secret

Russia set up a secret network to sell 90 billion in oil. It has fallen due to using the same mail server

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In the geopolitical chess of international sanctions, where Western governments design complex legislation to suffocate Vladimir Putin’s war machine, sometimes checkmate comes not from a brilliant diplomatic maneuver, but from corporate stinginess. An entire global smuggling network, designed to the millimeter to be invisible to the eyes of Washington and Brussels, has fallen like a house of cards for not wanting to pay separate email bills. A simple saving in computer infrastructure has exposed a monumental flow of black money. a colossal IT blunder (a huge computer error) has brought to light a smuggling network that has moved at least $90 billion worth of Russian oil. As revealed by extensive research of the Finance Timesthis plot is mainly responsible for financing the Kremlin in its war against Ukraine. The British media has identified a network of 48 companies which, on paper, operated completely independently from different physical addresses. However, in practice, they acted in unison to disguise the origin of the crude oil, especially that of Rosneft, the Russian state-controlled oil company. The need to hide these exports became life or death for the Kremlin in October 2025, when the United States imposed direct sanctions to Rosneft and Lukoil. From that moment on, a previously unknown company called Redwood Global Supply was suddenly crowned as the largest exporter of Russian crude oil in the world. This firm, along with the rest of the network, is linked to a group of businessmen of Azerbaijani origin with privileged access to the leadership of Rosneft, led by figures such as Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub. The independent Russian media The Moscow Times has been echoed of this discovery, highlighting a devastating fact: in November 2024, more than 80% of Rosneft’s maritime exports They moved through this network. Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft and current researcher at the Carnegie Center, explained to this medium that using fifty shell companies is “an old trick from the 90s” to evade taxes, but he confesses his surprise at the fact that a single network has become so immensely crucial for a giant like Rosneft. The triumph of shadow intermediaries The existence of this network means, quite simply, that the Western sanctions system is full of holes and that Russia has managed to industrialize evasion. According to the investigationthe success of this $90 billion network was based on strict separation of roles to erase the money trail. The network used a group of shell companies exclusively to buy crude oil shipments in Russia, and another group of companies, totally different on paper, to sell them in key markets such as India or China. In this way, the initial buyer and the final seller almost never coincided in customs documents. Furthermore, in most cases, the crude oil was labeled under generic names such as “export mix”, which destroyed any possibility of tracing its origin or checking whether the price cap imposed by the G7 was being respected. As we already explained at the time in Xatakathis modus operandi It is not new and it relies on an architecture of evasion that has been brewing for years in places like the United Arab Emirates. Something very similar happened with the case of Christopher Eppinger, a young trader German that perfectly illustrates how this underworld works. As we detailed in our report, while Europe boasted of energy sovereignty, an army of new intermediaries moved to Dubai—a jurisdiction that does not apply sanctions to Moscow—to make gold. The network now discovered by the British media uses exactly the same tools that we already analyzed: the express creation of opaque companies, the use of the “ghost fleet” (aging ships that turn off their transponders when approaching to load Russian crude oil) and transfers of oil on the high seas to mix it and falsify its origin. The only difference is that the Rosneft network uncovered by the FT was operating on an unprecedented industrial scale… Until they made a rookie mistake on the internet. The rookie mistake This entire sophisticated international network collapsed due to an absurd detail that borders on comedy. He Finance Times discovered that these 48 multi-billion dollar companies shared a single private server for their emails: mx.phoenixtrading.ltd By pulling this digital thread, the journalists of the FT they managed to identify 442 web domains who shared administrative functions of back office on that same server. The next step was pure data mining: they compared the names of those domains with the customs records of Russia and India. Thus, they discovered that the domain foxton-fzco.com It corresponded to Foxton FZCO (based in Dubai), buyer of $5.6 billion in oil; and? advanalliance.ltd It was Advan Alliance, which sold 1.5 billion to India. The desire to create and destroy companies quickly to mislead sanctioners—according to The Moscow Timesthe average lifespan of these signatures is only six months—led the network to centralize your IT infrastructure to reduce costs. A saving that has cost them their anonymity. The show must go on In the short term, the strategy of those involved is denial and adaptation. How to collect Finance Timesboth Tahir Garayev and Etibar Eyyub have categorically denied their involvement in sanctions evasion, calling the accusations “baseless” (curiously, Eyyub sent his denial from an email address hosted on the compromised server). The original company that founded the network, Coral Energy (now 2Rivers), has also disengaged from operations. However, behind the scenes, the machinery is already looking for new avenues. A senior Russian energy executive, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up the situation in the investigation starkly: “It creates additional costs and inconveniences. But at the end of the day, the show must go on.” The United Kingdom has already reacted to the investigation of the British media, sanctioning nearly 300 entities linked to this “dark web”, blocking Russian ships and banks. The fall of this immense $90 billion network shows that, in the 21st century, bank secrecy and flags of convenience are useless if the system administrator decides … Read more

The US has had a grain for “Iran”. The United Kingdom does not allow its bombers to enter a secret island that is key to the attack

