sector

At the age of 15, he built an ocean generator with a PVC pipe and 10 euros. A decade later, it continues to spark interest in the sector

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It was 2015 when a high school student from Boca Raton, Florida, presented to a jury of scientists a prototype built with parts that anyone could find in a hardware store. Your project He was trying to solve how to generate electricity where power lines do not reach, taking advantage of the movement of the sea. There was no laboratory or company behind it, just 12 dollars in budget (about 10 euros at the current exchange rate). Interestingly, his idea is the principle on which an entire emerging marine energy industry is built. Who is he and what did he do?. Hannah Herbst was 15 years old when she devised BEACON (Bringing Electricity Access to Countries through Ocean Energy), a probe capable of transforming the movement of ocean currents into electricity. The device earned him the title of “America’s Top Young Scientist” and $25,000 in the 2015 Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, after competing against eight other finalists at the 3M innovation center in Saint Paul, Minnesota. How it all started. As Herbst shared at the time, she maintained contact by postal mail with a nine-year-old girl in Ethiopia, who lived with almost no access to electricity. “I can’t even imagine a day without light,” came to declare Herbst herself told Business Insider when recalling their conversations. She wanted to build something that could bring energy to communities like her friend’s, without depending on expensive infrastructure or conventional electrical grids. This is how your invention works. The mechanism is easy to explain precisely because its beauty lies in its simplicity. A 3D-printed propeller is placed on one end of the device; When the water current makes it rotate, a system of pulleys transmits that movement to a Pelton wheel, a type of hydraulic turbine widely used in engineering, connected to a generator. All housed inside a PVC tube. This means that clean and continuous electricity can be obtained, without depending on the sun or the wind. Herbst tested the prototype on the Intracoastal Waterway of Boca Raton, where he managed to light LED bulbs. It is not that Herbst suddenly provided a new physical principle, but it is very interesting how his proposal took that physical principle to a much smaller and cheaper scale. It didn’t stop at a school fair model. With the help of Jeffrey Emslander, a 3M scientist who served as a mentor during the summer before the contest, Herbst wanted to take his idea to a larger scale version. According to picked up Business Insider’s calculations suggested that the expanded design could generate enough electricity to charge three car batteries in less than an hour, enough energy to power water desalination pumps, blood centrifuges in rural clinics, or coastal navigation beacons. Why does it matter? More than ten years later, this approach (small, autonomous and cheap devices for areas where installing a conventional electrical network does not pay off) is exactly the direction that the marine energy industry is taking. The United States Department of Energy estimates that the technical resource available in US waters equals approximately 57% of all the country’s current electricity generation, according to data from its Hydropower and Hydrokinetic Office, although it warns that the technology is still in an early stage of development. Between the lines. Turbine technology for marine currents already existed and was being researched on an industrial scale long before Herbst put it into practice. Although what is striking is that the direction in which the sector is now moving, with smaller, modular devices designed for areas without an electrical grid, instead of gigantic and centralized turbines, coincides with the idea that that teenager intuitively applied in her garage. In this sense, several companies already operate under this same approach, although on a very different scale. ORPC (Ocean Renewable Power Company) has deployed a hydrokinetic device in Igiugig, Alaska, since 2019 to supply that remote community, and is preparing new projects in rivers in Louisiana, Canada and France. Ocean Motion Technologies develops small wave generators controlled by artificial intelligence to power ocean sensors. and Hydrokinetic Energy Corp. works in turbines that take advantage of the Gulf of Mexico current. On the other hand, it should be noted that Herbst has never intended to patent his invention or keep it exclusive. “When I finish developing it, I’m going to release it openly… everyone in the world will be able to have access to the bill of materials and the data that I got, everything necessary to make this device,” explained Herbst to Fast Company magazine in 2015. And now what. Herbst has continued to broaden his horizons ever since. He trained in information systems at Florida Atlantic University, years later developed an antibacterial bandage inspired by shark skin and, now in the field of medical technology, created AutoTQan automatic tourniquet designed to save lives in severe bleeding situations. In fact, she is currently listed as founder and CEO of this medical initiative. Cover image | Medill News Service In Xataka | Europe has found an energy vein for the next decade: North Africa

