo Nazzaro, whom some sources They are now located in Russia. In 2020, the chairwoman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee in the US House even slipped that the Kremlin was trying to “exploit racial tensions” in North America and did not rule out that, to that end, it was supporting “white supremacist groups” located in the US and Europe. “The organization operates as a decentralized and clandestine network of small operational cells, whose main ideological postulates are supremacism, militant accelerationism and preparation for a ‘racial war,’” comments the police, who have released images of the weapons and articles located during the intervention, including several copies of the book ‘My Fight’. What is accelerationism? Broadly speaking, an extremist theory that seeks to foster instability to lead society to collapse. The ultimate objective: that this leads to a revolution that allows the reconstruction of a system designed “for the white man,” explains Veryan Khan, president and CEO of the Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, told the BBC. “Accelerationism integrates the anti-system and, in a similar way, seeks to cause the collapse of democratic and capitalist societies, accelerating their decline. This can be achieved through attempts to manipulate public discourse as well as by violent means,” Europol elaborates in a report on terrorism of 2024 in which it recognizes that “militant accelerationism” has gained “considerable popularity” thanks to online communities and comes in the midst of the expansion of extremist propaganda, supported in turn by conspiracists and fake news. Is there anything else? There are those who believe so. In X Manuel R. Torres, professor of Political Sciences, was sliding yesterday that in the images shared by the National Police about the operation you can see “something much more interesting than the Nazi paraphernalia.” That? To answer it attached an article signed by him and published in 2024 by the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies with a suggestive title: “Will technophobia be the driving force of a fifth wave of terrorism?” In its pages it reflects on a wave of terrorism driven by technophobia, fear of job loss, surveillance or environmental degradation. One of its objectives would be precisely to weaken civilization by attacking “neural points” of the system, taking advantage of the fact that society’s technological dependence makes it “more vulnerable” and facilitates “accelerating its collapse.” Images | Ministry of the Interior and Europol In Xataka | In 2017 Liverpool signed a star footballer. Without knowing it, he had found the solution to racism in … Read more

From now on your Word documents are automatically saved to OneDrive. It’s a disturbing idea

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Until now, when we saved a file that we worked with in Microsoft Word We used the hard drive or SSD of our computers. However, that just changed, and Microsoft has decided that your files are stored by default in your cloud. It is an idea that has its advantages, but also important drawbacks. what has happened. At an event dedicated to OneDrive and Copilot this week, Microsoft has announced new features for your cloud storage service. In the version of Word for Windows, new documents will be saved directly to OneDrive and automatic saving of those documents will be activated automatically. Good on the one hand. At Microsoft they explained that they knew “how frustrating it can be to search for important files on different devices and locations.” That has made them decide that instead of saving them directly to your device, are saved in the cloudwhere they are always available and from any other computer and place. It’s a good idea to have those documents ready to be accessed from other computers, but it has several major drawbacks. Also activating automatic auto-save will prevent us from losing work. Privacy and security. For starters, uploading documents to the cloud by default can raise privacy and security concerns. What happens if the document contains confidential or sensitive information? Would we really want to upload that document to the cloud? If someone gets our OneDrive credentials—and that happensespecially when we reuse passwords— you will be able to access all our documents and, if there is sensitive information in them, collect it. Will they use those files to train their AI models? Microsoft Support Managers they have made it clear in the past that “our terms of service clearly state that we do not use customer data to train our AI models.” The privacy terms and the website of theMicrosoft Responsible AI” seem to confirm this, although they do point out that they do use the conversations with Copilot—but not the documents themselves—to improve those models. It is not a backup, it is the only copy. Normally we turned to OneDrive and other cloud storage services as ways to have a backup copy of our documents and thus get closer to that philosophy of “Backups 3-2-1“. With this type of feature, the files are stored directly in OneDrive, and although we have a local folder synchronized with the OneDrive files on our computer, Microsoft reverses the process here: before we saved those files in another folder and then we also uploaded them to OneDrive if we wanted. Now that copy of OneDrive is the only one. You can go back to business as usual. Microsoft will set this option by default, but users can deactivate it so that the office application behaves in a traditional way and offers the saving of files on our PC or laptop. It is likely, however, that many users will not even do it if they do not know about this change. They will simply assume it, something that can end up causing confusion. What if I don’t have a connection? It is true that it is normal that at this point we work on documents when we have the computer connected to the internet, but that cannot be the case. If that happens, we will not be able to save to OneDrive or have the autosave option working with those cloud operations. What will happen then? It is likely that in this scenario Microsoft Word will save files temporarily in the computer’s storage system, but that detail is not clarified. Another way to encourage you to pay for OneDrive. Microsoft is obsessed with getting you to use (and pay for) its services. We already saw how they are blocking the installation of Windows 11 with local accountsand this automatic autosave in OneDrive also aims to boost the use of OneDrive and Microsoft 365, its two great solutions for end users and businesses. Image | Ed Hardie In Xataka | Microsoft embraces the ‘working vibe’: it has launched Excel and Word that are controlled with prompts

Two years ago, an asteroid exploded over France with unusual violence. What saved the French was their size

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February 13, 2023. It was 4:59 in the morning when a violent explosion illuminated the skies of Normandynorth of France. It was not a ray, nor a missile. It was the end of a travel of millions of kilometers for a small asteroid called 2023 Cx1. Seven hours of notice. The 650 -kilogram rock had just a meter in diameter, so it had been detected only seven hours before impact. But the most disturbing thing was not his surprise arrival, but his behavior when entering the earth’s atmosphere. An exhaustive analysis published two and a half years later in Nature Astronomy He has revealed that, if the asteroid had been larger, the consequences of his extraordinary explosion could have been devastating. A high -risk meteor. Most meteorites are fragmenting as they descend through the atmosphere, but 2023 CX1 endured intact until it reached a distance to the ground of only 28 kilometers. At that point, the pressure made it explode like a pump. After traveling through space for about 30 million years, the asteroid released 98% of all its kinetic energy in a second fraction. And in a very concentrated region of the atmosphere, when it reached a dynamic pressure of 4 megapascal. It does not compare with Cheliábinsk. The 2023 CX1 behavior was radically different from that of the car whose explosion of 500 kilotons He broke windows and caused hundreds of injured in Russia in 2013. The one in France generated a spherical shock wave instead of cylindrical, concentrating much more energy and greatly increasing the area of ​​soil affected by overpressure. According to researchers, this type of abrupt fragmentation could cause much more damage than the progressive fragmentations of similar size bodies. The French were lucky that it was so small. More firewood for planetary defense. The analysis was based on an unprecedented number of observations after mobilizing the scientific and citizen community in those seven hours of margin. The prediction of the fall by ESA and NASA had a margin of error of less than 20 meters between the planned and observed trajectory, which in turn facilitated the recovery of more than one hundred fragments of the meteorite in the commune of Saint-Pierre-Le Viger. According to the CSICwhich participated in the investigation, this event confirms the existence of a new population of asteroids, type L chondrites, capable of these violent explosions. “These asteroids must be taken into account in the Planetary Defense Strategiessince they represent a higher risk for populated areas, “says Auriane Egal, first author of the study. With what we know today, perhaps the authorities activate evacuation plans the next time an asteroid of this type threatens us. Provided that detection systems do not fail, and detect the threat in time. Image | THAT In Xataka | Tunguska: the explosion of 12 megatones that reminds us that space is full of wonders, but also of horrors

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