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Since the Cold War, many of the great powers have understood that modern wars do not begin when the first plane takes off, but when secures access to the bases from which it will take off. Sometimes the deciding factor is not so much firepower, but the key that opens or closes a key clue at the exact location on the map. That is happening right now on a lost atoll. A problem with name and surname. The United States has had a major problem for “the Iran thing” and it is not in Tehran, but in the Indian Ocean. United Kingdom refuses to authorize the use of Diego García Island and the RAF Fairford base for a possible air campaign against the Islamic Republic, alleging that it could violate international law if it is a preventive attack. Without that permission, Washington loses two key platforms to project its long-range air power, just when the president has given an ultimatum to Iran and has hinted that in a matter of days he could decide between an agreement or a military operation. The secret island that sustains long wars. It we count some time ago. Located halfway between the east coast of Africa and the west coast of Indonesia, The island was part of the Chagos Archipelago. During the 18th century, it was colonized by the French as an agricultural settlement. So they took the Chagossians, descendants of slaves from Africa and India, to the islands to work on growing coconut trees for the production of copra (dried coconut meat). Over time, the locals developed their own culture and dialect, known as Chagossian Creole. By 1814, after Napoleon’s defeat, The island came under British control as part of the Treaty of Parisintegrating into the colony of Mauritius. Throughout the 19th century, life on the island continued with a small population dedicated to agriculture and fishing, but things were about to change with the beginning of the new century. The agreement. During the Cold War, The United States and the United Kingdom sealed an agreement. Both nations saw the island as a strategic location for a secret military base in the Indian Ocean. In 1965, the British separated the Chagos Islands from Mauritius, thus forming the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), which also includes the other 57 islands of the Chagos Archipelago. By 1966, he signed a secret agreement with the United States, allowing the construction of the “secret” military base. Key node. Since then, Diego García is anything but any base, because he is one of the more strategic enclaves of the Pentagon in the Indian Ocean. Its central runway, its port capable of hosting nuclear submarines and its logistics infrastructure allow strategic bombers to be deployed, maintained and rearmed in sustained cycles. Without going too far, last year it already served as a pressure platform when several B-2s arrived in a clear message to Iran, and precisely that type of deployment is what is now conspicuous by its absence. That there are no visible bomber movements towards the island reinforces the idea that the british veto is conditioning military planning. Without bases there are no prolonged campaigns. The geographical difference is abysmal and explains the tension. From Diego García to Iran there are around 2,300 kilometers, from the United States more than 6,000. That distance sets the pace of departuresthe wear and tear of the crews and the intensity of the offensive. For a one-night operation you can fly round trip from Missouri, as was the case in previous attacks, but for a campaign a week or more against nuclear installations, military commands and missile launchers, advanced bases are needed that allow constant sorties to be generated. In other words, without access to the island and Fairford, the role of the B-2, B-1 or B-52 is greatly reduced and the plan loses volume. A clash between allies. The disagreement is not only technical, it is deeply political. London maintains that supporting an attack could implicate it legally if it knows the circumstances of an action considered unlawful, and the prime minister has marked distances with the White House. Washington, for its part, has responded hardening the tone and linking the refusal to the dispute over the future of Diego García within the Chagos Archipelago, whose status and possible transfer to Mauritius have opened a diplomatic rift. Thus, what began as a legal debate has led to a strategic struggle between historical allies. The war that is amplified without the key piece. Meanwhile, the United States continues to accumulate fighters, electronic warfare aircraft and resuppliers in the region, preparing the board as if the military option was still alive and imminent. It turns out that the heart of a prolonged air campaign is not the F-22s in transit, but those strategic bombers operating from a secure and nearby base. Yes UK maintains the vetoWashington will have more distant and less efficient alternatives, which would force the scope and intensity of the blow to be redesigned. In short, in full escalation with Iranthe piece that could do it all more simple For Washington it is precisely the one that blocks the movement today. Image | Department of DefenseRoyal Air Force, US Air Force In Xataka | One of the most remote islands was taken 60 years ago by the United Kingdom and the United States. Since then, what happens there has been a secret. In Xataka | If the most advanced US nuclear aircraft carrier maintains its speed, it will reach its destination on Sunday. Not good news for a nation

Sparkling water has a “secret” to losing weight. And it has nothing to do with its nutritional properties.