Amancio Ortega has come up short on bricks, so he has set his sights on a strategic sector: milk

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Amancio Ortega has become the greatest real estate magnate of the planet and, in the process, it has turned Pontegadea into the largest real estate agency in Europe. Ortega’s asset portfolio is made up of stores located on the best streets in the world, buildings of apartments for millionaireslarge offices in strategic locations and even hotels. However, in recent months Pontegadea has taken a liking to a much more profitable sector: that of specialized logistics centers. The investment arm of Amancio Ortega has paid 187 million Canadian dollars (about 115 million euros) for the largest refrigerated warehouse in Lactalisa French giant of the dairy industry worldwide. It is in Oshawa, Ontario, less than an hour’s drive from Toronto and stores the milk that supplies half of Canada. A warehouse designed to be the largest in the world. Broccolinithe Canadian firm in charge of building the logistics complex, designed it from scratch for Lactalis. The result It is 35,000 square meters with capacity for 60,000 cold pallets, eighty employees and a long-term lease that keeps the dairy giant Lactalis as a tenant of the complex that it has just sold. The center was conceived to unify the different distribution platforms that Lactalis had spread across Ontario. Its location gave it direct access to the country’s main highways, making it an efficient exit point to the rest of the territory, making the logistics center the ideal hub to centralize its entire cheese and dairy network in Canada. Lactalis: the dairy giant that few know. Headquartered in Laval, France, Lactalis is the largest dairy company of the planet. In 2024, it will exceed €30 billion in turnover for the first time, with 266 plants in 51 countries and 85,500 employees. In Canada it operates with some of the best-selling brands and has more than 4,000 workers in 30 facilities. The agreement reached with Pontegadea follows the usual lines dictated by Amancio Ortega: Pontegadea purchases the building and Lactalis continues to operate normally under a long-term rental regime. That is, only the owner of the infrastructure changes, but not the activity of the plant. It is the same agreement that Amazon accepted at its Seattle headquarters, Primark in the middle of Gran Vía Madrid or with the group’s brands PVH in the Netherlands. Pontegadea has taken Canada’s point. Ortega has been accumulating assets in Canada for years. In 2022 he bought the Royal Bank Plaza of Toronto, two towers in the financial center, for about 800 million Canadian dollars. In 2024 it acquired an Amazon warehouse in Burnaby, near Vancouver, for around 260 million euros. Last year The Post closedthe former Vancouver post office, for around 700 million euros. Judging by the number of operations that Ortega has closed in that country, everything indicates that the Canadian market is very attractive for Pontegadea. That has reinforced its presence in the country with each new “branch of investment” that it has started: it has offices, Premium commercial premises and, now, also logistics centers specialized in the dairy industry. The cold chain, the new objective. Pontegadea has been expanding its logistics portfolio for years beyond offices and commercial premises. The jump to food cold chain logistics is the most recent step, although not the first in this sense. Pontegadea already has a cold warehouse in Miami. This new movement represents an evolution with respect to the model of general logistics platforms that the real estate company had been applying. in Netherlandswhere he recently acquired a new logistics center of 94,000 m2 for 132 million euros. A refrigerated warehouse of this size is not easily improvised or moved, and that makes it especially valuable for those looking to secure rent collection for a long time. In Xataka | With just three moves, Amancio Ortega has conquered the Ibex35: he is now the most powerful investor in Spain Image | Broccolini

Bad Bunny’s authentic party takes place in Sector T, the “stiffs” outside the Metropolitano

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600,000 tickets are a lot of tickets. They are the ones that Bad Bunny has sold out for twelve concerts in Spain. The cheapest ones are around 70 euros. The most expensive, 600. The venues are going to be full every night. And yet, hundreds of people stand on the street, spread blankets and take out refrigerators around Gate 20 of the Riyadh Air Metropolitano and listen to the concert with a clarity that rivals that inside the venue. They call themselves Sector T. The T is for “stiff.” Who are they? Bad Bunny’s second concert in Madrid On Sunday, June 1, it left in its wake, along with the inevitable celebrity counts at the Casita (which are invariably the most read news in the media that cover the concerts), an image that circulated on social networks: hundreds of people who did not get (or did not want) entry gathered spontaneously outside the stadium, specifically in the area of ​​gate 20. There the music comes with surprising clarity and you can even see part of the stands of the venue. The scene was summed up by a spectator with a phrase that accompanies many of the videos: “Sector T of stiff but happy being able to afford the 10 dates.” The expectation. Bad Bunny debuts in Madrid a residency format that he had only done before in Puerto Ricowith ten consecutive nights in the same stadium. The tour brings together more than half a million people in its ten dates at the Metropolitano, with tickets flying in a matter of hours after they went on sale. The demand was so brutal that thousands of fans were unable to attend, but the feeling has not diminished that the concert is the place in Madrid where you “have to be” right now (with permission of the Pope’s visit). That is why the T Sector phenomenon has occurred. Metropolitan FTW. The Atlético stadium was not always the first reference in terms of concert venues in Madrid. That role corresponded to the Bernabéu, whose expensive renovation was designed precisely to turn it into a continuous entertainment space, without depending on football. We already know the story: acoustic problems, complaints from neighbors, and now the developers have to take care of possible fines. Clearest consequence: the Metropolitan takes the biggest musical shows of the yearamong them Bad Bunny and his ten nights at the athletic stadium. The Metropolitano has established a contractual limitation that requires all shows to end no later than 10:59 p.m., as a measure aimed at protecting residents’ rest and bringing forward the departure of the public. The venue also states that it operates with one of the most advanced acoustic control systems in Spain, which includes real-time monitoring, limiters verified by the City Council, probes in homes in Canillejas and Las Rosas and state-of-the-art acoustic barriers. Neighborhood associations have complaintsYes, because of the chaos at the exit, with traffic jams, horns, screams and so on. Sector T, of course, is a free agent who is not subject to any of those restrictions. The future of the T Sector. Bad Bunny still has eight more dates confirmed at the Metropolitano: June 2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 14 and 15. The makeshift sector of Gate 20 will have the opportunity to grow over the next two weeks: Sector T will grow larger as the tour progresses and images of the exterior circulate alongside those of the interior. What is not yet clear is whether the Metropolitan or the organization of the event will take any measure regarding the concentrations at the exterior entrances. For now, no one has told them to leave, so they will be there. And some will repeat. Image | NFL In Xataka | If the question is who can turn Amancio Ortega into his personal tailor, we already have an answer: Bad Bunny

sexual deepfakes out, mandatory AI label and millionaire fines to the private sector