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Sparkling water is one of those ‘rare’ options on the drinks menu that few people consume in our environment, but little by little it is gaining popularity. prominence in the dietary field. All thanks to a recent scientific publication that pointed to its benefits in order to lose weight with its consumption, although there is quite a bit of fine print under this premise. The study. The epicenter of this new wave of enthusiasm is placed in a study published in BMJ Nutrition where a fascinating hypothesis is raised: carbon dioxide dissolved in water could increase the glycolysis in the organism. A process that basically does is ‘break’ the sugar we have in our cells to obtain energy. In this way, we would be reducing one of the components that gives rise to the ‘hated’ fat that we want to avoid. As? Drinking sparkling water and having this happen is not something very ‘normal’ a priori. Science suggests that, when consuming carbonated water, the CO₂ that gives rise to those bubbles that we see on its surface passes into the bloodstream, where it could stimulate our red blood cells so that they use more glucose and therefore, it does not accumulate as fat. On paper, it sounds like music to the ears of anyone looking to lose weight: drinking water to burn off sugar. There is small print. The study itself is a brief report and the scientific community she has been quick to qualify it: Even if the mechanism exists, the isolated effect is too small to produce “miraculous” weight loss just by drinking water. In this way, we are not facing a great ‘fat burner’, but rather a metabolic curiosity that will hardly be noticed on the scale if it is not accompanied by other changes. The real trick. If sparkling water doesn’t magically “burn” calories, why do many nutritionists insist that it helps with weight control? The answer lies not in metabolism, but in fluid mechanics and satiety. This is not something new, but studies from 2008 already showed that carbonated drinks had a direct impact on the stomach. The first effect focuses on the distention of the stomach, since the gas takes up volume. Thus, when drinking sparkling water, there is greater distension of the ‘upper’ part of the stomach compared to normal water. This makes we get full faster and we don’t want to continue eating. There is more. But beyond filling us up faster, this distension sends satiety signals to the brain through the vagus nerve. That is why the bubbles “trick” the stomach, making it believe that it is fuller than it really is. In this way, the brain interprets that it is full and inhibits our desire to continue eating. thanks to chemical inhibition. Japanese investigations on oral stimulation with CO₂ suggest that this feeling of fullness can reduce subsequent food intake, although the effect is modest and short-term. The substitution factor. The strongest argument for sparkling water has nothing to do with CO₂ or gastric motility, but rather behavior. This is precisely what I was aiming for. a meta-analysis by McGlynn which reviewed what happens when we replace sugary drinks with calorie-free options. The results in this case are quite clear: replacing cola or packaged juice with water (with or without carbonation) reduces weight, BMI and body fat. And this is where sparkling water shines as a replacement tool, since for many people accustomed to the sensory “aggressiveness” of a carbonated soft drink, flat water is boring. And its impact. Sparkling water offers that oral stimulation, with the beloved sting of bubbles, without the “toll” of empty calories. If carbonated water helps you quit sugary sodas, that is the relevant clinical impact, not the fact that carbonated water speeds up the burning of sugars we have previously consumed. It’s not for everyone. Although hydration guides indicate that sparkling water hydrates exactly the same as regular water, it is not for everyone. That same mechanism that helps satiety (gastric distension) is the number one enemy for certain clinical profiles, such as for those who have gastroesophageal reflux or irritable bowel syndrome. Here, increasing the pressure of the digestive system can aggravate these diseases. Images | Anja Michal Jarmoluk In Xataka | The myth of “two liters of water a day” collapses: a mistake from 1945 that science is now trying to correct

Spain’s secret weapon in the Olympic Games is a skater dressed as a Minion. Universal almost prevented it

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Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté had been preparing for months for the most important moment of his sporting career. The 26-year-old Catalan skater, six-time Spanish champion, was clear about how he wanted to make his debut in the Olympic Games: dressed as a Minion, on the ice of Milan-Cortina 2026performing a medley of songs from the Universal Pictures animated saga. He had used that program throughout the season in international competitions, with the characteristic costume of blue jumpsuit and yellow t-shirt. I thought I had all the permits in order. Drama at Universal. On February 3, just four days before the opening ceremony of the Games, Guarino received devastating news: Universal Pictures was denying him permission to use the Minions’ music and costume in the Olympic event. “I was informed that I no longer have permission, due to copyright issues,” the skater explained in a statement published by the Royal Spanish Ice Sports Federation. Their competition was scheduled for Tuesday, February 11. Changing programs at that point seemed impossible. Permits? What permissions? In August 2024, before starting the season, he had processed the necessary permits through ClicknClearthe official system that the International Skating Union (ISU) makes available to athletes to manage music rights. His intervention included four pieces: Universal Pictures’ characteristic fanfare in the Minions version, ‘Freedom’ by Pharrell Williams (which appears in ‘Despicable Me’), and two other compositions related to the franchise. Negotiations begin. The week before the Games, Universal Studios requested additional information about the music and costumes that Guarino had been using for months. A race against time then began: the skater and his team had to negotiate simultaneously with Universal Pictures, Pharrell Williams, Sony Music and Juan Alcaraz, each owner of different rights of the songs. But as the news spread on social media, the massive support for Guarino convinced Universal to reconsider its position. All good. The skater quickly got approval for two of the songs, and got permission for a third by contacting the composer, also Spanish, directly. The fourth and final piece, Pharrell’s, was resolved at the last moment. On Friday, February 7, just two hours before the figure skating competition at the Games began with the team event, final confirmation came. The Royal Spanish Ice Sports Federation (RFEDH) announced that Guarino had obtained all the necessary licensesand managed to participate as planned last night. The laws. Guarino’s case is not an isolated incident. For decades, the International Skating Union (ISU) strictly prohibited the use of music with lyrics in competitions. Skaters could only choose instrumental pieces, usually classical music, that were in the public domain and did not raise copyright conflicts. In 2014the ISU decided to allow vocal music to attract a younger audience and modernize the image of the sport. The first time was in PyeongChang 2018. More cases. This artistic opening brought unforeseen consequences: skaters began to use copyrighted music, and artists began to claim compensation for its use. Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier used a version of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ performed by the duo Heavy Young Heathens in Beijing 2022, who sued them. This year, Russian Petr Gumennik They denied permission to use the music from the soundtrack of ‘The Perfume’. Belgian Loena Hendrickx changed one Celine Dion song for another at the last minute due to legal complications. Canadian artist CLANN expressed his displeasure upon discovering that the American Amber Glenn had used one of her songs, even though she had won the team gold medal with it. Mea Culpa. ISU President Jae Youl Kim has openly acknowledged the extent of the problem during these Games. The organization continues to seek solutions, but the complexity of the music rights ecosystem (involving songwriters, performers, production companies, record labels and distribution platforms) makes any licensing system vulnerable to errors or misunderstandings. The 2014 decision to modernize the sport by allowing vocal music was intended to revitalize it and bring it closer to new audiences, but has generated an unforeseen side effect. In Xataka | Surya Bonaly, the unattainable skater who ended up being banned from “dancing with death”

Anthropic wanted to secretly scan and then destroy millions of books to train its AI. It hasn’t been so secret

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A language model for AI needs input if it is to be trained to be more accurate and effective. The issue is how the information is obtained and whether there is an ethical way to do it that is profitable for the technology company in power. There is no doubt that the preferred option for companies has been to use all possible physical and digital content without anyone’s permission. There is also evidence. A judicial leak reveals that Anthropic invested tens of millions of dollars in acquiring and digitizing literary works without permission from the authors. According to account Washington Post, the project, internally called “Panama”, was part of a frenetic race among big technology companies to accumulate massive data to train their artificial intelligence models. How it all started. The Panama Project was launched by Anthropic in early 2024. According to internal documents revealed per the Washington Post, the goal was to “destructively scan every book in the world.” Furthermore, these documents also explicitly state that the company did not want anyone to know that they were working on it. In about a year, the company spent tens of millions of dollars buying millions of books, cutting their spines with hydraulic machines and scanning their pages to feed the AI ​​models that power Claudeits star chatbot. According to the media, the books, once digitized, ended up being recycled. Because has come to light. The details of the project have been revealed in a lawsuit for infringement of rights copyright filed by literary authors against Anthropic. Although the company agreed to pay $1.5 billion to close the case in August 2025, a district judge decided to make more than 4,000 pages of internal documents public last week, exposing the entire operation. They are not the only ones. Court documents reveal that other technology companies such as Meta, Google and OpenAI had also participated in this race to obtain massive information to train their models. According to revealed According to the documents, an Anthropic co-founder theorized in January 2023 that training AI models with books could teach them “how to write well” instead of imitating “low-quality internet slang.” On the other hand, an internal Meta email from 2024 described access to a digital library of books as “essential” to be competitive with rivals in the race to dominate AI. However, the documents revealed by the media also show how Meta employees expressed concern on several occasions about the legality of downloading millions of books without permission. An internal email from December 2023 indicates that the practice had been approved after being “escalated to MZ,” apparently referring to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. According to court records to which the media has had access, the companies did not consider it “practical” to obtain direct permission from publishers and authors. Instead, they found ways to mass-acquire books without the writers’ knowledge, including downloading unauthorized copies from third-party sites. Chat logs from April 2024 show an employee asking why they were using servers rented from Amazon to download torrents instead of Facebook’s own. The answer: “Avoid the risk of tracing” the activity back to the company. Data torrent. The documents to which the Washington Post has had access also they test that Ben Mann, co-founder of Anthropic, personally downloaded over 11 days in June 2021 a collection of books from LibGen, a gigantic library of copyrighted content. The outlet further revealed that, a year later, in July 2022, Mann celebrated the launch of the ‘Pirate Library Mirror’ website, which boasts a massive database of books and openly claims to violate copyright laws. “Just in time!!!” Mann wrote to other Anthropic employees, according to the outlet. Anthropic stated in legal documents that it never trained a revenue-generating business model using LibGen data nor did it use Pirate Library Mirror to train any full model. Anthropic’s legal solution. According to point the medium in its article, faced with the legal risk, Anthropic changed its strategy. The company hired Tom Turvey, a Silicon Valley veteran who had helped create the project Google Books two decades earlier. Under his direction, Anthropic considered purchasing books from libraries or secondhand bookstores, including New York’s iconic Strand bookstore. The company ultimately ended up buying millions of books and stacking them in a giant warehouse, often in batches of tens of thousands, according to court filings. The Washington Post assures In addition, the company worked with used book sellers in the United Kingdom. A project proposal mentions that Anthropic sought to “convert between 500,000 and two million books in a six-month period.” What the law says. Most legal cases against AI companies are still ongoing, but the media mention two court rulings that have considered that the use of books to train AI models without permission from the author or publisher may be legal under the “fair use” doctrine of copyright. In June 2025, District Judge William Alsup determined that Anthropic had the right to use books to train AI models because they process them in a “transformative” way. He compared the process to teachers “teaching schoolchildren to write well.” That same month, Judge Vince Chhabria ruled in the Meta case that the authors had not shown that the company’s AI models could harm the sales of their books. In the Anthropic case, the physical book scanning project was considered legal, but the judge determined that the company may have infringed copyright by downloading millions of books without authorization before launching Project Panama. The final agreement. Instead of facing a trial, Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5 billion to publishers and authors without admitting guilt. According to point According to the media, authors whose books were downloaded can claim their share of the settlement, estimated at about $3,000 per title. Cover image | Emil Widlund and Anthropic In Xataka | If AI is going to leave us without jobs, in the United Kingdom they are already seriously discussing the solution: a universal basic income