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Spain has approved the draft Organic Law for the good use and governance of artificial intelligence. The standard adapts the legislation to framework established by the European Union with the AI ​​law and establishes a series of obligations and prohibitions based on the risk classification of these systems. The regulations impose mandatory human supervision in high-risk systems and extend responsibility beyond the company that deploys these systems, also reaching those who use them. Sanctions. In mild cases, penalties range from 6,000 euros, such as not cooperating with the authorities, to 500,000 euros or 0.5% of the total turnover. In more serious cases, turnover shoots up to 35 million or, failing that, 7% of global turnover in very serious cases. Fines of 15 million or 3% of turnover are also proposed when high-risk systems are used without human supervision. The double standard. The controversy arises because these fines are not applied when it is the administration that fails to comply with the rule. If, for example, the police or a ministry uses an AI system classified as prohibited, the law contemplates reprimands and disciplinary actions, but no fines. The Government defends that it has “raised the bar for self-demand” with transparency measures, among which is the creation of a public inventory of all AI systems used in administrative procedures. It also introduces the figure of the AI ​​delegate who will be in charge of coordinating its use. Deepfakes. The creation of deepfakes of a sexual nature and also the creation of child pornography with AI tools is prohibited. Deepfakes that do not fall into these categories (for example of a politician or a public figure) are not prohibited, but must be labeled as AI in a “clear and distinguishable” way from the time they are first shared. AI content tagging. The ministry establishes that videos and images must have a watermark in a corner of the image in which the acronym AI is clearly read. For audio generated with AI, that same seal must appear in the corresponding application, whether it is Spotify, Apple Music or another service. If you do not choose this label, it will be the audio itself that must incorporate a warning that it is generated with AI. The date to begin applying this labeling is August 2 of this year. Who will be in charge of controlling it. Supervision will fall mainly on AESIA, the Spanish AI Supervision Agency, but will be supported by other authorities such as the Spanish Data Protection Agency for biometric data, the General Council of the Judiciary for the judicial field and the Bank of Spain for everything related to the financial system. According to The CountryAESIA plans to hire 50 analysts before the end of the year to carry out this task. When it comes into effect. The law is intended to come into force before the end of 2027, but the obligation to label data with AI will come into force on August 2. However, as the law is not yet applied, in practice it means that for more than a year there will be obligations in place, but with no real ability to impose fines on companies that fail to comply. Image | Moncloa In Xataka | Deepfakes are much more than a bad joke. Now the Government wants them to be a violation of the right to honor

The sector already invoices 80,000 million a year, but OpenAI and Anthropic take 89% of the income

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Everyone wants to get a piece of the AI ​​pie, but the reality is that the pie today belongs to two companies: OpenAI and Anthropic. This confirms it an analysis from The Information in which the income of the 34 most relevant companies in the market today has been analyzed. The accounts are beginning to be striking, but so is the reality of this new technological duopoly. The sector doubles income as a whole. According to the data collected by this means, these 34 companies have an annualized income of 80,000 million dollars, about 6,600 million dollars per month. That represents 112% more than six months ago, which means that these companies have grown more than double in that period of time. The most relevant fact is not in fact that. But in reality Anthropic and OpenAI are the ones thatthey win. That figure would be promising if it weren’t for the other major conclusion of the study: 89% of that income goes to just two companies: Anthropic and OpenAI. The other 32 share “the crumbs”, because almost 9 out of every 10 dollars in income goes to the accounts of these two new technological giants. This is generative AI. The analysis published by The Information includes the 34 main companies in the generative AI sector. Therefore, hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) or other large technology companies that participate in other areas of the industry. The report is therefore especially striking when it comes to verifying how much these companies are earning, and the reality is clear: they have grown very, very quickly. But (I). We have two big buts. The first: although both Anthropic and OpenAI are growing significantly in revenue, it must be taken into account that not all of them are for these companies. Anthropic has to give up some of that revenue to both Amazon and Google because they resell their services. OpenAI must also share 20% of its revenue with Microsoft until 2030, which means that this year it will have to pay about $6 billion. Companies have turned to AI, and the big winners are both OpenAI and Anthropic, which has accelerated exceptionally in 2026. Source: VisualCapitalist. But (II). The second but is even more important, and is that of a reality that continues to be overwhelming: these companies continue to spend much more money than they earn. OpenAI itself has estimated an expense of 600 billion dollars in computing capacity until 2030, and only in 2026 are their losses expected to triple to 14 billion dollars. It doesn’t matter if you win a lot: you keep losing even more. With Anthropic there is no recent spending estimate data, but the company itself has a projection of a cash flow of $17 billion in 2028. That is not the same as profits but it is a clear indication of when it expects to stop losing money. The important thing here is that this is an estimate. It could be fulfilled, but it could also not be fulfilled. The little ones grow. Three of the best-known AI startups have crossed the barrier of 500 million annual revenues since December and they now join Cursor, which achieved it last summer. These are Perplexity, ElevenLabs and Cognition, which demonstrate that they are already capturing part of a market that does not stop growing… and spending. But the big ones don’t stop distancing themselves. Although all of these startups already have an important dimension, Anthropic and OpenAI are at another level. Both have grown exceptionally and in recent times we have seen the takeover from Anthropic to OpenAI, which already has managed to achieve in market valuation. The creators of Claude were valued at 380 billion in February, but the success of Claude Code and his models in business environments has caused its price to skyrocket. The company plans to raise tens of billions of dollars this summer to reach a valuation of nearly a billion dollars. Stock market IPOs in sight. Both OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing their respective IPOs, and in both cases they hope to lift each about 60 billion dollars from investors to become companies right off the bat with market capitalizations that could be around a trillion dollars. It is an extraordinary figure, especially considering that at this time only 13 companies around the world they exceed that figure. In Xataka | Google and Amazon Just Invested Billions in Anthropic: It’s the Biggest Clue About Who’s Winning in AI