China studied the secret of falcons to hunt their prey. Now your drones only need 5 seconds against their targets

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Throughout history, armies have always observed nature to learn to hunt, defend themselves and coordinate better, from way to attack in group to the selection of the weakest enemy. Today, that old military tradition makes sense again in a radically different context, one marked by algorithmsautonomous machines and a new technological race that is reminiscent of other great military leaps of the past. AI as the axis of combat. In this scenario it appears China, which is systematically promoting the use of artificial intelligence in the military sphere, especially in swarms of drones and autonomous systems capable of operating with little or almost no no human intervention. counted the wall street journal this week that they are in possession of patents, academic papers and procurement documents showing that the People’s Liberation Army sees future warfare as an environment dominated by algorithms, where swarms replace individual platforms and the mass of cheap systems can overwhelm defenses, attack targets and resist electronic warfare. The Ukrainian experience reinforces this vision by demonstrating that drones are already decisive and that autonomy becomes increasingly valuable when human control degrades. Learn about animals. To solve how to coordinate swarms in real time, Chinese researchers are modeling algorithms inspired in animal behavior. For example, in an experiment developed at Beihang University, defensive drones trained as “hawks” They learned to identify and destroy the most vulnerable targets, while attacking drones imitated “pigeons” to avoid threats. In a five-on-five simulation, the defenders They eliminated all the attackers in just 5.3 seconds. Beyond the success of the results, the interest was in the method: adapt hunting, escape and animal cooperation rules to realistic combat scenarios, where drones fly, maneuver and make decisions under pressure. Mass production. The Chinese bet combines these algorithmic advances with a clear industrial advantage: factories capable of producing hundreds of thousands or millions of cheap drones per year. This allows us to think of swarms as a main weapon and not as a complement, something much more difficult for, for example, the United States, which produce fewer drones and at a much higher cost. Systems such as mobile launchers of dozens of drones, mother models capable of releasing swarms in flight or even “robot wolves” Armed forces show a doctrine oriented towards coordinated quantity, not individual technological excellence. Centralized control. The appeal of autonomy also reflects a structural distrust in the capabilities of Chinese middle managers, a recognized problem for years by the political and military leadership itself. The swarms controlled by algorithms They fit better with a centralized command culture, where decisions are designed from the top and executed without improvisation. For Beijing, AI offers a way to compensate for the lack of real combat experience and reduce reliance on human commanders in chaotic situations. One soldier, 200 drones. Added to this line of development is the massive deployment capacity that the People’s Liberation Army has begun to publicly display, with tests in which a single operator is capable of supervising swarms of more than 200 drones released in a very short time. In images and data released According to Chinese state television, the drones, trained through simulations and real flights, are capable of flying in precise formations, dividing reconnaissance, distraction and attack tasks, and changing functions on the fly thanks to autonomous algorithms that allow them “negotiate” among themselves without constant human orders. The implicit message is clear: China is not only investigating how to make swarms more intelligent, but how to put them in the air on a large scale with very few personnel, a force multiplier that reinforces its commitment to coordinated quantity as a central feature of its future doctrine. In the background, Taiwan. Of course, the approach is not without risks: Systems can fail under real conditions, be neutralized by countermeasures or, at the opposite extreme, make lethal decisions that are difficult to explain or control. Even so, the WSJ reported that the documents and analysis suggest that one of the most likely scenarios for the use of those chinese swarms It would be a conflict around Taiwan, where they could be used to saturate air defenses, locate targets and facilitate subsequent attacks. The result is a dangerous race, in which China seems to advance rapidly despite the uncertainties, bringing closer a type of war that until recently seemed pure science fiction. Image | USFWS Mountain-Prairie日本防衛省・統合幕僚監部 In Xataka | China’s new futuristic drone is already flying alongside the J-20 fighters. And Beijing has shown it without saying a word In Xataka | China has just crossed the same red line as Russia: for the first time, a military drone has invaded Taiwan’s airspace

Windows 95 had a little secret that made rebooting faster. The reason was in its more chaotic architecture

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If before Windows 95 If you used other operating systems, it’s hard not to remember the feeling of being faced with something completely new. That proposal introduced elements that we take for granted today, such as the Start menu, the taskbar or Plug and Play, and it did so at a time when starting a PC was almost a small ritual. But beneath that familiar interface a complex architecture was hidden, the result of the forced coexistence between DOS inheritances, 16-bit Windows and the first 32-bit layers. That design, as inelegant as it was effective, gave rise to unexpected behaviors that still surprise today. Few users knew that Windows 95 hid an alternative route to the classic reboot. It was enough to hold down the Shift key during the process started from the graphical interface for the system to display the warning “Windows is restarting”, instead of following the path of a cold restart, as described by Raymond Chen. The difference was not spectacular, but it was noticeable at a time when every minute of starting counted. That small gesture activated an internal mechanism designed to avoid, whenever possible, starting from scratch. The shortcut that did not restart completely Behind this behavior there was a precise technical decision. Chen details that Windows 95 used a flag called EW_RESTARTWINDOWS when invoking the old ExitWindows function, still 16-bit. With that instruction, the system did not order a cold restart of the computer, but rather something more limited: close Windows and restart it. The objective was to save steps, as long as the internal situation allowed it, although this optimization depended on everything fitting correctly. Once that alternative route was taken, the process followed a very specific sequence. The 16-bit Windows kernel was shut down first. The 32-bit virtual memory manager was then turned off and the processor returned to real mode, the most basic state of the system. At that point, control returned to win.com with a special signal asking for something very specific: restart Windows in protected mode without going through a full computer boot. With control back on win.com, the most fragile part of the process began. The program had to simulate a clean boot of Windows, as if it had just been run from scratch, which involved, in Chen’s words, resetting the command line options and returning some global variables to their original values. Although the work was largely clerical, it was especially complex because win.com It was written in assembly. There were no abstractions or modern conveniences. The decisive point was in memory. When win.com was executed, like any .com file, it received all available conventional memory. However, it freed up almost all memory beyond its own code so that Windows could load a large contiguous block when entering protected mode. If during the session a program reserved memory within the space that win.com had left free, the memory was fragmented. In that scenario, win.com could no longer recreate the original map it expected, and, Chen explains, it was forced to abandon the fast reset and fall into a hard reset. When everything fell into place, the process continued without turning back. win.com jumped directly to the code responsible for booting Windows in protected mode, recreating the virtual machine manager and llifting the 32-bit layers again. From there, the graphical interface loaded as usual and the user returned to the desktop. The difference was subtle but real: Windows hadn’t had to reboot the entire system to get to that point. This type of shortcut was only viable in a system built on cross-compatibilities. Windows 95 had to coexist with DOS software, 16-bit Windows programs and Win32 applications, and that mix forced us to accept inelegant but very practical solutions. The developers took advantage of this complexity to introduce hidden optimizations that could speed up restarts, although they could sometimes end in crashes. The obsession with saving memory led to very imaginative solutions. Chen explains that in assembler it was common to recycle code that was no longer going to be used as if it were free memory. On win.com, the first bytes of the entry point were reused as a global variableunder the premise that this code was only executed once. Since the quick restart did not return to that initial point, the system could allow that shortcut without affecting the process. That shortcut also showed its seams. Chen recalls that some users detected errors after performing several consecutive quick reboots, something that he was unable to consistently reproduce. Their hypothesis is that some driver wasn’t rebooting properly, leaving the system in a weird state, and that weirdness ended up taking its toll later. It’s no surprise that this type of behavior wasn’t presented as a documented feature, but it sums up the spirit of Windows 95 well: inventive, ambitious, and full of compromises. Images | Microsoft In Xataka | Schrödinger’s Office: at this point it is impossible to know if Microsoft keeps it alive or if everything is AI and Copilot

the secret was an invisible ice “blanket”