While the international pork sector collapses, Spain breaks records

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The Spanish pig industry closed 2025 with a historical record and, a priori, that cannot be. Because, finally, we are talking about 5.27 million tons of meat just when the European pig has been in recession for four years. 6% year-on-year growth just as African swine fever reappears after 31 years of absence. To give us an idea: Spain already invoices 24.2% of all pork in the EU and is the third world producer behind the US and China. How is it possible? The question is timely. After all, the sector is growing against the tide. Not only because of the plague, nor because of the conflicts between Europe and China; but because the collapse in prices and the general retreat would have advised taking a more conservative line. However, the explanation is simpler than it seems: what is sold as an industrial success hides a history of extreme foreign dependence, health fragility and an environmental problem that the country refuses to solve. But let’s go in parts. December 16, 2025, China increased its final tariffs on European pork from 4.9% to 19.8% for five years. It is true that Iberian ham and sausages were left out and that for many Spanish companies the average tariff was 9.8%, but the blow was forceful. Above all, because (although apparently all this was part of the electric car wars) the problem is structural: China imports less and less because it produces more and more. To this we must add that a little earlier, on November 28, 2025, the Ministry of Agriculture had confirmed the first two positives for African swine fever in wild boars, unleashing a problem that made headlines for weeks (and has still not been resolved). And from this storm that threatened to break everything, the only thing that has reached the consumer is that pork is the animal protein that has become the least expensive during 2025. Because? Well, because the crisis has been metabolized, driving the concentration of the sector: today, the ten largest companies market today 65% of national meat (compared to 52% ten years ago). We have lost 32% of small farms; but the big ones have more and more power. Something that also explains why the country is about to a very serious European sanction for not complying with the nitrates directive. In the end the question is not “how is it possible that the most efficient and best armored sector in Europe is simultaneously on the verge of a collapse of margins and with major water pollution problems?”; The point is that Spain produces more pigs than ever precisely for those reasons. Image | Amber Kipp In Xataka | The gap between what pork costs on farms and in supermarkets does not stop growing. The ranchers have said enough

We were going to turn trash into clean energy. Now the biogas sector faces its biggest challenge: convincing neighbors