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For decades, planetary geologists have faced a paradox that didn’t quite add up. On the one hand, the missions like Curiosity in Gale Crater show irrefutable evidence that there were lakes of liquid water for thousands or millions of years. On the other hand, climate models insist that ancient Mars It was a cold place.with temperatures well below freezing point. A new paradigm. The question in this case is quite clear: how can there be stable liquid water on a planet where the thermometer barely rises above zero degrees? A new study led by Rice University and published in AGU Advances seems to have found the missing piece in the puzzle: seasonal ice shields. The LakeM2ARS model. To solve the mystery, the team of researchers developed a specific model called LakeM2ARS. This model included everything we know about terrestrials, but adapted to the extreme conditions that existed on Mars 3.6 billion years ago. That is, a climate with less sunlight due to a younger Sun, an atmosphere with much more carbon dioxide and much more aggressive freezing and thawing cycles than those on Earth. Using these models, the researchers began to apply different climatic situations, covering a period of 30 Martian years, which is equivalent to 56 Earth years. The results in this case pointed to something quite fascinating: the water in the lakes only froze on their surface, creating a shield of ice. A natural “blanket”. The research introduces the concept of “ice shield” or “natural blanket.” Instead of being a solid block of ice, the Gale Crater lakes they would have been protected by a seasonal ice sheet thin enough to allow dynamic processes beneath it. In this way, this “blanket” acted as a thermal insulator, since ice has a low thermal conductivity. The good thing about this is that once a layer forms on the surface, the liquid water underneath is “trapped” and protected from the frigid air, maintaining a stable temperature even if the thermometer plummets outside. Another advantage. Beyond this we can see that the low Martian pressure causes liquid water to tend to sublimate quickly. The ice thus acted as a physical plug, conserving the water inventory for decades or even centuries. But it is not that the water underneath was completely cold, but rather that since it was a thin layer, sunlight could pass through it (similar to what happens in the lakes of the Dry Valleys of Antarctica), generating a slight internal heating. The missing piece. One of the biggest criticisms of the cold Mars hypothesis was the absence of geomorphological traces. The big question we can undoubtedly ask ourselves is that if Mars was a freezer, where are the large moraine deposits and the scars left by the glaciers as they advance? The Rice University study gives an elegant answer: the ice was too thin. Since they were not massive glaciers, but rather thin and seasonal layers, they did not have the weight or dynamics necessary to erode the terrain drastically. This fits perfectly with Curiosity’s observations, which show fine-grained lake sediments, typical of calm waters, and not the chaos of rocks that a glacier would leave behind. Microscopic life. This discovery changes the rules of the game for astrobiology, which wants above all to search for evidence of life on the red planet. In this case, the theory is put forward that if Martian lakes were sealed by ice, they became extremely stable environments. Under the ice, life would have been protected from harmful UV radiation and extreme temperature fluctuations. This is why Mars did not need to be a tropical paradise to be habitable; It was enough for him to have a good “armor” of ice that would keep his liquid oases safe from the icy vacuum of space. Images | BoliviaIntelligent In Xataka | China has just resolved one of the biggest doubts about going to Mars with the birth of six space mice

The last secret of anti-drought farming is literally burying sheep’s wool

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The wool we have in our clothes today may be seen as something insignificant, but in the past It was considered “white gold” that supported the economy of many countries around the world. Currently, Australia is one of the giant producers worldwide that has two types of products: fine wool, which sells very expensive, and low quality wool that is left unused. but science has already found a way to take advantage of it in agriculture itself. An underused resource. The scientific literature that has been growing in recent months suggest that this residue is actually an underutilized piece of biological engineering that is able to retain water where no one else can. And this is something that is very interesting for the most desertified lands, such as what happens in Spain, for example. And in those countries that are more arid, such as Australia or in Spainthere are several problems: the lack of water and the speed with which it evaporates from the ground. That is why this is where the “microsponge” function that wool can have comes in. The essays. After seeing that wool has this property to retain water, science began to work on it. It was then that scientists began to apply processed waste wool in agriculture, as pellets or in compressed form. In this way, after placing it on top of the earth, it was seen how the compacted and dry soils were beginning to regenerate. Simply a layer of wool on the soil can reduce surface water loss by up to 35%. This is something really positive, since it has been observed an increase in microbial activity of between 30 and 50%, and also the test crops showed increases in production of between 12% and 18%. A simple idea. Wool acts as an insulating blanket that prevents the sun from incinerating the soil, but it also acts as that hygroscopic sponge that allows water to be provided without it evaporating quickly. There are nuances. If we go down from the enthusiasm of field trials to the coldness of the laboratory, we find something different. A study published in 2022 pointed out that wool waste not only does not damage the microbiota, but rather stimulates it. Unlike other materials that can “steal” nitrogen from the soil to decompose, wool degrades by slowly releasing nutrients. More recently, in a 2025 studyan analysis of the use of wool pellets in lettuce cultivation. The water retention figures here are more conservative, but equally valuable: they documented improvements in soil moisture of between 3% and 25%. Everything always depended on the specific type of soil, being most effective in sandy soils that are most prone to drying out. Why it works. The key to the sponge as a true help for our crops is in its physical and chemical structure. It has been specifically seen that wool can absorb up to twice its weight in water without much problem. This is essential, because when it rains or is watered it will be able to store a lot of moisture and will gradually release it when the environment dries out. But also, we are talking about a slow fertilizer. This is explained because, being composed of keratin, wool is rich in nitrogen and sulfur. In addition, its biodegradation is slow, making it an organic alternative to synthetic fertilizers. Circular economy. Beyond its function in the field, the research frames wool within the need to reduce fossil inputs. Currently, manufacturing nitrogen fertilizers consumes large amounts of natural gas, so using wool as fertilizer can help us meet this large consumption. In addition to all this, the rancher gets rid of waste that previously cost him money to eliminate or took up a lot of space and the farmer obtains a material that protects his soil from erosion and drought. Images | Sam Carter Mike Erskine In Xataka | Extremadura has become master of an unexpected sector: the cultivation of tobacco “made in Spain”

The mission in Caracas revealed that the best kept secret in the US is not a drone: it is called DAP and you will not see it in the movies