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Spain may be emerging as great power in solar and wind energybut there are other green energies that choke him. The Spanish state is not having a nose for biogas. Or rather: it doesn’t smell good, in the most literal sense of the word. However, the sector has practically gone from zero to one hundred in record time: in just two years there are more than 200 biogas projects on the table in different processing phases. And they bring with them a problem: biogas is the green energy that no one wants close to home. The problem: energy transition vs. social rejection. In the roadmap for Spain’s energy transition (the PNIEC 2030), whose ultimate goal is for the state to achieve emissions neutrality by 2050, biogas has its role. But to make it possible, it is an essential requirement to build and launch plants. And here it collides with a wall of social rejection in the form of citizen platforms, not so much to the technology itself, but to the implementation model. There are no shortage of reasons: from the classic fear of bad smell to the lack of territorial planning, promoter companies that present projects without setting foot on the territory and talking to those who live there, the gigantism of some facilities or the shadow of macro farms as arguments, such as They explain for El País the emeritus professor of Environmental Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia Xavier Flotats and the biologist and researcher at the National Museum of Natural Sciences Fernando Valladares. Why is it important. That biogas appears in Spain’s energy transition strategy implies that, sooner or later, it will materialize; the key now is in the as. It is also a direct path to energy sovereignty that replaces natural gas. Just take a look at the electricity price map in Europe To understand it: countries that depend on imported fossil fuels suffer from price volatility, while those who have opted for their own alternatives They achieve greater independence and stability. But its value goes beyond energy. These plants generate organic fertilizers that replace chemicals derived from petroleum and offer a real solution to waste management. The slurry or agricultural remains will be produced the same, with or without a plant; The difference is that biogas allows them to be turned into a resource instead of leaving them as an environmental problem. Context. A biogas plant is essentially a stomach where bacteria break down organic waste without oxygen, known as anaerobic digestion. From here two products are obtained: a gas rich in methane and a fertilizer. Depending on the gas obtained, the plant is simply biogas or biomethane: biogas is methane combined with carbon dioxide in almost equal parts, so it is a “weak” fuel that is usually burned on site to generate electricity or local heat. However, biomethane plants add a refining step (removing carbon dioxide) to obtain a gas similar to fossil natural gas. In Europe, the biogas sector is a consolidated industry with more than 19,000 plantsof which almost half are in Germany. A picture says a thousand words: this Europe biomethane plants map of Gas Infrastructure Europe shows the density in states like Germany or Denmark compared to the Spanish desert. The ecological dilemma. For engineer Xavier Flotats, the general rejection is a contradiction: “For some activists, it is better that a landfill is emitting methane into the atmosphere than taking the waste to a biogas plant to do something useful with it.” And he goes deeper by explaining that although this outgoing digestate has 95% of the input composition by weight, its composition changes, it is mineralized and converted into fertilizer. Valladares assures that biogas plants are greenwashing in that the process does not make the waste disappear, they only remove 5%. And that “Biogas plants cannot be understood without the macro farms industrial poultry, pigs and cows.” For the biologist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences, the only viable plants are few, small, safe and expensive. Marina Gros, representative of Ecologistas en Acción recognizes that “There are discrepancies within the organization because there is debate, there are different visions.” And in fact, have published a guide to evaluate case by case. The elephant in the room. Beneath the biogas dilemma inevitably lies the controversy of macro farms: In the event of a possible deployment of plants, the reality would be that part of the biogas produced in the state would depend on its slurry. There are those who see this as taking advantage of an already existing problem, but for other people it represents a facelift to a type of industrial livestock farming designed to maximize productivity at a lower cost compared to animal welfare and the environmental balance of the territory. Separate the wheat from the chaff. Faced with this flood of projects, experts agree on the importance of distinguishing sustainable plans from those that are not. Some signs that indicate that a project is reasonable include choosing a location close to the waste it manages and operating on a regional scale, with a plan to use the digestate as a local fertilizer and a design that guarantees total watertightness. On the contrary, there are signs that are authentic red flag: that the plant is far from the waste but close to gas pipelines, the absence of plans for digestate, the reception of waste in open pits, competition with other plants for raw materials or a logic of an industrial macroplant detached from the territory. In Xataka | A strange source of energy is putting Europe’s energy unity at risk: manure In Xataka | The ace up Spain’s sleeve to grow even more in the renewable energy landscape: biomethane Cover | Spencer DeMera and Eli DeFaria

SpaceX is now a company in the railway sector and it is very bad news for its employees

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For some people it will be ingenuity, for others a very hard face, but the point is that SpaceX has found a way to avoid lawsuits and strikes by its workers when obtaining the name of air transport company. This means that it is regulated under the Railway Labor Law, with all the benefits that it entails within US legislation. The news. On March 13, the official resolution was made public by which SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space agency, is now considered a company in the railway sector in the United States. This means that your activity is no longer subject to the supervision of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)which is typically responsible for protecting the labor rights of private sector workers. The layoffs that started it all. In January 2024, the NLRB put a lawsuit against SpaceX on the tableafter the company illegally fired 8 employees. The lawsuit requested reinstatement of the employees, back pay, and a letter of apology to each of them. Given this situation, SpaceX responded with another lawsuit to the NLRBalleging that the procedure being carried out was unconstitutional. Rockets have the same legal treatment as cargo planes. An ace up your sleeve. According to Elon Musk’s company, the NLRB should not be able to act against a company that is dedicated to transportation. He added that One of its main missions is the transport of humans and goods to the International Space Station.. In many cases, these jobs are carried out for NASA, so they would also be providing a service to the Government. For all this, they requested to be covered under the Railway Labor Law. A plan that suits many. In recent years, SpaceX, as well as other Elon Musk companies, have been the subject of complaints from a multitude of dissatisfied employees, either due to their personal situation or due to bad practices carried out in the company. In the case of Neuralink, for example, Very bad practice towards laboratory animals was reported. But returning to SpaceX, the increasing volume of complaints could put the company’s work pace at risk. This, logically, would harm its managers, but also the companies that benefit from its services. The entire US space program would probably collapse. For all this, although it seemed difficult, in the end Elon Musk’s company has had a resolution in favor of its new name. Immune to strikes. One of the peculiarities of railroad companies in the United States is that they benefit from special state protection. Since minimum transport services must be guaranteed, strikes and other similar activities that would normally slow down the normal pace of work are closely controlled. The NLRB no longer rules. Another of those special protections for railroad companies is that the NLRB no longer has power over them. Therefore, dismissed employees cannot resort to it to report their situation. Instead, the company is governed by the rules of the National Mediation Boardmuch more lax in the mediation of labor disputes. It is true that employees can request strikes, but to do so they must undergo a long and tedious process that often causes them to change their decision. And now what? With this new name, SpaceX has even more power and freedom than before. If measures are carried out that involve malpractice towards employees, it is difficult for their complaints to come to fruition legally. This gives them a lot of leeway and greatly speeds up their protocols. Other curious legal victories. It is not the first time that SpaceX has obtained an unexpected legal name. Last year, for example, The Starbase base was given the name of cityso that all employees who live nearby would also become inhabitants. This, far from changing a few patterns, also gave SpaceX more freedom when maneuvering in the areas surrounding its base. As with railway legislation, what may seem like a small name change can change everything. Image | Gage Skidmore (Wikimedia Commons) |SpaceX In Xataka | SpaceX is preparing the largest IPO in history: the fact that it is doing so right now is no coincidence