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The capture of Nicolás Maduroby US forces has not only meant a political earthquakebut rather he explained with almost surgical clarity the media type that the United States reserves for maximum risk direct action operations. In fact, the famous Night Stalkers of Washington’s Army made it clear that the drone is still in second place. Designed to enter where no one else can.Qbecause the first place is reserved to DAPthe MH-60M Direct Action Penetrator, the most aggressive and specialized variant of the black hawk operated by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers. Venezuela was, in every sense, the ideal setting for this device: a hostile urban environment, potential air defenses, the need for rapid insertion, armed escort, precise fire and absolute coordination with assault teams. Although armed versions of the H-60 ​​exist in several countriesthe DAP of the 160th SOAR represents the maximum degree of maturity of the concept, far above even those already sophisticated MH-60 transportation of the regiment itself. It is not a helicopter adapted after the fact, but a platform conceived decades ago, operational at least since 1990to accompany special forces where error is not an option. In Xataka Neither drones nor fighters nor elite soldiers: the US entered Venezuela disguising a 20th-century tactic as technology. XIX Modular firepower. The heart of the DAP is its ability to combine the punch of an attack helicopter with the flexibility of a special operations device. The current configuration of the MH-60M incorporates modular short wings with one or two heavy points per side, capable of carrying a mix of 70mm missiles,AGM-114 Hellfireair-to-air missiles Stinger ATASheavy machine guns GAU-19/B .50 caliber and M230 cannons 30 mm, the same model used by the AH-64 Apache. Added to this are two 7.62mm miniguns which can be fixed in a frontal position to maximize the volume of fire during low-altitude passes. The introduction of APKWS II guided rockets laser has added surgical precision that allows beat specific objectives in dense environments without resorting to more destructive ammunition. All this arsenal is integrated into a platform that maintains a key advantage: its dual character. In a matter of hours, the DAP can return to a transport configuration, a critical quality for unpredictable operations where the same helicopter may need to escort, attack and evacuate in a single mission. Penetrate at night and fly low. Beyond weapons, what defines the MH-60M DAP is its ability to reach the target without being detected and survive once inside. The aircraft shares with the rest of the 160th SOAR fleet an avionics suite designed for extreme night flight and nap-of-the-earth profilesliterally skimming the terrain even in adverse weather conditions. They counted the TWZ analysts that the terrain tracking and avoidance radar, in its most modern version AN/APQ-187 Silent Knightallows the crew to fly blind to any other conventional helicopter, while the electro-optical and infrared system AN/ZSQ-2 provides identification, laser designation and video in real time. Systems like the Degraded Visual Environment Pilotage Systemwhich combines cameras, LIDAR and terrain databases, allow operating in dust, smoke, heavy rain or fog, common conditions in a night urban assault. And more. This set of sensors not only facilitates navigation, but also allows the DAP to fight at very close range, executing the classic combination of strafing and rockets that has been seen in videos of the Venezuelan operation, erroneously attributed in some cases to AH-1Z helicopters of the Marines. {“videoId”:”x9cqyyg”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”A KEY of 8 ZEROS PROTECTED the WORLD from an unauthorized NUCLEAR ATTACK”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”457″} Invisible shielding. Plus: If there is something that distinguishes the 160th SOAR helicopters, it is their obsession with survival. The MH-60M DAP is covered by a genuine self protection bubble which integrates infrared, radar and laser missile warnings, active electronic warfare systems, chaff and flare dispensers, and directional laser countermeasures such as the CIRCM systemcapable of blinding infrared guided missile seekers in mid-flight. This entire ecosystem is interconnected– Detection of a threat can automatically trigger jamming, countermeasures and evasive maneuvers without direct crew intervention. Added to this is a complete electronic intelligence system and data links that allow us to know the location of emerging threats and receive information from other platforms in real time. The result is one of the most difficult helicopters in the world to shoot down, especially in night and low-altitude missions. In Espinof Hugh Jackman presents the extraordinary trailer for his new film, where he becomes one of the most legendary characters of all time The coming war. The operation in Venezuela also has hinted the immediate future of this type of platforms. The US Army has been experimenting for years with the so-called lpunched effectsdrones launchable from helicopters capable of attacking, interfering or deceiving defenses tens or hundreds of kilometers away. Although its operational use has not been officially confirmed, there are indications that the MH-60M DAP could use them for the first time in combat during this mission, expanding its effective range and reducing direct exposure to enemy fire. Added to all this is the ability to refuel in flight using a telescopic probe, normally from MC-130J aircraftwhich extends the helicopter’s radius of action to limits imposed more by human resistance than by fuel. In short, the MH-60M DAP is consolidated as the version more armed and protected of the Black Hawk ever built, a tool tailor-made for operations like the one in Venezuela, where perfect coordination between helicopters, special forces and air support decides success or failure. Far from being a simple armed escort, the DAP is the closest thing to an integral force multiplier, difficult to replace by conventional means and a central piece of the way in which the United States today executes its most delicate missions. Image | MATTHEW WILLIAMS In Xataka | The attack on Venezuela has recovered an uncomfortable truth: that it would not have happened to North Korea for a very simple reason In Xataka | Satellite images of Venezuela before and after the attack have cleared up any doubt: … Read more

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