It is the promise of a Chinese startup that aims to revolutionize the sector

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There is a whole world in this synthetic fuels. And it is no wonder, since whoever can develop a renewable fuel, without harming the environment and with elements that we have in abundance, has won heaven. And in this regard, there is a Shanghai startup that promises to have taken a significant step. And if his claims hold up, it could change the rules of the game. We tell you the details. Context. China imports more than 70% of the crude oil it consumes, and a considerable proportion comes from the Middle East. If you have been paying attention to this region of the planet in recent weeks, you will have seen that the thing is not very there. And at a time when conflicts in the Persian Gulf generate volatility in the markets and threaten energy supply chains, Beijing has been looking for alternatives to conventional fossil fuels for years. It is in this scenario where Carbonology emerges. What exactly has he announced. Just like share SCMP, the company, co-founded in 2024 by a former Tesla vice president, claims to have developed a process to convert carbon dioxide (extracted from air and water) into synthetic fuel using solar and wind energy. The products it claims to be able to manufacture include gasoline, diesel, aviation kerosene and naphtha, all of them at competitive prices with those on the market. The company also reportedly announced that it is preparing a deployment to produce its product on a large scale in China. How this technology works. The process the startup describes is based on direct air capture, known in the industry as DAC (Direct Air Capture). This technique consists of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and combining it with hydrogen, in turn obtained through electrolysis of water using renewable energies, to synthesize liquid hydrocarbons. The result is fuels that are practically identical to those derived from petroleum, but whose carbon cycle is closed: the CO₂ they emit when burned is the same as that captured to manufacture them. It is really not a new process, as it has been developed for years in laboratories around the world and There are pilot projects underwaysuch as the Haru Oni ​​plant, in southern Chile, promoted by companies such as Siemens and Porsche. What is still unclear. The bad thing is that Carbonology’s claims lack details. According to the mediuma company spokesperson confirmed the information but declined to offer more information on the matter. As SCMP shares, the company has a registered capital of just over 14 million yuan (about $2 million) and completed a first round of financing last year. In January it opened a 300 million yuan R&D center in Shanghai, along with a synthetic kerosene production line. In any case, the company recognized that its future commercial operations will probably have to be located near large solar and wind energy facilities in western China, since it is a process with high energy demand. A problem that persists. Synthetic fuels produced from renewables remain expensive. The medium refers to paper published in January 2025 in the journal Energy Conversion and Management, where some of the obstacles to its commercialization were identified, including high capital intensity, low energy efficiency in the conversion and absence of infrastructure and regulatory frameworks that allow its large-scale deployment. About Repsol. In Spain, the main company that has promoted renewable fuels in its gas stations has been Repsol, although the concept in this case is different. Repsol comes from a process that reuses used cooking oilremains of agricultural processes and forestry waste to develop its Nexa fuel, which is already sold in hundreds of gas stations in the country. However, the company is also studying the DAC technique to produce synthetic fuels. It does this through a cutting-edge project in the Port of Bilbao (Petronor). At the moment what they have is a demonstration plant, so we will have to wait to see if it has an outlet. for the car. That a Chinese startup barely a year old claims to have solved the cost problem that has blocked the entire industry is, at the very least, interesting, but there is a lack of data to support it. DAC technology exists and is maturing, but most of the CO₂ captured so far is stored underground, not converted into fuel. That the announcement was made under these circumstances is curious, to say the least. So we will have to wait to see if this project ends up materializing and fulfills what it promises. Cover image | ADIGUN AMPA In Xataka | 115 million barrels released and a fear on the horizon: that gasoline in Spain will go to €2/liter

The almond trees throughout Spain are already in bloom and that is fantastic news for the sector. Or also a disaster

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40 years ago, on January 10, the father of Simplisíssimus told him it would be a bad year for the almond. The reason was simple: when the trees flowered early, the almond embryo was exposed (“weak and sensitive”) to late frosts that could destroy entire crops. Therefore, the good time for flowering was March, he explained. And he must have been right, but in the last 44 years it has been increasingly difficult to prove it. According to an article published by AEMETSince 1981, the flowering of the almond tree has been advancing systematically and documented throughout the country. But it seems that, at least in some areas, this has changed this year. If confirmed, it could be good news. When do almond trees bloom? According to the work of the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Senckenberg Research Institute and AEMETin these 40 years, the median flowering date in the center of the peninsula has moved from February 12 to February 7. Of course, the progress has not been linear: it has accelerated in recent years. At a historical level, the most advanced in recent decades was in 1993 (around January 8). And why should we care? In general terms, because the almond tree is the most extensive woody crop in Spain and, in fact, it is growing: in the last decade the dedicated area has grown by 34%. The almendril madness in the country is such that, well, Spain leads the sector with 765,000 hectares productive. That is, it is an issue that matters to us as a country. So, we’re talking about good news, right? It will depend on how the weather goes from now on and, furthermore, we must not forget that It has not been like this in all places. However, as has been happening lately in the field, it can be (at the same time) good news and bad news. Good because a big harvest would help remove volatility that the almond has had in recent years, because it would help generate rural employment in a year which is expected to be complicated by flooding and will give a break to agricultural insurance. And yet, a good harvest can end up delaying a fundamental debate: that of varieties. The only way the sector has adapt to climate changes is betting on late or hyperlate variants. They are not a magic solution, but it is a solution. The question is whether the global almond giant, up to its eyeballs in debt, will understand that it has to make a move. Image | Tim Mossholder In Xataka | An end of February with 20 ºC, haze and full reservoirs is not “good weather”: it is the sign of a completely misplaced meteorology

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